What would Jack do?

Terrorism! Political intrigue! Foreign policy! Torture! Trust and loyalty! These might be hot-button issues, ripped from today’s headlines, but they are meat and potatoes for Jack Bauer and the cast of 24. Three Tyndale University College (Toronto) philosophy professors, Jennifer Hart Weed, Ronald Weed and Richard Davis, are the editors of the latest book in the Wiley-Blackwell Philosophy and Pop Culture Series: 24 and Philosophy: The World According to Jack, released in December. It is described as a “philosophical exploration of the methods and motivations used by Jack Bauer and other characters in the highly charged television drama.” Among other things, the book asks: 'What would Jack Bauer do?'  

Room at the Inn

Calgary’s Inn from the Cold has acquired a permanent facility. It will now be able to offer ongoing shelter to homeless families. In December, the organization finalized the purchase of the downtown building, which it plans to turn into a dormitory. Diana Segboer, Inn’s executive director, told the Calgary Herald the new shelter will help counteract the “nomadic lifestyle [which] is particularly hard on children.

Scripture on the move

The Bible is on the bus, at least in Toronto. Bus Stop Bible Studies is dedicated to getting display ads featuring scripture onto as many buses as possible. The Scarborough-based president of the ministry, David Harrison, says the initiative has received positive coverage in secular media. After  Mississauga’s City Hall turned down the campaign, the issue received front page coverage in the Mississauga News. With the ads running on Toronto’s TTC system, Harrison approached other municipalities – several of which, he said, “have prohibitions against religious advertising.” He was encouraged when Burlington “overturned their prohibition.” The ads, he said, have drawn mostly positive responses – with some people noting they found them very helpful at times of crisis. The campaign has been approved for Calgary and Ottawa. busstopbiblestudies.com

Fabricating Jesus

Defenders of the faith looking for an apologetics text from a Canadian academic should check out Fabricating Jesus (IVP, 2006), by Craig A. Evans. The New Testament scholar, who teaches at Acadia Divinity College in Nova Scotia, says that after years of giving talks countering what he calls “dubious scholarly claims about Jesus,” he was motivated to write a book by the popularity of The Da Vinci Code. “Initially,” he said, “I tried to ignore it. However, I was bombed with requests to talk about it. I found myself drawn into the world of popular writing and pseudo-scholarship, which helped me recognize that much of the popular level nonsense in in fact based on and inspired by the very radical scholarship that I had been criticizing for years.”

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Do the hard thing

Having attracted millions of hits on their website, TheRebelution.com, Alex and Brett Harris are now turning to print to challenge teens to rebel against the low expectations of this culture. Do Hard Things, to be released in April by Multnomah Books, is aimed at exhorting young people to take responsibility for their futures.

Ecology & art

Situated at the main intersection on the campus of the University of British Columbia in Vancouver is a monument to both ecology and art. Lux Nova is a 40-foot wind tower built by Regent College as part of a major campus expansion program. Incorporating solar cells and stylized crosses, it features 144 square feet of photovoltaic glass. The structure produces its own light, and also features The Light – in the form of the Lord’s Prayer, written in Aramaic.

Mr. Dotcom

Featured on the cover of a recent issue of Business 2.0, Vancouver entrepreneur  Kevin Ham is described as “the master of Web domains, [who] built a $300 million empire.” After he got into the market for buying and selling domain names, his fortune blossomed. Ham says he initially became interested in the Web as a means of spreading the gospel. “It’s the real reason I’m still working,” he says. A devout Christian, he spent $31,000 to purchase the domain Christianrock.com; he also owns God.com and Satan.com.

         – DFD

Winter/Summer 2008