Here and There #31
"God & Country," criminal justice, drug addiction, mental competence, the cosmos, traffic deaths, and education—sort of the usual mix!
I’d intended to include these updates from Radley Balko on my last “Here and There” but failed. So here it is. As I noted back in #28, Balko is a careful journalist who has been tracking revisionist history of the George Floyd killing. My note back there was to his first post on a documentary that’s attempting to retry George Floyd and exonerate Officer Chauvin. Now there is a Part 2 of his investigation available, as well as an answer to one of the critics of Balko’s work, sort of a Part 2a, as it were. Stay tuned for Part 3. (If you missed Part 1, here's where you can find it.)
About Nazism, current American politics, the current world situation: you owe it to yourself to read Kristin Du Mez’s post on the God & Country documentary (which I’ve not seen yet) and the use of “Nazi” and “Nazism” in regard to current American politics and participants in it. It’s a carefully thought-through piece that deserves your consideration—and gain in knowledge. For what it’s worth, I agree with her (and her friend Blacketer’s) comments on the standard NT theological word-book edited by Gerhard Kittel.
How to deal with serious drug addiction? In the U.S., we mostly treat it as law-breaking and, following that, imprisonment for law-breaking. But not so in Portugal, which has put a lot of funding into handling things quite differently. Can you imagine the U.S. making this pivot? It seems unlikely to me.
The age and mental competence of the two leading major-party presidential candidates is news almost every day, in some way or other. But is there a difference between them, in terms of mental status, that matters? A former professor at The Johns Hopkins University medical school suggest that there’s a substantial difference. Could be?
Why have both traffic deaths and pedestrian deaths (a form of traffic death, but tabulated separately) been increasing since the beginning of the pandemic (and possibly earlier)? Is some of the reason cell-phone use while driving? distracted driving? Probably, says this article, and there’s data to support the contention. What can be done? The article also has some suggestions, although the causes and their solutions are likely complex, too.
A cosmic phenomenon known as “The Radcliffe Wave,” which is a large cosmic formation that mimics the sports stadium “wave.” I don’t understand it, but it is intriguing nonetheless. Sometimes, we’re just left with wonder (of both varieties!).
On the education front, there’s a story about a teacher resigning, as a matter of principle, when his in-class library was censored by the school board. I’m glad that I don’t live in Florida. And, back here in Indiana, our Attorney General, Todd Rokita, continues his culture wars by providing a way for any person to gripe about what’s being taught in Indiana’s public schools, with no vetting of the veracity of the complaint or anything of the sort. He’s aiming for the governorship. Fellow Hoosiers: be alert! (The link is to Peter Greene’s comments; there are quite a few news sites reporting the story in the past couple of weeks.)