Thirty Three Things (v. 67)

Redemption terminology in the NT is so bound up with Christ's work for and in the church that to extend it to whatever good we do in the broader world risks a shift in focus. Not for a moment do I want to deny that we are to serve as salt and light, that exiles may be called to do good in the pagan cities where Providence has appointed them to live (Jer 29), that every square foot of this world is under Christ's universal reign (even though that reign is still being contested), that the nations of the world will bring their "goods" into the Jerusalem that comes down from above. But many of those who speak easily and fluently of redeeming the culture soon focus all their energy shaping fiscal and political policies and the like, and merely assume the gospel. A gospel that is merely assumed, that does no more than perk away in the background while the focus of our attention is on the "redemption" of the culture in which we find ourselves, is lost within a generation or two. At the same time, I worry about Christians who focus their attention so narrowly on getting people "saved" that they care little about doing good to all people, even if especially to the household of God. Getting this right is not easy, and inevitably priorities will shift a little in various parts of the world, under various regimes. Part of the complexity of the discussion, I think, is bound up with what the church as church is responsible for, and what Christians as Christians are responsible for: I have argued that failure to make this distinction tends to lead toward sad conclusions.

11. The Disco Handbook (HT: BoingBoing)

12. Graph of the Week

more graph humor and song chart memes

13. When signs don't work:

"Children at play" signs and the like are absolutely ineffective in changing a driver's behavior, and studies of drivers through school zones show they were driving much faster than they remember. It's been argued that signs allow us to basically stop thinking, and in certain places experiments have been done in which they've been removed, with no negative safety effects.

14. 9 Things You Didn't Know About Benjamin Franklin

15. NPR: The Most Important Microbe You've Never Heard Of

By some estimates, the oxygen in one out of every five breaths you take comes from a bacterium called Prochlorococcus. Numbering in the trillion trillions, this tiny microbe is one of the most abundant organisms on Earth.

So when Prochlorococcus perform photosynthesis -- using energy from the sun to release oxygen from a water molecule -- that adds up to a lot of oxygen.

And yet this mass producer of an essential ingredient for life was unheard of until 20 years ago.

16. 15 Of The Most Luxurious Swimming Pools On Earth

17. Timewaster of the Week: Rollercoaster Creator (HT: The Presurfer)

18. Todd Levin on acronym jokes:

Ever find yourself in a room with a bunch of people, often at work, and you stumble across a mysterious acronym? Someone will recite the acronym and wonder, "what does that mean?" The instant this happens, a weird silence usually falls over the room as everyone revs up their minds, racing to be the first to construct a goofball interpretation of the acronym. Then someone will blurt one out, and soon all the remaining quickwits will follow with their own version. AND NONE OF THEM WILL BE FUNNY.

(HT: kottke.org)

19. Time: How Much Sleep Do You Really Need?

Studies show that people who sleep between 6.5 hr. and 7.5 hr. a night, as they report, live the longest. And people who sleep 8 hr. or more, or less than 6.5 hr., they don't live quite as long. There is just as much risk associated with sleeping too long as with sleeping too short. The big surprise is that long sleep seems to start at 8 hr. Sleeping 8.5 hr. might really be a little worse than sleeping 5 hr.

20. Jared Wilson's Memo to The Whiners:

If all that The Church did to you growing up was make you wear dressy clothes, sit through boring sermons, withstand ten verses of "Just As I Am" accompanied solely by bowel-rattling organ, listen to Sandi Patty and/or The Master's Five, or believe your soul is in eternal jeopardy if you don't choose Jesus, you were not abused by the church.

There are worse things than suffering the unhip-ness of church culture. God doesn't care about your haircut or what style of music you listen to, and if you think a lost world would like Jesus more if only his followers looked more emo, you're an idiot.

21. Cosmologists still in the dark about "dark matter":

As far as astronomers can tell, there is no relation between dark matter, the particles, and dark energy other than the name, but you never know. Some physicists are even willing to burn down their old sainted Einstein and revise his theory of gravity, general relativity, to make the cosmic discrepancies go away. There is in fact a simple explanation for the dark energy, Dr. Witten pointed out, one whose tangled history goes all the way back to Einstein, but it is also the most troubling.

"Dark energy has the somewhat unusual property that it was embarrassing before it was discovered," he said.

(HT: Neatorama)

22. Fake bus stop keeps Alzheimer's patients from escaping

A German nursing home has come up with a novel idea to stop Alzheimer's patients from wandering off: a phantom bus stop....

"It sounds funny," said Old Lions Chairman Franz-Josef Goebel, "but it helps. Our members are 84 years-old on average. Their short-term memory hardly works at all, but the long-term memory is still active. They know the green and yellow bus sign and remember that waiting there means they will go home." The result is that errant patients now wait for their trip home at the bus stop, before quickly forgetting why they were there in the first place.

23. Bibles are big business in China

The factory looks like it could be any plant in this export-driven nation. Hundreds of Chinese workers huddle over loud machines churning out large orders for customers at home and abroad.

But what they're making might surprise you: Bibles.

As Tibetan monks grab headlines protesting the lack of religious freedom under Chinese rule, a booming Bible industry is on its way to turning the world's biggest atheist nation into the world's largest producer of the Good Book.

(HT: Thinking Christian)

24. How to Read Mayan (HT: Neatorama)

25. LOLCat of the Week

more cat pictures

26. Scientific Fraud May Be More Widespread Than Thought

About 1,000 potential incidents of fabrication, falsification or plagiarism in scientific research go unreported every year, according to a survey that suggests such misconduct is far more prevalent than suspected.

On average, the Department of Health and Human Services' Office of Research Integrity receives only 24 reports of suspected misconduct from academic and other research institutions yearly, according to a report in the journal Nature. The authors called for scientists and institutions to implement more safeguards against research fraud.

27. The boy who thought 9/11 was his fault

Researchers in London have documented the case of a ten-year-old boy with Tourette's syndrome and obsessive compulsive symptoms, who believed the terror attacks of 9/11 occurred because he had failed to complete one of his daily rituals.

Mary Robertson and Andrea Cavanna claim this is the first ever case reported in the literature of a person believing they were responsible for causing a major disaster of the proportion experienced in America in 2001.

28. Baghdad Base's New Generators Run on Trash

At the U.S. military's headquarters in Iraq, it's garbage in, power out.

Two prototype generators - running on food slop, shredded documents and ammunition wrappers - have helped supply power to Camp Victory, near Baghdad, since early May.

29. Warning for teens: Teeth and jewelry don't mix

Skin piercings might be the rage among teens, but researchers from Tel Aviv University have found good reasons to think twice about piercing one's tongue or lip.

Dr. Liran Levin, a dentist from the Department of Oral Rehabilitation, School of Dental Medicine at Tel Aviv University has found that about 15 to 20 percent of teens with oral piercings are at high risk for both tooth fractures and gum disease. Resulting tooth fractures as well as periodontal problems, he says, can lead to anterior (front) tooth loss later in life.

30. Gallons per mile would help car shoppers make better decisions -- Posting a vehicle's fuel efficiency in "gallons per mile" rather than "miles per gallon" would help consumers make better decisions about car purchases and environmental impact, researchers from Duke University's Fuqua School of Business report in the June 20 issue of Science magazine.

31. Children learn smart behaviors without knowing what they know -- Young children show evidence of smart and flexible behavior early in life - even though they don't really know what they're doing, new research suggests. In a series of experiments, scientists tested how well 4- and 5-year-olds were able to rely on different types of information to choose objects in a group. In some situations, they were asked to choose objects based on color and in some cases based on shape. Results showed children could be trained to choose correctly, but still didn't know why shape or color was the right answer in any particular context.

32. Gay men and straight women have similar brains, study says -- The brains of gay men resemble those of straight women, according to research published today that provides more evidence of the role of biology in sexual orientation. Using brain-scanning equipment, researchers said they discovered similarities in the brain circuits that deal with language, perhaps explaining why homosexual men tend to outperform straight men on verbal skills tests -- as do heterosexual women.

33. Study: Most Children Strongly Opposed To Children's Healthcare