NIV Stewardship Study Bible Guided Tour from Brett Elder on Vimeo.

I'm an NIV guy in Spanish, but have been leaning towards the ESV in English. This, however, seems like a great resource. Thoughts?

Brian Hollar, with whom I went to see mediocre Avatar in mediocre 3D yesterday, relates the following on his blog, Thinking on the Margin, via Gizmodo:

I've been fascinated by the "Adspecs" since I first heard of them a few years ago. The glasses have oil-filled lenses which, when adjusted with the attached syringes, allow anyone to dial in their own prescription just by looking at a chart...

For the last few weeks, I've been speaking to the Centre for Vision in the Developing World's Owen Reading about where the project is going...  He explained why the Adspecs are such a good solution for developing economies.

"They require very little training to dispense, can be dispensed by an organisation's volunteers in the field, they only need to be delivered once and can make a difference for years afterwards, and are inherently safer (and less valuable on the black market) than items such as prescription medications."

It's the sort of mixture of charity and innovation that makes my heart leap, an opportunity to use the mass production and design capabilities of the developed world to provide a life-changing solution to those who need it--without making those who receive aid dependent on someone else for continued support...

Among all the widgets-of-the-day, the tablets and phones and mail-order furniture, it's easy to forget how technology can make such a profound difference in people's lives. So let's not forget.

Indeed, let's not.  Read the whole thing.

As Joel mentions, these are glasses are still undergoing iterative improvements and need quality enhancements to ensure ruggedness.  Maybe there's a way to build hollow frames which store the oil rather than storing it in syringes?  I wonder how easy these things are to clean?

Here's a video explaining more of how they work and what they do:

This is a brilliantly simple idea that has the potential to impact the lives of millions in the developing world.

BTW, I'm (unwittingly? unwillingly?) taking part in "Snowpocalypse 2.0: SNOWMAGEDDON" in DC this weekend...pray for people who have to drive in snow that usually don't, and that the shelters will have space and resources for the homeless caught in this storm.

I write over at World Magazine explain why "The Blind Side" is not racist and why many people, like David Brooks, conclude that Avatar is clearly racist.

The movie The Blind Side, which depicts a white family's successful adoption of an at-risk black male, has stirred the charge of "racism" for many in the black community. The word "silly" comes to mind as the most charitable word I would use in response to such a charge. A movie depicting a re-told true story recounting what the white Tuohy family actually did for a kid in need, who happened to be black, does not contain what we normally think of as racial dehumanization. It seems that many blacks are confusing "racism" with our distaste for "White Messiah" movies. . .

The rest is here.