American citizens no longer watch the evening news to get information; instead, they involve themselves in media that connects with their colleagues, learning style, political views, and general esthetic tastes. Through careful examination of the evolution of such media, various media outlets and the destruction of mass media trustworthiness, we can validate the shift in American society from dependency on mainstream media venues to a focus on grassroots and citizen journalism.

My senior thesis, The News Paper: Reflection on the Media Shift in Today’s Culture, reacts with the current transition in American media. Any feedback is welcome.

Word Document - 70k
PDF - 300k

What’s new on 10B?

• A New Layout
• The last layout was a bit…bleak. This layout promises to be a little fancier, with a little more flair.
• History
• The history page contains all previous posts - separated by month.
• Authors
• Spiced up the authors listing, however, the individual author pages still need a little love.

Coming Soon on 10B.

• RSS
• We’ll have an RSS feed for comments and posts shortly.
• Latest Comments
• Latest comments (front page) will work, eventually.
• Author Page
• Author bios, more pics, intregation of other RSS feeds (twitter, tumblr, flickr, etc.)
• Tumbling Tweets
• Some bandits are now tumbling and tweeting. It only seems right that we have a page that blends all of these together.
• 10b Merch
• MAYBE some shirts. Maybe.

Hopefully this gets you guys pumped about 10b again. If not, well, I don’t know what to tell you.

We will be looking for a few authors to join up TenBandits. Some (current) authors are looking to become less involved. Think you might be interested? Drop an email to me - mrandyclark (at) gmail (dot) com.

Well, work calls my name. Hopefully we talk soon.

Until then, friends.

hey andrew, it’s uncle ronnie. mom’s here in the beauty shop and we were talking, she said you were graduating saturday, congratulations. i was going to come to it, but she didn’t want me to show up, said it’d be embarrassing for you, said that she’s got some other guy she’s bringing and everything, so anyhow, hope you’re doing good. don’t get too psyched out. or scared. or anxious. the fact that you’re going to be a real adult with real responsibilities, going on into the big wide cruel world that’s going to suck you up and spit you out and leave you wasted for the rest of your life. so have a good day. bye.

After doing some research, I found that it cost Solid Rock Church (most likely a Christian cult) spent a quarter of a million dollars to erect this 16,000 pound, 62 foot tall, off-white statue on the side of Interstate 75.

Big Butter Jesus - Heywood Banks.

In southern Ohio, just north of Cincinnati
I beheld a vision, next to the expressway.
Was a 60 foot Jesus, with his hands in the air
looks like he’s carved out of butter,
just like at the state fair.

Big butter Jesus
Sweet cream Jesus
Oh country fresh Jesus
Unsalted Jesus
Oh Promise Jesus
Imperial Jesus
Can’t believe it’s not Jesus
Oleo Lord.

Well you see him from the chest up
like he’s about to do a back flip,
or maybe scored a touchdown
or maybe melting or about to drown.
Ya know, I’ve been to the state fair
seen a cow made out of corn cobs
Steven Hawking made of string cheese
and the virgin out of olives.

Big butter Jesus
Sweet cream Jesus
Oh country fresh Jesus
Unsalted Jesus
Oh Promise Jesus
Imperial Jesus
Can’t believe it’s not Jesus
Oleo Lord.

Shipped in pieces on a flatbed
staring backwards was his big head
Driver stuck in traffic backups
desperately avoiding eye contact
Well don’t make no graven images.
I think it’s one of the 10 commandments
I hope the grading curve is kindly
You get into heaven with a 90

Big butter Jesus
Sweet cream Jesus
Oh country fresh Jesus
Unsalted Jesus
Oh Promise Jesus
Imperial Jesus
Can’t believe it’s not Jesus
Oleo Lord.

Can’t believe it’s not Jesus.

When I got out the door, I thought to myself, “man, it’s dark out here for 6:30am.” and it was dark, but I figured I was just up early and that’s how it was.

I got in my car, started it up, turned on my morning Sheryl Crow, and prepared to back out of my driveway when the clock caught my eye. The glowing LED car-clock said: 3:32am.

Especially at night
I worry over situations
I know I’ll be alright
Perhaps it’s just imagination

Day after day it reappears
Night after night my heartbeat shows the fear
Ghosts appear and fade away

Alone between the sheets
Only brings exasperation
It’s time to walk the streets
Smell the desperation

At least there’s pretty lights
And though there’s little variation
It nullifies the night from overkill

Day after day it reappears
Night after night my heartbeat shows the fear
Ghosts appear and fade away
Come back another day

I can’t get to sleep
I think about the implications
Of diving in too deep
And possibly the complications

Especially at night
I worry over situations
I know I’ll be alright
It’s just overkill

Day after day it reappears
Night after night my heartbeat shows the fear
Ghosts appear and fade away
Ghosts appear and fade away
Ghosts appear and fade away

• Are suspicious of to much thinking and learning
• Consider the Christian faith to be stable and unchanging
• Assume that the meaning of the Bible is fixed and reliable
• Can be resistant to new insights

• Are inqusitive
• Are imaginative
• Look for imprroved understandings of the Bible
• Are Humble

• 3 movements share core beliefs, different emphasis.
• Orthodox
• Preserving Christianitiy’s historic faith and practice
• Evangelical
• The authority of scripture and…
• Fundamentalist
• Additional beliefs often considered non-negotiable

• Evangelism is something we do. We bring people to Christ.
• Evangelical is a defining group. It’s who we are.

• Calvinism & Arminianism
• Human Depravity - on our own none of us would choose christ
• God’s grace - the reason we come to Christ is the conviction of the Holy Spirit
• Calvinism
• God’s mysterious will
• Selective work of the spirit
• Irresistible grace
• Compulsory sanctification
• Arminianism
• God’s foreknowledge
• Universal work of the spirit
• Forceless grace (resistable)
• Optional sanctification
• The Great Opportunity
• Decision
• Conversion is more decision…
• Simple prayer of repentance
• What we get out. Happy now, heaven then.
• Assurance of salvation based on decision
• Eternality security is guaranteed
• Discipleship
• Conversion is a process with identifiable point in time
• Learning about Christ
• Benefit God’s kingdom
• Assurance of salvation based on awareness
• Eternal security is conditional

• Chapter 1
• How We Lost the Christian Mind and Why We Must Recover it

1. Knowledge is only found in a test tube
• We can only learn from science
2. Religion is relegated to the back of the intellectual bus
• morality and religion are passe
• faith is a private matter
3. The speechwriter is replaced by the makeup man
• form, rules are disregarded
• style and appearance are more important than character

1. University
3. Media
4. Government

1. The church is safe and sound on its own reservation
2. The church is surviving, but in a state of perpetual adolescence
3. The church is advancing, but is building houses on sand
• New Christians live the same as Non Christians

1. Puritans were smart, intellectual people
1. Christianity became focused on
   1. Immediate personal conversion
   2. Emotional Sermons
2. Secular Study of the Bible
1. Christians responded
1. Suspicious of intellectual and scholarship
2. Withdrew from intellectual culture
3. Where are we today?
1. Secular society has welcomed the trojan horse of anti-intellectualism into its walls

1. Reason-less faith
2. Separation of the secular and sacred
3. A stifled witness

• “we have the right to happiness” - now means something it hasn’t meant before
• happiness is a sense of pleasurable satisfaction.
• We use ‘happy’ to refer to a certain feeling we have, a sense of satisfaction inside
• New ‘happiness’ is vastly overrated

• Rate of depression increased 10 times in one generation
• People have lost the hunger to live for something bigger than they are
• #1 preoccupation is wether they feel happy

• 3 hours of tv = 300 gorgeous women
• Yesteryear - no cars, tv, internet, less beautiful women
• Guys reason: “I can do better”
• Focus on yourself, “how will it make me feel happy”

• Happiness is defined as eternal life
• The essence of eternal life is a new quality of life
• A person learns to live like Jesus Christ

• You’re no longer concerned about your own desires
• To deny yourself, you don’t make your desires the absolute
• Seek to live for JC
• Practiced daily

• Deny yourself, focus on others
• Learn how to be a good friend
• You’ve got a dot called your life, if you focus on becoming a certain kind of person, you’ll grow in virtue and livelyhood

• If you want to feel happiness, don’t seek it
• If you want to feel satisfaction, forget what satisfaction feels like
• If you gain your life, you lose it. IF you lose your life for Christ, you’ll gain it.

• If the whole game doesn’t have a purpose, the moves within the game are meaningless.
• If there is no God, what does it matter what you choose to do.

• Happiness is a feeling of satisfaction.
• In order to gain happiness, I have to focus on me.
• The path to happiness is not self-absorption, it is the path of self denial.