This is the first in what I hope to be a regular series of posts compiled mostly of stuff I’ve encountered online throughout the week, both religious and secular in nature. The title: “Stuff!” Of course.

Fed Up With Facebook? Delete it, and Here’s How

“In the blink of an eye, Mark Zuckerberg has gone from boy wonder to Big Brother, from Mozart to Mao. The man and his machine have suffered a populist fall precipitous enough to make even Tiger Woods wince with empathy. All this calamity, of course, begs the obvious question: “How did things go so horribly wrong?”

Why Church Kids Must Go Bad

“The model of adolescent faith is not the kid who can avoid the bad, but the kid who stares down the darkness in herself and in her world by seeking God in just such places. The model of adolescent faith is not shiny, happy kids, but honest kids, that in joy confess a God who works in backwards ways, in ways where the first are last, and the suffering are embraced, where all who taste death are promised God’s very presence. They are not good kids that avoid all that is bad, but faithful kids that go into the world to seek God in the real, in the reality of existence, which is both beautiful and horrible.”

The Lost Language of Worship

“Contemporary worship suffers from an emotional bias. It is disproportionately upbeat. I am not necessarily talking about the tempo of the music, although this bias is sometimes reflected in the tempo. I am talking about its emotional tone. The culture of evangelical worship has little tolerance for grief in the assembly.”

London unveils creepy-looking mascots for 2012 Olympics

“Olympic mascots have always been the object of scorn (remember Izzy?), but these two, uh, things take the absurdity to a whole new level. There’s a complicated backstory to the characters which was written by a children’s author. It explains why the mascots have one eye (it’s a camera lens to see the world) and yellow lights on tops of their heads (an homage to London taxicabs), but fails to tell the tale of why they look like early rejects from a Pixar movie.”

Seattle’s Best Coffee Stirs Up Heated Opinions

“Seattle’s Best Coffee revealed a redesigned logo this week. Unfortunately, its ambiguous look brings to mind a lot more than just a cup of joe.”

How a Web Design Goes Straight to Hell

While we’re still on the subject of design, here’s one take on the web design process that I’m sure every web developer can relate to. Hilarious and sobering.

Ian McKellen – Fresh Prince of Bel-Air

What would we do without the internet?

God Smacked

If Team Pyro did the Daily Show, it’d probably look like something like this.

Nike – Write the Future

Nike knows how to make commercials. But its latest World Cup ad has got to be one of its best ever. Helmed by Alejandro Inarritu (director of “21 Grams” and “Babel”) the nifty video is peppered with humorous visions of the future, skillful soccer plays, and hilarious cameos. An instant classic.