A La Carte (6/24)

Email and Offline Relationships [2] - TIME has a worthwhile article on the way email can potentially damage offline relationships. “It’s possible that instead of fostering real friendships off-line, e-mail and social networking may take the place of them — and the distance inherent in screen-only interactions may breed feelings of isolation or a tendency to care less about other people. After all, if you don’t feel like dealing with a friend’s problem online, all you have to do is log off.”

Christ & Katrina [3] - Russell Moore writes about visiting his hometown for the first time after Hurricane Katrina. “For a week I didn’t know if my parents and grandmother and other relatives were alive or dead. I watched the images on television, pacing the floors as I saw landmark after landmark wiped off the map. The mausoleums in some of the graveyards are said to have opened, with coffins and bodies floating down the streets. But the round-the-clock cable networks didn’t prepare me for seeing my post-Katrina hometown with my eyes for the first time. My boyhood prophecy charts prepared me more.”

Pray for Joni Eareckson Tada [4] - CT reveals that Joni Eareckson Tada will be undergoing surgery for breast cancer.

Pornography and Your Brain [5] - Here’s a good article on the ways pornography changes your brain. This is an area of growing interest and increasing concern. “This article will seek to answer two questions: (1) Biologically, is the brain affected by pornography and other sexual addictions? (2) If so, and if such addictions are widespread, can they have a societal effect as well?”