Sunspots 774

Things I have recently spotted that may be of interest to someone else: (No April Fools' jokes

here)

Christianity: Christianity Today discusses the impact of Corrie ten Boom.

Some churches are meeting during various varieties of shutting down, according to Christianity Today.
 
Computing: Gizmo's freeware recommends a note-taking application, which has several interesting features, and is, of course, free.

NPR discusses attempts to prevent false information on Facebook and other platforms. 

Education: A National Emergency Library will lend you over a million digitized books.

Health: (and politics) FiveThirtyEight on why we shouldn't "just try" drugs in the hope that some such will  be an effective treatment for COVID-19.

Humor: (and Engineering) Gizmodo put up videos of 11 really cool Lego creations, which, among other things, will vacuum up Legos, and sort them.

Philosophy: (And Science, and Christianity) Christianity Today has a fine article examining the possibility of a multiverse (or multiverses) and the implications thereof. Part of the impetus for the article was the Spider-verse movie.


Politics: FiveThirtyEight discusses remote voting by members of Congress.

Science: Gizmodo reports that some squid, living in darkness, deep in the ocean, apparently communicate by glowing.

Gizmodo also reports that seismic activity levels are down, because many of us are staying home.

Earther reports on a bacterium that consumes polyurethane, a plastic that is, otherwise, almost impossible to break down.

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

Multi-worlds universes and God's sovereignty

Some scientists, and others, believe that it is possible that there is a multiverse. Trivial example: I purchase an ice cream cone. I can choose chocolate ice cream, or butter pecan. The universe lets me do both, but splits, and, in each case, goes on from there, with a chocolate universe, and a butter pecan universe. In other words, lots of universes, a multiverse. Each choice I can make causes the universe to split, again. Philip Pullman's fiction, the "His Dark Materials" works, are set in such a multi-universe.

Travis Perry, writing on the Speculative Faith blog, has considered the possibility that the choices we make create alternative universes, and the question of whether God could have allowed such a situation. If there were such alternate universes, would, or could, there be a unique Bible for each? Or at least, for each major moral choice -- for example, a world where Adam and Eve never fell, or one where the Jewish authorities accepted the Gospel?

Perry doesn't believe in the many-worlds interpretation, but his thoughts are interesting.

Thanks for reading. Read Perry.