Quick Hits of the Week

• We’re well into the 21st century, now, and some people are lamenting the lack of all the really cool technological advancements we once dreamed of. That’s pretty easy to explain, though. The more rules an industry has, the harder it is to have innovation in that industry. Energy and transportation are both pretty heavily regulated, so no flying cars or pocket nuclear reactors. It’s a price we pay for safety. However, computer technology and the Interwebs are mostly free from regulation, so we do have computers in our pockets that can connect us to anywhere in the world. And think about how you would explain Lasik eye surgery to a person who lived 100 years ago. We have had a lot of really cool technological advances, but the problem is that we just take them for granted.

• After I had my say regarding the Connecticut school incident, I finally got a chance to catch up on all the articles that were in my news feed, and I came across an excellent point by Lenore Skenazy that I think adds something to the discussion. It has to do with how the immediacy of the media we take in during one of these crises affects our perspective on how to respond to them. The sooner, and more fully we are exposed to a tragedy, the closer it feels to our daily life, and that’s not always a good thing. Actually, the truth is that we (and our children) are less likely to die a violent death today than at any other time in human history. (Bonus: I learned about the 1927 Bath Township Elementary murders, which was fascinating and totally messed up.)

• In most areas of my life, I’m a fan of Occam’s Razor. Start with the simplest solution, move to the next most complex solution as needed. Not everything in life is simple though. Most things that really matter can’t be explained and understood in a 20 minute meeting. For example, learning how to create and keep a home budget for your family takes months to understand and years to master. Don’t miss out on opportunities to grow because they’re too complicated or time-consuming.

• Here’s a patent application for smart handcuffs with a Tazer built in. Better yet, they’re also designed to deliver a substance through needle or gas to “achieve any desired result.” It seems a little overkill to me, but maybe the need to shock and sedate a shackled prisoner comes up a lot more often than I could imagine.

• Finally, the best and worst media errors and corrections of 2012. Some are amazing, others are just hilarious.

Is there something valuable or important or cool or funny or weird or awesome out there I missed this week? I can’t hit it all, but you should let me know about it by dropping me a line or sharing it in the comments below! I’d appreciate the heads up.

Quick Hits of the Week

• As a man who is now fascinated by personal finances, I’m always interested in hearing stories about herculean home cost-cutting. I thought my wife was doing a great job by keeping our grocery budget under $500 a month (including toiletries), but then I read Lydia Beiler’s savings tips that keeps her families groceries under $200 a month. Holy crap. I still think we do a great job, but obviously there’s room for improvement.

• Joseph Sangl recently asked his readers what they would teach their children about money in 10 minutes or less. He had a huge response, and here he posts ten of his favorites. I’ll confess that one of those ten came from me. Can you guess which one?

• Man, this was a rough post to read, but what a reminder. We’re responsible for raising and guiding our children, but they’re just on loan to us. They can be gone in a flash, and there could be nothing we can do to stop it. What will we teach them? I want my children to grow up to be adventurers on this rock hurtling through space, and not to live in fear of it. What about your kids?

• It appears that Hostess is going to go bankrupt, and there doesn’t seem to be any stopping it. Funny how I remember it being an industry leader in my childhood. Those cheesy one page ads in the back of my comic books just got a lot more dated. So, given my post earlier this week, what caused this giant to fall? Scott Shackford offers up five four plausible answers, and one entertaining bit of lunacy. I think it was mainly number three, myself, but numbers one and two are making strong cases for themselves these days.

• Finally, I don’t know how to say this, other than to just say it: Insulting a man’s testicular fortitude in Italy is a criminal offense. Really.

Is there something valuable or important or cool or funny or weird or awesome out there I missed this week? I can’t hit it all, but you should let me know about it by dropping me a line or sharing it in the comments below! I’d appreciate the heads up.

Quick Hits of the Week

• I am always surprised when I hear the statistics about giving among Christians. It’s well known that people working in ministry are, in a majority of cases, underpaid. Christians are called to be generous, emulating the gift that was given to us by Christ. Our family tithes and gives as much as we feel called to, because we want our church to be able to pay our pastors well, and we want there to be margin for helping the people in our community who have difficulty providing for themselves. Now, there is some debate over whether or not pastors should depend on the financial support of the church, but I think the argument for is fairly strong. If you don’t that’s your choice, but I’m wondering how you live generously.

• We like to measure our success, no matter how we endeavor. One of the problems with that is the way we measure our success will have an effect on how we try to achieve it. Sometimes we’re just measuring the wrong things. For example, in education: if the goal is children who love learning, are test scores the best way to measure that?

• Alright. I’m not condoning fighting a house fire with a garden hose. I don’t actually think that it would be effective. However, faced with the possibility that a neighborhood fire might spread to my property, and no firefighters in sight, I might try something drastic to slow the oncoming destruction. It would be incredibly unwise for me to do so against the explicit order of a police officer, too, but I would expect at least a couple of verbal warnings before they’d resort to whipping out a Tazer and shooting me with it to stop me. What do you think?

• Part of the problem that our garden hose wielder was running into was the fear of what might happen. The police couldn’t risk him even trying to stave off the flames, because if he were hurt or killed, they would likely receive some blame. We live in a society that more and more tells us that if we can do something to reduce a risk we should do it, no matter the cost, or the limiting freedom. Every time somebody dies in a tragedy, somebody is to blame.

• Y’know, I thought that the guy with the Romney/Ryan face tattoo was the funniest thing I had seen this last week, but then somebody linked me to this. You have to love a possessed toaster.

Is there something valuable or important or cool or funny or weird or awesome out there I missed this week? I can’t hit it all, but you should let me know about it by dropping me a line or sharing it in the comments below! I’d appreciate the heads up.

Quick Hits of the Week

• It’s important to keep up intensity when you are trying to accomplish a big goal. The problem is that when our intensity starts to fade, it’s not immediately apparent. According to Joseph Sangl, it’s a lot like a ceiling fan. Sangl is a finance guy, so he’s talking about money management, but we can also keep it in mind when we set goals in any area of our life. Don’t let your switch turn off. Momentum will drain away quickly.

• Yesterday was Halloween. My kids got a pretty good haul. They got chocolate bars, and lollipops, and licorice, and pretty much all the prepackaged sugary goodness you can think of. (Never enough of these, though.) Unfortunately, they didn’t get any popcorn balls or caramel apples. No raisins, either. That’s a shame, really. Lenore Skenazy wants us all to send in a picture of them eating the unsafe, unwrapped treat that they received. You might think she’s crazy, but I think she just wants to raise the incidence of poisoning or serious injury from these kinds of Halloween booty to more than zero. Yep. No one has ever actually been poisoned, or been seriously injured by a razor blade or pin in any of their Halloween candy. Sorry, fear-mongers.

• We used to have cats, but they’ve passed away, and we haven’t agreed on when we’ll be replacing them. It’s inevitable that we will, though. When we do, I’m going to look into building a cabinet like this one. I think it would fit nicely in the laundry room. I’m also hoping that my son will be old enough to handle cleaning duties.

• I’ve mentioned that I support overarching reform of drug policy in America, and that I want to see an end to the war on drugs. This isn’t such a controversial opinion anymore. According to a recent report from Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP), “police in the U.S. arrest someone for marijuana every 42 seconds and that 87% of those arrests are for possession alone.” However, when three states are considering voter legislation to change how marijuana is regulated, we should take it as a signal to begin a serious discussion about nationwide change. Check out the recent Jarecki documentary, The House I Live In, as a great starting point regarding this issue.

• It’s a game that I will never force my children to play. It’s unlikely that I will ever own a copy. It’s the horror that is Monopoly. But it wasn’t always Monopoly. At one time it was called the Landlord’s Game, and it was well loved. Take a look at some of the vintage images on this site that shows you what ‘Monopoly’ used to look like, and what the rules used to be.

Is there something valuable or important or cool or funny or weird or awesome out there I missed this week? I can’t hit it all, but you should let me know about it by dropping me a line or sharing it in the comments below! I’d appreciate the heads up.