- I’ve enjoyed playing around with Twitter over the past couple of months, but this story makes my updates seem ridiculously shallow. An American student who used a microblog site to free himself from an Egyptian jail is harnessing the Web’s power again — this time to demand the release of his translator. James Karl Buck was released from a Mahalla jail after sending a one-word blog post from his cell phone through the Twitter Web site. The message — “Arrested” — alerted all of his friends on the site of his detention.
- In his typically insightful way Pete Rollins asks some difficult questions about our interactions with those who are different from us. We may say that we want to live in a society of difference and that we are enriched by this wealth of diversity. Indeed we may even spend our time fighting for such a society. However, so much of this seems to spring from a deep horror and fear of the other. Is it not the case that we can celebrate others only so long as they occupy a public space with us within which they do not air their potentially exclusive, racist and sexist attitudes?
- Short YouTube video of Barack and Michelle Obama’s “fist bump” after securing the nomination. Nice. (via everybody cares)
- A Time magazine article from 1947(!), “The Last Traffic Jam”. The average U.S. citizen completely ignores the regularity with which the automobile kills him, maims him, embroils him with the law and provides mobile shelter for rakes intent on seducing his daughters… Said Dr. J. P. Hilton, a Denver psychiatrist: “The driver behind a traffic crawler gets angry. His reason departs. He wants to ram through, to pass, to punish the object of his anger.” Did the doctor feel the same way? “And how,” he said, and shuddered. “I dream of wide highways and no automobiles—no automobiles at all.” (via kottke)
David W. Swanson
Pastor and Author
David W. Swanson 
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