Woke up with quite a headache this morning (it’s Spring!) so I ended up watching more of the morning news than I usually do. One of the things that genuinely amuses me is they way weather people in Southern California try to manufacture weather drama. So today, for example, they announced repeatedly that it is going to be “windy and cold.”

Having lived in Chicago for seven years, windy and cold brings to mind wind chill temperatures from single digits to the 20s.

So just how cold and windy is this SoCal day predicted to be? Sunny, winds 15 to 20 mph, and 64. That’s right, 64 degrees. Six. Four. I know people who keep their A/C at 68, so it’s hard to think of 64 as “cold.”

Cool, maybe. I might even go for crisp, given the wind. But cold? No, California. It is not cold.

Transition (noun) — movement, passage, or change from one position, state, stage, subject, concept, etc., to another; change.

Hiatus (noun) — a break or interruption in the continuity of a work, series, action, etc.

August 31 was the last day at my job, and, as many of you know, I’ll be starting classes at Fuller Seminary later this month.  So, during this time of transition I’m taking a bit of a hiatus from spending time online.

As classes start and I settle into a new routine, I’ll evaluate how much time I have to devote to all things online.  In the mean time I’m thinking through what it is I want to accomplish by spending time online, which will help to determine what priority I put on updating things here at 2BHuman.

Maybe because I once had a job that involved implementing warehouse automation systems.  Or maybe I’m just a nerd.

Anyway, it’s an article from last week’s Chicago Tribune on how Netflix’s warehouse works.  With pictures.

As you may have heard by now, President Obama has disbanded the President’s Council on Bioethics. As usual, my buddy Joe says it better than I could:

To the electoral victor goes the electoral spoils, so Obama’s disbanding is neither surprising nor unprecedented. It is, however, lamentable, if for no other reason than that they will no longer be producing rich, nuanced works of philosophical reflection. Bioethics commissions have been around since the mid-1970s but under Leon Kass and later Edmund Pellegrino the council created a new literary genre of government documents: pythonic guides to policy.

Is Wired.  Because of the breadth of reporting.  Case in point, “The Untold Story of the World’s Biggest Diamond Heist” from this month’s issue. Another great article is “High Tech Cowboys of the Deep Seas: The Race to Save the Cougar Ace” from March of last year.

Books & Culture has an interview with the always excellent Jean Bethke Elshtain where she discusses, among other things, her assertion:

In our own liberal society at the moment, and in most of the Western democracies in general, we are pursuing a paradoxical project: We are most aware of those with physical and mental disabilities; we want to provide them access. Yet at the same time, our most enthused-about and ideologically fraught projects aim at creating a world with no such persons in it.

Highly recommended reading.

But too great to miss:

HT: Joe Carter

From Christianity Today:

Nearly three years ago, Alan Jacobs wrote in Books & Culture, “Right now, and for the foreseeable future, the blogosphere is the friend of information but the enemy of thought.”

I’m probably guilty as charged on that score.

Worth reading the whole thing

I’ll just say that I find this very convicting.

We need to hear competing voices of information from the world around us, use our time in the digital world wisely, and learn to shut that world down when it becomes more important to get up in the morning and answer emails than it does to get up and read the Bible and pray.

A helpful reminder from Dr. Carson. Read the whole thing.

Read it again.