andersoj.org oddments

I am excited (and maybe a little too much so) to be moving to Blacksburg, VA — a town which actually has a “Blacksburg 2046 Comprehensive Plan”, which clearly subscribes to several tenets of New Urbanism. (more…)

After engineers commanded Mars Rover Spirit into an unusual behavior — operating after solar input has all but disappeared — it returned this remarkable sunset image. More details are available at SpaceRef. –JA

Is anyone else freaked out by the notion that the North Pole is headed to Siberia?

Our friend Lauren Winner has an article posted which strikes near home — Beyond Being a Bridesmaid. While the chiffon dress is a trivial place to start, Winner goes somewhere interesting with this article, championing a re-imagining of marriage as a communal endeavor. Enjoy. [A note… this is on boundless.org, so if you’re philosophically opposed to the Good Dr. Dobson, don’t follow the link.]

This article follows neatly on the heels of a conversation we had in our SLCL meeting on Monday night, where we talked about the Word of God being always personal, but never private. The distinction between the notions of ‘personal’ and ‘private’ is a challenging one as we apply it to some of the material elements of our life — money, sex, time, employment — and ask ourselves whether our conduct in these matters is really as ‘private’ as our society likes to suggest.

A sample quote below the fold… Enjoy… –JA (more…)

Proudly directing readers to the Patriot Ledger article on Youth at Bethel Church. Our youth pastor, Mat Thomas, has been doing good things at Bethel, and its exciting to see some kind of recognition! –JA

SoMA has a review of Real Sex up at Lauren Winner: Reformed Sinner or Canny Opportunist? - Astrid Storm, which is really the first negative review I’ve read of the book, so I wanted to give it some airplay. Storm is an Episcopal priest — Winner’s own tradition — and so her challenges deserve some attention… (more…)

My SLCL crowd might like to read Bill McKibben’s review of Jeffrey Sachs’ book, The End of Poverty. –JA

For those of you who are scripture readers regularly, there is a new resource up at Lector Works, aiming to prepare Lectors for the weekly readings from the Roman Catholic Lectionary. You may also be interested in the grandaddy of such sites, over at Lector’s Notes. Note the discussion in their lector dialog section on the topic of including teens in the ministry of lector. –JA

The BBC is now offering its content in an unusually unconstrained fashion on backstage.bbc.co.uk. A story on the topic aired on NPR’s On the Media today [transcript] [mp3 audio stream]. –JA