Saturday, April 27, 2013

Socially Acceptable Sin

Someone posted a link to this and I thought it might be good to post here.  It made me think of Screwtape and his intentional misguiding of natural tendencies.


What do you think?

Wednesday, April 17, 2013

Liberty Denied to the Poor

I read this post and thought it was interesting and maybe even a little depressing.  It contrasts two views of economic development and explains how the one that was followed has created problems in third world countries where the value of the person is diminished.  It mentions the an oil push in Uganda promoted by the World Bank and Ugandan government that is pushing poor villagers out of their homes.  It reminds me of Little Bee.

http://blog.acton.org/archives/53313-liberty-for-me-but-not-for-thee.html

Sunday, April 14, 2013

A View from the Underside: The Legacy of Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Thanks again, Pastor Mike, for passing this on to me.

A View from the Underside: The Legacy of Dietrich

This is a book and DVD by Al Skaggs and is just one of his justice series.  The series seems to focus on Christians standing up for the oppressed and has 12 different plays/performances that he performs at places around the world, 3 books, and 3 dvds.  I have not read the books or seen play or dvd although I think I will likely do so in the not too distant future.  If I do read or see any I will post that here on the blog.

Tuesday, April 9, 2013

Books, Trends and Culturomics

Some interesting stuff:

TED talk aboutWhat We Learned from 5 Million Books;"What We Learned from 5 Million Books"
This is about finding cultural trends using 5 million books that have been indexed by Google and can be searched using NGrams

Very interesting.  What do you all think?

Monday, April 8, 2013

Screwtape Letters

I just finished reading Screwtape Letters and Screwtape Toast.  I am really looking forward to talking about this one.  I wondered why demons do what they do if they can't win.  This is an interesting explanation of that.  I am with CS Lewis that this would be easier to write and in my case read, but thinking about it makes you uncomfortable.

By the way, there is an audio version of this with John Cleese of Monty Python fame as the narrator out there as well.  Just in case you want to hear someone else read it.