A La Carte (January 16)

Today’s Kindle deals include several titles from Crossway on the subject of family. There’s also a good little Watts biography in there.

Are You a Confirmation Bias Christian?

Confirmation bias is a powerful force and one that can play a surprisingly prominent role in your life.

Not So Golden Globes

Writing for WORLD, Cal Thomas reflects on “the astounding arrogance, superiority, and hypocrisy of Hollywood’s elite.”

Retirement Stewardship

I’ve recently begun reading (and enjoying) Chris Cagle’s Retirement Stewardship blog. He discusses personal finance leading to a “good” retirement.

I once watched a documentary about this amazing service in Mumbai that takes lunches from homes to offices. “A 2010 study by the Harvard Business School graded it ‘Six Sigma’, which means the dabbawalas make fewer than 3.4 mistakes per million transactions. With deliveries to and from roughly 200,000 customers each day that translates to little more than 400 delayed or missing dabbas in a year.”

This Day in 1815. 202 years ago today reformer Henry Thornton died in William Willberforce’s house. Thornton was a banker and parliamentarian and was a key figure behind the anti-slavery group Clapham Sect. *

Reading King’s Letter from a Birmingham Jail

Justin Taylor: “If Martin Luther King Jr.’s ‘I Had a Dream’ speech (August 28, 1963) was the visionary sermon of the Civil Rights Movement, his ‘Letter from Birmingham Jail’ was its epistolatory defense.” He provides a kind of reading guide for it. Meanwhile, Kevin DeYoung shares his pastoral prayer from yesterday.

Pavlov’s in Your Pocket

Seth Godin: “Why do people buy lottery tickets? It’s certainly not based on any rational analysis of financial risk or reward. So, why do something that almost never seems to work? Because it actually works every single time.”

Randy Alcorn offers wisdom on when (and when not) to share Romans 8:28.