Miscellaneous Musings on Monday

Hello, and welcome to another edition of our Monday festival of links! I know some of you are short on time this season--I certainly am--but if you can only read one link, read the first one. I am still thinking about how powerful it is to live out Jesus' calling to love your enemies and do good to those who persecute you.

In the "news" today...

• Christians Raise Funds For Ill Atheist Protester from The Tyler Paper.

  Greene is the San Antonio atheist who threatened to sue in an attempt to force Henderson County officials to remove its nativity scene. Greene also filed a complaint with the state against the county judge for not removing a county commissioner for remarks supporting the nativity scene.
  
  Greene dropped consideration of the lawsuit after being told by medical personnel he could at any time go blind in at least one eye from a detached retina. Greene decided he could not pursue a lawsuit blind.

• More Proof That Birth Control May Be Bad News for Breast Cancer from The Stir. When people try to tell me that they will never use synthetic hormones because they cause cancer, I ask them if they use hormonal birth control. If they say yes, I ask them if they realize it is basically the same thing, but in a higher dose.

  Women who used the shot of synthetic hormones for at least a year had double the risk of getting breast cancer, according to the study published in the journal Cancer Research. Family history, obesity, age, and pregnancy history didn’t seem to make a difference.
  

• The Thomas Kinkade You Didn't Know from The Gospel Coalition.

  But there is another Kinkade---the young struggling painter---that is largely unknown to both his admirers and his critics. Despite his extraordinary commercial success, Kinkade's earlier work is largely unknown to audiences familiar with his later mass market works (typified by his trademark "cottage" scenes).

• Salted Carmel Chocolate Shortbread Bars from Tracey's Culinary Adventures. Does anyone know a good substitute for the corn syrup this recipe calls for? I don't keep that on-hand.

  At the base of the bars is a crumbly shortbread layer, which is topped with a sweet and gooey caramel and then finally a glossy chocolate glaze. These are also sprinkled with a bit of fleur de sel so they have that salty-sweet combo going on. Yum! They're like the fancy cousin of the Twix.

• 'THE PROOF OF INNOCENCE’: READ THE MATH PROBLEM THAT GOT ONE MAN OUT OF A TRAFFIC TICKET from The Blaze.

  We show that if a car stops at a stop sign, an observer, e.g., a police officer, located at a certain distance perpendicular to the car trajectory, must have an illusion that the car does not stop, if the following three conditions are satisfied: (1) the observer measures not the linear but angular speed of the car; (2) the car decelerates and subsequently accelerates relatively fast; and (3) there is a short-time obstruction of the observer’s view of the car by an external object, e.g., another car, at the moment when both cars are near the stop sign. 

Have a fabulous day, everybody!