2. The Origin of Everyday Punctuation Marks
3. Can you name all 43 US Presidents? You have ten minutes to get all 43. I only got 32. (Don't laugh, it's harder than you might think.) (HT: Neatorama)
4. Robert Samuelson writes about The Sad Fate of the Comma. I sympathize with Samuelson's dismay. I've long thought the decline in the use of the serial comma portends the end of Western culture. (I'm only half kidding.)
5. Jennifer Roback Morse argues that we should "Get the Government Out of Sex Ed":
If you need an operation and the doctor tells you that overall, seven-eighths of patients have a successful outcome, you might think that was a pretty good deal. But suppose the operation failed. While you’re in the recovery room, the doctor tells you, “Oh, by the way, for people like you, the operation only succeeds 30% of the time. But we’ll sell you the solution to the botched operation.” You’d be furious. You’d sue that doctor for malpractice if you didn’t punch him first.
Yet this is precisely the situation Congress supports by funding Planned Parenthood and its allies to provide “comprehensive sex education” in secondary schools.
Morse notes that, a poor cohabiting teenager using the Pill has a failure rate of 48.4%; 70% if they're using condoms.
6. 78 Timeless Wealth Building Tips from Benjamin Franklin
7. Quote of the Week -- Kim Gandy, president of the National Organization for Women, on the Democrats embrace of liberal evangelicals: "I don't want a progressive evangelical movement any more than I want the conservative one we have right now."
8. The Seven Habits of Persuasive Speakers
9. Foreign Policy magazine lists "The World’s Stupidest Fatwas":
Pokemon -- Denouncing the lovable Japanese cartoon characters as having “possessed the minds” of Saudi youngsters, Saudi Arabia’s highest religious authority banned Pokémon video games and cards in the spring of 2001. Not only do Saudi scholars believe that Pokémon encourages gambling, which is forbidden in Islam, but it is apparently a front for Israel as well.
With full leasing ownership of the 700MHz spectrum, Google will try to effectively cripple the cell phone industry. […] Google is requesting “open devices” that will work on the “open networks.” In other words, Google wants to create the ability for companies (and most likely itself) to create devices that will seamlessly connect to the broadband spectrum. Why can’t one of those devices be a phone?
[…] Within no time, Google will announce that wireless will be made available to the public through its system. After all, it did it in San Francisco, why won’t it do it all over the country? In effect, Google would run a “third broadband pipe.”
[…] Once the company announces the wireless broadband to the nation, it will immediately announce that Google Phone everyone has been talking about. The Google Phone will work specifically with the Google system (kind of like Skype) and will be free of charge.
(HT: Gadgetopia)
11. Nine super powers made real by modern technology. (HT: Neatorama)
12. Lewis Pugh tests the limits of human stupidity by being the first man to swim at the North Pole:
The 36-year-old Londoner spent almost 19 minutes at minus 1.8C as he front crawled for a full kilometer - more than half a mile in the coldest water a human has ever swum.
"It was like jumping into a dark black hole," he said. "The pain was immediate and felt like my body was on fire.
"I was in excruciating pain from beginning to end and I nearly quit on a few occasions. It was without doubt the hardest swim of my life."
But he said that a colleague ski-ing on pack ice alongside him looking out for hungry polar bears spurred him on.
(HT: Neatorama)
13. Scientists Solve Checkers: Computer scientists at the University of Alberta have solved checkers, the popular board game with a history that dates back to 3,000 B.C. After 18-and-a-half years and sifting through 500 billion billion (a five followed by 20 zeroes) checkers positions, Dr. Jonathan Schaeffer and colleagues have built a checkers-playing computer program that cannot be beaten. Completed in late April this year, the program, Chinook, may be played to a draw but will never be defeated.
14. Adrian Warnock wants it all:
"Why shouldn't we have churches that are every bit as concerned about doctrinal accuracy and knowledge as John MacArthur, that love relational intimacy with Jesus as much as John Arnott, see miraculous healings that are every bit as dynamic as the ones the tele-evangelists claim to have seen, are as full of vision and purpose as Rick Warren, as skilled in leadership as Bill Hybels, as humble and committed to spiritual maturity as C. J. Mahaney, as relevant to practical life as the author of any self-help book you can think of, that impact social needs in the model of Shaftsbury, tackle political issues like Wilberforce, preach with both the passion for souls of Spurgeon and the passion for God's glory of John Piper, that hear from God as clearly as any modern prophet, are as aggressively missional as Mark Driscoll, have the apostolic drive of Terry Virgo, and yet somehow still feel as comforting as my wife's homemade apple crumble with custard?"
15. Credential Society vs. Babies
In one way, credential inflation is just a relative game. If a job that took a high school degree before now takes a college degree, then everyone just competes to move up a step, without changing relative position. The same number of people, drawn from the same classes, end up with the job as before -- it just takes them longer to get there.
There is one calendar, though, that it more imperious than the academic one: the biological clock for babies. Now that all positions are legally open to women, women as a group have been doing very well in competing in school to prepare for the top positions -- doing better, in fact, than men. However, highly credentialed women face a conflict that highly credentialed men do not face nearly as much: how to fit in having and raising babies with the endless credentials chase?
Credential inflation hurts women more than men for irreducible biological reasons. Babies are reason enough to consider fighting the credential society.
(HT: Stuart Buck)
16. Doug Groothius on the Lessons from Francis Schaeffer
17. The Chronicle of Higher Education makes an intriguing argument: If We Don't Call Them Names, the Terrorists Win
Let's mention just one key goal: the education of the world's Muslim youth. Instead of hearing moral praise and encouragement for terrorism from jihadists, which then gets mixed in their minds with the nonjudgmental, tactical talk of Western officials and media, they'd have to absorb a steady stream of insults of terrorists' intelligence, morality, decency, and reasoning. Young Muslims would have to get used to hearing jihadist heroes described as savages, scum, and uncivilized losers, along with the reasons why. It would intellectually force them, far more than they are forced today, to choose between two visions of the world.
We should not minimize the thirst for respect among terrorists and their potential sympathizers. When we treat terrorists only as tactical foes, as though we're too jaded for moral talk, we raise the self-respect of terrorists and their appeal to young people.
(HT: Professor Bainbridge)
18. This IP Address Map lookup service assist you in locating the geographical location of an IP Address. (HT:
Collin Brendemuehl)
19. NameMyVote.com, a game in which users view photos of other users and guess, by their appearance alone, whether they are Democrats, Republicans or Independents.
20. 50 Tools that can Improve your Writing Skills
21. In the event you are seated next to a Calvinist… (HT: Irish Calvinist)
22. The Slippery Slope of Kenya's Donkey Nappy Plan: "If we have to put nappies on our donkeys, soon they will say our cows need them too." (HT: Marginal Revolution)
23. 40+ Tips to Improve your Grammar and Punctuation
24. Jonathan at Smart Wealthy Rich explains what playing in a rock band taught him about running a business. (HT: Steve-Olson.com)
25. Top 10 Most Memorable Movie Cars My favorite is "No. 3: 1961 Ferrari 250 GT, 'Ferris Bueller's Day Off'" (HT: Neatorama)
26. Top 20 Skylines in the World My favorite (obviously) is #18 -- Dallas, TX (HT: Neatorama)
27. 45 Best Freeware Design Programs (HT: Lifehacker)
28. Do children understand God's mind before they understand other people's?
29. The end of barroom brawls -- study shows alcohol can reduce aggression.
30. Be a Theater Geek, Be Emotionally Healthy: A unique study to be published the journal Child Development found that adolescents’ emotional skills were strengthened through a high school theater program.
31. Be a Brat, Be Friendless: Behavior problems in the early grades appear to lead to peer rejection and a lack of friends in elementary school. This, in turn, can lead to early adolescent depression and loneliness.
32. play
33. Breaking News: The Internet Has Crashed
http://www.evangelicaloutpost.com/mt/mt-trackback.cgi/3768
1
Did the US Presidents thing in less than 2 minutes. :)
posted on 07.23.2007 12:38 AM2
Speaking of the car in "Ferris Bueller" - if ever I could have stepped into a movie and intervened, it would have been that scene in Cameron's garage when the car meets its demise.
posted on 07.23.2007 2:45 AM3
It looks to me like the link to Adrian's post is broken. It should not have the apostrophe.
this one should work.
posted on 07.23.2007 7:25 AM4
Morse notes that, a poor cohabiting teenager using the Pill has a failure rate of 48.4%; 70% if they're using condoms.
Heee, what happened to Joe's impassioned defense of free will? If you have an operation it's success is almost entirely determined by the skill of the doctor and the condition of your body. Maybe 'positive thinking' plays some role but unless you're Yoda from Star Wars it's probably quite limited when compared to those other two factors. Education, though, only provides tools that may or may not be used. Is a screwdriver a failure because it sits in its owner's toolbox until it rots, never used for anything useful?
A true failure rate would be a poor cohabitating teenager not knowing she was supposed to take the pill every day to avoid pregnancy or not knowing he needed to wear a condom every time to avoid STDs or pregnancy. If, though, a cohabitating teenager decided not to use these things it isn't really a failure of education. It's either a decision to get pregnant (in which case education here is successful since they know you have to stop using the pill/condom to get pregnant) or a decision to 'live dangerously'.
9. Foreign Policy magazine lists "The World’s Stupidest Fatwas":
Pokemon ...
I was laughing until I recalled we had a little fatwa of our own against the Teletubbies....
posted on 07.23.2007 7:25 AM5
I believe Number 21. In the event you are seated next to a Calvinist… is originally from http://tominthebox.blogspot.com/2007/06/calvinism-air-safety.html
posted on 07.23.2007 8:43 AMa great reformed satire blog!
6
Not to boast in my ignorance (thought that's exactly what I'm doing), but I only got 12 on the presidents. Another lesson in humility for me.
posted on 07.23.2007 8:58 AM7
"3. Can you name all 43 US Presidents?"
By the five-minute mark, I had all but two. Arthur and Harding somehow eluded me.
posted on 07.23.2007 9:21 AM8
Sounds like an economic problem to me - frankly, if said teenagers could earn a livable wage more easily, they probably wouldn't be cohabiting.
Fix the poverty problem, and you contribute to fixing the social problem.
posted on 07.23.2007 10:21 AM9
#7 needs a little more context. You're quoting an article that apparently quotes Time magazine. Even there it doesn't seem to me to be verbatim. At any rate, here's the paragraph from Time.
- - - - -
National Organization for Women president Kim Gandy, a Presbyterian, found herself at a luncheon where she was scheduled to speak after Jim Wallis and before Jesse Jackson. She challenged Wallis' vision of a new army of Christian soldiers head on: "I don't want a progressive evangelical movement any more than I want the conservative one we have right now," she declared. It does not constitute hostility to religion, she suggests, to want to keep it at a distance from political activity. "I don't want my pastor telling politicians what to do," she says, "or anyone else's pastor doing that."
posted on 07.23.2007 10:30 AM10
Actually a bigger problem with this part of this study Morse is making such a big deal about is this 'poor cohabitating teenager' demographic.
1. How many teenagers are cohabitating to begin with? I'm guessing this means teenagers in a married relationship or a relationship like marriage (both living in the same place, sleeping in the same bed). This is hardly representative of most teens.
2. Is this a fair test of contraceptives? Such a relationship is probably the most likely to encourage lax use of contraceptives. After all they are already living together so a pregnancy isn't exactly going to be shocking to anyone now is it?
3. Is this a fair test of anyone's educational program?
But it doesn't. To make an apples to apples test you need to compare a group of teens exposed to 'abstinence education' compared to a group exposed to either no education or some other types. In this real test 'abstinence education' has been coming up very short.
That's a strange statement. How does a condom or pill know you are poor and therefore willwork less hard? Or do poor kids magically have stronger sperm and eggs that are able to defeat pills and condoms? Why it doesn't. What you're probably seeing here is improper use of the contraception. Perhaps this is due to lack of education (for example, not knowing that antibiotics can cause the pill to stop working) or perhaps this is due to choices ("ohhh I don't feel like using it today").
If this was true 'contraceptive failure' the response would be a flury of lawsuits. Imagine, just for a moment, a pharmaceutical company accidently produced several million doses of the pill that were placeabos. Thousands of unintended pregnancies would result and probably tens of thousands of lawsuits.
Why are not any lawyers getting rich going to these 'poor cohabitating teens' and asking them if they were on the pill and then offering to sue for the 'failure'?
It is time for the federal government to get out of the sex education business once and for all.
It really isn't in the sex education business except to push 'abstinence education' as a form of cultural pork to its allies in the reality challenged sector (aka the religious right).
posted on 07.23.2007 11:19 AM11
How could any movie car list be complete without Herbie?
For shame.
posted on 07.23.2007 12:31 PM12
Comparing sex ed to a doctor's advice before surgery has to be one of the worst analogies I've heard in a while.
A better comparison would be with driver's ed. Let's suppose that instead of teaching kids to drive safely and wear their seatbelts, we decided to instead focus completely on driving abstinence. Teenagers could still get their licenses at 16 (after all, 16 year old kids can legally have sex), but we would expend hundreds of millions of dollars trying to teach them to choose to never ever drive. Let's face it, there is no such thing as "safe driving" for a 16 year old. Even if they wear a seatbelt (condom) there's a good chance they will be in a wreck and may be seriously injured or even killed.
From now on, let us campaign and pressure the government to take the abstinence only approach to driver's ed. Any other approach is merely encouraging them to drive and putting them in mortal danger.
posted on 07.23.2007 1:04 PM13
"How could any movie car list be complete without Herbie?"
We are also missing Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.
posted on 07.23.2007 3:48 PM14
Is that game rigged?
Without a doubt I picked all the pretty girls to be republican (Except for one who was dressed a little slutty) and was right and all unnattractive girls to be Democrats and was right.
Statistically speaking there has to be some non-slutty good looking Democrat females. So i'm guessing the game is rigged.
posted on 07.23.2007 9:04 PM15
I matched your 32. Bottom line is, I suck at the 19th century presidents. The ten I missed were all between 1817 and 1901. And I'm kicking myself for having missed about five of them.
posted on 07.24.2007 12:22 PM