Jonathan's blog

Via kendallball.net, another article questioning the value of short-term missions, this one titled "Rise of sunshine Samaritans: on a mission or holiday?" by G. Jeffrey MacDonald in The Christian Science Monitor:

By the millions, Americans are jumping at the chance to become missionaries - with one key stipulation of the 21st century: They expect to get their comfortable lives back a few days later. Evangelicals often build homes or visit orphanages, then explain the roots of their faith to new friends. Mainline Christians tend to focus on providing relief from poverty. This year, tens of thousands of short-term missionaries plan to storm the hurricane-ravaged Gulf Coast in visible witness to their savior's love for humankind... As these missions flourish, however, the faithful are debating the wisdom of tailoring outreach programs to suit the needs and wants of missionaries in search of a peak, transformational experience. Critics say impoverished people, especially overseas, often end up pandering to cash-wielding, untrained missionaries who leave a bad impression and don't make meaningful lifestyle changes upon return... Short-term trips, lasting two weeks or less, drew about 1.6 million Americans to foreign mission fields last year, according to a survey by Robert Wuthnow, a sociologist of religion at Princeton University. Others who study Christian missions, such as Todd Johnson of the Center for the Study of Global Christianity at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, say brief domestic mission trips draw even more participants than international ones... Short-term mission trips date back to the 1960s when air travel first became accessible to religiously passionate pockets of the middle class, according to Dr. Johnson. But only since the mid-1990s, with the rise of Internet-savvy megachurches, have local congregations attained the tools necessary to bypass denominations and forge their own ties on the ground as far away as Asia, Africa, and the Middle East.

From my old blog that I haven't yet merged into this one:

Something on the order of 1 to 4 million North Americans participate in a short term mission trips, at a cost of a few billion dollars a year. Conventional wisdom says these activities make a long-lasting positive impact on both the missionaries and the people they visit. Recent research by Kurt Ver Beek (his website is here and some discussion is here) argues that neither group is significantly affected in the long run.

Some comments from my friend Chris are here.

More wierdness from Pat...from an AP article on MSNBC.com:

Robertson has made the predictions at least four times in the past two weeks on his news-and-talk television show "The 700 Club" on the Christian Broadcasting Network, which he founded. Robertson said the revelations about this year's weather came to him during his annual personal prayer retreat in January. "If I heard the Lord right about 2006, the coasts of America will be lashed by storms," Robertson said May 8. On Wednesday, he added, "There well may be something as bad as a tsunami in the Pacific Northwest."

Via The Week, God has revealed the winner of Florida's gubernatorial race too. From an AP article by Brendan Farrington in The Washington Post:

A reverend who introduced Republican gubernatorial candidate Charlie Crist during a breakfast with other pastors Monday said the Lord came to him in a dream two years ago and told him Crist would be the state's next governor. The Rev. O'Neal Dozier said that before the dream he did not know Crist, nor had Crist made known his plans to run for governor. "The Lord Jesus spoke to me and he said 'There's something I want you to know,'" said Dozier, pastor of the Worldwide Christian Center in Pompano Beach. "'Charlie Crist will be the next governor of the state of Florida.'" Since then, Dozier has spent time with Crist and talked with him at length about policy. He told the group that Crist would be uncompromising in his Christian faith. "I introduce to you, as the Lord Jesus has said, the next governor of the state of Florida, Charlie Crist," Dozier said.

From a press release of the same title from University of California - Berkeley:

When used indoors under certain conditions, many common household cleaners and air fresheners emit toxic pollutants at levels that may lead to health risks, according to a new study by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Exposure levels to some of the pollutants - and to the secondary pollutants formed when some of the products mix with ozone - may exceed regulatory guidelines when a large surface is cleaned in a small room or when the products are used regularly, resulting in chronic exposure, according to the study.. Four years in the making, the team's 330-page study and report, "Indoor Air Chemistry: Cleaning Agents, Ozone and Toxic Air Contaminants," was posted online by the ARB on Wednesday, May 10, at http://www.arb.ca.gov/research/apr/past/indoor.htm. The ARB asked Nazaroff and his team to focus their work in two areas: an investigation of toxic air contaminants in household cleaning products and air fresheners, especially a class of chemicals known as ethylene-based glycol ethers; and an examination of the chemistry that occurs when such products are used indoors - in particular, products that contain a reactive group of chemicals called terpenes... In several realistic use scenarios, the tests showed that people could be exposed to potentially dangerous levels of toxic pollutants. The scenarios included:

• Cleaning in a small, moderately ventilated bathroom. In calculations based on emissions from one of the glycol-ether containing products, the team found that a person who spends 15 minutes cleaning scale off of a shower stall could inhale three times the "acute one-hour exposure limit" for this compound set by the California Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment.
• Air freshener and ozone in a child's bedroom. This scenario could occur when people use both air fresheners and ozone-generating devices simultaneously in a room. This could lead to exposures to formaldehyde that are 25 percent higher than California's guideline value. Because other sources of formaldehyde could also be present in the room, exposure to formaldehyde would probably be even higher, the report states.
• Cleaning when outdoor ozone levels are high. This scenario simulates an apartment in Southern California on a day when the mid-afternoon outdoor ozone concentration is high. A person who stays in the kitchen for two hours after using a moderate amount of one of the terpene-containing products would breathe in about one quarter of the total daily guideline value for particulate matter.
• Multi-house cleaning by a professional home cleaner. Under this scenario, a person who cleans four houses a day, five days per week, 50 weeks per year, would take in about 80 micrograms per day of formaldehyde, double the guideline value set by California's Proposition 65. In addition, the person's intake of fine particulate matter during the hours spent cleaning would exceed the average federal guideline level for an entire year. These quantities are in addition to the formaldehyde and particulate matter that the person would be exposed to from all other sources and activities during the year.

The take-home message from these studies, according to Nazaroff, is that everyone - but especially cleaning professionals - should be cautious about overuse of products with high levels of ethylene-based glycol ethers and terpenes. Rooms should be ventilated during and after cleaning, some products should be used in diluted solutions as opposed to full-strength, and cleaning supplies should be promptly removed from occupied spaces once cleaning is done. Also, people should avoid the use of ozone generators or ionizing air cleaners, especially in the same space where terpene-containing cleaning products or air fresheners are being used.

Today I finished watching The Yes Men (2003,R). From Reel.com:

A filmcrew follows a small group of activists who gains world-wide notoriety for impersonating World Trade Organization members on television and at business conferences.

I enjoyed this one. You've got to admire this guys by getting there point across and having fun doing it via impersonation and pranks. I remember when they pulled their Bhopal prank on Dow Chemical. 4 out of 5.

Today I finished watching Team America: World Police (2004,R) (Screen It! Review). From Wikipedia:

The film tells the story of an overzealous gang of anti-terrorist "global peace" enforcers known as Team America. Much of the film is a parody of the Bush Administration's War on Terror. Most of the heroes and villains represent extreme caricatures of both conservative and liberal attitudes towards the war, and American foreign policy in general. The film also heavily parodies the clichés of other action movies...

Though highly vulgar and profane, the lampooning of the haphazardly executed war on terror and the penchant of "Hollywood liberals" to step into politics was amusing.