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Saturday Selections – Sept 21, 2024

Actions speak louder than words

During the COVID lockdowns political leaders were caught, with some regularity, violating their own rules, so this just-released clip might not even seem all that newsworthy. It is particularly scandalous – in this undercover video, Dr. Jay Varma, senior advisor to the New York City mayor, and, in his words, the architect of the city’s COVID rules, admits to holding a sex party that violated those rules.

What makes this notable is what Steven Crowder highlights: “This is a story about those in charge not fearing what it is that they demanded you fear…” The lesson here is that when something is outside our expertise and we have to trust someone else’s evaluation, their actions – not their words – tell us what they really believe. What we have here is a COVID expert telling us that this virus was dangerous enough to shut down our church services but not his sex parties.

And that’s a bit of hindsight worth filing away.

How women survive breastfeeding

There is so much more going on in our bodies than anyone has ever imagined. Scientists just discovered a hormone produced when a mother is lactating that prevents her from going into a calcium dive – otherwise the baby getting calcium from mom would come at a cost to the calcium in mom’s own skeletal system leading to osteoporosis.

This is a longer article, and a bit technical, but the gist is amazing.

Helping others trust God in the face of infertility and miscarriage (20 min)

Jeremy Pray, the author of Infertility and Miscarriage: Helping Others Trust God in Every Season, discusses how to counsel couples facing infertility. How should they understand what God is doing? This podcast is intended for biblical counselors but would be a good listen for friends and family of anyone facing this struggle. Listen to this as a 20-minute podcast or, for those who prefer to read, there is also a transcript.

When therapy harms instead of helps

The Bible speaks to the value of wise counsel. But it shouldn’t surprise us that some secular counseling makes things worse.

How green energy endangers us in an emergency

How far is your EV car going to get you when a storm knocks out the grid? But a truck with a full gas tank can get you out of the danger zone. And a tank of gas can get ambulances where they need to go. And power the semis bringing in emergency supplies. And etc. and etc.

Gavin Newsom signed a deepfake ban so The Babylon Bee responded

AI advances now allow the quick, cheap, and easy creation of “deepfake” videos that can depict people saying things they never did or would say. A fake but realistic depiction of Joe Biden could be made to say, “The nomination was stolen from me,” or an indecipherable-from the-real “Donald Trump” could be shown talking about how the Russians backed him. These sorts of deepfakes could cause enormous problems.

Some sort of regulation would seem a must then. However, when regulations come from unprincipled politicians we have to remember what Obama’s former chief of staff Rahm Emanuel said about using trouble to push an agenda: “never let a serious crisis go to waste.” When California Governor Gavin Newsom signed a law banning deep fake election ads, it would have been naieve to think it won’t be weaponized against his enemies. After all, we’re seeing more and more “lawfare” – lax enforcement of the rules for friends of the government, and the strictest application of the law against their enemies, So The Bablyon Bee stepped up to be the first target, creating the ad below. There is supposed to be an exception for satire, but Newsom agitated for this bill in response to a clearly sataric ad against Kamala Harris, so we will see.

Got to love the very last line.

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News

Saturday Selections – September 14, 2024

Why not raise the minimum wage to $100? Transgender thinking has infected economics too, with politicians applying the same wishes-can-reshape-reality thinking as they hike the minimum wage. They've decided if they say workers are worth $15 a hour, then they will be. But if such wishing really did make it so, why not hike it to $25 an hour? Or $50? Or as this video (from 7 years back) asks, why not $100? It's because in the real world, the minimum wage is actually an employment ban on anyone who can't bring that amount of value to their employer. Inexperienced workers, handicapped workers, or elderly workers who might work at a slower gear could all be barred from employment. And if we made the minimum wage $100 an hour, that would ban a lot of people. But why is it okay when we ban smaller numbers of people at $15 a hour? And how did it become the government's role to decide not simply whether or not people should be allowed to offer their labor at a lower rate, but whether they should be allowed to work at all? Why did God create viruses and bacteria? While we don't understand all that bacteria and viruses might have done before the Fall into sin, some of their current useful functions give us some clues. 4 arguments against doctor-assisted murder These are 4 really good arguments to stack on top of the foundational truth that our lives are given by God, and therefore are not our own to dispose of as we would. As He has said, don't murder. Psychology of marriage There's an old joke about a band of scientists and researchers who set out to scale Mount Intellect, rising up from the valleys of ignorance. They scrape their way slowly up, and as they finally summit the highest peak, they find a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries. God made us for marriage, for commitment, and thus that's so much better for us than "shacking up." And now some psychologists have discovered and explained how making the choice to commit is better for us. Welcome to the summit, gentlemen. A Christian’s practical guide to reproductive technology 3 key takeaways: Doctors create an average of 15 embryos in a single round of IVF. Unfortunately, only 3-7% of all created embryos result in the live birth of a child. The outcomes of IVF are not neutral. Children born through IVF have a higher likelihood of cancer, autism, minor cleft pallet, or a congenital heart defect. A diagnosis or season of infertility does not mean that a couple will never have children; only that it may require more work and time than they initially expected. Is Gen Z really the poorest generation?  God forbids covetousness in the 10th Commandment, and one powerful way to counter temptation in this direction is to count our blessings. So, yes, many are worse off than they were just 5 years ago. But even the struggling Gen Z is probably doing a lot better than their grandparents were in the 70s. This video is American, but there's a lot of transfer to what's going on north of the border. ...