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<\/a><\/p>\nBrad Brisco\u2019s<\/a><\/strong> opening to a post on what he has learned in being a foster\/resource family: \u201cThis week marks the end of the first year of being a foster\/resource family. After an extended time of reflecting on the concept of hospitality and recognizing the insanity of maintaining a \u201chome office\u201d that was never used, (and the constant prodding of my wife Mischele) our family decided to convert our office back to a bedroom to be in a better position to welcome others into our home.\u00a0In the past twelve months we have had over 40 different kids come through our home. It has been a wild, crazy, fulfilling, maturing, and at times disturbing and heart-wrenching journey. But, it has also been a time of much learning and reflection. Here are just a few things I have learned, or have been reminded of in a fresh way, in the past year \u2026\u201d<\/p>\n Karen\u2019s <\/a><\/strong>got some good reflections here: \u201cThe thing about rocking chairs is that they force you to be still, to think, to reflect, and to engage with others in a more quiet, thoughtful way. Whether it\u2019s a simple wave and nod at the neighbor, or lively after-dinner discourse.\u00a0I have never witnessed a conversation turn ugly between people sitting in rocking chairs. I\u2019ve heard them debate politics and religion and child-rearing. I\u2019ve heard them talk about celebrities, preachers, and celebrity preachers while tipping back in their rockers. But I have never heard somebody outright insult another person while sitting in a rocker. \u00a0Nearly every conversation I\u2019ve heard while leaning in a rocker entailed a lot of laughter.\u00a0Social media is the place where all generations gather now. There are some wonderful things about that, not the least of which is the opportunity to interact with people from a wide-variety of neighborhoods. Many of you have become dear friends to me through social media.\u201d Then she moves to this: \u201cA large contingency of the online community is infected with a flesh-eating bacteria. I\u2019ve sat by, horrified, as people I admire have come under attack, people who have been a great source of encouragement and community to me.\u00a0Kind, thoughtful, gracious people who have been gutted by this viral flesh-eating bacteria.\u201d<\/p>\n God have mercy, Lynne Hybels\u2019 post about rape in Congo<\/a><\/strong>: \u201cImpunity<\/em>. This is a word we hear often in Congo (DRC). I can\u2019t access Google for a dictionary definition, but what it means here is that men can rape women with no fear of consequences. Here, there is no rule of law. There is only the rule of the gun, the rule of the powerful, the rule of male dominance. \u00a0Before we arrived, the\u00a0Ten for Congo<\/em> team did research, read books, and studied reports on rape as a weapon of war. But we missed something. Yes, rape is a weapon of war in the Congo. Rebel militia fighters do hide in the forest, ready to attack vulnerable women. They do know that if they rape enough women they can destroy the social fabric of an entire community. \u00a0But we\u2019ve discovered something worse than rape as a weapon of war. What\u2019s worse is an underlying culture of rape. A culture in which rape has become normalized. Accepted. Okay. This is a patriarchal society taken to the tragic extreme. From the time they are born, boys are taught that being a man means they must have dominion over women. Rapists are congratulated on being \u201cman enough\u201d to \u201ctake a woman.\u201d \u00a0Even churches reinforced this perspective when they preached a perverted message of female submission. Women were to submit, period. There was no mention of the fact that men are to love their wives as Christ loved the church\u2014even to the point of giving his life for his beloved. No mention of the concept of mutual submission.\u201d<\/p>\n Great story about Tony Jones\u2019 mom and dad and Cavonte<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>\n Public profanity? Fined.<\/a><\/strong> \u201cAt a town meeting, residents voted 183-50 to approve a proposal from the police chief to impose a $20 fine on public profanity.\u00a0Officials insist the proposal was not intended to censor casual or private conversations, but instead to crack down on loud, profanity-laden language used by teens and other young people in the downtown area and public parks.\u00a0\u201cI\u2019m really happy about it,\u201d Mimi Duphily, a store owner and former town selectwoman, said after the vote. \u201cI\u2019m sure there\u2019s going to be some fallout, but I think what we did was necessary.\u201d\u00a0Duphily, who runs an auto parts store, is among the downtown merchants who wanted to take a stand against the kind of swearing that can make customers uncomfortable.\u00a0\u201cThey\u2019ll sit on the bench and yell back and forth to each other with the foulest language. It\u2019s just so inappropriate,\u201d she said.\u201d<\/p>\n Genuine, not genuine, maybe genuine<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>\n Meanderings in the News<\/strong><\/p>\n Charles P. Pierce is steeping hot mad at David Brooks<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>\n Grief and children<\/a><\/strong>: \u201cRoughly 5,000 children have lost a parent, and more than 5,200 have lost a sibling, according to estimates. \u00a0The youngest will grow up only knowing their lost loved one through stories told by family and friends; the older ones will try to come to terms with their loss while coming of age, navigating that awkward period between childhood and adulthood.\u00a0For Jordan and other first-timers at grief camp, such a loss has forever altered a time in their lives when they should be looking forward to the possibilities rather than looking back at what could have been.\u00a0Every year, the nonprofit\u00a0Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors<\/a>brings together hundreds of children of fallen service members to attend the Good Grief Camp. The camp coincides with TAPS\u2019National Military Survivor Seminar<\/a> for spouses and parents.\u201d CofE and scaremongering<\/a>?<\/strong><\/p>\n Timothy Williams<\/a><\/strong>: \u201cThe suicide rate among the nation\u2019s active-duty military personnel has spiked this year, eclipsing the number of troops dying in battle and on pace to set a record annual high since the start of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan more than a decade ago, the Pentagon said Friday.\u201d<\/p>\n Jonah Lehrer and mental bias<\/a><\/strong>: \u201cAnd here\u2019s the upsetting punch line: intelligence seems to make things worse. The scientists gave the students four measures of \u201ccognitive sophistication.\u201d As they report in the paper, all four of the measures showed positive correlations, \u201cindicating that more cognitively sophisticated participants showed larger bias blind spots.\u201d This trend held for many of the specific biases, indicating that smarter people (at least as measured by S.A.T. scores) and those more likely to engage in deliberation were slightly more vulnerable to common mental mistakes. Education also isn\u2019t a savior; as Kahneman and Shane Frederick first noted many years ago, more than fifty per cent of students at Harvard, Princeton, and M.I.T. gave the incorrect answer to the bat-and-ball question.\u00a0What explains this result? One provocative hypothesis is that the bias blind spot arises because of a mismatch between how we evaluate others and how we evaluate ourselves. When considering the irrational choices of a stranger, for instance, we are forced to rely on behavioral information; we see their biases from the outside, which allows us to glimpse their systematic thinking errors. However, when assessing our own bad choices, we tend to engage in elaborate introspection. We scrutinize our motivations and search for relevant reasons; we lament our mistakes to therapists and ruminate on the beliefs that led us astray.\u00a0The problem with this introspective approach is that the driving forces behind biases\u2014the root causes of our irrationality\u2014are largely unconscious, which means they remain invisible to self-analysis and impermeable to intelligence. In fact, introspection can actually compound the error, blinding us to those primal processes responsible for many of our everyday failings. We spin eloquent stories, but these stories miss the point. The more we attempt to know ourselves, the less we actually understand.<\/p>\n Adrian Owen and the mind in the vegetative state<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>\n This is theology<\/a><\/strong>: \u201cAriely points out that we are driven by morality much more than standard economic models allow. But I was struck by what you might call the Good Person Construct and the moral calculus it implies. For the past several centuries, most Westerners would have identified themselves fundamentally as Depraved Sinners. In this construct, sin is something you fight like a recurring cancer \u2014 part of a daily battle against evil.\u00a0But these days, people are more likely to believe in their essential goodness. People who live by the Good Person Construct try to balance their virtuous self-image with their selfish desires. They try to manage the moral plusses and minuses and keep their overall record in positive territory. In this construct, moral life is more like dieting: I give myself permission to have a few cookies because I had salads for lunch and dinner. I give myself permission to cheat a little because, when I look at my overall life, I see that I\u2019m still a good person.\u00a0The Good Person isn\u2019t shooting for perfection any more than most dieters are following their diet 100 percent. It\u2019s enough to be workably suboptimal, a tolerant, harmless sinner and a generally good guy.\u201d<\/p>\n Developing a healthy heart<\/a><\/strong>: \u201cReady for some exciting health news? \u201cNinety-nine percent of heart disease is preventable by changing your diet and lifestyle,\u201d said Dr. Dean Ornish, a clinical professor of medicine at the University of California at San Francisco and author of\u00a0Dr. Dean Ornish\u2019s Program for Reversing Heart Disease<\/em>.\u00a0What\u2019s more, scientists are discovering that we don\u2019t have to ban all fat and salt to stay healthy. Instead, you just need to cut back on saturated fat (which comes from meat and whole-fat dairy) and trans fats (found in partially hydrogenated oils in fried and many processed foods). These types of fat seem to increase levels of \u201cbad\u201d LDL cholesterol, which lines arteries with plaque and can cause a heart attack or stroke.\u201d<\/p>\n Ellen Ruppel Shell<\/a><\/strong>: \u201cThe study concludes that, over time, reducing animal fat intake\u00a0decreased<\/em> blood cholesterol levels, and that a high fat low carbohydrate diet\u00a0increased <\/em>blood cholesterol levels. On average, Swedes who switched from a lower fat diet to a higher fat\/lower carbohydrate diet saw their blood cholesterol creep up \u2014 despite an increased use of cholesterol lowering medication.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/a>Craig Cottongim<\/a><\/strong>: \u201cI don\u2019t like to suffer. Yet today at age 44, with a Bachelor\u2019s degree and two Masters degrees, I\u2019m once again working construction. I\u2019ve gone from a cozy office with comfy leather chairs and oak bookshelves to doing backbreaking work while fighting freezing rain, snow, and now a scalding hot summer. Daily, I\u2019m completely exposed to the bitterest of elements while doing work that wears your body down. Construction is grueling work when you\u2019re in your 20\u2019s; it\u2019s excruciatingly hard on your body working concrete on your 40\u2019s. Most of us like to get a good education, find a good job, and then enjoy a nice standard of living. We all like to move forward, not backwards. Surprisingly, I\u2019m happier than I\u2019ve been in years, and by the way, I feel I\u2019ve moved forward.\u00a0It would be counterproductive to attempt an exhaustive account of all I\u2019ve learned, but I want to share some of what I\u2019ve learned by becoming a tentmaker. After 17 years of \u201cfulltime\u201d preaching in established mainline churches, I\u2019m now involved in an exciting new plant. But. The cost of planting a church has placed me back in the workplace as well. You might think I would have become bitter, even resentful from having to do manual labor after all these years. But still, like I said, I\u2019m happier than I\u2019ve been in years!\u201d<\/p>\n<\/a>When it comes to social technology, women are the new first adopters<\/a><\/strong>: \u201cIt turns out women are our new lead adopters. When you look at internet usage, it turns out women in Western countries use the internet 17 percent more every month than their male counterparts. Women are more likely to be using the mobile phones they own, they spend more time talking on them, they spend more time using location-based services. But they also spend more time sending text messages. Women are the fastest growing and largest users on Skype, and that\u2019s mostly younger women. Women are the fastest category and biggest users on every social networking site with the exception of LinkedIn. Women are the vast majority owners of all internet enabled devices\u2013readers, healthcare devices, GPS\u2013that whole bundle of technology is mostly owned by women.\u201d<\/p>\n