What makes German Culture Special
By PaulD | May 13, 2008
In the Der Spiegel Online today I found an article about what Germans believe, hope and fear. Fascinating. The first graphic is on the left but there is much more. Freedom of expression is an incredibly high value for them. Over 90% of men and women thought this.
Less than half believe in life after death (48% of women and only 32% of men) But, as my friend Andreas Wolf says, “believe it or no: 100% believe in death after life!”
Their dream car is an Audi A4…and I must confess I understand why. 
But they only work 192 days out of the year while in the USA we work about 238 days…that gives them much more time to drive the Audi A4….and my jealousy could begin to rise 
And lastly, it was not surprising to me that relationships and friendships have the most importance in the lives of Germans. They believe in faithfulness and in love.
There are a lot of things we could stereotypically say about Germans and there are lots of jokes that cover those stereotypes but, as always, these are not really true.
I have found them as well as the Austrians to be a wonderful people who put emphasis on friendship and are trying to find their way in a significantly changing world.
Now…let us work to see the kingdom of God and the salvation of Jesus be more important to this significant people.
Tags: europeans, germans, cultural survey
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Impressive! Web 2.5 - 3.0 software…that is free
By PaulD | May 11, 2008
I was totally impressed with an addon to Firefox called Zotero. It makes the Web more useful and fits perfectly into the kinds of things that will bring us to Web 3.0. To get there, they say that web browsers need to change. So, now, right from your Firefox browser Zotero can help you:
- Annotate and organize research results, including video.
- Save information about a reference, including author, title, and other publication information.
- Create libraries and save searches
- Attach files, links, notes, and pdfs to records.
- Store a screenshot of a web page.
- Export information as formatted citations in word processing programs (Word, Google Docs).
- Tag and sort records and perform advanced searches.
- View records in personal collection when offline.
- Cite records in any language.
It is really pretty amazing. If you use the web for research and you use FireFox or Flock (like I do) …you need this software. Just like they say on their website: “Zotero [zoh-TAIR-oh] is a free, easy-to-use Firefox extension to help you collect, manage, and cite your research sources. It lives right where you do your work — in the web browser itself.” www.zotero.org It even integrates with MSWord.
Also see the wikipedia for more info.
Blogged with the Flock Browser
Tags: zotero,software, reference management software
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Mary Poppins ‘Scary Mary’ trailer
By PaulD | May 11, 2008
So, you can twist just about everything. My kids love Mary Poppins and so do I but we howled with laghter when we saw this…well Kate and I did while Anna thought it was awful that someone would turn such a happy movie into something that looked scary…but then she laughed at some of it too. Enjoy!
Tags: fun
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Embraced, rescued
By PaulD | May 11, 2008
This morning I was really struck by this passage from the Bible, Ephesians 1:7 through 10. It is in Spanish below but you can find the English here. I was was humbled this morning because I was not feeling particularly forgiven nor redeemed…in other words, embraced by God, rescued by Him by Jesus. So, this morning, once again, I submitted to His wisdom and understanding that today just like yesterday and tomorrow He has embraced me, rescued me by Jesus.
7 En él (Cristo) tenemos
redención por medio de su sangre,
el perdón de nuestras transgresiones,
según las riquezas de su (Dios Padre) gracia 8
que hizo sobreabundar para con nosotros
en toda sabiduría y entendimiento.
9 El (Dios Padre) nos ha dado a conocer el misterio de su voluntad,
según el beneplácito que se propuso en Cristo,
10 a manera de plan para el cumplimiento de los tiempos:
que en Cristo sean reunidas bajo una cabeza todas las cosas,
tanto las que están en los cielos como las que están en la tierra.
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Don Francisco -Rocky Mountain Radio
By PaulD | May 8, 2008
I do not know if you remember Don Francisco but in the ’80s he was the story teller of Christian music. There was John Fisher the theologian - musician (He came before Michael Card) and Larry Norman the protester - musician. Well here you have Don Francisco -Rocky Mountain Radio where you can listen to Don, his wife Wendy, their daughter and some friends. They even offer their songs as mp3 downloads. It is a lot of fun and a blessing. Drop by and give them a listen.
Tags: DonFrancisco, Christian music
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