Neal Patrick Harris loves Thomas more than you:

Neil Patrick Harris’ Thomas & Friends Obsession from Neil Patrick Harris

Gays, Religious Traditionalists and the Feeling of Being Under Siege

Faith in the system or faith in Jesus?

Which door do you choose? (I know this is pure marketing for a soap company, but it still is an effective and powerful video).

Of interest:

What does Bob Dylan do for a living? “I confound expectations”

Seth Godin: Measure what you care about.

The worst thing about Lenovos adware isn’t the adware.
Semi related: AT&T is charging customers not to spy on them. I’ve been thinking about covering the topic both these articles speak to in a class I’m taking this semester. Both incidents represent a natural progression that has been happening for some time with the economic incentives of data mining verses the personal interests of privacy, and I don’t necessarily see this changing anytime soon; rather, I’d expect it to continue to grow and become increasingly less obvious to the end user. Overall lesson: using HTTPS, VPNs, and encryption is your friend, but even that isn’t perfect.

9 Facts About Computer Security that Every Expert Wish You Knew. Numbers 1-6 are especially essential to know and put into practice.

My cousin Tristan is NO LONGER my authorized biographer.

Using a personal Kaban system to organize your work. Interesting idea and I have set up an account on Trello, but haven’t put a working system into place yet.

Slacktivist: Of pocket lint and ‘political correctness.’:

“There’s a perverse impulse to get defensive when confronted with anything that might make us feel embarrassed or force us to admit that we maybe did something foolish or unthinking. And that defensiveness can lead us to resent or to reject the simple advice that can free us from what may turn out to be wholly avoidable and easily resolvable problems.”

Also from Fred Clark: Southern Baptist Leaders Call for War… Or Something…

 A Farewell to Mallrats. Prior to this article, I’ve been thinking how malls are no longer the “third space” they were for teens 20 years ago. The article speaks of some economic factors behind this, but I also wonder about the social factors – the ways shopping centers have been policed and monitored for the last 20 or so years I think have been actively designed to keep teens away – leaving them with very little public space to freely gather anymore. The rise of social media, I think, is a direct consequence of this displacement. Since there are now so few public, physical spaces for teens to gather they have resorted to digital spaces.

Stephen Colbert talks about his faith. What I LOVE about this video is that:
1. Colbert “gets” who Peter is in Scripture
2. The discovery that he used the very same scripture for his wedding that I used in mine (and no it’s not the traditional 1 Corinthians 13):

When churches want a pastor who can ‘bring in young families.’

Detroit’s ‘Walking Man’ Walks On – the complexity of poverty and how sometimes our “solutions” create more problems for others.

The Privatization Backlash (aka sometimes the ‘private sector’ isn’t the solution).

(Obligatory note about neglected blog here).

Of interest recently:

What the world looks like with Social Anxiety

Why Airlines Want to Make You Suffer

2 Reasons You Shouldn’t Compare Yourself to Other People

From my college friend, Courtney Ball: Two Stories About Belonging

Wil Wheaton: I know I can be broken

Scot McKnight: Right to Carry Increases Crime

The Top Gun trailer you didn’t see (via)

Magnets can attract your cereal

This 16-year-old Scam is Still Making Children Sick
Related:

 (I actually remember seeing this PSA on TV back in the day but had forgotten all about it until I found it here).

Seth Godin: Used to Be

7 Career Lessons You Missed From The Breakfast Club

I’ve been mulling over a post offering practical and easy computer security tips for my friends and any others who stumble upon this blog, but in general DON’T do this:

Glad to see that Go Daddy is getting better – I’ve not needed to use them for domain registration, but I was also had a commitment NOT to use them because of their prior advertising campaigns.

Roy Kafri – Mayokero:

Roy Kafri – Mayokero (Music Video) from Vania Heymann on Vimeo.

Of interest from the last couple months…

How to clean your gadgets without ruining them.

Donald Miller: I’m Glad I’m Not the Same Guy Who Wrote Blue Like Jazz.

A link that will make my wife’s head explode: A Definitive Ranking of Every Character on the West Wing.

Seth Godin: Without a Keyboard.

“The public square is more public than ever, but minds are rarely changed in 140 character bursts and by selfies.”

 GEGeek Tech Toolkit – I’ve played with similar USB app packages in the past, but this one looks particularly interesting.

That time I let my cloud storage get too full…

Why You’re More Successful Than You Think.

Jamie, the Very Worst Missionary: #Blessed. I preached on Matthew 5 this past week in Ypsilanti and touched on this same theme that our very notion of blessing in warped, but Jamie lays it out in a much better way.

Kali LInux NetHunter. This past spring I was playing with some basic tools that turn tablets into hacking platforms as a way of understanding the potential security risks mobile devices can present. This takes that possibility to a whole new level.

Guy is setting up coffee dates with all 1088 of his Facebook friends. I love this idea.

A gun is more likely to be used against its owner than against a bad guy.

Diet Racism (via)

Fred Clark: Jesus, Clobber-Texts and The Centurion’s ‘Companion’

Of interest from recent weeks…

The Auto Bailout Saved 1.5 Million Jobs

Here’s Everywhere You Should Enable Two-Factor Authentication Right Now (For non tech friends, two-factor authentication is basically an easy way to add a second “layer” to your passwords on various internet sites – generally your e-mail, cloud, social network service, etc. will send you a 4-6 digit code via text so you can help prove who you are. I’d recommend using it for any service you might worry about being compromised).

The Journal of a New Cobra Recruit:

 “Sarge is a great teacher because he doesn’t just criticize. He showed the right way to shoot. What you do is you start shooting your gun wildly and run towards the target as fast as you can and, in your scariest voice, you yell “COBRA!” We worked on that all afternoon, and just before we broke for dinner, I actually hit the target! Sarge and everyone else were so happy for me that they were about to cry. Told me I’d just set the record for marksmanship in COBRA boot camp.”

(make sure you read the whole thing).

 How Hitler Tried to Redesign Christmas

The FBI Considered “It’s A Wonderful Life” to be Communist Propaganda

Surprise! It’s Super Easy to Identify People from Metadata 

Saving Mr. Banks is a Spoonful of Lies

Neil Gaiman’s New Year’s Wish

Seth Godin: Welcome to Paris

Billy Bragg – January Song:

Of interest from the last couple weeks…

Jeremy Smith – Fair Atheists, Religious Jerks and Clergy Taxes. I think in general there is a lot of misunderstanding about how clergy are taxed; because clergy are considered self-employed, and parsonages are treated as taxable income, clergy (at those who play by the rules), are often taxed at a slightly higher rate than most people. But the cause isn’t helped by clergy (especially those like Rick Warren) who do take their income as a 100% housing allowance and then are able to purchase their own homes, effectively “double dipping” by deducing the interest on mortgages.

A quick note on parsonages – the “free housing” provided to clergy – it’s good to remember that this is primarily a benefit to the congregation, not the pastor, who is missing the opportunity to build equity, receive tax credits for home ownership, and will face becoming a first-time home buyer retirement. In an itinerant system parsonages do make a degree of sense, and I appreciate being able to have lived in some very nice parsonages, but it should be made clear that this isn’t some amazing benefit clergy get – most people in the secular world would not voluntarily choose to live in a situation where their employer was also their landlord (especially if the employer had a reputation of doing things as cheaply as possible).

Seth Godin: Is there a reason for the friction? I’ve actually written about this idea in terms of computer security recently, but it certainly also applies to church membership – there are points where a degree of friction is necessary to make people aware of their choices and to take it seriously.

Lifehack: The 7 Deadly Sins of Happiness.

Fred Clark: The American Legion demands that free citizens take a loyalty pledge written by a socialist. Also from Fred, check out: ‘The rich rule over the poor’: Dave Ramsey, McDonalds, and the personal salvation of personal finance (Part 1), and (Part 2).

It’s always 10:10 in watch ads (via):

9 Things You Have Wrong About Introverts.

The Atlantic: When Trying to Rebut Criticism of Your Racial Politics, Try Not to Make Things Worse.

How Hull Inspired Paul Heaton. Love Hull & Heaton both. Despite Hull being the go-to joke in the UK about a town that’s awful and boring, I remember my time there fondly and would love to make a return visit. (Of course I also love Des Moines and Detroit, so maybe I just love cities that frequently are treated like punchlines).

David Steindl-Rast: Want to be happy? Be grateful:

Thinking of Paul Heaton and Hull, here’s an oldie from the Housemartins:

Of interest from the last few weeks:

Girl Talk sampled over 350 copyrighted songs – which then saw sales bumps.

Quit being nice.

By 2019 Lego minifigs will outnumber humans.

Wil Wheaton on depression: I Got Better.

Dearborn, Michigan is not under sharia law.

Dan Dick: Grace-free living.

J Dilla vs the Beach Boys. I did a poem a few weeks ago where I referenced J Dilla, and got a lot of shocked looks by people in the crowd that totally didn’t expect an older white guy from the suburbs to know who he was. Good times.

How to Craft the Perfect Home Office. I’m still working on a finding a good set up for my home office; there are some good tips here.

Mapping Out My Future!

Everything wrong with Back to the Future:

With all the discussion related to the trail of Rev. Frank Shaefer, I found Jason Micheli’s take to be particularly interesting.

Jeremy Smith: Fair Atheists, Religious Jerks and Clergy Taxes. I think Jeremy makes some good points here, especially if the eventual trade off is getting rid of the “self employed” designation.

How not to say the wrong thing to someone who is ill.

I challenged hackers to investigate me and what they found is chilling.

Johnny Marr – “How Soon Is Now” (not quite the same without Morrissey’s vocals, but still pretty good).