I saw an interesting study today that claimed that 51% of Christians were actually acting more like Pharisees than Christ.  It was based on a survey given to almost 800 people of a variety of Christian persuasions (practicing Catholic, practicing Protestant, notional (identifies as Christian but does not go to church), Evangelical, and born-again but non-Evangelical), and it asked them a series of 20 questions to assess their attitudes and actions, and gave them a score of “Pharisee-like” or “Christ-like”.  Here’s what they found:

• I listen to others to learn their story before telling them about my faith.
• In recent years, I have influenced multiple people to consider following Christ.
• I regularly choose to have meals with people with very different faith or morals from me.
• I try to discover the needs of non-Christians rather than waiting for them to come to me.
• I am personally spending time with non-believers to help them follow Jesus.

• I see God-given value in every person, regardless of their past or present condition.
• I believe God is for everyone.
• I see God working in people’s lives, even when they are not following him.
• It is more important to help people know God is for them than to make sure they know they are sinners.
• I feel compassion for people who are not following God and doing immoral things.

• I tell others the most important thing in my life is following God’s rules.
• I don’t talk about my sins or struggles. That’s between me and God.
• I try to avoid spending time with people who are openly gay or lesbian.
• I like to point out those who do not have the right theology or doctrine.
• I prefer to serve people who attend my church rather than those outside the church.

• I find it hard to be friends with people who seem to constantly do the wrong things.
• It’s not my responsibility to help people who won’t help themselves.
• I feel grateful to be a Christian when I see other people’s failures and flaws.
• I believe we should stand against those who are opposed to Christian values.
• People who follow God’s rules are better than those who do not.

Now I don’t know how many of these statements most people would or would not agree with, but I thought a more interesting list could have been generated by asking various scholars in each of the surveyed denominations what their definitions were.  Different people have different interpretations of things, and statements like “I find it hard to be friends with people who seem to constantly do the wrong things.” seem pretty likely to mean different things to different people.  I mean, I’m not friends with people who steal my stuff or are continuously mean to me.  Is that self-righteous?

Last week I ran in to two different studies about beards.  This was interesting, as it’s not normally a hot topic in academia.  

Would you care to ponder your place in time and space?  Here’s a good visualization.

As for space, I have my favorite new game.  It’s called Geo Guesser.  It gives you a random picture of a spot somewhere in the world, and you have to guess where it is.  The closest I’ve been is 1800 km off.  My high score is 7329.

If that games got you tripped up, explore your neighborhood while running away from zombies here.

Speaking of geography, check out this infographic on which state employee makes the most money in each state.  Spoiler alert: it’s coaches.  But who should be the best paid?  Jonathan suggests the state house tour guides.  I like that.

Hey, it’s my first Mother’s Day!  Husband’s out of town on business, so I’m spending the day babysitting (can you still call it that when he’s yours?)  Anyway, here are some animal moms that deserve a break.

Oh, and a very happy graduation day to my little sister who’s getting her bachelors of nursing today!  Your patients are lucky to have you!

I have some fun links for later in the day, but looking at the news this morning I wanted to ponder something that’s truly bugging me.

In my post yesterday, I cited a Gallup Poll that asked people “What do you think is the most important problem facing this country today?”

I was intrigued when I noticed that the top answer was “the economy in general”.  Other top answers included unemployment, the deficit, lack of money, poverty and taxes.  This interested me because if I told you I was concerned about the economy, I would have been talking about all of those things.  I decided to take a closer look at the methodology for the survey (it’s a PDF at the bottom of the link above) and found that apparently this question is open ended, and then the results are grouped from there.

I thought this was interesting, because asking people like this lends itself to people getting general on you, with words that they have their own meaning for.  Someone worried about the economy could mean mostly unemployment, or mostly the deficit, or any combination of things.

This problem arises in polls with pre-programmed answers too.  People tend to gravitate towards the biggest possible categories when asked to pick a top concern.  It’s good to remember this when hearing reports on what people care about.  It’s always a good idea to look at the other options and see if their categories were more limiting.  We like to keep our options open.

Last week I did a set of polls where I asked readers to weigh in on how old they defined “young” as in various situations.  The answers didn’t totally surprise me…support for “youngness” seems to begin to drop when you hit 18 and peter out by the time you hit 30 or 35.

What triggered the question to begin with was a link someone put up on facebook to a letter from a young conservative girl about gun control.  When I read the headline, I had been thinking that this “young girl” was going to be 15 or 16, maybe a college student at the most.  I took a look at the picture accompanying the article and was interested that the woman pictured looked a bit older than I had thought.  I did a little digging, and from the best I can tell, the author (Katie Kieffer) seems to be about 30*.

It’s a little nit-picky, I know, but I’m 31 and if someone under 80 or so called me a “young girl” I’d be surprised.  My theory is that politics is dominated by older people, and thus people are described as young for longer than in everyday life.  Just a theory.

Anyway, what really caught my eye about her article was what she labeled “Obama Lie #1”:

Obama Lie #1: “90 percent of Americans” support the Manchin-Toomey bill for extended background checks.
False. According to the latest Gallup Poll, just 4 percent of Americans think that guns/gun control is the most important issue facing our country. That means 96 percent of Americans are NOT worried about this issue and would not support increased gun control, especially if they knew the truth about background checks. Dr. John Lott has shown that: “There is no real scientific evidence among criminologists and economists that background checks actually reduce crime.”

Now honestly, I grew up in New Hampshire.  I think I was 9 the first time I fired a gun.  I find it relaxing. I’m not big on laws I see as reactionary that lack evidence to back up their methods. But characterizing this as a lie?  That seems a bit much.

For the first part: the Washington Post/ABC poll did, in fact, find that 90% of people agreed with expanding background checks to gun shows.  The Pew research center put it at 85%.   Now there are definitely details you could use to protest this: Obama actually said 90% support universal background checks, and these asked about gun show background checks…different wording could cause different answers.  Different polls find different numbers, 90% is on the high side, etc.  At the end of the day though, there are legitimate polls showing high support for background checks at gun shows.

What truly baffled me was her assertion that “96% of Americans are NOT worried about this issue and would not support increase gun control”.  I looked up the Gallup Poll she cited and found that the exact question asked was “What do you think the most important problem facing this country today?”.  It’s true that only 4% listed guns, but I’m pretty sure no one thought that classifying one of these issue as “most important” was saying that they wouldn’t support any action on any of the other things on the list.   Other things that scored lower than guns: ethics and moral decline, education, taxes and immigration.  I’m sure everyone will be thrilled to know we don’t need to talk about those any more

In conclusion, I think Obama quoted the poll with a fair degree of accuracy.  Results of a different poll with a completely different question don’t actually make that in to a lie.

It’s a pity because her last statement, about a lack of evidence that background checks work, actually has some credibility.  It looks like the biggest point of impact is actually suicides in those 55+, but not much on homicides.

*Her bio lists that she started the St Thomas Standard in her sophomore year of college, when most people are about 20.  The St Thomas Standard lists their founding date as 2003.  

There’s been a few interesting headlines about the dangers of swaddling babies.

I always find these types of stories interesting…essentially you have a practice for children called in to question because someone did it in the wrong way/with the wrong age group*, and then the headlines act like the whole practice is questionable.  Sigh.

Here’s the thing:  swaddling (wrapping babies up snugly in a blanket) is safe if done right.  I did it, and stopped between 2 and 3 months old when the little lord got too wiggly.  For a newborn though, it calms them down.  This makes sense…they spent 9 months in a snug environment, and it makes them feel safe.  If you know anyone having a baby, get them these.  They do the work for you.  They’re awesome.

Anyway, there apparently are some people questioning whether this practice should stop being recommended because if you do it wrong or for too long, it’s bad.  I think this is a great example of letting a small but quantifiable risk (ie the risk of SIDS) trump a larger but less quantifiable risk.

Babies who aren’t swaddled don’t calm as easily or sleep as well…or at least mine didn’t (and I hear I’m not alone).  Parents who have screaming awake babies get tired and frustrated.  How many car accidents would be caused by sleepy parents?  Injury to the child due to inattention?  Cases of shaken baby syndrome because the child wouldn’t sleep?  This would be impossible to measure, but the risks of having a newborn who doesn’t sleep well are very very real.  After all, this (admittedly small) study found that 70% of mothers of colicky infants have fantasized explicitly about harming their child….at that point the risk of SIDS is far smaller than the risk of the mother not getting any sleep.

I get the seduction of prioritizing those things which are easily measured, but we should never lose sight of what’s less measurable….now I think I’m gonna go get some sleep!

*In this case they managed to swaddle a 7 month old and a 1 year old.  I can barely get a diaper on my 9 month old….I have no idea how they swaddled them.

Oops, forgot to post these yesterday.  Oddly, I forgot in part because I am headed to the funeral of ANOTHER uncle named James.  I know I know, losing one is misfortune, losing a second looks like carelessness*.

Anyway, who needs some brain bleach?  I do!

First, we’ve got the muppets and Star Wars, all mixed up!  I loved Jim Henson, he was amazing.

I don’t know about you, but we definitely busted out the grill this week.  Grilling as a weeknight activity is one of my favorite things about summer.  Here’s 28 badass burgers to make this weekend.

My other favorite thing about this time of year is that Game of Thrones is on!  I am more addicted to this show/series than I have been to any pop culture phenomena in a long time.  I think I spent almost 2 hours this week discussing it with various people.  There’s quite the debate around whether you should read the books first or watch the show first, and I thought this list did a good job of highlighting which characters come off better in the show than in the books.  For those of you who have no idea what I’m talking about, let me just say if you want to see/read a series that completely turns tropes on their head without ever going in to “you’re just trying to be clever” territory (and you don’t mind brutal sex and violence), watch/read it. You’re welcome.

If this research is wrong, I don’t want to be right.

And now a video.  Edison vs Tesla – the rap battle (and yes, there’s a whole series of these…Mozart vs Skrillex is worthwhile)

*Forgive me the gallows humor, I love Oscar Wilde, and it’s been a long month.  This is my husband’s uncle, and he’d had a stroke AND cancer for a while now.  While we’re glad he’s no longer suffering, it’s still very sad.  He was a funny and good man, and he was only 60.  The surrealness of the names/proximity of deaths is pretty weird, all in all.

On my commute in this morning, I was listening to an interview with Jason Collins, the NBA player who recently became the first active/pro/major sport athlete to come out as a homosexual.  He’s an interesting guy, and it’s an interesting story, but one I never thought of as potential blog fodder…until I saw this story about how Howard Kurtz had been let go from the Daily Beast for his inaccurate commentary on the story.