1. In The Grammarian's Five Daughters, a fable by science fiction writer Eleanor Arnason, a mother bestows grammatical gifts to five daughters seeking their fortune in the world. The eldest daughter gets a bag full of nouns, the next gets verbs, the next adjectives, and the next adverbs. The youngest daughter is stuck with the leftovers, those “dull little words” overlooked by everyone else: the prepositions. (HT: OUPblog)
2. How To Beat Carnival Games (HT: Lifehacker)
3. 100 of the Best Legal Free Full Version Games You Can Download Online (HT: The Presurfer)
4. How to Whiten your Teeth with Strawberries and Baking Soda
5. Men Choose Romance Over Success
Men may be more willing than women to sacrifice achievement goals for a romantic relationship, according to a new study by Catherine Mosher of Duke Medical Center and Sharon Danoff-Burg from the University of Albany. Their findings challenge our preconceptions that women are more likely to prioritize people and relationships while men are more focused on themselves and their achievements.
6. Quote of the Week: "People claim to believe all kinds of things, but if you want to find out what they really believe, see what they can sing about." -- Fred Sanders
7. 20 Big-Time Plot Twists [Warning: Contains spoilers] (HT: Reformed Chicks Blabbing)
8. Paul Kjoss Helseth on how racial reconciliation won’t happen if we don’t take Ephesians seriously:
Principled opposition to the pursuit of “racial reconciliation” in the church is not in itself evidence of intercultural incompetence. It can be evidence of eagerness to safeguard the primacy and sufficiency of the gospel in the life of the church by insisting that believers have already been reconciled to God and to one another by the Cross of Christ.
9. 24 Tips To Becoming An Early Riser (HT: Lifehacker)
10. John Koessler says it's emptiness, not fullness, that Jesus blesses:
Blessed are those who hunger? Hunger and thirst signal need. They are symptoms of emptiness and unfulfilled desire. How can they be a source of blessing?
The fact that Jesus says he is talking about hunger and thirst for righteousness clarifies little. He seems to have put the emphasis in the wrong place. Why not, "Blessed are the righteous?" Hunger implies a lack of righteousness. Jesus' proposal is so radical, it turns our notions of God and righteousness and blessing on their heads. He blesses what most of us would curse.
According to Jesus, when we draw near to the kingdom, it is better to come empty than full. We are tempted to think that righteousness is the condition we must be in to be blessed. Jesus says the opposite. Righteousness is the blessing; hunger is the precondition.
11. The 100 Most Powerful Women (HT: The Presurfer)
12. Question of the Week: Macht from Prosthesis wonders, "How come when a married man with kids gets caught trying to have sex with another man, the first reaction some people have is to say "he's gay" rather than "he's bisexual?" Call me stupid, but (without knowing any other information about a person) that seems like the most obvious label for a person who has sex with both men and women."
13. Walter C. Kaiser, Jr. on Job, his friends, and "reductionist justice"
Where then did Job's three friends go wrong? They reduced all evil to "retributive suffering," which is caused by sin and disobedience to God. But there are seven other types of suffering mentioned in the Bible: educational or disciplinary suffering as in Proverbs 3:11 or Hebrews 12:5-6; vicarious suffering, as in the case of our Lord's death on the cross; empathetic suffering, where one person's grief affects many others, as Isaiah 63:9 illustrates; evidential or testimonial suffering, as in the first two chapters of Job; doxological suffering for the glory of God, as in the man born blind in John 9; revelational suffering, as in the case of the prophet Hosea's wife abandoning him; and apocalyptic or eschatological suffering that will come at the end of this age.
14. A poll taken by the ONE campaign of a survey of 500 past Republican Iowans found that three in four voters (77%) agree that the Unites States has a moral obligation to address problems like disease, hunger and lack of economic opportunity in the poorest countries because it was built on a solid foundation of faith that teaches us to help others. When millions of children around the world are dying from preventable diseases and hunger, 79% of Republicans agree that we have a moral obligation to do what we can to help.
15. How to read a blog post in 13 steps
16. Dictionary of Management Jargon (HT: )
17. Top 10 Incredible Recordings, including Alessandro Moreschi, the only recorded true castrato, Mado Robin, a French singer who recorded the highest note ever sung, and the first recording of human voices by Frank Lambert. (HT: The Presurfer)
18. How to Get a Job on Craigslist
19. 12 Things to Do with Coca Cola
#6 A can of Coke poured into the toilet will clean it. The acid in the drink gets to work right away.
(HT: Dumb Little Man)
20. 18 Overlooked Things Everyone Should Bring to College (HT: Lifehacker)
21. The World's Ugliest Cars (HT: The Presurfer)
22. Test yourself in a game of Rock, Paper, Scissors against an Artificial Intelligence program. (HT: Ian Ayres)
23. Prediction Tools #1 -- Predict How Long You'll Live
24. Prediction Tools #2 -- Predict Your Child's Adult Height
25. Prediction Tools #3 -- Predict the Success of a Book Title
26. Prediction Tools #4 -- Predict Demographics of Who Will Use a Webpage (HT: Ian Ayres, for #23-26)">)
27. Psychiatrists are the least religious of all physicians -- A nationwide survey of the religious beliefs and practices of American physicians has found that the least religious of all medical specialties is psychiatry. Among psychiatrists who have a religion, more than twice as many are Jewish and far fewer are Protestant or Catholic, the two most common religions among physicians overall. The study, published in the September 2007 issue of Psychiatric Services, also found that religious physicians, especially Protestants, are less likely to refer patients to psychiatrists, and more likely to send them to members of the clergy or to a religious counselor.
28. Church Takes "Novel Approach" to Deacon Ministry
"Formerly the deacons pretty much ran the church" said Alvin Turner, a life-long member of [Mt. Salus Baptist Church in Gainesville]. "But during our last congregational meeting we came up with some new and fresh ideas about what the deacons ministry ought to be like."
The "new" approach will be this; the deacons will now minister to the widows and the needy of the church so that the pastor can focus on the ministry of the word.
While many are excited about this "new" approach, some of the deacons are less enthusiastic about the change.
"I've been a deacon for 35 years" said Terry Cummings. "We were running things just fine around here. I'm not about to start serving food, or fixing someone's porch, I'll tell you that right now."
[Note: This article is satirical. Really, what Baptist deacons would set aside their Biblical role of running the church to take on the optional tasks of feeding widows and orphans?]
29. You don't have to hate other groups to love your own -- Shiite vs. Sunni. Red state vs. Blue state. Immigrant vs. native. While it may appear that conflict is an inevitable part of interaction between groups, research actually suggests that fighting, hating and contempt between groups is not a necessary part of human nature, according to an Ohio State University professor of psychology.
30. Money illusion and the market -- Standard economics assumes that people base their decisions on real value only and take changes in price tags properly into account. For example, a rational consumer is assumed to base his shopping decisions on "real" prices (e.g., how many hours do I have to work for a loaf of bread?) and would not change his consumption patterns if all "nominal" prices were to move in proportion (e.g. are inflated by the same factor). Yet, normal people are often confused by purely nominal changes.
31. ZIP codes and property values predict obesity rates -- Neighborhood property values predict local obesity rates better than education or incomes, according to a study from the University of Washington being published online this week by the journal Social Science and Medicine. For each additional $100,000 in the median price of homes, UW researchers found, obesity rates in a given ZIP code dropped by 2 percent.
32. God thoughts influence your generosity -- Thoughts related to God cultivate cooperative behaviour and generosity, according to University of British Columbia psychology researchers. In a study to be published in the September issue of Psychological Science journal, researchers investigated how thinking about God and notions of a higher power influenced positive social behavior, specifically cooperation with others and generosity to strangers. The study found that priming people with "god concepts" -- by activating subconscious thoughts through word games -- promoted altruism. In addition, the researchers found that this effect was consistent in behavior whether people declared themselves believers or not.
33. So what does a bull in a china shop really do?
How to Read a Blog Post in Three Steps:
1) Begin at the beginning,
2) Go on until you come to the end,
3) Then stop.
Regarding number twelve... if you're a gay man having sex with only with a women, then that's the functional equivalent of celibacy. If you're a bisexual man only having sex with a woman, then you have a sex life, but it may not be as rich as you'd like.
Now, in which situation would a man be willing to risk what is perhaps the cushiest job in the universe? You'd have to be really desperate...
No. 19, the stuff to do with Coke, is all false urban legend. Check out Snopes.com.
Gene,
Actually, Snopes confirms that it is true:
In the grammar story, the second daughter (verbs) marries a princess. She is told she might get an heir if she beds down one of the princes. What the heezy?
Marie,
I think the point is that verbs are gay. ; )
Either that, or the kingdom is in Massachuesetts.
Joe,
I've really come to look forward to your 33 items post each week. I appreciate the breadth of items represented and that you take the time to comb the internet for this stuff. Keep it up! Thank you.
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