Odds & Ends

• From Mitchell & Webb comes this warning for all you church innovators out there: great ideas are useless without a context in which they can be used.

•  We've had three days of glorious weather here on the Oregon Coast. Unfortunately, this meant the local casino was able to celebrate its 15th anniversary with a fireworks display. My dog was not amused.

•  I'm fascinated by the Forbes map that lets you find out who moved where in 2008. My own Lincoln County, for instance, had 24 people move to Los Angeles County -- and 41 people move from LA County to here. 

• You know what they need at the General Conference session in Atlanta? Vuvuzelas. Just saying.

• One thing I've learned from Carlo D'este's Warlord: A Life of Winston Churchill at War (1874-1945) -- great leaders are not always nice people. (And who would have guessed that Churchill always wore pink silk underwear?)

• And I'll close with this quote from Bertholt Brecht (and no, I haven't yet figured out if it is a promise or a warning): "Because things are the way they are, things will not stay the way they are."