While I am glad things are (appar­ent­ly) bet­ter than we had believed, I am agog that NO ONE NOTICED. Wow.

Ghana “fact” of the day

Two years ago Ghana’s sta­tis­ti­cal ser­vice announced it was revis­ing its GDP esti­mates upwards by over 60%, sug­gest­ing that in the pre­vi­ous esti­mates about US$13bn worth’s of eco­nom­ic ac…

That there is a strong cor­re­la­tion makes intu­itive sense to me, although I would not have pegged it as the strongest pre­dic­tor.

Sen­tences to pon­der

Stun­ning­ly, the post­pone­ment of mar­riage and par­ent­ing — the fac­tors that shrink the birth rate — is the very best pre­dic­tor of a person’s pol­i­tics in the Unit­ed States, over even income and edu­cat.…..

So much truth in just three pan­els…

Dil­bert com­ic strip for 11/22/2012 from the offi­cial Dil­bert com­ic strips archive.

The Offi­cial Dil­bert Web­site fea­tur­ing Scott Adams Dil­bert strips, ani­ma­tion, mashups and more star­ring Dil­bert, Dog­bert, Wal­ly, The Pointy Haired Boss, Alice, Asok, Dog­bert’s New Rul­ing Class and mor…

How fas­ci­nat­ing. His skep­ti­cism notwith­stand­ing, this is a great source for ser­mon illus­tra­tions on David v Goliath.

The Straight Dope: Has an impor­tant bat­tle ever been decid­ed by sin­gle com­bat?

Dear Cecil: I’m cur­rent­ly read­ing Poly­bius’s Rise of the Roman Empire and stum­bled on a quote that begs for elab­o­ra­tion. In book VI, Poly­bius offhand­ed­ly remarks, “Many Romans have vol­un­teered to enga…

An excel­lent sto­ry from one of the Ph.D. can­di­dates in my min­istry.

A Light In The Dark­ness

The very first hike i went on as a Boy Scout was to Daniel Boone Nation­al For­est in Ken­tucky. We had sched­uled a 12 mile course to take 5–6 hours. It was a beau­ti­ful April day, cool and bright, a gr…

This is a good expla­na­tion. If you are a Chris­t­ian con­sid­er­ing min­istry, this is worth reflect­ing upon.

Why Go to Sem­i­nary?

A sem­i­nary’s most impor­tant task is to pass on sound doc­trine to the next gen­er­a­tion of pas­tors for the ben­e­fit of the church­es. A sem­i­nary’s most impor­tant task is to pass on sound doc­trine to the ne…

This is a very dis­turb­ing post. I knew in vague terms that there were dis­in­cen­tives for the poor to earn more mon­ey, but this is aston­ish­ing. Col­or me depressed.

Tax­es and cliffs

The whole tax debate is supreme­ly frus­trat­ing to any­one who sur­vived econ 1. The ill effects of tax­a­tion — the “dis­tor­tions” — depend on the total, mar­gin­al rate includ­ing trans­fers. If I earn an ex…

This could sub­sti­tute for RA train­ing on a lot of cam­pus­es…

Pearls Before Swine by Stephan Pastis, Novem­ber 27, 2012 Via @GoComics

At its heart, Pearls Before Swine is the com­ic strip tale of two friends: an arro­gant Rat who thinks he knows it all and a slow-wit­ted Pig who does­n’t know any bet­ter. Togeth­er, this pair offers caust…

I some­times teach as an adjunct for the Assem­blies of God The­o­log­i­cal Sem­i­nary, and I must con­fess that I hate assign­ing grades. This essay is a help­ful reflec­tion on the noble task of eval­u­a­tion.

Grad­ing as Truth-Telling | John G. Stack­house, Jr.

A false bal­ance is an abom­i­na­tion to Yhwh, but an accu­rate weight is his delight. (Proverbs 11:1). Grad­ing papers is among the most dif­fi­cult parts, and is cer­tain­ly the least plea­sur­able part, of my …

Some news sto­ries catch you off-guard. This one def­i­nite­ly sur­prised me.

Defin­ing deprav­i­ty down­wards in Deutsch­land

YouTube Pre­view Image. Der Spiegel’s Eng­lish-lan­guage bul­letin reports that con­ser­v­a­tive deputies on the Agri­cul­tur­al Affairs com­mit­tee of the Bun­destag have intro­duced leg­is­la­tion ban­ning sex with an…