These are quotes which stood out to me, possibly for use in a sermon someday. Their presence here does not mean I agree with them, it merely shows that I might want to reference them later. The default view is five random selections. Use the tag list on the right to view all quotes relevant to that theme.
Our friend Russ Bredholt is back with a new entry for us to ponder. I
always appreciate his musings and comments. Russ managed to have a
household accident a few weeks back and dropped me a line to explain.
I was real worried until he told me he was back playing golf, but
only with a nine finger grip. He's back thinking too. Here are his
thoughts on the Mindset of a New Generation
"At a recent meeting of college presidents a presentation was given
by Dr. Diana Oblinger, professor of business at the University of
North Carolina. Dr. Oblinger's subject was changing technology and
its implication for higher education.
The more she talked, the more I realized just how much her material
would also relate to the church.
To underscore her point about a shift in priorities and values among
younger adults, Dr. Oblinger listed the following as characteristics
of the
"Information Age Mindset:"*
-Computers aren't technology
-The Internet is better than TV
-Reality is no longer real
-Doing is more important than knowing
-Nintendo over logic
-Multitasking is a way of life
-Typing is preferred to handwriting
-Staying connected is essential
-Zero tolerance for delays
-Consumer and creator are blurring
Each item listed above was commented on for clarification. Space
does not allow us to go into that kind of detail. Most reading this
column will be able to interpret these points. They make for
interesting discussion.
What I want to do is highlight Dr. Oblinger's response...offering
advice to leaders of educational institutions and speaking to the
issue of how, if at all, to respond. Her counsel comes in the form
of questions (good advisors do this). The emphasis, you will note,
focuses on internal values first.
Dr. Oblinger raised four questions. I modified each and added a
comment in order to fit the context of the church:
1. Why are we doing church?
Before trying to get into the details of overhauling how we do
church, can we simply ask ourselves the simple question: What causes
us to be here in the first place?
2. What kind of experience do we want our people (members/attenders)
to have as a result of being connected to our church?
I believe in mystery and serendipity, but there is something about
leaders working to intentionally shape and influence relationships
and experiences so they are more positive than negative.
3. Does information technology change our traditional mission?
Maybe it does not change as much as we think. Perhaps it is the
context of mission where adaptations are to be considered.
4. What is distinctive about our church?
We have written on this subject before. It is our observation that
most congregations don't know what sets them apart from other faith
groups. (A good way to find this out is to interview the newer
members of the church.)
Those that enjoy some measure of results do so in part because they
are not the same as everyone else. Effectiveness is often related to
the degree of difference. Churches can be long on vision and short
on follow-up.
Attention to detail is the most overlooked aspect of congregational
life, other than time with the spiritual disciplines.
Before we get too wrapped up in technological advances, it is still
worthwhile to come back to a few basic questions that help us clarify
what is important to us. It is becoming clearer what is of interest
to young adults.
The question is whose values will prevail?"
Give feedback directly to our friend Russ Bredholt, Jr. by emailing
him at rbredholt@aol.com. His source for the comments come from an
article by Jason L. Frand in Educause Review (S/O 2000)
Want to know how fast Slammer (a.k.a. Sapphire/SQL Slammer) proliferated? "This worm required roughly 10 minutes to spread worldwide making it by far the fastest worm to date. In the early stages the worm was doubling in size every 8.5 seconds. At its peak, achieved approximately 3 minutes after it was released, Sapphire scanned the net at over 55 million IP addresses per second."
Nicholas Weaver and his team at UC Berkeley have a fascinating report on SQL Slammer at http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~nweaver/sapphire/
He that serves God for money will serve the Devil for better wages.
Nothing is more dangerous than an idea when it is the only one you have. – Emile Chartier
Monkeys Pay to See Female Monkey Bottoms
By Robert Roy Britt
LiveScience Senior Writer
posted: 28 January 2005
04:27 pm ET
Would you pay to see a monkey's backside? I hope not. Monkeys will, and I guess that's okay, though it sounds awfully close to the sort of thing that lands guys in jail here in the human realm.
A new study found that male monkeys will give up their juice rewards in order to ogle pictures of female monkey's bottoms. The way the experiment was set up, the act is akin to paying for the images, the researchers say.
The rhesus macaque monkeys also splurged on photos of top-dog counterparts, the high-ranking primates. Maybe that's like you or me buying People magazine.
The research, which will be detailed in the March issue of Current Biology, gets more interesting.
The scientists actually had to pay these guys, in the form of extra juice, to get them to look at images of lower-ranking monkeys.
Curiously, the monkeys in the test hadn't had any direct physical contact with the monkeys in the photos, so they didn't have personal experience with who was hot and who was not.
"So, somehow, they are getting this information by observation -- by seeing other individuals interact," said Michael Platt of the Duke University Medical Center.
Next, Platt and his colleagues want to see how people will perform in a similar experiment.
"At the moment, it's only a tantalizing possibility, but we believe that similar processes are at work in these monkeys and in people," Platt said. "After all, the same kinds of social conditions have been important in primate evolution for both nonhuman primates and humans. So, in further experiments, we also want to try to establish in the same way how people attribute value to acquiring visual information about other individuals."
The study, announced Friday, is far from monkey business. It was sponsored by the National Institute of Mental Health and the Cure Autism Now Foundation. The goal is to learn more about the social machinery of the brain with an eye toward helping autism patients.
"One of the main problems in people with autism is that they don't find it very motivating to look at other individuals," Platt said. "And even when they do, they can't seem to assess information about that individual's importance, intentions or expressions."
The monkeys provide "an excellent model for how social motivation for looking is processed in normal individuals," Platt said. "And, it's a model that we can use to explore the neurophysiological mechanisms of those motivations in a way we can't do in humans. For example, we can use drugs that affect specific neural processes to explore whether we can mimic some of the deficits found in autism in these animals."