2008 Favorite Blogs Roundup

I wanted to share some blogs with you for the holidays in case you find yourself surfing the web and aren't sure where to go. I subscribe to all of these blogs in my reader and hope you enjoy them.

Art and Design
Design Milk Full of beautiful furniture and design ideas
Elite By Design Web design and Photoshop Inspiration
Photojojo This is a great site for photography tips and gadgets
WebUrbanist Urban design, culture, travel, architecture, and alternative art

Random Interests
Problogger An excellent site with tips to improve the quality of your blog
BoingBoing Bizarre news from all over the web
TreeHugger Everything environmental and green
Freakonomics A look at the world through stats and figures
Lifehacker Life tips and downloads
Sharkride Cutting edge technologies
Don't Taze Me Bro Documents of the abuse of power by those in authority

Science and Technology
Both Ted Talks and Pop!Tech have awesome videos of thinkers from our time who are on the bleeding edge of their field of study
WIRED Technology news
Discovery Science news

World News and Insight
Google News The best web based news service available. You can customize it to follow your own specific interests and it collects data from all the world's news aggregates.
Fox News and CNN are good to read side by side to see what is happening in the USA. Fox leans to the American right and CNN to the American left, so reading both you have a better chance of distinguishing the truth.
BBC is one of the best sources of world news
Al Jazeera is world news from a middle-eastern perspective

Ministry
Tall Skinny Kiwi This is one of my favorite Christian blogs.
Beauty and Depravity The is the blog of a Seattle Pastor Eugene Cho, that I just began following.
His church also runs the Quest Cafe and I find his articles very thoughtful.
Mustard Seed Associates this is a blog run by a Christian group living in intentional community
Todd Hiestand is a pastor who has a blog devoted to missional living in suburbia
SmartChristian keeps it's finger on the pulse of Christian news

Just for Fun
ThinkGeek Great gift ideas for the geek in your life (wink, wink)
Woot! Random item that is on sale for one day only
FAIL Blog Pictures and videos of failed moments

Chicago Blogs
Here is a link to some of my Chicago Blogs of Note

Do you have a favorite blog not listed here? Leave the link in the comments and I'll check it out.

Creative Street Art

Art in Chicago

Last weekend Lori and I had the privilege of going into the city of Chicago and see an Art Exhibit that our friend Karmen did along with some other local artists. One of the artists who was there has a great site called Don't Talk to Robots. I loved his work and was checking out his site and it turns out that he designed the Harvest site. What a small world!

Anyway, it was great seeing how this group was using art to bring light to some of the issues that people in the city are facing. We look forward to seeing their next exhibit.

I am always on the lookout for new instruments!

How do you see the World?

This is an interesting collection of globes that takes a look at the world through various lenses. The one that you see above shows refugee movement.

A Package Arrived this Week...

...and when I opened it this is what I found inside.

I met Marcel a few years ago when he was working with a Dutch ministry in Santiago dC called Oasis Trails (A Christian organization that provides housing for pilgrims). Marcel participated in Church with our team and he and I got to know each other well by running together and encouraging each other in art.

Marcel was the first person to really explain Icons to me. He took me to an Icon exhibit that was in the Cathedral of Santiago. He explained how they were used in the Eastern Orthodox Church throughout history to aid in prayer. He explained the artistic rules of the characters. Each personality has to be draw a certain way and certain things indicate which Biblical character is being drawn.

When I went to visit Marcel in the Netherlands in 2005 he had been taking classes in how to make Icons. He took me on a drive into the countryside to visit the studio of his teacher. Marcel also showed me the materials in his house that he used to paint the Icons. He had different kinds of colored powders that he would mix to create colors. In order to make skin look realistic he had to paint multiple layers on top of each other. At the end he made a traditional lacker out of egg whites. I was impressed by the complicated process and amazed at the collection that he had made. He had made Icons depicting biblical scenes from Shadrach, Meshack and Abednego to Christ and the apostles.

This Icon that Marcel sent me is called "Christ our High Priest". As someone with a very amateur eye for Icons, I see Christ in his priestly robes. We can tell that it is Christ by the sign of blessing that he is giving with his right hand, the halo, and the passage of the Bible that is quoted in his left hand ( "I am the light of the world....").

Thanks Marcel! It is beautiful and hanging in our front room!