Jonathan's blog

From an article of the same title by Somini Sengupta in the NY Times:

In the richest city in India, with the nation's economy marching ahead at an enviable clip, middle-class people...are reduced to foraging for water. Their predicament testifies to the government's astonishing inability to deliver the most basic services to its citizens at a time when India asserts itself as a global power. The crisis, decades in the making, has grown as fast as India in recent years. A soaring population, the warp-speed sprawl of cities, and a vast and thirsty farm belt have all put new strains on a feeble, ill-kept public water and sanitation network... Nationwide, the urban water distribution network is in such disrepair that no city can provide water from the public tap for more than a few hours a day. An even bigger problem than demand is disposal. New Delhi can neither quench its thirst, nor adequately get rid of the ever bigger heaps of sewage that it produces. Some 45 percent of the population is not connected to the public sewerage system. Those issues are amplified nationwide. More than 700 million Indians, or roughly two-thirds of the population, do not have adequate sanitation. Largely for lack of clean water, 2.1 million children under the age of 5 die each year, according to the United Nations.

From an article of the same title by Richard Fausset in the LA Times:

Pastor Marty Baker preaches that the Bible is the eternal and inviolate word of God. On other church matters, he's willing to change with the times. Jeans are welcome at Stevens Creek Community Church, the 1,100-member evangelical congregation Baker founded 19 years ago. Sermons are available as podcasts, and the electric house band has been known to cover Aerosmith's "Dream On." A recent men's fellowship breakfast was devoted to discussing the spiritual wages of lunching at Hooters. It is a bid for relevance in a nation charmed by pop culture and consumerism, and it is not an uncommon one. But Baker has waded further into the 21st century than most fishers of American souls, as evidenced one Wednesday night when churchgoer Josh Marshall stepped up to a curious machine in the church lobby. It was one of Stevens Creek's three "Giving Kiosks": a sleek black pedestal topped with a computer screen, numeric keypad and magnetic-strip reader. Prompted by the on-screen instructions, Marshall performed a ritual more common in quickie marts than a house of God: He pulled out a bank card, swiped it and punched in some numbers. The machine spat out a receipt. Marshall's $400 donation was routed to church coffers before he had found his seat for evening worship.

From an article of the same title in The Washington Post:

A new breed of churches in this region of China has demonstrated a boldness and independence unmatched elsewhere in the country, despite strict government guidelines for places of worship. Here in Wenzhou and the surrounding province of Zhejiang, just south of Shanghai, a growing number of congregations that began life as house churches -- unauthorized places of worship set up in private, often dilapidated homes -- have recently registered with the government, while continuing to spurn the rules of the official Protestant church in China. Like so many institutions in China, these churches now hover in a sort of legal netherworld. The official church, known as the Three-Self Patriotic Movement, was founded in the 1950s to free religious Chinese from foreign funds and influence. Its name is derived from the principles of self-governance, self-support and self-propagation of the Gospel... According to the rules of China's official church, midweek services are forbidden, as is proselytizing outside of church. But the rules are often bent, depending on the relationship between local officials and church leaders, and some independent-minded churches refuse to attend official meetings or pay official fees... Nothing illustrated the boldness of Zhejiang's Christians more clearly than the hasty building of an illegal house church this summer in a suburb of Hangzhou, the provincial capital. When local officials demolished the church, a massive riot ensued, with 3,000 protesters facing off against thousands of uniformed riot police, security guards and plainclothes police. It was the most dramatic example in a series of arrests, raids and demolitions of churches considered illegal by the authorities. Some observers said the riot was only the latest chapter in a long-running battle between authorities and the more outspoken of China's growing population of 45 million to 65 million Christians. Other activists said it represented a stepped-up persecution of unregistered congregations.

The recent news stories about the death of Byron Nelson reminded me of another coC/golf connection: Kenny Perry. I had heard a little bit about it from my brother-in-law who works at Lipscomb, so I did a bit of research (and edited my first Wikipedia entry). From Wikipedia:

Perry was born in Elizabethtown, Kentucky. He attended Western Kentucky University and turned professional in 1982. He failed in his first two attempts to qualify for the PGA Tour at Q-school (Qualifying school). He missed by 1 stroke one year and received word that his wife had gone into labor during the fourth round the next year. In 1985 a Franklin, Kentucky businessman and Lipscomb University graduate loaned him $5000 for a last shot at Q-school. Rather than repay the loan, he was asked to give a percentage of his tour earnings to Lipscomb University if he qualified. He tied for 40th at Q-school, earning his card with a two-shot cushion. Perry and his benefactor agreed on 5 percent, and he has maintained that commitment to the university ever since in the form of a scholarship for residents of Simpson County, Kentucky. In his first few seasons he found it a struggle to retain his qualified status, but he attained his first win in 1991 at the Memorial Tournament. Two more wins followed in the mid 1990s, another in 2001, and three victories in 2003. He was in the top 10 of the Official World Golf Rankings for a short time. Perry won in 2005 at the Bay Hill Invitational and the Bank of America Colonial. In 2006 he became the tenth man to reach US$20 million in PGA Tour career earnings in addition to taking an 8-week break from the tour to recover from knee surgery. He is a deacon in the Franklin, Kentucky, Church of Christ.

From an article of the same title by John Branch in the NY Times:

The league has long had an uneasy relationship with crowd noise, and may soon embark on its latest quest to overcome it - not by hushing fans, but by allowing visiting players the benefit of a helmet-to-helmet wireless communication system... With no reasonable way to curb enthusiasm without appearing stodgy, Roger Goodell, the new N.F.L. commissioner, is floating another idea: placing microphones in quarterbacks' helmets and speakers in the helmets of other offensive players, so that play calls and snap counts can be heard despite the din. Quarterbacks now have earpieces that allow them to hear coaches, but the transmission is cut with 15 seconds left on the play clock. Goodell said he believed that noise should lift a defense, not interrupt an offense. He said he did not want to hush the crowd, just limit its impact. "That's what our game is about: our athletes and coaches playing at the highest possible level and being able to execute their game plans," Goodell said Sept. 6, during his first news conference after succeeding Paul Tagliabue. "To some extent right now, I think we are hindering that a little bit, because they come into an opposing stadium and they are not able to put the full offense in, they are not able to run plays in, they are not able to change the plays at the line of scrimmage."