Sunspots 745

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

Christianity: Relevant takes on the Prosperity Gospel.

Finance: Catherine Rampell discusses the effects of the Trump administration rolling back regulations, and the President's remarks about businesses that are hurt by his tariffs really suffering from bad management.

Politics: FiveThirtyEight has studied crowd size at political events, and found that polls are a better predictor than crowd size.

NPR reports that the Department of Education has been making it almost impossible for teachers to get the loan forgiveness they were promised, if they went into teaching.

NPR analyzes the likely results of the Electoral College in the 2020 presidential election.

Catherine Rampell tells us that the Trump administration has been, and is, waging a war on children, and gives us details.

Gizmodo reports on yet another survey that indicates that all Americans, including gun owners, are in favor of stricter background checks, red flag laws, and the like.

Science: Ars Technica reports that a company that genetically engineered a bull so that he wouldn't have horns also, unwittingly, placed some bacterial and plasmid genes in the bull. Thanks to one of my brothers for the information on this.

Gizmodo reports on research about what causes someone to be left-handed.

The Scientist reports on research into how bar-headed geese can fly over Everest, in spite of the low oxygen at such a high altitude.

Sports: FiveThirtyEight thinks that the NFL pre-season should be eliminated, or seriously changed.

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

Sunspots 626

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

Education: National Public Radio has published an in-depth report on the pluses and minuses of school voucher programs.

Ethics: Rerum Novarum, an encyclical issued in 1881, by Pope Leo XIII, on the treatment of laborers, and a lot more. Sample (from paragraph 28):
Neither must it be supposed that the solicitude of the Church is so preoccupied with the spiritual concerns of her children as to neglect their temporal and earthly interests. Her desire is that the poor, for example, should rise above poverty and wretchedness, and better their condition in life; and for this she makes a strong endeavor. By the fact that she calls men to virtue and forms them to its practice she promotes this in no slight degree.


Finance: Relevant reports on a study of repaying loans, which found that people who mentioned God when talking about paying back loans were less likely to pay them back.

Health: National Public Radio details two good methods for washing our hands. (Confession: I don't use either of them.)

History: Some historical facts you didn't learn in school, from Listverse.

Humor: (Sort of) Scientific American reports further on the question of why people take their empty shopping carts to a cart corral, or don't. The report is mostly interesting comments, from returners and non-returners.


Politics: Listverse tells us that free speech is being attacked from many sides, in many ways.

(And history) FiveThirtyEight discusses US political scandals of the past, and points out that even when Presidents were involved in some really bad stuff, many congresspeople stuck by them.

Science: (and Christianity) Relevant strongly defends the concept of human-caused climate change.

Wired reports that scientists have made functioning mouse ovaries with a 3-D printer. Really.

Listverse describes 10 fascinating facts about plants.



Image source (public domain)