Thirty Three Things (v. 40)

African Christians tend to understand and appreciate the Old Testament far better than their Western counterparts, author Philip Jenkins told his fellow evangelical scholars Nov. 15.

Jenkins, a professor of religious studies and history at Pennsylvania State University, spoke in San Diego to fellow members of the Evangelical Theological Society. His speech was one of several addresses and papers presented during the body’s 59th annual meeting, themed “Teaching Them to Obey.”

In Jenkins' remarks, the prolific author said many of the ideas about Christianity that are the most difficult to convey to a contemporary Western audience make intuitive sense to many indigenous African audiences, as well as some Asian audiences.

Cultures that espouse tribal identities and are intimately acquainted with animal sacrifice, dietary restrictions, polygamy, sacred rocks and the like are well-equipped to read and identify with the Hebrew Bible’s stories, Jenkins said.

11. With the Website Eternal Sunset, you can now catch the sun at its most romantic moment all over the world on hundreds of Internet-linked cameras. (HT: Very Short List)

12. Top Twenty Books Nobody Reads

13. The 25 Greatest Viral Videos (HT: Neatorama)

14. New Improved Stereotypes, including: Germans can get pregnant from the sound of David Hasselhoff's voice. Belgians evolved from crabs, not apes. New Yorkers lack the ability to recognize faces. (HT: The Presurfer)

15. J.P. Moreland on Christianity as a Knowledge Tradition

16. Death in the Morning: A Carnegie Mellon study shows that pedestrian deaths increase almost 200% when daylight saving time ends.

17. Study: Blondes Make Men Act Dumber

While blondes may have more fun, a new study suggests that fair-haired ladies may be making those around them dumber.

Researchers found that men's scores on general knowledge tests drop when they are shown photos of blonde women, the Sunday Times of London reported.

Upon further inspection, it was found that the test subjects were not distracted by the light hair, but driven by social stereotypes to "think blonde."

(HT: HolyCoast)

18. The Economist on The World in 2008 (HT: In the Agora)

19. From the Times’ obituary of Harold Berman Ramesh:

Harold Joseph Berman was born on Feb. 13, 1918, in Hartford. Under a theory he enunciated in 2006 for The Fulton County Daily Report, an Atlanta legal and business newspaper, he said that he, like all children, had been a law student from a young age. “A child says, 'It's my toy.' That's property law,” he said. “A child says, 'You promised me.' That's contract law. A child says, 'He hit me first.' That's criminal law. A child says, 'Daddy said I could.' That's constitutional law.”

20. Big Bang or Big Goof? Astronomer Verschuur Challenges 'Seeds' Proof – "Oops! A University of Memphis radio astronomer publishes a paper in a leading journal saying one of the most spectacular discoveries in astronomy history is nothing more than a goof."

21. From an article on human memory that includes profiles of a woman who remembers everything she's done in her life since age 11 and a man who remembers almost nothing after 1960:

The metaphors we most often use to describe memory -- the photograph, the tape recorder, the mirror, the hard drive -- all suggest mechanical accuracy, as if the mind were some sort of meticulous transcriber of our experiences. And for a long time it was a commonly held view that our brains function as perfect recorders-that a lifetime of memories are socked away somewhere in the cerebral attic, and if they can't be found it isn't because they've disappeared, but only because we've lost access to them.

(HT: Kottke.org)

22. Xenophon on The Infallible Method of Argument

When the argument was referred back to first principles in this way, the truth became apparent to his opponents too. And when he himself was setting out a detailed argument, he used to proceed by such stages as were generally agreed, because he thought that this was the infallible method of argument. Consequently, when he was talking, he used to win the agreement of his audience more than anyone else I have known. He used to say that Homer himself attributed to Odysseus the quality of being an infallible speaker, because he could base his arguments on the accepted beliefs of his hearers.

23. Music Maps -- Find out who is listening to what and where. The popularity map shows snapshots of current top artists and album charts by geographical location. (HT: The Presurfer)

24. Violence: A Micro-sociological Theory

25. LOLCat of the Week

moar funny pictures

26. Coincidences in linguistics (HT: Kottke.org)

27. Mere Orthodoxy with a "rough definition of gratitude":

Gratitude Is the Spontaneous Emotion of Thanksgiving and Happiness in Response to Some Unmerited Good.

When someone gives you a gift you did not expect and did not deserve, you ought (and most people do) feel a spontaneous sense of gratitude. Gratitude is an openness, a rather vulnerable and tender affection, a sense of one's own lowliness (not to say worthlessness) and unmerited favor. It is often said, “It is more blessed to give than to receive.” It is equally true that, “It is more humbling to receive than to give.” To receive a gift, a kind word, the honor of a friendship is to accept one's own true place in the world, a place of having needs and wants that others may satisfy.

28. Visuwords

29. What's the value of a fancy education?

[F]ormer Harvard University President Derek Bok wrote, Many seniors graduate without being able to write well enough to satisfy their employers. Many cannot reason clearly or perform competently in analyzing complex, non-technical problems, even though faculties rank critical thinking as the primary goal of a college education. Few undergraduates receiving a degree are able to speak or read a foreign language. Most have never taken a course in quantitative reasoning or acquired the knowledge needed to be a reasonably informed citizen in a democracy. And those are only some of the problems.

30. The secret to remembering material long-term -- The secret to remembering material long-term is not to cram and over-learn but rather to periodically review what you’ve studied. That’s according to Doug Rohrer and Harold Pashler who have identified an intriguing relationship between how long to leave it before returning to previously studied material, and the ultimate duration for which you want to remember it for.

31. Babies prefer good Samaritans -- In the first evidence of its kind to date, Yale researchers find that infants prefer individuals who help others to those who either do nothing, or interfere with others' goals, it is reported today in Nature.

32. Don't judge a brook by its color -- brown waters are more natural -- Over the last 20 years lakes and streams in remote parts of the UK, southern Scandinavia and eastern North America have been increasingly stained brown by dissolved organic matter. In this week’s Nature journal (22 November) an international team, led by researchers from UCL (University College London) and the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), demonstrates that the colour change is indicative of a return to a more natural, pre-industrial state following a decline in the level of acid rain.

33. Negotiating with the Dentist

(HT: Maggie’s Farm)