Archive for the ‘Globalization’ Category
Best Links of the Week
Kermit Gosnell, the infanticide-abortion doctor, made over $1.8 million dollars a year, 17 properties, a boat, and a 41 year old mistress on payroll. This story keeps getting worse and worse.
Flu vaccine touts that it kills all strains of the flu virus.
A few articles on multi-culturalism – “Ending the Multicultural Experiment” “Nickolas Sarkozy, “Multiculturalism Has Failed“”
Some analysis of what the Egypt situation means for Christians in Egypt.
Saudi Arabia can’t refine enough oil to keep up with demand.
Crazy good goal from Wayne Rooney:
Best Links of the Week
George W. Bush has a few refreshingly rare words for a former president in a recent interview:
I don’t want to go out and campaign for candidates. I don’t want to be viewed as a perpetual money-raiser. I don’t want to be on these talk shows giving my opinion, second-guessing the current president. I think it’s bad for the country, frankly, to have a former president criticize his successor. It’s tough enough to be president as it is without a former president undermining the current president. Plus, I don’t want to do that.
Huge insult during Chinese delegation visit and huge blunder by Obama administration – “A State Insult with Chinese Charateristics.” This further highlights
Indian government has a $35 tablet computer.
“Why You Should Always Run Up the Score” – First Things
GOP entertaining privatizing Medicare.
The most sued companies in America. Surprise, all the usual subprime suspects lead the list…
China keeps ramping up the dollar rhetoric.
FCIC Report – Financial Crisis was Avoidable – I am not sure whether this is the case or not. It is a rather complex question of whether it was avoidable or not. It leaves me with the question, does human irrationality not necessitate the existence of irrational bubbles?
Over 99% vote for secession in Southern Sudan
Drug smugglers attempt to catapult drugs over U.S./Mexico border. Nothing like profit driving innovation… I wonder if they came up with their pot trebuchet idea while smoking pot.
Tons of British Anglicans fleeing the Anglican church in favor of Roman Catholicism
Baseball player walks away from $12 million salary because he says he ‘doesn’t deserve it.’
Rafi Eitan recounts the story of their capture of Nazi Holocaust chief architect Adolf Eichmann.
Truly excellent interview with Francis Ford Coppola:
There is something we know that’s connected with beauty and truth. There is something ancient. We know that art is about beauty, and therefore it has to be about truth.
UN spends $288,700 per “green job”
Consumer confidence crashing in the UK
11% of all homes are vacant in U.S. – this amounts to 18 million homes
Florida Judge rules that Obamacare is unconstitutional. In the same vein, “Tawdry Details of Obamacare“
“Greatest Putt-Putt Shot Ever”
Smooth Criminal on Cello
Best Links of the Week
I think some PAC published this video… worth watching
How to use Zotero to organize your personal library. Zotero has personally saved me literally dozens of hours on a single project I worked on recently. Any person in graduate school writing papers should use this tool. The simple firefox/Office plugin will format your footnotes and create your Bibliography and/or Works Cited for you. Hours saved. I can’t believe more people don’t use this already.
The French are funny. They are rioting because their version of Social Security got moved from age 60 to age 62. I remember them getting all fussy when Sarkozy changed the work week from 35 hours to 40 hours.
WSJ on the status of the mortgage mess in the U.S.
Spot on TIME Magazine piece on why young Italian professionals are leaving Italy in droves. For once, an American journalistic enterprise hits a home run on understanding the many layers of Italian culture and economics. Here is a bonus piece on the trash crisis in Naples, Italy. I remember the citizens of Avellino getting so upset at their trash crisis that they started dumping trash on the city courthouse steps and lighting it on fire. Awesome.
An interesting opinion piece on UGA’s new engineering school and the state of education in the state of Georgia.
Best Links of the Week
Some cogent thoughts on church planting by Ed Stetzer (see video above)
Tim Tebow Documentary coming out soon: Trailer Here
Excellent piece in Vanity Fair by Michael Lewis entitled, “Beware of Greeks Bearing Bonds“
WSJ article on Obama pushing for a tax cut and a tax hike?
Further Seems Forever reuniting with Chris Carabba. I am hope that the new music is substantive and layered.
HDR video using two Canon 5D Mark ii‘s
Very-well written piece utterly dissecting Lady Gaga (and by corollary the generation that has made her famous) in an article entitled, “Lady Gaga and the Death of Sex.”
Interesting debate in Israel over daylight savings time and theology.
Tennessee Volunteer football coach has to coach up players on how to take a shower properly after a series of staph infections amongst players.
Popular Science gallery on 30 Awesome College Labs (classes).
Stanford creating seriously peer-reviewed rival to Wikipedia.
Infographic on who is in the blogosphere. (HT: Challies)
“How to block abusive or unfriendly email on Gmail“
Fidel Castro reportedly saying publicly that Cuban model of government and economics does not work… then states he misspoke and meant to say “capitalism doesn’t work.”
Really strange soccer goal (HT: Uri)
Why the Chinese economy is expanding – efficient production. Note – the video has not been sped up
Best Links of the Week
Typhoon Class Russian Submarine
Much greater activity by Russian submarines in the North Atlantic. By the way, The Hunt for Red October, is one of my favorite books and movie.
Famous man-caves. My favorite is Frank Lloyd-Wright’s man-cave.
Russia-Asia/Pacific pipeline begins development. This is probably the most important and substantial piece of news this week or month but it will not even make a blip on the radar of any major news outlet. This pipeline will substantially change the path of Russian oil from the Europe to Asia. Russia is very very well positioned for the future. This move is smart, strategic, and sound. It ensures that neither Indo-China nor the EU will give Russia any major political problems, while it also ensures a steady cash flow to their already commodity rich economy. Water, food (mainly corn), oil, lending, and parity make the world go round. If that sentence makes no sense to you, then you don’t grasp globalization yet. Politics and economics are two sides of the same coin whose fiat is power. In my opinion, Vladimir Putin and the Russian technocratic government are wicked brilliant. If the United States wants to be relevant in the 22nd Century we need to return to sound fiscal policy and streamlined government.
Russell Moore brings needed clarity to Glenn Beck’s rally in Washington D.C.
GMail now introduces priority inbox: “Incoming email gets separated into sections: important and unread, starred, and everything else. Don’t like these? Customize them.” This is super helpful as I have been already doing something like this with a system of marking unread and color coded stars (superstars GMail plugin). It will be rolled out throughout this week and has yet to been offered in my account yet, but I cannot wait.
Carl Trueman has a great piece on pastors actually knowing the people in their church.
“Why ∏A = gUG + min(k-g, (1-g)(1-r)) equals low airline fares“
A really really thorough post on how to completely extricate your online footprint… complete with ungoogling, social networking deletion, down to much more minor minutiae.
Stormpulse is a really nice weather and hurricane website I discovered this week.
Ridiculous between the legs tennis shot by Roger Federer:
Best Links of the Week
In one of the weirder stories in recent memory… former head of NASDAQ and convicted swindler of $50,000,000,000, Bernie Madoff was severely beaten. There are several details that are really strange though, Yahoo has the full article. Apparently the incident happened back in December of 2009. It involves a homosexual prison gang. Madoff’s injuries are really bad, ‘facial fractures, lacerations, broken ribs, and a collapsed lung.’ I do recall that Madoff was hospitalized back in December for ‘falling out of a bunk bed,’ and remember being skeptical about that. Apparently, Madoff spends his time in the medium security prison giving out financial advice to inmates and he has also befriended the head of the Columbo crime family Carmine Persico. Apparently also, former Lehman Brothers CEO was beaten up also by a former Lehman employee. You can’t make this story up.
Google quits censoring in China.
Dwight Schrute would be proud of Shell Oil Company and a subsidiary Virent, for making biofuel gasoline from beets.
Bill Gates wants a nuclear reactor.
World famous thief Gerald Blanchard is caught due to a disgruntled Wal-Mart employee.
Best Links of the Week
Woman decides not to abort child because of Tim Tebow Superbowl commercial.
Keith Mathison of Ligonier recommends some books on the Person of Christ.
Thai protestors pour out 132 gallons of their own blood on the steps of government headquarters.
Al Mohler’s list of the top ten books pastors should read in 2010.
“Episcopal Church Ordains Second Gay Bishop“
Mark Driscoll gives a brief biography of St. Patrick.
What a Happy Meal from McDonald’s looks like after one year.
Lovely Day for a Guinness
Os Guinness that is...
Justin Taylor has a wonderful little interview of Os Guinness, where he peppers him with insightful questions regarding on old book, The Gravedigger File (in anticipation for his forthcoming book The Last Christian on Earth). For those not familiar with Guinness, he is the great-great-great grandson of Arthur Guinness, brewer and founder of Guinness beer. He is a keen analyzer of evangelicalism and a necessary read for developing both a Christian worldview and philosophy of ministry. He is well-travelled, well thought out, cogent, and prescient in his thinking. 1983′s Gravedigger put forth the idea that Christianity was the major force behind modernization and capitalism in the West and what Christianity created it also uncritically adopted, thereby undermining Christianity. Undoubtedly true.
Excellent Article from Tim Keller on Issues Facing the Western Church
The Big Issues Facing the Western Church
1. The opportunity for extensive culture-making in the U.S
2. The rise of Islam
3. The new non-western Global Christianity
4. The growing cultural remoteness of the gospel
5. The end of prosperity?
As usual, Keller has some prescient and keen cultural insight. Your thoughts?
Best Links of the Week
The Danger of an Unconverted Seminary
Which is your favorite? Did I miss anything extraordinary?
1. “The Danger of an Uncoverted Seminary” – a very worthwhile read, from a mainline perspective, on thedechristianization of the West and how seminaries ought to be adjusting to this shift. We’ve never been more like the 1st/2nd centuries – pluralism, syncretism, and a world where the velocity of ideas was ever quicker due to new trade routes.
2. Very disturbing Gallop Poll showing that 53% of democrat leaning voters think positively about “socialism.” This is insanity. People need to read history. Also included in the poll were voters impressions of: small business, free enterprise, entrepreneurs, capitalism, big business, and federal government. Also, 63% of all polled (both democrat and republican) thought Barack Obama was a “socialist.”
3. Google has been doing lots of stuff this week: “Is Google Planning to Add Storeviews to Google Maps?“; “Google Creates Experimental Fiber Network…(capable of 1Gb/s)“; they also are launched an offensive on Facebook over their Gmail client – “Google wants to be Facebook and Facebook wants to be Gmail“.
4. Ligonier has a huge compilation of links on the New Perspectives on Paul, from Turretin to present.
5. Proposed Obama 2011 budget cuts could drastically reduce charitable giving from taking away line item deductions for those in 28% and higher tax brackets.
6. A fascinating piece on First Things entitled, “Vampires and the Anthropic Principle.”
7. First Things has an interesting info-graphic and analysis of the 210,000,000 Facebook profiles and friend networks: “The Localism of Facebook Nation“
8. “The Government Has Your Babies’ DNA“
9. Steven Pearlstein of the Washington Post writes on the fallout of the Amazon v. MacMillan.
10. Only 4 men have been to all 44 Superbowls, here is their story.
11. “Physicist Discovers How to Teleport Energy“: infinite possibilities here.
12. A very scary article from GQ about cell phone radiation and brain cancer. The writer talked to several investment bankers in their late 30s/early 40s who have been using cell phones since the brick days… and have brain tumors. This is not a tin foil hat, conspiracy theory article, it is cogently written.
13. Awkwardfamilyphotos.com – self-explanatory, hilarious, and definitely awkward.
14. “The Beauty of Waves“: series of photos from LIFE Magazine of beautiful waves. Photography done by Clark Little.
15. Several people in the Philippines have been murdered by singing the triumphalist Frank Sinatra song, “My Way,” read the NY Times article.
16. 12 really random things you can buy on the internet (I fancy both the tanks and the giant floating hamster balls).
17. NY Times article on the ‘Shortage of Men on College Campuses.’
18. Foxnews on proposed new government administration to study climate change. File under: big government and waste of money.
19. NY Times Op-Ed chilling story on “The World Capital of Killing.”
20. “Will the Baby Boomers Bankrupt Social Security” – CNBC article
21. Ed Stetzer on potential upcoming shifts in pastoral ministry.
22. Low intelligence second most important indicator (behind smoking) as predictor of heart disease.
