Rotundus.com

Try to Remember

An New Yorker article on the different ways of learning the digits of pi. If only my high school had offered an iPod touch as the prize the student who'd memorized the most decimals as did at one of the schools mentioned in the article. That said, I didn't bother going further after the first 45 or 50 decimals back when I bothered with that sort of thing to pass the time in high school.

The Horse Manure problem

Public transit systems and other approaches that might lead to urban densification are where I tend to diverge a little bit from a relatively libertarian view of life. This article looks at some of the problems that arise if we take a "back in the good old days" approach to resolving our problems, although it wasn't enough to convince me a no-limits-on-cars policy is a good idea.

PETA: Don't call animals 'it' in the Bible

Sometimes PETA amuses me. From the actual press release, via CNN: "PETA has written to the Committee on Bible Translation to suggest that its next translation also remove speciesist language by referring to animals as 'he or she' instead of 'it.'" Here I had been expecting to hear something in opposition, e.g., to animal slaughter and that sort of thing.

Arriving as Pregnant Tourists, Leaving With American Babies

Interestingly the practice seems as though it might be legal, and tourist visas can't be denied on the basis of pregnancy. Other than for things like building code violations, I'm not sure that anything is likely to change in the near future. As the article points out, these kids seem less likely to be integrated into American society than the children of illegal immigrants from Latin America (and possibly even those illegal immigrants themselves may be better integrated).

Via: Mashable

Tim Challies' book review of "Heaven is For Real"

Seems that he's as cynical as I am about these sorts of books: "First, the Bible gives us no indication whatsoever that God will work in this way and that he will call one of us to heaven and then cause us to return. It is for man to die once and then the resurrection. To allow a man (or a boy) to experience heaven and then to bring him back would not be grace but cruelty. The only biblical example we have of a man being caught up to heaven is Paul and it’s very interesting that he was forbidden to tell anything about it. And the reason he even mentioned this experience was not to offer encouragement that heaven exists, but to serve as a part of his “gospel boasting.” He saw heaven and was told to say nothing about it."

Allah: A Christian Response

"Volf articulates clearly what many Christians (and Muslims) have sadly missed in the history of Christian-Muslim relations: We must apply the Golden Rule to mission. He applies it in several ways. First, we must witness only if we allow others to witness to us (211). Second, we should witness how we wish others would witness to us, that is, without coercion, bribery, seduction, or unfairly comparing the worst of one religion with the best of another (211-212)" The book being reviewed does seems to overstate the similarity between Islam and Christianity though with the "claim that one can be a practicing Muslim and 100 percent Christian"

xkcd: Model Rail

I suspect that Ryan would endorse rule 1: "Do not talk about model rail layouts"

Cultural Suppression of Female Sexuality

A journal paper looking at the subject. Its abstract: "Four theories about cultural suppression of female sexuality are evaluated. Data are reviewed on cross-cultural differences in power and sex ratios, reactions to the sexual revolution, direct restraining influences on adolescent and adult female sexuality, double standard patterns of sexual morality, female genital surgery, legal and religious restrictions on sex, prostitution and pornography, and sexual deception. The view that men suppress female sexuality received hardly any support and is flatly contradicted by some findings. Instead, the evidence favors the view that women have worked to stifle each other’s sexuality because sex is a limited resource that women use to negotiate with men, and scarcity gives women an advantage." You can find a publicly accessible version of this here.

The Great Gatsby

Not particularly exciting. Reading a book from back in the 1920s which repeatedly used the word "gay" got a little confusing

The Crisis of Islam: Holy War and Unholy Terror

I'll rate this one as "meh". Worth reading if you haven't read a lot of stuff on the history of the Middle East, but otherwise not too much new.

Animal Farm

I caught a play adaptation of Orwell's 1984 earlier this year. Now it was time to read a little more Orwell. Overall a good read.

Ministries of Mercy

Tim Keller's first published book - more or less his doctoral thesis. It seemed a little more practical than his more recent book on this topic. Worth reading.