A humorous look at messages about the meaning of life in the cartoon linked below…
At the end of it all, what people really want is to be in charge of their lives. However, one cannot worship God when one is on the throne.
Dear human… – Zach Weiner – smbc-comics.com – RichardDawkins.net.
I have not looked at this yet, but the result of 5 years’ collaboration between the World Evangelical Alliance, the World Council of Churches, and the Roman Catholic Church should be a significant theological and sociological statement.
As you look it over, what do you think???
And here is a story of the frenetic pace of technology change, which really affects us all…
As newer and faster technologies beget newer and faster technologies, consumers move on to the next big thing with alacrity. In four years, Flip has gone from start-up, to dominant camcorder maker, to defunct. It took I.B.M. about four years just to reach dominance with its PC in the early 1980s. The iPad is only one year old.
What is changing in your world??? Are you planning for what life will be like in a year’s time, or assuming things will be like they are today?
I know, we wish a lot of those changes would not come, because they are a pain to adjust to, and we will miss the way things are now. Denial may satisfy your emotions right now, but it won’t help you life a more fulfilling life tomorrow. Best to just get on with it and take the changes little by little, as they come, and maybe even dream about what could be better. Make some positive adjustments that may surprise you with new joys…
This chart from Seth Godin is startling. And it points out our innate human fear of the unknown, and our comfort with the known - even if the known is much more harmful to us!
For every person killed by nuclear power generation, 4,000 die due to coal, adjusted for the same amount of power produced… You might very well have excellent reasons to argue for one form over another. Not the point of this post. The question is: did you know about this chart? How does it resonate with you?
hmmm…
Here is a new study with some counter-intuitive findings. How do you match up against their suggestions?
And a better question is, how long do you want to live? I set a goal three decades ago of 85 years, thinking that will be long enough to live a full and fruitful life, and short enough to not linger in poor health for long.
Another even better question is, what will you fill your years with to make them meaningful and significant? It is not enough to live for ourselves, enjoying leisure and pleasure, we were made to honor God and contribute to his kingdom! What can you do as an older person to invest in people?
Interesting memo from Nokia’s CEO on how Apple took over the high end mobile phone market. This in particular caught my attention:
The battle of devices has now become a war of ecosystems, where ecosystems include not only the hardware and software of the device, but developers, applications, ecommerce, advertising, search, social applications, location-based services, unified communications and many other things. Our competitors aren’t taking our market share with devices; they are taking our market share with an entire ecosystem. This means we’re going to have to decide how we either build, catalyse or join an ecosystem.
Which begs the question for me and you – what is my product and what is the ecosystem that sells it? If I don’t have an ecosystem, how can I develop it? Who? What? How?
…but there are others I would choose to live in from a purely human standpoint. Wouldn’t mind checking out some of those European favorites : )
But, there is more to our choice of location than enjoyment. When my wife and I visited London in 1996 to consider moving there, we thought “We would love it here, but we don’t sense they need us here.” A calling from God and sense of strategic contribution led us to Asia. What brought you to your city?
In Mercer Consultings annual Quality of Living Survey, Europe once again dominates the list of 215 countries around the world. The top three cities are, by rank, Vienna, Zurich (last years winner), and Geneva…. The top city in Asia is Singapore, at no. 26.
Pretty simple stuff (on four myths of mentoring) from this Harvard Business Review article, things that I learned from Bobby Clinton and Terry Walling, and which I teach in my Eight Essentials of Mentoring seminar. But it is nice to hear it from such a respected source as HBR…
Willyerd suggests you may want to avoid using the word “mentor” altogether. “You can simply say, ‘I’d really like to get your advice on something’,” she says.
Great leaders are masterful at identifying and articulating their values (as well as their vision). Bill Hybels is without a doubt one of the most influential Christian leaders of the past 30 years, championing the “seeker-sensitive” model of church. In these 76 short chapters, he brilliantly describes the values that drive him and his ministry. Reading this book will prompt you to identify what values guide you and will challenge you to learn how to communicate them in a compelling way.
I do not like Glee. It is entertaining, but it is over-the-top in caricaturing people and promoting an amoral self-centerd approach to life. Everything’s OK if you like yourself, and the weirder the better.
I have heard the actors talk about the message of acceptance and affirmation in the show, and how wonderful it is.
Now the creator of the show points out that acceptance and affirmation only goes so far… to those who like Glee! Hypocritical?
Well, fine, Ryan Murphy doesn’t want to use someone like you, either. Nyah-nyah!
The Glee creator, in acknowledging all of the big stars just dying to be on the Golden Globe-winning series or have their music adapted for the show, made a special point of singling out the more reluctant Kings of Leon in a recent interview with the Hollywood Reporter.
“F–k you, Kings of Leon,” Murphy said. “They’re self-centered assholes and they missed the big picture.”
And it doesn’t get any bigger than Glee, apparently…
Meanwhile, Kings frontman Caleb Followill says he certainly didn’t mean to be the Sue Sylvester of rock.
“This whole Glee thing is a shock to us,” he told THR in response to Murphy’s diatribe. “It’s gotten out of hand. At the time of the request, we hadn’t even seen the show. It came at the end of that record cycle, and we were over promoting ["Use Somebody"]. This was never meant as a slap in the face to Glee or to music education or to fans of the show. We’re not sure where the anger is coming from.”
“Usually I find that people who make those comments, their careers are over; they’re uneducated and quite stupid,” Murphy said, this time referring to Slash, who, unlike Followill, actually did make a crack about Glee, calling it “worse than Grease” as far as licensing went.
Christianity Today Magazine