CHICAGO, IL (August 7, 2015) — Many Covenanters routinely share links to social media articles and videos with one another that Covenant News Service believes may be of interest to others. Each Friday we post five of them. Following is a sample of those submissions—their inclusion does not represent an endorsement by the Covenant of any views expressed

In a Small Town in Washington State, Pride and Shame over Atomic Legacy
Residents of Richland, Washington, who worked at the nuclear plants in the 1940s produced the plutonium used in the “Fat Man” bomb that was dropped on Nagasaki and finally led the Japanese to surrender. Many in the town have taken pride in its role and believe the bombings actually saved lives by ending the war. Richland High School sports teams are called the bombers, and their symbol is the mushroom cloud it calls the R-Cloud. But an increasing number of residents see the R-Cloud as a blight on Richmond.

‘Hiroshima’

To mark the seventieth anniversary of the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, The New Yorker has posted online the full text of ‘Hiroshima,’ an article it published one year after the event. The magazine devoted an entire issue to the piece, which was later published as a book read by more than three million people. John Hersey tells the story of six survivors of the blast from the time shortly before the bomb was dropped until the one-year anniversary. The article helped give birth to “New Journalism,” in which writers use the narrative techniques of fiction to tell a nonfiction story and still is regarded as one of the best magazine pieces ever written.

Roundtable: All of Baseball History Should Get an Asterisk
Do baseball stats reflect moral relativity? Many fans don’t recognize the records set during the “steroids era,” and voters steadfastly refuse to vote into the Hall of Fame any player who used or was suspected of using performance-enhancing drugs. But should the players who used amphetamines in the decades before the steroids scandal be treated with the same disdain? Should the records set by athletes who played before the league was integrated be considered “pure”? This article present poll responses to these questions, and a commentary on the results.

Father and Son Posed for a Photo in the Exact Same Way for 27 Years
The first photo was taken when the son was just a baby. From the introduction: “The familial love between the father and the son is palpable in their body language. At times, they stray from the embrace perfected in their early years, but they eventually return to that pose signifying the bond between a parent and a child. The photos reflect the way that people mature, but they also show how beautiful it is when your family can grow alongside you too.”

In Zimbabwe, We Don’t Cry for Lions
Goodwell Nzou is a doctoral student in molecular and cellular biosciences at Wake Forest University who also happens to be from a village in Zimbabwe, where lions are objects of terror, not “local favorites.” He has been dismayed to see the vilification of the American dentist who killed Cecil the Lion. “I faced the starkest cultural contradiction I’d experienced during my five years studying in the United States,” Nzou writes. Anyone in favor of multicultural understanding must give a true listen to Nzou if we are serious about what we say. I’m guessing Ingrid Newkirk, president of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, already has her mind made up. She released an official statement from the organization that called for dentist Walter Palmer to be hanged.