Sunspots 792

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

The Arts: Speculative Faith has a discussion of how adapting a book to a movie can go bad, using The Voyage of the Dawn Treader as the main example.

Christianity: A Christianity Today article points out the importance of churches gathering together. (The article does not advocate unbounded opening under today's circumstances.)

A Relevant writer says that God isn't particularly interested in blessing America.

Computing: WindowSwap lets you look out someone else's window, and lets others look out of yours.

Gizmo's Freeware reports on Converter 365, which will convert many file formats to others. There's no need to sign up, and no charge. It works!

Environment: (and Ethics) Christianity Today has an article about the rights and wrongs of exploring other planets. Can we do so without altering any life that is already present there?

Gizmodo reports that places that were most polluted, 35 years ago, are still polluted badly.

All time heat records have recently been set in several locations in the Middle East, according to Gizmodo.

Gizmodo also reports that two long-standing ice formations, in Canada, have disappeared.

Health: USA Today reports that fly-by-night brokers are profiting massively from government purchases of anti-COVID supplies.

Relevant (and other outlets) report that a doctor from Houston, who recently was part of a presentation supporting President Trump's debunked views on COVID therapy, and other aspects of the Trump administration's handling of the pandemic, has some really strange views. (Demons can attack you through sex; reptiles are part of the government.)

Gizmodo has published some reflections on the idea of dying of old age (or at an old age).

History:

Humor: Gizmodo reports on an exploration of what would happen if a rifle barrel were bent back toward the stock, as in Bugs Bunny cartoons.

(Or not) Jalopnik reports that way too many pleasure boats showed up when the recent space vessel landed in the ocean.

Philosophy:

Politics: FiveThirtyEight on how Republicans have an advantage in the Senate, despite Democrats representing more people.

FiveThirtyEight also discusses our perceptions on crime. We think we are much more likely to be robbed than we actually are, and the crime rate (although it's hard to pin that down) has been going down, not up, for many years.

FiveThirtyEight also reports on three dozen recent state elections. Many of them were all mail-in, and voter turnout (or turn-in) was up significantly.

Science: Gizmodo reports that the source of most of the boulders at Stonehenge has been found, and it is 20 or so miles from the site.

Gizmodo also reports on a recurring cloud on Mars, large enough to be seen by ordinary telescopes on earth.

The graphic used in these posts is from NASA, hence, it is free to use like this.

Thanks for looking!

Sunspots 569

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



Christianity: Relevant thinks that so-called Christian movies are usually pretty bad, and that it's not because of a giant anti-Christian conspiracy to call them bad. How to fix this? The article says to tell stories like Jesus did.

Relevant also points out that most churches don't serve -- in fact may hurt -- people with mental illnesses.

I am a member of The Wesleyan Church. David Drury has written a brief essay on "What are Wesleyans for?" (as opposed to what, if anything, they might be against.)

Computing: Gizmo's Freeware reports on an on-line utility that can convert most any file format to any other reasonable format. This includes audio formats, as well as document formats.

Gizmo's has also found a free ransomware protection program. I installed it.

And Gizmo's has advice on how to recover your wireless password.

Wired reports on the progress, and imperfectness, of computer transcription of human speech -- there's still about an 8% error rate. (Humans doing the transcribing have about a 4% error rate.)

Health: Wired reports that only about 3% of US adult inhabitants have a truly healthy lifestyle, and that eating healthy, exercising, etc., doesn't guarantee that you will remain well.

History: Listverse tells us about 10 important African-American cowboys.

Politics: (And religion) Relevant has pointed out that some of President Obama's speeches sounded like Christian preaching.

FiveThirtyEight examines the salaries of state legislators (in New Mexico, they don't get a salary), and finds that state legislatures seem to do better work when better paid.

FiveThirtyEight also analyzes the Republican race for President, and finds that Donald Trump is doing worse than any other front-runner in the last few decades.

Science: Wired reports that nuclear power plants are actually very safe, but that they don't produce electricity as cheaply as other means, so they aren't getting built.

Wired also posted some photos of magnified peacock feathers, which are just amazing.

Listverse posts 10 facts about cancer cells from the late Henrietta Lacks, which cells have been critical to cancer research. For more about Mrs. Lacks, see here.

Sports: FiveThirtyEight on whether the Chicago Cubs will actually do something important in baseball this year.

Image source (public domain)

Sunspots 495

Things I have recently spotted that may be of interest to someone else:
Christianity: Threads from Henry's Web, a blog, has some careful thinking on separation of church and state. (Notice that I'm not putting this in Politics, but in Christianity.)
A blog post about Contemporary Christian music, from a worship leader who has moved away from doing 100% of that in worship.
Computing: Relevant reports that there is a real college course, entitled "wasting time on the Internet."
Gizmo's Freeware reports on a free web site that will convert most any file format into something else.
Humor: Tom Magliozzi, co-host, with his brother, Ray, of Car Talk, a long-running National Public Radio show, has passed away. We miss him.
Why it's smart to wear the same outfit every day. (This seems to apply to men, not women, but what do I know?)
Literature: Speculative Faith on The Bible and magic. I hadn't considered that Elsa, from Frozen, is a witch, but I guess she is. The article doesn't condemn Frozen. It does point out specific uses of magic that Christians should avoid.
Science: Wired reports on the winners of a contest on the best photos of microscopic objects.
Sports: Caroline Wozniacki, tennis star (she came in second in this year's US Open) ran in the New York marathon, and did well, in spite of never having run the entire distance at one practice session before. How good would she be if she really practiced?


 Image source (public domain)