Saturday night will be the first election in 33 years that I won’t be behind a microphone for an election coverage. For the first time, I’ll experience an election party and probably turn to the internet for updates. I’m fully in agreement with my colleague Jeremy Halcrow about the election coverage by our mainstream media. Whereas once, wealthy publishers might have served up any old rubbish for the chattering classes, now its trivia for the twittering classes.  Has the internet made us dumber?

1. Certainly Jeremy’s article about Media is failing good government touched a nerve with our readers. One said “Many thoughtful people are feeling angry and helpless” about the media’s treatment of issues. Some reporters are showing their bias and some are deliberately hired because they hate everybody equally. You know who I’m talking about. A lot of heat but not much light. That said, I give a bouquet to the The Australian’s National Affairs page. Aside from journalist’s tweets (how do they get the time to do serious analysis when they have to tweet constantly), it brings together all the issues in one easy to read page.

2. Speaking of twitter, did you hear the one about the man trying to tweet the Bible over 2 years? His first tweet -  “In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth”. That didn’t even use 140 characters, the limit on Twitter. Just wait till he gets to the genealogies.

3. There is interesting research from the US this week. The Barna group has surveyed the faith practices of teenagers. It seems evangelism is low on their list.

Among 13- to 17-year-old Protestants, there are actually signs of increased religious activity: they are more likely to pray, go to worship services, read the Bible and attend youth group meetings than were Protestant-affiliated teens a dozen years ago. Given that religious participation is improving among this group, the drop in personal evangelism among born again Protestant teens is even more striking, dropping from 72% in 1997 to 53% in late 2009.

4. Two medical studies this week seem to bear out what Christians have always believed. In the Church of England newspaper, George Conger writes about the study of "proximal intercessory prayer" (PIP) "” when one or more people pray for someone in that person's presence and with physical contact. Healing prayer can have some remarkable benefits, the study concludes. George should know. As well as his journalistic work, he’s a hospice chaplain. The other study, by psychologists studying brain waves,  shows that thinking about God reduces distress. But only for believers. They found that for atheists, thinking about God causes distress!  A summary can be found here.

5. Details keep emerging of the events surrounding the death of ten aid workers, members of the International Assistance Mission in Afghanistan. It’s a harrowing story, told by the only one who escaped, the group’s Moslem driver. It is well reported by the Independant.

Please keep the people of Afghanistan in your prayers. And the people who risk their lives to help them.