Random links

As mentioned, I'll probably be trying to phase out this style of posts, but I've got a bit of a backlog of already collected info beforehand.

Arrested for bibles, North Korean dies in prison

A bit about missionaries operating in and around North Korea. "Like most North Koreans, Son Jong Nam knew next to nothing about Christianity when he fled to neighboring China in 1998. Eleven years later, he died back in North Korea in prison, reportedly tortured to death for trying to spread the Gospel in his native land"

Pascal on Our Addiction to Distraction

A little elaboration on that fairly well-known saying from Pascal: "I have often said that the sole cause of man’s unhappiness is that he does not know how to stay quietly in his room."

Economists who did their homework (800 years of it)

The intro: "The advertisement warns of speculative financial bubbles. It mocks a group of gullible Frenchmen seduced into a silly, 18th-century investment scheme, noting that the modern shareholder, armed with superior information, can avoid the pitfalls of the past. "How different the position of the investor today!" the ad enthuses. It ran in The Saturday Evening Post on Sept. 14, 1929. A month later, the stock market crashed. "Everyone wants to think they’re smarter than the poor souls in developing countries, and smarter than their predecessors," says Carmen M. Reinhart, an economist at the University of Maryland. "They’re wrong. And we can prove it."

Study: Radio sports can distract drivers

"... listening to sports on the radio while driving can be as dangerous as drunken driving" - The sample size of the study seems a bit too small to draw any particularly solid conclusions, but it's still an interesting question to ponder.