\n<\/p> Karen<\/strong><\/a>: \u201cBut here, in this household, the news of bin Laden\u2019s death was not met with fists pumps or high fives. The news laid me out flat. Forehead to the floor. Praying. Weeping. More praying. Yes, I\u2019m grateful that our military has stopped bin Laden. If there is one thing I understand completely it is the sacrifices our nation\u2019s military have made. I was 9-years-old when my father, Staff Sgt. David Spears, was killed in Vietnam\u2019s Ia Drang Valley.\u201d<\/p>\n Gary David Stratton<\/strong><\/a>, on China and the Christian university student.<\/p>\n Jews and Christians at a bris<\/em><\/strong><\/a>. \u201cSaturday we had a wonderful bris in our home\u00a0(no, not our baby \u2014 we already have 8!)<\/em>. Many things were wonderful about it.\u00a0First <\/strong>of all, a bris\u00a0(circumcision ceremony)<\/em> is always a joyous occasion (oo, maybe that anti-circumcision activist will post a comment again)<\/em>.Second<\/strong>, this was an intermarried family\u00a0(mostly what we have in our community)<\/em> and the Christian and Jewish family were present.\u00a0Third<\/strong>, there was no disharmony between the Jewish family and Christian family.\u00a0Fourth<\/strong>, I was able to see and enjoy the positive reactions of the Jewish mohel (the one who performs the circumcision and leads the liturgy)<\/em> and the positive reactions of the Jewish and Christian families.\u201d<\/p>\n J.E. Dyer<\/strong><\/a>: \u201cA poignant aspect of this flurry of crimes is the hope for \u201ctolerance\u201d repeated over and over like a mantra by public officials. In response to the vandalism case in Calabasas, sheriff\u2019s deputies have been\u00a0mobilized<\/a> to \u201ceducate students on the dangers of hate and intolerance.\u201d Whether the deputies\u2019 warnings will sink in better than the ones students receive about drugs and unprotected sex is a good question. But it\u2019s the incessant invocation of \u201ctolerance\u201d that merits closer inspection. In the face of the seemingly ineradicable evil of Nazi-like anti-Semitism and racism, tolerance is a terribly inadequate word.\u201d<\/p>\n Are Mormons Christians? Roger Olson<\/strong><\/a>. Take a look please<\/strong><\/a>. Gotta love that college student\u2019s life<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n Christine Scheller<\/strong><\/a>: \u201cI\u2019ve read numerous books on forgiveness. Some of them lead me to conclude that the authors have never known the kind of spiritual betrayal some Christians, including myself, have known. If they did, they could never write the pabulum they are selling.\u201d<\/p>\n Mike Glenn<\/strong><\/a> on OBL\u2019s death. Roger Olson<\/strong><\/a> on OBL\u2019s death.<\/p>\n The missional manifesto<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n Meanderings in the News<\/p>\n 2. Catherine Mayer on aging<\/strong><\/a>: \u201cBut the natural order is itself in flux. My father still dives in his 80s, still lectures, researches, writes books. People are living longer, sometimes much longer. Across the developed world the average lifetime has lengthened by 30 years since the beginning of the 20th century. The fastest-growing segment of the world population is the very old, with the number of centenarians up from a few thousand in 1950 to 340,000 in 2010 and projected to reach nearly 6 million by 2050. You might have thought we\u2019d use all that extra time to squeeze in a few additional stages of life \u2013 from the seven ages of man observed by Shakespeare, when life expectancy at birth was below 40, to maybe 10, 12, 15 stages now that a man born in Stratford-upon-Avon looks forward to an average span of 76.9 years. Here\u2019s the crazy, counterintuitive thing: the ages of man are actually eliding. Youth used to be our last hurrah before the onset of maturity and dotage, each milestone benchmarked against culturally determined expectations. Those expectations are now swirling and re-forming like glassfish in a current. What that means is that the premises on which our governments legislate are outdated. Our economies are based on data that no longer applies. There is a profound disconnect between how we imagine life and how it actually unfolds.<\/p>\n 3. Internet entrepreneurs <\/strong><\/a>and this means I\u2019m definitely over the hill: \u201cConsumer Internet entrepreneurs are like pro basketball players,\u201d<\/em> a venture capitalist told me recently while discussing the prospects for a thirty-something founder,\u00a0\u201cThey peak at 25, by 30 they\u2019re usually done.\u201d<\/em> Why? Because young entrepreneurs are more creative and imaginative, and are willing put 100% of their lives into their startups, he said.\u201cIt\u2019s not a guess, this is a data driven observation,\u201d<\/em> says the VC. He had a number of caveats. First, this only applies to consumer Internet entrepreneurs. Enterprise and hardware startups tend to do better with older founders, where experience (and direct sales experience) matter a lot. And there are plenty of founders that, like Michael Jordan, can peak way beyond 25 (and the\u00a0peak basketball age<\/a> is really probably at least a 27).\u201cThose tend to be the repeat success founders,\u201d<\/em> he said,\u00a0\u201cthe rules don\u2019t apply to them.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n 4. Apple\u2019s demands<\/strong><\/a>: \u201cAn investigation into the conditions of Chinese workers has revealed the shocking human cost of producing the must-have\u00a0Apple<\/a> iPhones and iPads that are now ubiquitous in the west. The research, carried out by two NGOs, has revealed disturbing allegations of excessive working hours and draconian workplace rules at two major plants in southern\u00a0China<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n 5. Do you Dashboard? <\/strong><\/a>\u201cThe blogging crew here at TUAW headquarters frequently gets inspiration from emails that we receive from developers and hardware manufacturers. As a perfect example, the inbox the other morning contained some information about an upcoming iOS app that syncs to a\u00a0Dashboard widget<\/a>. Fellow blogger Erica Sadun said she wouldn\u2019t touch the app, since \u201cDashboard causes me to break out in hives,\u201d and Kelly Guimont asked \u201cdoes anyone use the Dashboard for anything?\u201d Dashboard is SO yesterday. But, wait, what about those of us who don\u2019t even know what a Dashboard is?!<\/p>\n 6. Good ol\u2019 George Will<\/strong><\/a>: \u201c[Caterpillar] recently picked Muncie, Ind., for a major manufacturing plant.\u00a0Says Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels<\/a> of his neighboring state, \u201cIt\u2019s like living next door to \u2018The Simpsons\u2019 \u2014 you know, the dysfunctional family down the block.\u201d [Thanks Mitch.] A\u00a0study by the Illinois Policy Institute<\/a>, a market-oriented think tank, concludes that between 1991 and 2009, Illinois lost more than 1.2 million residents \u2014 more than one every 10 minutes \u2014 to other states. Between 1995 and 2007, the total net income leaving Illinois was $23.5 billion. The five states receiving most refugees from Illinois were Florida, Indiana, Wisconsin, Arizona and Texas. Two are Illinois\u2019 neighbors, three have warm weather, two \u2014 Florida and Texas \u2014 have no income tax. In January, a lame-duck session of Illinois\u2019 legislature \u2014 including 18 Democrats who were defeated in November \u2014 raised the personal income tax 67 percent and the corporate tax almost 50 percent. This and the increase \u2014 from 3 percent to 5 percent \u2014 in the tax on small businesses make Illinois, as the Wall Street Journal says, \u201cone of the most expensive places in the world to conduct business.\u201d Tim Storm\u2019s presence in Beloit demonstrates how American federalism gives force to a familiar axiom: Businesses go where they are welcome and stay where they are well-treated.\u201d<\/p>\n 7. Yuval Levin and Ramesh Ponnuru<\/a><\/strong>: \u201cIn Sunday\u2019s\u00a0New York Times<\/em>, we\u00a0argued<\/a> that along with the Paul Ryan budget, Republicans need to get behind some specifics for replacing Obamacare. Simply repealing the law would certainly be better than implementing it, since Obamacare would put in place a structure even worse than the status quo, but the status quo is very problematic and voters are right to expect conservatives to offer their own answer. As we noted, a number of conservatives have proposed such an alternative \u2014 the transformation of the open-ended tax exclusion for employer-provided health insurance into a fixed tax credit that everyone could use in purchasing insurance of their choice.\u201d<\/p>\n 8. Robert Crosby\u2019s excellent reflection on David Wilkerson<\/strong><\/a>: \u201cDavid was up late as usual at midnight watching the \u201cLate Show\u201d when he first asked the question: \u201cWhat would happen, Lord, if I sold the TV set and spent that time\u2014praying?\u201d After David Wilkerson prayed that prayer in 1958, the world would soon find out. \u201cWhat would happen, Lord, if I \u2026 ?\u201d After his television was actually sold, Wilkerson began to devote his midnight to 2 a.m. hours to prayer. One night while trying to pray, he found himself unusually drawn to an issue of\u00a0Life\u00a0magazine sitting on his desk. At first he suspected his interest in reading to be merely a human diversion pulling him away from the discipline of prayer. Nonetheless he couldn\u2019t get away from it and finally asked, \u201cGod is there something you want me to see?\u201d<\/p>\n 9. By D.T.<\/strong><\/a>: \u201cVISITORS taking the underground to\u00a0Gangnam, the new money district of\u00a0Seoul, often remark at the vast numbers of adverts forplastic\u00a0surgery\u00a0found plastered all over both trains and platforms. Those alighting at\u00a0Sinsa or Apgujong stations in particular will find themselves bombarded\u00a0with exhortations to \u201cround your rectangular jaw\u201d, or before-and-after\u00a0images of small and large diamond rings. South Korea\u2019s\u00a0fascination with plastic surgery<\/a>is not a new development, but as the word has spread, the business has changed. Foreigners from the near abroad are getting in on the act. Korea is now benefiting from\u00a0droves of Japanese and Chinese in particular taking the short flight\u00a0over, having a quick nip or tuck, and doing a little shopping or\u00a0sightseeing, before going home prettier. The head surgeon of\u00a0BK Dongyang\u00a0Plastic\u00a0Surgery<\/a>, a group which operates out of a 16-storey\u00a0building, travels all around Asia giving consultations for prospective\u00a0clients; in the words of BK\u2019s own website, \u201cSouth Korea is Asia\u2019s\u00a0plastic\u00a0surgery capital \u2026 [Head surgeon] Dr Kim Byung-gun might well\u00a0be its tsar.\u201d (Mayor, tsar, what have you.)\u201d<\/p>\n 10. Looking for a job, listen to those young folks who got their first job on what helped<\/strong><\/a>: \u201cFor many\u00a0college students getting a job<\/a> in today\u2019s economy may seem like a difficult feat, especially for those with little to no professional experience. Everyone\u2019s heard the same advice: Network, use online search engines and go to the career center. But\u00a0the way you utilize these tools<\/a> is just as important as the resources themselves.\u201d<\/p>\n 11. Of all the stuff on Osama bin Laden<\/strong><\/a>, this was one of the best and most informative.<\/p>\n Meanderings in Sports<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/wp.patheos.com\/community\/sites\/40\/2011\/05\/Screen-shot-2011-05-01-at-7.34.57-AM2-300x179.jpg\" "\\"Screen")
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<\/a>1. Pope John Paul II\u2019s beatification<\/strong><\/a>: \u201cNick Squires at the Vatican\u00a02:19PM BST 01 May 2011 Benedict XVI, in his homily on the steps of St Peter\u2019s during the beatification ceremony, called him \u201cbeloved and revered\u201d. In an apparent reference to John Paul\u2019s bold defiance of Communism and support for the Polish Solidarity movement, Benedict said his predecessor \u201cturned back with the strength of a titan \u2026 a tide which appeared irreversible.\u201d The first non-Italian Pope in 455 years when he was elected in 1978, John Paul brought new vitality to the Vatican but alienated many Roman Catholics with his conservative social views. Baptised Karol Wojtyla, he was born in a small town near Krak\u00f3w, in southern Poland, the son of an army officer, in 1920.\u201d<\/p>\n