Daily Links 3-5-14

In today's post: why Satan hates your family, who is your lion, reasons to avoid sexual immorality, Reddit saves a bakery, and more.

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Why Satan hates your family. Some good points here about why Satan works so hard to attack families.

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How to write an e-mail that will get a response. Some of these tips will seem a little obvious. However, it amazes me the number of e-mails I get that don't abide by even the simplest of guidelines.

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Who is your lion? Whose lion are you? Or to put it another way: who has had the biggest impact on your Christian walk? And who have you had the biggest impact upon?

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"Dear Soldier -- my dad was a soldier. He's in heaven now."  A heartwarming story about an 8 year old boy who decided to pay it forward with a soldier.

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Hire slow, fire fast. A very unconventional way of thinking about hiring and firing employees. It has a lot of merit.

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10 reasons to avoid sexual immorality. A very sobering list to reflect upon.

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25 motivational Winston Churchill quotes. How we so desperately need a leader like him today.

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Don't doubt the power of social media: how Reddit came to a bakery's rescue. (Hat tip: Food Riot)

Daily Links 11-26-13

In today's link roundup: tech companies that turned down merger offers, using a procrasination pad, remembering Apollo 11, and much more.

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A fascinating list of 8 tech companies that turned down merger offers. Not all of the stories ended well. Some of the companies, however, thrived.

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From Art of Manliness, a wonderful collection of spy concealments.

During World War II, a British publisher used Monopoly sets to smuggle maps, compasses, and money to prisoners of war.

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From Lifehacker, how to stay focused on your current task with a procrastination pad. Personally, I like working from to-do lists and this seems like a great way to manage my free time.

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An online gallery of the objects from Apollo 11 that are currently housed in the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum.

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Here's a real piece of cinematic history: Audrey Hepburn's screen test for Roman Holiday.


Hat tip: Open Culture

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An assortment of vintage advertisements starring notable authors (hat tip Book Riot). Yes, it's true that there was a time when authors would endorse different products. Nowadays authors aren't as well known so it's unlikely that you would see these kinds of ads.

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A review of the new documentary profiling Calvin and Hobbes creator Bill Watterson, Dear Mr. Watterson, at Christianity Today.

Daily Links 10-3-13

A movie that was way ahead of its time, girls need dads, fixing the baseball schedule, and more in today's collection of links.

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I hadn't thought about the movie The King of Comedy until I ran across this article at Acculturated. But now that I think about it, the author has it exactly right. This movie was way ahead of its time and offers a grim picture of the state of popular culture today.

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Joe Maddon is one of the best managers in baseball. He's also a unique guy. Steve Wulf has a terrific profile of the Tampa Bay Rays skipper.

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More from Acculturated (one of my current favorite blogs): Girls need their fathers. An excerpt:

So much of who we are, and who we become for that matter, depends on where we came from, and how we were raised.  And for little girls, much of who we become depends on how invested our fathers were in our lives.

There are some women in the world with fathers who are very attentive and encouraging, and who actively help form their daughters into amazing women. There are other girls, who never knew their father or lost their dad at a young age, but many of these girls have an uncle, a cousin, a family friend, or some other father figure in their life, who led them in life and formed them into awe-inspiring women.

But, there is another section of society’s daughters that have fathers who seem to be present, but in actuality are completely disconnected and detached from his little daughter’s life. This has become a problem in the world today and it is getting worse every day.

Many parents have lost sight of what their children need, and the fact that kids don’t need their parents to be their “friend”, they need their parents to be parents. And this seems to be the case with many father-daughter relationships.

The fathers in question are a part of their little girls every day lives, but they neglect every aspect of their daughter’s formation and fail to be there for her in the moments she needs him most. Girls need their fathers to be strong and direct them in the ways of the world; otherwise these girls are forced to make adult decisions at a very young age.

Be sure to read the whole thing.

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Now that baseball has moved onto the postseason, it's time to start figuring out how to fix the regular season schedule. 

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The doubly thankful villages of the United Kingdom. It's a really neat story. (hat tip Neatorama)

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The fascinating story of the man who served as chaplain to war criminals during the Nuremberg trials. (Hat tip: Blogging Theologically)

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A wonderful tribute to the late Tom Clancy.

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How one company turned a failed government contract into a fashion icon.

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Here's a fun list: the 10 greatest baseball comedy bits.

Daily Links 9-27-13

Harnessing the power of introverts, the dangers of busyness, how a 1940's actress helped develop wireless technologies we enjoy today, and more in today's link roundup.

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One the best books I have read lately is Susan Cain's Quiet: The Power Of Introverts In A World That Can't Stop Talking. This article neatly summarizes her findings in the book and how businesses can apply its lessons.

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Three dangers of busyness. This looks like it's going to be a great book.

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Some fascinating facts about Walt Disney World that you may not know.

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Did you know that a 1940's Hollywood star helped make wireless technologies possible? It's a fascinating story.

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Recreating Ernest Hemingway's hamburger recipe. (Hat tip: Food Riot). I have to say that this looks delicious and may be well worth a try.

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Victor Davis Hanson on the decline of college:

For the last 70 years, American higher education was assumed to be the pathway to upward mobility and a rich shared-learning experience. Young Americans for four years took a common core of classes, learned to look at the world dispassionately, and gained the concrete knowledge to make informed arguments logically.

The result was a more skilled workforce and a competent democratic citizenry. That ideal may still be true at our flagship universities, with their enormous endowments and stellar world rankings. Yet most everywhere else, something went terribly wrong with that model. Almost all the old campus protocols are now tragically outdated or antithetical to their original mission.

Be sure to read the whole thing.

Daily Links 9-9-13

The challenges of spelling, more benefits of owning a Kindle, and more in today's edition.

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Why is English spelling so messed up? Mental Floss has the answer.

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It was only a matter of time:

that it would let customers who bought certain print books download the electronic versions of those titles for a small fee, or for free. For anyone who buys both kinds of books, myself included, the service, which Amazon calls Kindle MatchBook, raises a simple question: What took so long?

I had wondered when this was going to happen. Just another reason to own a Kindle.

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14 Lessons of the New Workplace Millenials Need to Master. Actually reading over this list just about anyone who works in the business world should apply these lessons.

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This is an amazing story:

Brigitte Höss lives quietly on a leafy side street in Northern Virginia. She is retired now, having worked in a Washington fashion salon for more than 30 years. She recently was diagnosed with cancer and spends much of her days dealing with the medical consequences. Brigitte also has a secret that not even her grandchildren know. Her father was Rudolf Höss, the Kommandant of Auschwitz. It was Rudolf Höss who designed and built Auschwitz from an old army barracks in Poland to a killing machine capable of murdering 2,000 people an hour. By the end of the war, 1.1 million Jews had been killed in the camp, along with 20,000 gypsies and tens of thousands of Polish and Russian political prisoners. As such, Brigitte’s father was one of the biggest mass murderers in history. For nearly 40 years she has kept her past out of public view, unexamined, not even sharing her story with her closest family members.

But here is one of the best parts of this story:

In 1972 they moved to Washington. Brigitte’s husband took a senior job with a transportation company, and they bought a house in Georgetown. It was a chance for Brigitte to start over. Brigitte struggled — she didn’t know how to write a check, spoke little English and was without friends or family. After some searching, she found a part-time job in a fashion boutique. One day a short Jewish lady visited the boutique. She liked Brigitte’s style and asked her to come work in her fashion salon in the District. Soon after she was hired, Brigitte says, she got drunk with her manager and confessed that her father was Rudolf Höss. The manager told the store’s owner. The owner told Brigitte that she could stay, that she had not committed any crime herself. What Brigitte did not know, at least not until later, was that the store owner and her husband were Jewish and had fled Nazi Germany after the Kristallnacht attacks of 1938. Brigitte was thankful for being seen as a person, rather than her father’s daughter. She worked at the store for 35 years, serving prominent Washingtonians, including the wives of senators and congressmen. The store owner returned Brigitte’s loyalty and hard work by keeping her secret. With the exception of one other manager, none of the other staff knew the truth about Brigitte’s family history.

Be sure to read the whole thing.
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Ten things I've Learned on Twitter. Some interesting tips for folks who want to use Twitter more effectively. (hat tip Thom Rainer)
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Why Duck Dynasty Viewers Heed Its Call (hat tip Acculturated). Maybe it has something to do with the fact that the Robertsons are real, down to earth, honest to goodness folks.

Daily Links 9-2-13

Happy Labor Day! Here are some links for your edification as you prepare to go back to work tomorrow.

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"What do you do for a living?" is a common question to ask someone you meet for the first time. How should a Christian respond?

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The media trumpets a story on the success of "breadwinner moms" but overlooks the more important (and troubling statistics) that the study reveals.

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5 things you need to unlearn to succeed at work. Yes, there are things you need to unlearn.

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Don't let social media ruin your marriage. Some of these tips may seem pretty basic but there are a number of good tips here.

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Sometimes in business it's better to just pick up the phone. While I don't particularly like spending a lot of time on the phone I do find it's often easier to make a call than send an e-mail. What also seems to be missing today is a lot of the face-to-face interaction that used to take place in business. Technology is great and can be really convenient but sometimes it helps to use old-fashioned methods to build rapport with your business partners.

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Dispelling misconceptions about the value of our work. (hat tip Chailles)