Rotundus.com

Nearly all marriages, even happy ones, are mistakes, in the sense that almost certainly (in a more perfect world, or even with a little more care in this very imperfect one) both partners might be found more suitable mates. But the real soul-mate is the one you are actually married to.

- J.R. Tolkien, cited on p. 191 of Seeing Through Cynicism

• In the big cities, do men or women have higher average salaries? Answer: In U.S. big cities, women in their 20s working full-time jobs earn more than men of the same age (cited in Reuters)
• Which country has the higher birthrate, Canada or mainland China? Answer: China (via Wikipedia)
• How rich are "deadbeat dads"? Answer: they're broke. Federal Office of Child Support Enforcement data shows that two-thirds of those who owe child support nationwide earned less than $10,000 in the previous year. According to the largest federally funded study of divorced dads ever conducted, unemployment, not willful neglect, is the largest cause of failure to pay child support. (source)
• Do attitudes toward divorce (going into a marriage) affect marital quality? Answer: Yes. Research suggests that those with favourable attitudes towards divorce are likely to invest less in their marriages, reducing perceived quality.

Congregants find megachurches offer more personal worship and sense of community than smaller churches, according to a study released yesterday that challenges the conventional wisdom that some large churches are too big to offer a spiritual experience.

Researchers at the Institute for Studies of Religion, who defined megachurches as those with more than 1,000 worshipers, found that their members were twice as likely to have friends in the congregation than members of small churches. They also displayed a higher level of personal commitment to the church -- attending services and tithing more often than small-church members.

(Clipped from the Washington Post)

As the authors of the article note, larger churches tend to be more "evangelical" than smaller churches on average, so this may be a comparison of liberal vs. conservative Christianity in disguise. On the other hand, Osteen et al may distort things in the other direction - perhaps what they're really detecting is consumerism that some mega-churches seem to be focused on. In any case, it's some interesting food for thought.