Asides

I was skep­ti­cal, but it is a plau­si­ble con­tender.

The best word ever

Over the past two months, Ted McCagg has been run­ning a con­test on his blog to find the best word ever. A win­ner was recent­ly anno

This is a life-sav­ing chart and should be post­ed promi­nent­ly wher­ev­er men and women cross paths.

When Is It Okay to Ask a Woman If She’s Preg­nant?

It’s a tricky ques­tion, but this chart pro­vides a good rule of thumb. HT: The CornerIt’s a tricky ques­tion, but this chart pro­vides a good rule of thumb. HT: The Cor­ner

I have always thought this is the dumb­est pos­si­ble crit­i­cism of the Catholic Church. It’s like say­ing that Bat­man does­n’t fight crime because Bruce Wayne goes to par­ties. It miss­es the way the nar­ra­tive fits togeth­er.

Out of Ur: Do Megachurch­es Hurt the Poor?

Con­ver­sa­tions for Min­istry Lead­ers

File this under “ter­ri­fy­ing anec­dotes”

Seth’s Blog » Blog Archive » Unac­count­able by Mar­ty Makary

The author, Mar­ty Makary, asked the same ques­tion at his talks and got the same response. Both of them — Leape and Makary — should have start­ed ask­ing “What frac­tion of the sur­geons you work with are …

I am not sure whether media or edu­ca­tion is more at fault in this, but I believe they inad­ver­tent­ly col­lab­o­rate to pro­duce this con­fu­sion.

Amer­i­cans Con­fused About the Num­ber of Protes­tants, Athe­ists, Mor­mons, and Mus­lims

A new study finds that Amer­i­cans under­es­ti­mate the pro­por­tion of Protes­tants in the U.S., while over­es­ti­mat­ing the pro­por­tions of Mor­mons, Mus­lims, and atheists/agnostics.A new study finds that Amer…

I am huge­ly in favor of genet­i­cal­ly mod­i­fy­ing all kinds of stuff. I think it’s a great way to hon­or God. 

Should there be required label­ing of GMOs?

Here is one on-the-mark take (of many): …there have been more than 300 inde­pen­dent med­ical stud­ies on the health and safe­ty of genet­i­cal­ly mod­i­fied foods. The World Health Orga­ni­za­tion, the Nation­al A…

This is pret­ty infor­ma­tive despite the author. He does not seem to be open to the pos­si­bil­i­ty that porn is intrin­si­cal­ly not-so-good. He swift­ly moves from this admis­sion, “most of the porn work­ers (and espe­cial­ly the women) inter­viewed here were sex­u­al­ly abused, or had run out of mon­ey, or were addicts, or had no sup­port network—they were peo­ple who had been pushed into a cor­ner” to “the prob­lems porn work­ers encounter seem like prob­lems lots of work­ers encounter: abu­sive work­ing con­di­tions, inad­e­quate (or more often non-exis­tent) pen­sions, and lack of options.” Real­ly?

Ex Porn Stars Are the 99 Per­cent

The doc­u­men­tary ‘After Porn Ends’ is more about work than sex.

True of ser­mons as well. 

Get­ting Feed­back: Diag­no­sis and Rem­e­dy Are Dif­fer­ent Things | Ben Cas­nocha

Total­ly agree. A relat­ed anec­dote: In the months lead­ing up to the health­care bill, Atul Gawande for the New York­er and David Gold­hill for the Atlantic had phe­nom­e­nal arti­cles detail­ing what was wrong…

This. Yes.

Old Enough to Cri­tique But Too Young to Par­ent

A Wheaton Col­lege pro­fes­sor of the­ol­o­gy explains that his stu­dents can come up with sophis­ti­cat­ed cri­tiques of their par­ents’ faith but are flum­moxed when asked to explain the mean­ing of the gospel.A …

The last bul­let point rings so true it ought to have first chair in a sym­pho­ny. 

Are “fren­e­mies” even worse than ene­mies? — Bark­ing up the wrong tree

“Friends that we feel ambiva­lent­ly about raise our blood pres­sure more — cause more anx­i­ety and stress — than peo­ple we active­ly dis­like.” This is from an episode (“Fren­e­mies”) of the con­sis­tent­ly e…