This site shows up very well in search engine results, and one of the top posts attracting search engine traffic is this one on whether bisphenol A in Nalgene bottles is dangerous.

I’ve used a Nalgene religiously since 2000, and have consumed probably 2,500 gallons of water using it. In fact, I rarely use a drinking glass. I wash my Nalgene about once a week (see this post for bacteria info, including petri dish photos). If anyone was going to suffer ill health effects from using a Nalgene, it’d be me. No damage to any organs or appendages so far, though. I replace my bottle when the label wears off, and I’m on my third now (actually, my 2nd Nalgene was fine, but I had to replace it after leaving it on a plane).

Today we were in Whole Foods, for some reason, and I bought a Sigg bottle (this one) to see how it compares. I like the way it feels (it’s is one of the few anodized/texturized Sigg bottles), but the mouth is not wide enough to hold ice. I’m big on icewater, so the ice-unfriendliness may be a dealbreaker.

Anyway, Nalgene announced a few weeks ago that they’re phasing out the polycarbonate that traditional Nalgene bottles are made of, in favor of another material, Eastman’s “Tritan” copolyester, which does not contain bisphenol A. I don’t know how this material compares in terms of feel, taste, or durability to polycarbonate, but these bottles will probably become widely available next month. Here’s the press release.

So, if you’re afraid of bisphenol A, you’ll have plenty of alternatives from Nalgene.

I was watching TV the other day and this commercial for the We Campaign to stop global warming caught my attention:

Terrablog points out that the narrator of this clip is none other than William H. Macy, which I didn’t realize when I watched it. It’s an inspiring commercial - I thought it was going to be an Obama ad or something.

The We Campaign’s platform focuses on the following solutions:

• Clean Energy Economy
• Personal Choices
• Adoption of Renewables
• Enhanced Energy Efficiency
• Innovative Leadership

The campaign is funded by Al Gore and other private donors. It reminds me of the One Campaign - a public awareness effort designed to build political will for changes that will benefit all of humanity.

Start here for some footprint-reducing tips.

I was visiting Ross’ blog this evening to see if there were any comments on his fantastic post from a few days ago, and in the sidebar, I saw a link to Real Live Preacher.

I hadn’t been to RLP in years, so I clicked the link and saw the site pretty much the way it was last time I visited - full of long, interesting stories and funky illustrations.

If you recall, RLP (whose real name is Gordon Atkinson) published a book a while back, which contained about 50 essays, many of which were first posted on the blog - hence the title of the book, RealLivePreacher.com.

The book didn’t sell all that well, so the publisher let him buy the books for a quarter each (plus freight). He is now selling them by mail from his home, but with a twist: when you buy one, he looks up your address on Microsoft Live Maps and writes you a note or otherwise personalizes the package, even including some random, easily shipped object he has lying around (such as a sporting even ticket or a pressed flower or something equally whimsical).

He says:

Whenever possible, you should resist the urge to automate things. You can’t do everything by hand. I know that. But when you can, you should. link

I like his style. The shipping is now as much an art as the writing was, and buying the book feels like participating in that art. It’s $13.50 all told, and they accept PayPal.

“You’re kind of dead wrong, but you’re the nicest wrong guy I’ve met in a long time” - Al Sharpton

“I hated everything he stood for, but after meeting him in person, years after the trial, Jerry Falwell and I became good friends. He would visit me in California and we would debate together on college campuses. I always appreciated his sincerity even though I knew what he was selling and he knew what I was selling.” - Larry Flynt

Any others, or your own thoughts?

Orchid, uploaded by justinbaeder.

Amy’s orchid bloomed recently after several years of dormancy. More pictures of the orchid

Can you blame them?

Wal-Mart vice-chairman Michael Duke is in Mumbai for talks with Bharti bosses and government representatives. Wal-Mart and Bharti are planning a joint venture for cash-and-carry.

A statement from Wal-Mart says Mr Duke is visiting India “to learn more about the market first-hand and to further explore the wholesale cash-and-carry business”.

Via BBC.

How will people come to faith in Christ without the shared vocabulary that was commonly understood in our culture fifty years ago?

Twenty years ago, the solution was to remove all of the vocabulary. We ended up with vacuous megachurch theology, and stupid books with no theological content but lots of pseudo-Christian tips for better living (I’m making assumptions here, so forgive me if I’m wrong about this book).

While megachurches are still cropping up all over the place and growing like crazy, they have failed to capture the imagination of the postmodern generations. They are big and popular for the reasons that malls are big and popular - because people like what they can get there. They aren’t popular for the reasons that, say, the Jerusalem church was popular in the first century.

So let’s assume that the way to faith is not through a church with no religious language or icky bible talk. The Christian faith is a complex system of beliefs, practices, history, and documents, and can’t be faithfully reduced to four steps or ten chapters in a how-to-believe book.

Consider the plight of someone who encounters Christ and the Christian faith, and wants to sign up, or is at least considering it. They enter a church that uses the insider vocabulary (which could be a non-traditional housechurch, or a very traditional church in a building), and are taken aback.

All religions have some type of specialized vocabulary. Some people are attracted to the ancient-sounding words (especially the Latin), and find that such language awakens their sense of mystery and transcendence. Some people find it weird and off-putting. What’s a church to do?

The best advice I have heard is to use the terminology, but be ready to explain it when necessary. For someone new to the faith, though, that may not be enough. Will we need to explain 4,000 years of history in order to help someone understand the pivotal concepts of Christianity?

Perhaps we can translate the bolder points of the Gospel into more readily understood terms. What would such translation look like? Do we need a user-friendly dictionary for our faith? Would such a project become so densely self-referential that it would no longer be helpful, at least in communicating with someone who is only casually interested?

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.