A christian blog with a decidedly biblical perspective on the world and events around us. Look around, read, enjoy and feel free to comment. Interesting story, send us the info via our contact page. Subscribe by clicking here.
Subscribe to RSS
Scientific progress depends on accurate and complete data. It also relies on replication. The past couple of days have uncovered some shocking revelations about the baloney practices that pass as sound science about climate change.
It was announced Thursday afternoon that computer hackers had obtained 160 megabytes of e-mails from the Climate Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia (UEA) in England. Those e-mails involved communication among many scientific researchers and policy advocates with similar ideological positions all across the world. Those purported authorities were brazenly discussing the destruction and hiding of data that did not support global-warming claims.
Professor Phil Jones, the head of the Climate Research Unit, and professor Michael E. Mann at Pennsylvania State University, who has been an important scientist in the climate debate, have come under particular scrutiny. Among his e-mails, Mr. Jones talked to Mr. Mann about the “trick of adding in the real temps to each series … to hide the decline in temperature.”
Mr. Mann admitted that he was party to this conversation and lamely explained to the New York Times that “scientists often used the word ‘trick’ to refer to a good way to solve a problem ‘and not something secret.’ ” Though the liberal New York newspaper apparently buys this explanation, we have seen no benign explanation that justifies efforts by researchers to skew data on so-called global-warming “to hide the decline.” Given the controversies over the accuracy of Mr. Mann’s past research, it is surprising his current explanations are accepted so readily.
There is a lot of damning evidence about these researchers concealing information that counters their bias. In another exchange, Mr. Jones told Mr. Mann: “If they ever hear there is a Freedom of Information Act now in the UK, I think I’ll delete the file rather than send to anyone” and, “We also have a data protection act, which I will hide behind.” Mr. Jones further urged Mr. Mann to join him in deleting e-mail exchanges about the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) controversial assessment report (ARA): “Can you delete any emails you may have had with Keith re [the IPCC's Fourth Assessment Report]?”
In another e-mail, Mr. Jones told Mr. Mann, professor Malcolm K. Hughes of the University of Arizona and professor Raymond S. Bradley of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst: “I’m getting hassled by a couple of people to release the CRU station temperature data. Don’t any of you three tell anybody that the UK has a Freedom of Information Act!”
At one point, Mr. Jones complained to another academic, “I did get an email from the [Freedom of Information] person here early yesterday to tell me I shouldn’t be deleting emails.” He also offered up more dubious tricks of his trade, specifically that “IPCC is an international organization, so is above any national FOI. Even if UEA holds anything about IPCC, we are not obliged to pass it on.” Another professor at the Climate Research Unit, Tim Osborn, discussed in e-mails how truncating a data series can hide a cooling trend that otherwise would be seen in the results. Mr. Mann sent Mr. Osborn an e-mail saying that the results he was sending shouldn’t be shown to others because the data support critics of global warming.
Repeatedly throughout the e-mails that have been made public, proponents of global-warming theories refer to data that has been hidden or destroyed. Only e-mails from Mr. Jones’ institution have been made public, and with his obvious approach to deleting sensitive files, it’s difficult to determine exactly how much more information has been lost that could be damaging to the global-warming theocracy and its doomsday forecasts.
We don’t condone e-mail theft by hackers, though these e-mails were covered by Britain’s Freedom of Information Act and should have been released. The content of these e-mails raises extremely serious questions that could end the academic careers of many prominent professors. Academics who have purposely hidden data, destroyed information and doctored their results have committed scientific fraud. We can only hope respected academic institutions such as Pennsylvania State University, the University of Arizona and the University of Massachusetts at Amherst conduct proper investigative inquiries.
Most important, however, these revelations of fudged science should have a cooling effect on global-warming hysteria and the panicked policies that are being pushed forward to address the unproven theory.
A Little Falls, Minn., pastor recently spoke out about his decision to resign after his congregation rejected a motion to leave the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.
The Rev. Nate Bjorge told the Brainerd Dispatch that First Lutheran Church’s vote last month to stay in the ELCA called into question his effectiveness as a pastor.
“I was extremely disheartened,” Bjorge told the local newspaper as he recalled the Oct. 11 vote. “I haven’t been angry by this whole process. Sad might be a better word.”
The congregational vote was prompted by a controversial decision by the ELCA’s chief legislative body in August to allow noncelibate gays and lesbians to be ordained. Since then more than a dozen congregations in Minnesota have vowed or already voted to sever ties with the denomination.
First Lutheran wasn’t one of them.
The Little Falls church defeated a motion to withdraw from the ELCA by a vote of 160-96. It also voted 95-73 not to affiliate with Lutheran Congregations in Mission for Christ, which allows gay clergy as long as they are celibate.
Bjorge told the local Dispatch that he has friends who are homosexual and his congregation has always been welcoming to homosexuals. But he said he can’t condone homosexual behavior, calling it a destructive lifestyle.
“For me, there was no question,” he said. “This issue directly violates the word of God.”
With such strongly held beliefs, Bjorge felt he could no longer lead a church that was going to continue as an ELCA congregation.
“It’s important for them to move on and become a healthy congregation again,” he told the Brainerd Dispatch. “My presence wasn’t going to help that.”
Bjorge is currently leading a group of people who left First Lutheran to start their own church, Faith Lutheran. He was called by the group to serve as their pastor.
Meanwhile, disaffected Lutherans are working on a new church body to accommodate those who want to leave the ELCA. Lutheran CORE (Coalition for Renewal) announced last week that a proposal for the separate denomination will likely be released in February.
To borrow a computer term, if Ayatollah Khomeini, Osama bin Laden, and Nidal Hasan represent Islamism 1.0, Recep Tayyip Erdog(an (the prime minister of Turkey), Tariq Ramadan (a Swiss intellectual), and Keith Ellison (a U.S. congressman) represent Islamism 2.0. The former kill more people but the latter pose a greater threat to Western civilization.
The 1.0 version attacks those perceived as obstructing its goal of a society ruled by a global caliphate and totally regulated by the Shari’a (Islamic law). Islamism’s original tactics, from totalitarian rule to mega-terrorism, encompass unlimited brutality. Three thousand dead in one attack? Bin Laden’s search for atomic weaponry suggests the murderous toll could be a hundred or even a thousand times larger.
However, a review of the past three decades, since Islamism became a significant political force, finds that violence alone rarely works. Survivors of terrorism rarely capitulate to radical Islam – not after the assassination of Anwar el-Sadat in Egypt in 1981, nor the 9/11 attacks, the Bali bombings of 2002, the Madrid bombing of 2004, the Amman bombing of 2005, or the terrorist campaigns in Israel, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. Terrorism does physical damage and kills and intimidates but it rarely overturns the existing order. Imagine Islamists had caused the devastation of Hurricane Katrina or the 2004 tsunami – what could these have lastingly achieved?
Non-terrorist violence aimed at applying the Shari’a does hardly better. Revolution (meaning, a wide-scale social revolt) took Islamists to power in just one place at one time – Iran in 1978–79. Likewise, coup d’état (a military overthrow) carried them to power just once – Sudan in 1989. Same for civil war – Afghanistan in 1996.
If the violence of Islamism 1.0 rarely succeeds in forwarding the Shari’a, the Islamism 2.0 strategy of working through the system does better. Islamists, adept at winning public opinion, represent the main opposition force in Muslim-majority countries such as Morocco, Egypt, Lebanon, and Kuwait. Islamists have enjoyed electoral success in Algeria in 1992, Bangladesh in 2001, Turkey in 2002, and Iraq in 2005.
Once in power, they can move the country toward Shari’a. As Mahmoud Ahmadinejad faces the wrath of Iranian street demonstrators and bin Laden cowers in a cave, Erdog(an basks in public approval, remakes the Republic of Turkey, and offers an enticing model for Islamists worldwide.
Sayyid Imam al-Sharif, the Egyptian theorist of Al-Qaeda, changed his approach and now endorses lawful Islamism.
Recognizing this pattern, Al-Qaeda’s once-leading theorist has publicly repudiated terrorism and adopted political means. Sayyid Imam al-Sharif (b. 1950, also known by the nom de guerre Dr. Fadl) was accused of helping assassinate Sadat. In 1988 he published a book that argued for perpetual, violent jihad against the West. With time, however, Sharif observed the inutility of violent attacks and instead advocated a strategy of infiltrating the state and influencing society.
In a recent book, he condemned the use of force against Muslims (“Every drop of blood that was shed or is being shed in Afghanistan and Iraq is the responsibility of bin Laden and Zawahiri and their followers”) and even against non-Muslims (9/11 was counterproductive, for “what good is it if you destroy one of your enemy’s buildings, and he destroys one of your countries? What good is it if you kill one of his people, and he kills a thousand of yours?”).
Sharif’s evolution from theorist of terrorism to advocate of lawful transformation echoes a much broader shift; accordingly, as author Lawrence Wright notes, his defection poses a “terrible threat” to Al-Qaeda. Other once-violent Islamist organizations in Algeria, Egypt, and Syria have recognized the potential of lawful Islamism and largely renounced violence. One also sees a parallel shift in Western countries; Ramadan and Ellison represent a burgeoning trend.
(What one might call Islamism 1.5 – a combination of hard and soft means, of external and internal approaches – also works. It involves lawful Islamists softening up the enemy, then violent elements seizing power. The Hamas takeover of Gaza proved that such a combination can work: win elections in 2006, then stage a violent insurrection in 2007. Similar processes are possibly underway in Pakistan. The United Kingdom might be undergoing the opposite process, whereby violence creates a political opening.)
In conclusion, only Islamists, not fascists or communists, have gone well beyond crude force to win public support and develop a 2.0 version. Because this aspect of Islamism undermines traditional values and destroys freedoms, it may threaten civilized life even more than does 1.0′s brutality.
Iran launches its huge Modafean-e (Defenders) Aseman-e-Velayat air defense exercise Sunday, Nov. 22, to protect its nuclear sites, after failing to persuade Russia to deliver the linchpin of its air defenses, S-300 missiles. For two weeks, high-ranking Iranian politicians and generals bombarded Moscow to make good on its contract to supply the key weapon, to no avail. Saturday, Nov. 21, Iran’s air force commander Brig. Gen. Ahmad Mighani spoke at length about the highly sophisticated S-300, without which, DEBKAfile’s military sources say, Iran has no real defense against US and Israeli aerial or missile strikes against its nuclear installations.
Iran will hold its war games in the western and southern regions, which Iran estimates will be selected by the Americans and Israelis for attack, and cover an area of 600,000 sq. km. Iranian warplanes will simulate enemy jets zooming in to strike.
Our sources report that, aside from the Russian-made Tor-M 1 short-range interceptor, Iran’s air defense systems are outdated and pretty useless against US stealth bombers or the Israeli air force’s electronic jamming instruments. Syria likewise lacked the weapons for stopping Israel attack its North-Korean-made nuclear reactor two years ago. The Iranian air force has nowhere near the capacity to take on US or Israeli air might.
Lacking the crucial S-300, a senior Revolutionary Guards officer was reduced to threatening: “If Israel attacks Iran, Iranian missiles will explode in the heart of Tel Aviv!”
Iranian strategists are trying to make do with four devices:
1. As many nuclear installations as possible are being moved to secret subterranean sites – among them most of the research laboratories working on the development of nuclear weapons and missiles.
2. Bogus installations have been planted not far from genuine plants to mislead assailants.
3. Tehran’s most powerful defense is the deterrent strength of its ballistic missiles and the missiles distributed to its Middle East allies, Syria, the Lebanese Hizballah and the Palestinian Hamas. Therefore, Iran’s first response to attack will not be to attack Israeli population centers as the Revolutionary Guards officer threatened, but to strike the home bases of its air force, missile and radar as well as the Israel-based US military facilities, so that Israeli warplanes will have no facilities to come back to and its missiles are knocked off their launch pads.
4. Iran’s means its air defense war game as a rejoinder for the joint US-Israel Juniper Cobra 10 anti-ballistic exercise which took place for two weeks earlier this month. Iran’s leaders had to make good on their vow not to leave any American or Israeli military step in the region unanswered, although the anti-air exercise will expose the big hole in their defenses. Even if every last anti-air measure and device they possess is deployed, Iran’s nuclear facilities will still be susceptible to attack, be they the uranium enrichment center at Natanz, the Isfahan fuel plants in Isfahan, the facilities in northern Tehran, or the reactors going up in Arak opposite the Straits of Hormuz.
Police are arresting innocent people in order to get their hands on as many DNA samples as possible, senior Government advisers revealed last night.
The Human Genetics Commission said the Big Brother tactic was creating a ‘spiral of suspicion’ among the public.
The panel – which contains some of Britain’s leading scientists and academics – said officers should no longer routinely take samples at the point of arresting a suspect.
They also called for all police – including support staff – to place their own DNA on the national database in a show of solidarity with a public being routinely placed under suspicion.
By law, officers are only allowed to make an arrest if they have ‘ reasonable suspicion’ that a person has committed a crime.
But the HGC, which has carried out a lengthy review of the merits of the database, said evidence had emerged of police arresting people purely so they could take their DNA.
Its chairman, Professor Jonathan Montgomery, said: ‘People are arrested in order to retain DNA information that might not have been arrested in other circumstances.’
The claim, which was backed by evidence from a senior police officer, delivers a significant blow to the Government’s defence of the database – which contains more than 5.6million samples.
Campaigners have long feared officers were carrying out mass sweeps of the population to load their samples on the database, and make future crime fighting easier.
The result is one million entirely innocent people having their genetic details logged by the state.
The Commission said one of the consequences of current DNA laws was that young black men are ‘very highly over-represented’, with more than three quarters of those aged 18-35 on the database.
Professor Montgomery warned this was creating a ‘spiral of suspicion’ among sections of society.
A retired senior police officer, a superintendent, told the commission: ‘It is now the norm to arrest offenders for everything if there is a power to do so.
‘It is apparently understood by serving police officers that one of the reasons, if not the reason, for the change in practice is so that the DNA of the offender can be obtained.’
Officers in England and Wales are entitled to take samples from everyone they arrest for a recordable offence.
Proposals within the Crime and Security Bill – published last week – will for the first time put a time limit, in most cases six years, on how long profiles are stored when the alleged offender is either not charged or later cleared.
But there are no plans to reduce police powers to take samples on arrest.
One possibility is to only take DNA when a suspect is charged – making it harder for police to target innocents for their DNA.
In a 110-page report, the commission said more detailed research is required to evaluate how useful the database is in helping to solve crimes, describing current evidence as ‘flimsy’.
It accused politicians of using single case studies where the database has secured a conviction instead of carrying out a rigorous evaluation of its scale and function.
Latest Government figures show the costs of running the system – the largest in the world – have risen dramatically, to £4.3million from £2.1million in just a year.
Over the past two years, more than 1.17million new profiles have been added to the database but the number of DNA-related detections fell from a peak of 41,148 in 2006-07 to 31,915 in 2008-09.
LibDem spokesman Chris Huhne said: ‘The Government’s cavalier attitude to DNA retention has put us in the ridiculous situation where people are being arrested just to have their DNA harvested.
Liberty warned police were being given a ‘perverse incentive’ to arrest individuals just to get their details on the database.
Tory home affairs spokesman James Brokenshire said: ‘For too long the Government has had a policy of growing the DNA database for the sake of it, regardless of guilt or innocence.’
Tories last night attacked reported Government plans to charge innocent people a £200 fee to apply to have their names removed from the national DNA database.
Like Nokia last week, Qualcomm has been talking up the future of phones, and the company gave us a sneak peek of what to expect a short while down the road: face recognition technology tied to social network search technology, so you can find out what a stranger just tweeted simply by pointing your handset at them. Is Facebook stalking about to get a whole lot worse?
We’ve seen in-picture face recognition start to appear in mobile phones recently, with Sony Ericsson promising the tech will make it into the Xperia X10 early next year. But Qualcomm reckons it’s going to get much more integrated and advanced.
Gilbert admitted that the possibility raised serious privacy issues – you could theoretically pull up a person’s home address through automatic whois requests – but ethics aside, it’s an interesting next step for augmented reality apps, which layer data over the surroundings and have started to take off in a big way over the last year. As phones get faster and more powerful, what’s to stop people integrating this form of search?
Gilbert described a future where the “handheld device becomes the remote control of your life”. If you ask us, we’ve already reached that stage – would you take it to the next level like this?
Cheques are to be abolished under controversial plans being drawn up by bankers.
They are widely expected to vote next month for the chequebook to be consigned to history.
Yesterday, the move was criticised by consumer groups, business lobbyists and charities representing the elderly.
They raised fears that vulnerable people, who have relied on their chequebook all their lives, will be left confused.
Many others simply prefer to pay by cheque, instead of by direct debit or bank transfer.
The Payments Council said its research shows the number of cheques being written every day has fallen dramatically in recent years.
At their peak in 1990, around 11million cheques were written every day. Latest figures show the number has dropped to around 3.8million
.
Cheques, which were first used in Britain 350 years ago, are also an expensive form of payment for banks.
They cost around £1 each to process, which is four times as much as electronic payments.
The council’s 15-strong board – made up of 11 banking representatives and four independents – will take a decision on December 16.
The most likely date for cheques to be phased out in the UK is 2018.
A growing number of stores including John Lewis and Tesco have stopped accepting cheques.
Stores claim they are the most insecure form of payment and that abolishing them cuts queues at checkouts.
But cheques are still widely used for making payments to tradesmen and for utility bills.
Government departments, such as HM Revenue & Customs and the Department for Work and Pensions, rely on cheques to make millions of payments each year.
Andrew Harrop, head of public policy at Age Concern and Help the Aged, said: ‘Many older people use cheques and cash for all their transactions and are uncomfortable with alternative payment methods, such as credit or debit cards with PIN numbers.
‘To prevent older people becoming financially excluded, any plans to end the use of cheques must ensure there are alternative ways of paying which they are happy using.’
Vera Cottrell, of the consumer lobby group Which?, said: ‘There are still no cheap, safe alternatives to cheques. Until that time, cheques should not be withdrawn.’
The Federation of Small Businesses said it will ‘strongly oppose’ any move to get rid of cheques.
Sandra Quinn, a director of the Payments Council, said: ‘We are completely aware that elderly, disabled and disadvantaged people need alternatives to be in place.
‘If the decision is made to end the cheque, there will be a long time before it comes into effect.’
Count down to 2018?
The ancient Romans are believed to have used an early form of cheque known as praescriptiones in the first century BC
The English word cheque comes from the Arabic akk, which refers to a written note of credit used by Muslim merchants
The first cheque in the UK was written in 1659
Cheques are likely to be abolished in Britain in 2018
Cheque volumes in the UK peaked in 1990 when 4 billion were written
The predicted number of cheques written per day in the UK in 2018 is 1.6m
The number of cheques received each year by the average adult is five
The average value of a personal cheque payment is £227
The amount of retail spending still paid for by cheque is 3.9 per cent
Oversized cheques are often used during charity events and, regardless of size, can still be redeemed for their cash value as long as they have the same parts as a normal cheque
According to the Guinness Book of World Records, the largest ever oversized cheque was 12m by 25m (39 ft × 82 ft)
For decades, the world’s supercomputers have been the tightly guarded property of universities and governments. But what would happen if regular folks could get their hands on one?
The price of supercomputers is dropping quickly, in part because they are often built with the same off-the-shelf parts found in PCs, as a supercomputing conference here last week made clear. Just about any organization with a few million dollars can now buy or assemble a top-flight machine.
Meanwhile, research groups and companies like I.B.M., Hewlett-Packard, Microsoft and Intel are finding ways to make vast stores of information available online through so-called cloud computing.
These advances are pulling down the high walls around computing-intensive research. A result could be a democratization that gives ordinary people with a novel idea a chance to explore their curiosity with heavy computing firepower — and maybe find something unexpected.
The trend has spurred some of the world’s top computing experts and scientists to work toward freeing valuable stores of information. The goal is to fill big computers with scientific data and then let anyone in the world with a PC, including amateur scientists, tap into these systems.
“It’s a good call to arms,” said Mark Barrenechea, the chief executive of Silicon Graphics, which sells computing systems to labs and businesses. “The technology is there. The need is there. This could exponentially increase the amount of science done across the globe.”
The notion of top research centers sharing information is hardly new. Some of the earliest incarnations of what we now know as the World Wide Web came to life so that physicists and other scientists could tap into large data stores from afar.
In addition, universities and government labs were early advocates of what became popularized as grid computing, where shared networks were created to shuttle data about.
The current thinking, however, is that the labs can accomplish far more than was previously practical by piggybacking on some of the trends sweeping the technology industry. And, this time around, research bodies big and small, along with brainy individuals, can participate in the sharing agenda.
For inspiration, scientists are looking at cloud computing services like Google’s online office software, photo-sharing sites and Amazon.com’s data center rental program. They are trying to bring that type of Web-based technology into their labs and make it handle enormous volumes of data.
“You’ve seen these desktop applications move into the cloud,” said Pete Beckman, the director of the Argonne Leadership Computing Facility in Illinois. “Now science is on that same track. This helps democratize science and good ideas.”
With $32 million from the Energy Department, Argonne has set to work on Magellan, a project to explore the creation of a cloud-computing infrastructure that scientists around the globe can use. Mr. Beckman argued that such a system would reduce the need for smaller universities and labs to spend money on their own computing infrastructure.
Another benefit is that researchers would not need to spend days downloading huge data sets so that they could perform analysis on their own computers. Instead, they could send requests to Magellan and just receive the answers.
Even curious individuals on the fringe of academia may have a chance to delve into things like climate change and protein analysis.
“Some mathematician in Russia can say, ‘I have an idea,’ ” Mr. Beckman said. “The barrier to entry is so low for him to try out that idea. So, this really broadens the number of discoverers and, hopefully, discoveries.”
The computing industry has made such a discussion possible. Historically, the world’s top supercomputers relied on expensive, proprietary components. Government laboratories paid vast sums of money to use these systems for classified projects.
But, over the last 10 years, the vital innards of supercomputers have become more mainstream, and a wide variety of organizations have bought them.
At the conference, undergraduate students competed in a contest to build affordable mini-supercomputers on the fly. And a supercomputer called Jaguar at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee officially became the world’s fastest machine. It links thousands of mainstream chips from Advanced Micro Devices.
Seven of the world’s top 10 supercomputers use standard chips from A.M.D. and Intel, as do about 90 percent of the 500 fastest machines. “I think this says that supercomputing technology is affordable,” said Margaret Lewis, an A.M.D. director. “We are kind of getting away from this ivory tower.”
While Magellan and similar projects are encouraging signs, researchers have warned that much work lies ahead to free what they consider valuable information for broader analysis.
At the Georgia Institute of Technology, for example, researchers have developed software that can evaluate scans of the brain and heart, and identify anomalies that might indicate problems. To advance such techniques, the researchers need to train their software by testing it on thousands of body scans.
But it is hard to find a repository of such scans that a hospital or a government organization like the National Institutes of Health is willing to share, even if personal information can be stripped away, said George Biros, a professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology. “Medical schools don’t make this information available,” he said.
Bill Howe, a senior scientist at the eScience Institute at the University of Washington, has urged research organizations to reveal their information. “All the data that we collect in science should be accessible, and that’s just not the way it works today,” he said.
Mr. Howe said high school students and so-called citizen scientists could make new discoveries if given the chance.
“Let’s see what happens when classrooms of students explore this information,” he said.
The title character of Ray Bradbury’s book The Illustrated Man is covered with moving, shifting tattoos. If you look at them, they will tell you a story.
New LED tattoos from the University of Pennsylvania could make the Illustrated Man real. Researchers there are developing silicon-and-silk implantable devices which sit under the skin like a tattoo. Already implanted into mice, these tattoos could carry LEDs, turning your skin into a screen.
The silk substrate onto which the chips are mounted eventually dissolves away inside the body, leaving just the electronics behind. The silicon chips are around the length of a small grain of rice — about 1 millimeter, and just 250 nanometers thick. The sheet of silk will keep them in place, molding to the shape of the skin when saline solution is added.
These displays could be hooked up to any kind of electronic device, also inside the body. Medical uses are being explored, from blood-sugar sensors that show their readouts on the skin itself to neurodevices that tie into the body’s nervous system — hooking chips to particular nerves to control a prosthetic hand, for example.
Chips are already used inside bodies, most notably the tiny RFID tags injected into pets. But the flexible nature of these “tattooed” circuits means they can move elastically with the body, sitting in places that a rigid circuit board couldn’t.
The first displays are sure to be primitive, but likely very useful for the patients that receive them. You won’t be getting the full-color, hi-res images that come with ink, but functional displays. This doesn’t mean that the commercial and artistic possibilities are being ignored. Philips, the electronics giant, is exploring some sexual applications.
It’s certainly rather creepy, but we’re not sure that the inevitable next stage of playing adult movie clips on your partner’s back will be appealing to all. We, of course, are considering the geekier side of this tech. GPS, with a map readout on the back of the wrist would certainly be useful, as would chips that cover your eyeballs and can darken down when the sun is shining too bright.
And a full-body display will eventually be used for advertising. Combine this with bioluminescent ink, for example, and you could turn yourself into a small, walking version of Times Square. At least, unlike a real tattoo, you can switch this one off.
In fact, if you start to imagine the possible uses, they seems almost endless. Just like the stories that play across the body of the Illustrated Man.
Thanksgiving is a deeply theological act, rightly understood. As a matter of fact, thankfulness is a theology in microcosm — a key to understanding what we really believe about God, ourselves, and the world we experience.
A haunting question is this: How do atheists observe Thanksgiving? I can easily understand that an atheist or agnostic would think of fellow human beings and feel led to express thankfulness and gratitude to all those who, both directly and indirectly, have contributed to their lives. But what about the blessings that cannot be ascribed to human agency? Those are both more numerous and more significant, ranging from the universe we experience to the gift of life itself.
Can one really be thankful without being thankful to someone? It makes no sense to express thankfulness to a purely naturalistic system. The late Stephen Jay Gould, an atheist and one of the foremost paleontologists and evolutionists of his day, described human life as “but a tiny, late-arising twig on life’s enormously arborescent bush.” Gould was a clear-headed evolutionist who took the theory of evolution to its ultimate conclusion — human life is merely an accident, though a very happy accident for us. Within that worldview, how does thankfulness work?
The Apostle Paul points to a central insight about thankfulness when he instructs the Christians in Rome about the reality and consequences of unbelief. After making clear that God has revealed himself to all humanity through the created order, Paul asserts that we are all without excuse when it comes to our responsibility to know and worship the Creator.
He wrote:
“For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse. For even though they knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks, but they became futile in their speculations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools. . .” [Romans 1:20-22].
This remarkable passage has at its center an indictment of thanklessness. They did not honor Him as God or give thanks. Paul wants us to understand that the refusal to honor God and give thanks is a raw form of the primal sin. Theologians have long debated the foundational sin — and answers have ranged from lust to pride. Nevertheless, it would seem that being unthankful, refusing to recognize God as the source of all good things, is very close to the essence of the primal sin. What explains the rebellion of Adam and Eve in the Garden? A lack of proper thankfulness was at the core of their sin. God gave them unspeakable riches and abundance, but forbade them the fruit of one tree. A proper thankfulness would have led our first parents to avoid that fruit at all costs, and to obey the Lord’s command. Taken further, this first sin was also a lack of thankfulness in that the decision to eat the forbidden fruit indicated a lack of thankfulness that took the form of an assertion that we creatures — not the Creator — know what is best for us and intend the best for us.
They did not honor Him as God or give thanks. Clearly, honoring God as God leads us naturally into thankfulness. To honor Him as God is to honor His limitless love, His benevolence and care, His provision and uncountable gifts. To fail in thankfulness is to fail to honor God — and this is the biblical description of fallen and sinful humanity. We are a thankless lot.
Sinners saved by the grace and mercy of God know a thankfulness that exceeds any merely human thankfulness. How do we express thankfulness for the provision the Father has made for us in Christ, the riches that are made ours in Him, and the unspeakable gift of the surpassing grace of God? As Paul wrote to the Corinthians, “Thanks be to God for His indescribable gift” [2 Corinthians 9:15].
So, observe a wonderful Thanksgiving — but realize that a proper Christian Thanksgiving is a deeply theological act that requires an active mind as well as a thankful heart. We need to think deeply, widely, carefully, and faithfully about the countless reasons for our thankfulness to God.
It is humbling to see that Paul so explicitly links a lack of thankfulness to sin, foolishness, and idolatry. A lack of proper thankfulness to God is a clear sign of a basic godlessness. Millions of Americans will celebrate Thanksgiving with little consciousness of this truth. Their impulse to express gratitude is a sign of their spiritual need that can be met only in Christ.
So have a very Happy Thanksgiving — and remember that giving thanks is one of the most explicitly theological acts any human can contemplate. O give thanks to the Lord, for He is good; for His lovingkindness is everlasting [1 Chronicles 16:34]. Give thanks.
viagra and hearing loss Ed Treatment Natural Female use of viagra female version of viagra 761.
erectile dysfunction vacuums Cialis Dysfunction Erectile Levitra how to get viagra
herbal remedy for erectile dysfunction; Erectile Dysfunction Psychological Zocor erectile dysfunction zoloft erectile dysfunction 147.
robin williams viagra Viagra Spray "explore advances in male impotence treatments"
viagra perscription online Natural Remedy Erectile Dysfunction male hormone dhea impotence levels
will ferrell erectile dysfunction Viagra Perscription Online ed treatment with ginko
erectile dysfunction pills evaluated; On Viagra "non prescription viagra"
cialis viagra How To Buy Viagramale impotence age
Cigarette smoking and erectile dysfunction cigarette smoking causing male impotence 395. Impotence Viagra The latest treatment for ed topical ed treatment 237.
most effective ed treatment! Viagra 50 Mg actos erectile dysfunction
l dopa for male impotence! Buy Cheap Viagra erectile dysfunction and pravastatin;
male impotence pumps vacu Holistic Ed Treatment cost of viagra
female forcing male sexual impotence; Male Impotence Brochure actos erectile dysfunction
accounting treatment for sr ed Water Ed Treatment Male impotence due to surgery male impotence enema 629.
lamictal erectile dysfunction! Accounting Treatment Sr Ed Ias "buy viagra online"
problems with viagra, Viagra Cheap erectile dysfunction link suggest
"non prescription viagra" Viagra Uk viagra times;
viagra soft tabs? Ed Treatments erectile dysfunction ed treatment
u 3312 viagra cialis Male Impotence Advice yohimbie bark and male impotence
facts male impotence psychological effects
lexapro erectile dysfunction,
erectile dysfunction paypal, Zetia And Erectile Dysfunction straighttalk net erectile dysfunction review
male impotence and solutions? Make Your Own Viagra newest transdermal treatment for ed
tricor erectile dysfunction Hebal Ed Treatmenterectile dysfunction exercise
Viagra and alternatives viagra and blood pressure 767. How To Make Viagra how to take viagra
cialis medication erectile dysfunction Erectile Dysfunction Pills accupril and erectile dysfunction
Subscribe to RSS
