Disqus - Latest Comments for Rich Tatum

Re: The Best Blogging Advice Ever. Period.

Rich Tatum — Mon, 19 Mar 2007 02:43:28 -0000

Great tips, Glen, especially on finding your "voice." This is one of the hardest things for new writers/bloggers to achieve, principally because they simply haven't written enough. It takes time to develop a voice, and that time involves writing, writing, writing. After a time, one can write with multiple "voices," witness the best-selling fiction authors who have to master a different voice for each novel they write.

If you're interested, check out my take on blogging tips: "39 tips to improve weblog traffic and visibility."

Regards,

Rich
BlogRodent

Re: When I started using Twitter...

Rich Tatum — Fri, 01 May 2009 22:55:06 -0000

Good for you! "Social networking" is ultimately antisocial when there's no "net" left after all the "work." Internet relationships already suffer from low bandwidth: we shouldn't rob friends of what little bandwidth there is by spending our attention capital on relational pyramid schemes.

Rich
BlogRodent

Re: Status Report - High Calling Blog Network

Rich Tatum — Wed, 11 Jul 2007 20:05:56 -0000

I'd never heard of the network your forming and will have to research this to learn more about it. I like what you've written here.

Thank you for honoring me by mentioning my PneumaBlog network. I really appreciate it.

Regards,

Rich
BlogRodent

Re: Writing (and Blogging) Is About Relationships

Rich Tatum — Wed, 11 Jul 2007 20:18:00 -0000

It was great to find this article! I'm presenting at the Internet Ministry Confence in September, and this is the topic of my presentation. Even for corporate (and especially for ministry) bloggers, it's all about the relationships.

Regards,

Rich
BlogRodent

Re: BlogJet is dead to me

Rich Tatum — Fri, 25 Nov 2005 08:00:45 -0000

Hey, I'm having the same problem with BlogJet, but the error is sporadic, and it only started recently. I'm wondering what's going on, because I didn't change anything on the server, and I didn't change anything on my PC.

Meanwhile, since you're a WordPress user, I suggest you do what I did for Technoratic tags. Install the SimpleTags plugin (http://www.broobles.com/scripts/simpletags/) and you can simply insert Technorati tags at the end of your post by enclosing a comma-seperated list with a set of tags like: <tag>keyword1, keword phrase2, other keyword</tag>.

Regards,

Rich
BlogRodent

Re: Comment Spam discussed at Northern Voice

Rich Tatum — Thu, 04 May 2006 03:35:41 -0000

Like most bloggers, I've had waves of trackback, comment, and referrer spam hit my site from time to time. You think you're cruising free and easy until, wham!, you get blindsided by a thousand little spam entries that need to be deleted by hand, and then you have to go hunting for the perfect solution. Like many here, I've found Akismet to be a great solution for comment spam. Only maybe ten false positives and two or three false negatives out of 1,912 spams eaten.

To combat referrer spam I use referrer karma, but you have to keep a closer eye on RK to prevent legit users from being blocked (RK tests the referrer for a real link to the blog--which can fail if the referring page is behind a login, such as with webmail services).

For me, for now, turning off comments is simply not an option. Commenting has created relationships that simply wouldn't have existed without the sense of dialog that forms around posts. And not all commenters have blogs, and not all bloggers know to use trackback links (or care), and not all bloggers feel like turning an aside into a full-blown posts. Comments are a valuable part of the dialog.

Requiring all "comments" to be blog posts with trackbacks is like saying, "I will address you from my soapbox, and you must be silent. If you wish to speak to me, you must ascend to your own box."

When I blogged on a church shooting, the grandchild of one of the victims posted on my site. Then his mother contacted me via private post. When I blogged on Justin Berry, a personal friend of Justin's commented and contacted me privately. There are a few other examples of connections made and interesting relationships formed just from allowing comments and fomenting dialogue.

Let the Akismets and Bad Behaviors and Spam Karmas thrive. They are protecting a valuable commodity: dialog.

Regards,

Rich
BlogRodent

Re: A documentary, what do you think of it?

Rich Tatum — Sat, 09 Sep 2006 09:27:44 -0000

I feel like I recognize scenes from this video from my own camp experiences as a kid. However, the trailer disturbs me greatly. I'll have to catch a screening and process my thinking on my blog, later. But, for now, I'm both horrified and compelled.

And embarrased.

Regards,

Rich
BlogRodent

Re: Jesus Camp

Rich Tatum — Fri, 22 Sep 2006 00:40:43 -0000

I don't know that I've seen a more active comment thread about this film anywhere else on the blogosphere, what a riot!

Regarding Becky Fischer's comments, she said:

"I wanna see young people that are as committed to the cause of Christ as the young people are to the cause of Islam. I want to see them as radically laying down their lives for the Gospel as they are over in Pakistan and in Israel and Palestine and all those different places you know, because, you know, we have--excuse me--but we have the truth!"

Lets take a step back and breathe for a moment. This is classic evangelical language dating as far back as Christ himself, "Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends." Or "You will be handed over to be persecuted and put to death, and you will be hated by all nations because of me." Or consider Paul the Apostle's language: "If you live according to the sinful nature, you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the misdeeds of the body, you will live." Or "Put to death, therefore, whatever belongs to your earthly nature: sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires and greed, which is idolatry."

The language of death and dying in Evangelicalism is first metaphorical, referring to what we consider to be spiritual things. On another level, though, it's literal. As Christ said, there is no higher honor that do die for a friend. And this is sometimes what happens to missionaries ... they give their lives up as martyrs, not suicides, not bombers. TO conflate the entire history of Christianity into an equation where fervent Penteocotals = militant muslims is, frankly, ignorant.

Regarding the camo and face paint, what isn't clear in the clip footage you've seen is that this is a skit, or "human video" acted out at a church months before the camp at a church in Lee's Summit, Missouri. This is a dance presentation that the children have choreographed to song. Yes, it's militaristic, yes there's camo. Yes, there's face paint. But it's a dramatic presentation!

Let's not confuse our categories here. Kids dancing in a choreographed musical routine do not equal children being trained to shoot a moving target with an AK-47.

I have seen the whole film, and I've taken notes on it (I've virtually transcribed the whole thing). I am not personally comfortable with the camp activities, and I have several points of disagreement with Becky Fischer's methodology and her theology, and I really, really don't like the fact that kids like Levi are being goaded into public ministry at far too early an age.

But I also don't like the fact that Ewing and Grady--perhaps unaware of their biases--have served up a highly biased presentation. It is nowhere near as even-handed and objective as Magnolia and others would have you believe.

If you're interested in my reviews on the subject, I have a couple articles:

Jesus Camp: Brainwashed in the Blood - or Is it Spin? @ BlogRodent (longer)

Jesus Camp: Brainwashed in the Blood @ CT (shorter)

Regards,

Rich
BlogRodent