One of my websites, MemorizeNow.com, which I wrote primarily for memorizing Bible passages, just got a couple of unexpected and nice notices at Lifehacker and at MakeUseOf. Thanks, folks!

The other day I bought a little D-ring key holder thinking it would serve a particular purpose.

It didn't, and I stood there looking at the ring and wondering what to do with it. It's a nice ring, so I didn't want to throw it away, and it doesn't need to be recycled since it works fine, but on the other hand, since it isn't what I need, it is just junk cluttering up my house.

It led me to realize that there is a category of stuff that is neither trash nor recyclables, good stuff you don't need but which might be useful to someone else but is too inexpensive to bother selling.

So... what if cities or community organizations (churches, Rotary clubs Lions clubs, whatever) sponsored junk exchanges ("treasure exchanges?") two or four times a year at a local park or parking lot. You could bring your not-being-used stuff for other people to take home and then pick through everybody else's discards to find things you might need.

Wow! I'd give my little D-ring - and a lot of other stuff - in a flash, knowing it would have a good home. And it would declutter my house and I might even find something useful, and for free!

Here is a comparison of Christian colleges taken out of the 2009 Forbes list of America's Best Colleges. Please note that a) Forbes leaves out a lot of Christian colleges, so this is very incomplete, and b) Forbes is not grading colleges on their quality as Christian schools. Also, keep in mind that there may be schools that I have simply missed. (And sorry about that if I have.)

Nevertheless, it is quite interesting. Perhaps it will bring a few colleges into view that you had not considered before. The number on the left is Forbes' ranking of the college. Here's the list:

58 - George Fox University Oregon
97 - Huntington University Indiana
103 - Wheaton College Illinois
109 - Oklahoma Baptist University Oklahoma
110 - Carson-Newman College Tennessee
120 - Mississippi College Mississippi
155 - Oklahoma Wesleyan University Oklahoma
172 - Houghton College New York
177 - Goshen College Indiana
185 - Covenant College Georgia
198 - Whitworth College Washington
212 - Northwestern College Iowa
222 - Westmont College California
245 - Erskine College South Carolina
278 - Union University Tennessee
279 - Bob Jones University South Carolina
289 - Cedarville University Ohio
291 - Northwestern College Minnesota
306 - Master's College California
314 - Biola University California
316 - John Brown University Arkansas
335 - Taylor University Indiana
364 - Grove City College Pennsylvania
384 - Asbury College Kentucky
394 - Dordt College Iowa
395 - Vanguard University California
407 - Abilene Christian University Texas
426 - Gordon College Massachusetts
451 - Seattle Pacific University Washington
455 - Calvin College Michigan
483 - Baylor University Texas
510 - Azusa Pacific University California
515 - Corban College Oregon
542 - Messiah College Pennsylvania

See the 2008 list here.

It seems that there is a new emphasis on "Community" going around in Christian circles.

I've gone along with this without any fuss, because, well, community is important, but the emphasis has always made me a bit wary, and I've only recently gotten around to asking myself why I'm wary.

As I think about it, I believe the answer is that I am wary for the same reason that other emphases make me wary. I get wary when I think an emphasis is gaining such prominence that it might upset the bedrock emphasis that Jesus gave us in Matthew 22:37-40, that the most important command is to love God, and the second most important command (into which developing community would fall) is to love one's neighbors as one's self. When command number two starts to nudge out command number one, I start to get fidgety.

Also, I am a bit concerned that focusing on community can mean focusing on ourselves, as the church, and maybe forgetting those outside the church.

Another thing that kind of bothers me about "Community" (with a capital C), is that there is nothing inherently noble about communities. There are communities that do good works and there are communities of robbers and murderers. There are communities where the members are kept in misery and ignorance by abusive leaders. There are communities that don't want to be communities, such as prisoners in jail. You can't get away from communities. You probably belong to dozens of them. Your neighborhood, your city, your state or province, your country, your race, your religion, your hobbies, your work, your Facebook friends. Nazi Germany was a community, Soviet Russia was a community, Communist North Korea is a community. Communities are often sources of conflict as people identify themselves with their community as opposed to other communities.

Good and bad, they are all over the place and I don't think you can get away from community unless you are a self-sufficient hermit living in the outback of Australia or Alaska.

So I really don't think there is any particular need to emphasize the importance of community any more than there is a need to emphasize the importance of air. It is important; we all know it is important; and for the most part, it is just there.

And as for the church, the church IS a community, whether it wants to be or not, so I'm not sure I see much value in telling people, "We need to be a community" when that is what they already are. Instead, I think the church should emphasize being a good community, a godly community, worshiping God together and helping each other out and reaching out in love beyond our church community.

Happily, for the most part, even if I'm not entirely comfortable with their choice of words, I think that is what most people mean when they emphasize community, and so for the most part I applaud, but I just think we should be careful not to promote command number two to replace command number one.

During a Bible study last year we were challenged to memorize some passages from the book of II Corinthians, and I got to thinking that maybe a website could help people memorize Bible verses or whatever else they want to memorize.

Making a website like that was (and is) a bigger project than I bargained on, but I think it is somewhat presentable now, and I invite you to take a look:

MemorizeNow.com

I've started using it myself and will hopefully make a few little improvements here and there, but anyway, if you're interested, there it is.

Thanks for giving it a look!

Once upon a time there was a wonderful farm by the sparkling sea. The sun was gentle, the mountains nearby were beautiful, the beaches were warm and the geese who lived on the farm were very happy.

True, farmer Cal took an egg from most of the geese once a year. From those who didn't lay eggs he took nothing, but from quite a few he took a golden egg.

But that was okay because Cal sold the eggs and used the money to keep the farm tidy and the water running, and he kept a little for himself, but that didn't bother the geese because he did a good job and deserved to be paid for his work and the geese got to keep most of what they made.

But farmer Cal grew old and died, and his children took over the farm. They looked enviously at the geese who laid the golden eggs, and came up with a plan.

"Oh geese," they said. "It is not right that some of you live in poor twig nests. We will collect a few more golden eggs and provide better things for the poor among you."

"Yes!" said the poor geese.

"That sounds good," said the geese who laid the golden eggs. "We're willing to give more so everybody can have nice things." But two or three grumbled that if they wanted to help poor geese, they didn't need Cal's children to help them.

So farmer Cal's children collected more golden eggs and built themselves very nice houses, and spent part of the money to help the poor geese.

And everything was still fine on Cal's farm.

But soon Cal's children wanted more, so they said, "Oh geese, some among you still are poorer than the others, so we will take a few more golden eggs and use them to help the poor.

"Yes!" said the poorer geese.

"Well... I guess." said the golden geese.

So Cal's children took more golden eggs and bought themselves Mercedes and spent part of the money to help the poor geese.

Some of the golden geese began to grumble, and some flew away to neighboring farms and some decided to retire from the golden egg business since they didn't get to keep as much as before. But most kept working and stayed. After all, they did want to be kind to the poor, and besides, the weather was still very nice and the mountains and sea were still beautiful.

Soon Cal's kids found they were not collecting as many golden eggs as before since some of the golden geese had left and some had retired and very few of the younger geese wanted to get into the golden egg business - at least not on Cal's farm.

And so Cal's children came to the geese once again:

"Oh geese," they said, "the supply of golden eggs is down and the poor among you are suffering! We will have to take more golden eggs to continue helping them."

"Yes!" said the poorer geese.

"No!" said the golden geese.

But now there were many more poor geese than golden geese, and so the objections of the golden geese were lost in the roar of approval.

But soon, when farmer Cal's kids came to get more golden eggs, they didn't find as many as before because many of the golden geese had left, and those who stayed had decided to get out of the golden egg business.

And with so few golden eggs Cal's children barely had enough eggs to pay for the gas and insurance for their Mercedes and for heating their swimming pools, so there was almost nothing left over for the poor geese.

So Farmer Cal's children went to the geese and said: "Oh geese, you can see for yourselves how greedy the golden geese are! They want to keep all the eggs for themselves! They don't care about the poor."

"Yeah!" said the poor geese, and they spat on the few golden geese that were left.

And the golden geese said nothing. They just flew off to a neighboring farm.

This is a little bit dated, but a while ago I was asked to give my thoughts for a small missions books publisher about the recent Google book settlement. (As background, Google was sued for copyright violations by a consortium of book publishers because it has been scanning and making available online portions of books, or complete books.) I'm not a lawyer, so don't take this as having any legal weight, but here are a few wild speculations that might be interesting:

One big problem in the publishing industry is trying to figure out who owns the copyright to what. There must be tens of thousands of copyright owners, and companies that own copyrights are started and go out of business with great regularity, and people die, and who owns the rights to what is often very mysterious. Google wanted to digitize all the books and publications it can get its hands on, but tracking down all the copyright holders to get permission from each one would have been a continuing nightmare.

So - and this may be my imagination, but I'm tempted to see a grand design by Google - Google executes this plan:

First, it does something that some would say is of dubious legality by digitizing in-copyright publications. This, of course, ticked-off the copyright owners, who generally have no more cohesion than a herd of cats, and forced them to band together to fight for their interests.

Ah-ha! Google has now forced its legal opponents to form a single, unified group. Now Google only has one organization to bargain with instead of tens of thousands of mostly-unknown copyright holders. Nightmare solved!

Google then seals a deal with the copyright-holders group, thereby covering itself legally and opening new business possibilities (such as putting ads on the pages of the digitized books). But since the basic legal issue (whether Google was within the law by digitizing the books) remains undecided, this would appear to mean that any competitors who want to copy Google's digitizing plan will have to overcome these legal hurdles on their own.

Also, and I think most importantly for society and the publishing industry, the deal creates an independent, nonprofit organization tentatively called "The Registry," which will represent copyright holders in their relations with Google. The Registry is being given the task (among other things) of keeping track of the contact information for the rights owners and doing business deals for their benefit with Google.

Wow! This registry could be a very positive thing. It could facilitate publishers and authors contacting copyright holders to obtain permission to excerpt or reprint their works. Wedded to the Internet, it could be the basis for a "Permissions Marketplace," where copyright holders could offer a license to their works for sale at whatever price they choose. People could simply pay the price online and use the material without any further fuss. I think this could be a big boon to publishers in general.