Saturday Selections – May 28, 2022

Great moments in unintended consequences "But I didn't mean to!" is a child's frequently invoked defense become parents will generally buy it, at least so long as it is true. It doesn't work if that errant elbow or accidental eye poke was delivered while a kid was busy doing something he totally shouldn't have been doing. Then dad won't much care whether it was intentional. or not. So what about when the government throws an accidental haymaker? Sure, some government programs go horribly wrong, but most are started with the best of intentions, right? So don't we just have to take the bad with the good, and hope they'll do better next time? Well, the problem is not simply that some programs go wrong – we know perfection is unattainable – but that the government gets some things wrong that they should never have been doing in the first place. Then claiming "good intentions" is no excuse at all. What lowering the voting age would do There's a push on in some countries to lower the voting age to 16, or even younger, and that only natural in a culture that worships youth. But would a younger voting age actually help those it's supposed to? No, as J. Budziszewski writes: "It would only mean increasing the political clout of those who have influence through the young. Pop stars. Sports coaches. Schoolteachers. Writers and editors of media aimed at teens. Especially people in such groups who have no children of their own to take up their time and attention." Science writers: journalists, or just PR agents? A former science editor for the New York Times, writing about science writers asked, “Journalists, or PR Agents?” He asked this in the context of reporting on the origins of COVID-19 virus "but what he says applies even more so to reporting on evolution." The year of the graves: how the world’s media got it wrong on residential school graves (10-min read) "One particularly unhelpful feature of the residential schools coverage involves the careless conflation of horrific, verifiable crimes with second- and third-hand accounts of childhood horror stories. Reconciliation is not what you get when you render Canadians incapable of believing what they’ve been told about the schools." Gratitude rewires your brain "...gratitude is not a magic cure for all that ails us. It is, however, for mental health what vegetables are for physical health: vital, underrated, and sometimes difficult to swallow. " Teachable moments from your epic parenting fails (10 min read) "...after raging at my son that morning, I didn’t offer a heart-level apology.... Hence, I picked up my cell to call him at my mom’s and attempt something more Christlike. What I’ll always remember? His response. 'Mommy, I forgive you. And I want to let you know that even when you do bad things, I still love you. And even when you do bad things, God still loves you.' Now I felt really bad for yelling. The power of this teachable moment lay in my 4-year-old repeating the encapsulated gospel back to me. He not only got it; he applied it. (Granted, that night after he spit on the bathroom mirror, his response felt less glorious: 'I want to let you know that even when I do bad things, I still love you.')" The bombardier beetle doesn't blow up God's genius is evident in the stunning craftsmanship of these bombmaking beetles... ...