An image from NASA

Kris and I are in Katy, Texas, just outside Houston, this weekend. I’m speaking at First Methodist in Katy, and we’re looking forward to spending time with Marlin Fenn and the good folks at Katy. (Two weekends in a row on the road has limited my computer time, so I apologize for not having as many links today.)

My favorite Olympic winner: the Flying Tomato.

One of our readers (Ted) reviews another (Allan) about a book Allan wrote. Great.

Ernie Banks doesn’t care if it’s snowing down on him, let’s play ball!

A Lenten reflection by Michael Thompson.

Graphic image, but one used by writers all the time.

A Lenten suggestion — who’ll take up LaVonne’s challenge?

Another good Lenten reflection by Brett.

David Fitch has a great conversation going about autocratic, democratic and incarnational approaches to church debates.

Derek Leman has a nice post comparing Bernard of Clairvaux with the rabbinic midrash on Song of Songs.

Richard Mouw on interreligious dialogue.

A good source for families who want to follow the Church calendar.

Good post about older folks and technology.

On denominations … thoughtful.

On denominationalism … thoughtful.

Did you see this review of Hannam’s history of faith and science? Well-written review.

Meanderings in the News

1. It’s all in your head! (That is, your politics is in your hard-wiring.)

2. On climate change politics: “Climate researchers say the errors do not disprove the U.N. panel’s central conclusion: Climate change is happening, and humans are causing it. Some researchers said the U.N. panel’s attitude — appearing to promise that its results were infallible, and reacting slowly to evidence that they were not — could undermine the rest of its work. What’s happened here is that there’s an industry of climate-change denialists who are trying to make it seem as though you can’t trust anything that is between the covers” of the panel’s report, said Jeffrey Kargel, a professor at the University of Arizona who studies glaciers. “It’s really heartbreaking to see this happen, and to see that the IPCC left themselves open” to being attacked.”

3. Textbooks for Texas public schools are a debatable issue — big time.

4. Does the internet hurt? “There is, in fact, a host of research that directly tackles these issues. To date, studies suggest there is no consistent evidence that the Internet causes mental problems. If anything, the data show that people who use social networking sites actually tend to have better offline social lives, while those who play computer games are better than nongamers at absorbing and reacting to information with no loss of accuracy or increased impulsiveness. In contrast, the accumulation of many years of evidence suggests that heavy television viewing does appear to have a negative effect on our health and our ability to concentrate. We almost never hear about these sorts of studies anymore because television is old hat, technology scares need to be novel, and evidence that something is safe just doesn’t make the grade in the shock-horror media agenda.” Speaking of which: teenagers text on average 10x/hour!

5. Changes in Iran toward a military dictatorship?

6. The winter to remember — random chaos.

7. Guelzo on Lincoln on justice.

8. The Vatican weighs in on tops of the pops.

9. Recently I’ve tired of the many who spend so much time wondering what nonChristians think of the Church and church services and whether or not we are “friendly” (as defined by survey questions) … so I found Mark Galli’s piece a breath of fresh, wise air.

10. Anyone seeing this at their local level?