Sunspots 741

Things I have recently spotted that may be of interest to

someone else:

Health: Listverse tells us 10 interesting things about sweat.

Grammarphobia discusses the naming of Viagra and a number of other drugs.

History: NPR discusses the awful history of the idea of white supremacy, which idea has been, and is, all too popular, for decades.

Humor: (or something) Gizmodo reports on toilet explosions.


Politics: Relevant points out that video game playing doesn't seem to be responsible for mass shootings.

Relevant reports that Chaldean Christians have been sent back to Iraq, where some of them had never been before, with predictable awful consequences.

Relevant takes the Lt. Governor of Texas to task for tying the shooting in El Paso to removal of prayer from the public schools. Franklin Graham apparently agreed with the Lt. Governor.

Catherine Rampell discusses the meaning of "drain the swamp" under the Trump administration. It doesn't mean what most of us thought it did.

Rampell also writes about how President Trump treats former aides/lawyers/whatever who are less than completely adulatory about the President. Not very well.

Michael Gerson on conspiracy theories, and President Trump.
 
Science: The Scientist tells us that space exploration by Israel, and the US, may have left living organisms on the moon.

The Scientist also reports that lots of bacteria in the ocean capture light energy by using a pigment different from chlorophyll.

. . . and The Scientist, and many other outlets, report on the serious weakening, perhaps even nullification, of the Endangered Species Act. 

NPR reports on the discovery of a very large fossil parrot.

Sports: Simone Biles shows us amazing excellence in gymnastics.

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

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)