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Showing posts with label free speech. Show all posts
Showing posts with label free speech. Show all posts

Tuesday, May 16, 2017

Sunspots 626


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



Education: National Public Radio has published an in-depth report on the pluses and minuses of school voucher programs.

Ethics: Rerum Novarum, an encyclical issued in 1881, by Pope Leo XIII, on the treatment of laborers, and a lot more. Sample (from paragraph 28):
Neither must it be supposed that the solicitude of the Church is so preoccupied with the spiritual concerns of her children as to neglect their temporal and earthly interests. Her desire is that the poor, for example, should rise above poverty and wretchedness, and better their condition in life; and for this she makes a strong endeavor. By the fact that she calls men to virtue and forms them to its practice she promotes this in no slight degree.


Finance: Relevant reports on a study of repaying loans, which found that people who mentioned God when talking about paying back loans were less likely to pay them back.

Health: National Public Radio details two good methods for washing our hands. (Confession: I don't use either of them.)

History: Some historical facts you didn't learn in school, from Listverse.

Humor: (Sort of) Scientific American reports further on the question of why people take their empty shopping carts to a cart corral, or don't. The report is mostly interesting comments, from returners and non-returners.


Politics: Listverse tells us that free speech is being attacked from many sides, in many ways.

(And history) FiveThirtyEight discusses US political scandals of the past, and points out that even when Presidents were involved in some really bad stuff, many congresspeople stuck by them.

Science: (and Christianity) Relevant strongly defends the concept of human-caused climate change.

Wired reports that scientists have made functioning mouse ovaries with a 3-D printer. Really.

Listverse describes 10 fascinating facts about plants.



Image source (public domain)

Wednesday, December 10, 2014

Sunspots 499

Things I have recently spotted that may be of interest to someone else:
Christianity: Ben Watson, professional football player, and black man, has written a thoughtful piece on the events in Ferguson, Missouri.

Computing: (or something) National Public Radio on the Supreme Court hearing a case about a man who threatened to kill his wife on Facebook, and continued to do so, in spite of a restraining order and a visit from an FBI agent. He claims that this is free speech.
 
Humor: Relevant examines some Christmas songs carefully, and wonders why we listen to them.
 
Politics: Surprise! NPR reports on a study that says that making campaign contributions to candidates leads to lower taxes for companies that do so.
 
Science: (or something) Wired reports that ants efficiently clean food off the streets of New York City. (about one-fourth of the trash in that city is food.)
 
Wired also reports on treehoppers, some really strangely shaped, and sounding, insects.

Sports: A Clemson University football player, Artavis Scott, did an amazing ballet for the last few yards of a touchdown run, running sideways, and staying in bounds.

 Image source (public domain)

Wednesday, May 14, 2014

Sunspots 470

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

The Arts: One of my brothers is an excellent photographer. Two of his recent offerings are a photo of a moonbow (a rainbow caused by moonlight) and one of "ghosts" walking on a stairs -- see his explanation.

Christianity: Ken Schenck discusses Calvinism and Arminianism, including the question of free will.
Computing: (sort of) a picture, a visual comment on some of us and our information utilities.
Humor: A video, about two minutes long, of a crow, playing in the snow on top of cars.
Politics: The New York Times report on a study of how individual Supreme Court justices voted in free speech cases.
Science: Scientific American reports on a report in Nature that migratory birds are confused by electronic signals given off by us, at least in places where there are a lot of us.
Image source (public domain)

Wednesday, October 03, 2012

Sunspots 386

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

Humor: (I know -- it's not funny at all) You probably don't wonder why women have so much more difficulty finding things that fit them than men do, but, if you do wonder, it's because women's sizes are anything but standard. (From the New York Times.)

Science: (not Science Fiction) Fox News reports that scientists are working on a real warp drive, which drive was popularized in the Star Trek TV series (all of them) and the Star Trek movies.

The cost of sequencing a person's genes is getting affordable, less than $5,000, and going down. National Public Radio reports that this has promise, and raises numerous ethical questions. Also practical ones -- will your doctor be able to interpret the results and explain them to you?

The Arts: The trailer for the soon-to-be-released Hobbit film.

Politics: National Public Radio has done a graphic analysis of candidate Romney's 47 percent who don't pay income taxes, showing why they don't.

(or Christianity) The Christian Post reports that an Egyptian man is to be put on trial for tearing out pages of the Bible. The blog that pointed me to this says that Christians should protest this arrest and trial. I agree. We should protest this.

Computing: (Or Education) National Public Radio reports on Coursera, which offers free on-line education, high quality education.

Christianity: "This God of rough edges will not be smoothed out, neither by the fundamentalists who think he is mainly interested in populating hell, nor the liberals who imagine hell is empty." Mark Galli, reviewing the movie, Hellbound?, for Christianity Today.


Image source (public domain)

Wednesday, August 22, 2012

Sunspots 380

Things I have recently spotted that may be of interest to someone else:
 
Science: Yes, amphibians (frogs and such) have recently taken some big hits. But Wired reports that several new species have recently been found.
 
The Arts: Wired has a gallery of artists' conceptions of humans exploring Mars.

Computing: I was amazed to read that a court has ruled that "liking" on Facebook is not protected as free speech. According to Fox News, this will be appealed.

Christianity: (or philosophy) Ken Schenck has a brief, but excellent post (11 lines long!) on the relationship between objectivity and faith.

A good summary of what Theistic Evolution is all about, from the BioLogos Forum.

Image source (public domain)