Sunspots 742

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

Christianity: Christianity Today reports that Bibles which are mostly printed in China and exported to the US, will not be subject to tariffs.
Relevant points out four Bible verses that are too often used out of context.
He Lives on why it makes no sense to bear arms in church to protect against gun violence there.


Computing: National Public Radio reports that lots of people, especially teens, are addicted to the Internet in South Korea, and what the government is doiong about it.

Education: Listverse explains why 10 common objects have the shape that they do. (Why airplane windows are rounded, for example.)

Environment: (and Christianity) Christianity Today considers the matter of whether Christian businesspeople should be concerned about the environment.


Food: NPR discusses the pros and cons of grass-fed versus feed lot fed beef.

NPR reports that our banana supply is at risk.

Politics: Michael Gerson doesn't like many of the words used in the President's discourse, but thinks objecting to his language, but ignoring his attacks on human dignity, is hypocritical and short-sighted.

NPR discusses the remarkable power of the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell.

Internet watchdog Snopes has discussed a study on how people believe in the truth of satire.

Science: Gizmodo reports that a young woman had a "twin" growing inside her body.

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

Excerpts from Orthodoxy, by Gilbert K. Chesterton, 12

Satire may be mad and anarchic, but it presupposes an admitted superiority in certain things over others; it presupposes a standard.

Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to the small and arrogant oligarchy of those who merely happen to be walking about. All democrats object to men being disqualified by the accident of birth; tradition objects to their being disqualified by the accident of death.

 My first and last philosophy, that which I believe in with unbroken certainty, I learnt in the nursery. I generally learnt it from a nurse; that is, from the solemn and star-appointed priestess at once of democracy and tradition. The things I believed most then, the things I believe most now, are the things called fairy tales. They seem to me to be the entirely reasonable things. They are not fantasies: compared with them other things are fantastic. Compared with them religion and rationalism are both abnormal, though religion is abnormally right and rationalism abnormally wrong. Fairyland is nothing but the sunny country of common sense.
But I deal here with what ethic and philosophy come from being fed on fairy tales. If I were describing them in detail I could note many noble and healthy principles that arise from them. there is the chivalrous lesson of “Jack the Giant Killer”; that giants should be killed because they are gigantic. It is a manly mutiny against pride as such. For the rebel is older than all the kingdoms, and the Jacobin has more tradition than the Jacobite. There is the lesson of “Cinderella,” which is the same as that of the Magnificat—exaltavit humiles. There is the great lesson of “Beauty and the Beast”; that a thing must be loved before it is loveable. There is the terrible allegory of the “Sleeping Beauty,” which tells how the human creature was blessed with all birthday gifts, yet cursed with death; and how death also may perhaps be softened to a sleep.

Orthodoxy, first published in 1908, by G. K. Chesterton, is in the public domain, and available from Project Gutenberg. The previous post in this series is here.  Thanks for reading! Read Chesterton.