Sunday, June 19, 2005

random

Discovery Place, a museum in Charlotte, has a current exhibit entitled Grossology. You will learn much at this exhibit that might be new to you; for example, you may not have known that humans produce one quart of mucus per day.

My wife and I saw Cinderella Man the other night. It stars Russell Crowe and Renee Zellweger, and it is a boxing movie, sort of Rocky meets Danny Boy (Crowe plays the Irish boxer James Braddock). A good movie, I give it a B. If you are into Irish movies, I would instead recommend The Commitments or The Secret of Roan Inish. Or, if you want something more in the Irish-American vein, rent or buy In America.

Our daughter is concluding her third week in Singapore,with four more to go. She called to wish me a Happy Father's Day on Sunday, which was wonderful.

I love North Carolina, but I struggle with this recent piece of data. We are home to the Outer Banks, the Great Smoky Mountains, Mount Mitchell (highest peak east of the Mississippi), the Blue Ridge Parkway, a significant stretch of the Appalachian Trail, Cameron Indoor Stadium, Mount Airy (aka Mayberry), and I could go on. Guess which destination attracts the most tourists in our state? Concord Mills, a huge mega-mall north of Charlotte. Sixteen million pilgrims visited this shrine last year.

Providence UMC hosts a transnational videoconference next Sunday afternoon, June 26, at 2:00. It will happen simultaneously in forty North American cities, as well as Jerusalem. I will help to host this, along with Rabbi Judy Schindler and Chaplain Kahlil Akbar, both also of Charlotte. You can learn more about the event by clicking the Providence UMC link, to the right.

If you are interested in the subject, a superb three-part series appeared in The New Yorker in May and June on Global Warming. Click here to read an interview with the author, Elizabeth Kolbert.

A wonderful resource for those interested in the intersection between Christianity and culture is Mars Hill Audio. "Mars Hill" refers to Acts 17, and the apostle Paul's speech before the learned and wise of Athens. Ken Myers writes compellingly of the difference between traditional apologetics and cultural apologetics, the former being a response to the theoreticians (such as Freud or Marx), the latter being a critique of popular ideas like "Have it Your Way" or "You Deserve A Break Today" or "Just Do It". Mars Hill Audio produces cds, but you can read the article on the website.

It's a jungle out there! The new season of Monk begins on July 8, 10: p.m., on the USA network.

If you click the Krystal Hamburgers link to the right, you can see a Krystal actually being cooked, and hear the sizzle. Krystals are truly one of the deep south's gifts to the larger world. You rarely find them north of the Georgia-Alabama axis, although there is one in Asheville. The northern version is the White Castle. As we are in the season of criss-crossing the U.S. in our automobiles, I admonish you not to pass a Krystal restaurant without stopping. You can thank me later.

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