Weekend Reads 3/18/17

Mountains, Meadows, and Marmots: Creation or Judgment?

According to Tackett and like-minded YECs, geological processes such as earthquakes, floods—including Noah’s Flood—volcanism, plate tectonics, uplift, subsidence, and the like, could not have been a part of God’s “very good” creation. Instead, they were brought into the world by Adam’s sin, which affected every aspect of creation—possibly including extraterrestrial planets and stars. But these very same processes are the immediate cause of every geological formation we see today. Thus, had Adam never sinned, there would be no Grand Canyon, no Niagara Falls, no Mt. Kilimanjaro, and no Mt. Everest. In fact, there might have been no high mountains at all.

There Is No Right to Repair

Why would Samsung, for example, want to license its IoT refrigerator rather than sell it to you? Many reasons: To prevent you from using anything other than an official Samsung repair service. To prevent you from reselling the device. To prevent you from bad-mouthing the product.

Barack Obama has a plan for the Trump era

Obama’s aides say he believes that if he can take politically neutral steps to improve democracy — by bringing people together through “civic engagement,” or by giving grassroots activists the tools for community organizing — then that will change the political landscape that culminated in Donald Trump’s election, while also keeping Obama himself above the fray.

Have fun

Charlie needed to go to the hospital. That meant — despite already being cold and wet and tired — we wouldn’t be getting on the van when it came back around at the end of the night. We’d have to let them know (we didn’t have cell phones then), then wait for them to finish picking up and returning all the other teams before coming back to get us, and Charlie, and Mick (because Charlie was, we think, schizophrenic, and genuinely scared of hospitals and of me and of pretty much everyone else, and that was the only way we could convince him to go). And then we’d all have to head to Jefferson where we’d have to persuade them to accept a filthy patient who had no ID and no insurance and who was loudly proclaiming that he didn’t want to be there.