Yesterday, I found a podcast that I thought was very interesting. It is a facilitated discussion between Chuck Colson, Greg Boyd, and Shane Claiborne about the crossroads of politics and Christianity. Colson is the founder of Prison Fellowship and author of God & Government. Boyd is founder and senior pastor of Woodland Hills Church, a megachurch in Minnesota, and author of The Myth of a Christian Nation. Claiborne is founder of The Simple Way and co-author of Jesus for President and author of The Irresistible Revolution.

Here's a description of the podcast:

A passionate discussion is unfolding in public and in private among Evangelical leaders and communities. Should Christians be involved in politics and if so, how? What has gone wrong, and what has been learned from the Moral Majority up until now. In this live public conversation, Krista probes these ideas with three formative Evangelicals.

You can find more information about it here, including downloads of the podcast, the entire unedited interview, and a video of the interview.

Labels: church, politics

Today is Free Cone Day at Ben & Jerry's.

I stopped by the Ben and Jerry's on Hillsborough Street during lunch and grabbed a cone of Half Baked1.

I was pleasantly surprised that not only was Ben & Jerry's giving away free ice cream, but they were also spreading the word about the ONE campaign. They were giving out flyers with information, getting people to sign-up to become members of ONE, and they were giving out ONE bands. Ben & Jerry's has recently partnered up with the ONE campaign to spread the word about ending extreme poverty.

Stop Ben & Jerry's today and get your free ice cream and if you haven't signed up to be a part of the ONE Campaign, go ahead and take care of that while you consume your tasty treat.

1. back Half Baked® - (Now in shops!) Chocolate & vanilla Ice Creams with fudge brownies & gobs of chocolate chip cookie dough.

Labels: activism, food

Did you hear the one about Pat Robertson and Al Sharpton sitting on the couch together?

Has anyone seen the commercial with Al Sharpton and Pat Robertson on the couch together telling everyone to take care of the planet. This combination is just funny to me. This is the stuff that you hear in jokes.

Labels: green, video

Kim posted a new video on Palmer's blog. Head over there and check him out.

Labels: baby, video

I feel like I would be doing my efforts to live green some sort of dis-service if I didn't mention it. So here it is... Happy Earth Day.

I'm not even sure what that means, but I wanted to put it out there.

Did anyone do, or hear of anyone doing, something cool for Earth Day?

Labels: green

We have to stop global warming. We must. If we don't we will have dire consequences to pay. See this article for more details.

Labels: activism, beer, green

Obviously, I haven't been blogging. So, I thought I would update you all with what I've been doing instead.

Work Stuff
Over the past few months, my job has gotten significantly more demanding. I have went from being the sole tester on a project that no one, or almost no one, cared about to being the unofficial team lead for the testing team on a project that a lot of people, including our CEO, care about.

This shift has made my works days seem a lot shorter, almost too short, as I often feel like I don't have time to get done all that needs to be done. My days have been filled with tasks like planning and conducting meetings, training new team members, infrastructure design and setup, among other things. I am being called upon by the managers to make sure everything that needs to get taken care of gets taken care of.

I have to say that even though I am doing work well beyond my job desription without getting paid for it, I am more satisfied with my job now than I ever have been. So, all the time that I used to have in my work day to blog has been filled with... work.

Family Stuff
It is no secret that I am the proud father of a ten month old little boy. It is also not a secret that I am the proud husband of my wonderful wife, Kim. Well, if you were unaware, being a husband and a father takes effort.

My wife is at home all day with our son, Palmer. So, I've been making more of an effort to take care of him when I get home. This means I spend less time on the computer and thus, less time blogging.

Also, recently Kim has started working from home. So, in the evenings when I am home and doing my best impersonation of a daddy, she is often on the computer working. She is working for a local company doing medical transcription from home. Thus far, it is working out well. I am working through my withdrawal from the internet. However, we are thinking of purchasing a Mac Book.

Other Stuff
Those are the main reasons my blogging has fallen off, but there are a few other contributing factors. Some of those are Twitter, my bike, reading, yard work, and fantasy baseball.

If I were more disciplined, I would set aside some time to blog in my schedule, but the problem with that is that I don't have a schedule. Maybe one day I will make one of those, but for now, I hope to post at least once a week.

I miss you.

Labels: family, work

I recently signed our family up for an "Eco-Friendly Family Challenge" at work. I was asked to be a contributor to a blog for the challenge. Since I have taken the time to write it there, I figured I would post it here as well.

Here is my first entry. It is supposed to tell why we signed up. Let me know what you think.

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A little over a year ago, my wife, Kim, and I decided to take steps towards being more environmentally conscious, or "eco-friendly". A few of the major motivating factors in our move were: us becoming home owners, us expecting our first child, and, surprisingly, our faith.

Kim and I bought our first house in August of 2006. Soon after moving in, we flet the weight of responsibility settling in. With home ownership came not only a mortgage payment, but also a bigger impact on the world around us. We had to make decisions about what type of appliances to buy, what temperature to set the thermostat at, what type of chemicals to use on the lawn, etc..

These were questions we had never considered before. Previously, we did our part by walking our cans and bottles across the parking lot of the apartment complex to the recycling center. Now, we were home owners. That makes us grown-ups, right? And being grown-ups means being responsible, right? So, for better or worse, we decided to try our best to be responsible and make these decisions with the environment in mind.

Not long after moving in to our house, Kim and I found out that we were expecting our first child. This added another layer of responsibility and another reason to live environmentally conscious lives. In general, it is not our generation that has to deal with the environmental decisions that we make. Most of the impact of our decisions is felt by future generations.

So, given that we were now making a contribution to those future generations. We felt that we should also take part in the clean-up and maintaining of the environment. We hope that the habitats we teach our son, Palmer, will be something that he can teach his children. It's great to think that we could possibly be setting our family on a course that helps preserve our environment.

The most surprising reason for us going green may be our faith. It was for us. Around the time we started making an effort to be more eco-friendly, I read a book about a guy that was off the deep end when it comes to being environmentally conscious. He had altered his life completely in an attempt to reduce his impact on the environment. I wasn't ready to do that, but I did find some of his ideas relatively easy to implement.

The most interesting thing about this guy was his motivation for living "eco-friendly". His faith was the driving force behind his actions. This was interesting because he and I shared a common faith, yet, I had never thought about my faith being connected to my environmental decisions. As I said before, I wasn't quite ready to go as far as this guy, but the idea that my faith was somehow connected the environment definitely weighed in on my family's move toward being "eco-friendly".

I decided to sign our family up for the RFC Eco-Friendly Family Challenge for a few reasons. We hope to find more practical ways that we can reduce our negative impact on the environment. We also saw it as a chance to share some of the things we have found easy to implement. We'd love to see other families join in with us in our attempt to take responsibility for our actions. We thought sharing some of the things we do as a family might make that task seem a little less daunting.

We are not radicals. We are one family taking small, simple steps toward being "eco-friendly".