I got invited to take a survey about eBible. The site has added a ton of great social bookmarking and other features. I’m not sure how much I’ll use it, but you can sign up to be my friend so we can share [Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles voice] bible bookmarks!

Here’s what I suggested:

Add NIV and NRSV, the two translations I use the most. I will not use eBible consistently until these translations are available. I’d be willing to pay a few dollars as a license fee if that’s why they’re not available.

Eliminate the automatic highlighting of verses with commentary - it should be possible to turn this off if desired. It’s very distracting. I did notice that it’s possible to turn off highlighting by opening a new translation column, then closing the first one.

Let the text column width be either adjustable or fill the width of the screen - awkward to have forced line breaks, and have the right 60% of my screen empty. By industry standards for typography, either the linespacing (leading) should be decreased, or the column width should be increased slightly. I’d prefer to be able to control this as well as the font face and style, as reading long texts onscreen is difficult, so being able to customize it helps.

I don’t really like the mouseover-scroll buttons. I’d much rather have something I can click and drag. I know a normal textbox scrollbar wouldn’t work because you can scroll all the way from beginning to end of the bible, which is too much for one scrollbar. Maybe something like a jog wheel, which lets you control the speed at which you’re scrolling.

Two suggestions for the additional translation columns:
-Make it possible to view different passages in each column (not just one passage in different translations). This would involve unlocking the scroll feature, so each column scrolled independently (though I’d also want to be able to scroll them all together when reading one text in multiple versions)
-

Bookmarking:

• The “create new bookmark” popup should be movable, in case it’s blocking the text and you want to refer to it while creating your bookmark.
• If you select (highlight) a word before right-clicking to add a bookmark, the selected word should automatically be added as a topic
• The ESC key should close the bookmark popup

The social features should be more intuitive. It takes way too much digging into the settings pages to find out that you can add friends with whom you can share bookmarks. There should be a link on every page to this feature. Also, it’s not clear what this sharing will look like, so it’s hard to see the benefit (though I do understand it).

“Use” and “Share”, rather than being on separate pages, should be side by side in columns or panes of some type. It’s too much trouble to switch back and forth between them, yet that’s how you’d use the share feature - when reading the text. And when you see something someone else has shared, you naturally want to read the text. They should go together. Also, it’s unclear that there are all these great social features when you’re on the read screen, which is where most people will look first (since that’s all a paper bible has, you wouldn’t think to look for anything else at first).

Top 3 suggestions:

• Add NIV and NRSV, free or for purchase
• Turn off highlighting of verses with commentary
• Make it possible to “use” and “share” on the same screen (e.g. read text and browse bookmarks/tags)

Great platform! Keep up the good work and improvements.

Yes, it’s a book Scot McKnight wrote, but it’s also, well, a creed, written by Brian McLaren in 2004.

This creed was originally shared at the Emergent Convention, Nashville, May 2004.

By Brian McLaren

We have confidence in Jesus
Who healed the sick, the blind, and the paralyzed.
And even raised the dead.

He cast out evil powers and
Confronted corrupt leaders.
He cleansed the temple.
He favored the poor.
He turned water into wine,
Walked on water, calmed storms.

He died for the sins of the world,
Rose from the dead, and ascended to the Father,
Sent the Holy Spirit.

We have confidence in Jesus
Who taught in word and example,
Sign and wonder.
He preached parables of the kingdom of God
On hillsides, from boats, in the temple, in homes,
At banquets and parties, along the road, on beaches, in towns,
By day and by night.

He taught the way of love for God and neighbor,
For stranger and enemy, for outcast and alien.

We have confidence in Jesus,
Who called disciples, led them,
Gave them new names and new purpose
And sent them out to preach good news.
He washed their feet as a servant.
He walked with them, ate with them,
Called them friends,
Rebuked them, encouraged them,
Promised to leave and then return,
And promised to be with them always.

He taught them to pray.
He rose early to pray, stole away to desolate places,
Fasted and faced agonizing temptations,
Wept in a garden,
And prayed, “Not my will but your will be done.”
He rejoiced, he sang, he feasted, he wept.

We have confidence in Jesus,
So we follow him, learn his ways,
Seek to obey his teaching and live by his example.
We walk with him, walk in him, abide in him,
As a branch in a vine.

We have not seen him, but we love him.
His words are to us words of life eternal,
And to know him is to know the true and living God.
We do not see him now, but we have confidence in Jesus.

Amen.

One possibility within the SMC Liturgy Beta.

The Seattle School District’s two levies are up for renewal.

• The operations levy provides 24% of the day-to-day operating budget for the district
• The capital levy provides funds for rebuilding and renovating schools

Neither of these levies is a new tax, and both are essential for providing adequate education in the Seattle School District (while I am an employee of the district, I am writing as a private citizen).

The arguments against renewal of the levies have fallen along two lines:

• The district hasn’t managed funds well in the past, or will not spend these funds on the top priorities
• Taxes should be reduced, not maintained or raised (these levies total nearly a billion dollars over the next four years)

If you’d rather a tax cut than adequately funded schools, I don’t know that you’d have any reason to keep reading. But I’m intrigued by how many people have articulated opposition to the levies using the first argument.

KUOW, our local NPR station, had a story on the levies that I heard on the way to class today. They gave roughly equal airtime to a woman who was in favor of both levies, and a woman who was opposed to the capital levy because of the way the district would spend the money.

The second woman had gripes with specific building projects; for example, she wanted the boiler at Nathan Hale replaced, but there’s no plan to spend any levy funds on this. She said, in essence, “I disagree with the way the school district will spend these capital improvement funds, so I will vote to cut them completely.” Is this a valid argument? I think not.

• If you want to have input on how the funds were spent, sign up to speak at a school board meeting or serve on a committee
• It is not helpful to act in a punitive manner toward a public institution. If we do, we are only hurting those whom that institution serves - namely, our students.
• Making a political point when half a billion education dollars are at stake is childish at best. If you’re looking for an opportunity to take your marbles and go home, look elsewhere.

If you live in Seattle, please vote in the February 6 election - yes on both measures. Absentee ballots have already been mailed - if you got one, send it in.

Yes, really. Mr. Talent On Loan from God will appear on All Things Considered later today, which will doubtless cause many an uptight Seattleite to make sure their radio is on the right station. A synopsis:

Is talk radio polarizing America? What about conservative talk radio? While some say it is polarizing, Rush Limbaugh disagrees — he says we’ve always been a partisan country. We take a closer listen to conservative talk radio.

Look for audio and more notes later on the ATC website. There’s nothing up yet, but I will be interested to hear Mr. Limbaugh’s argument that his role is to get people to become involved, not to polarize them.

A new video from the band Evening Service and “ministry” (sneer quotes intended) Love God’s Way, euphemistically titled “The Bible Says” (Come on, why don’t you title it the repeated verse in the chorus?).

[Video removed by MySpace]

I’m appalled and offended. It’s bad enough coming from Fred Phelps, but nobody takes his screeds seriously. When it’s actually combined with decent web design and catchy music, I’m afraid that this will be interpreted as more “mainstream” than it is in reality.

Imagine William Hung plus Napoleon Dynamite plus Dwight from The Office, trying out before Paula, Randy, and Simon. Ladies and gentlemen, Nick Zitzman auditioning for American Idol in Seattle.

Four minutes of delightfully horrifying audition insanity. Highlights:

• The Righteous Brothers’ Unchained Melody. In three different keys.
• Creative lyrics
• They let him keep going. And going. And going.

Only in Seattle, and only on American Idol.

If you are interested in blogging about American Idol, please contact me via the WebbleYou Blog Network.

There’s an interesting debate going on at beliefnet between Sam Harris, author of The End of Faith, and Andrew Sullivan, blogger extraordinaire and author of The Conservative Soul.

View the entire dialogue here. Harris believes “that religion itself–not its more extreme forms–is to blame” for violent religious fundamentalism, while Sullivan, a Catholic, tries to articulate a moderate Christian faith.

One thing I find strange is that beliefnet is posting the entire contents of Sam Harris’ comments, but only excerpts of Andrew Sullivan’s replies (as well as links to the full text at his blog).

From Sullivan:

The reason I find fundamentalism so troubling …is its inability to integrate doubt into faith, its resistance to human reason, its tendency to pride and exclusion, and its inability to accept mystery as the core reality of any religious life. You find it troubling, I think, purely because it upholds truths that cannot be proved empirically or even, in some respects, logically. In that sense, of course, I think you have no reason to dislike or oppose it any more than you would oppose my kind of faith.

…I do not see reason as somehow in conflict with faith - since both are reconciled by a Truth that may yet be beyond our understanding.

From Harris:

Moderates neither submit to the real demands of scripture nor draw fully honest inferences from the growing testimony of science. In attempting to find a middle ground between religious dogmatism and intellectual honesty, it seems to me that religious moderates betray faith and reason equally.

Link.

Interesting stuff. Do check it out, and let me know what you think in the comments.

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