Dan's New Blog: Suburban Messiah

Hey everyone! As you may have seen with the last post, I've set up a new blog over on WordPress, designed to cover my religion angles specifically. It's called Suburban Messiah, which is a pseudonym I created for my solo music project denoting the fact that I'm just some random dude from the suburbs who likes to spout off his religious views like he's important.

As I continue to post miscellanies here on the Quail, I'll be hitting on my religion highlights as well, taking the Gawker Media format and posting the link to my homepage before pasting the entire article into the Quail page. This will remind you, or inspire you, to visit me over at Suburban Messiah for all your favorite Dan religious musings.

The same platform applies to the new blog as it did here: please approach me with any questions, suggestions or comments, and more than anything — enjoy!!

Megachurch Number Crunching - What does it prove?

From Suburban Messiah:

Martin Marty, a longstanding noted Christian scholar (in fact, I read one of his books breaking down the use of mass media in Christianity — from 1961), recently wrote an article regarding the numbers game in modern American Evangelicalism.

Questioning a topic I pondered about a month ago, Marty explains that numbers don't really tell the story of what a church is doing and how it's affecting its congregation, no matter how many people are attending.

I don't think this is surprising, but as is mentioned in his article and in mine, Willow Creek, one of the most influential megachurches in recent history, has begun to question its mission. Seeing that numbers were the focus instead of ministry, the church decided to take a different angle. With the recent surge of corruption in the Evangelical ranks, I wonder if others will follow Willow Creek's model like they did originally.

Giant Magnetic Ropes Discovered Connecting Earth to the Sun

This is just like it sounds. In studying substorms that cause varying durations of the aurora borealis (the Northern Lights), a team of scientists discovered evidence of "giant magnetic ropes linking the Earth's atmosphere to the Sun and channeling solar energy to create the spectacular northern and southern lights shows."

Situated approximately 40,000 miles above the earth, these "ropes," which are described to be intertwined much like a hemp rope, comprise a width the size of the earth itself.

I don't pretend to know how to conceptualize this, or what it means as a discovery. My main response to the news was "neato." However, this article does a much better job of explaining the scientific side of this phenomenon. Let us know what you think, or what this might mean. I'm just laying it out there.

To boot, here's some more info on the aurora.

A Finals News Dump

Hello Pasty Quaildom! As we've made ourselves scarce for the past couple weeks, I've still been reading on the ol' series of tubes we call the Internets, and here are just a few of the things I've come across that fit the "miscellaneous" category. By shying away from my daily religion news dose (though be sure, I've had plenty of time to think about religion), I found a few other interesting articles.

-- First, Deadspin had a couple intriguing posts I wanted to reproduce. Big Daddy Drew, of Kissing Suzy Kolber fame, posted an article about why the NFL should adopt the NCAA overtime format.

To sum: “Q: But doesn't that dilute the sanctity of the game?

A: I thought about this as well. And here was my conclusion: FUCK THE SANCTITY OF THE GAME. Who gives a shit? Are there any fans of college ball who wish they had the NFL's overtime format? Or that they had ties back? No. The purity of the game is overrated. The whole reason these games are played is to entertain fans. And college overtime is kickass entertainment.”

I think you might agree that this is worth a quick, mindless read.

Second, Deadspin reports that everyone's favorite person that constantly speaks above 100 decibels, ESPN's Stephen A. Smith (see picture), has called for the eradication of the blogosphere.


He says that "non-professionals" shouldn't be reporting on sports. There are so many ridiculous things to point out here that I don't know where to start. I'll let you draw your own conclusions.


-- On the political side, after the Romney ridiculousness last week, I've moved away from any Election coverage, so I don't have anything on that front. However, I do have some stuff on the Sean Penn acting like his opinion matters front. There's a transcript of his entire "major political address" that is well worth a read.


-- Finally, I have to work in my religion news. Here's an article re-posted on Dallas Morning News' religion blog, explaining that fictional religious people can, in fact, have intelligent and insightful things to say. This comes on the heels of a post I put up a couple months ago regarding a more realistic version of Christians in fiction.

Who Will Get 2nd Pick in the 2008 NFL Draft?

So, last night, while I was watching the pitiful Falcons lose their 10th game of the season, I started wondering what team will get the 2nd pick in the 2008 Draft?

For those of you who don't follow, the NFL ranks the teams from worst to best to determine the draft order for the following year. Miami has virtually wrapped up the 1st pick with their 0-13 performance this year, but there are 4 teams with 3-10 records in line for the second pick, and another three with 4-9 records. After doing some research, I found that the first tie-breaker will be based on strength of schedule.

Since exams are over and I have nothing constructive to do with myself, I decided to figure out the strength of schedule for each of the teams in the race for the 2nd pick. Here is what I found out (SOS = Combined wins of all past and future opponents to this point in the season):

Jets (3-10) – SOS = 109
- Remaining Opp. = @NE (13-0), @TEN (7-6), KC (4-9)
Falcons (3-10) – SOS = 107
- Remaining Opp. = @TB (8-5), @ARIZ (6-7), SEA (9-4)
49ers (3-10) – SOS = 100
- Remaining Opp. = CIN (5-8), TB (8-5), @CLE (8-5)
Rams (3-10) – SOS = 107
- Remaining Opp. = GB (11-2), PIT(9-4), @ARIZ (6-7)
Baltimore (4-9) – SOS = 107
- Remaining Opp = @MIA (0-13), @SEA (9-4), PIT (9-4)
Oakland (4-9) – SOS = 106
- Remaining Opp = IND (11-2), @JAX (9-4), SD (8-5)
Kansas City (4-9) – SOS = 106
- Remaining Opp = TEN (7-6), @ DET (6-7), NYJ (3-10)

Looking at this information, I have to figure that the 49ers (now without Alex Smith for the remainder) are the odds on favorites to have the 2nd pick. The Falcons will probably grab the 3rd spot, assuming they don't do something absurd like win out the season (This seems, um, unlikely now).

So what does it mean? Check here for ESPN's draft board, including a ranking of the top 100 players who are likely to throw their names in. Some highlights:

Darren McFadden, Glenn Dorsey, Matt Ryan, Brian Brohm, and Andre Woodson.