COFFEE BREAK 130

+ updated at 3:07pm EST, Tuesday, January 26, 2010

+ Shuck and Jive offers "Being A Sermon -- A Sermon" by John Shuck.  I preached on the same texts last Sunday with the exception of the Bhagavad Gita selection.  John's sermon is profound and there are some delicious comments including a couple by me.
Excerpt from the sermon: "I have heard a lot of horror stories in my ministry from people who believed what they heard from a pulpit. What they believed about themselves or others or what they were supposed to do often didn’t turn out so well. It is frightening the power that interpreters of sacred texts can have over people."

+ The Diane Rehm Show offers Shankar Vedantam: The Hidden Brain. Guest host: Susan Page. The power of our hidden brains: How our unconscious minds elect presidents, control markets, wage wars, and routinely, but imperceptibly, influence our daily lives. Guest: Shankar Vedantam, author of "Department of Human Behavior," featured in "The Washington Post" from 2006-2009, and a Nieman Fellow at Harvard.

+ The The Diane Rehm Show offers Debt and joblessness. Guest host: Susan Page. Debate over the role of the Federal government and Federal Reserve in steering the U-S economy out of recession, addressing the deficit and improving the outlook for jobs. Guests: Alice Rivlin, senior fellow, Brookings Institution, vice chair, Board of Governors, Federal Reserve System (1996-99); director, White House Office of Management and Budget (1994-96); and founding director, Congressional Budget Office (1975-83). Kevin Hassett, director, economic policy studies, American Enterprise Institute. James K. Galbraith, economist; Lloyd M. Bentsen Jr. chair in government/business relations and professor of government at the University of Texas at Austin's Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs; author of "The Predator State: How Conservatives Abandoned the Free Market and Why Liberals Should Too."

+ The Witherspoon Society is offering "Big money and democracy: a fair contest?" So far there are four articles responding to the recent Supreme Court decision allowing corporations unlimited access to our political campaigns.

+ Winter has returned to the Erie Canal.  Almost all of the previous snow was washed away in heavy rains yesterday as the temperature soared into the 50s.  But now the long January thaw is over.  Snow is falling now but will end soon ... just a dusting.