Well, actually I learned this on Monday. But I didn’t get around to writing about it either Monday night (when I was tired) or yesterday (when I was busy). My cousin – half Michigan now, as a result of college and summer jobs – informed me that Michiganers who live in the “mitten” part of the state are called “trolls.” That’s because they live “under the bridge,” that is, south of the five-mile bridge connecting the mitten with the Upper Peninsula. (I don’t know exactly where this bridge is, but it’s obviously up north somewhere!) In return, the “trolls” call everybody from the Upper Peninsula a “yooper.” That’s the phonetic spelling of how they pronounce “UPer.” UP, of course, standing for Upper Peninsula. I never knew Michiganers had such interesting geographic terminology!

This past week, I’ve had little urge to write. Dunno why. Maybe it’s because I’ve been fighting writer’s block all week at work! In other news, my foot is feeling much MUCH better, although it still hurts a bit to walk. (I’m surviving fine.) The weather has been perfectly lovely, which in turn has made me quite happy. Except when the sun wakes me up at 6:30 a.m. every day. Or almost every day. I’m getting ready to play guitar tomorrow at church, for which I’m quite excited, then I’ll probably do some cleaning… because I’m still woefully behind due to my lack of mobility last weekend. And now for your weekly (or sort-of-weekly) hodgepodge of interesting links. I apologize for those who enjoy little snippet-type material to read on lunch break, because most of these are essays and articles that require a bit of time. Learn to bind your own book (journal) with the help of this detailed instruction manual. In infographic form. Maybe I’ll try this next time I need a journal. Which will...

Owwww. I twisted my foot, again. Same foot that I twisted halfway through choir tour at the end of my junior year. No wait, must have been sophomore year. I wasn’t in choir junior year! Anyhow, the following collection is a bit sparse today, for the mere fact of my foot’s pain. And happy Cinco de Mayo!! What color is your language? Yellow or pink? Latinate or good ol’ Saxon? The forgetting pill erases painful memories. Forever. At least, in theory it does. Would it be ethical to use in any situation? The article also describes a certain malleability one’s memory exhibits. My psych-college-roomie avers that the discrepancies between memory and reality are generally minor. Oh look. Young people don’t ignore newspapers quite as much as we thought they did. Which means, they’re not opposed to randomly picking one up when the concrete block building they’re waiting in blocks the signal on their smartphone. Seminarians end up with a bunch of debt. That’s not good. But what other mode...

There’s a word for taking animal’s body parts and implanting them into humans for medicinal purposes, like taking a pig’s or a cow’s heart valves and doing heart surgery with them. It’s xenotransplantation. I had never heard of that word before. I learned it in tonight’s church small group lesson. We’re going through a worldview curriculum called “Understanding the Times” (already somewhat familiar to me) and started the bioethics videos tonight. Xenotransplantation is just one of the several bioethical issues that will be coming up here soon. Another is a combination of nanotechnology and artificial intelligence. As the video speaker pointed out: What’s scarier than invisible robots that can think like you? Not much. This new series of random observations is inspired jointly by my sister and my dad. Abby suggested that I blog about stuff I learned each day, and Dad used to ask me and my siblings every night at dinner—“what did you learn today?” We often responded with “nothing,” ...

Yesterday was a fantastic day. I got a big writing project accomplished, cooked something healthy for supper, was told I was an answer to prayer, and got to talk about some serious theological matters via IM with a friend from college. And today was also quite lovely—very, very productive (with laundry and grocery shopping all done), plus a fruitful trip to both a moving sale and a library booksale. Anyhow, I realized this evening that a good portion of the links I had open in my Internet browser had to do with singleness in one way or another (despite last week’s tab cleanup). Thus unfolded the following collection: Via a link posted in a comment thread on some blog somewhere, I meandered through the Internet to a blog called The Sexy Celibate (so named, says the author , to give an ironic, interesting twist on the somewhat cliché single-Christian theme). It’s one of the best blogs I’ve read in a long time. The most recent posts take the horns of a huge issue in the Christian singl...

ShopVacs are cool. Like bowties. I got into watching new episodes of the British sci-fi show Doctor Who this past year. Blame my brother. No, blame my mother. She’s the one who raised me on recordings of Star Trek: The Original Series and the British show The Avengers ( the show starring Patrick MacNee and Diana Rigg that had nothing to do with superpowers ). Doctor Who is basically a cross of those two, with better special effects. In the most recent two seasons, the title character (who’s actually just “The Doctor”) is constantly defending his right to wear a bowtie. He says “bowties are cool” with an inimitable (by me) British accent and a slight flair for the ridiculous that only he can pull off. It amuses me to no end. I bought a ShopVac this weekend in order to do my cleaning. ShopVacs are cool, you know. It was also cheap and made sense, for me, since I have carpet and a need to vacuum out my little car sometimes. Ever tried vacuuming a car with an upright? It only works ...

Well, a ton has happened this week that’s blog-worthy, and yet, I sit here thinking, “oh! I have a huge bunch of tabs open that I should link to!” I guess clearing my poor computer’s tab bar is uppermost in my priorities this evening. The Exchange – the senior pastor of this random Texas church followed me on Twitter this week. I don’t have a clue why. I’ve never even been to Texas. Has higher education stiffed its most important client? A question that The Atlantic asks, and answers, intelligently. Also some good reasons to think through grad school rather than considering it a given for a smart undergrad. Don’t make these grammar mistakes! Please!! (Infographic, via a friend from college.) Pew for One? – I found this to be an interesting, but not particularly groundbreaking, article about being single in today’s churches. The author is completely correct about someone like me looking for the same basic things in a church that any married folks would want… solid theology, invo...