Good morning and welcome to the weekend – Christmas Weekend!

I thought about not sending anything out, but why not? I mean, you’ll have time to sit and read a few articles while visiting with the in-laws right?

So just a few for your consideration…

Let me start with one called The Salvation of ‘Napalm Girl’ which was sent to me by David B. This is a great story – the intersection of history and redemption, which is especially pertinent during the season of Christmas.

Okay, I haven’t read this one yet, but I as it is from the New York Times, I sort of just reveled in the guilty pleasure of their downcast headline: E.P.A. Officials, Disheartened by Agency’s Direction, Are Leaving in Drove…can you blame me?

There are a few stories out there about how Apple is being sued for intentionally slowing down their phones...I think this is something most everyone suspected or complained about, but apparently, it has less to do with merely the computer processing demand of new apps/software, and more to do with the limited lifespan of lithium-ion batteries. Basically, in sum: Apple put crappy batteries in their phones, to cover this up they put governing software code into said phones that would slow the speed of said phones down after only a year in order to cover up *cough*, oh, sorry, “account for and facilitate” battery life demands.  The whole thing was almost enough to send me running into the arms of another major technological giant.

This was both fascinating and infuriating: Saipan: The Island Where Chinese Mothers Deliver American Babies.  Question for you: How many American mothers are crossing oceans to have their babies in China in order to gain Chinese citizenship (not that it works that way over there…I don’t think at least)?  Okay, this is obviously ironic, right?  Okay good.

This is so painful: Good News! You Are a Bitcoin Millionaire. Bad News! You Forgot Your Password.  Excerpt:

James Howells, an IT worker in Newport, Wales, lost 7,500 bitcoin he mined in 2009 after a hard drive with his private key was accidentally thrown away during an office cleanup. His story went viral this month as the value of the hard drive’s contents rocketed to more than $100 million. Now he’s attempting to excavate the landfill and dig through four years’ worth of trash to find it.

This is really, really, really long…but you need to scan it, or at least try and find the key takeaways: The secret backstory of how Obama let Hezbollah off the hook.  Here’s a taste test:

Soon afterward, Kelly said, he ran into one of the unit’s top prosecutors and asked if there was “something going on with the White House that explains why we can’t get a criminal filing.”

“You don’t know the half of it,” the prosecutor replied, according to Kelly. “Right now, we have 50 FBI agents not doing anything because they know their Iran cases aren’t going anywhere,” including investigations around the U.S. into allegedly complicit used-car dealers.

And, this was just weird coming from someone that normally disgusts me: What if Ken Starr was Right? (Ross Douthat).

Tim Challies takes on the Love Languages…burn! 

This is fascinating stuff here: Could Crispr Help to Knock Out Superbugs? (their subtitle: A combination of gene editing and viruses that attack bacteria could help scientists fight antibiotic resistance).

Okay, so I know that I just posted a lot of articles from the Wall Street Journal.  It doesn’t always happen like that, but when it does I feel a special nagging sense of guilt. I know not everyone has a subscription to the Journal, but I’d recommend that you consider it. Also, you might be able to get access through your local library (I don’t know for sure, that’s just a random thought).  It’s worth it!

That’s it for now – have a great Christmas and a wonderful New Year!

PJW