Notes from the Trail

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Many of you have noticed the icon to the right at the bottom of all my posts. It’s a referral tool, and there are dozens of them out there. When you click on the button, it gives you an option to refer - or “Digg!, stumble, spurl, etc. - the entry you have just enjoyed reading to the attention of thousands. It’s just that simple. A button click.

Here’s why it is important:

• Recommending an entry that has informed, inspired, helped or given you insight and direction will obviously do so for others as well.
• Recommending an entry will bring more traffic to the author’s site (and if they have linked to yours, it will produce indirect benefits for you as well).
• It helps promote content that you enjoy to the attention of others.
• It helps you keep a record of interesting entries, articles, and news items in one place. (Digg, Stumbleupon, Reddit, Spurl, Magnolia and others all track the entries you’ve referred.)
• If more than one person recommends the same site or article, that article will gain popularity across the net quickly.

You might be wondering if it really works? Earlier this week, I “stumbled” the article that Mandy had written for our church website. The graph to the right shows you the hits on the site for that week. Guess when I stumbled it?

More traffic means more influence. If you own a business, are self-employed or are a Christian, this should be important to you. You want more influence, right? 

That’s why you want to practice social referring. With any of these services, you’ll have to create an account. That’s a real pain, I know, but after the account is created, you’re ready to go. Find one service you like and stick with it. I’ve been experimenting with Digg and Stumbleupon, and there are many articles recommending the latter over the former:

• Why Digg is destined for failure.. (December 2006)
• Why Digg is still the best … (November 2007)
• Why Digg’s recommendation engine is a step backward … (July 2008)
• Digg vs. Stumbleupon …
• Stumbleupon vs. Digg: Voyeurs vs Sheep … (April 2007)
• Forget about Digg; use Stumbleupon (July 2008)
• Digg vs. Stumbleupon (July 2008) *Probably the best article of them all…

Why does anyone care about traffic or social referral sites? Well, think of the blog/website world like you do about a local dentist, for example. You’re trying to find out which dentist to use after moving to a new town, and you begin to ask around right? It’s pretty much the same concept with social referral sites. You’re simply telling others what sites, articles and blogs that you consider trustworthy, interesting or good.

If you link your Digg or Stumbleupon account to your lifestream (the list of web activity you can see in my right column), then folks can see at a glance what you’re recommending and reading. 

History

What we’re really talking about is referred to as “social bookmarking.” The granddaddy of them all is del.icio.us. I’ve never gotten into it, though I have an account there. 

Here’s a decent summary of the social bookmarking timeline from Wikipedia:

Founded in 2003, del.icio.us pioneered tagging and coined the term social bookmarking. In 2004, as del.icio.us began to take off, Furl and Simpy were released, along with Citeulike and Connotea (sometimes called social citation services), and the related recommendation system Stumbleupon. In 2006, Ma.gnolia, Blue Dot, and Diigo entered the bookmarking field, and Connectbeam included a social bookmarking and tagging service aimed at businesses and enterprises. In 2007 IBM released its Lotus Connections product. Sites such as Digg, reddit, and Newsvine offer a similar system for organization of “social news”.

Faster than leaving a comment

One other thing… social bookmarking provides a much faster way to indicate that you appreciate an author’s content when you don’t want to think up a comment. Just click on the button under the article, and the feedback is registered through your referral!

The unthinkable and ridiculous happened this past Saturday night - Sunday morning. Another scooter was stolen from our carport. 

Yup.

This time, it was Sam’s electric scooter that he had received for Christmas. Adelyn’s identical pink scooter was parked right next to it (and has since been moved from the carport). 

I can’t even begin to tell you how aggravated I am about this. We’ve lived in this house for almost seven years, and this is the first time we’ve had to address the issue of security and locks and cameras. Monticello has always been the kind of town that you can leave your doors open and your car unlocked. No more, apparently.

In the past few months, we’ve had good friends who go to Journey (and live next door to one another) have push mowers taken from their carports. The crime wave (and I would have thought it ludicrous before these events to call it that) that has settled in on our community seems to have crashed into a shore of disbelief and inaction.

Daily, we are seeing stories reported in local media about drug busts. Recently, we lost a teenager to a stabbing at a family event over the July 4th weekend due to senseless and uncontrolled rage. Some local youth were caught stealing electronic equipment from businesses and churches. Another man was arrested for sexual indecency with a child. Another group of young adults was arrested for stealing prescription drugs from a local pharmacy. In a town of 10,000. 

In response to the stabbing (and probably the collective feeling of fear and loss of security), some members of the community have organized a “Stop the Hate” rally where there will be singing, a candle-light vigil, and speeches from local pastors and community leaders. I applaud their intent. Hopefully, it will be the first salvo fired in our community’s fight to reclaim its moral center.

However, a rally cannot replace our responsibility to be involved. Involved in our community’s welfare. Involved in people’s lives. We must be intentionally involved in life. For some of us, that may mean running for office in the future. For some of us, it may mean holding our existing political leaders accountable for proactive, visionary leadership. For some of us, it may mean confronting dead-beat dads. For casting a personal vision for kids and teens that is greater than what they see on TV, in the sports world or through fashion.

This loss of security we are all feeling in our community should provoke acts of heroism. For many, it simply means speaking up. Whether in confrontation, encouragement, suggestion, or contribution, your voice, vote, and values can only count and make a difference if you speak up and follow through.

Now… if anyone wants to contribute to the scooter fund… ;)

 

 How Important Is Church Membership?: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

This is the audio of John Piper’s sermon from July 13, 2008. Piper examines the importance and biblical foundation of church membership. His points are powerful refutes of the “I don’t need to belong to a local church” attitude that has ebbed and flowed throughout history. 

He details “5 strands of evidence” which include:

1. The church is to discipline its members. (How can you discipline someone if they do not consider themselves under the authority of spiritual leaders or an understood gathering of believers that has “membership?”)
2. Excommunication exists. (Why does the New Testament prescribe and describe this practice if church membership is meaningless?)
3. Christians are required and commanded to submit to their spiritual leaders.
4. Shepherds are required and commanded to care for their flock.
5. The metaphor of the body.

Poor Al Gore. What cause will he have to resort to for publicity and limelight if hanging chads and global warming are no longer in vogue?

I have always had a niggling doubt in the back of my mind about the veracity of global warming. How could the tiny machinations of man impact the massiveness of our planet in such a dramatic way in so short a time? I wrote a little about my thoughts on the whole issue back when I reviewed Michael Crichton’s thriller, State of Fear. (You can read an ABC News article on it here.) By the way, the title is an apropos description of what the global warming crowd would like to create.  

Now it seems that another leading scientific think tank is taking the offense by opening up dialogue in its journal Physics & Society. The American Physical Society had initially been sucked into supporting the politically-charged agenda of global warming but now is backing away from it, it seems.

One of the early contributions to the journal is Victor Monckton, the science advisor to Margaret Thatcher’s administration in Britain. He says:

 ”I was dismayed to discover that the IPCC’s [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] 2001 and 2007 reports did not devote chapters to the central ‘climate sensitivity’ question, and did not explain in proper, systematic detail the methods by which they evaluated it. When I began to investigate, it seemed that the IPCC was deliberately concealing and obscuring its method.” (italics mine)

In a summary article on this, Powerline says:

According to Monckton, there is substantial support for his results, “in the peer-reviewed literature, most articles on climate sensitivity conclude, as I have done, that climate sensitivity must be harmlessly low.”

Monckton… says natural variability is the cause of most of the Earth’s recent warming. “In the past 70 years the Sun was more active than at almost any other time in the past 11,400 years … Mars, Jupiter, Neptune’s largest moon, and Pluto warmed at the same time as Earth.”

This news does not bode well for liberal political activists which have tried to made global warming an issue in this election season. If the legs are knocked out from under global warming like those of traditional evolution, what will they have to stand on any longer? I guess their opinions need to evolve to become truly scientific rather than emotional interpretations of what they would like to be fact.

Is it the wrath of God?

Francis Schaeffer in Death in the City had a different interpretation in 1968 of why bad things might be happening environmentally - from tsunamis to tornadoes to floods to hurricanes to earthquakes. He suggested that the insurance companies might be more correct than we allow. Call them “acts of God,” he would say:

“Not all that occurs in space-time history is explainable on the basis of natural causes and effect, for example, economic, military, and psychological forces.”

He goes on to point to Romans 1.18-19 where the apostle Paul writes:

For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. (ESV)

Schaeffer prophetically declares,

“There is only one perspective we can have of the post-Christian world of our generation: an understanding that our culture and our country is under the wrath of God. Our country is under the wrath of God. Northern European culture is under the wrath of God.”

Whew. Wrath of God is not politically-correct or inspiring stuff. But it may give us insight as to why some of the things are happening that others interpreted global warming as being responsible for. Destruction, disaster and devastation. Are they being poured out from heaven as from a bowl on cultures that have turned their back on the living God after having affirmed Him as their foundation?

As I was saying in the last post, Hugh Hewitt’s book Blog: Understanding the Information Reformation was a challenge and provocation for me. The more I reflected on it after reading it, the more I realized that in many ways my blog was, well, bland. 

I hate to admit that to myself, because I feel that I’ve been pretty informative, encouraging, challenging and even edgy (heck, who else do you know that writes about butt boils?). However, I have rarely written about topics that are controversial. I have for the most part steered clear of politics (except for last year’s sales tax debacle). And I have been very vocal about my faith and love for Jesus Christ. It is the absolute foundation of all that I do.

Yet, Hewitt’s book bothered me. In a nutshell, it caused me to consider whether my writings were really influencing readers - or if they were merely informing readers. 

When I was running MonticelloLive.com, I chose to not only report news but to dig deeper beneath our community’s noise and try to see what was making things “tick” and “go bump in the night.” I learned a lot about some people’s motives, ideals and agendas. Some of those were encouraging; some were disconcerting.

The times that I wrote editorials (1, 2, 3), I got quite a bit of negative feedback from some leaders in town and even from a few Christians. The gist of their complaint was that I was a pastor, and that I shouldn’t be saying the things I was saying. It’s quite a turn of events to realize that just 100 years ago, pastors were the moral leaders and opinion influencers in their communities. Heck, 500 years ago, pastors were the primary civic leaders and engines of community life. (Can you say Martin Luther or John Calvin?!) Imagine what things would be like politically and religiously if they had listened to folks tell them that pastors should just preach and not get involved!

That brings me full circle to what I am have wrestling with. It’s been obvious over the past year that local news outlets choose simply to report news. It’s like a reflex. Something happens; someone writes about it. There is not much of an effort to dig deep and find news. Truly getting involved and seeking to contribute to community life, however, requires more than that. 

Edmund Burke said, 

“All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.”  (Wayne Greeson has an excellent sermon on this topic here.)

It’s not just evil that triumphs when good people do nothing. Ignorance prevails. I think it’s time to do something. How about you? (to be continued)