This past week, I’ve had little urge to write. Dunno why. Maybe it’s because I’ve been fighting writer’s block all week at work! 
And now for your weekly (or sort-of-weekly) hodgepodge of interesting links. I apologize for those who enjoy little snippet-type material to read on lunch break, because most of these are essays and articles that require a bit of time.
Learn to bind your own book (journal) with the help of this detailed instruction manual. In infographic form. Maybe I’ll try this next time I need a journal. Which will be several months… unless I devise some other purpose for which I need one sooner! (Via Alicia)
Are you killing the Internet by giving in to the demands of the walled gardens—like Facebook—that try to suck your entire Internet experience within their bounds? This guy was. And now he’s trying not to.
…from 1995 on, the assumption of the internet has been that all internet resources were available to everyone for a single flat fee and that anyone who was willing to work hard could become a hit on the internet and build a successful business from there.
But such carefree idealistic days are seldom too far from being exploited by people who prefer the balance of power to shift in their direction. Innocently at first but with increasing frequency, some new silos started appearing.
At first, those silos seemed unthreatening because they were small and the rest of the internet was substantially larger than they were. But just as a small hole in a dam seems relatively irrelevant at first, the pressure started building up and eventually led to an increasing number of areas around the internet where traffic would flow one way only, coming in from the community but never leaving back.
(Via ReadWriteWeb, which has a related essay as well.)
Here is another contribution from the I-am-introverted crowd on the Internet: The top five things introverts dread about church. Like “hey! You’re new! Stand up in front of EVERYBODY and let’s all sing to you!” Or how about the classic, “turn around and say good morning to all the people you never speak with otherwise!” I understand it’s a way to try to get people to recognize the people they sit next to or around, but I can’t say that it’s really helped much, at least from my newcomer’s point of view. The people who will take any interest in the people around their pew will do so whether there’s a greeting time or not. (Thank goodness I’m not an extreme introvert. I think I’m fairly balanced, actually, but I can really identify with a lot of the introverted frustrations.)
Random Googleness pulled up an article by a C&MA pastor on how the early C&MA congregations treated the issue of women in senior ministry positions. Pretty interesting to read, at least to me it is. Apparently early C&MA churches permitted women to be senior pastors in some cases. Currently the denomination is against having women in senior pastoring positions, in contrast to many mainline denominations. However it’s more progressive, or whatever, than your stereotypical KJV-or-bust Baptist church—i.e., I can go to church in jeans if I want.
How the GOP is going to try to appeal to the Latino/Hispanic population in the U.S., at least as World magazine sees it. Because even if illegal immigrants and green-card holders can’t vote, their naturalized citizen relatives can.
A fascinating review of The Hunger Games, except it’s only part one. Part two will be coming next week. I love how this guy connects the series with previous dystopian novels, since they add soooo much context.
How to play Dust in the Wind on guitar. These are video tutorials.
And if you don’t play guitar, well, you can listen to it anyway.
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