A couple of announcements

Some bloggy things some of you might be interested in . . .

First of all: Over the past couple of days, I've been corresponding with a Kansas City blogger named Pete Thomas, who is organizing something called BarCampKC for May 9-10. BarCamps, I've learned, started out as techie-oriented meet-and-greets that involve idea-swapping. Pete has in mind some of that sort of thing, too, but he's also interested in having those of us less-adept in IT things--you know, those of us who'd be lost without Blogger's standard templates--to talk about the thrills and chills of writing for tens of people whom we'll most likely meet very few of in real life but who loyally visit our sites anyway. In other words, if it were up to me to characterize it, it sounds like a more-formal version of a blog-meet. Potentially fun, in other words.

I can't make it for this BarCamp (I'll be about chest-high in Finals Week then), but I've taken the liberty of passing a couple of names on to Pete. If any other KC-ish folks want to know more, follow the first link or e-mail Pete at "pete AT pollensystems DOT com."

And now, a returning blog and a new one. Tom of A Dancing Star! (a Nietzsche reference) has roused himself from a lengthy silence. Tom is in Singapore; he writes elegantly about culture and books and, in this post, the dilemma of choosing between watching soccer and watching a new film.

The new blog is Arieljvan.com, kept by Ariel of Bittersweet Life. Ariel's readers know him to be a committed Christian who feels called to establish a church in downtown Kansas City, and Arieljvan.com's focus will be that dimension of his life. Bittersweet Life will be focused on more secular concerns, coffee and basketball and pop-culture among them (though, Jayhawks fan that he is, I may have just blasphemed in his eyes for listing basketball as a secular concern). Anyway, I refer the curious to "Redeeming Alcohol for the Glory of God" and, especially, to the post it links to: a serious post whose concerns are larger than alcohol consumption per se. But: that said, if you don't laugh at "Jesus: King of the Brews" (the title of another post referred to), there's something seriously wrong with you.