Interesting links

The New York Times, which has a few good pieces today, links to the story of Oxford, IA, whose 700-some population has been photographed by Peter Feldstein, first in 1984, and again this year. The story is interesting, but this quote gives an illustration: One of the town’s oldest

People are leaving, schools are closing, what is going to happen to North Dakota?

The New York Times has extracts (PDF) of the recently rediscovered Gnostic Gospel of Judas.

Prayer for the sick appears not merely not to work, but to be actively harmful.

Occasions when the Bible is wrong, set out in complete detail at Biblical Errancy. Via Metafilter.

Who knew? Some people think the earth doesn’t go round the Sun. More links at MeFi.

The John Lewis Partnership – presumably because they don’t have shareholders, and therefore don’t care about quarterly results announcements – publish weekly sales figures for both John Lewis and Waitrose.

Dick Bruna, creator of Miffy, may well be the nicest guy in the world.

Remember those text-based adventure games? You know “Get sandwich” and all that? Now you can play one as the President of the United States. (via MeFi)

The New York Times magazine has an interesting feature on hikikomori – the ‘shut-in’. These are Japanese teenagers (usually) who lock themselves in their room, away from human contact for years or decades. Is it a culture-specific phenomenon (like anorexia in the West), or could the same thing happen here?