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Wednesday, August 28, 2013

Sunspots 433

Things I have recently spotted that may be of interest to someone else:

The Arts: Wired reports on how an artist has created art based on the movements of the London Underground (that's the subway, if you didn't know this.)

Christianity: E. Stephen Burnett heads an insightful discussion on whether the Harry Potter books teach occultism. (He doesn't believe so.) There are a lot of comments, almost all done in a respectful manner. Burnett says, among other things, that "trusting [occult practices] instead of God as a means to manipulate one’s world and control one’s life. (This is the goal behind any real occult/witchery attempts, including the infamous 'prosperity gospel' heresy.)"

Christianity Today reports that too many non-Christians don't even know a Christian.

Computing: A National Public Radio reporter allowed an MIT professor to examine the metadata from the reporter's Gmail account, in a way similar to how the NSA can use our metadata. The professor learned a lot, without reading any of the e-mail.

Education: None of the more than 24,000 students taking entrance exams for the University of Liberia obtained a score high enough for entrance.

Science: (And Philosophy, and Christianity) Books and Culture, sister publication to Christianity Today, has re-published an essay, by Karl Giberson, a physicist, about the theoretical work of Stephen Hawking.




Image source (public domain)

2 comments:

atlibertytosay said...

I'm confused.

Harry Potter does trust in the occult and magic to save him and NEVER prays. He also willingly associates with evil.

This statement seems contradictory to the premise of the article:

"trusting [occult practices] instead of God as a means to manipulate one’s world and control one’s life."

Martin LaBar said...

Thanks, atlibertytosay. It depends on how you define occult practices, which Burnett is careful to do, whether you, or anyone else, agrees with his definition.