It’s Saturday and the sun is shining down here in Kerry. Hard to feel bad on a beautiful day like this. Then I remember this is the world of Brexit and Trump. Yep, another week of trying to deal with a planet that appears to have lost its mind.
I’ve decided to concentrate on the aspect of Brexit that matters most, sport. OK, maybe doesn’t matter most but these two articles on one aspect of one particular sport is very interesting. I can only imagine the innumerable other issues that Brexit will throw up.
The Trump article is by another Christian publication that slams him as unsuitable for high office. I know it’s looking increasingly unlikely that he’ll win but we should never forget the disgusting forces he unleashed will be used by a future politician who will be able to sell himself better.
I hope you enjoy the links and as ever, consider subscribing and/or heading over to Amazon to check out some of my fiction.
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“But not all evangelical Christians—in fact, alas, most evangelical Christians, judging by the polls—have shown the same critical judgment when it comes to the Republican nominee. True, when given a choice, primary voters who claimed evangelical faith largely chose other candidates. But since his nomination, Donald Trump has been able to count on “the evangelicals” (in his words) for a great deal of support.” Speak Truth to Trump
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“Moderator: I mean should a woman be able to get an abortion after viability, say at 28 weeks or even up to their due date?” “Do you support abortion on demand?” How Hillary Clinton should answer this question
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“The Premier League’s top academies are preparing for life after Brexit. England’s big clubs currently benefit from the European Union’s exception to Fifa’s Article 19, which allows them to sign 16 year olds from Europe, instead of having to wait until the player turns 18. But after the news that the government will be pursuing a ‘hard Brexit’ from the European Union, clubs fear that these days are numbered.” Premier League academies fear losing out on future Hector Bellerins after Brexit vote raises transfer fears
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“Basically, a player who cost €50 million in June would have cost an English club £38.4m. On Tuesday, that same €50m guy would have set a Premier League club back £45.9m.” Premier League shouldn’t be too affected by falling exchange rates
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“The study, which took place over the course of about 6 years, focused on behavioral changes in baby monkeys when they were given vaccines. The study’s findings appeared in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, and to the surprise of no one (except science-denying loons), there was no link between vaccines and autism.” Anti-vaxxer group furious after study they funded debunks vaccine-autism link
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“The HPV vaccine saves lives, but as with all vaccination there’s sadly plenty of scaremongering and misinformation – and this can cost lives. In this video, I try to explain why HPV vaccination matters, and why the misconceptions and fears aroud it simply don’t stack up.” The HPV vaccine – untangling the sound and fury
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“I have no doubt that you are tough, and I bet your immune system is something to be very proud of. But the fact is, an estimated 5 percent to 20 percent of the United States population gets the flu each year, Dr. Bresee said. The fact that you’ve never gotten the flu is no indication that you won’t get it in the future. You’re essentially rolling the dice anew each year, and there’s a decent chance you’re eventually gonna get a bad roll.” Let’s Talk a Millennial Into Getting a Flu Shot
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“This sort of total solution promises to assemble the pieces of the jigsaw at one stroke. It is therefore perennially attractive to the type of intelligence that is always looking for ever-more complex ways to stop thinking. This is immediately discernible from the testimonies of ex-believers of one sort or another. The discovery of a complete ideology provides “an answer to every question”, as Arthur Koestler put it when describing the “light which poured in all directions” when he embraced communism.” Islamic State’s absolutism has antecedents in 20th Century communism and fascism
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“A galaxy can be thought of as a factory that produces stars from cold gas, with some galaxies being more productive than others. Therefore, what roughly defines the evolutionary parameters of a galaxy is the rate of star formation, stellar mass, and gas content.” Using oxygen as a tracer of galactic evolution
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“In water alone, when cooling sets in, the long chains snap back into their helix structure so rapidly that there’s no time for the matching process with the shorter chains. That snapping shut, which happens in both RNA and DNA, is called “strand inhibition,” and in living cells, enzymes solve the problem of keeping the long chains apart while gene strands duplicate.” Was the secret spice in primal gene soup a thickener?
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“The question of what Lewis thought he was doing is not quite the same question as “What prompted him to write?” On this, there are various theories. Some biographers, including A N Wilson in his brilliant and contentious study of 1990, have made much of the fact that Lewis began work on The Lion at a time in his life when multiple stresses, personal and intellectual, were driving him back towards a long-lost world of childhood imagination where matters did not have to be settled by constant conflict.” Why did C S Lewis write the Chronicles of Narnia?
