1. An Irrational Guide to Gifts
Imagine that you are walking by a storefront and you notice a beautiful coat that is just the right cut and color. You walk in to check it out, and up close it is even more beautiful. But then, you look at the price tag and you discover that it is about twice as expensive as you originally guessed, and after 30 seconds of painful deliberation you decide that you can’t possibly justify paying so much for a coat – and you go on your way. When you get home, you find out that your significant other has purchased that same exact coat for you . . . from your joint checking account. Now, ask yourself how you would feel about this. Would you say a) “Honey, this is very nice of you, but I have weighted the costs and benefits earlier and decided that this coat is not worth the money — so please take it back immediately” or b) “Thank you so much, I love it, and I love you.” I suspect that the answer is b. Why? Because by getting you the expensive coat, your significant other got you what you wanted without making you contemplate the guilt associated with the purchase.
2. Sermon Title of the Week: From John Leland, a Baptist evangelist from Massachusetts, in 1791 - “The Rights of Conscience Inalienable, and Therefore Religious Opinions Not Cognizable by Law; or, The High-Flying Church-Man, Stripped of His Legal Robe, Appears a Yaho.”
3. Mark and Susan are most likely names to divorce
People named Mark and Susan are the most likely to have marriages which end in divorce, it has been found.A study of data from thousands of recently filed divorces in the UK found these monikers appeared more often than any others.
David, Michael, Caroline and Nicola were also discovered to appear as divorce clients more often than those with other names.
4. Top ten Greatest Mathematicians
5. The Perfect Place to Commit a Crime is in Yellowstone National Park
Let’s say you, heaven forbid, are charged with a crime. The Constitution itself (Article III, Section 2 for those who wish to look it up) requires that the “Trial shall be held in the State where the said Crimes shall have been committed.” Pretty straight forward. The 6th Amendment requires that the jury must be “of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed.” Again, pretty clear. The only confusing part, unless you’re a lawyer, is probably the term “district.”The U.S. Federal Courts are divided into zones called “districts” which correlate almost perfectly with states themselves. Connecticut has one district: the District of Connecticut. New York has four, using ordinal directions, e.g. “Southern District of New York” which includes Manhattan, the Bronx, and six counties in the state. Wyoming has one, as well, which includes the entire state — and, in addition, the parts of Yellowstone National Park which are in Idaho and Montana. And that’s where the perfect crime scene appears.
So that crime you’re charged with? Imagine you committed it in the part of Yellowstone which is actually in Idaho. Where would your jury come from? It would have to be from the state (Idaho) and district (the District of Wyoming) in which the crime was commited — in other words, from that same part of Yellowstone which is in Idaho. The population of that area?
Zero.
Good luck finding that jury.
6. 15 Bizarre Creatures Under the Sea
7. Weird News of the Week: Spanish woman claims she owns the sun
A canny Spanish woman from Galicia - a sun-drenched region on the border with Spain and Portugal - has decided that she owns the star, and has the registration papers to prove it.
Angeles Duran, 49, says that the sun officially belongs to her now, having had the celestial body registered in her name at a local notary office.Ms Duran told the online edition of daily El Mundo she took the step in September after reading about an American man who had registered himself as the owner of the moon and most planets in our solar system.
There is an international agreement which states that no country may claim ownership of a planet or star, but it says nothing about individuals, she added. ‘There was no snag, I backed my claim legally, I am not stupid, I know the law. ‘I did it but anyone else could have done it, it simply occurred to me first.’
8. Quote of the Week: “There are a hundred magazines, but only about five stories.” — G.K. Chesterton
Information, n., now runs 9,400 words, the length of a novella. It is a sort of masterpiece—an adventure in cultural history. A century ago “information” did not have much resonance. It was a nothing word. “An item of training; an instruction.” Now (as people have been saying for fifty years) we are in the Information Age. Which, by the way, the OED defines for us in its dry-as-chili-powder prose: “the era in which the retrieval, management, and transmission of information, esp. by using computer technology, is a principal (commercial) activity.”
10. 10 Spelling Bee Game Websites That Help Your Children Spell Words Right
11. Your Parents’ Divorce Will Make You Pay More For College
Students from families with divorced or remarried parents pay twice the share of their college education as compared to their peers whose parents remain married to each other, according to recent research published online by the Journal of Family Issues.“Divorced or separated parents contributed significantly less than married parents — in absolute dollars, as a proportion of their income, and as a proportion of their children’s financial need,” Ruth N. López Turley, associate professor of sociology at Rice University, and Matthew Desmond, a junior fellow at Harvard University, say in their article, “Contributions to College Costs by Married, Divorced, and Remarried Parents.”
(Via: Gawker )
12. Image of the Week: The Surreal Treehopper
German artist Alfred Keller (1902-1955), who worked for Berlin’s natural history museum, is well known for his insect sculptures. The picture above shows one of his creations, a model of the Brazilian treehopper Bocydium globulare.
13. 8 Great Antarctic Explorers
14. Lost Civilization May Have Existed Beneath the Persian Gulf
Veiled beneath the Persian Gulf, a once-fertile landmass may have supported some of the earliest humans outside Africa some 75,000 to 100,000 years ago, a new review of research suggests.At its peak, the floodplain now below the Gulf would have been about the size of Great Britain, and then shrank as water began to flood the area. Then, about 8,000 years ago, the land would have been swallowed up by the Indian Ocean, the review scientist said.
15. Infographic of the Week: Explain the Internet to a 19th Century Street Urchin
16. Google’s annual Zeitgeist video
17. Top 10 Heart Attack Symptoms You Shouldn’t Ignore
From officiating at a wedding ceremony to eulogizing at a funeral, it’s clear that the job of a clergy member is complex but crucial. Whether you’re a priest, minister, vicar, rabbi, or bishop, it’s typically your job to provide religious and spiritual guidance to members of your congregation. While you will most likely rely on the authority of a particular religious text—the Bible, the Koran, or the Torah, for example—you will encounter challenging spiritual questions and earthly events that require your own interpretation of those texts and rely on your own knowledge, understanding, and faith experiences. Much of your work can be administrative—managing the day-to-day operations and staff of a religious center or place of worship—and very time consuming. It can also be highly social, whether you’re visiting congregation members in the hospital, attending a community event, or counseling a couple on the brink of divorce. It will be your responsibility to grow your congregation, find reliable lay leaders to run workshops or handle finances, and even oversee the repair of old lighting fixtures and damaged organ pipes. Keep in mind, too, that not all clerics have congregations, but may serve in other capacities.
(Via: TitusOneNine )
20. We’re No. 2
In the poll, only one in five Americans said that the U.S. economy is the world’s strongest—nearly half picked China instead. Looking forward, Americans are somewhat more optimistic about regaining primacy, but still only about one in three expect the U.S. economy to be the world’s strongest in 20 years. Nearly three-fifths of those surveyed said that increasing competition from lower-paid workers around the world will keep living standards for average Americans from growing as fast as they did in the past. Ruben Owen, a retired Boeing engineer in Seattle who responded to the survey, spoke for many when he said, “We’re still in a reasonably good place . . . but it’s going to get harder because other places are growing stronger.”
21. 11 Extravagant Celebrity Weddings
22. HistoricalLOL of the Week
23. Imitate an Accent to Understand It Better
To find out how we can make sense of unfamiliar inflections, psychologists spoke to volunteers in an accent they’d invented. Some subjects were told to imitate the odd sounds. Others were told to simply listen, or to repeat the sentence in their normal voice. Turns out the mimics did better at deciphering the unusual exchange. The scientists say that simply moving your mouth like other folks do allows you to intuit their potentially eccentric speech patterns, and get what they say.
25. Military One Step Closer to Battlefield Holograms
It’s one of those grandiose ideas that gets bandied about by Pentagon scientists and pops up in the press every few years. The “Face of Allah” weapon would beam a massive, lifelike hologram over a battlefield, projecting the image of some deity “to incite fear in soldiers on a battlefield,” according to one researcher.We last checked in on holographic weapons research two years ago, when the University of New Hampshire was working on some Pentagon-funded projects. Since then, another university team has turned holograms into a reality — but not as tools of war. Not yet, at least.
26. 7 deadly sins of 401(k) investing
27. Better Book Title of the Week
28. How-To of the Week: Create Old-Fashioned Cotton Candy Right in Your Kitchen
29. Do spies use sex to extract secrets?
Are honey traps real, or are they found only in James Bond movies?Oh, they’re real. Honey traps, also called “honey pots,” have been a favorite spying tactic as long as sex and espionage have existed—in other words, forever. Perhaps the earliest honey trap on record was the betrayal of Samson by Delilah, who revealed Samson’s weakness (his hair) to the Philistines in exchange for 1,100 pieces of silver, as described in the Book of Judges. The practice continued into the 20th century and became a staple of Cold War spy craft. Governments around the world set up honey traps to this day, but it’s an especially common practice in Russia and China. The Central Intelligence Agency doesn’t comment on whether its agents use their sexuality to obtain information, but current and former intelligence officials sayit does happen occasionally.
31. Imitate an Accent to Understand It Better
To find out how we can make sense of unfamiliar inflections, psychologists spoke to volunteers in an accent they’d invented. Some subjects were told to imitate the odd sounds. Others were told to simply listen, or to repeat the sentence in their normal voice. Turns out the mimics did better at deciphering the unusual exchange. The scientists say that simply moving your mouth like other folks do allows you to intuit their potentially eccentric speech patterns, and get what they say.
32. Difference Between: Direct Current and Alternating Current
33. 100 Crazy Christmas Lights Displays In 2 Minutes
You have a decision to make: double or nothing.
For this week only, a generous supporter has offered to fully match all new and increased donations to First Things up to $60,000.
In other words, your gift of $50 unlocks $100 for First Things, your gift of $100 unlocks $200, and so on, up to a total of $120,000. But if you don’t give, nothing.
So what will it be, dear reader: double, or nothing?
Make your year-end gift go twice as far for First Things by giving now.
