Sunspots 946

Things I have recently spotted that may be of interest to others*

Computing: VentureBeat discusses the problem of getting artificial intelligence to forget information.

Politics: Vox discusses the Supreme Court's past and present on church and state matters.

Environment: A USA Today story tells us that feeding birds is not always good for the birds.

Food: Low-paid migrant workers do much of the dangerous preparation of food for sale, for example fixing crabs for eating, according to a Conversation article.

Another Conversation article explains how carbonated drinks are made, and their effect.

Health: NPR reports that doctors lose a percentage of what they get paid. It's put into the coffers of financial middlemen.

Science: The Guardian reports on a study which indicates that there are a lot of organisms that live in the soil, but are not known well, if at all.

TheScientist (and other outlets) report on nematodes that have lived in suspended animation for over 40,000 years.

Gizmodo reports on the discovery of a large brown dwarf star.

*I try not to include items that require a password or fee to view.

Thanks for reading.

 

Sunspots 736

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

Christianity: A Relevant writer warns of the dangers of patriotism, for Christians.

Kaiser Health News reports that small churches can wipe out millions of dollars in other people's medical debts. 

A Relevant writer on why the Bible is trustworthy.

Computing: Gizmo's Freeware on what you can do with the Function keys (F1, F2, etc.) in Windows, and Office.

Education:  Listverse tells us some things we probably didn't know about newborn babies.

Health: NPR on how to pick a doctor, or how to change doctors.

Politics: Catherine Rampell on incriminating, or nearly such, e-mails between a Republican gerrymandering expert and a Census Bureau employee, a few years ago, about adding a question about citizenship to the census. There's also a discussion of the effect of adding such a question.

Relevant reports that when Russell Moore, an official of the Southern Baptist Convention, was one of many Christian leaders who decried conditions for immigrant children, Jerry Falwell, Jr., attacked Moore.

FiveThirtyEight posted "The First Democratic Debate in Five Charts." (The report combines the two nights of the debate.)

NPR reports that President Trump recently portrayed himself as helping the environment a lot.

Michael Gerson says that the President celebrated military victories, but not the character of the US.

The graphic used in these posts is from NASA, hence, I believe, it is public domain.
Thanks for looking!

On divine healing -- My father's words, 1943

My father worked on the Alcan Highway during World War II. One of my brothers has been scanning the letters he sent my mother during that time, and I am most grateful.

On October 1, 1943, he was responding to my mother, who had stayed behind in Wisconsin with me and my two next brothers. She had apparently had an eye problem, and gone to a doctor about it, but wondered if she should have just trusted in God for divine healing.

Here's what my Dad said: 
You say it seems incongruous to believe in the power of God to heal and yet go to a physician. Why? Has not God seen fit to endow that [doctor's name] with the knowledge and power to heal eyes? Isn't it possible, though far fetched, that his only mission in life was to heal your eye under God's direction? We both know that God has the power to heal directly and does heal that way, yet Christ saw fit to use clay and spittle on the blind eyes so that that person would have something to pin his faith to. Perhaps it is better expressed thus: The clay and spittle were not necessary and Christ had no belief in them, but the blind man believed in them, therefore Christ used them. Of course this is just an idea and my reasoning may be faulty. [The Biblical events Dad referred to are found in John 9.]

Thanks for reading!

Here's a post, in this blog, on a similar subject, but there's not much overlap.