Meanderings, 26 November 2021
We have now officially entered the holiday season. Advent is about to begin, Thanksgiving is behind us, and we look forward to Christmas and the New Year (and may 2022 be an improvement on 2020 and 2021!).
Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash
Yorkshire, not pudding, but pigs:
(CNN)The festive season is typically time for pigs in blankets, but at one British golf club, some oinkers have been creating quite a stir.
Two huge pigs recently made their way onto the course at Lightcliffe Golf Club in Yorkshire, disrupting play and even injuring some golfers who tried to shoo them away.
They first appeared on Sunday, remembers president Philip Marshall, although he tells CNN Sport the club "don't know where they came from."
"One of our golfers saw these pigs on the course and tried to shoo them off and he sustained a cut on his leg and had to go to A&E for a shot," Marshall said. "And they disappeared then, so we thought they'd gone.
"On Tuesday, they reappeared then, and they dug up the 18th green, the first tee and then our head green's director tried to shoo one of them off and it turned on him and it cut his leg. So he had to go and have a tetanus jab but he's fine. And he actually had a hole-in-one this (Thursday) morning! So no ill-effects to him at all then."
Although Marshall describes the injuries as minor cuts, both went to the emergency room as a precaution as they were injuries caused by a wild animal.
Pet tummy tucks and, well, you guessed it:
(WJW) — From “tummy tucks” to “facelifts” many plastic surgeries that were formerly reserved for humans are now being performed on pets.
It may sound outrageous, but these operations are actually advanced procedures that can dramatically improve the animal’s life; including a potbelly pig named Winnie.
“We call it Winnie’s tummy tuck but really it was a medically necessary surgery so she could walk and enjoy being a pig,” said Lissy Kuhn, at Happy Trails Farm Animal Sanctuary in Ravenna, Ohio.
The potbelly pig arrived at the sanctuary weighing well over 400 lbs and was unable to stand, let alone walk.
The loving caretakers at Happy Trails worked with Winnie for more than a year helping her lose over 200 lbs, but that only created another painful issue.
“She was quickly developing a lot of excess skin, and when she began walking she began stepping on this excess skin,” said Kuhn.
That’s when the incredible surgeons at The Ohio State University School of Veterinary Medicine performed the tummy tuck; removing over 10 inches of excess skin enabling Winnie to walk and finally live a happy life.
Other animals have undergone eye jobs, facelifts and a rhinoplasty to improve their quality of life.
ST. LOUIS (KTVI) – Scientists have discovered the bones of a dinosaur in Missouri, and it’s a new genus never uncovered before.
Paleontologist Guy Darrough discovered the juvenile skeleton of a Parrosaurus Missouriensis in the Show-Me State. The specific location of the finding is being kept secret until the site can be secured.
“I can’t imagine anything that’s more impressive than what we discovered here. A new genus in species. Its world-famous discovery,” said Darrough.
Remains of the duckbilled dinosaur, which measure a staggering 25 to 30 feet long, have not been found anywhere else in the United States. When Darrough found the juvenile dinosaur skeleton, he had it transported to the Sainte Genevieve Museum Learning Center. Then, he called Chicago’s Field Museum with the big news.
“I eventually talked to Pete Makovicky, curator of dinosaurs at the Field Museum,” said Darrough. “He came down and looked and said, ‘Yeah, you guys got dinosaurs.’”
Not long after Makovicky and his team started digging in Missouri, they found an adult Parrosaurus Missouriensis right next to the juvenile.
“This is in fact a remarkable site in one of the best dinosaur locals east of the Great Plains,” said Makovicky, a professor in earth and environmental sciences at the University of Minnesota.
Makovicky said he has dug up dinosaurs all over the world. However, he calls the Missouri site one of the most unique. He believes it’s likely other dinosaurs will be found there.
That’s the big word now—deconstructing. Some, who have been grossly harmed by their spiritual leaders, are using this word as they realize that they have a lot of unbiblical teaching to unlearn. Others are realizing that their faith was based on a cultural construct—they have no firm foundation. And so, some are using this word as they are leaving the faith, saying none of it is real. It’s also a label being pasted on those who are revealing harmful patterns of an unbiblical, hierarchal anthropology in the history of the church. For example, the recent 9Marks article which affirms Kristin DuMez, Beth Allison Barr, and Jamar Tisby as leaders of the “deconstructionist project.” This tactic is divisive—it villainizes brothers and sisters in the faith, sets oneself or one’s organization up as the answer, and leads by fear. It’s also a distraction.
Can we just stop and take a look at the condition of Christ’s church?
What do all the stories of abuse and cover-up that have been exposed this year alone reveal? What do the church leader’s reactions to survivors who ask for help reveal? What do some of the books, such as the ones written by DuMez, Barr, and Tisby—and the reactions to them—reveal?
On a larger scale than we want to see, instead of evangelizing, the church itself is the mission field.
Instead of giving the world a beautiful picture of Christ’s bride and a glimpse of our telos in communion with him and one another, we see much ugliness and abuse of power. In multiple denominations. How did we get here? What is church supposed to be? What is our witness to the watching world? Some are so battered by spiritual abuse that they can’t bear to walk through the church doors. Some observers of Christianity are glad they never took the leap. And many still within her walls are so factioned and polarized that they’ve lost sight of what church is supposed to be.
HUNTINGTON, W.Va. (WOWK) – The FCC says spam calls are on the rise in some parts of the country.
Scammers try to dupe unsuspecting people into revealing personal information, like a social security number, address, or password.
And although some residents say they’ve signed up for various apps and systems to prevent getting these calls, they still come through.
You might think that signing up for the Do Not Call registry is enough to protect you, but it’s not always that simple.
“The ‘Do Not Call Registry’ still exists. And the problem with the ‘Do Not Call Registry’ is that with current technology, you can fake a phone number that you’re calling from. So you can pick a random phone number in the community and use that number to call from by basically doing some electronic wizardry,” says Bill Gardner, a Cyber Security Assistant Professor at Marshall University.
He says, although helpful, the Do Not Call list has a few downfalls like its inability to block calls from charities or political affiliates.
Gardner also says these scammers will target anyone who will answer the phone.
“Usually it’s an older person who’s not savvy about what’s going on. People who don’t have email, they’ll just call them and say ‘this is the IRS’ or ‘this is the FBI and your social security card is expired’ or some crazy thing like that,” says Gardner.
That’s an old pine cone and tree, really old!
CORVALLIS, Ore. (KOIN) — Researchers with Oregon State University have discovered seeds sprouting from an amber-encased pinecone.
The phenomenon is caused by a rare botanical condition called precocious germination in which seeds sprout before leaving the fruit, according to the university.
George Poinar Jr. with the Oregon State College of Science published a paper in the Historical Biology that described a pinecone – about 40 million years old – encased in a Baltic amber, where several embryonic stems make an appearance. …
“That’s part of what makes this discovery so intriguing, even beyond that it’s the first fossil record of plant viviparity involving seed germination,” he noted. “I find it fascinating that the seeds in this small pinecone could start to germinate inside the cone and the sprouts could grow out so far before they perished in the resin.”
Poinar said that the sprouts’ tips include needle clusters, some in bundles of five. That associates the fossil with the extinct pine species Pinus cembrifolia, which was previously derived from Baltic amber.
Pinecones in Baltic amber are not commonly found, he added.
“The ones that do appear are prized by collectors and because the cones’ scales are hard, they’re usually very well preserved and appear lifelike,” said the university.
Viviparity in plants typically shows up in one of two ways, but precocious germination is the more common of the two, explained Poinar, such as when a bulbil emerges directly from the flower head of a parent plant.
“In the case of seed viviparity in this fossil, the seeds produced embryonic stems that are quite evident in the amber,” he said. “Whether those stems, known as hypocotyls, appeared before the cone became encased in amber is unclear. However, based on their position, it appears that some growth, if not most, occurred after the pinecone fell into the resin.”