Okay, this is seriously freaky: while seated, lift your right foot about 6″ off the floor and begin moving it in clockwise circles. Now trace the number “6” in the air with your right hand: your foot will change direction — and there’s nothing you can do about it. (via) Makes you wonder if perhaps there were a few places where God was on a conservation kick and doubled up on some nerve endings.

This week’s groaner: Chicken Little was found dead in the playground. Police suspect fowl play. Okay, okay… where does a penguin keep his money? In a snow bank.

And now on with the linkage:

1. Larry Norman passed away this past week.
2. Added to the lexicon: Squirmeneutics
3. The crop of presidential candidates run through psychology tests with MBTI-interpretation.
4. In the footsteps of Jesus… but not in a good way.
5. Stairway To Heaven… great use of storage space.
6. Most Dangerous Roads in the World
7. Jamie Arpin-Ricci has announced an update on their adoption plans, including a fundraiser for the cause… further details at adoptapixel.ca; any amount helps.
8. Matt Stone: What does mission shaped liturgy look like?
9. Hope you had a good “leap day” yesterday. Why Leap Years Are Used; Leap year was first observed by Julius Caesar in 45BCE… a year that doesn’t seem to fit the pattern. Contrary to popular belief, leap year is not every four years — it’s every year divisible by four unless it’s also divisible by 100, unless it’s also divisible by 400. Clear? That’s why 2000 was a leap year but 1900 was not.
10. Michael Patton’s emerging church series is complete and he’s compiled it into a single post and pdf.
11. Joe Thorn: 7 Characteristics of an Ingrown Church
12. Oprah: competitive giving
13. Larry Norman was Only Visiting this Planet; perhaps now he’s In Another Land. Stephen Shields has the near-definitive metapost.
14. On Scot McKnight’s Hermeneutics Quiz and “Rethinking How You Read the Bible”
15. Philip Zimbardo at TED; you heard it here first. Evil is systemic.
16. The Danger of Attractionalism and Further Dangers of Attractionalism
17. Kester Brewin: What Are The ‘Grand Challenges’ for Theology for the 21st Century?
18. Len Hjalmarson on the evolution [and twilight] of hierarchy also see my Wikiklesia chapter on this: “Hyperlinks Subvert Hierarchy: The Internet, Non-Hierarchical Organizations, and the Structure of the Church”
19. More Hjalmarson on missional orders
20. NYT: The Bible as Graphic Novel, With a Samurai Stranger Called Christ (Login at Bugmenot) Late addition: I see Jamie noticed this as well, with additional links and comment.
21. Has anybody else read Sandra Boynton’s books to their kids? The Power of Whimsy. She had a barking/counting dog book that always made our dog howl by the time you got to about seven dogs: too much fun. “Moo, Baa, La La La.”
22. N.T. Wright comments on politics, Sharia Law, multiculturalism, colonialism and other fine points — a worthwhile 6-minute video.
23. I’m thinking about Action Learning vs. Academy Learning (with a good diagram). I can’t help but wonder if the old Hebrew vs. Greek thinking is a helpful dichotomy, but you sure see it a lot.

Last week I turned out to be Charlie, but this week my fate is better:

What is Your Fate on Lost?

And for your trivial education, a “fact of the day”:

People have been eating ice cream for 3000 years, originally as flavored snow or ice. Ice cream evolved from flavored ices that were popular with the Roman nobility in the 4th century BC. The emperor Nero is known to have imported snow from the mountains and topped it with fruit juices and honey. In the 13th century, Marco Polo was reported to have returned from China with recipes for making water and milk ices. Early colonists poured maple syrup over snow. Both Washington and Jefferson owned a “cream machine for making ice” and Dolly Madison’s White House dinner parties were talked about for the “large shining dome of pink ice cream” as the centerpiece. Colonists talked about going to ice cream houses since the 1700s, which weren’t generally called ice cream parlors or ice cream stands until the late 1870s. The discovery that salt would lower the freezing point of cracked ice led to the first practical method of making ice cream. Making ice cream in the home was greatly simplified by the invention of the wooden bucket freezer with rotary paddles. In 1846, Nancy Johnson, a Philadelphia dairy maid, invented the hand-cranked ice cream freezer. In 1851 the first wholesale ice cream was manufactured in Baltimore. With the development of mechanical refrigeration, widespread distribution of ice cream became possible. After the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair, people started asking for ice cream cones, invented at the fair when an ice cream vendor ran out of dishes and a nearby vendor of the crisp pastry, salabria, twisted it into a cone to hold the ice cream. Haagen-Dazs began manufacturing in 1959 and Ben & Jerry’s was created in 1978.