One week from now...

Next Wednesday, approximately half the country will be celebrating their candidate's victory. Who will emerge victorious?

Christian Hip Hop

Several years ago, I had the pleasure of being introduced to the music of Grits. They're a southern Christian rap group, and I loved their sound.

Shortly thereafter, I began hearing about Lecrae, another Christian hip hop artist. At the time, I think he may have been new on the scene, but I again loved the music.

Thus, I definitely enjoyed this interview of Lecrae by Mark Driscoll. If you've ever wondered if there's any good Christian hip hop out there, look no further.

Link of the Day -- Time's Top 25 Blogs

So if you're sitting here wondering what other blogs out there you should be adding to your reader, look no further than this list of the current Top 25 blogs by Time Magazine. Enjoy.

Go Cubs Go

I enjoyed this synopsis on the My Baseball Fantasy blog of the origins of the Cubs' postgame victory tune, "Go Cubs Go."

If you don't know the full story, definitely check it out. It's almost playoff time...

Golden Parachutes

Last week in the financial sector was crazy. Stocks, of which I own several just for fun, were nuts.

Huge companies have failed, and the major investment banks have quickly shrunk in number. I have been struck, though, by the fact that CEOs of these failed companies are still walking away with wealth. Even if stockholders and the average employee are not, the leaders seem to be doing alright.

In an article called How the Masters of the Universe ran amok and cost us the earth, explaining the Lehman Brothers failure, The Scotsman details the walkaway pay many of these CEOs garnered:

Fuld [Lehman's CEO] joined the bulge bracket. He was paid $34.5 million in 2005, comprising a base salary of $750,000, a $13.8 million cash bonus, and stock and options worth $19.94 million.

So how does his demise compare with the other fallen idols who have now fled the crashing debris in Wall Street? They may have driven their banks – and their shareholders – into enormous losses. But the former Masters of the Universe will never know what it's like to live in a subprime home.

By the end, 62-year-old Fuld was Lehman's biggest individual stockholder. Despite the crash, he stands to leave with about $65 million, based on Lehman's Friday morning stock price of $3.73. This tally includes 8.6 million unrestricted shares worth some $32.1 million as of Friday morning – though they had been worth $582 million last November before the credit crunch hurricane struck.

Chuck ("I'm still dancing") Prince left Citigroup with a package said to be worth $40 million. He also received a pension of $1.74 million and another one million stock options – worthless at the time of his departure. Merrill Lynch's Stan O'Neal spent much of last summer perfecting his golf swing, confident that his trusty lieutenants at Merrill could avoid those subprime bunkers. It turned out to be a bad call.

HE WAS ousted last October as the first waves of the credit crunch struck, with a retirement package reckoned at more than $160 million.

Jimmy Cayne, 15 years at the top of Bear Stearns, was said to be on the golf course in June 2006 just as the bank dropped the first of many clangers, with a 10 per cent dive in profits. Worse followed, with the bank having to put up $3.2 billion to try to rescue its imploding hedge fund.

By mid-March last year, when the bank collapsed, Cayne, who would rush from Wall Street by chopper to the private Hollywood Golf Club in New Jersey to play 18 holes before dark, had already relinquished the reins, handing over the chief executive's role to Alan Schwartz.

When Schwartz went cap in hand to the New York Fed for a $30 billion bail-out, Cayne was said to be competing in the North American Bridge Championship in Detroit.

Cayne and his wife, Patricia, sold all their 5.6 million shares in Bear Stearns – worth as much as $1.2 billion in January 2007 – for $61.3 million at the end of March this year. The couple recently bought two adjacent apartments in New York's plush Plaza building for $28.2 million.

He left with a $30 million "golden goodbye" – enough to do up his Park Avenue property and a mock Tudor mansion in Greenwich, Connecticut. But it emerged that the mansion, set in 2.3 acres of land, was surplus to requirements. "It no longer meets his needs,'' said the local estate agent, trying to sell it for $6.15 million. He was forced to cut the asking price.

That's how tough it gets at the top in Wall Street.

Hmm, something about this doesn't seem right. So here we have a bunch of companies failing miserably. The person who was paid to make sure exactly that was not the case is still being rewarded handsomely. Sure, they've lost money, but they've still gained much. I think Mark Cuban nailed it when he said,

There is one major problem on Wall Street, that until solved, will result in meltown after meltdown in future years. I can’t say if the meltdown monkey will hit every 2,3, 5 or 10 years. But I can say with certainty that it will happen again. Why ?

Because Risk and Reward have been decoupled for CEOs on Wall Street.

If you are the CEO of a major public company, once you qualify for your golden parachute there is absolutely no reason not to throw the Hail Mary pass, and do high risk deals every chance you get.

The excuse for such high levels of pay is that these are jobs high in risk, and so there needs to be a high reward so people can accept the risk. But if the risk is still worth millions of dollars, I think it's fair to say that the risk is gone. And thus, the incentive not to fail is greatly removed.

I was glad to see Newseek this week analyze the levels of pay of more of these CEOs and give a fantastic rundown. They asked what the CEOs heavily involved in the events of the past week went away with financially.

So what can we do? Is this a problem? I personally would not be opposed to legislation requiring publicly traded companies to cap CEO pay at something like 100 times the average worker at their company's salary. Thoughts?

The Art of Flopping

Well worth passing on:



(ht: TrueHoop)

Urban Jesus

This is pretty neat. My church is currently doing a series called Urban Jesus. We're talking about how,

The city changes you. In many ways the city becomes you and you become the city. The church at Corinth allowed the city to change them, even their view of God.

Paul writes the first few chapters of I Corinthians focused on the person of Christ and how Jesus should change even how we live in the city. Urban Jesus is a study on how city dwellers should be transformed by the Gospel of Jesus even more than their city.

I think the graphic for the series is pretty cool too.

Being a part of a church that is continuing the discussion begun by Tim Keller, Ray Bakke, and Bob Lupton, among many others, is pretty fun.

Happy Birthday Baby!

One year old.

What's the best show on TV ever?

Jason Kottke wants to know.

And if you know us, you know we're happy about the results so far.

The Suburban Dream

So, after basically taking two months off, I'm back. Or at least I hope to be.
What better subject to kick things off with than a spiel on the collapsing suburban dream.

So a couple months ago, CNN ran an interesting article asking whether, "America's suburban dream [is] collapsing into a nightmare?" They noted,

This change can be witnessed in places like Atlanta, Georgia, Detroit, Michigan, and Dallas, Texas, said Christopher Leinberger, an urban planning professor at the University of Michigan and visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution, where once rundown downtowns are being revitalized by well-educated, young professionals who have no desire to live in a detached single family home typical of a suburbia where life is often centered around long commutes and cars.

Instead, they are looking for what Leinberger calls "walkable urbanism" -- both small communities and big cities characterized by efficient mass transit systems and high density developments enabling residents to walk virtually everywhere for everything -- from home to work to restaurants to movie theaters.

The so-called New Urbanism movement emerged in the mid-90s and has been steadily gaining momentum, especially with rising energy costs, environmental concerns and health problems associated with what Leinberger calls "drivable suburbanism" -- a low-density built environment plan that emerged around the end of the World War II and has been the dominant design in the U.S. ever since.

Thirty-five percent of the nation's wealth, according to Leinberger, has been invested in constructing this drivable suburban landscape.

But now, Leinberger told CNN, it appears the pendulum is beginning to swing back in favor of the type of walkable community that existed long before the advent of the once fashionable suburbs in the 1940s. He says it is being driven by generations molded by television shows like "Seinfeld" and "Friends," where city life is shown as being cool again -- a thing to flock to, rather than flee.

"The image of the city was once something to be left behind,"

Continuing on that theme, the Freakonomics blog ran a quorum on the subject. They asked, "What is the Future of Suburbia?" Answers ran the gamut from 'apocalyptic utopianism' to 'brutal reality.

I then read a great article which talked about this trend featuring, of all places, Chicago. In The New Republic, in an article called Trading Places, Alan Ehrenhalt wrote about the demographic inversion of the American city. He notes,

In the past three decades, Chicago has undergone changes that are routinely described as gentrification, but are in fact more complicated and more profound than the process that term suggests. A better description would be "demographic inversion." Chicago is gradually coming to resemble a traditional European city--Vienna or Paris in the nineteenth century, or, for that matter, Paris today. The poor and the newcomers are living on the outskirts. The people who live near the center--some of them black or Hispanic but most of them white--are those who can afford to do so.

I'm not necessarily sure what to think of this trend. While part of me doesn't want to be part of a trend, I'm completely on board with the benefits of 'New Urbanism'. One of the things we love about the city is the walkability and the option of accessible public transit. Being part of a densely populated area seems to lend itself to a dynamic level of life in a neighborhood that is very appealing to us.

At the same time, there is no doubt that choices are being made. As noted, cost of living is higher. And certain amenities are being chosen over others. And I suppose it does come down to what you matter most. But I guess what most matters to me is that people make that choice not based on false reasons, like schools, but on what they actually are choosing between.
We must ask ourselves, do we want a big yard or a walkable community?

Problems

So I've been a bit busy lately. You may have noticed my post count dropping. Sorry about that. Don't worry, it's not an indication that I will be leaving this blogging world, just a reflection of all that's going on for the fam right now. If you're curious, my wife has documented much of it over at WCW's.

Additionally, my home computer has crashed and I've been without it for over a month now. It's got all kinds of problems (hopefully not as bad as those caused by this guy, but still, yikes.) That's the first time this has been the case (no computer) since the beginning of my freshman year of college. Not sure if it's a good thing or not. Hopefully I'll be getting it fixed soon, but until then, I'm limited.

Hopefully you'll bear with me, and when I'm able to get back up and running and a bit more time becomes available, I'll be back with a vengeance. And until then, I'll still try to post when I'm able.

Life in Google Street View

On a quiet afternoon at 6436 S. Oakley here in Chicago, two boys didn't notice the camera recording their every move...


Unsurprisingly, it appears that this particular picture has been pulled from online.

Play Budget Hero

Have you ever thought you could do a better job than our current politicians in Washington? Well, here's your chance. In a highly engaging online game, this site has given you the ability to play federal budget czar.

It's up to you, balance our federal budget...

Play Budget Hero.

Poor People With Checks

I apologize that I haven't been posting as frequently. Obviously there's been a lot going on. And then this past week my computer crashed. (still working on that)
That said, I will be continuing to try to throw fun insightful items up when I get the chance. So I hope you enjoy.

So I just got done watching this video featured on Freakonomics. To quote them,

What kind of people use check-cashing places? How do they work? Do such places contribute to inequality?

And most important — why are people paying for their own money?

Wonder no more.

Office Stress

So one of my co-workers got a little stressed last month. Unfortunately for him, it was all captured on the security cameras...


Office Worker Goes Absolutely Insane - Watch more free videos

Peak Water

So most of us have heard of the concept of Peak Oil. But have you heard concern about Peak Water?

Here's a good post that talks about this. It's definitely interesting. And for sure read the linked Wired article. As you've seen on here before, the discussion of water usage is something that I think will be a big part of our future.

The paucity or abundance of water countries and regions hold has the potential to be a leading cause of conflict as we move through this century.

Genocides

I just finished watching The Devil Came On Horseback, a documentary about the genocide in the Darfur region of Sudan. Truly it is a horrendous situation; where more than 450,000 people have been killed. It is extremely sad that history keeps repeating itself.

Watching this, I feel it is of utmost importance that we be aware of what our history actually is. What was the greatest genocide of the last century?

If you said that perpetrated by Nazi Germany, you'd be wrong. While terrible, it only ranks third--just in the last century.

Civilians Killed by Governments in the Twentieth Century: Top Twenty Regimes
Location (Regime) Deaths Era
Soviet Union (Communists) 61,900,000 1917-1990
China (Communists) 35,200,000 1949-present
Germany (Nazi Third Reich) 20,900,000 1933-1945
China (Kuomintang) 10,400,000 1928-1949
Japan (Imperial-Fascist) 6,000,000 1936-1945
China (Communist Guerrillas) 3,500,000 1923-1948
Cambodia (Communists) 2,000,000 1975-1979
Turkey ("Young Turks") 1,900,000 1909-1917
Vietnam (Communists) 1,700,000 1945-present
North Korea (Communists) 1,700,000 1948-present
Poland (Communists) 1,600,000 1945-1948
Pakistan (Yahya Khan) 1,500,000 1971
Mexico (Porfiriato) 1,400,000 1900-1920
Yugoslavia (Communists) 1,100,000 1944-1990
Russia (Czarist) 1,100,000 1900-1917
Turkey (Mustafa Kemal "Ataturk") 900,000 1918-1923
United Kingdom (Constitutional) 800,000 1900-present
Portugal (Fascist) 700,000 1926-1975
Croatia (Fascists) 700,000 1941-1945
Indonesia (Suharto) 600,000 1965-present

And this is to say nothing of the 19th century. 8-10 million people died at the hands of King Leopold of the Netherlands in the Congo, 400,000 Circassians were killed by the Russians, ...and I could go on.

Sadly, we continually seem to be reminded that people are evil. As German philosopher Friedrich Hegel said, "The only thing we learn from history is that we learn nothing from history." Oh that instead we would heed the words of George Santayana who said, "Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it."

Homeless: Can you build a life from $25?

In a test of the American Dream, Adam Shepard started life from scratch with the clothes on his back and twenty-five dollars...

Did he make a go of it, and if so what does that say about the state of homelessness in our country today? Find out.

Alive

I found this tidbit of new research extremely interesting.

Understanding the concept of a "living thing" is a late developmental achievement. Early research by Jean Piaget, showed that kids attribute "life status" to things that move on their own (e.g. clouds or bikes) and even 10-year-olds have difficulty understanding the scope of a living thing.

Wow. That has some big ramifications to me. To be honest, though, it doesn't surprise me. First of all, if it takes humans this long, it is obvious that this is a concept animals would struggle with. And what follows to me is the interesting tie-in to the 'Age of Accountability' discussion. The question is, if you still don't truly understand what it means to be alive, do you understand what to be human really is? And then, do you understand that you have a soul?

Protestantism vs. Catholicism

The past year has seen continued evolution within Roman Catholicism as the new Pope continues to put his own stamp of leadership on that branch of Christianity. As I was reading about it recently, though, I was reminded that it is worth observing that there are distinct differences between Catholicism and Protestantism. This becomes especially important when we read what Pope Benedict approved as a statement about Catholicism:

This Church [the Christian church founded by Jesus], constituted and organised in this world as a society, subsists in the Catholic Church, governed by the successor of Peter and the Bishops in communion with him.

...According to Catholic doctrine, these Communities [Protestant churches] do not enjoy apostolic succession in the sacrament of Orders, and are, therefore, deprived of a constitutive element of the Church. These ecclesial Communities which, specifically because of the absence of the sacramental priesthood, have not preserved the genuine and integral substance of the Eucharistic Mystery cannot, according to Catholic doctrine, be called "Churches" in the proper sense.

He is claiming that the Roman Catholic Church is the only true church -- or, in words the Vatican would prefer to use, the only institutional form in which the Church of Christ subsists. Al Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, has an interesting perspective on this:

It all comes down to this -- the claim of the Roman Catholic Church to the primacy of the Bishop of Rome and the Pope as the universal monarch of the church is the defining issue. Roman Catholics and Evangelicals should together recognize the importance of that claim. We should together realize and admit that this is an issue worthy of division. The Roman Catholic Church is willing to go so far as to assert that any church that denies the papacy is no true church. Evangelicals should be equally candid in asserting that any church defined by the claims of the papacy is no true church. This is not a theological game for children, it is the honest recognition of the importance of the question.
The Reformers and their heirs put their lives on the line in order to stake this claim. In this era of confusion and theological laxity we often forget that this was one of the defining issues of the Reformation itself. Both the Reformers and the Roman Catholic Church staked their claim to be the true church -- and both revealed their most essential convictions in making their argument. As Martin Luther and John Calvin both made clear, the first mark of the true Church is the ministry of the Word -- the preaching of the Gospel. The Reformers indicted the Roman Catholic Church for failing to exhibit this mark, and thus failing to be a true Church. The Catholic church returned the favor, defining the church in terms of the papacy and magisterial authority. Those claims have not changed.

I also appreciate the spiritual concern reflected in this document. The artificial and deadly dangerous game of ecumenical confusion has obscured issues of grave concern for our souls. I truly believe that Pope Benedict and the Congregation for the Defense of the Faith are concerned for our evangelical souls and our evangelical congregations. Pope Benedict is not playing a game. He is not asserting a claim to primacy on the playground. He, along with the Magisterium of his church, believes that Protestant churches are gravely defective and that our souls are in danger. His sacramental theology plays a large role in this concern, for he believes and teaches that a church without submission to the papacy has no guaranteed efficacy for its sacraments. (This point, by the way, explains why the Protestant churches that claim a sacramental theology are more concerned about this Vatican statement -- it denies the basic validity of their sacraments.)

I actually appreciate the Pope's concern. If he is right, we are endangering our souls and the souls of our church members. Of course, I am convinced that he is not right -- not right on the papacy, not right on the sacraments, not right on the priesthood, not right on the Gospel, not right on the church.

The Roman Catholic Church believes we are in spiritual danger for obstinately and disobediently excluding ourselves from submission to its universal claims and its papacy. Evangelicals should be concerned that Catholics are in spiritual danger for their submission to these very claims. We both understand what is at stake.

The Rev. Mark Hanson, presiding bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, responded to the press by saying that the Vatican's "exclusive claims" are "troubling." He also said, "what may have been meant to clarify has caused pain."

I will let Bishop Hanson explain his pain. I do not see this new Vatican statement as an innovation or an insult. I see it as a clarification and a helpful demarcation of the issues at stake.

I appreciate the Roman Catholic Church's candor on this issue, and I believe that Evangelical Christians, with equal respect and clarity, should respond in kind. This is a time to be respectfully candid -- not a time to be offended.

So what are the differences between Protestantism and Catholicism? Justin Taylor quoted a nice rundown from Scott Manetsch, who is associate professor of church history at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, on his blog:

In summary, this reviewer believes it impossible to reconcile the classic Protestant solas with the teaching of the Catholic Catechism.

For Roman Catholics, Scripture and Tradition are two distinct but equal modes of revealed authority which the magisterium of the Roman Church has sole responsibility to transmit and interpret. For the early Protestant reformers, the holy Scripture provides final normative authority for Christian doctrine and practice, standing as judge above all institutions and ecclesial traditions.

For Roman Catholics, sinners are justified because of inherent righteousness. For the mainstream Protestant reformers, sinners are accepted on the basis of the righteousness of another—namely, the alien righteousness of Christ imputed to them.

For Roman Catholics, sinners are both justified by unmerited grace at baptism and (subsequently) justified by those infused graces merited by cooperating with divine grace. For the magisterial reformers, sinners are justified before God by grace alone.

For Roman Catholics, sinners are justified by faith (in baptism), but not by faith alone. For the sixteenth-century Protestant reformers, sinners are justified by faith alone.

For Roman Catholics, justification is a process of renewal that affords no solid basis for Christian assurance in this life. For reformers such as Luther and Calvin, justification is God’s decisive verdict of forgiveness and righteousness that assures Christian believers of the acceptance and love of their heavenly Father.

And so there you go. As Mohler says, "This is a theological question." As with all theology, there is absolute truth at stake on this issue. Finding it becomes our task.