Blogger/Blog*Spot

Did you notice while reading blogs this week that the ads at the top of the platform Blog*Spot are gone?
Good. The ads were annoying. Some were incongruous to the content of the blogs.

Google redesigned Blogger in May, offering users more template designs.

The new navbar has a Google SiteSearch box to search the blog you're viewing, as well as shortcuts to add blog entries to your own Blogger-powered blog, sign up for a new blog, or visit a random blog. The Navbar appears on all hosted Blog*Spot blogs, but can be disabled for users publishing to third-party hosts via FTP.

Searches in the navigation bar take users to a results page on the Google site, where AdWords ads are served to the right of the organic search results.

According to the Blogger site, the goal was to improve access to key Blogger features: "The Blogger navbar replaces the default ad block formerly inserted on blogspot.com pages with a more useful navigation tool."

Posted by Bene Diction at 12:21 AM | Comments (10)

Stumbling toward faith

Over a year ago I came across a blog called i took the red pill.
It was beautifully laid out.
Iphy (Renee Altson) is a writer. I mean the kind of person meant to write, not the kind of person trained to. Some people are just meant to write. I've since learned that that is exactly what she does do for a living, and that her writing caught the attention of a publisher.

The posts were raw, painful, angry, sad, fearful, sometimes lost, and not at all your typical happy clappy god-blog material. Iphy was speaking up about abuse, one of those topics that we find easy to tuck away - familial abuse and spiritual abuse and sexual abuse.
All done in the name of God.

Now her life has been put into a book and published by Zondervan...stumbling toward faith.

So many of us have not come from healthy families, but few of us have had to face such cruelty and soul sucking sin carried out in the name of the church and of God. It is not an easy read, but it is a testament to life - to Iphy's and to the renewal brought by the wounded Healer. There is a diagnostic scale of 1 to 6 used by the medical profession to rate abuse, with one being the least and six being death. Those that have experienced the horrors in the 5th set of criteria are often hospitalized and too broken to function in society. What the scale doesn't factor in is faith, hope and love, whether it be from the abused or from the community around them. Nor does it acknowledge the hard, hard work and steadiness required to overcome.

When I heard that Iphy reached her dream to publish a book, I wanted to be one of the first to acknowledge her accomplishment. I guess because it is a miracle in the small ways dreams happen. I've been receiving emails from a blogger that is promoting this book for Renee (links are down) with a virtual-book tour. Glancing at the calender, this blog was scheduled for August 20th, and apparently Zondervan is offering a copy to those of us who promote the book on our blogs.

Thank you, but that's not what this is about.
I don't do conference calls and organized book marketing well.

Renee, I'd have let people know about your book anyway.
They need to hear how God loves through pain, finds us in hellish circumstances, and loves us in brokeness. Life isn't pretty, but life can be lived with courage and dignity. stumbling toward faith. Indeed. God bless you Iphy.

Update: For those of us outside the US or not near a Zondervan outlet, stumbling toward faith is available through Amazon.
Update: I was able to get through to the virtual-book tour site once the blogger helping sell this book clicked over. If you'd like to help, here is the link.

Leap Bloggin' in the dog days of summer

The Evangelical Outpost is running a series of posts entitled Know Your Evangelicals.
I'm getting a kick out of it. Person number seven is up. I haven't gone back in the series to see why Joe has picked these particular people, but I have noticed they have some things in common.
a) They are highly educated US citizens
b) They are male
c) They are white, with the exception of a Reverend T.D. Jakes

One of Joe's sub-headers is 'why you've heard of him.'
I haven't heard of many of these guys, but apparently they are famous. I'll crawl back under my bear rug in my igloo now.
If you'd like to read about an evangelical who has achieved a different kind of fame, head over to Real Live Preacher's post on a man named Red Davis.

Update: I went back and found out why Joe is running this series.

Contrary to the way we may be portrayed in the media, not all evangelicals think alike. You would be mistaken, for example, in assuming that because Jim Wallis is an “evangelical activist” that he's would agree with the views of the “religious right” (he doesn't). Or that referring to a person’s political persuasion as “progressive evangelical” is an oxymoron (it isn’t). While we may tend to agree on the most basic theological issues, on social concerns there is a broad spectrum of views. Some evangelicals, for instance, are vehemently opposed to same-sex marriages while others support “gay rights.”

In order to help clear some of the confusion about “who’s who” and where particular evangelicals stand on the issues, I’ve decided to start this intermittent series in order to profile the views and backgrounds of some of the leading thinkers, leaders, publications, and organizations within evangelicalism.

If you are interested in how religion is portrayed in the media or religious writers, you might like The Revealer or GetReligion.

Quantum Tea asks a very basic question...does everything have to be ministry?

Dr. Mark Byron is beat, kind of burned out on hard news, settling into a new life, and mentally and emotionally tired. That is quite understandable. I had a news director who cared more about his staff than about getting the news out.
And I think thats why it was an efficient newsroom. He'd notice when we got low, and would send us out on a 'soft' news story, like a day at a provincial park. Soft news is actually a bit harder to write, you drive yourself so hard, it's hard to slow down, relax and get creative.

There is a new way to communicate on blogs. It's called the Chatango and it works like MSN messenger. Cre8d has one. When you type a message in, the blogger gets a popup window like messenger. And only you and the blogger can see what is being said. Unlike a tag board, it's real time.

Redwood Dragon nearly lost his beloved dog Oka. If you are a bit squeamish, don't head over. Oka is recovering. What is sobering is that it may have been a small peice of a plant...

Foxtail awns (the pointed, dual-spined seed packages shown here) are designed to work their way into the ground under the impetus of the slightest breeze, and will easily do the same to flesh. Their points are incredibly sharp, and the spines are covered with microscopic barbs that point backwards so that they only move one way: deeper. Back in April Oka had an episode of coughing, and his x-rays indicated some lung irritation, so it is quite possible that he inhaled a foxtail, which then worked his way out of his lung, through the pleural membrane, and into his subcutaneous layer. If so, he is very fortunate it didn't take a slight turn into his abdominal cavity, with resulting peritonitis, and further did not damage any muscle tissue. Mind you, a foxtail doesn't have to be inhaled to cause this kind of damage: they often enter a dog's body from between its toes, or even, in thick-coated dogs, through the skin. (Today, in a somewhat Dantean mood, I was thinking about suitable Infernal punishment for the Spaniards who introduced the damned things to California, and pretty much wiped out the native grasses in the process.)

If you are squeamish, don't click on this. It is about a poster, with old fashioned type like a handbill. It is facts, gruesome, hard facts. No pictures. As old looking as war and death themselves. Stark. Words. Numbers. Black. White. Life. Death. Haunting, unbelievably haunting. I think of parents counting the fingers and toes of their newborn. The numbers shake even a statistican.

While Fragments from Floyd is away, sneak over to his blog, enjoy his amazing photographs and drink in some well told lessons about Queen Anne's Lace, Liverwort, Joe Pye. Many urban dwellers if they see these at all, call them weeds. And follow the adventures of Waldo, a watersnake that has taken up residence.

Gee, looked in the mirror lately mate?

Do you have a sexy name? The Green Man found this one. If you are a Matt you may and if you are a Paul, well...

Go to school kid...Mike looks at how some tourists treat begging children.

he was begging, of course. I see him often; he comes from a homeless camp down in the valley, and like most of the beggars up here, he comes in order to gain a little bit of income from the tourists in town. Now, the digruntled American obviously objected to being ‘harrassed’ by the kid, and decided to give him some ‘friendly’ advice. “Go to school!” he was shouting. “Understand? GO TO SCHOOL!”

Stranger in a Strange Land is heading back to her birthland.

I am heading off now to what is on paper my homeland. However, I am not fully American anymore. I am a Bosanka, or at least a Bosansko-Amerikanka. America is to me as much a Strange Land in some ways as Bosnia has been. Therefore, while there will be some blog silence as I travel home and get settled, you can expect that in the near future you can find me blogging here with a redesigned site still as a Stranger in a Strange Land. I hope to be able to use the blog to process my reentry and reverse culture shock.

And Virtual-Doug remains in the States, with his heart reaching toward Viet Nam.

Life at work is the norm, but as I confided to a friend, my heart is not there. I feel guilty that I don’t submerse myself in my work with the same enthusiasm as I normally have. My mind seems to have already retired, despite the fact the decision to go to Viet Nam in February has not been made yet, and despite the fact I have not told anyone in an official position that I intend to retire.

Someday - someday soon.

(just a few evangelicals - and why might want to hear about them)

Advertising in online news
On line spending in the US is estimated to reach 8.4 billion dollars this year.
And as the competition for our dollar gets stronger, a new way of advertising has sprung up. Embedded ad words in a news piece.

Rising from this volatile mix of competing interests is a product called IntelliTxt by Vibrant Media. It works by underlining certain words in an article so that when a reader runs his cursor over one of them, an ad springs up. For example, in a story on antivirus software, words like "virus," "security" and "worms" might be highlighted. Then readers, if they so choose, could mouse over one or all of them, click on a "sponsored link" and go straight to the advertiser's website.

Living and voting in Brazil

For those of us who have never lived in a city with a population base over a few million - cities like San Paulo Brazil seem uncomprehensible.
18 million people live in San Paulo.
It's difficult to understand how a city that size is manageable.
Elections are being held in Brazil in October and this lively BBC peice looks the uniqueness of a mandatory voting system, over 30 parties, thousands of candidates and one of the most sophisticated and effective voting systems in the world. Brazil is a country of over 184 million people, and the most economically stable in South America. Disparity remains a hugh concern, but Brazil has shaken off a half century of military intervention in it's political process.

I'm trying to mentally picture 100 kilometer long traffic jams, or overpasses so close to buildings you can see what people are watching on TV. I didn't know Canada's fomer Rhinoceros Party took it's origin from Brazil.

Olympics
The 31 year old Canadian who jumped into the pool at the Olympic diving event reminds me of the old pastime of streaking. At 31 years of age, aren't there better ways to get attention? And, as typical in this kind of stunt, it took officals awhile to get the guy out of the pool. My first thought was he sounded like a hockey fan pulling a stunt, but that isn't fair to hockey fans.
This is a world wide event, and with all that money spent on security it doesn't make sense to risk your life, tutu and true love aside.
What I haven't been able to find out is why he had a gambling website URL on his chest. Gives question to the 'true love' excuse.

UPDATE: The Canadian fool in the pool is getting off lucky. Ron Bensimhon, could have been charged with trespassing at an Olympic venue and terrorizing the Olympic Games - which carries a three to five year sentence. He is facing 5 months in prison and paid a fine pending appeal, which could take a couple of years. I won't dignify the Quebec casino he was advertising with a mention - apparently he pulled a similar stunt in Germany at the World Figure Skating Championships. And, quelle surprise, this company has used these kind of gimmicks before. Now they deny involvement?

During an appearance before a three-judge tribunal, Bensimhon said he didn't "do the stunt for money." Instead, he just wanted to be famous. "I never thought it would be this bad," he said.

Bensimhon, who had a black eye and bruise on his face, also told the court he was beat up by police and that he had "suffered enough."

Bensimhon was charged with a misdemeanour of violating the normal running of the Games. The maximum penalty was five years in jail, but many had expected a 30-day sentence.

You are 31 years old buddy. Grow up. The 1972 Munich massacre really happened.
A 3 metre belly flop could give you that black eye, but I tend to believe you were roughed up. What you did was wrong, and if the police roughed you up, what they did was wrong. You are very lucky to get out of this with a fine, some jail time and a black eye. Since when is a casino worth all that? I wonder why people engaged in ambush marketing, don't understand the social nuances of fame and infamy?

And speaking of international er, games the linking policy for the official site is quite lengthy. Opps. I'm supposed to use the term Athens 2004 if I embedd the link in copy. And I didn't ask the Internet department if I could link. But, I didn't deep link. Man, by the time you read all the rules, it will be time for the winter games.
It's easier to go to the um, games blog run from LivingRoom.
They are running about 15 minutes ahead of the the official site and the media anyway if that is your cup of tea.

International other things
I've been enjoying the blog connexions lately. I think that is because Mike, who is a student in the UK has been in India working with Tibetan refugees. He is on his way home. Richard, who lives in Wales is returning from a trip to the US.
And Joel is from the US is posting from the US. And I haven't posted hardly at all.:^) It's just been good reading what everyone else has to say. And the refreshing international flavour aside, there hasn't been any kerfuffles about politics. That could be subject to change, but I kind of doubt it.