Here and There #33
Plastics in our bodies; cloning; minority life; "woke"; Liberty University; helping people in trouble; solar storms and our planet.
Recently, there was an extensive report in Consumer Reports about the prevalence of degraded plastic in our foods. If you haven’t read that, you should—for your own safety. But now, there’s a well-founded report that those plastics are inside our bodies and doing damage there, in all kinds of ways (diabetes, cognitive loss, heart attacks, strokes). You can read about this new report by Eric Topol here. Cut back on your storage of foods in plastic; and avoid buying them in plastic, when you can.
Scientists are working on cloning extinct species. They have made steps toward cloning woolly mammoths. Is this a good idea?
Integration is still coming slowly to the U.S. At my alma mater, which is dealing with racial discrimination especially in the 1930s in its treatment of Blacks, there are several non-White faculty, including Esau McCaulley, who ruminates about what it means to be a minority even at an institution that opposes racial discrimination. (The link is a gift.)
It’s generally recognized that the term “woke” has become something of a flashpoint. From the right, it’s viewed as a label that makes the “woke” person an extreme leftists. And though used in the Black community for years before becoming a term of opprobrium, which has resulted in many on the left finding it hard to use any longer—the word’s been hijacked—it’s worth considering what is going. On the occasion of the state of Florida essentially dismantling all sociology programs at state colleges and universities, Dennis Hiebert has written a brief essay bemoaning the dismissal of sociology.
Of all people, Christians should be alert to and active in dealing with sexual abuse in their own institutions. Now, Liberty University, arguably the world’s largest Christian university, has been fined the second largest amount (of its type) in history for failure to report sexual crimes on campus. (The largest such fine was assessed to Michigan State University in the Larry Nasser scandal.) Conservative commentator David French wrote about Liberty last fall (gift link), long before this fine was levied but in consideration of other major problems at the school. And now John Hawthorne has a helpful summary of the entire matter; John’s a long-time Christian college professor who has a book on the future of Christian higher education coming out sometime this fall.
“The people we all feel called to help already possess a potency, a dignity, and a divine potential that God has been cultivating since long before we arrived. Our job is to support them in realizing their own divine vocation.” This is a quotation from an interview with Christopher M. Hayes (lots of Chris Hayeses out there; keep them straight!) that Beth Felker Jones conducted about Hayes’s new book on how we can help (or not) people in difficult circumstances. I may have to read this book!
Once again, Noah Smith has a “5 things” post that actually ends up being 7 things. The topics include the question politicians ask about “are you better off now than 4 years ago”; how Dune helps us understand the contemporary Middle East; badly formed polls/polling; how and why energy is very abundant right now and into the future; how various factors affect who we feel about the density of people in cities; and more.
Finally, a longish article I read in The New Yorker about what will happen if a major solar storm hits the planet—what can be done about and what can’t and some explanation of just how vulnerable we are. The sun is our friend and necessary to our lives but poses a danger as well. The article is available as a PDF.