Random

~ I'm still catching up on some blog reading and I found Hollie's post about her MAC flights interesting. On the leg from Guam to Hawaii her flight was medevacing a newborn baby. On one leg of the trip she was on a plane that was a flying gas station -- refueling fighter jets as they flew along. She's got pictures.

~ Is the clock ticking for the mega churches? David Fitch thinks that there are indicators suggesting it to be so. I think the jury is still out. Culture is always in flux and I'm not sure that Americans and Canadians are going to completely embrace postmodern values. A crisis, economic or otherwise, could jar the movement of culture one way or the other pretty easily. Still, given the choice (and we are), lots of small has a lot of advantage over a few big.

~ New study: Only 36% of American adolescents are gamers -- mostly males. There was little evidence that video games were displacing academic activities (non-gamers only spend an average of 8 minutes a day reading anyway) or sports. I doubt that this will be the final word on the subject.

~ Quotable: "Finally, Christians in a pluralistic society, where there is no presumption in favor of their beliefs or practices, but perhaps a strong bias against, are in the very best position to show the true excellence of the Way of Christ..." -- Dallas Willard musing on the value of pluralism

~ Google loses Gmail trademark case in Germany. I can understand and sympathize with the little guy trying to protect his intellectual property. But what I don't get is if the trademark was wrapped up so tightly how was it that Google was able to register the gmail.com domain. Any serious trademark owner would have also registered the domain and all variations thereof -- probably even before registering the trademark.

~ Beth is wanting us to vote for her Springfield in the Simpson's Movie Springfield Challenge. I have to admit that Springfield, Oregon put together a pretty good movie. And since we've been to Beth and Steve's home in Springfield, Oregon, for dinner I'm pretty partial. But some of the other 14 Springfields put together pretty good videos, too. Springfield, Missouri; Springfield, Kentucky; and Springfield, Vermont were also on my favorites list. (Two Springfields in Scotland apparently didn't make the cut.) Voting ends July 9th so I have a few days to pray about it.