Center for Systemic Peace

Here's a little research association that is collecting and publishing statistics about war.

What MLK actually did

I ran across this Kos-hosted essay a while back, and parts of it stuck in my head, but when it surfaced on Facebook again I was surprised (as usual) at the amount of detail I'd forgotten. It's worth reading. MLK's legacy is that he ended two centuries of racial terror in the South. His political legacy, or rather the legislation enacted as a result of his work, is great, but it was essentially white people acknowledging the new reality that he introduced and that black people in the South made real. And that insight is a fantastic thing.

The poor don't behave like the rich

A somewhat tongue-in-cheek headline for an article discussing some of the advances in economic modeling (yeah, the poor behave differently from the rich).

Rich people don't actually create the jobs

Good article at Business Insider.

Prosperity theology

A few links I hit in November:

• What does the Bible say about the prosperity gospel?
• Is the Word of Faith movement Biblical? (As always, the answer is 'no'.)
• Christian support for slavery
• Wikipedia gives us some history
• Benny Hinn's site had an article asking "Prosperity... Is It Biblical?" but it has been removed. I would hazard a guess that there's a lot of churn there instead of any ... steadfast statement of principles, I suppose is the phrase I'm looking for.
• Here's a neat article about Hinn, though.
• A review of a book about prosperity theology (from the pro camp, not the con. That is, from the pro con camp in actuality).

Yoruban mythology: the Orishas

So here is some delectable eye-candy involving the Orishas, or Gods. These are beautiful! And on further investigation (involving reading the Wiki page for Orisha) I found that the various lineages of this religion still claim some 100 million adherents around the world.

The stories of the Orisha seem to be just as detailed and extensive as Greek mythology - the only difference being that nobody still worships Zeus. Fascinating.