Sunspots 5

That great philosopher, Ted Forth: "There is no downside to hope, Sal," in Sally Forth, syndicated cartoon, April 17th, 2005, written by Francesco Marciuliano.

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Divine instructions to not go to war against trees:

Deuteronomy 20:19 When thou shalt besiege a city a long time, in making war against it to take it, thou shalt not destroy the trees thereof by wielding an axe against them; for thou mayest eat of them, and thou shalt not cut them down; for is the tree of the field man, that it should be besieged of thee? 20:20 Only the trees of which thou knowest that they are not trees for food, thou shalt destroy and cut them down; and thou shalt build bulwarks against the city that maketh war with thee, until it fall. (ASV, which is public domain)

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A Swedish diplomat of the day expected steam navigation in the United States and Russia to "act most powerfully in drawing men together and in binding the inhabitants of the most distant regions into fraternal union," but new technologies are always predicted to unite and to pacify when they more commonly fracture and arouse . . . --the same virtues would be claimed in a later decade of the nineteenth century of the telegraph and of radio in the twentieth. Richard Rhodes, in John James Audubon: The Making of an American, New York: Knopf, 2004, p. 136.

Rhodes was writing about the 1810's. He does not mention the Internet or cell phones, but he might have. Do these technologies unite and pacify?

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Matt Doherty, who was head coach when most of the most important North Carolina Men's basketball national champions were recruited, but was ousted, has found another head coaching position.

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Jeremy Pierce, at Parableman, has one of his many thought-provoking posts, this time on Christians and politics.