Short stuff

Using the five movie rating categories, the highest percentage of movies in 1996 were rated R. That is up 7.8% since 1984. The two categories that have fewer movies in 1996 as compared to 1984 are PG, down to 14.7% from 31.3%, and NC-17/X, down to .3% from .9%. In 1996, teens, on the average, watched 62 movies on cable, 45 on VCR, 30 on TV, 11 in movie theatres and 2 on CD-ROM or digital disk.
USA Today

Christianity Online, a service of Christianity Today, Inc. (CTi), captured an America Online Members' Choice Award, presented by America Online Networks. This award honours 50 of the most popular programming sites on America Online for excellence and originality as determined quarterly by AOL's 8.2 million members. The recipients are chosen using a formula that measures unique visits to a site as well as frequency of visits and usage. "Our goal is to offer our members the best content in cyberspace," said Barry Schuler, president of Creative development for AOL Networks. Christianity Online (CO), founded in 1994, is America Online's top religion partner. Activity centres around its community chat rooms and message boards, which include areas for women, men, singles, church leaders, students, kids and families. Additional features include current news and magazines; church, Bible and reference; Christianity on the Internet; music and media; the CO shopping mall; and classifieds. The mission of Christianity Online is to cultivate an online community that provides Christians with the opportunity to fellowship with one another, to encourage spiritual growth through abundant content, and to communicate the depth and transforming power of the gospel to all who visit the site, according to John LaRue, executive director of electronic media for CTi.
CTi news release

New Age spirituality is seeling like hotcakes in America according to the America Booksellers Association. More than 10 million copies were purchased in 1996, an increase of 9% from 1995. Overall book sales grew only 3% during that period. Hot New Age topics include aromatherapy, alternative medicine, and Feng Shui, a Japanese belief which teaches that arranging objects in a home can affect its "chi", or spiritual energy.
Evangelical Press News Service

MCC and Christian Peacemaker Teams (CPT) are jointly developing a website "The Games Project". The Project will collect information about computer and video games and rate them according to their levels of violence, sexism, sexual explicitness and portrayal of minorities, as well as the level of fun, challenge and cooperation. For people with Internet access, games can be evaluated right on the website at www.sentex.net/~games. For those not on-line, evaluation forms can be obtained by writing to MCC Ontario, 50 Kent Ave., Kitchener, Ont. N2G 3R1, or e-mailing to games@sentex.net.
MCC Canada

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