Links for 2010-06-12

"My conundrum was not unique -- not to me and not to the question of usury. The same dilemma arises whenever we treat the Bible as a rulebook. That's an approach that guarantees -- that manufactures -- conflicts between text and reason, text and experience, text and reality, text and context.

And such conflicts always produce perverse choices. In my case it was the perverse choice between, on the one hand, the evident goodness of the work being done by South Shore and Grameen and a hundred real-world incarnations of the Bailey Bros. Building & Loan and, on the other hand, the biblical prohibition against usury. In someone else's case it might involve the perverse choice between some devotion to a list of rules gleaned from Paul's epistles and the near constant warning in those same epistles against compiling such lists of rules."

A really nice visualization of the entire World Cup schedule.

"Reaching sizes of up to 90 by 120 meters, the field, or "pitch," is actually larger than that of any other court or field sport in the world, a clear case of overcompensation if there ever was one"