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I was of course appalled by the assassination of Charlie Kirk, just as I’m opposed to the assassination of any innocent person and nearly all “non-innocent’ people. And no, I didn’t agree with most of what Kirk said or stood for, but we can disagree with people without suggesting that they be killed, or celebrating when they are killed. I did agree with Kirk’s view, which some thing was phony, to promote discourse and exchange of views with one’s opponents.

But when people like Kirk push religious behaviors or values, I can still criticize their proselytizing. For Charlie Kirk was a Christian, and pushing Christianity was an important part of his message.  Yesterday he was helped along by the Free Press, which, along with other “mainstream” sites like the NY Times, is increasingly trying to tell us how religion is good for us—it fills the “God-shaped hole” in our being.  Notice that Kirk’s recommended Sabbath rest is part of the book’s message, and we’re supposed to kick back on the weekends, not to rest from the travails of the world, or because it recharges us, but because God tells us so. (Granted, Kirk does point out research showing the benefits of resting, but to Kirk, religion is central to this rest.) And Kirk’s new book from which the piece was taken is called Stop in the Name of God (an alteration of a Supremes song). From the book’s website:

In a world that never slows down, where busyness is worn as a badge of honor and screens dictate our every move, Stop in the Name of God offers a radical yet profoundly simple invitation: pause, rest, and reconnect. Through the transformative practice of honoring the Sabbath, bestselling author Charlie Kirk guides readers to reclaim a sacred rhythm that restores balance, nurtures the soul, and strengthens relationships. This book is not about escaping modern life-it’s about living it more fully, intentionally, and meaningfully.

Yesterday’s article, touting “Charlie Kirk’s final message to America,” is telling us to keep the Sabbath, and keep it in a way that the Bible recommends in Genesis and Exodus. (Presumably Kirk didn’t agree with the Old Testament’s approbation of genocide, though.)

The whole article, consisting of a bit by Kirk’s wife Erika followed by an excerpt from Kirk’s book, is introduced with approbation by the FP editors, who link to his book on a site where the FP may make a profit. The intro (bold and italics are from the original).

In the final years of his life, Charlie Kirk wrote a book. It’s about the importance of observing the Sabbath in our increasingly frenetic age; of resisting, for one day a week, your smartphone, your work, the distractions of modern life—and dedicating yourself to what’s truly important.

Stop, In the Name of God will be published posthumously on December 9. We’re honored to share an exclusive excerpt with you today. But first, there is no one better to introduce Charlie’s final message to America than his widow, Erika Kirk. —The Editors

Many people think their work is truly important, though. I know of many writers who didn’t take a stipulated day off to rest. Yes, they took time off, but not because God said so.

Click to read the article:

There’s an intro from Kirk’s widow Erika, and I do feel horrible for her, seeing her husband killed in front of her along with their two children. Kirk was only 31, and their kids will grow up without their dad.  Erika gives an introduction, and I do admire her for continuing one important part of her husband’s message: to have free discourse with your political opponents:

This, I think, is what saved him from burnout. Charlie didn’t write a book about the Sabbath because he wanted to learn the impact that it would have on his life. He did it because he knew it worked. The Sabbath saved him.

Writing it wasn’t easy. In every page, you can see the depth of theological and scientific research that went into it. There’s an area in our home with lots of plants in it; that was his secret garden. After work, very late at night when the kids were asleep, he would go there. And even if it was 30 minutes, 10 minutes, five minutes a day, he would write.

. . . There is a reason this book isn’t political. Charlie wanted to heal the country, and he saw his conversations with students on campus as a piece of the puzzle. But when he was on campus, if someone was screaming at him, he knew they weren’t actually listening. When you’re constantly combative and fighting, you have no time to treat other people like human beings. Charlie genuinely felt that if the world had a weekly day of rest, just one, it would be the ultimate game changer.

First, note that Charlie’s way of healing the country is not a way that many of us would follow: he was pushing the Christian Right. Further, although his message isn’t political, it is based on Christianity, and that’s the part I oppose. In the part of Kirk’s book excerpted below, he deals with six objections to taking a Sabbath rest. Again, perhaps most people already do benefit from a weekend rest, but they are having it anyway! There’s no need to do it because God thinks it’s good when you’re doing it.. Just leave out the God part, since there’s no evidence for Him anyway. (I hate capitalizing “Him”, as it implies God exists).

Here’s how Kirk answers people who say they feel guilty taking a day or two off (the rest are excerpt from his book, and all bolding is mine):

If taking one day off makes you anxious or ashamed, then you must ask, What am I really worshipping? No idol condemns rest like the idol of productivity. This is the golden calf of the modern age. We bow to output, chase metrics, and sacrifice our joy on the altar of efficiency.

But our identity must be anchored in something far greater than toil. Work is good—it reflects God’s creative nature. But rest is holy—it reflects His sufficiency. The same God who calls us to labor for six days also commands us to rest for one. That’s not weakness; that’s worship.

Here’s part of his answer to people who say “I’m too busy to take a Sabbath”. The bold part is mine:

About five weekends out of the year—sometimes more—it becomes genuinely difficult for me to take a Sabbath. Occasionally, I’m asked to speak at conferences, churches, or public forums that fall squarely on weekends. And in those moments, I face the same tension many of you do: How do I honor God when life won’t slow down?

Here’s my answer: I do everything in my power to plan around it. But when that’s not possible, I get creative and deliberate. If I have to work on Saturday, I take Sunday as my Sabbath. If both days are booked and filled with travel or obligations, I plan ahead to block off the following weekend for extended rest—phone off, no emails, no output.

The goal isn’t a rigid formula—it’s a reordered life. The Sabbath is not meant to shame you into rest, but to awaken you to how much you’ve been missing.

You are also teaching your family something profound. Every time you pause your productivity and make room for stillness, you are discipling your children. You are showing them that faith isn’t confined to church pews but is woven into time itself.

And from the finale:

Don’t be afraid to turn off your phone. You’re not falling behind—you’re catching up to what matters most. The people in front of you. The presence of God. The peace you’ve been craving.

Now don’t get me wrong: it may be useful for some people to abstain from work or take phone calls on the weekend. (Kirk also reads scripture, sleeps, plays with his kids, and abstains from alcohol.) But for others, and those include me, I enjoy working (mostly writing and reading now), and I don’t spend that much time on the phone. Remember, many, many people don’t like their jobs and would appreciate time off, regardless of why one gets it. But I think you can see that this article’s publication is of a piece of what seems to be a new movement: cure the perceived malaise of people today by imbuing them with religious (often Christian) values.

In fact, Kirk’s message is pretty much the same as Jon Haidt’s, who’s long recommended that people abstain from devices, particularly kids. And that is to make us more social, more connected with each other. But you don’t need God to do that: Haidt is an atheist.  So you can get the benefits of rest, if you need it, without doing it in the name of God.  Religion may make people do some things that they need but wouldn’t do without it, but is that a reason to embrace Christianity. Humanists can certainly run their lives in a way not centered on a fictitious being and his fictitious book. You can also find a secular reason for the Sabbath in Jesus’s words (Mark 2:27): “And he said unto them, The sabbath was made for man, and not man for the sabbath.”

Here’s the central placement of Kirk’s message on the Free Press site yesterday.  I’m wondering if Bari Weiss and Nellie take a Sabbath, and I’m worried about what happens when Weiss becomes a big macher in the CBS News.

Remember, if Kirk transformed the country in the way he wanted to heal it, we would be living in a Christian theocracy and following the dictates of MAGA, but with strong religious overtones. That would not “heal” us.

Our writers and contributors have chosen their favourite ever science-y books, films, TV shows, music, video games, board games and more to see you through the festive period

The time of day that cancer drugs are administered could make a big difference to a patient's outcomes, and would be a relatively simple intervention to roll out

Scientists are testing a novel way to measure cosmic expansion using time delays in gravitationally lensed quasars. Their results match “local” measurements but clash with early-universe estimates, strengthening the mysterious Hubble tension. This mismatch could point to new physics rather than observational error. Researchers now aim to boost precision to solve the puzzle.

Rik Gern is specializing in mushroom photos lately. Here are some photos from Wisconsin, though Rik lives in Austin, Texas. His captions and IDs are indented, and you can enlarge his photos by clicking on them.

Here are some more mushroom pictures from my recent trip to northern Wisconsin. This is the first of two batches dedicated to the ubiquitous Pinewood gingertail (Xeromphalina campanella). These technically edible, but bitter-tasting mushrooms are usually found in large clusters.

Here are some on a fallen tree:

This cluster was found at the base of a living tree:

A closeup of this group of Pinewood gingertails in an old tree stump gives the impression of giant mushrooms at the mouth of a cave!:

These mushrooms growing in the crevice of a tree look like more giants, this time growing on the side of a rocky cliff:

The rest of the pictures are of individual and clustered mushrooms growing on mossy logs. I don’t know what it is about this species that I find so beautiful, but to my eye they represent the Northwoods as much as the ferns and pine trees:

One more batch of these beauties is on the way!

A sudden X-ray flare from a supermassive black hole in galaxy NGC 3783 triggered ultra-fast winds racing outward at a fifth the speed of light—an event never witnessed before. Using XMM-Newton and XRISM, astronomers caught the blast unfold in real time, revealing how tangled magnetic fields can rapidly “untwist” and hurl matter into space much like an enormous, cosmic-scale version of the Sun’s coronal mass ejections.

New simulations of Milky Way-like galaxies reveal that the strange split between two chemically distinct groups of stars may arise from several very different evolutionary events. Bursts of star formation, shifts in flowing gas, and even streams of metal-poor material from a galaxy’s outskirts can all create this double pattern. The findings challenge the long-held assumption that a major ancient collision caused the split.

How a Finnish physicist named Karl Lemström once became obsessed with recreating the aurora borealis from scratch – and may have ended up creating something even more intriguing

At the same time that Vera Rubin was turning cosmology upside down with conclusive evidence for the existence of dark matter, Stephen Hawking was doing…Stephen Hawking things.

Engineers can be split into two camps - those who just release whatever they’re building and try to fix whatever might be wrong with it as they get feedback on it, and those who test their product in every possible way before releasing it to the public. Luckily, NASA engineers are in the latter camp - it wouldn’t look great if all of the probes we send throughout the solar system failed because of something we could have easily tested for here at home. However, finding analogues for the places we want to send those probes remains a challenge for some NASA projects, so they make due with the best Earth has to offer. For Mars, that means testing technology in the desert’s rolling sand dune and rocky outcrops, and this year several different NASA technologies were tested in deserts throughout the country, as reported in a press release from the agency.

From machine learning to voting, the workings of the world demand randomisation, but true sources of randomness are surprisingly hard to find. Now quantum mechanics has supplied the answer

An exploration of all the scientific possibilities by which ghosts might actually exist in this universe.

Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Mean temperatures this year approached 1.5°C above the preindustrial average, making it the second hottest year after 2024

Astronomers have captured images of two nova explosions only days after they exploded. The detailed images show that these explosions are more complex than thought. There are multiple outflows and, in some cases, delayed ejection of material.

In a new study, sustainability and space scientists discuss how the principles of reducing, reusing, and recycling could be applied to satellites and spacecraft.

Astronomers have acquired evidence that Omega Centauri, the largest-known globular cluster in the Milky Way, hosts an intermediate mass black hole (IMBH). These elusive objects should exist, according to theory, but have been difficult to verify. The IMBH in Omega Centauri is considered a candidate black hole, and new research examined the region with the JWST for any conclusive evidence.

New research and observations with the VLT's ERIS instrument show that some stars are following predictable orbits near Sagitarrius A-star, the Milky Way's supermassive black hole. This goes against the established idea that the black hole's enormous gravity destroys stars and gas clouds. Even a binary star system in the region seems to go about its business unaffected.

Some of the elements used by living systems are far more abundant in Cassiopeia A than we thought, hinting that some parts of our galaxy might be more suitable for life than others

At the Honest Broker website, writer Ted Gioia has an article summarizing his friend’s view of the bet and worst hit songs of the 1960s—perhaps the best decade in the history of pop and rock music. The article is below, and I’ll simply list a few songs from each category selected by his friend Chris Dalla Riva (he has a book on them, too). Dalla Riva also runs his own site, “Can’t get much higher“, which deals with a lot of interesting musical questions like “The greatest two-hit wonders”, e.g., Pink Floyd, Jimmy Buffett, and “Which music stars [of the Sixties] are being forgotten the fastest?” e.g., Peter & Gordon, jan & Dean.

At any rate, here is an excerpt from Gioia’s article and Dalla Riva’s selection of best and worst hits (songs that made #1) of the Sixties.  Quotations are indented, and my own comments are flush left. Click screenshot to read:

Excerpts:

Chris Dalla Riva is a guru of data analytics on popular culture. He’s been a longtime friend to The Honest Broker, and I’ve learned a lot from his work.

And now Chris has released a fun and fascinating book, Uncharted Territory: What Numbers Tell Us about the Biggest Hit Songs and Ourselves. This is the closest music writing gets to the freewheeling conversations ardent fans have among themselves about bands, songs, and rising or falling reputations.

But Uncharted Territory also draws on the scrupulous research that is Chris’s trademark. (You might have seen some of it on his Substack Can’t Get Much Higher.)

With his permission, I’m sharing an extract below on #1 hit songs of the 1960s. The entire book deserves your attention. You can learn more at this link.

This is from Dalla Rivia’s book:

When I decided that I was going to listen to every song to ever get to number one on the Billboard Hot 100, I wasn’t in a great spot. My mental health was suffering greatly, and I was working a job that I hated. Every waking moment outside of my job was spent with my guitar. Some nights I would literally fall asleep playing. Still, I did not feel good. And nothing seemed to help. Therapy. Medications. Exercise. Socializing. It was all a wash.

For some reason, I decided that a musical quest might help. I set out to listen to every number one hit since the Hot 100 was started in August 1958. Why? Again, I was a musician. I thought it might help my songwriting. Maybe I could unlock some secret to writing a hit and use the knowledge to quit my job. At the same time, I thought it might be good for my sanity. I would only listen to one song a day. Listening to one song a day is an easy thing to accomplish. Maybe one little win could right my mind.

And it kind of did. A friend soon joined me on my journey. Each day, I would text him the number one hit. We’d both listen a few times. I’d play along on my guitar. We’d talk about it and rate the song out of ten. I started tracking those ratings in a spreadsheet. Slowly, that spreadsheet began to balloon as I tracked a ton of other facts and figures. Trends began to emerge, and I started to write about them. My musings became Uncharted Territory: What Numbers Tell Us about the Biggest Hit Songs and Ourselves. It’s a data-driven history of popular music that I wrote as I spent all those years listening to every number one song.

That’s an interesting task, and here are the author’s highlights with a few of them giving his comments:

“Georgia on My Mind” by Ray Charles (November 14, 1960)—The reason this song has been recorded hundreds of times is because the melody sounds like it was delivered from the high heavens. That’s not a shock. That melody was written by Hoagy Carmichael, the man behind classics like “Stardust” and “Heart and Soul.” But the reason you know this version of “Georgia on My Mind” rather than any other comes down to a different person: Ray Charles.

To state the obvious, Ray Charles was a talented piano player. You can hear that talent shine on the jazzy fills he sprinkles throughout this song. But his greatest instrument was his voice, a voice whose subtle slides and slurs could make Georgia feel like your home even if you’d never been within a thousand miles of it.

“Runaway” by Del Shannon (April 24, 1961)

“Running Scared” by Roy Orbison (June 5, 1961)

“He’s a Rebel” by The Crystals (November 3, 1962

“My Girl” by The Temptations (March 6, 1965)—When Smokey Robinson wrote “My Guy” for Mary Wells, I imagine he thought he’d never write a better song. “My Guy” is just so expertly crafted that burgeoning songwriters should study it. But then a year later, he decided to write a response to “My Guy” for The Temptations. Response songs were very common during the 1960s. Chubby Checker hits it big with “The Twist.” Joey Dee jumps on the bandwagon with the “Peppermint Twist.” Only one name made sense for Smokey’s response: “My Girl.”

“My Girl” is not just the greatest response song of all time, it might be the greatest song period. I’d go so far as to argue that if a random DJ in the twenty-first century cut off whatever booty-shaking track they were playing at the club on Friday night and put on “My Girl,” nobody would complain. Decades later, the ascending guitar riff and finger-snapping rhythm that drive this track remain as fresh as ever.

“Ticket to Ride” by The Beatles (May 22, 1965)

“You Keep Me Hangin’ On” by The Supremes (November 19, 1966)

“(Sittin’ On) The Dock of The Bay” by Otis Redding (March 16, 1968)

“I Heard It Through the Grapevine” by Marvin Gaye (December 14, 1968)—This song is about humiliating heartache. It’s about finding out your lover is done with you indirectly, through rumors circulating on the streets, rumors you are the last to be privy to.

That rumor starts with the keyboard playing a circular riff in its lower register. Then it moves to the drums, a soft thump, your heartbeat. Then it finds its way to the guitar and strings echoing the initial whisper of the keyboard. With each step, the truth becomes more apparent. Then Marvin Gaye arrives, the pain dripping from his voice, a voice whose range and control are nearly inhuman. He knows the truth, and even if “a man ain’t supposed to cry,” he can’t hide his pain.

Sadly, I don’t have time to look at the #1 songs myself, though I have to say that there are better songs by these groups or singers, but they may not have made #1. For instance, Otis Redding’s “Try a Little Tenderness” is, to me, a lot better than “The dock of the bay,” and “Stop! In the name of love” by the Supremes beats “You keep me hanging on.”  There are others, but let’s go on to the worst songs.

“The Battle of New Orleans” by Johnny Horton (June 1, 1960)

“Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polka Dot Bikini” by Brian Hyland (August 8, 1960)—This song is about a girl who is embarrassed by the yellow polka dot bikini she is wearing and runs from place to place to stay covered up. She starts in a changing room, then runs to a blanket, and then into the water. While in the water, she’s described as “turning blue” before the final line declares that there isn’t anywhere else for her to go. Call me crazy, but I think this irritating song might have a sinister, deathly undertone that everyone else has missed. And even if I’m imagining it, it still makes me feel sick.

“Moody River” by Pat Boone (June 19, 1961)

“Wooden Heart” by Joe Dowell (August 28, 1961)

“Go Away Little Girl” by Steve Lawrence (January 12, 1963)—My sister Natalie was walking through the room while I was listening to this song. 27-year-old Steve Lawrence crooning the words “Go away, little girl / I’m not supposed to be alone with you” stopped her dead in her tracks. “Is this by a pedophile?” she asked.

Despite how creepy that couplet might sound, the lyrics are not anything criminal. The song was composed by Carole King and Gerry Goffin about a man tempted to cheat on his lover. Albeit patronizing, the term “little girl” was common fare in pop songs at the time. In this era alone, it’s used in five additional songs, including The Beatles’ “I Feel Fine” (e.g., “I’m so glad that she’s my little girl”) and Tommy Roe’s “Sheila” (e.g., “Man this little girl is fine”). But when you need this many words to explain why a creepy-sounding song actually isn’t creepy, you’re probably not going to have people lining up to listen to it.

“Mrs. Brown, You’ve Got a Lovely Daughter” by Herman’s Hermits (May 1, 1965)

These last three are real stinkers, and they’re on my own personal list:

“The Ballad of the Green Berets” by SSgt. Barry Sadler (March 5, 1966)—When looking back at the 1960s, we often remember the scores of artists who wrote songs in protest of the Vietnam War. But there really were people who supported it. “The Ballad of the Green Berets” is proof of that. Topping the charts for five weeks on its way to becoming the tenth best-selling single of 1966, SSgt. Barry Sadler’s military march is an unabashed celebration of the armed forces, the soldier in his song dying with only one final request for his wife, namely that their son also serve. Now knowing about the endless, pointless destruction of the Vietnam War, this musical wish is hard to stomach.

“Honey” by Bobby Goldsboro (April 13, 1968)—Telling the story of a man whose wife died, “Honey” falls within the maudlin tragedy song tradition. But what makes this sappy song stand out is that it’s not clear whether the narrator ever really liked his wife. He describes her as “Kind of dumb and kind of smart,” while also recounting how he laughed himself to tears when she almost hurt herself falling in the snow. With lines like, “She wrecked the car and she was sad / And so afraid that I’d be mad, but what the heck,” the only thing you should feel after “Honey” is hope that you’ll never be in a relationship like this.

“In the Year 2525 (Exordium & Terminus)” by Zagar and Evans (July 12, 1969)—In Dave Barry’s novel Tricky Business, he describes a band that is forced to work the party circuit after they fail to make it big. When the group is asked to play a song that they don’t like, Barry describes how they then perform a retaliation song to punish the audience. “In the Year 2525” is described as the “hydrogen bomb” of retaliation songs. While I don’t know if I’d go that far, it’s a strange song that predicts the future in thousand-year increments. If Zager and Evans are correct, then in the year 4545 you’ll no longer need your teeth because “You won’t find a thing to chew.” Dentists, please beware!

And, just to supplement this list (actually, “Mrs. Brown” isn’t so bad), here’s my own personal list, compiled over decades, of the worst pop/rock songs ever. The “best” list is pages long, so I won’t include it. But if you can find “An open letter to my teenage son, list to it. Remember, many of these songs were after the sixties, so it’s not comparable.

Coyne’s Worst Songs Ever

Green Berets                                       Sgt. Barry Sadler

An Open Letter to My Teenage Son  Victor Lundberg

Spill the Wine (Dig that Girl)             Eric Burdon

I Got a Brand New Pair of Rollerskates         Melanie

I’ve Never Been to Me                                    Charlene

Octopus’ Garden                                 The Beatles

Macarthur Park                                   Richard Harris

Old Rivers                                           Walter Brennan

Take the Money and Run                   Steve Miller

Muskrat Love                                     The Captain and Tenille

The Name Game                                 Shirley Ellis

Drops of Jupiter                                  Train

Oh hell, I’ll also add my BEST list, but only between 1962 and 1969. Surely some of these made #1, but they’re not in the list above. They also don’t include soul music, of which I’ve kept a separate list. And THAT one is awesome (perhaps I’ll put it up some time). I have added “God only knows” by the Beach Boys, which came out in 1966.

Coyne;’s best non-soul songs, 1962-1969

Light My Fire                         The Doors

Nowhere Man                         Beatles

Eleanor Rigby                         Beatles

In My Life                              Beatles

Got to Get You into My Life  Beatles

Please Please Me                    Beatles

A Day in the Life                    Beatles

Louie Louie                            The Kingsmen

Sweet Judy Blue Eyes            Crosby, Stills & Nash

49 Reasons                              Crosby Stills & Nash

Bluebird                                  Buffalo Springfield

Rock & Roll Woman              Buffalo Springfield

On the Way Home                  Buffalo Springfield

Feel a Whole Lot Better         The Byrds

Eight Miles High                    The Byrds

Mr. Tambourine Man             The Byrds

Turn! Turn! Turn!                   The Byrds

Touch Me                               The Doors

Honky Tonk Woman              The Rolling Stones

Venus in Furs                          Velvet Underground

Heroin                                     Velvet Underground

California Dreaming               Mamas & Papas

I Saw Her Again                     Mamas & Papas

Younger Girl                           Lovin’ Spoonful

Summer in the City                Lovin’ Spoonful

Groovin’                                  Young Rascals

Wouldn’t It Be Nice                The Beach Boys

Don’t Worry Baby                  The Beach Boys

God Only Knows                     The Beach Boys

Little Deuce Coupe                 The Beach Boys

Badge                                      Cream

Positively 4th Street               Bob Dylan

Angel                                      Jimi Hendrix

I Only Wanna Be With You   Dusty Springfield

Take Another Little Piece of My Heart          Big Bro. & Holding Co.

Along Comes Mary                The Association

Israelites                                  Desmond Dekker

You Don’t Have to Say you Love Me            Dusty Springfield

I Only Want to be With You  Dusty Springfield

These choices are subjective, of course, so feel free to weigh in on either my choices or Dalla Rivia’s:

h/t Barry

Screen time has been linked to all sorts of problems, from depression and obesity to poor sleep. But how worried should you really be? Jacob Aron sifts through the evidence