- Maggie and I don’t have children, but I still found this interview with Pamela Paul in Salon really interesting. The playpen is something that all of our parents used. You plopped the kid in it, and then you ran to take the laundry out of the washing machine, and throw it in the dryer, or to return a call to your girlfriend. Today, the playpen is considered totally verboten. You never put your kid in a playpen. How could you limit their exploration? How could you deprive them of the stimulation? You may as well be spanking your kid roundly every day for no reason whatsoever. But what is Baby Einstein really, but a modern playpen? It’s a way to have your kid occupied, while you get to go do something else. (via kottke)
- Mark Van Steenwyk writes poignantly about privilege and oppression in a post titled A Mountain of Bones over at Jesus Manifesto. Some say that my place on this mountain is a birthright that I cannot sell. Nevertheless, I’m trying to climb down this mountain to live at the lower heights. In all things I must place my spiritual kinship above ethnic ties and racial ties and even family ties. I don’t do this out of guilt, but because I honestly believe that I can experience more of the Kingdom this way, and experience more of Jesus this way.
- Anyone following Ben Saunders attempt at a world speed record to the North Pole? He’s blogging as he goes. It’s still cold enough for eyelashes to freeze (which is less of a problem than it sounds) and for chocolate to lose its flavor (a big problem indeed). And I’m drifting backwards. I’m amazed I managed six nautical miles today, and it wouldn’t surprise me if the Arctic gobbles back one or two of those miles as I lie here tonight. It’s all good fun.
- Chris Jordan has an exhibit about American consumption that has to be seen. I won’t even try to explain it. This series looks at contemporary American culture through the austere lens of statistics. Each image portrays a specific quantity of something: fifteen million sheets of office paper (five minutes of paper use); 106,000 aluminum cans (thirty seconds of can consumption) and so on. My hope is that images representing these quantities might have a different effect than the raw numbers alone, such as we find daily in articles and books. Statistics can feel abstract and anesthetizing, making it difficult to connect with and make meaning of 3.6 million SUV sales in one year, for example, or 2.3 million Americans in prison, or 410,000 paper cups used every fifteen minutes. (via johnny baker)
David W. Swanson
Pastor and Author
David W. Swanson 
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