It’s Past Time to Rethink Modern Sexual Morality

The practical result of consent-focused morality is the sexualization of everything. With the line drawn at desire alone, there is no longer any space that’s sex-free. Work meetings or restaurants can be creative locations for steamy liaisons. Not even marriage or existing relationships stand as a firewall against potential hookups. The problem, of course, is that people don’t walk around broadcasting their desires. We don’t have a flashing “yes” or “no” that hovers over our heads. So someone has to make the ask. Someone has to make the move. Consent is determined by the request, and in a completely sexualized culture, the request can come at any time, anywhere, and from any person you encounter — regardless of the power imbalance or the propriety of the location.

Research Reveals the 5 Biggest Influencers on Your Child’s Spiritual Health

1. The child regularly reads his/her Bible while growing up.
2. The child regularly spends time in prayer growing up.
3. The child regularly served in church while growing up.
4. The child listens primarily to Christian music.
5. The child participates in church mission trips and projects.

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The Future of Truth and Misinformation Online

Their reasoning revealed a wide range of opinions about the nature of these threats and the most likely solutions required to resolve them. But the overarching and competing themes were clear: Those who do not think things will improve felt that humans mostly shape technology advances to their own, not-fully-noble purposes and that bad actors with bad motives will thwart the best efforts of technology innovators to remedy today’s problems.

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Impostor syndrome

The big reason is that we’re all impostors. You’re not imagining that you’re an impostor, it’s likely that you are one.
Everyone who is doing important work is working on something that might not work. And it’s extremely likely that they’re also not the very best qualified person on the planet to be doing that work.

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Confessions Of An Impostor

One of imposter syndrome’s frustrating ironies is that actual frauds rarely seem to experience this phenomenon. English philosopher Bertrand Russell put it more poetically: “The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt.”

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Doctor’s orders: The case nominating Charcandrick West for Chiefs Man of the Year

That led to some email correspondence with the Shriners Hospital for Children — Shreveport, where Thomas Pressly diagnosed West with systemic juvenile arthritis and rescued him at 14 years old from hopeless weeks of the unknown while being virtually unable to move without suffering acute pain.
The grateful West has made it a point to give back and lend his support to the Arthritis Foundation in numerous ways, including last summer taking part in a video (“Body of Steel”) with 10-year-old Kansas Citian Jillian Reid to help raise awareness and funds.
He also is host to camps for kids on behalf of the Shreveport hospital, where he is seeking to create annual events.

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Why Nerds and Nurses Are Taking Over the U.S. Economy

The fastest-growing jobs through 2026 belong to what one might call the Three Cs: care, computers, and clean energy. No occupation is projected to add more workers than personal-care aides, who perform non-medical duties for older Americans, such as bathing and cooking. Along with home-health aides, these two occupations are projected to create 1.1 million new jobs in the next decade. Remarkably, that’s 10 percent of the total 11.5 million jobs that the BLS expects the economy to add. Clean-energy workers, like solar-panel installers and wind-turbine technicians, are the only occupations that are expected to double by 2026. Mathematicians and statisticians round out the top-10 list.

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A new American revolution is starting in New England—against Daylight Saving Time

If the purpose of time is indeed coordination, there should be fewer time zones and no time changes. I have proposed moving the continental United States to two time zones and ending seasonal time changes. Granted, this would mean even more dark hours in Maine, since it would be on the same time zone as Texas. But the world already de facto operates on fewer time zones. Plenty of conference calls feature people in London, New York, and San Francisco without too much trouble. And there’s evidence that people adapt their schedules to TV, not the sun.

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Candidate falls for hoax, proposes drug-sniffing police bunnies

When asked about drugs at a Phoenixville mayoral forum, Republican nominee Dave Gautreau proposed that, if elected, he would look into getting drug-sniffing bunnies for the borough police department.

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Students Walk Out After Teacher Orders: Speak ‘American’

Students staged a walkout on Monday after a cellphone video appeared to show a New Jersey high school English teacher reprimanding three students for speaking Spanish and telling them to speak “American.”

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A growing share of Americans say it’s not necessary to believe in God to be moral

Most U.S. adults now say it is not necessary to believe in God to be moral and have good values (56%), up from about half (49%) who expressed this view in 2011. This increase reflects the continued growth in the share of the population that has no religious affiliation, but it also is the result of changing attitudes among those who do identify with a religion, including white evangelical Protestants.

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Idolatry at the Office

During these years, I worked so feverishly, not to serve God, but to relish the approval it brought me — and because I feared the implications for my identity should the praise fall silent.
Our world, it seems, condones such idolatry, and even trains us in it. Modern professionalism demands an impeccable standard of performance from its adherents. Amid the pressure, many of us depend on labels such as thorough, hardworking, diligent, tireless, and strong to substantiate our worth.

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Steps to Opening Your Door to Your Neighbors

So how do we overcome our fears? Here are some practical pointers that may help.

• Pray and ask God to help you overcome any fear you may have and replace it with love. Fear of the other person is overcome by love for the other person.
• Hang out where you can meet others. Jesus was in the marketplace, at the temple, in the village…places where he could see people and get to know them.
• Give invitations. Jesus did. He said, “Follow me.” “Come and see.” He opened up his life to others. Learn to invite people to your house. You might just start with one neighbor. Like Matthew, they might open the door to others.
• Accept invitations. Jesus did. To weddings. To houses. To parties. If you get invited, go!

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Bivocational Ministry as an Evangelism Opportunity

Through engaging co-workers on family, entertainment, politics, and culture, pastors can trade in their own tired stereotypes for a more robust and nuanced understanding of people outside their church. No longer present solely to solve their co-workers crises before quickly moving on, pastors can better understand and dedicate the necessary time to be true missionaries in their secular vocation.

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The Five Choices of Declining Churches

At its basic levels, declining churches really have one of five choices. And if a church makes no choice, it has really decided to choose the “do nothing” option, the worst of the five choices.

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Is it really God speaking to you?

This is why I’m really shy to say “God told me” unless it’s something that I can clearly back up with Scripture. That’s not saying that God only speaks to us by His Word. But it is saying that the only certain guide that we have is God’s Word. That voice in my head must submit to the ancient words and ultimately to the Lord Himself.

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Mobile phone companies appear to be providing your number and location to anyone who pays

Without rigorous consent standards, mobile companies may as well be selling the data indiscriminately the same way they were before advocacy groups took them to task for it. For now there doesn’t appear to be a way to officially opt out — but there also doesn’t appear to be a clear and present danger, such as an obvious scammer or wholesaler using this technique.

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Gardener, 62, got so fed up with his wife’s nagging he went to live in the woods for TEN YEARS

A gardener got so fed up with his wife’s nagging he ran away from home and lived in the woods for ten years.
Malcolm Applegate, 62, was married to his wife for three years before upping sticks after the relationship reached breaking point.

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Hilariously Unphotogenic Animals That You Will Feel Guilty For Laughing At

Guess what? Animals can be those guys too. No matter how hard they try to be photogenic, they just can’t quite pull it off. Bored Panda has compiled a list of otherwise majestic and graceful animals, captured in less than flattering moments. If there were an animal Facebook (Snoutbook?) these clumsy creatures would be bugging their buddies to untag them NOW!

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Harvey Weinstein vs Billy Graham

But the Harvey Weinsteins and Bill O’Reillys of the world are reminders that women in subordinate positions to men often feel pressured into closeness, and that this pressure almost always serves male libido and ego more than it serves women. If women often do not have the professional/economic leverage to afford rare or nonexistent access to male leadership (and I think that’s often true), how much less do they have leverage to refuse a meeting or a conversation because of uncomfortable circumstances?

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Technology is destroying the most important asset in your life

You can spend 80 years of a life with as much free time as you want and still not get out of it as much as someone who only lived for 40 years but managed to appropriately direct attention to the things that mattered to them. Although time is indeed limited, with attention, it can be diluted to expand beyond what most other people get out of the same quantity.

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Price vs. cost

Cost is what I had to give up to get this. Cost is how much to feed it, take care of it, maintain it and troubleshoot it. Cost is my lack of focus and my cost of storage. Cost is the externalities, the effluent, the side effects.

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3 Reasons to Regularly Get Others to Preach

If you feel a resistance in your heart and mind to the thought of handing the keys over for a Sunday, maybe an idol is riled up . Knock it down by stepping down from the stage for a week. Brothers, get out of the pulpit. It’s good for you. It’s good for the church.

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12 Bible Study Hacks

1. Put your Bible in an easily accessible place
2. Set aside 15 to 30 minutes a day
3. Join or start a Bible reading club or study group
4. Study one book of the Bible at a time
5. Study the Bible by topics
6. Have a Bible encyclopedia or dictionary nearby
7. Write your thoughts or notes in the margin of your Bible
8. Ask what the original audience or people in the story learned
9. Put yourself in the story
10. Journal what you learn
11. Apply the lesson you learn to your daily life
12. Spend time in prayer

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Texas inmates donate more than $50K to Harvey relief efforts

Inmates in Texas prisons have donated more than $50,000 to relief efforts following the devastation left by Hurricane Harvey in August.
The New York Times reported that inmates in prisons throughout Texas donated $53,863 for Harvey relief after Texas Department of Criminal Justice officials allowed them to donate funds from their commissary accounts.

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Understanding Worldview and the Flag

As such, to move beyond this impasse, it is necessary to step back and recognize that people attach different kinds and degrees of significances to symbols and gestures. Rather than framing this as a question of absolute right and wrong and judging the matter on the basis of our own imposed values and beliefs, we should ask one another, What do these things mean to you? How can I accommodate without causing unintended offense?

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I used to think gun control was the answer. My research told me otherwise.

A reduction in gun deaths is most likely to come from finding smaller chances for victories and expanding those solutions as much as possible. We save lives by focusing on a range of tactics to protect the different kinds of potential victims and reforming potential killers, not from sweeping bans focused on the guns themselves.

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The White Privilege of the “Lone Wolf” Shooter

What we are witnessing is the blatant fact that white privilege protects even Stephen Paddock, an alleged mass murderer, not just from being called a terrorist, but from the anger, rage, hellfire, and fury that would surely rain down if he were almost anyone other than a white man. His skin protects him. It also prevents our nation from having an honest conversation about why so many white men do what he did, and why this nation seems absolutely determined to do next to nothing about it.

Don’t Try To Be Successful, Try To Do Good Work

“If you do good work, success will follow.” That’s what I’m supposed to tell you now.
But it’s not true.
Sometimes – many times – numerical success stays elusive, no matter how hard we work, how smart we are or how much we pray.
That’s why the good work needs to be its own reward.

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Are We Saved by Faith Alone?

A person is saved solely on the basis of their faith in Jesus Christ. They put their faith in Jesus Christ by penitently being baptized in water for the forgiveness of their sins (Acts 2:38; Romans 6:1-7; 1 Peter 3:21). There is no contradiction there. That is exactly what the New Testament teaches from beginning to end.

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Productive on six hours of sleep? You’re deluding yourself, expert says

Operating on short sleep — anything less than seven hours — impairs a host of brain and bodily functions, said Walker, who is also a professor of neuroscience and psychology. It increases your risk for heart attack, cancer and stroke, compromises your immune system and makes you emotionally irrational, less charismatic and more prone to lying.

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Manu Ginobili reminds us why he is one of the greatest Spurs ever

I been asked about my legacy and I really don’t care much about the legacy. … I want to be remembered as a good person, a good dude, that I was here around in town, and fun to watch, and good to hang out with but after a few years it’s going to be forgotten. The legacy thing is very overrated.

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Please Read Me Your Email

When emails are received with feedback, criticism or complaints, one pastor asks that the sender meet with them to read the email aloud. They explain that they want to ensure that they read the the email with the tone and emphasis intended by the sender.

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No, the World Won’t End Next Week and There’s No Such Thing as a Christian Numerologist

Every time end-of-the-world predictions resurface in the media, it is important that we ask ourselves, “Is this helpful? Is peddling these falsehoods a good way to contribute to meaningful, helpful discussions about the end times?”
Of course, the answer to this is no, they most definitely do not.
Every time.

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Did the news media underplay the Tennessee church shooting? Not so fast with that criticism

On the one hand, I agree with those tired of hearing about Donald Trump’s latest tweets about the National Football League … or any of Trump’s tweets, for that matter. On the other hand, I think the real reason the Tennessee church shooting hasn’t received more coverage (and as pointed out, it’s received A LOT) is because of the death toll.
Sadly, in America in 2017, a mass shooting in which one person dies is not going to dominate the news cycle for long. Such tragedies have become too common.

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Jesus, a Rescue Dog, and the Cone of Shame

So you surround your wounds with the cone. Not physically, but spiritually. You get people in place around you. You realize you cannot make it on your own. You commit to be restored by those who will speak truth into your life. Those who will walk with you.
But it is not a cone of shame. It is a cone of love. People who care. Brothers and sisters who have been there. A community of faith that is interested in releasing you from shame and guilt. A church that is committed to healing you by the grace of God.
But you may look a little different. You may have a scar or two. But one day, you realize you are not licking your wounds. You have survived. You have been healed.

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Work and the Loneliness Epidemic

Today, over 40% of adults in America report feeling lonely, and research suggests that the real number may well be higher. Additionally, the number of people who report having a close confidante in their lives has been declining over the past few decades. In the workplace, many employees — and half of CEOs — report feeling lonely in their roles.

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Man Who Saved the World From Nuclear Armageddon in 1983 Dies at 77

Lt. Col. Stanislav Petrov was 44 years old and working at a missile detection bunker south of Moscow on September 26, 1983. His computer told him that five nuclear missiles were on their way, and given their flight time, he had just 20 minutes to launch a counter attack. But Petrov told his superior officers that it was a false alarm. He had absolutely no real evidence that this was true, but it probably saved millions of lives.

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Here’s how the first Indian American congresswoman responded to a C-SPAN caller’s rant about ‘these illegal aliens’

“John, it sounds like you are in a lot of economic pain and that is true across the country, and there is no question we as a country need to deal with economic inequality and make sure we have good paying jobs for everyone,” she said, her voice even. “I am committed to that and I’ll tell you that right here looking into … I can’t see your face, but looking into your eyes, I’ll tell you to blame immigrants is completely wrong and here’s why.”

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Education Isn’t the Key to a Good Income

After analyzing federal income tax records for millions of Americans, and studying, for the first time, the direct relationship between a child’s earnings and that of their parents, they determined that the chances of a child growing up at the bottom of the national income distribution to ever one day reach the top actually varies greatly by geography. For example, they found that a poor child raised in San Jose, or Salt Lake City, has a much greater chance of reaching the top than a poor child raised in Baltimore, or Charlotte. They couldn’t say exactly why, but they concluded that five correlated factors—segregation, family structure, income inequality, local school quality, and social capital—were likely to make a difference. Their conclusion: America is land of opportunity for some. For others, much less so.

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TSA Approves Testing for Scanners That Allow Liquids, Laptops to Stay in Bags

The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) has approved a test run of computed tomography (CT) scanners, which sound like something from Tron, but quite simply, will let you keep liquids and your laptop in your carry-on bag.

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Trump accepts 11-year-old Virginia boy’s offer to mow White House lawn

Frank Giaccio, an 11-year-old Virginia boy who offered to mow the White House lawn, saw his dream come true this week.
Giaccio penned a letter to President Trump offering to care for the White House lawn for free.
“Dear Mr. President. It would be my honor to mow the White House lawn for some weekend for you. Even though I’m only 10, I’d like to show the nation what young people like me are ready for,” Giaccio’s letter read.
In response, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said President Trump “would love to” give him “the opportunity to mow the grass in the Rose Garden.”

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