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George Friedman makes a living foretelling the future.  He doesn’t use tarot cards or tea leaves or the lines on your palm, but his pronouncements are nonetheless spooky.  Best selling author and founder of STRATFOR, the world’s leading private intelligence company, Friedman uses information available to all of us, coupled with his own private findings, to which he throws in the key ingredient - perspective.  In The Next 100 Years:  A Forecast for the 21st Century, Friedman does what almost no one is capable; he couples an objective look at the facts with a constant reminder that what seems of critical importance in today’s geopolitical scenery will probably have faded to a footnote of history within 20 years.

Friedman predicts many surprising things for the coming century.  China will not pose a major threat, but Mexico will emerge as a world power.  The US-jihadist war is he calls it, will soon blow over having been, if not won outright by the U.S., at least not lost, which amounts to the same thing.  Poland and Turkey will gain global prominence.  And the most surprizing one of all, his overarching theme of the book:  this will be the century of U.S. dominance.  Rather than being on the decline, the U.S. is undeniably in ascendance.  U.S. naysaying is so prevalent both at home and in Europe that we tend to take our demise as inevitable and imminent.  Read the Next 100 Years to find out why that is a parochial and short-sighted view.  Fascinating reading!

When I see an established author teamed with a newcomer on a project, I assume this is someone the publisher is trying to promote.  So when one of my favorite authors, master of Christian suspense Ted Dekker, came out with a new book with “& Erin Healy” after his name, I assumed she was really the main author and they were just using his name.  If that is indeed the case, the novel Kiss represents the appearance of a major new talent.

Shauna wakes from a coma with six months of her recent memory missing after a horrible car accident.  Can any of the terrible things she’s being accused of be true, or is someone framing her?  What about this man who is supposed to be her boyfriend?  Can she trust him?  While looking for answers she uncovers skeletons in the closet of her estranged father who is the frontrunner in next month’s presidential election.  There are plenty of the heartpounding thrills that always keep me up past my bedtime when reading Dekker, but there is more.  Healy’s writing is a bit richer in introspection and human emotion than I expect from a Dekker novel.  I think Dekker devotees will love Kiss.  I suspect some who never cared for Dekker will too.  Mark me down as a Healy fan.  I’ll be eager to read the next Dekker/Healy collaboration (announced for Jan. 2010) as well as any solo efforts that are surely forthcoming from Erin Healy.

My family and I finally got around to watching Fireproof yesterday and we thoroughly enjoyed it! While it didn’t live up to the hype of “Christian moral values with Hollywood production values”, it was still well done and a great story. Kirk Cameron’s acting is solid in the lead role of fireman Caleb Holt who lives by the motto “never leave your partner behind” yet is on the verge of letting his marriage crumble around him. Unfortunately, most of the other actors are weak, some painfully so. But you soon get swept up in the story, making it easier to ignore the clumsiness of the acting.

When self-absorbed, insensitive Caleb is confronted with a wife who plans to leave, his dad challenges him with “the Love Dare”, a 40 day program to save his marriage. At first Caleb goes through the motions of being a better husband, but it slowly starts to dawn on him that he doesn’t have a clue what sacrificial love is. The film gives a clear and credible presentation of Jesus as the answer to the central problem of life - our sinfulness. Whether things are mostly right or mostly wrong with their marriage, all Christian couples will benefit from seeing Fireproof.

I am not stupid.  Honors degree in engineering.  MBA from a top school.  PhD in managment.  Fluent in French (English too, some say).  But when I try to operate the cable remote I feel pretty much like the bumbling idiot who teenagers roll their eyes at and sitcoms hold out as the typical clueless dad.

Fortunately John Palfrey and Urs Gasser have me figured out.  I’m an immigrant in this world.  Not a native.  The world I was born into no longer exists and, like an alien, I’ve found myself plunked down in foreign territory.  So of course I can’t be expected to feel perfectly at home here, regardless of whatever smarts I might possess.  In Born Digital:  Understanding the First Generation of Digital Natives, they explain the brave new world inhabited by those under 30 — the first generation born and raised completely wired.  Here we see a sociological portrait of this exotic tribe of young people and find they are both extraordinarily sophisticated and strangely narrow.  Good reading for those who would like to have some clue about the current generation of texters, tweeters, and bluetoothed bloggers.  order here