Sunspots 803

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

Christianity: Relevant reports that the Chinese government is removing crosses, and other items identifying Christianity, from state-approved churches.

Christianity Today reminds us that devotional books are not to be a substitute for the Bible. Thanks.

(And Politics) Ken Schenck discusses interpretation of the Bible, and considers how the US Constitution is interpreted by the Supreme Court. ("Originalism")

Environment: Relevant reports that September was the hottest September in history.

Ethics: A Gallup poll from June examines the acceptability (or not) of various behaviors. Marital infidelity was the behavior most unacceptable, to 89% of respondents. As FiveThirtyEight put it, it's hard to get 9 out of 10 Americans to agree on anything, but they seem to on this.

Health: (and politics) FiveThirtyEight tells us why we didn't learn much from President Trump's COVID illness.

Gizmodo reports that over 1,000 current and former Centers for Disease Control officials have asked that the CDC be given back its traditional role as leading the fight against COVID. The article closes by doubting that this will happen, at least not soon.

But the CDC has published a new study, documenting how much more serious COVID is, compared to seasonal flu.

Humor: Listverse tells us about 10 wacky names of towns in the US.

Politics: (or something) FiveThirtyEight on how the QAnon conspiracy theory hurts effective efforts to stop child trafficking and sexual abuse.

(And Religion) Relevant reports on a survey, which asked people from 9 different groups (white evangelicals, Hispanic protestants, unaffiliated, non-Christian, and more) about what issues were most important to them. White evangelical protestants were the only group that had abortion and terrorism among their top three issues, and were the only group that didn't list the COVID pandemic among their top three issues.

Science: NPR reports that there are mountains capped by methane frost on Pluto.

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

Thanks for looking!