1. David Cameron, head of Britain's Conservative Party, recently gave a great speech on the need for family-friendly policies:
Today I want to talk to you about a simple ambition that I have for our country. It's at the heart of what I believe, and what I believe our country needs. My ambition is to make Britain more family-friendly. To make our country a better place to bring up children. Not just because it's the right thing to do, not just because my family is the most important thing in my life, but because families should be the most important thing in our country's life.
Why? We all know why. Because those kids at the end of the street, causing mayhem, smashing up the bus shelter...we know what the problem is. It goes back to the home, the way they were brought up, the lack of a strong family to teach them that you just don't behave like that. It's families. Those young people who leave school without qualifications, expecting nothing but a life on welfare. We know what the problem is. The problem is they never had that strong family saying: go on, try hard at school, do your homework, make something of your life. Those people in jail, time after time, addicted to drugs and unable to break free of their habit and a life of crime. We know what the problem is. It's families and be clear: there are single parents, divorced parents, widows - all working hard to keep their families together, to keep their children on track. The modern Conservative Party is the party of families, and we need to support them all.
(HT: ConservativeHome's ToryDiary)
2. John Mark Reynolds on longing for love:
Somehow the traditional Christian sexual ethic of Dante and Donne has become confused with repression or being undersexed. Nothing could be further from the truth. If my email box is any indication, libertine sexual rules have not made us happier or better lovers. It has made things worse. It certainly did for me.
Chastity is a positive thing, not the lack of something. It is, I think, the active nourishment of love to prepare it for the appropriate beloved. It is a great gift....In old movies, making love was about intimacy and might culminate in marriage. Marriage was more, so much more, than the sex act, though it was not less than that. In modern terms, making love is merely a nice way to say the f-word.
3. England's Royal College of Psychiatrists warns abortions can lead to mental illness:
The Royal College of Psychiatrists recommends updating abortion information leaflets to include details of the risks of depression. "Consent cannot be informed without the provision of adequate and appropriate information," it says.
Several studies, including research published in the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry in 2006, concluded that abortion in young women might be associated with risks of mental health problems.
4. Future Tech: A wireless neckband that intercepts nerve signals allows you to talk on the phone without emitting a sound.
(HT: Marc Andreessen)
5. Homes made out of airplanes
6. Quote of the Week: "We as Christians can very easily become more concerned about whether other people are loving us, than we are about whether we are loving other people. I know that being and feeling loved are important needs for any human being. That's how we're made. But it's worth noticing, especially in the context of the church, that the Bible's command is to 'love one another,' not "to be loved by one another." The language is active, not passive." -- Greg Gilbert (HT: One Eternal Day)
7. Jared Wilson has some numbers that put the Iraq war in perspective. For example:
Total [U.S. Active Duty Military] Deaths under Reagan 1981-1988 - 19,593
Total Deaths under Bush I 1989-1992 - 6,223
Total Deaths under Clinton 1993-2000 - 7,500
Total Deaths under Bush II 2001-2006 - 8,792
8. Study results released from Ellison Research show the vast majority of Americans (87%) believe in the concept of sin. "Sin" was defined in the research as "something that is almost always considered wrong, particularly from a religious or moral perspective."
The behaviors a majority of all Americans describe as sinful are:
* Adultery 81%
* Racism 74%
* Using "hard" drugs such as cocaine, heroine, meth, LSD, etc. 65%
* Not saying anything if a cashier gives you too much change back 63%
* Having an abortion 56%
* Homosexual activity or sex 52%
* Not reporting some income on your tax returns 52%
9. American Book Review's list of the 100 best last lines from novels. (HT: kottke.org)
10. Doug Smith on How to Complain to God:
Have you ever seen a grievance form or policy? Many institutions offer a means through which a dissatisfied individual may file a complaint in a proper manner. Most places have enough sense to know that everything they do and everyone they hire will not consistently meet the highest standards of perfection at all times. Therefore, they offer a means to complain properly because there is a right way and a wrong way to complain.
God created the world for His glory. The original creation was perfectly ordered and supplied, and no one could have filed a legitimate grievance in it. But when sin entered the world, things changed. In a fallen world, much is not right. When Adam and Eve rebelled, they altered the relationships of humans to God and to one another. The earth itself was cursed, death became a reality, and work became difficult and futile. The woman began to know sorrow in childbirth; the man began to know sorrow in work. God knows we live in a world that is now imperfect. He understands that we face difficulties. He realizes that we will have complaints, but we have a right way and a wrong way to complain.
11. Procrastination Flow Chart
12. WaPo op-ed: Who Says The Elite Aren't Fit To Serve?
Along this road I discovered something about myself, and about the military.
About myself, I discovered that there were within me - within everyone - latent abilities, tendencies, temperaments that only an environment such as this will bring out. And yes, I'm speaking to you bookish types now. However well you may think you know your own pacific constitution, be assured that there is someone more physical and forceful within you - someone you will meet, given the right circumstances.About the Army, I learned that it can be a hard - and hardening - environment, but by and large the people in it are just people. They are not uniquely tough by nature, though they become so through training and preparation and habit. And their toughness is leavened with a deep sense of common humanity - a basic unquestioning take-them-as-they-are compassion rarely found in the "softer" cosmopolitan world of ambition and sophistication from which I hail.
A good article, though the headline is about three decades out of date. "Elite" is no longer a synonym for the privileged class; those who serve are the elite.
13. TV and Movies on the Web (Part I) - Hulu is a free, ad-supported site that Hulu offers full-length feature films like The Usual Suspects, Ice Age, and The Big Lebowski and TV shows like Firefly, 30 Rock, and 24. You can watch the shows on their site or embed them on your own blog or website.
14. TV and Movies on the Web (Part II) -- Fancast offers a broad collection of TV episodes you can watch in their entirety on the website - for free. Shows include current hits like The Office and The Simpsons and older fare like Star Trek, The Bob Newhart Show, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. (HT: VSL)
15. From Peter Moskos's Cop in the Hood: My Year Policing Baltimore's Eastern District (via Marginal Revolution):
Motivated primarily by a desire for court overtime pay, police officers want arrests on their own terms, ideally without victims, complaints, or unnecessary paperwork. Young officers make more arrests than veteran officers. These officers believe that making arrests is police work. In my squad, the top three officers in arrest totals were three officers with the least experience. An arrest-based culture can exist in a low-drug environment, but without a limitless supply of arrestable criminal offenders, an arrest-based culture cannot make a lot of arrests. Neighborhoods, without public drug dealings will not produce a high number of arrests.
16. How My Net Worth Went from $-40,000 to $285,000 in Five Years (HT: Lifehacker)
17. Timewaster of the Week: Open Doors
18. Victor Reppert on evangelical terminology:
A lot of times I have struggled with discussions amongst evangelicals where a certain type of evangelical vocabulary is equated with Christian faith or Christian orthodoxy. For example, the phrase "accept Christ as your Lord and Savior" isn't in the Bible at all, and while Scripture mentions being born again about three times, it never hyphenates the phrase "born-again" with Christian.
What happens is that people who don't disagree sound as though they do, but also people can appear to agree with one another because both can use evangelical terminology, while not agreeing with one another at all.
19. Walter Russell Mead, a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, on American evangelicals and foreign policy:
In terms of creating American soft power, this is extraordinary. If you travel around a lot of the developing world, what you see is the extraordinary progress of Christian missions and evangelization. Christianity in general leads people in many cases to have very positive feelings about the United States and American foreign policy. Polls taken, say, among Pentecostals in Nigeria, showed great support for America's war on terror at a time when, in a lot of the world, that policy was profoundly unpopular. Polling evidence shows that in places like Kenya, Nigeria, and other African countries where Christianity has become a very vibrant presence, people are optimistic about their future; they actually are glad to see American values playing a larger role in their countries.
20. Ian Ayres wonders Is Tooth Cleaning a Scam?
The review looked for evidence to answer two related questions...The results were not heartening for those of us who have suffered through dozens upon dozens of cleanings. The meta analysis of qualifying studies suggested that the evidence was mixed, at best. For example, there is not strong evidence that hygienist cleaning reduces gingivitis:
21. The final episode of St. Elsewhere revealed that all of the action of the show took place in the mind of an autistic child. St Elsewhere has direct connections to twelve other television series - many of them direct crossovers of character to and from the series. Others make mention of specific parts of the St Elsewhere fictional universe, placing them within the same fictional sphere. This page maps the 280 other shows that are connected to the show through crossovers and references. (HT: kottke.org)
22. Olbers's Paradox and the Finitude of the Universe
If the universe is infinite, then it would seem that any possible point in the sky would eventually line up with a star. Given that the universe is infinitely old, it would follow that enough time has passed for the starlight to reach earth. Since every point in the sky would be occupied by a star and enough time has passed for the starlight to occupy that point, it would follow that at night when we look up at the sky we should see a luminous glowing plenum above our heads -- perhaps with a few dark points where nearby celestial bodies have blocked the incoming light. But as we all know, the night sky is the opposite: it is mainly dark with a few points of light. Therefore, the universe is not infinite.
23. Calif. girl stops out-of-control bus; gets detention
A 15-year-old girl who stopped an out-of-control school bus she was riding on was handed a Saturday detention instead because she was skipping school.
Marina High School student Amanda Rouse was on a bus with 40 elementary school students Wednesday morning when the driver fell out of her seat after a turn and hit her head. Rouse jumped up and applied the brakes, bringing the bus to a halt after striking two parked cars. No one was injured. She said had asked the bus driver for a ride because she felt sick at school.
"She is in trouble with school because she made the wrong decision," said Rouse's grandmother, Sally Correll. "But I can't help but believe that she was where God wanted her to be."
24. 7 Insane Conspiracies That Actually Happened
#7. The Business Plot
In 1933, group of wealthy businessmen that allegedly included the heads of Chase Bank, GM, Goodyear, Standard Oil, the DuPont family and Senator Prescott Bush tried to recruit Marine Corps Major General Smedley Butler to lead a military coup against President FDR and install a fascist dictatorship in the United States. And yes, we're talking about the same Prescott Bush who fathered one US President and grandfathered another one.
25. LOLCat LOLPuppy of the Week
see more crazy cat pics
26. Newsweek: Are liberals messier than conservatives?
Most people would agree on the core tenets: the conservative tendency to value tradition and authority over change, and the liberal tendency to value equality over hierarchy. New York University psychologist John Jost and his colleagues have been using time-tested instruments to plumb the unconscious attitudes of both self-proclaimed conservatives and liberals. Although most everyone prefers order to chaos, the psychologists found this yearning to be much more potent in conservatives than in liberals. Put another way, conservatives have little tolerance for any messiness, let alone rebelliousness, even on this basic neuronal level. Liberals, by contrast, have a deep-wired preference for flexibility and progress over tradition. The starkest difference between conservatives and liberals was related to feminism, which conservatives believe in their gut to be a threat to their ordered world.
(HT: The Point)
27. The Lost Features of Google
28. Philosophy Bites Podcast (MP3): Simon Blackburn on Plato's Cave
29. Movie critic Steven D. Greydanus offers a Seussian-style review of Horton Hears a Who!. It begins...
In the wide world of Seuss, from the white Sneech-beach sands
Out to sleepy Far Foodle, and throughout the lands
Of the Yooks and the Zooks, no hero is braver
Than Horton, egg-hatcher and Who life-saver.
No one's heart's bigger, even Thidwick the Moose
And even the Lorax took less abuse.
One book can't contain Horton's dogged heroics!
His stoical pluck shows up all other stoics!
(HT: Jeffrey Overstreet)
30. Study: Journalism Net Effect Defies Expectation
The Internet has profoundly changed journalism, but not necessarily in ways that were predicted even a few years ago, a study on the industry released Sunday found.
It was believed at one point that the Net would democratize the media, offering many new voices, stories and perspectives. Yet the news agenda actually seems to be narrowing, with many Web sites primarily packaging news that is produced elsewhere, according to the Project for Excellence in Journalism's annual State of the News Media report.
31. Red-light Cameras Increase Crashes, Florida Researchers Find -- Rather than improving motorist safety, red-light cameras significantly increase crashes and are a ticket to higher auto insurance premiums, researchers at the University of South Florida College of Public Health conclude. The effective remedy to red-light running uses engineering solutions to improve intersection safety, which is particularly important to Florida's elderly drivers, the researchers recommend.
32. Cup Of Black Tea Could Defend Against Athrax Threat, Research Suggests -- A cup of black tea could be the next line of defense in the threat of bio-terrorism according to new international research. A new study has revealed how the humble cup of tea could well be an antidote to Bacillus anthracis -- more commonly know as anthrax. Components in English breakfast tea such as polyphenols have the ability to inhibit the activity of anthrax.
33. Jesus Saves
92 year-old Pauline Jacoby tells a would-be robber about Jesus. (HT: Common Grounds Online)
Well, at least Magnum, P.I. wasn't in the list. ;-)
St. Elsewhere was a great show. It got a little loopy at times, but it was always well-written and entertaining. And so many well-known names, (if not, faces) were regulars on the show: Denzel Washington, Ed Begley, Helen Hunt, Howie Mandel, David Morse, Mark Harmon, Bruce Greenwood...there are probably more.
Re: #24
It should be noted that fascism had quite a lot of support in the US in the early 1930's. Father Coughlin, a radio priest heard by about a 1/3 of the country at his peak (contrast this with Limbaugh who gets maybe 5% of the US as listeners), was a supporter of both Mussolini and Hitler. Huey Long, considered a rival to FDR for the 1936 Democrat nomination prior to his assassination, supported fascist policies. It's not surprising that in the midst of the Great Depression, people would seriously think about emulating the, what appeared to be, successful policies of Mussolini and even Hitler. Remember, WW2 and the Holocaust were still a long way off in 1933.
Re, 30
The article ends with this: "In another unexpected finding, citizen-created Web sites and blogs are actually far less welcoming to outside commentary than the so-called mainstream media, the report said."
It's amazing for those of us who were there at the beginning of blogdom when all the talk was about community and linking and trackbacks, and the new journalism where everyone's opinion counted. Hah. As soon as there was money to be made from it all that went by the wayside. The first clue I had that the jig was up was the announcement of the formation of Pajamas media. They were obviously going to try and control the "conversation." It is quite irritating to go to sites like Glenn's or The Corner or Christianity Today and not be able to respond to posts which are incorrect, or ignorant or just one sided.
I think the lesson is: If you want to influence opinion you must first control who gets to express an opinion. Sites without the ability to comment are like trials where only one side gets to present their case. While no doubt the dream of every litigator they are not likely to lead to the truth and are fundamentally unfair.
The Blogosphere has become that which they hated most –– The MSM.
#22.
Speaking as a physicist (in training) this one unfortunately doesn't really hold up due to an effect called red shift. Basically, the wavelength of light (which affects the colour of light) travelling across space gets stretched, if the distance is great enough (and in many cases it is) then the stretching or "shift" would be so great that the light from the star would be moved out of the visible spectrum. So for this argument there could in fact be an infinite number of stars, we just wouldn't see most of them due to red shift.
A better argument for the finitude of the universe is the fact that it is expanding (red shift is a proof for this). This means the universe must have come from being more contracted/smaller and taking that all the way back means that the universe was once just a single point - the singularity. Because of this it directly follows that space does have a finite size and because the Universe has a temperature (see Cosmic Background Radiation) which is not absolute zero, having cooled from the Big Bang temperatures, then the Universe is not infinitely old either. If it was infinitely old then I would reasonably expect the average temperature of space to be zero, having had enough time to completely cool down. Therefore, the universe is finite in time and space.
#22
If the universe was infinitely old, we would never have gotten to this point in time, since you cannot cross an infinite.
22. Olbers's Paradox and the Finitude of the Universe
Does Joe actually buy this or is he presenting it as a historical artifact?
1. Given that the universe is infinitely old? Where does that come from?
2. It assumes the universe is uniform.
3. It does not account for the expansion of the universe. If you go far enough away the expansion of space outpaces the speed of light. Even if there is an infinite amount of light "coming in" expansion will outrun it.
The only thing that can be said is we have a finite visible universe of about 10 billion light years. What is beyond that is unknown and cannot be observed.
If the universe is infinitely old, then the present is at the half way point. Behind the present is the infinite past. Ahead of the present is the infinite future. Unfortunately though, movement in any one direction is relatively meaningless with respect to the whole.
When having this discussion it is a good idea to keep in mind the difference between the visible universe (the ball of about 10-15 billion light years that we can see, at least in theory) and the Universe meaning "everything that is".
We once had this discussion with Gordon. Most scientific outlets use the word univerise to really mean the visible universe, which is finite in both age and size. We don't know what, if anything is beyond the visible universe. Probably, though, there's more stars and galaxies. Why?
Well take someone in a galaxy a billion light years to your left. What do they see? They see a visible universe of 10-15 billion light years in either direction. To their right they see a billion less light years of stars than we do and to their left they see a billion light years more. So what do they see? Probably more stars. If they didn't then it would imply that we are at the center of the universe, which is kind of surprising IMO.
The big question then is if you keep hopping a billion light years to the left do you ever stop seeing just more and more galaxies? Maybe or maybe not. There's no reason to think that you wouldn't which would mean an infinite universe.
To make it all the more mind boggling, there's no reason the universe couldn't be infinite AND contained inside some larger type of meta-universe that is either finite or infinite. Just look at the number line. There's an infinite number of odd numbers, of even numbers etc. You can also 'contain' an infinite number of numbers between two finite numbers (say the number of points between 1 and 2).