• Three Days Three Nights. Walt Kaiser explains why Jesus was crucified on a Friday rather than Wednesday as some people believe.
• Stations of the Resurrection. You’ve heard of the Stations of the Cross. Mark Roberts introduces you to the Stations of the Resurrection.
• De-Baptism. More than 100,000 people recently downloaded “certificates of de-baptism” from the Internet to renounce their Christian faith.
• Why Professional Athletes Go Broke. The main reasons given are the recession, bad investments, misplaced trust, divorce (“the most dangerous thing that could happen to an athlete financially”) and the pressure to consume conspicuously.

• GPS Bible Study. Tim Challies tries out his new GPS and offers some related thoughts on Bible study.
• On Hyphenated Names. Frederica Mathewes-Green shares the amusing misadventures of taking on a hyphenated married name.
• Bible Memory. Demian Farnworth offers 18 practical tips to help you memorize more Scripture.
• Longevity. Did you know that two of President John Tyler’s grandsons are still alive? “Not great-great-grandsons, not great-grandsons, but grandsons.” President Tyler was born in 1790.

• Obama’s Prayer Partners. The New York Times has an interesting article on the five pastors President Obama calls for prayer and conversation.
• dc Talk’s Tait Join Newsboys. Former dc Talk member Michael Tait will be touring with the Newsboys as their lead singer, the band announced this week.
• Dawn Treader Gets a New Release Date. Good news for Narnia fans! Walden Media and Twentieth-Century Fox have gone back to a winter release date for the third installment of the Chronicles of Narnia movies. The new release date is December 10, 2010.
• James Dobson Steps Down. “Focus on the Family’s James C. Dobson, Ph.D., has stepped down as board chairman of the ministry he founded 32 years ago … His wife, National Day of Prayer Chairman Shirley Dobson, has also left the Focus on the Family Board of Directors. They have been elected to the positions of Founder and Chairman Emeritus and Director Emerita, respectively, for the nonprofit ministry they started in 1977.”

TECHNOLOGY EDITION.

• Like robots? The Big Picture has pictures.
• E.T. Phone Home. The Kepler Spacecraft will launch Friday in its quest for Earth-like planets in Earth-like places.
• Read Kindle Books on Your iPhone. Can’t afford to shell out $359 for a Kindle 2? Download this free app that lets you read Kindle books on your iPhone instead.
• How to Make Your PC Boot Faster. I know, my brother would say, “Buy a Mac.” (See PC and Mac in the Garden of Eden) The “/noguiboot” setting was a new one for me.
• Gdrive in 2009. Google Drive, or Gdrive as it is better known, will offer online storage where Google servers have enough capacity to hold the entire contents of your hard drive. (Question: Do you want to give Google access to every file on your hard drive?)

• GodTube Changes Name. Christian video and social networking site GodTube.com is now Tangle.com. Tangle.com will focus more on being a family-friendly site rather than a specifically Christian site.
• Free Tax Preparation at Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart is offering free tax prepararion services for taxpayers earning less than $56,000 per year.
• 800,000 Lives Saved. “The Washington Times estimated last week that former President Bush’s pro-life administration limited abortions so much, that perhaps 100,000 lives were saved in every year he served.”
• What Does the Bible Say About That? Carolyn Larsen’s new book helps 8-12 year olds understand what the Bible says about a variety of topics.

• Free Bible Book Introductions Online. IBS (International Bible Society) gives you free access to the full NIV Study Bible introductions for each book of the Bible.
• 8 Ways to Kill Clutter in 5 Minutes. Clutter taking over? Check out Lifehack’s eight ways to get in, get organized, and get out.
• The Light Bulb Showdown. Which is less expensive in the long run: a 34-cent incandescent bulb or a $120 LED bulb with equivalent light output? You may be surprised at the results.
• Le Roi S’Amuse. Michael Ward looks at the intricate rhyming pattern of one of my favorite C.S. Lewis poems, “Le Roi S’Amuse” (“The King Amuses Himself”) — a poem about God creating the world.

• From CNN: Obama may quickly reverse abortion policy. “President-elect Barack Obama is considering issuing an executive order to reverse a controversial Bush administration abortion policy in his first week in office.”
• Prayer for Obama. Albert Mohler offers a thoughtful and heartfelt prayer for our new President.
• Church Web Design. Lorelle on WordPress has an interesting article on church marketing and learning from church web development. (See also Darren Hoyt’s Interviews with Church Designers.)
• Potential Coral Ridge Merger. Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church extended a call to New City Church pastor Tullian Tchividjian to become senior pastor at Coral Ridge. As a result both churches have agreed to consider a possible merger.
• Why Disney Dropped Narnia. The LA Times fills in some of the back story as to why Disney stepped away from the Narnia films. Plus some good news that either 20th Century Fox, Sony, or Warner Bros. may step in to finance the third film.

• Why Xmas? R.C. Sproul explains why “X” is used when it replaces Christ in Christmas.
• Mozart or Salieri? Listen to the audio clips and see if you can guess the right composer. Quiz will be graded and corrected at the end. (I only got 6 out of 10 right.)
• Finding Baby Jesus. Churches are putting GPS devices inside their nativity figures to track them down if stolen.
• Film Ethics Course. Professor John Stackhouse is teaming up with film producer Ralph Winter (Star Trek; X-Men; Fantastic Four) to teach a class on the ethics of filmmaking this summer at Regent College in Vancouver. This sounds like a great course. I wish I lived closer.

• Catholic Hospital Counterthreat. Catholic hospitals threaten to shut down if Obama signs the Freedom of Choice Act.
• Keep Christ in Your Christmas Cards. Stand To Reason blog has posted some meaningful, Christian messages that you can copy, format, and print to glue in your Christmas cards.
• Casting Call for Dawn Treader. According to Hannah Montana Casting, “The Voyage of the Dawn Treader” will begin pre-production soon and the casting directors are accepting photos and resumes.
• Movies on YouTube. MGM will be posting full-length films as YouTube tries to compete with Hulu.
• Hubble Advent Calendar. The Big Picture will be unveiling a new photo from the Hubble Space Telescope for each of the 25 days leading up to Christmas.

• Bible Maps. BibleAtlas.org has quick links to maps for each of the Biblical place names along with encyclopedia and concordance information.
• National Toy Hall of Fame. Looking for the best toy suggestions for your kids? Check out the 41 toys that have been inducted into the National Toy Hall of Fame.
• Jay Walker’s Library. From King James to James Bond and Chaucer to Sputnik, internet entrepreneur Jay Walker has an amazing personal library in his home.
• Bob Jones Apologizes. Bob Jones University of Greenville, South Carolina, issued an online statement last week apologizing for “racially hurtful” practices of its past, including prohibiting married African American students until 1971 and unmarried African American students until 1975, and banning interracial dating until 2000.

• 10 Things You’d Love to Say at Work But Can’t. From Michael Hyatt.
• LIFE Photo Archive. Search millions of photographs from the LIFE photo archive, stretching from the 1750s to today.
• Mini-Nuclear Power Plants. Nuclear power plants smaller than a garden shed and able to power 20,000 homes will be on sale within five years, say scientists at Los Alamos, the US government laboratory which developed the first atomic bomb.
• Missionary Taxi Club. Christian taxi drivers in South Korea use Christian radio in hopes of leading passengers to Christ. There are 450 members in the Missionary Taxi Club who have been meeting monthly for 25 years to worship and discuss opportunities to share the Good News with their passengers.

• WEA General Assembly. The World Evangleical Alliance closed its first general assembly in six years last week with a renewed commitment to world evangelism and six major resolutions setting out an evangelical response to religious liberty, HIV and Aids, poverty, peacemaking, creation care and the global financial crisis.
• Orcs Are Back! British film makers are hoping to recreate the magic of the Lord of the Rings trilogy in a low budget movie inspired by JRR Tolkien’s books. Born of Hope is a prequel to the fantasy novels and tells the story of the Dúnedain, the Rangers of the North, before the return of the King.
• Brain-Computer Interface. People who are completely paralyzed due to illness or trauma are getting help communicating with a new technology that connects their brains to a computer.
• TV and Sex. Research suggests that pregnancy rates are higher among teens who watch a lot of TV with sexual dialogue and behavior. Teens who watched shows with sexual content were twice as likely to become pregnant over the next three years as those who watched few such programs.
• Jesus Creed Moves. Scot McKnight’s Jesus Creed blog has moved to Beliefnet. The new web address is: http://blog.beliefnet.com/jesuscreed/
• How to Make Maple Syrup. Yum.