Feel Like A Civil War Is Coming? You’re Supposed To.
Do you feel like the world is going crazy? You’re supposed to feel that way. News corporations make gazillions exploiting our fears and making us angry. They make their videos dramatic and attractive so we will keep watching and scrolling and clicking. The “news” about a coming civil war is a tragic example. The media ...
YouTube Kids Isn’t The Babysitter You’re Looking For
Parents: If there was a cute, colorful, friendly robot that would babysit your kids for free, would you use it? What if the robot was programmable by people around the world, so that anyone could teach it new games to play with your kids? What if a company like Google offered this amazing robot, promising ...
Don’t Be Fooled By Facebook Propaganda
Facebook is on the hot seat these days. With claims of being a “living, breathing crime scene,” former leaders who say it is “ripping apart” society, and calls to kill a new product because of its danger to children, all is not well at the world’s most powerful social media empire. In response to recent ...
If You Fall for a Scam, Here’s Why You’ll Do It
Caveat Emptor. Let the buyer beware. Unfortunately, Sam, a young American man on a dream trip to Bangkok, forgot this familiar Latin phrase. While walking towards a planned tour of the famous Grand Palace, a short, thin, local man with a toothless grin stopped him, saying the Palace was closed for renovations today. However, Sam’s ...
It’s Not Too Late To NOT Give Your Child A Screen For Christmas
The most powerful corporations of our time have made it cheap and easy for us to give them direct access to the hearts and minds of our kids. They have intentionally designed their devices to be addictive. That’s why they’re cheap; they know once we’re hooked, we’ll habitually return for everything else their advertisers want ...
Remembering A Hero Of The Faith
What other-worldly level of strength, character, and faithfulness would it take for your spouse to write this about you after fifty (50!) years of marriage? A brilliant thinker who could engage any scholar on that level, a consummate professional writer who could pack more into three paragraphs than anyone I ever knew, a tender-hearted lover ...
What Do You Want, And Why?
“Sweetheart, what do you want for dinner?” “I don’t know, what do you feel like?” “I don’t care, whatever sounds good to you.” “Well, I don’t care either, and I asked you first.” We have conversations like this all the time, don’t we? We often don’t really know what we want to do next. But ...
Social Media Is Free, But …
Then we freely give back: Our time Our attention Our ideas Our photos, videos Everything we like A diary of our whole lives Unlimited permission to data mine everything we share Our relationships Our future And, because we’re all doing this, they play us against each other. We distract each other, while they keep cashing ...
You Are Not Your Feelings
Everyone’s heard this cultural mantra: our feelings define our identity. According to pop-culture wisdom, truth itself is created and validated by our feelings. We must listen to and act upon our emotions, as they are the most authentic part of who we are. Just think back to the most popular psalm of the cultural doctrine-defining ...
A Call For Noble Men
It means something to be a Smith. I come from a long line of Oregon wheat farmers. I tasted my heritage when Dad sent my teenage self away from my comfortable middle-class city life to hoe weeds around hundreds of acres of hot, arid, Eastern Oregon fields with my uncles and cousins. I’m grateful now, ...
