A great description of science: "Lay people tend to regard science, especially physics, as a lofty temple inhabited by serene, Spock-like wise men. Working scientists, though, will tell you it's more like the stock market, full of fads and fashions, booms and busts."
"Technology helps Canadian families juggle busy schedules and stay in touch, but it's also leaving them time-crunched, over-stimulated and isolated even while under the same roof, according to a new report from the Vanier Institute of the Family."
The article seems to offer a great description of what happens when you separate "Christianity" from any concrete meaning. To quote one of the leaders putting on this event: "it's an invitation to join us in the pews every single Sunday, where not a single one of these pastors will care if you agree with us or if you think our families are appropriate. We’ll serve you communion, we’ll pray with you and we’ll visit you in the hospital."
A while back I read Dan Pink's book Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us, suggesting that typical opinions about what drives people to achieve are wrong. Essentially he argues that the use of carrots and sticks to attempt to drive people to complete tasks are less effective than intrinsic motivation - finding the achievement gained from completing the work itself to be sufficient to drive a person forward. The clip above is a brief, 11-minute summary of the book.
A bit about missionaries operating in and around North Korea. "Like most North Koreans, Son Jong Nam knew next to nothing about Christianity when he fled to neighboring China in 1998. Eleven years later, he died back in North Korea in prison, reportedly tortured to death for trying to spread the Gospel in his native land"
A little elaboration on that fairly well-known saying from Pascal: "I have often said that the sole cause of man’s unhappiness is that he does not know how to stay quietly in his room."
The intro: "The advertisement warns of speculative financial bubbles. It mocks a group of gullible Frenchmen seduced into a silly, 18th-century investment scheme, noting that the modern shareholder, armed with superior information, can avoid the pitfalls of the past. "How different the position of the investor today!" the ad enthuses. It ran in The Saturday Evening Post on Sept. 14, 1929. A month later, the stock market crashed. "Everyone wants to think they’re smarter than the poor souls in developing countries, and smarter than their predecessors," says Carmen M. Reinhart, an economist at the University of Maryland. "They’re wrong. And we can prove it."
"... listening to sports on the radio while driving can be as dangerous as drunken driving" - The sample size of the study seems a bit too small to draw any particularly solid conclusions, but it's still an interesting question to ponder.
