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Tuesday, February 07, 2012

Links to Your World, Tuesday February 7

Federal employees owe $3.4 billion in back taxes...and the U.S. Office of Government Ethics had one of the highest percentages of delinquency, with 6.49% of its 77 employees behind in what they owed. (HT: Andrew Kang)

 

"A study conducted by the financial service company Investopedia found that the sum value of different homemaking duties annually amounts to almost six figures. If a homemaker's job were salaried, it would draw, on average, $96,291 per year. Tasks accounted for in the study included private chef, house cleaner, child care provider, driver, and laundry service provider." (Joe Carter)

 

Ayaan Hirsi Ali in Newsweek: "A fair-minded assessment of recent events and trends leads to the conclusion that the scale and severity of Islamophobia pales in comparison with the bloody Christophobia currently coursing through Muslim-majority nations from one end of the globe to the other. The conspiracy of silence surrounding this violent expression of religious intolerance has to stop." She outlines the hotspots and recommends responses.

 

Top five regrets of the dying


"According to Charles Murray in 'Coming Apart'..., a large swath of white America—poor and working-class whites, who make up approximately 30% of the white population—is turning away from the core values that have sustained the American experiment. At the same time, the top 20% of the white population has quietly been recovering its cultural moorings after a flirtation with the counterculture in the 1960s and 1970s....He is particularly concerned with the ways in which working-class whites are losing touch with what he calls the four 'founding virtues'—industriousness, honesty (including abiding by the law), marriage and religion, all of which have played a vital role in the life of the republic." (Read the rest of the WSJ review)


David Murrow, author of Why Men Hate Going to Church, wrote 2 articles for Boundless, a webzine for young singles: The first is how churches have tended to "screen out" young men in later elementary years and (especially) in youth groups . And, two, tips on how churches can win their young men back – and the role single women can play in that revival.


TLC plans to do a show called "Preacher's Wives," along the lines of the "Real Housewives" series. Ah, me.


"A worldwide study of charitable giving...ranked Americans first in giving personal money, and time, to organizations and strangers....Of the top 20 nations in giving, only five are in the top 20 of economic wealth" (Time).


Jeremy Pierre: '"I love you, but you need to obey.' Every English-speaking parent has said that phrase at some point or another. It's our attempt as parents to express commitment to our children even as we require them to obey: 'I love you despite anything you do, but you also need to obey what I tell you.' I'd like to take issue, however, with using the conjunction butbetween these phrases. Using but may be communicating something we don't want to say---namely, that there is some kind of conceptual opposition between 'I love you' and 'You need to obey.'" Read the rest.


"A new study suggests that the ability of exercise to speed the removal of garbage from inside our body’s cells may be one of its most valuable, if least visible, effects." Read the article.


I loathe endnotes and just can't see how they improve over footnotes. This guy feels the same way.

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