Weekly Meanderings 30 January 2021
Good morning folks!
MOUNT PLEASANT, S.C. - No business can master a drive-thru like Chick-fil-A, and a restaurant manager is getting high praise for using the company’s method to help workers at a COVID-19 vaccination site after a computer glitch caused a traffic gridlock.
Mayor Will Haynie said he was notified on Jan. 22 that traffic was backed up for an hour at the COVID-19 vaccination site at Seacoast Church. He called Chick-fil-A Manager Jerry Walkowiak for help, knowing the company had a great reputation for mastering the art of drive-thru.
Haynie said he already had the manager’s number from a friend who also worked for the restaurant.
"I called him [Walkowiak] on my way over and he actually got there before I did," Haynie told FOX Television Stations on Monday. "He was standing there. He was moving people along."
Haynie tweeted a video of the site.
"Chic Fil A manager Jerry Walkowiak donating his professional drive thru experience to help our vaccination program in Mt. Pleasant today," Haynie posted. "When you need help, call the pros."
SAN ANTONIO (NEXSTAR) – Two years before a Reddit community would come to dominate headlines, a Texas mother gave her son a gift for Kwanzaa – ten shares of GameStock stock.
Nina Carr, of San Antonio, told the Houston Chronicle she gifted the shares, bought at $6 a piece, to her then 8-year-old son Jaydyn as part of Kwanzaa’s fourth principle of “cooperative economics,” Ujamaa.
Little did they know on December 30, 2019, a future war between retail stock traders trying to force the hand of hedge funds betting against GameStop would cause the share price to rocket upwards.
Carr told the paper that Jaydyn has been learning about building wealth alongside her, so when her phone started blowing up with watchlist alerts about GameStop, she recalled, “I was trying to explain to him that this was unusual, I asked him, ‘Do you want to stay or sell?'”
Jaydyn decided to sell the stock Wednesday evening at over 53 times the value his mother bought it at, cashing in his shares for a tidy $3,200.
Carr told the Chronicle that $2,200 will be deposited in his savings account while the rest will go to future investments.
OP Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene is a controversial figure in the Republican party. She was already contentious for past support of the QAnon conspiracy theory and berating survivors of the Parkland shootings, then CNN found that she had endorsed posts calling for lethal violence against top Democrats, including comments that said “a bullet to the head would be quicker” than removing House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and that “through removal or death, doesn’t matter, as long as she [Pelosi] goes.” Even more bizarre conspiracy theories litter Greene’s past Facebook use.
That’s all extra odd because as it turns out, Greene’s Christian history is also well-documented. Author Jeff Chu found a 2011 video from North Point Community Church in which Greene talks about her faith and her reason for getting baptized. As Chu notes, North Point, led by Pastor Andy Stanley, is one of the largest churches in the country. …
On Tuesday, Greene took to Twitter in an attempt to get ahead of CNN’s story. “Over the years, I’ve had teams of people manage my pages,” she said. “Many posts have been liked. Many posts have been shared. Some did not represent my views.” She said journalists were “taking old Facebook posts from random users to try and cancel me and silence my voice.” She’s been deleting old tweets and Facebook posts, even as calls for her to resign come from both sides of the aisle. “She is not a Republican,” tweeted Republican Rep. Adam Kinzinger. “There are many who claim the title of Republican and have nothing in common with our core values.” California Rep. Jimmy Gomez plans to introduce a resolution that would expel Greene from the House.
Wherever that ends up, the fact remains that Greene was discipled in a mainstream, well-liked church and still endorsed these views. In fact, according to her website, she was a leader and volunteer at North Point. Clearly, that doesn’t mean that Greene got these ideas at North Point — there’s nothing whatsoever to suggest that’s the case. But it does raise questions about just how people can become radicalized into conspiracy theories while attending church, and the role pastors have in making sure their congregants aren’t spreading harmful lies. A recent poll found that about half of all Protestant pastors in the U.S. hear conspiracy theories from their pews. The problem is a big one.
[In the Persian Gulf] Slavery and slave trading formed a major part of this commercial history, particularly after the advent of Islam. Africans, Baluchis, Iranians, Indians, Bangladeshis, Southeast Asians and others from the Indian Ocean littoral were steadily and involuntarily transported into the Gulf in increasingly large numbers, for work as domestic servants, date harvesters, seamen, stone masons, pearl divers, concubines, guards, agricultural workers, labourers, and caretakers of livestock. Historians have noted that there was a great upsurge of slave trading into the region in the 18th and 19th centuries, during the heyday of the Indian Ocean slave trade. Many Persian Gulf families became very wealthy as a result of this upsurge. This is the backdrop for what turns out to be a very ugly and sad aspect of the spectacular rise of contemporary social orders in the six Gulf city-states. Each is an example, and perhaps the only examples existing in the world today, of what the sociologist Moses Finley (1912-86) called a ‘genuine slave society’. …
In the region [of the Persian Gulf], migrant workers make up a large percentage of the population – for example, in the UAE and Qatar, they constitute around 90 per cent, in Kuwait, this is around 66 per cent, and in Saudi Arabia, around 33 per cent. These labourers have few rights in the legal systems of the city-states, and a great majority work in very dangerous circumstances on huge construction sites, frequently risking death or serious physical injury from hazardous worksite conditions, including long hours without breaks, debilitating heat approaching 50 degrees Celsius or 122 degrees Fahrenheit, a lack of elementary safety precautions and the absence of competent supervision. Reputable labour organisations have reported that one or two workers die on these construction sites every day and, in Qatar, which is preparing to host the 2022 FIFA World Cup, more than 4,000 migrant workers will die in workplace accidents on FIFA projects before the event takes place. No other construction project in the world even comes close to such rates of death.
A construction worker in Dubai earns about AED106,000 (US$28,000) a year compared with the AED258,000 (US$70,251) per capita yearly prevailing wage in the city. The same is generally true in each of the other city-states. Construction workers are housed in squalid dormitories. In these work camps, 20 to 30 men can end up sharing one bathroom, with eight or more sleeping in the same room. Passports and other travel documents are confiscated upon arrival and workers essentially spend all of their waking hours on the construction site; they are transported to and from the sites each day with little or no chance to see or enjoy the city they are helping to build. Those who don’t work on the construction sites can be found working as domestic servants throughout the region, often completely hidden from view, and others are employed in commercial and industrial enterprises, working as drivers, cleaners, caretakers, security guards, carpenters, plumbers, pipefitters, stone masons, and in a variety of other workplace occupations. …
An intelligent and observant reader might ask: ‘But what about the definition of slavery?’ The employment relationships seen in the Persian Gulf aren’t the kind of property-based relationships that Finley wrote about, where slaves were owned, bought and sold, inherited, gifted, leased and financed, like chattel, in markets and other circumstances. This is undoubtedly true but we must also recognise that there are human relationships today that are the effective juridical equivalent of chattel slavery, perhaps best described by the sociologist Orlando Patterson as ‘social death’. In such a situation, the social and legal disadvantage of the labourer is so great that it makes no difference whether the legal system enforces a classical property relationship or not. The person is, in practice, enslaved because all of indicia of the classical property relationship (ownership and control) exist in fact.
or many years it seemed that overpopulation was the looming crisis of our age. Back in 1968, the Stanford biologists Paul and Anne Ehrlich infamously predicted that millions would soon starve to death in their bestselling, doom-saying book The Population Bomb; since then, neo-Malthusian rumblings of imminent disaster have been a continual refrain in certain sections of the environmental movement – fears that were recently given voice on David Attenborough’s documentary Life on our Planet.
At the time the Ehrlichs were publishing their dark prophecies, the world was at its peak of population growth, which at that point was increasing at a rate of 2.1% a year. Since then, the global population has ballooned from 3.5 billion to 7.67 billion.
But growth has slowed – and considerably. As women’s empowerment advances, and access to contraception improves, birthrates around the world are stuttering and stalling, and in many countries now there are fewer than 2.1 children per woman – the minimum level required to maintain a stable population.
Falling fertility rates have been a problem in the world’s wealthiest nations – notably in Japan and Germany – for some time. In South Korea last year, birthrates fell to 0.84 per woman, a record low despite extensive government efforts to promote childbearing. From next year, cash bonuses of 2m won (£1,320) will be paid to every couple expecting a child, on top of existing child benefit payments.
The fertility rate is also falling dramatically in England and Wales – from 1.9 children per woman in 2012 to just 1.65 in 2019. Provisional figures from the Office for National Statistics for 2020 suggest it could now be 1.6, which would be the lowest rate since before the second world war. The problem is even more severe in Scotland, where the rate has fallen from 1.67 in 2012 to 1.37 in 2019. …
An influential study published in the Lancet last year predicted that the global population would come to a peak much earlier than expected – reaching 9.73 billion in 2064 – before dropping to 8.79 billion by 2100. Falling birthrates, noted the authors, were likely to have significant “economic, social, environmental, and geopolitical consequences” around the world.
Their model predicted that 23 countries would see their populations more than halve before the end of this century, including Spain, Italy and Ukraine. China, where a controversial one-child per couple policy – brought in to slow spiralling population growth – only ended in 2016, is now also expected to experience massive population declines in the coming years, by an estimated 48% by 2100.
It’s growing ever clearer that we are looking at a future very different from the one we had been expecting – and a crisis of a different kind, as ageing populations place shrinking economies under ever greater strain.
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (KRQE) – An Albuquerque high school student just got his pilot’s license and is already using it for good. He’s helping rescue and fly animals all over New Mexico, saving them from being euthanized.
At SAMS Academy Aviation in Albuquerque, high school students are learning more than just calculus and history – they’re getting their pilot’s licenses. Now, those students are getting an even bigger lesson in giving back.
“I would love to fly anyway I could,” said Cody Anderson, a pilot and student at SAMS Academy Aviation. “It’s a great opportunity in general, because, I need the flight time because I’m training on my instrument and commercial.”
Many animal shelters during COVID are either closed or low on staff and filled to the brim with animals. It has put many at risk of being killed.
“In our region, we have a major pet overpopulation issue,” said Koko Dean, Executive Director of Barkhouse. “What that means is when they go to the shelter, any animal that goes there is at risk of being possible [sic] euthanized just due to lack of space.”
A tragedy of delusional thinking; it’s easier to believe in a conspiracy than the truth.
Evangelical pro-Trumpers were roundly defeated in November. They hitched their hope–both politically and ethically–to one of the most corrupt and immoral presidents in American history. Most of Trump’s diehard evangelical supporters believe that evil forces stole the election. preventing four more years of a God-appointed president who was born to restore America to Christian greatness. Trump lost the election, but his cause was just. Over the next months and years, such a belief will be disseminated through what I have called a lost cause evangelical infrastructure.
As it is now shaping up, Eric Metaxas and Charlie Kirk will use their platforms as the most prominent evangelical defenders of the lost cause. Former Minnesota congresswoman and GOP presidential candidate Michelle Bachmann will educate young men and women in the evangelical lost cause from her new position as dean of the Robertson School of Government at Regent University. The Falkirk Center at Liberty University will be an institutional home for this movement as it continues to provide a platform for pro-Trump evangelicals Metaxas, Kirk, Jenna Ellis, Sebastian Gorka, and others. On the Independent Network Charismatic front, “prophets” such as Lance Wallnau will continue to use their large social media presence to rally the faithful in a Trump-inspired Christian populism.
And dozens and dozens of evangelical churches will continue to host lost cause events like the one we saw earlier this week at Calvary Chapel-Chino Hills with Jack Hibbs and Kirk. …
Kirk claims that every one of “the left’s” policies “run contrary to God’s laws and God’s nature.” Hibbs agrees. The crowd cheers. Those in attendance are obviously happy that their pastor has allowed a political rally to break-out in the Calvary Chapel sanctuary. Both Kirk and Hibbs sit back and grin with satisfaction.
Hibbs, trying and failing to show he is some kind of historian or political philosopher, claims that “the Bible is the birthplace of the Constitution, one feeds the other and one defends the other.” I wrote about these kinds of Christian nationalist claims extensively in chapters 9 and 10 of Was America Founded as a Christian Nation?: A Historical Introduction.
Why we need the Electoral College:
FOR WHAT FELT LIKE FOREVER, evolutionary researchers were frustrated: They simply could not find the Neanderthal Y chromosome — there were just no good samples to be found.
The Y chromosome is only possessed by males, passed exclusively from father to son. The issue was the lack of robust DNA from Neanderthal men, which had been preserved badly in comparison to the females’.
However, scientists have finally managed to get their hands on some. In a study published in September of this year, a team of researchers used an unorthodox method to fish out some Y chromosome molecules from three male Neanderthals who lived around 38,000 to 53,000 years ago.
INVERSE IS COUNTING DOWN THE 20 STORIES REDEFINING 'HUMAN' FROM 2020. THIS IS NUMBER 7. SEE THE FULL LIST HERE.
Taking a somewhat unconventional approach, they reconstructed the molecules from the microbial DNA that inhabited the ancient bones and teeth. In the process, they gained fascinating insights into our long-extinct relatives.
WHAT WAS DISCOVERED — It turns out, Neanderthals were so-called stripped of their masculinity when we, the Homo sapiens, mated with Neanderthal women over 100,000 years ago. This species crossover resulted in the Neanderthal Y being slowly bred out over time, and the human Y chromosome taking up its place.
The researchers were also able to reconstruct the Y chromosomes of two male Denisovans, the close cousins of Neanderthals who inhabited much of Asia. Surprisingly, the researchers discovered that the Neanderthal and modern human Y chromosomes were more alike in comparison to the Denisovan Y chromosomes.
This may have happened simply because the “Denisovans were so far East that they did not encounter these very early modern human groups,” Martin Petr, the first author of the paper and a postdoctoral candidate at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, and Janet Kelso, the paper’s senior author and a professor at the Institute, told Inverse.
“The fact that Neanderthal Y chromosomes are more similar to modern humans than Denisovans is very exciting as it provides us with a clear insight into their shared history.”
Books & Resources
A Church Called Tov: Forming a Goodness Culture That Resists Abuses of Power and Promotes Healing
2020-10-06
256 pp., 16.49
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