Some other writer made an interesting character who’s name was translated as:
As a color, shade of purple.
A memorable … As a mauve kind of punny.

“If it squirms, it’s biology. If it stinks, it’s chemistry. If it doesn’t work, it’s physics. And if you can’t understand it, it’s mathematics.” ? Magnus Pyke

All I know about science I learned on the internet (applied math aka stats, computer programming, and political science degrees here).

You might enjoy this Asimov story, which combines Biblical and Scientific viewpoints.

https://bigbible.org/sansblogue/ot/pentateuch/genesis/creation-just-six-days-asimov-explains/

Asimov’s “How it happened”
https://bigbible.org/sansblogue/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/Asimov.pdf

Well, it took physicists finding QM to finally help the chemists understand what they were finding. They made the periodic table but until QM there was not real understanding of what it meant. So, I would say the hierarchy of physics as the basis for chemistry, and chemistry the basis for biology holds. I give credit to chemists and also biologists for making sense out of some extremely complex systems. I prefer to stick with the much simpler physics.

As the researchers note, the fact that most coronavirus clusters and outbreaks occurred indoors is not particularly surprising given the Chinese government’s enactment of stay-at-home orders. But while the study “does not rule out outdoor transmission of the virus, ”it notes that “among our 7,324 identified cases in China with sufficient descriptions, only one outdoor outbreak [transmission] involving two cases [infections] occurred.”

I believe Asimov was a Chemist by training, but I often wonder if Physics is a subset of Chemistry, or vice versa 🙂 .

I just checked on Amazon. You can buy new and used copies of the book. I think it is also sold separately (Old and New Testament), but I’m not sure if the individual copies are still available. You probably know Asimov wrote over 500 books in his lifetime. It’s an inconceivable sum. I’ve read a few of them. His “Understanding Physics” (a compilation of three separate volumes) is one of my favorites, although you would likely be a much harsher critic than I. I’ve bought copies for several musician friends who were struggling with understanding the nature of sound. His explanation on that topic is the best I’ve encountered for a laymen’s understanding.

Rufus: I had never heard of the Asimov book. I’ll have to get it. Someone once said that inside every physicist is a philosopher, and I have been indulging that aspect since retirement. For exactly the same reasons you listed, I wanted to delve into the Bible a bit more, and the Asimov book looks like the way to go.

Since the Bible figures so prominently in so much of Western literature and art I tried several times to get through it so I could understand all the references to it that I encountered in so many other works. (I did the same thing with Greek and Roman mythology for the same reason.)

One of my favorite resources for understanding the Bible is Isaac Asimov’s Guide to the Old and New Testament. It’s a staggeringly huge work and, since Asimov is a secular Jew who was a non-believer at the time of its writing, he approaches it with little bias. The Bible seems to be a work few people can discuss objectively. He spends a lot of time on regional history and politics, geography… He even references what other extant histories state about the same time periods and addresses potential translation errors. It’s a heckuva work!

Somewhere after Deuteronomy things started blurring together for me and by the time I got to the New Testament I came up with a shorthand to remember the final 2/3 of the Old Testament:

Israelites: “G*d, things are really rough down here. Can you send us a King to lead us, rather than these Levite priests?”
G*d: “You think that’s what you want, but you really don’t want that…”
Israelites: “But we do. We really, really want a King to tell us what to do.”
G*d: “O.K., Don’t say I didn’t warn you…”
Rinse, repeat.

My wife and I watched the “Ten Commandments” last week. She had never seen it. When Moses was on Ararat and Dathan started convincing the Israelites to abandon him she said, “You mean they just saw the Red Sea being parted and they are going to go back to worshipping a golden calf?!”

Human beings are wacky.

I think many of you will appreciate this recent interview Brendan did with Heather. They discuss political reactions to the Coronavirus outbreak.
https://www.spiked-online.com/podcast/the-brendan-oneill-show/

What neo said. Don’t let hate consume you. It does no harm to your enemies, but plenty of harm to you.

If one could wave a magic wand and remove wrongheaded political ideas from all who currently hold them today, within a generation there would be a whole new population of believers. It is very seductive to believe absolute power and control can save the world.
* * *
Which is why we still read the ancient Jewish accounts of their national history- no matter how often the Lord chastised them for erroneous beliefs and behavior, within a generation or two they were back at the starting line again.