From John Piper’s book, What Jesus Demands from the World: It is risky for Jesus to say, “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s.” That puts a high premium on obedience to the demands of Caesar. One of the realities that warrants this risk is that the heart of rebellion is more dangerous in us than the demands of Caesar outside of us. Jesus wants us to see that the danger to our soul from unjust, secular governments is... Read more
Children are literalists rather than ironists, says David Bayly, they grasp what they see but fare poorly when it comes to reading between lines: This means that the character of many fathers is misread by their children. Or, more accurately, read with greater clarity than most fathers would like. The man who thinks that the love he buries beneath a gruff exterior is all the more sweet to his children for its crusty shell is a fabulist. Children don’t read... Read more
How one persistent state trooper has saved hundreds of lives. (Via: Take Your Vitamin Z) Read more
A new study finds that even academic scholars perceived research to be of higher quality if there’s some math involved—even if the math makes no sense: Mathematics is a fundamental tool of research. Although potentially applicable in every discipline, the amount of training in mathematics that students typically receive varies greatly between different disciplines. In those disciplines where most researchers do not master mathematics, the use of mathematics may be held in too much awe. To demonstrate this I conducted... Read more
Remember when your mother told you to clean your plate since there were starving people in the world? Apparently, not too many people are following her advice. As much as half of all the food produced in the world—equivalent to 2 billion tons—ends up as waste every year: The UK’s Institution of Mechanical Engineers (IMechE) blames the “staggering” new figures in its analysis on unnecessarily strict sell-by dates, buy-one-get-one free and Western consumer demand for cosmetically perfect food, along with... Read more
By the end of World War II, more than 35,000 Allied POWs had escaped from German prison camps. And more than a few of those escapees owe their breakout to a classic board game: During World War II, the British secret service hatched a master plan to smuggle escape gear to captured Allied soldiers inside Germany. Their secret weapon? Monopoly boxes. The original notion was simple enough: Find a way to sneak useful items into prison camps in an unassuming... Read more
A new study, published in the Annals of Neurology, that identifies a common gene variant affecting circadian rhythms. And that variant, it seems, could also predict the time of day you will die: Particularly when you’re older, you are 14 percent more likely to die on your birthday than on any other day of the year. Particularly when you live in certain geographical areas, you are 13 percent more likely to die after getting a paycheck. And particularly when you’re... Read more
Non-Western people are not failed attempts at modernity, let alone failed attempts to be us, says Wade Davis. They are unique expressions of the human imagination and heart, unique answers to a fundamental question: what does it mean to be human and alive? When asked this question, the cultures of the world respond in 7000 different voices, and these answers collectively comprise our human repertoire for dealing with all the challenges that will confront us as a species as we... Read more
The Internet is exposing us to massive quantities of things that are amazing and improbably, says Kevin Kelly. And that might just be changing our culture: The internets are also brimming with improbable feats of performance — someone who can run up a side of a building, or slide down suburban roof tops, or stack up cups faster than you can blink. Not just humans, but pets open doors, ride scooters, and paint pictures. The improbable also includes extraordinary levels... Read more
Since 2009, the Gallup polling firm has surveyed people in 150 countries and territories on, among other things, their daily emotional experience: Singapore is the least emotional country in the world. ”Singaporeans recognize they have a problem,” Bloomberg Businessweek writes of the country’s “emotional deficit,” citing a culture in which schools “discourage students from thinking of themselves as individuals.” They also point to low work satisfaction, competitiveness, and the urban experience: “Staying emotionally neutral could be a way of coping with... Read more
Joe Carter
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