Does CBD Kill Bacteria? What to Know – Healthline

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When it comes to cannabis, most attention centers around two parts of the plant: tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the component that produces the high sensation, and cannabidiol (CBD), the part typically used for medicinal purposes.

As you might already know, CBD enjoys a lot of popularity in the wellness field. Its widely used as an alternative remedy for conditions ranging from nausea to chronic pain. Some people even find it helpful for easing mental health symptoms like anxiety.

Until 2018, it was difficult to get government approval to study CBD, so most of the research exploring its uses is quite new. One emerging area of study thats gathered a lot of excitement? CBDs antimicrobial traits.

As it turns out, CBD actually does a pretty good job killing bacteria even some strains that are resistant to traditional antibiotics. Having a potential weapon against these supergerms could save a lot of lives.

Read on to learn what experts know about CBDs ability to kill bacteria and what this means for you.

CBD can kill both Gram-positive and Gram-negative bacteria. Both types of bacteria can develop resistance to antibiotics. However, Gram-positive bacteria usually prove much harder to kill because they have thicker protective membranes.

According to a 2021 study, it takes very little CBD to kill most Gram-positive bacteria. CBD can even destroy species that have developed resistance to multiple drugs, such as:

Among the Gram-negative bacteria also studied, 20 species survived CBD exposure. This wasnt too surprising, since scientists havent come up with any new classes of antibiotics to treat Gram-negative bacteria since 1962.

What the researchers did find surprising? CBD could kill four kinds of Gram-negative bacteria, all of which have a history of drug resistance and can be life-threatening:

Overall, CBD seems to show promise as a versatile antimicrobial agent.

That said, the researchers did reported numerous conflicts of interest, the main one being that the pharmaceutical company Botanix funded much of the study. Botanix makes a topical CBD formula thats currently undergoing clinical trials.

However, other studies without conflicts of interest have reported similar findings. For example, a 2022 study found CBD can fight Salmonella typhimurium, a Gram-negative bacteria that attacks your stomach and intestines. Around 59 percent of salmonella infections resistant to ampicillin (a specialized antibiotic used to treat salmonella) involve the typhimurium strain.

CBDs ability to fight bacteria is potentially a huge deal. The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) estimate 2.8 million people develop an antibiotic-resistant infection each year, and around 35,000 people die from these infections.

Cannabidiol appears to kill many of the more harmful bacteria species, including:

These numbers come from the 2019 CDC report Antibiotic Resistance Threats in the United States.

MRSA, in particular, appears to have a much harder time mustering resistance against CBD than against antibiotics. The 2021 study measured drug resistance by growing MRSA in petri dishes and measuring the minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC), or amount of substance needed to kill all the bacteria in the dish.

The antibiotic daptomycins MIC increased 26-fold over 20 days of exposure. In other words, the MRSA bacteria developed so much drug resistance after 20 days that it took 26 times the original amount of daptomycin to kill it.

Meanwhile, cannabidiols MIC only increased by a factor of 1.5. Relatively speaking, MRSA barely developed any resistance against CBD.

CBD isnt avoiding resistance just because its new to the bacteria battlefield. Theres something special about how CBD functions that makes it harder for bacteria to adapt.

Many drug-resistant bacteria defend themselves by preventing antibiotics from entering their cells. Common antibiotic-fighting tactics include:

Yet CBD doesnt need to enter the bacteria to kill it. Instead, it attacks bacteria membranes, popping cells like microscopic water balloons. Bacteria cells dont have defined organelles the way animal and plant cells do. Their innards are more like a soup that just spills out into the void, once something destroys the membrane keeping everything together.

But some traditional antibiotics, like penicillin, also kill bacteria by destroying their membranes. Further research may help experts determine which specific molecules CBD targets and why CBD appears more effective than antibiotics at breaking down certain kinds of bacterial membranes.

Despite this encouraging lab performance, CBD is far from ready to be used as antimicrobial treatment in the real world. This substance has a major weakness that keeps it from becoming a miracle drug: It binds to protein very easily.

When CBD enters your bloodstream, most of it will latch on to proteins in your plasma. CBD doesnt kill human proteins like it does germs, but it does become glued to those cells. Only 10 to 14 percent of CBD will remain floating free and available to attack bacteria. Even if the CBD does reach the site of the infection, other tempting proteins might lure it away.

In a nutshell, taking cannabis or CBD oil most likely wont help you fight off an infection. CBD spreads too much through the body to launch a targeted attack against bacteria. And you cant exactly flood your system with CBD without risking an overdose.

Scientists continue to study ways to take advantage of CBDs bacteria-fighting potential. Possibilities include formulas to transport CBD directly to the bacteria in an infection, or synthetic CBD that ignores human proteins and focuses only on attacking bacteria.

Animal and human studies to date have found the most success with oral formulas. Rather than an injection, future CBD treatments may take the form of a nasal spray or pill.

In short, while CBD gummies cant currently treat infection, its possible you could take an antimicrobial CBD gummy in the future.

You may not be able to harness CBDs antimicrobial potential just yet. Still, you might notice some benefits when using CBD for pain or anxiety.

A few helpful reminders before you try CBD:

CBD has the ability to kill certain species of antibiotic-resistant bacteria. Even so, it likely wont replace antibiotics anytime soon.

Experts need to conduct more research to determine exactly how CBD functions in the human body before they can put it to use as a treatment for infections.

Emily Swaim is a freelance health writer and editor who specializes in psychology. She has a BA in English from Kenyon College and an MFA in writing from California College of the Arts. In 2021, she received her Board of Editors in Life Sciences (BELS) certification. You can find more of her work on GoodTherapy, Verywell, Investopedia, Vox, and Insider. Find her on Twitter and LinkedIn.

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Does CBD Kill Bacteria? What to Know - Healthline

Must Employers Ignore Positive Drug Tests Caused By CBD Use? – JD Supra

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In recent years, we have advised employers whose employees tested positive for marijuana, but the employee claimed that the positive test resulted from their use of legal CBD oil or related products. Some employers have explicitly warned employees about the risk of using CBD products that contain detectible amounts of THC, the active ingredient in marijuana. What happens, however, when an employee claims that excusing the positive result is a required accommodation under the Americans with Disabilities Act?

In a recent federal district court decision in Louisiana, the judge denied the employers motion for summary judgment in a case in which an employee alleged that she was using CBD oil under a doctors prescription to treat chronic migraines. The employer terminated her employment after testing positive for THC, citing a government contract that mandated such testing. The employee claimed that excusing the positive test was a form of required accommodation under the ADA.

In her decision, the district court judge concluded that a jury should determine whether the employer should have accommodated this request. She rejected the employers argument that the federal governments listing of marijuana as a Schedule I controlled substance automatically removes persons who test positive from the ADAs protections. The court also appeared to draw a distinction between CBD and THC, even if the former substance can contain trace amounts of THC.

This decision was made by a district court and does not have a binding effect on other courts or employers. If the matter goes to trial, the jury may conclude that the request to ignore the drug test result was an undue hardship on the employer under the ADA. Regardless, this decision calls into question employers assumption that employees who test positive for marijuana cannot claim CBD use as a legal excuse. As more cases on this issue arise, employers should modify their drug testing policies to follow the guidance provided by federal courts.

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Must Employers Ignore Positive Drug Tests Caused By CBD Use? - JD Supra

How to fry cannabis leaves (yes, thats a thing) – GreenState

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(Photo by LILLIAN SUWANRUMPHA/AFP via Getty Images)

Looking for an especially dope party snack for this 4th of July? Nothing says freedom like fried cannabis leaves.

More and more states are passing legislation allowing people to have cannabis on their person or at home. This has become even easier with the advent of CBD oil and other products derived from cannabis.

RELATED: Cooking with Cannabis: Curb Your Hunger with Cannabis Chili

If you grow legal cannabis, you can easily render your cannabis leaves into surprisingly tasty and truly unique treats that you can enjoy all day, every day.

While frying cannabisleaves wont get you high, theyre a super tasty snack that will leave you wanting more.

Read on to learn more about how to fry cannabis leaves, and for some delicious recipes that incorporate this ingredient.

Though they sound like a novelty in the U.S., fried cannabis leaves are a relatively popular delicacy in Thailand.

Cannabis was only just recently decriminalized in the country, but many Thai restaurants have been incorporating fried cannabis leaves in multiple delicious menu offerings for many years. Restaurant-goers can slurp soup garnished with dried marijuana leaves or crunch deep-fried bread topped with pork and deep-fried marijuana leaves.

MaeKhrua Hua Pa is considered thefirst Thai cookbook to contain a recipe for tender ganja leaves, and it was published in 1908.

RELATED: Cooking with cannabis: Melt-in-your-mouth cannabis chocolate

Its pretty simple. Just follow these six easy steps.

Fried cannabis leaves are delicious to eat by themselves, but if youre craving something more filling, here are some equally scrumptious and slightly more savory options:

Whats better than soft, pillowy potato pieces with fried sage and cannabis leaves? Cannabis leaf frying just went to a whole other carb-filled level.

The recipe is super easy; just be sure that your cannabis and sage leaves are very dry for optimum crispiness.

The Crazy Happy Pizza is a popular menu offering in Thailand, and you can make it at home, too!

To amp up the cannabis flavor, infuse cannabis oil into the dough of your pizza and top it with your favorite toppings. While your pizza is in the oven, fry up an entire cannabis leaf and place it on top once fully cooked.

A Thai-style omelet is as easy to make as it sounds.

Whisk eggs with fish sauce, soy sauce, and pepper. Pour the mixture into a frying pan and place a whole cannabis leaf on top. Fry in a pan until the edges crisp up.

You can also fry upyour cannabis leaves separately and sprinkle them on top, along with fried shallots or chives.

RELATED: Cooking with Cannabis: Wacky Mac n Cheese

If you have some leftover leaves in your kitchen, now is the time to fry them up.

For more summer cannabis recipe inspiration, you can check out these popular cannabis cooking shows streaming right now. Happy chef-ing!

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How to fry cannabis leaves (yes, thats a thing) - GreenState

Posthumanism – Wikipedia

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Class of philosophies

Posthumanism or post-humanism (meaning "after humanism" or "beyond humanism") is a term with at least seven definitions according to philosopher Francesca Ferrando:[1]

Philosopher Ted Schatzki suggests there are two varieties of posthumanism of the philosophical kind:[15]

One, which he calls 'objectivism', tries to counter the overemphasis of the subjective or intersubjective that pervades humanism, and emphasises the role of the nonhuman agents, whether they be animals and plants, or computers or other things.[15]

A second prioritizes practices, especially social practices, over individuals (or individual subjects) which, they say, constitute the individual.[15]

There may be a third kind of posthumanism, propounded by the philosopher Herman Dooyeweerd. Though he did not label it as 'posthumanism', he made an extensive and penetrating immanent critique of Humanism, and then constructed a philosophy that presupposed neither Humanist, nor Scholastic, nor Greek thought but started with a different religious ground motive.[16] Dooyeweerd prioritized law and meaningfulness as that which enables humanity and all else to exist, behave, live, occur, etc. "Meaning is the being of all that has been created," Dooyeweerd wrote, "and the nature even of our selfhood."[17] Both human and nonhuman alike function subject to a common 'law-side', which is diverse, composed of a number of distinct law-spheres or aspects.[18] The temporal being of both human and non-human is multi-aspectual; for example, both plants and humans are bodies, functioning in the biotic aspect, and both computers and humans function in the formative and lingual aspect, but humans function in the aesthetic, juridical, ethical and faith aspects too. The Dooyeweerdian version is able to incorporate and integrate both the objectivist version and the practices version, because it allows nonhuman agents their own subject-functioning in various aspects and places emphasis on aspectual functioning.[19]

Ihab Hassan, theorist in the academic study of literature, once stated:

Humanism may be coming to an end as humanism transforms itself into something one must helplessly call posthumanism.[20]

This view predates most currents of posthumanism which have developed over the late 20th century in somewhat diverse, but complementary, domains of thought and practice. For example, Hassan is a known scholar whose theoretical writings expressly address postmodernity in society.[21] Beyond postmodernist studies, posthumanism has been developed and deployed by various cultural theorists, often in reaction to problematic inherent assumptions within humanistic and enlightenment thought.[4]

Theorists who both complement and contrast Hassan include Michel Foucault, Judith Butler, cyberneticists such as Gregory Bateson, Warren McCullouch, Norbert Wiener, Bruno Latour, Cary Wolfe, Elaine Graham, N. Katherine Hayles, Benjamin H. Bratton, Donna Haraway, Peter Sloterdijk, Stefan Lorenz Sorgner, Evan Thompson, Francisco Varela, Humberto Maturana, Timothy Morton, and Douglas Kellner. Among the theorists are philosophers, such as Robert Pepperell, who have written about a "posthuman condition", which is often substituted for the term "posthumanism".[5][8]

Posthumanism differs from classical humanism by relegating humanity back to one of many natural species, thereby rejecting any claims founded on anthropocentric dominance.[22] According to this claim, humans have no inherent rights to destroy nature or set themselves above it in ethical considerations a priori.[23] Human knowledge is also reduced to a less controlling position, previously seen as the defining aspect of the world. Human rights exist on a spectrum with animal rights and posthuman rights.[24] The limitations and fallibility of human intelligence are confessed, even though it does not imply abandoning the rational tradition of humanism.[25]

Proponents of a posthuman discourse, suggest that innovative advancements and emerging technologies have transcended the traditional model of the human, as proposed by Descartes among others associated with philosophy of the Enlightenment period.[26] In contrast to humanism, the discourse of posthumanism seeks to redefine the boundaries surrounding modern philosophical understanding of the human. Posthumanism represents an evolution of thought beyond that of the contemporary social boundaries and is predicated on the seeking of truth within a postmodern context. In so doing, it rejects previous attempts to establish 'anthropological universals' that are imbued with anthropocentric assumptions.[22] Recently, critics have sought to describe the emergence of posthumanism as a critical moment in modernity, arguing for the origins of key posthuman ideas in modern fiction,[27] in Nietzsche,[28] or in a modernist response to the crisis of historicity.[29]

Although Nietzsche's philosophy has been characterized as posthumanist,[30][31][32] the philosopher Michel Foucault placed posthumanism within a context that differentiated humanism from enlightenment thought. According to Foucault, the two existed in a state of tension: as humanism sought to establish norms while Enlightenment thought attempted to transcend all that is material, including the boundaries that are constructed by humanistic thought.[22] Drawing on the Enlightenment's challenges to the boundaries of humanism, posthumanism rejects the various assumptions of human dogmas (anthropological, political, scientific) and takes the next step by attempting to change the nature of thought about what it means to be human. This requires not only decentering the human in multiple discourses (evolutionary, ecological, technological) but also examining those discourses to uncover inherent humanistic, anthropocentric, normative notions of humanness and the concept of the human.

Posthumanistic discourse aims to open up spaces to examine what it means to be human and critically question the concept of "the human" in light of current cultural and historical contexts.[4] In her book How We Became Posthuman, N. Katherine Hayles, writes about the struggle between different versions of the posthuman as it continually co-evolves alongside intelligent machines.[33] Such coevolution, according to some strands of the posthuman discourse, allows one to extend their subjective understandings of real experiences beyond the boundaries of embodied existence. According to Hayles's view of posthuman, often referred to as technological posthumanism, visual perception and digital representations thus paradoxically become ever more salient. Even as one seeks to extend knowledge by deconstructing perceived boundaries, it is these same boundaries that make knowledge acquisition possible. The use of technology in a contemporary society is thought to complicate this relationship.[34]

Hayles discusses the translation of human bodies into information (as suggested by Hans Moravec) in order to illuminate how the boundaries of our embodied reality have been compromised in the current age and how narrow definitions of humanness no longer apply. Because of this, according to Hayles, posthumanism is characterized by a loss of subjectivity based on bodily boundaries.[4] This strand of posthumanism, including the changing notion of subjectivity and the disruption of ideas concerning what it means to be human, is often associated with Donna Haraways concept of the cyborg.[4] However, Haraway has distanced herself from posthumanistic discourse due to other theorists use of the term to promote utopian views of technological innovation to extend the human biological capacity[35] (even though these notions would more correctly fall into the realm of transhumanism[4]).

While posthumanism is a broad and complex ideology, it has relevant implications today and for the future. It attempts to redefine social structures without inherently humanly or even biological origins, but rather in terms of social and psychological systems where consciousness and communication could potentially exist as unique disembodied entities. Questions subsequently emerge with respect to the current use and the future of technology in shaping human existence,[22] as do new concerns with regards to language, symbolism, subjectivity, phenomenology, ethics, justice and creativity.

Sociologist James Hughes comments that there is considerable confusion between the two terms.[36][37] In the introduction to their book on post- and transhumanism, Robert Ranisch and Stefan Sorgner address the source of this confusion, stating that posthumanism is often used as an umbrella term that includes both transhumanism and critical posthumanism.[36]

Although both subjects relate to the future of humanity, they differ in their view of anthropocentrism.[38] Pramod Nayar, author of Posthumanism, states that posthumanism has two main branches: ontological and critical.[39] Ontological posthumanism is synonymous with transhumanism. The subject is regarded as an intensification of humanism.[40] Transhumanist thought suggests that humans are not post human yet, but that human enhancement, often through technological advancement and application, is the passage of becoming post human.[41] Transhumanism retains humanism's focus on the Homo sapiens as the center of the world but also considers technology to be an integral aid to human progression. Critical posthumanism, however, is opposed to these views.[42] Critical posthumanism rejects both human exceptionalism (the idea that humans are unique creatures) and human instrumentalism (that humans have a right to control the natural world).[39] These contrasting views on the importance of human beings are the main distinctions between the two subjects.[43]

Transhumanism is also more ingrained in popular culture than critical posthumanism, especially in science fiction. The term is referred to by Pramod Nayar as "the pop posthumanism of cinema and pop culture."[39]

Some critics have argued that all forms of posthumanism, including transhumanism, have more in common than their respective proponents realize.[44] Linking these different approaches, Paul James suggests that 'the key political problem is that, in effect, the position allows the human as a category of being to flow down the plughole of history':

This is ontologically critical. Unlike the naming of postmodernism where the post does not infer the end of what it previously meant to be human (just the passing of the dominance of the modern) the posthumanists are playing a serious game where the human, in all its ontological variability, disappears in the name of saving something unspecified about us as merely a motley co-location of individuals and communities.[45]

However, some posthumanists in the humanities and the arts are critical of transhumanism (the brunt of Paul James's criticism), in part, because they argue that it incorporates and extends many of the values of Enlightenment humanism and classical liberalism, namely scientism, according to performance philosopher Shannon Bell:[46]

Altruism, mutualism, humanism are the soft and slimy virtues that underpin liberal capitalism. Humanism has always been integrated into discourses of exploitation: colonialism, imperialism, neoimperialism, democracy, and of course, American democratization. One of the serious flaws in transhumanism is the importation of liberal-human values to the biotechno enhancement of the human. Posthumanism has a much stronger critical edge attempting to develop through enactment new understandings of the self and others, essence, consciousness, intelligence, reason, agency, intimacy, life, embodiment, identity and the body.[46]

While many modern leaders of thought are accepting of nature of ideologies described by posthumanism, some are more skeptical of the term. Donna Haraway, the author of A Cyborg Manifesto, has outspokenly rejected the term, though acknowledges a philosophical alignment with posthumanism. Haraway opts instead for the term of companion species, referring to nonhuman entities with which humans coexist.[35]

Questions of race, some argue, are suspiciously elided within the "turn" to posthumanism. Noting that the terms "post" and "human" are already loaded with racial meaning, critical theorist Zakiyyah Iman Jackson argues that the impulse to move "beyond" the human within posthumanism too often ignores "praxes of humanity and critiques produced by black people", including Frantz Fanon and Aime Cesaire to Hortense Spillers and Fred Moten. Interrogating the conceptual grounds in which such a mode of beyond is rendered legible and viable, Jackson argues that it is important to observe that "blackness conditions and constitutes the very nonhuman disruption and/or disruption" which posthumanists invite. In other words, given that race in general and blackness in particular constitutes the very terms through which human/nonhuman distinctions are made, for example in enduring legacies of scientific racism, a gesture toward a beyond actually returns us to a Eurocentric transcendentalism long challenged. Posthumanist scholarship, due to characteristic rhetorical techniques, is also frequently subject to the same critiques commonly made of postmodernist scholarship in the 1980s and 1990s.

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Posthumanism - Wikipedia

What is Post-Humanism? – Ethics Explainer By The Ethics Centre

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In reality, though, Sophia was not a breakthrough in AI. She was just an elaborately made puppet that could answer some simple questions. But the debate Sophia provoked about what rights robots might have in the future is a topic that is being explored by an emerging philosophical movement known as post-humanism.

In order to understand what post-humanism is, its important to start with a definition of what it is departing from. Humanism is a term that captures a broad range of philosophical and ethical movements that are unified by their unshakable belief in the unique value, agency, and moral supremacy of human beings.

Emerging during the Renaissance, humanism was a reaction against the superstition and religious authoritarianism of Medieval Europe. It wrested control of human destiny from the whims of a transcendent divinity and placed it in the hands of rational individuals (which, at that time, meant white men). In so doing, the humanist worldview, which still holds sway over many of our most important political and social institutions, positions humans at the centre of the moral world.

Post-humanism, which is a set of ideas that have been emerging since around the 1990s, challenges the notion that humans are and always will be the only agents of the moral world. In fact, post-humanists argue that in our technologically mediated future, understanding the world as a moral hierarchy and placing humans at the top of it will no longer make sense.

The best-known post-humanists, who are also sometimes referred to as transhumanists, claim that in the coming century, human beings will be radically altered by implants, bio-hacking, cognitive enhancement and other bio-medical technology. These enhancements will lead us to evolve into a species that is completely unrecognisable to what we are now.

This vision of the future is championed most vocally by Ray Kurzweil, a chief engineer of Google, who believes that the exponential rate of technological development will bring an end to human history as we have known it, triggering completely new ways of being that mere mortals like us cannot yet comprehend.

While this vision of the post-human appeals to Kurzweils Silicon Valley imagination, other post-human thinkers offer a very different perspective. Philosopher Donna Haraway, for instance, argues that the fusing of humans and technology will not physically enhance humanity, but will help us see ourselves as being interconnected rather than separate from non-human beings.

She argues that becoming cyborgs strange assemblages of human and machine will help us understand that the oppositions we set up between the human and non-human, natural and artificial, self and other, organic and inorganic, are merely ideas that can be broken down and renegotiated. And more than this, she thinks if we are comfortable with seeing ourselves as being part human and part machine, perhaps we will also find it easier to break down other outdated oppositions of gender, of race, of species.

So while for Kurzweil post-humanism describes a technological future of enhanced humanity, for Haraway, post-humanism is an ethical position that extends moral concern to things that are different from us and in particular to other species and objects with which we cohabit the world.

Our post-human future, Haraway claims, will be a time when species meet, and when humans finally make room for non-human things within the scope of our moral concern. A post-human ethics, therefore, encourages us to think outside of the interests of our own species, be less narcissistic in our conception of the world, and to take the interests and rights of things that are different to us seriously.

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What is Post-Humanism? - Ethics Explainer By The Ethics Centre

The Importance of Empathy in Healthcare: Advancing Humanism

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What does it mean to advance humanism in healthcare? According to Arnold P. Gold Foundation advancing humanism in healthcare is characterized as, a respectful and compassionate relationship between physicians, members of the healthcare team and their patients. A recent article published January 26, 2019 in Modern Healthcare talks about the importance of having all members of the healthcare team constantly educated regarding how to utilize patient-communication-best-practices to ensure the best outcomes. This title says it all, Physician empathy a key driver of patient satisfaction. This article was published by Science Daily and points out that sixty-five percent of patient satisfaction was attributed to physician empathy.Additional Gold Foundation studies have also recognized the impact empathy has on improving health outcomes and its significance in patient care.

Empathy is defined as, the ability to understand and share the feelings of another. It is the capacity to put ones self in anothers shoes and feel what that person is going through and share their emotions and feelings. It is the recognition and validation of a patients fear, anxiety, pain, and worry. It is the ability to understand patients feelings and facilitate a more accurate diagnoses and more caring treatment. Expressing patient empathy indeed advances humanism in healthcare as a matter of fact expressing empathy in healthcare is THE KEY INGREDIENT to enhancing the patient experience and patient encounter.

Both empathy and compassion in healthcare play vital roles in thepatient experienceand are key components of the physician-patient relationship. When a patient arrives to see their healthcare provider, the patients medical condition whether it is a severe illness or injury, a chronic condition, or simply a routine check-up will often manifest emotions such as anxiety, fear, and apprehension. Patients want to know they are receiving the very best care, and that is conveyed when their care team is empathetic and compassionate.

Empathy extends far beyond a patients medical history, signs, and symptoms. It is more than a clinical diagnosis and treatment. Empathy encompasses a connection and an understanding that includes the mind, body, and soul. Expressing empathy is highly effective and powerful, which builds patient trust, calms anxiety, and improves health outcomes.Research has shownempathy and compassion to be associated with better adherence to medications, decreased malpractice cases, fewer mistakes, and increased patient satisfaction. Expressing empathy, one patient at a time, advances humanism in healthcare.

When I first watched the video below, I was reminded, and blown-away, by the notion that the smallest expressions of empathy make huge lasting impressions. Checkout the Cleveland Clinics, Delos Toby Cosgrove, MD, President and CEO, as he and his team demonstrate some special moments that exemplifies the power of empathy in healthcare. The video has become a viral sensation, with 4,437,714 views on YouTube, as of this writing. It may be viewed below:

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The Importance of Empathy in Healthcare: Advancing Humanism

1.How did humanism affect the Enlightenment? A. It led people to return …

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1.How did humanism affect the Enlightenment?

A. It led people to return to traditional religious beliefs.

B. It led people to turn away from scientific explanations of events.

C. It led people to apply logic and reason to understand the world.

D. It led to an increase in absolute monarchies in Europe.

2.What does the quote We should regard all men as our brothers describe?

A. feminism

B. tolerance

C. separation of powers

D. natural rights

3.Rousseau's idea of (tolerance, the social contract, natural rights, or separation of powers)[choose one] stood in direct contrast to the previous idea of a king's right to rule by divine right. Under Rousseau's theory, a government gets its power from(the people, a constitution,god,or the natural order of things)[choose one]rather than from (the people, a constitution, god,or the natural order of things)[choose one] .

4.The framers of the United States Constitution used Montesquieu's idea of (free markets, the social contract, natural rights, or a separation of powers)[choose one] when they gave (the free market,the people, the president, or congress)[choose one] the ability to create laws and (the free market,the people, the president, or congress)[choose one] the ability to carry out the laws..

Someone here will be able to check what YOU THINK the answers are once you post them.

1. C - It led people to apply logic and reason to understand the world.2. B - Tolerance3. The social contract, the people, God4. a separation of powers, Congress, the president

Megan is correct

thanks megan

The answers are 1.C 2.the social contract, the people,god 3.a separation of powers,Congress,president 4.B

Megan is a lifesaver with the correct answers and Nick took her correct answers and placed them in the correct order and for that... Thanks to the both of you!

nick is correct because he has the social contract instead of Megan as tolerance because she got them all mixed up. so GG my guy

Nick is right. Thanks!

thanks Nick

CABD

Thanks Nick and Megan, you two are lifesavers

t r a s h

im confused

XD One minute after you " "

Morningfrost

The girl that gave the questions didn't give em in order like the lesson did. that's why some of you guys got It wrong LOL

But who asked though

totally.not.jett

thx Megan

1:C2: the social contract, the people, god3: a separation of powers, Congress, president 4:B

Social Studies

1:C2: the social contract, the people, god3: a separation of powers, Congress, president4: B

no

Still correct for connexus1:C2: the social contract, the people, god3: a separation of powers, Congress, president4:B

Megan is correct. BTW thanks megan :>

creepy mcnugget

Nick is correct thanks

Mitsuki Nakamura

Dattebama!It is correct!

Menma Uzumaki

@Nick is correct for Connexus

YouDontNeedToKnowMyName

I used Nick's answers and they were correct, thx bro! also to clear up some confusion, ''connexus'' and ''connections'' are the same!

Megan is right just in a different order good job

Thx @Nick

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1.How did humanism affect the Enlightenment? A. It led people to return ...

The Arnold P. Gold Foundation

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The Arnold P. Gold Foundation champions humanism in healthcare, which we define as compassionate, collaborative, and scientifically excellent care. This Gold standard of care embraces all and targets barriers to such care. We empower experts, learners, and leaders to together create systems and cultures that support humanistic care for all.

The Gold Foundation is pleased to announce the six winners of the 2022 Hope Babette Tang Humanism in Healthcare Essay Contest: three by medical students and three by nursing students. First place is awarded to Mason Blacker of the NYU Grossman School of Medicine and nursing student Jessica Pierce of the Oregon Health & Science University. This years winning essays all tell the story of the moments that take us back to our own humanity.

17 medical students have been selected as 2022 Gold Student Summer Fellows, launching summer projects to magnify humanism in healthcare and help address health inequities. Each of the 9 projects was selected for their focus on underserved communities.

The Annual Gala was June 9th in New York City, a celebration of the 20th anniversary of the Gold Humanism Honor Society and the 5th anniversary of the Gold Corporate Council. Check back next week for a recording of the full 90-minute event. Thank you to all who joined us, and congratulations to the gala honorees!

Advancing Healthcare Equity with Medical Humanities is an illuminating webinar series that spans 10 sessions, all of which further dialogue on the timely issue of health equity across the healthcare ecosystem. CME credits are available for $10 / 1 hour per webinar.

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‘Crimes Of The Future’ Review: David Cronenberg’s Experiment In World-Building And Idea Generation | DMT – DMT

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The question which strikes you every time you watch a body horror movie is, What are the limitations of the moniker of body horror? Is it only restricted to simple gore and bloodshed as mutilations are inflicted on the body? At what point does body horror evolve from gore to something far more sensual and potent? The near future of David Cronenbergs Crimes Of The Future is a terrifying dystopia.

Mature-Content Warning

The world is affected by pollution and climate change with disastrous results, causing unforeseen changes to the human body. To counter that, significant biotechnological advances have been made, including the invention of machines that interface with the human body and control bodily functions. However, unlike most sci-fi dealing with post-humanism (for example, the Deus-Ex games), the visual aesthetic of said interfaces is less machine-like and more human-like. Even the pieces of machinery are covered with viscera and slime; the electronics used to conduct surgery are shaped more like bones than electronic appendages. But perhaps due to the cause of such environmental changes, the human body itself has evolved such that the threshold of pain and the presence of infectious diseases has decreased. Thus, in typical Cronenbergian fashion, the pain has replaced pleasure, and as a character calls it, Surgery is the new sex.

However, evolution has resulted in mutations as well. For an eight-year-old child named Brecken, that translates to an ability to eat plastic, which causes him to be murdered by his mother because of the exhibition of such inhuman characteristics. For Saul Tenser (Viggo Mortensen), this has caused his body to develop new vestigial organs. While this causes Tenser excruciating pain and has rendered him dependent on machinery linked to his endocrine system to maintain optimum stability, Tenser uses this ability to elevate himself as a famous performance artist, with his assistant Caprice performing surgery on him in front of a live audience and extracting the new vestigial organ. In a world as potently unique as this one, the physical body is a form of identity. Marking and tattooing of organs is a deliberate method of ownership and also registration of different organs.

The world and environment in the movie are interesting, and Cronenberg ensures you remember them. That comprises letting the environment speak for it, but for the majority of its runtime, Crimes Of The Future (2022) is a victim of clunky exposition delivered through clumsily simplistic written dialogues which sound more forced than natural. The use of a minimum score in the movie adds to the very unsettling flair of the storytelling. That feeling of unsettlement is compounded by the eagerness of characters to undergo surgery, where Cronenberg satirizes the use of plastic surgery to increase the number of scars and mutilations and exhibits them as a badge of honor and performance art. To some extent, that is a political statement; the ownership of ones body just extends to the interior organs, if we take the concept of tattooing to its literal extreme.

The issue with Crimes Of The Future is its introduction of different curveballs, which take time to develop, but the resultant payoff feels surprisingly low. It is very much a result of the movie being dramatically inert. The emotional utterances and moments of tearful poignancy feel blatantly artificial or over the top compared to the cold, haunting, pause-filled conversations between the characters. The gore scenes are scored to classical music, and the editing and staging of these sequences of surgery and gore feel cool, almost mechanical in their approach, even though seeing images like a zipper connecting two halves of the stomach and Lea Seydouxs character Caprice opening said zipper and delivering oral should be a cause for grimace or puking. Instead, it brought about a minor sense of curiosity.

Because that is what Crimes Of The Future is. An exercise in the development of ideas about human evolution and the evolution of the environment, remotely different from most visually spectacled sci-fi. The different political factions of performance artists, the commercial sniveling bureaucracy of The National Organ Registry, and the mutated plastic-eating members of society are thickly veiled satires of the difference between art and commerce and how Tenser, through his performance art, is trying to straddle that line. Maybe, in the end, even he succumbs to the temptation of art. This exercise in ideas is suitably carried by Viggo Mortensen and Lea Seydoux, who are acting at the perfect wavelength which Cronenberg desires. Kristen Stewart, however, plays the manic version of Princess Diana in Spencer, and it is extremely distracting, while Scott Speedman shows sparks of passion and insanity not unfamiliar with the world Cronenberg has crafted. It is a fascinating movie, which will satisfy the Cronenberg diehards. I only wish it had more visceral energy and the sticky bloody warmth you would expect from a film where surgery is the new form of pleasure.

See More: Crimes Of The Future Ending, Explained: What Happens At The Live Autopsy Performance? Is Saul Dead Or Alive?

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'Crimes Of The Future' Review: David Cronenberg's Experiment In World-Building And Idea Generation | DMT - DMT

Five Hindu ways of life world needs to learn for peace, prosperity and happiness – Firstpost

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There are several Hindu principles which the world has adopted from Hinduism and there are many which the world needs to adopt so as to make it a better place to live

Celebrating Hindu way of life.

Hinduism is the oldest existing civilisation in the world. The interesting thing is that besides being the oldest, it is a resilient and ever flourishing civilisation, too. Have you ever wondered why this civilisation has survived and is still blooming? The answer lies in its civilisational ethos. Hinduism is not a religion; it is a way of life. With the march of civilisation, the Hindu-intellect evolved certain values, principles, creeds and beliefs. This Hindu way of living is based on these core values and fundamentals which make it ever growing and sustaining. There is a basic underlying value-system which has enabled this civilisation to survive for over 5,000 years. Interestingly, these values have been assimilated in our culture in such a way that they have become part of our daily lives. These ways of life are termedSanatani(beginning-less) since they are beyond time and space and are universal in their applicability.

There are many Hindu principles which the world has adopted from Hinduism and there are many which the world needs to adopt so as to make it a better place to live. The following are a few of them:

Extended family as a life value

National Geographic researcher and Blue Zones founder Dan Buettner discovered that communities with most centenarians have one thing in common: Making family members and other loved ones among the daily priorities. As per this research, time spent with family is a wise investment which can add up to six years to your life expectancy! Living in an extended family is one of the important values of Hinduism.

The Hindu concept of life is not a life based on individualism per se, but a life which is based on family-ism. It is not the individual but individual in family who is the basic unit of Hindu identity. Family is a pivot on which the whole Hindu way of life revolves. It is in the family that a Hindu-individual is born, groomed and gets his value system. Living in a family makes your life stress-free and gives psychological support to excel.

Hindu parents are duty bound to raise their children and take care of ageing parents. This unit of family is generally an extended family in which though all the members may not be living under the same roof but enjoy very close emotional bonds. You cannot conceive of any Hindu family without family as the basic unit.

Respecting parents and elders

A child is groomed to respect, care and obey his parents and grandparents. Lord Ram gave up his kingdom for the sake of his fathers vow. Parents for any Hindu child are living Gods. Indian legends have the example of Shravan Kumar who shouldered his blind parents to all the holy cities. Out of father and mother, mother is given more respect since she is the birth-giver.

Unlike many Western cultures where parents are disobeyed, it is hard to think of any Hindu child disobeying his parents. The other social value is respecting elders. The elders may include uncles, aunts (both paternal and maternal), other elders of the family, and elders in general. The teacher is worshiped as a guru and is given equal respect as parents. A guru is a mentor, friend, philosopher and guide for his students and is revered as such.

Respecting guests

You will not find such a welcoming attitude towards guests in any culture where the latter are hailed as gods. The underlying thought of Hindu-philosophy isAtithi Devo Bhav(Guests are Gods). The visiting guest is given utmost respect and care. This value is imbibed right in the family culture and has been ritualised as a tradition. This is one of the reasons why the Hindu civilisation has been so receptive to all the incoming cultures and giving space to accommodate them all. India is home to all the major six religions of the world and people from other religions have settled here because of the accommodative ethos of Hinduism.

Co-existence with other beings

Going to temple and reciting prayers is a daily ritual for many Hindus. The most interesting part is the recitation of the prayers ending with two axioms Parniyon Mein Sadbhavna Ho (let all living beings live in peace with each other) and Vishva Ka Kalyan Ho (Let the whole world prosper). The Hindu is not concerned about me, myself or fellow human beings only.Praniyonmeans all living creatures, including birds, animals, plants, trees, etc. Even the Panch-Tatva which are five basic elements of life water, air, earth, space and fire are considered living entities and are hailed and worshiped as such. A Hindu worships rivers, mountains, fire, forests, sky, et al. As for Vishva Ka kalyanHo, it means that a Hindu is not only concerned with fellow countrymen, but prays for the well-being and welfare of the whole universal; this is true humanism and universalism.

The world needs to learn these cultural values which are the core ethics of Hinduism.

The writer is an independent columnist. Views expressed are personal.

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Why Artists Are Returning to ‘Oceanic Thinking’ – ArtReview

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With an increasing glut of water-themed exhibitions, the artworld is taking a compelling, aquatic turn

The ocean provides a model to accommodate change and unpredictability, to sway back and forth between, and ultimately to transcend, numerous disciplines, writes curator Stefanie Hessler in her essay Tidalectic Curating (2020). Proffering a radical premise for an alternative artistic practice, one that looks towards an aquatic, rather than telluric, form of posthumanism, Hessler invokes a term first coined by Barbadian writer and poet Kamau Brathwaite to describe a singular ontology linked to the oceans tidal movements in his words, the ripple and the two tide movement, which leads, above all, to a rejection of the notion of dialectic (and its three-part structure of thesis, antithesis and synthesis). More importantly, Brathwaites thinking allows for a construction of identity that moves away from traditional anchors in time and place, to propose a new, fluid form that crossed oceans and continents. Its this thesis that thinkers and curators like Hessler gravitate towards. As she says, by following the thought of Brathwaite one may find oneself immersed in a hybrid worldview from the oceans, with their surfaces as much as in their depths.

Hesslers exploration of what has become more generally termed critical ocean studies or blue humanities, by scholars such as Elizabeth Deloughrey (who, along with Hessler, spoke at the Oceanic Imaginaries conference held in March at the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam) and Philip E. Steinberg, signals a compelling, aquatic turn in posthumanist critique of the last decade, and one that had been absent throughout large swathes of twentieth-century theory outside the narrow purview of the environmental activist movement. But the current exothermic transformations to the worlds hydrosphere have drastically rewritten the material imaginary of water and its relation to the terrestrial bios. Such changes are clearly visible in the aquatic-themed works of contemporary multimedia artists such as Superflex (Flooded McDonalds, 2009, and Dive-In, 2019), David Gumbs (Water & Dreams, 2014), Julien Creuzet (mon corps carcasse, 2019) and Elise Rasmussen (The Year Without a Summer, 2020).

Critical ocean studies water-borne imaginaries, however, have ventricles that stretch back far beyond a twenty-first-century eco-poetics. In fact, much of the current artistic fascination with these imaginaries is indebted to a premodern worldview, in which climate was often associated with a sublime, and leaky, volatility. In Gumbss experimental film, for example, a fluid collage of vivid, computer-generated colours and effects overlaid on video of tide pools and slow-motion droplets of liquid produces a sensation of immersive virtuality what might be called the image of digital wetness. Yet Gumbss techno-uterine fantasy is largely indebted to Gaston Bachelards 1942 text of the same name, in which the mercurial French philosopher conceives of a water mind-set that distinguishes between an ancient Heraclitean flux, and the Socratic metaphysics that dominated Western thought for centuries. [Water] is the essential, ontological metamorphosis between fire and earth, he writes. [It is an] element more feminine and more uniform than fire, a more constant one which symbolizes human powers that are more hidden, simple and simplifying. For Gumbs, as for Bachelard, the water mindset is closely linked with an atavistic and maternal reverie, an experience that precedes the moderns emphasis on conscious thought and contemplation.

Despite its reputation as an urtext on water (Bachelards Water and Dreams is the second in a four-part collection he published on the elements), the philosophers work is not ahistorical; rather, it is rooted in a Romantic tradition of climatology and hydrophilia, which often employed the theme of water to blur the edges between artistic innovation and private fantasy. This lineage includes the Surrealist-inspired, painterly films of Jean Painlev, Jean Vigo and Jean Epstein; the proto-Oulipo novels of Raymond Roussel; the nautical, poetic-prose of Jules Verne, Charles Baudelaire and Jules Michelet; as well as the musical impressionism of Claude Debussy, Maurice Ravel and Lili Boulanger. They helped to prologue what Deloughrey (2020) would describe as critical ocean studies rich maritime grammar of swirling interdisciplinarity.

Rasmussens film The Year Without a Summer is similarly rooted in a Romantic-era history of water and climate, drawing comparisons between the global crisis of the Anthropocene and the colonial-era crisis instigated by Mount Tamboras 1815 eruption on the island of Sumbawa. The subsequent anomalies in aerosols, cold temperatures and rain lingered over Earth for years, with food shortages reaching as far afield as Ireland and Switzerland, while inadvertently helping to inspire the late-Gothic tradition in literature and painting. The emergence of murky seascapes and cloudscapes, like Caspar David Friedrichs Two Men by the Sea (1817) and J.M.W. Turners 181618 sketches (later published as The Skies Sketchbook), created at the height of Tamboras atmospheric fallout, show how the centurys increasing fascination with a water mindset was softening boundaries between traditional landscape and colour field, figuration and abstraction. This would reach its culmination in the liquiform abstractions of James McNeill Whistlers Thames nocturnes and the lacustrine impressionism of Claude Monet.

[Maritime mythologies] show us that the 19th century was an epoch of great speculations about the elements, German theorist Peter Sloterdijk writes in Neither Sun nor Death (2011). He points to the expansion of colonialism and the technologisation of shipbuilding for the eras changing relationships to the sea, in which the sublime was remodeled into the Titanesque [A]n ocean appears as a giant matrix, an immense test tube, as an immeasurable incubator. It is this contest between Titanic mastery and dissolution that characterised a Romantic poetics of water, or what cultural historian Howard Isham (2004) calls oceanic consciousness. As the paradigm of that mastery, the ship appeared not only as an image of colonial-era technology but also that of safe enclosure, a finite habitat against the vast, liquid unknown, according to Roland Barthes (1957), for whom Vernes Nautilus submarine in Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (1870) is mans ideal, seaward living room.

In this sense, the iconography of the ship continues to appear in contemporary works like Superflexs mesmerising Flooded McDonalds, a film in which a fast-food restaurants self-contained interior is slowly submerged in water, sending all of its trademark scenography, food and plastic wrappings into a swirling vortex. As a miniature parable of a cataclysmic weather event, it also evokes the Romantic fantasy of the sinking ship on turbulent seas, a particularly popular Dutch subgenre of painting further dramatised by both Turner (The Wreck of a Transport Ship, 1810) and Friedrich (The Sea of Ice, 182324). Or in the followup, Dive-In, the group erects a coral reef-like megalith in the water-parched Coachella Valley and projects underwater images taken from onboard Dardanella (the research ship of TBA21-Academy, founded by art collector and activist Francesca Thyssen-Bornemisza, and of which Hessler was a curator, 201619), thus creating a cinematic aquarium on the desert floor. While the project suggests both the deep history of the valleys Lake Cahuilla and the future ruins of an apocalyptic sea-rise, it also recalls eighteenth- and late-nineteenth-century panoramic devices like the Eidophusikon (which often exhibited seascapes) or Hugo dAlesis Marorama. DAlesis protocinematic tourist attraction was erected for the 1900 Paris Exposition and allowed visitors to sit in a lifesize cruise ship, where they could view a hydraulic backdrop of the Mediterranean shore scrolling across the deck accompanied by artificial fragrances and mechanical soundscapes of sea travel. Like Vernes vision of the Nautilus, dAlesi aspired to craft a floating living room for the Romantics oceanic consciousness.

Vernes descriptions aboard the Nautilus also hinted at the nineteenth-centurys orientalised visions of Eastern waters. In the second section of Twenty Thousand Leagues he writes of the Indian Oceans surface as largely uninhabited by ships or sailors except for a floating graveyard of bodies that flows from the Ganges. Despite this, the sea itself is filled with plentiful treasures waiting to be discovered; and sharks, from which Captain Nemo saves a helpless Indian oyster diver, declaring him an oppressed compatriot. This depiction by Verne was based upon a prevalent, Eurocentric travel narrative that reduced the Afro-Asian worlds cultural and commercial infrastructures to an undifferentiated tribal paradise ripe for harvesting. In fact, the Indian Oceans trade winds and early shipping technologies had created a littoral network that contested European imperial power in both size and innovation, and contained its own oceanic imaginaries. It was only by the nineteenth century that European traders, buttressed by vast militaries and indentured labour, were able to gain control of South Asian shipping routes and attain global dominance of the oceans. Not coincidentally, the nineteenth century also saw the invention of the historical category of the Indian Ocean by Europeans, according to Indian Ocean studies scholar Rila Mukherjee (2013). It is along these same lines that creative mapmaking works like Yonatan Cohen and Rafi Segals Territorial Map of the World (2013) and Izabela Plutas Oceanic Atlas (vanishing) (2020) reimagine the apparatus of Western cartography in stratifying the borders between land and ocean, home and antipodes, West and East.

The European ship was also deeply implicated in the abhorrent activity of the Atlantic slave trade, which reached its zenith at the end of the eighteenth century but contributed to much of the wealth, technology and ideology of the nineteenth-century nation-state and those banana republics of the Caribbean archipelago that served as colonial fiefdoms. The Romantics oceanic consciousness contained the repressed memory of African bondage. This is examined in French- Caribbean artist Julien Creuzets video mon corps carcasse, which uses digital animation to simulate the ongoing poisoning of Martiniques tropical landscape through the contemporary plantation system, imaging the fluid absorption of toxins through the populations bloodstream. Here, the microscopic liquidity of the black colonial body draws an explicit link between what Hessler, citing both British theorist Paul Gilroys The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness (1993) and queer studies scholar Macarena Gmez- Barriss The Extractive Zone: Social Ecologies and Decolonial Perspectives (2017), describes as the Wests extractive capitalism and the historical dispossession of the Middle Passage, in which millions of Africans were forced across the Atlantic as chattel slaves. In Creuzets film, as in the work of fellow French-Caribbean poet and critic douard Glissant, the Romantic water mindset must shed its Western fantasies of fixity and power, and embrace an archipelagic ethics of creolisation if it is to become truly tidalectic.

Critical ocean studies absorbs all of these rivulets of water-based imaginaries in an effort to reconsider their place in the contemporary, terrestrial world. With the increasing glut of water-themed exhibitions and scholarship, it appears the nineteenth-century oceanic consciousness has reemerged as a twenty-first-century water mindset. But the formers fantasies of immersion and abstraction have also prefigured the impending climatological crisis and a new, drowning mindset in which the human ship floats precariously on a rising sea.

Elise Rasmussens The Year Without a Summer (2020), Izabela Plutas Oceanic Atlas (vanishing) (2020) and Superflexs Dive-In (2019) are on show in Oceanic Thinking, at the University of Queensland Museum, through 25 June

Erik Morse is a writer based in Texas

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The Overwhelming Of The Evangelical Mind: Information and The Soul’s Limits – Patheos

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In a previous post, I wrote that the Evangelical mind was being split apart. This was in virtue of living amidst two competing camps of philosophical method. Here I address a different yet related issue. It is one causing not so much a bifurcation of the Christian mind, but a devastating fragmentation of it. The source of this fragmentation is the technology available to us, combined with our undisciplined use of it.

The framing question is this: is our technology, and our use of it, overwhelming our mental capacities in such a way that we are suffering emotionally and spiritually? I think this may be the case. If so, we must reconsider this dynamic relationship between human person and human product.

Mind and body have only been strongly delineated since Rene Descartes gave birth to modern philosophy in the 17th century. With Descartes, the infamous mind-body problem emerges on the philosophical scene (well, sort of). Ancient views of the human person could speak both of body and mind, or soul, but not in such compartmentalized terms (with the exception of the Gnostics perhaps, who misunderstood and misapplied Plato). Paulssarx is far more than just the physical body, it has a mental and spiritual component as well.

Thus, the biblical view of the human person speaks about the spirit or soul of man along withthe body. The two are united in an organic synthesis. The God of the Bible made and united body and soul as a means for us to bear His divine image. Just as the physical macrocosmos expresses the majesty of the Creator (Psalm 19:1-6), so to the physical microcosmos that is every human person (Psalm 8:4-8).

Hence the vital importance of Jesus incarnation and His bodily resurrection, as well as the bodily resurrection of all souls at the end of timesome to judgment, some to eternal glory. Gods paradigm creation, the human person, was meant to be eternally physical as well as spiritual. I do not claim that Gods power was limited in such a way as to necessitate bodily existence. God could have made world consisting only of immaterial minds. But Gods freedom in His choice of creation, which is intimately interwoven with His goodness, must be respected.

And so what we do with our bodies matters greatly to the vitality of our soul (or mind). This is a basic truth that every food scientist and dietician knows quite well. Conversely, what we put into our mind affects the health and wellbeing of our bodies. Bad ideas can corrupt our bodies just as immoral bodily acts corrupt our inner self.It is for this reason that Paul, on the one hand, can commend the church in Philippi to do the following:

Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.

Phil 4:8

and then turn around and say this on the other:

What you have learned and received and heard and seen in mepractice these things, and the God of peace will be with you.

Phil 4:9

When piety of thought and physical practice fit together, there is harmony of action, and, for the Christian, God is with us in that action. This is what it means to be moral.

Any athlete who habitually practices thinking about his movements on the playing field knows that this envisioning of what one is about to do physically increases the likelihood of actually doing it. Similarly, envisioning wicked things or entertaining evil thoughts will increase the likelihood of actually doing them. This is how the human person is constructed. This is not to say we will necessarily do all that we think (and thank God for that!). It is however to say that to habitually entertain or imagine something in the mind will facilitate acting it out in the body. Something that is rarely or hardly ever contemplated will rarely if ever be actualized.

We can only begin to imagine how powerful and how good this mind-body dynamic will be when fully redeemed in Christ. Is it too much to think we might be able to create wonderful realities simply by thinking about them, apart from the manipulation of other materials? Only an eternal time in heaven will tell. Of course the corollary to this is what an embodied soul that thinks only evil thoughts will be like given an eternal timescale. I have written about this elsewhere, but it is a consideration that may make the Christian doctrine of hell more comprehensible, especially if we were to take our inner most thoughts, feelings and desires both seriously and at face value.

It is for these reasons, therefore, that we must think hard about technology and how its use can affect our inner lives. As our parents (or grandparents) rightly taught us: garbage in, garbage out. Although it is not only garbage that we must be aware of. The devil is more subtle than that. Not all information we take in is intrinsically bad.

Information can often be good. At least we tend to see the status of being informed as a generally good thing. However, the mind (and body) cannot sustain receiving a constant flow of information without some negative effects. We were not designed to be information processing machines only, although in one sense we are like that. And so we must learn to manage and regulate the amount of information we take in. Otherwise we might find ourselves overwhelmed, perhaps to the point of being incapacitated or, as I said, fragmented. It seems we really can overdose on information. This is something that theologian Robin Phillips has appropriately called Information Fatigue.

I can think of four ways that too much information might negatively affect us (although certainly there are more). If we are not careful, this information overflow can have serious ramifications for our well being. And so we must be sensitive to taking in too much of the following:

Each of these types of information, if not managed well, might facilitate serious mental and emotional illness. Each area of information can affect us negatively in its own way.

Daily we are met with information about the following: wars overseas, mass shootings, domestic violence, racial tension, potential financial collapse, rising costs, growing inflation, global pandemics and devastation due to earthquake, tornadoes, hurricanes, heat waves and forest fires. The first set of issues relates to what moral philosophers and theologians would call human or moral evil. The latter are usually categorized as natural evil or suffering. The first have to do with what cognizant, personal agents do to each other. The latter have to do with what impersonal nature can do to us. There is a third type of evil, demonic evil, which I will not address here (in spite of the fact that it underlies much of the other two kinds).

In addition to seeing all the general evil and suffering of the world, in both religious and non-religious contexts, Christians in particular are constantly reminded of various and sundry moral failures of high-ranking or prominent spokesmenfor the Church. The Church, which is supposed to be the safe-haven from the world, often appears no different than it or even much worse. Thus we are overwhelmed daily with this kind of information. Not only by the numerous atrocities of mankind or the volatility of nature in general, but about evil and suffering within our own Christian context.This can be too much for the mind to process. Moreover, in light of point 4 below, we can feel helpless to do anything about this level or degree of evil.

Of course the problem is not that there is moral evil and natural suffering in the world. The Church has always provided answers to the Problem of Evil in rich and robust ways throughout its history. While that answer may not be adequate for some skeptics, the Christian message of hope and redemption in Christ, in spite of evil and suffering, is still the best solution to the problem the world has yet received.

The problem, therefore, is not evil and suffering per se. Rather it isthe access we have to information about evil and suffering. The amount of evil in the world is likely, although this seems impossible to quantify, no more or less today (adjusted for population size of course) than in the past. In fact, we might assume there is far less suffering today than in the past. As C.S. Lewis was keen to point out: one of the only real differences between us and pre-modern men has been the invention of chloroform (i.e., painkillers). Yet our ancestors physical suffering drove them toward God, while our physical comfort drives us away.

But here is perhaps one other major difference between us and our fore-forefathers: our technology exposes us to a much greater volume and variety of grief. But this is not just grief in generalwhich we always knew existed but grief in particular. We become aware of too many individual stories of tragedy. We know of too many personal examples of real people in real places who suffer real sufferings or commit real evils. For every school shooting in America, there is the story of the numerous victims as well as the story of the shooter himself. Prior generations would only have known about the tragedies in their immediate, localized area of knowledge (e.g., in their villages, townships andmaybe cities).

True, all this global information might motivate us to moral action. But so could seeing the same thing locally motivate us to act. In fact, it is possible that knowing too much information about evil and suffering at a distance might actually hinder us from acting locally. Perhaps we miss what is going on right in front of us, specifically because we are busy reading about or watching horrors from around the world. This dynamic would be inverse, the further back in time one goes and the simpler the technology of the day.

There is one more important point to make about this unparalleled access to information regarding human evil and suffering. That is this: reporting about human wickedness and natural disasters will always outweigh reporting about human goodness and the regular, and very beneficial, operations of natural processes. Rarely will the media report about someone being terribly kind or extraordinarily gracious; or that two individuals or groups treated each other with unusual generosity. Even more rarely will you hear anyone report, at least in spectacular fashion, about how the water cycle yet again functioned in accordance with natural laws today; or how the suns rays once more reliably contributed to photosynthesis, growing the worlds crops; or how there was not an earthquake in this part of the world or a tornado in that part of the country yesterday or last week.

One of the reasons the medieval Roman Catholic church retained Latin as the language of the Church was so that thorny doctrinal issues could be debated behind the scenes, sparing the common man from the intense battle of ideas and terms often required to hash out critical theological judgements. The common man and woman could have their simple religion without being exposed to the long, arduous debates over which doctrines should actually be taught or preached. They could simply benefit from the results of those debates.

Of course the Reformers position was that in spite of the chaos it might cause for a vernacular Bible to be in the hand of every ploughboy and shoemaker, it was nevertheless worth the risk. For the common man to have the Word of God available to him for his daily bread was too great a reward, one that offset the price paid of large-scale theological turmoil. Nevertheless, the Reformation did open the pandoras box of public theological debate, debates that eventually lead to open war. That open war eventually lead to the Enlightenments understandable, albeit unjustified, rejection of revelation and the teaching authority of the Church.

Today, however, we have a very different problem than just vying theological interpretations among denominations or ecumenical traditions. With the rise of the modern research university in the 19th century, the fragmentation of academic disciplines, the abandonment of public Christian education in favor of secular humanism and the dawn of the internet and social media, it is not only debates about Christian doctrines that are public and seemingly endless. It is endless debates about reality itself that now overwhelm us. Having no public authority or consensus view, or even consensus method about how to grasp truth, the contemporary mind is literally fragmented in ways never before in human history.

Even if algorithms are set up to keep us in a particular kind of ideological echo chamber, a problem in itself, the inevitable wave of seeing or hearing point and counterpoint and counter-counter point to every thing we believe in, from the nature of certain human products, like vaccines, to human nature itself can be truly distressing and depressing. Mental health experts, whoever they may be (another problem), have only begun to scratch the surface of this new epistemic situation, one that could only be called chaotic if not outright nihilistic. Too many worldview options may very well just end in the void of never landing anywhere. This post-modern malaise, once contained in the confines of the brick and mortar academy, now spills out into the virtual streets via the internet.

For Christians, this raises numerous question of how to approach information in our continuous search for deeper levels of truth, given the bounds of the biblical revelation. Which studies or news sources do we access for reliable information? Which studies do we go on to cite as either accurately supporting, or genuinely challenging, our prior theological commitments? Which studies or news stories do we allow to shape our worldview? I could go on. Robin Phillips has again done an excellent job addressing this epistemic crisis we now face. Nevertheless that this problem of too much competing information about reality is itself a daunting reality cannot be overstated.

In contrast to number 1, this problem relates to our endless access to mindless, trivial and foolish information. This takes many forms: late-night talk shows, late-late night talk shows and even later night talk shows than those. Then there is the endless stream of sports; of movies (bad ones, usually about comic book or video game characters); of supposedly sophisticated British TV Series, of incoherent, egoistical reality TV shows (The Masked Singer American Idol, The Housewives of Upper Siberia, etc., etc.); of shows that get too particular about incredibly mundane things (baking shows dedicated solely to cupcakes); and so on and so forth.

This list could grow exponentially if we include Youtube channels, Tik Tok, etc. I hesitate to think about how many hours of how many lives have been wasted watching stupid animal videos or just stupid human videos. As I mentioned, this problem is the converse of the first two. It is not the overwhelming of the mind with the serious, the weighty and the significant. It is the spoiling of the mind with the inane a distracting of the soul from all matters of real import. C.S. Lewis summed up this tactic of the devil in his classicThe Screwtape Letters,where the pursuit of nothing of particular importance leads gradually to eternal separation from God:

Nothing is very strong: strong enough to steal away a mans best years not in sweet sins but in a dreary flickering of the mind over it knows not what and knows not why, in the gratification of curiosities so feeble that the man is only half aware of them, in drumming of fingers and kicking of heels, in whistling tunes that he does not like, or in the long, dim labyrinth of reveries that have not even lust or ambition to give them a relish, but which, once chance association has started them, the creature is too weak and fuddled to shake off.

You will say that these are very small sins; and doubtless, like all young tempters, you are anxious to be able to report spectacular wickedness. But do remember, the only thing that matters is the extent to which you separate the man from the Enemy. It does not matter how small the sins are provided that their cumulative effect is to edge the man away from the Light and out into the Nothing. Murder is no better than cards if cards can do the trick. Indeed the safest road to Hell is the gradual onethe gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts.

Seinfeld, one of the most acclaimed TV-series of the 1990s, was self-referentially a show about nothing. Indeed our technology has allowed us to become a culture that is very much about the sameabout nothing.

Finally, all of these have to do in some way or another with a broader category of information. What I mean is that these other sources of information overflow all exist as a subset of a larger domain. That domain could be described as: information about things we cannot really affect or actualize given our circumstance or capacities. In other words, technology opens us up to a world of concrete, particular events and people that seem near to us but actually are at quite a distance.

The conflict in Ukraine might be one example of this. Many can, and have, donated money to the cause of Ukraine on account of technology itself. However, at the same time, there are simply too many aspects of the war that most of us cannot conceivably affect. As I pointed out above, this concern over things we cannot affect might even deter us from focusing on, or even being aware of, some local issue that we can affect (like things going on in our own home or on our block).

But there are also things constantly presented to us that are not just at a physical distance. Instead they exist at a kind of metaphysical distance. For example, I can take in enormous amounts of information about all kinds of potential life opportunities or pathways. This could be information related to exotic travel destination or to exciting career opportunities; or about people who have done extraordinary things (Stephan Curry perhaps) usually on account of their extraordinary abilities. I can consume information about things that I, in reality, could never actualize.

In taking in so much information of this sort, I can be lured into a kind of dream state. It is a state that could fool me into believing I can not only do one of these things but perhaps all of them. I can have a life full of adventurous travel given a career as a black-ops, special forces soldier who also has a lovely home with a faithful wife and five happy, healthy children and, of course, a dog. One can see the problem of having access to information about so many various lifestyle opportunities. It can tempt us to form a composite image of a life that is utterly unrealizable or unactualizable. Moreover, it would be impossible not just for me, but really for anyone.

This sets us up for a very hard fall. Especially if we actually try to pursue one or more of these goals. Moreover, for Christians, it can cause us to lose sight of where God has placed us, what God has given us (ability-wise) and what He has actually called us to be and do. Too much information of this last type can hinder our ability to discern Gods actual call on our life by overwhelming us with the wide array of possible life callings.

In sum, the human person is a holistic creature: body and soul in a unified synthesis. What comes into our minds will have affects on the body. What we do with our bodies will either degrade or elevate our minds. Todays technology is overwhelming us in various ways and our minds were not meant for this abundance of information.

If we do not discipline our use of technology, information of four types can begin to harm us. They can harm not only our individual soul, but the life and well-being of our immediate community. This community starts with our families, then our neighborhoods and our local institutions, to include the local church. I do not have a perfect solution to this very modern problem. Still I am fairly certain we need a better approach to information and we need it soon. If not we may find ourselves on a very gradual slope to a very infernal place.

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The Overwhelming Of The Evangelical Mind: Information and The Soul's Limits - Patheos

70% of 10-Year-Olds now in Learning Poverty, Unable to Read and Understand a Simple Text – Modern Diplomacy

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When Egyptian football legend Mohammed Aboutreika came out swinging against homosexuality in late 2021, he touched a raw nerve across the Muslim world.

The tit-for-tat between Mr. Aboutreika and supporters of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) rights laid bare a yawning gap.

For Mr. Aboutreika and many in the Muslim world, the issue is adhering to their values and rejecting attempts to impose the values of others.

For supporters of LGBT rights and LGBT soccer fans, at stake most immediately is LGBT peoples right to attend the 2022 Qatar World Cup without fear of discrimination or legal entanglement because of their sexuality.

Longer-term, its about ensuring recognition of LGBT rights, including social acceptability, inclusivity, and non-discrimination.

Solving the immediate problem may be the lower hanging fruit. However, it may also open a pathway to what is realistically achievable in the middle term.

The reality is that what may be realistically possible is at best akin to US President Bill Clintons application to gays in the US military of the dont ask, dont tell rule or Indonesias de facto live and let live principle.

That may not be satisfactory, but it may be the only thing that, for now, is possible without putting LGBT communities at risk by provoking public hostility and backlash.

To be sure, autocratic Middle Eastern regimes like Saudi Arabia and Egypt often target LGBT communities for domestic political gain. In addition, the United Arab Emirates, perhaps the Middle Easts socially most liberal society, recently backtracked on LGBT-related issues.

The trick in campaigning for LGBT rights is avoiding playing into the hands of autocrats while maintaining the pressure.

Simply attempting to impose recognition is unlikely to produce results. Instead, a more realistic strategy is to devise ways to stimulate debate in Muslim-majority countries and encourage social change bottom-up to ensure public buy-in.

That worked to a degree as human rights groups, and trade unions used the World Cup to pressure Qatar to make changes to its labour regime. LGBT rights are in a different category and relate more directly, rightly or wrongly, to perceived religious precepts.

As such, what worked with labour rights, even if human rights groups would like to see more far-reaching reforms, is unlikely to produce similar results when it comes to LGBT rights.

Lobbying on behalf of a vast migrant labour force, which has historically been subjected to brutally exploitative practices, has yielded tangible results But there is a long way to go before the rights of a mainly South Asian workforce, from some of the worlds poorest countries, are properly safeguarded, The Guardian noted.

The paper backed proposals by human rights groups and British trade unions for the establishment in Qatar of migrant workers centres, which would offer advice, support and representation in lieu of a trade union, and compensation for relatives of labourers who died while employed in World Cup-related public works projects.

Going to extremes, Saudi Arabia, amid a push to encourage tourism, launched rainbow raids this month on shops selling childrens toys and accessories.

Authorities targeted clothing and toys, including hair clips, pop-its, t-shirts, bows, skirts, hats, and colouring pencils that contradict the Islamic faith and public morals and promote homosexual colours that target the younger generation, said a commerce ministry official.

Earlier, the kingdom, like the UAE, banned Lightyear, a Disney and Pixar animated production, because of a same-sex kiss scene, and Disneys Doctor Strange in the Universe of Madness, in which one character refers to her two mums.

The UAE ban appeared to contradict the governments announcement in late 2021 that it would end the censorship of films. The countrys Media Regulatory Office said it would introduce a 21+ age viewer classification policy instead. However, that wasnt evident when the office tweeted an image of Lightyear, crossed out with a red line.

Human Rights Watch has repeatedly charged that Egyptian police and National Security Agency officers arbitrarily arrest LGBT people and detain them in inhuman conditions, systematically subject them to ill-treatment including torture, and often incite fellow inmates to abuse them.

With the World Cup only months away, Qatar is caught in a Catch-22. In a country where the few gays willing to speak out describe an environment of social and legal discrimination, Qatari authorities would like to see the World Cup finals as an interlude of live and let live.

Qatari officials have insisted in recent years that LGBT fans would be welcome during the World Cup but would be expected to respect norms that frown on public expressions of affection irrespective of sexual orientation.

Paul Amann, the founder of Liverpool FCs LGBT supporters club Kop Outs, met in 2019 with Qatari World Cup organizers before traveling to Doha with his husband to evaluate the situation.

Im very satisfied that their approach is to provide an everyone is welcome ethos that does include respect, albeit through privacy. Im not sure if rainbow flags generally will ever be accepted in-country, but maybe in stadia, Mr. Amann said upon his return.

Mr. Aboutreika put Qatar on the spot when he asserted in November 2021 that our role is to stand up to this phenomenon, homosexuality, because its a dangerous ideology and its becoming nasty, and people are not ashamed of it anymore. They (the Premier League) will tell you that homosexuality is human rights. No, it is not human rights; in fact, its against humanity.

The Qatari parliament and state-aligned media, imams in Saudi mosques, Saudi diplomats, and Al-Azhar, the citadel of Islamic learning in Cairo, rallied to reiterate Mr. Aboutreika s condemnation despite his allegedly Islamist leanings.

Mr. Aboutreikas remarks were in response to Australian gay footballer Josh Cavallo who revived the sexuality debate when he declared that he would be afraid to play in the Qatar World Cup because of the Gulf states ban on homosexuality and harsh legal penalties ranging from flogging to lengthy prison terms.

One of the few players to discuss his sexuality publicly, Mr. Cavallo expressed his concern a month after coming out as gay. Mr. Cavallo said other footballers had privately expressed similar fears.

What is evident in the sexuality debate is that few people, if any, will be convinced by arguments raised by the opposing side in what amounts to a dialogue of the deaf. Both sides of the divide feel deeply about their positions.

For proponents of LGBT rights, the challenge is to develop strategies that may contribute to change rather than insisting on a path that is more likely to deepen the trench lines than produce results for the people it is really about: the LGBT community.

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70% of 10-Year-Olds now in Learning Poverty, Unable to Read and Understand a Simple Text - Modern Diplomacy

West Badin residents want street names linked to Confederacy renamed – The Stanly News & Press | The Stanly News & Press – Stanly News &…

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A group of concerned West Badin citizens have been busy mobilizing to try and get the town council to have a discussion regarding changing the names of several streets in the western part of the town that have ties to the Confederacy.

While many streets in the eastern part of town, including Pine Street, Hickory Street and Elm Street, are named after trees, many of the streets on the western end, which has historically been home to the towns Black community, are named after slave owners and Confederate war heroes such as Lee Street, presumably named after Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee, and Jackson Street, likely named after Confederate Gen. Thomas Stonewall Jackson.

Even though some of the names, like Lincoln and Grant, are named after historical leaders who made noteworthy strides in advancing the cause of freedom for Blacks, the group, which is comprised of around 200 people, wants to decide for themselves what the individual names should be.

The whole idea with that (deciding the merits of each individual historical figure) ishow would you say, Well this person is good and that person is bad when the main issue has been why was a predominately Black neighborhood named after all Caucasian leaders? said Avonda Wilson, one of the organizers of the group. If you want to change one, then you may as well change all of them.

Georgette Edgerton, another organizer of the group, said the streets in West Badin, which have been in place for more than a century, were intentionally named for these historical figures to give the people of West Badin a sense of patriotic citizenry, which in other words means to keep us in bondage.

Well, right now we realize no longer will we be put in bondage, Edgerton added.

The groups efforts comes when cities and towns across the country have been removing statues of Confederate leaders and renaming streets. Several streets in Charlotte with ties to slavery and the Confederacy, for example, were renamed within the past year.

Wilson said conversations about changing the street names has been discussed internally within the community for at least the last 30 years, but only in the past decade has it been brought up publicly before town leaders. No action has been taken on the issue, but members of the group are hoping this time will be different.

The group has been pressing the council to include on its July 12 meeting an agenda item allowing for discussion of the issue. According to information from Badin Town Manager Jay Almond, the council will have a special meeting at 4:30 p.m. Wednesday at the Badin Town Hall to discuss street names in the town, though no members of the public will speak.

At this point, Wilson and Edgerton said, the residents of West Badin are not worried about what the new names should be; they simply want the issue to be discussed and a public hearing to be held during the July council meeting.

All we want them to do is actually just put it on the agenda, Wilson said.

Im praying that the town council will listen to the young people, Edgerton said.

If the council were to allow the names to be changed, Wilson believes the new names should reflect the population that resides within the area. Some ideas brought up include changing streets to honor prominent Black leaders like Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and also to celebrate the towns own Black history by highlighting key local figures.

This was built as a predominately Black neighborhood so if its going to be a predominately Black neighborhood, let the street names be named after predominately Black people, Wilson said.

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West Badin residents want street names linked to Confederacy renamed - The Stanly News & Press | The Stanly News & Press - Stanly News &...

Fairfax could rename Lee Highway, other roads due to Confederate ties – FOX 5 DC

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Fairfax considering changing name of Lee Highway, other roads

Fairfax wants to change the name of Lee Highway, Old Lee Highway and more roads in the city to continue a reconsideration of confederate names.

FAIRFAX, Va. (FOX 5 DC) - Fairfax wants to change the name of Lee Highway, Old Lee Highway and more roads in the city to continue a reconsideration of confederate names.

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The city says they have undergone a year-long process of listening and learning, and now they're ready for action, following the lead of many neighboring communities who are navigating how to put Confederate history in context.

In 2019, the name Jefferson Davis Highway came down from portions of Route 1 in Arlington and Alexandria, continuing a reconsideration of Confederate names and monuments in Northern Virginia.

READ MORE: Nonprofit CEO mysteriously found dead in Fairfax home

Now, Fairfax wants to change the name of 14 streets, including Mosby Road, Plantation Parkway, Confederate Lane, Raider Lane, Reb Street and more. It will be up for a vote in July.

Fairfax County Supervisor Rodney Lusk of the Lee District has also announced plans to introduce a bill to change the district name to Franconia.

"Ive learned that for many of our neighbors that the name Lee District invokes images of the old gravel pits, or footsteps along Huntley Meadows, or pride in the history of the Laurel Grove school,"says Lusk. "However, for others, the name Lee stands for the most recognizable figure of the confederacy General Robert E Lee."

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The council will vote Tuesday on whether to redesign the city seal that currently features Confederate soldier John Marr.

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Fairfax could rename Lee Highway, other roads due to Confederate ties - FOX 5 DC

Reactions to a post-Roe world and more Virginia headlines – Virginia Mercury

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Demonstrations broke out Friday and continued into the weekend in response to the U.S. Supreme Courts ruling overturning Roe v. Wade.Richmond Times-Dispatch, Virginian-Pilot

The ruling becomes another flashpoint in Virginias most competitive congressional contests, joining inflation among the issues that will help determine control of the House of Representatives in November.Richmond Times-Dispatch

Yesli Vega, the Republican nominee for Virginias 7th Congressional District, downplayed the possibility of becoming pregnant as a result of rape at a campaign event last month. Ive actually heard that its harder for a woman to get pregnant if shes been raped.Axios

Lynchburg police are investigating vandalism at a pregnancy center that discourages women from having an abortion. If abortion aint safe, you aint safe was spray-painted on the building and several windows were broken. Fairfax police are also investigating arson and graffiti related to the Roe decision at a Catholic church in Reston.Associated Press, InsideNoVa

Seven members and associates of the MS-13 street gang have been convicted of sex trafficking in federal court after taking in a 13-year-old runaway and coercing her into commercial sex acts in Maryland and Virginia.Associated Press

Attorneys for the Washington Commanders worked to keep a former team executive from testifying about a phone call where he reported a sexual harassment allegation to Dan Snyder and Snyder appeared to brush it aside.Richmond Times-Dispatch

The statewide median sales price for a home surpassed $400,000 for the first time in May.Virginia Business

Nearly a third of people living in the Washington region, including Northern Virginia, struggled to access food last year, according to an analysis by the Capital Area Food Bank.Washington Post

Roanoke Times columnist Dan Casey asked readers for their impressions of the Jan. 6 hearings and was blitzed with responses. Most commonly, readers who responded sounded aghast by what happened, he wrote.Roanoke Times

A federal appeals court denied a request from Mountain Valley Pipeline to have a new panel of judges reconsider permits that have been struck down repeatedly.Associated Press

Loudoun Countys elected chief prosecutor has filed a petition with the Supreme Court of Virginia asking it to overturn an order from a local judge disqualifying the entire Loudoun Commonwealths Attorneys Office from a serial burglary case.Washington Post

A lawsuit is seeking to block a Charlottesville museum from melting down a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee that has already been cut into pieces.Washington Post

Floyd Countys Board of Supervisors voted not to join the New River Valley Passenger Rail Authority, a body formed by a 2021 law to oversee the return of passenger rail to the New River Valley.SWVA Today

A proposed mural to honor local figures in Black history has caused discord, including a walkout of three members, among a Leesburg public art council.Loudoun Times-Mirror

A Virginia Beach couple for whom the Coast Guard had been searching notified officials they were safe and on course for Hampton. The pair had originally been sailing from Hampton to the Azores when their boat was struck by lightning.Associated Press

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Reactions to a post-Roe world and more Virginia headlines - Virginia Mercury

How to open your eyes to racism in the United States | Opinion – Deseret News

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Our family lived in the South, and I fell in love with it.

The architecture, the green, the friendliness, the weather, the mens apparel (need I mention bow ties, boat shoes and seersucker?). And an air so heavy with moisture it wraps you like a blanket. For a woman from the desert, it was heaven.

The home we rented during our four years in Richmond, Virginia, was six blocks west of one of the most beautiful tree- and mansion-lined streets Ive ever seen Monument Avenue.

The avenue was aptly named for the large statues set atop huge and gorgeous marble platforms, with men regally mounted on horses or standing on powerful legs with outstretched arms.

The faces of these elevated men were unrecognizable to me, a Westerner, as were most of the names. I had to look them up.

Contrary to my expectations of the familiar Washingtons and Lincolns of the era these men were heroes of the Confederate States of America.

I remember being weirded out. The contradiction between the beauty of the statues and the avenue, and these mens attempt to protect the institution and practice of enslaving humans, did not have a natural resting place in my mind.

Still, Monument Avenue became the corridor of my life in Richmond. It was the route I drove to visit my husband, who was working more than 100 hours a week at the hospital downtown.

Its shady sidewalks were the path along which I pushed a large blue double-stroller, filled with small children, on morning runs.

I loved that street. I was forever willing to drive or walk an extra few minutes if it meant I could be on Monument Avenue.

And as time passed, I became more and more accustomed to the grand men of the confederacy hovering over me.

In my years in Richmond, I remember wondering how other people in a city with a population made up of 46% African heritage (Black), 45% Anglo heritage (white) felt about those statues.

I never asked.

Despite many of my husbands co-residents and co-workers being Black, as well as many of his patients, I didnt ask. Despite my life being filled with young moms and neighbors who were Richmond natives, all white, I never asked.

I wish I had.

I understand now that I was an outsider looking in at Richmond that the shock I felt at first seeing those statues, gradually faded. I understand that there is something miraculous about being on the outside, like you can see the flaws and the beauty of something that insiders take for granted or become too-used-to to notice.

It took me moving, getting out of the hustle of tiny children, out of the city with the hovering statues and putting the effort in to reading about law and history and individuals stories to realize that policies can change, but I, as a person, must change as well to make a concrete difference. Especially in regards to racism.

I have observed and been a part of many conversations about race since June 2020, after the infamous murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, that finally alerted so many of us to the fact that there is work to be done.

These conversations have been with an incredibly wide range of people from every heritage and persuasion extremely conservative to extremely liberal, loving to angry, hopeful to despairing.

It has been a necessary time of torment over the social construction of race. I view this unrest as positive movement toward finishing work that most of us wish had been done centuries ago.

Juneteenth, the day marked to celebrate the emancipation of enslaved people in America, was this month. It is a day when the words in our beloved Declaration of Independence, We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness, became truer.

It is truly something worth celebrating.

And I pray that our generation is the one that can see racism as an outsider.

Emily Bell McCormick is the founder and president ofThe Policy Project/Utah Period Project, a nonprofit organization that works to strengthen communities by implementing healthy policy. McCormick, a Utah native, and her husband live in Salt Lake City with their five children.

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How to open your eyes to racism in the United States | Opinion - Deseret News

Civil War buffs to gather Saturday in Westminster for annual commemoration of Corbit’s Charge, a Civil War battle fought on Main Street – Baltimore…

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On Saturday, area history buffs will descend on Westminster for the annual commemoration of Corbits Charge, also known as the Battle of Westminster.

The battle took place on June 29, 1863 as part of the Gettysburg Campaign of the American Civil War. Saturdays event commemorates the tragedy of war that took place on Westminsters streets, according to the Pipe Creek Civil War Round Table, which organizes it.

Historical displays, infantry demonstrations, tours of historic sites, film screenings, a procession and gravesite services are planned throughout the day, beginning at 10 a.m.

We have a little bit of everything for anyone who is interested in local history, said Steven W. Carney, of Westminster, the event committee chairman. The event is meant to be educational and raise awareness of Carroll Countys rich Civil War history.

According to the groups website, the Battle of Westminster included 108 Union troops from companies C and D of the 1st Delaware Cavalry clashing against 5,000 Confederate Cavalry troops under the command of J.E.B. Stuart at the Junction of Washington Road and Main Street. It was named Corbits Charge after Capt. Charles Corbit, who bravely led the Union troopers into the fight. Although the battle was a Confederate victory, this act of suicidal bravery on the part of the inexperienced and outnumbered Union troopers helped to impede J.E.B. Stuarts ability to link up with the Confederate infantry in Pennsylvania. This was a contributing factor in the Union Victory at the battle of Gettysburg, according to the Pipe Creek Civil War Round Table website.

This year marks the 20th commemoration of the battle. The first event was held in 2003, a combined effort of the City of Westminster, the Pipe Creek Civil War Round Table, the Historical Society of Carroll County, and other groups, Carney said. Since that original event, it has been held in several locations and has taken a variety of forms, he added.

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This year, attendees can look forward to a activities for visitors of all ages. For children, an activity booklet and junior historian program will be available, along with many hands-on activities, Carney said.

Historical displays will include artifacts and weapons, uniforms and artillery. Local artisans will have wares for sale. Jeff Leister, known as the Tin Man, will bring his tinware and Rick Barrick , The Log Cabin Caner, will have his chair caning products on offer.

The 1st Maryland Artillery and the 3rd Maryland Infantry will help to bring history alive through infantry demonstrations. Film screenings will include The Road to Gettysburg and a new documentary on Corbits Charge.

A memorial service is planned at the Corbits Charge Monument near the courthouse to recognize the sacrifice of the Civil War-era civilians of Westminster as well as the soldiers of both the Union and Confederate Armies, according to the round tables website. The service concludes at the graveyard of Westminsters Ascension Episcopal Church, 23 N. Court St., with the laying of wreaths on the graves of two Civil War veterans, 1st Lt. John Murray, a Confederate killed during Corbits Charge, and Samuel Butler, Co. C 32nd Inf. U.S.C.T. , of the Union Army.

We are also proud to have representatives from the Ellsworth Cemetery to discuss its history and their efforts to preserve it, Carney noted.

Ellsworth Cemetery is a historic Black cemetery in Westminster, created on Dec. 21, 1876 when six Black Union Army veterans sought to provide a burial place for the Colored residents of Westminster, Maryland, according to the Community Foundation of Carroll County. The cemetery contains about 200 graves.

The event will be held from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., Saturday, and will be centered at Westminster City Hall, 1838 Emerald Hill Lane. For more information about the event, go to http://pipecreekroundtable.org.

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Civil War buffs to gather Saturday in Westminster for annual commemoration of Corbit's Charge, a Civil War battle fought on Main Street - Baltimore...

‘53% Of’ review examining the similarities on different sides of the aisle – New York Theatre Guide

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In light of Friday's SCOTUS ruling that overturned Roe v. Wade and its protection of abortion rights nationwide, Steph Del Rosso's semi-satirical political drama53% Ofnow inches closer to a horror play. The show kicks off in December 2016, and in 2022, where it could just as easily be set, it reminds us of the grave, lasting effects of that election. That said, it shouldn't take a catastrophic ruling for a play to pack a punch. 53% Ofis assembled from a collection of political talking points from both sides that, by now, feel worn thin.

53% Of centers around two small coalitions. The conservative Women for Freedom and Family moms' group of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, represents the 53% of white women who voted for Donald Trump as president in 2016, and a liberal allyship group of 20somethings in Brooklyn represents the other 47%. We begin with the moms in a quaint suburban home throw pillows embroidered with "Home Sweet Home," photos of kids, a fireplace at a meeting to decide who should introduce the newly elected president at an upcoming school visit.

Here, Del Rosso plays to the expected audience's (urban liberals) most stereotypical view of Trump voters, peppering the women's conversation with fear-mongering talk of "illegal aliens" and aborted children, and derisive doubt toward a local teenager who claims she was raped. We're meant to dislike them especially PJ, who shows up proudly sporting a Confederate flag sweatshirt.

PJ, though, introduces a class war, as even her fellow Republicans in the room are put off by her clothing choices and brash way of speaking. A similar, subtler war emerges in the second half of the show, in which we pivot to the cramped Brooklyn apartment where the liberal activists are planning their next event. However, they spend most of their meeting quibbling over whether the others are being progressive "correctly" and spend the other half performing a "white guilt ritual" that's meant to help them confront their own prejudices.

Del Rosso's intended takeaway is clear: neither Republican nor Democratic white women are a monolith, and the two parties aren't as different as they may believe themselves to be. As portrayed in 53% Of, both groupshave the catty, competitve dynamic of a high school clique, and their preoccupation with respectability and being a "better"conservative or liberal than the others means neither deserves to act morally righteous. It also prevents them from doing any effective work, whatever their cause may be. Performative activism and inaction, the showposits, are just as bad as openly supporting harmful actions.

For me, a social media-saturated Gen Z-er, all this rang true and relevant, but added little new to the conversations that have dominated my feeds for the past two years. The show offers little insight into the failings of white people, intentional or not, that many young audiences especially, and certainly POC of any age, have likely been exposed to.(The singular, token-ish POC character, RJ, exemplifies this, as she's contradictorily given a monologue aboutnot relying on POC to validate and educate us, which is seemingly meant to educate us.)

This also points to another issue 53% Of, which is written by a presumably liberal white woman,appears to be for audiences of liberal white women. For that specific group,53% Ofworks best as an intro-level reminder to check our biases and, to use a platitude, "do better." But it doesn't take a strong stance on what a different or better path forward looks like. While well-intentioned and well-acted, it's not the political theatre we need.

53% Of is at the McGinn/Cazale Theater through July 10. Get 53% Of tickets on New York Theatre Guide.

Photo credit: Grace Rex, Cathryn Wake, Marianna McClellan, and Anna Crivelli in 53% Of. (Photo by Joan Marcus)

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'53% Of' review examining the similarities on different sides of the aisle - New York Theatre Guide

What would you have done if a freedom seeker had knocked on your door? – York Daily Record

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Jim McClure| York Daily Record

Tour historic 18th century Mifflin house in 2016

The Mifflin House is a stone Hellam Township farmhouse with much of its original interior, as it was in the 18th century

Paul Kuehnel, York Daily Record

A member of the audience who had sat through my hourlong Riverfest presentation on a 90-degree Sunday showed he caught my big theme.

Big moral decisions confronted those living in York and Lancaster counties in the Civil War era.

After I had finished my talk on the Underground Railroad and Hellam Townships preserved Mifflin House, he told me that he was glad that I had concentrated on matters of right and wrong in the 1860s and before.

We need that today, he said. Particularly today.

He was saying that a consideration of thorny issues from the past might help us in this day of sorting through complex matters being brought to bear in the public square.

His remarks were gratifying and indicate that people are hungry to understand serious history, even under a withering sun on the green lawn of the John Wright Restaurant in Wrightsville.

I presented about 10 decision points facing people in the Civil War era, leading with a case that likely confronted countless York County residents at night: At their door, many would have faced distressed individuals or families of freedom seekers, enslaved people in flight from bondage using the loose network of safe houses called the Underground Railroad.

The context is that aiding such weary travelers could have been an act of civil disobedience, a willful breaking of state or federal law. It could have meant imprisonment, fines or both.

I asked the Riverfest audience to use the four Ds as a memory device.

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Would they have denied the weary traveler, simply closing the door? Or even reported him to authorities. Would they have delivered the freedom seeker, inviting him in for food and lodging and then safely guide him along his way?

Or would they have delayed or distributed aid, offering a measure of help without unduly risking exposure of family and farm to legal authority? In this case, a property owner might say that the traveler could stay on the edge of his property and rest for a couple of hours and then proceed alone to a known safe house. Or give biscuits and milk to restore strength but ask them to be on their way.

Well return to these options deliver, deny, distribute or delay in a minute.

A sampling of other decision points that I presented at Riverfest:

If you were enslaved in Maryland or northern Virginia, do you run for freedom and face the threat of a beating or death or stay enslaved and live in bondage?

Those two states are useful in this discussion because they were homes to large populations of enslaved people and proximate to the Mason-Dixon Line. About 87,000 enslaved people were listed in Marylands census in 1860 and about 491,000 in Virginia.

York County would have been a destination, with its 40+-mile border with Maryland and promise of multiple routes to the Susquehanna. Relative safety awaited those crossing the river.

Maps show York County as host to major Underground Railroad routes, and historian Scott Mingus has identified at least 20 safe houses in the county.

York County would not have offered real safety from enslavers, so a freedom seeker would not gain liberty until reaching Canada or having traveled a considerable distance from the Mason-Dixon Line.

State and federal laws aside, the majority of York countians in the Civil War era were not in accord with the war or the practice of freeing enslaved people. In other words, county residents would have offered a mixed bag of assistance, if any, to freedom seekers.

A.B. Farquhar, a factory owner who hired a substitute to serve for him in the Civil War, gave insight about the county view of slavery. He wrote in 1922 about John Browns raid on Harpers Ferry and its failed goal of causing a slave insurrection. Farquhar said that enslaved people did not understand revolt, that they were, in the main, more interested in three meals a day than in political theory .

But there was a worthy minority Society of Friends (Quakers), free Black people and others who risked everything to aid those on the run.

S. Morgan Smith, a Moravian pastor who served as a Union Army chaplain in the war, was one of those who preached abolition. Smith like Farquhar, a noted York County industrialist after the war asked in a sermon one Sunday: Who are the persons who unjustly bind with the fetters of bondage and oppress him to the day of his death?

The milewide Susquehanna was a mighty big river for weary bands of travelers to cross without aid.

A survey of fords and ferries was undertaken in 1777, when the Continental Congress members in York feared British troopers would splash across the Susquehanna and capture them. Twice, the survey noted that guides would be needed to steer British raiders across at Wrights Ferry, running between Wrightsville and Columbia: The river is fordable in low water, but it is so wide and the bed so full of rocks and stones that the ford is only of service to those persons who know it perfectly well.

In the years before the Civil War, Robert Loney was one such person who knew it well. He came to York as a free man in 1819, lived in Columbia and knew the tricky river like the back of his paddle. He would guide freedom seekers across, working at great risk with the Mifflin family, who operated a safe house on a hilltop outside Wrightsville.

The Quaker family of Jonathan and Susanna Mifflin came to what is today known as Hellam Townships Mifflin House in the early 1800s.

With their son, Samuel, they operated what one newspaper account in 1913 stated: The house occupied a commanding position and was one of the most noted (Underground Railroad) stations in the country. One account tells about 13 freedom seekers gathered in their parlor for two days because the uncrossable Susquehanna was swollen with rain.

The Mifflin House also served as a Confederate artillery position in the Battle of Wrightsville in late June 1863. In that fight, the Union Armys initial plan was to blow up one span of the milelong covered bridge to stop the attacking Confederates from crossing.

One freedman fought the enemy with a cigar.

One old negro to whom was entrusted the duty of igniting the fuse sat very cooly on the edge of the pier smoking a cigar, Mingus wrote, citing a newspaper account at the time.

He faced 1,800 seasoned Confederates without panic.

In contrast, the day before, Farquhar, part of a group of panicking city fathers facing the Confederate invasion force, had sought out the enemy and cut a preliminary deal to surrender York.

Alone, and without authority to speak for the council, Mingus wrote, he rode off (to Abbottstown) in the early afternoon.

About 15 years ago, excavation had started in three places at the base of Highpoint, starting a sweeping land-use controversy known as Lauxmont. An order from government came for the developer to stop this high-end residential development on this prime river view property.

After years of complex litigation, Highpoint and Native Lands county parks emerged for public use. That started a cascading series of heritage projects that included Long Levels Zimmerman Center and the designation of the river region as the Susquehanna National Heritage Area, under the National Parks Service.

The Susquehanna National Heritage Region recently teamed up with Preservation Pennsylvania and the Conservation Fund to save the Mifflin House from demolition.

Instead of being cleared for warehouse use, the Mifflin House farmstead will become a regional welcome center and Underground Railroad historic site. Early planning calls for a trail to run from the house to the Susquehanna, replicating a possible path that freedom seekers took to meet up with Robert Loney.

At Riverfest near the end of my presentation, I asked the audience about which of the Ds they would choose if faced with that knock at midnight from a stranger on the run.

One member said he would seek a way to help in some way but would not put his family at risk from imprisonment or fines the middle ground of delaying and distributing.

Another audience member, a Quaker, said she would go the full route in helping a freedom seeker an act of delivery.

To the question of whether any audience member would deny or refuse any aid to a struggling traveler at the door, not a single person raised their hand.

With these cases from history after benefiting from examples in which weve done the right thing were now in a better position to not be deniers, to make a right moral decision.

Arent we?

Sources: Scott Mingus The Ground Swallowed Them Up and Guiding Lights: Underground Railroad Conductors in York County, Pa.

Jim McClure is the retired editor of the York Daily Record and has authored or co-authored nine books on York County history. Reach him at jimmcclure21@outlook.com.

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What would you have done if a freedom seeker had knocked on your door? - York Daily Record