CHICAGO, IL (September 9, 2016) — Covenanters routinely share links to social media articles and videos that Covenant News Service believes may be of interest to others. Each Friday we post five of them. Following is a sample of those submissions—their inclusion does not represent an endorsement by the Covenant of any views expressed.
The Psychology of Star Trek’s Relentless Optimism about the Future
Thursday was the fiftieth anniversary of the iconic Star Trek. Perhaps the world needed the show more than we knew.
From the article: “Most conversations about politics don’t change our mind, but only strengthen our preexisting beliefs. Star Trek, however, manages to bypass its audience’s political defenses because it presents real-world conflicts in ways that we find less threatening. Even today, bringing up the Vietnam War can be polarizing in conversation. But a story about the Federation and Klingons arming opposing tribes on the planet Neural…? That sparks a real discussion, not a shouting match of partisan politics.”
We Are All Noah Now
Noah was ridiculed by his community—and so are people today who are sounding alarms and proposing solutions to match the scale of the impending catastrophe of rapid extinction rates.
From the article: “The dominant theme running through the International Union for Conservation of Nature seminars was the fact that we are bumping up against and piercing planetary boundaries—on forests, oceans, ice melt, species extinctions and temperature—from which Mother Nature will not be able to recover. When the coral and elephants are all gone, no 3-D printer will be able to recreate them.”
Airplane Lands on Wrong Continent
This is what is known as a bad day at the office. Captain Kirk never would have made this error.
From the article: “Carrying 212 passengers, the AirAsia flight bound for Kuala Lumpur on March 10, 2015, was flying in the wrong direction after takeoff from Sydney, because the pilot had manually entered the wrong coordinates of the plane’s position into the flight’s onboard navigation.”
White Male Leadership Persists at Evangelical Ministries
Not only do evangelical organizations trail the business world and other charitable organizations in gender and ethnic diversity—but too often they don’t even seem to care.
From the article: “Hundreds of evangelical organizations were surveyed for the 2014 Women in Leadership National Study. It found that nearly a quarter have no women on their boards and more than half have no women in top positions. These leadership figures are significantly lower than those in the corporate world and the broader charitable world.”
Why Apple Killed the Headphone Jack
You might be sick of hearing about iPhones, but this is a great story about what happens when trying to make radical changes. If it works, you’re a visionary genius who demonstrated great courage. If it doesn’t, then everyone wonders how you could have been so foolish.
From the article: “ ‘Remember, we’ve been through this many times before,’ says Schiller. ‘We got rid of parallel ports, the serial bus, floppy drives, physical keyboards on phones—do you miss the physical keyboards on your phone?…At some point—some point soon, I think—we’re all going to look back at the furor over the headphone jack and wonder what the big deal was.’ ”
