Greetings faithful readers:

After two and a half years of almost daily blogging, I'm going to be unplugging for the next 30 days. I'm heading down to Oaxaca, Mexico, to attend a wedding, get some reading done for school, and express some solidaridad. I'll be back online in September and until then I've left our Spectrum Blog in very capable fingers.

This week we reached our 10,000th comment since we launched in late November.

To celebrate with you - our faithful community - we're offering a free yearlong journal subscription to anyone who gets five new people to make their first comment on the Spectrum site.

In addition, you'll be entered in a drawing for a free companion registration for the forthcoming Spectrum|Adventist Forum conference Sept. 26-28.

Spring, 2008
Volume 36, Issue 2

GENERAL COMMENTS
This is an excellent issue. The Ages of Adventism by Bull and Lockhart and The Point of the Spear by Benjamin McArthur are MUST READS. The film, The Power of Forgiveness is a MUST SEE. How Birding Became Almost Cool by Hayward and McClelland is beautifully written and magnificently illustrated. Even if you’re not a member of the birding community, this article is a rare treat.

EDITORIALS
Naming Names
by Bonnie Dwyer

Here are some Spectrum stats from March 20 to June 21. You're a part of:

Over 109,186 Visits
by over 63,434 Absolute Unique Visitors
with 248,745 Pageviews.

As many of you know, the Adventist Forum Conference is coming up. It will be Sep. 26-28 at the Mission Inn Resort and Conference Center, Howey-in-the-Hills, Florida.

h/t Jonthan Pichot

Spectrum was submitted in the Public Service category by pingVision for the 7th Annual Horizon Interactive Awards.

The Horizon Interactive Awards is a prestigious international competition recognizing outstanding achievement among interactive media producers. The awards showcase the best web site design, cd-roms, dvds, video, kiosks, video games and other interactive media. Horizon honors the most talented developers of interactive media.

Here are our site visits ranked by city. We are an increasingly international site for Adventism. Check to see if your city on the top 30. If your city is mentioned, are you surprised by its rank?

The new Spectrum journal should be in subscribers' mailboxes by now.

If you've had a chance to look through it and read some of the articles, gazed at the art work, or pondered the poetry, consider this an open thread for your reactions.

(Since it's the end of the week, feel free to share any other random thoughts that you have. Anything interesting happening in your neck of Adventism that we should know about? How was your week?)

Speaking as an animal lover (and occasional activist), compassion for all forms of life is important, and that's what I hear Thieme articulating. Undoubtedly the luxury to extend compassion to animals is a rich-country issue, but it's not an exclusive gesture; people who care for animals almost always extend that compassion to people first. I'll wager that animal rights activists are also typically well-informed and involved in ways to alleviate suffering for people in other (or local) parts of the world.