This has been a fantastic trip and I am glad that I came.  It’s funny, looking up and down the street, if you don’t look at the street signage, you would almost thing that you were in a large city on the Eastern Seaboard like Boston or Alexandria with much older architecture.  It looks pretty normal, which is part of the point.  Try to go anywhere or talk to anyone and it’s pretty clear that you’re not in Kansas anymore (sorry, I had to).  For the most part, English is spoken as a second language and most people can switch easily between the two.  Being that both English and Dutch are Germanic influenced languages, there are many similarities, which also helps when trying to read signs while speaking only English.  Usually you can get an idea of what’s going on and if you can’t, someone who speaks both languages is likely nearby.

The real bonus of the trip is the morning teaching sessions.  Having taken two Missions and two Church History classes through my church’s in-house Bible institute, it really set me up for taking this trip.  Our Senior Pastor and trip leader, Jeff Adams had repeatedly said that while some content is repetitive there were some things that could be taught far better here than in a classroom and he is so right!  I am not much of an artistic person in terms of fine arts and most of the time, whatever message the artist is trying to convey just blows right past me, but Jeff has spend considerable time showing us how philosophical ideology and forward thinking shows up later in art.  It is far too much to get into here, but it’s a great study!  I know that when I get to the museums, I will get a lot more out of it than I otherwise would have.

If you have any connection to KCBT and not been, I highly recommend the trip.  When you look at the itinerary, it looks like there is oodles and oodles of downtime and yes there is some, but boy it goes fast!

I’m sitting in my room writing this and chowing down on some stroopwafels.  If you know what they are, I know you are jealous.  If you don’t, you should be!

I’m not going to go off the deep end and turn into crazy apocalyptic Bible guy, but I have said to Crystal for quite some time that whatever Satan’s famed mark of the beast spoken of at the end of Revelation 13 will be something slick.  Something so technologically awesome that will make unlocked 3G iPhones look like primitive versions of mancala. The mark won’t be your fingerprints and will likely not be a barcode, but according to Scripture, it WILL be something prominent either on your right hand or your forehead. So what could it be?  Endless speculations exist and the truth is that no one knows.  What is known is that there will be severe penalties for refusing the mark and great rewards for getting it.  It’s going to make life so much easier.  Why wouldn’t you want this?

Mmmmkay.  Welcome to the future!   I’m a little short on details, but check this video out that was posted by our friends at wired.com. You can read the whole article about what they’re calling an “LED Tattoo”. It’s pretty trippy!  If you’re really feeling frisky, check out the links at the bottom to other articles on the same thing.

Silicon on silk: This clear silk film, about one centimeter squared, has six silicon transistors on its surface. These flexible devices can be implanted in mice like the one in this image without causing any harm, and the silk degrades over time. The orange liquid on the hair is a disinfectant used during the surgery. Credit: Rogers/Omenetto

Did you see that? It’s like something out of the “Alien” trilogy!  Did you see it moving around and stuff?  Ewwww!  All that I’m sayin’…is that I’m sayin’!  And the sound it makes?  In the movies, I’m cool with it.  In real life it would give me the heebie jeebies.  The whole thing is sick!  Sick as in kind of awesome and sick as I might start puking all over from being grossed out!  My “Is this a good thing or a bad thing?” discernment muscle is a little confused right now.

The fact that Philips is involved means that A) this idea has serious merit (at least in theory) and B) it now has cash behind it and legions of R & D scientists.  So, okay, back to quasi-reality.  Is this LED tattoo thing going to be the long awaited mark of the beast?  I’m going to file it under “possible but unlikely.”

But I bet they’re somehow related.

So just remember that when your great-grandkids come home and want to show you how they can watch movies in the palm of their hand with no external media and can open doors, pay bills, start their cars and take online classes with their new 5th Gen LED Tattoos or something crazy like that.

So, my final assessment after raising tons of questions and offering zero answers as is so typical rampant in the blogosphere?

Freaky, dude.  That’s all I got.