Links to Your World, Tuesday, Christmas Day

Nice rendition of "I Heard the Bells"--

 

Strange facts about 10 favorite Christmas carols.

 

Apple's getting a new home in Austin, with an eventual 7100 employees at the site.

 

"What kind of world do you want to have? One where intense, negative feelings we don’t like are labeled as disorders, or a world where people grieve?” That was what one critic said about the new DSM labeling bereavement as clinical depression. The DSM, or Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, represents American psychiatry’s official tool for deciding between mental disorders and normality. Critics say the newest DSM represents "a tendency in modern psychiatry to medicalize the normal range of human experience." The ones to benefit, according to the article, are in the pharmaceutical industry. Story at Wired.






"There is overwhelming epidemiological evidence that the vast majority of people with psychiatric disorders do not commit violent acts. Only about 4 percent of violence in the United States can be attributed to people with mental illness." NYT, Richard Friedman, M.D.




Fonderie 47 takes AK47s off the market in Africa, melts them down, and gives the materials to artists to make jewelry. Cool project, cool photos. Sermon illustration here.

 

God hates Westboro Baptist Church.

 

Comforting: "In the autumn of 1885, people in Austin, Texas, began to feel sick. One after another, they developed a chill and then a soaring fever. They vomited and broke out in rashes. Their most distinctive symptom was agonizing pain behind their eyes and in the bones of their arms and legs. And when the fever subsided, lack of appetite and deep exhaustion left them unable to work for weeks or months. Austin had been founded only 46 years before, and it was still small, with just 22,000 people. By the time the epidemic was over, 16,000 of them had fallen ill." Now, according to this Slate article, it's coming back.

 

Saeed Abedini, American Christian, Imprisoned In Iran For Preaching Christianity, Thrown In Notorious Prison (HuffPo)

 

China's Central Committee wants the nation's universities to crack down on Christianity.

 

WSJ: "A Pew Forum study last year found that Christians are persecuted—by independent groups or governments—in 131 of the 193 countries in the world."

 

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