Sacred Treasure
- Where is good and evil in Afghanistan by Tom Bowring (c/o Psephizo)
- For important historical background, one can’t do much better than William Dalrymple’s brilliant account of Afghan history
- Are Foreigners Still Needed in the age of indigenous mission? a Crucial question and one that far too few western Christians stop to consider. Kirst Rievan over at Lausanne
So Speaker’s Corner has a blasphemy law? Cranmer his trenchant self on the Christian preacher who can only assume she had it coming…?
- Also on Psephizo, Ian Paul has a v helpful conversation with Mark Nam about East Asians, racism and the church
- Giles Fraser fascinating as ever on whether Jordan Peterson believes in God. Nice shout out for this blog’s motto!
Topical Treasure
- The World in future – US, China, Russia and the EU. – SEEING RED by Scott Galloway (long read)
- When huge roads nearly destroyed London – having grown up not far from the West Way in the 1970s, the impact from building it never crossed my mind. Just part of the furniture. But it could have all been a LOT worse.
- It’s hard now to imagine what segregation was like in America’s South or in South Africa. This is not to claim that racism no longer exists. But it is important to see images like this from Memphis, Tennessee to be reminded.
- Florence Nightingale was a pioneer of modern nursing. This is fascinating about her use of data visualisation (something I can get a bit geeky about)

- A beautiful short film about a 90-year old Indonesian man with his own ocean clean-up operation
Quirky Treasure
I detest CAPTCHAs – this one is about as useful as they get (nice gag from the RAF H/T John Naughton)
- Hmmm – chocolate records?? That was never going to last…
- Portraits of Swedes (the land of some of my fathers) from 100 years ago.
- These buildings in Sibiu, Romania are definitely ‘up to something’. Be very concerned.
- Great writers have notebooks for jottings and thoughts. But Dostoyevsky’s was on a completely different level!
- 2021 Comedy Wildlife Photography Awards. A necessary annual pick-me-up
- Photos that resulted in accidental renaissance paintings
- And portraits of Czech centenarians, then and later.
- This is beautiful to watch – a technique created in the 1940s in the USSR