Grab, Hold, Speculate: What's Fueling Taiwan's Land Price Explosion - CommonWealth Magazine

Speculation has caused home prices here to rise to absurd levels - to the point that ordinary people can no longer afford to buy homes, unless it's with the help of their parents, while both the husband and wife work full-time.  This article explains why.

Real Estate Rage: Our Land, Their Luxury Homes - CommonWealth Magazine

In Taipei salaries are stagnant, but housing prices soar, lifted ever higher by the luxury real estate market. What can be done to restrain rampant property speculation and defuse mounting anger?

Taiwan’s Unbridled Development: An End to the Era of the Wolf - CommonWealth Magazine
More about the way the rich exploit the poor, with the help (or unconcern) of the government.

Reagan insider: GOP destroyed economy Paul B. Farrell - MarketWatch
I don't think it's the GOP alone, but all of American society is failing.  America's not in good shape these days.


Training Pastors, Rabbis, and Imams Together - TIME
And by this headline, and knowing that this is the idea of a Methodist seminary school, you will know that the Methodist church has lost sight of the Gospel of Christ, which is repentance, and a turning to Christ for our salvation, as only He has lived a perfect life which can appease God's wrath and work as a substitute for our sinful selves. 

The hope of officials at all three organizations is that when leaders study their own religious traditions together alongside friends of other faiths, they will develop the respect and wisdom necessary to transform America's fractured religious outlook.

This is not what Americans need - what they need is to turn to God for salvation, knowing that they deserve His wrath, as do all people, and that He will save them if they genuinely rely on Him, and Him alone, for salvation, and make Him and His glory the center of their lives.  I pray that this will happen.

Radioactive batteries keep going and going - Future of Energy- msnbc.com
I would like a few.  Please.


Children should be allowed to play in the dirt, new research suggests - Telegraph
It helps them heal faster.  Actually, this is pretty cool, because they found that staphlococci bacteria put out some stuff that reduces inflammation and promotes healing (and this is commonly found wherever. Stop disinfecting everything!)

Nonprofits get help from rookie lawyers - Giving- msnbc.com
This is good - new lawyers get assigned to nonprofits for their first year, as a public service.  It gives them experience, non-profits some decent legal help, and law firms a good name.  Also, I liked this quote:

Murphy, 25, started her public interest fellowship at the University of Mississippi's Civil Legal Clinic in August. She has helped poor clients with housing and tax problems and traveled this month to the poverty-ridden Delta with other attorneys and law students to investigate one low-income neighborhood's sewer problems.

"This is what this profession is for — it's for helping people," said Murphy, who focused on corporate tax early in law school at Ole Miss. "I had lost sight of that."

mental_floss Blog » Holocaust Hero Chiune Sugihara
Mental Floss is irratatingly obsessed with being smart - with knowledge for knowledge's sake, and only tidbits of it at that.
However, they do find things from time to time that are pretty good - like this guy, Chiune Sugihara.  He was Japan's ambassador to Lithuania during WW2, and when he was ordered to leave the country, he refused, and instead, working with the one other Dutch ambassador who wouldn't leave, they devised a plan to save Jewish refugees, but it would require them being routed through Japan.  His government refused, and even told him to issue no travel visas at all.  So,

Sugihara discussed the plan with his wife Yukiko and decided to risk his career and his entire future by defying his superiors. The couple then spent 29 days issuing travel visas, up to 300 a day, as thousands of refugees stood in line at his office. Yukiko would prepare and register the visas while Chiune Sugihara would sign and stamp them, hour after hour, without breaking for meals. They would work late into the night until Yukiko would massage her husband’s weary hands in preparation for the next day. Sugihara was under orders to leave, which he could no longer delay. The family departed on September 1st, but he kept signing visas even as he boarded the train. Sugihara then tossed his official stamp out to the crowd, as he hadn’t time to stamp them all.

His government reassigned him a few times, then allowed him to go to a POW camp for a year and a half. After that, it pretended he didn't exist, and went so far as to tell the people that had survived because of him that he did not exist. He fell into poverty, worked in Moscow for a trading company, and only saw his family once a year. He was recognized for his efforts only one year before he died (which is much better than I was expecting!)

At the very beginning of the article, it mentions he joined the Greek Orthodox Church. I wonder if he was a Christian? His actions during the war seem to say yes....

Nevertheless, I thank God for people like this, and am thankful that He saw fit to save people's lives through this one man's actions.



Deseret News | Blast closes canyon
This is from 4 years ago, but is pretty scary.  A truck carrying explosives tipped over, started a fire in the remote canyon it was driving through, and the fire then set the explosives off, creating a crater 30 feet deep(!).
No one died.  Not a single person.
Amazing.  I thank God for His watching over people like this, and giving evidence of His mercy and providence and love.  I pray that people would turn to Him after seeing how much He cares even for those who are against Him (that's all of us, by the way, prior to being saved)


The Twilight Saga: New Moon | Plugged In Online Movie Reviews
Someone, somewhere, signed me up for Focus on the Family.  While I appreciate the thought, it seems that particular group is more concerned with fighting culture wars than for fighting to proclaim the message of Jesus Christ, which is that everyone has fallen short of God's standard, you will be judged impartially (meaning: you are not getting off the hook for anything), and now is the time to repent and believe in Christ as your perfect substitutionary sacrifice.

What does that have to do with a movie review?  Not once did it mention anything about God, or Jesus, or why any of the things present in the movie are objectionable.  If I can't tell whether this was written by a Mormon, a Christian, or just a conservative American, then something is not quite right.  We, as believers in our Great Lord Jesus Christ, must be bold for Him, and use whatever opportunity we have to build up our brothers and sisters, to proclaim His Gospel of salvation, and generally let the world know in every way we can that Jesus is coming back - that there's no room for anyone to be complacent.  Steven Isaac, please consider how you are serving the Lord.


Masking-Tape Art, With One Vehement Critic - City Room Blog - NYTimes.com
This is the sort of inanity that most people associate with art and artists.  It seems so much like something out of a bad parody that I wonder if it isn't. 

Climategate: the final nail in the coffin of ‘Anthropogenic Global Warming’? – Telegraph Blogs
I have no idea how reliable a source this guy is, I'm guessing not entirely reliable, but I'm too lazy to look this up at the moment. 
But you know how the Climate Research Unit at East Anglia got hacked, and their e-mails stolen? 
This blog mentions those.  And they apparently are working to cover up and discredit evidence that disagrees with global warming, as well as those who dare to advocate against the same.  That's not good.  I would like our leaders to make decisions that are based on truth, and that are as just as possible.  This can't happen when special interests lie to us.


Idolatry on Sunday Mornings, Pt. 1 | Worship Matters
This is a great blog series.  I recommend it.

Songwriting
And this is a great series of free MP3s about writing songs to glorify God.

Lastly, this bizarre video, which I saw as an advertisement somewhere:

Rental Goats Clear Brush Better, Beat Cosmonauts in Space Race | GOOD
Look at the picture, too.  I'd love to use goats for clearing brush, if I had any to clear. 

Israel: Photos show Iran link to arms - Mideast/N. Africa - msnbc.com
There are photos proving the arms shipped to Hezbollah came from Iran.  Big surprise.

Report: Blackwater OK’d plan to bribe Iraqis - Conflict in Iraq- msnbc.com
Remember when they killed some people randomly?  They tried to bribe their problems away. 

Is Saying Sorry Better than Prison? | GOOD

Instead of sending kids who commit assault, theft, or “motoring offences” to a prison, the government sends them to a meeting. There, the young troublemaker is asked to give an account of the offense, and the victim, who is usually present, is invited to ask questions and describe the effects of the crime. Then they decide, together, with the help of a professional coordinator, on a “plan” to make things right. This usually means doing unpaid restorative work and giving a face-to-face apology.

More than 5,500 meetings between victims and offenders have taken place in Northern Ireland since 2003…. Some 38% of 10 to 17 year olds participating in the scheme in Northern Ireland in 2006 re-offended within a year, compared to 71% of those given custodial terms. The percentage of those re-offending where restorative justice was used instead of a prosecution was 28%.

In a report, the PRT said many victims were found to prefer the experience of participating in a restorative justice meeting to attending court.

It's cheaper than jail, establishes justice, the criminals are less likely to re-offend (and they also have to see the effects of their crime), and victims like it better.  Is there a better system than this?  And if not, what are we using?


Gas Loss | GOOD
According to this, cars only use about 15% of the gas for moving the car and running systems like AC.  The rest is mostly wasted. 

‘Slow money’ gains momentum - Giving- msnbc.com
This sort of thing usually irks me, but investing money in your own community, and knowing who you've invested in, personally, and being able to walk in and check on them, and help them out if need be - that sounds like a pretty good thing to me. 

10-day China package from $888 - Deals- msnbc.com
This is a ridiculous deal.  Airfare and lodging is included. 

The Truth About 2012 Doomsday Hype | LiveScience
I'll bet they will say nothing particularly surprising to most of you.  Such as: the Mayans have no idea what you're scared of, and this whole thing is new to them.

Penn Museum - Penn Museum's Year 2012 Prediction
If you don't entirely trust Livescience (not a bad idea), here's an expert in ancient Mayan writing.

"The Maya made calculations spanning millions of years and the 5,200-year cycle that ends in 2012 is a rather short one. The date itself is mentioned only once in all the many thousands of Maya inscriptions, where it is used as an arbitrary anchor date for the matters under discussion and not associated with any particular prophesy. We know that the Maya believed in a world after 2012 since they mention events set well beyond this, with an inscription at Palenque, Mexico, describing one in the year 4772."

Imagine that.  Their calendar has arbitrary dates. 

The Year 1000 - Hachette Book Group
I would like to read this book.

As the Shadow of the Millennium Descended Across England and Christendom, it Seemed as if the World was About to End. Actually, it was Only the Beginning... Welcome to the Year 1000. This is What Life was Like. How clothes were fastened in a world without buttons, p.10 The rudiments of medieval brain surgery, p.124 The first millennium's Bill Gates, p.192 How dolphins forecasted weather, p.140 The recipe for a medieval form of Viagra, p.126 Body parts a married woman had to forfeit if she committed adultery, p.

Smart.fm
It's a site where you can learn a lot of different things, with built-in review sessions at intervals.  It has a lot of language stuff.  Want to learn Japanese?  There's plenty there.  Chinese has a fair showing, too.  Lots of others. 

Roadside Geology Series - Geology Underfoot - GEOLOGY.com
I remember my dad having the one for Arizona.  I liked that book, though I doubt I learned much from it.  heheh.

Hideous Rodent May Provide Cure For Cancer | Popular Science
Trust nothing from Popular Science.  If I told them I'd found a toothpaste that mostly prevents cavities, they'd lead their article with something like, "Keep Your Teeth Until 300?"
All the same, I didn't know naked mole rats were immune to cancer, or that they obeyed their queen.  I should probably look somewhere more reputable before I trust those "facts". 


How debit cards fleece consumers - MSN Money
They aren't treated the same as credit cards, because it's just your money, not theirs.  There are also plenty of fees.  Yay.

Banks punish perfect customers- Top Stocks - MSN Money
How surprising.  The rich oppress the poor so that they may become even richer.  This by no means is the worst of their examples, and if you're fortunate to be a good customer you're probably not that poor.  "Those filthy poor people barely deserve to have a bank account at all - they have so much trouble holding onto money, that we should do them a favor by taking as much of it as we can in fees and incomprehensible loans, an dputting it to a better use...on ourselves," would perhaps describe the attitude of the banks.  I am reminded of this:

They sell the righteous for silver,
and the needy for a pair of sandals.
They trample on the heads of the poor
as upon the dust of the ground
and deny justice to the oppressed. 
(Amos 2:6-7)
Do you think that God does not see, or that He will not judge? 

Does Mahmoud Ahmadinejad Have Jewish Roots? | Foreign Policy
I'm not sure that it matters, but it would be ironic.


Billions in aid never reached Pakistan army - Pakistan - msnbc.com
Apparently, of the 6.6 billion we gave Pakistan to fund its army (which was supposed to be fighting al-Qeada or whatever else), only $500 million actually went to it.  The rest was misused.  And the Pentagon and our government don't care.


Is Afghanistan the New Africa? | Foreign Policy
Is our money really improving things?


Finally, an interesting quote from the days when it was still cool to burn living widows on their dead husband's funeral pyres in India:

"You say that it is your custom to burn widows. Very well. We also have a custom: when men burn a woman alive, we tie a rope around their necks and we hang them. Build your funeral pyre; beside it, my carpenters will build a gallows. You may follow your custom. And then we will follow ours."
- General Napier

Dwarves found 'theme park' commune to escape bullying - Telegraph
Only in China. I guess in the old days they said "only in America", but we can't compete with this.

Farmer's daughter disarms terrorist and shoots him dead with AK47 - Telegraph
Terrorists break into her house, beat her father, and what does she do? She runs at them with an axe, hits one, takes his gun, shoots him, then shoots at the others (and hits one). All without ever having fired a shot before. Brave girl.

Think Again: Lawrence of Arabia | Foreign Policy

Afghanistan is a mess. Suicide bombs are still going off in Iraq. Is nation-building doomed to failure? It's time to consult the original insurgent, T.E. Lawrence.

Yup, he seemed to know what he was doing, maybe we should finally listen to him?

Mom ordered to stop baby-sitting friends’ kids - Parenting & Family
Because by watching her friends' kids as they wait for the bus, as far as the state of Michigan is concerned, she is running an illegal daycare.

Homeless sex offenders ordered out of woods - Crime & courts- msnbc.com
This seems like a pretty foreseeable consequence of prohibiting child molesters from living anywhere near anywhere children might possibly go. Not that I particularly like them, but God has made them in His image, too, and we are called to stand for justice. This isn't right.
Also, having a bunch of perverts living in the woods, somewhat supervised, just seems like a bad idea.

This girl sings songs in English/Hebrew, and she's pretty good. I assume she's a Hebrew Christian. I'd love to sing some of these songs, too, but no one here in Taiwan knows any Hebrew (including me), so it'd be a little weird.
Still, it's nice.

Cameron Todd Willingham, Texas, and the death penalty : The New Yorker

Did Texas execute an innocent man?

It's long, but well worth reading. It appears that Texas relied more on machismo, gut feelings, and the hokey-pokey instead of due process, science, and reliable investigators. So they killed an innocent man. After making him spend ~15 years in prison. After his children were killed in the fire. Which he was blamed for, along with wanting to murder them. And his wife left him while he was in prison.
Way to kick a man when he's down, Texas.
This is not good. If you ever have power over another man's life, be very sure you have the right to take it. We all answer to God in the end.

People of Walmart
On a less horrifying note, here's something I found from my sister. People of Walmart. If you are not an American, this is the sort of thing you can see in America. I don't care which picture it is, you can see this sort of thing almost anywhere, if you're lucky.
I love my country, and I try to love people the same way God does, but...sometimes it's harder. If they just look crazy, or are poor, or whatever, hey, I've done that, and that's nothing much. We are the same to God. It's the ones who are crazy with attitude that are harder to love. The arrogant ones. And yet I know God loves them, too. My Savior is far more amazing than I could ever hope.
Anyway, it's picture of people (and their things) at Walmart.

Pigeon beats Net firm in data transfer race

Bird with card strapped to leg triumphs in 50-mile South African showdown

I'd believe that.

U.S. student kills burglar with samurai sword
And it sounds like he knew how to use it, too - he took the guy's hand off in addition to slashing his neck.

Unguided, we really do go in circles, study finds

Just as pop­u­lar wis­dom holds, peo­ple try­ing to walk a straight course through un­fa­mil­iar ter­ri­to­ry end up walk­ing in cir­cles, ac­cord­ing to a new stu­dy.

That's too bad, huh?

Cities work much like brains, study finds
The bigger and more complex the city/brain, the more, and better, connections it needs. Pay attention, city of Atlanta! All of America, for that matter.

Masked speeder stymies Arizona police - Crime & courts- msnbc.com
Sounds like the typical guy trying, pathetically, to get out of paying fines for speeding. Except he points this out:

VonTesmar, who said he simply drives with the flow of traffic, said if DPS does have surveillance photos of him on the road, it proves he's not a danger to other drivers. If he was, DPS would have pulled him over, he said.

Also:

"They're out staking out a guy with a monkey mask?" he said. "They watched him break the law and didn't do anything about it? If they had pulled him over, they could have pulled the mask off. It just proves photo radar is not about safety, it's about money."

And cops wonder why people don't respect them. Or the speed limit. Or the government. If you know you're the one people see most often as representing the government, how do you think you should act?
Of course, Christians have a duty to obey, no matter how stupid the rules (unless they go against what God has commanded); but, even if you're not a Christian, as a citizen of the US, or wherever you find yourself, you should probably obey anyway.