Friday in the wild - Jan. 28, 2005

Here's my usual end-of-the-week roundup of what I found new and interesting around the blogosphere (and elsewhere) since last Friday.

My first laugh of the week came from Judd at Melodion, who received an absurdly over-packaged order from Amazon.com. (H/T to Boar's Head Tavern.)

Tim Challies rethinks his indifference to anti-rock crusades:

This morning at church I noticed an invitation to attend a Media Awareness Seminar at a nearby church. They provided a link to the organization which provides these seminars and I decided to visit their web site. There is an interested section on that site where they break down the top 40 countdown from a certain popular radio station. The list is current as of May 18, 2004  - a little dated, but recent enough to be relevant. I am not easily shocked, but samples of lyrics from the songs on this list blew me away. Despite spending my life as a believer, I don't consider myself sheltered, yet these songs still made my eyes bulge a few times. I don't even know some of the words, though I can generally guess at their meanings.

[Read Top 40 Radio Examined]

Wittenberg Gate wants to play a game of Spot the Fallacy with an article about evolution and intelligent design. Have fun.

Parableman notes the discovery by archæologists that (surprise, surprise, surprise!) the Edomite nation existed when the Bible said it did. As Jeremy notes: "About 50 years ago the general attitude was to doubt anything in the Bible that didn't have specific evidence (besides the record in the text) confirming it." At this rate in another 50 years the trend will be to trust the Bible unless there's evidence to the contrary.

Marla Swoffer things the Godbloggers have hit critical mass and are up To something.

Looks like Darren of Nicene Theology is starting a series critiquing the theology of the Holiness movement, about which I have also made the occasional remark here and there.

Mr. Standfast has been running down the categories in his blogroll this week. I highlight the generalists simply because I get a mention there, thanks to my saying pretty much what's on my mind instead of sticking to a particular theme like many bloggers do. The whole series is kind of fun reading, since I don't classify my favourite blogs like this (I do catalogue my personal list of blog bookmarks in very broad categories such as "Christian" or "News" or "Canadian," but wouldn't have to explain them).

This week I exercised my personal prerogative and added the just-started blog of Don Elbourne, Locusts and Wild Honey, to my blogroll. Don is a Baptist pastor in Louisiana, a Ph.D. candidate, a contributor to the SWORD Project, and all round Web wonk from whom I've learned a fair bit about designing my own sites. He has also scanned and made a whole bunch of historic Southern Baptist literature available.

In the Google rankings, the Crusty Curmudgeon moves up to #4 in searches for crusty, although it was actually at #3 yesterday. Apart from that, no interesting search queries brought the curious to the blog.