Thank you, dear blogging reader, for tuning in to Day #40 of my “Embrace” series.

Forty is a meaningful number in the Bible.
But its significance is not limited to biblical application.
Forty days:

• is mentioned 146 times in the Bible.
• is used to designate important time periods in the Bible.
• is the number of days before his temptation, that Jesus fasted: “forty days and forty nights” (Matthew 4:2, Mark 1:13, Luke 4:2).
• is the period from the resurrection of Jesus to the ascension of Jesus (Acts 1:3).
• carries significance in today’s world: Minus 40 degrees, or “40 below,” is the only temperature that is the same in both Fahrenheit and Celsius.
• was important in the Middle Ages: when the bubonic plague gripped Europe, ships would be isolated in harbor for 40 days before passengers could go ashore.
• is the origin of words we use in today’s pandemic: The Italian…

Source – motherjones.com

• “…

How the American Diet Turbocharges COVID-19

The pandemic’s toll is further proof that we’re eating ourselves sick.

Before the coronavirus hit in early 2020, a quieter epidemic was already taking its toll across the United States: the near-universal prevalence of diet-­related maladies. More than half of the calories Americans consume come from “ultraprocessed” foods that are shot through with added sugars and fats and are associated with weight gain. Pile those on top of our sedentary lifestyle, and the result is that almost 90 percent of adults have a sign of metabolic dysfunction—including high blood pressure, cholesterol, or blood sugar—and more than 40 percent are obese. In the pandemic’s first five months, the US had a 39 percent higher mortality rate than Europe, where the obesity rate is half ours.

This mess made us vulnerable to the worst aspects of the coronavirus: In the first…

Two waterworks employees manually cleaning the rainwater sewers under Hohenstaufenstraße in Berlin-Schöneberg, 1930). Image via Berliner Wasserbetriebe.

It was a rainy morning in Berlin today so here’s a rain-related fact: did you know that Berlin‘s rainwater sewer system measures 3,300 km? That is approximately the distance between the German capital and the ancient city of Luxor in Egypt.

The stormwater sewers are not the only elements of the underground sewerage system protecting the city from the consequences of excessive rainfall. Berlin can also rely on its 1,900 km of mixed sewers (the older canals, mostly located in the city centre, transporting both household waste water and rainwater when necessary). No to mention the subterranean storage spaces where in case of heavy rains (not unusual in Berlin during the last decade) where the water can be held and subsequently transported to purification stations, instead of allowing it to…

This essay was originally written asEducation by and for Indigenous Australiain Semester 2 of 2020 for ABOR1110, Introduction to Aboriginal Studies, at the University of Newcastle. It has been reformated and slightly revised for this website.

The state of education in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Isander communities prior to European colonisation can be inferred to some significant extent from contemporary Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander education models that have emerged as a result of reflecting on traditional ways of making knowledge.

After developing a context-based model of education for Aboriginal students in Arnhem land to facilitate their completion of year 11 and year 12, Chris Garner took his model to traditional landowners in Arnhem land who said that they’d “been doing that for years” (TEDx Talks, 2011). This context-based education is found in Indigenous education frameworks, such as the Holistic Teaching and Learning Framework developed by Uncle Ernie…