Random

• Joyce is home from the hospital and feeling better. PTL! ~ Link

• Rick Mansfield reviews the new New Living Translation Study Bible -- overall he sounds pretty impressed. ~ Link

• Dale Vallejo-Sanderson and his film-making son Anthony are taking a few days on Guam while they're in transit to Bali. So we did the island tour today and Chamorro Village this evening. That was fun!

Dale is the pastor of Wellspring Covenant Church in Honolulu. We figured out today that we were both at Fuller Seminary during the same time period in the early '80s.

• The University of Florida has a grad student specializing in "comics studies." Why not? Comic books are an important part of the culture. There are other schools -- even as early as elementary school -- playing follow the leader. ~ Link

• College students, tired of getting ripped off by textbook publishers who charge exorbitant prices for books, have started scanning texts and slapping the pirated digital versions up online. No, it's not right -- but it is understandable. Paying over $200 for each book in some undergrad subjects is outrageous. ~ Link

• Students in my Christian Doctrine 3 class (religious movements common in Micronesia) will be happy to learn that there are no required textbooks to buy this fall. They may not be as excited once they learn that they, through their own investigation, are going to be producing the textbook upon which the final exam will be based.

• More on China's growing influence in Africa -- particularly the Congo. ~ Link

• Mervyns, the department store giant, has filed for bankruptcy. We've shopped at Mervyn Morris' store since I was a kid and I worked for them unloading trucks while I was a college student -- helped open store #45 in Tempe, Arizona -- which is now closed. The market has shifted but Mervyns stores still feel a lot like they did in the 1970s. They're also a bit expensive for the lines they carry. As the economy has become sluggish their weaknesses have left them vulnerable. ~ Link

• "A wise person is hungry for knowledge, while the fool feeds on trash." ~ Proverbs 15:14 (NLT)