Seth Godin (via Domino Project): Piracy? You Wish. Great reminder it’s the ideas and the art that matter, not the sales. Also from Godin: Tracts, Manifestos and Books.
Jen Lemen: How to be Happy (Part 6).
Bread for the World: Congress Wants Your Church to Spend $50,000 (via Fred Clark). While I sort of “get” the attempt to argue that feeding the hungry should be the work of the churches, it conveniently seems to forget that many of the church pantries I know are already stretched pretty thin even as donor generosity has increased, and it is VERY unlikely that people will turn their personal tax savings into charitable contributions (certainly not at a 1:1 ratio). It also fails to acknowledge the economics of scale – government programs can simply get much more value for each dollar, rather than a bunch of different churches working independently.
I’m pretty sure that when Jesus said to “pray for those who harass you” (Matthew 5:44), this is NOT what he meant. (also via Fred Clark)
Mark Engler: Tax Day Doesn’t Belong to the Tea Party Anymore.
My main focus this past week has been the General Conference of the United Methodist Church. Some of the key posts that have caught my eye:
Andrew Conrad developed a #gc2012 Twitter Word Cloud Project.
From Dan Dick: April 25 Reflections; Same Language, Different Meanings; Specific Conference; Value-Addled; and Safety in Numbness.
Rev. Momma on Guaranteed Appointments. (I’m hoping to get a post with my own thoughts on this soon).
Lovett Weems: The Tussle Over Metrics.
And while this post on God’s Different Kind of Arithmetic wasn’t necessarily General Conference related, it certainly fits some of the main concerns and themes of the week.
Found myself in the mood to listen, once again to the amazing Radiohead album OK Computer this morning…