Dress Down Friday is Back
It’s been a little while since I’ve done a dress down friday post (a casual listing of interesting web links) and so today seemed like a good day to start back up again, at least on an on-again-off-again basis.
Better World Books is an online bookstore that uses funds from their sales to help encouarge literacy throughout the world, not to mention recycling old used books and giving them to those in need, and shipping your order free to anywhere in the US [thanks JR].
Better World Books collects and sells books online to fund literacy initiatives worldwide. With more than two million new and used titles in stock, were a self-sustaining, triple-bottom-line company that creates social, economic and environmental value for all our stakeholders.
A church youth conference set to give away a semiautomatic assualt riffle to one teenager had to cancel the giveaway.
Over at the Compassion International blog there’s a lengthy discussion (see comments) on “Why We Can’t End Poverty.” The author of the post provokes thought when he says, ” I dont think were called to end poverty. I do think were called to be obedient to Gods command. Its about taking care of those who are less fortunate. I think its about making sure that no child ever starves to death for lack of food, or dies from a preventable disease…I think God allows poverty so that His glory may be shown through His people doing His work obeying that command.” What do you think?
Ralph Peters at the New York Post takes to task intellectuals who he believes are wasting their time trying to change the world (only) through the power of the pen. His piece is a fiery retort against academics and pacifists alike (can you have one without the other?). He’s certainly trying to stir the hornet’s nest when he says, “Pacifists mean well. But they’re a dictator’s best friends…The use of the pen is an indulgence we can afford only because better men and women grip the sword on our behalf.” It’s a bit ironic that he too uses the power of the pen to challenge those who he believes get nothing done by sitting in their ivory towers writing and thinking.
As a nice balance to Peters essay, Jarrod McKenna in “Ecopornography, Culture Jamming and the Church,” challenges what he calls “Empirewash” and the commitment to unending cycles of violence by lifting up George Fox and early Friends as an example of the church Culture Jamming.
Finally, Al Gore gives a speech in which he says: “America must commit to producing 100% of our electricity from cheap, clean renewable energy sources like solar and wind within 10 years.” You can learn more here.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dt9wZloG97U&hl=en&fs=1&w=425&h=344]