Random Thoughts 1/9/07

• Wikipedia's featured article yesterday was Operation Auca, the 1956 attempt by missionaries to make contact with native people in Ecuador which led to the deaths of five of those missionaries. In Christian circles, this is a well known event. But I was still surprised to see it on the front page of Wikipedia.
• I'm slowly working my way through another book by Victor Davis Hanson about the Peloponnesian War. That's the long Greek War between Athens and Sparta, that led to the fall of the wealthy, democratic, and liberal Athens to an enemy she shouldn't have lost to and maybe shouldn't have been fighting in the first place. It's really unnerving to see parallels between Athens and the United States. I'm most concerned that there are Americans today who either think that we can't lose a war or that, if we did, it wouldn't have any real significance to our daily lives. The truth is that, as unthinkable as it is, all nations eventually fall and that reality ought to be taken seriously.
  
• Apple introduced the iPhone today. Check out its website, this phone is really impressive. This is the way these things ought to work. You can see the new commercials and other new stuff from Apple on their website.
  
• I was told this was the greatest commercial ever. I don't know about that, but it is kind of clever. The actor is Bruce Campbell of "B movie" fame.
• It looks like our church will have a second, concurrent Dave Ramsey class, on a different night of the week. We had a much larger group of interested people than we expected. More information will be forthcoming.
• Please, please, please change the college football bowl system into a playoff system. This was the first year that I didn't watch a single bowl game, though I wish I had watched the Boise State - Oklahoma game. And I'd sure watch Florida play Boise State if they had the chance. Fortunately we can watch a college sport do it right in March (Go Kansas!).