Sunspots 880

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

Christianity: Ken Schenck has published "explanatory notes" on Bible passages relating to Holy Week. Here's one of these.

Environment: (and politics) Gizmodo reports on a scientist who finally decided that "...  It's not political to tell the truth" about climate change.

Gizmodo reports that sea urchins are dying off rapidly. They are important members of reef communities. The reason for the deaths is unclear.

Finances: Gizmodo reports on how much the very rich pay in income taxes.

Science: (or something) A man with over 100 snakes in his house, several of them poisonous, was found dead in the home, according to Gizmodo and multiple sources.

ListVerse tells us a lot about the tiny, and extremely resilient, animals known as tardigrades.

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

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

Thanks for reading.

 

Sunspots 681

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

The Arts: Relevant celebrates the products of Pixar studio.

Christianity: Sojourners says that we worship the rich.

Relevant has some good advice for married couples who don't engage in sex very often.

Christianity Today warns churches that the church, itself, may be groomed by sexual predators.

Health: It really is harder to think in summer heat.

History: Listverse on the origin of 10 common articles of clothing.


Politics: (or something) Domino's pizza has decided to start fixing roads, so that their pizzas won't be damaged during delivery. Really.

Science: Gizmodo reports the honeybees may be able to comprehend zero -- the absence of something. Ancient human mathematicians didn't seem to comprehend this, by the way.

Gizmodo also explains (as far as we can, at the present) why some scientists believe that there is dark matter, and what that matter might be.

Todd C. Wood, a respected young-earth creationist scientist, reacts to a recent scientific article that claims that all species of animals are about the same age. Wood is not convinced.

Thanks for looking!

Image source (public domain)

Excerpts from Orthodoxy, by G. K. Chesterton, 44

Is there any answer to the proposition that those who have had the best opportunities will probably be our best guides? Is there any answer to the argument that those who have breathed clean air had better decide for those who have breathed foul? As far as I know, there is only one answer, and that answer is Christianity. Only the Christian Church can offer any rational objection to a complete confidence in the rich. For she has maintained from the beginning that the danger was not in man’s environment, but in man. Further, she has maintained that if we come to talk of a dangerous environment, the most dangerous environment of all is the commodious environment.

I know that the most modern manufacture has been really occupied in trying to produce an abnormally large needle. I know that the most recent biologists have been chiefly anxious to discover a very small camel. But if we diminish the camel to his smallest, or open the eye of the needle to its largest—if, in short, we assume the words of Christ to have meant the very least that they could mean, His words must at the very least mean this—that rich men are not very likely to be morally trustworthy. Christianity even when watered down is hot enough to boil all modern society to rags. The mere minimum of the Church would be a deadly ultimatum to the world. For the whole modern world is absolutely based on the assumption, not that the rich are necessary (which is tenable), but that the rich are trustworthy, which (for a Christian) is not tenable. You will hear everlastingly, in all discussions about newspapers, companies, aristocracies, or party politics, this argument that the rich man cannot be bribed. The fact is, of course, that the rich man is bribed; he has been bribed already. That is why he is a rich man. The whole case for Christianity is that a man who is dependent upon the luxuries of this life is a corrupt man, spiritually corrupt, politically corrupt, financially corrupt. There is one thing that Christ and all the Christian saints have said with a sort of savage monotony. They have said simply that to be rich is to be in peculiar danger of moral wreck. It is not demonstrably un-Christian to kill the rich as violators of definable justice. It is not demonstrably un-Christian to crown the rich as convenient rulers of society. It is not certainly un-Christian to rebel against the rich or to submit to the rich. But it is quite certainly un-Christian to trust the rich, to regard the rich as more morally safe than the poor. A Christian may consistently say, “I respect that man’s rank, although he takes bribes.” But a Christian cannot say, as all modern men are saying at lunch and breakfast, “a man of that rank would not take bribes.” For it is a part of Christian dogma that any man in any rank may take bribes. It is a part of Christian dogma; it also happens by a curious coincidence that it is a part of obvious human history. When people say that man “in that position” would be incorruptible, there is no need to bring Christianity into the discussion. Was Lord Bacon a bootblack? Was the Duke of Marlborough a crossing sweeper? In the best Utopia, I must be prepared for the moral fall of any man in any position at any moment; especially for my fall from my position at this moment.

Orthodoxy, first published in 1908, by G. K. Chesterton, is in the public domain, and available from Project Gutenberg. The previous post in this series is here. Thanks for reading! Read Chesterton.