Links to Your World, Tuesday November 17

Want someone to watch your pet post-rapture? This guy says since he’s going to be “left behind” he’ll do it for $110. Sigh….


“We stopped buying all the stuff we didn't need that was supposed to make us happier, and we seem to be happier for it. And who would have expected that?” (Nancy Gibbs of Time asks, given the current economic woes, why do polls show Americans so cheery?)


“Once the abortion procedure began, [Abby] Johnson saw the child ‘crumple’ under the pressure of the vacuum and then in an instant the child was gone. The reality of seeing the baby moving struck her as she stood in shock and dropped the ultrasound probe, she recalled: ‘My heart was racing. I kept thinking about my daughter.’” (Coverage of the Planned Parenthood director who quit after assisting in an abortion)


Interesting WSJ piece on conducting business overseas as a part of a Christian missionary strategy.


An Italian inventor has devised an electronic holy-water dispenser to reduce exposure to the H1N1 virus in Catholic churches.


“Long dismissed by researchers as trivial and fleeting, teen romance is emerging as a powerful factor in kids' development—one in which parents have a major role to play, new studies show. The romantic ties kids form between middle school and college are important markers of progress toward adulthood; their choice of partners as early as middle school actually shapes their development to a surprising degree. And while parents' dating advice may seem about as welcomed by teens as the swine flu, the research suggests the opposite—that young people not only value parental input, but tend to have healthier relationships when they receive parental advice” (Story).


“Words that previously were rarely heard on television suddenly turn up everywhere, while once unspeakable slurs become passé from overuse” (NYT).


Reaction to the Fort Hood Shooting:

From the National Association of Evangelicals: “A tragedy caused by the act of one individual should not be compounded by generalizing actions to a culture, ethnicity or religion. The NAE calls on all Americans to build stronger relationships of understanding and reconciliation with their neighbors of different faiths and backgrounds. Chaplain Paul Vicalvi, Executive Director of the NAE Chaplains Commission, said, ‘We should be clear: The actions of this one man do not reflect the beliefs or values of the vast majority of American Muslims.’”

John Mark Reynolds says that we should not object to those who say that they are Muslims first and Americans second. We are, in fact, Christians first and Americans second. Reynolds says what we must object to is a virulent version of Islam that poses itself against the social contract that is at the heart of the American Experiment.

Terry Mattingly reports on his conversation with a Muslim who cautions that making a sweeping defense of any and all Muslims is just as irresponsible as making a sweeping accusation of any and all: “Understanding requires analyzing, not sanitizing. I’m not interested in hysteria. It’s clear that we have to be careful not to reduce this story to Islam but the corrective to that is not to whitewash Islam from public discussion of the story altogether. It’s to put the role of religious conviction in its proper perspective. And by the way, we won’t know what that proper perspective is until all the details have come in. But in and among those details has to be the detail that Major Hasan visited radical Islamist web sites, that he had email exchanges with an extremist preacher, that he reportedly shouted ‘Allahu Akbar’ before he opened fire on comrades, that he told fellow community members that he did not wish to fight fellow Muslims. So my point simply is that this is a complex case but complexity is not served by, you know, excising certain factors out of the equation merely because you’re uncomfortable with them.”

“The tragedy at Fort Hood last week raised many fears among Christian political advocacy groups. For some groups the shooting provoked a fear of a Muslim "fifth column" in the military. For others groups it provoked a fear of anti-Muslim backlash in the American populace.” (Read the varying reactions from evangelicals collected by Christianity Today)

“The admonition not to rush to judgment or jump to conclusions might sound fair and prudent enough, perhaps even statesmanlike when uttered by the president, as long it's borne in mind that such advice is itself a judgment that is more than halfway to a conclusion. What it plainly implies in the present case is that the actions of Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan should not be assumed in any meaningful way to be related to his Muslim faith….In order to demonstrate the absence of a connection, however, the following facts would have to be regarded as relatively random or secondary.” Christopher Hitchens proceeds to list “seven salient facts” about Major Hasan’s radical Isalmic affinity.

I’ve already posted comments that grabbed my attention from James Taranto and Tunku Varadarajan.