Random

~ Somehow someone figured out that two days ago a major demographic shift occurred. For the first time in human history, the earth’s population is now more urban than rural. I won't dispute the trend -- but that they could peg it down so precisely to a Wednesday in May is utterly amazing. I do admit though, that I felt the ground move a little bit around 7 p.m. But I thought it was just a big truck driving by on the way to the city.

~ "OpenCola" -- online recipe for making your own. Does someone have an open source recipe for something diet, caffeine-free, with key lime in it?

~ Google will no longer carry ads for "academic paper-writing services and the sale of pre-written essays, theses, and dissertations..." So it's a little harder to cheat -- although I'm not sure who was actually paying for the stuff. There is so much online that is free. Even a few of my preaching students tried preaching sermons they'd downloaded off the Internet. (I should mention that cultural standards regarding originality are not the same on the Islands as they are in mainstream America.) I heard one Spurgeon sermon and thought, wow, this sounds like something right out of the 19th century. So I put a few choice phrases on Google and the whole thing came up.

So far no one has tried preaching one of my sermons downloaded from SermonCentral.

~ Happiness Lodge, one of our Chuukese students, who will be doing his internship in the States this summer, helping Dave plug PIBC and working at a camp for a few weeks, made it to California. He's a terrific preacher and hopefully will have many opportunities to speak. Right now he's hanging out with his uncle in Pasadena.

~ Wal-Mart is going to start selling Dell computers.

~ China will pass the US in manufacturing. The US will remain strong through innovation. Or so the experts are forecasting.

~ Lausanne III -- Capetown, October 16th-25th, 2010. I think I'd like to go this time.

~ Matt Glover (via)