Presently my brain feels like it’s been scooped out of my skull, coated in batter, fried, sprinkled with powdered sugar, and served on a paper plate at the county fair. So today I’m trying something new—a series of miscellanies from my week. This week included helpful reading on the topics of humility, books, politics, manliness, freebies, weight loss, social networking, and the end of the world. And I have conclusive proof that faux hip-hop routines should be forever banned from churches. Presenting the first ever Friday miscellanies…

[Humility] The following quote by Jonathan Edwards (Religious Affections) has been like a meat tenderizer to my heart all week: “All gracious affections that are a sweet odor to Christ, and that fill the soul of a Christian with a heavenly sweetness and fragrancy, are brokenhearted affections. A truly Christian love, either to God or men, is a humble brokenhearted love. The desires of the saints, however earnest, are humble desires: their hope is a humble hope; and their joy, even when it is unspeakable, and full of glory, is a humble brokenhearted joy, and leaves the Christian more poor in spirit, and more like a little child, and more disposed to a universal lowliness of behavior.”

[Books] T-minus 32 days, 15 hours, 25 minutes, and 13 seconds until the ESV Study Bible ships (Oct. 15). Who’s counting? Post the widget on your own blog (here).

[Books] Douglas Moo’s new Pillar commentary on Colossians and Philemon is out. Delicious!

[Books] Getting the Blues: What Blues Music Teaches Us about Suffering and Salvation by Steve Nichols is now out.

[Apocalypse] Contrary to some predictions, the Swiss and their Large Hadron Collider didn’t slip the world into a black hole noose this week. Gene Veith: “Today, a super-particle accelerator will get turned on just outside of Geneva, Switzerland. Some people, though, are afraid it will generate black holes that will suck in all the matter of the earth.”

[Clothing] Don’t Waste Your Threads. DWYLife shirts now available online.

[Church] “The City” is for Mars Hill church [think Mark Driscoll] an innovative way to connect their church that uses the best of online social networking to facilitate care within the church body. I’ve been watching this develop over the past year and I can see great benefit in its ability to facilitate care groups and ministry involvement. Because the project is limited to MH members, it has been hard to find much information but recently they posted a video demonstration of “The City.”

[+Life] Sarah Palin’s testimony threatens abortion business. L.A. Times blog: “Sarah and Todd Palin’s decision to complete her recent pregnancy, despite advance notice that their baby Trig had Down syndrome, is hailed by many in the pro-life movement as walking the walk as well as talking the talk. But a senior Canadian doctor is now expressing concerns that [it] … may prompt other women to make the same decision against abortion because of that genetic abnormality. And thereby reduce the number of abortions.”

[Manliness] The History and Nature of Man Friendships. The Art of Manliness blog: “While the man friendship looks like a simple relationship, its history is actually quite interesting and complex. The virtues of duty and loyalty have remained the same guiding principles in man friendships throughout time. However, how men express those principles in a friendship has have gone through fascinating changes in the course of human history. What follows is a brief history of the man friendship.” [Warning: some ‘mature’ content on this website.]

[Preaching] My friend Erik Raymond wrote a perceptive post on what Palin’s speech tells us about the contemporary attention span for sermon-like settings: “Think of how out of place it would have looked last night for Governor Sarah Palin to sit on a stool or on a couch to deliver that speech. She didn’t even walk around! She just stood there and talked. And she talked for quite awhile. The ‘experts’ would have you to believe that Americans (those in or out of church) cannot sit and process information in this format; we have changed, we are a culture that feeds on the narrative.”

[Laugh/Cry?] Join me in banning faux hip-hop from churches. Watch video here.

[Politics] Peggy Noonan on Sarah Palin: “She has the power of the normal. Hillary Clinton is grim, stentorian, was born to politics and its connivances. Nancy Pelosi, another mother of five, often seems dazed and ad hoc. But this state governor and mother of a big family is a woman in a good mood. There is something so normal about her, so ‘You’ve met this person before and you like her,’ that she broke through in a new way, as a character vividly herself, and vividly genuine.”

[Politics] The convention speeches … Wordled. Wired.com.

[Free Stuff] And tons of it. Kiplinger.com: ”It’s been said that the best things in life are free–and we couldn’t agree more. So we’ve beefed up our annual list of our favorite freebies to bring you even more this year. We looked for primo goods and services, no useless junk allowed. And boy, did we find ’em, from financial management and planning helps to entertainment and vacation freebies. Go ahead. Embrace your inner tightwad.”

[Weight Loss] Pic it before you eat it. Telegraph: “Slimmers began to eat healthier food when they were asked to take a picture of what they were eating, scientists found. The pictures appear to have concentrated the dieters’ minds at just the right time, before they were about to eat, the researchers who carried out the study believe. Photographs were also more effective at encouraging volunteers to watch what they ate than traditional written food diaries.”