Sunspots 776

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

The Arts: A fantasy picture about conquering the Corona virus. 

Speculative Faith lists and describes the most original fantastic stories of all time.

Christianity: Christianity Today reports that Easter Sunday set a record for YouVersion (A Bible application) use. Over 40 million used it that day.

Environment: Gizmodo reports that the Trump administration continues to try to remove restrictions on the release of Mercury into the environment, based on a flawed analysis.

Health: FiveThirtyEight realizes that Dr. Anthony Fauci actually predicted the situation we are in now, over a year ago.

(And Etiquette) A Gizmodo writer suggests that the curtsy be brought back, as a form of mutual acknowledgement.

A FiveThirtyEight writer tells us why we have reacted more strongly, as a world, to COVID-19 than to Ebola, Swine Flu, or SARS.

NPR says that we don't need to disinfect our groceries after we bring them in.

Humor: (or something) NPR, and other outlets, report that jigsaw puzzle sales are way up.


Politics: FiveThirtyEight on why Bernie Sanders lost to Joe Biden.

On March 13th, President Trump announced a number of steps toward fighting the COVID-9 virus. NPR reports on how these initiatives are going, a month later. Basically, the government is doing the things it can do itself, but the joint private-public initiatives that were promised haven't materialized, mostly because the White House, apparently, made them up.

Science: To quote the Gizmodo article's title: "Birds are judging you by your outfit."

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

Thanks for looking!

Sunspots 411

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

The Arts: (Sort of) From Wired: the preview of a new Star Trek movie.
 
Christianity: Christianity Today has a discussion about Francis Chan and other radical pastors/authors.
Speculative Faith has a fine post on the resurrection.

Humor: I'm pretty sure that an introvert prepared this chart, distinguishing introverts from extroverts.
 
Politics: NPR reports on how the number of Americans on disability is growing, in spite of the Americans with Disabilities Act, and why. Most of it is not pretty. Disability, for some people who aren't really disabled, is a way of getting support when they can't find work. State governments have an incentive to get more people on disability, because it's a Federal program. Some parents have an incentive to have their children stay on disability, because, as long as they are, the parents get support. I should add that there are people out there who are genuinely disabled, and helping them should be part of the safety net.
 
Science: Wired has posted a stunning NASA photo of Mercury.
Image source (public domain)