July 6, 2007
Uruapan__“Estas maraniendo el bandwidth,” you’re hogging the bandwith, is not something you want to hear while you’re trying to upload a video of your latest adventures in trying to track down a cult. In all my internet life (yes, I call it that since I’ve been on since some crazy pre-internet days when I was 17 surfing on librarians’ terminals) I have never been called a bandwidth hog. I felt dejected and insulted [see entire entry...]

July 5, 2007
Nuevo Jerusalen_At 5 am Mark and I dragged ourselves out of our dingy hotel room in Potambaro, packed up our gear and headed out in a stupor to New Jerusalem for their 7 am mass.  No coffee, no food, no water, just gear and our mud stained gray Subaru slowly making its way through a thick darkness stirring with sugar cane fields and heat lighting clouds hanging low across a moon lit by [see entire entry...]

Guadalajara, Mexico__It’s a radioactive sky outside, the color of rust and the silhouette of planes against pools of water from the rain that has just stopped in Guadalajara where I wait for my next plane. I’m piggybacking on free Wi-Fi and clearing out unsent emails, while drinking a peach-prune yogurt from a slender bottle (you know you’re in Mexico when trying to get a plain yogurt is an impossible task). The airport is empty except [see entire entry...]

After a long stretch on 1-40 from Memphis, Clayton and I left the superhighway to climb up into the mountains of northeastern Tennessee. Hancock County spans several mountain ridges, winding roads climb steeply only to dive down into the next valley just when you thought you’d reached the top. In the widest valley, the Clinch River cuts a gentle blue swath through tobacco [see entire entry...]

Our Sexual Ethics Interactive has been re-dubbed The Moral Compass. I’m out in the field with my trusty fellow News21 camerapersons asking all the tough Sex Eth questions for our online video supplements; for example, how does YOUR religion feel about masturbation, divorce, premarital sex and dancin’ in the streets? Ok, I left off the dancin’ in the streets part. So far it’s been a wonderful education. I’ve learned about “Virtue Ethics” based on [see entire entry...]

Clayton and I started our day in a tuxedo shop in Benton, a small, sleepy town outside Little Rock, where the couple we’ve been profiling for the story on covenant marriages was shopping for their wedding.
This was no ordinary tux shop – a Bible lay open on a pedestal near the door, and the owner took off his heavy ring and held it toward us. [see entire entry...]

The Church at Rock Creek is a twelve million dollar facility that sits on top of a hill 15 minutes West of Little Rock. We’re told it’s among the 100 fastest growing churches in the country. It’s a one-stop shop for families of faith: Starbucks coffee, a bookstore, baby gifts and charity options all line the tremendous corridor. A dozen security personnel roam the lobby, and the head of security told us [see entire entry...]

Sunday marked my first trip to the San Francisco’s gay pride parade, where the themes of God, sex and family were on rainbow display, marching down Market Street. Joelle and I were there to follow the march of an Episcopalian parish from the area, St. John’s of the Mission, whose priest is a gay man. The Episcopalians were in good company - in the stretch where we congregated, the people of faith were lining up [see entire entry...]

In search of late-night food in downtown Little Rock, Singeli and I ran into a guitarist named James and his friend Alvin, an artist and local historian of sorts who drew our portraits. James, a self-avowed Christafarian, sang songs about Haile Selassie I, while his companion told us of Arkansas’ forgotten Norse roots. Both talked about the corrupting influence of money when it comes [see entire entry...]

Here’s a spoof of SL in RL, I think you’ll get it soon enough.
There’s also the Wired story from last week and this is definitely my favorite site to just check out what’s hot around religion in SL. As for making money in SL, how about giving it away? I’ll keep posting these up because my Google alerts is inundating me with them, but these are definitely my picks so far.