Category: Resources & Reviews

College Factoid

“The aver­age age of an under­grad­u­ate stu­dent is 26, reports the Amer­i­can Coun­cil on Edu­ca­tion. But the aver­age age of an under­grad­u­ate liv­ing on cam­pus is 20, the group says.” (source: Alco­hol mak­ers on tricky path in mar­ket­ing to col­lege crowd)

Grownup School

Ama­zon has a fea­ture called Grownup School that I was total­ly unaware of. It’s an awe­some idea–ask experts what books they think are best in their field and let the rest of us in on the secret. Found via Freako­nom­ics blog.

The Goblet of Fire

Paula and I went to see Har­ry Pot­ter and the Gob­let of Fire last night.

Loved it. Eas­i­ly the best of the series so far. In fact, I think it was bet­ter than the book upon which it was based (and I NEVER think that about a movie).

Dilbert Dude On ID

Scott Adams, the cre­ator of Dil­bert, just wrote a fas­ci­nat­ing essay on under­stand­ing the Darwinism/Intelligent Design debate. No mat­ter what you expect this essay to say, it’s dif­fer­ent. (update: he pub­lished parts two, three, and four)

Understanding Today’s Students

Pres­by­ter­ian col­lege min­is­ter Rhett Smith has a pret­ty lengthy essay about today’s stu­dents.

Stanford iTunes

Lots of Stan­ford audio con­tent is avail­able online for free now. Check out Stan­ford iTunes for fac­ul­ty lec­tures, con­fer­ences, guest speak­ers and more.

Guy Kawasaki

I just heard Guy Kawasa­ki speak at Straight Talk, a mar­ket­place min­istry host­ed by Men­lo Park Pres­by­ter­ian Church. He uses humor well. For instance, he was offered a job in Atlanta but “could­n’t take a job where they call sushi bait.”

I real­ly appre­ci­at­ed his intro:

When I was younger I used to go to a lot indus­try con­fer­ences, and I learned that most CEOs suck as speak­ers. And the only thing worse than lis­ten­ing to a speak­er who sucks is not know­ing how much longer they’re going to suck. So I’ve adopt­ed a sim­ple rule: all my pre­sen­ta­tions are in a top-ten for­mat. That way, if you decide I suck you at least know how much longer I’m going to do it.

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, I know a few preach­ers who could use his advice. 🙂

His talk was The Art of the Start, based on his book. It’s a talk he’s giv­en in a lot of dif­fer­ent venues. You can find the notes online. He did a pret­ty good job of cus­tomiz­ing it for the con­text of the meet­ing (Chris­t­ian busi­ness pro­fes­sion­als and their guests).

In hon­or of his speak­ing advice, here are ten things I learned about Guy Kawasa­ki:

  1. He’s a Chris­t­ian.
  2. He went to Stan­ford (where he majored in “the eas­i­est major I could find–psychology.”).
  3. He sec­u­lar­ized the term evan­ge­lism while at Apple. Good for him–the word could real­ly use a facelift.
  4. He loves Apple and dis­dains Microsoft. “DOS was a moral wrong.”
  5. He finds evi­dence for the exis­tence of a per­son­al God in the con­tin­ued sur­vival of Apple. He fur­ther con­cludes that God real­ly likes dig­i­tal music and wants you to pay for it.
  6. He went to law school and dropped out after ten days, “there­by inher­it­ing 2,000 years of pent-up Asian guilt.”
  7. He loves to play hockey–it sounds like an obses­sion.
  8. He is a CSI addict and is eager­ly await­ing the day that they release CSI: Men­lo Park.
  9. He loves first-class in Sin­ga­pore Air­lines. In fact, that’s his work­ing mod­el of heav­en.
  10. He thinks iStockPhoto.com rocks–he went out of his way to plug it at the end of his pre­sen­ta­tion and claimed to do so with­out any finan­cial incen­tive (“I’m not an investor or any­thing, I just love their prod­uct.”)

the inimitable Terry Pratchett strikes again

If you’ve nev­er had the plea­sure before, you owe it to your­self to read some­thing by Ter­ry Pratch­ett. He’s a humor fan­ta­sy nov­el­ist who actu­al­ly makes me laugh out loud on a fair­ly reg­u­lar basis.

I just fin­ished his most recent book and stum­bled across these two lit­tle snip­pets that tick­led me.

Thud! (Discworld, Book 30)

[Nob­by said,] “There’s a lot that goes on that we don’t know about.”

“Like what, exact­ly?” Colon retort­ed. “Name me one thing that’s going on that you don’t know about. There–you can’t, can you?” (page 42)

And lat­er…

“War, Nob­by. Huh! What is it good for?” he said.
“Dun­no, Sarge. Free­ing slaves, maybe?”
“Absol–well, okay.”
“Defend­ing your­self against a total­i­tar­i­an aggres­sor?”
“All right, I’ll grant you that, but–”
“Sav­ing civ­i­liza­tion from a horde of–”
“It does­n’t do any good in the long run is what I’m say­ing, Nob­by, if you’d lis­ten for five sec­onds togeth­er, ” said Fred Colon sharply.
“Yeah, but in the long run, what does, Sarge?” (page 50)

Redesigned PreachingToday.com is Sweet

The redesigned PreachingToday.com is real­ly nice. The new media sec­tion is espe­cial­ly good (although it’s a bit hard to find the media brows­ing page–it’s http://preachingtoday.com/media/browse.html–and there are a few glitch­es they still need to work out).

Over­all, I’m quite hap­py. I’m an annu­al sub­scriber and I’ve always got­ten far more than my mon­ey’s worth. Now it’s dou­bly true.

PersonalMDiv.com

I’ve been slow­ly stew­ing an idea in my brain for a few days now, and I final­ly decid­ed to act on it. I noticed the cre­ation of personalmba.com with inter­est, but did­n’t think much about it until I saw that Jor­don Coop­er was inspired to cre­ate a com­pa­ra­ble M. Div. list (thanks to Andrew Jones for point­ing it out).

Any­way, I noticed that there was some crit­i­cism of the over­all idea and of the spe­cif­ic book choic­es (some of the crit­i­cism was thought­ful, some was knee-jerk). I thought it would be great to cre­ate a wiki to let the broad­er com­mu­ni­ty craft a list of books, arti­cles, and projects that would real­ly make a dif­fer­ence in some­one’s min­istry.

So I did. I present PersonalMDiv.com.

Have at it.