Linky Linky

Notice I added some links to other blogs, etc on the sidebar.

This includes the recently commented and queried bb and cv.

So, check 'em out! and let me know if there are others you think we should link.

At the risk of sounding like an Evil Conservative

Some people are always talking about how wind and solar power are the Answer; fossil fuels have too big an effect on the environment. Not to delve into fossil fuels, but nobody ever thinks about the possible effects of wind or solar power. Windmills harvest energy. From where? They take it out of the wind. It seems that if the whole world were powered by wind, that could be quite an impact on wind and weather patterns. What would that do to climate?

And solar: you have arrays of black panels that absorb much more of the sun's energy than what's underneath it; that is, where you put lots of panels, you used to be reflecting quite a bit more energy back into space. Even with more efficient panels, running the whole world on solar could be a significant net gain of energy absorbtion on earth.

Someone should do the math on that global warming.

The Emergent Church

Have any of you become aquainted with the "Emerging" movement within "evangelicalism" (I decided henceforth to distinguish between Big E Evangelicalism, which embodies its Greek root evangel = gospel, and little e evangelicalism, which is just the name of something), as popularized by Brian McLaren? Anyway, I just finished a (somewhat lengthy) series of posts from a friend of mine about it, that I found a quite useful discussion.

Emergent as a movement within evangelicalism Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

He pointed to some pages from "McLarenists", and I was struck by one quote there, how their jargon is a bunch of forceless platitudes, and reads like stereotypical upper management-speak, self-help pep talks, and sales seminars about "new paradigms". Here's the original, and the following is my feeble understanding (my editorial remarks in []). Maybe y'all can help me better understand it:

"The emerging church around the world shares a number of common characteristics, including in most cases, an emergent vocabulary [self-referential and circular?], synoptic outlook [they only like Matthew, Mark and Luke?], creative expression, organic resourcing [reduce dependency on foreign petrol?], fluid strategy [again, petrol?], decentralized leadership, holistic expression, fluency in new media [ahh... this one I get... "God spoke and there was PowerPoint"], postmodern sensibility, structural simplicity, countercultural origins [back to the "Jesus freaks..."], an upfront missional focus, modular church expression [what...?] rather than singular, a deep ecclesiology [sub-basements in all church buildings?] attendance at particular yearly festivals [Rosh Hashanna, Ramadan, Juneteenth...], a greater ecumenical commitment and social concern and so on" (Andrew Jones, The Emerging Conversation: Unabridged)

So.... what?

Political poll

Suppose that Hilary Clinton gets the Democratic nomination and Mitt Romney gets the Republican nomination. Do you
A. vote for Mitt Romney
B. vote for Hilary Clinton (hint: not B)
C. vote for a third-party candidate
D. stay home and don't vote

Honestly, I'm caught between A and C. Not that my vote would make a difference. Living in Utah, Romney would probably end up winning the state with about 99.57% of the vote and it wouldn't matter who I voted for. But it is the priniciple of the thing, so the reason that I would find it hard to vote for Romney is because he is Mormon. Now, he does have good morals and would probably lean a lot of the same ways I do about the things that I care about the most (i.e. abortion, homosexuality, etc.). And it's not like many of the presidents that have claimed to be Christian were really Christian (Bill Clinton claimed to be Baptist, after all, albeit American Baptist). But I don't like the idea that Gordon Hinckley could call the White House at any time and get Romney to do what he wanted. Maybe I'm over-reacting, but I don't think it is much of a stretch to see that this could happen. Anyway, what do you guys think?