Sunspots 535

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


Christianity: Relevant tells us that private communion shouldn't be a chore, and makes some suggestions to make it more interesting. They suggest communion through food, among other things.

Stephen L. Corey points out that God created, or at least allowed, people who are not exactly male or female.

Computing: Gizmo's Freeware on privacy (or not -- some leaks can be fixed) in Windows 10.

Education: National Public Radio reports on how public schools in the US are neglecting the smartest kids.

Science: National Public Radio reports on research linking our leanness, or lack thereof, to our gut bacteria.

NPR also reports on very low-frequency communication sounds made by elephants.

Wired reports that Pluto's atmosphere seems to be being renewed. Its gravity is too weak to hold it as well as the earth holds ours.

Wired also explains why water gets stale when left out overnight.

Wired also reports on an on-line database of mathematical sequences, and the man who has maintained this database for 50 years. (Examples: 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34 . . ., the Fibonacci sequence, or 1, 2, 3, 5, 7, 11, 13, 17, 19, 23, 29 . . ., the prime numbers.) There are many, many more of these sequences in the database.


Image source (public domain)

Sunspots 533

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

Christianity: Ken Schenck tells us that the primary duty of the church is to worship God.
 
Computing: (or Fashion) Wired reports on a woman who printed her own clothes with a 3-D printer.


Wired reviews Windows 10 -- quite positively, but don't install it quite yet, yourself -- let Microsoft get out whatever bugs there may be.


Some artificial intelligence scientists are saying that we need a world-wide ban on the production of robots which are designed to kill people, using their own artificial intelligence. Some of them already exist.


Politics: (or business) National Public Radio tells us that human trafficking is widespread in agriculture and fisheries, around the world, with some in the US.

OpenSecrets is a non-partisan web site that keeps track of money and politics.


Science: Wired reports on "Kick 'em Jenny," which is the name of a dormant volcano, (I am not making this up!) which may be about to erupt.

 
NPR reports on transporting, as done in Star Trek. One atom at a time. Sort of.


Sports: Congratulations to Nancy Lieberman, who has been hired as an assistant coach in the National Basketball Association. (She's not the first woman hired -- Becky Hammon had that honor.) And Christianity Today (!) reports that a National Football League team has, for the first time, hired a female coach. 


Image source (public domain)

Sunspots 532

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

Christianity: An essay in Relevant on "What We Get Wrong about Humility." A lot, it seems.

Computing: Gizmo's Freeware tells us about a free Windows program to recover deleted files.

Gizmo's also advises on upgrading (or not) to Windows 10.

And Gizmo's points to a treasure trove on YouTube: Over half a million old news clips, of the kind you used to see with movies, if you can remember that far back.

Education: FiveThirtyEight, the statistical site, says that having students evaluate teachers is actually working pretty well.

The New York Times tells us that there aren't really many differences between colleges.

The Environment: FiveThirtyEight (and other outlets) tells us that the first six months of 2015 were the hottest such ever recorded. The report gives details for a number of US cities, some of which experienced some cold weather, too.

Politics: (Or violence) More US residents have been killed, in terror attacks, by white supremacists, than were killed in terror attacks by jihadists, since September 11, 2001. See here and here, for details.

And Relevant gives us some shocking statistics about gun violence in the US.

Benjamin L. Corey asks if my (or your) version of Christianity has become Americanized.


Image source (public domain)