Benefactor

September 29, 2008 at 6:05 pm (Culture)
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I read this in the New York Times today, about NFL quarterback Kurt Warner (my favorite player in the league), and I thought it was worth sharing.

The restaurant game before an away game is one of Kurt Warner’s favorites, a fringe benefit of being a well-paid football player that never gets old.

At dinner, Warner and his wife, Brenda, will sit back and watch as one or more of their seven children scan the dining area like a quarterback going through his progressions on the field.

Once they target a table, Warner, the Arizona Cardinals’ quarterback, quietly adds that dinner tab to his own.  At a steakhouse here last Saturday, a family of four received a free meal without knowing the identity of their benefactor.

The Warners cooked up the idea many years ago, after their food-stamp-cashing days were behind them and Warner had become the toast of St. Louis by leading the Rams to victory in the 2000 Super Bowl.

They thought it would be a playful way of instilling in their children the joy of giving.  “We want our kids to grow up knowing that because of football we are so blessed,” Warner said Wednesday.  He added: “We never want them to lose sight of what it’s really about. Our circumstances are not the most important thing. It’s what we do with those circumstances.”

It’s the lead of a very good story, and really needs no further commentary, except to encourage you to read it in its entirety.

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Chain

September 22, 2008 at 5:29 pm (Culture)
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You would think that social networking is a brand new thing.

The phrase, social networking, is new, but maybe not the concept.  But if you say the phrase out loud, and you may want to do so right now, it makes you feel good, almost like you know more than you’re supposed to know.

It is also the phrase most used to describe the Facebook phenomenon.  A recent article reported that Facebook is the number one social network website in the world.  In just a span of twelve months, Facebook added 75 million unique monthly visitors (from 40 million in April, 2007, to 115 million in April, 2008).  Of those 75 million unique visitors, 62 million were from places other than the United States of America.

MySpace, in the same time span, has not grown enough to even chart it’s progress.

Facebook began as a toy for college students, almost a tongue-in-cheek graduation from MySpace.  But, as you may know dear reader, your friend list, if you are on Facebook, includes people outside of that demographic.  It’s rate of growth has outpaced other social networking sites.

And the reasons for its success are almost immediate.  If you have your own Facebook account, you will notice a few things.  One, you were probably asked to join a network, which, according to Facebook, most people do.  Another, is that you are asked a slate of questions about yourself, and you almost feel compelled to answer them accordingly. 

In it’s purest form, Facebook is almost about vanity.  You are telling your own private world, in online terms, what you value, who you like, and even your current mood.  And you are given complete control.  No one in the real world can force anything here. 

Because, as I’ve written before, millions of lives are now lived on computer screens.
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I have a theory. 

Facebook has made relationships cool again.  We have taken a phrase, social networking, and made it sound almost technological, and very much inventive, though, at its core, social networking is just a new way to describe relationships.  And Facebook has given us a place to invest in relationships.

And I guess we need that.  The cultural swing of America has gone from small towns to a scattering of friends across this continent, and has placed us in isolated areas, away from family, and away from longtime friends.  The Internet was, for a time, the savior of relationships, with email being the hottest ticket in town.  But that became cumbersome.  So cell phones became the rage.  But rates were too high.  So text messaging followed next in this evolutionary tale.  But we wanted to say more.  So MySpace happened.  But MySpace is a public page, and maybe we don’t want everyone to see what we have to say, and the need for control developed.  So there was a need, and the development of Facebook filled that need.  But it also provided competition for MySpace among those who use each one.  One psychologist even cited research that both users MySpace and Facebook could be seen through socio-economic lenses.

So even relationships, lived online, are now divided among class lines.  Interesting, isn’t it? 

In the end, though, Facebook offered privacy, and controlled access.  And most people seem to like that.  So Facebook is the student who has become the teacher. 

But what holds Facebook together, and makes it work so well, is the accountability that ensures that these relationships survive.

The information in any given profile is checked every time new access is granted to your profile by adding these friends.  And, in turn, whenever you are given access to someones profile, by the unique privilege of being their friend, you can check their information.  And you will ask about something that doesn’t play well.  And you will be asked about something that someone else disputes.  Facebook would not be the most dominant social networking site in the world if accountability wasn’t so accessible, or so necessary.  It is what makes any relationship work.
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It would seem, though the lens of technology, that humanity craves a chain of people, where we find ourselves connected somewhere. 

But, of course, it isn’t the first to offer such a place.

The greatest social networking site on the planet is in the lobby of any church.  Try it this Sunday and see.

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Filled

September 15, 2008 at 7:05 pm (Culture)
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I found the following statistics in The Journal for Student Ministries this weekend, and thought they were worth sharing. 

(Before you read, I must tell you that the more I read them, the more I felt like a small bit of ice in an ever-growing snowball.  Each stat heaped more evidence of a clutter-filled life upon the previous statistic, and when I finished them, my head hurt from the overwhelming success culture enjoys at garnering the attention of the American teenager.  It’s a little frightening.  And it should be.)

TV

  • TV consumption among teens is up slightly to an average of 11.9 hours a week.
  • Teen boys watch more television than teen girls, averaging about an hour and a half more (13.2 hours a week).
  • For tweens (8 to 1), the average amount of television consumed during a typical week is 12.2 hours, with tween boys watching about 14.5 hours (during the school year).
  • Three of ten guys’ top-five favorites are animated, led by The Family Guy, followed by The Simpsons and South Park.
  • The Office moved up nine slots to the third most popular show among all teen males.
  • Biggest mover for teen girls:  ABC Family’s Greek, which came in tied for eighth.
  • For tween viewers, American Idol is no longer number one; now it’s Hannah Montana.
  • For tween girls, ABC’s Dancing with the Stars moved up four notches to land in the fifth spot.
  • For tween boys, it’s all about SpongeBob and Zack & Cody.  The biggest mover was the ABC comedy The George Lopez Show, which shot up 10 spots to secure the seventh spot.

Internet

  • Teens spend 12.5 hours online while tweens spend only 6.4 hours (typical week during school year).
  • Teens have grown tired of MySpace and have moved on to Facebook in the past couple of months.
  • Only a couple of virtual worlds are on tweens’ radars.
  • The top sites tweens visit — Webkinz among both tween boys and tween girls.  Then Neopets, owned by Viacom’s interactive unit, as well as Nick.com.
  • Club Penguin remains in third place for tween girls and dropped from 11th place to 13th place for tween boys since last summer.
  • AddictingGames is fast becoming the top casual gaming site among all youth.

Entertainment and Pop Culture

  • During a typical month teens seen an average of 1.8 movies (in a movie theater).
  • Tweens see an average of 1.3 per month.
  • Tween attendance is consistent with a year ago, while the average number of movies teens see in a typical month has increased slightly from 1.5 movies a year ago.
  • Most appealing movie genres for teens:  Action/Adventure titles, followed by comedies.
  • Tweens prefer comedies, followed by animated features, then action/adventure.
  • For the third straight year, Pirates of the Caribbean star Johnny Depp retains the title as the most popular Hollywood celebrity among teen and tween females.
  • Funny man Adam Sandler is tops among the boys, followed closely by the two Will’s — Smith and Ferrell.
  • The most popular female celebrity among teen girls?  Miley Cyrus, followed by Reese Witherspoon, Keira Knightley, and Amanda Byrnes.
  • The top female celeb among teen boys is Jessica Alba for the second straight year, followed by Miley Cyrus, Ashley Tisdale, and Alicia Keys.

Retail and Shopping

  • During a typical month teens spend an average of $135 across nine product categories.
  • Nearly half of their spending goes towards clothing and accessories.
  • For 16 and 17 year-old teens who have part-time jobs (minimum of 5 hours per week), their spending across the same nine categories jumps sharply to $264 a month, just about double the average among all teens and about 45% higher than the average for all 16 and 17 year-olds.
  • For tweens, it’s all about candy, gum, and games.
  • The most-visited specialty clothing retailer among teen females is Victoria’s Secret, followed closely by Hollister.
  • Teen males visit American Eagle Outfitters more often than any other specialty retailer, followed by Abercrombie & Fitch and Hollister.
  • Old Navy, for both tween boys and girls, remains the most shopped at specialty clothing retailer by a considerable margin.

It’s all a little overwhelming, isn’t it?

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Write

September 12, 2008 at 2:49 pm (Church, Opinions)
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it’s how the kids do it these days.

and it’s a brand of communication i swore i would never do.

and yet, i do.  i love the english language.  i love the nuances of the language, and i love the way words are put together.  words are powerful, and they are powerful when they are spoken, and they are powerful when they are written.  and since i do both, and do both frequently, i figured that i would never demote the english language to such frivolousness as writing without capital letters.

and then i found facebook.  and since i direct a rather large student ministry, and since most of my students live their lives on facebook, i go where the kids are.  and that’s where they are.  and this is how they communicate.

captions for photographs are written without capital letters.  status updates are written without capital letters.  favorite movies.  favorite songs.  interests.  all of these things are written without ever pressing the shift key on the keyboard. 

and that poor little shift key.  once so important.  once used to start a new thought, or a new sentence, and now it has been left behind, ostracized.  and it is lonely.  now, in this new found mode of communication, where words are never capitalized, the shift key may be used only when SOMEONE IS VERY ANGRY.  and then again, it could be overlooked for the simpler caps lock key. 

writing without capital letters, really, is a way to communicate an attitude.  using all lower caps indicates that what you are saying is not very serious, or that your current mood is one of normalcy.  and it is different than the structured world in which we live, where homework must be written in proper english, and where reports and presentations must be written in strictly professional ways.  it really is a sort of rebellion, and so we decide that with friends and family, and our facebook crowd, we’ll only communicate in the ways we believe we talk, and surely the words we say are never capitalized.  and surely, talk of sports and relationships and movies don’t need such heavy restrictions, such as the usage of capital letters – we can just save all of that for when it is absolutely necessary.

so the little shift key is overlooked. 

but really, how much effort do we expend to press the shift key, anyway? 

wait.  i just used the shift key there.  so it needs to be used when you place a question mark at the end of your sentence.  so, we have found another use.  and an important use.  (even though you need it for parentheses, and apostrophes, in my common experience, neither are used much, and pale in use to the all powerful question mark.)  the shift key’s primary purpose, in this cyber-communication world, then, is it’s need for questions.

and there a lot of questions in this lived-online world.  it’s the normal, back and forth conversation, that usually involves statements and questions.  and when you mostly talk through your keyboard, face-to-face contact becomes tough, and awkward, so we just stick to talking with words that omit all capital letters.

because life is lived on the screens of millions of computers.
__________

we are now seeing the emergence of a new, common, vernacular language.  it is the underground language of the people.  it is the way to communicate to a great amount of people in this particular culture, so much so that if you enter this world, and use that little shift key, you’ll be seen as someone who doesn’t belong, or who doesn’t understand.  and whether you do understand or not is really irrelevant.  it’s that your appearance says otherwise.  and in an attention-deficit world, every edge you have to be relevant you take.  and if that means forsaking the beloved english language for teenage typing, then it must be done. 

because in an online world, appearance is less about clothes, and more about words. 

because words are powerful.  even how you type them.

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Ironic

September 3, 2008 at 6:24 pm (Culture, Entertainment, Opinions, Thinking)
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I think we are learning, right now, how we really feel about women in power.

Through the nomination of a woman for the vice-presidency, I believed that I would bear witness to a keen cultural shift, a shift that would move our contemporary society to a more generous acceptance of a woman with great power.  As both a student and teacher of history, that is incredibly fascinating.

I also believed, last Friday, that there was great hope for girls.  As a director of a rather large student ministry, with a rather numerous group of girls, and having girls in my own family, I really believed that the world in which they are growing would give them respect and equal footing.  I thought times were changing.

But how wrong I was.

I still may be sitting on the front row of an historical moment for women.  But those who are first in great movements bear the greatest amount of stress, and Governor Palin is no exception.  All things aside, when looking at this moment in perspective, it makes a little more sense.  She placed herself on the altar of criticism, and she knew full well what was coming.  And she did it, anyway.  She did it, perhaps for several reasons, but also knowing that if this election resulted in victory, she would be the first, perhaps of many.

And, for better or worse, she is partnered in this journey with her daughter, who is soon to be a mother herself.  If anything, the current situation shows the real humanity of both mother and daughter, but by no means does it speak of vulnerability or senselessness.  This young mother-to-be is, in many ways, similar to the girl whose life intersected with Jesus, a girl who was discovered and brought to face a soon and sudden death because of her adultery, until those who would deliver the blows were confronted with their own selfish greed and morality.  And those very accusers have spawned their own ancestry.

All of that being said, then, these two ladies are in a unique situation to do things on behalf of women that need to be done. 

Because yesterday, Australia held it’s first-ever Stiletto Sprint, encouraging women to join in a race, wearing stiletto heels, also breaking a world record for the greatest amount of people to enter such a race.  There was a monetary prize, along with a golden pair of high heels.

Stiletto Sprint, Sydney, Australia

And I, for one, have seen, and been part, of meaningless games and activities, all in the name of good fun and fellowship.  But I also think that, in the context of Sarah Palin, the timing of this race in Australia seems a bit ironic.  We, in a modern society, should be lauding the accomplishments of a renaissance woman, for once, who can have a family, run a government, and gain tremendous respect throughout.  But, instead, we ask women to run a race wearing high heels. 

Maybe I am reading too much into this.  And maybe I’ll be proven to be a bit off-center.  But I am offended, not because of the Australian race, and not even because of the explicit criticism of Sarah Palin, but because we have not entirely come to expect, deserve, and appreciate more. 

And that is what is most disappointing.

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