Supreme Court and religion

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”In two blows to church-state separation, Justices Breyer and Kagan joined the conservative majority on the Supreme Court in granting even more preferential treatment to religious bodies. In one case, the court gave the green light to religious employers to apply the “ministerial exemption” to pretty much any employee; a teacher is a coach is a priest, and none can seek legal redress if they feel they’ve been discriminated against on the job. In the other case, employers who think it’s wicked for women not to want a baby every time they have sex can get out of covering birth control in their health insurance policies.

“It is a clear win for the First Amendment and religious liberty when the highest court affirms the right of religious institutions to be free of government interference and meddling,” said Grazie Christie, a radiologist and policy advisor for The Catholic Association.

“The AP reports that the US Roman Catholic Church has recently “used a special and unprecedented exemption from federal rules to amass at least $1.4 billion in taxpayer-backed coronavirus aid, with many millions going to dioceses that have paid huge settlements or sought bankruptcy protection because of clergy sexual abuse cover-ups.” They go on to say the haul may have been twice that much—reaching or even exceeding $3.5 billion. Guess this is the kind of meddling that’s A-okay with the church.

“In short, SCOTUS says let the churches do whatever they please, and the Trump administration gives them buckets of money to do it with.

“This isn’t religious liberty—it’s religious exceptionalism and bigotry. Religion should never be an excuse to discriminate, and our government should never put church before state.”.   (Jennifer Bardi,  Senior Editor, The Humanist 11 June 2020).

My comment:  I don’t want our tax dollars directed to re-filling the coffers of a church which has cast a blind eye on sexual predation, and mis-handled the whole issue.  I think it appalling that  “religious employers” should be allowed to decide whether or not an employee should or should not have a baby and exclude her from company health policy at will.  This whole issue is being dictated by a small minority of religious extremists who should get out of the bedroom and concentrate on helping to suppress Covid-19, which they have uncaringly ( and, I would argue, greedily) allowed to roar back.

There is absolutely nothing Epicurus would have in common with these cruel and intrusive people.

 

A weird question to the New Scientist, plus two answers

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“If I wanted to be buried so that I was eventually fossilised, for possible discovery in the far future, where would be the best location on Earth to do this?”  (Jonathan Wallace, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK)

If your aim is to be fossilised after you die, I would suggest that you ask your relatives to sink your body rapidly into one of the “dead zones” that occur in some of the world’s seas. Where large rivers meet the sea, the massive organic load sometimes results in low-oxygen conditions over vast areas that are largely devoid of most living organisms.

In such anoxic conditions, your body is unlikely to get eaten by fish, crustaceans or other scavengers. At the same time, the huge amount of sediment coming from the river as the current slows should ensure that your body will be rapidly covered by layers of sediment that will potentially become sedimentary rock in aeons to come.

A good location might be in the Gulf of Mexico, in the area where the Mississippi disgorges itself. Parts of the Black Sea would also be good candidates.

Jon Noad

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Calgary, Alberta, Canada

There are many ways to get fossilised. If you want the process to go quickly, then find a tree that exudes resin. Leave your body at the base of the tree and allow the resin to gradually cover it.

Eventually, the resin will turn to amber. The only problem is that you would need to find a very large tree, because the amount of amber created by this process is generally quite small. It might be possible to fossilise your head, but probably not your whole body.

Other places where at least parts of your body could be encased in sediment include streams that run through limestone. The dissolved lime (calcium oxide) precipitates as travertine, a sedimentary rock that is a form of limestone rather like the calcium carbonate that coats the element in your kettle. Travertine can quickly cover small items.

A slower yet perhaps more straightforward approach would be to bury your body beneath the sea or a lake bed, in an area where there is little oxygen permeating into the substrate, so that scavengers cannot invade the sediment and eat you.

Many soda lakes in Africa fit this profile, although their alkali water can be caustic, and might eat away at your remains. But the calcified remains of animals found around Lake Natron in Tanzania suggest that this method could work.

Choose a lake with slow-moving currents, because the sediment being deposited will be fine-grained. This will lead to less disturbance and to better preservation of your soft parts as a black carbon film, and with luck may even preserve your facial features. Deep sea beds should also work well, which is what created the famous Burgess Shale in British Columbia, Canada, for example.

The best option may be northern Australian coast. The unique geochemistry of the mangrove muds lead to animals such as mangrove lobsters (Thalassina anomala) becoming fossilised in as little as 5000 years.

12055345767968669487.jpgBurying your corpse here should guarantee fossilisation, with the bonus that a nodule called a concretion will form around you that will preserve your skeleton in three dimensions.

My comment:  I know some people who are already fossilized, without the need for burial anywhere.

Corruption on public display

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The federal government’s Paycheck Protection Program, a massive, multi-billion loan program designed to keep small businesses afloat and retain jobs as part of the CARES Act stimulus package, got a lot of heat for its seemingly opaque application and approval process when it debuted back in March. Now, as reports emerge of multi-million dollar handouts to wealthy donors, friends, family, and corrupt firms, it’s obvious that heat was well-deserved.

We are told that the public do not trust the government, and this is not likely to reverse that verdict. Companies with multiple branches, such as restaurants, put in for loans that treated each branch as a separate business, and this meant that the company walked away with massive handouts. – of our money.  This is not just a matter of maladministration; it is a matter of corruption.   Epicurus, who stood for openness and honesty would have been disgusted.

The virus has been around longer than we thought

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Milan, Italy

Scientific analysis of sewage samples has shown that the novel coronavirus was present in both Milan and Turin by mid-December, more than two months before Italy’s first case was diagnosed in Codogno, southeast of Milan, on 20 February. Covid-19 patients are believed to shed the virus in their faeces from the time they are infected – often days before they are symptomatic – so analysis of sewage water can be used to identify outbreaks well before they are obvious to doctors. “After the outbreak we were testing sewage for the virus and realised we could check back in time by analysing old frozen samples,” explained Dr Luca Lucentini of Italy’s national health institute. The finding is one of several from around the world to suggest that by the time China raised the alarm, in January, the virus had spread far more extensively than initially realised.  (The Week, 27 June 2020)

 My take:  When I was at school I did dismally at physics and chemistry, and my mathematical ability was not great.  I still feel more comfortable with History and the arts.  However, unlike far too many modern day, politically engaged Americans,  I respect science and scientists deeply and admire their hard work and diligence.  This crisis, so harmful for the peace of mind, would be ten times worse were it not for the scientists and health experts.  I want to say a huge “ thank you” to them all and beg them not to be intimidated by know-nothing bullies with strange, indifferent attitudes towards the health and welfare of their fellow citizens.  Epicureanism is partly based on respect for others doing their best.

Microplastics are everywhere

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Tiny pieces of plastic that pollute the environment can be produced by simply opening a plastic bottle or tearing a food wrapper.

Microplastics are between 0.001 and 5 millimetres in size and are usually either produced directly, or form when large plastic debris breaks up. We now know that millions of tonnes of microplastics are abundant in the environment and can harm marine life by entering the food chain. Microplastics are also found in our food  although the effect on human health is still unclear.

Cheng Fang at the University of Newcastle, Australia and his colleagues tested whether everyday activities could release microplastics. They opened common plastic items such as bags, bottles and packaging film by twisting the bottle cap or tearing the bag, for example, or by cutting them with scissors or a knife, which deforms and fractures the plastic.

The team used a scale that is sensitive to weights as low as one nanogram to collect and measure the microplastics that landed on its surface. Between about 10 and 30 nanograms of microplastic were released from opening the plastic items, which amounts to between 14,000 and 75,000 individual microplastic particles. But the team says that the true amount released is probably even higher, because many microplastics are statically charged and remain in the air.

Studying the microplastics with a microscope revealed that most were in the form of fragments or fibres of varying shape and size. Some could be seen with the naked eye, such as those from cutting bottles. The team also used a technique called spectroscopy to deduce the microplastics’ chemical composition and found the majority were made of polyethylene, one of the most widely used plastics.

“This finding sends an important warning,” says Fang. “We might need to take our own responsibility and work with industry together to reduce [microplastics].”

Comment from Christian Dunn at Bangor University, UK: : “I’d love to say that I’m surprised and shocked at the results, but unfortunately, I’m not and you are  not. We’re now realising that microplastics are literally everywhere.   It is now crucial that we work to find out their  possible health effects, and cut back on unnecessary plastic use”.  (Gege Li, March 28 2020)Journal reference: Nature Scientific Report. DOI: 10.1038/s41598-020-61146-4)