"But thou, O Daniel, shut up the words, and seal the book, even to the time of the end: many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased.
(Daniel 12:4)
Knowledge Shall Be Increased
Dear Friends,
Greetings. As the article below points out, "There was 5 exabytes of information created between the dawn of civilization through 2003, but that much information is now created every 2 days, and the pace is increasing."
What could be more of a fulfillment of God's prophecy through Daniel than the above prophecy, that knowledge shall be increased in the last days. The last days being the days of tribulation, the days, just before the second coming of Jesus, the days before the thousand year reign of Christ on this earth.
This prophecy is being fulfilled this very day, this very moment while you are reading this. And this is only one of many prophecies that are currently being fulfilled. As we look at the world around us and see what is happening in different parts of the planet we cannot help but believe that we are truly living in the End Time, the last days, and as Jesus promised in other prophecies, once the darkness is past we have the promise of His return to rule the world in righteousness.
"Then shall appear the sign of the Son of man in heaven: and then shall all the tribes of the earth mourn, and they shall see the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory. And he shall send his angels with a great sound of a trumpet, and they shall gather together his elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other." (Matthew 24:30-31)
"Behold, he cometh with clouds; and every eye shall see him, and they also which pierced him: and all kindreds of the earth shall wail because of him." (Revelation 1:7)
"I saw thrones, and they sat upon them, and judgment was given unto them: and I saw the souls of them that were beheaded for the witness of Jesus, and for the word of God, and which had not worshipped the beast, neither his image, neither had received his mark upon their foreheads, or in their hands; and they lived and reigned with Christ a thousand years." (Revelation 20:4)
We pray the following articles, images, and videos will be a blessing to you.
***
Read Write Web
Google CEO Schmidt: "People Aren't Ready for the Technology Revolution"
By Marshall Kirkpatrick
August 4, 2010
Eric Schmidt spoke at the Techonomy conference in Lake Tahoe today and dropped some serious rhetorical bombs. "There was 5 exabytes of information created between the dawn of civilization through 2003," Schmidt said, "but that much information is now created every 2 days, and the pace is increasing...People aren't ready for the technology revolution that's going to happen to them."
The Techonomy conference is a gathering of people from around the globe seeking to use technology to solve the world's big problems. Schmidt spoke there today and said that people need to get ready for major technology disruption, fast.
The bulk of what's contributing to this explosion of data, Schmidt says, is user generated content. From that content, far more prediction than we've seen today is possible and will be a factor in the future.
"If I look at enough of your messaging and your location, and use Artificial Intelligence," Schmidt said, "we can predict where you are going to go."
"Show us 14 photos of yourself and we can identify who you are. You think you don't have 14 photos of yourself on the internet? You've got Facebook photos! People will find it's very useful to have devices that remember what you want to do, because you forgot...But society isn't ready for questions that will be raised as result of user-generated content."
In addition to predicting personal behavior, diseases and other crises will become predictable as well, Schmidt said.
On the misuse of information for criminal or anti-social purposes:
See also: Eric Schmidt on What the Web Will Look Like in 5 Years
"The only way to manage this is true transparency and no anonymity. In a world of asynchronous threats, it is too dangerous for there not to be some way to identify you. We need a [verified] name service for people. Governments will demand it."
How's that all sound to you? Realistic? Frightening? A combination of both?
The upside? "In our lifetimes," Schmidt says, "we'll go from a small number of people having access to information, to 5 billion people having all the world's knowledge in their native language." That is truly incredible.
But in a loss of privacy, in the hyper-proliferation of predictive technologies, is there a cost in terms of free will? Maybe not, but it certainly seems an appropriate subject of debate.
CNBC
We Are in Equivalent of Great Depression: Strategist
Published: Monday, 9 Aug 2010
By: Patrick Allen
The mid-summer rally is over and stocks will begin a downward leg before bottoming in October, as the world economy is in what looks like a Great Depression, Robin Griffiths, a technical strategist at Cazenove Capital, told CNBC Monday.
"Equities are for losers and bond markets for winners. Equities are simply for people who like losing money," Griffiths said.
"A double-dip is inevitable and imminent, as Keynesian stimulus measures have never worked anywhere. We are in the equivalent of a Great Depression following 3 years of credit crisis," he added.
Department of Monitoring Kavkaz Center
Radiation, plague, and fires: foreign embassies urgently evacuate staff from Russia
A hasty evacuation of diplomatic staff from foreign embassies, like a stampede, began in Moscow. Many embassies are trying to hide the evacuation for political reasons. Mass evacuation of the embassies of Canada and Poland was officially reported at night on August 7.
Western media meanwhile reported that the Canadian embassy in Moscow was closed. Dutch embassy is urgently evacuating its diplomatic staff from Russia.
High level of air pollution (see photo), as one of the consequences of forest fires, has become an official ground for evacuating embassy staff and their family members.
Unofficially, they speak about plague in Russia, but first of all, about sharply elevated radioactive background in the city, caused by destruction of atomic bombs in fires at nuclear weapons arsenals outside Moscow. According to unofficial information, warehouses of chemical and bacteriological weapons were also burnt down.
The final decision on immediate evacuation of foreign diplomats from Russia was made after the ringleader of the Russian terrorist gang Disaster Ministry, Shoigu, said that "the level of radiation may increase in Bryansk region because of fires" (the soil there is still very strongly contaminated by Chernobyl).
Sophisticated diplomats immediately understood the diplomatic slang, familiar to them, and rushed to pack baggage, Russian media reported.
Early in the morning of 7 August, the escape of foreign diplomats from Russia took epidemic proportions. It is possible that the diplomats, through the intelligence services of their countries, know something that is not yet known to the general public.
Germany officially closed its embassy and evacuated the entire staff from the doomed Russian Empire, media outlets reported. Austria, along with Poland and Canada, is evacuating almost all its staff from Russia. Foreign embassies addressed to their citizens got stuck in the country to leave Russia as soon as possible.
A Hamburg newspaper, Die Welt, reported in a clear text format that the urgent flee of German diplomats from Russia was caused by radiation approaching Moscow.
The radiation, according to the newspaper, comes from facilities for the production of atomic bombs (400 km east of Moscow) burning in Sarov. Emission of radiation in the environment continues.
On the territory "of the atomic research center," as this plant is officially called, two fires are still raging, the newspaper writes. Russians cannot conceal facts, since fires are perfectly visible from satellites.
Naturally, the evacuation affected all, without exception, embassies in Moscow, but most of them reported nothing for political reasons. The case is very serious, and certainly it is not related to the smog and fumes.
Meanwhile, governments of civilized countries warned their citizens not to go in any case to Russia gripped by a full set of traditional natural and unnatural calamities.
The Austrian Embassy in Moscow appealed to all Austrian citizens in Russia to leave the country immediately. All Austrian diplomats are urgently leaving Russia. Only minor staff without diplomatic status will remain at the embassy. Naturally, there will be no one issuing visas to Russians.
The US State Department warned Americans that a trip and staying in Russia is a mortal threat to their life. The corresponding notification was circulated on Friday by the Bureau of Consular Affairs of the US State Department. The statement reads:
"The US State Department warns American citizens about the risks involved in traveling to Russia due to wildfires there and their impact on safety, air quality, and transportation".
The statement noted that fires and "high temperatures" in the central part of Russia produced "hazardous levels of air pollution and numerous flight delays and cancellations in Moscow".
Americans traveling to these areas of Russia are advised to cancel the trip. US citizens with heart or lung disease who are already inside the giant area of natural disasters, which now represents the whole Russia, are advised to avoid unnecessary outdoor staying and strenuous physical loads.
The current alert warning will remain in force until September 5, when the situation in Russia, as the US stipulates, relaxes as far as fires are concerned, because there'll be left nothing to burn. The situation would remain unpredictable regarding plague and radiation.
Foreign Ministries of Germany, Bulgaria: France, Italy and other countries also appealed to their citizens not to travel to Russia.
Independent
Russians fear worst as fires reach Chernobyl fallout zone
Scepticism as officials try to play down threat of radioactive residue in smog
By Miriam Elder
12 August 2010
Firefighters tackle flames near the village of Kustaryovka in the Ryazan region of Russia yesterday as the wildfires continued to fan out across the country and head towards the contaminated Chernobyl nuclear plant
Radiation levels near Chernobyl could rise and pose long-term health dangers as deadly forest fires spread to land contaminated by the world's largest nuclear-reactor disaster, Russian environmentalists said yesterday.
Activists said that the effect of the flames, fanned by the hottest weather in the region in 1,000 years, is bound to be serious. "This is radiation that will be dangerous for the local population living near the fires and firefighters managing the fires," said Vladimir Chuprov, head of Greenpeace Russia's energy unit. "What is not clear is what could be the danger of the combined radiation effect and toxic effect of the smog. No one knows how these effects multiply each other."
If the weather situation changes, particularly with heavy winds, the toxic smoke could blow westward, he warned. However he added: "Moscow and the EU states are out of the risk zone."
Radioactive residue from the explosion at Chernobyl, a massive nuclear power plant in Ukraine, continues to line the earth in Ukraine, Belarus and western Russia. Experts have been warning for more than a week that the fires that have blanketed much of western Russia in thick smoke could stir nuclear debris from the accident, adding a potentially deadly pollutant to the carbon monoxide-thick smog.
But as officials admitted that the fires had reached areas affected by fallout from the 1986 nuclear explosion, they insisted that there was no reason to panic.
On Tuesday, Russia's chief sanitary official, Gennady Onishchenko, criticised environmentalists for raising alarm over the nuclear issue. "There is no need to sow panic," he said. "Everything is fine."
And the Russian emergencies ministry said it had increased forest patrols around Bryansk, the western region that lies close to Chernobyl, and that its efforts to battle the flames there were largely successful. "There is a danger, but we are controlling the situation," said Vladimir Rozinkevich of the Bryansk forest protection service.
The local emergencies ministry in Snezhinsk, the site of a major nuclear research centre, said the fires there had been extinguished by yesterday. Yet fires still threaten Mayak, a major nuclear storage and reprocessing site in Chelyabinsk, where a nuclear accident in 1957 also left the grounds littered with nuclear residue.
Russians are, however, growing weary of official statements. The Kremlin has a long history of downplaying disasters in a bid to appear in control. State-run television has focused on official efforts to battle the flames. On Tuesday, it aired footage of the Prime Minister, Vladimir Putin, co-piloting a firefighting jet and pressing a button to spill 24 tonnes of water over burning land. Vedomosti, a leading business daily which usually strives to appear apolitical, lambasted the move in an editorial yesterday, saying: "This is tunnel vision of the PR-men who believe that a TV picture of Putin behind the wheel of something is an eternal panacea."
Mr Putin's ratings, and those of President Dmitry Medvedev, have fallen as a result of the fires. One poll has put Mr Putin's approval rating below 50 per cent. Yesterday, Mr Medvedev posted on Twitter: "I've been reading about how many of our people have taken it upon themselves to help fire victims. I do appreciate it."
More than 600 fires continue to burn across Russia. The acrid smoke that has choked Moscow since Friday lifted yesterday, but weather officials warned it would likely return by the end of the week. Officially, 52 people have died in the fires, but with reports of several villages completely destroyed by the fires, many believe the final death toll will be much higher.
Some officials appear to have taken a blase attitude to the crisis. Moscow's mayor, Yury Luzhkov, remained on holiday for days before being called back to the capital earlier this week, and the head of the Moscow region forestry service remains on holiday.
More than 165,000 firefighting and emergencies officials have been deployed to tackle the flames, but they are equipped with dilapidated tools and are still sorely under-staffed.
telegraph.co.uk
Pakistan floods: disaster is the worst in the UN's history
The United Nations has rated the floods in Pakistan as the greatest humanitarian crisis in recent history with more people affected than the South-East Asian tsunami and the recent earthquakes in Kashmir and Haiti combined.
By Neil Tweedie in Charsadda -
09 Aug 2010
Although the current 1,600 death toll in Pakistan represents a tiny fraction of the estimated 610,000 people killed in the three previous events, some two million more people - 13.8 million - have suffered losses requiring long or short-term help.
Maurizio Giuliano, a spokesman for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said: "This disaster is worse than the tsunami, the 2005 Pakistan earthquake and the Haiti earthquake."
The comparison illustrates the scale of the crisis facing Pakistan as its inefficient and corrupt bureaucracy battles to mitigate the effects of the flooding.
The disaster zone stretches from the Swat Valley in the north, where 600,000 people are in need of help, to Sindh in the south.
Billions of pounds will be needed to rebuild affected areas but western nations have pledged only tens of millions in aid. Radical Islamic groups are jockeying to fill the vacuum left by government incompetence and relative international indifference.
Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, formerly North-West Frontier Province and scene of a bloody Taliban insurgency, has been devasted by swollen rivers. The steel girder bridge over the Khyali River in Charsadda which built by the British at the height of the Raj is a jagged stump. It was a vital gateway to the region and its loss has hampered the aid effort.
"There are people here who are 80 and who will tell you that they have seen nothing like it in their lives," said Arif Jabbar Khan, leading the Oxfam team in the town. "This was a productive agricultural area with a big middle class who have now lost everything. The effect of that will be enormously destabilizing. There was a riot in town as people demanded food."
Beneath it, the brown waters of the swollen Khyali, three times its normal width, thundered southward over what had been homes and farms.
The problems here are being replicated across Pakistan. Of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa's population of 1.7 million, some one million have been made destitute by the flooding. The government has managed to distribute 10,000 food packs in the 10 days since the disaster. They will feed just 80,000 people.
Flood victims stand around homeless, aimless, their clothes covered in sticky red mud. The river thunders on, oblivious.
"The reaction in the west to this crisis has been lukewarm so far," said Mr Khan. "The governments there need to understand what is going on." Meanwhile Mr Khan must get on with the basics, pouring chlorine into wells to prevent the spread of e-coli and cholera, and organizing payments to families so that they can buy food in Charsadda's still-functioning market.
The nearby city of Peshawar relies on the area for much of its food, and prices are now rocketing in the markets there - as they are along the length of Pakistan.
Still more people are still dying in Pakistan's remote mountainous northern provinces, swept away in the torrent or buried in landslides.
The government in Islamabad has admitted that cannot cope with such a catastrophe, but the international response has been lukewarm.
Yousuf Raza Gilani, Pakistan's prime minister, left to deal with the crisis while his president, Asif Ali Zardari, toured Britain and France, said the floods would set Pakistan back years.
Jean-Maurice Ripert, the United Nations special envoy for the disaster, said the scale of funding for Pakistan's recovery could only escalate. He said: "The emergency phase will require hundreds of millions of dollars and the recovery and reconstruction part will require billions of dollars."
Angry survivors have attacked government officials in flood-hit areas. The government's fear of a backlash is believed to be behind the blocking of two independent TV channels, Geo and Ary, which have been critical of President Asif Ali Zardari for going ahead with a European tour as large parts of his country suffered inundation.
- telegraph.co.uk
Giant Mecca clock seeks to call time on Greenwich
For more than a century, a point on the top of a hill in south-east London has been recognised as the centre of world time and the official starting point of each new day.
By Adrian Blomfield, Middle East Correspondent, and Martin Beckford - 11 Aug 2010
Big Ben (L) and the Mecca Clock Tower (R) are now in competition to be recognised as the centre of time
The Mecca Clock Royal Tower hotel overlooks the Grand Mosque in the holy Muslim Saudi city of Mecca Photo: AFP/GETTY IMAGES
But now the supremacy of Greenwich Mean Time is being challenged by a gargantuan new clock being built in Mecca, by which the world's 1.5 billion Muslims could soon be setting their watches.
Due to start ticking on Thursday as the faithful begin fasting during the month of Ramadan, the timepiece sits atop the Royal Mecca Clock Tower which dominates Islam's holiest city.
It is at the heart of a vast complex funded by the Saudi government that will also house hotels, shopping malls and conference halls.
Bearing a striking resemblance to both St Stephen's Tower, which houses the bell of Big Ben, and the Empire State Building, the Saudi upstart aims to outdo its revered British rival in every way.
The clock's four faces are 151ft in diameter and will be illuminated by 2million LED lights along with huge Arabic script reading: "In the name of Allah". The clock will run on Arabia Standard Time which is three hours ahead of GMT.
When a glittering spire is added, topped with a crescent to symbolise Islam, the edifice will stand at nearly 2,000 ft, making it the world's second tallest building.
The clock of Big Ben, by comparison, is just 23ft in diameter, while its tower stands at a mere 316ft.
Residents of Mecca will also be reminded that it is time to pray when 21,000 green and white lights, visible at a distance of 18 miles, flash five times a day.
But Islamic scholars hope the clock's influence will stretch far further than the sands of Saudi Arabia, as part of a plan for Mecca to eclipse the Greenwich Observatory as the "true centre of the earth".
For the past 125 years, the international community has accepted that the start of each day should be measured from the prime meridian, representing 0 degrees longitude, which passes through the Greenwich Observatory.
A standard time by which other clocks were set was needed to organise global travel and communications, but in the Islamic world the idea that it should be centred on a part of London is seen as a colonial anachronism.
As Mohammed al-Arkubi, manager of one of the hotels in the complex, put it: "Putting Mecca time in the face of Greenwich Mean Time. This is the goal."
According to Yusuf al-Qaradawi, an Egyptian cleric known around the Muslim world for his popular television show "Sharia and Life", Mecca has a greater claim to being the prime meridian because it is "in perfect alignment with the magnetic north."
This claim that the holy city is a "zero magnetism zone" has won support from some Arab scientists like Abdel-Baset al-Sayyed of the Egyptian National Research Centre who says that there is no magnetic force in Mecca.
"That's why if someone travels to Mecca or lives there, he lives longer, is healthier and is less affected by the earth's gravity," he said. "You get charged with energy."
Western scientists have challenged such assertions, noting that the Magnetic North Pole is in actual fact on a line of longitude that passes through Canada, the United States, Mexico and Antarctica.
The Independent
Robot to explore mysterious tunnels in Great Pyramid
For 4,500 years, no one has known what lies beyond two stone doors deep inside the monument
By Andrew Johnson
Sunday, 8 August 2010
For 4,500 years, the Great Pyramid at Giza has enthralled, fascinated and ultimately frustrated everyone who has attempted to penetrate its secrets.
Now a robotics team from Leeds University, working with Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities, is preparing a machine which they hope will solve one of its enduring mysteries.
The pyramid, known as the Pyramid of Khufu after the king who built it around 2,560BC, is the only wonder of the ancient world still standing. At its heart are two rooms known as the King's Chamber and the Queen's Chamber. Two shafts rise from the King's Chamber at 45-degree angles and lead to the exterior of the monument. They are believed to be a passageway designed to fire the king's spirit into the firmament so that he can take his place among the stars.
In the Queen's Chamber, there are two further shafts, discovered in 1872. Unlike those in the King's Chamber, these do not lead to the outer face of the pyramid
No one knows what the shafts are for. In 1992, a camera sent up the shaft leading from the south wall of the Queen's Chamber discovered it was blocked after 60 metres by a limestone door with two copper handles. In 2002, a further expedition drilled through this door and revealed, 20 centimetres behind it, a second door.
"The second door is unlike the first. It looks as if it is screening or covering something," said Dr Zahi Hawass, the head of the Supreme Council who is in charge of the expedition. The north shaft bends by 45 degrees after 18 metres but, after 60 metres, is also blocked by a limestone door.
Now technicians at Leeds University are putting the finishing touches to a robot which, they hope, will follow the shaft to its end. Known as the Djedi project, after the magician whom Khufu consulted when planning the pyramid, the robot will be able to drill through the second set of doors to see what lies beyond.
Dr Robert Richardson, of the Leeds University School of Mechanical Engineering, said they would continue the expedition until they reach the end of the shafts.
"We have been working on the project for five years," he said. "We have no preconceptions. We are trying to gain evidence for other people to draw conclusions. There are two shafts. The north shaft is blocked by a limestone door and nothing has penetrated that door. With the south shaft a previous team has measured the thickness of the stone, drilled through it and put a camera through it and found there was another surface. We are going to determine how thick that is and we could drill through it. We are preparing the robot now and expect to send it up before the end of the year. It's a big question, and it's very important not to cause unnecessary damage. We will carry on until we find the answer. We hope to get all the data possible which will be sufficient to answer the questions."
Mail Online
The new Nessie? Mystery 'sea creature' spotted off British coast
By DAILY MAIL REPORTER -
31st July 2010
Cynics may dismiss it as just a piece of driftwood or a trick of the light.
But a photograph showing what appears to be a long-necked sea creature has got marine experts scratching their heads.
The 'animal' was snapped stalking a shoal of fish just 30 yards off the British coast.
Mystery: The 'sea serpent' was spotted stalking a shoal of fish just yards off the Saltern Cove in Paignton, Devon. The fish were apparently so scared that they beached themselves
The fish were apparently so terrified they beached themselves just seconds later.
The creature was spotted off the Devon coast at Saltern Cove, Paignton, by locals who reported a sighting of what they thought was a turtle.
But pictures taken by one of the baffled witnesses, Gill Pearce, reveal the neck of the greenish-brown beast with the reptile-like head is far too long for it to be a turtle.
Mrs Pearce, who took the photo on July 27, reported her sighting to the Marine Conservation Society (MCS) where it was studied by sea life experts.
Claire Fischer from the MCS said: 'Gill Pearce spotted the creature about 20 metres from the bay at Saltern Cove, near Goodrington.
'It was observed at about 15.30 on 27 July but by the time she had got her camera it had moved further out.
'She spotted it following a shoal of fish which beached themselves in Saltern Cove.
'The creature remained in the sea, then went out again and followed the shoal - this indicates it's not a turtle as they only eat jellyfish.
'We would love to know if other people have seen anything like this in the same area and can help clear up the mystery.'
In the deep: The 'animal' was at first dismissed as a sea turtle but experts say its long neck and reptile-like head - as well as the fact it was chasing fish - contradict this theory
Some people think the sea sighting could be linked to that of a sperm whale sighted off south Devon recently but Miss Fischer dismissed that explanation.
'They [sperm whales] wouldn't come that close inshore and the reptilian-like head counts that out - at least that's what the experts are saying.'
The sighting has caused a stir on the MCS website too, where theories range from sea serpent to salt water crocodile.
An MCS spokesman said: 'It was reported as a turtle as it had large front flippers and small back flippers and what appeared to be a shell but was also said to have a small head on a thin neck about two-feet long which craned above the surface like a Plesiosaur.
Sighting: The mysterious creature was spotted in waters off Saltern Cove, near Paington
'No sea turtles do that with their heads and we do not know of similarly described freshwater turtles that grow so big.
'It's described as being as long as a sea lion with a long neck which floated at the same height in the water all the time.
'This is not a fake. The problem is the distance and clarity from which the photos were taken.
'The lady thought it may have been a turtle - but turtles don't chase fish.
'So at the moment it is "unidentified" - the person who reported it has trawled the internet and says the closest ID fit is a giant green sea turtle - but the description of the head doesn't add up.'
The organisation is now asking for people to keep a keen watch on the seas off South Devon and have appealed for more photos to be taken.
A spokesman said: 'If you live or are visiting down near Saltern Cove Goodrington, near Paignton please keep your eyes on the sea and let us know if you see anything - and keep your camera by your side just in case.'
Discovery News
On April 10th, 1977, a Japanese fishing boat off the coast of New Zealand, snagged what appeared to be a possible modern day plesiosaurus in fishing nets 900 feet underwater.
The dead and decaying creature was 32 feet long and weighed an estimated 4,000 pounds. The evidence was examined and tested by a group of Japanese marine scientists and the Director of Animal Research at the National Science Museum of Japan reported, "It seems that these animals are not extinct after all. It's impossible for only one to have survived. There must be a group."
This find was so important that the Japanese honored it with a commemorative postage stamp as the scientific discovery of the year. The plesiosaur was even used as the official emblem for the 1977 National Exhibition which celebrated 100 years of scientific discovery.
This should not surprise us as there have been numerous sightings of these "sea monsters". The Navy ship U.S.S. Stein apparently tangled with a huge creature when its' sonar equipment suddenly stopped working. When the captain headed the ship back for repairs at Long Beach Naval Dockyard, it was discovered that the rubber covering that protected the sonar dome was torn and battered with hundreds of sharp, hollow teeth broken off and still in the covering.
It is interesting that many reports of "sea serpents" were reported during WW1 such as this description by Captain Georg von Forstner: "On July 20, 1915, our U28 torpedoed the British steamer Iberian carrying a rich cargo in the North Atlantic. The steamer sank quickly, the bow sticking almost vertically into the air. When it had gone for about twenty-five seconds there was a violent explosion. A little later pieces of wreckage, and among them a gigantic sea animal (writhing and struggling wildly), was shot out of the water to a height of 60 to 100 feet."
The Bible also speaks of sea creatures of such immense size that they "play" with the ships at sea. Job 41 calls this interesting creature the "leviathan" and it is described as so strong and large that no man can capture it or control it. Were these sea creatures prehistoric or do they continue to dwell in the seas?
Power Point Paradise
The Civil War pterosaur shot no one's allowed to see!"
March 19, 2010
The most obfuscated photo in history?
There's a very old photo no one can see! Not that it doesn't exist! It exists alright. But no one is really allowed to see it by the "thought police". Even when people see it, many still can't really see it as it is! At least very few of them.
So what about that "most obfuscated photo"?
It's an old sepia colored photo that was printed in a "believe it or not" type book in the U.S., according to many people who either used to have a copy or read it. It was published sometime between the 1950-ies and 1960-ies. Then in the early nineties, this amazing photo got scanned and put on the internet, in plain sight! Nevertheless, today, very few people can see it for what it really is!
Reuters
Cancer cells slurp up fructose, US study finds
Aug 2, 2010
* Study shows fructose used differently from glucose
* Findings challenge common wisdom about sugars
WASHINGTON Aug 2 (Reuters) - Pancreatic tumor cells use fructose to divide and proliferate, U.S. researchers said on Monday in a study that challenges the common wisdom that all sugars are the same.
Tumor cells fed both glucose and fructose used the two sugars in two different ways, the team at the University of California Los Angeles found.
They said their finding, published in the journal Cancer Research, may help explain other studies that have linked fructose intake with pancreatic cancer, one of the deadliest cancer types.
"These findings show that cancer cells can readily metabolize fructose to increase proliferation," Dr. Anthony Heaney of UCLA's Jonsson Cancer Center and colleagues wrote.
"They have major significance for cancer patients given dietary refined fructose consumption, and indicate that efforts to reduce refined fructose intake or inhibit fructose-mediated actions may disrupt cancer growth."
Americans take in large amounts of fructose, mainly in high fructose corn syrup, a mix of fructose and glucose that is used in soft drinks, bread and a range of other foods.
Politicians, regulators, health experts and the industry have debated whether high fructose corn syrup and other ingredients have been helping make Americans fatter and less healthy.
Too much sugar of any kind not only adds pounds, but is also a key culprit in diabetes, heart disease and stroke, according to the American Heart Association.
Several states, including New York and California, have weighed a tax on sweetened soft drinks to defray the cost of treating obesity-related diseases such as heart disease, diabetes and cancer.
The American Beverage Association, whose members include Coca-Cola (KO.N) and Kraft Foods (KFT.N) have strongly, and successfully, opposed efforts to tax soda.
The industry has also argued that sugar is sugar.
Heaney said his team found otherwise. They grew pancreatic cancer cells in lab dishes and fed them both glucose and fructose.
Tumor cells thrive on sugar but they used the fructose to proliferate. "Importantly, fructose and glucose metabolism are quite different," Heaney's team wrote.
"I think this paper has a lot of public health implications. Hopefully, at the federal level there will be some effort to step back on the amount of high fructose corn syrup in our diets," Heaney said in a statement.
Now the team hopes to develop a drug that might stop tumor cells from making use of fructose.
U.S. consumption of high fructose corn syrup went up 1,000 percent between 1970 and 1990, researchers reported in 2004 in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.
***
CNN
Sci-fi legend Ray Bradbury on God, 'monsters and angels'
By John Blake
August 2, 2010
Ray Bradbury turns 90 this month, but his house, which is filled with stuffed animals and toys, looks like a playhouse.
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
Ray Bradbury is the author of classics like "Fahrenheit 451"
Bradbury's life has been as enchanted as his stories
Sci-fi legend has rarely talked about his faith, until now
Bradbury: "Joy is the grace we say to God"
(CNN) -- Ray Bradbury lives in a rambling Los Angeles home full of stuffed dinosaurs, a tin robot pushing an ice cream cart, and a life-sized Bullwinkle the Moose doll lounging in a cushioned chair.
The 89-year-old science fiction author watches Fox News Channel by day, Turner Classic Movies by night. He spends the rest of his time summoning "the monsters and angels" of his imagination for his enchanting tales.
Bradbury's imagination has yielded classic books such as "Fahrenheit 451," "The Martian Chronicles" and 600 short stories that predicted everything from the emergence of ATMs to live broadcasts of fugitive car chases.
Bradbury, who turns 90 this month, says he will sometimes open one of his books late at night and cry out thanks to God.
"I sit there and cry because I haven't done any of this," he told Sam Weller, his biographer and friend. "It's a God-given thing, and I'm so grateful, so, so grateful. The best description of my career as a writer is, 'At play in the fields of the
Lord.' "
Bradbury's stories are filled with references to God and faith, but he's rarely talked at length about his religious beliefs, until now.
'Joy is the grace we say to God'
He describes himself as a "delicatessen religionist." He's inspired by Eastern and Western religions.
The center of his faith, though, is love. Everything -- the reason he decided to write his first short story at 12; his 56-year marriage to his muse and late wife, Maggie; his friendships with everyone from Walt Disney to Alfred Hitchcock -- is based on love.
Bradbury is in love with love.
I once asked him if he prayed, and he said, 'Joy is the grace we say to God.'
--Sam Weller, Ray Bradbury biographer
Once, when he saw Walt Disney, architect of the Magic Kingdom, Christmas shopping in Los Angeles, Bradbury approached him and said: "Mr. Disney, my name is Ray Bradbury and I love you."
Bradbury's favorite book in the Bible is the Gospel of John, which is filled with references to love.
"At the center of religion is love," Bradbury says from his home, which is painted dandelion yellow in honor of his favorite book, "Dandelion Wine."
"I love you and I forgive you. I am like you and you are like me. I love all people. I love the world. I love creating. ... Everything in our life should be based on love."
Bradbury's voice booms with enthusiasm over the phone. He now uses a wheelchair. His hearing has deteriorated. But he talks like an excitable kid with an old man's voice. (Each Christmas, Bradbury asked his wife to give him toys in place of any other gifts.)
Weller, author of "Listen to The Echoes: The Ray Bradbury Interviews," says Bradbury ends many conversations with "God bless." Weller's book devotes an entire chapter to Bradbury's faith.
"I once asked him if he prayed, and he said, 'Joy is the grace we say to God,' '' Weller says.
Bradbury was raised as a Baptist in Waukegan, Illinois, by his father, a utility lineman, and his mother, a housewife. Both were infrequent churchgoers.
His family moved to Los Angeles during the Great Depression to look for work. When he turned 14, Bradbury began visiting Catholic churches, synagogues and charismatic churches on his own to figure out his faith.
Bradbury has been called a Unitarian, but he rejects that term. He dislikes labels of any kind.
"I'm a Zen Buddhist if I would describe myself," he says. "I don't think about what I do. I do it. That's Buddhism. I jump off the cliff and build my wings on the way down."
Examples of faith in Bradbury's stories
Bradbury started writing for pulp magazines like "Weird Tales" and "Thrilling Wonder Stories" at the beginning of his career. But even then, faith was an important theme.
In his 1949 story "The Man," Bradbury tells the story of a rocket crew landing on Mars, only to see their thunder taken by a Christ-like figure who had arrived only hours earlier.
In subsequent stories such as "Bless Me, Father, For I Have Sinned," priests and other ordinary people search and find redemption.
Allusions to Christianity are common in his stories, but Bradbury doesn't define himself as a Christian. He considers Jesus a wise prophet, like Buddha and Confucius.
"Jesus is a remarkable person," Bradbury says. "He was on his way to becoming Christ, and he made it."
Weller, also author of "The Bradbury Chronicles: The Life of Ray Bradbury," says Bradbury's religious antenna is most attuned to Christianity.
"The guy keeps writing about Jesus, but he doesn't consider himself a Christian," Weller says.
"He says faith is necessary but that we should accept the fact that when it comes to God, none of us know anything."
I jump off the cliff and build my wings on the way down.
--Ray Bradbury, legendary sci-fi author
The Rev. Calvin Miller, author of the New Testament novels "The Singer Trilogy," sees an optimism in Bradbury's stories that's reflected in the Judeo-Christian belief that there will be a "new heaven and a new Earth" one day.
Miller once wrote an essay about Bradbury's "Christian positivism," titled "Hope in a Doubtful Age," that was published in "Christianity Today," an evangelical magazine.
After the essay appeared, Miller says, he was sorting through mail at home when he noticed two thank-you letters from Bradbury -- one written when the author was headed to Paris for vacation and another when he arrived.
The following Christmas, Miller says, he received something else from Bradbury.
"Every Christmas afterward, he sent me a card," Miller says. "I guess the religious implications of the article meant a lot to him."
Will space travel destroy our belief in God?
The religious implications of space travel also mean much to Bradbury.
Bradbury has been a relentless supporter of space exploration. Ascending to the heavens won't destroy God; it'll reinforce belief, he says.
"We're moving more toward God," he says. "We're moving toward more proofs of his creation in other worlds he's created in other parts of the universe. Space travel will increase our belief in God."
As he approaches the end of his journey, Bradbury is still conjuring his monsters and angels. His next book, "Summer Morning, Summer Night," was just released last month.
Many of his best friends, though, are not around to read him anymore.
"My personal telephone book is a book of the dead now," Bradbury told Weller in his book of interviews. "I'm so old. Almost all of my friends have died, and I don't have the guts to take their names out of the book."
Bradbury is also concerned about something beyond his own mortality: humanity's survival.
Space travel and religion seek the same goal -- immortality, Bradbury says. If humanity remains on Earth, it is doomed because someday the sun will either explode or flame out.
Everyone -- not just the characters in his story -- must eventually explore the stars, he says.
"We must move into the universe. Mankind must save itself. We must escape the danger of war and politics. We must become astronauts and go out into the universe and discover the God in ourselves."
Paul A. Drockton M.A.
A Glimpse into the Spirit World
True Freedom can only come to those who are without fear. Fear is a lever used by evil men to lead us away from our duties. The greatest fear men have is the fear of death. I am not sure if it is uncertainty they fear, or some other expectation. I think it varies from individual to individual.
As you can tell from my writings, I no longer share the common fears of mankind. God, in His infinite mercy, has shown me what lies beyond our mortal experience, therefore, I am unfettered to pursue the core truths of humanity. One of those core truths is that their is an afterlife, Just as there is a premortal life, for all of us. A man may be shown these things, but he always limitations on who and where he can share this knowledge, if at all.
In the next few articles I am going to focus on the reality of life after death, as much as I am permitted. I will start with a vision given to Heber Q. Hale in 1920.
"I passed but a short distance from my body through a film into the world of spirits. This was my first experience after going to sleep. I seemed to realize that I had passed through the change called death and I so referred to it in my conversation with the immortal beings with whom I immediately came into contact. I readily observed their displeasure at our use of the word death and the fear which we attach to it. They use there another word in referring to the transition from mortality to immortality, which word I don't recall and I can only approach its meaning and the impression which was left upon my mind, by calling it "the New Birth."' (Source)
As you can see, for those that have experienced what is referred to as the "New Birth", their is no cold, hard grave for the part of man that matters. The elements that make up our mortal body simply return to their mother earth. The most important part of man, the Spirit, continues its journey. This is the part of man that had its previous existence with God before it came to this world.
Another big misconception is that the Spirit is merely pure energy that merges with "The Light" and loses its individual identity when it enters the Spirit World. This is both a Gnostic and Luciferian concept. The reality is that our Spirits are composed of both a finer matter and energy. This finer matter is usually not seen by the human eye, but there are exceptions, where men and women have seen the Spirits of the dead. Heber continues:
"My first visual impression was the nearness of the world of spirits to the world of mortality. The vastness of this heavenly sphere was bewildering to the eyes of the spirit-novice. Many enjoyed unrestricted vision, and unimpeded action, while many others were visibly restricted as to both vision and action. The vegetation and landscape were beautiful beyond description; not all green as here, but gold with varying shades of pink, orange, and lavender as the rainbow. A sweet calmness pervaded everything. The people I met there I did not think of as spirits, but as men and women, self-thinking and self-acting individuals, going about important business in a most orderly manner. There was perfect order there and everybody had something to do and seemed to be about their business." (Ibid)
The restrictions placed on some in that world are largely a result of their own doing. We are only limited by our willingness to accept truth. The greater a man or woman's willingness to embrace truth, the greater is "visions" in the next life. Damnation is nothing more or less than a man's failure to accept the core truths of this life and the eternities.
In my visions of the afterlife I saw that all living things have a song to sing in that world. Flowers, trees, animals and even people. This song is based on their Spiritual Development. The more developed a Spirit is, the more beautiful the song and the greater its influence.
"That the inhabitants of the spirit world are classified according to their lives of purity, and their subservience to the Father's will, was subsequently made apparent. Particularly was it observed that the wicked and unrepentant are confined to a certain district by themselves, the confines of which are as definitely determined and impassible as the line marking the division of the physical from the spiritual world. A mere film, but impassible until the person himself was changed.
The world of spirit is the temporary abode of all spirits pending the resurrection from the dead and the judgment. There was much activity within the different spheres, and appointed ministers of salvation were seen coming from the higher to the lower spheres in pursuit of their missionary appointments." (Ibid)
Our purpose in that life is to embrace all the truth we can physically possess, then we have a responsibility to share it with others according to their capacity to receive it. A beautiful plan that exalts all the participants, or condemns them.
"I had a very pronounced desire to meet certain of my kinsfolk and friends, but I was at once impressed with the fact that I had entered a tremendously great and extensive world, even greater than our earth and more abundantly inhabited. I could be in only one place at a time, could do only one thing at a time, could look only in one direction at a time, and accordingly it would require many, many years to search out and converse with all those I had known and those whom I desired to meet unless they were especially summoned to receive men."
Of course, since men are at different stages of development in that world, it would only make sense that the world they inhabit is totally dependant on the truths they have received.
"I was surprised to find there, no babies in arms. I met the infant son of Orson W. Rawlings, my first counselor. I immediately recognized him as the baby who died a few years ago, and yet he seemed to have the intelligence and, in certain respect, the appearance of an adult, and was engaged in matters pertaining to his family and its genealogy. My mind was quite contented upon the point that mothers will again receive into their arms their children who died in infancy and will be fully satisfied, but the fact remains that entrance into the world of spirits is not an inhibition of growth but the greatest opportunity of development. Babies are adult spirits in infant bodies."
This demonstrates my point of pre-earthly development in our Father's House for the Spirits of men. The fact that our Spirits were fully developed to their capacity before we came to mortality is evidenced by this portion of Hyrum's vision.
***
If you do not already know Jesus, we urge you to receive Him today, now. To receive Jesus and to be assured that you will live on into His glorious kingdom, all that is required is a simple prayer. Jesus has already paid the price to make your entry a surety.
Just simply pray, dear Jesus, I believe you are the Son of God who died to take away my sin and the sin of the world. I ask you to please come into my heart, forgive me my sin, give me eternal life, and help me to love you and others. Amen.
If you have prayed that prayer you can rest assured you have eternal life.
"That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved." (Romans 10:9)
If you would like more information concerning your salvation, or any counsel or spiritual guidance, we welcome you to write us, or search the web site.
Until next week the Lord bless and keep you.
Almondtree Productions
"He shall speak great words against the most High, and shall wear out the saints of the most High, and think to change times and laws."
(Daniel 7:25)