Random links
- What’s a Congregation Worth?
- "Does a congregation’s tax-exempt status outweigh the economic value it adds to its community? The University of Pennsylvania’s Ram Cnaan has long been searching for a specific answer. In a 1997 study, he found that urban congregations provide, on average, $140,000 worth of services annually. In 2009, Cnaan (who describes himself as nonreligious) revised his estimate to $476,663.24. Now he’s about to release an even more detailed pilot study focusing on 12 historic Philadelphia congregations, including First Baptist Church, whose annual value to the local economy Cnaan’s team places conservatively at $6,090,032 (nearly ten times its annual budget)." I'm still generally opposing to tax exemptions or subsidies for religious organizations - even if they do add some economic value to the community.
- How technology is killing the Asian growth miracle
- Basically with robots replacing labour there's not the wage differential incentive to outsource and high fuel costs push more towards localization of manufacturing.
- Superweeds, Superpests: The Legacy of Pesticides
- How we reach the point where insects have adapted such that genetically engineered crops now require more pesticides that non-genetically engineered varieties?
- World Happiness Report
- How can you measure happiness? Should you replace measures like GDP with measures of happiness as the primary means of comparing countries? How does happiness compare between countries?