Best Links of the Week

Typhoon Class Russian Submarine

Much greater activity by Russian submarines in the North Atlantic.  By the way, The Hunt for Red October, is one of my favorite books and movie.

Famous man-caves.  My favorite is Frank Lloyd-Wright’s man-cave.

Russia-Asia/Pacific pipeline begins development.  This is probably the most important and substantial piece of news this week or month but it will not even make a blip on the radar of any major news outlet.  This pipeline will substantially change the path of Russian oil from the Europe to Asia.  Russia is very very well positioned for the future.  This move is smart, strategic, and sound.  It ensures that neither Indo-China nor the EU will give Russia any major political problems, while it also ensures a steady cash flow to their already commodity rich economy.  Water, food (mainly corn), oil, lending, and parity make the world go round.  If that sentence makes no sense to you, then you don’t grasp globalization yet.  Politics and economics are two sides of the same coin whose fiat is power.  In my opinion, Vladimir Putin and the Russian technocratic government are wicked brilliant.  If the United States wants to be relevant in the 22nd Century we need to return to sound fiscal policy and streamlined government.

Russell Moore brings needed clarity to Glenn Beck’s rally in Washington D.C.

GMail now introduces priority inbox: “Incoming email gets separated into sections: important and unread, starred, and everything else. Don’t like these? Customize them.”  This is super helpful as I have been already doing something like this with a system of marking unread and color coded stars (superstars GMail plugin).  It will be rolled out throughout this week and has yet to been offered in my account yet, but I cannot wait.

Carl Trueman has a great piece on pastors actually knowing the people in their church.

“Why ∏A = gUG + min(k-g, (1-g)(1-r)) equals low airline fares”

A really really thorough post on how to completely extricate your online footprint… complete with ungoogling, social networking deletion, down to much more minor minutiae.

Stormpulse is a really nice weather and hurricane website I discovered this week.

Ridiculous between the legs tennis shot by Roger Federer:

Best Links of the Week

Kevin DeYoung has a brief writeup of Keswick Theology (from Andy Naselli).  This is the “let go and let God” theology and the divorcing of salvation from Lordship (ie.  I got saved when I was ______ old and I accepted God as Lord/re-dedicated when I was ________ old).  This kind of language was par for the course in my Dispensational upbringing and its view of sanctification is quite problematic.  The writeup has a nice brief history and summary of Keswick theology.

Avoiding Missional Idolatries.  Some lucid and thoughtful analysis of some pitfalls of missional church thinking.

The problem of groundwood paper vs. archival quality paper in modern book publishing.

Technology is re-wiring our brains.  I have felt the pinch of technology on myself.  Compulsive e-mail checking and always being on the grid actually stinks.  In the same vein is this article:  “Does the Internet Make us Dumber?”

Some thoughtful analysis of Two Kingdom Theology and Neo-Calvinism.

The culture of narcissism among millennials.

Our National Debt is about to overtake our GDP.

Rahm Emmanuel and Joe Biden supersoaker fight on the White House lawn (you can’t make this stuff up).

If you don’t know what UVB-76 is, you may find this wikipedia article interesting.  It ceased broadcasting this week.

Apparently the financier of the much-maligned Gaza bound Flotilla is also the same financier of the proposed Ground Zero Mosque.

D-Day Pictures.

Obama’s trifecta of policy failure.

What in the world does “Spiritual But Not Religious” mean?

Video of the expansion of Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity and Islam over time.  Its a bit reductionistic, but worth a watch.

Finance Bubble Predictor.

Adidas World Cup Commercial = Star Wars Cantina Scene + David Beckham + Snoop Dogg + Lightsabre = Awesome

Two videos this week:  Neat time lapse video, shot .1fps on motion track, and set to some Jonsi:

“Waiting for Armageddon” Movie Trailer

I ran across this movie trailer today on Hulu.  It is a film analyzing the impact of classical Premillenial Dispensationalism on Israel, American culture, neo-conservativism, American foreign policy, Islam, and Mideast peace.  Suffice to say, without having seen the film, I most likely agree with the disturbing affects of classical Dispensational Premillenialism on all of the aforementioned spheres.

Should a 150 year old doctrine that isn’t taught at any seminary drive American foreign policy?  Your thoughts?