Check out my new book, Human Again– the Quest to Save the Future from Religion.
Order today and receive a pre-book release discount.
Enjoy.
I’m listening to Jason Sharp performing at House Blend Cafe.
This performance is part of Voxtropolis that is taking place
in Orlando, Florida this week.
Register to win an “iPod Touch”
Here’s How.
ONE. Chill out to cool music at
VOXTROPOLIS ORLANDO
January 27, 2008
Push Play Cafe
TWO. Register to win the ‘iPod Touch” while there.
THREE. Be present at the drawing.
VOXTROPOLIS
February 8, 2008
7 PM - 10 PM
Downtown Orlando
While there, you’ll experience a very cool and informal ambience, chilling music by local and visiting artists, and get a feel for a new musical and artistic vibe in Central Florida.
*For those of you who will join us at VOXTROPOLIS — the world music jam on February 8-9 — you may register that evening. ** You must be present to win.
Register to win an “iPod Touch”
Here’s How.
ONE. Chill out to cool music at
VOXTROPOLIS ORLANDO
January 27, 2008
Push Play Cafe
TWO. Register to win the ‘iPod Touch” while there.
THREE. Be present at the drawing.
VOXTROPOLIS
February 8, 2008
7 PM - 10 PM
Downtown Orlando
While there, you’ll experience a very cool and informal ambience, chilling music by local and visiting artists, and get a feel for a new musical and artistic vibe in Central Florida.
*For those of you who will join us at VOXTROPOLIS — the world music jam on February 8-9 — you may register that evening. ** You must be present to win.
According Debra Williamson, an analyst at eMarketer, 20 million children will be members of some sort of virtual world by 2011. Today there are 8.2 million.
In a recent New York Times article, Web Playgrounds for the Very Young, Club Penguin attracts 7 times more traffic than Second Life, a virtual world for adults. [Even those of us who’ve not memorized the times tables through 99 can see that’s a huge difference. See my post, Future Watch: Education, for back story on this].
The New York Times quotes, Steve Wadsworth, president of the Walt Disney Group: “There is a massive opportunity here.” In other words, watch out. The big corporations (Movies, toys, etc) are coming after your kids.
What do you think?
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Register Now for HUMANA 2.08. For more info see the Website at http://fight4humanity.com
Do you have your multiplication tables memorized through 99?
How about your children?
This morning’s New York Times had an interesting article about
the Japanese looking to India for educational models. Japan has
dominated their region of the world for the last century or so.
Of course, by now almost everyone is aware of the ascendancy
India and China as economic global giants.
But it is India with it’s powerful surge into the world of software
development, internet businesses and the knowledge economy that
has captured Japan’s attention. The Times reports that Japanese papers
carry stories of Indian Children “memorizing multiplication tables
up to 99 times 99, compared with Japan’s relatively lax elementary-
school requirement of knowing 9 times 9.”
Future economic prosperity lies in the sciences and technology and it
is these areas in which Japan –while still excelling — has fallen
comparatively speaking in the last few years.
The result? Get this- the success of Indian style education in Japan.
[This is in and of itself worthy of a post — the fact that Japan would
look to an Asian country reverses generations of prejudice]. The
philosophy is to teach children more facts at a younger age,
memorization and cramming of info.
For many Americans this will seem slavish. But that’s because we
live in the center of the world where everything is easier. In some ways
this makes us weaker. We push less because we’re the pinnacle. In the
meantime the developing world, like little turtles born on the shore, race
for the seas of math, science, discipline and achievement as if their lives
depended on it.
Here’s a future scenario. The USA replaces China as the mass producer
of cheap imitations and souvenirs (just visit Sunset and Hollywood Blvds
in Los Angeles or International Dr in Orlando to see what this would look like),
India becomes the world leader in Education and the Japanese learn to speak
English and write code from Indians.
God I love this planet.
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Register Now for HUMANA 2.08. For more info see the Website at http://fight4humanity.com
Get ready for some excellent changes here at Voxtropolis in 2008.
- The main page will change.
-
The blog feed will soon appear in the Taboo Lounge where it is illegal to
post on religion and politics. So you can count on the fact that the graffiti
will be all over those walls.
- prepare for some guests bloggers of note
-
this site will also become the main site for VOXTROPOLIS the experience
- here comes Culture Pub Central –get in the network
Happy New Years from
Voxtropolis Headquarters
How relevant is your reading compared to the New York Times top 10 books list for 2007?
Here they are…5 fiction and 5 nonfiction. Enjoy.
FICTION…
MAN GONE DOWN
By Michael Thomas. Black Cat/Grove/Atlantic, paper, $14. This first novel explores the fragmented personal histories behind four desperate days in a black writer’s life.
OUT STEALING HORSES
By Per Petterson. Translated by Anne Born. Graywolf Press, $22. In this short yet spacious Norwegian novel, an Oslo professional hopes to cure his loneliness with a plunge into solitude.
THE SAVAGE DETECTIVES
By Roberto Bolaño. Translated by Natasha Wimmer. Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $27. A craftily autobiographical novel about a band of literary guerrillas.
THEN WE CAME TO THE END
By Joshua Ferris. Little, Brown & Company, $23.99. Layoff notices fly in Ferris’s acidly funny first novel, set in a white-collar office in the wake of the dot-com debacle.
TREE OF SMOKE
By Denis Johnson. Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $27. The author of “Jesus’ Son” offers a soulful novel about the travails of a large cast of characters during the Vietnam War.
NONFICTION…
IMPERIAL LIFE IN THE EMERALD CITY: Inside Iraq’s Green Zone.
By Rajiv Chandrasekaran. Alfred A. Knopf, $25.95; Vintage, paper, $14.95. The author, a Washington Post journalist, catalogs the arrogance and ineptitude that marked America’s governance of Iraq.
LITTLE HEATHENS: Hard Times and High Spirits on an Iowa Farm During the Great Depression.
By Mildred Armstrong Kalish. Bantam Books, $22. Kalish’s soaring love for her childhood memories saturates this memoir, which coaxes the reader into joy, wonder and even envy.
THE NINE: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court.
By Jeffrey Toobin. Doubleday, $27.95. An erudite outsider’s account of the cloistered court’s inner workings.
THE ORDEAL OF ELIZABETH MARSH: A Woman in World History.
By Linda Colley. Pantheon Books, $27.50. Colley tracks the “compulsively itinerant” Marsh across the 18th century and several continents.
THE REST IS NOISE: Listening to the Twentieth Century.
By Alex Ross. Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $30. In his own feat of orchestration, The New Yorker’s music critic presents a history of the last century as refracted through its classical music.
Didn’t fare to well? Try the 100 notable books list. Here’s the link: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/02/books/review/notable-books-2007.html
Getting out of the Ghetto tip #1: One way to get out of the ghetto is to start picking up the books, music and films normal people –well ok, New York Times critics may not be normal — read.
Happy New Year.
The Proto-Voxtropolis® Culture Pubs™ were pulled off in style in both the Orlando and Winter Park locations.
Great turnouts, great networking, fantastic venues, cool music. Check out the video on voxtropolis.com (Orlando) and voxtropolis.com/cafe (Winter Park).
The next Orlando event will be on January 27 at Java Dave’s Push Play Cafe on Alafaya.
We’ll keep you posted on the Winter Park scene as well.
The Voxtropolis Culture Pub Network is an alternative to a traditional church planting network. One difference is that a traditional church planting network has the goal of sending out church planters to plant churches. The Culture Pub Network has the goal of helping Christ following people engage unreached people in spiritual conversation. The motivation behind both the traditional church planting network and of the Culture Pub network is the same: That Christ be made known in all the earth.
Right now we are working with two new Voxtropolis Culture Pub teams in the central Florida area. Both of them have their first engagements this month. Follow their stories right here.
Photo: First Culture Pub Team Meeting with the East Side Underground
Both Central Florida Culture Pubs will have the first meetings within the next two weeks. We’ll try to photo document and maybe even video a bit of the process and events. Stay tunes to the City of Voices.
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Register for HUMANA 2.08 (H2.08) now
3 Things you Gotta Know about H2.08
Invitation to H2.08
