1. Ronald Reagan: A Graphic Biography
2. The social-network of the Marvel Universe: Physicist Pablo Gleiser studied the social web within the fictional universe of Marvel comics, comprising 6486 characters in 12,942 issues (How to Be a Superhero [PDF]). Taking two characters to be linked if they appeared in the same issue, he found a superficially realistic social network. A small fraction of characters - notably the superheroes themselves - had far more links than most others, acting as key social hubs.
The single-strongest bond in the network -- i.e. the tie most commonly reiterated in Marvel plots -- is between Peter Parker and Mary Jane. The next most-important superconnectors? The Thing, the Beast, Namor, and the Hulk. (HT: collision detection)
3. Is there a "culture of corruption in the GOP? Well, there has been a scandal, arrest, indictment, ethics violation, admission of guilt, etc., every week from January to September 1 of 2007.
4. Random bits of trivia of American life from pollster Mark Penn's new "Microtrends”:
Over the past two generations, the number of left-handed Americans has nearly doubled. Between 2004 and 2005, the purchase of fashion yarn increased 56 percent. The fastest growing group of knitters are teens and twentysomethings. The fastest growing group of videogamers? Moms over the age of 45. People making more than $75,000 a year are much more likely to be among the 30 million Americans with tattoos than members of lower-income groups. Of young Californians surveyed last year, 1 percent aspire to become military snipers. Only 77 of Harvard's 6,700 undergraduates are majoring in math. At Yale, that number is 38 out of 5,300.
5. Marine Team Finds Surprising Evidence Supporting A Great Biblical Flood
Prof. Beer was part of the team on board "Mediterranean Explorer" that recently headed to the Black Sea off the coast of Turkey, the site where historians believe the great biblical flood occurred. EcoOcean and an international team believe they have found evidence to substantiate what is written in the Bible.
Says Weil, "We found that indeed a flood happened around that time. From core samples, we see that a flood broke through the natural barrier separating the Mediterranean Sea and the freshwater Black Sea, bringing with it seashells that only grow in a marine environment. There was no doubt that it was a fast flood -- one that covered an expanse four times the size of Israel. It might not have been Noah, as it is written in the Bible, but we believe people in that region had to build boats in order to save their animals from drowning. We think that the ones who survived were fishermen -- they already had the boats."
6. In Gay By Choice? The Science of Sexual Identity, the ultraliberal MotherJones magazine dares to ask "If science proves sexual orientation is more fluid than we've been led to believe, can homosexuality still be a protected right?"
7. Quote of the Week I: "What is most scarce in our culture is long, thoughtful, patient, deliberate analysis of questions that do not have obvious or easy answers." -- Leon Wieseltier, quoted by Steve Wasserman. (HT: Gideon Strauss)
8. Quote of the Week II: "For centuries, Christians have posed the dilemma of Christian theology as a problem of faith v. reason. That's a non-starter, a concession of defeat, for it assumes that there can be such a thing as a faith-free rationality. But there cannot be. What we have is not a conflict of faith and reason, but a conflict of various faith-reasons or reason-faiths." -- Peter J. Leithart
9. David Wayne on being the human being at the office:
I submit for your consideration that the problems we all face at work are a direct result of the fall, and more specifically a result of our god-playing. God-playing explains the tyrants and egomanicacs who inhabit all rungs of the corporate ladder. God-playing also explains the chronic underachievers in an organization. After all, if you are God you aren't there to put yourself out and produce for the benefit of another, you exist to be worshiped. What doesn't bring you glory isn't worth your time. God-playing explains the broken relationships at work, after all, a god can buck no resistance to his will. With such a mindset we don't go to work to love and serve, but to further our own plans and agendas.
10. John Wilson says Christians were part of the '60s, too.
Not long ago, I took a look at a half-dozen histories of the '60s. Every one of them mentioned Students for a Democratic Society. Only one of them mentioned the Catholic charismatic revival that began on a retreat held by Duquesne University faculty and students early in 1967. Or the parallel influence of Pentecostalism on Protestants, especially of the evangelical variety, that changed the face of worship and piety in countless American churches and connected American believers with the global surge of Pentecostalism. And what about the Lubavitchers and similar Orthodox Jewish movements that began to attract young people at the same time?
Why this ludicrous disparity in coverage? Simple. In the master narrative of these histories, shaped by a peculiarly complacent conception of civil society, what millions of people happened to be doing in churches or synagogues isn't worthy of notice, especially if it contradicts the assumption that the trajectory of the '60s was taking a whole generation away from organized religion. Sure, the slideshow will feature Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, but a bunch of Christians speaking in tongues? Please!
Note, too, that just as chroniclers from the left want to preserve the zeitgeist of the '60s from any contamination by the Holy Spirit, so chroniclers from the right--conservative Christians in particular--are wont to cast that decade as a time of dramatic national apostasy, a turning away from God, the bitter harvest of which we are now reaping. To acknowledge that the reality was much messier--that the Bergstroms are as well suited as Jim Morrison or Janis Joplin to represent the spirit of that time--would require these pundits to start from scratch.
11. Lists of Underrated Novels from The Guardian and New York magazine (HT: Marginal Revolution)
12. The 'next step' for pro-lifers is a move back to an old idea: "Virginia Catholics are putting their pro-life philosophy into practice with a new home for unwed mothers in Orange County."
13. Richard Mouw on an an "evangelical" way of treating those whom we think get it wrong:
"We want to oppose false teachers because they do not teach things that are true. But if in our attempts to defeat them we play fast and loose with the truth, by attributing to them things that they don’t in fact teach and if we don’t really care whether we have it exactly right or not then we have become false teachers: teachers of untruths!
I suggest this as a rule of thumb: focus on false teachings rather than on false teachers. When we concentrate on opposing false teachers we tend to think about defeating people which can lead to all kinds of dangers. When we concentrate on the careful examination of false teachings we are more aware of the need to speak truthfully.
(HT: It Takes A Church...)
14. Morph Thing is an online application where you can combine a picture of two celebrities. From looking at some of the examples, combining Jennifer Aniston with anyone improves their looks. (HT: The Presurfer)
15. 10 Ways Your Resume Irks Hiring Managers
16. Throwing Like a Girl -- an Atlantic Monthly article from 1996 takes on the task of examining why girls “throw like girls.” (HT: TruePravda)
17. The inbred family tree of King Charles II of Spain
18. 10 Things You Might’ve Been Better Off Not Knowing About Your Body
19. The 50 Worst Cars of All Time
20. Economist Tyler Cowen has seven facts about milk. Sample: "There are reports of cows being stolen from Wisconsin dairy farms."
21. How to Write a Perfect Email
22. Switzerland: Europe's heart of darkness?
Switzerland is known as a haven of peace and neutrality. But today it is home to a new extremism that has alarmed the United Nations. Proposals for draconian new laws that target the country's immigrants have been condemned as unjust and racist. A poster campaign, the work of its leading political party, is decried as xenophobic. Has Switzerland become Europe's heart of darkness?
23. The Religion of Journalism (Part I) -- In response to a reader who claims journalists are warped by the '60s, George Rodrigue, managing editor of The Dallas Morning News, claims that "journalists are probably children of the '60s – but that would be the 1760s, not the 1960s." He adds that one thing journalist have picked up from that era is a reverence for Reason: "A sense that following Reason (they loved their capital letters back then) was akin to following God, because why else would the Creator give us the power of reason?"
24. The Religion of Journalism (Part II) -- In response to the item in #23, media critic Terry Mattingly says, "So, journalism is essentially a deist or Unitarian/Universalist profession. Any observer would have to admit that there is truth to that."
25. Future Career Path Of Gifted Youth Can Be Predicted By Age 13 By SAT
26. After-School Inventors -- A photo gallery of young entrepreneurs
27. How to Learn 21 Languages with Your iPod
28. Hacking Ikea (HT: Glenn Lucke)
29. Clowns vs. KKK in Knoxville, TN:
Alex Linder the founder of [the VNN Vanguard Nazi/KKK group] and the lead organizer of the rally kicked off events by rushing the clowns in a fit of rage, and was promptly arrested by 4 Knoxville police officers who dropped him to the ground when he resisted and dragged him off past the red shiny shoes of the clowns.
“White Power!” the Nazi’s shouted, “White Flour?” the clowns yelled back running in circles throwing flour in the air and raising separate letters which spelt “White Flour”.
“White Power!” the Nazi’s angrily shouted once more, “White flowers?” the clowns cheers and threw white flowers in the air and danced about merrily.
“White Power!” the Nazi’s tried once again in a doomed and somewhat funny attempt to clarify their message, “ohhhhhh!” the clowns yelled “Tight Shower!” and held a solar shower in the air and all tried to crowd under to get clean as per the Klan’s directions.
At this point several of the Nazi’s and Klan members began clutching their hearts as if they were about to have a heart attack. Their beady eyes bulged, and the veins in their tiny narrow foreheads beat in rage. One last time they screamed “White Power!”
The clown women thought they finally understood what the Klan was trying to say. “Ohhhhh…” the women clowns said. “Now we understand…”, “WIFE POWER!” they lifted the letters up in the air, grabbed the nearest male clowns and lifted them in their arms and ran about merrily chanting “WIFE POWER! WIFE POWER! WIFE POWER!”
It was at this point that several observers reported seeing several Klan members heads exploding in rage and they stopped trying to explain to the clowns what they wanted.
Sounds like the clowns won that round. (HT: Neatorama)
30. Pop stars more than twice as likely to die an early death: Rock and pop stars are more than twice as likely as the rest of the population to die an early death, and within a few years of becoming famous, reveals research published ahead of print in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health.
31. Secondhand Smoke Is A Health Threat To Pets: “There have been a number of scientific papers recently that have reported the significant health threat secondhand smoke poses to pets,” syas Dr. Carolynn MacAllister, Oklahoma State University Cooperative Extension Service veterinarian. “Secondhand smoke has been associated with oral cancer and lymphoma in cats, lung and nasal cancer in dogs, as well as lung cancer in birds.”
32. 'Skinny gene' does exist' -- UT Southwestern researchers found that a single gene might control whether or not individuals tend to pile on fat, a discovery that may point to new ways to fight obesity and diabetes.
33. West Side Story, the Zombie Version
(HT: Neatorama)
"In Gay By Choice? The Science of Sexual Identity, the ultraliberal MotherJones magazine dares to ask 'If science proves sexual orientation is more fluid than we've been led to believe, can homosexuality still be a protected right?'"
So what? It's just a rhetorical question. When you think about it, it's a pretty stupid one at that. It seems to assume that only behaviors that are direct manifestations of genetics can be protected, which, of course, is manifestly false.
What was your point in including this bit of fluff?
I was thinking about Reagan recently when listening to Tony Perkins and other members of the Arlington Group pontificate about GOP presidential candidates that they deemed not "tough enough" on gays. I realized then that Ronald Reagan would never have gotten the nomination from his own Party if this group had been around back then. He just wasn't mean-spirited enough to satisfy their current requirements in a Christian candidate.
As for the tired "Is gay a choice" deal, so what? Religion is a choice, and it gets a great deal more legal protection than gays and lesbians could ever hope to have.