Blogaround

1. Paleontologists discover a 240-million-year-old 'dragon' fossil in full (February 23, via) "It's a fitting discovery in the Year of the Dragon: A team of scientists has uncovered a complete fossil of an aquatic reptile that resembles a 'Chinese dragon' because of its snake-like appearance and elongated neck." Cool!

2. NASA's Mars helicopter Ingenuity has flown its last flight after suffering rotor damage (January 26, via) "The 4-pound (1.8 kilograms) chopper was tasked with demonstrating that powered flight is indeed possible on Mars despite the planet's thin atmosphere — it promptly did so during a five-flight campaign that spring."

3. I didn’t fancy men or women. Then I had a baby (February 13, via) Article about an asexual woman who decided to get pregnant using a sperm donor.

4. What TV Shows Get Wrong (and Right!) About Therapy (November 15) 27-minute video from Cinema Therapy.

5. A ‘Reading Rainbow’ Documentary Is Coming Next Month (February 28) Cool!

6. When Star Trek Confronted Racism Head-On (February 28) 23-minute video about a "Deep Space Nine" episode

7. If Elisabeth Elliot's Marriage Advice was Supposed to Ruin Your Life, This is the First I've Heard It (February 12) "The book is a frankly overheated and occasionally goofy account of two people who, like all young people, have very intense and primarily interior problems that don’t make sense to anyone over twenty-five. Passion and Purity, though, is told through the perspective of a much older woman who actually does seem to agree that these problems are very serious, and that the tortured process of wondering if you’re touching your boyfriend too much or if he loves you too much is actually part of preparation for marriage. How do we make sense of this?"

Blogaround + Happy Chinese New Year!

Chinese dragon, with the text "2024 Happy New Year." Image source.

Happy Chinese New Year! New year's eve was on February 9 this year, and February 10 is the first day of the year of the dragon. 龙年大吉！

Some links related to Chinese New Year:

1. 3 Surprising Things From This Year’s Spring Festival Gala (February 10)

And here's the video of the French song mentioned in the article: 法语音乐剧首登春晚！《巴黎圣母院》选段《美人》太动听 「2024央视春晚」| CCTV春晚

2. 舞蹈《锦鲤》搭配周深的《大鱼》演绎生命的灵动与绚烂 「2024央视春晚」| CCTV春晚 (February 10) Video of the goldfish dance performed at the Chinese New Year gala. The dancers fly around on cables, very cool.

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And links about everything else:

3. Psychology of a Hero: ALADDIN (February 7) 25-minute video from Cinema Therapy. "Aladdin's best self is the one who helped the street urchins and who promised to set Genie free, but then out of fear of losing everything, he rescinds his promise to Genie, he lies to Jasmine, and he just keeps hurting people."

4. 'Obviously Sudokus Only Use Integers'... Hold My Beer!! (January 16) 1-hour-18-minute sudoku solve video. Wow, this one is amazing- it needs algebra. My favorite part is when Simon tries and fails to remember the word "epsilon"- "Oh gosh I used to be all over that stuff when I was young." So relatable. 

5. Tracy Chapman & Luke Combs Deliver Gripping Performance Of "Fast Car" | 2024 GRAMMYs I posted about this last time, but here's the full video.

6. Eyesores or Heritage? Shanghai’s Ubiquitous Laundry Racks (February 13) "Walk around any corner in Shanghai and you will likely see these clothes racks, especially outside traditional lane houses and high-rise condos built in the 1990s." This is so real.

7. Banana Prices (February 9) xkcd comic.

8. Elisabeth Elliot, Flawed Queen of Purity Culture, and Her Disturbing Third Marriage (February 6) [content note: abusive marriage] "Domestic abuse addles the brain. A victim may begin to believe she deserves this kind of treatment, that she could perhaps stop the abuse by her own efforts—if only she were better, prettier, smarter, holier. Through this lens, I have begun to understand the complexity of this elderly woman whose livelihood depended on her teachings about marriage and whose theology shifted so that it matched her reality of suffering, obedience, and surrender. Perhaps she feared the consequences of divorce on her career or reputation."

9. Georgia Senator Vows to Protect Girl, But Then Runs Away After Learning She Is Trans (February 17) "That’s when Kotler spoke to Senator Summers about how she was there with her kids to 'talk to legislators about keeping her kids safe.'"

Blogaround

1. This xkcd comic about credit card rewards. Because this is exactly how I think...

2. Chinese eagerly await return of panda from US zoo (April 11) "But in recent times, Memphis Zoo has been grilled by Chinese netizens over accusations that Ya Ya and Le Le had been mistreated during their stay."

3. World Book Day: A Bookstore for the Blind (April 23) "China is home to 17 million visually impaired people, who often face barriers entering the workforce and even colleges due to a lack of braille exam papers. China only has one braille press, and there were 959 braille libraries nationwide as of 2017, but many people aren’t aware of them."

Also from Sixth Tone: Holiday Hustle: In China, Most Resent Trading Weekends for Time Off (April 25) "Since 1999, the government has created longer vacations by swapping working days with weekends preceding and following the holiday." Yeah, we get 1 day off for May 1 (Labor Day), but they moved the weekends around to make it 5 days in a row.

One criticism I have for Sixth Tone's article- it says "China’s public holiday system, which allows employees to trade weekends for longer holidays" which makes it sound like we have a choice. Lol, no, we don't have a choice. This is the work schedule set by the government. Sunday, April 23 and Saturday, May 6 are work days. If you don't want to work on those weekend days, you have to use your own vacation days for that.

4. Community Memory and the Search for Unassailable Abuse (April 23) "This pressure to turn our worst and most painful experiences into argument fodder is part of what I aimed to highlight in The Glossary & The Gristmill — a post about how our own community is contributing, in part, to why it feels like certain stories can’t be told. When community dynamics dictate that argument fodder is the top priority, that creates inhibitions against sharing our stories."

5. Preston Sprinkle’s strange interview with Sheila Gregoire and Rebecca Lindenbach (April 13) "In one of the creepiest moments of the podcast, Sprinkle told of an experience he had at a local coffee shop." 

Also, Preston Sprinkle hasn't heard of Brio magazine. It was a magazine for teen girls, published by Focus on the Family, which promoted a lot of "purity" teaching. I read it all the time in high school. To be fair, though, Sprinkle's work is more along the lines of "how to pretend to be an ally to LGBTQ people", rather than "here are the reasons women and girls in the church have internalized sexual shame."

6. Mattel unveils a Barbie with Down syndrome (April 25) "'Our goal is to enable all children to see themselves in Barbie, while also encouraging children to play with dolls who do not look like themselves. Doll play outside of a child's own lived experience can teach understanding and build a greater sense of empathy, leading to a more accepting world,' McKnight said."

7. Ex-officer who fatally shot Breonna Taylor hired as a deputy (April 25)

8. The kingdom of heaven is like: Lizzo brings drag queens on stage at her Knoxville show to protest law (April 23)

9. Dragon catches on fire during Disneyland’s ‘Fantasmic’ show (April 23) Wow!

10. Tucker Carlson departs Fox News, pushed out by Rupert Murdoch (April 24)

11. Ranking the Pain of Stinging Insects, From ‘Spicy’ to ‘Shockingly Electric’ (April 24, via) [content note: article has a few images of bugs] This is about Justin Schmidt, a scientist who went around getting stung by various insects (over 1000 times) so he could compare them all objectively. 

4 Biblical Definitions We Need to Defend in the Culture Wars

Red dragon with seven heads. Image source.

Longtime readers may know that I find it endlessly entertaining the way people talk about "the biblical definition of marriage" as if such a thing exists. (Like, do they realize the bible is not a dictionary?) On that note, I'd like to call your attention to these other biblical definitions that Christians really need to defend in the face of an increasingly secular culture.

1. Dragons

Revelation 12:3 gives us the biblical definition of dragons: "an enormous red dragon with seven heads and ten horns and seven crowns on its heads." However, when I did a google image search for "dragon", not a single result matched this description. (I was able to get biblically-accurate dragons by searching "dragon revelation" though.) In our current society, most people are ignorant about what the bible says about dragons, and the images we see in popular movies only serve to reinforce this ignorance.

Bible-believing Christians need to boycott all movies, books, and other forms of media which include depictions of dragons that directly contradict the bible's clear teaching.

2. Racing

In 1 Corinthians 9:24, we find the biblical definiton of racing: "Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one gets the prize?" However, in our godless society, the bible's clear teaching on racing has been all but abandoned. It is incredibly rare to find a race where only one runner is awarded a prize. In the Olympics, for example, medals are awarded to the first, second, and third fastest participants- a blatant attack on the authority of Scripture.

Furthermore, even though the bible only speaks of races with runners, our culture has perverted the idea of racing so much that now there are so-called "races" which involve other types of transportation. We have lost sight of the biblical definition of racing and now have races for cars, bikes, horses, swimmers- where does this slippery slope end? If we don't take a stand for the biblical definition of racing, our culture will surely descend into moral chaos.

3. Doctors

Matthew 9:12 is perfectly clear: "It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick." Yet many modern Christians have abandoned the authority of Scripture, and they go for annual check-ups even though they are not sick. They claim that preventative care is a new concept that Jesus didn't say anything about. Nothing could be further from the truth. Here in Matthew 9:12, we read Jesus' own words- the biblical definition of doctors.

Furthermore, there are many Christians who cite the health benefits of annual check-ups in order to justify their sin. They talk about serious health problems that are much easier to treat if detected early. They elevate their own experience and human emotions above God's word. God is the one who created our bodies. God knows what's best for us. The bible is clear: Only sick people should be making doctor's appointments.

4. Dishwashing

Jesus' teaching in Matthew 23:25-26 is very clear: "Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence. Blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup and dish, and then the outside also will be clean." But our secular culture has all but abandoned this principle. Instead of trusting Jesus' word when he said it is only necessary to wash the inside of a dish, people use soap and water to wash BOTH the inside AND outside. This behavior is widely practiced even by those who claim to be Christians!

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As our culture becomes more and more immoral and loses sight of God's word, we need to be the ones to take a stand. Our future is at stake. Our children's future is at stake.

Happy Dragon Boat Festival!

Dragon boat racing. Image source.

Hi everyone, today is Dragon Boat Festival (端午节 duān wǔ jié) in China! This year it falls on June 20, but it's based on the lunar calendar so it's on different days (around the summer solstice) every year.

On this day, we eat 粽子 (zòng zi) and have dragon boat races. Now, what is a 粽子 (zòng zi), you ask? Behold, some pictures:

Image source.

In the above picture, you can see how the 粽子 (zòng zi) have a tetrahedral shape, and they are wrapped in leaves to be steamed or boiled.

Image source.

This picture shows what's inside the 粽子 (zòng zi). Mostly rice, with some meat or maybe red beans or other flavors added.

The legend behind Dragon Boat Festival is as follows (source: wikipedia):

The story best known in modern China holds that the festival commemorates the death of the poet and minister Qu Yuan [屈原 qū yuán](c. 340–278 BC) of the ancient state of Chu during the Warring States period of the Zhou Dynasty. A cadet member of the Chu royal house, Qu served in high offices. However, when the king decided to ally with the increasingly powerful state of Qin, Qu was banished for opposing the alliance and even accused of treason. During his exile, Qu Yuan wrote a great deal of poetry. Twenty-eight years later, Qin captured Ying, the Chu capital. In despair, Qu Yuan committed suicide by drowning himself in the Miluo River.

It is said that the local people, who admired him, raced out in their boats to save him or at least retrieve his body. This is said to have been the origin of dragon boat races. When his body could not be found, they dropped balls of sticky rice into the river so that the fish would eat them instead of Qu Yuan's body. This is said to be the origin of zongzi.

I didn't race dragon boats or anything today- instead I went to see the new Jurassic World movie (侏罗纪世界 zhū luó jì shì jiè). Because, dragons. I guess?

Here's the cardboard movie ad they had at the theatre.

The movie was in English with Chinese subtitles. It still blows my mind how willing Chinese people are to go see movies in English and then read the subtitles. For Americans, if you have to read a movie, it's not really entertainment, it's more like "let's behold this cultural/historical work of art," right? But American movies are super-popular in China, so, that's the way it is.

My opinion about Jurassic World: Well I wasn't even sure if I wanted to see it or not, because I don't like movies that have violence- and you know this movie is going to have dinosaurs breaking out of their cages and eating people. But I really love dinosaurs, so I figured I should see the movie- if people in mainstream culture are going to be talking about this movie and dinosaurs, I don't want to miss out.

It was an exciting movie, but too violent for me. I liked the parts with the science and genetic research though. And my FAVORITE scene was the part of the theme park where children could ride little triceratops. So cute!!! If they could have just made a movie all about that, I would be totally on board.

And one more photo I took at the movie theatre:

Yeah... 小心地滑 (xiǎo xīn dì huá) should be translated "caution, wet floor" instead of "carefully slide." But whatever.

Anyway, hope you all have a great Dragon Boat Festival! 端午节快乐！