Interested blog readers may remember we noted his death and its personal significance back in December 2007.

Attorneys with the Iowa Attorney General’s Office listed on court filings as representing the university in the lawsuit did not immediately return phone messages Friday seeking comment.

A UI spokeswoman, Anne Bassett, said in an email Friday afternoon that the university “respects the decision of the court and will move forward in accordance with the decision.”

Daniel Blomberg, an attorney for InterVarsity, said Friday’s ruling puts other schools on notice.

“Schools are supposed to be a place of free inquiry and open thought, but the school officials here punished opinions they didn’t like and promoted ones they did — all while using taxpayer dollars to do it,” Blomberg said.

Update: a federal court affirmed that the University of Iowa discriminated against InterVarsity and other religious clubs https://t.co/Y6RYwol6QK

— Christianity Today (@CTmagazine) July 20, 2021

Feminism needs a serious reality check. In a Foucauldian framework that views reality as constructed by power, one must oppose reality in order to resist oppression. If the feminist movement hopes to endure and effectively advocate the dignity of women and girls worldwide, it must depart from the anti-realist path that led to this bloody battleground. To survive the pending Armageddon, feminism must lose its paranoid rejection of essential differences between the sexes. This does not mean a reversion to cartoonish, reductive caricatures. Men and women are different, but they are not polarized opposites; our difference is asymmetrical, consonant with a shared humanity and individual inimitability.

Only from a realist ground can we successfully discern which differences are a consequence of sexism, and which are not. Only from a realist ground can one make the confident argument that a man cannot merely opt into womanhood, because there is a pre-social givenness to womanness, a nature that is shaped by nurture, but not wholly conjured by it.

Institutional power and language profoundly influence how we perceive reality; that’s something the postmodernists get right. But to assert that power creates reality is to concede that woman is a construct—a concession that, for the feminist movement, will ultimately prove to be fatal.

Read it all.

Feminism’s Last Battle, this month's long-read by @FavaleAbs https://t.co/0wJ7K3AByA

— Public Discourse (@PublicDiscourse) July 18, 2021

Americans owe nearly twice as much medical debt as was previously known, and the amount owed has become increasingly concentrated in states that do not participate in the Affordable Care Act’s Medicaid expansion program.

New research published Tuesday in JAMA finds that collection agencies held $140 billion in unpaid medical bills last year,. An earlier study, examining debts in 2016, estimated that Americans held $81 billion in medical debt.

This new paper took a more complete look at which patients have outstanding medical debts, including individuals who do not have credit cards or bank accounts. Using 10 percent of all credit reports from the credit rating agency TransUnion, the paper finds that about 18 percent of Americans hold medical debt that is in collections.

The researchers found that, between 2009 and 2020, unpaid medical bills became the largest source of debt that Americans owe collections agencies. Overall debt, both from medical bills and other sources, declined during that period as the economy recovered from the Great Recession.

Read it all.

Unpaid medical bills are now the largest source of debt held by collection agencies.

That wasn't true a decade ago. https://t.co/UReU5SynBd

— Sarah Kliff (@sarahkliff) July 20, 2021

Most of the tests that doctors use to diagnose cancer — such as mammography, colonoscopy, and CT scans — are based on imaging. More recently, researchers have also developed molecular diagnostics that can detect specific cancer-associated molecules that circulate in bodily fluids like blood or urine.

MIT engineers have now created a new diagnostic nanoparticle that combines both of these features: It can reveal the presence of cancerous proteins through a urine test, and it functions as an imaging agent, pinpointing the tumor location. In principle, this diagnostic could be used to detect cancer anywhere in the body, including tumors that have metastasized from their original locations.

“This is a really broad sensor intended to respond to both primary tumors and their metastases. It can trigger a urinary signal and also allow us to visualize where the tumors are,” says Sangeeta Bhatia, the John and Dorothy Wilson Professor of Health Sciences and Technology and Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at MIT and a member of MIT’s Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research and Institute for Medical Engineering and Science.

In a new study, Bhatia and her colleagues showed that the diagnostic could be used to monitor the progression of colon cancer, including the spread of metastatic tumors to the lung and the liver. Eventually, they hope it could be developed into a routine cancer test that could be performed annually.

Read it all.

Revealing the presence of cancerous proteins through a urine test as well as functioning as an imaging agent, this nanoparticle-based diagnostic from the Bhatia Lab could be used to detect cancer anywhere in the body.https://t.co/6gKuFZHwpI

— Koch Institute at MIT (@kochinstitute) July 16, 2021

In reflecting on this, Pastor John Starke of New York City notes that “while the pandemic has surely exposed what is fragile in our world and in the church, it has also exposed what is in vain … [some] had been trying to build something that God had no intention of building. ”

And so I wonder, how does work and life need to change not despite the earthquake but because of it? What things need to be torn down to make way for new possibilities?

Reporting on the challenges churches face coming out of the pandemic, Kate Shellnutt writes “What feels like struggles atop struggles could be an opportunity for the church to live up to its ideals, to care well for each other and look to God in their suffering.”

But more than anything in this moment, I find myself learning to hope—to believe that even as an earthquake remakes a place that this place can still hold possibility and calling.

Read it all.

This article encouraged me today: We Put Down Roots. Then Everything Around Us Shifted. https://t.co/d5cWvmgFy1 via @CTMagazine

— Dena Dyer (@denajdyer) July 19, 2021

Fill us, O Christ, with thine own compassion for the hungry multitudes of the world of our day; and use us now, as thou didst use thy disciples of old, as thy willing instruments to minister to their needs, through all such means as thou shalt show us; for thy mercy’s sake.

Sunrise reflection of the working harbor at Rockport on Cape Ann, Massachusetts. Good light and happy photo making! https://t.co/TitefdBu4M #photography #CapeAnn #Rockport #artwork #sunrise #fineartphotography #interiordesign #wallart #boating #lobsterboat #fishingboat pic.twitter.com/qpmY9iM7BD

— Juergen Roth (@naturefineart) July 20, 2021

Now at Ico′nium they entered together into the Jewish synagogue, and so spoke that a great company believed, both of Jews and of Greeks. But the unbelieving Jews stirred up the Gentiles and poisoned their minds against the brethren. So they remained for a long time, speaking boldly for the Lord, who bore witness to the word of his grace, granting signs and wonders to be done by their hands. But the people of the city were divided; some sided with the Jews, and some with the apostles. When an attempt was made by both Gentiles and Jews, with their rulers, to molest them and to stone them, they learned of it and fled to Lystra and Derbe, cities of Lycao′nia, and to the surrounding country; and there they preached the gospel.

Now at Lystra there was a man sitting, who could not use his feet; he was a cripple from birth, who had never walked. He listened to Paul speaking; and Paul, looking intently at him and seeing that he had faith to be made well, said in a loud voice, “Stand upright on your feet.” And he sprang up and walked. And when the crowds saw what Paul had done, they lifted up their voices, saying in Lycao′nian, “The gods have come down to us in the likeness of men!” Barnabas they called Zeus, and Paul, because he was the chief speaker, they called Hermes. And the priest of Zeus, whose temple was in front of the city, brought oxen and garlands to the gates and wanted to offer sacrifice with the people. But when the apostles Barnabas and Paul heard of it, they tore their garments and rushed out among the multitude, crying, “Men, why are you doing this? We also are men, of like nature with you, and bring you good news, that you should turn from these vain things to a living God who made the heaven and the earth and the sea and all that is in them. In past generations he allowed all the nations to walk in their own ways; yet he did not leave himself without witness, for he did good and gave you from heaven rains and fruitful seasons, satisfying your hearts with food and gladness.” With these words they scarcely restrained the people from offering sacrifice to them.

–Acts 14:1-18

Morning walk before the heat starts. #Dartmoor #burrator #sunrise pic.twitter.com/ow2WTawFjH

— Alex (@alex_hendry75) July 20, 2021