Weekend Reads 1/21/17

Rev. Barber: A “Moral Center,” Not a “Religious Left,” Will Save Us in 2017

Barber criticized conservative white evangelicals who insist that the moral issues of the day are standing against LGBT people and women’s access to reproductive health care, saying that their priorities are “so far from biblical faith and the politics of God that it is heretical.” At the same time, he rejected a characterization of the Repairers of the Breach as the “religious left,” insisting that it represents the same kind of “moral center” that powered previous social justice movements.

Stop Saying Trump’s Win Had Nothing To Do With Economics

Economic anxiety is not the same thing as economic hardship.…Hardship, as I’m using it here, refers to a person’s present-day economic struggles: poverty, joblessness, falling wages, foreclosure, bankruptcy. Anxiety is all about what lies ahead — concerns about saving for retirement or college, worry of a potential layoff, fears that your children’s prospects aren’t as bright as your own were.

Astronomers predict a "red nova" will brighten our skies in 2022

Then, in 2015, the astronomers made observations that matched their exponential plot of light curves and orbital velocities. "The merger hypothesis has had predictive power and we currently have no alternative explanation for its timing behavior," the authors state.

Seven Gadgets That Rode the CES Hype Machine to Disappointment

CES debuted gadget hits like the VCR, CD player and Xbox over the years, but the popular consumer electronics conference also showcases a lot of technology that fails to match the hype.