Evan Brown’s Links of Interest

In a time of financial crisis, which would be more important to you: giving a voluntary gift to your place of worship or keeping your home? According to one Reuters piece, some Christians are continuing to give away a tenth of their income even as they face the possibility of foreclosure on their homes.

A study mentioned in the article says that only five percent of American adults tithed last year. As a member of that five percent, I can fully appreciate the difficult decision that these tithers have made. For them, honoring their commitment to God outweighs all other priorities — including keeping the roof over their heads. I hope that if I were in the same position, I would have the faith to trust God and reach the same determination.

A lot of people probably find that kind of thinking to be crazy. While it is true that it takes a different mindset, I think it is hardly crazy for someone to consider his relationship with God to be of greater worth than a home mortgage. People put their money where their values are. And for those who value the right things, I believe that the Lord will bless them greatly for it.

Link: USA Today

Microsoft really likes jQuery. So much so that the software giant will be making the popular JavaScript library part of its official development platform. In the future, jQuery will be shipped with versions of Visual Studio, and Microsoft will provide support of jQuery to developers. Microsoft will also be using jQuery internally, using it to create Ajax controls and server-side helper methods for use with the .NET framework.

This is wonderful news. I am a big fan of jQuery; I first discovered the library a little over a year ago when working on a web project that required a lot of manipulation of the DOM. Since then, I have used jQuery in practically every web application I have developed. It is a fantastic, light-weight library which makes writing JavaScript code a pleasure, and I am glad to see Microsoft appreciates it as much as I do.

Links: John Resig • Scott Guthrie • Scott Hanselman

Hollywood legend Paul Newman passed away yesterday after a lengthy battle against cancer.

Newman appeared in numerous movies such as Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Cool Hand Luke, The Color of Money, and Road to Perdition. Two of my personal favorite Newman performances were his portrayal of Brick Pollitt in the film version of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and Walter Bridge in Mr. & Mrs. Bridge. And although my six-year-old son is too young to appreciate Newman’s lifetime of cinema work, he loves Doc Hudson from Cars.

The man could also make an outstanding salad dressing.

Paul Newman was a class act. He will be missed.

Link: LA Times

It is nice to see that so many members of Congress are doing well for themselves (including my own senator Richard Shelby). Now, if only they would keep their hands off my money, maybe I could become well-off too!

Link: Roll Call

What is the secret to becoming a centenarian? Abstaining from alcohol, according to Tomoji Tanabe, the world’s old man. Tanabe, who has been recognized by the Guinness Book of World Records as the oldest living male, turned 113 years old today.

Link: Fox News

Best Buy, the giant consumer electronics retailer, has acquired Napster, the online music service which most people don’t even known is still around, for 121 million dollars.

Why? I don’t have a clue. The two companies do not seem to be very compatible on the surface (maybe Best Buy could bundle music subscriptions with the media players it sells). Not to mention, Napster hasn’t been “cool” since 2001.

Link: TechCrunch

Some might consider 2008 a bad year for Roger Federer. After all, he lost in the semi-finals at the Australian Open and lost both the French Open and Wimbledon finals to newly-christened World No. 1 Rafael Nadal.

But since defeating Andy Murray last night in the U.S. Open final, Federer can now claim an accomplishment that no one else can: five consecutive titles at both the U.S. Open and Wimbledon. Adding in his three Australian Open wins, and Federer is only one away from Pete Sampras’s record of fourteen Grand Slam singles titles. My bet is that he breaks that record next year.

Federer’s domination of tennis may have slowed this year, but I predict it is far from over.

Link: New York Times

I have seen a lot of disgusting things written in the past week and a half about Republican Vice-Presidential nominee Sarah Palin, but this Salon article by Juan Cole is absolutely the worst.

In the piece, Cole attempts to draw a comparison between Palin’s conservative Christian beliefs and the beliefs of Islamic extremists — you know, the kind who are willing to detonate a bomb in the middle of a crowded marketplace in the name of their god. The claim of moral equivalence is such a stretch that it would be laughable if the author were not dead serious.

I talked about the absurdity of linking “radical” Christians with radical Muslims two years ago when Rosie O’Donnell did it on The View. While a little more refined than Rosie’s crassness, this article attacking Bible-believing Christians and specifically Governor Palin is no different.

A fair warning: click through to the article only if you think you can stomach it.

Link: Salon

As a recovering Trekker (at least until the new movie comes out next summer when I am sure to relapse), I find it worth noting that Star Trek, the classic science fiction television show now known as “The Original Series”, first aired on NBC on September 8, 1966, forty-two years ago today. The show lasted only three seasons and seventy-nine episodes, but its popularity with fans spawned five more television series (including the animated one), eleven feature films, hundreds of novels, and countless merchandise.

Live long and prosper, indeed.

Link: Gizmodo

It has been ten years since Google was founded (or thereabout), and in that time, the company has revolutionized the way that I — and millions of others — use the Internet.

The most obvious example is of this is Google’s famous search engine, which holds such marketshare that no other company seems even close to catching up. Another is Google AdSense, with those ubiquitous text ads that have covered the Web and altered how people advertise online. Then there is Gmail, which was a game-changer for web-based email, and Google Maps, which completely revamped the look and feel of online mapping. Now we have Google Chrome, launched just last week, which has the chance of becoming a serious challenger to Internet Explorer and Firefox in the web browser market.

Those are just a few high-profile examples, and there are plenty more. With so many accomplishments in its first decade, I look forward to seeing what other revolutionary products Google has for us in the years ahead.

Link: Fortune