Ray Fowler .org

• GPS Bible Study. Tim Challies tries out his new GPS and offers some related thoughts on Bible study.
• On Hyphenated Names. Frederica Mathewes-Green shares the amusing misadventures of taking on a hyphenated married name.
• Bible Memory. Demian Farnworth offers 18 practical tips to help you memorize more Scripture.
• Longevity. Did you know that two of President John Tyler’s grandsons are still alive? “Not great-great-grandsons, not great-grandsons, but grandsons.” President Tyler was born in 1790.

Slate had an interesting article last month about the Internet back in 1996. Here are five facts that jumped out at me.

In 1996:

• Only 20 million American adults had access to the Internet, about as many as subscribe to satellite radio today. (Internet World Stats reports nearly 250 million Internet users in North America today.)
• Americans with Internet access spent fewer than 30 minutes a month surfing the Web. (Today, we spend about 27 hours a month online.)
• You accessed the Internet by dial-up modem, tied up your phone line, and paid by the hour. Plus, it took about 30 seconds to load each page.
• There was not a whole lot to do online. There was no YouTube, Digg, Google, Twitter, Facebook, or Wikipedia. There was no instant messaging or online MP3’s. Amazon was just getting started and only sold books. You mostly checked news, weather and email.
• Yahoo produced its search directory using actual human beings who reviewed new sites and cataloged them. Obviously, this model was unable to keep pace with the growth of the Web.

What do you remember about those early internet days? How do you think the Internet may change in the next decade?

HT: Christ and Pop Culture

Related posts:

• Taming the Internet in the Home
• Media Access for the Next Generation

Mission Aviation Fellowship (MAF) recently received its first new plane specifically designed for missions.

Manufacturer Quest Aircraft Co. of Sandpoint, Idaho delivered its first KODIAK 100, the first of the next-generation bush planes it produces, to MAF on Thursday. The plane is the long awaited result of the shared vision between MAF and Quest to design an aircraft that can run on jet fuel, which is cheaper than aviation gas (avgas) and in greater supply.

Most of MAF’s fleet is Cessna 206’s (C206), which need avgas that is often in short supply and costly in areas where the mission group operates.

Also, the KODIAK 100 can carry nearly twice the cargo – such as medicine, food or disaster relief supplies – of the C206 and will help MAF dramatically increase delivery while reducing operating costs.

“Aviation, in the minds of many, is the heart and soul of reaching the unreached peoples of the world,” says John Boyd, president and chief executive officer of MAF-USA. “Missionary aircraft can take people into areas where there are no roads. They can deliver food, medicines and other supplies when roads are impassible.”

Profits from the commercial sales of the aircraft will subsidize a portion of the cost for each 11th plane produced. The 11th plane will be delivered to participating non-profit Christian and humanitarian aviation organizations.

So I am at the library today checking out John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath, and the librarian at the counter tells me, “I think we have this on video if you would rather see the movie.”

One hundred million children under the age of 15 live in the Arab world and at least half of them have access to satellite television. SAT-7 KIDS provides Christian programming for children in the Arab world 24 hours a day.

SAT-7 KIDS is the first and only Arabic Christian channel exclusively for children. This channel aims to make the Gospel of Christ available to an entire generation of young Arabs in a way meaningful to them. The channel airs original dramas, talk shows, educational material, cartoons, music programs and other shows that capture the attention of young viewers.

You can watch a live streaming broadcast of SAT-7 KIDS here. I enjoyed it even not knowing the language. (HT: 30 Days of Prayer)

Abraham Piper asks: “What are you better at than other people?…Now you know what you should do for them.”

Former President George W. Bush speaks out on President Barack Obama, saying he wants Obama to succeed and that it’s “essential” to support the new leader. Instead of taking potshots at Obama, Bush said the new president has enough critics and that he “deserves my silence.” Bush also said, “I love my country a lot more than I love politics. I think it is essential that he be helped in office.”

Ray Pritchard reminds us that God’s delays are not the same as God’s denials. “If Jesus had healed Lazarus, that would have been a great miracle. Raising him from the dead was an even greater one. God’s delays are not the same as God’s denials. If we know that, we can keep believing even while we wait for an answer that has not yet come. You never know when a resurrection is on the way.”

Peter Leichart shares some lenten thoughts on fasting and feasting. “Fasting looks like an enemy to life, but the opposite is true. We live abundantly only if we know how to fast—which is to say, only if we are disciplined to wait until the feast is ready. Lent trains us to be a people of patience and restraint, a people who rejoices in a God who has time and gives us time and makes us wait for the treasures He gives.”

David Wayne (who is battling cancer) writes about suffering as witness. “The thinking goes that God sends trials to teach us a lesson and thus, we should expect relief once the lesson is learned. When the trial continues beyond what we expected or hoped, we wonder what is wrong with us — we [think we] must not have learned enough from them … [W]hile acknowledging that suffering has a teaching focus in the life of a believer, I think we ought to expand our view of suffering to see it as a means of witness. I know that many do, but maybe this ought to be given the greater weight.”

I was watching some of this on the news last night. It is really amazing.

(Video length: 1:38)

An undersea volcano in the South Pacific is spewing stunning columns of smoke, steam and ash thousands of feet into the air. The eruption began Monday after a series of earthquakes near Tonga, a 170-island archipelago between Australia and Tahiti, residents told the Associated Press. There were magnitude-5.0 quakes there Sunday night and Monday afternoon, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

Though the Wellington Volcanic Ash Advisory Center (VAAC) issued an advisory for the area, the plume isn’t endangering island residents and so far hasn’t hurt fish or other animals, according to the AP.

Yesterday a plume rose to between 15,000 and 25,000 feet (4.6 to 7.6 kilometers), the Smithsonian’s Global Volcanism Program reported. “It’s a very significant eruption, on quite a large scale,” Tonga’s chief geologist, Kelepi Maf, told the Times of London. This is not unusual for this area and we expect this to happen here at any time.” (Scientific American)

(From The Cartoon Blog)

We once did a skit at our church very similar to this as a way of reminding our people to reach out to guests on Sunday mornings. Does this cartoon remind you of your church at all? What are some ways your church tries to make guests feel welcome?

Related post: The Dullest Blog in the World

Rose is off to Texas for a couple weeks to visit her parents, so I am back to playing Mr. Mom. If I do anything stupid, I will be sure to let you know. (Isn’t that what blogs are for?) Meanwhile, you can catch up on earlier installments of Mr. Mom here:

• Playing Mr. Mom
• Mr. Mom Calls Texas

• Obama’s Prayer Partners. The New York Times has an interesting article on the five pastors President Obama calls for prayer and conversation.
• dc Talk’s Tait Join Newsboys. Former dc Talk member Michael Tait will be touring with the Newsboys as their lead singer, the band announced this week.
• Dawn Treader Gets a New Release Date. Good news for Narnia fans! Walden Media and Twentieth-Century Fox have gone back to a winter release date for the third installment of the Chronicles of Narnia movies. The new release date is December 10, 2010.
• James Dobson Steps Down. “Focus on the Family’s James C. Dobson, Ph.D., has stepped down as board chairman of the ministry he founded 32 years ago … His wife, National Day of Prayer Chairman Shirley Dobson, has also left the Focus on the Family Board of Directors. They have been elected to the positions of Founder and Chairman Emeritus and Director Emerita, respectively, for the nonprofit ministry they started in 1977.”

Happy St. Patrick’s Day!

(Video length: 8:32)

A little girl asked her father, “Daddy, where did people come from?”

He answered, “God created the first man and woman, then they had children, and that’s where we came from.”

“Okay,” she said, and went off to find her mother. “Mommy,” she asked, “where did people come from?”

Her mother answered, “Well, there were these monkeys, and over time they changed into people, and that’s where we came from.”

The little girl went back to her father. “Daddy, I’m confused. You say God created us, and Mommy says we came from monkeys. I don’t understand.”

Her father replied, “Honey, it’s simple. Let me explain it to you. Your mother was telling you about her side of the family.”

(heard at a conference last weekend)