I think people are pinning a lot of hope on a vaccine, coronovirus vaccines have not been notably successful and they've been working on them for many years.

In Christian theology all of creation exists to glorify God, even inanimate creation. Belief or unbelief doesn't really come into it, from that perspective (though it does from the other end of the telescope.)

How so? The whole effort is directed to getting them out as soon as possible. And if they are in their own homes they don't have to quarantine, but no one can stop them being high risk if they don't. The other option is try and keep cases as low as possible and then they have to remain segregated much longer.

Well, safe is the point of flattening the curve - so people who become ill have access to proper care. I'm not sure what you mean by safe beyond that - it's like the flu, it's not safe. Not everyone is at equal risk, but not all risk factors make people high risk. People who are immunosuppressed for example, the very elderly in care homes,, they are the high risk people who need to think about strict quarantine. That doesn't mean they necessarily have to do so, btw - but that is a risk they choose (Though if you are in an institution then you will likely have less choice.) If there is no herd immunity, that is unfortunate, but doesn't really suggest an easy option. Permanent shut down of services and social distancing isn't likely to be something people would accept even if it were possible. At that point I think the scenario would be life as per normal with outbreaks where people stay home and probably some quarantining too, but mainly people would have to get used to a yearly round of infection as they do wth the flu and medical services would have to remain beefed up to reflect that.

I would say the point of life is to love and be loved. Although I would also say the idea of glorifying God is built in to that.

I don't think that's what I am getting at. Nothing to do with sacrificing anyone or a too high price, just the way a virus behaves. It's a virus, it will do what it will do which is infect people. Barring an early vaccine which is unlikely, the best option for those who are high risk is for them to strictly observe quarantine until there is herd immunity, and to have that happen as soon as possible so that they aren't quarantined for inhumane/unsustainable amounts of time. If people are imagining some scenario where we can all keep social distancing and testing to the point that we halt the virus, that is going to involve much longer and more significant restrictions, all the while the high risk people have to observe even more restrictions. And this would happen in waves in most places because there will never been enough immunity in the population to prevent it, and you can't stop it moving around the globe. Now, it seems like Australia and NZ maybe slightly different in hoping they can actually reduce the virus and prevent new infection from coming in through strict control and testing and preventing travel internationally. Personally I am pretty doubtful that can work, but maybe it could work long enough - I don't know how long people will accept things like not being able to travel without quarantining for two weeks, or what it might mean for trade. But in many places that simply isn't an option, the ability to prevent the virus moving from other places is not geographically or politically possible. Many people where I live think the government strategy is to stop the spread. That's just not true, and if they are very surprised when they realise that I am concerned about what their response is going to be.

Well, I guess! I've been busy up until the last few weeks.

I think there are a few things going on with this. I'm in Canada, and I have a few family members in health care who are part of the management for covid in our province, so I have some pretty clear sense of what the medical people are thinking. It is to flatten the curve and keep it at a sustainable level until there is herd immunity. They aren't sure that there is immunity, but they have some reason to think there is. The idea of preventing spread totally is not part of their thinking, and they aren't counting on a vaccine ever becoming available either. Their assumption is up to 90% of the poulation will get it eventually. They are also concerned to reach that point as quickly as possible without overwhelming resources. However - many many people are not understanding that and believe that they will be able to avoid getting it if they follow the restrictions. I think there are a few things behind this - fear mainly, not understanding the science, and a lot is down to the messaging from the government. I am convinced that the premier and medical officer who do a press conference every day have little or no idea how people are taking the things they say. Some confusions also seems to come from people hearing about places like New Zealand, or where reported deaths seem low, and not understanding that their situation has substantial differences, or that we actually don't know that their strategy is successful because it is too soon. I've become fairly concerned about people's well being. Not so much the economy as such though production of essential items is a concern. But people are becoming very judgemental about things that are not risky. Parks etc have been closed although there is little risk from them and our local government doesn't seem to have much intent to open them up. People and kids are struggling. Domestic abuse it up including two deaths, plus there was a mass shooting here for the first time ever, the largest in Canadian history, and it seems to have begun as a domestic incident too. People like my MIL are not getting care for their cancer which is stressful and possibly dangerous. My aunt died and no one but her son could be with her in hospital. I worry about public pressure to keep things locked down, and that they will not accept that most people will become ill and many will die before a vaccine becomes available, or they don't understand that may not happen at all.

I think it's often a few leaders who suck the others in. The latter learn to recognize and avoid it most of the time, and even most of the leaders grow out of it. Some never do though.

I'm not sure whether seven is really old enough to appreciate apologetics. And especially good apologetics. Could you say something more about what his questions are, or are there specific things that bother him? There might be some more specific sorts of things that are appropriate. One thing I would say is that while it can feel weird to be part of a minority, it's important for young people Christ in the worship or religious community they belong to, to be able to value that., to feel they belong there.

Is this a change for her, or has she always been like that? And is she distant geographically? What do you mean by reaching out? One of my good friends I have a hard time connecting with him when he's living away. It's mostly just the way he is, super-busy in work and a little emotionally exhausted, and disorganised about day to day things. Typically, when he is away, I rarely talk to him. Right now, I haven't spoken to him or had an email for about a year and a half, though I know he intended to give me a call about a year ago - he said so to another friend who went to visit him. I've just learned not to worry about this. If he comes this way, he'll make contact. Or I've considered going to see him this summer though the plane ticket is dear and it's one of those tiny planes, so I am not sure I'll be able to. It might not be similar, but with those kinds of friends I don't think it is always an absolute necessity to have regular contact when you are actually distant.

Women do seem more likely than men, overall, to have a lot of very personal sharing in relationships. Though I think some of that is cultural. But it maybe also makes women more likely to be sucked into things with emotional vampires. In school I remember it was a real thing to have these weird power dynamics between girls, built around self-revelation and gossip about others who were being excluded. Often there were girls who were part of the group in a marginal way who periodically were cut out while the higher status girls talked about them in a nasty way. I never saw anything quite so diabolcal with the boys who I often hung out with, mainly because they seemed a simpler lot.

Hmm, I find more and more I am influenced by the effect things have on different kinds of relations. Which tends to mean relatively less emphasis on individuals, because individuals inevitably act to a large degree as the larger social or economic or cultural or political context pushes them. Often without realising it. Chages in political policy or laws or people's beliefs rarely remain at the individual level.

Yes, this is just the kind of thing I am talking about. "Situational friends" sounds odd, but they exist, and it's not a bad thing. Sometimes they also become lifelong friends eventually. It's more than an acquaintance, but it's about being in the same place at the same time more than anything. I also have cousins like you say. Some I have not met much, have no real relationship with though I'd recognise the duties of family. But my one cousin I grew up across the street from, I see a few times a year usually, sometimes a bit more. He lives about an hour a way, but he has a young family, a busy job. If he comes to work in town we will try and have lunch. But it's a deep relationship, he's someone I would trust absolutely if I needed to divulge something terrible, who I know would understand where I was coming from if I came to him with a problem. That's also what my relationships with my other "old friends" are like. And like you, it's not a large group, probably about five people and then maybe a few others who I am not as close to but who have a similar quality of relationship.

I don't know, I don't think I really have a loose definition of friend. I would not call people in my neighbourhood that I have neighbourly relationships with friends. And what the article is talking about makes no sense to me. You can't have friends that just ignore you, or you ignore them. It's one thing to be a little relaxed about stuff, another to be simply thoughtless. But I don't see that friendship has to mean you are actively engaged in things like hanging out or talking. Two of my longest and best friends are currently living thousands of miles from me, both are busy. One in particular has always been a poor correspondent. This has gone on for a long time, interspersed there have been periods we move back closer and then we spend time together. But we don't go from being friends, to "we used to be friends" to friends again. Again though I don't think the article is even talking about people like that, it seems to be talking about new friendships.

This is more common in military settings I think because everyone knows that people need the support, and they are away from family and often friends. So it's become part of the culture and in many cases that is explicitly encouraged and sort of passed on through those communities. Given how unsettled many communities are these days it would be a nice thing to adopt more widely. But people are becoming increasingly cut off from each other. I think it's different than the sort of relationship where you know someone pretty intimately for many years, growing up together or living together, but you aren't in a season where you see them. It's in a way deeper than a friendship, it's more like a family connection, these are people you have shared your history with, a community and who know you and your life in a special way. There is still goodwill between you. We don't really have a separate word for that kind of relationship though.

Yes, these buttons usually IME aren't really made out of leather, they are wood or plastic. But they are meant to look like leather.

I think there is probably going to be a difference between "serious" artistic movies that are remembered because they are really good films, and then those that are more nostalgic to young people who grew up with them. I wonder about the Marvel and latest crop of Star Wars films, or even some of the Disney films over the last few years. I don't think they will be remembered as great films really, though maybe as technical feats. But I do wonder about whether people who were young will remember them fondly or with nostalgia. I can't decide if its more a matter of having enjoyed them at the right age, or whether there needs to be something about the films themselves that they need to have. But the "big" movies people might remember are those plus HP, LOTR. There are lots of good quality films between 2000-2010 but I think fewer since, a lot of the best writing moved to television.

I don't know what they are called, but they are meant to look like they are made out of leather.

Yes, I think this is a tricky thing. What I would say has been true for me is that there are some people who I may not see or even hear from a lot but we remain close. But these were also people who at one time I did see often and had the opportunity to grow close to. Some are former roommates, or people I worked closely with for years, or studied with for years. Many of them I had a lot of meaningful experiences with and discussed lots of issues and questions, in some cases quite personal ones. When I do get together with these people, or they move back to town, etc, we fall right back into contact like family. They are people who I think of often. It's a bit different when someone you don't have that solid base with, and they aren't close by, and you don't interact with them much. I'm not sure what that is really, not quite a friendship? I have met a few people over the years where I think there could be a friendship but it doesn't quite get the chance to take off for external reasons. I always think, maybe at a later time it will, but in the mean time they don't really fulfil the emotional or other needs a friend does. I do think that a certain amount of availability is important. And that often can mean just that you will see them regularly, maybe at a club or church or even better, they live nearby and you can easily see them anytime. That seems to create the best chance of developing the sort of relationship that is lasting even when circumstances don't make it easy. Just thinking - over the last few years, probably the friendship that has flourished most for me is with someone who gives my kids lessons. We are very similar and have a lot of interests and values in common, but it helps a lot that I see him a few times a week at lessons even if its brief, that he's single without kids so his social time is pretty free, and that he lives 5 min from my house. I remember reading once that studies show that if it takes more than about 1/2 hour to meet up with someone, chances are people won't do it much. I think that's true overall IME.

Yes, I've changed my mind pretty significantly over the years on various things. Some in one direction and sometimes in the other. In some cases it comes from seeing situations play out more clearly, or being able to make a more holistic sort of analysis. In some instances over the last few years I've looked back at issues where there were warnings that they would lead to some problem, which I dismissed, and now I see that in some wys they were very much correct, or even wholly correct. I have a much better sense of how one idea connects to others and also how, over time, people and society change. I've become much more suspicious of claims that a particular viewpoint is pro-woman, or anti-racist, or whatever. Some that I can think of that are fairly recent and less hot-button - at one time I was very big on switching to a proportional representation electoral system, and now I am much less sure it matters and may even be a bad idea. I also for a time was fairly supportive of UBI and I am now not so sure it's a good idea.

I would also be ok with pretty much all of the examples you gave. The only one I might think twice about would be the Dickens, and it wouldn't bother me really either. From my perspective, modernising spelling and such in a book where those things are non-standard is not much different than reading a translation. I wouldn't expect my children to read something in old English, and this is similar. But if they can get real value and the real feel of the book from the modernised version, that is worthwhile. Similarly, if the author or a sensitive editor has adapted the book for a particular age group, for whom the general content of the book is understandable, that should be fine. Presumably it would have been fine if the same author had written a whole different version for younger readers, so why not adapt what was already written? Again, my assumption is that the book is really being represented in a holistic way. You aren't giving them what amounts to a different book with some of the same words. Myths and tales, especially those with a basis in oral culture, as far as I am concerned are always fair game, they should just be good retellings. I became a classics major because of a book of mythological tales from around the world that someone gave me as a gift one year. Books I would steer away from would be ones where I felt something substantial was lost, the story misrepresented, or which were really best met with a more mature mind. I'd likely not use an abridged or adapted Austen for example, as mentioned above. I feel like so much of the nuance is in the exact language, and really the stories are generally quite spare, there isn't much extra. And it takes a certain maturity of mind to appreciate the stories in any case.

I always have a strong response to the Steve Miller song "Abra Cadabra." It makes me think of hot summers stuck in the car.

Possibilities: A Canticle for Leibowitz The Warden/Barchester Towers The Brothers Karamazov The Power and the Glory Diary of a Country Priest The Children of Men

I tend to think of the basis of being an educated person as being self-concious about what you believe, and why. Being able to reason, sure, but also knowing that you can make reason go wherever you want, what people really need to know is where their starting place is, and why they are starting there as opposed to somewhere else. I think this requires some knowledge of history and at least one belief system, generally the one that underlies the educational decisions being made. Along those same lines I think a knowledge of how we know is important, how do we know about the world, how do we know about science, how do we know about history? More generally I think to be educated should mean having the knowledge and understanding necessary to make decisions as a citizen. Can you vote intelligently, talk about important questions facing society, get something done in your community? Cultural knowledge, literature, art, etc, of your own culture is also important, it tells us who we are, what kind of people we are, where we come from, what we value. In many ways more so than study of history tells us. And I guess that other thing that strikes me is that all this knowing isn't just about abstract knowing, but also it's about experience, and love.