1. The High Calling published an article I wrote. I linked it earlier, but here it is again in an act of shameless self-promotion. It goes to some core issues I'm trying to put into a book. Six Ideas on How to Lead Congregations to Integrate Work and Discipleship
2. Should Pastors Know How Much Church Members Give?
A recent study found that churches where pastors know how much is donated and by whom were more likely to be doing well financially. However, only half of the 3,000 responding congregations (and only 39 percent of evangelical ones) told the Lake Institute on Faith and Giving that their pastors knew this information.
What experts said (starting with "yes" and moving to "no" ): ...
3. Model for megacities? Mexico City cleans up its air.
... With urbanization advancing, economies expanding, and climate change a concern, Mexico City has emerged as an unlikely environmental example for cities in developing countries suffering similar air quality issues.
Mexico City recorded only eight days with air quality considered "good" in 1992. That compares with 248 "good" air days in 2012, reflecting the success of initiatives to relocate industry, kick clunkers off the capital's streets, encourage cleaner technologies, and expand public transit and cycling options. ...
4. Unmanned Drones May Have Their Greatest Impact on Agriculture
Talk about beating swords into plowshares. The mention of drones may conjure up images of Star Wars-like spacecraft or hell-fire war machines. But the controversial technology may prove to have its greatest impact in a peaceful endeavor: farming. ...
... The market for agricultural drones lies in the technology's ability to provide farmers with a bird's-eye view of their land. Historically, farmers have walked their land to survey it—looking for areas that need more fertilizer or water. More recently many have begun using small passenger planes to look at their lots from the air. But since airplane rental and fuel costs can quickly run into five figures, there's strong demand for cheaper alternatives. ...
... "Eighty percent of the utilization, once we are allowed to have Unmanned Aircraft Systems in the national airspace, in the first 10 years is going to be in precision agriculture," said Michael Toscano, CEO of AUVSI. "You will have a situation where you can spray crops by a UAS that flies 2 or 3 feet above the plants. You can control the downwash because you can put the pesticides on the plants and not in the ground where it gets to the groundwater."
"It sounds trivial but those numbers really add up a lot," said Rory Paul of Volt Aerial Robotics. "If we could save farms 1 percent on inputs like herbicide and pesticide and increase their yields by 1 percent, you are looking at multibillion dollar savings."...
5. Fascinating piece about the The Historical Horror of Childbirth
... Such stories were not at all shocking, as a woman's chances of dying during childbirth were between one and two percent -for each birth. If a woman gave birth to eight or ten children, her chances of eventually dying in childbirth were pretty high. The infant mortality rate was even higher. The chances of a child dying before his fifth birthday were estimated to be around 20 percent, depending on the community (accurate records are scarce). In addition to the fear of death or the fear of the child dying, there was no pain relief during labor, except for whisky in some places. ...
6. "INDIA will soon have a fifth of the world's working-age population." India's moment
7. 'Late-life crisis' hits the over-60s
"Of the 33% who went through a crisis, bereavement was the most common trigger, followed by personal illness or injury."
8. Hispanic High School Graduates Pass Whites in Rate of College Enrollment
9. Atlantic Cities asks the question that has interested me for years: Why Do So Many People Think Gun Violence Is Getting Worse?
"Twenty years into this safer era, we still don't know quite how we got here. Perhaps in absence of a logical narrative, many Americans simply find it hard to believe this is true."
10. People Don't Wear A Shocking Amount Of Their Clothes.
"The average person only wears about 20% of the clothing in his or her closets. Most clothing goes unworn because it's the result of an impulse buy or doesn't fit correctly, Ray A. Smith at the Wall Street Journal reports."
11. This week was the 20th anniversary of the birth of the World Wide Web. The Day Distance Disappeared
12. Great piece! The Tech Trends to Fear the Most: It's Not All Good
13. The market 'bubble' you've never heard of: "Some economists are worried that farmland prices are nearing bubble territory. How bad can it be if no one's heard of it?"
14. Michael Barone says College Bubble Bursts After Decades of Extravagance
15. Whatever happened to these Fortune 500 companies? "Here are seven companies from the first Fortune 500 that have since been merged, split up, or put out to pasture."
16. Dwight Lee has a thought-provoking piece about The Two Moralities of Ebenezer Scrooge.
17. The global economy: Welcome to the post-BRIC world
18. Development finance in Africa
19. Toxic Waste Sites Take Toll on Millions in Poor Nations
New studies attempt to quantify just how harmful the rampant exposure to lead and other chemicals is in the developing world.
20. James Pethokoukis with a provocative article about income inequality: Why A Decline In Income Inequality Would Be Bad News
Why has income inequality been rising in advanced economies — it's not just the US, people — over the past few decades? The economic consensus mostly explains the phenomenon as a race between accelerating technological change and expanding education. And the rise of inequality shows, as JPMorgan economist Mike Feroli puts it in a new report, that the "pace of technological advance has outstripped the ability of the educational system to supply the human capital skills needed to utilize this technology, leading to out-sized earnings gains for those who have such skills (the so-called college wage premium)."...
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