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For the foreseeable future you will only find Knight Of Day here at www.knightofday.tumblr.com as I have chosen not to renew the old domain. Since I rarely post I decided to not put out the money for hosting and domain registration.
Excerpt From “The Flinch” by Julien Smith
I told you yesterday about a free book published by Seth Godin’s The Domino Project. I hadn’t read it at the time of that post but I zipped through it last night and highly recommend you go to Amazon and download it while it’s free. You don’t have to have a Kindle to read it as they have apps for Macs, iPads/iPhones, Windows, and just about everything else.
The book is a manifesto encouraging the reader to not ‘flinch’ when this get difficult or uncomfortable. Smith asserts that most people live like is- avoiding anyone that might cause them pain or discomfort. The only way to make a real impact on the World is roll withe the punches and go on the attack.
This excerpt describes what she is calls “The Flinch” and sets up the rest of the book:
“The flinch is hard. It means seeing the lies you tell yourself, facing the fear behind them, and handling the pain that your journey demands—all without hesitation.
“The flinch is the moment when every doubt you’ve ever had comes back and hits you, hard. It’s when your whole body feels tense. It’s an instinct that tells you to run. It’s a moment of tension that happens in the body and the brain, and it stops everything cold.”
- Julien Smith, “The Flinch”
Free Kindle Book- “The Flinch” by Julien Smith
Author and speaker Seth Godin is sadly ending his year long experiment in the publishing industry and is closing down The Domino Project. However, he’s going out with a bang as the last Domino book was released this week and is currently available for free in Kindle form.
The book is “The Flinch” by Julien Smith. It’s a call to fight through times when you want to avoid doing something that will be tough, uncomfortable, and risky. I haven’t gotten to read it yet but many people I respect are raving about it.
Here’s the link:
Book Recommendation- “Homicide: A Year On The Killing Streets” by David Simon
David Simon is the creator of the seminal crime drama “The Wire” and the underrated “Treme” but before moving into television he was a reporter and writer. “Homicide: A Year On The Killing Streets” is the account of a year Simon spent with the Homicide Unit of the Baltimore Police Department. It’s an eye-opening book about the turmoil and despair of America’s inner cities. Highly recommended, you won’t be disappointed.
Here’s links to purchase the book:
Overloaded: Our Media Consumption Problem
Modern society is consuming media at a rate astronomically beyond that of any previous time in history. We’ve maintained the longstanding ritual of watching hours of television a day while the rest of our lives have quickly become more and more built around continuous consumption of media in multiple forms. We watch TV shows and films, read books and magazines, play video games, surf the web, call and text, follow the news, and even conduct much of our social lives through online networks. Some time spent consuming media might genuinely benefit us- if only serving as a break from the stress of our daily lives- and undoubtably adds to the enjoyment of life. Yet, surely there are better things we could be doing with large chunks of this time. Does the numb pleasure of being in a vegetative state for long periods really outweigh the effects of soaking up so much largely useless information, or should we work to break the habit and to be a more deliberate consumer?
The first step to overcoming a habit or addiction is recognizing and admitting the problem. Nielsen’s “State Of The Media 2010: U.S. Audiences & Devices” study details just how much media we take in every day. Kids from age 2 to 11 watch an average of 25.8 hours of television each week. For those over 65 it’s 48.9 hours a week and for the remaining population it’s 35.6 hours. That comes out to approximately 5 hours and 15 minutes of television viewing each day for the average American. A more recent Nielsen report, “State Of The Media: The Cross-Platform Report; Q2, 2011”, indicates that while traditional TV viewing has remained at roughly the same level over the last year, the streaming of video over the internet has increased tremendously. Surfing the internet now takes up about 3.6 hours of everyone’s day. In 2011 during the month of May alone Americans spent 53,457,258 minutes on Facebook. That’s over 37,123 days, or 1237 months, or 103 years-in one month! The rise of mobile communications devices and the arrival of the post-PC era has evolved to the point that many of us are glued to our smartphones or tablets a majority of the day.
An important question to ask in response to this sobering data is: how has the continual increase of media consumption affected us? Science points towards our growing reliance on technology as actually changing the neurological makeup of our brains. America’s obesity epidemic is fueled in part by the accepted preference to sit around and consume media rather than do something active. Beyond the physical changes, overconsumption of media also comes with grave psychological and spiritual tolls.
When we indiscriminately consume everything we can we are simply whiling away the time. Accustomed to stuffing our hearts and souls with the filler of television, or websites, or whatever, we neglect to take the time to fill ourselves with God’s love and wisdom. We distract ourselves and gradually disconnect from the Savior. Our very way of communicating has fundamentally shifted and we find ourselves off frequency.
David Kinnaman, President of The Barna Group, commented on the findings from a study of the faith practices of teenagers:
“While there is still much vibrancy to teen spirituality, it seems to be ‘thinning out.’ Teenagers view religious involvement partly as a way to maintain their all-important relationships. Yet perhaps technology such as social networking is reconfiguring teens’ needs for relationships and continual connectivity, diminishing the role of certain spiritual forms of engagement in their lives. Talking to God may be losing out to Facebook.”
Young people are moving away from God because their preferred method of relating to others is increasingly done over wires rather than face to face. It is easy to lose sight of God when you have learned to disengage from reality and soak up whatever entertainment is available. We become slaves to our human nature, falling in step with the rhythm of the world. We lose sight of our direction and our spiritual growth stalls. Paul urges us in Romans 12:1-2 (MSG) to not go down this path:
“So here’s what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life-your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life-and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. Don’t become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You’ll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you.”
As Christians it is our duty to ward off letting entertainment and media dictate our values and influence our behavior. We must engage in intentional consumption that works to further mold us into the likeness of Christ. This does not mean cutting out all media but rather making informed decisions to seek out only things that are beneficial or substantive rather than vacuous or destructive. We must keep the difficult balance of living amidst our culture yet not living for our culture.
Many Christians question whether we should be consuming secular media at all. In the book “Stuff Christians Like” author Jon Acuff shares of how he used the excuse of trying to stay relevant to justify watching episodes of “Family Guy”. It can be tempting to stay current on a show that provides you with no intrinsic value merely so you will not be the only one of your friends who is out of the loop. Intentionally consuming entertainment and media that is ’nutritious’ rather than full of ’empty calories’ is a diet and fitness regimen that can help keep our hearts and minds pure. We must decide for ourselves whether to extricate fully from our cultural world, but Acuff adds this thought:
“I get the desire to use culture to further the Kingdom, too. I mean, that’s been a hallmark of Christianity from the very beginning—its ability to take pieces of the secular and to mold them to reflect something better.”
We cannot let ourselves become well-adjusted to and complacent within our culture. We must devote ourselves to becoming the person God divinely appointed us to be so we may influence culture rather than be influenced by culture. The first steps back towards God begin with walking away from the next TV rerun, online gaming session, or movie showing and spending time in prayer and in study of the Word.
Shadow Of A Nation - Crow Indians And Basketball
Really inspiring story of a man who overcame the disease that devours his people and made it through to a better life. Plus, there’s basketball.
A Palm-Sized, Cube-Shaped, Cloud-Powered Thermal Printer With an Adorable Pair of Feet and a Cute Face
Very cool and interesting new product coming out in 2012. Rather than read from a screen the “Little Printer” puts your favorite sources onto thin paper.
Would anyone be interested in this? I think I enjoy being paperless too much.
Congress Weighs Taking the War-on-Drugs Approach to Fighting Internet Piracy
Must read article on the backwards way our government and the entertainment lobbyists plan to attack online piracy. I am not condoning piracy nor arguing that it should be left unchecked but this plan could cripple the Internet.
Nine Things Successful People Do Differently
Good look at how to set goals, change habits, and achieve success.
iA Writer For Mac And For iPad On Sale!!!
I was going to write a thorough review of these two apps but when I saw the developers website - iAWriter.com - I discovered there was no need. They cover everything you need to know better than I ever could. The app is just as good as the website, I promise.
I can’t recommend this enough for anyone who writes anything, ever. It’s the best there is. I use it every single day and absolutely love it. Having both and syncing with Dropbox is a breeze. You won’t know how you wrote with out it. If you think it looks light on ‘features’ like customization and such, trust me- you won’t want them. They nailed it so there is no need to provide any other settings. Right up there with Instapaper as my all-time greatest app.
Ideas Are Just a Multiplier of Execution
Great point made here: having a great idea in and of itself means nothing, you must execute that idea.
Save Community!
We demand that NBC reverse its crazy decision to shelve Community. The show is the best one on TV and NBC should renew it immediately!
