What Caught My Eye Today - Bibles, Viruses, Immigration, Dating, Potpourri

Bibles - Costco Wholesale has been doing some serious repenting. While shopping in a store in Simi Valley, California a local pastor tweeted a photo of Bibles relegated to the store's fiction section. That did not sit well with members of his congregation. I've two questions already.  First, is a priest doing shopping at a Costco in the first place; and second, who follows their clergyman on Twitter? Once word of the misplaced gospels spread on social media and made its way onto local and national broadcasts, Costco released a statement blaming a distributor for mislabeling a "small percentage" of the Bibles in stock before they were shipped to the California. In the statement, Costco said it takes full responsibility for the incident and should have caught the mistake. Being the God fearing Christian that I am, I'm not going to argue whether or not the Bible is a work of fiction or not. However, it is worth noting that the four canonical gospels of the New Testament – Matthew, Mark, Luke and John – were not only written many years after the events which they describe occurred, but these four gospels were picked out of several hundred gospels nearly 500 years later.

Viruses - Don't have enough things on your mind to keep you up at night?  How about these little gems? The Center for Disease Control says three nightmare super bugs have become so virulent that they pose an urgent risk to the health of Americans. The first is a deadly diarrhea-causing infection. That sounds bad. The second is a bloodstream infection that kills half the people it infects. Yeah, this one doesn't sound too pleasant, either. The third is a drug-resistant form of gonorrhea that has evolved to become resistant to the last drug available against it, raising the prospect of a sexually transmitted global epidemic. This "super gonorrhea" tests to spread through unprotected oral sex. Sort of takes some of the fun out of sex, don't you think? I wonder if Purell could sanitize more than just your hands; not that I'm suggesting you should sanitize anything else with it.

Immigration - The Young Conservatives of Texas canceled it annual "Catch an Illegal Immigrant" event at the University of Texas, Austin, after complaints from students and faculty. Go figure. The group said the game, in which students would chase down other students wearing "illegal immigrant" signs, was meant to spark a campus-wide discussion about the issue. And yet somehow, this group's completely innocent intentions were misconstrued by college students and faculty.  If you ask me this is more of an indictment on higher education.  How could any sensible, well-educated person possible view this event as any other than the public service announcement it was intended to be? 

Dating - There is a new "female-friendly" dating application. The program is like a Yelp for women who want to know as much about who they are going to a restaurant with as they do about the restaurant they are going to. It allows them to anonymously review men who are they Facebook friends and read similar reviews from women they don't know. Users can rate men in categories and add hashtags that are used to calculate a score and rate the men. Where to begin?  First off, this smacks of sexism to me.  Where is the "male-friendly" version of this application?  Second, in my day, the whole purpose of going on a date was to get to know someone.  Why bother going through the pointless exercise of actually connecting with someone, when you can find out everything you want to know about them on Facebook?  Which brings me to my next thought.  Is it just me or does the notion of ratings based on feedback from women who no longer have any desire to date a guy seem to be a questionable premise? I'm thinking there may be some negative bias in some of those reviews.  And finally, what would motivate a girl to friend a bunch of strangers who previously dated the dude she's interested in?  If you ask me, no good could possibly come from that.

Potpourri - Quite the hodge-podge of useless trivia this time around (as if any trivia is particular useful).

• Vocabulary - The Oxford University Press declared that "selfie," taking a self-portrait with a smartphone, was the new word of the year for 2013. More proof that the art of language is in serious decline.
• Lifestyle - 27% of Americans lived alone in 2012, compared to just 17% living in single-person households in 1970. Considering that technology is well on its way to making actual human contact obsolete, I'm surprised this number isn't higher.
• Olympic Medals - The value of raw materials in a gold medal to be awarded at the 2014 Winter Olympic Games in Sochi, Russia is $650. The value of raw materials in a silver medal is $335 and $5 in a bronze medal. How depressing is it that recognition of a lifetime spent getting to the pinnacle of one's sport is worth less than a premium coffee drink at the local Starbucks?