Where I’ve Been Online Post-Facebook…and Why

Soo…9 days without Facebook. What have I been doing with myself? Mowing the lawn, taking long walks outside, working on projects for work and school; I’ve also been revisiting the various social networks and micro-networks I’ve joined over the last several years…and I’ve joined a coupla more. Presented here, for my benefit and yours, are the places I’m connected to online – and why I’m on a particular network. This doesn’t count email discussion groups I’m part of; I suppose that’d be a whole ‘nother post!

General/Meta

Twitter – @zoecarnate

FriendFeed – FriendFeed is awesome; let’s hope Facebook buying them doesn’t screw it up.

LinkedIn – my business, my biz-nass.

LibraryThing – my library, cataloged. A super-fun social network for book geeks.

Myspace – because sometimes I’m nostalgic for 2003.

Plaxo – does anyone remember what Plaxo is for?

YouTube – my vids, vids, vids.

Futurist

ShapingTomorrow – a large global community; primarily devoted to environmental scanning and trend analysis

The New Futurists – a younger crop of futurists, centered primarily in the northeast United States.

Faith

TransFORM – there’s more than meets the eye here.

Christiarchy! – Christian anarchists and Anabaptists (is there a difference?)

Christian Mysticism & Contemplative Spirituality – what it says. Contemplate that.

Missional Tribe – this one had a strong start but I think WordPress infrastructure, while great for blogs, isn’t great for supporting social networks.

Recovering Evangelical – hee-hee.

Metro Atlanta Emergent Cohort – my once and future cohort.

The Hyphenateds:

Anglimergent – I’m not Episcopalian, but I’m inspired by ’em…especially St Gregory of Nyssa in San Francisco.

Baptimergent – I’m not Baptist, but I used to be! And I’m inspired by New Community Church in Raleigh.

Cathlimergent – A brand new network started by my friend John Sylvest of ChristianNonduality

Emerging Leaders Network – aka Luthermergent. I’m not Lutheran, but…you see where this is going? Mad props to House For All in Denver.

The Common Root – formerly Submergent; an awesome group of Anabaptist-minded peeps.

QuakerQuaker – aka Convergent Friends.

House Church Homies

Simple Church

Organic Church Today

Healing Communities

Bleeding-Edge Creatives

Love Is Concrete – you can actually draw stuff in this network.

Wisefire – a great group of people.

iEvolve: Global Practice Community – Integral peeps.

ROM: Ohh Yeah!

Welcome to my wildest ROM video yet. Really, I’m stepping up my game here – trying to bring some of the zaniness and energy into my videos that the ROM itself gives. I’m slowly becoming better at some of the technical aspects of video production, and hopefully the better sound quality will show in this vid.

I promised last week to have updates of bench-marking, body fat analysis, etc…but then my family & I got some kind of flu. (Zombie swine flu, perhaps? Well, I’m not undead yet…) So, in light of my renewed blogging vows, you’ll see this coming next week – and far more consistently after that. I want to emphasize that the ROM has revolutionized my fitness, forever as far as I’m concerned since it’s so…freakin’…easy. I don’t have a Charles Atlas body yet, but I’m steadily getting there. If you’re tuning in today for the first time (or the first time in awhile), you can see my whole-health journey-to-date here.

The music this time around is just breathtaking; it’s from Aaron Strumpel‘s hot new album Elephants, which reminds me of Joseph Arthur meets Wovenhand/16 Horsepower – the most ecstatically awesome mashup I can imagine at the moment. And for a limited time, those joining the uber-creative Love Is Concrete artists’ circle are getting a free download of the full album, courtesy of Aaron’s generosity & that of his producer, Todd Fadel of Agents of Future notoriety. Love Is Concrete is also 100% free so check it out & feel the love!

A question for my techie friends: Do you have any idea how to view YouTube’s AudioSwap playlist without being in edit mode? I want to browse their database of pre-approved music to avoid the Cher muting snafu I suffered a coupla months back, but I want to see their offerings enough in advance that I can do themed recordings. Lemme know if you have any insights…

Silenced by Cher! 1st ROM Lower-Body Workout Vid MUTED by THE MAN! What I’m Gonna Do About It

So last week I posted my first lower-body ROM workout video. The first people that saw it got the full experience just fine – they laughed, they cried, they were inspired. So imagine my surprise a couple days later when my buddy Andrew Tatum (who just had his first baby, btw) comments on the vid and says “This is much, much more hilarious without the sound…where’s the sound, friend?”

No sound?! Well, then I check my Inbox to find out that YouTube has emailed me – one No Reply. Mr. Reply cut straight to the point: “Your video, First ROM Leg Workout!, may have audio content from Believe by Cher that is owned or licensed by WMG. As a result, your video has been muted.”

Silenced by Cher??

Now I’d like to think that Cher had nothing to do with this, personally. She seems like a decent woman. But clearly, these ‘WMG’ people she’s hired are a bit over-protective, not to mention too much time on their hands. I mean, c’mon, who gets paid to watch every single YouTube upload and determine if one’s violating their interpretation of copyright? In an era of massive layoffs, this job just screams ‘pork.’

(The infamous silenced video itself)

But the bottom line is, What to do? I majored in Journalism in undergrad. I’ve taken a Media Law class. And what we all came away with in that class is that a.) Intellectual property rights are a big deal, and b.) We have no idea how they ought to work on the World Wide Web. It’s an evolving phenomenon. As a creator myself, I wouldn’t want someone misusing my work, particularly for profit. But seeing as a.) It’s a pretty low-quality recording, b.) It’s not for profit, c.) It’s all in good fun, I don’t see where I’m violating “fair use.” YouTube’s Copyright Dispute page points to a page with four factors to self-diagnose fair use:

1. the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;
2. the nature of the copyrighted work;
3. the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and
4. the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.

Siiiiiiiiigh. I dunno. It seems to me that my use of ‘Believe’ by Cher falls under ‘parody’ kinda, utilizing the song as background music in a fun kind of way that, if anything, gives publicity to this has-been pop-radio hit. But what do I know?

I don’t.

Now had this happened a month ago, I would have momentarily raised my fist in the air, and then done nothing. After all, I’m not a lawyer, and I can’t afford one for something like this, can I? Oh, but now I can – thanks to the friendly folks at Pre-Paid Legal! A few weeks ago I signed up for Pre-Paid Legal’s Family Legal Services Plan with Identity Theft Shield. A friend of mine had become an independent PPL associate and suggested I check ou the service. Basically, for $35.95 a month I get:

• Preventative legal services – including legal consultation & advice by phone, letters written & phone calls made by lawyers on my behalf (up to two a year for my small business too), contract and document review, and will preparation for Jasmin & I for just $20.
• Motor vehicle legal services – including help with traffic tickets and (God forbid) defense in the event of Manslaughter & Vehicular Homicide charges
• Trial defense services – including up to 60 hours legal defense for civil or job-related criminal charges
• IRS audit services – basically advice & representation if the Tax Man comes after you
• Identity theft shield – round-the-clock credit report monitoring, licensed investigation, and identity restoration should virtual baddies usurp our good digital names

I thought that was a pretty good deal. After all, lawyers are expensive – so pricey, that we rarely utilize their services when we just have a basic question about our rights in a given situation – in my present case, me vs. Cher. So I got the service, and I decided to become an independent associate myself. After all, I know a ton of church planters, small business owners, entrepreneurs, and others who would benefit from having a full legal team on a shoestring budget. If you’re interested in the service – or looking for an income opportunity – feel free to visit my PrePaidLegal page and sign up. You can also email me at morrell.michael [at] gmail [dot] com if you have any questions.

So today, I’m going to call my lawyer. I can’t guarantee that the audio will be restored to my ROM lower-body video – the call might simply be an education on the latest nuances of Internet copyright law – but at least I’ll know. And knowing, as they say, is half the journey.

Does Anyone Have a ROM?

No, not ROM Spaceknight, you comics aficionado sillies; ROM as in the über-high-end 4-minute workout machine that just screams Range of Motion (hence the acronym). I found out about it one night whilst venturing into the back pages of my Atlantic Monthly, something I rarely do for fear of being pelted by the conclusions of articles that have already taxed my ADD-addled attention span to the limits, arranged between ads for the Belgian Waffle Pro and custom-crafted leather bookbinding. I know, it’s what I get for subscribing to The Atlantic (and Harpers, and Mother Jones, and other magazines that make me what my friend Gareth calls ‘a certified member of the liberal white guilt intelligentsia’).

So anyway. I was flipping through the mag when I came across this ad, headlined in all caps EXERCISE IN EXACTLY 4 MINUTES PER DAY. I used to be a copywriter for a living (I still maintain some clients, but I mostly do my publishing consulting stuff nowadays), so I’m always a tough critic for ads like this. The sheer audacity of what comes next drew me in:

The typical ROM purchaser goes through several stages:

1.     Total disbelief that the ROM can do all this in only 4 minutes.
2.     Rhetorical (and sometimes hostile) questioning and ridicule.
3.     Reading the ROM literature and reluctantly understanding it.
4.     Taking a leap of faith and renting a ROM for 30 days.
5.     Being highly impressed by the results and purchasing a ROM.
6.     Becoming a ROM enthusiast and trying to persuade friends.
7.     Being ignored and ridiculed by the friends who think you’ve lost your mind.
8.     After a year of using the ROM your friends admiring your good shape.
9.     You telling them (again) that you only exercise those 4 minutes per day.
10.     Those friends reluctantly renting the ROM for a 30 day trial.Then the above cycle repeats from point 5 on down.

Take a look at this thing:

It’s, like, totally Zen. And it carries a $14,615.00 price tag. Holy Guacamole, Batman! And yet they have these 15-year warranties, and I’m adding up gym costs plus gas costs in my head, plus (of course) time costs – which are the biggest one for a certified-ADD father/husband/student/small business owner/author. Their ad concludes:

From 4 minutes on the ROM you get the same results as from 20 to 45 minutes aerobic exercise (jogging, running, etc.) for cardio and respiratory benefits, plus 45 minutes weight training for muscle tone and strength, plus 20 minutes stretching exercise for limberness/flexibility.

O. Really?

Well, I’ve poked around the internets, running keyword searches like “ROM scam” and “ROM ripoff” – nada. Instead, I see testimonials from people who really seem to be losing weight, building muscle, feeling better, and having more time on their hands. For someone who’s never been into sports (or athletics of any kind for that matter), I’ve gotta admit: four minutes a day is appealing.

So here’s what I’m thinking.

I just turned 29 last month. Less than one year from 30, I’ve been taking a lot of inventory of my life. In my Foresight@Regent courses, we learn a mode of personal and organizational learning called Systems Thinking – popularized by Peter Senge of The Fifth Discipline fame. The gist is we’re always creating the life we live; we’re always designing it. The problem is, most of us design it by default, unconsciously, and often in self-sabotaging ways. Bringing life-design to a conscious level is a skill set we humans are just developing. (Hence the rationale for Strategic Foresight, btw) This ‘intelligent design’ happens on societal levels of course, but also personal. These past couple of years I’ve been privileged to have some wonderful people in my life – mentors, life coaches, and even (gasp!) therapists and counselors who are helping me work through my ‘shadow’ sides and interact with reality in a more healthy and whole manner. I guess what I’m seeking is integration, a whole life well-lived for myself and others. Isn’t that what we all want?

So: A friend of mine, Drew, was recently reading Integral Life Practice, edited by Ken Wilber and published out of the Integral Institute. The Integral folks are always fascinating, what with their map-making theories of everything and all. It turns out they have a great programme for ‘whole-life cross-training’ involving our physical, mental, and spiritual selves. Taking a cue from ILP (I’m still reading my own copy of the book), I’ve decided: I want to develop a doable life-rhthym, one that incorporates Centering Prayer, maybe some Yoga or DoxaSoma, and – of course – physical training. True, the apostle Paul said (in perfect Elizabethan English) “bodily exercise profiteth little,” but hey: that guy built low-cost dwelling for a living. I’d like to see him sit behind a computer all day and tell me that! (Plus at four minutes a day, I’d like to think even Paul would approve.)

In short, by the time I’m 30 I’d like to:

• Engage in centering prayer daily – ’cause we can all use more of the conscious fellowship of the Godhead in our lives.
• Practice Yoga – seeing as I have the grace and flexibility and in-touch-with-my-body-ness of a dried-up turnip
• Exercise my body – because I need cardiovascular health; I want to keep up with my little girl; I like natural endorphin highs; I like to concentrate on my work; I need to lose 50 pounds this year

…and I want to do all this in about an hour a day. Because I want to delve more deeply into my studies, love my family more, spend more time with my neighbors, and hang out more with my friend Hugh Hollowell and his homeless friends downtown. Stuff I think I could do with some whole-life cross-training.

What If…

What if I could somehow procure a ROM? (I have my ways) Would any of you, dear readers, be interested in charting my progress with me? I’m thinking I’d blog about what it’s like for a time-management-challenged guy like me to engage in some ‘intelligent life design,’ how it feels to make positive, healthy, & consistent changes, and if this ROM thing really does what it says. Since workouts are ostensibly only four minutes long, I’m thinking that once a week I’d actually record my entire workout and put it on YouTube or Vimeo or something. It might not be as funny as Will It Blend?, but I’m thinking a pasty white guy like me working out could provide some of you with catharsis or comic relief.

Please comment if…

• You have experience with the ROM or some kinda similar exercise equipment
• You’d get a laugh out of seeing some ‘before’ and ‘after’ pics and workout vids along The Countdown to 30
• You have stories of your own whole-life rhythms and lifestyle design you’d like to share
• You want to make fun of me.

Update 12/10: I’m getting a ROM!

Heresy Hunters: I Get By With a Little Help from My Friends

You know you’re doing something worthwhile when all the right people are denouncing you.

A couple of weeks ago Herescope denounced Jay Gary, Diana Butler-Bass, Brian McLaren and myself, who will be hanging out at the World Future Society‘s annual conference in D.C. We’ll be talking about “The Future of the Religious Right” and of global Christian faith in general, but the Heroscope team sees our work as promoting “new theologies and practices,” and “disparaging…of biblical prophecy.” Somehow, they suspect that all this winds up “creating an evolutionary convergence” where we all sing Kumbaya and venerate Gaia and Easter bunnies. As if that’s a bad thing!

Moving along: I’ve already told you the kind of flack The Shack has been getting recently with the heresy-hunter websites. Well, as Steve Knight reports at Emergent Village, now our ‘ol pal Mark Driscoll is in on the action too (you can watch his eight-minute YouTube rant on the E.V. link). Apparently he’s mighty uncomfortable with the sacred feminine, anthropomorphic depictions of God, and the idea of the Trinity (and thus, human relatedness) as mutually submissive rather than chain-of-command hierarchical. Sigh. Co-publisher Wayne Jacobsen blogs his response to the question “Is The Shack Heresy?”

Of course Frank Viola has had his share of critique concerning Pagan Christianity–not all from shrill heresy hunters, but certainly enough of it. Well, Tim Dale over at Karis Productions produced this pretty funny spoof response:

I have two observations about all the shelling and attack from this past month: Most of the people above are friends of mine, and for the most part, we can all laugh this off (in the cases of Frank and Team Shack, they can laugh all the way to the bank, as these books have really struck a chord with most readers and have become best-sellers)–even if we don’t know whether to laugh or cry sometimes. Others, though, are not so fortunate–heresy-hunters can cost people their livelihoods.

I don’t have the privilege of knowing Peter Enns, but his story has been all over the blogosphere recently. As Christianity Today reports, Enns has been suspended from his teaching post at Westminster Theological Seminary for writing his 2005 book Inspiration and Incarnation: Evangelicals and the Problem of the Old Testament, which takes a hard look at the messy, complex, and human aspects of Scripture from an evangelically-informed text criticism point of view. The Board of Trustees said:

“That for the good of the Seminary (Faculty Manual II.4.C.4) Professor Peter Enns be suspended at the close of this school year, that is May 23, 2008 (Constitution Article III, Section 15), and that the Institutional Personnel Committee (IPC) recommend the appropriate process for the Board to consider whether Professor Enns should be terminated from his employment at the Seminary. Further that the IPC present their recommendations to the Board at its meeting in May 2008.”

I understand that confessionally Christian schools are not as enamored with “freedom of thought at any cost” like their liberal arts counterparts; I get that evangelical higher learning institutions are trying to maintain a precarious balance between intellectual integrity and nurturing creedal faith commitments. All the same, Enns is not Bishop Spong or something–he’s asking questions about Holy Writ that the rest of the Church (and world at large) have been asking since the 19th century. Like it or not, those who read and love the Bible are going to begin pondering its more troubling aspects with greater honesty and ideological flexibility.

Heresy-hunting is far from the world’s worst problem. (Next time, I’m going to blog about sex trafficking. Please try to refrain from throwing yourself off a building.) Nonetheless, it is a downer. As I mused last year, sometimes I wonder why I even bother participating in this kind of ‘dialogue’–it all seems so insular. Sometimes I just want to throw my blog into the ocean (so to speak) and becoming a wandering hermit…with my wife and child, of course. But for now, I suppose I’ll leave everyone with an easily-rebuttable maxim: If you don’t have something kind to blog, don’t blog anything at all.

Related:

Mike Todd’s The Shack Film casting call

John MacArthur launches Nothing Must Change tour

Heretic Hunter video

Brad Cummings and Wayne J have something constructive to say about all of this in their Doctrine Police podcast at The God Journey