Sunsppts 981

Things I have spotted that may be of interest to others:

The Trump administration wants to change the Endangered Species Act so that destruction of habitat that endangered species need won't be considered harm.

ZDNet discusses passkeys and passwords.

Gizmodo reports that My Pillow maker, and Trump backer, Mike Lindell's, lawyers filed a brief that was generated by a ChatBot, and which contained several references to non-existent past legal rulings.

National Public Radio reports on Catholic reaction to a picture, apparently approved by the White House, of Donald Trump as pope.

 

Sunspots 760

I know. It's Christmas, but old habits are hard to break. Hence this post. Thank God for becoming incarnate!

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



Christianity: Relevant on the real war on Christmas.

(And politics) A Christianity Today opinion piece calls for President Trump to be removed from office, by impeachment or at the ballot box, mostly because of his lack of moral character: "His Twitter feed alone—with its habitual string of mischaracterizations, lies, and slanders—is a near perfect example of a human being who is morally lost and confused."

Christianity Today has published another opinion, supporting the first, and also denying that it is a left-wing organization, or pro-abortion, or that it doesn't take the Bible seriously. Quite the contrary. The main problem, it says, is not President Trump. "He is not the sickness. He is a symptom of a sickness that began before him, which is the hyper-politicization of the American church. This is a danger for all of us, wherever we fall on the political spectrum. Jesus said we should give to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s. With profound love and respect, we ask our brothers and sisters in Christ to consider whether they have given to Caesar what belongs only to God: their unconditional loyalty."
 
Computing: Gizmodo reports on the 50 worst (i. e., most easily discovered and used for bad things) passwords. 


Education: Listverse tells us about ten words that almost got spelled and/or pronounced differently.

(or something) The 100 most popular US baby names, in 2019.
Finance: (and politics) The tax cuts of 2 years ago haven't done what they were promised to do, according to an NPR report.

History: (and politics) NPR discusses how we came to be such a partisan nation.

Humor: (or something) NPR also reports that there aren't enough Santas in Germany.


Politics: (And Christianity) Another article, a thoughtful one, on what Christians should think about Donald Trump.

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

Sunspots 640

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

Christianity: Relevant has an article on modesty. It points out that becoming lustful after seeing a woman is a man's choice, that what men are sexually attracted to varies from man to man, and is also different in different cultures, and that the only use of the word, modesty, in the Bible, in 1 Timothy 2:9, refers to ornaments, not to how much leg or whatever may be revealed.

David Drury urges so-called evangelicals to repentance.


Computing: Gizmo's Freeware recommends the Problem Steps Recorder, a free tool, built in to Windows computers, which records exactly what happened, and when.

National Public Radio reports that experts have changed their recommendations on choosing passwords. Their recommendations should make things simpler.

Gizmo's freeware also reports on a web site that will tell you what passwords have been compromised in the past (millions have).

Education: Listverse describes the right and wrong usage of 10 common words.

Food: NPR reports that men may be more attractive to  women if they eat certain foods.

History: Relevant points out that Robert E. Lee, himself, was not in favor of displaying confederate sympathy in statues, and in other ways, after the Civil War.
 
Politics: FiveThirtyEight presents a short, calm primer on the histories of black and white identity politics, and the role of President Trump.

The New York Times presents data on the frequency, by race, of killings by police being ruled justifiable.

Science: Statnews reports on the interesting things that have happened when white nationalists have genetic tests to examine their ancestry.

FiveThirtyEight reports that, with the exception of Saturn, solar eclipses would not be visible on any other planet in our solar system, and eclipses on earth are much better viewing than the possibility from Saturn.



Image source (public domain)

Sunspots 575

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


Christianity: Bible scholar Ken Schenck on what the Bible says about wealth.

E. Stephen Burnett has written two "duh!" posts, about truths Christians need to be reminded of: our non-Christian neighbors don't get God's law, and they don't even understand God's grace in a rudimentary way.

Christianity Today on Pascal's wager. (The wager was about whether it makes sense to be a Christian believer, even if, say, Christian teaching about heaven is false.)

Computing: Gizmo's Freeware points to a site that will tell you how hard it would be to crack a password.

The Environment: (or something) Listverse discusses the 10 loneliest things in the world.

Food: Listverse reports on 10 strange soda (aka soft drink) flavors.

Health: National Public Radio reports on whether or not women need to have menstrual periods.

Politics: (and health)  National Public Radio reports that a ten billion dollar program which was supposed to speed up getting treatment visits for veterans has actually made things worse. Oh, dear.

Science: Wired on why insect stings really hurt.

Listverse reports on 10 bizarre-sounding proposals by scientists, most of which were suggested as ways to alleviate Global Climate Change.

NPR reports on research designed to find out why we gossip.

Sports: FiveThirtyEight reports that women get concussions from participating in sports at higher rates than men do.

Image source (public domain)  

Sunspots 573

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

Christianity: A resource on the history of the Biblical canon.

Computing: Wired on how to make passwords more secure.

Health: Wired reports on the dangers of driving over the speed limit, or of setting the speed limit higher.
 
Politics: National Public Radio has a commentary on how the news media failed to cover Donald Trump properly.

FiveThirtyEight weighs in on how and why Trump won the Republican nomination.

FiveThirtyEight also reports that Trump supporters have higher incomes than the public at large, which is contrary to what has often been said, or implied.

Science: Listverse reports on animals that decorate themselves, or their surroundings.

Listverse also reports on 10 small isolated villages where health conditions rare elsewhere are common.

Wired reports that the simple little hydra may be potentially immortal, and explains why.
 
Image source (public domain)  

Sunspots 565

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

The Arts: Listverse reports on 10 non-European languages that have provided words which are common in English.

Christianity: Reaction to a poll of Israelis, from Christianity Today and Relevant. Israeli Christians (mostly Catholic and Orthodox) are much less likely than US Christians to believe that Israel should be controlled by Jews.

Relevant wonders when conservative Christians will start to take global climate change seriously. (Some already do, of course.)

Ken Schenck argues that sex should be kept within a marriage.

In BioLogos, a discussion on the meaning of death in the Bible, and whether there could have been death before the Fall.

Computing: Gizmo's Freeware points out that you can use wildcards in Google searches.

From the same source: A freeware replacement for the Windows 8 or 10 start menu.

Wired reports that changing passwords frequently doesn't really make you more secure. (Provided, of course, that the password you are continuing to use is hard enough for the bad guys to figure out.)

Humor (and Food): A four minute YouTube video of a Kit Kat candy bar being surgically implanted into a Three Musketeers candy bar.

Politics: A writer for Sojourners says that he is a one-issue voter -- he's looking for a candidate with integrity. He doesn't seem to have found one.

The Washington Post reports on proposed US Constitutional amendments, lots of them. (Like 11,000+)

Fivethirtyeight counted up the phrases most often used, in the Republican Presidential debates, by Cruz, Kasich, Rubio and Trump.

Science: The Christian Science Monitor reports that ravens may have at least a rudimentary theory of mind. (The article tells you what that is.)

Fivethirtyeight tells us why most of us are right-handed.



Image source (public domain)

Sunspots 388

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

Humor:  An academic journal which rejects all material submitted to it for publication. (It ceased "publication" several months ago, but its web site is still available.)

(Humorous, or odd, to us, anyway.) Some people in Senegal take their sheep seriously. Very seriously. The Huffington Post reports on a televised sheep beauty contest.

Science: National Public Radio on apple trees in the US. They are dwarfs!

Computing: Microsoft offers a free (and, according to an expert who should know -- definitely not me -- safe) site that evaluates the strength of a password for you. All you have to do is to type it in. I discovered that one of my passwords, which I thought would be pretty difficult to crack, was weak. Whoops!

Christianity: From the BioLogos Forum, a look at how ancient theologians (Luther, Origen, Calvin, Augustine, and Aquinas) interpreted Genesis 1.

Image source (public domain)

Sunspots 326

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

Science: NPR reports that the food preferences of babies are strongly influenced by what their mothers ate while they were pregnant.

The Arts: From Wired: the earth, seen (and heard) as a watermelon. You have to see it to understand.

Computing: How secure is your password? Check it out.

Image source (public domain)

Sunspots 313

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

Science: Wired reports on the discovery, in the lab, of a new parthenogenetic species of lizard. Unfortunately, the photos at the end confused me.

 
Politics: I have been a Flickr member for several years. (Flickr is a photograph-based social network.) I recently discovered that President Obama has a Flickr account. I doubt if he took all of the over 50,000 photos that are in it by himself . . .  So I checked on some other political people. Tim Pawlenty has an account, with a lot less photos. Michele Bachman, Sarah Palin and Newt Gingrich don't seem to have accounts.

Computing: You've probably seen this all before, but here's an article on how passwords are hacked.

Christianity: An English translation of the Latin text of the Requiem Mass, by Mozart (and others).

Image source (public domain)