EZ Reads, 2/25/09

The last 36 hours or so of reading were really good, reminding me what I enjoy about this whole blogging thing... so here are a few of the pieces I enjoyed:

• Taking off on yesterday's post by Bad4 on how dating broadens your mind, Bas~Melech compares dating to blogging in figuring out which broadens your mind best.
• YD laments a high school student's disgust over losing out lunchtime to a video about the Mercaz HaRav massacre.
• A fantastic piece by R' Yonasan Goldson on BeyondBT noting how large scale division leads to an increase in localized homogeneous groups. It's quite a fascinating analysis with a very good message.
• A beautiful and heart-warming post by NMF#7 about soldiers and babies.
• A Soldier's Mother has another beautiful post on how the Israeli army rewards its' soldiers' hard work with a thank you... and how the soldiers thank God.
• An interesting study concludes hand-motions help people learn math better. It mentions Italians, but I'd add Jews into that mix. On a separate note, I can't believe people get paid to research things I could show them in my living room.
• Honestly Frum is incensed that after years of not only decrying the internet, but rejecting ads that included web addresses, Hamodia started a website and then justified it by noting it's a necessity of our time. I'm less troubled by the website (which I think is a positive sign of their joining the 21st century) and more troubled that the same logic which was rejected until now is suddenly accepted when convenient.
  
• R' Gil Student at Hirhurim questions the idea of thanking the anti-religious for forcing religion to understand itself better, as per a recent WSJ piece.
• SoccerDad notes that Shai Agassi is talking to 19 companies in Israel to help push electric cars in the country from a nice idea to reality. Awesome.
• Freakonomics notes a site that lets you quantify Obama's SOTU address, like how he used "crisis" 11 times, while Hoover did 4 times during the Great Depression.
• Though it's certainly not a perfect comparison, Basketball-Reference calculates that if Lebron were to play at the pace Oscar Robertson did in 1962 he'd be averaging 41/10/10. Sick. (Hat Tip: David Linn)
  
• Win some Oh Nuts! stuff at ParshaBlog.
  

Enjoy!