Eye on Faith

Wednesday, March 28, 2018

Free-range parenting

(Painting by Maud Humphrey)

Utah wants kids to feel at home on the range, even when ranging by themselves.

There was a time when nine-year-olds could come and go freely without adult supervision. Kids were often seen walking and biking about town, or running errands for the family.

In some states, this is currently a red flag for child neglect. A Maryland couple was charged with such twice, just for allowing their children, “ages 10 and 6,” to “walk home by themselves from a nearby… park.”

Abduction by strangers is relatively rare, and lessons learned from independent trips can be invaluable. When government takes on too much of a parental role, Big Brother can bully all younger siblings.

As Lenore Skenazy, an advocate of free-range parenting, recently wrote: Why give kids freedom – why give parents freedom – when you can take it away so easily and say you’re championing safety in the process?

Resources

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/utah%e2%80%99s-%e2%80%98free-range-parenting%e2%80%99-law-said-to-be-first-in-the-nation/ar-BBKNMp6?li=BBnb7Kz&ocid=BHEA000

How's your interstitium?

Does this clear things up? (Image by LadyofHats)

So it isn’t enough to wonder whether Pluto is a planet or not. Now we’ve got to play word games with the interstitium, too.

The what? My point exactly. We never gave interstitial tissue and fluid a second glance back in high school biology. Now this bodily styrofoam may soon be elevated to organ status.

These “widespread, fluid-filled spaces within and between tissues all over your body” might have both “a unitary structure [and] function.” If so, they fit the definition of a human organ. And what might this function be? That remains as mysterious as whether Pluto is a planet or not.

Resources

https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/medical/newfound-organ-could-be-the-biggest-in-your-body/ar-BBKN5s2?OCID=ansmsnnews11

Monday, March 26, 2018

Can't hide under or over this rock

Who's out there listening? (Public Domain)

Our third rock from the sun might be unique in terms of harboring life. Or not.

Perhaps there are alien invaders out there who would love a piece of our planet. But how would they know life exists in this here corner of the universe?

Advanced technology can detect chemicals from amazing distances. Earth’s atmosphere is loaded with life-indicating molecules. Abundant oxygen shows that something must be “pumping out loads of O₂.” In our case, that something is photosynthetic plants. Earth’s atmospheric “levels of nitrogen, carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide and methane” are also live giveaways.

Light emissions from our neon cities can also be seen from light-years away with the help of an ExoLife Finder (ELF) telescope, “at least 130 feet wide [and] custom-built for [this] task.” Humans expect to build such a telescope within the coming decade.

Aliens that are closer than 590 trillion miles from Earth might also pick up on our radio transmissions. If they are any farther, then “our earliest radio signals simply haven’t reached them yet.”

Resources

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/aliens-could-detect-life-on-earth-heres-how/ar-BBKHsEn?li=BBnbfcL&ocid=BHEA000