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!

 

Sunspots 548

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


Christianity: The Difference Between (a non-religious site) differentiates between faith and belief.

Health: National Public Radio debunks some ideas about flu shots.

Politics: The Washington Post's Michael Gerson says that coming down hard on Muslims is used as propaganda ammunition to recruit followers.

Relevant has an article on What the Bible says about how to treat refugees.

Science: Wired reports on how hints from termite mound design can cut energy consumption in our buildings.

Wired also reports on a high-tech repair of a cracked elephant's tusk.

The BBC reports that pigeons are able to detect breast cancer in human X-rays.


Image source (public domain)

Sunspots 441

Things I have recently spotted that may be of interest to

someone else:
Christianity: Ken Schenck has a short post on different ways the New Testament authors used the Old Testament.
Computing: (or maybe politics) Leonard Pitts on how connecting with people on-line can make us not see what's around us.
Gizmo's Freeware on a site that lets you make a free web page.
Health: WebMD says that having a flu shot lowers the risk of heart disease.
Science: National Geographic reports that Eucalyptus trees in Australia deposit minute amounts of gold in their leaves, and that this might be useful in pointing miners to gold deposits underground.
Wired reports that it is possible to predict a child's ability in math by observing how well they can estimate quantities when so young that they can't yet use words.


Image source (public domain)

Proper hand-washing

Antibacterial soaps have become increasingly popular in recent years. However, these soaps are no more effective at killing germs than is regular soap. Using antibacterial soaps may lead to the development of bacteria that are resistant to the products' antimicrobial agents — making it even harder to kill these germs in the future. In general, regular soap is fine.  - "Hand washing: an easy way to prevent infection," from the Mayo Clinic.

The same document suggests the use of alcohol-containing hand sanitizers.

The US Centers for Disease Control gives similar advice.

Flu is caused by a virus, not by bacteria. Antibiotics, and other anti-bacterial agents, have little or no effectiveness against viruses. As I understand it, alcohol can damage virus structure, hence has some effectiveness against these germs.

Wash often, using soap and water, or use alcohol-based hand sanitizers. The reason that washing is effective is that it removes the germs from your hands, so that you don't carry them to your nose or mouth. You can remove viruses and bacteria (and other things!) from your hands that way.

Bacterial resistance is all too common. It is often the result of natural selection -- exposure to an anti-bacterial agent kills susceptible bacteria, but leaves those that are resistant, which, as a result, means the the population at large is more resistant. As some of you know from unfortunate experience, it is now possible to get staphylococcus, and other infections, which are very difficult to fight with antibiotics. The same infection, a few decades ago, would probably have been easy to treat. Using antibiotics too often, in soap, in cattle feed, and probably in other ways, has selected for bacteria that are very hard to stop, and may kill us. (See Wikipedia article on antibiotic resistance.)

Keep clean! Thanks for reading.