The takeover of the evangelical church by blowhard self-branders with an axe to grind and books/advertisements to sell is one of the most unfortunate consequences of the capitalistic trend of religion in late 20th century America.

Great piece in the NY Times this morning examining what happened…

Evangelicals Without Blowhards – NYTimes.com: “Centuries ago, serious religious study was extraordinarily demanding and rigorous; in contrast, anyone could declare himself a scientist and go in the business of, say, alchemy. These days, it’s the reverse. A Ph.D. in chemistry is a rigorous degree, while a preacher can explain the Bible on television without mastering Hebrew or Greek — or even showing interest in the nuances of the original texts.”

I surprise people when I tell them I consider myself an evangelical for many of the same reasons I consider myself a baptist. Thomas and I even did a show about that once and will hopefully revisit the theme on our now rebooted ThinkingBaptist podcast.

Maybe I’m a dreamer when it comes to my faith, but I’m not the only one.

Great app (seriously, go check it out)…

Algebra Touch for iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad on the iTunes App Store

Interesting review…

I wish apps could give me grades.

I’ve relaunched the Thinking.FM podcast network…

ThinkingDaily 1: Get Back: “Not technically the first ThinkingDaily, but a good restart.

Sam will be doing this 10-20 minute show on a daily basis ruminating on life, tech, the Beatles and what makes us all human.”

Thomas Whitley and I also did our first new ThinkingBaptist podcast with special guest Merianna Neely yesterday.

I’m excited about the other new shows that will be coming out next week, so stay tuned if you’re into podcasts.

Download ThinkingDaily 1

I always think it is frustratingly sad that we, as adults, attempt to impose our modes of learning on young brains in our classrooms when so much literature says our brains are at very different cognitive stages…

Children Play Like Scientists Work | Wired Science | Wired.com: “Young children play like scientists work, according to a new research project at MIT and Stanford University.”

Maybe that Jesus fellow was right and the kingdom belongs to the children.

My third camp at Spartanburg Day School (don’t blame me, I didn’t design this page) this summer is appropriately titled “iCamp: Developing Apps for Smarties” and has around a dozen rising 6th-10th graders (girls and boys) participating. My ideal for the camp was to give the kids a good foundation is basic HTML (preferably HTML5), CSS, usable PHP and work our way into Cocoa and a little Java so that they could have something of a finished iOS app (or Android if they preferred) by Friday that they had made themselves.

I have to admit that I was a little tentative about the camp this morning because it had been so long since I had gotten my hands dirty with Xcode or even thought about how I would teach a concept like reading CSS that I thought maybe I had bitten off more than I could chew.

An hour into camp this morning (we meet for 3 hours a day), I realized that my apprehensions were, as usual, wrapped in unnecessary fears as the kids had already begun building fascinating web pages in HTML5 (including video tags) and working confidently in Xcode. To be honest, I was shocked and amazed. I’m not sure why I’m ever shocked and amazed by student potential anymore.

Into our third hour of the morning, I noticed the students had begun chatting among themselves about sites like Facebook and AddictingGames.com and wondering what type of codebase they were running and how those sites ran. So, we did a few view sources and started talking about the differences in the walled garden approach of Facebook to something like Google+ (which they all really want to use evidently) and what it meant for sites heavy in Flash to be resource intensive compared to sites like YouTube which have HTML5 options based on Google’s WebM codecs… I forgot I was talking to 12-16 year olds for more than a few moments.

Oh, and it’s incredibly fun to be getting my own hands dirty with programming again. It’s not like riding a bike, but learning and being excited by this stuff with a dozen young folks is mind-bendingly fun. I couldn’t wait to crack open my old machine and check out some code I had been working on for a never-finished app that I want desperately to polish up tonight.

So no… we didn’t dig up any worms or walk amongst mother nature today (and probably won’t this week) but started dipping our toes into some very nerdy throat-beardy topics like open standards and library calls that makes me convinced we’ll have a literate population of “digital” natives that will see the forest for the trees and understand more about themselves and their circles of influences and friendships as they get their hands dirty in 1′s and 0′s. Or at least that’s one of my many prayers about the future of our culture(s).

Here’s to the Crazy (Young) Ones that hear my prayers.

Best thing I think I’ve ever read on CNN.com…

My Take: Why evangelicals should stop evangelizing – CNN Belief Blog – CNN.com Blogs: “Jesus was the master of challenging religious prejudice and breaking down sectarian walls. Why do so many Christians want to rebuild those walls?”

Those Gospels sure are slippery things when you start reading them…

“Haven’t you heard it’s a battle of words?“

Beautiful…

What is literacy today? The Daring Librarian explains – The Answer Sheet – The Washington Post: “Q) For starters, how would you define literacy in 2011?

A) Transliteracy. It’s transliteracy. Thinking beyond the format. Literacy has evolved, to not be defined or confined by container or format. It’s not just reading words on a page. It might be decoding graphic novels, it might be decoding video. It will be literacy in forms we haven’t even dreamed yet. We should encourage kids now to get their literary riches in formats that appeal to them and that they are comfortable with, whatever it may be. That is the future. The literacy of the future is finding meaning in many forms.”

Head over if you’re interested in literacy education and read the whole interview. Worth your time to ponder what transliteracy means and how that might look in your classroom.

Best thing I’ve read in a while from my pal Thomas…

“Free” Scholarship |: “By shining the proverbial light on science and technology we are pushing liberal arts and social sciences into the shadows. Our country may well be able to produce the best new tech gadgets and design the most fuel efficient vehicles, but we must ask ourselves if we want this at the expense of devaluing literature, sociology, psychology, religious studies, journalism, etc.”

We all need to go read Who Killed Homer? again.

During my time at Yale, I worked at the Yale Art Gallery in the Ancient Art department… it was a dream job (even got to write a little book).

The dreamiest part of the job was working in a small group of 2 or 3 grad students to systematically digitize Yale’s collection of artifacts, remains, sculpture, pottery and photograph plates from the 1930′s excavations of Dura Europos.

We literally spent months in the dark basement of the Yale Art Gallery taking photos of all sorts of incredible objects that we treated as sacred (picture Indiana Jones with a digital camera).

This was 2000-2002 and we were all knew at digital photography and each object we pulled from the shelves was precious and amazing (including the earliest depiction we know of Jesus, though sitting on the shelves in the basement for years has taken its toll on the image).

I am, as you might know, still obsessed with Dura as a result of those Indiana Jones days. So, when Thomas sent this over last night my jaw dropped because one of my main jobs (along with taking pictures of objects) was actually scanning in the very fragile glass photographic slides taken at the digs in the 1930′s and getting their levels right in Photoshop. It was a painstakingly repetitive job, but each new delicate and dusty glass slide offered up a glimpse into a world and a place that was downright amazing…

Study Sheds New Light on Archaeology of the Dura-Europos Expedition | popular archaeology -: “Tucked away carefully within the archival collections of the Yale University Art Gallery in New Haven, Connecticut, more than 5,000 unpublished photographs taken between 1928 and 1937 recount a story in visual detail that cannot be fully told in the printed words of excavation reports, site journals or the popular press of the time.”

Thanks for finding that, Thomas. Having touched each of those photos and having seen the treasure that lies in those archives makes me jealous and excited that they are finally being put to good use as we continue to learn more about the amazing place/experience that was Dura Europos (my best work on Dura).

This linked article looks like an amazing study, by the way. Off to find the journal article and add it to my Dura collection!

I distrust Google.

There, I said it. I don’t feel comfortable having an advertising company parse out my entire online identity and data and I’ve always have had serious doubts about people that are so willing to hand over the keys to their own kingdom (including myself).

However, when it comes to relatively brainless setup of something as nerdy as Exchange service for an individual, there aren’t very many options. One of those options is, of course, Google Apps.

I’ve been using Google Apps (the paid variety) for my @samharrelson.com mail/calendar/contact service for the last two years until I decided to roll my own and give things a go through my web hosting service, MediaTemple.

That worked fine when it came to IMAP email but I still longed for calendar, task and contact sync (as well as synchronous mail sync that kept everything properly read and unread). Clearly, that service wasn’t what I wanted.

This weekend I decided to give Rackspace a try (their hosted Exchange service). After 10 minutes of setup between Apple Mail, iCal, my iPhone (via an additional ActiveSync service add-on) and my iPad with their Exchange servers, I was all set. I’m automatically in love.

Yes, it costs $13 a month (Exchange is $10 and ActiveSync for my iPhone is $3), but I cannot think of a better expenditure to ensure that I’m free of the google chain on my identity while having Exchange level service to the most important part of my digital experience (email).

BTW… Pro Tip here: check out the TaskTask app if you are using iOS and interested in Exchange level task sync… Wow. Great app there.

All in all, I’m in nerd love.