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A La Carte (5/11)
- 05/11/11
- 7
I was doing a phone interview last night and had a rather awkward moment. I was in the basement and as I was answering a question, I spotted a hamster in the window well, trying to get into our house (or get out of the window well). I hadn’t expected that. When the interview wrapped up, I managed to track down its grateful and relieved owner (who lives 2 doors down). End of story.
More Friends Online - This seems rather significant. “There really is something in that lingering suspicion that most users of social networking sites have more friends in cyberspace than reality.The average person has in fact double the amount of online friends than physical ones.”
Underage Facebook Users - I am often asked in interviews how we should train our children to use social media responsibly. Here’s a good place to start: don’t cheat the system and get them a Facebook account before they are old enough to legitimately have one. And yet there are currently 7.5 million Facebook users who are underage (who have lied or whose parents have lied to get them an account).
Starbucks, Vocation and the Mundane - Here are some interesting thoughts from Matt Perman about vocation.
Unspoken Truths - As cancer ravages his body, Christopher Hitchens is finding his voice leaving him. You can’t help but pity the man; you can’t help but pray for him.
The ‘Education’ Mantra - “One of the sad and dangerous signs of our times is how many people are enthralled by words, without bothering to look at the realities behind those words.” Ain’t that the truth! Thomas Sowell writes about “education” and how it is one of those words.
Thriving at College - Speaking of education, my friend Alex Chediak wants you (or your kids or your grand kids) to thrive at college. And that just happens to be the title of his new book. Here is a very positive review of it.
The King’s English - Now this is pretty clever. This video ties into a unique blog effort. In honor of the 400th anniversary of the King James Version, this blogger “will blog on a phrase each day that has passed into common parlance: popular phrases like ‘labour of love’, ‘beast of burden’, ‘wits' end’ and ‘scapegoat’; but also phrases that should be more popular, like ‘filthy lucre’ and ‘gird up thy loins’.” (see http://kingsenglish.info/)
We spend our years with sighing; it is a valley of tears; but death is the funeral of all our sorrows. —Thomas Watson
I am a follower of Jesus Christ, a husband to Aileen and a father to three young children. I worship and serve as a pastor at 
Releasing on April 1, The Next
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This review of the bestselling
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Comments (7)
The idea of vocation is important even if one is unemployed in the conventional sense. I currently find myself without “conventional work” but even if you find yourself unemployed , you are not. In fact between making sure my son’s get to school , my wife to work , clean and reno’s to our house , shuttle my aging Aunt (who has no children) around , prepare meals to maximize our budget(I love to cook) and counsel my son’s friends who are lacking in a Father figure, my weeks are full.
Until which time I become employed again in the conventional sense , the lesson I have learned is all task I carry out have purpose and meaning for God’s glory. It has been a blessing to be “unemployed” , for I have had opportunities to serve others that I would never have had. So when I clean our house or make biscuits, yes it may be mundane to some but if we have a proper understanding of God , then we know we can do all things for his glory , even scrubbing out the shower .
Your comment on “Underage Facebook Users” brings back a discussion I’ve been having with others on the same topic.
So that I don’t get too lengthy, I will simply ask a question: When you download a program and it asks you if you’ve read the agreement (that would literally take 20 to 30 minutes to read) - and it won’t let you download the program without reading it… do you check the box?
“This seems rather significant. “There really is something in that lingering suspicion that most users of social networking sites have more friends in cyberspace than reality.The average person has in fact double the amount of online friends than physical ones.”
This is getting exercised over semantics. If Facebook less cheesily used the term “Contacts” instead of “Friends,” there would be nothing to get excited about, because people wouldn’t be comparing the number of online contacts they have to the number of actual “friends” they have.
If there is a problem here, it is with people not being able to distinguish between Facebook contacts and actual “Friends.” And surely there are some people with that issue (though probably fewer than the worriers think.) But you can’t determine the existence or extent of that problem by asking people how many Facebook profiles they link to, compared to how many friends they have.
Tim,Did you follow the command of Mark 16:15 and preach the gospel to this hamster before you returned him/her/it to the owner..
j/k don’t take my question seriously.
Mike, did you follow Matthew 18 and contact Tim privately before you posted that? ;-)
Thanks for the heads up about the “Thriving in College” book. As a believer who has both undergraduate and graduate degrees from secular universities, I sometimes feel chastised or looked down upon for not going to a Christian university. In spite of being on a “heathen” campus, I found college to be a time of immense growth. But I also saw others for whom it was a spiritual struggle. I’m happy to know there is such a great book out there I can recommend.
The underage Facebook thing really gets me. I even mentioned it one time on Facebook to see what kind of response I would get - to me it seems that if you allow your under 13 child to join Facebook, you are basically telling that child that it is okay to lie. I have Christian friends that don’t have a problem with this. And I don’t understand how they can think it is okay to teach their child it is okay to lie.