It has been a long time since I last produced a link post, so I thought that it would be worthwhile to do one again. This time, I will be posting most of the links without any comment. Very few if any of the following links are explicitly theological in character. Rather, they are an assortment of things that I have read, listened to, or watched online within the last two weeks and found stimulating. Many of them are not representative of my views at all and some might even express opinions with which I sharply disagree. I only link them because I found that my own thinking was sparked or interest was piqued by them (and a few are just for fun). I might make this a regular feature, if people are interested.
Feel free to share your thoughts on any of them, or share links of your own in the comments below!
In no particular order…
1. The American—Western-European Values Gap
2. 5 Reasons Why I Actually Love Jane Austen
3. On the Figure of the Troll – In partial defence of trolling
4. What Happy People do Differently
6. Is There Anything Good About Men?
7. And I’m Like, Quotative ‘Like’ Isn’t Just For Quoting
8. The 1 Percent Ruined Love: Marriage is for the Rich
9. How to be Outraged on the Internet
10. The Machine Zone: This Is Where You Go When You Just Can’t Stop Looking at Pictures on Facebook
11. Boggle is Better than Scrabble
12. Ruzzle – my new online Boggle app addiction (I’m ‘zugzwanged’ – challenge me if you dare!)
13. Don’t Fear the Male Babysitter
14. What Strengthens and Weakens Our Integrity – Part 1: Why Small Choices Count; Part 2: Closing the Gap Between Our Actions and their Consequences
17. On Freedomspotting – Yes, three Ribbonfarm links.
18. History of Britain in Lego
19. Online ‘Likes’ Herd Others to Similar Views
20. The Urgency—and the Challenge—of Connecting Sports, Race, and Genetics
22. Mitt Romney, One Night Stands, and the Economics of Relationships
23. Does ‘Ozymandias’ Really Mean What We Think It Means?
24. New Atheism Didn’t Beget the ‘Nones’
25. XKCD: Time. See the video here.
26. Language and Trayvon Martin’s Life
28. Really Basic Stuff About Government Debt
29. Is Porn the New Opium of the Masses?
30. Testosterone – How taking testosterone as part of gender reassignment changed one person’s conception of gender, nature, and nurture
31. The New Puritans: When Did Liberals Become So Uptight?
32. What Sort of Yoke is that Thingamajig?
33. The Making of a Steinway
34. Obama Campaign Manager Jim Messina Talks Big Data
35. G.K. Chesterton in Sight and Sound
36. Science of Persuasion
Alastair's Adversaria 
Kudos for following XKCD time. Also, here’s a navigable version: http://geekwagon.net/projects/xkcd1190/
Thanks for the link!
On Baumeister’s lecture about men I spent some time writing about that a few years ago. At the risk of linking to my own piece (assuming the reader has thoroughly absorbed Baumeister’s work on men) …
http://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2011/07/roy-baumeister-disposability-of-men-and.html
In neo-Reformed circles in the US the rallying cry of “man up” has been pretty common but it remains to be seen whether this bootstrap approach will always be effective. Males who are confronted with how disposable they can actually be in a society may either opt out or see themselves as barred from the conventional gender roles due to economic limitation. It was ever thus, of course, but in older societies (like that of, say, Jane Austen) the unmarriageable person (whether due to economic or physical limitations) could be given some options of useful roles to play (and to go all the way back to your discussions with Rebecca Wagner about Evans, Alastair, the nuns come to mind here, too).
Thanks for passing this link on. A very interesting read!