GCG - until every family is doing well©
* The Church for The Internet Generation *
* For The Modern World *
* The First Worldwide Internet Community Church with Biblical principles for all people *
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* For The Modern World *
* The First Worldwide Internet Community Church with Biblical principles for all people *
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Trough out this website, GCG's editors give meaning to certain words or sayings
that may be unfamiliar to the speakers of English as their second language
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that may be unfamiliar to the speakers of English as their second language
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PLEASE NOTICE:
As of today the whole beautiful HOME page in this website with important & beneficial information has disappeared - GCG has informed the web provider Weebly to repair the damage and return the page as it is some kind of a technical mistake and not caused by GCG
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"Apart from Me you can do nothing"
(John 15:5).
Gift from God for your life
Gift from God for your life in this world is Success, Happiness, Piece of Mind, Wealth, Excellent Relationships, Great Marriage, Successful Children - All is yours when you cling to The Bible and follow its Rules for Success. GCG will teach you all those laws - based on The Bible - God's Word and Book for Life Success
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NOTICE: Important info for every web visitor
The web provider, weebly.com, is working on this page and on this whole website to find out the reason for the technical malfunctioning. The orderly, original set up for some article topics, lines and additional links with the complete texts is not holding. It may or may not appear in every page = tab. The lines are jumping unevenly, changing the font size and boldness is changing by itself after the website work. All is fine when GCG's editors save & publish the new information. When next time starting to work on the editing and placing new material, the pages appear messed up - it happens after GCG's editors exit the whole website. However, all information stays in this extensive website & is available in full in every page and for every article. GCG is sorry for the inconvenience - the web provider will repair this technical malfunctioning.
All material in this website is being used in College & University education for every degree level. Despite the "jumping lines & other technical difficulties", you will and every web visitor still will get the high level science information.
Global Church of God - GCG
*The First Worldwide Internet Community Church with Biblical principles for all people*
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Quotation
"The family that prays together stays together,
and if they stay together they will love one another
as God has loved each one of them.
And works of love are always works of peace".
Mother Teresa
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click: Mother Teresa
For high-level, up-to-date human science information
visit our affiliate Save The American Family - STAF, Inc., -not-for-profit- website
(click) www.staf1org.weebly.com
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Life-sized Noah's Ark finally finished
It took an eccentric millionaire four long years to complete the 450-foot labor of love.
Click: What's inside it
Related links (click green for further info) In case the link has expired, search the web with the article title In case the link has expired, search the web with the article title ________________________________________
This is one of the must-see websites - you'll love it and I bet: you'll cry, too
'Humans of New York': The woman who reduced photographer to tears
"I'll tell you what my husband told me when he was dying. I said, 'Mo, how am I going to live without you?' And he said, take the love that you have for me and spread it around.'" It was a moment that moved the photographer Brandon Stanton to tears. The 29-year-old self-taught photographer is behind the hugely popular "Humans of New York" blog and now book. Brandon's willingness to approach strangers has led to some pretty amazing moments of openness, "whether it's someone telling me about their battle with cancer, or somebody even telling me how they were molested as a child," he says of many "startlingly honest revelations."
Click all five:
(1) Brandon - Humans of New York - (2) Humans of New York - (3) Images for Brandon Stanton
(4) Humans of New York - Wikipedia
(5) Humans of New York - click: www.humansofnewyork.com
* Good advice for all of us *
__________________________________________
It took an eccentric millionaire four long years to complete the 450-foot labor of love.
Click: What's inside it
Related links (click green for further info) In case the link has expired, search the web with the article title In case the link has expired, search the web with the article title ________________________________________
This is one of the must-see websites - you'll love it and I bet: you'll cry, too
'Humans of New York': The woman who reduced photographer to tears
"I'll tell you what my husband told me when he was dying. I said, 'Mo, how am I going to live without you?' And he said, take the love that you have for me and spread it around.'" It was a moment that moved the photographer Brandon Stanton to tears. The 29-year-old self-taught photographer is behind the hugely popular "Humans of New York" blog and now book. Brandon's willingness to approach strangers has led to some pretty amazing moments of openness, "whether it's someone telling me about their battle with cancer, or somebody even telling me how they were molested as a child," he says of many "startlingly honest revelations."
Click all five:
(1) Brandon - Humans of New York - (2) Humans of New York - (3) Images for Brandon Stanton
(4) Humans of New York - Wikipedia
(5) Humans of New York - click: www.humansofnewyork.com
* Good advice for all of us *
__________________________________________
Far More Than a Lady With a Lamp - Florence Nightingale She was known as "The Lady with the Lamp" after her habit of making rounds at night - she is considered the foundational philosopher of modern nursing, statistician, and social reformer - born May 12, 1820, Florence, Italy—died August 13, 1910, London, England The click: Nightingale Pledge taken by new nurses was named in her honor, and the annual click: International Nurses Day is celebrated around the world on her birthday. Click colored areas below for further info- In medical school, as one of only 10 female students, I ignored click: Florence Nightingale assiduously (= constantly & with persistence). I didn’t want to play any of the roles I thought she modeled for women — obedient wife, caring sister, modest daughter. It wasn’t until I was practicing medicine in an old-fashioned hospital in San Francisco and learned that its comfortable open wards were “Nightingale wards” that I started to take an interest. Why were they called that? What I learned is that after the click: Crimean War from 1853 to 1856 (history repeats itself, in 2014 Russia still has similar demands in the Ukrainian situation), in which thousands of British soldiers died from infections, Nightingale visited almost every hospital in Europe, analyzed them and then wrote up her findings in “Notes on Hospitals,” which became the guide to hospital architecture for the next century.
Its first sentences changed my idea of Florence Nightingale forever: “It may seem a strange principle to enunciate as the very first requirement in a hospital that it should do the sick no harm. It is quite necessary, nevertheless, to lay down such a principle.”
Photo To see the photos click: Far More Than a Lady With a Lamp - if the link has expired search the web with "NYT article Far More Than a Lady With a Lamp, March 14, 2014"
Florence Nightingale Credit Associated Press As true today as it was 150 years ago — acerbic, witty and clear.Then I got to the end of the book, where Nightingale lays out one of the first sets of hospital mortality statistics collected. Statistics had recently been applied to social phenomena by Adolphe Quetelet, and Nightingale was taken by them. “To understand God’s thought, we must study statistics,” she wrote. And to display her evidence, she came up with the polar pie chart, a visual way of understanding data we still use. It was that appendix which gave me the first inkling that this was a brilliant woman. How did I get her so wrong?
So I began to read. There are more than 300 Nightingale biographies and 16 volumes of her writings. Her life (1820-1910) spanned the 19th century, that bridge between the premodern and modern worlds, and she stood with a foot in each, with premodern feelings and modern ideas.
When she was born there was no anesthesia and no antisepsis, hardly a thermometer, and no oxygen, IVs*) or antibiotics. The best surgeon was whoever could amputate a leg in less than 90 seconds; appendicitis often meant death. *) by injection into a vein = IV = intravenous; an intravenous injection; an intravenous solution; intravenous feeding
By the time she died there was germ theory, the laboratory and vaccines against cholera, typhoid and plague. So she lived through a revolution in health care.
Her family was wealthy in a “Downton Abbey” sort of way, with cooks, butlers and maids. Her father educated her at home; she learned Greek, Latin, French, German and Italian, history and music.
Then she turned 17, and it was time to get a husband. She rebelled. She didn’t want to marry; she wanted to work in hospitals as a nurse, taking care of the sick poor. In 1837 this was unheard-of. Nursing was done by servants, and her family looked upon her idea, she wrote, as if she’d “gone to be a maid of all work.”
They fought it out for 15 years. She turned down every suitor; she took every opportunity for training as a nurse, and eventually she won. Her father granted her an annuity, and she took over a hospital on Harley Street where she put her ideas into practice.
Then came the Crimean War. It was the first war with correspondents at the front, and they reported on the thousands of soldiers dying at hospitals from typhoid fever, cholera and dysentery. Nightingale, whose work was well known by then, was asked to go to the Crimean Peninsula.
Photo To see the photos click: Far More Than a Lady With a Lamp - if the link has expired search the web with "NYT article Far More Than a Lady With a Lamp, March 14, 2014"
. Florence Nightingale championed the use of statistics, developed the polar pie chart to illustrate mortality causes in the Crimean War.What she saw there — the filth, the lack of food, bandages, even latrines — stunned her, scarred her and energized her for the rest of her life. In that uncaring chaos, she had a vision of its opposite, of how things could be — shining hospitals with professional nurses and medical care for everyone, especially the poor, “who, when they are sick, become our brothers.”
She spent the rest of her life making that vision a reality.
She wrote “Notes on Nursing,” which became a best seller and made her financially independent. She reorganized Britain’s army hospitals and reformed the nursing in workhouses. She founded the first real school for nurses, and its graduates — “Nightingales”— carried her reformation throughout the world. She wrote on public health, sanitation, India and prostitution, and for 50 years she was behind most of the health-related legislation in England. All this even though she was bedridden from chronic brucellosis, an infection she’d contracted in Crimea.
In her lifetime, she was esteemed. Queen Victoria wished aloud that she had Nightingale in her cabinet; babies, buildings and streets were named after her. When she died, burial in Westminster Abbey was offered, though her family, respecting her wishes, turned it down.
So much of what she fought for we take for granted today — our beautiful hospitals, the honored nursing profession, data-driven research.
What would she have thought of the Affordable Care Act? She would have liked its emphasis on public health, on data and on adequate care for everyone. There’s just one thing she would have missed — her belief that caring for the sick is not a business but a calling.
She didn’t mean “calling” in a religious sense. She meant having a kind of feeling for one’s work — an inner sense of what is right, which she termed “enthusiasm,” from the Greek entheos, having a god within. The opposite of a “calling” was “telling” — that is, rewards, punishments and threats — and she observed that without a calling, no amount of telling would satisfy. Which is what would have worried her about the Affordable Care Act. It relies on telling, on thousands of new regulations, rules and laws. There’s no calling in it.
Now, Nightingale understood the different goals of doctor, nurse, lawyer and economist. From her study of hospitals she’d concluded that patients get the best care when no single power is ascendant, rather when there is the “perpetual rub” between doctor, nurse and administrator.
What would have worried her about the health care act is that its balance is off: It gives too much power to the telling of economists and lawyers and too little to the calling of doctors and nurses.
Nightingale, however, was an optimist. God wants us to make mistakes, she believed; mistakes are the basis of evolution. She was also a fighter, so I imagine she would have seen the health care law as a work in progress, and what we have still to learn from her, even so long after her death, is her willingness to fight and her determination to get it right. She didn’t accept being told in her own life, and she wouldn’t have wanted us to accept it in ours.
Victoria Sweet, a physician in San Francisco, is the author of “God’s Hotel: A Doctor, a Hospital and a Pilgrimage to the Heart of Medicine.”
To see the photos click: Far More Than a Lady With a Lamp - if the link has expired search the web with "NYT article Far More Than a Lady With a Lamp, March 14, 2014" Source: (1) A version of this article appears in print on March 4, 2014, on page D3 of the New York edition with the headline: Far More Than a Lady With a Lamp. Far More than a lady with a lamp- Florence Nightingale, OM, RRC was a celebrated British social reformer and statistician, and the founder of modern nursing. She came to prominence while serving as a nurse during the Crimean War, where she tended to wounded soldiers. Wikipedia
- Born: May 12, 1820, Florence, Italy
- Died: August 13, 1910, Park Lane, London, United Kingdom
- Full name: Florence Nightingale
- Education: King's College London
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At the end of this page: 101 Scientific Facts & Foreknowledge
Detailed scientific evidence of the accuracy of The Bible & proof that The Bible is the first Science book full of science facts that the modern human science has discovered much later, perhaps just yesterday, one month ago, one year or any amount of years ago. Clear proof that The Bible must have been dictated by someone who knew all secrets in the universe. The people, "God's secretaries", say: "God appeared and asked me to write down His dictations and give to my nation as their life success advice & success rules". In those times, the Jewish people had one of the most advanced writing technology - one reason God used them.
The accurate predictions - Foreknowledge.
Foreknowledge means: awareness of something before it happens or exists.
In addition to the science facts, The Bible has hundreds of detailed predictions of the future events in the world, listed with names & accurately with the smallest details - all dictated by God to his secretaries hundreds & thousands of years before they actually happened. The predictions dictated by God give detailed information what will happen in different places in the coming hundreds & thousands of years, e.g., who is the king, what wars and why they will come, etc., even Jesus birth, work & death was predicted thousands of years earlier with exact details - all actual facts proven true by the modern human historians, archaeologists, geologists and by any other science. With today's technology we can see through the earth, to the bottom of the oceans, far to the entire universe & beyond.
The full truth
The information at the end of this page is revealing and will convince any reasonable human being to see the truth. The truth about the Biblical texts being fully true and accurate. It is logical that the whole Bible must be true in every detail as these listed examples also are fully true. The people who wrote down The Bible could not have known any of the example facts, thus, they did not write down their own opinions because no human could have known any of the science or future facts. Someone who knew all what is in the world and in the universe, knew the past and the future in all details, must have told the facts. No human could have been capable of such knowledge then or now.
Today's prophets
Prophet = a person regarded as an inspired teacher or proclaimer of the will of God or of the future events in our world or in the universe.
To proclaim means "to announce officially and publicly".
God's will is that we humans would respect our body & mind by having a healthy lifestyle and by eating natural, life-sustaining food. The Bible guides us to treat our bodies in respectful manner and maintain it well. Based on God's dictation The Bible gives full details what to eat and what not to eat, how otherwise to live in order to stay healthy and have a long, successful life. The Bible states: the two most important success rules are: (1) love God, and (2) love your neighbor. Loving God means to respect & follow God's dictations in The Bible to stay healthy and to have success in every area of life, including in the finances. Loving your neighbor would provide us all reasonable chances getting along without wars, killings, hate & disasters on a personal or a country level. All problems and failure in human life come from not following these 2 important "love rules".
The Bible tells that in the past during the human history, God used some chosen people as His prophets to warn the nations and people of the future catastrophes (flooding, earthquakes, etc.). These prophets told "God appeared to me and guided me to tell you to change your ways to live, to change the way the people behaved, in order to avoid the otherwise coming disasters".
In the same way, today, God uses scientists and certain influential individuals to tell to the entire world now: change the way we ruin the earth by our polluting lifestyle or the world will collapse and billions of people will die. This refers to the warming of the world. Are we listening? In the past human history often the people did not listen to these prophets. Is the situation now the same? The earth is in a big trouble based on our wrong, destroying lifestyle. The situation is similar when the nutrition scientists warn the world of wrong eating leading to overweight & obesity, of the use of commercialized processed food instead of natural food, smoking, drug use, alcohol abuse, sex abuse - in case we continue we will end having life-destroying sicknesses. Are we listening? Today in the U.S. and worldwide over 75 % of the population is overweight or obese with killing sicknesses as diabetes, cancer, arthritis, high blood pressure, sex abuse based AIDS, etc. - all coming from (1) wrong eating & (2) wrong lifestyle - all against God's success guidance in The Bible. The prophets of today, many of them public figures, ex-country Presidents, or otherwise well-known, respected scientists, are warning us all, the whole world - are we listening or are we continuing the body and earth polluting wrong, destroying actions.Click: Global carbon emissions hit record high in 2012
Additional related info links provided for your study to enrich your and your family's life
The material at the end of this page has links to hundreds of additional information sources - for your own growth in knowledge & life wisdom to succeed, to stay healthy, have an enjoyable, happy, financially rich, long, rewarding life now and to have also the perfect eternal life later, as The Bible promises.
Respect the information by applying it in your own and in your family's life. Guide your children to do the same - then you are on the road to a new, healthy, long successful & financially rich life.
Quotation "You respect, you keep - you don't, you lose"
(Dr. Christian, Pastor, GCG)
___________________________________
Click: Global carbon emissions hit record high
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The Wedding Fix Is In
Everyone U.S. wide & worldwide planning for a wedding will benefit from this article
Can the internet fix the price-gouging problem in the wedding industry
Price gouging is a pejorative*) term referring to a situation in which a seller prices goods or commodities at a level much higher than is considered reasonable or fair. *) pejorative = expressing contempt or disapproval
Click colored areas for further info
I was never the type to create a wedding “dream board,” with collages of petal-strewn, princess-themed fantasy nuptials. So I thought the process of planning my own wedding would be fairly painless and practical. That was before I entered the economically baffling world of the wedding-industrial complex.
I knew, of course, that weddings are notoriously expensive, but what I did not expect was the sheer difficulty of finding any price information at all. Not only will vendors not post prices online, but many will not even quote them over the phone, requiring a face-to-face meeting first. In fact, before they would even show me any of their dresses, let alone price tags, some bridal shops have required me to fill out a form divulging my occupation, employer, address, dress budget, overall wedding budget, reception venue and other intrusive information.
Wedding vendors seemed to be trying to size me up to figure out how much I’m willing to pay; consumer advocates say this is a common practice, as is charging more for a given service for a wedding than for a “family function” or “corporate event.” Austan Goolsbee, an economics professor at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, click: Booth School of Business recalls that when he was married over a decade ago, one caterer initially quoted him about $60 a head, and then jacked up the price to about $90 per person after realizing the function was a wedding. These are forms of what economists call price discrimination; it sounds unfair, but it’s perfectly legal, and it’s easier to get away with in markets where there’s little price transparency and consumers are relatively uninformed.
When the Internet came along, it transformed industries like air travel, bookselling and even life insurance, by massively reducing search costs (essentially, the difficulty of comparison shopping), thereby pushing down prices. It seems as if the $50 billion wedding industry — in which the average couple spends upward of $25,000, according to the market-research firms IBISWorld click: IBISWorld and The Wedding Report click: The Wedding Report — should be ripe for similar “disruption.” But while there are plenty of wedding-related websites, they typically work like dream boards, rarely including specific prices. Why hasn’t some enterprising Silicon Valley firm come in and made the market more transparent?
I spoke with a lot of wedding industry veterans, as well as economists who study other markets where consumers frequently feel gouged, thanks to high search costs and informational asymmetries (health care, funerals). They told me the wedding industry’s dysfunction is a product of its highly bespoke services — and, as a result, greater transparency might not bring down prices anyway.
David M. Wood, president of the Association of Bridal Consultants, click: Association of Bridal Consultants
said part of the problem is that most brides are first-time shoppers. They are less informed about what a “fair” price is, or how long it should take to discover prices.
(If you just spent two hours going through different bouquet and centerpiece pricing options at one florist, you might assume that it will take the same amount of time at other vendors and decide it’s too much of a hassle to shop around.) Because this event is (ideally) once in a lifetime, that also means that vendors can appeal to consumers’ sentimentality, urging them not to cheap out on the “most important” day of their lives. Because of similar concerns about guilt-tripping salespeople, the Federal Trade Commission requires funeral homes to provide its bereaved customers with an itemized price list.
Many in the wedding industry wielded this once-in-a-lifetime logic, explaining to me that wedding services are not standardized enough to create a meaningful price aggregator. With books, there’s a single bar code for each product, but it’s hard to do apples-to-apples pricing comparisons between wedding bands or photographers. This argument isn’t incredibly compelling. After all, I can see prices for highly differentiated food-delivery options on sites like Seamless. Locality, a start-up, has been collecting and publishing a menu of prices for services usually considered highly nonstandardized, like massages, day care and dentist visits. Creating something similar for wedding services should not be insurmountably difficult.
But even if some company swooped in and lowered search costs, that doesn’t necessarily mean that prices would fall as a result. Vendors could counteract the decrease in search costs by finding ways to make prices more difficult to compare — something known as “obfuscation,” (= bewilderment: confusion resulting from failure to understand) studied by the M.I.T. click: MIT - Massachusetts Institute of Technology economists Glenn Ellison click: Home Page of Glenn Ellison - MIT and Sara Fisher Ellison MIT Economics : Sara Fisher Ellison.
Sellers could obfuscate (=complicate) prices by giving different product names to an identical item, depending on which store is selling it, as the mattress industry has been accused of doing. Or they might lower prices for the specific keyword consumers search for, but then compensate with hidden fees or required add-on purchases. Many New York venue-based caterers quote a price per guest in the form of “[price] plus plus,” as in “$180 plus plus,” with one “plus” referring to taxes and the other “plus” referring to a “service” or “administrative” fee, which ranges somewhat arbitrarily from 18 to 25 percent, depending on the venue. This makes it very difficult to compare prices even when they’re aggregated side by side — similar to the rise of baggage fees on airlines in the age of Orbitz. click: Orbitz Travel
Ultimately, it may be that prices are not the primary attribute upon which people are searching for wedding vendors. By way of analogy, even if notoriously opaque health-care providers started posting prices upfront, patients still wouldn’t all flock to the lowest-cost brain surgeon. When it comes to services like weddings and delicate operations, consumers typically care about other qualities more, and so providing more price transparency might not change consumers’ choices.
Which brings us to the matter of those wedding-dream-board makers. Strong consumer preferences — about the flower type, bridesmaid dress, cake decorations, music style, whatever — mean less price sensitivity (what economists refer to as greater demand inelasticity). If the cocktail napkins must be blue, the happy couple will be willing to pay more for blue. So if there are enough brides out there with strong and specific preferences, who want their weddings to be the special day they always dreamed of, that’s going to push equilibrium prices higher, no matter how transparently they are displayed. In other words, the Bridezillas keep prices high for the rest of us.
Text source: (click) CATHERINE RAMPELL
Catherine Rampell is an economics reporter for The New York Times
Comments & links by STAF, Inc.
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Bible Verses About Family
Bible verses that give the biblical perspective on subjects relating to families, such as love, family relationships, family problems, family values, children, strength, and death. Read verses from the Holy Bible about family in relation to God, Jesus Christ, and the Christian faith.
Click the colored area
Use our Bible verses by topic topic page to quickly find Bible verses organized by popular topics.
1 Corinthians 13:4-7 Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
Matthew 19:9 And I say to you: whoever divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another, commits adultery.”
Mark 10:12 .And if she divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery.”
Click the colored areas for further info
Source: The Bible
_____________________________________________________________________
The accurate predictions - Foreknowledge.
Foreknowledge means: awareness of something before it happens or exists.
In addition to the science facts, The Bible has hundreds of detailed predictions of the future events in the world, listed with names & accurately with the smallest details - all dictated by God to his secretaries hundreds & thousands of years before they actually happened. The predictions dictated by God give detailed information what will happen in different places in the coming hundreds & thousands of years, e.g., who is the king, what wars and why they will come, etc., even Jesus birth, work & death was predicted thousands of years earlier with exact details - all actual facts proven true by the modern human historians, archaeologists, geologists and by any other science. With today's technology we can see through the earth, to the bottom of the oceans, far to the entire universe & beyond.
The full truth
The information at the end of this page is revealing and will convince any reasonable human being to see the truth. The truth about the Biblical texts being fully true and accurate. It is logical that the whole Bible must be true in every detail as these listed examples also are fully true. The people who wrote down The Bible could not have known any of the example facts, thus, they did not write down their own opinions because no human could have known any of the science or future facts. Someone who knew all what is in the world and in the universe, knew the past and the future in all details, must have told the facts. No human could have been capable of such knowledge then or now.
Today's prophets
Prophet = a person regarded as an inspired teacher or proclaimer of the will of God or of the future events in our world or in the universe.
To proclaim means "to announce officially and publicly".
God's will is that we humans would respect our body & mind by having a healthy lifestyle and by eating natural, life-sustaining food. The Bible guides us to treat our bodies in respectful manner and maintain it well. Based on God's dictation The Bible gives full details what to eat and what not to eat, how otherwise to live in order to stay healthy and have a long, successful life. The Bible states: the two most important success rules are: (1) love God, and (2) love your neighbor. Loving God means to respect & follow God's dictations in The Bible to stay healthy and to have success in every area of life, including in the finances. Loving your neighbor would provide us all reasonable chances getting along without wars, killings, hate & disasters on a personal or a country level. All problems and failure in human life come from not following these 2 important "love rules".
The Bible tells that in the past during the human history, God used some chosen people as His prophets to warn the nations and people of the future catastrophes (flooding, earthquakes, etc.). These prophets told "God appeared to me and guided me to tell you to change your ways to live, to change the way the people behaved, in order to avoid the otherwise coming disasters".
In the same way, today, God uses scientists and certain influential individuals to tell to the entire world now: change the way we ruin the earth by our polluting lifestyle or the world will collapse and billions of people will die. This refers to the warming of the world. Are we listening? In the past human history often the people did not listen to these prophets. Is the situation now the same? The earth is in a big trouble based on our wrong, destroying lifestyle. The situation is similar when the nutrition scientists warn the world of wrong eating leading to overweight & obesity, of the use of commercialized processed food instead of natural food, smoking, drug use, alcohol abuse, sex abuse - in case we continue we will end having life-destroying sicknesses. Are we listening? Today in the U.S. and worldwide over 75 % of the population is overweight or obese with killing sicknesses as diabetes, cancer, arthritis, high blood pressure, sex abuse based AIDS, etc. - all coming from (1) wrong eating & (2) wrong lifestyle - all against God's success guidance in The Bible. The prophets of today, many of them public figures, ex-country Presidents, or otherwise well-known, respected scientists, are warning us all, the whole world - are we listening or are we continuing the body and earth polluting wrong, destroying actions.Click: Global carbon emissions hit record high in 2012
Additional related info links provided for your study to enrich your and your family's life
The material at the end of this page has links to hundreds of additional information sources - for your own growth in knowledge & life wisdom to succeed, to stay healthy, have an enjoyable, happy, financially rich, long, rewarding life now and to have also the perfect eternal life later, as The Bible promises.
Respect the information by applying it in your own and in your family's life. Guide your children to do the same - then you are on the road to a new, healthy, long successful & financially rich life.
Quotation "You respect, you keep - you don't, you lose"
(Dr. Christian, Pastor, GCG)
___________________________________
Click: Global carbon emissions hit record high
______________________________________________________________________________
The Wedding Fix Is In
Everyone U.S. wide & worldwide planning for a wedding will benefit from this article
Can the internet fix the price-gouging problem in the wedding industry
Price gouging is a pejorative*) term referring to a situation in which a seller prices goods or commodities at a level much higher than is considered reasonable or fair. *) pejorative = expressing contempt or disapproval
Click colored areas for further info
I was never the type to create a wedding “dream board,” with collages of petal-strewn, princess-themed fantasy nuptials. So I thought the process of planning my own wedding would be fairly painless and practical. That was before I entered the economically baffling world of the wedding-industrial complex.
I knew, of course, that weddings are notoriously expensive, but what I did not expect was the sheer difficulty of finding any price information at all. Not only will vendors not post prices online, but many will not even quote them over the phone, requiring a face-to-face meeting first. In fact, before they would even show me any of their dresses, let alone price tags, some bridal shops have required me to fill out a form divulging my occupation, employer, address, dress budget, overall wedding budget, reception venue and other intrusive information.
Wedding vendors seemed to be trying to size me up to figure out how much I’m willing to pay; consumer advocates say this is a common practice, as is charging more for a given service for a wedding than for a “family function” or “corporate event.” Austan Goolsbee, an economics professor at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, click: Booth School of Business recalls that when he was married over a decade ago, one caterer initially quoted him about $60 a head, and then jacked up the price to about $90 per person after realizing the function was a wedding. These are forms of what economists call price discrimination; it sounds unfair, but it’s perfectly legal, and it’s easier to get away with in markets where there’s little price transparency and consumers are relatively uninformed.
When the Internet came along, it transformed industries like air travel, bookselling and even life insurance, by massively reducing search costs (essentially, the difficulty of comparison shopping), thereby pushing down prices. It seems as if the $50 billion wedding industry — in which the average couple spends upward of $25,000, according to the market-research firms IBISWorld click: IBISWorld and The Wedding Report click: The Wedding Report — should be ripe for similar “disruption.” But while there are plenty of wedding-related websites, they typically work like dream boards, rarely including specific prices. Why hasn’t some enterprising Silicon Valley firm come in and made the market more transparent?
I spoke with a lot of wedding industry veterans, as well as economists who study other markets where consumers frequently feel gouged, thanks to high search costs and informational asymmetries (health care, funerals). They told me the wedding industry’s dysfunction is a product of its highly bespoke services — and, as a result, greater transparency might not bring down prices anyway.
David M. Wood, president of the Association of Bridal Consultants, click: Association of Bridal Consultants
said part of the problem is that most brides are first-time shoppers. They are less informed about what a “fair” price is, or how long it should take to discover prices.
(If you just spent two hours going through different bouquet and centerpiece pricing options at one florist, you might assume that it will take the same amount of time at other vendors and decide it’s too much of a hassle to shop around.) Because this event is (ideally) once in a lifetime, that also means that vendors can appeal to consumers’ sentimentality, urging them not to cheap out on the “most important” day of their lives. Because of similar concerns about guilt-tripping salespeople, the Federal Trade Commission requires funeral homes to provide its bereaved customers with an itemized price list.
Many in the wedding industry wielded this once-in-a-lifetime logic, explaining to me that wedding services are not standardized enough to create a meaningful price aggregator. With books, there’s a single bar code for each product, but it’s hard to do apples-to-apples pricing comparisons between wedding bands or photographers. This argument isn’t incredibly compelling. After all, I can see prices for highly differentiated food-delivery options on sites like Seamless. Locality, a start-up, has been collecting and publishing a menu of prices for services usually considered highly nonstandardized, like massages, day care and dentist visits. Creating something similar for wedding services should not be insurmountably difficult.
But even if some company swooped in and lowered search costs, that doesn’t necessarily mean that prices would fall as a result. Vendors could counteract the decrease in search costs by finding ways to make prices more difficult to compare — something known as “obfuscation,” (= bewilderment: confusion resulting from failure to understand) studied by the M.I.T. click: MIT - Massachusetts Institute of Technology economists Glenn Ellison click: Home Page of Glenn Ellison - MIT and Sara Fisher Ellison MIT Economics : Sara Fisher Ellison.
Sellers could obfuscate (=complicate) prices by giving different product names to an identical item, depending on which store is selling it, as the mattress industry has been accused of doing. Or they might lower prices for the specific keyword consumers search for, but then compensate with hidden fees or required add-on purchases. Many New York venue-based caterers quote a price per guest in the form of “[price] plus plus,” as in “$180 plus plus,” with one “plus” referring to taxes and the other “plus” referring to a “service” or “administrative” fee, which ranges somewhat arbitrarily from 18 to 25 percent, depending on the venue. This makes it very difficult to compare prices even when they’re aggregated side by side — similar to the rise of baggage fees on airlines in the age of Orbitz. click: Orbitz Travel
Ultimately, it may be that prices are not the primary attribute upon which people are searching for wedding vendors. By way of analogy, even if notoriously opaque health-care providers started posting prices upfront, patients still wouldn’t all flock to the lowest-cost brain surgeon. When it comes to services like weddings and delicate operations, consumers typically care about other qualities more, and so providing more price transparency might not change consumers’ choices.
Which brings us to the matter of those wedding-dream-board makers. Strong consumer preferences — about the flower type, bridesmaid dress, cake decorations, music style, whatever — mean less price sensitivity (what economists refer to as greater demand inelasticity). If the cocktail napkins must be blue, the happy couple will be willing to pay more for blue. So if there are enough brides out there with strong and specific preferences, who want their weddings to be the special day they always dreamed of, that’s going to push equilibrium prices higher, no matter how transparently they are displayed. In other words, the Bridezillas keep prices high for the rest of us.
Text source: (click) CATHERINE RAMPELL
Catherine Rampell is an economics reporter for The New York Times
Comments & links by STAF, Inc.
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Bible Verses About Family
Bible verses that give the biblical perspective on subjects relating to families, such as love, family relationships, family problems, family values, children, strength, and death. Read verses from the Holy Bible about family in relation to God, Jesus Christ, and the Christian faith.
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Use our Bible verses by topic topic page to quickly find Bible verses organized by popular topics.
- Exodus 20:12 "Honor your father and your mother, so that you may live long in the land the LORD your God is giving you.
Read Exodus 20 | View in parallel | Compare Translations - Deuteronomy 5:16 "Honor your father and your mother, as the LORD your God has commanded you, so that you may live long and that it may go well with you in the land the LORD your God is giving you.
Read Deuteronomy 5 | View in parallel | Compare Translations - Proverbs 1:8 Listen, my son, to your father's instruction and do not forsake your mother's teaching.
Read Proverbs 1 | View in parallel | Compare Translations - Proverbs 6:20 My son, keep your father's commands and do not forsake your mother's teaching.
Read Proverbs 6 | View in parallel | Compare Translations - Proverbs 15:20 A wise son brings joy to his father, but a foolish man despises his mother.
Read Proverbs 15 | View in parallel | Compare Translations - Matthew 15:4 For God said, 'Honor your father and mother' and 'Anyone who curses his father or mother must be put to death.'
Read Matthew 15 | View in parallel | Compare Translations - Ephesians 6:1-2 Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. "Honor your father and mother"--which is the first commandment with a promise--
Read Ephesians 6 | View in parallel | Compare Translations - Colossians 3:20 Children, obey your parents in everything, for this pleases the Lord.
Read Colossians 3 | View in parallel | Compare Translations - Psalm 103:17 But from everlasting to everlasting the LORD's love is with those who fear him, and his righteousness with their children's children--
Read Psalms 103 | View in parallel | Compare Translations - Joshua 24:15 But if serving the LORD seems undesirable to you, then choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your forefathers served beyond the River, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you are living. But as for me and my household, we will serve the LORD."
Read Joshua 24 | View in parallel | Compare Translations - Proverbs 11:29 He who brings trouble on his family will inherit only wind, and the fool will be servant to the wise.
Read Proverbs 11 | View in parallel | Compare Translations - Proverbs 15:27 A greedy man brings trouble to his family, but he who hates bribes will live.
Read Proverbs 15 | View in parallel | Compare Translations - Proverbs 31:15-17 She gets up while it is still dark; she provides food for her family and portions for her servant girls. She considers a field and buys it; out of her earnings she plants a vineyard. She sets about her work vigorously; her arms are strong for her tasks.
Read Proverbs 31 | View in parallel | Compare Translations
1 Corinthians 13:4-7 Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
Matthew 19:9 And I say to you: whoever divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another, commits adultery.”
Mark 10:12 .And if she divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery.”
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Source: The Bible
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"To succeed in life, you need three things:
a wishbone, a backbone and a funnybone"
(Click) Reba McEntire - Wikipedia
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Every leader & every parent will benefit from reading this article and from applying its principles
How to succeed as a business leader or as any leader ?
Do what Mr. Don Knauss of Clorox teaches in this excellent interview article
Start doing the same as Mr. Don Knauss does
The same principles apply in your home when raising children - the parent is not a tyrant*)
but must be a servant & a guide who figures out what is truly best for everyone
*) a tyrant = a cruel and oppressive ruler
Example sentence: "the tyrant was deposed by popular demonstrations"Synonyms for "deposed": overthrow, unseat, dethrone, topple, remove, supplant, displace .
A tyrant business leader will lose the true trust of his/her employees and cannot succeed
with such an attitude to gain the employee's best effort in everything.
The tyrant business leader will be deposed mentally in his/her employees' minds.
A tyrant attitude can never succeed as well as will a respectful attitude to put the employees' needs first.
In the home setting a tyrant parent will not win the children's love & respect and will fail
raising emotionally & mentally healthy children then often leading to drug use & crimes.
Synonyms for 'tyrant': click each: dictator, despot, autocrat, authoritarian, oppressor
Don Knauss of Clorox,
on Putting Your Followers First
This is the same as the success principle in The Bible:
"Whoever wants to be the biggest among you, must be everyone's servant"
Click: Matthew 20:26-28
Click: The Clorox Company
Q. Were you in leadership roles when you were younger?
A. I learned a lot of leadership lessons playing football and baseball in high school. But I started to think a lot more in college about what I was going to do. I was working on my master’s in history when I decided to join the Marine Corps. There was a service mentality in our family. My dad was Army Air Corps. My brother was Air Force. I was going to be a Marine. That changed everything.
Q. What did you learn in the Marines about leadership?
I’ll tell you a story. I was stationed on Oahu. The first day I was actually in a line unit — after 15 months of school and training — was on Hawaii, the Big Island. There’s a big Army base there where artillery units train and shoot live rounds. They helicoptered me over and I took a jeep to join 120 Marines in this artillery battery. They’d been out in the field for several weeks, and the commanding officer had ordered hot food from the base camp because they’d been eating C rations [canned food] for several days.
“If you’re going to engage the best and the brightest and retain them,” the Clorox C.E.O. says, “they’d better think that you care more about them than you care about yourself.” I had been up since 5 in the morning, and I was pretty hungry. I started walking over to get in front of the line, and this gunnery sergeant grabbed my shoulder and turned me around. He said: “Lieutenant, in the field the men always eat first. You can have some if there’s any left.” I said, “O.K., I get it.”
That was the whole Marine Corps approach — it’s all about your people; it’s not about you. And if you’re going to lead these people, you’d better demonstrate that you care more about them than you care about yourself. I’ve never forgotten that, and that shaped my whole approach to leadership from then on.
Q. When you got out of the Marines, did you know what you wanted to do?
I learned in the Marine Corps that I really liked strategy. Every operation in the military is based on a five-paragraph order, and the acronym is Smeac — situation, mission, execution, administration and communication. It’s a very logical flow.
I decided to get into brand management, and Procter & Gamble was a great training ground, and they hired a lot of junior military officers. Procter was more of a written than verbal culture, and business initiatives were structured through short memos. It was almost an exact parallel of the five-paragraph order. I said, “I could fit into that culture.”
Q. What were some other leadership lessons?
One thing I learned very quickly was that there’s a head part and a heart part. The head part was, how are you going to focus the organization? And it had better be simple, and it probably should not be more than three things. You’ve got to communicate it about 100 times and align your incentive structure to it. It’s about distilling the complex to the simple, and I’ve seen leaders fail because they do the reverse, by trying to make things into some intellectual exercise. Whatever business you’re in, there are fundamentals, just like blocking and tackling in football. It always comes back to the fundamentals. You cannot let yourself get bored with the fundamentals.
On the heart side, the lesson is that it’s all about your people. If you’re going to engage the best and the brightest and retain them, they’d better think that you care more about them than you care about yourself. They’re not about making you look good. You’re about making them successful. If you really believe that and act on that, it gains you credibility and trust. You can run an organization based on fear for a short time. But trust is a much more powerful, long-term and sustainable way to drive an organization.
The other thing I’ve learned is that you’ve got to assume the best intent of people, and that they’re really trying to do a good job. I’ve seen organizations that are based more on fear than trust because senior management really thinks people are trying to get one over on them, that they’re just punching a clock. People really are trying to do a good job, and they want to be proud of where they work. Understanding that helped make me a bit more patient.
Q. How do you hire?
First and foremost, I’m looking for fire in the belly. I’m looking for passion. I’m looking for energy. Is the person going to take a leading role and have an impact on the business? I will take passion over pedigree any day of the week. Second, are they smart? Can they think analytically, creatively and strategically? If you don’t have the intellectual horsepower, it’s going to be hard for people to follow you.
Third, is there any pattern in the person’s career that shows they can develop people? Did people move up through an organization because they were mentored by this person? A fourth thing is, can they communicate? Can you imagine this person on a stage, inspiring a large group? Do they have an easy, informal manner? Or are they too formal, too focused on hierarchy? That doesn’t work. Formality slows things down in companies. Informality speeds things up. It is much more powerful to use authority than power.
One of the things I’ve learned is that as you move up in an organization, you’re given more power. The less you use the power you’ve been given, the more authority people give you, because they think: “You know what? This guy’s O.K.” Persuading people to do things — come along with me because we’re going in the right direction — is much more powerful over time.
The last thing I look for is the values of the person. Do they tell the truth, but do they also stand up for what they think is right in the company? It starts with integrity, which is really the grease of commerce. You get things done much more quickly when people trust you.
Source: (1) NYT, (2) STAF, Inc.
MARCH 22, 2014
This interview with Don Knauss, chief executive of the Clorox Company, was conducted and condensed by the NYT
click: Donald Knauss: Executive Profile & Biography
click: Don Knauss of Clorox, on Putting Your Followers First - The ...www.nytimes.com/.../don-knauss-of-clorox-on-puttin...The New York Times
Source:(1) NYT, (2) STAF, Inc.
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Article 1 of 2
Article 2 of 2 next below - read it - it is about the same person as the article above:Nick D’Aloisio - worth of your time
Teenager Sells App For $40 Million And Why You Should Care
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Yes, this is the kid who made 40 million bucks with an app that summarized things.
Click: An 18 year old kid from England, sold his app for 40 million dollars to Yahoo. Which makes me ask: How many young people do you know that have projects like his? Creating a website? Starting their own blog? Creating an app? (click: this 12 year old did). Online staffing firm oDesk.com click: recently surveyed their users on their views of being an employee in the workplace
.oDesk: Freelancers and Freelance Jobs Onlinehttps://www.odesk.com/
Find freelancers and freelance jobs on oDesk - the world's largest online workplace where savvy businesses and professional freelancers go to work!
- 72 percent of users at “regular jobs” responded with saying they wanted to be entirely independent.
- 58 percent identified themselves as entrepreneurs.
Want to open an online store? Cool. Snap a few pics on your iPhone, open a shopify account, link your Paypal and you could be making those extra bucks to pay off those pesty college loans within a few hours. The consequences are tiny. In fact these days we’re raised with the notion that failing is a good thing. The scarce job market and uncertain economy encourages our generation to do just that bit extra for themselves.
Cloud based devices are changing the way we work. 63% of millenials have smartphone and as a result, we have the opportunity to work with live, real-time collaborative data everywhere we go. Tools like Google Drive and Dropbox allow you to do just that. We can write documents, post a twitter update and have skype calls… all while sitting butt-naked on the toilet with an iPhone. This generation expects the same freedom with their job in the workplace (although maybe not on the office toilet).
Teenager Sells App For $40 Million And Why You Should CareDid you think I was joking?
My message as a member of this new breed to you Generation X’ers, Baby boomers and C-level execs that are working with, or will begin working with millenials in the near future, is to recognize the changes that are happening. Understand these changes and take full advantage so you can attract and keep the very best people on your team.
Give them more independence. For crying out loud, we spend more time alone with the internet than we do talking to people. If you want the best out of them, Let them be entrepreneurial. Let them take some initiative and they’ll reward you for it.
More Tech articles from Business 2 Community:
- 10 Video Conferencing Questions Answered...
- 6 Must-Have Photography Apps
- Get Ahead of the Mobile Herd: 5 Best Practices for Mobile-Optimized Marketing
- Top Five Cloud-Based Learning Management Systems (LMS)
- Will “Smart-Devices” Change the Face of SEO As We Know It?
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Article 2 of 2 next below - read it - it is about the same person as the article above Nick D’Aloisio - worth of your time
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Article 2 of 2 Both 1 of 2 and 2 of 2 are about the same person:Nick D’Aloisio
He as Millions and a New Job at Yahoo. Soon, He’ll Be 18
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One of Yahoo’s newest employees is a 17-year-old high school student in Britain.
He is one of its richest, too.
That student, Nick D’Aloisio, a programming whiz who wasn’t even born when Yahoo was founded in 1994, sold his news-reading app, Summly, to the company on Monday for a sum said to be in the tens of millions of dollars. Yahoo said it would incorporate his algorithmic invention, which takes long-form stories and shortens them for readers using smartphones, in its own mobile apps, with Mr. D’Aloisio’s help.
“I’ve still got a year and a half left at my high school,” he said in a telephone interview on Monday. But he will make arrangements to test out of his classes and work from the Yahoo office in London, partly to abide by the company’s new and much-debated policy that prohibits working from home.
Mr. D’Aloisio, who declined to comment on the price paid by Yahoo (the technology news site AllThingsD pegged the purchase price at about $30 million), was Summly’s largest shareholder.
Summly’s other investors, improbably enough, included Wendi Murdoch, Ashton Kutcher and Yoko Ono. The most important one was Li Ka-shing, the Hong Kong billionaire, whose investment fund supported Mr. D’Aloisio’s idea early on, before it was even called Summly.
“They took a gamble on me when I was a 15-year-old,” Mr. D’Aloisio said, by providing seed financing that let him hire employees and lease office space.
The fund read about Mr. D’Aloisio’s early-stage app on TechCrunch, the Silicon Valley blog of record, found his e-mail address and startled him with a message expressing interest.
The others signed up later. “Because it was my first time around, people just wanted to help,” he said.
For teenagers who fancy themselves entrepreneurs — and their parents, too — the news of the sale conjured up some feelings of inadequacy, but also awe. For Brian Wong, the 21-year-old founder of Kiip, a mobile rewards company, the reaction was downright laughable: “I feel old!”
A few years ago, Mr. Wong was described in the news media as the youngest person ever to receive venture capital funding. But a couple of younger founders came along — “and then Nick broke all of our records,” Mr. Wong said on Monday.
Among the attributes that helped Mr. D’Aloisio, he said, was a preternatural ability to articulate exactly what he wanted Summly to be. “There were no umms, no uhhs, no hesitations, no insecurities,” Mr. Wong said.
Mr. D’Aloisio, for his part, sounded somewhat uninterested in answering questions about his age on Monday. He acknowledged that it was an advantage in some pitch meetings, and certainly in the news media, “but so was the strength of the idea.” He was more eager to talk about his new employer, Yahoo, which is trying to reinvent itself as a mobile-first technology company (having dropped the digital media tagline it used before Marissa Mayer became chief executive last year).
“People are kind of underestimating how powerful it’s going to become and how much opportunity is there,” he said.
For a company that badly wants to be labeled innovative, those words are worth a lot.
Mr. D’Aloisio’s father, who works at Morgan Stanley, and his mother, a lawyer, had no special knowledge of technology. But they nurtured their son’s fascination with it and he started coding at age 12. Eventually he decided to develop an app with what he calls an “automatic summarization algorithm,” one that “can take pre-existing long-form content and summarize it.” In other words, it tries to solve a problem that is often summed up with the abbreviation tl;dr: “too long; didn’t read.”
Summly officially came online last November. By December, Mr. D’Aloisio was talking to Yahoo and other suitors.
Yahoo said in a statement that while the Summly app would be shut down, “we will acquire the technology and you’ll see it come to life throughout Yahoo’s mobile experiences soon.”
Other news-reading apps have attracted corporate attention as of late, reflecting the scramble by media companies to adapt to skyrocketing traffic from mobile devices. The social network LinkedIn was said to be pursuing an app called Pulse earlier this month. Still, the eight-figure payday for a teenage entrepreneur on Monday struck some as outlandish and set off speculation that Yahoo was willing to pay almost any price for “cool.”
Mr. D’Aloisio, though, will have plenty of time to prove his and his algorithm’s worth. As for the sizable paycheck from Yahoo, he said he did not have any specific plans for the sudden windfall. “It’s going to be put into a trust fund and my parents will help manage it,” he said.
He did say, however, that “angel investing could be really fun.” When not working at Yahoo, he will keep up with his hobbies — cricket in particular — and set his sights on attending college at Oxford. His intended major is philosophy.
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The next article below has two parts
Part One is an abbreviated version of this important topic -
a topic that clearly explains the reasons to our many serious challenges and dangers in the U.S. & in the world
Part Two, next below Part One, is a broader, more detailed article for the same challenges
Study both together with your whole family
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Part One (Part Two next below)
For the last 30 years, America has been engulfed in a culture war
that threatens the nation's very foundation, its very survival
When a nation, founded as one nation under God, gives up its sovereignty under God
in favor "interdependence" on the world, you can see where the future lies
(sovereignty = supreme power or authority)
(interdependence = mutually dependent)
To be a friend of this future system in the sense of compromising God's viewpoint of life and letting the world squeeze you into its mold is to commit adultery, spiritually speaking. Remember, also, that in a true relationship with God through Jesus Christ, believers are viewed as being the "Bride" of Christ (2 Cor. 11 v.2) .
That's another reason that playing around with false religion is viewed throughout the Bible as spiritual adultery.
For the last 30 years, America has been engulfed in a culture war that threatens the nation's very foundation, its very survival. God's word tells us in Luke 12 v.48 that
"For everyone to whom much is given, from him much will be required; and to whom much has been committed, of him they will ask the more."
In the history of the world has any nation been more blessed than the US? Yet there is always a cost to immorality. And today we are beginning to pay it. In the past 30 years there has been a 560% increase in violent crime. Illegitimate births have increased 419%. Divorce rates have tripled. The number of children living in single parent homes has tripled. The teen suicide rate has increase 200%. Student Achievement Tests have plummeted 80 points.
It should not surprise us that Billy Graham said years ago that if God didn't judge America soon, he would have to apologize to Sodom and Gomorrah. But it's not just the US. The entire world is in a headlong plunge into the morality of Sodom and Gomorrah and unfortunately into the same judgment.
The Big Four Sins
Rev. 9 v.21 lists the four most prominent sins of the Tribulation*) period. The significance of these sins is great in light of present trends in the world
It's no coincidence that the four major sins listed here are today four of the most serious problems facing law enforcement
(tribulation = a cause or state of great trouble or suffering)
(1) The first of these characteristic sins is murder
For whatever reason, societal permissiveness, lack of punishment or lack of faith, there has been an alarming increase in murder throughout the US and the world. One factor is the rejection of absolute standards of right and wrong. When a judge who posts the Ten Commandments in his courtroom is sued, you know society has its priorities upside down. Anyone who was awake in the latter part of the 20th century could see the violence around us. I don't think I need to elaborate on this point.
The murder of unborn children in our day is a stench in God's nostrils. Women and men should repent of these murders. Murder with a deadly weapon is not always with a gun or a knife. One of the most useless murders in our day is drunk drivers killing people with their automobiles. Some are drunk on alcohol and some on drugs. All of these are useless killings that do not accomplish anything.
President Clinton vetoed a bill, passed with bi-partisan support in both the house and the senate, that would have prohibited partial birth abortions.
(2) The second prominent sin of the Tribulation era will be drug related occult activities
The word sorceries is used in Rev. 9 v.21. It comes from the Greek word meaning pharmacy, and refers here to the practice of the occult tied to the use of drugs.
Drug use in the 1990's doubled from the 1960's and early 70's. In 1997 more than 11% claimed to use drugs every month. According to a study by the Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University in New York, today's daughters are 15 times more likely than their baby boom mothers to have begun illegal drug use by age 15.
Another category of skyrocketing use is in so called designer drugs, such as methamphetamine. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y. stated when Bill Clinton was president that "I have never, never, never seen a president who cares less about this issue."
There is a strong link between drug use and demon possession. As far back as 1971, the International Journal of Social Psychiatry dealt with the reality of demon possession and how to diagnose it.
There is a need to ascertain if there is any involvement in drug addiction, as it is common that addicts, especially with heroin and alcohol, become involved with black magic and vice versa. Some have been known in some cases to have been very religious people who defaulted, and thus left themselves open to some power other than God to control their lives.
Sorceries can also be anything associated with the occult: palm reading, horoscope, etc. So many people in our society today are playing around with mind control, transcendental meditation, and other false religions. All of this type of activity is to undermine our belief in God.
(3) The third prominent sin of the Tribulation will be rampant immorality
"Porneia," the Greek word used in this verse, refers to all kinds of sexual activity outside of marriage. Apparently, there will be a complete breakdown in the institution of marriage. Well, folks, as anyone can plainly see, we're almost there!
More than 70,000 women are sexually assaulted every year in the US. (1 every 45 seconds) It is the most rapidly growing violent crime in the country.
Domestic violence is more widespread than ever. Each year between 2 and 4 million women are battered; 1,500 women are murdered by their intimate partners; 1.8 million elderly are victims of maltreatment; 1.7 million child abuse reports are filed. Fornication covers living with someone before you are married. Fornication covers being married and dating someone else. Fornication covers all homosexual and lesbian acts.
The US Supreme court rules as unconstitutional Colorado's Amendment 2 to the state constitution, a simple and popular attempt to prohibit local governments from turning homosexuals and other sexual deviates into the latest protected political class. By the court's reasoning, as dissenting Justice Antonio Scalia pointed out, any state that bans Polygamy is also in trouble.
It's actually a matter of debate in the House of Representatives and US Senate, whether men should be allowed to marry men and women marry women. (1997)
(4) The fourth characteristic of the Tribulation will be thievery of all kinds
Crime in all of its manifestations is on the upsurge today. The experts say a youth crime crisis is right around the corner. At the current growth rate, there will be nearly one half million more adolescent boys in the year 2010 than there are today. That trend would mean there will be 30,000 more chronic juvenile delinquents on the streets in 15 years. (from 1997) Though representing only 7% of all male teens, these chronic offenders commit 70% of all serious crime in their age group.
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Study Revelation 9 - next below
Revelation 9 - New International Version (NIV)
9 The fifth angel sounded his trumpet, and I saw a star that had fallen from the sky to the earth. The star was given the key to the shaft of the Abyss. 2 When he opened the Abyss, smoke rose from it like the smoke from a gigantic furnace. The sun and sky were darkened by the smoke from the Abyss.3 And out of the smoke locusts came down on the earth and were given power like that of scorpions of the earth. 4 They were told not to harm the grass of the earth or any plant or tree, but only those people who did not have the seal of God on their foreheads. 5 They were not allowed to kill them but only to torture them for five months. And the agony they suffered was like that of the sting of a scorpion when it strikes. 6 During those days people will seek death but will not find it; they will long to die, but death will elude them.
7 The locusts looked like horses prepared for battle. On their heads they wore something like crowns of gold, and their faces resembled human faces. 8 Their hair was like women’s hair, and their teeth were like lions’ teeth. 9 They had breastplates like breastplates of iron, and the sound of their wings was like the thundering of many horses and chariots rushing into battle.10 They had tails with stingers, like scorpions, and in their tails they had power to torment people for five months. 11 They had as king over them the angel of the Abyss, whose name in Hebrew is Abaddon and in Greek is Apollyon (that is, Destroyer).
12 The first woe is past; two other woes are yet to come.
13 The sixth angel sounded his trumpet, and I heard a voice coming from the four horns of the golden altar that is before God. 14 It said to the sixth angel who had the trumpet, “Release the four angels who are bound at the great river Euphrates.” 15 And the four angels who had been kept ready for this very hour and day and month and year were released to kill a third of mankind. 16 The number of the mounted troops was twice ten thousand times ten thousand. I heard their number.
17 The horses and riders I saw in my vision looked like this: Their breastplates were fiery red, dark blue, and yellow as sulfur. The heads of the horses resembled the heads of lions, and out of their mouths came fire, smoke and sulfur. 18 A thirdof mankind was killed by the three plagues of fire, smoke and sulfur that came out of their mouths. 19 The power of the horses was in their mouths and in their tails; for their tails were like snakes, having heads with which they inflict injury.
20 The rest of mankind who were not killed by these plagues still did not repent of the work of their hands; they did not stop worshiping demons, and idols of gold, silver, bronze, stone and wood—idols that cannot see or hear or walk. 21 Nor did they repent of their murders, their magic arts, their sexual immorality or their thefts.
(Part Two next below)
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Part Two is a broader, more detailed article for the same challenges
In Revelation chapter 9, the fifth and sixth trumpets are described. The fifth trumpet brings a five month period of torment on the unbelievers of the earth.
In the first 12 verses, John employs the image of a pit seven times to describe hell. Each time the pit is closely associated with demons; it is also associated with the unsaved. (Romans 10 v.7)
This image of hell may also imply darkness and imprisonment since pits were often used as prisons in ancient cultures. Obviously, the pit appears as a place of suffering.
If you have trouble believing God could ever make a hell, remember it was prepared for the Devil and his angels. (Matthew 25 verse 41. Those who go to hell are in essence choosing to spend eternity with Satan rather than with Christ.
Revelation, Chapter 9 - with the detailed analysis of our present challenges
in the USA and in the world
9:1 "And the fifth angel sounded, and I saw a star fall from heaven unto the earth: and to him was given the key of the bottomless pit."
We know that Jesus Christ holds the key to the bottomless pit. He took the key away from Satan when He (Jesus) went there, preached, and brought captivity captive out with Him, Ephesians 4:8
The Fifth Trumpet - The expulsion of Satan from heaven. The identification of Satan in this passage is not hard to make. Isaiah foresaw this development in exactly the same manner described by John. "How you have fallen from heaven, O star of the
morning, son of the dawn! You have been cut down to the earth, you who have weakened the nations!" (Isaiah 14 v.12)
Many people mistakenly believe that throughout human history, Satan has already been banished from heaven, or that he reigns in some kind of kingdom in hell. That isn't true. Satan has always had access to the Throne of God, where he serves as the
principle accuser of the saints of God. "Now there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord,
and Satan also came among them." (Job 1 v.4)
Satan's entry into God's presence changes here. Now he is kicked out of heaven, and he is furious. Note also that he carries with him the key to the bottomless pit. (Rev. 9 v.1) He didn't have it before; it was given him by the One who holds the keys to heaven, hell and to death.
9:2 "And he opened the bottomless pit; and there arose a smoke out of the pit, as the smoke of a great furnace; and the sun and the air were darkened by reason of the smoke of the pit."
Jesus gave Satan the keys so that he could be released to carry out this punishment. Just as Satan had to have permission of God to afflict Job, Satan brings all of these terrible things on the earth and his people by permission of God.
The physical smoke that comes up surely will obscure the sun and diminish the light. In the spiritual, it will diminish the Light, as
well.
The abyss is the home of Satan and the demons. When Satan opens the abyss, here come the demons in force to deceive and destroy. They have such a vicious nature that God had to bind them to keep the human race from being annihilated before
the appointed time, but now the restrains are off.
"And out of the smoke came forth locusts upon the earth; and power was given them, as the scorpions of the earth have power. And they were told that they should not hurt the grass of the earth, nor any green thing, nor any tree, but only the men who do not have the seal of God on their foreheads.
The appearance of these locusts is both frightening and repulsive (v.7-10), and they do not act in an unorganized way; in fact,
John says, "They had as king over them the angel of the bottomless pit, whose name in Hebrew is Abaddon, but in Greek he has
the name Apollyon" (v.11) Both names mean "Destroyer". This seems to be one of the plagues that God sends on the followers
of Antichrist to hinder them from proselytizing among the uncommitted of the world. It may also give Tribulation saints some
time to prepare themselves for the horrors of the soon to come Great Tribulation.
If any religious activity is still going on at this time, there will be a flood of false doctrine and defaming of the Lord Jesus Christ. It
would be a kind of religion of the flesh, (anything goes religion). It sounds very much like what is going on today in most churches.
9:3 "And there came out of the smoke locusts upon the earth: and unto them was given power, as the scorpions of the earth have power."
The description of the locusts indicates that they are demons who are given physical forms in order to manifest their
destruction and torment. Horses show their warlike character. Their crowns depict them as conquerors. Human faces show
intelligence. Their feminine hair perhaps makes them seductive and attractive. The teeth of lions shows them to be
destructive and hurtful. Breastplates of iron make them indestructible. Wings symbolize swiftness. The stings in their tails give
them the power to hurt. Fortunately for mankind, their period of torment is limited to five mouths. But the next judgment is
even worse.
Notice, these have to be demons as they had no power in and of themselves. It was given unto them.
9:4 "And it was commanded them that they should not hurt the grass of the earth, neither any green thing, neither any tree; but only those men which have not the seal of God in their foreheads."
This is an attack on the person, which makes us take another look at it spiritually. They have orders not to hurt the vegetation or the 144,000 who have been sealed in their foreheads. Real locusts would eat every green thing that they could find, and they do. Looking at this from the spiritual standpoint, these locusts are demon spirits turned loose upon this earth. The devil, or his demons, cannot really hurt anyone covered in the blood of Jesus.
They were not permitted to kill anyone, but to torment for five months; and their torment was like the torment of a scorpion when it stings a man." (Rev. 9 v.3-5) God's instructions are in essence, "You may torment those who have the Antichrist's mark, but you may not kill them." Also, "you may not touch those who belong to Me." Satan's power is under strict control over those sealed by God - both now and in the Tribulation. Though this will be a period of great anguish, it is really the grace of GOD at work. I'm sure that the LORD is seeking to make mankind think because of this terrible torment and to decide to come to Him.
9:5 "And to them it was given that they should not kill them, but that they should be tormented five months: and their torment [was] as the torment of a scorpion, when he striketh a man."
Here again, whether this is physical pain and torment from fallout causing sores and torture, or whether this is spiritual and terrible suffering, it is brought on by constant attack from the devil for five months. It is terrible. As at Hiroshima, those who survived the bomb, wished they were dead. Great sores, deformities and torment beyond our comprehension took place. In many cases it took five months to die. A terrible burn would have the pain of a scorpion's sting.
At this point, let's look at something we've studied before. Remember the 144,000 where the four angels held back the winds until they had been sealed in chapter 7 verse 1?
Not only were the 144,000 sealed but also those who turned to Christ during the Tribulation. Those are the Tribulation Saints and they too were sealed by God just as all true Christians of today have God's seal on them.
9:6 "And in those days shall men seek death, and shall not find it; and shall desire to die, and death shall flee from them."
Death would be a welcome relief to all this suffering. These forces of evil turned loose (unrestrained) upon the earth, whether physical or spiritual, will be so terrible that men will beg to die but will be unable to during this punishment.
This was the first of the three Woes!
9:7-8 "And the shapes of the locusts [were] like unto horses prepared unto battle; and on their heads [were] as it were crowns like gold, and their faces [were] as the faces of men." "And they had hair as the hair of women, and their teeth were as [the teeth] of lions."
Here John describes the locusts (demons) as he gives a detailed description of their appearance in his vision. They are described as locusts as they will bring massive and devastating judgment from God.
This demon host will be virtually unstoppable and man will have no weapon that can harm them or cure for the terrible torment they will inflict.
Their faces of men indicate they are intelligent and rational beings, not insects. Having hair as being like the hair of women emphasizes their seductiveness. Perhaps to lure unsuspecting unbelievers to come close to them before striking them.
Having teeth like the teeth of lions means they will be more fierce, powerful and deadly then lions.
9:9 "And they had breastplates, as it were breastplates of iron; and the sound of their wings [was] as the sound of chariots of many horses running to battle."
Breastplates of iron symbolizes their invulnerability.
In short, they will be impossible to resist or to destroy. There will be no escaping their worldwide onslaught as there will be nowhere to run or hide from them.
In a metaphor drawn from a battlefield, John compares the sound of their wings to a moving army, noting that it was like the sound of chariots, of many horses rushing to batter. The sound alone will be enough to put fear into the hearts of the unbelievers.
9:10 "And they had tails like unto scorpions, and there were stings in their tails: and their power [was] to hurt men five months."
As these demons are compared to scorpions, it is clear that their mission is to hurt men. The very nature of this full scale demonic torment that drives men to seek death and not find it, or to pursue death and not catch it, is not described.
Their are references in the bible where demons possessed people such as found in Matthew 8 v.28, Matthew 4 v.23-24, Matthew 8 v.6 and Mark 9 v.20-22.
These demons are given the power to torment unbelievers for 5 full months with no relief for the tormented. This stresses God's sovereign power over the timing of their assault. Eventually God will return them to the abyss with their evil amster, then send them to the lake of fire. (Chapter 20)
9:11 "And they had a king over them, [which is] the angel of the bottomless pit, whose name in the Hebrew tongue [is] Abaddon, but in the Greek tongue hath [his] name Apollyon."
You can call him any name you care to. This is Satan. Lucifer was one of the angels close to God in heaven. He was a very beautiful angel before his fall. All of the demons were angels in heaven until 1/3 of the angels followed Lucifer and became demons.
Angels, as we have said before, are ministering spirits. These fallen angels (demons) are ministering pain and suffering. Their
mission is to destroy. Their leader, Lucifer, is the epitome of evil. He has been their king since they were cast out of heaven by God. Their abode, when they are not on a mission of destruction, is in the abyss. This is where they were loosed from in V-2. They are continuously causing war, both spiritual and literal. Their mission is to destroy any way they can.
This "king" in V-11 is the star we saw in V-1, which was thrown out of heaven and has hell for an abode. Just as he lead these
angels out of heaven, he leads them in this mission of destruction. Satan, even though fallen, must do every thing the Lord commands him.
Remember all of this happens because God's wrath is kindled. God alone can stop Satan. This time God does not want to stop him. God allows, and even orders, this to happen. Satan, Apollyon, Abaddon, Lucifer, the devil, or whatever you care to call him, is still obedient to God. He, as we, or any other being, or angel, are created and subject to the desires of the Creator. God alone could stop this destruction. "Apollyon" and "Abaddon" mean destruction.
Jesus had and has many names. Satan is a counterfeiter, so he has many names, as well. People throughout history have tried to put names of modern conquerors to these, but I do not believe that is intended here.
9:12 "One woe is past; [and], behold, there come two woes more hereafter."
As if this is not terrible enough that we have been hearing about, there are two more woes. The open warfare on the streets of Lebanon and Israel remind us very much of the things we read about in the last lesson. A mother in that area of the world has no idea when her family leaves the house whether they will return alive or not.
The descendents of Ishmael and Isaac (the flesh and the spirit) are still in mortal combat after all the 1000's of years that have
passed. Just as there is a spiritual battle of the flesh and the spirit that we must face each day, there is a physical battle in Israel between the Arab and the Jew. Ishmael was told that his descendents would live around the Jews and would be fighting continuously.
The Bible is true. A woe is a terrible calamity.
9:13-14 "And the sixth angel sounded, and I heard a voice from the four horns of the golden altar which is before God," "Saying to the sixth angel which had the trumpet, Loose the four angels which are bound in the great river Euphrates."
The number six indicates man or mankind. "Horns" mean power and strength. The number four means worldwide. This "golden altar" is where God is. God is never associated with other metals.
The Sixth Trumpet - The Four Angels Released - At the blowing of the 6th trumpet, the 2nd woe is released: the release of "the four angels who are bound at the great river Euphrates" (v.14). The angels apparently lead an army of 200 million "horsemen" (demons) who kill a third of mankind through the plagues of fire and smoke and brimstone.
God views the Euphrates River as the dividing line between East and West. In fact, the old Roman Empire also saw it that way. Everything east of the Euphrates was called the Far East or Asia. The region just to the west of the great river was known as the
Near East or Asia Minor.
9:15 "And the four angels were loosed, which were prepared for an hour, and a day, and a month, and a year, for to slay the third part of men."
When these angels are loosed, they immediately inspire the great population centers of Asia to launch an attack on the Western and Middle Eastern strongholds. These demons are effective, because they cause one and a half billion people, a third of the remaining population, to be killed in short order.
The Apostle John wrote, "And the four angels, who had been prepared for the Hour and Day and Month and Year, are released, so that they might kill a third of mankind. And the number of the armies of the horsemen (demons) was 200 million; I heard the number of them."
9:16 "And the number of the army of the horsemen [were] two hundred thousand thousand: and I heard the number of them."
Now in addition to the demons who have roamed the earth throughout history, spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places (Eph. 6 v.12) recently cast to earth (9 v.1 and 12 v.4) and the numerous demons recently released from the abyss at the sounding of the 5th trumpet, comes a new demonic army that is two hundred million strong.
Some have suggested that the 200 million will come from the Chinese who can currently field an army of that size. However it is very doubtful this could be a human army due to the inability to equip, feed, transport, not to mention the water it would take to support that size contingent. Those things taken into consideration strongly suggest this will be a supernatural rather than a human force, especially as the four angels (demons) are commanding this force.
When you combine this 3rd with the quarter of humanity killed in the seal judgments, by this point in the Tribulation half of the world's population (after the rapture) already has been destroyed. Tim LaHaye makes reference to the Chinese army which can raise a 200 million man army now. That has prompted some interpreters to suggest the 200 million would come with the kings of the east to do battle with Christ at the consummation of the end of this age, known as the Battle of Armageddon. While there is no question that the armies of the Orient coming to that battle at the very end of the Tribulation will be enormous, due to the incredible population of those countries, they definitely are not the Rev. 9 v.16 army. Consider the following reasons:
judgment.
For these and other reasons not mentioned, it is not realistic to assume that the armies of 16 v.12 are synonymous with those of 9 v.16. The 200 million horsemen who come on the scene will obviously be supernatural, creatures that are so awesome to look on that they actually frighten some people to death. And their sting "is in their mouth and their tails", and with them they kill one third of the world's population of those who reject Christ and commit themselves to Antichrist.
9:17 "And thus I saw the horses in the vision, and them that sat on them, having breastplates of fire, and of jacinth, and brimstone: and the heads of the horses [were] as the heads of lions; and out of their mouths issued fire and smoke and brimstone."
Horses have been often associated with warfare in scripture. It is clear these are not actual horses judging the heads were as the heads of lions.
Many have tried to associate the meaning of this scripture with weapons of war, but this can't be. John would have no problem with associating a lion's head with what these appeared to look like.
John saw three ways the demon horses killed their victims and all ways depict the violent and devastating fury of hell. They incinerated them with fire, then asphyxiated with smoke and brimstone which proceeded out of their mouths.
9:18 "By these three was the third part of men killed, by the fire, and by the smoke, and by the brimstone, which issued out of their mouths."
The end result of this demonic 200 million was that a third of the remaining mankind would be killed. Note that a quarter of mankind was killed during the seal judgments, leaving three quarters of the remaining population. As one third is now killed, 50% of mankind now has been killed. (one third of 75 that was remaining is 25%)
The death of one third of the earth's remaining inhabitants will be the most catastrophic disaster to strike the earth since the flood during the days on Noah.
9:19 "For their power is in their mouth, and in their tails: for their tails [were] like unto serpents, and had heads, and with them they do hurt."
Not only were these demonic horses able to kill with their mouths, but also death was in their tails. Their tails are like deadly poisonous serpents. The horses tails were not actual serpents as the horses were not actual horses.
But these images are describing the supernatural deadliness of this demon force in terms that one would normally understand in the natural world.
Unlike the demonic scorpion stings of the 5th trumpet judgment, the bites of these demonic creatures will be fatal.
9:20 "And the rest of the men which were not killed by these plagues yet repented not of the works of their hands, that they should not worship devils, and idols of gold, and silver, and brass, and stone, and of wood: which neither can see, nor hear, nor walk:"
In is so unimaginable that after many years of suffering and death by this time from the horrible judgments of God, combined with the 144,000, the two witnesses, an angel who gives the Word of God to humans, not to mention the countless number of Tribulation Saints, that the rest of mankind, who were not killed by these plaques, did not repent.
These "men" are not just males, but all of mankind. Women will have to answer for their own actions, as well as the men. What in the world has to happen before they will repent? All of these things worshipped in verse 20 describes our day. These are things of the world. Trying to out do the neighbors with: a bigger house - "wood or stone", finer jewelry - "gold and silver", expensive ornaments -"brass" and worship of the devil - "worship devils"
All of these things listed are inanimate objects and have no power to accomplish anything.
Anything or anyone who does not elevate Jesus Christ to deity is in error and worshipping the devil. Jesus said Himself that "He that is not with me is against me; and he that gathereth not with me scattereth abroad." Matthew 12:30.
We are either on the side of Jesus or the devil. There is no middle ground. We are not to worship God's creations. We are to worship the Creator.
9:21 "Neither repented they of their murders, nor of their sorceries, nor of their fornication, nor of their thefts."
At that future point in history, idolatry, mysticism, spiritism, satanism and all forms of false region will become the norm as demons lead people into more wicked and vicious behaviors. Violent crimes like murder will be absolutely rampant. Without any sense of morality, the evil, unrepentant people will imitate the demon horde's murderous blood lust. Of course, believers in God will doubtlessly be their prime targets.
Once again, people will refuse to repent of their sins as the world of unrepentant people compete for the scarce supplies of food, clothing, water, shelter and medicines.
Under the influence of the massive demon forces that has been unleashed upon the world, false religion, murder, sexual perversion and crime will be unparalleled in human history.
The Big Four Sins
Rev. 9 v.21 lists the four most prominent sins of the Tribulation period. The significance of these sins is great in light of present trends in the world. It's no coincidence that the four major sins listed here are today four of the most serious problems facing law enforcement.
(1) The first of these characteristic sins is murder. For whatever reason, societal permissiveness, lack of punishment or lack of faith, there has been an alarming increase in murder throughout the US and the world. One factor is the rejection of absolute standards of right and wrong. When a judge who posts the Ten Commandments in his courtroom is sued, you know society has its priorities upside down. Anyone who was awake in the latter part of the 20th century could see the violence around us. I don't think I need to elaborate on this point.
The murder of unborn children in our day is a stench in God's nostrils. Women and men should repent of these murders. Murder with a deadly weapon is not always with a gun or a knife. One of the most useless murders in our day is drunk drivers killing people with their automobiles. Some are drunk on alcohol and some on drugs. All of these are useless killings that do not accomplish anything.
President Clinton vetoed a bill, passed with bi-partisan support in both the house and the senate, that would have prohibited partial birth abortions.
(2) The second prominent sin of the Tribulation era will be drug related occult activities. The word sorceries is used in Rev. 9 v.21. It comes from the Greek word meaning pharmacy, and refers here to the practice of the occult tied to the use of drugs.
Drug use in the 1990's doubled from the 1960's and early 70's. In 1997 more than 11% claimed to use drugs every month. According to a study by the Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University in New York, today's daughters are 15 times more likely than their baby boom mothers to have begun illegal drug use by age 15.
Another category of skyrocketing use is in so called designer drugs, such as methamphetamine. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y. stated when Bill Clinton was president that "I have never, never, never seen a president who cares less about this issue."
There is a strong link between drug use and demon possession. As far back as 1971, the International Journal of Social Psychiatry dealt with the reality of demon possession and how to diagnose it.
There is a need to ascertain if there is any involvement in drug addiction, as it is common that addicts, especially with heroin and alcohol, become involved with black magic and vice versa. Some have been known in some cases to have been very religious people who defaulted, and thus left themselves open to some power other than God to control their lives.
Sorceries can also be anything associated with the occult: palm reading, horoscope, etc. So many people in our society today are playing around with mind control, transcendental meditation, and other false religions. All of this type of activity is to undermine our belief in God.
(3) The third prominent sin of the Tribulation will be rampant immorality. "Porneia," the Greek word used in this verse, refers to all kinds of sexual activity outside of marriage. Apparently, there will be a complete breakdown in the institution of marriage. Well, folks, as anyone can plainly see, we're almost there!
More than 70,000 women are sexually assaulted every year in the US. (1 every 45 seconds) It is the most rapidly growing violent crime in the country.
Domestic violence is more widespread than ever. Each year between 2 and 4 million women are battered; 1,500 women are murdered by their intimate partners; 1.8 million elderly are victims of maltreatment; 1.7 million child abuse reports are filed. Fornication covers living with someone before you are married. Fornication covers being married and dating someone else. Fornication covers all homosexual and lesbian acts.
The US Supreme court rules as unconstitutional Colorado's Amendment 2 to the state constitution, a simple and popular attempt to prohibit local governments from turning homosexuals and other sexual deviates into the latest protected political class. By the court's reasoning, as dissenting Justice Antonio Scalia pointed out, any state that bans Polygamy is also in trouble.
It's actually a matter of debate in the House of Representatives and US Senate, whether men should be allowed to marry men and women marry women. (1997)
(4) The fourth characteristic of the Tribulation will be thievery of all kinds. Crime in all of its manifestations is on the upsurge today. The experts say a youth crime crisis is right around the corner. At the current growth rate, there will be nearly one half million more adolescent boys in the year 2010 than there are today. That trend would mean there will be 30,000 more chronic juvenile delinquents on the streets in 15 years. (from 1997) Though representing only 7% of all male teens, these chronic offenders commit 70% of all serious crime in their age group.
When a nation, founded as one nation under God, gives up its sovereignty under God in favor of "interdependence" on the world, you can see where the future lies. To be a friend of this future system in the sense of compromising God's viewpoint of life and letting the world squeeze you into its mold is to commit adultery, spiritually speaking. Remember, also, that in a true relationship with God through Jesus Christ, believers are viewed as being the "Bride" of Christ (2 Cor. 11 v.2) That's another reason that playing around with false religion is viewed throughout the Bible as spiritual adultery.
For the last 30 years, America has been engulfed in a culture war that threatens the nation's very foundation, its very survival. God's word tells us in Luke 12 v.48 that "For everyone to whom much is given, from him much will be required; and to whom much has been committed, of him they will ask the more."
In the history of the world has any nation been more blessed than the US? Yet there is always a cost to immorality. And today we are beginning to pay it. In the past 30 years there has been a 560% increase in violent crime. Illegitimate births have increased 419%. Divorce rates have tripled. The number of children living in single parent homes has tripled. The teen suicide rate has increase 200%. Student Achievement Tests have plummeted 80 points.
It should not surprise us that Billy Graham said years ago that if God didn't judge America soon, he would have to apologize to Sodom and Gomorrah. But it's not just the US. The entire world is in a headlong plunge into the morality of Sodom and Gomorrah and unfortunately into the same judgment.
Source: The Bible (NIV) - Revelation 9
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Is Music the Key to Success?
Click green for further info
The answer is: a definite YES - The facts below in the article - Read & Apply in your family.
Guide your children to learn to play if they show interest - start early, the earlier the better. Children copy their parents or older siblings.
Join your church choir or any choir. Additional guidance in the article and at the end of the article
Condolezza Rice (former U.S. Secretary of State) trained to be a concert pianist. Alan Greenspan, former chairman of the Federal Reserve, was a professional clarinet and saxophone player. The hedge fund billionaire Bruce Kovner is a pianist who took classes at Juilliard.
The Juilliard School: Homewww.juilliard.edu/ Private conservatory offering programs through the Divisions of Dance, Drama, and Music from its campus at Lincoln Center in New York City.
Multiple studies link music study to academic achievement. But what is it about serious music training that seems to correlate with outsize success in other fields?
Music in this article means:
(1) learning to play an instrument (of your choice), (2) learning to sing well solo, group or choir. Playing music has multiple benefits for success: (1) activates the brain creative areas, gives focus, gives possibilities to deeper thinking, to endurance & to basically every activity in life.
Listening to music has also great benefits (listening to soft music - not rock, etc. loud, modern) = listening to baroque music is success creating; it stimulates positively your brains for creativity*)
*) Baroque music - Wikipedia, the free encyclopediaen.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baroque_music
Baroque music is a style of Western art music composed from approximately 1600 to 1750. This era follows the Renaissance, and was followed in turn by the
Baroque-Music.combaroque-music.com/ Baroque-Music.com - Baroque Music, Baroque Composers, Baroque Instruments.
The connection isn’t a coincidence. I know because I asked. I put the question to top-flight professionals in industries from tech to finance to media, all of whom had serious (if often little-known) past lives as musicians. Almost all made a connection between their music training and their professional achievements.
The phenomenon extends beyond the math-music association. Strikingly, many high achievers told me music opened up the pathways to creative thinking. And their experiences suggest that music training sharpens other qualities: Collaboration. The ability to listen. A way of thinking that weaves together disparate ideas. The power to focus on the present and the future simultaneously.
Will your school music program turn your kid into a Paul Allen, the billionaire co-founder of Microsoft (guitar)? Or a Woody Allen (clarinet)? Probably not. These are singular achievers. But the way these and other visionaries I spoke to process music is intriguing. As is the way many of them apply music’s lessons of focus and discipline into new ways of thinking and communicating — even problem solving.
Look carefully and you’ll find musicians at the top of almost any industry. Woody Allen performs weekly with a jazz band. The television broadcaster Paula Zahn (cello) and the NBC chief White House correspondent Chuck Todd (French horn) attended college on music scholarships; NBC’s Andrea Mitchell trained to become a professional violinist. Both Microsoft’s Mr. Allen and the venture capitalist Roger McNamee have rock bands. Larry Page, a co-founder of Google, played saxophone in high school. Steven Spielberg is a clarinetist and son of a pianist. The former World Bank president James D. Wolfensohn has played cello at Carnegie Hall.
“It’s not a coincidence,” says Mr. Greenspan, who gave up jazz clarinet but still dabbles at the baby grand in his living room. “I can tell you as a statistician, the probability that that is mere chance is extremely small.” The cautious former Fed chief adds, “That’s all that you can judge about the facts. The crucial question is: why does that connection exist?”
Paul Allen offers an answer. He says music “reinforces your confidence in the ability to create.” Mr. Allen began playing the violin at age 7 and switched to the guitar as a teenager. Even in the early days of Microsoft, he would pick up his guitar at the end of marathon days of programming. The music was the emotional analog to his day job, with each channeling a different type of creative impulse. In both, he says, “something is pushing you to look beyond what currently exists and express yourself in a new way.”
Mr. Todd says there is a connection between years of practice and competition and what he calls the “drive for perfection.” The veteran advertising executive Steve Hayden credits his background as a cellist for his most famous work, the Apple “1984” commercial depicting rebellion against a dictator. “I was thinking of Stravinsky when I came up with that idea,” he says. He adds that his cello performance background helps him work collaboratively: “Ensemble playing trains you, quite literally, to play well with others, to know when to solo and when to follow.”
For many of the high achievers I spoke with, music functions as a “hidden language,” as Mr. Wolfensohn calls it, one that enhances the ability to connect disparate or even contradictory ideas. When he ran the World Bank, Mr. Wolfensohn traveled to more than 100 countries, often taking in local performances (and occasionally joining in on a borrowed cello), which helped him understand “the culture of people, as distinct from their balance sheet.”
It’s in that context that the much-discussed connection between math and music resonates most. Both are at heart modes of expression. Bruce Kovner, the founder of the hedge fund Caxton Associates and chairman of the board of Juilliard, says he sees similarities between his piano playing and investing strategy; as he says, both “relate to pattern recognition, and some people extend these paradigms across different senses.”
Mr. Kovner and the concert pianist Robert Taub both describe a sort of synesthesia — they perceive patterns in a three-dimensional way. Mr. Taub, who gained fame for his Beethoven recordings and has since founded a music software company, MuseAmi, says that when he performs, he can “visualize all of the notes and their interrelationships,” a skill that translates intellectually into making “multiple connections in multiple spheres.”
For others I spoke to, their passion for music is more notable than their talent. Woody Allen told me bluntly, “I’m not an accomplished musician. I get total traction from the fact that I’m in movies.”
Mr. Allen sees music as a diversion, unconnected to his day job. He likens himself to “a weekend tennis player who comes in once a week to play. I don’t have a particularly good ear at all or a particularly good sense of timing. In comedy, I’ve got a good instinct for rhythm. In music, I don’t, really.”
Still, he practices the clarinet at least half an hour every day, because wind players will lose their embouchure (mouth position) if they don’t: “If you want to play at all you have to practice. I have to practice every single day to be as bad as I am.” He performs regularly, even touring internationally with his New Orleans jazz band. “I never thought I would be playing in concert halls of the world to 5,000, 6,000 people,” he says. “I will say, quite unexpectedly, it enriched my life tremendously.”
Music provides balance, explains Mr. Wolfensohn, who began cello lessons as an adult. “You aren’t trying to win any races or be the leader of this or the leader of that. You’re enjoying it because of the satisfaction and joy you get out of music, which is totally unrelated to your professional status.”
For Roger McNamee, whose Elevation Partners is perhaps best known for its early investment in Facebook, “music and technology have converged,” he says. He became expert on Facebook by using it to promote his band, Moonalice, and now is focusing on video by live-streaming its concerts. He says musicians and top professionals share “the almost desperate need to dive deep.” This capacity to obsess seems to unite top performers in music and other fields.
Ms. Zahn remembers spending up to four hours a day “holed up in cramped practice rooms trying to master a phrase” on her cello. Mr. Todd, now 41, recounted in detail the solo audition at age 17 when he got the second-highest mark rather than the highest mark — though he still was principal horn in Florida’s All-State Orchestra.
“I’ve always believed the reason I’ve gotten ahead is by outworking other people,” he says. It’s a skill learned by “playing that solo one more time, working on that one little section one more time,” and it translates into “working on something over and over again, or double-checking or triple-checking.” He adds, “There’s nothing like music to teach you that eventually if you work hard enough, it does get better. You see the results.”
That’s an observation worth remembering at a time when music as a serious pursuit — and music education — is in decline in this country.
Consider the qualities these high achievers say music has sharpened: collaboration, creativity, discipline and the capacity to reconcile conflicting ideas. All are qualities notably absent from public life. Music may not make you a genius, or rich, or even a better person. But it helps train you to think differently, to process different points of view — and most important, to take pleasure in listening.
Source:
Joanne Lipman is a co-author, with Melanie Kupchynsky, of the book “Strings Attached: One Tough Teacher and the Gift of Great Expectations.”
Click green for further info:
Strings Attached: One Tough Teacher and the Gift of ... - Amazon.comwww.amazon.com › ... › Music › Instruments › StringsStrings Attached: One Tough Teacher and the Gift of Great Expectations [Joanne Lipman, Melanie Kupchynsky] on Amazon.com. *FREE* super saver shipping ..
Read the book and apply the knowledge - have your whole family, including your children, reading the book and practice the principles together in your family.
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In Revelation chapter 9, the fifth and sixth trumpets are described. The fifth trumpet brings a five month period of torment on the unbelievers of the earth.
In the first 12 verses, John employs the image of a pit seven times to describe hell. Each time the pit is closely associated with demons; it is also associated with the unsaved. (Romans 10 v.7)
This image of hell may also imply darkness and imprisonment since pits were often used as prisons in ancient cultures. Obviously, the pit appears as a place of suffering.
If you have trouble believing God could ever make a hell, remember it was prepared for the Devil and his angels. (Matthew 25 verse 41. Those who go to hell are in essence choosing to spend eternity with Satan rather than with Christ.
Revelation, Chapter 9 - with the detailed analysis of our present challenges
in the USA and in the world
9:1 "And the fifth angel sounded, and I saw a star fall from heaven unto the earth: and to him was given the key of the bottomless pit."
We know that Jesus Christ holds the key to the bottomless pit. He took the key away from Satan when He (Jesus) went there, preached, and brought captivity captive out with Him, Ephesians 4:8
The Fifth Trumpet - The expulsion of Satan from heaven. The identification of Satan in this passage is not hard to make. Isaiah foresaw this development in exactly the same manner described by John. "How you have fallen from heaven, O star of the
morning, son of the dawn! You have been cut down to the earth, you who have weakened the nations!" (Isaiah 14 v.12)
Many people mistakenly believe that throughout human history, Satan has already been banished from heaven, or that he reigns in some kind of kingdom in hell. That isn't true. Satan has always had access to the Throne of God, where he serves as the
principle accuser of the saints of God. "Now there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord,
and Satan also came among them." (Job 1 v.4)
Satan's entry into God's presence changes here. Now he is kicked out of heaven, and he is furious. Note also that he carries with him the key to the bottomless pit. (Rev. 9 v.1) He didn't have it before; it was given him by the One who holds the keys to heaven, hell and to death.
9:2 "And he opened the bottomless pit; and there arose a smoke out of the pit, as the smoke of a great furnace; and the sun and the air were darkened by reason of the smoke of the pit."
Jesus gave Satan the keys so that he could be released to carry out this punishment. Just as Satan had to have permission of God to afflict Job, Satan brings all of these terrible things on the earth and his people by permission of God.
The physical smoke that comes up surely will obscure the sun and diminish the light. In the spiritual, it will diminish the Light, as
well.
The abyss is the home of Satan and the demons. When Satan opens the abyss, here come the demons in force to deceive and destroy. They have such a vicious nature that God had to bind them to keep the human race from being annihilated before
the appointed time, but now the restrains are off.
"And out of the smoke came forth locusts upon the earth; and power was given them, as the scorpions of the earth have power. And they were told that they should not hurt the grass of the earth, nor any green thing, nor any tree, but only the men who do not have the seal of God on their foreheads.
The appearance of these locusts is both frightening and repulsive (v.7-10), and they do not act in an unorganized way; in fact,
John says, "They had as king over them the angel of the bottomless pit, whose name in Hebrew is Abaddon, but in Greek he has
the name Apollyon" (v.11) Both names mean "Destroyer". This seems to be one of the plagues that God sends on the followers
of Antichrist to hinder them from proselytizing among the uncommitted of the world. It may also give Tribulation saints some
time to prepare themselves for the horrors of the soon to come Great Tribulation.
If any religious activity is still going on at this time, there will be a flood of false doctrine and defaming of the Lord Jesus Christ. It
would be a kind of religion of the flesh, (anything goes religion). It sounds very much like what is going on today in most churches.
9:3 "And there came out of the smoke locusts upon the earth: and unto them was given power, as the scorpions of the earth have power."
The description of the locusts indicates that they are demons who are given physical forms in order to manifest their
destruction and torment. Horses show their warlike character. Their crowns depict them as conquerors. Human faces show
intelligence. Their feminine hair perhaps makes them seductive and attractive. The teeth of lions shows them to be
destructive and hurtful. Breastplates of iron make them indestructible. Wings symbolize swiftness. The stings in their tails give
them the power to hurt. Fortunately for mankind, their period of torment is limited to five mouths. But the next judgment is
even worse.
Notice, these have to be demons as they had no power in and of themselves. It was given unto them.
9:4 "And it was commanded them that they should not hurt the grass of the earth, neither any green thing, neither any tree; but only those men which have not the seal of God in their foreheads."
This is an attack on the person, which makes us take another look at it spiritually. They have orders not to hurt the vegetation or the 144,000 who have been sealed in their foreheads. Real locusts would eat every green thing that they could find, and they do. Looking at this from the spiritual standpoint, these locusts are demon spirits turned loose upon this earth. The devil, or his demons, cannot really hurt anyone covered in the blood of Jesus.
They were not permitted to kill anyone, but to torment for five months; and their torment was like the torment of a scorpion when it stings a man." (Rev. 9 v.3-5) God's instructions are in essence, "You may torment those who have the Antichrist's mark, but you may not kill them." Also, "you may not touch those who belong to Me." Satan's power is under strict control over those sealed by God - both now and in the Tribulation. Though this will be a period of great anguish, it is really the grace of GOD at work. I'm sure that the LORD is seeking to make mankind think because of this terrible torment and to decide to come to Him.
9:5 "And to them it was given that they should not kill them, but that they should be tormented five months: and their torment [was] as the torment of a scorpion, when he striketh a man."
Here again, whether this is physical pain and torment from fallout causing sores and torture, or whether this is spiritual and terrible suffering, it is brought on by constant attack from the devil for five months. It is terrible. As at Hiroshima, those who survived the bomb, wished they were dead. Great sores, deformities and torment beyond our comprehension took place. In many cases it took five months to die. A terrible burn would have the pain of a scorpion's sting.
At this point, let's look at something we've studied before. Remember the 144,000 where the four angels held back the winds until they had been sealed in chapter 7 verse 1?
Not only were the 144,000 sealed but also those who turned to Christ during the Tribulation. Those are the Tribulation Saints and they too were sealed by God just as all true Christians of today have God's seal on them.
9:6 "And in those days shall men seek death, and shall not find it; and shall desire to die, and death shall flee from them."
Death would be a welcome relief to all this suffering. These forces of evil turned loose (unrestrained) upon the earth, whether physical or spiritual, will be so terrible that men will beg to die but will be unable to during this punishment.
This was the first of the three Woes!
9:7-8 "And the shapes of the locusts [were] like unto horses prepared unto battle; and on their heads [were] as it were crowns like gold, and their faces [were] as the faces of men." "And they had hair as the hair of women, and their teeth were as [the teeth] of lions."
Here John describes the locusts (demons) as he gives a detailed description of their appearance in his vision. They are described as locusts as they will bring massive and devastating judgment from God.
This demon host will be virtually unstoppable and man will have no weapon that can harm them or cure for the terrible torment they will inflict.
Their faces of men indicate they are intelligent and rational beings, not insects. Having hair as being like the hair of women emphasizes their seductiveness. Perhaps to lure unsuspecting unbelievers to come close to them before striking them.
Having teeth like the teeth of lions means they will be more fierce, powerful and deadly then lions.
9:9 "And they had breastplates, as it were breastplates of iron; and the sound of their wings [was] as the sound of chariots of many horses running to battle."
Breastplates of iron symbolizes their invulnerability.
In short, they will be impossible to resist or to destroy. There will be no escaping their worldwide onslaught as there will be nowhere to run or hide from them.
In a metaphor drawn from a battlefield, John compares the sound of their wings to a moving army, noting that it was like the sound of chariots, of many horses rushing to batter. The sound alone will be enough to put fear into the hearts of the unbelievers.
9:10 "And they had tails like unto scorpions, and there were stings in their tails: and their power [was] to hurt men five months."
As these demons are compared to scorpions, it is clear that their mission is to hurt men. The very nature of this full scale demonic torment that drives men to seek death and not find it, or to pursue death and not catch it, is not described.
Their are references in the bible where demons possessed people such as found in Matthew 8 v.28, Matthew 4 v.23-24, Matthew 8 v.6 and Mark 9 v.20-22.
These demons are given the power to torment unbelievers for 5 full months with no relief for the tormented. This stresses God's sovereign power over the timing of their assault. Eventually God will return them to the abyss with their evil amster, then send them to the lake of fire. (Chapter 20)
9:11 "And they had a king over them, [which is] the angel of the bottomless pit, whose name in the Hebrew tongue [is] Abaddon, but in the Greek tongue hath [his] name Apollyon."
You can call him any name you care to. This is Satan. Lucifer was one of the angels close to God in heaven. He was a very beautiful angel before his fall. All of the demons were angels in heaven until 1/3 of the angels followed Lucifer and became demons.
Angels, as we have said before, are ministering spirits. These fallen angels (demons) are ministering pain and suffering. Their
mission is to destroy. Their leader, Lucifer, is the epitome of evil. He has been their king since they were cast out of heaven by God. Their abode, when they are not on a mission of destruction, is in the abyss. This is where they were loosed from in V-2. They are continuously causing war, both spiritual and literal. Their mission is to destroy any way they can.
This "king" in V-11 is the star we saw in V-1, which was thrown out of heaven and has hell for an abode. Just as he lead these
angels out of heaven, he leads them in this mission of destruction. Satan, even though fallen, must do every thing the Lord commands him.
Remember all of this happens because God's wrath is kindled. God alone can stop Satan. This time God does not want to stop him. God allows, and even orders, this to happen. Satan, Apollyon, Abaddon, Lucifer, the devil, or whatever you care to call him, is still obedient to God. He, as we, or any other being, or angel, are created and subject to the desires of the Creator. God alone could stop this destruction. "Apollyon" and "Abaddon" mean destruction.
Jesus had and has many names. Satan is a counterfeiter, so he has many names, as well. People throughout history have tried to put names of modern conquerors to these, but I do not believe that is intended here.
9:12 "One woe is past; [and], behold, there come two woes more hereafter."
As if this is not terrible enough that we have been hearing about, there are two more woes. The open warfare on the streets of Lebanon and Israel remind us very much of the things we read about in the last lesson. A mother in that area of the world has no idea when her family leaves the house whether they will return alive or not.
The descendents of Ishmael and Isaac (the flesh and the spirit) are still in mortal combat after all the 1000's of years that have
passed. Just as there is a spiritual battle of the flesh and the spirit that we must face each day, there is a physical battle in Israel between the Arab and the Jew. Ishmael was told that his descendents would live around the Jews and would be fighting continuously.
The Bible is true. A woe is a terrible calamity.
9:13-14 "And the sixth angel sounded, and I heard a voice from the four horns of the golden altar which is before God," "Saying to the sixth angel which had the trumpet, Loose the four angels which are bound in the great river Euphrates."
The number six indicates man or mankind. "Horns" mean power and strength. The number four means worldwide. This "golden altar" is where God is. God is never associated with other metals.
The Sixth Trumpet - The Four Angels Released - At the blowing of the 6th trumpet, the 2nd woe is released: the release of "the four angels who are bound at the great river Euphrates" (v.14). The angels apparently lead an army of 200 million "horsemen" (demons) who kill a third of mankind through the plagues of fire and smoke and brimstone.
God views the Euphrates River as the dividing line between East and West. In fact, the old Roman Empire also saw it that way. Everything east of the Euphrates was called the Far East or Asia. The region just to the west of the great river was known as the
Near East or Asia Minor.
9:15 "And the four angels were loosed, which were prepared for an hour, and a day, and a month, and a year, for to slay the third part of men."
When these angels are loosed, they immediately inspire the great population centers of Asia to launch an attack on the Western and Middle Eastern strongholds. These demons are effective, because they cause one and a half billion people, a third of the remaining population, to be killed in short order.
The Apostle John wrote, "And the four angels, who had been prepared for the Hour and Day and Month and Year, are released, so that they might kill a third of mankind. And the number of the armies of the horsemen (demons) was 200 million; I heard the number of them."
9:16 "And the number of the army of the horsemen [were] two hundred thousand thousand: and I heard the number of them."
Now in addition to the demons who have roamed the earth throughout history, spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places (Eph. 6 v.12) recently cast to earth (9 v.1 and 12 v.4) and the numerous demons recently released from the abyss at the sounding of the 5th trumpet, comes a new demonic army that is two hundred million strong.
Some have suggested that the 200 million will come from the Chinese who can currently field an army of that size. However it is very doubtful this could be a human army due to the inability to equip, feed, transport, not to mention the water it would take to support that size contingent. Those things taken into consideration strongly suggest this will be a supernatural rather than a human force, especially as the four angels (demons) are commanding this force.
When you combine this 3rd with the quarter of humanity killed in the seal judgments, by this point in the Tribulation half of the world's population (after the rapture) already has been destroyed. Tim LaHaye makes reference to the Chinese army which can raise a 200 million man army now. That has prompted some interpreters to suggest the 200 million would come with the kings of the east to do battle with Christ at the consummation of the end of this age, known as the Battle of Armageddon. While there is no question that the armies of the Orient coming to that battle at the very end of the Tribulation will be enormous, due to the incredible population of those countries, they definitely are not the Rev. 9 v.16 army. Consider the following reasons:
- The 9 v.16 army goes out during the 6th trumpet, which occurs near the middle of the Tribulation; the 16 v.12 army goes out at the end of the Tribulation.
- The 200 million in 9 v.16 are not humans but demons, doing things men cannot do. These "horsemen" have a supernatural
effect on the earth. - The Chinese army would include all the men and women under arms in China, including their local militias or defense forces. There is no way the communist government could risk committing all its military and armament to the Middle East, for they know their freedom hungry citizens would revolt before they returned. Besides, the logistics of moving an army of 200 million from the Orient across the Euphrates and the Arabian Desert to the little land of Israel seems impossible.
judgment.
For these and other reasons not mentioned, it is not realistic to assume that the armies of 16 v.12 are synonymous with those of 9 v.16. The 200 million horsemen who come on the scene will obviously be supernatural, creatures that are so awesome to look on that they actually frighten some people to death. And their sting "is in their mouth and their tails", and with them they kill one third of the world's population of those who reject Christ and commit themselves to Antichrist.
9:17 "And thus I saw the horses in the vision, and them that sat on them, having breastplates of fire, and of jacinth, and brimstone: and the heads of the horses [were] as the heads of lions; and out of their mouths issued fire and smoke and brimstone."
Horses have been often associated with warfare in scripture. It is clear these are not actual horses judging the heads were as the heads of lions.
Many have tried to associate the meaning of this scripture with weapons of war, but this can't be. John would have no problem with associating a lion's head with what these appeared to look like.
John saw three ways the demon horses killed their victims and all ways depict the violent and devastating fury of hell. They incinerated them with fire, then asphyxiated with smoke and brimstone which proceeded out of their mouths.
9:18 "By these three was the third part of men killed, by the fire, and by the smoke, and by the brimstone, which issued out of their mouths."
The end result of this demonic 200 million was that a third of the remaining mankind would be killed. Note that a quarter of mankind was killed during the seal judgments, leaving three quarters of the remaining population. As one third is now killed, 50% of mankind now has been killed. (one third of 75 that was remaining is 25%)
The death of one third of the earth's remaining inhabitants will be the most catastrophic disaster to strike the earth since the flood during the days on Noah.
9:19 "For their power is in their mouth, and in their tails: for their tails [were] like unto serpents, and had heads, and with them they do hurt."
Not only were these demonic horses able to kill with their mouths, but also death was in their tails. Their tails are like deadly poisonous serpents. The horses tails were not actual serpents as the horses were not actual horses.
But these images are describing the supernatural deadliness of this demon force in terms that one would normally understand in the natural world.
Unlike the demonic scorpion stings of the 5th trumpet judgment, the bites of these demonic creatures will be fatal.
9:20 "And the rest of the men which were not killed by these plagues yet repented not of the works of their hands, that they should not worship devils, and idols of gold, and silver, and brass, and stone, and of wood: which neither can see, nor hear, nor walk:"
In is so unimaginable that after many years of suffering and death by this time from the horrible judgments of God, combined with the 144,000, the two witnesses, an angel who gives the Word of God to humans, not to mention the countless number of Tribulation Saints, that the rest of mankind, who were not killed by these plaques, did not repent.
These "men" are not just males, but all of mankind. Women will have to answer for their own actions, as well as the men. What in the world has to happen before they will repent? All of these things worshipped in verse 20 describes our day. These are things of the world. Trying to out do the neighbors with: a bigger house - "wood or stone", finer jewelry - "gold and silver", expensive ornaments -"brass" and worship of the devil - "worship devils"
All of these things listed are inanimate objects and have no power to accomplish anything.
Anything or anyone who does not elevate Jesus Christ to deity is in error and worshipping the devil. Jesus said Himself that "He that is not with me is against me; and he that gathereth not with me scattereth abroad." Matthew 12:30.
We are either on the side of Jesus or the devil. There is no middle ground. We are not to worship God's creations. We are to worship the Creator.
9:21 "Neither repented they of their murders, nor of their sorceries, nor of their fornication, nor of their thefts."
At that future point in history, idolatry, mysticism, spiritism, satanism and all forms of false region will become the norm as demons lead people into more wicked and vicious behaviors. Violent crimes like murder will be absolutely rampant. Without any sense of morality, the evil, unrepentant people will imitate the demon horde's murderous blood lust. Of course, believers in God will doubtlessly be their prime targets.
Once again, people will refuse to repent of their sins as the world of unrepentant people compete for the scarce supplies of food, clothing, water, shelter and medicines.
Under the influence of the massive demon forces that has been unleashed upon the world, false religion, murder, sexual perversion and crime will be unparalleled in human history.
The Big Four Sins
Rev. 9 v.21 lists the four most prominent sins of the Tribulation period. The significance of these sins is great in light of present trends in the world. It's no coincidence that the four major sins listed here are today four of the most serious problems facing law enforcement.
(1) The first of these characteristic sins is murder. For whatever reason, societal permissiveness, lack of punishment or lack of faith, there has been an alarming increase in murder throughout the US and the world. One factor is the rejection of absolute standards of right and wrong. When a judge who posts the Ten Commandments in his courtroom is sued, you know society has its priorities upside down. Anyone who was awake in the latter part of the 20th century could see the violence around us. I don't think I need to elaborate on this point.
The murder of unborn children in our day is a stench in God's nostrils. Women and men should repent of these murders. Murder with a deadly weapon is not always with a gun or a knife. One of the most useless murders in our day is drunk drivers killing people with their automobiles. Some are drunk on alcohol and some on drugs. All of these are useless killings that do not accomplish anything.
President Clinton vetoed a bill, passed with bi-partisan support in both the house and the senate, that would have prohibited partial birth abortions.
(2) The second prominent sin of the Tribulation era will be drug related occult activities. The word sorceries is used in Rev. 9 v.21. It comes from the Greek word meaning pharmacy, and refers here to the practice of the occult tied to the use of drugs.
Drug use in the 1990's doubled from the 1960's and early 70's. In 1997 more than 11% claimed to use drugs every month. According to a study by the Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University in New York, today's daughters are 15 times more likely than their baby boom mothers to have begun illegal drug use by age 15.
Another category of skyrocketing use is in so called designer drugs, such as methamphetamine. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y. stated when Bill Clinton was president that "I have never, never, never seen a president who cares less about this issue."
There is a strong link between drug use and demon possession. As far back as 1971, the International Journal of Social Psychiatry dealt with the reality of demon possession and how to diagnose it.
There is a need to ascertain if there is any involvement in drug addiction, as it is common that addicts, especially with heroin and alcohol, become involved with black magic and vice versa. Some have been known in some cases to have been very religious people who defaulted, and thus left themselves open to some power other than God to control their lives.
Sorceries can also be anything associated with the occult: palm reading, horoscope, etc. So many people in our society today are playing around with mind control, transcendental meditation, and other false religions. All of this type of activity is to undermine our belief in God.
(3) The third prominent sin of the Tribulation will be rampant immorality. "Porneia," the Greek word used in this verse, refers to all kinds of sexual activity outside of marriage. Apparently, there will be a complete breakdown in the institution of marriage. Well, folks, as anyone can plainly see, we're almost there!
More than 70,000 women are sexually assaulted every year in the US. (1 every 45 seconds) It is the most rapidly growing violent crime in the country.
Domestic violence is more widespread than ever. Each year between 2 and 4 million women are battered; 1,500 women are murdered by their intimate partners; 1.8 million elderly are victims of maltreatment; 1.7 million child abuse reports are filed. Fornication covers living with someone before you are married. Fornication covers being married and dating someone else. Fornication covers all homosexual and lesbian acts.
The US Supreme court rules as unconstitutional Colorado's Amendment 2 to the state constitution, a simple and popular attempt to prohibit local governments from turning homosexuals and other sexual deviates into the latest protected political class. By the court's reasoning, as dissenting Justice Antonio Scalia pointed out, any state that bans Polygamy is also in trouble.
It's actually a matter of debate in the House of Representatives and US Senate, whether men should be allowed to marry men and women marry women. (1997)
(4) The fourth characteristic of the Tribulation will be thievery of all kinds. Crime in all of its manifestations is on the upsurge today. The experts say a youth crime crisis is right around the corner. At the current growth rate, there will be nearly one half million more adolescent boys in the year 2010 than there are today. That trend would mean there will be 30,000 more chronic juvenile delinquents on the streets in 15 years. (from 1997) Though representing only 7% of all male teens, these chronic offenders commit 70% of all serious crime in their age group.
When a nation, founded as one nation under God, gives up its sovereignty under God in favor of "interdependence" on the world, you can see where the future lies. To be a friend of this future system in the sense of compromising God's viewpoint of life and letting the world squeeze you into its mold is to commit adultery, spiritually speaking. Remember, also, that in a true relationship with God through Jesus Christ, believers are viewed as being the "Bride" of Christ (2 Cor. 11 v.2) That's another reason that playing around with false religion is viewed throughout the Bible as spiritual adultery.
For the last 30 years, America has been engulfed in a culture war that threatens the nation's very foundation, its very survival. God's word tells us in Luke 12 v.48 that "For everyone to whom much is given, from him much will be required; and to whom much has been committed, of him they will ask the more."
In the history of the world has any nation been more blessed than the US? Yet there is always a cost to immorality. And today we are beginning to pay it. In the past 30 years there has been a 560% increase in violent crime. Illegitimate births have increased 419%. Divorce rates have tripled. The number of children living in single parent homes has tripled. The teen suicide rate has increase 200%. Student Achievement Tests have plummeted 80 points.
It should not surprise us that Billy Graham said years ago that if God didn't judge America soon, he would have to apologize to Sodom and Gomorrah. But it's not just the US. The entire world is in a headlong plunge into the morality of Sodom and Gomorrah and unfortunately into the same judgment.
Source: The Bible (NIV) - Revelation 9
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Is Music the Key to Success?
Click green for further info
The answer is: a definite YES - The facts below in the article - Read & Apply in your family.
Guide your children to learn to play if they show interest - start early, the earlier the better. Children copy their parents or older siblings.
Join your church choir or any choir. Additional guidance in the article and at the end of the article
Condolezza Rice (former U.S. Secretary of State) trained to be a concert pianist. Alan Greenspan, former chairman of the Federal Reserve, was a professional clarinet and saxophone player. The hedge fund billionaire Bruce Kovner is a pianist who took classes at Juilliard.
The Juilliard School: Homewww.juilliard.edu/ Private conservatory offering programs through the Divisions of Dance, Drama, and Music from its campus at Lincoln Center in New York City.
Multiple studies link music study to academic achievement. But what is it about serious music training that seems to correlate with outsize success in other fields?
Music in this article means:
(1) learning to play an instrument (of your choice), (2) learning to sing well solo, group or choir. Playing music has multiple benefits for success: (1) activates the brain creative areas, gives focus, gives possibilities to deeper thinking, to endurance & to basically every activity in life.
Listening to music has also great benefits (listening to soft music - not rock, etc. loud, modern) = listening to baroque music is success creating; it stimulates positively your brains for creativity*)
*) Baroque music - Wikipedia, the free encyclopediaen.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baroque_music
Baroque music is a style of Western art music composed from approximately 1600 to 1750. This era follows the Renaissance, and was followed in turn by the
Baroque-Music.combaroque-music.com/ Baroque-Music.com - Baroque Music, Baroque Composers, Baroque Instruments.
The connection isn’t a coincidence. I know because I asked. I put the question to top-flight professionals in industries from tech to finance to media, all of whom had serious (if often little-known) past lives as musicians. Almost all made a connection between their music training and their professional achievements.
The phenomenon extends beyond the math-music association. Strikingly, many high achievers told me music opened up the pathways to creative thinking. And their experiences suggest that music training sharpens other qualities: Collaboration. The ability to listen. A way of thinking that weaves together disparate ideas. The power to focus on the present and the future simultaneously.
Will your school music program turn your kid into a Paul Allen, the billionaire co-founder of Microsoft (guitar)? Or a Woody Allen (clarinet)? Probably not. These are singular achievers. But the way these and other visionaries I spoke to process music is intriguing. As is the way many of them apply music’s lessons of focus and discipline into new ways of thinking and communicating — even problem solving.
Look carefully and you’ll find musicians at the top of almost any industry. Woody Allen performs weekly with a jazz band. The television broadcaster Paula Zahn (cello) and the NBC chief White House correspondent Chuck Todd (French horn) attended college on music scholarships; NBC’s Andrea Mitchell trained to become a professional violinist. Both Microsoft’s Mr. Allen and the venture capitalist Roger McNamee have rock bands. Larry Page, a co-founder of Google, played saxophone in high school. Steven Spielberg is a clarinetist and son of a pianist. The former World Bank president James D. Wolfensohn has played cello at Carnegie Hall.
“It’s not a coincidence,” says Mr. Greenspan, who gave up jazz clarinet but still dabbles at the baby grand in his living room. “I can tell you as a statistician, the probability that that is mere chance is extremely small.” The cautious former Fed chief adds, “That’s all that you can judge about the facts. The crucial question is: why does that connection exist?”
Paul Allen offers an answer. He says music “reinforces your confidence in the ability to create.” Mr. Allen began playing the violin at age 7 and switched to the guitar as a teenager. Even in the early days of Microsoft, he would pick up his guitar at the end of marathon days of programming. The music was the emotional analog to his day job, with each channeling a different type of creative impulse. In both, he says, “something is pushing you to look beyond what currently exists and express yourself in a new way.”
Mr. Todd says there is a connection between years of practice and competition and what he calls the “drive for perfection.” The veteran advertising executive Steve Hayden credits his background as a cellist for his most famous work, the Apple “1984” commercial depicting rebellion against a dictator. “I was thinking of Stravinsky when I came up with that idea,” he says. He adds that his cello performance background helps him work collaboratively: “Ensemble playing trains you, quite literally, to play well with others, to know when to solo and when to follow.”
For many of the high achievers I spoke with, music functions as a “hidden language,” as Mr. Wolfensohn calls it, one that enhances the ability to connect disparate or even contradictory ideas. When he ran the World Bank, Mr. Wolfensohn traveled to more than 100 countries, often taking in local performances (and occasionally joining in on a borrowed cello), which helped him understand “the culture of people, as distinct from their balance sheet.”
It’s in that context that the much-discussed connection between math and music resonates most. Both are at heart modes of expression. Bruce Kovner, the founder of the hedge fund Caxton Associates and chairman of the board of Juilliard, says he sees similarities between his piano playing and investing strategy; as he says, both “relate to pattern recognition, and some people extend these paradigms across different senses.”
Mr. Kovner and the concert pianist Robert Taub both describe a sort of synesthesia — they perceive patterns in a three-dimensional way. Mr. Taub, who gained fame for his Beethoven recordings and has since founded a music software company, MuseAmi, says that when he performs, he can “visualize all of the notes and their interrelationships,” a skill that translates intellectually into making “multiple connections in multiple spheres.”
For others I spoke to, their passion for music is more notable than their talent. Woody Allen told me bluntly, “I’m not an accomplished musician. I get total traction from the fact that I’m in movies.”
Mr. Allen sees music as a diversion, unconnected to his day job. He likens himself to “a weekend tennis player who comes in once a week to play. I don’t have a particularly good ear at all or a particularly good sense of timing. In comedy, I’ve got a good instinct for rhythm. In music, I don’t, really.”
Still, he practices the clarinet at least half an hour every day, because wind players will lose their embouchure (mouth position) if they don’t: “If you want to play at all you have to practice. I have to practice every single day to be as bad as I am.” He performs regularly, even touring internationally with his New Orleans jazz band. “I never thought I would be playing in concert halls of the world to 5,000, 6,000 people,” he says. “I will say, quite unexpectedly, it enriched my life tremendously.”
Music provides balance, explains Mr. Wolfensohn, who began cello lessons as an adult. “You aren’t trying to win any races or be the leader of this or the leader of that. You’re enjoying it because of the satisfaction and joy you get out of music, which is totally unrelated to your professional status.”
For Roger McNamee, whose Elevation Partners is perhaps best known for its early investment in Facebook, “music and technology have converged,” he says. He became expert on Facebook by using it to promote his band, Moonalice, and now is focusing on video by live-streaming its concerts. He says musicians and top professionals share “the almost desperate need to dive deep.” This capacity to obsess seems to unite top performers in music and other fields.
Ms. Zahn remembers spending up to four hours a day “holed up in cramped practice rooms trying to master a phrase” on her cello. Mr. Todd, now 41, recounted in detail the solo audition at age 17 when he got the second-highest mark rather than the highest mark — though he still was principal horn in Florida’s All-State Orchestra.
“I’ve always believed the reason I’ve gotten ahead is by outworking other people,” he says. It’s a skill learned by “playing that solo one more time, working on that one little section one more time,” and it translates into “working on something over and over again, or double-checking or triple-checking.” He adds, “There’s nothing like music to teach you that eventually if you work hard enough, it does get better. You see the results.”
That’s an observation worth remembering at a time when music as a serious pursuit — and music education — is in decline in this country.
Consider the qualities these high achievers say music has sharpened: collaboration, creativity, discipline and the capacity to reconcile conflicting ideas. All are qualities notably absent from public life. Music may not make you a genius, or rich, or even a better person. But it helps train you to think differently, to process different points of view — and most important, to take pleasure in listening.
Source:
Joanne Lipman is a co-author, with Melanie Kupchynsky, of the book “Strings Attached: One Tough Teacher and the Gift of Great Expectations.”
Click green for further info:
Strings Attached: One Tough Teacher and the Gift of ... - Amazon.comwww.amazon.com › ... › Music › Instruments › StringsStrings Attached: One Tough Teacher and the Gift of Great Expectations [Joanne Lipman, Melanie Kupchynsky] on Amazon.com. *FREE* super saver shipping ..
Read the book and apply the knowledge - have your whole family, including your children, reading the book and practice the principles together in your family.
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How Skeptics and Believers Can Connect
A good article about our life and how to solve communication challenges in all levels including in marriages
I DO not call myself a Christian. So maybe I should not have been surprised when I went on my first Christian radio show, a year ago, and the host set out to save me — live, on a nationally syndicated program, for 30 minutes. In the few seconds before I was connected, when I could hear him on the air but he could not hear me, he explained: “Listen, she’s not one of us. But I won’t fight with her.” It was a pledge he did not keep. Did I think God was present? My response, that I was speaking as a social scientist, interested him not at all.
I was on the show to discuss my recent book, which explains the way evangelicals learn to experience themselves in conversation with God. It argues that learning to hear God speak involves skill, that the skill changes the way people use and experience their minds, and that those who use this skill do so, for the most part, with sophistication. I have spent a lot of time thinking about the complexity of faith, and have tried to take theologically conservative faith seriously. As I did so, over a decade of research, I found myself more open to the idea of God, and more aware of the fragile human grasp on the real.
So it was a shock to have my host grill me about the state of my soul. It reminded me that one of the things that makes mutual respect between believers and nonbelievers difficult is that there is a kind of line in the sand, and you’re either on one side of it or on the other. Skeptics do this too, of course. I remember a dinner party where I was explaining my work among evangelicals to a colleague, and her face grew longer and longer until she said, “You talk to them?”
The in-your-face confrontation makes it that much harder to connect. The more my interviewer pressed me, the more my faith — such as it is — grew strained.
I had come to live (theologically speaking) in a messy in-between. My interviewer wanted clarity. The more he put me on the spot, the more I wanted to say that I shared nothing with him and that his beliefs were flimsy dreams. And the more I resisted, the more he just got mad. He was determined. I was exhausted.
Anthropologists have a term for this racheting-up of opposition: schismogenesis*). Gregory Bateson developed the word to describe mirroring interactions, where every move by each side makes the other respond more negatively, like those horrible arguments with your spouse where everything you say makes the other person dig in their heels more fiercely.
These days we Americans live not only with political schismogenesis, but also religious schismogenesis. The political scientists Robert D. Putnam and David E. Campbell, in their book “American Grace,” found that “recent years have seen the sharpest points of disagreement between religious believers — of nearly all stripes — and those who denounce religious belief of all types.” The last few election cycles have made it clear that many evangelicals think that those without religion are dangerously wrong on many issues. A crop of equally committed atheists and agnostics have reciprocated, with vigor. Professors Putnam and Campbell find that it is the people at the extremes who are most engaged in the battle, but all of us see the battle lines clearly drawn.
I think that schismogenesis is responsible for the striking increase in the number of people who say that they are not affiliated with any religion. Since the early 1990s that number has more than doubled to 20 percent from less than 10 percent, and is close to a third for people under 30. We know that most of these people still believe in God or a higher power, whatever they mean by that. It’s just that they are no longer willing to describe themselves as associated with a religion. They’ve seen that line in the sand, and they’re not willing to step over it.
Yet believers and nonbelievers are not so different from one another, news that is sometimes a surprise to both. When I arrived at one church I had come to study, I thought that I would stick out like a sore thumb. I did not. Instead, I saw my own doubts, anxieties and yearnings reflected in those around me. People were willing to utter sentences — like “I believe in God” — that I was not, but many of those I met spoke openly and comfortably about times of uncertainty, even doubt. Many of my skeptical friends think of themselves as secular, sometimes profoundly so. Yet these secular friends often hover on the edge of faith. They meditate. They keep journals. They go on retreats. They just don’t know what to do with their spiritual yearnings.
Perhaps there is hope. Good marriages work because couples learn to repair, rather than escalate, their conflicts. Same-sex marriage and abortion should not be approached by drawing a line in the sand and demonizing everyone on the other side. We need to recognize something of what we share, and to carry on a conversation — and if we can keep the conversation going, we will, however slowly, move forward.
If we can’t, we’re in real trouble.
Click colored areas for further info
Source:
NYT ¶& T. M. Luhrmann, a professor of anthropology at Stanford and the author of “When God Talks Back: Understanding the American Evangelical Relationship With God,” is a guest columnist for NYT
*) Schismogenesis literally means "creation of division". The term derives from the Greek words skhisma "cleft" (borrowed into English asschism, "division into opposing factions"), and genesis "generation, creation" (deriving in turn from gignesthai "be born or produced, creation, a coming into being").
Read more about Schismogenesis - click the links below
Click colored areas
- Schismogenesis - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schismogenesis
Schismogenesis literally means "creation of division". The term derives from the Greek words skhisma "cleft" (borrowed into English as schism, "division into ...
Concepts - Types - Sociolinguistics - Systems of holding back - Click
schismogenesis
christianhubert.com/writings/schismogenesis.html
schismogenesis. Gregory Bateson uses this term to describe progressive differentiation between social groups or individuals. For example, if two groups exhibit .. - Stepping Out of the Pattern - INTERLUDE: An Internet Retreat
www.interluderetreat.com/meditate/schismo.htm
Schismogenesis is a word coined by heavy weight social scientist Gregory Bateson that he used in describing relationship processes among people. He defined ... - Click colored area # 4 has a video - see & listen
►
www.youtube.com/watch
Oct 17, 2010 - Uploaded by edivietro
I learned this term from a lecture series by Deborah Tannen, but it has helped me tremendously in working with ...
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Tennessee Homecoming King Nominees Give Crown to Another Teen
Three Tennessee homecoming king nominees made a unanimous and touching decision that no matter who won, they would give the crown to a beloved student with a genetic condition.
Students Jesse Cooper, Drew Gibbs and Zeke Grissom were all nominated for homecoming king at Community High School's basketball homecoming ceremony.
The teens got together and decided that the winner would turn over the honor to junior Scotty Maloney, who has Williams Syndrome, a neurological disorder that inhibits learning and speech.
"I've been blessed with so many things," Cooper told ABC News' Nashville affiliate WKRN-TV. "I just wanted Scotty to experience something great in his high school days."
"He's always happy, so he deserves some recognition for who he is," Gibbs said.
Cooper won the popular vote for king, but when the official announcement was made at a Friday ceremony, the principal told the crowd what the nominees had decided to do.
"When they called [Scotty's] name, his eyes got really big and I don't know that he registered exactly what was happening. He knew something was," Maloney's teacher Liz Hestle Gassaway told ABCNews.com. "It was very, very emotional."
The crowd erupted with cheers and Maloney got a long standing ovation, WKRN reported, as he was awarded his "King" medal.
"It was just a ton of emotion from everybody," Grissom told WKRN. "I think I saw Scotty shed a few tears. I know Jesse was pretty emotional. We were all emotional out there on the court."
Maloney is a beloved teen in his school and in the community, Gassaway said.
"Scotty is fabulous. He is a superstar. He knows everybody. There's not one person that Scotty does not know," she said. "To know him and meet him is to love him."
Gassaway believes that the nearly 500-student school in Unionville, Tenn., is "one of the best schools in the world when it comes to dealing with special needs children."
Students like Cooper help out in special needs gym classes and other activities. Gassaway said the boys' gesture toward Maloney sent a greater message.
"We want people to have more empathy towards people, not be scared of people with disabilities," she said. "We want them to embrace them, more like the boys did."
Next year Maloney will get to crown the school's new homecoming king. But for now, he is proudly sporting his medal everywhere he goes.
"He's been wearing his medal around," Gassaway said with a laugh. "He is not here today because he had a doctor's appointment, but I'm sure he has his medal on."
__________________
Jesus told us: "The two most important success rules (= old word: Commandments) are: (1) Respect God and God's success laws (= apply them daily), (2) love your neighbor. These 2 actually cover the meaning of all ten.
In this story below, from January 2013, the high school students, the whole school, and the local society did show deep love for their neighbor, a developmentally disabled student in their school.
A few comments from the public:
(1) Those boys' parents should be very proud to have raised such fine young men.
(2) People like this are my heroes, not film stars or football players, but everyday people who perform extraordinary acts of love and kindness. Thank you for making my day.
(3) That story gives me hope for our future leaders. Nice job boys, parents, students, teachers & administrators.
________________________________________
Three Tennessee homecoming king nominees made a unanimous and touching decision that no matter who won, they would give the crown to a beloved student with a genetic condition.
Students Jesse Cooper, Drew Gibbs and Zeke Grissom were all nominated for homecoming king at Community High School's basketball homecoming ceremony.
The teens got together and decided that the winner would turn over the honor to junior Scotty Maloney, who has Williams Syndrome, a neurological disorder that inhibits learning and speech.
"I've been blessed with so many things," Cooper told ABC News' Nashville affiliate WKRN-TV. "I just wanted Scotty to experience something great in his high school days."
"He's always happy, so he deserves some recognition for who he is," Gibbs said.
Cooper won the popular vote for king, but when the official announcement was made at a Friday ceremony, the principal told the crowd what the nominees had decided to do.
"When they called [Scotty's] name, his eyes got really big and I don't know that he registered exactly what was happening. He knew something was," Maloney's teacher Liz Hestle Gassaway told ABCNews.com. "It was very, very emotional."
The crowd erupted with cheers and Maloney got a long standing ovation, WKRN reported, as he was awarded his "King" medal.
"It was just a ton of emotion from everybody," Grissom told WKRN. "I think I saw Scotty shed a few tears. I know Jesse was pretty emotional. We were all emotional out there on the court."
Maloney is a beloved teen in his school and in the community, Gassaway said.
"Scotty is fabulous. He is a superstar. He knows everybody. There's not one person that Scotty does not know," she said. "To know him and meet him is to love him."
Gassaway believes that the nearly 500-student school in Unionville, Tenn., is "one of the best schools in the world when it comes to dealing with special needs children."
Students like Cooper help out in special needs gym classes and other activities. Gassaway said the boys' gesture toward Maloney sent a greater message.
"We want people to have more empathy towards people, not be scared of people with disabilities," she said. "We want them to embrace them, more like the boys did."
Next year Maloney will get to crown the school's new homecoming king. But for now, he is proudly sporting his medal everywhere he goes.
"He's been wearing his medal around," Gassaway said with a laugh. "He is not here today because he had a doctor's appointment, but I'm sure he has his medal on."
__________________
Jesus told us: "The two most important success rules (= old word: Commandments) are: (1) Respect God and God's success laws (= apply them daily), (2) love your neighbor. These 2 actually cover the meaning of all ten.
In this story below, from January 2013, the high school students, the whole school, and the local society did show deep love for their neighbor, a developmentally disabled student in their school.
A few comments from the public:
(1) Those boys' parents should be very proud to have raised such fine young men.
(2) People like this are my heroes, not film stars or football players, but everyday people who perform extraordinary acts of love and kindness. Thank you for making my day.
(3) That story gives me hope for our future leaders. Nice job boys, parents, students, teachers & administrators.
________________________________________
Good info - read - apply - win
Article 1 of 2 (Article 2 of 2 next below) Soft Skills: .
What Employers Want (and Don't Want) in an Employee
Click green for further info
To start with:
These are two simple and very powerful things you can do to demonstrate your value:
(1) make those around you look good to others within and outside your workplace,
(2) and assist in any way you can, large or small.
_________
The Bible: Whoever wants to be the greatest must be a servant to everyone click: Mark 10:42-45
__________________
No matter the technical or how-to (“hard”) skill requirements of a job, there are "soft skills" valued at all workplaces. Sometimes what separates a good employee from an exceptional one is taking just one or two extra steps or considering a situation from the employer’s point of view. Whether you are trying to get a job, keep a job, get promoted, or have a more successful career, you will benefit from giving regular thought to how you can serve a current or potential employer better.
Employers want employees who are: self-motivated, have ideas and take initiative; deliver more than is promised or expected
Employers don't want employees who: wait for specific instructions, deliver the bare minimum
By regularly performing beyond what is required, you’ll make yourself ever more valuable to your
employer, which is crucial these days with hiring freezes and layoffs. Even if not all of your ideas are implemented, the fact that you are thinking of ways to improve things or try something new
will be appreciated
Want: Flexible, eager to learn new things
Don't want: Resistant to change, uninterested in learning new skills
Rapid, constant change is commonplace these days. Low-maintenance employees who can adapt quickly and without a fuss are more likely to be retained when there’s a layoff.
Want: Easy to work with, positive, has conflict resolution and negotiation skills
Don’t want: Conflict with supervisor and others, resistance to compromise, complaining
Positivity and amiability are good qualities at any job, and with so many positions these days being temporary, project, or consulting work, it is more important than ever to get along with those with whom you interact. Working successfully with others increases your visibility in the workplace, expands your network, and builds your reputation in a positive way – all these can help to increase your job security.
Want: Has a large network; active in professional organizations
Don't want: Uncomfortable with networking or uninterested in professional activities beyond “9 to 5”
Alliances with others in your field provide opportunities to collaborate and share resources, information, and advice. These things benefit everyone involved: you, your employer, and those in your network. A strong network is also essential for a successful job hunt.
Want: Informs supervisor of problems and proposes well-thought-out solutions
Don't want: Brings problems to supervisor and expects him/her to give solutions
Problem-solvers are much preferred to problem-bringers. This is another way to demonstrate initiative and good judgment and shows respect for your manager’s time.
Want: Organized and able to multitask, punctual, behaves professionally, meets deadlines without reminders
Don't want: Chronically late, disorganized, unprofessional, rude or abusive, requires close supervision to get work done
If you demonstrate effective time management and consistently professional demeanor and interactions, you’ll gain your supervisor’s trust and s/he will appreciate not having to devote time to checking up on you. This can lead to increased responsibilities and more opportunities in the future.
Want: Takes responsibility, reliable, honest
Don’t want: Gives excuses, hides mistakes, blames others
Trust can take a long time to build, and very little time to destroy. Your boss will likely forgive you for making a mistake if you own up to it, apologize, fix it, and take care not to make it again. Honesty is not just telling the truth, it is also keeping your word; do what you say you’ll do, every time.
Want: Understands when to discuss, and when to follow instructions
Don’t want: Endless debate, questions every decision
There’s a time to ask questions and offer opinions and there’s a time to say “Got it” and just do what needs to be done. Your boss will appreciate it if you can read situations accurately and know which response is appropriate.
Want: Able to accept and give criticism in a professional manner
Don’t want: Takes things personally, becomes defensive, avoids difficult conversations with direct reports or gives feedback in a harsh, harmful way
Accepting constructive criticism can sting, and giving such criticism can be more uncomfortable than many new supervisors imagine it would be. Being able to do both with grace and respect and move forward without drama will serve you well in your career.
Want: Strong communication skills: writing (formal and informal), verbal, presentation/instruction
Don’t want: Unclear communications, poor writing skills, discomfort with public speaking or presentations
Effective and appropriate communication in different work settings is required for success, and comfort with public speaking is a plus if not a requirement for many positions and for advancement.
Want: Makes employer and supervisor look good, lightens supervisor’s and others’ loads
Don't want: Disinterested in making employer look good or more interested in promoting self
These are two simple and very powerful things you can do to demonstrate your value:
(1) make those around you look good to others within and outside your workplace,
(2) and assist in any way you can, large or small.
To end with:
These are two simple and very powerful things you can do to demonstrate your value:
(1) make those around you look good to others within and outside your workplace,
(2) and assist in any way you can, large or small.
Source:
Ellen Mehling received her MSLIS from Long Island University and works as a librarian, instructor and writer in and around NYC. Her professional experience includes work in special, public, and academic libraries, as well as archives. She is Director of the Westchester Graduate Library School Program and Director of Internships for L.I.U.’s Palmer School and since 2009 has been METRO’s Job Bank Manager / Career Development Consultant. She teaches classes and workshops on job hunting, information literacy, researching, and other subjects at METRO’s Training Center and other venues within and outside NYC.
(Article 2 of 2 next below)
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Article 2 of 2 (Article 1 of 2 next above)
What You Need Besides Experience to Get That Job A New Survey - A Nationwide Study
with 2,076 hiring managers and human resource professionals across industries
Click colored areas for further info A new survey has lifted the lid on what, beyond job skills, influence a hiring managers decision. The CareerBuilder study shows that job candidates may also need everything from a sense of humor to knowledge of current affairs to showing they are involved in their community in order to be successful.Careerbuilder.com: Jobs & Job Search Advice, Employment & Careerswww.careerbuilder.com/ Looking for a new job? Get advice or search over 1.6 million jobs on the largest job site, set alerts to be first in line and have new jobs emailed to you.
The nationwide study, which included 2,076 hiring managers and human resource professionals across industries, asked them to say which factors would make them more likely to choose one of two equally qualified candidates.
The top responses:
"When you're looking for a job, the key is selling your personal brand," said Rosemary Haefner of CareerBuilder in a statement. "Employers are not only looking for people who are professionally qualified for the position, but also someone who is going to fit in at the office."
This unspoken assessment proves doesn't stop when you get the job, of course. It plays a large part in determining who does and doesn't get promoted. The survey also asked executives to identify what they look for when picking out who gets promoted.
Speaking up counts for a lot: One third of employers say they are more likely to promote an employee who has previously asked for a promotion. However, there was much more agreement about what kinds of behavior keeps someone from being moved up, including:
However, you may want to think twice before trying to get a promotion. The study also found that at nearly two-thirds of the companies surveyed a promotion doesn't guarantee a pay raise.
Click colored areas for further info
Source:click Careerbuilder.com: Jobs & Job Search Advice, Employment & Careerswww.careerbuilder.com/ Looking for a new job? Get advice or search over 1.6 million jobs on the largest job site, set alerts to be first in line and have new jobs emailed to you
_______________________________________
What You Need Besides Experience to Get That Job A New Survey - A Nationwide Study
with 2,076 hiring managers and human resource professionals across industries
Click colored areas for further info A new survey has lifted the lid on what, beyond job skills, influence a hiring managers decision. The CareerBuilder study shows that job candidates may also need everything from a sense of humor to knowledge of current affairs to showing they are involved in their community in order to be successful.Careerbuilder.com: Jobs & Job Search Advice, Employment & Careerswww.careerbuilder.com/ Looking for a new job? Get advice or search over 1.6 million jobs on the largest job site, set alerts to be first in line and have new jobs emailed to you.
The nationwide study, which included 2,076 hiring managers and human resource professionals across industries, asked them to say which factors would make them more likely to choose one of two equally qualified candidates.
The top responses:
- The candidate with the better sense of humor: 27 percent - GCG's hint: buy a few joke books, use the jokes, telling jokes to your friends trains you to become more humorous - tell a joke or 2 to the hiring manager
- The candidate who is involved in his or her community: 26 percent
- The candidate who is better dressed: 22 percent
- The candidate whom I have more in common with: 21 percent
- The candidate who is more physically fit: 13 percent
- The candidate who is more on top of current affairs and pop culture: 8 percent
- The candidate who is more involved in social media: 7 percent
- The candidate who is knowledgeable about sports: 4 percent
"When you're looking for a job, the key is selling your personal brand," said Rosemary Haefner of CareerBuilder in a statement. "Employers are not only looking for people who are professionally qualified for the position, but also someone who is going to fit in at the office."
This unspoken assessment proves doesn't stop when you get the job, of course. It plays a large part in determining who does and doesn't get promoted. The survey also asked executives to identify what they look for when picking out who gets promoted.
Speaking up counts for a lot: One third of employers say they are more likely to promote an employee who has previously asked for a promotion. However, there was much more agreement about what kinds of behavior keeps someone from being moved up, including:
- Someone who says, "that's not my job:" 71 percent
- Someone who is often late: 69 percent
- Someone who has lied at work: 68 percent
- Someone who takes credit for other people's work: 64 percent
- Someone who often leaves work early: 55 percent
- Someone who takes liberties with expenses charged back to the company: 55 percent
- Someone who gossips: 46 percent
- Someone who doesn't dress professionally: 35 percent
- Someone who swears: 30 percent
- Someone who doesn't say anything in meetings: 22 percent
- Someone who cried at work: 9 percent
- Someone who has dated a co-worker: 8 percent
However, you may want to think twice before trying to get a promotion. The study also found that at nearly two-thirds of the companies surveyed a promotion doesn't guarantee a pay raise.
Click colored areas for further info
Source:click Careerbuilder.com: Jobs & Job Search Advice, Employment & Careerswww.careerbuilder.com/ Looking for a new job? Get advice or search over 1.6 million jobs on the largest job site, set alerts to be first in line and have new jobs emailed to you
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See above two articles: (1) getting the job & (2) workplace success
81 Bible Verses
about Servant Leaders
Click any location info below to connect to that info in the Bible
Mark 10:42-45
And Jesus called them to him and said to them, “You know that those who are considered rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones exercise authority over them. But it shall not be so among you. But whoever would be great among you must be your servant, and whoever would be first among you must be slave of all. For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”
1 Peter 5:3
Not domineering over those in your charge, but being examples to the flock.
Acts 20:35
In all things I have shown you that by working hard in this way we must help the weak and remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how he himself said, ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive.’”
Mark 10:45
For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”
Hebrews 13:7
Remember your leaders, those who spoke to you the word of God. Consider the outcome of their way of life, and imitate their faith.
Luke 22:26
But not so with you. Rather, let the greatest among you become as the youngest, and the leader as one who serves.
Philippians 2:3-8
Do nothing from rivalry or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. ...
John 13:12-15 When he had washed their feet and put on his outer garments and resumed his place, he said to them, “Do you understand what I have done to you? You call me Teacher and Lord, and you are right, for so I am. If I then, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another's feet. For I have given you an example, that you also should do just as I have done to you.
Acts 20:28 Pay careful attention to yourselves and to all the flock, in which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to care for the church of God, which he obtained with his own blood.
1 Peter 5:2 Shepherd the flock of God that is among you, exercising oversight, not under compulsion, but willingly, as God would have you; not for shameful gain, but eagerly;
Hebrews 13:17 Obey your leaders and submit to them, for they are keeping watch over your souls, as those who will have to give an account. Let them do this with joy and not with groaning, for that would be of no advantage to you.
1 Timothy 3:1-16 The saying is trustworthy: If anyone aspires to the office of overseer, he desires a noble task. Therefore an overseer must be above reproach, the husband of one wife, sober-minded, self-controlled, respectable, hospitable, able to teach, not a drunkard, not violent but gentle, not quarrelsome, not a lover of money. He must manage his own household well, with all dignity keeping his children submissive, for if someone does not know how to manage his own household, how will he care for God's church? ...
1 Timothy 3:1 The saying is trustworthy: If anyone aspires to the office of overseer, he desires a noble task.
Romans 12:2 Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.
Romans 12:1-21 - I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect. For by the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned. For as in one body we have many members, and the members do not all have the same function, so we, though many, are one body in Christ, and individually members one of another. ...
Acts 6:1-15 - Now in these days when the disciples were increasing in number, a complaint by the Hellenists arose against the Hebrews because their widows were being neglected in the daily distribution. And the twelve summoned the full number of the disciples and said, “It is not right that we should give up preaching the word of God to serve tables. Therefore, brothers, pick out from among you seven men of good repute, full of the Spirit and of wisdom, whom we will appoint to this duty. But we will devote ourselves to prayer and to the ministry of the word.” And what they said pleased the whole gathering, and they chose Stephen, a man full of faith and of the Holy Spirit, and Philip, and Prochorus, and Nicanor, and Timon, and Parmenas, and Nicolaus, a proselyte of Antioch. ...
James 3:1 ESV / 7 helpful votesNot many of you should become teachers, my brothers, for you know that we who teach will be judged with greater strictness.
1 Timothy 5:17 ESV - Let the elders who rule well be considered worthy of double honor, especially those who labor in preaching and teaching.
1 Timothy 2:1-15 ESV - First of all, then, I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for all people, for kings and all who are in high positions, that we may lead a peaceful and quiet life, godly and dignified in every way. This is good, and it is pleasing in the sight of God our Savior, who desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus,
John 13:3-5 ESV - Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands, and that he had come from God and was going back to God, rose from supper. He laid aside his outer garments, and taking a towel, tied it around his waist. Then he poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples' feet and to wipe them with the towel that was wrapped around him.
Matthew 20:28 ESV - Even as the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”
2 Timothy 4:5 ESV - As for you, always be sober-minded, endure suffering, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry.
1 Timothy 3:1-13 ESV - The saying is trustworthy: If anyone aspires to the office of overseer, he desires a noble task. Therefore an overseer must be above reproach, the husband of one wife, sober-minded, self-controlled, respectable, hospitable, able to teach, not a drunkard, not violent but gentle, not quarrelsome, not a lover of money. He must manage his own household well, with all dignity keeping his children submissive, for if someone does not know how to manage his own household, how will he care for God's church? ...
Ephesians 4:12 ESV - To equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ,
3 John 1:9 ESV - I have written something to the church, but Diotrephes, who likes to put himself first, does not acknowledge our authority.\
1 Peter 5:1-14 ESV - So I exhort the elders among you, as a fellow elder and a witness of the sufferings of Christ, as well as a partaker in the glory that is going to be revealed: shepherd the flock of God that is among you, exercising oversight, not under compulsion, but willingly, as God would have you; not for shameful gain, but eagerly; not domineering over those in your charge, but being examples to the flock. And when the chief Shepherd appears, you will receive the unfading crown of glory. Likewise, you who are younger, be subject to the elders. Clothe yourselves, all of you, with humility toward one another, for “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.” ...
Titus 1:5 ESV - This is why I left you in Crete, so that you might put what remained into order, and appoint elders in every town as I directed you--
1 Timothy 5:1-25 ESV - Do not rebuke an older man but encourage him as you would a father, younger men as brothers, older women as mothers, younger women as sisters, in all purity. Honor widows who are truly widows. But if a widow has children or grandchildren, let them first learn to show godliness to their own household and to make some return to their parents, for this is pleasing in the sight of God. She who is truly a widow, left all alone, has set her hope on God and continues in supplications and prayers night and day, ...
John 13:12-17 ESV - When he had washed their feet and put on his outer garments and resumed his place, he said to them, “Do you understand what I have done to you? You call me Teacher and Lord, and you are right, for so I am. If I then, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another's feet. For I have given you an example, that you also should do just as I have done to you. Truly, truly, I say to you, a servant is not greater than his master, nor is a messenger greater than the one who sent him. ...
Mark 1:1-45 ESV - The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. As it is written in Isaiah the prophet, “Behold, I send my messenger before your face, who will prepare your way, the voice of one crying in the wilderness: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight,’” John appeared, baptizing in the wilderness and proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. And all the country of Judea and all Jerusalem were going out to him and were being baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins. ...
Matthew 16:1-28 ESV - and the Pharisees and Sadducees came, and to test him they asked him to show them a sign from heaven. He answered them, “When it is evening, you say, ‘It will be fair weather, for the sky is red.’ And in the morning, ‘It will be stormy today, for the sky is red and threatening.’ You know how to interpret the appearance of the sky, but you cannot interpret the signs of the times. An evil and adulterous generation seeks for a sign, but no sign will be given to it except the sign of Jonah.” So he left them and departed. When the disciples reached the other side, they had forgotten to bring any bread. ...
Song of Solomon 1:1-17 ESV - The Song of Songs, which is Solomon's. Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth! For your love is better than wine; your anointing oils are fragrant; your name is oil poured out; therefore virgins love you. Draw me after you; let us run. The king has brought me into his chambers. We will exult and rejoice in you; we will extol your love more than wine; rightly do they love you. I am very dark, but lovely, O daughters of Jerusalem, like the tents of Kedar, like the curtains of Solomon. ...
1 John 2:1-29 ESV - My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. He is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world. And by this we know that we have come to know him, if we keep his commandments. Whoever says “I know him” but does not keep his commandments is a liar, and the truth is not in him, but whoever keeps his word, in him truly the love of God is perfected. By this we may know that we are in him: ...
1 Timothy 3:8 ESV / 3 helpful votesDeacons likewise must be dignified, not double-tongued, not addicted to much wine, not greedy for dishonest gain.
1 Corinthians 10:11 ESV / 3 helpful votesNow these things happened to them as an example, but they were written down for our instruction, on whom the end of the ages has come.
Acts 6:1 ESV / 3 helpful votesNow in these days when the disciples were increasing in number, a complaint by the Hellenists arose against the Hebrews because their widows were being neglected in the daily distribution.
Mark 10:35-45 ESV / 3 helpful votesAnd James and John, the sons of Zebedee, came up to him and said to him, “Teacher, we want you to do for us whatever we ask of you.” And he said to them, “What do you want me to do for you?” And they said to him, “Grant us to sit, one at your right hand and one at your left, in your glory.” Jesus said to them, “You do not know what you are asking. Are you able to drink the cup that I drink, or to be baptized with the baptism with which I am baptized?” And they said to him, “We are able.” And Jesus said to them, “The cup that I drink you will drink, and with the baptism with which I am baptized, you will be baptized, ...
Matthew 23:8-10 ESV / 3 helpful votesBut you are not to be called rabbi, for you have one teacher, and you are all brothers. And call no man your father on earth, for you have one Father, who is in heaven. Neither be called instructors, for you have one instructor, the Christ.
Matthew 23:8 ESV / 3 helpful votesBut you are not to be called rabbi, for you have one teacher, and you are all brothers.
Matthew 20:25-28 ESV / 3 helpful votesBut Jesus called them to him and said, “You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones exercise authority over them. It shall not be so among you. But whoever would be great among you must be your servant, and whoever would be first among you must be your slave, even as the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”
Matthew 20:23 ESV / 3 helpful votesHe said to them, “You will drink my cup, but to sit at my right hand and at my left is not mine to grant, but it is for those for whom it has been prepared by my Father.”
Matthew 20:20-28 ESV / 3 helpful votesThen the mother of the sons of Zebedee came up to him with her sons, and kneeling before him she asked him for something. And he said to her, “What do you want?” She said to him, “Say that these two sons of mine are to sit, one at your right hand and one at your left, in your kingdom.” Jesus answered, “You do not know what you are asking. Are you able to drink the cup that I am to drink?” They said to him, “We are able.” He said to them, “You will drink my cup, but to sit at my right hand and at my left is not mine to grant, but it is for those for whom it has been prepared by my Father.” And when the ten heard it, they were indignant at the two brothers. ...
Matthew 20:1-34 ESV / 3 helpful votes“For the kingdom of heaven is like a master of a house who went out early in the morning to hire laborers for his vineyard. After agreeing with the laborers for a denarius a day, he sent them into his vineyard. And going out about the third hour he saw others standing idle in the marketplace, and to them he said, ‘You go into the vineyard too, and whatever is right I will give you.’ So they went. Going out again about the sixth hour and the ninth hour, he did the same. ...
Matthew 16:18 ESV / 3 helpful votesAnd I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.
Matthew 10:6 ESV / 3 helpful votesBut go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.
Matthew 6:21 ESV / 3 helpful votesFor where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.
Isaiah 9:6 ESV / 3 helpful votesFor to us a child is born, to us a son is given; and the government shall be upon his shoulder, and his name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.
Ecclesiastes 10:1-20 ESV / 3 helpful votesDead flies make the perfumer's ointment give off a stench; so a little folly outweighs wisdom and honor. A wise man's heart inclines him to the right, but a fool's heart to the left. Even when the fool walks on the road, he lacks sense, and he says to everyone that he is a fool. If the anger of the ruler rises against you, do not leave your place, for calmness will lay great offenses to rest. There is an evil that I have seen under the sun, as it were an error proceeding from the ruler: ...
Ecclesiastes 5:1-20 ESV / 3 helpful votesGuard your steps when you go to the house of God. To draw near to listen is better than to offer the sacrifice of fools, for they do not know that they are doing evil. Be not rash with your mouth, nor let your heart be hasty to utter a word before God, for God is in heaven and you are on earth. Therefore let your words be few. For a dream comes with much business, and a fool's voice with many words. When you vow a vow to God, do not delay paying it, for he has no pleasure in fools. Pay what you vow. It is better that you should not vow than that you should vow and not pay. ...
1 Chronicles 2:1-55 ESV / 3 helpful votesThese are the sons of Israel: Reuben, Simeon, Levi, Judah, Issachar, Zebulun, Dan, Joseph, Benjamin, Naphtali, Gad, and Asher. The sons of Judah: Er, Onan and Shelah; these three Bath-shua the Canaanite bore to him. Now Er, Judah's firstborn, was evil in the sight of the Lord, and he put him to death. His daughter-in-law Tamar also bore him Perez and Zerah. Judah had five sons in all. The sons of Perez: Hezron and Hamul. ...
Revelation 21:1-27 ESV / 2 helpful votesThen I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.” And he who was seated on the throne said, “Behold, I am making all things new.” Also he said, “Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true.” ...
1 Peter 2:25 ESV / 2 helpful votesFor you were straying like sheep, but have now returned to the Shepherd and Overseer of your souls.
1 Peter 2:4-9 ESV / 2 helpful votesAs you come to him, a living stone rejected by men but in the sight of God chosen and precious, you yourselves like living stones are being built up as a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. For it stands in Scripture: “Behold, I am laying in Zion a stone, a cornerstone chosen and precious, and whoever believes in him will not be put to shame.” So the honor is for you who believe, but for those who do not believe, “The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone,” and “A stone of stumbling, and a rock of offense.” They stumble because they disobey the word, as they were destined to do. ...
1 Peter 2:1-25 ESV / 2 helpful votesSo put away all malice and all deceit and hypocrisy and envy and all slander. Like newborn infants, long for the pure spiritual milk, that by it you may grow up into salvation— if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good. As you come to him, a living stone rejected by men but in the sight of God chosen and precious, you yourselves like living stones are being built up as a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. ...
Hebrews 1:1-14 ESV / 2 helpful votesLong ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world. He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power. After making purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high, having become as much superior to angels as the name he has inherited is more excellent than theirs. For to which of the angels did God ever say, “You are my Son, today I have begotten you”? Or again, “I will be to him a father, and he shall be to me a son”? ...
Titus 1:15 ESV / 2 helpful votesTo the pure, all things are pure, but to the defiled and unbelieving, nothing is pure; but both their minds and their consciences are defiled.
2 Timothy 2:2 ESV / 2 helpful votesAnd what you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses entrust to faithful men who will be able to teach others also.
2 Thessalonians 2:3 ESV / 2 helpful votesLet no one deceive you in any way. For that day will not come, unless the rebellion comes first, and the man of lawlessness is revealed, the son of destruction,
2 Thessalonians 1:1-12 ESV / 2 helpful votesPaul, Silvanus, and Timothy, To the church of the Thessalonians in God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ: Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. We ought always to give thanks to God for you, brothers, as is right, because your faith is growing abundantly, and the love of every one of you for one another is increasing. Therefore we ourselves boast about you in the churches of God for your steadfastness and faith in all your persecutions and in the afflictions that you are enduring. This is evidence of the righteous judgment of God, that you may be considered worthy of the kingdom of God, for which you are also suffering— ...
Philippians 1:1 ESV / 2 helpful votesPaul and Timothy, servants of Christ Jesus, To all the saints in Christ Jesus who are at Philippi, with the overseers and deacons:
Ephesians 4:11 ESV / 2 helpful votesAnd he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers,
Galatians 3:19 ESV / 2 helpful votesWhy then the law? It was added because of transgressions, until the offspring should come to whom the promise had been made, and it was put in place through angels by an intermediary.
Romans 16:1 ESV / 2 helpful votesI commend to you our sister Phoebe, a servant of the church at Cenchreae,
Romans 12:1 ESV / 2 helpful votesI appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.
Acts 20:29 ESV / 2 helpful votesI know that after my departure fierce wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock;
John 16:11 ESV / 2 helpful votesConcerning judgment, because the ruler of this world is judged.
John 14:30 ESV / 2 helpful votesI will no longer talk much with you, for the ruler of this world is coming. He has no claim on me,
John 12:31 ESV / 2 helpful votesNow is the judgment of this world; now will the ruler of this world be cast out.
John 5:24 ESV / 2 helpful votesTruly, truly, I say to you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life. He does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life.
John 3:16 ESV / 2 helpful votes“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.
John 3:1-36 ESV / 2 helpful votesNow there was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews. This man came to Jesus by night and said to him, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher come from God, for no one can do these signs that you do unless God is with him.” Jesus answered him, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.” Nicodemus said to him, “How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter a second time into his mother's womb and be born?” Jesus answered, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. ...
John 1:38 ESV / 2 helpful votesJesus turned and saw them following and said to them, “What are you seeking?” And they said to him, “Rabbi” (which means Teacher), “where are you staying?”
John 1:14 ESV / 2 helpful votesAnd the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.
Matthew 28:18-20 ESV / 2 helpful votesAnd Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”
Matthew 7:15 ESV / 2 helpful votes“Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep's clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves.
Matthew 5:1-48 ESV / 2 helpful votesSeeing the crowds, he went up on the mountain, and when he sat down, his disciples came to him. And he opened his mouth and taught them, saying: “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. “Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth. ...
Titus 2:13 Waiting for our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ,
1 Timothy 3:1-7 The saying is trustworthy: If anyone aspires to the office of overseer, he desires a noble task. Therefore an overseer must be above reproach, the husband of one wife, sober-minded, self-controlled, respectable, hospitable, able to teach, not a drunkard, not violent but gentle, not quarrelsome, not a lover of money. He must manage his own household well, with all dignity keeping his children submissive, for if someone does not know how to manage his own household, how will he care for God's church? ...
Galatians 3:28 There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.
Matthew 24:42-44 Therefore, stay awake, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming. But know this, that if the master of the house had known in what part of the night the thief was coming, he would have stayed awake and would not have let his house be broken into. Therefore you also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect.
2 Samuel 1:1-27 After the death of Saul, when David had returned from striking down the Amalekites, David remained two days in Ziklag. And on the third day, behold, a man came from Saul's camp, with his clothes torn and dirt on his head. And when he came to David, he fell to the ground and paid homage. David said to him, “Where do you come from?” And he said to him, “I have escaped from the camp of Israel.” And David said to him, “How did it go? Tell me.” And he answered, “The people fled from the battle, and also many of the people have fallen and are dead, and Saul and his son Jonathan are also dead.” Then David said to the young man who told him, “How do you know that Saul and his son Jonathan are dead?” ...
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Health, Wealth, Happiness, Success & Successology®
(1) What is * SUCCESSOLOGY®
(2) Revealed * THE BILLIONAIRES' SOURCE FOR LIFE
(3) Learn HOW * LAWS OF SUCCESS
* Health * Wealth * Happiness _________________________
Biblical guidance for
nutrition – what to (and what NOT to) eat The “Maker’s Diet”
HOW TO
(2) stay debt free; (3) have enough and a surplus of money;
(4) achieve a long healthy life; (5) create great wealth;
(6) have a really happy marriage, good family & excellent children and;
(7) have a fulfilling success in your life.
The 2 most important laws for Success in Life
Jesus was asked: "Which is the most important of all the commandments?" Jesus answered, "Here is the most important one. The Lord is our God. The Lord is one. Love the Lord with all your mind and heart and with all your strength.'(Also: Deuteronomy 6:4, 5) And here is the second one. 'Love your neighbor as you love yourself.' --(Also: Leviticus 19:18) There is no commandment more important than these two."–Mark 12: 28-31 BILLIONAIRES WALK WITH THE BIBLE
IN THEIR POCKET
* THE BILLIONAIRES' SOURCE FOR WISDOM AND SUCCESS
Bible Quote
”Fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge. Only fools despise wisdom and discipline.” Proverbs 1: 7
(By King Solomon – the richest multi-billionaire in the history of mankind.)
Analysis:
This above Bible quote is to say that only when a person trusts in God will he or she be truly wise and successful. Human wisdom is fine and necessary, but no matter how skilled a person might be, without a humble willingness to learn from God, he or she will end up in trouble. God is concerned of all of life, and in the Bible God shows us humans how to live well and successful. Notice:
“Not only King Solomon, but also today’s billionairesbelieve God is guiding them how to succeed – today’s billionaires follow all God’s wisdom and will. Do you? Make your choice now. – Global Church of God - GCG will guide you in your road to success, health, and wealth.”
By Dr. Christian, Pastor of GCG
See for additional information below
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What is SUCCESSOLOGY® ?
SUCCESSOLOGY®
(Reg. US Pat.Off. 1991) is a new, modern science for success, designed and handling all life issues for our present society, the internet generation. Whatever your age: 5 – 50 -100 or 150, YOU are a member of the internet generation – we all are. In the same manner, SUCCESSOLOGY® is for all of us and includes all Lifestyle matters – from nutrition to technology and anything between. Success, Health, Wealth, Happiness, Marriage - Family & Children, Finances, and all of the rest what we have in our lives.
Dr. Christian, Pastor of GCG is the founder of SUCCESSOLOGY®
Dr. Christian has developed over 25 different copyrighted, registered, patented or otherwise protected techniques & methods for various science areas – all in a worldwide use as well as a few medical devices for child care and for adult needs
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________________________________________
Bible Quote
”The Lord spoke to Joshua and said: ‘Be strong and very courageous. Be careful to follow the Biblical laws for Life; do not turn from them to the right or to the left, that you may be successful in everything you do.
Study the Biblical Success Laws and meditate on them, daily, to be sure you follow what is written in them. Only then you can succeed. Do not be afraid or discouraged, for I, the Lord, your God, am with you wherever you go’.” Joshua 1: 6-9
Human Quote
“In any activity in Life, the more attention is paid to the smallest of the details, the bigger the results” Dr. Christian, Pastor of GCG
Human Quote
"Whatever your mind can conceive you can achieve"
Napoleon Hill, the developer of the modern motivational sciences in the mid 1900's
Human Quote
“Everything in Life is an exchange – if you get something free, the bill did not come, yet" Dr. Christian, Pastor of GCG
Human Quote
“When God wants to give you a gift He always puts it in a form of a problem.”
Dr. Christian, Founder & Pastor of Global Church of God - GCG, New York, NY
- nationwide & worldwide services ________________
Challenges, difficulties, and problems
are all actually blessings in life - for all of us
Learn to know why that is a fact – then: you will find lasting strength, joy, and happiness no matter what situation you might face. Find out” Why and How”: Listen to the Radio/TV Shows (Show recordings on the internet 24/7)
The information and all Life Coaching you’ll receive from these Shows will improve your life and give you all answers you have been searching for.
Link to The Miracle Radio/TV Show : http://hudsonliberty.com/tv
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LIFE IS LIKE: A GARDEN
Quite naturally, leaves wither and flowers fade. Only if we clear the decay of the past then and there can we really enjoy the beauty of the new leaves and flower. Likewise, we must clear the murkiness of the past bad experiences from our minds. Life is remembrance in forgetfulness. Forgive what ought to be forgiven; forget what ought to be forgotten. Let us embrace Life with renewed vigor. We should be able to face every moment of life with renewed expectations, like a freshly blossomed flower.
__________________________
Human Quote
“When God wants to give you a gift He always puts it in a form of a problem.”
Dr. Christian, Founder & Pastor of Global Church of God - GCG, New York, NY - nationwide & worldwide services -
________________________________________ .
Quite naturally, leaves wither and flowers fade. Only if we clear the decay of the past then and there can we really enjoy the beauty of the new leaves and flower. Likewise, we must clear the murkiness of the past bad experiences from our minds. Life is remembrance in forgetfulness. Forgive what ought to be forgiven; forget what ought to be forgotten. Let us embrace Life with renewed vigor. We should be able to face every moment of life with renewed expectations, like a freshly blossomed flower.
__________________________
Human Quote
“When God wants to give you a gift He always puts it in a form of a problem.”
Dr. Christian, Founder & Pastor of Global Church of God - GCG, New York, NY - nationwide & worldwide services -
________________________________________ .
'Cold Feet' May Predict Divorce
The Bible clearly guides us all to know that marriage is forever - one exception: fornication - divorced is allowed. Respect your gift from God - your marriage - work out the difficulties. Go together to a competent counseling.
Our affiliate not-for-profit organization, Save The American Family - STAF, Inc., has the most competent marriage restoring operation that we know. STAF, Inc. is not calling their service "counseling" - they have developed all new, nationwide & internationally tested techniques, methods that will Restore Any Marriage™ - RAM™.
STAF, Inc. will, with their new techniques, save and restore the heavenly happiness in your marriage, happiness that is mutually for both spouse deeper than before.
When you got married in the traditional manner = you two met, started dating, fell in love, someone proposed, you got engaged & started planning your wedding. All that took time and money. When you two were willing to go through this much trouble, there must have been real, true love between the two of you.
REAL, TRUE love never dies, never disappears.
A divorce is not necessary when you got married in the traditional manner and if no fornication was involved. An act of fornication does not mean that you HAVE to get divorced, says The Bible. You can forgive and start again. Remember also: we are guided to forgive. The Bible says "forgive 7 times 77 and more" and it says "forgive so that your Heavenly Father can forgive you your wrong actions, too".
We all make mistakes. When we seriously regret and repent, all will be forgiven and you can continue your life with peace of mind, this time with more experience to avoid mistakes.
For earthy, competent guidance in all marriage issues
visit the website of GCG's affiliate organization Save The American Family - STAF, Inc., -not-for-profit-
at: (click) www.staf1org.weebly.com (reads: ...staf one...) - there: in tab: Services, and there in sub-tab: Restoring Any Marriage™ - RAM™
The article: 'Cold Feet' May Predict Divorce
Source:
LiveScience.com
Click the colored areas for further information
Ladies: If you're having doubts about marrying your beau, you might want to take a step back. New research shows that a woman's hesitation before her wedding might predict a bumpy road ahead.
"People think everybody has premarital doubts and you don't have to worry about them," Justin Lavner, a UCLA doctoral student in psychology who led the study, said in a statement. "We found they are common but not benign. Newlywed wives who had doubts about getting married before their wedding were two-and-a-half times more likely to divorce four years later than wives without these doubts. Among couples still married after four years,husbands and wives with doubts were significantly less satisfied with their marriage than those without doubts. "
Lavner and his team studied 232 couples in Los Angeles during the first few months of marriage and then checked in on the spouses every six months for four years.
During the first interview, the researchers asked the newlyweds, "Were you ever uncertain or hesitant about getting married?" Forty-seven percent of husbands answered "yes," compared with 38 percent of wives. While men seemed more likely to have cold feet, their wives' reservations better predicted future problems. [8 Ways to Ruin Your Relationship]
Nineteen percent of wives who reported doubts about getting married were divorced four years later. Among women who did not report doubts, just 8 percent were divorced four years later. For husbands, those figures were 14 percent and 9 percent, respectively.
In 36 percent of couples, both partners said they had no doubts before the wedding, and of those, just 6 percent got divorced by the four-year mark. Among couples in which both spouses reported premarital doubts, 20 percent got divorced. Of couples in which only the husband reported doubts, 10 percent got divorced, compared with 18 percent of couples who got divorced when only the wife had doubts. Past research, detailed in the December 2011 issue of the journal Family Relations, found that fear of divorce actually keeps many devoted young couples from saying "I do."
Doubts, however, don't necessarily mean doom for the relationship, Lavner and his team assured. But the researchers, who published their study in the Journal of Family Psychology, recommended that couples address misgivings,
doubt, uncertainty, apprehension, or doubt AND before tying the knot.
"If you see something unusual on your skin, should you ignore it and go to the beach, or see a doctor? Be smart and don't ignore it — and don't ignore your doubts either," researcher Thomas Bradbury, who co-directs the Relationship Institute at UCLA, said in a statement. "Have a conversation and see how it goes. Do you think the doubts will go away when you have a mortgage and two kids? Don't count on that."
In fact, a record number of Americans are unmarried today, research reported in 2011 by the Pew Research Center, though the researchers aren't sure if people are delaying marriage or shunning it altogether; the survey did show the proporation of never-married Americans has doubled since 1960.
Click the colored areas for further information
Follow LiveScience on Twitter @livescience. We're also on Facebook & Google+.
________________________________________
The Bible clearly guides us all to know that marriage is forever - one exception: fornication - divorced is allowed. Respect your gift from God - your marriage - work out the difficulties. Go together to a competent counseling.
Our affiliate not-for-profit organization, Save The American Family - STAF, Inc., has the most competent marriage restoring operation that we know. STAF, Inc. is not calling their service "counseling" - they have developed all new, nationwide & internationally tested techniques, methods that will Restore Any Marriage™ - RAM™.
STAF, Inc. will, with their new techniques, save and restore the heavenly happiness in your marriage, happiness that is mutually for both spouse deeper than before.
When you got married in the traditional manner = you two met, started dating, fell in love, someone proposed, you got engaged & started planning your wedding. All that took time and money. When you two were willing to go through this much trouble, there must have been real, true love between the two of you.
REAL, TRUE love never dies, never disappears.
A divorce is not necessary when you got married in the traditional manner and if no fornication was involved. An act of fornication does not mean that you HAVE to get divorced, says The Bible. You can forgive and start again. Remember also: we are guided to forgive. The Bible says "forgive 7 times 77 and more" and it says "forgive so that your Heavenly Father can forgive you your wrong actions, too".
We all make mistakes. When we seriously regret and repent, all will be forgiven and you can continue your life with peace of mind, this time with more experience to avoid mistakes.
For earthy, competent guidance in all marriage issues
visit the website of GCG's affiliate organization Save The American Family - STAF, Inc., -not-for-profit-
at: (click) www.staf1org.weebly.com (reads: ...staf one...) - there: in tab: Services, and there in sub-tab: Restoring Any Marriage™ - RAM™
The article: 'Cold Feet' May Predict Divorce
Source:
LiveScience.com
Click the colored areas for further information
Ladies: If you're having doubts about marrying your beau, you might want to take a step back. New research shows that a woman's hesitation before her wedding might predict a bumpy road ahead.
"People think everybody has premarital doubts and you don't have to worry about them," Justin Lavner, a UCLA doctoral student in psychology who led the study, said in a statement. "We found they are common but not benign. Newlywed wives who had doubts about getting married before their wedding were two-and-a-half times more likely to divorce four years later than wives without these doubts. Among couples still married after four years,husbands and wives with doubts were significantly less satisfied with their marriage than those without doubts. "
Lavner and his team studied 232 couples in Los Angeles during the first few months of marriage and then checked in on the spouses every six months for four years.
During the first interview, the researchers asked the newlyweds, "Were you ever uncertain or hesitant about getting married?" Forty-seven percent of husbands answered "yes," compared with 38 percent of wives. While men seemed more likely to have cold feet, their wives' reservations better predicted future problems. [8 Ways to Ruin Your Relationship]
Nineteen percent of wives who reported doubts about getting married were divorced four years later. Among women who did not report doubts, just 8 percent were divorced four years later. For husbands, those figures were 14 percent and 9 percent, respectively.
In 36 percent of couples, both partners said they had no doubts before the wedding, and of those, just 6 percent got divorced by the four-year mark. Among couples in which both spouses reported premarital doubts, 20 percent got divorced. Of couples in which only the husband reported doubts, 10 percent got divorced, compared with 18 percent of couples who got divorced when only the wife had doubts. Past research, detailed in the December 2011 issue of the journal Family Relations, found that fear of divorce actually keeps many devoted young couples from saying "I do."
Doubts, however, don't necessarily mean doom for the relationship, Lavner and his team assured. But the researchers, who published their study in the Journal of Family Psychology, recommended that couples address misgivings,
doubt, uncertainty, apprehension, or doubt AND before tying the knot.
"If you see something unusual on your skin, should you ignore it and go to the beach, or see a doctor? Be smart and don't ignore it — and don't ignore your doubts either," researcher Thomas Bradbury, who co-directs the Relationship Institute at UCLA, said in a statement. "Have a conversation and see how it goes. Do you think the doubts will go away when you have a mortgage and two kids? Don't count on that."
In fact, a record number of Americans are unmarried today, research reported in 2011 by the Pew Research Center, though the researchers aren't sure if people are delaying marriage or shunning it altogether; the survey did show the proporation of never-married Americans has doubled since 1960.
Click the colored areas for further information
Follow LiveScience on Twitter @livescience. We're also on Facebook & Google+.
- 6 Scientific Tips for a Successful Marriage
- The 6 Most Tragic Love Stories in History
- 5 Myths About Women's Bodies
________________________________________
12 disasters your child is facing
in a divorce or in a separation
12 disasters your child is facing in a divorce or a separation
Are you willing to risk your child falling in the disasters listed below
? A CHILD GROWING UP IN A SINGLE-PARENT FAMILY AND ESPECIALLY WITHOUT A FATHER
(1) Faces overall increased risks to health and
welfare;
(2) 5 times more likely to commit suicide;
(3) 32 times more likely to run away;
(4) 20 times more likely to have behavioral disorders;
(5) 14 times more likely to commit rape;
(6) 9 times more likely to drop out of school;
(7) 10 times more likely to abuse alcohol and drugs;
(8) 20 times more likely to end up in prison;
(9) increased learning difficulties;
(10) increased risk of divorce when grown;
(11) increased out of wedlock pregnancies;
(12) seriously increased risk of having a stroke
during his/her life time.
(13) high blood pressure challenges in their adult years
(14) children's obesity rate rises 104 % with parents separation or divorce
For # 12 see a detailed article below
Are you willing to risk your child falling into the disasters listed above
?
_________________________________________
Are you willing to risk your child falling into the disasters listed
above and below
?
Children of Divorce
Face Twice
the Lifetime Risk of Stroke
Study
According to new research, children of divorce have
more than double the lifetime risk
for experiencing a stroke
than those whose parents stay married during their childhood
Children of divorce appear to have more than double the lifetime risk for experiencing a stroke compared with those whose parents' marriage stays intact during their childhood, new research suggests.
The finding stems from a survey of more than 13,000 Canadians, about 10 percent of whom had experienced parental divorce when they were young children or adolescents.
"I certainly don't want this to be taken to mean that children from divorced households are condemned to have strokes," said study author Dr. Esme Fuller-Thomson, a professor and Sandra Rotman Chair in the faculties of social work, medicine and nursing at the University of Toronto.
"This is just one factor among many that may increase stroke risk," she noted. "And we don't know that it's causal, in the sense that divorce leads to a stroke. It could be that many other things are at work here that are related to divorce, but are not divorce itself. We just don't know yet."
Fuller-Thomson is slated to present her team's findings Monday at the Gerontological Society of America's annual meeting in New Orleans.
To explore the question, the authors sifted through data that had initially been collected in 2005 by Statistics Canada, the Canadian equivalent of the U.S. Census Bureau.
The current study focused on survey participants from two Canadian provinces, Manitoba and Saskatchewan.
Nearly 1,400 of the 13,000 respondents had experienced parental divorce, and just fewer than 2 percent (248) said they had experienced a stroke at some point.
The research team looked into a wide range of potentially influential factors, including age, race, gender, socioeconomic background, educational background, adult mental health history, childhood physical abuse history, long-term parental unemployment, lifestyle issues (such as obesity, and smoking and drinking behaviors), and diabetes history.
Ultimately, the researchers determined none of these variables explained the bottom-line finding: that children of divorce seem to bear an approximately 2.2 times higher risk for lifetime stroke.
"This needs to be replicated several times to make sure there really is this relationship," cautioned Fuller-Thomson. "But if this holds up, one possible explanation is that adverse child experiences may become physically embedded in the way you react to stresses later on in life, particularly in terms of dysfunctions in cortisol levels, which is what's involved in the fight-or-flight mechanism. It's possible. But that's just a hypothesis at this point," she added.
"But the other important thing to note is that even if divorce is proved to cause stroke, many of these people who we looked at who are having stroke are now in their 60s, 70s and 80s," she noted. "That means they experienced divorce in the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s, when the consequences and context for divorce were quite different. So we can't take their experience and project into the future, since it's very different to be a child of divorce today. So this is novel and interesting, but people really should not go into panic mode over it."
Meanwhile, Dr. Kirk Garratt, clinical director of interventional cardiovascular research at Lenox Hill Hospital within the North Shore-Long Island Jewish Systems in New York City, agreed that it is premature to draw any conclusions based on the finding.
"But it certainly stimulates a discussion, because we would want to understand what actual mechanisms underpin this, particularly since divorce itself is probably not a modifiable risk factor. Meaning, you're not going to tell people they can't divorce because they're going to give their child a stroke," he explained.
"So what's worth looking at is not the socially charged issue of divorce itself," Garratt said, "but rather what is the unique social trauma that might come along with divorce that perhaps alters something physiologically in children of divorce. And that could prove to give some direction to studies of stress, and how stress can cause real physical harm."\
Are you willing to risk your child falling into the above listed disasters
?
__________
Warnings Against Gluttony
"Eat and drink they say to you but they do not mean it. You will vomit up the little you have eaten and you will waste your pleasant words" Proverbs 23:7-8
Gluttony, one of the seven deadly sins, is the traditional term used to describe an individual who indulges in excessive and indiscriminate eating or drinking.
It is deadly sin because gluttony leads to overweight and obesity and abuse of alcohol leads to less brain & nerve power. Obesity & overweight leads to any type of deadly sickness: heart problems, diabetes, cancer, psoriasis, etc. - to any sickness. 95 % of all sicknesses are based on a wrong lifestyle all against the biblical guidance.
In a religious context, gluttony may refer to any overindulgence, materialistic as well as spiritual. For Christians, Biblical scripture provides the primary source for admonitions against gluttonous behavior. For example, in the Old Testament, Proverbs 23 cautions against the evils of gluttony, "for the drunkard and the glutton will come to poverty and drowsiness will clothe them with rags" (23:21). Similarly, in the New Testament St. Paul chastises those whose "god is the belly"; that is those who are enemies of the Cross and whose minds are "set on earthly things" (Phil iii, 19). Although the Bible frequently warns against gluttonous ways, the modern reader may find difficulty in understanding why gluttony is classified as such a heinous transgression. The authors of four literary classics: Thomas Aquinas, St. John of the Cross, Charles Dickens and Suetonius, may provide us with an answer as to why we should head the ancestral warnings against gluttony.
The early Christian writer, St Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) addresses the doubt of whether gluttony is a sin in the Second Part of the Second Part of Question 148, Article 1 of the Summa Theologica. In this work, gluttony is defined as excessive eating and drinking. Aquinas responds to three major objections that are commonly raised against the view of gluttony as a sin. The first objection is based on scripture. The author of the Gospel of Mathew records Jesus as saying, "Not that which goeth into the mouth defileth a man" (Mt 15:11). One could argue, therefore, that food, which goes into man, cannot defile man. Secondly, since no man sins in what he cannot avoid (Ep. 1xxi, ad Lucin), gluttony is not a sin because food cannot be avoided. Finally, since the first movement in taking food is not a sin, gluttony is not a sin, "for in every kind of movement the first movement is a sin". The main arguments against gluttony as a sin center around the fact that food is needed in order to supply the body with energy and nourishment in order for one to survive. In response to the objections outlined above, Aquinas concedes that eating and drinking in moderation is not sinful. However, "inordinate desires" to perform any activity, including eating and drinking are sins. Accordingly, gluttony is a sin because it is an inordinate desire. Aquinas writes, "it is the inordinate desire of food that defiles a man spiritually". Aquinas further states that gluttony exists "only when a man knowingly exceeds the measure in eating, from a desire for pleasure of the palate". Finally, in defense of gluttony as a sin, Aquinas proposes that although we have no control over the natural appetite, we have the ability to restrain the sensitive appetite. Aquinas informs us that first movement in taking food is a sin for "the first movement of gluttony denotes inordinateness in the sensitive appetite, and this is not without sin". In conclusion, the consumption of food and drink are not classified as sins. Rather, the inordinate desire to consume food for the mere pleasure the food produces is sinful.
Another canonized Christian writer, St. John of the cross, similarly condemns gluttony. St. John of the Cross was born in 1542, beatified by Clemet X in 1675 and later canonized by Benedict XIII in 1726. Unlike Aquinas, St. John?s intention is not to argue whether gluttony is a sin. Rather in his famous work, Dark Night of the Soul, St. John offers a classical Christian interpretation of spiritual rather than material gluttony which provides the reader with various reasons why gluttony should be avoided. St. John describes spiritual gluttony as an "imperfection" that provides pleasure so that those who sin in this way, "strive more after spiritual sweetness than after spiritual purity and discretion" (54). These sinners go to extremes and surpass the limits of moderation. St. John has no doubt that overindulgence is an integral part of the sin of spiritual gluttony, for he describes these sinners as "more eager to eat than to eat cleanly and perfectly" (56). However, the sin of spiritual gluttony involves more than overindulgence itself. The gluttonous are addicted to prayer and strive for pleasure in prayer, yet when "they have not found this pleasure they become greatly discouraged thinking they have accomplished nothing" (57). These voracious sinners want pleasure for the sake of pleasure. They pray for a direct reward and an immediate feeling of satisfaction and purity. This is the heart of spiritual gluttony; religious practices and rituals are performed for the wrong reasons. These sinners are commensurate to the video poker gambler who keeps plugging in quarter after quarter and dollar after dollar in order to receive "the jackpot" or the big payoff. Similarly, those who "suffer" from spiritual gluttony are looking for the prize of spiritual satisfaction through repetitive prayer. Both are addicted to the idea of immediate gratification. St. John describes these individuals, as "expending all their effort in seeking spiritual pleasure and consolation, they never tire, therefore, of reading books; and they begin now one meditation, now another, in their pursuit of this pleasure which they desire to experience in the things of God" (54). Similar to Aquinas, St. John believes that these practices are selfish and result in the loss of true devotion and spirituality because one is overindulging in religious practice for the mere pleasure of the immoderation.
St John also condemns spiritual gluttony because it promotes additional sins. For example, the glutton is lead to think, "their own satisfaction and pleasures are the satisfaction and service of God" (55). This is perhaps the worst consequence of spiritual gluttony for those who suffer from this sin also "desire to feel and taste God as though he were comprehensible by them and accessible to them"(56). But St. John warns, "this is opposed to the Nature of God since it is impurity is faith" (56). Spiritual gluttony may also lead one to judge others unnaturally. St. John warns that "some become irritated at the sins of others and keep watch on those others with a sort of uneasy zeal" (53). For St. John spiritual gluttony is condemned because of the sin inherent in the overindulgence itself and because of the subsequent character defects, such as egotism and sagaciousness, that gluttony breeds.
Warnings against gluttony are not only addressed in canonized Christian writings but in other classical literature as well. Charles Dickens lived from 1812-1870, during a time when eating and drinking played a great part in social activities. As Love describes, during this time, "There were lavish balls?Each type called for a menu, which was extravagant by modern standards. For example the hostess of a ball was required by tradition to serve a number of dishes in excess of the number of dancers. If there were sixty-two dancers it was considered proper to have sixty-two dishes on the table (55). As Love suggests, Dicken?s major contribution to Christian ethics is that he rebelled against this type of lifestyle and condemned those whom he believed had lost touch with fundamental moral and religious virtues. Modern commentators such as Fournier, have discovered that Dickens vision "corresponds to a Christian framework that is as old as the homiletic tradition of medieval times"(vii). In his novels, Dickens denounces gluttony more than any other sin.
For example, Dicken?s novel, Little Dorritt, published serially from 1855-1857 is a denunciation of prison life, an attack on social and economical injustices and a criticism of gluttonous behavior. The novel is also reveals the author?s personal disgust at the Victorian populace to overindulge and illustrates Dicken?s dissatisfaction with Victorian society?s preoccupation with selfish materialism. The heroine, Amy Dorritt spends most of her life visiting the Marhalsea prison where her father is imprisoned for debt. There, she witnesses the physical abuse and psychological sufferings that the prisoners encounter. Amy falls in love with Arthur Clennam, the son of the woman Amy works for. After freeing Mr. Dorrit from prison, Arthur himself becomes a debtor and is afraid to ask for Amy?s hand in marriage. However, after Arthur?s mother, Mrs. Cleman reveals that Arthur is not her biological son and confesses that she has been pilfering money from the Dorrrit?s for several years, Arthur and Amy are married. Since the theme of this novel concerns the conditions of poverty, Dicken?s consistently equates gluttonous behavior with greed. For example, Dickens describes Mr. Blandois as a greedy, miserly man whose "greed at dinner, too was closely linked in keeping with the greed of Monsieur Rigaud at breakfast. His avaricious manner of collecting all the eatables about him and devouring some with his eyes while devouring others with his jaws in the same manner." (Book I Chap XXX). Mr. Blandois is compared to Monsieur Rigaud, one of Dickens most unpleasant characters, in order to draw an analogy between craving food and money. That is Mr. Bladois desires food as much as Rigaud hungers for money.
In this novel all the immoral acts of the main characters are traced back to gluttony. For example, Dicken?s associates another of the deadly sins, sloth, with gluttony. Dickens describes Mr. Blandois slothfulness similar to that of a famous Roman Emperor, "And when he could eat no more, and sat sucking his delicate fingers one by one wiping them on the cloth, there wanted nothing but the substitution of vine leaves to finish the picture" (Book I Chap XXX). No other passage comes close to showing Dicken?s disgust with gluttonous ways!
Historians have also been a useful source of information on societal behavior morals and ethics. The celebrated historian, Suetonius was born in the Christian era, toward the end of the reign of the Roman Emperor Vespasion, around 79 AD. His work is significant because his accounts have assisted in understanding the development of early Christianity. Although Suetonius is a non-Christian source, his accounts of the early Roman Emperors in The Lives of the Twelve Caesars provide the best illustration of the evils of gluttony. Although Suetonius depicts the lives of the twelve Caesars from Julius Caesar to Domitian, two of these Emperors Caligula and Nero reflect the epitome of gluttony. After reading Suetonius? portrayal of these two emperors, one should be terrified to display even an ounce of gluttonous behavior.
Suetonius describes Caligula as a cruel and sardonic emperor who was prone to feasting in the most unusual ways. Suetonius writes that, "persons were often put to torture in his presence, whilst he was dining or carousing" (Caligula, XXXII). Suetonius further states that "in the devices of his profuse expenditure, he surpassed all the prodigals that ever lived" (Caligula, XXXVII). Caligula also reportedly "invented a new kind of bath" with unusual dishes and banquets while "drinking pearls of immense value dissolved in vinegar, and serving up for his guests loaves and other victuals modeled in gold" (Caligula, XXXVII). Caligula?s feasts and gluttonous acts are used as the backdrop for his more serious trespasses. His gluttony lead to desires to torture and murder innocent individuals, in which he reportedly prolonged the suffering of victims. For example, Suetonius describes several instances of torture that occurred during public feasts. He reportedly burned alive a writer in the amphitheater, cut out the tongue of a knight and "disfigured many persons of honorable rank, by branding them in the face with hot irons and then condemned them to the mines"(XXXVI). Gluttony is also to blame for Caligula?s unnatural lusts, which include incestuous desires and a preoccupation with intimate relations (XXVII). Suetonius writes that at public suppers Caligula would invite wives to come along with their husbands. At the end of the evening he would choose one and have her sent to him and after having his way with her would publicly "commend or disparage her in the presence of the company recounting her charms or defects" (Caligula XXXVI). Suetonius suggests that all of Caligula?s greater trespasses are the result of his innate and uncontrollable gluttony. Suetonius too depicted Nero as a glutton and a drunkard. In Suetonius?s opinion, Nero thought that "there was no other use of riches and money than to squander them away profusely" (Nero XXX). Suetonius writes that Nero "never wore the same garment twice. He has been known to stake four hundred thousand sesterces on a throw of the dice. It was his custom to fish with a golden net, drawn by silken cords of purple and scarlet" (Nero XXX). Like Caligula before him, Nero?s gluttonous ways set the foundation for his further crimes. According to Justin Goddard, "Suetonius makes Nero?s taste for prolonged banquets mark the turning point of his career, the moment at which the vices began to outweigh the few imperial virtues". For example, the incestuous relationship between Nero and his mother Agrippina begins with the inebriated Nero being approached while dining and following a nighttime carousal he contemplates her murder (67). Furthermore, Suetonius describes that Nero?s "vices gaining strength by degrees, he laid aside his jocular amusements, and all disguise; breaking out into enormous crimes, without the least attempt to conceal them" (Nero XXVII). His extravagance lead him to deferring payment to his troops and increased his riches by plundering the populace. Suetonius believes that Nero?s gluttony was the foundation of his later practices of parricide and murder (Nero XXXIII). Nero set fire to Rome, inflicted punishments on the Christians (XVI) and "from this period butchered without distinction or quarter, all whom his caprice suggested as objects for his cruelty" (XXXVI). Needless to say, when Nero committed suicide by driving a dagger into his throat to avoid death by the senate, "the public joy was so great upon the occasion, that the common people ran about the city with caps upon their heads" (LVII).
As the preceding literary works illustrate, gluttony is a sin that should be acknowledged and dealt with. All of the writer?s above have established that both spiritual and material gluttony cause severe character defects, which can lead one to the practice of other sins such as pride, sloth, lust and even murder. Also, the loss of self-control that gluttony promotes affects religious practices. For instance gluttony distracts one from spiritual meditation which can eventually lead to a lack of faith. Scripture warns that if we fail to follow these warnings against gluttonous behavior our "eyes will see strange things" and our "mind will utter up perverse things" (Proverbs 23:29-35).
In this way, one may end up like Mr. Blandois, Caligula or Nero. If you give into the temptations of gluttony, you will become so disagreeable and offensive that only fellow gluttons will want you in their company!
Warnings Against Gluttony
"Eat and drink they say to you but they do not mean it. You will vomit up the little you have eaten and you will waste your pleasant words" Proverbs 23:7-8
Gluttony, one of the seven deadly sins, is the traditional term used to describe an individual who indulges in excessive and indiscriminate eating or drinking.
It is deadly sin because gluttony leads to overweight and obesity and abuse of alcohol leads to less brain & nerve power. Obesity & overweight leads to any type of deadly sickness: heart problems, diabetes, cancer, psoriasis, etc. - to any sickness. 95 % of all sicknesses are based on a wrong lifestyle all against the biblical guidance.
In a religious context, gluttony may refer to any overindulgence, materialistic as well as spiritual. For Christians, Biblical scripture provides the primary source for admonitions against gluttonous behavior. For example, in the Old Testament, Proverbs 23 cautions against the evils of gluttony, "for the drunkard and the glutton will come to poverty and drowsiness will clothe them with rags" (23:21). Similarly, in the New Testament St. Paul chastises those whose "god is the belly"; that is those who are enemies of the Cross and whose minds are "set on earthly things" (Phil iii, 19). Although the Bible frequently warns against gluttonous ways, the modern reader may find difficulty in understanding why gluttony is classified as such a heinous transgression. The authors of four literary classics: Thomas Aquinas, St. John of the Cross, Charles Dickens and Suetonius, may provide us with an answer as to why we should head the ancestral warnings against gluttony.
The early Christian writer, St Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) addresses the doubt of whether gluttony is a sin in the Second Part of the Second Part of Question 148, Article 1 of the Summa Theologica. In this work, gluttony is defined as excessive eating and drinking. Aquinas responds to three major objections that are commonly raised against the view of gluttony as a sin. The first objection is based on scripture. The author of the Gospel of Mathew records Jesus as saying, "Not that which goeth into the mouth defileth a man" (Mt 15:11). One could argue, therefore, that food, which goes into man, cannot defile man. Secondly, since no man sins in what he cannot avoid (Ep. 1xxi, ad Lucin), gluttony is not a sin because food cannot be avoided. Finally, since the first movement in taking food is not a sin, gluttony is not a sin, "for in every kind of movement the first movement is a sin". The main arguments against gluttony as a sin center around the fact that food is needed in order to supply the body with energy and nourishment in order for one to survive. In response to the objections outlined above, Aquinas concedes that eating and drinking in moderation is not sinful. However, "inordinate desires" to perform any activity, including eating and drinking are sins. Accordingly, gluttony is a sin because it is an inordinate desire. Aquinas writes, "it is the inordinate desire of food that defiles a man spiritually". Aquinas further states that gluttony exists "only when a man knowingly exceeds the measure in eating, from a desire for pleasure of the palate". Finally, in defense of gluttony as a sin, Aquinas proposes that although we have no control over the natural appetite, we have the ability to restrain the sensitive appetite. Aquinas informs us that first movement in taking food is a sin for "the first movement of gluttony denotes inordinateness in the sensitive appetite, and this is not without sin". In conclusion, the consumption of food and drink are not classified as sins. Rather, the inordinate desire to consume food for the mere pleasure the food produces is sinful.
Another canonized Christian writer, St. John of the cross, similarly condemns gluttony. St. John of the Cross was born in 1542, beatified by Clemet X in 1675 and later canonized by Benedict XIII in 1726. Unlike Aquinas, St. John?s intention is not to argue whether gluttony is a sin. Rather in his famous work, Dark Night of the Soul, St. John offers a classical Christian interpretation of spiritual rather than material gluttony which provides the reader with various reasons why gluttony should be avoided. St. John describes spiritual gluttony as an "imperfection" that provides pleasure so that those who sin in this way, "strive more after spiritual sweetness than after spiritual purity and discretion" (54). These sinners go to extremes and surpass the limits of moderation. St. John has no doubt that overindulgence is an integral part of the sin of spiritual gluttony, for he describes these sinners as "more eager to eat than to eat cleanly and perfectly" (56). However, the sin of spiritual gluttony involves more than overindulgence itself. The gluttonous are addicted to prayer and strive for pleasure in prayer, yet when "they have not found this pleasure they become greatly discouraged thinking they have accomplished nothing" (57). These voracious sinners want pleasure for the sake of pleasure. They pray for a direct reward and an immediate feeling of satisfaction and purity. This is the heart of spiritual gluttony; religious practices and rituals are performed for the wrong reasons. These sinners are commensurate to the video poker gambler who keeps plugging in quarter after quarter and dollar after dollar in order to receive "the jackpot" or the big payoff. Similarly, those who "suffer" from spiritual gluttony are looking for the prize of spiritual satisfaction through repetitive prayer. Both are addicted to the idea of immediate gratification. St. John describes these individuals, as "expending all their effort in seeking spiritual pleasure and consolation, they never tire, therefore, of reading books; and they begin now one meditation, now another, in their pursuit of this pleasure which they desire to experience in the things of God" (54). Similar to Aquinas, St. John believes that these practices are selfish and result in the loss of true devotion and spirituality because one is overindulging in religious practice for the mere pleasure of the immoderation.
St John also condemns spiritual gluttony because it promotes additional sins. For example, the glutton is lead to think, "their own satisfaction and pleasures are the satisfaction and service of God" (55). This is perhaps the worst consequence of spiritual gluttony for those who suffer from this sin also "desire to feel and taste God as though he were comprehensible by them and accessible to them"(56). But St. John warns, "this is opposed to the Nature of God since it is impurity is faith" (56). Spiritual gluttony may also lead one to judge others unnaturally. St. John warns that "some become irritated at the sins of others and keep watch on those others with a sort of uneasy zeal" (53). For St. John spiritual gluttony is condemned because of the sin inherent in the overindulgence itself and because of the subsequent character defects, such as egotism and sagaciousness, that gluttony breeds.
Warnings against gluttony are not only addressed in canonized Christian writings but in other classical literature as well. Charles Dickens lived from 1812-1870, during a time when eating and drinking played a great part in social activities. As Love describes, during this time, "There were lavish balls?Each type called for a menu, which was extravagant by modern standards. For example the hostess of a ball was required by tradition to serve a number of dishes in excess of the number of dancers. If there were sixty-two dancers it was considered proper to have sixty-two dishes on the table (55). As Love suggests, Dicken?s major contribution to Christian ethics is that he rebelled against this type of lifestyle and condemned those whom he believed had lost touch with fundamental moral and religious virtues. Modern commentators such as Fournier, have discovered that Dickens vision "corresponds to a Christian framework that is as old as the homiletic tradition of medieval times"(vii). In his novels, Dickens denounces gluttony more than any other sin.
For example, Dicken?s novel, Little Dorritt, published serially from 1855-1857 is a denunciation of prison life, an attack on social and economical injustices and a criticism of gluttonous behavior. The novel is also reveals the author?s personal disgust at the Victorian populace to overindulge and illustrates Dicken?s dissatisfaction with Victorian society?s preoccupation with selfish materialism. The heroine, Amy Dorritt spends most of her life visiting the Marhalsea prison where her father is imprisoned for debt. There, she witnesses the physical abuse and psychological sufferings that the prisoners encounter. Amy falls in love with Arthur Clennam, the son of the woman Amy works for. After freeing Mr. Dorrit from prison, Arthur himself becomes a debtor and is afraid to ask for Amy?s hand in marriage. However, after Arthur?s mother, Mrs. Cleman reveals that Arthur is not her biological son and confesses that she has been pilfering money from the Dorrrit?s for several years, Arthur and Amy are married. Since the theme of this novel concerns the conditions of poverty, Dicken?s consistently equates gluttonous behavior with greed. For example, Dickens describes Mr. Blandois as a greedy, miserly man whose "greed at dinner, too was closely linked in keeping with the greed of Monsieur Rigaud at breakfast. His avaricious manner of collecting all the eatables about him and devouring some with his eyes while devouring others with his jaws in the same manner." (Book I Chap XXX). Mr. Blandois is compared to Monsieur Rigaud, one of Dickens most unpleasant characters, in order to draw an analogy between craving food and money. That is Mr. Bladois desires food as much as Rigaud hungers for money.
In this novel all the immoral acts of the main characters are traced back to gluttony. For example, Dicken?s associates another of the deadly sins, sloth, with gluttony. Dickens describes Mr. Blandois slothfulness similar to that of a famous Roman Emperor, "And when he could eat no more, and sat sucking his delicate fingers one by one wiping them on the cloth, there wanted nothing but the substitution of vine leaves to finish the picture" (Book I Chap XXX). No other passage comes close to showing Dicken?s disgust with gluttonous ways!
Historians have also been a useful source of information on societal behavior morals and ethics. The celebrated historian, Suetonius was born in the Christian era, toward the end of the reign of the Roman Emperor Vespasion, around 79 AD. His work is significant because his accounts have assisted in understanding the development of early Christianity. Although Suetonius is a non-Christian source, his accounts of the early Roman Emperors in The Lives of the Twelve Caesars provide the best illustration of the evils of gluttony. Although Suetonius depicts the lives of the twelve Caesars from Julius Caesar to Domitian, two of these Emperors Caligula and Nero reflect the epitome of gluttony. After reading Suetonius? portrayal of these two emperors, one should be terrified to display even an ounce of gluttonous behavior.
Suetonius describes Caligula as a cruel and sardonic emperor who was prone to feasting in the most unusual ways. Suetonius writes that, "persons were often put to torture in his presence, whilst he was dining or carousing" (Caligula, XXXII). Suetonius further states that "in the devices of his profuse expenditure, he surpassed all the prodigals that ever lived" (Caligula, XXXVII). Caligula also reportedly "invented a new kind of bath" with unusual dishes and banquets while "drinking pearls of immense value dissolved in vinegar, and serving up for his guests loaves and other victuals modeled in gold" (Caligula, XXXVII). Caligula?s feasts and gluttonous acts are used as the backdrop for his more serious trespasses. His gluttony lead to desires to torture and murder innocent individuals, in which he reportedly prolonged the suffering of victims. For example, Suetonius describes several instances of torture that occurred during public feasts. He reportedly burned alive a writer in the amphitheater, cut out the tongue of a knight and "disfigured many persons of honorable rank, by branding them in the face with hot irons and then condemned them to the mines"(XXXVI). Gluttony is also to blame for Caligula?s unnatural lusts, which include incestuous desires and a preoccupation with intimate relations (XXVII). Suetonius writes that at public suppers Caligula would invite wives to come along with their husbands. At the end of the evening he would choose one and have her sent to him and after having his way with her would publicly "commend or disparage her in the presence of the company recounting her charms or defects" (Caligula XXXVI). Suetonius suggests that all of Caligula?s greater trespasses are the result of his innate and uncontrollable gluttony. Suetonius too depicted Nero as a glutton and a drunkard. In Suetonius?s opinion, Nero thought that "there was no other use of riches and money than to squander them away profusely" (Nero XXX). Suetonius writes that Nero "never wore the same garment twice. He has been known to stake four hundred thousand sesterces on a throw of the dice. It was his custom to fish with a golden net, drawn by silken cords of purple and scarlet" (Nero XXX). Like Caligula before him, Nero?s gluttonous ways set the foundation for his further crimes. According to Justin Goddard, "Suetonius makes Nero?s taste for prolonged banquets mark the turning point of his career, the moment at which the vices began to outweigh the few imperial virtues". For example, the incestuous relationship between Nero and his mother Agrippina begins with the inebriated Nero being approached while dining and following a nighttime carousal he contemplates her murder (67). Furthermore, Suetonius describes that Nero?s "vices gaining strength by degrees, he laid aside his jocular amusements, and all disguise; breaking out into enormous crimes, without the least attempt to conceal them" (Nero XXVII). His extravagance lead him to deferring payment to his troops and increased his riches by plundering the populace. Suetonius believes that Nero?s gluttony was the foundation of his later practices of parricide and murder (Nero XXXIII). Nero set fire to Rome, inflicted punishments on the Christians (XVI) and "from this period butchered without distinction or quarter, all whom his caprice suggested as objects for his cruelty" (XXXVI). Needless to say, when Nero committed suicide by driving a dagger into his throat to avoid death by the senate, "the public joy was so great upon the occasion, that the common people ran about the city with caps upon their heads" (LVII).
As the preceding literary works illustrate, gluttony is a sin that should be acknowledged and dealt with. All of the writer?s above have established that both spiritual and material gluttony cause severe character defects, which can lead one to the practice of other sins such as pride, sloth, lust and even murder. Also, the loss of self-control that gluttony promotes affects religious practices. For instance gluttony distracts one from spiritual meditation which can eventually lead to a lack of faith. Scripture warns that if we fail to follow these warnings against gluttonous behavior our "eyes will see strange things" and our "mind will utter up perverse things" (Proverbs 23:29-35).
In this way, one may end up like Mr. Blandois, Caligula or Nero. If you give into the temptations of gluttony, you will become so disagreeable and offensive that only fellow gluttons will want you in their company!
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Unemployment May Increase Chances of Heart Attacks
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Unemployment hurts more than your wallet — it may damage your heart. That's according to a study linking joblessness with heart attacks in older workers.
The increased odds weren't huge, although multiple job losses posed as big a threat as smoking, high blood pressure and other conditions that are bad for the heart.
The researchers analyzed data on more than 13,000 men and women aged 51 to 75 taking part in an ongoing health and retirement survey partly sponsored by the National Institute on Aging. Since 1992, participants have been interviewed every two years about their employment and health.
The new analysis has several limitations. The data show periods of unemployment but don't indicate whether people were fired, laid off, out of work while switching jobs, or had voluntarily left a job. The researchers considered all of these situations "job losses," but it's likely the greatest risks for heart attacks were from being fired or laid off, said researcher Matthew Dupre, an assistant professor at Duke University and the lead author. Retirement was not considered unemployment
Sarah Burgard, a University of Michigan researcher who has studied the relationship between job loss and health, called the research solid but said it would be important to know the reason for the unemployment.
Does Hard Work Pay Off For Your Heart? Watch Video
Laughter Yoga: Smiling for Better Health? Watch Video
Exercise for Your Heart Watch Video
"There probably are differences in consequences of job loss when it's voluntary or more or less expected" and when it comes as a sudden shock, said Burgard, who was not involved in the study.
The analysis appears in Monday's, 11/19/12, Archives of Internal Medicine. An editorial in the journal says the study adds to decades of research linking job loss with health effects and that research should now turn to examining how and why that happens.
Theories include that the stress of losing a job may trigger a heart attack in people with clogged arteries or heart disease; and that the unemployed lose health insurance and access to medical care that can help keep them healthy, Burgard said.
The analysis covers 1992-2010. Participants were mostly in their 50s at the study's beginning and were asked about their job history, and about employment status and recent heart attacks at subsequent interviews. People who'd had heart attacks before the study began were excluded.
Nearly 70 percent had at least one job loss, or period of unemployment after working at a job, and at least 10 percent had four or more before and/or during the study period.
There were 1,061 heart attacks during the study. Those with at least one job loss were 22 percent more likely to have a heart attack than those who never lost a job. Those with at least four job losses had a 60 percent higher risk than those with none. Men and women faced equal risks.
Even though the odds linked with job loss weren't huge, many participants already faced increased other risks for a heart attack because of obesity, high blood pressure or lack of exercise.
"Any significant additional risk is important," Dupre said.
Click green for further info
This article is for your private use, only
_______________________________________________________
The following article relates to jobs and interviews:
in some states
size discrimination is not illegal by law
Find out in your own state how the discrimination laws
are in case you have any concerns
__________
‘Plus-Sized’ College Student, Ms. Jordan Ramos,
Claims Discrimination at Bar
Ramos approached the Human Rights Commission in Iowa City, but the organization told her
they could not do an investigation because size discrimination is not illegal by law, Ramos said.
Find out in your own state how the discrimination laws are in case you have any concerns.
A self-described “plus sized” college student who was told she was “obviously pregnant” and “not pretty enough” to dance on a platform in a bar in Iowa is claiming she was discriminated against by the bar’s bouncers. Jordan Ramos, a 21-year-old University of Iowa student said she went to Union Bar in Iowa City, Iowa
with her friends on March 3. She said she tried to get onto a platform where several of her friends were dancing, but was stopped by the bouncer, who said they were at capacity.
Ramos said she waited until a few girls left, and again tried to go up. She was stopped again, which she said prompted her to ask, “What is the difference between the other girls up there and myself?”
“There was only one difference: I am a plus-sized individual. The bouncer said ‘Look, you will never get up on this platform. Go back to the dance floor where you belong,’” Ramos told ABC News.
Ramos said a friend of hers tried to talk to the manager, but he refused to talk to her. The manager told them to leave, Ramos said. She sent the manager an email, which she says was never answered.
A social work professor at the University of Iowa told Ramos to return to the bar.
“She told my friends and I to go back and see if the same thing happens and to try to get them to say aloud ‘I am not allowing you up because of your size,’” Ramos said.
On April 14, Ramos returned to the Union Bar with a group of friends. Ramos’ friends, who she said are all thin, were able to get up on the platform easily. But Ramos was blocked from entering, she said.
Ramos asked the bouncer repeatedly why she could not dance on the platform.
“He said, ‘You’re not pretty enough and you’re pregnant.’ I said, ‘I can tell you with 100 percent certainty that I am not pregnant.’ He then looked at my stomach and said, ‘You obviously are.’ They knew I was not pregnant; it was there way of calling me fat without having to actually say it,” Ramos said.
Ramos approached the Human Rights Commission in Iowa City, but the organization told her they could not do an investigation because size discrimination is not illegal by law, Ramos said.
Union Bar did not immediately return a call for comment from ABC News.
This is for your private use, only
Source: abc News
____________________________________________________ .
Unemployment May Increase Chances of Heart Attacks
Click green for further info
Unemployment hurts more than your wallet — it may damage your heart. That's according to a study linking joblessness with heart attacks in older workers.
The increased odds weren't huge, although multiple job losses posed as big a threat as smoking, high blood pressure and other conditions that are bad for the heart.
The researchers analyzed data on more than 13,000 men and women aged 51 to 75 taking part in an ongoing health and retirement survey partly sponsored by the National Institute on Aging. Since 1992, participants have been interviewed every two years about their employment and health.
The new analysis has several limitations. The data show periods of unemployment but don't indicate whether people were fired, laid off, out of work while switching jobs, or had voluntarily left a job. The researchers considered all of these situations "job losses," but it's likely the greatest risks for heart attacks were from being fired or laid off, said researcher Matthew Dupre, an assistant professor at Duke University and the lead author. Retirement was not considered unemployment
Sarah Burgard, a University of Michigan researcher who has studied the relationship between job loss and health, called the research solid but said it would be important to know the reason for the unemployment.
Does Hard Work Pay Off For Your Heart? Watch Video
Laughter Yoga: Smiling for Better Health? Watch Video
Exercise for Your Heart Watch Video
"There probably are differences in consequences of job loss when it's voluntary or more or less expected" and when it comes as a sudden shock, said Burgard, who was not involved in the study.
The analysis appears in Monday's, 11/19/12, Archives of Internal Medicine. An editorial in the journal says the study adds to decades of research linking job loss with health effects and that research should now turn to examining how and why that happens.
Theories include that the stress of losing a job may trigger a heart attack in people with clogged arteries or heart disease; and that the unemployed lose health insurance and access to medical care that can help keep them healthy, Burgard said.
The analysis covers 1992-2010. Participants were mostly in their 50s at the study's beginning and were asked about their job history, and about employment status and recent heart attacks at subsequent interviews. People who'd had heart attacks before the study began were excluded.
Nearly 70 percent had at least one job loss, or period of unemployment after working at a job, and at least 10 percent had four or more before and/or during the study period.
There were 1,061 heart attacks during the study. Those with at least one job loss were 22 percent more likely to have a heart attack than those who never lost a job. Those with at least four job losses had a 60 percent higher risk than those with none. Men and women faced equal risks.
Even though the odds linked with job loss weren't huge, many participants already faced increased other risks for a heart attack because of obesity, high blood pressure or lack of exercise.
"Any significant additional risk is important," Dupre said.
Click green for further info
This article is for your private use, only
_______________________________________________________
The following article relates to jobs and interviews:
in some states
size discrimination is not illegal by law
Find out in your own state how the discrimination laws
are in case you have any concerns
__________
‘Plus-Sized’ College Student, Ms. Jordan Ramos,
Claims Discrimination at Bar
Ramos approached the Human Rights Commission in Iowa City, but the organization told her
they could not do an investigation because size discrimination is not illegal by law, Ramos said.
Find out in your own state how the discrimination laws are in case you have any concerns.
A self-described “plus sized” college student who was told she was “obviously pregnant” and “not pretty enough” to dance on a platform in a bar in Iowa is claiming she was discriminated against by the bar’s bouncers. Jordan Ramos, a 21-year-old University of Iowa student said she went to Union Bar in Iowa City, Iowa
with her friends on March 3. She said she tried to get onto a platform where several of her friends were dancing, but was stopped by the bouncer, who said they were at capacity.
Ramos said she waited until a few girls left, and again tried to go up. She was stopped again, which she said prompted her to ask, “What is the difference between the other girls up there and myself?”
“There was only one difference: I am a plus-sized individual. The bouncer said ‘Look, you will never get up on this platform. Go back to the dance floor where you belong,’” Ramos told ABC News.
Ramos said a friend of hers tried to talk to the manager, but he refused to talk to her. The manager told them to leave, Ramos said. She sent the manager an email, which she says was never answered.
A social work professor at the University of Iowa told Ramos to return to the bar.
“She told my friends and I to go back and see if the same thing happens and to try to get them to say aloud ‘I am not allowing you up because of your size,’” Ramos said.
On April 14, Ramos returned to the Union Bar with a group of friends. Ramos’ friends, who she said are all thin, were able to get up on the platform easily. But Ramos was blocked from entering, she said.
Ramos asked the bouncer repeatedly why she could not dance on the platform.
“He said, ‘You’re not pretty enough and you’re pregnant.’ I said, ‘I can tell you with 100 percent certainty that I am not pregnant.’ He then looked at my stomach and said, ‘You obviously are.’ They knew I was not pregnant; it was there way of calling me fat without having to actually say it,” Ramos said.
Ramos approached the Human Rights Commission in Iowa City, but the organization told her they could not do an investigation because size discrimination is not illegal by law, Ramos said.
Union Bar did not immediately return a call for comment from ABC News.
This is for your private use, only
Source: abc News
____________________________________________________ .
For Poor, Leap to College Often Ends in a Hard Fall
GALVESTON, Tex. — Angelica Gonzales marched through high school in Goth armor — black boots, chains and cargo pants — but undermined her pose of alienation with a place on the honor roll. She nicknamed herself after a metal band and vowed to become the first in her family to earn a college degree.
“I don’t want to work at Walmart” like her mother, she wrote to a school counselor.
Weekends and summers were devoted to a college-readiness program, where her best friends, Melissa O’Neal and Bianca Gonzalez, shared her drive to “get off the island” — escape the prospect of dead-end lives in luckless Galveston. Melissa, an eighth-grade valedictorian, seethed over her mother’s boyfriends and drinking, and Bianca’s bubbly innocence hid the trauma of her father’s death. They stuck together so much that a tutor called them the “triplets.”
Low-income strivers face uphill climbs, especially at Ball High School, where a third of the girls’ class failed to graduate on schedule. But by the time the triplets donned mortarboards in the class of 2008, their story seemed to validate the promise of education as the great equalizer.
Angelica, a daughter of a struggling Mexican immigrant, was headed to Emory University. Bianca enrolled in community college, and Melissa left for Texas State University, President Lyndon B. Johnson’s alma mater.
“It felt like we were taking off, from one life to another,” Melissa said. “It felt like, ‘Here we go!’ ”
Four years later, their story seems less like a tribute to upward mobility than a study of obstacles in an age of soaring economic inequality. Not one of them has a four-year degree. Only one is still studying full time, and two have crushing debts. Angelica, who left Emory owing more than $60,000, is a clerk in a Galveston furniture store.
Each showed the ability to do college work, even excel at it. But the need to earn money brought one set of strains, campus alienation brought others, and ties to boyfriends not in school added complications. With little guidance from family or school officials, college became a leap that they braved without a safety net.
The story of their lost footing is also the story of something larger — the growing role that education plays in preserving class divisions. Poor students have long trailed affluent peers in school performance, but from grade-school tests to college completion, the gaps are growing. With school success and earning prospects ever more entwined, the consequences carry far: education, a force meant to erode class barriers, appears to be fortifying them.
“Everyone wants to think of education as an equalizer — the place where upward mobility gets started,” said Greg J. Duncan, an economist at the University of California, Irvine. “But on virtually every measure we have, the gaps between high- and low-income kids are widening. It’s very disheartening.”
The growing role of class in academic success has taken experts by surprise since it follows decades of equal opportunity efforts and counters racial trends, where differences have narrowed. It adds to fears over recent evidence suggesting that low-income Americans have lower chances of upward mobility than counterparts in Canada and Western Europe.
Thirty years ago, there was a 31 percentage point difference between the share of prosperous and poor Americans who earned bachelor’s degrees, according to Martha J. Bailey and Susan M. Dynarski of the University of Michigan. Now the gap is 45 points.
While both groups improved their odds of finishing college, the affluent improved much more, widening their sizable lead.
Likely reasons include soaring incomes at the top and changes in family structure, which have left fewer low-income students with the support of two-parent homes. Neighborhoods have grown more segregated by class, leaving lower-income students increasingly concentrated in lower-quality schools. And even after accounting for financial aid, the costs of attending a public university have risen 60 percent in the past two decades. Many low-income students, feeling the need to help out at home, are deterred by the thought of years of lost wages and piles of debt.
In placing their hopes in education, the Galveston teenagers followed a tradition as old as the country itself. But if only the prosperous become educated — and only the educated prosper — the schoolhouse risks becoming just another place where the fortunate preserve their edge.
“It’s becoming increasingly unlikely that a low-income student, no matter how intrinsically bright, moves up the socioeconomic ladder,” said Sean Reardon, a sociologist at Stanford. “What we’re talking about is a threat to the American dream.”
High School
No one pictured the teenagers as even friends, much less triplets. Angelica hid behind dark eyeliner, Melissa’s moods turned on the drama at home, and Bianca, in the class behind, seemed even younger than she was. What they had in common was a college-prep program for low-income teenagers, Upward Bound, and trust in its counselor, Priscilla Gonzales Culver, whom everyone called “Miss G.”
Angelica was the product of a large Mexican-American family, which she sought both to honor and surpass. Her mother, Ana Gonzales, had crossed the border illegally as a child, gained citizenship and settled the clan in Galveston, where she ruled by force of will. She once grounded Angelica for a month for coming home a minute late. With hints of both respect and fear, Angelica never called her “Mom” — only “Mrs. Lady.”
Home was an apartment in a subdivided house, with relatives in the adjacent units. Family meals and family feuds went hand in hand. One of Angelica’s uncles bore scars from his days in a street gang. Her grandmother spoke little English. With a quirky mix of distance and devotion, Angelica studied German instead of Spanish and gave the fiesta celebrating her 15th birthday a Goth theme, with fairies and dragons on the tabletop globes. “Korn chick,” she fancifully called herself, after the dissonant metal band.
But school was all business. “Academics was where I shined,” she said. Her grandmother and aunts worked at Walmart alongside Mrs. Lady, and Angelica was rankled equally by how little money they made and how little respect they got. Upward Bound asked her to rank the importance of college on a scale of 1 to 10.
“10,” she wrote.
Melissa also wanted to get off the island — and more immediately out of her house. “When I was about 7, my mom began dating and hanging around a bunch of drunks,” she wrote on the Upward Bound application. For her mother, addiction to painkillers and severe depression followed. Her grandparents offered her one refuge, and school offered another.
“I like to learn — I’m weird,” she said.
By eighth grade, Melissa was at the top of her class and sampling a course at a private high school. She yearned to apply there but swore the opposite to her mother and grandparents. Protecting families from their own ambition is a skill many poor students learn. “I knew we didn’t have the money,” Melissa said. “I felt like I had no right to ask.”
New to Upward Bound, Melissa noticed that one student always ate alone and crowded in beside her. “She forced her friendship on me,” Angelica said.
Bianca joined the following year with a cheerfulness that disguised any trace of family tragedy. As the eldest of four siblings, she had spent the years since her father’s death as a backup mother. To Bianca, family meant everything.
She arrived just in time for the trip at the heart of triplets lore — the Upward Bound visit to Chicago. While they had known they wanted more than Galveston offered, somewhere between the Sears Tower and Northwestern University they glimpsed what it might be. The trip at once consecrated a friendship and defined it around shared goals.
“We wanted to do something better with our lives,” Angelica said.
Ball High was hard on goals. In addition to Bosco, a drug-sniffing dog profiled in the local paper, the campus had four safety officers to deter fights. A pepper spray incident in the girls’ senior year sent 50 students to the school nurse. Only 2 percent of Texas high schools were ranked “academically unacceptable.” Ball was among them.
Melissa now marvels at what a good parent her mother has become to her younger brother after she stopped drinking and was treated for her depression. But when she returned from the high school trip to Chicago, the conflicts grew so intense that Miss G. took her in one night. “I really put her through a lot,” said Melissa’s mother, Pam Craft. “Everything she did, she did on her own — I’m so proud of her.” Miss G.’s notes variously observed that “there are limited groceries,” “student is overwhelmed” and “she’s basically raising herself.”
While faulting her mother’s choices in men, Melissa made a troubling choice of her own with her ambitionless boyfriend. Among the many ways he let her down was getting another girl pregnant. Yet as many times as they broke up, they got back together again. “He is going to bring her down,” Miss G. warned.
Despite the turmoil, Melissa earned “commended” marks, the highest level, on half her state skills tests, edited the yearbook and published two opinion articles in the Galveston newspaper, one of them about her brother’s struggle with autism. Working three jobs, she missed so much school that she nearly failed to graduate, but she still finished in the top quarter of her class. It was never clear which would prevail — her habit of courting disaster or her talent for narrow escapes.
Returning from Chicago, Bianca jumped a grade, which allowed her to graduate with Melissa and Angelica.
Angelica kept making A’s on her way to a four-year grade-point average of 3.9. “Amazingly bright and dedicated,” one instructor wrote. A score of 1,240 on the math and reading portions of her SAT ranked her at the 84th percentile nationwide. When the German teacher suddenly quit, the school tapped her to finish teaching the first-year course.
Outside school, Angelica’s life revolved around her boyfriend, Fred Weaver, who was three years older and drove a yellow Sting Ray. Fred was devoted — too devoted, Mrs. Lady thought, and she warned Angelica not to let the relationship keep her from going to college. Fred’s father owned a local furniture store, and everyone could see that Fred’s dream was to run it with Angelica at his side.
Senior year raced by, with Miss G. doing her best to steer frightened and distracted students though the college selection process. Despite all the campus visits, choices were made without the intense supervision that many affluent students enjoy. Bianca, anchored to the island by family and an older boyfriend, chose community college. Melissa picked Texas State in San Marcos because “the application was easiest.”
Angelica had thought of little beyond Northwestern and was crestfallen when she was rejected. She had sent a last-minute application to a school in Atlanta that had e-mailed her. Only after getting in did she discover that she had achieved something special.
Emory cost nearly $50,000 that year, but it was one of a small tier of top schools that promised to meet the financial needs of any student good enough to be admitted. It had even started a program to relieve the neediest students of high debt burdens. “No one should have to give up their goals and dreams because financial challenges stand in the way,” its Web site says.
Plus an unseen campus a thousand miles away had an innate appeal. “How many times do you get the chance to completely reinvent yourself?” Angelica said.
Rich-Poor Gap Grows
If Melissa and Angelica felt that heading off to university set them apart from other low-income students, they were right. Fewer than 30 percent of students in the bottom quarter of incomes even enroll in a four-year school. And among that group, fewer than half graduate.
Income has always shaped academic success, but its importance is growing. Professor Reardon, the Stanford sociologist, examined a dozen reading and math tests dating back 25 years and found that the gap in scores of high- and low-income students has grown by 40 percent, even as the difference between blacks and whites has narrowed.
While race once predicted scores more than class, the opposite now holds. By eighth grade, white students surpass blacks by an average of three grade levels, while upper-income students are four grades ahead of low-income counterparts.
“The racial gaps are quite big, but the income gaps are bigger,” Professor Reardon said.
One explanation is simply that the rich have clearly gotten richer. A generation ago, families at the 90th percentile had five times the income of those at the 10th percentile. Now they have 10 times as much.
But as shop class gave way to computer labs, schools may have also changed in ways that make parental income and education more important. SAT coaches were once rare, even for families that could afford them. Now they are part of a vast college preparation industry.
Certainly as the payoff to education has grown — college graduates have greatly widened their earnings lead — affluent families have invested more in it. They have tripled the amount by which they outspend low-income families on enrichment activities like sports, music lessons and summer camps, according to Professor Duncan and Prof. Richard Murnane of Harvard.
In addition, upper-income parents, especially fathers, have increased their child-rearing time, while the presence of fathers in low-income homes has declined. Miss G. said there is a reason the triplets relied so heavily on boyfriends: “Their fathers weren’t there.”
Annette Lareau, a sociologist at the University of Pennsylvania, argues that the affluent also enjoy an advocacy edge: parents are quicker to intervene when their children need help, while low-income families often feel intimidated and defer to school officials, a problem that would trail Melissa and Angelica in their journey through college.
“Middle-class students get the sense the institution will respond to them,” Professor Lareau said. “Working-class and poor students don’t experience that. It makes them more vulnerable.”
Matthew M. Chingos of the Brookings Institution has found that low-income students finish college less often than affluent peers even when they outscore them on skills tests. Only 26 percent of eighth graders with below-average incomes but above-average scores go on to earn bachelor’s degrees, compared with 30 percent of students with subpar performances but more money.
“These are students who have already overcome significant obstacles to score above average on this test,” Mr. Chingos said. “To see how few earn college degrees is really disturbing.”
Triplets Start College
Melissa lasted at Texas State for all of two hours. As soon as she arrived, her car battery died, prompting a tearful call to Miss. G., who arranged a jump. Her dorm mates had parents to haul boxes and hover. Melissa unpacked alone. With four days left until classes began, she panicked and drove 200 miles back home.
For all the talk of getting away, her tattoo featured a local boast: she was “B.O.I.” — born on the island. Her grandparents ordered her back to school. “I really didn’t want to leave” the island, she said.
Midway through the semester she decided she had made a mistake by going to Texas State. She had picked the wrong time to leave home. She would move back to Galveston, join Bianca at community college and transfer to a four-year school later. But when she tried to return the financial aid to Texas State, she discovered it was too late. A long walk across the hilly campus led to an epiphany.
“I realized there was nothing in Galveston for me,” she said. “This is where I need to be.”
Angelica had a costlier setback. For an elite school, Emory enrolls an unusually large number of low-income students — 22 percent get Pell grants, compared with 11 percent at Harvard — and gives them unusually large aid packages. But Angelica had failed to complete all the financial aid forms.
Slow to consider Emory, she got a late start on the complex process and was delayed by questions about her father, whom she did not even know how to reach. Though Emory sent weekly e-mails — 17 of them, along with an invitation to a program for minority students — they went to a school account she had not learned to check. From the start, the wires were crossed.
As classes approached, she just got in the car with Mrs. Lady and Fred and drove 14 hours to Atlanta hoping to work things out. But by then Emory had distributed all of its aid. Even with federal loans and grants, Angelica was $40,000 short. The only way to enroll was to borrow from a bank.
Forty thousand dollars was an unfathomable sum. Angelica did not tell Mrs. Lady, to protect her from the worry. She needed a co-signer, and the only person she could ask was Fred. That would bind her future to her past, but she feared that if she tried to defer, she might not have a future — she might never make it back.
“I was like, ‘I don’t care what kind of debt it puts me in — I’ve got to get this done,”‘ she said.
Fred answered her request with his. They got engaged.
A few weeks later, Hurricane Ike hit Galveston, with Katrina-like consequences. About a sixth of the population never returned. Mrs. Lady lost her apartment and much of what she owned. Fred, consumed with rebuilding the store, reduced the modest sums he had promised to send Angelica.
Social life was awkward. She often felt she was the only one on campus without a credit card. Her roommate moved out, with no explanation. But one element of college appealed to Angelica and Melissa alike: the classes. Other debt-ridden students might wonder why the road to middle-class life passed through anthropology exams and lectures on art history. But Melissa was happy to ponder tribal life in Papua New Guinea and Angelica stepped off the 18-hour bus ride home and let slip an appreciative word about German film.
“My family said ‘O.K., now you go to some big fancy school,’ ” she said.
With A’s, B’s, C’s and D’s, her report card looked like alphabet soup. “I was ready for Galveston College — I wasn’t ready for Emory,” Angelica said. But she salvaged a 2.6 GPA and went home for the summer happy.
“I thought the hard part was over,” she said.
At the end of the summer, Angelica and Melissa marked their ascent as college women with the perfect road trip. Melissa had decided to become a speech therapist. Angelica would practice child psychology. Somewhere between the rainbow in Louisiana and the blues bar in Orlando, they talked of launching a practice to help poor children. Fortune smiled all week.
“We were where we should be and we had the world at our feet,” Melissa said.
Melissa
She returned to a campus that was starting to feel like home. She had a roommate she liked and a job she loved, as a clerk in a Disney store. But despite the feeling of deep change — or perhaps because of it — she got back together with her high-school boyfriend. “That was one of the stupidest things I’ve ever done,” she said.
In the middle of Melissa’s sophomore year they became engaged. He moved near the campus to live with her, and Melissa charged most of their expenses on her credit cards. He was enrolling in the Job Corps program, and they agreed they would pay down the bills together after he became an electrician.
Melissa hit an academic pothole — a C in a communications course, which kept her out of the competitive speech therapy program. But she decided to aim for graduate-school training, and her other grades soared, placing her on the dean’s list both semesters her junior year. When her mother made a rare campus visit, Melissa hurried to show her the prominent display on the student center wall.
“That was one of the proudest moments of my life,” Melissa said.
Just before her senior year, Melissa planned a trip to celebrate her 21st birthday. Preparing to leave, she discovered her money was missing. Only one person had her bank code. After finishing Job Corps, her boyfriend was jobless once again and acting odd — as if he were using drugs.
No one but Melissa was surprised. Although she returned the engagement ring, she could not return the $4,000 in credit card debt he had promised to help pay. With her finances and emotions in disarray, she started her senior year so depressed she hung up black curtains so she could sleep all day. She skipped class, doubled her work hours, and failed nearly every course.
“I started partying, and I was working all the time because I had this debt,” she said.
If the speed of her decline stands out, so does her lack of a safety net. It is easy to imagine a more affluent family stepping in with money or other support. Miss G. sent her the names of some campus therapists but Melissa did not call. She waited for an internal bungee cord to break the fall. She came within one F of losing her financial aid, then aced last summer’s classes.
She is now a fifth-year senior, on track to graduate next summer, and her new boyfriend is studying to be an engineer. At home, she had a way of finding the wrong people. “I haven’t found any wrong people out here,” she said.
With more than $44,000 in loans, she can expect to pay $250 a month for the next quarter century, on top of whatever she may borrow for graduate school. She hides the notices in a drawer and harbors no regrets. “Education — you can’t put a price on it,” she said. “No matter what happens in your life, they can’t take your education away.”
Bianca
Bianca missed the Florida road trip, though no one remembers why. She liked to talk of getting away, until it came time to go.
Among the perils that low-income students face is “under-matching,” choosing a close or familiar school instead of the best they can attend.
“The more selective the institution is, the more likely kids are to graduate,” said Mr. Chingos, the Brookings researcher. “There are higher expectations, more resources and more stigma to dropping out.”
Bianca was under-matched. She was living at home, dating her high-school boyfriend and taking classes at Galveston College. A semester on the honor roll only kept her from sensing the drift away from her plan to transfer to a four-year school.
Her grandfather’s cancer, and chemotherapy treatments, offered more reasons to stay. She had lived with him since her father had died. Leaving felt like betrayal. “I thought it was more important to be at home than to be selfish and be at school,” she said.
The idea that education can be “selfish” — a belief largely alien among the upper-middle class — is one poor students often confront, even if it remains unspoken. “Family is such a priority, especially when you’re a Hispanic female,” Miss G. said. “You’re afraid you’re going to hear, ‘You’re leaving us, you think you’re better.’ ”
In her second year of community college, Bianca was admitted to a state university a hundred miles away. Miss. G. and her mother urged her to go. Her mind raced with reasons to wait.
“I didn’t want to leave and have my grandfather die.”
“I had to help my mom.”
“I think I got burned out.”
Bianca stayed in Galveston, finished her associate degree, and now works as a beach-bar cashier and a spa receptionist. She still plans to get a bachelor’s degree, someday.
“I don’t think I was lazy. I think I was scared,” she said. In the meantime, “life happened.”
Angelica
After the financial aid disaster in her first year, Angelica met the next deadline and returned as a sophomore with significant support. Still, she sensed she was on shakier ground than other low-income students and never understood why. The answer is buried in the aid archives: Emory repeatedly inflated her family’s income without telling her.
Angelica reported that her mother made $35,000 a year and paid about half of that in rent. With her housing costs so high, Emory assumed the family had extra money and assigned Mrs. Lady an income of $51,000. But Mrs. Lady was not hiding money. She was paying inflated post-hurricane rent with the help of Federal disaster aid, a detail Angelica had inadvertently omitted.
By counting money the family did not have, Emory not only increased the amount it expected Angelica to pay in addition to her financial aid. It also disqualified her from most of the school’s touted program of debt relief. Under the Emory Advantage plan the school replaces loans with grants for families making less than $50,000 a year. Moving Angelica just over the threshold placed her in a less-generous tier and forced her to borrow an additional $15,000 before she could qualify. The mistake will add years to her repayment plan.
She discovered what had happened only recently, after allowing a reporter to review her file with Emory officials. “There was no other income coming in,” she said. “I can’t believe that they would do that and not say anything to us. That seems completely unfair.”
Emory officials said they had to rely on the information Angelica provided and that they will not make retroactive adjustments.
“The method that was used in her case was very standard methodology,” said J. Lynn Zimmerman, the senior vice provost who oversees financial aid. “I think that what’s unusual is that she really didn’t advocate for herself or ask for any kind of review. If she or her mother would have provided any additional information it would have triggered a conversation.”
Unaware she had any basis for complaint, Angelica found a campus job she loved, repairing library books. It was solitary and artistic work, and it attracted a small sisterhood of women who appreciated her grandmother’s tamales and her streak of purple hair. One day her boss, Julie Newton, overheard her excitedly talking about Hegel.
“She was an extremely intelligent woman and an unusual one,” she said.
Yet even as Angelica’s work hours grew, so did the rigor of her coursework. Meetings with faculty advisers were optional and Angelica did not consult hers. When it came time to declare a major, she had a B-plus average in the humanities and D’s in psychology. She chose psychology.
By the end of her second year, she felt exhausted and had grades to show it. Her long-distance love life was exhausted, too, and she briefly broke up with Fred. She went home for the summer to work at Target and dragged herself back to a troubled junior year.
She moved off campus to save money but found herself spending even more. “I would sit and debate whether I could buy a head of lettuce,” she said. Fred was no longer helping, and her relationship with him snapped. That he had backed a $40,000 loan only made the split harder. They had been together since she was 15.
“It was days of back and forth, crying,” she said.
This was no time to tackle Psychology 200, a course on research methods required of majors. The devotion of the professor, Nancy Bliwise, had earned her a campus teaching award. But her exacting standards and brusque manner left student opinion divided.
“Quite possibly the greatest professor at Emory,” wrote one contributor to the Web site Rate My Professor. Others found her “condescending,” “horribly disrespectful,” and “plain out mean.”
Midway through the semester, Angelica just stopped coming to class. Professor Bliwise called her in and found her despondent. “She was emotionless and that scared me,” the professor said in an interview. Angelica said she had to work too much to keep up, but could not drop the course without losing her full-time status and her aid. So she planned to take an “F.”
Alarmed, Professor Bliwise raised other options, then asked — empathetically, the professor thought — if Angelica had considered cheaper schools. She herself had worked her way through Cleveland State then earned a doctorate at the University of Chicago.
Angelica sat stone-faced, burning. All she could hear was someone saying she was too poor for Emory. “It was pretty clear if I couldn’t afford to be there, I shouldn’t waste her time,” she said.
That was the beginning of the end. Angelica failed that course and three others her junior year, as her upside-down circumstances left her cheating a $200,000 education for a $9-an-hour job. She was not one to make it easy, but Emory never found a way to intervene. “Is there a way to reach out to her?” Professor Bliwise asked in an e-mail to the dean’s office.
The dean’s office left messages. Angelica acknowledged that she was slow to respond but said she got no answer when she did. The school did an electronic key card check to verify whether she was still on campus. More professors expressed concerns. “Personal issues are interfering with her ability to concentrate,” one warned. Angelica contacted campus counseling but said all the appointments had been taken.
Emory can hardly be cast as indifferent to low-income students. It spends $94 million a year of its own money on financial aid and graduates its poorest students nearly as often as the rest. Its failure to reach Angelica may have come up short, but that is partly a measure of the sheer distance it was trying to bridge.
When Angelica finally found a way to express herself, she did so silently. Her final piece for a sculpture class was a papier-mâché baby, sprouting needles like a porcupine. No one could mistake the statement of her own vulnerability.
“It was a shocking piece,” said her professor, Linda Armstrong. “She had a way of using art to tap into her deepest emotions and feelings. I don’t think she understood how good she was.”
Angelica spent the next summer waiting for an expulsion letter that never came. Another missed deadline cost her several thousand dollars in aid in her senior year, and Emory mistakenly concluded that Mrs. Lady had made a $70,000 down payment on a house. (In describing the complicated transaction with a nonprofit group, Angelica failed to note that most of the money came from a program for first-time home buyers.) Emory officials said the mistake did not affect her aid, but the difference between the school’s costs and her package of loans and grants swelled to $12,000 — a sum she could not possibly meet.
She skipped more classes and worked longer hours.
“I felt, I’m going to be on academic probation anyway, I might as well work and pay my rent until they suspend me.”
Finally, Emory did — forcing her to take a semester away with the option of reapplying.
The tale could be cast as an elite school failing a needy student or a student unwilling to be helped, but neither explanation does justice to an issue as complicated as higher education and class.
“It’s a little of both,” said Joanne Brzinski, a dean who oversees academic advising. “We reached out to her, but she didn’t respond. I always fault myself when students don’t do as well as we’d like them to.”
“It’s such a sad story,” she added. “She had the ability.”
Ms. Newton, Angelica’s former supervisor at the library, wondered if her conflict went beyond money, to a fear of the very success she sought. “I wouldn’t go as far as to say she was committing self-sabotage, but the thought crossed my mind,” she said. “For someone so connected to family and Grandma and the tamales, I wondered if she feared that graduating would alienate her.”
A long bridge crosses the bay to Galveston Island. Angelica returned a year ago the way she had left, with Mrs. Lady and Fred at her side. She is $61,000 in debt, seeing Fred again, and making $8.50 an hour at his family’s furniture store. No one can tell whether she is settling down or gathering strength for another escape.
A dinner with Melissa and Bianca a while back offered the comfort of friends who demand no explanations. Melissa suggested they all enroll at Texas State. But Bianca does not know what to study, and Angelica said that she had gone too far to surrender all hopes of an Emory degree.
“I could have done some things better, and Emory could have done some things better,” she said. “But I don’t blame either one of us. Everyone knows life is unfair — being low-income puts you at a disadvantage. I just didn’t understand the extent of the obstacles I was going to have to overcome.”
Kitty Bennett contributed research.
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Source: NYT
_________________________________________________________
Source: The New York Times
This article is only for your personal use
Earliest Americans Arrived in Waves, DNA Study Finds
By NICHOLAS WADE
North and South America were first populated by three waves of migrants from Siberia rather than just a single migration, say researchers who have studied the whole genomes of Native Americans in South America and Canada.
Some scientists assert that the Americas were peopled in one large migration from Siberia that happened about 15,000 years ago, but the new genetic research shows that this central episode was followed by at least two smaller migrations from Siberia, one by people who became the ancestors of today’s Eskimos and Aleutians and another by people speaking Na-Dene, whose descendants are confined to North America. The research was published online on Wednesday in the journal Nature.
The finding vindicates a proposal first made on linguistic grounds by Joseph Greenberg, the great classifier of the world’s languages. He asserted in 1987 that most languages spoken in North and South America were derived from the single mother tongue of the first settlers from Siberia, which he called Amerind. Two later waves, he surmised, brought speakers of Eskimo-Aleut and of Na-Dene, the language family spoken by the Apache and Navajo.
But many linguists who specialize in American languages derided Dr. Greenberg’s proposal, saying they saw no evidence for any single ancestral language like Amerind. “American linguists made up their minds 25 years ago that they wouldn’t support Greenberg, and they haven’t changed their mind one whit,” said Merritt Ruhlen, a colleague of Dr. Greenberg, who died in 2001.
The new DNA study is based on gene chips that sample the entire genome and presents a fuller picture than earlier studies, which were based on small regions of the genome like the Y chromosome or mitochondrial DNA. Several of the mitochondrial DNA studies had pointed to a single migration.
A team led by David Reich of Harvard Medical School and Dr. Andres Ruiz-Linares of University College London reported that there was a main migration that populated the entire Americas. They cannot date the migration from their genomic data but accept the estimate by others that the migration occurred around 15,000 years ago. This was in the window of time that occurred after the melting of great glaciers that blocked passage from Siberia to Alaska, and before the rising waters at the end of the last ice age submerged Beringia, the land bridge between them.
They also find evidence for two further waves of migration, one among Na-Dene speakers and the other among Eskimo-Aleut, again as Dr. Greenberg predicted. But whereas Dr. Greenberg’s proposal suggested that three discrete groups of people were packed into the Americas, the new genome study finds that the second and third waves mixed in with the first. Eskimos inherit about half of their DNA from the people of the first migration and half from a second migration. The Chipewyans of Canada, who speak a Na-Dene language, have 90 percent of their genes from the first migration and some 10 percent from a third.
It is not clear why the Chipewyans and others speak a Na-Dene language if most of their DNA is from Amerind speakers. Dr. Ruiz-Linares said a minority language could often dominate others in the case of conquest; an example of this is the ubiquity of Spanish in Latin America.
If the genetics of the early migrations to the Americas can be defined well enough, it should in principle be possible to match them with their source populations in Asia. Dr. Greenberg had argued on linguistic grounds that the Na-Dene language family was derived from Ket, spoken by the Ket people in the Yenisei valley of Siberia. But Dr. Reich said there was not yet enough genomic data from Asia or the Americas to make these links. His samples of Na-Dene and Ket DNA did not match, but the few Ket samples he had may have become mixed with DNA from people of other ethnicities, so the test, in his view, was inconclusive.
The team’s samples of Native American genomes were drawn mostly from South America, with a handful from Canada. Samples from tribes in the United States could not be used because the existing ones had been collected for medical reasons and the donors had not given consent for population genetics studies, Dr. Ruiz-Linares said. Native Americans in the United States have been reluctant to participate in inquiries into their origins. The Genographic Project of the National Geographic Society wrote recently to all federally recognized tribes in the United States asking for samples, but only two agreed to give them, said Spencer Wells, the project director.
Interracial marriage — or admixture, as geneticists call it — may have distorted earlier efforts to trace ancestry because subjects assumed to be American may have had European or other DNA admixed in their genomes. Dr. Reich and his colleagues have developed a method to define the racial origin of each segment of DNA and have found that on average 8.5 percent of Native American DNA belongs to other races. They then screened these admixed sections out of their analysis.
Archaeologists who study Native American history are glad to have the genetic data but also have reservations, given that several of the geneticists’ conclusions have changed over time. “This is a really important step forward but not the last word,” said David Meltzer of Southern Methodist University, noting that many migrations may not yet have shown up in the genetic samples. Michael H. Crawford, an anthropologist at the University of Kansas, said the paucity of samples from North America and from coastal regions made it hard to claim a complete picture of early migrations has been attained.
“Sometimes the statisticians make wonderful interpretations, but you have to be very guarded,” he said.
The geneticists’ finding of a single main migration of people who presumably spoke a single language at the time confirms Dr. Greenberg’s central idea that most American languages are descended from a single root, even though the genetic data cannot confirm the specific language relationships he described.
“Many linguists put down Greenberg as rubbish and don’t believe his publications,” Dr. Ruiz-Linares said. But he considers his study a substantial vindication of Dr. Greenberg. “It’s striking that we have this correspondence between the genetics and the linguistics,” he said.
__________________________
Source: The New York Times
This article is only for your personal use
Earliest Americans Arrived in Waves, DNA Study Finds
By NICHOLAS WADE
North and South America were first populated by three waves of migrants from Siberia rather than just a single migration, say researchers who have studied the whole genomes of Native Americans in South America and Canada.
Some scientists assert that the Americas were peopled in one large migration from Siberia that happened about 15,000 years ago, but the new genetic research shows that this central episode was followed by at least two smaller migrations from Siberia, one by people who became the ancestors of today’s Eskimos and Aleutians and another by people speaking Na-Dene, whose descendants are confined to North America. The research was published online on Wednesday in the journal Nature.
The finding vindicates a proposal first made on linguistic grounds by Joseph Greenberg, the great classifier of the world’s languages. He asserted in 1987 that most languages spoken in North and South America were derived from the single mother tongue of the first settlers from Siberia, which he called Amerind. Two later waves, he surmised, brought speakers of Eskimo-Aleut and of Na-Dene, the language family spoken by the Apache and Navajo.
But many linguists who specialize in American languages derided Dr. Greenberg’s proposal, saying they saw no evidence for any single ancestral language like Amerind. “American linguists made up their minds 25 years ago that they wouldn’t support Greenberg, and they haven’t changed their mind one whit,” said Merritt Ruhlen, a colleague of Dr. Greenberg, who died in 2001.
The new DNA study is based on gene chips that sample the entire genome and presents a fuller picture than earlier studies, which were based on small regions of the genome like the Y chromosome or mitochondrial DNA. Several of the mitochondrial DNA studies had pointed to a single migration.
A team led by David Reich of Harvard Medical School and Dr. Andres Ruiz-Linares of University College London reported that there was a main migration that populated the entire Americas. They cannot date the migration from their genomic data but accept the estimate by others that the migration occurred around 15,000 years ago. This was in the window of time that occurred after the melting of great glaciers that blocked passage from Siberia to Alaska, and before the rising waters at the end of the last ice age submerged Beringia, the land bridge between them.
They also find evidence for two further waves of migration, one among Na-Dene speakers and the other among Eskimo-Aleut, again as Dr. Greenberg predicted. But whereas Dr. Greenberg’s proposal suggested that three discrete groups of people were packed into the Americas, the new genome study finds that the second and third waves mixed in with the first. Eskimos inherit about half of their DNA from the people of the first migration and half from a second migration. The Chipewyans of Canada, who speak a Na-Dene language, have 90 percent of their genes from the first migration and some 10 percent from a third.
It is not clear why the Chipewyans and others speak a Na-Dene language if most of their DNA is from Amerind speakers. Dr. Ruiz-Linares said a minority language could often dominate others in the case of conquest; an example of this is the ubiquity of Spanish in Latin America.
If the genetics of the early migrations to the Americas can be defined well enough, it should in principle be possible to match them with their source populations in Asia. Dr. Greenberg had argued on linguistic grounds that the Na-Dene language family was derived from Ket, spoken by the Ket people in the Yenisei valley of Siberia. But Dr. Reich said there was not yet enough genomic data from Asia or the Americas to make these links. His samples of Na-Dene and Ket DNA did not match, but the few Ket samples he had may have become mixed with DNA from people of other ethnicities, so the test, in his view, was inconclusive.
The team’s samples of Native American genomes were drawn mostly from South America, with a handful from Canada. Samples from tribes in the United States could not be used because the existing ones had been collected for medical reasons and the donors had not given consent for population genetics studies, Dr. Ruiz-Linares said. Native Americans in the United States have been reluctant to participate in inquiries into their origins. The Genographic Project of the National Geographic Society wrote recently to all federally recognized tribes in the United States asking for samples, but only two agreed to give them, said Spencer Wells, the project director.
Interracial marriage — or admixture, as geneticists call it — may have distorted earlier efforts to trace ancestry because subjects assumed to be American may have had European or other DNA admixed in their genomes. Dr. Reich and his colleagues have developed a method to define the racial origin of each segment of DNA and have found that on average 8.5 percent of Native American DNA belongs to other races. They then screened these admixed sections out of their analysis.
Archaeologists who study Native American history are glad to have the genetic data but also have reservations, given that several of the geneticists’ conclusions have changed over time. “This is a really important step forward but not the last word,” said David Meltzer of Southern Methodist University, noting that many migrations may not yet have shown up in the genetic samples. Michael H. Crawford, an anthropologist at the University of Kansas, said the paucity of samples from North America and from coastal regions made it hard to claim a complete picture of early migrations has been attained.
“Sometimes the statisticians make wonderful interpretations, but you have to be very guarded,” he said.
The geneticists’ finding of a single main migration of people who presumably spoke a single language at the time confirms Dr. Greenberg’s central idea that most American languages are descended from a single root, even though the genetic data cannot confirm the specific language relationships he described.
“Many linguists put down Greenberg as rubbish and don’t believe his publications,” Dr. Ruiz-Linares said. But he considers his study a substantial vindication of Dr. Greenberg. “It’s striking that we have this correspondence between the genetics and the linguistics,” he said.
__________________________
Communal Breaks: A Chance to Bond
Source: The New York Times
By PHYLLIS KORKKI
This is for your personal use, only
WHAT is one of the most important decisions a company can make? It’s where to put the coffee.
O.K., maybe it’s not quite as earth-shattering as, say, hiring a C.E.O. or choosing which products to make. But well-designed beverage areas are a surprisingly important contributor to productivity, according to Ben Waber, president and C.E.O. of Sociometric Solutions, a workplace consulting firm.
“In general when we look at what makes people happy and effective at work, it’s being able to spend time with a close group of people,” Dr. Waber said. “You need to structure work in such a way that people have those opportunities.”
As I wrote in my last column, taking frequent breaks allows workers to recharge their internal energy. Individual breaks — a walk around the block or quiet time alone in a conference room — enable a worker to return, refreshed, to arduous pursuits.
But social breaks are also important to a worker’s — and a company’s — well-being. They reinforce bonds, improve morale and increase possibilities for collaboration.
Which brings us back to beverages. Sociometric recently worked with a pharmaceutical business that had many different pantry areas with no seating. And employees apologized to Dr. Waber about the awfulness of the coffee.
This represented “a big opportunity lost,” he said. After analyzing worker communication patterns, Sociometric recommended that the company remove many of the small spaces and create a big, central gathering area with ample seating — and better coffee.
As a result, people began mingling with a wider array of co-workers, and levels of collaboration and performance improved, Dr. Waber said.
Breaks are also meant for venting. Consider Sociometric’s experience with call centers at a major bank. The bank had thought it would be more efficient to stagger workers’ breaks so that not too many people from a team were off at the same time.
Somewhat counterintuitively, Sociometric advised the bank to schedule breaks for a team together, with an alternate crew filling in. The results were a 25 percent improvement in the number of calls answered and a reduction in employee stress, Dr. Waber said.
No one was forced to socialize during the breaks, but the new schedule created a natural way for employees to vent about problems and seek help from one another, he said.
THERE’S little sense in ordering employees into the break room. Requiring employees to socialize can bring stress, and while it may further work or career goals, it can run counter to a break’s function of restoring energy, said John P. Trougakos, an assistant management professor at the University of Toronto Scarborough and the Rotman School of Management.
Technology companies have long embraced the concept of voluntary group breaks as a path to creativity and collaboration. In fact, the idea for Gmail was first conceived by a small group at one of Google’s cafes, said Katelin Todhunter-Gerberg, a senior associate on Google’s communications team.
In addition to cafes and coffee bars, Google provides Ping-Pong tables, pool tables and video games. It even has a bowling alley that can be booked like a conference room. Employees can also hike, bike and train for races together, and form groups for activities like wine tasting.
Breaks are also good simply because they propel people out of their chairs. The evidence is overwhelming that prolonged sitting endangers workers’ health, and that people who move often throughout the day are healthier than those who stay seated.
That’s why Dr. Toni Yancey, a professor of health services at the University of California, Los Angeles, supports group exercise breaks. Her studies have shown that such exercise can reduce sick leave and workers’ compensation claims.
She developed a range of exercises for people who are “your typical overweight sedentary adults,” wearing almost any attire. Ideally, the exercises are to be performed in two 10-minute sessions during the workday. People might dance to salsa music, say, or mimic the motions of pitching and batting in a baseball-themed program.
Dr. Yancey favors voluntary participation in a structured program that is supported by management. The force of the group, she says, is much stronger than individual good intentions.
____________________________________
Source: The New York Times
By PHYLLIS KORKKI
This is for your personal use, only
WHAT is one of the most important decisions a company can make? It’s where to put the coffee.
O.K., maybe it’s not quite as earth-shattering as, say, hiring a C.E.O. or choosing which products to make. But well-designed beverage areas are a surprisingly important contributor to productivity, according to Ben Waber, president and C.E.O. of Sociometric Solutions, a workplace consulting firm.
“In general when we look at what makes people happy and effective at work, it’s being able to spend time with a close group of people,” Dr. Waber said. “You need to structure work in such a way that people have those opportunities.”
As I wrote in my last column, taking frequent breaks allows workers to recharge their internal energy. Individual breaks — a walk around the block or quiet time alone in a conference room — enable a worker to return, refreshed, to arduous pursuits.
But social breaks are also important to a worker’s — and a company’s — well-being. They reinforce bonds, improve morale and increase possibilities for collaboration.
Which brings us back to beverages. Sociometric recently worked with a pharmaceutical business that had many different pantry areas with no seating. And employees apologized to Dr. Waber about the awfulness of the coffee.
This represented “a big opportunity lost,” he said. After analyzing worker communication patterns, Sociometric recommended that the company remove many of the small spaces and create a big, central gathering area with ample seating — and better coffee.
As a result, people began mingling with a wider array of co-workers, and levels of collaboration and performance improved, Dr. Waber said.
Breaks are also meant for venting. Consider Sociometric’s experience with call centers at a major bank. The bank had thought it would be more efficient to stagger workers’ breaks so that not too many people from a team were off at the same time.
Somewhat counterintuitively, Sociometric advised the bank to schedule breaks for a team together, with an alternate crew filling in. The results were a 25 percent improvement in the number of calls answered and a reduction in employee stress, Dr. Waber said.
No one was forced to socialize during the breaks, but the new schedule created a natural way for employees to vent about problems and seek help from one another, he said.
THERE’S little sense in ordering employees into the break room. Requiring employees to socialize can bring stress, and while it may further work or career goals, it can run counter to a break’s function of restoring energy, said John P. Trougakos, an assistant management professor at the University of Toronto Scarborough and the Rotman School of Management.
Technology companies have long embraced the concept of voluntary group breaks as a path to creativity and collaboration. In fact, the idea for Gmail was first conceived by a small group at one of Google’s cafes, said Katelin Todhunter-Gerberg, a senior associate on Google’s communications team.
In addition to cafes and coffee bars, Google provides Ping-Pong tables, pool tables and video games. It even has a bowling alley that can be booked like a conference room. Employees can also hike, bike and train for races together, and form groups for activities like wine tasting.
Breaks are also good simply because they propel people out of their chairs. The evidence is overwhelming that prolonged sitting endangers workers’ health, and that people who move often throughout the day are healthier than those who stay seated.
That’s why Dr. Toni Yancey, a professor of health services at the University of California, Los Angeles, supports group exercise breaks. Her studies have shown that such exercise can reduce sick leave and workers’ compensation claims.
She developed a range of exercises for people who are “your typical overweight sedentary adults,” wearing almost any attire. Ideally, the exercises are to be performed in two 10-minute sessions during the workday. People might dance to salsa music, say, or mimic the motions of pitching and batting in a baseball-themed program.
Dr. Yancey favors voluntary participation in a structured program that is supported by management. The force of the group, she says, is much stronger than individual good intentions.
____________________________________
August 11, 2012
Source: The New York Times, Sunday Review, page 6, 8/12/12
Hundred-Year Forecast: Drought
This article is for your personal use, only
By CHRISTOPHER R. SCHWALM, CHRISTOPHER A. WILLIAMS and KEVIN SCHAEFER
BY many measurements, this summer’s drought is one for the record books. But so was last year’s drought in the South Central states. And it has been only a decade since an extreme five-year drought hit the American West. Widespread annual droughts, once a rare calamity, have become more frequent and are set to become the “new normal.”
Until recently, many scientists spoke of climate change mainly as a “threat,” sometime in the future. But it is increasingly clear that we already live in the era of human-induced climate change, with a growing frequency of weather and climate extremes like heat waves, droughts, floods and fires.
Future precipitation trends, based on climate model projections for the coming fifth assessment from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, indicate that droughts of this length and severity will be commonplace through the end of the century unless human-induced carbon emissions are significantly reduced. Indeed, assuming business as usual, each of the next 80 years in the American West is expected to see less rainfall than the average of the five years of the drought that hit the region from 2000 to 2004.
That extreme drought (which we have analyzed in a new study in the journal Nature-Geoscience) had profound consequences for carbon sequestration, agricultural productivity and water resources: plants, for example, took in only half the carbon dioxide they do normally, thanks to a drought-induced drop in photosynthesis.
In the drought’s worst year, Western crop yields were down by 13 percent, with many local cases of complete crop failure. Major river basins showed 5 percent to 50 percent reductions in flow. These reductions persisted up to three years after the drought ended, because the lakes and reservoirs that feed them needed several years of average rainfall to return to predrought levels.
In terms of severity and geographic extent, the 2000-4 drought in the West exceeded such legendary events as the Dust Bowl of the 1930s. While that drought saw intervening years of normal rainfall, the years of the turn-of-the-century drought were consecutive. More seriously still, long-term climate records from tree-ring chronologies show that this drought was the most severe event of its kind in the western United States in the past 800 years. Though there have been many extreme droughts over the last 1,200 years, only three other events have been of similar magnitude, all during periods of “megadroughts.”
Most frightening is that this extreme event could become the new normal: climate models point to a warmer planet, largely because of greenhouse gas emissions. Planetary warming, in turn, is expected to create drier conditions across western North America, because of the way global-wind and atmospheric-pressure patterns shift in response.
Indeed, scientists see signs of the relationship between warming and drought in western North America by analyzing trends over the last 100 years; evidence suggests that the more frequent drought and low precipitation events observed for the West during the 20th century are associated with increasing temperatures across the Northern Hemisphere.
These climate-model projections suggest that what we consider today to be an episode of severe drought might even be classified as a period of abnormal wetness by the end of the century and that a coming megadrought — a prolonged, multidecade period of significantly below-average precipitation — is possible and likely in the American West.
The current drought plaguing the country is worryingly consistent with these expectations. Although we do not attribute any single event to global warming, the severity of both the turn-of-the-century drought and the current one is consistent with simulations accounting for warming from increased greenhouse gases. The Northern Hemisphere has just recorded its 327th consecutive month in which the temperature exceeded the 20th-century average. This year had the fourth-warmest winter on record, with record-shattering high temperatures in March. And 2012 has already seen huge wildfires in Colorado and other Western states. More than 3,200 heat records were broken in June alone.
And yet that may be only the beginning, a fact that should force us to confront the likelihood of new and painful challenges. A megadrought would present a major risk to water resources in the American West, which are distributed through a complex series of local, state and regional water-sharing agreements and laws. Virtually every drop of water flowing in the American West is legally claimed, sometimes by several users, and the demand is expected to increase as the population grows.
Many Western cities will have to fundamentally change how they acquire and use water. The sort of temporary emergency steps that we grudgingly adopt during periods of low rainfall — fewer showers, lawn-watering bans — will become permanent. Some regions will become impossible to farm because of lack of irrigation water. Thermoelectric energy production will compete for limited water resources.
There is still time to prevent the worst; the risk of a multidecade megadrought in the American West can be reduced if we reduce fossil-fuel emissions. But there can be little doubt that what was once thought to be a future threat is suddenly, catastrophically upon us.
Christopher R. Schwalm is a research assistant professor of earth sciences at Northern Arizona University. Christopher A. Williams is anassistant professor of geography at Clark University. Kevin Schaefer is a research scientist at the National Snow and Ice Data Center.
_______________________________
Source: The New York Times, Sunday Review, page 6, 8/12/12
Hundred-Year Forecast: Drought
This article is for your personal use, only
By CHRISTOPHER R. SCHWALM, CHRISTOPHER A. WILLIAMS and KEVIN SCHAEFER
BY many measurements, this summer’s drought is one for the record books. But so was last year’s drought in the South Central states. And it has been only a decade since an extreme five-year drought hit the American West. Widespread annual droughts, once a rare calamity, have become more frequent and are set to become the “new normal.”
Until recently, many scientists spoke of climate change mainly as a “threat,” sometime in the future. But it is increasingly clear that we already live in the era of human-induced climate change, with a growing frequency of weather and climate extremes like heat waves, droughts, floods and fires.
Future precipitation trends, based on climate model projections for the coming fifth assessment from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, indicate that droughts of this length and severity will be commonplace through the end of the century unless human-induced carbon emissions are significantly reduced. Indeed, assuming business as usual, each of the next 80 years in the American West is expected to see less rainfall than the average of the five years of the drought that hit the region from 2000 to 2004.
That extreme drought (which we have analyzed in a new study in the journal Nature-Geoscience) had profound consequences for carbon sequestration, agricultural productivity and water resources: plants, for example, took in only half the carbon dioxide they do normally, thanks to a drought-induced drop in photosynthesis.
In the drought’s worst year, Western crop yields were down by 13 percent, with many local cases of complete crop failure. Major river basins showed 5 percent to 50 percent reductions in flow. These reductions persisted up to three years after the drought ended, because the lakes and reservoirs that feed them needed several years of average rainfall to return to predrought levels.
In terms of severity and geographic extent, the 2000-4 drought in the West exceeded such legendary events as the Dust Bowl of the 1930s. While that drought saw intervening years of normal rainfall, the years of the turn-of-the-century drought were consecutive. More seriously still, long-term climate records from tree-ring chronologies show that this drought was the most severe event of its kind in the western United States in the past 800 years. Though there have been many extreme droughts over the last 1,200 years, only three other events have been of similar magnitude, all during periods of “megadroughts.”
Most frightening is that this extreme event could become the new normal: climate models point to a warmer planet, largely because of greenhouse gas emissions. Planetary warming, in turn, is expected to create drier conditions across western North America, because of the way global-wind and atmospheric-pressure patterns shift in response.
Indeed, scientists see signs of the relationship between warming and drought in western North America by analyzing trends over the last 100 years; evidence suggests that the more frequent drought and low precipitation events observed for the West during the 20th century are associated with increasing temperatures across the Northern Hemisphere.
These climate-model projections suggest that what we consider today to be an episode of severe drought might even be classified as a period of abnormal wetness by the end of the century and that a coming megadrought — a prolonged, multidecade period of significantly below-average precipitation — is possible and likely in the American West.
The current drought plaguing the country is worryingly consistent with these expectations. Although we do not attribute any single event to global warming, the severity of both the turn-of-the-century drought and the current one is consistent with simulations accounting for warming from increased greenhouse gases. The Northern Hemisphere has just recorded its 327th consecutive month in which the temperature exceeded the 20th-century average. This year had the fourth-warmest winter on record, with record-shattering high temperatures in March. And 2012 has already seen huge wildfires in Colorado and other Western states. More than 3,200 heat records were broken in June alone.
And yet that may be only the beginning, a fact that should force us to confront the likelihood of new and painful challenges. A megadrought would present a major risk to water resources in the American West, which are distributed through a complex series of local, state and regional water-sharing agreements and laws. Virtually every drop of water flowing in the American West is legally claimed, sometimes by several users, and the demand is expected to increase as the population grows.
Many Western cities will have to fundamentally change how they acquire and use water. The sort of temporary emergency steps that we grudgingly adopt during periods of low rainfall — fewer showers, lawn-watering bans — will become permanent. Some regions will become impossible to farm because of lack of irrigation water. Thermoelectric energy production will compete for limited water resources.
There is still time to prevent the worst; the risk of a multidecade megadrought in the American West can be reduced if we reduce fossil-fuel emissions. But there can be little doubt that what was once thought to be a future threat is suddenly, catastrophically upon us.
Christopher R. Schwalm is a research assistant professor of earth sciences at Northern Arizona University. Christopher A. Williams is anassistant professor of geography at Clark University. Kevin Schaefer is a research scientist at the National Snow and Ice Data Center.
_______________________________
This article is for your personal use, only
Source: The New York Times
July 8, 2012
By ARTHUR C. BROOKS
Why Conservatives Are Happier Than Liberals
GCG's comment: This article shows the two important ground level reasons for Happiness: (1) a lasting, strong marriage, possible with children, and (2) a strong religious faith. In case you are interested in finding a good source for marriage & family guidance, based on the most modern science, our affiliate not-for-profit organization, Save The American Family - STAF, Inc., headquartered in New York City with nationwide & worldwide access to its services, go to their extensive, beautiful website www.staf1org.weebly.com.
STAF, Inc. is the leading specialist in all life success & happiness topics. Their specialists, known internationally, will strengthen your marriage, your family happiness, and your children's safe & successful future. In STAF, Inc.'s website go to tab: "services" and there "RAM- Restoring Any Marriage"™ and: apply the information.
Quotation "Knowledge is no power - only applied knowledge is power" (Dr. Christian, GCG, Pastor)
WHO is happier about life — liberals or conservatives?
The answer might seem straightforward. After all, there is an entire academic literature in the social sciences dedicated to showing conservatives as naturally authoritarian, dogmatic, intolerant of ambiguity, fearful of threat and loss, low in self-esteem and uncomfortable with complex modes of thinking. And it was the candidate Barack Obama in 2008 who infamously labeled blue-collar voters “bitter,” as they “cling to guns or religion.” Obviously, liberals must be happier, right?
Wrong. Scholars on both the left and right have studied this question extensively, and have reached a consensus that it is conservatives who possess the happiness edge. Many data sets show this. For example, the Pew Research Center in 2006 reported that conservative Republicans were 68 percent more likely than liberal Democrats to say they were “very happy” about their lives. This pattern has persisted for decades. The question isn’t whether this is true, but why.
Many conservatives favor an explanation focusing on lifestyle differences, such as marriage and faith. They note that most conservatives are married; most liberals are not. (The percentages are 53 percent to 33 percent, according to my calculations using data from the 2004 General Social Survey, and almost none of the gap is due to the fact that liberals tend to be younger than conservatives.) Marriage and happiness go together. If two people are demographically the same but one is married and the other is not, the married person will be 18 percentage points more likely to say he or she is very happy than the unmarried person.
The story on religion is much the same. According to the Social Capital Community Benchmark Survey, conservatives who practice a faith outnumber religious liberals in America nearly four to one. And the link to happiness? You guessed it. Religious participants are nearly twice as likely to say they are very happy about their lives as are secularists (43 percent to 23 percent). The differences don’t depend on education, race, sex or age; the happiness difference exists even when you account for income.
Whether religion and marriage should make people happy is a question you have to answer for yourself. But consider this: Fifty-two percent of married, religious, politically conservative people (with kids) are very happy — versus only 14 percent of single, secular, liberal people without kids.
An explanation for the happiness gap more congenial to liberals is that conservatives are simply inattentive to the misery of others. If they recognized the injustice in the world, they wouldn’t be so cheerful. In the words of Jaime Napier and John Jost, New York University psychologists, in the journal Psychological Science, “Liberals may be less happy than conservatives because they are less ideologically prepared to rationalize (or explain away) the degree of inequality in society.” The academic parlance for this is “system justification.”
The data show that conservatives do indeed see the free enterprise system in a sunnier light than liberals do, believing in each American’s ability to get ahead on the basis of achievement. Liberals are more likely to see people as victims of circumstance and oppression, and doubt whether individuals can climb without governmental help. My own analysis using 2005 survey data from Syracuse University shows that about 90 percent of conservatives agree that “While people may begin with different opportunities, hard work and perseverance can usually overcome those disadvantages.” Liberals — even upper-income liberals — are a third less likely to say this.
So conservatives are ignorant, and ignorance is bliss, right? Not so fast, according to a study from the University of Florida psychologists Barry Schlenker and John Chambers and the University of Toronto psychologist Bonnie Le in the Journal of Research in Personality. These scholars note that liberals define fairness and an improved society in terms of greater economic equality. Liberals then condemn the happiness of conservatives, because conservatives are relatively untroubled by a problem that, it turns out, their political counterparts defined.
Imagine the opposite. Say liberals were the happy ones. Conservatives might charge that it is only because liberals are unperturbed by the social welfare state’s monstrous threat to economic liberty. Liberals would justifiably dismiss this argument as solipsistic and silly.
There is one other noteworthy political happiness gap that has gotten less scholarly attention than conservatives versus liberals: moderates versus extremists.
Political moderates must be happier than extremists, it always seemed to me. After all, extremists actually advertise their misery with strident bumper stickers that say things like, “If you’re not outraged, you’re not paying attention!”
But it turns out that’s wrong. People at the extremes are happier than political moderates. Correcting for income, education, age, race, family situation and religion, the happiest Americans are those who say they are either “extremely conservative” (48 percent very happy) or “extremely liberal” (35 percent). Everyone else is less happy, with the nadir at dead-center “moderate” (26 percent).
What explains this odd pattern? One possibility is that extremists have the whole world figured out, and sorted into good guys and bad guys. They have the security of knowing what’s wrong, and whom to fight. They are the happy warriors.
Whatever the explanation, the implications are striking. The Occupy Wall Street protesters may have looked like a miserable mess. In truth, they were probably happier than the moderates making fun of them from the offices above. And none, it seems, are happier than the Tea Partiers, many of whom cling to guns and faith with great tenacity. Which some moderately liberal readers of this newspaper might find quite depressing.
Arthur C. Brooks is the president of the American Enterprise Institute and the author of “The Road to Freedom” and “Gross National Happiness.”
___________________________
Source: The New York Times
July 8, 2012
By ARTHUR C. BROOKS
Why Conservatives Are Happier Than Liberals
GCG's comment: This article shows the two important ground level reasons for Happiness: (1) a lasting, strong marriage, possible with children, and (2) a strong religious faith. In case you are interested in finding a good source for marriage & family guidance, based on the most modern science, our affiliate not-for-profit organization, Save The American Family - STAF, Inc., headquartered in New York City with nationwide & worldwide access to its services, go to their extensive, beautiful website www.staf1org.weebly.com.
STAF, Inc. is the leading specialist in all life success & happiness topics. Their specialists, known internationally, will strengthen your marriage, your family happiness, and your children's safe & successful future. In STAF, Inc.'s website go to tab: "services" and there "RAM- Restoring Any Marriage"™ and: apply the information.
Quotation "Knowledge is no power - only applied knowledge is power" (Dr. Christian, GCG, Pastor)
WHO is happier about life — liberals or conservatives?
The answer might seem straightforward. After all, there is an entire academic literature in the social sciences dedicated to showing conservatives as naturally authoritarian, dogmatic, intolerant of ambiguity, fearful of threat and loss, low in self-esteem and uncomfortable with complex modes of thinking. And it was the candidate Barack Obama in 2008 who infamously labeled blue-collar voters “bitter,” as they “cling to guns or religion.” Obviously, liberals must be happier, right?
Wrong. Scholars on both the left and right have studied this question extensively, and have reached a consensus that it is conservatives who possess the happiness edge. Many data sets show this. For example, the Pew Research Center in 2006 reported that conservative Republicans were 68 percent more likely than liberal Democrats to say they were “very happy” about their lives. This pattern has persisted for decades. The question isn’t whether this is true, but why.
Many conservatives favor an explanation focusing on lifestyle differences, such as marriage and faith. They note that most conservatives are married; most liberals are not. (The percentages are 53 percent to 33 percent, according to my calculations using data from the 2004 General Social Survey, and almost none of the gap is due to the fact that liberals tend to be younger than conservatives.) Marriage and happiness go together. If two people are demographically the same but one is married and the other is not, the married person will be 18 percentage points more likely to say he or she is very happy than the unmarried person.
The story on religion is much the same. According to the Social Capital Community Benchmark Survey, conservatives who practice a faith outnumber religious liberals in America nearly four to one. And the link to happiness? You guessed it. Religious participants are nearly twice as likely to say they are very happy about their lives as are secularists (43 percent to 23 percent). The differences don’t depend on education, race, sex or age; the happiness difference exists even when you account for income.
Whether religion and marriage should make people happy is a question you have to answer for yourself. But consider this: Fifty-two percent of married, religious, politically conservative people (with kids) are very happy — versus only 14 percent of single, secular, liberal people without kids.
An explanation for the happiness gap more congenial to liberals is that conservatives are simply inattentive to the misery of others. If they recognized the injustice in the world, they wouldn’t be so cheerful. In the words of Jaime Napier and John Jost, New York University psychologists, in the journal Psychological Science, “Liberals may be less happy than conservatives because they are less ideologically prepared to rationalize (or explain away) the degree of inequality in society.” The academic parlance for this is “system justification.”
The data show that conservatives do indeed see the free enterprise system in a sunnier light than liberals do, believing in each American’s ability to get ahead on the basis of achievement. Liberals are more likely to see people as victims of circumstance and oppression, and doubt whether individuals can climb without governmental help. My own analysis using 2005 survey data from Syracuse University shows that about 90 percent of conservatives agree that “While people may begin with different opportunities, hard work and perseverance can usually overcome those disadvantages.” Liberals — even upper-income liberals — are a third less likely to say this.
So conservatives are ignorant, and ignorance is bliss, right? Not so fast, according to a study from the University of Florida psychologists Barry Schlenker and John Chambers and the University of Toronto psychologist Bonnie Le in the Journal of Research in Personality. These scholars note that liberals define fairness and an improved society in terms of greater economic equality. Liberals then condemn the happiness of conservatives, because conservatives are relatively untroubled by a problem that, it turns out, their political counterparts defined.
Imagine the opposite. Say liberals were the happy ones. Conservatives might charge that it is only because liberals are unperturbed by the social welfare state’s monstrous threat to economic liberty. Liberals would justifiably dismiss this argument as solipsistic and silly.
There is one other noteworthy political happiness gap that has gotten less scholarly attention than conservatives versus liberals: moderates versus extremists.
Political moderates must be happier than extremists, it always seemed to me. After all, extremists actually advertise their misery with strident bumper stickers that say things like, “If you’re not outraged, you’re not paying attention!”
But it turns out that’s wrong. People at the extremes are happier than political moderates. Correcting for income, education, age, race, family situation and religion, the happiest Americans are those who say they are either “extremely conservative” (48 percent very happy) or “extremely liberal” (35 percent). Everyone else is less happy, with the nadir at dead-center “moderate” (26 percent).
What explains this odd pattern? One possibility is that extremists have the whole world figured out, and sorted into good guys and bad guys. They have the security of knowing what’s wrong, and whom to fight. They are the happy warriors.
Whatever the explanation, the implications are striking. The Occupy Wall Street protesters may have looked like a miserable mess. In truth, they were probably happier than the moderates making fun of them from the offices above. And none, it seems, are happier than the Tea Partiers, many of whom cling to guns and faith with great tenacity. Which some moderately liberal readers of this newspaper might find quite depressing.
Arthur C. Brooks is the president of the American Enterprise Institute and the author of “The Road to Freedom” and “Gross National Happiness.”
___________________________
Insight - Neuroscience in court: My brain made me do it
GCG: Perhaps it is the Devil ?
By Kate Kelland, Health and Science Correspondent | Reuters LONDON (Reuters)
He was once a respected pediatrician, loved by patients and their parents for over 30 years. Now Domenico Mattiello faces trial for pedophilia, accused of making sexual advances towards little girls in his care.
Scientific experts will argue in court that his damaged brain made him do it, and his lawyers will ask for leniency.
It's the latest example of how neuroscience - the science of the brain and how it works - is taking the stand and beginning to challenge society's notions of crime and punishment.
The issue has been thrown into the spotlight by new technologies, like structural and functional magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), positron emission tomography (PET) scans and DNA analysis, that can help pinpoint the biological basis of mental disorders.
A series of recent studies has established that psychopathic rapists and murderers have distinct brain structures that show up when their heads are scanned using MRI.
And in the United States, two companies, one called No Lie MRI and another called Cephos Corp, are advertising lie-detection services using fMRI to lawyers and prosecutors.
CRIME AND PUNISHMENT
While structural MRI scans show the structure of a brain and can highlight differences between one brain and another, PET and fMRI scans can also show the brain in action, lighting up at particular points when the brain engages in certain tasks.
But the dazzling new technologies and detailed genetic data leave unanswered the issue of whether criminal courts are the right place to use this new information.
"The worry is that the law, or at least some judges, might be so overawed by the technology that they start essentially delegating the decision about guilt to a particular form of test," says Colin Blakemore, a professor of neuroscience at Oxford University.
The lawyers for American serial killer Brian Dugan, who was facing execution in Illinois after pleading guilty to raping and killing a 10-year-old girl, used scans of his brain activity to argue he had mental malfunctions and should be spared the death penalty. In the event, Illinois abolished capital punishment while he was on death row.
In a court in the Indian city of Mumbai, a woman was convicted of murder based only oncircumstantial evidence and a so-called brain electrical oscillations signature profiling (BEOS) test, the results of which prosecutors said suggested she was guilty.
The days when mental capacity for crime is argued over by psychiatrists unaided by sophisticated machinery - such as Friday's verdict that Norwegian mass killer Anders Behring Breivik was sane when he killed 77 people - look numbered.
"All sorts of types of neuroscience evidence are being used for all sorts of types of claims," says Teneille Brown, a professor of law at the University of Utah. "The question is, is this technology really ready for prime time, or is it being abused?"
"ACQUIRED PAEDOPHILIA"
In Mattiello's case, the neuroscientific evidence will come in the form of a full psychiatric and biological analysis including an MRI brain scan that shows a roughly 4 centimeter tumor growing at the base of his brain.
This created pressure inside his skull and "altered his behavior", says Pietro Pietrini, a molecular geneticist and psychiatrist at Italy's University of Pisa who is compiling an expert report on the 65-year-old.
"His previous behavior was completely normal," Pietrini told Reuters. "He was a pediatrician for 30 something years and he saw tens of thousands of children and never had any problem. The question is why, at some point, did someone who has always behaved properly suddenly change so drastically?"
The doctor was arrested in Vicenza, northern Italy, more than a year ago and is undergoing cancer treatment after having the tumor removed. Pietrini is due to see him again next month to continue his assessment and see the effects of the treatment.
The case, which has yet go to court, is strikingly similar to another of "acquired pedophilia" dating back to 2002, in which a 40-year-old married American schoolteacher suddenly became obsessed with sex and began secretly to collect child pornography.
He was eventually removed from the family home for making sexual advances towards his step-daughter and convicted of pedophilia. But later medical examinations found he had an egg-sized tumor in a part of the brain involved in decision-making.
When the tumor was removed, the man recovered from his pedophilic tendencies and was able to return to his family.
Experts are generally agreed that conditions like psychopathy and pedophilia can't be "cured", but in this groundbreaking case it appeared that removing the tumor, and hence the pressure in the brain, may have re-established his ability to control impulses.
As in that case, Pietrini said he and colleague Giuseppe Sartori of Padua University believed Mattiello's tumor "may well have played a role in altering his behavior".
"This is what we will be arguing," Pietrini said. "But of course it will be for the judge to determine to what extent he believes this medical condition played a role."
Oxford's Blakemore, one of the world's leading thinkers in this field, says such cases are "startling".
"It makes one wonder about the notion of responsibility," he said in an interview.
IS "MY BRAIN MADE ME DO IT" A DEFENCE?
And when it comes to prison, should pedophiles, psychopaths and other violent criminals be punished less severely if their behavior can be blamed on biology? Is "my brain made me do it" a defense that warrants recognition with lighter sentences, or even no jail time at all?
"(It) raises the whole issue of what you think sentencing is for," says Blakemore. "Is it about punishment? Is it about retribution? Is it about remediation and rehabilitation? Is it about protecting society? Well, to some extent it's about all of those things."
Recent evidence - from both real and hypothetical cases - suggests judges are sympathetic to neurobiological evidence as mitigation.
A study published in the journal Science this month showed that criminal psychopaths in the United States whose lawyers provide biological evidence for their brain condition are more likely to be sentenced to shorter jail terms than those who are simply said to be psychopaths.
For the study, researchers at the University of Utah tweaked the real-life case of Stephen Mobley, a 39-year-old American who was sentenced to death in 1994 after robbing a Domino's pizza place in Georgia and shooting dead the restaurant's manager.
At his trial, Mobley's lawyer presented evidence in mitigation showing the accused had a variant of a gene called MAO-A that has been dubbed the "warrior" gene after scientists found it was linked to violent behavior.
AGGRESSIVE GENES
In the Science study, judges were given a hypothetical case loosely based on Mobley's, where the crime was a savage beating with a gun, rather than a fatal shooting.
All the judges were told the defendant was a psychopath, but only half were given expert testimony on the genetic and neurobiological causes of his psychopathy. Those who got the neuroscientific evidence were more likely to give a shorter sentence - generally about a year less, the study found.
Pietrini worked on a similar real-life case in Italy in 2009 - thought to be one of the first criminal cases in Europe to use this type of neuroscientific evidence.
It involved Abdelmalek Bayout, an Algerian living in Italy, who was tried and convicted for fatally stabbing a man who teased him in the street.
After conducting a series of tests on the Algerian, Pietrini and colleagues said they had found abnormalities in imaging scans of his brain, and in five genes that have been linked to violent behavior — including MAO-A.
A 2002 study led by researchers at the Institute of Psychiatry at King's College London linked low levels of MAO-A with aggressiveness and criminal behavior in boys who were raised in abusive environments.
Bayout's lawyers got his sentence reduced by arguing that this and other bad genes had affected his brain and were partly to blame for the attack.
WHERE WILL IT END?
Experts say it's almost inevitable that neuroscience and law will become yet more intertwined. After all, while neuroscience seeks to find out how the brain functions and affects behavior, the law's main concern is with regulating behavior.
Yet many are uneasy about the use in courts of law - and in matters of life and death - of basic science that is only just creeping out of the lab.
Observers such as Hank Greely, a professor of law at Stanford University, point out that no scientific peer-reviewed studies have been published demonstrating that BEOS - the brain test used in the Mumbai case - actually works.
Others stress that while genes like MAO-A have been associated with violence, there are also plenty of people with similar genotypes who don't go out and kill, rape or abuse.
"Neuroscience is being used by serious scientists in real labs, but the people trying to apply it in courts are not those same people," says Utah's Brown. "So they're taking something that looks very objective, that looks like gold standard science, but then morphing it into a forensic use it wasn't developed for.
"This isn't snake-oil science. It's real science. But it's being misapplied."
Seena Fazel, a clinical senior lecturer in forensic psychiatry at Oxford University, says he's uncomfortable with the long-term implications and wonders where it will end.
There are already known biological bases for many brain disorders criminals suffer from, including drug addiction, alcoholism and antisocial personality disorder, which is thought to affect up to half of all those in prison.
"If psychopathy reduces your sentence because it has a biological basis, why shouldn't these other more common conditions also result in reduced sentences? The problem here is where do we draw the line?"
(Reporting by Kate Kelland, editing by David Stamp and Will Waterman)
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GCG: Perhaps it is the Devil ?
By Kate Kelland, Health and Science Correspondent | Reuters LONDON (Reuters)
He was once a respected pediatrician, loved by patients and their parents for over 30 years. Now Domenico Mattiello faces trial for pedophilia, accused of making sexual advances towards little girls in his care.
Scientific experts will argue in court that his damaged brain made him do it, and his lawyers will ask for leniency.
It's the latest example of how neuroscience - the science of the brain and how it works - is taking the stand and beginning to challenge society's notions of crime and punishment.
The issue has been thrown into the spotlight by new technologies, like structural and functional magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), positron emission tomography (PET) scans and DNA analysis, that can help pinpoint the biological basis of mental disorders.
A series of recent studies has established that psychopathic rapists and murderers have distinct brain structures that show up when their heads are scanned using MRI.
And in the United States, two companies, one called No Lie MRI and another called Cephos Corp, are advertising lie-detection services using fMRI to lawyers and prosecutors.
CRIME AND PUNISHMENT
While structural MRI scans show the structure of a brain and can highlight differences between one brain and another, PET and fMRI scans can also show the brain in action, lighting up at particular points when the brain engages in certain tasks.
But the dazzling new technologies and detailed genetic data leave unanswered the issue of whether criminal courts are the right place to use this new information.
"The worry is that the law, or at least some judges, might be so overawed by the technology that they start essentially delegating the decision about guilt to a particular form of test," says Colin Blakemore, a professor of neuroscience at Oxford University.
The lawyers for American serial killer Brian Dugan, who was facing execution in Illinois after pleading guilty to raping and killing a 10-year-old girl, used scans of his brain activity to argue he had mental malfunctions and should be spared the death penalty. In the event, Illinois abolished capital punishment while he was on death row.
In a court in the Indian city of Mumbai, a woman was convicted of murder based only oncircumstantial evidence and a so-called brain electrical oscillations signature profiling (BEOS) test, the results of which prosecutors said suggested she was guilty.
The days when mental capacity for crime is argued over by psychiatrists unaided by sophisticated machinery - such as Friday's verdict that Norwegian mass killer Anders Behring Breivik was sane when he killed 77 people - look numbered.
"All sorts of types of neuroscience evidence are being used for all sorts of types of claims," says Teneille Brown, a professor of law at the University of Utah. "The question is, is this technology really ready for prime time, or is it being abused?"
"ACQUIRED PAEDOPHILIA"
In Mattiello's case, the neuroscientific evidence will come in the form of a full psychiatric and biological analysis including an MRI brain scan that shows a roughly 4 centimeter tumor growing at the base of his brain.
This created pressure inside his skull and "altered his behavior", says Pietro Pietrini, a molecular geneticist and psychiatrist at Italy's University of Pisa who is compiling an expert report on the 65-year-old.
"His previous behavior was completely normal," Pietrini told Reuters. "He was a pediatrician for 30 something years and he saw tens of thousands of children and never had any problem. The question is why, at some point, did someone who has always behaved properly suddenly change so drastically?"
The doctor was arrested in Vicenza, northern Italy, more than a year ago and is undergoing cancer treatment after having the tumor removed. Pietrini is due to see him again next month to continue his assessment and see the effects of the treatment.
The case, which has yet go to court, is strikingly similar to another of "acquired pedophilia" dating back to 2002, in which a 40-year-old married American schoolteacher suddenly became obsessed with sex and began secretly to collect child pornography.
He was eventually removed from the family home for making sexual advances towards his step-daughter and convicted of pedophilia. But later medical examinations found he had an egg-sized tumor in a part of the brain involved in decision-making.
When the tumor was removed, the man recovered from his pedophilic tendencies and was able to return to his family.
Experts are generally agreed that conditions like psychopathy and pedophilia can't be "cured", but in this groundbreaking case it appeared that removing the tumor, and hence the pressure in the brain, may have re-established his ability to control impulses.
As in that case, Pietrini said he and colleague Giuseppe Sartori of Padua University believed Mattiello's tumor "may well have played a role in altering his behavior".
"This is what we will be arguing," Pietrini said. "But of course it will be for the judge to determine to what extent he believes this medical condition played a role."
Oxford's Blakemore, one of the world's leading thinkers in this field, says such cases are "startling".
"It makes one wonder about the notion of responsibility," he said in an interview.
IS "MY BRAIN MADE ME DO IT" A DEFENCE?
And when it comes to prison, should pedophiles, psychopaths and other violent criminals be punished less severely if their behavior can be blamed on biology? Is "my brain made me do it" a defense that warrants recognition with lighter sentences, or even no jail time at all?
"(It) raises the whole issue of what you think sentencing is for," says Blakemore. "Is it about punishment? Is it about retribution? Is it about remediation and rehabilitation? Is it about protecting society? Well, to some extent it's about all of those things."
Recent evidence - from both real and hypothetical cases - suggests judges are sympathetic to neurobiological evidence as mitigation.
A study published in the journal Science this month showed that criminal psychopaths in the United States whose lawyers provide biological evidence for their brain condition are more likely to be sentenced to shorter jail terms than those who are simply said to be psychopaths.
For the study, researchers at the University of Utah tweaked the real-life case of Stephen Mobley, a 39-year-old American who was sentenced to death in 1994 after robbing a Domino's pizza place in Georgia and shooting dead the restaurant's manager.
At his trial, Mobley's lawyer presented evidence in mitigation showing the accused had a variant of a gene called MAO-A that has been dubbed the "warrior" gene after scientists found it was linked to violent behavior.
AGGRESSIVE GENES
In the Science study, judges were given a hypothetical case loosely based on Mobley's, where the crime was a savage beating with a gun, rather than a fatal shooting.
All the judges were told the defendant was a psychopath, but only half were given expert testimony on the genetic and neurobiological causes of his psychopathy. Those who got the neuroscientific evidence were more likely to give a shorter sentence - generally about a year less, the study found.
Pietrini worked on a similar real-life case in Italy in 2009 - thought to be one of the first criminal cases in Europe to use this type of neuroscientific evidence.
It involved Abdelmalek Bayout, an Algerian living in Italy, who was tried and convicted for fatally stabbing a man who teased him in the street.
After conducting a series of tests on the Algerian, Pietrini and colleagues said they had found abnormalities in imaging scans of his brain, and in five genes that have been linked to violent behavior — including MAO-A.
A 2002 study led by researchers at the Institute of Psychiatry at King's College London linked low levels of MAO-A with aggressiveness and criminal behavior in boys who were raised in abusive environments.
Bayout's lawyers got his sentence reduced by arguing that this and other bad genes had affected his brain and were partly to blame for the attack.
WHERE WILL IT END?
Experts say it's almost inevitable that neuroscience and law will become yet more intertwined. After all, while neuroscience seeks to find out how the brain functions and affects behavior, the law's main concern is with regulating behavior.
Yet many are uneasy about the use in courts of law - and in matters of life and death - of basic science that is only just creeping out of the lab.
Observers such as Hank Greely, a professor of law at Stanford University, point out that no scientific peer-reviewed studies have been published demonstrating that BEOS - the brain test used in the Mumbai case - actually works.
Others stress that while genes like MAO-A have been associated with violence, there are also plenty of people with similar genotypes who don't go out and kill, rape or abuse.
"Neuroscience is being used by serious scientists in real labs, but the people trying to apply it in courts are not those same people," says Utah's Brown. "So they're taking something that looks very objective, that looks like gold standard science, but then morphing it into a forensic use it wasn't developed for.
"This isn't snake-oil science. It's real science. But it's being misapplied."
Seena Fazel, a clinical senior lecturer in forensic psychiatry at Oxford University, says he's uncomfortable with the long-term implications and wonders where it will end.
There are already known biological bases for many brain disorders criminals suffer from, including drug addiction, alcoholism and antisocial personality disorder, which is thought to affect up to half of all those in prison.
"If psychopathy reduces your sentence because it has a biological basis, why shouldn't these other more common conditions also result in reduced sentences? The problem here is where do we draw the line?"
(Reporting by Kate Kelland, editing by David Stamp and Will Waterman)
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Eloquent Youth Wins Toastmasters Title
By Shar Adams On August 21, 2012 - In National News
Finalists at the Toastmasters World Championship of Public Speaking (L to R): second-place winner Palaniappa Subramaniam, first-place winner Ryan Avery, and third-place winner Stuart Pink. (Toastmasters)
It is hardly surprising that an American won this year’s Toastmasters World Championship of Public Speaking—Americans make up nearly three-quarters of the roughly 280,000 Toastmaster members worldwide.
The winner this year, however, was the youngest person to win the championship in the contest’s history. Twenty-five-year-old Ryan Avery from Portland, Ore., took away top honors in a grueling six-month contest.
Avery out spoke 30,000 participants from 116 countries, including eight other finalists at the championship event in Florida on Aug. 15–18.
A member of Gen Y, the generation born after the ’70s who grew up communicating electronically, text messaging, emailing, twittering, and uploading to Facebook to make a point, Avery believes the win is significant for his age group.
“I am part of the ‘like’ generation where I used to say ‘like’ every other word,” he told The Epoch Times by phone.
He says it was not nerves that drove him to take up Toastmasters.
It was not until he saw a video of himself, recorded as part of his job, that he realized he had the Gen Y affliction of communicating badly and using fillers every couple of words, which he now describes as “extremely distracting.”
“I showed it to my Dad and he said, ‘Man you need to join Toastmasters,’” Avery explained, a move for which his Dad stumped up the first six months and now reckons it was the best $50 he has ever spent.
There are fears that Gen Y is losing the ability to communicate face to face, Avery said, describing the sorts of comments that are made about his generation: “Hey, pull out a handwritten letter and write a thank you note, or communicate without saying ‘you know’ every five words!”
As director of Marketing for the Special Olympics in Oregon, Avery took up the challenge to win the international competition, not only to upgrade communication skills for his job but also to make a point about his peers.
“I am part of the ‘like’ generation where I used to say ‘like’ every other word.”-Ryan Avery, 2012 Toastmasters world champion public speaker
“I wanted to make sure that I was representing Special Olympics in an eloquent and professional way, and I also wanted to position myself as a younger professional employee, to show people that my generation is looking to improve,” he said.
“We are going to be the next political leaders, lawyers, and doctors and teachers, so I wanted to be a type of representative or ambassador for that.”
Trust Is ImportantGen Y, as much as they are disparaged for being overconfident and opportunistic, are a values-based, well connected, and loyal generation, says Australian social commentator Hugh Mackay who has conducted extensive research on the age group.
In keeping with that assessment, Avery won the event with a seven-minute speech, titled “Trust is a Must,” about the importance of keeping one’s promises.
“A promise is only as good as the person who gives it,” he asserts in his winning speech, which took the audience through a series of humorous but heartfelt life lessons.
According Dr. Michael Telch, an anxiety specialist at the University of Texas, fear of public speaking is the most common phobia in the United States.
Toastmasters, a world leader in communication and leadership development, began in California in 1924 and now has 13,500 clubs around the world. Asia constitutes 16.6 percent of the membership, Australia and Oceania 6.4 percent, and Europe 4.9 percent.
Avery’s win marks a generational shift for the nonprofit educational and mentoring institution whose average age, according to its website, is 45.8 years.
His win also marks an awakening for the verbally challenged Gen Y, said Avery, who expects to see an explosion in numbers of Gen Y joining Toastmasters in the coming years.
He speaks highly of his experience at Toastmasters, its wealth of training materials, the many years’ experience in leadership and communication among members, and its tried and true method of appointing a mentor for each new member, providing an accessible and much needed service.
“The reason why I was the world champion this year is because I found myself with the best communicators who were phenomenal,” he said, noting that his mentor was a past world champion public speaker.
Related Articles
Along with the expertise and wisdom inherent within the institution, Avery believes being part of a larger, supportive network like Toastmasters, albeit different to the Internet, will resonate with his peers.
“Our mission is to be supportive of each other,” he said, “That is one of our key words, ‘support,’ and when you walk into any Toastmaster club around the world, and I have walked into many, you get that same feeling of you are welcome,” he said.
The Epoch Times publishes in 35 countries and in 19 languages. Subscribe to our e-newsletter.
Source:By Shar Adams On August 21, 2012 In National News
This is for your private use, only
URL to article: http://www.theepochtimes.com/n2/united-states/youth-learning-to-communicate-the-old-way-282327.html
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By Shar Adams On August 21, 2012 - In National News
Finalists at the Toastmasters World Championship of Public Speaking (L to R): second-place winner Palaniappa Subramaniam, first-place winner Ryan Avery, and third-place winner Stuart Pink. (Toastmasters)
It is hardly surprising that an American won this year’s Toastmasters World Championship of Public Speaking—Americans make up nearly three-quarters of the roughly 280,000 Toastmaster members worldwide.
The winner this year, however, was the youngest person to win the championship in the contest’s history. Twenty-five-year-old Ryan Avery from Portland, Ore., took away top honors in a grueling six-month contest.
Avery out spoke 30,000 participants from 116 countries, including eight other finalists at the championship event in Florida on Aug. 15–18.
A member of Gen Y, the generation born after the ’70s who grew up communicating electronically, text messaging, emailing, twittering, and uploading to Facebook to make a point, Avery believes the win is significant for his age group.
“I am part of the ‘like’ generation where I used to say ‘like’ every other word,” he told The Epoch Times by phone.
He says it was not nerves that drove him to take up Toastmasters.
It was not until he saw a video of himself, recorded as part of his job, that he realized he had the Gen Y affliction of communicating badly and using fillers every couple of words, which he now describes as “extremely distracting.”
“I showed it to my Dad and he said, ‘Man you need to join Toastmasters,’” Avery explained, a move for which his Dad stumped up the first six months and now reckons it was the best $50 he has ever spent.
There are fears that Gen Y is losing the ability to communicate face to face, Avery said, describing the sorts of comments that are made about his generation: “Hey, pull out a handwritten letter and write a thank you note, or communicate without saying ‘you know’ every five words!”
As director of Marketing for the Special Olympics in Oregon, Avery took up the challenge to win the international competition, not only to upgrade communication skills for his job but also to make a point about his peers.
“I am part of the ‘like’ generation where I used to say ‘like’ every other word.”-Ryan Avery, 2012 Toastmasters world champion public speaker
“I wanted to make sure that I was representing Special Olympics in an eloquent and professional way, and I also wanted to position myself as a younger professional employee, to show people that my generation is looking to improve,” he said.
“We are going to be the next political leaders, lawyers, and doctors and teachers, so I wanted to be a type of representative or ambassador for that.”
Trust Is ImportantGen Y, as much as they are disparaged for being overconfident and opportunistic, are a values-based, well connected, and loyal generation, says Australian social commentator Hugh Mackay who has conducted extensive research on the age group.
In keeping with that assessment, Avery won the event with a seven-minute speech, titled “Trust is a Must,” about the importance of keeping one’s promises.
“A promise is only as good as the person who gives it,” he asserts in his winning speech, which took the audience through a series of humorous but heartfelt life lessons.
According Dr. Michael Telch, an anxiety specialist at the University of Texas, fear of public speaking is the most common phobia in the United States.
Toastmasters, a world leader in communication and leadership development, began in California in 1924 and now has 13,500 clubs around the world. Asia constitutes 16.6 percent of the membership, Australia and Oceania 6.4 percent, and Europe 4.9 percent.
Avery’s win marks a generational shift for the nonprofit educational and mentoring institution whose average age, according to its website, is 45.8 years.
His win also marks an awakening for the verbally challenged Gen Y, said Avery, who expects to see an explosion in numbers of Gen Y joining Toastmasters in the coming years.
He speaks highly of his experience at Toastmasters, its wealth of training materials, the many years’ experience in leadership and communication among members, and its tried and true method of appointing a mentor for each new member, providing an accessible and much needed service.
“The reason why I was the world champion this year is because I found myself with the best communicators who were phenomenal,” he said, noting that his mentor was a past world champion public speaker.
Related Articles
Along with the expertise and wisdom inherent within the institution, Avery believes being part of a larger, supportive network like Toastmasters, albeit different to the Internet, will resonate with his peers.
“Our mission is to be supportive of each other,” he said, “That is one of our key words, ‘support,’ and when you walk into any Toastmaster club around the world, and I have walked into many, you get that same feeling of you are welcome,” he said.
The Epoch Times publishes in 35 countries and in 19 languages. Subscribe to our e-newsletter.
Source:By Shar Adams On August 21, 2012 In National News
This is for your private use, only
URL to article: http://www.theepochtimes.com/n2/united-states/youth-learning-to-communicate-the-old-way-282327.html
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A Few Well-Chosen Words Pay the Fare for Some
THAT white-knuckled flier sitting across the aisle muttering anxiously may well have a case of fear of flying. But it may also be a case of fear of public speaking.
Consider that there are many thousands of corporate and professional meetings, trade shows, conventions, conferences and other events every year, and that the meetings business has been growing, domestically and internationally. And just about every one features a selection of public speakers. My guess is that most flights include at least one business traveler headed somewhere to give a speech of some kind.
“I never really thought of it that way, but obviously that’s the case,” said Peter V. Handal, the chief executive of Dale Carnegie Training, a company that provides training in communications and leadership skills.
Public speaking is, of course, a basic requirement in many jobs, from the pulpit to the front office. But it’s also a thriving business that provides employment, or extra income, to thousands of people from all parts of life who travel for speaking engagements that can pay from $1,500 or so to well over $200,000 just to talk for an hour or so.
Over $200,000 for a speech? Well, that’s about what Bill Clinton averaged per speaking engagement in 2011, when he made a total of $13.4 million for 54 paid speeches, according to a CNN analysis based on financial disclosure statements filed by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton.
Nor is Mr. Clinton alone in the top niche of highly paid speakers. Just among English speakers, the ranks of those who command $100,000 or more for a speech (plus first-class travel expenses) include Rudolph W. Giuliani, Sarah Palin, Oprah Winfrey, Alan Greenspan, Al Gore, Richard Branson and many others.
But there are many others, in multiple pay grades and in a vast range of specialties, who are all giving speeches. One indication that the demand is rising is in the job growth in the business of planning for meetings and trade shows. In 2010, 71,600 people were employed as meeting, convention and event planners in the United States. That number is “expected to grow 44 percent from 2010 to 2020, much faster than the average for all occupations,” according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
And while it is hard to imagine that Bill Clinton or Richard Branson ever experienced anxiety about talking, public speaking remains a source of at least some anxiety for many businesspeople.
“A lot of people really are afraid of public speaking,” Mr. Handal said.
As noted on the Web site of Toastmasters International, a nonprofit group that encourages the development of speaking skills at its 15,500 clubs around the world, “Believe it or not, your chances of dying of stage fright are extremely slim.”
On the other hand, even if you’re accustomed to public speaking, your chances of doing it more effectively are probably enhanced with training of the sort provided by Toastmasters and other organizations.
Mr. Handal said that the Dale Carnegie drills stressed gentle coaching. “We have somebody stand up in front of a group of people and give a two-minute talk, and they do it several times during the course of training.”
When I was younger, I was daunted by the prospect of giving a speech. Remember Jackie Gleason as the tongue-tied Ralph Kramden babbling “Homina, homina, homina” when he had to give a speech? That was what I feared I’d be, but after a few times at the lectern, I eventually got the hang of it. Familiarity is the key, as Mr. Handal said.
One curveball being thrown at public speakers, incidentally, comes from technology. At big events, the speaker’s image is often projected on giant video screens, allowing people to see quirks that once went largely unnoticed.
“If you’re all the way up on a stage in a room with 2,000 people, most people really can’t see the small inflections and changes in your facial expression,” Mr. Handal said. But with those giant screens, “suddenly they really can, which makes body language far more important than it ever was.”
He added: “One of the things we teach people is to smile more. I thought I was smiling, but after participating in one training session I reviewed the video with a coach, and I realized I looked like a sourpuss. There was a big disconnect between what I thought I was doing, and what I actually was doing on the video.”
Now, of course, if you’re one of those people getting $25,000, $50,000 or even $100,000-plus for a speech, not including your hotel suite and a first-class plane ticket, that is probably no longer an issue. You undoubtedly have a lot to smile about.
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DealBook: Wall Street Pay Remains High Even as Jobs Shrink Read More »
Source: NYT
October 9, 2012
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Door to Door in the Heartland, Preaching Healthy Living
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OKLAHOMA CITY — Like a missionary, Michael Bailey, a county health worker, spends his days driving his beat-up Nissan around this city’s poorest neighborhood, spreading the word in barber shops and convenience stores about the benefits of healthy diet and exercise. “Look at the kids,” he said. “Overweight, huffing and wheezing. Their lives will be miserable if this doesn’t change.”
Mr. Bailey believes that food is slowly killing his community here, and signing people up for a program to prevent heart disease is his way of saving souls.
Local governments across the country are creating dozens of such experiments with money from the Obama administration’s Affordable Care Act. It is part of a broad national effort set in motion by the law to nudge a health care system geared toward responding to illness to one that tries to stop people from getting sick in the first place. To that end, the law created the $10 billion Prevention and Public Health Fund, the largest-ever federal investment in community prevention.
Supporters say the effort is long overdue in an age where preventable disease is the single largest cause of death. Indeed, unhealthy behaviors, like smoking and poor diet, account for 40 percent of premature deaths in the United States, while poor health care and limited access to the health care system accounted for a tenth of such deaths, according to an analysis of federal data and mortality studies by J. Michael McGinnis, a senior scholar at the Institute of Medicine.
But critics say efforts to influence behavior will have only a modest effect without policy measures like taxes on soda and restrictions on marketing to children to change the food environment.
Oklahoma City, run by a Republican mayor, Mick Cornett, has with little notice won federal prevention money through the new law, a surprising source of financing in this deeply conservative Republican state. The governor, Mary Fallin, turned away $54 million in federal money to help prepare for the new law last year.
Republicans in Congress derided the prevention program as “a slush fund to build sidewalks, jungle gyms and swing sets,” but Mr. Cornett has embraced its approach, turning this city — labeled one of the fattest in America in 2007 by Men’s Fitness magazine — into a laboratory for healthy living. In recent years, he has transformed it with bike lanes, walking paths and an Olympic rowing complex. He started a drive called “This City Is Going on a Diet.” He even accepted an invitation from Michelle Obama, who has made childhoodobesity her signature cause, to attend the 2010 State of the Union address.
“We don’t believe in individual freedom to the extent of letting people make poor health decisions and just wither away without help,” Mr. Cornett said in an interview.
Many scientists doubt such programs actually work. Only a handful of the dozens of published studies on obesity interventions have produced results, and only when participants were intensively engaged, said Tom Baranowski, a professor of pediatrics at Baylor College of Medicine. “Sending newsletters and calling is not enough,” he said.
But some public health experts say that the kinds of things being tried under the law could help bring a cultural shift. The single biggest behavioral success of the last century — the dramatic reduction in the share of Americans who smoke — took 50 years of education, regulation and medical intervention. Likewise, only a mixture of approaches has a chance of eventually reducing rates of obesity, these experts say.
“Over time all of this effort builds up so people come to think about the problem and their own behavior in a different way,” said Bruce Link, a professor of epidemiology and sociology at the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University.
In Oklahoma City, county officials have focused on the least healthy ZIP code — 73111 — a sun-seared stretch of one-story bungalows, fast food restaurants and minimarts. Heart disease mortality rates are 10 times as high as in the healthiest neighborhood, which is next to one of the biggest medical complexes in the state, including a teaching hospital with a large share of charity care.
In addition to the heart program, which offers free medicine and checkups in exchange for taking a health class, the area is getting a new health complex with sports fields and walking trails, and a physical education coordinator for city schools. Public messages against sugary drinks are plastered on buses and benches. Health workers will identify the area’s highest-risk patients, connect them with doctors, and follow up with them after checkups, a measure Gary Cox, director of the county health department, said was designed to reduce emergency room visits.
Thousands of fliers for the heart program were mailed out last year, but there were few takers until Mr. Bailey, the health department worker, began persuading people to sign up in the spring. The area is nearly 90 percent black, with a history of racial tensions, and people are suspicious of government programs targeting them.
Terri Long, 51, a cashier at a grocery store, was among Mr. Bailey’s first takers. Without health insurance, she had no way of paying for doctor visits or medicine, and was grateful for the program. She had bypass surgery this winter and realized that unless she changed her habits, she might not live to see the last of her nine grandchildren “walk across the stage.” She says she lost 15 pounds by cutting out her favorite foods: chocolate doughnuts and pork rinds. But she doesn’t know anyone else who has signed up.
“They say, ‘When my time is up, it’s up,’ ” she said as she scanned soda and snacks at the checkout.
Mr. Bailey argues that poverty is a big barrier to prevention. Hand-to-mouth living and the short-term thinking that often goes with it means many people are shopping at gas station minimarts where junk food is the staple. Exhausted mothers may let their children fend for themselves in such stores with food stamp swipe cards.
“If you ask, ‘What would help your health the most?,’ people say, ‘More money,’ ” Mr. Bailey said.
Brandi Jones, the manager at A Family Affair, a soul food restaurant, disagreed.
“With more money, people will just buy more bad food,” she said. “At the end of the day, you’ve got a choice. It’s like drugs — you’ve got to say no.”
But that is hard when bad food is the easiest choice, and some public health experts say that no real progress on obesity is possible unless governments regulate junk food with measures like taxes on sugary drinks or prohibitions on marketing to children. New York City has experimented with such policies, but they have been slow to spread, in part because of lobbying by the food industry. In Oklahoma, even a ban on smoking in restaurants and bars has been elusive. “You have to change the drivers,” said Kelly Brownell, director of the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity at Yale University, “rather than count on people to resist them.”
Mr. Bailey believes he can help people do just that. He has lost 15 pounds himself since starting his current job. A recent health class he led was part group therapy, part nutrition lesson.
One participant, Tricia Woodward, 65, in a bright yellow dress, said she had given up beef and pork, but conceded that “chicken is holding on hard.” Kim Golson, 44, a driver for the post office who recently lost his left leg to diabetes, held himself up as a warning to the other overweight men. “What you see here is what you’re heading toward,” he said, pointing at his leg, fitted with a prosthetic.
Gwendolyn Wallace, a retiree who lost 12 pounds since the class, said she had been helped by a new walking trail near her house that she still had mostly to herself.
“I watched from my kitchen window as they built that track,” she said. “I thought, it’s a crying shame. I’m going to go out and walk that track. I don’t have an excuse. And you know what? It’s beautiful.”
MORE IN HEALTH (10 OF 31 ARTICLES)Ovarian Cancer Screenings Are Not Effective, Panel SaysRead More »
Source: NYT
By SABRINA TAVERNISE
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Early Music Lessons Have Longtime Benefits
Click the colored areas for further information
By PERRI KLASS, M.D.
When children learn to play a musical instrument, they strengthen a range of auditory skills. Recent studies suggest that these benefits extend all through life, at least for those who continue to be engaged with music.
But a study published last month is the first to show that music lessons in childhood may lead to changes in the brain that persist years after the lessons stop.
Researchers at Northwestern University recorded the auditory brainstem responses of college students - that is to say, their electrical brain waves - in response to complex sounds. The group of students who reported musical training in childhood had more robust responses - their brains were better able to pick out essential elements, like pitch, in the complex sounds when they were tested. And this was true even if the lessons had ended years ago.
Indeed, scientists are puzzling out the connections between musical training in childhood and language-based learning - for instance, reading. Learning to play an instrument may confer some unexpected benefits, recent studies suggest.
We aren't talking here about the "Mozart effect," the claim that listening to classical music can improve people's performance on tests. Instead, these are studies of the effects of active engagement and discipline. This kind of musical training improves the brain's ability to discern the components of sound - the pitch, the timing and the timbre.
"To learn to read, you need to have good working memory, the ability to disambiguate speech sounds, make sound-to-meaning connections," said Professor Nina Kraus, director of the Auditory Neuroscience Laboratory at Northwestern University. "Each one of these things really seems to be strengthened with active engagement in playing a musical instrument."
Skill in appreciating the subtle qualities of sound, even against a complicated and noisy background, turns out to be important not just for a child learning to understand speech and written language, but also for an elderly person struggling with hearing loss.
In a study of those who do keep playing, published this summer, researchers found that as musicians age, they experience the same decline in peripheral hearing, the functioning of the nerves in their ears, as nonmusicians. But older musicians preserve the brain functions, the central auditory processing skills that can help you understand speech against the background of a noisy environment.
"We often refer to the 'cocktail party' problem - or imagine going to a restaurant where a lot of people are talking," said Dr. Claude Alain, assistant director of the Rotman Research Institute in Toronto and one of the authors of the study. "The older adults who are musically trained perform better on speech in noise tests - it involves the brain rather than the peripheral hearing system."
Researchers at the University of California, San Francisco, are approaching the soundscape from a different point of view, studying thegenetics of absolute, or perfect, pitch, that ability to identify any tone. Dr. Jane Gitschier, a professor of medicine and pediatrics who directs the study there, and her colleagues are trying to tease out both the genetics and the effects of early training.
"The immediate question we've been trying to get to is what are the variants in people's genomes that could predispose an individual to have absolute pitch," she said. "The hypothesis, further, is that those variants will then manifest as absolute pitch with the input of early musical training."
Indeed, almost everyone who qualifies as having truly absolute pitch turns out to have had musical training in childhood (you can take the test and volunteer for the study at http://perfectpitch.ucsf.edu/study/).
Alexandra Parbery-Clark, a doctoral candidate in Dr. Kraus's lab and one of the authors of a paper published this year on auditory working memory and music, was originally trained as a concert pianist. Her desire to go back to graduate school and study the brain, she told me, grew out of teaching at a French school for musically talented children, and observing the ways that musical training affected other kinds of learning.
"If you get a kid who is maybe 3 or 4 years old and you're teaching them to attend, they're not only working on their auditory skills but also working on their attention skills and their memory skills - which can translate into scholastic learning," she said.
Now Ms. Parbery-Clark and her colleagues can look at recordings of the brain's electrical detection of sounds, and they can see the musically trained brains producing different - and stronger - responses. "Now I have more proof, tangible proof, music is really doing something," she told me. "One of my lab mates can look at the computer and say, 'Oh, you're recording from a musician!' "
Many of the researchers in this area are themselves musicians interested in the plasticity of the brain and the effects of musical education on brain waves, which mirror the stimulus sounds. "This is a response that actually reflects the acoustic elements of sound that we know carry meaning," Professor Kraus said.
There's a fascination - and even a certain heady delight - in learning what the brain can do, and in drawing out the many effects of the combination of stimulation, application, practice and auditory exercise that musical education provides. But the researchers all caution that there is no one best way to apply these findings.
Different instruments, different teaching methods, different regimens - families need to find what appeals to the individual child and what works for the family, since a big piece of this should be about pleasure and mastery. Children should enjoy themselves, and their lessons. Parents need to care about music, not slot it in as a therapeutic tool.
"We want music to be recognized for what it can be in a person's life, not necessarily, 'Oh, we want you to have better cognitive skills, so we're going to put you in music,' " Ms. Parbery-Clark said. "Music is great, music is fantastic, music is social - let them enjoy it for what it really is."
Click the green areas for further information
By PERRI KLASS, M.D.
Source:
NYT
____________________________________
.
Declaration of Internet Freedom
By: U.S. Congress Rep. Darrell Issa and Rep. Anna Eshoo
Source:
Politico Newspaper
September 18, 2012
The Internet is essential to life in the 21st century. The way we do business, communicate and live our lives now largely depends on being able to get online. Ensuring the freedom to access and use the Internet has become a bipartisan priority.
For the first time, both the Republican and Democratic parties included a discussion of Internet freedom in their official platforms.
“The Internet,” says the GOP platform, “has unleashed innovation, enabled growth, and inspired freedom more rapidly and extensively than any other technological advance in human history. Its independence is its power.”
The Democratic platform states: “President [Barack] Obama is strongly committed to protecting an open Internet that fosters investment, innovation, creativity, consumer choice and free speech, unfettered by censorship or undue violations or privacy.”
These party platform documents are not without their differences. Open, inclusive and robust debate is a good thing. But when it comes to Internet freedom, there is far more that unites us than separates us.
That is the reason we have both signed the Declaration of Internet Freedom — a landmark document drafted by Internet advocates of all political persuasions who have come together in support of five principles that transcend partisan politics.
The declaration reads:
We stand for a free and open Internet.
We support transparent and participatory processes for making Internet policy and the establishment of five basic principles:
• Expression: Don’t censor the Internet.
• Access: Promote universal access to fast and affordable networks.
• Openness: Keep the Internet an open network in which everyone is free to connect, communicate, write, read, watch, speak, listen, learn, create and innovate.
• Innovation: Protect the freedom to innovate and create without permission. Don’t block new technologies, and don’t punish innovators for their users’ actions.
• Privacy: Protect privacy and defend everyone’s ability to control how their data and devices are used.
More than 50,000 people and some 2,000 organizations — representing millions of people around the world — have already signed this declaration. It has been translated into more than 70 languages, so that as many people as possible can read the text and participate in the debate.
The Internet may well prove to be our most fundamental technological achievement. Because of it, people around the world have instant access to vital information, can hold their governments accountable and create better lives for themselves and their families.
Democrats and Republicans, despite continuing political debate and differences, can join together to protect an open Internet that strengthens our economy and our democracy.
Will you join us in supporting the Declaration of Internet Freedom?
Visit (click) www.internetdeclaration.org to view it.
Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) is chairman of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee. Rep. Anna Eshoo (D-Calif.) is the ranking member of the Subcommittee on Communications and Technology.
© 2012 POLITICO LLC
This is for your private use, only
Additional free internet information See the article below - the same topic "Keep The Internet Free"
__________________________________
Keep the Internet free
Additional free internet information See the article above - the same topic: Internet Freedom
Marco Rubio:
By: U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio
September 18, 2012
The Internet’s impact around the globe is staggering. It has connected people and ideas in ways not previously imagined. Just last year, authoritarian rulers were overthrown in North Africa and the Middle East by popular uprisings. These events have been greatly aided by their people’s access to the Internet, which helped them share ideas, organize demonstrations and highlight repressive government actions in real time.
We need to protect fundamental Internet freedoms in the hope that greater connectivity will help bring greater prosperity to people around the world while helping the oppressed achieve what the Arab Spring achieved for the people in the Middle East and North Africa.
If we look just 90 miles from the shores of Florida, to the homeland of my parents and grandparents, we see what the tyrannical Castro brothers have done to all Cubans not just through dictatorship but with control of technology and the Internet. The average citizen is strictly prohibited from using Google, YouTube and blogs. Only the government elite and foreigners have access to the Internet in Cuba, as well as the few who might illegally access a limited piece of the Internet.
Or look to China, which recently announced plans to tighten government control over the Internet. The new rules require all users of microblogs like Twitter to register with their real names, and all forums, blogs and microblogs must meet government approval. The communist government is clearly concerned about the Internet’s power to connect and influence people. Rather than allowing the Chinese people to take advantage of new innovations and Internet services, the government has issued stricter rules to maintain more control and restrict freedom of information.
It is no surprise that China is one of the nations due to call for more international control over the Internet at the coming World Conference on International Telecommunications in December, when 193 countries are to meet in Dubai to update the International Telecommunications Regulations.
Some countries view this meeting as an opportunity to give the United Nations and International Telecommunications Union unprecedented controls over Internet governance. Last year, China, Russia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan proposed an “international code of conduct” in an attempt to claim greater control over the Internet.
A top-down, international regulatory model goes against the very nature of the Internet. An international regulatory regime, and the politics and red tape that go with it, directly conflict with the Internet’s purpose of sharing ideas and connecting people. Governments and international bodies cannot keep pace with the Internet, and they should not try to do so.
The current bottom-up, multi-stakeholder model has ensured the Internet’s success and helped safeguard it from international or state control. The Internet we know today — which has transformed societies and economies around the world — has thrived because it is not controlled by governments and is open, allowing for continued innovation and information sharing.
To ensure this continues, the United States must be a leader. We cannot sit idly by as Internet freedom around the world is threatened. I have introduced a bipartisan resolution condemning some countries’ efforts to control the Internet and urging the Obama administration to oppose these actions. The House recently passed a similar resolution by 414-0. It is time for the Senate to act.
The Senate Foreign Relations Committee should pass this resolution without delay, and we must get the Senate’s full weight behind it. Given the Internet’s impact on commerce and the exercise of basic freedoms, we must proactively assert our interests in keeping the Internet free and prevent enemies of freedom from dictating its future.
Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) serves as a member on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the Communications, Technology and the Internet Subcommittee of the Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee.
© 2012 POLITICO LLC
_________________________________________
Education: A Predictor of Longer Life - below
GCG: Comment to this article: Excellent level of information - The Bible tells the same facts - knowledge, education of God's word, The Bible, is the key to a long life.
Knowing The Bible is education. The article below refers to our earthly education (High School, College, University) and shows: the broader the education the better choices we make and the longer we stay healthy and the longer we live. The same principle applies to becoming financially rich. God wants you, us all, to stay healthy, live long, and be rich financially (as long as the money is not becoming our "god").
GCG: Comment to this article: Excellent level of information - The Bible tells the same facts - knowledge, education of God's word, The Bible, is the key to a long life.
Knowing The Bible is education. The article below refers to our earthly education (High School, College, University) and shows: the broader the education the better choices we make and the longer we stay healthy and the longer we live. The same principle applies to becoming financially rich. God wants you, us all, to stay healthy, live long, and be rich financially (as long as the money is not becoming our "god").
Education: A Predictor of Longer Life
By Philip Moeller
U.S.News & World Report
This is for your personal use, only
If you want to know how long you will live, you might stop fretting over genetics and family history and instead look at your educational achievements. Education is certainly not the only variable associated with longer lives, but it may be the most powerful.
[See Top 10 U.S. Places for Healthcare.]
Recent study findings published in the journal Health Affairs present a remarkable update to the already considerable research showing education to be a powerful predictor of longer life spans.
"The lifelong relationships of education and its correlates with health and longevity are striking," the article said. "Education exerts its direct beneficial effects on health through the adoption of healthier lifestyles, better ability to cope with stress, and more effective management of chronic diseases. However, the indirect effects of education through access to more privileged social position, better-paying jobs, and higher income are also profound."
While the findings are good news for educated Americans, they also indicate that medical and lifestyle breakthroughs that have triggered the much-publicized longevity revolution are not being enjoyed by less-educated Americans whose lifespans have fallen further behind over time. This trend has implications for the debate about raising the Social Security retirement age. It also adds a compelling mortality tale to the economic costs of the nation's falling educational-achievement levels compared with other nations.
Within U.S. racial groups, educational achievement is associated with significant longevity benefits. But compared across racial groups, the longevity gap is even greater, which indicates continued race-based differences in how long Americans live. The Health Affairs article was co-authored by 15 leading academic experts in aging and longevity. The research was conducted by the MacArthur Foundation Research Network on an Aging Society.
[See 10 Things Aging Americans Want.]
"We found that in 2008 U.S. adult men and women with fewer than twelve years of education had life expectancies not much better than those of all adults in the 1950s and 1960s," the article said. "When race and education are combined, the disparity is even more striking."
Within racial and ethnic groups, there was a pronounced longevity benefit when comparing people with 16 or more years of school with those with less than 12 years. Among women, the differences in life expectancy at birth were 10.4 years among whites, 6.5 years among blacks, and 2.9 years for Hispanics. Among men, the gaps were 12.9 years among whites, 9.7 years among blacks, and 5.5 years for Hispanics.
But the differences were more striking across all racial groups. "White U.S. men and women with 16 years or more of schooling had life expectancies far greater than black Americans with fewer than 12 years of education--14.2 years more for white men than black men, and 10.3 years more for white women than black women," the article said.
"These gaps have widened over time and have led to at least two 'Americas,' if not multiple others, in terms of life expectancy, demarcated by level of education and racial-group membership." Compared with similar 1990 measures, by 2008, the gap among men had widened by nearly a year, and among women, by more than two-and-a-half years.
[See Tips on Social Security Spousal Benefits.]
"The current life expectancy at birth for U.S. blacks with fewer than twelve years of education is equivalent to the life expectancy observed in the 1960s and 1970s for all people in the United States, but blacks' longevity has been improving with time," the article said.
That hasn't been the case for whites. "White males with fewer than twelve years of education currently have a life expectancy at birth equivalent to that of all men in the United States born in 1972, while white females with similar education have the life expectancy of all women in the country born in 1964," it added. "And the longevity of these white males and females is growing worse over time."
The impact of education on lifespans is so powerful, the authors said, that improving people's health and lifestyle behaviors alone "are not likely to have a major impact on disparities in longevity." The authors called on policymakers to "implement educational enhancements at young, middle, and older ages for people of all races, to reduce the large gap in health and longevity that persists today."
More From US News & World Report
By Philip Moeller
U.S.News & World Report
This is for your personal use, only
If you want to know how long you will live, you might stop fretting over genetics and family history and instead look at your educational achievements. Education is certainly not the only variable associated with longer lives, but it may be the most powerful.
[See Top 10 U.S. Places for Healthcare.]
Recent study findings published in the journal Health Affairs present a remarkable update to the already considerable research showing education to be a powerful predictor of longer life spans.
"The lifelong relationships of education and its correlates with health and longevity are striking," the article said. "Education exerts its direct beneficial effects on health through the adoption of healthier lifestyles, better ability to cope with stress, and more effective management of chronic diseases. However, the indirect effects of education through access to more privileged social position, better-paying jobs, and higher income are also profound."
While the findings are good news for educated Americans, they also indicate that medical and lifestyle breakthroughs that have triggered the much-publicized longevity revolution are not being enjoyed by less-educated Americans whose lifespans have fallen further behind over time. This trend has implications for the debate about raising the Social Security retirement age. It also adds a compelling mortality tale to the economic costs of the nation's falling educational-achievement levels compared with other nations.
Within U.S. racial groups, educational achievement is associated with significant longevity benefits. But compared across racial groups, the longevity gap is even greater, which indicates continued race-based differences in how long Americans live. The Health Affairs article was co-authored by 15 leading academic experts in aging and longevity. The research was conducted by the MacArthur Foundation Research Network on an Aging Society.
[See 10 Things Aging Americans Want.]
"We found that in 2008 U.S. adult men and women with fewer than twelve years of education had life expectancies not much better than those of all adults in the 1950s and 1960s," the article said. "When race and education are combined, the disparity is even more striking."
Within racial and ethnic groups, there was a pronounced longevity benefit when comparing people with 16 or more years of school with those with less than 12 years. Among women, the differences in life expectancy at birth were 10.4 years among whites, 6.5 years among blacks, and 2.9 years for Hispanics. Among men, the gaps were 12.9 years among whites, 9.7 years among blacks, and 5.5 years for Hispanics.
But the differences were more striking across all racial groups. "White U.S. men and women with 16 years or more of schooling had life expectancies far greater than black Americans with fewer than 12 years of education--14.2 years more for white men than black men, and 10.3 years more for white women than black women," the article said.
"These gaps have widened over time and have led to at least two 'Americas,' if not multiple others, in terms of life expectancy, demarcated by level of education and racial-group membership." Compared with similar 1990 measures, by 2008, the gap among men had widened by nearly a year, and among women, by more than two-and-a-half years.
[See Tips on Social Security Spousal Benefits.]
"The current life expectancy at birth for U.S. blacks with fewer than twelve years of education is equivalent to the life expectancy observed in the 1960s and 1970s for all people in the United States, but blacks' longevity has been improving with time," the article said.
That hasn't been the case for whites. "White males with fewer than twelve years of education currently have a life expectancy at birth equivalent to that of all men in the United States born in 1972, while white females with similar education have the life expectancy of all women in the country born in 1964," it added. "And the longevity of these white males and females is growing worse over time."
The impact of education on lifespans is so powerful, the authors said, that improving people's health and lifestyle behaviors alone "are not likely to have a major impact on disparities in longevity." The authors called on policymakers to "implement educational enhancements at young, middle, and older ages for people of all races, to reduce the large gap in health and longevity that persists today."
More From US News & World Report
- Best U.S. States to Live-in 2032
- Updating Your Retirement-Savings Calculations
- Making the Most of a Disappointing Retirement Nest Egg
- _________________________________________
Below selected GCG's comments
placed for popular internet articles
Each article and GCG's comment next to each other
______________________
A GCG comment to the article below placed on the internet on 3/29/13+
4/1/13
The article (below the comment): How gay marriage's fate was sealed more than 50 years ago By Damon Linker | The Week
The same GCG's comment may fit different internet articles - then the comment is only placed here once and the internet articles below the comment.
The same principle with each different comment
A comment by the Global Church of God
By Dr Christian von Christophers, Ph.D., N.D., D.D.
Our country is based on the Christian, Biblical Principles - that's the statement by the historians.
The Bible was in the hands of our founding fathers.
The Bible, (two of them: (1) MLK's & (2) Pres. Lincoln's), was used in President Obama's inauguration ceremony.
Mr.Obama states his religion is the Biblical Christian.
Then what is this mocking our nation's original foundation? The Bible.
It is clearly said in The Bible that gay sex is a deadly wrong doing. Read Leviticus 18.
It is also said in The Bible that if the leader of a nation endorses gay sex, the leader is doomed. Did our President sell his values & soul for the sake of winning in politics?
If the nation accepts gay marriages, the nation is doomed according to The Bible.
The Bible allows sex only between man and woman and basically as a married couple.
Gay sex brings deadly sicknesses - a science fact.
Will we ever learn? The history proves this sickness statement correct also on the medical science level.
What one does in his/her private life is his/her private matter and his or her responsibility of the negative, deadly consequences. Because it is a private matter, for anyone who is not a gay to discriminate gay people in a workplace or in any place, is wrong. The deadly consequences of the gay sex is the sole responsibility of its practitioner.
When we accept gay marriages as a legal matter, our nation is doomed, says The Bible.
Aside The Bible, is it really a natural thing to practice sex as a gay couple?
The nature did not design us humans for gay activities. We and our sexual organs are designed to be used in sex between a man & a woman.
When any human being takes unnatural actions, it most likely causes negative reactions in the human body. When you take a drop of deadly poison, which is unnatural, you know the consequences.
God gave a free will to us humans. Our health, happiness & the length of our lives depends on our own choices.
Everyone of us can decide our own ways as long as we do not hurt other people.
It is no man's right to criticize anyone based on their personal choices.
Any kind of an act of discrimination is against the Biblical success teachings.
GCG's presence is needed in D.C. in the U.S. Congress (House & Senate) to remind of our founding fathers' idea for our country. GCG is needed in D.C. to give reminders of ethics & reasonability in our choices as the nation's lawmakers.
Listen to GCG's, Inc.'s popular Radio Show - you'll get free CEU & College-University credits.
The show link in GCG's website (tab: Radio/TV Shows)
Visit GCG's website - Use in web search (copy: "Dr. Christian, Ph.D., N.D., D.D., Pastor, Global Church of God Ministry, New York;"
Respectfully,
Christian von Christophers, Ph.D., N.D., D.D.
GCG's founding Pastor
========================================
_________________________________
A GCG Comment to this article just above
Obama lauds progress on gay civil rights in inaugural address
By Mark Felsenthal | Reuters Date: January 2013
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama's inaugural address on Monday, 1/21/13 marked the first time a president used the occasion to praise progress on gay rights, an indication of shifting public attitudes on the issue.
In the speech marking the start of his second term, Obama placed the struggle for gay rights squarely in the pantheon of two other defining civil rights movements in American history: those for blacks and women.
"The most evident of truths - that all of us are created equal - is the star that guides us still," he said. "Just as it guided our forebears through Seneca Falls, and Selma, and Stonewall."
The 1848 Seneca Falls, New York, convention was an early women's rights conference. Selma, Alabama, was the site of a pivotal 1965 civil rights march demanding equality for black Americans. The Stonewall riots of 1969 were protests against a police raid of a New York gay bar and opened the door to gay rights activism.
Obama's inclusion of gay rights - still opposed by many conservatives - among his list of priorities might have been unthinkably divisive as recently as his first inauguration in 2009.
"It really speaks to how public opinion has evolved on gay rights in the last four years," said Patrick Egan, a professor of political science at New York University. "You don't see that kind of change in public opinion happen very often."
A USA Today/Gallup poll published in December found that approval of same-sex marriage had risen to 53 percent in 2012 from less than 40 percent in 2005. Young adults were the most supportive.
Nine states and the District of Columbia have legalized same-sex marriage. Last November, Maryland, Maine and Washington became the first states to do so through the ballot box.
But opposition still runs deep in parts of the country. The USA Today/Gallup poll found gay marriage opposed by a majority in the South. North Carolina in 2011 added a voter-approved ban to its constitution. Some 30 states have passed constitutional amendments banning same-sex marriage.
The issue also remains far from settled in U.S. courts. The U.S. Supreme Court in late March will hear oral arguments in a pair of cases challenging laws that define marriage as a union of a man and woman.
While many of Obama's supporters believe the president always strongly supported same-sex marriage and letting gays serve openly in the military, his public backing has only recently been on display. He was heckled in 2010 by gay rights activists who believed he was moving too slowly on policies that required gays serving in the military to be quiet about their sexual preference.
That policy, known as "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," was repealed in 2011. Vice President Joe Biden's May 2012 expression of support for gay marriage was seen at the time as getting ahead of Obama's public position.
'MADE HISTORY TODAY'
The president's speech on Monday left no doubt about his firm commitment to achieving full equality for U.S. gays.
"Our journey is not complete until our gay brothers and sisters are treated like anyone else under the law," he said.
Other aspects of the inaugural ceremony underscored the prominence of the issue for the Obama administration. An openly gay poet, Richard Blanco, read the inaugural poem. The minister originally chosen to deliver the inaugural benediction withdrew after being criticized for making anti-gay comments.
Rights advocates welcomed what they viewed as Obama's unequivocal support.
"President Barack Obama made history today by connecting the lives of committed and loving lesbian and gay couples fighting for marriage equality to this nation's proud tradition of equal rights for all," said Chad Griffin, president of the Human Rights Campaign, a group that lobbies Congress for gay rights.
While gay rights support has traditionally been the province of Democratic politicians, many analysts see the ground shifting toward greater acceptance of gays and gay rights across the political spectrum.
While a narrow majority of Americans support gay marriage, backing for banning workplace discrimination against gays is much more overwhelming, said Egan.
"If we look at history and we look at the trajectory of support for women and African-Americans, our best guess is that politicians of the future of either party will call for equal rights for gay Americans," he said.
(Editing by Marilyn W. Thompson and Peter Cooney)
======================================================
Obama lauds progress on gay civil rights in inaugural address
By Mark Felsenthal | Reuters Date: January 2013
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama's inaugural address on Monday, 1/21/13 marked the first time a president used the occasion to praise progress on gay rights, an indication of shifting public attitudes on the issue.
In the speech marking the start of his second term, Obama placed the struggle for gay rights squarely in the pantheon of two other defining civil rights movements in American history: those for blacks and women.
"The most evident of truths - that all of us are created equal - is the star that guides us still," he said. "Just as it guided our forebears through Seneca Falls, and Selma, and Stonewall."
The 1848 Seneca Falls, New York, convention was an early women's rights conference. Selma, Alabama, was the site of a pivotal 1965 civil rights march demanding equality for black Americans. The Stonewall riots of 1969 were protests against a police raid of a New York gay bar and opened the door to gay rights activism.
Obama's inclusion of gay rights - still opposed by many conservatives - among his list of priorities might have been unthinkably divisive as recently as his first inauguration in 2009.
"It really speaks to how public opinion has evolved on gay rights in the last four years," said Patrick Egan, a professor of political science at New York University. "You don't see that kind of change in public opinion happen very often."
A USA Today/Gallup poll published in December found that approval of same-sex marriage had risen to 53 percent in 2012 from less than 40 percent in 2005. Young adults were the most supportive.
Nine states and the District of Columbia have legalized same-sex marriage. Last November, Maryland, Maine and Washington became the first states to do so through the ballot box.
But opposition still runs deep in parts of the country. The USA Today/Gallup poll found gay marriage opposed by a majority in the South. North Carolina in 2011 added a voter-approved ban to its constitution. Some 30 states have passed constitutional amendments banning same-sex marriage.
The issue also remains far from settled in U.S. courts. The U.S. Supreme Court in late March will hear oral arguments in a pair of cases challenging laws that define marriage as a union of a man and woman.
While many of Obama's supporters believe the president always strongly supported same-sex marriage and letting gays serve openly in the military, his public backing has only recently been on display. He was heckled in 2010 by gay rights activists who believed he was moving too slowly on policies that required gays serving in the military to be quiet about their sexual preference.
That policy, known as "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," was repealed in 2011. Vice President Joe Biden's May 2012 expression of support for gay marriage was seen at the time as getting ahead of Obama's public position.
'MADE HISTORY TODAY'
The president's speech on Monday left no doubt about his firm commitment to achieving full equality for U.S. gays.
"Our journey is not complete until our gay brothers and sisters are treated like anyone else under the law," he said.
Other aspects of the inaugural ceremony underscored the prominence of the issue for the Obama administration. An openly gay poet, Richard Blanco, read the inaugural poem. The minister originally chosen to deliver the inaugural benediction withdrew after being criticized for making anti-gay comments.
Rights advocates welcomed what they viewed as Obama's unequivocal support.
"President Barack Obama made history today by connecting the lives of committed and loving lesbian and gay couples fighting for marriage equality to this nation's proud tradition of equal rights for all," said Chad Griffin, president of the Human Rights Campaign, a group that lobbies Congress for gay rights.
While gay rights support has traditionally been the province of Democratic politicians, many analysts see the ground shifting toward greater acceptance of gays and gay rights across the political spectrum.
While a narrow majority of Americans support gay marriage, backing for banning workplace discrimination against gays is much more overwhelming, said Egan.
"If we look at history and we look at the trajectory of support for women and African-Americans, our best guess is that politicians of the future of either party will call for equal rights for gay Americans," he said.
(Editing by Marilyn W. Thompson and Peter Cooney)
======================================================
A GCG Comment to this article above Mon 4/1/13 = the same as was placed for OBAMA lauds.....
How gay marriage's fate was sealed more than 50 years ago
Date: March 2013
Search Results Search Results Search Results
It has to do with the introduction of birth control pills
How will the Supreme Court rule in this week's gay marriage cases? I have no idea. What I do know is that the outcome almost doesn't matter. One way or another, gay marriage will be legal throughout the country before long.
That's not the riskiest prediction. Plenty of pundits have said the same thing based on the stunningly rapid shift of public opinion on the issue. But public opinion can be fickle. How do we know that current trends will continue and that a backlash against gay marriage isn't right around the corner? Because even the best arguments employed by its smartest opponents are utterly unconvincing.
SEE MORE: 9 negative effects divorce reportedly has on children
To be clear, I'm not talking about the explicitly religious case against gay marriage. Arguments based on orthodox Catholic, evangelical Protestant, Orthodox Jewish, or Mormon premises — premises grounded in the revelations, scriptures, and traditions of particular faith communities — are often perfectly valid. It's just that our constitutional order doesn't rest on those premises, and members of those communities lack the numbers to impose their views on the country as a whole through majority vote.
What I mean are the arguments advanced by those opponents of gay marriage who claim to have reason on their side — who wish to persuade citizens of goodwill regardless of their religious commitments (or lack of commitments). Foremost among these opponents is Robert P. George of Princeton University, lead author of an amicus brief filed with the Supreme Court. No critic of gay marriage has gone further in claiming that reason alone can tell us to reject gay marriage — and no critic has done more to demonstrate (inadvertently) how deeply confused the case against gay marriage really is.
SEE MORE: Why is everyone shocked Victoria's Secret markets to teenagers?
George and his co-authors Sherif Girgis and Ryan T. Anderson make the following argument: "Our civilization" has univocally defined marriage as a "conjugal union" between one man and one woman — that is, a union between two people that is oriented to the goal of producing children. Whether or not a particular male-female couple can produce a child is irrelevant. In cases of infertility due to medical defect or advanced age on the part of one or both members of the marriage, the union falls short of reaching its goal but remains oriented to that goal nonetheless. (The union would produce a child if the bodies of both members were functioning as they should.)
Advocates of gay marriage, by contrast, seek to promulgate an alternative — a "revisionist" — definition of marriage, one based not on producing children but on "emotional fulfillment, without any inherent connections to bodily union or procreation and family life." ("Inherent" does a lot of work in that sentence, since gay couples can and do adopt children and devote themselves to family life. But because such couples can't produce the children themselves, their union remains, by George's definition, a non-procreative partnership.) This revisionist, non-procreative form of marriage would detach the institution from ideals of "permanence and exclusivity" that flow from child-rearing. That is, once couples cease viewing their union as oriented to the goal of producing children, divorce and infidelity will become commonplace. And since society has a stake in encouraging stable families, advocates of gay marriage must not be allowed to prevail.
SEE MORE: Bully pulpit: Can Obama save gun legislation?
Any number of objections could be raised against this line of argument. (Is it really true, for example, that "our civilization" has affirmed a single definition of marriage?) But I'm primarily interested in focusing on its most decisive weakness — which is that it gets a crucial chain of causality exactly backwards. Permitting gay marriage will not lead Americans to stop thinking of marriage as a conjugal union. Quite the reverse: Gay marriage has come to be widely accepted because our society stopped thinking of marriage as a conjugal union decades ago.
Between five and six decades ago, to be precise. That's when the birth control pill — first made available to consumers for the treatment of menstrual disorders in 1957 and approved by the FDA for contraceptive use three years later — began to transform sexual relationships, and hence marriage, in the United States. Once pregnancy was decoupled from intercourse, pre-marital sex became far more common, which removed one powerful incentive to marry young (or marry at all). It likewise became far more common for newlyweds to give themselves an extended childless honeymoon (with some couples choosing never to have kids).
SEE MORE: How the Supreme Court will rule on gay marriage: A prediction
In all of these ways, and many more, the widespread availability of contraception transformed marriage from a conjugal union into a relationship based to a considerable degree on the emotional and sexual fulfillment of its members — with childrearing often, though not always, a part of the equation. And it is because same-sex couples are obviously just as capable as heterosexual couples of forming relationships based on emotional and sexual fulfillment that gay marriage has come to be accepted so widely and so quickly in our culture. (If marriage were still considered a conjugal union, the idea of gay marriage could never have gained the support it currently enjoys. On the contrary, it would be considered ridiculous — as it remains today among members of religious groups that continue to affirm more traditional, conjugal views of marriage.)
George and his co-authors may well be right that the widespread adoption of a non-conjugal view of marriage leads to negative social consequences, including explosions in rates of divorce and out-of-wedlock births. But that's an argument against contraception, not gay marriage.
SEE MORE: Guantanamo's growing hunger strike. Why now?
America's understanding of marriage changed decades ago, the outcome of that change is our settled custom, and though the demand for gay marriage might have been unthinkable before the change, it is hard to see how giving in to that demand will make much of a difference now. Most Americans intuitively understand this. Which is why even the most strenuous efforts of the most intellectually formidable opponents of gay marriage are bound to fail.
View this article on TheWeek.com Get 4 Free Issues of The Week
Other stories from this section:
A few Comments from Public
171 comments
How gay marriage's fate was sealed more than 50 years ago
Date: March 2013
Search Results Search Results Search Results
- How gay marriage's fate was sealed more than 50 ... - Yahoo! News news.yahoo.com/gay-marriages-fate-sealed-more-50-years-ago-0730... You +1'd this publicly. Undo1 day ago – From Yahoo! News: It has to do with the introduction of birth control pills.
It has to do with the introduction of birth control pills
How will the Supreme Court rule in this week's gay marriage cases? I have no idea. What I do know is that the outcome almost doesn't matter. One way or another, gay marriage will be legal throughout the country before long.
That's not the riskiest prediction. Plenty of pundits have said the same thing based on the stunningly rapid shift of public opinion on the issue. But public opinion can be fickle. How do we know that current trends will continue and that a backlash against gay marriage isn't right around the corner? Because even the best arguments employed by its smartest opponents are utterly unconvincing.
SEE MORE: 9 negative effects divorce reportedly has on children
To be clear, I'm not talking about the explicitly religious case against gay marriage. Arguments based on orthodox Catholic, evangelical Protestant, Orthodox Jewish, or Mormon premises — premises grounded in the revelations, scriptures, and traditions of particular faith communities — are often perfectly valid. It's just that our constitutional order doesn't rest on those premises, and members of those communities lack the numbers to impose their views on the country as a whole through majority vote.
What I mean are the arguments advanced by those opponents of gay marriage who claim to have reason on their side — who wish to persuade citizens of goodwill regardless of their religious commitments (or lack of commitments). Foremost among these opponents is Robert P. George of Princeton University, lead author of an amicus brief filed with the Supreme Court. No critic of gay marriage has gone further in claiming that reason alone can tell us to reject gay marriage — and no critic has done more to demonstrate (inadvertently) how deeply confused the case against gay marriage really is.
SEE MORE: Why is everyone shocked Victoria's Secret markets to teenagers?
George and his co-authors Sherif Girgis and Ryan T. Anderson make the following argument: "Our civilization" has univocally defined marriage as a "conjugal union" between one man and one woman — that is, a union between two people that is oriented to the goal of producing children. Whether or not a particular male-female couple can produce a child is irrelevant. In cases of infertility due to medical defect or advanced age on the part of one or both members of the marriage, the union falls short of reaching its goal but remains oriented to that goal nonetheless. (The union would produce a child if the bodies of both members were functioning as they should.)
Advocates of gay marriage, by contrast, seek to promulgate an alternative — a "revisionist" — definition of marriage, one based not on producing children but on "emotional fulfillment, without any inherent connections to bodily union or procreation and family life." ("Inherent" does a lot of work in that sentence, since gay couples can and do adopt children and devote themselves to family life. But because such couples can't produce the children themselves, their union remains, by George's definition, a non-procreative partnership.) This revisionist, non-procreative form of marriage would detach the institution from ideals of "permanence and exclusivity" that flow from child-rearing. That is, once couples cease viewing their union as oriented to the goal of producing children, divorce and infidelity will become commonplace. And since society has a stake in encouraging stable families, advocates of gay marriage must not be allowed to prevail.
SEE MORE: Bully pulpit: Can Obama save gun legislation?
Any number of objections could be raised against this line of argument. (Is it really true, for example, that "our civilization" has affirmed a single definition of marriage?) But I'm primarily interested in focusing on its most decisive weakness — which is that it gets a crucial chain of causality exactly backwards. Permitting gay marriage will not lead Americans to stop thinking of marriage as a conjugal union. Quite the reverse: Gay marriage has come to be widely accepted because our society stopped thinking of marriage as a conjugal union decades ago.
Between five and six decades ago, to be precise. That's when the birth control pill — first made available to consumers for the treatment of menstrual disorders in 1957 and approved by the FDA for contraceptive use three years later — began to transform sexual relationships, and hence marriage, in the United States. Once pregnancy was decoupled from intercourse, pre-marital sex became far more common, which removed one powerful incentive to marry young (or marry at all). It likewise became far more common for newlyweds to give themselves an extended childless honeymoon (with some couples choosing never to have kids).
SEE MORE: How the Supreme Court will rule on gay marriage: A prediction
In all of these ways, and many more, the widespread availability of contraception transformed marriage from a conjugal union into a relationship based to a considerable degree on the emotional and sexual fulfillment of its members — with childrearing often, though not always, a part of the equation. And it is because same-sex couples are obviously just as capable as heterosexual couples of forming relationships based on emotional and sexual fulfillment that gay marriage has come to be accepted so widely and so quickly in our culture. (If marriage were still considered a conjugal union, the idea of gay marriage could never have gained the support it currently enjoys. On the contrary, it would be considered ridiculous — as it remains today among members of religious groups that continue to affirm more traditional, conjugal views of marriage.)
George and his co-authors may well be right that the widespread adoption of a non-conjugal view of marriage leads to negative social consequences, including explosions in rates of divorce and out-of-wedlock births. But that's an argument against contraception, not gay marriage.
SEE MORE: Guantanamo's growing hunger strike. Why now?
America's understanding of marriage changed decades ago, the outcome of that change is our settled custom, and though the demand for gay marriage might have been unthinkable before the change, it is hard to see how giving in to that demand will make much of a difference now. Most Americans intuitively understand this. Which is why even the most strenuous efforts of the most intellectually formidable opponents of gay marriage are bound to fail.
View this article on TheWeek.com Get 4 Free Issues of The Week
Other stories from this section:
- The culture war was never a fair fight
- How gay rights tipped so quickly
- Government should get out of the marriage business
A few Comments from Public
171 comments
- Popular Now
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;-D • 13 mins ago Report AbuseCome on now.....gay couples can be just as dysfunctional as every other couple out there. Let's not push this concept that same sex marriage is somehow magical and that they aren't going to have the same rate of divorce and dysfunctional kids as the rest of the married world.3 Replies
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Yep, It's Me Again! • 23 mins ago Report AbusePassing a law doesn't guarantee popular acceptance or condolence of any social, moral or political issue as many have found out in similar situations in the past.5 Replies
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Cow Hunter • 2 mins 20 secs ago Report AbuseWhere do they get their poll numbers? No one has ever ask me for an opinion.Reply
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SteelersX6 • 3 mins 12 secs ago Report AbuseSo will the birth control pill also open the door to legally marrying a brother or sister, Aunt or Uncle because you love them and want equality in life too?Reply- ________________________________________________________________
THE GCG comment THIS VERSION HAS
Has: these colored (blue & red) = (1) modern church, (2) proven with science, (3) Successology(r)
Comment by Global Church of God - GCG
- church for the modern world -
The First Worldwide Community Church with Biblical principles for all people
by Dr. Christian von Christophers, Ph.D., N.D., D.D. - Lead Pastor, GCG
Our country is based on the Christian, Biblical Principles - that's the statement by the historians. The Bible was in the hands of our founding fathers.
The Bible, (two of them: (1) MLK's & (2) Pres. Lincoln's), was used in President Obama's inauguration ceremony. Mr.Obama states his religion is the Biblical Christian.
Then what is this mocking our nation's original foundation? The Bible.
It is clearly said in The Bible that gay sex is a deadly wrong doing. Read Leviticus 18.
It is also said in The Bible that if the leader of a nation endorses gay sex, the leader is doomed. Did our President sell his values & soul for the sake of winning in politics?
If the nation accepts gay marriages, the nation is doomed according to The Bible.
The Bible allows sex only between man and woman and basically as a married couple.
Gay sex brings deadly sicknesses - a science fact.
Will we ever learn? The history proves this sickness statement correct also on the medical science level.
What one does in his/her private life is his/her private matter and his or her responsibility of the negative, deadly consequences. Because it is a private matter, for anyone who is not a gay to discriminate gay people in a workplace or in any place, is wrong.
When we accept gay marriages as a legal matter, our nation is doomed, says The Bible.
Aside The Bible, is it really a natural thing to practice sex as a gay couple?
The nature did not design us humans for gay activities. We and our sexual organs are designed to be used in sex between a man & a woman.
When any human being takes unnatural actions, it most likely causes negative reactions in the human body. When you take a drop of deadly poison, which is unnatural, you know the consequences.
God gave a free will to us humans. Our health, happiness & the length of our lives depends on our own choices.
Everyone of us can decide our own ways as long as we do not hurt other people.
It is no man's right to criticize anyone based on their personal choices.
Any kind of an act of discrimination is against the Biblical success teachings.
A huge question for all of us humans: How to have a mentally, physically, financially happy & successful life?
As the founder of Successology ® (Reg.US.Pat.Off.1991) - the new science for life success - I am honored, no matter what your background, homeless, a President or a King or anything between, to show light for finding a road to your worthy goals and getting them fulfilled.
Visit for further information GCG's website & another affiliated, science & success website introduced there.
GCG is a for the modern world - our teaching for life success is always based on two elements:
(1) The Biblical Text and (2) the most updated modern human science. Based on the latest science facts GCG proves every statement we make in our teaching.
GCG's presence is needed in D.C. in the U.S. Congress (House & Senate) to remind of our founding fathers' idea for our country. GCG is needed in D.C. to give reminders of ethics & reasonability in our choices as the nation's lawmakers.
GCG's presence is needed in the White House to give truthful Biblical success counseling as it is in The Bible not as it is in our own desires.
Listen to GCG's, Inc.'s popular Radio Show - you'll get free CEU & College-University credits.
To find the Show link use in your web search: "Dr. Christian von Christophers, Ph.D., N.D., D.D., Pastor - The Miracle Show ".
Use in web search: "Dr. Christian, Ph.D., N.D., D.D., Pastor, Global Church of God Ministry, New York;"
Respectfully,
Christian von Christophers, Ph.D., N.D., D.D.
___________________________________________________________
This comment placed for the article below on 4/7/13: ‘If Anyone Wants to Call Me a Bible-Thumper, Go Ahead’
Comment by Global Church of God - GCG
- church for the modern world -
The First Worldwide Community Church with Biblical principles for all people
by Dr. Christian von Christophers, Ph.D., N.D., D.D. - Lead Pastor, GCG
Our country is based on the Christian, Biblical Principles - that's the statement by the historians. The Bible was in the hands of our founding fathers.
The Bible, (two of them: (1) MLK's & (2) Pres. Lincoln's), was used in President Obama's inauguration ceremony. Mr.Obama states his religion is the Biblical Christian.
Then what is this mocking our nation's original foundation? The Bible.
It is clearly said in The Bible that gay sex is a deadly wrong doing. Read Leviticus 18.
It is also said in The Bible that if the leader of a nation endorses gay sex, the leader is doomed. Did our President sell his values & soul for the sake of winning in politics?
If the nation accepts gay marriages, the nation is doomed according to The Bible.
The Bible allows sex only between man and woman and basically as a married couple.
Gay sex brings deadly sicknesses - a science fact.
Will we ever learn? The history proves this sickness statement correct also on the medical science level.
What one does in his/her private life is his/her private matter and his or her responsibility of the negative, deadly consequences. Because it is a private matter, for anyone who is not a gay to discriminate gay people in a workplace or in any place, is wrong.
When we accept gay marriages as a legal matter, our nation is doomed, says The Bible.
Aside The Bible, is it really a natural thing to practice sex as a gay couple?
The nature did not design us humans for gay activities. We and our sexual organs are designed to be used in sex between a man & a woman.
When any human being takes unnatural actions, it most likely causes negative reactions in the human body. When you take a drop of deadly poison, which is unnatural, you know the consequences.
God gave a free will to us humans. Our health, happiness & the length of our lives depends on our own choices.
Everyone of us can decide our own ways as long as we do not hurt other people.
It is no man's right to criticize anyone based on their personal choices.
Any kind of an act of discrimination is against the Biblical success teachings.
A huge question for all of us humans: How to have a mentally, physically, financially happy & successful life?
As the founder of Successology ® (Reg.US.Pat.Off.1991) - the new science for life success - I am honored, no matter what your background, homeless, a President or a King or anything between, to show light for finding a road to your worthy goals and getting them fulfilled.
Visit for further information GCG's website & another affiliated, science & success website introduced there.
GCG is a for the modern world - our teaching for life success is always based on two elements:
(1) The Biblical Text and (2) the most updated modern human science. Based on the latest science facts GCG proves every statement we make in our teaching.
GCG's presence is needed in D.C. in the U.S. Congress (House & Senate) to remind of our founding fathers' idea for our country. GCG is needed in D.C. to give reminders of ethics & reasonability in our choices as the nation's lawmakers.
GCG's presence is needed in the White House to give truthful Biblical success counseling as it is in The Bible not as it is in our own desires.
Listen to GCG's, Inc.'s popular Radio Show - you'll get free CEU & College-University credits.
To find the Show link use in your web search: "Dr. Christian von Christophers, Ph.D., N.D., D.D., Pastor - The Miracle Show ".
Use in web search: "Dr. Christian, Ph.D., N.D., D.D., Pastor, Global Church of God Ministry, New York;"
Respectfully,
Christian von Christophers, Ph.D., N.D., D.D.
Has: these colored (blue & red) = (1) modern church, (2) proven with science, (3) Successology(r)
Comment by Global Church of God - GCG
- church for the modern world -
The First Worldwide Community Church with Biblical principles for all people
by Dr. Christian von Christophers, Ph.D., N.D., D.D. - Lead Pastor, GCG
Our country is based on the Christian, Biblical Principles - that's the statement by the historians. The Bible was in the hands of our founding fathers.
The Bible, (two of them: (1) MLK's & (2) Pres. Lincoln's), was used in President Obama's inauguration ceremony. Mr.Obama states his religion is the Biblical Christian.
Then what is this mocking our nation's original foundation? The Bible.
It is clearly said in The Bible that gay sex is a deadly wrong doing. Read Leviticus 18.
It is also said in The Bible that if the leader of a nation endorses gay sex, the leader is doomed. Did our President sell his values & soul for the sake of winning in politics?
If the nation accepts gay marriages, the nation is doomed according to The Bible.
The Bible allows sex only between man and woman and basically as a married couple.
Gay sex brings deadly sicknesses - a science fact.
Will we ever learn? The history proves this sickness statement correct also on the medical science level.
What one does in his/her private life is his/her private matter and his or her responsibility of the negative, deadly consequences. Because it is a private matter, for anyone who is not a gay to discriminate gay people in a workplace or in any place, is wrong.
When we accept gay marriages as a legal matter, our nation is doomed, says The Bible.
Aside The Bible, is it really a natural thing to practice sex as a gay couple?
The nature did not design us humans for gay activities. We and our sexual organs are designed to be used in sex between a man & a woman.
When any human being takes unnatural actions, it most likely causes negative reactions in the human body. When you take a drop of deadly poison, which is unnatural, you know the consequences.
God gave a free will to us humans. Our health, happiness & the length of our lives depends on our own choices.
Everyone of us can decide our own ways as long as we do not hurt other people.
It is no man's right to criticize anyone based on their personal choices.
Any kind of an act of discrimination is against the Biblical success teachings.
A huge question for all of us humans: How to have a mentally, physically, financially happy & successful life?
As the founder of Successology ® (Reg.US.Pat.Off.1991) - the new science for life success - I am honored, no matter what your background, homeless, a President or a King or anything between, to show light for finding a road to your worthy goals and getting them fulfilled.
Visit for further information GCG's website & another affiliated, science & success website introduced there.
GCG is a for the modern world - our teaching for life success is always based on two elements:
(1) The Biblical Text and (2) the most updated modern human science. Based on the latest science facts GCG proves every statement we make in our teaching.
GCG's presence is needed in D.C. in the U.S. Congress (House & Senate) to remind of our founding fathers' idea for our country. GCG is needed in D.C. to give reminders of ethics & reasonability in our choices as the nation's lawmakers.
GCG's presence is needed in the White House to give truthful Biblical success counseling as it is in The Bible not as it is in our own desires.
Listen to GCG's, Inc.'s popular Radio Show - you'll get free CEU & College-University credits.
To find the Show link use in your web search: "Dr. Christian von Christophers, Ph.D., N.D., D.D., Pastor - The Miracle Show ".
Use in web search: "Dr. Christian, Ph.D., N.D., D.D., Pastor, Global Church of God Ministry, New York;"
Respectfully,
Christian von Christophers, Ph.D., N.D., D.D.
___________________________________________________________
This comment placed for the article below on 4/7/13: ‘If Anyone Wants to Call Me a Bible-Thumper, Go Ahead’
Comment by Global Church of God - GCG
- church for the modern world -
The First Worldwide Community Church with Biblical principles for all people
by Dr. Christian von Christophers, Ph.D., N.D., D.D. - Lead Pastor, GCG
Our country is based on the Christian, Biblical Principles - that's the statement by the historians. The Bible was in the hands of our founding fathers.
The Bible, (two of them: (1) MLK's & (2) Pres. Lincoln's), was used in President Obama's inauguration ceremony. Mr.Obama states his religion is the Biblical Christian.
Then what is this mocking our nation's original foundation? The Bible.
It is clearly said in The Bible that gay sex is a deadly wrong doing. Read Leviticus 18.
It is also said in The Bible that if the leader of a nation endorses gay sex, the leader is doomed. Did our President sell his values & soul for the sake of winning in politics?
If the nation accepts gay marriages, the nation is doomed according to The Bible.
The Bible allows sex only between man and woman and basically as a married couple.
Gay sex brings deadly sicknesses - a science fact.
Will we ever learn? The history proves this sickness statement correct also on the medical science level.
What one does in his/her private life is his/her private matter and his or her responsibility of the negative, deadly consequences. Because it is a private matter, for anyone who is not a gay to discriminate gay people in a workplace or in any place, is wrong.
When we accept gay marriages as a legal matter, our nation is doomed, says The Bible.
Aside The Bible, is it really a natural thing to practice sex as a gay couple?
The nature did not design us humans for gay activities. We and our sexual organs are designed to be used in sex between a man & a woman.
When any human being takes unnatural actions, it most likely causes negative reactions in the human body. When you take a drop of deadly poison, which is unnatural, you know the consequences.
God gave a free will to us humans. Our health, happiness & the length of our lives depends on our own choices.
Everyone of us can decide our own ways as long as we do not hurt other people.
It is no man's right to criticize anyone based on their personal choices.
Any kind of an act of discrimination is against the Biblical success teachings.
A huge question for all of us humans: How to have a mentally, physically, financially happy & successful life?
As the founder of Successology ® (Reg.US.Pat.Off.1991) - the new science for life success - I am honored, no matter what your background, homeless, a President or a King or anything between, to show light for finding a road to your worthy goals and getting them fulfilled.
Visit for further information GCG's website & another affiliated, science & success website introduced there.
GCG is a for the modern world - our teaching for life success is always based on two elements:
(1) The Biblical Text and (2) the most updated modern human science. Based on the latest science facts GCG proves every statement we make in our teaching.
GCG's presence is needed in D.C. in the U.S. Congress (House & Senate) to remind of our founding fathers' idea for our country. GCG is needed in D.C. to give reminders of ethics & reasonability in our choices as the nation's lawmakers.
GCG's presence is needed in the White House to give truthful Biblical success counseling as it is in The Bible not as it is in our own desires.
Listen to GCG's, Inc.'s popular Radio Show - you'll get free CEU & College-University credits.
To find the Show link use in your web search: "Dr. Christian von Christophers, Ph.D., N.D., D.D., Pastor - The Miracle Show ".
Use in web search: "Dr. Christian, Ph.D., N.D., D.D., Pastor, Global Church of God Ministry, New York;"
Respectfully,
Christian von Christophers, Ph.D., N.D., D.D.
On 4/7/13,The above comment placed on the internet for this article
‘If Anyone Wants to Call Me a Bible-Thumper*), Go Ahead’
Bill O'Reilly's charged gay marriage debate with conservative radio host Laura Ingraham drew a strong reaction from The Blaze audience, particularly over O'Reilly's contention that same-sex marriage opponents often "thump the Bible" to make their point.
Here's what some of you had to say about it:
Leftfighter
Speaking of schoolmarm *) vocabulary lessons, you'd think he'd understand that the institution of marriage is first and foremost a religious rite, not a civil right.
*) = A schoolmistress (typically used with reference to a woman regarded as prim**), strict, brisk in manner) **) prim = stiffly formal and respectable
The problem here seems to be the words being used. If you want to call it marriage, I won't go along because marriage is a union between one man and one woman.
If you want to call it a civil union (AKA "C'mon, Myrtle, let's go on down to yonder courthouse and get us hitched."), then I'm fine with it. A courthouse union and a religious marriage are very much the same, with the major exception being that marriage involves God, where civil unions don't.
Since God is clear on the issue of homosexuality (and, by extension, same sex marriage), I think it's particularly rancid (= smelling or tasting unpleasant)
to change the definition to include a group of people acting in opposition to His Will.
If you want to call them civil unions, then we have a different situation altogether. As Civil Unions are a construct of a secular government, I'm fine with them. As I said, civil rights and religious rites are different things.
If this were the case, frankly, the Federal government has no seat at the table, beyond ensuring that the views of the legislature of one state (Maryland, for example) can't force their gay marriage law upon the express will of the people of states like Florida, whose people rejected gay marriage by a 60+ percent supermajority. In other words, the Federal government's role is to ensure federalism.
ordfan
I AM an opponent of same-sex marriage. If anyone wants to call me a Bible thumper, go ahead. I DO NOT CARE. My Bible IS the basis for my ENTIRE argument against homosexuality.......period. Now DO NOT be mistaken, being against homosexuality and against homosexuals are two VERY different things. I am not against homosexuals just because of that.?
P.S. If two men or two women want to live together, that's their choice but find some other title to call it. Sorry, the term "marriage" has been taken and the definition was established as between one man and one woman a long long time before ANY ONE OF US ever walked this planet. Quit trying to change it or hijack it. Or maybe I should say give it back.
Evi1ution
Comment: I agree with Rush Limbaugh on the subject of gay marriage, which is it's going to be legalized throughout the country regardless if we like it or not. It doesn't mean to stop defending the institution of marriage as man and wife, but just know that the LGBT (LGBT is an initialism that collectively refers to the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender community), patterned after other civil rights movements, will get it legalized nationwide. You can try using the Bible as evidence but a lot of people think it's a fairytale. We can only win with a secular debate. There's already studies that "prove" that a child does better in life when raised by same-sex couples. There are scientific studies that prove otherwise and I would use that information, studies linked to homosexual behavior, instead of a Bible verse.
termyt
I agree with the sentiment, anyways. Our culture is not a place where "God said so" or "the Bible says so" is a compelling reason to do or refrain from anything.
If we are going to convince anyone that our lifestyle is one that breeds peace and prosperity, we need to be able to defend it through example and discourse that shows it in terms they agree are valid.
Even though the Bible is authoritative and true, using it as evidence to someone one who disputes its authority is not even a little bit compelling (= interest evoking) to them.
Strat-M16
I'm disappointed in Laura Ingraham. I expect her to say "First and foremost, I defend marriage by the definition of marriage, as defined by GOD. Every other argument is just a supporting argument."
But, Bill (the rino) is right, when he says the Biblical argument is a losing one. The world has decided to ignore God. The world will have to answer to God on that score.
Coach54
Calling a Christian a "Bible thumper" has been used as a derogatory term for eons. It speaks volumes about the depth of B.O.'s beliefs. The Bible is the ONLY basis for moral absolutes.
Same-sex "marriage" is about overthrowing cultural norms that have for centuries set traditional marriage apart from other household forms on the basis of tradition, legal precedent, and social-science evidence.
Marriage has always been properly and appropriately discriminatory, as when it denies a man the right to marry his mother, daughter, sister, a child, someone already married or someone of the same gender.
It is erroneous to assert that homosexuals are being denied the right to enter the marriage union when the immovable foundations of natural law dictate that marriage is by definition a heterosexual institution - a union between one man and one woman - because men and women are the only categories of human beings that can bring forth the next generation.
Limiting marriage to one man and one woman cannot be construed to be discriminatory. It is a necessary condition for marriage. The church's obligation to protect the sanctity of marriage is based upon creation, nature, human physiology, the authority of Scripture, the protection of family and children, and safeguarding the ability to build strong, sustainable societies based on good moral values.
KainAnderson
I'm highly disappointed in some of the Blaze readers commenting here.
Bill O is correct. You can't make political policy based on religious beliefs!!! Those of you who think you can ARE the PROGRESSIVES, not Bill O. Legislating morality is the kind of thinking that brought us prohibition. There are Christian sects who believe divorce (ALL DIVORCE) is wrong, or instrumental music in worship is wrong, or women teaching men. Should we outlaw it all? What about modest clothing and who gets to decide that?
While I believe all of you to be sincere in your religious beliefs, you are the people who lost this debate for us. The real debate is whether government has any business in marriage whatsoever. By allowing government to deal favors, tax and otherwise, based on marital status, we've created this problem because gays (rightly so) should be allowed the same rights as the rest of us. That's where we should have been attacking the government. Instead, all of you on the religious right sucked this debate into "Bible Thumping" which is a loser argument. Now Big Government will win because all of you have been marginalized and the real debate around the role of Government in marriage has been lost. Bill O has always stated he's against gay marriage, but that you can't create law based on "the Bible says...". I'd have thought with all the libertarians here I wouldn't have found this comment pool devolving into a modern day Progressive prohibition mob.
*) Originating from typically southern US fundamentalist Christian sects given to evangelizing in a very outgoing, rumbunctious**) way, often characterized by a religious bigot standing on a street corner, with or without foam around his mouth, shouting about how we should all turn to Christ, whilst vigorously thumping his soft covered bible for emphasis. Their actions usually do more harm than good to their cause and bring into disrepute and ridicule those more reticent Christians.
He's a bible thumper, so don't go near him.
He thinks everything in the bible should be taken literally; he's a foolish bible thumper.
**) rumbunctious - opposite of calm, orderly, peaceful
Related: Thump the Bible' Controversy Leads Bill O'Reilly to Give This Response
‘If Anyone Wants to Call Me a Bible-Thumper*), Go Ahead’
Bill O'Reilly's charged gay marriage debate with conservative radio host Laura Ingraham drew a strong reaction from The Blaze audience, particularly over O'Reilly's contention that same-sex marriage opponents often "thump the Bible" to make their point.
Here's what some of you had to say about it:
Leftfighter
Speaking of schoolmarm *) vocabulary lessons, you'd think he'd understand that the institution of marriage is first and foremost a religious rite, not a civil right.
*) = A schoolmistress (typically used with reference to a woman regarded as prim**), strict, brisk in manner) **) prim = stiffly formal and respectable
The problem here seems to be the words being used. If you want to call it marriage, I won't go along because marriage is a union between one man and one woman.
If you want to call it a civil union (AKA "C'mon, Myrtle, let's go on down to yonder courthouse and get us hitched."), then I'm fine with it. A courthouse union and a religious marriage are very much the same, with the major exception being that marriage involves God, where civil unions don't.
Since God is clear on the issue of homosexuality (and, by extension, same sex marriage), I think it's particularly rancid (= smelling or tasting unpleasant)
to change the definition to include a group of people acting in opposition to His Will.
If you want to call them civil unions, then we have a different situation altogether. As Civil Unions are a construct of a secular government, I'm fine with them. As I said, civil rights and religious rites are different things.
If this were the case, frankly, the Federal government has no seat at the table, beyond ensuring that the views of the legislature of one state (Maryland, for example) can't force their gay marriage law upon the express will of the people of states like Florida, whose people rejected gay marriage by a 60+ percent supermajority. In other words, the Federal government's role is to ensure federalism.
ordfan
I AM an opponent of same-sex marriage. If anyone wants to call me a Bible thumper, go ahead. I DO NOT CARE. My Bible IS the basis for my ENTIRE argument against homosexuality.......period. Now DO NOT be mistaken, being against homosexuality and against homosexuals are two VERY different things. I am not against homosexuals just because of that.?
P.S. If two men or two women want to live together, that's their choice but find some other title to call it. Sorry, the term "marriage" has been taken and the definition was established as between one man and one woman a long long time before ANY ONE OF US ever walked this planet. Quit trying to change it or hijack it. Or maybe I should say give it back.
Evi1ution
Comment: I agree with Rush Limbaugh on the subject of gay marriage, which is it's going to be legalized throughout the country regardless if we like it or not. It doesn't mean to stop defending the institution of marriage as man and wife, but just know that the LGBT (LGBT is an initialism that collectively refers to the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender community), patterned after other civil rights movements, will get it legalized nationwide. You can try using the Bible as evidence but a lot of people think it's a fairytale. We can only win with a secular debate. There's already studies that "prove" that a child does better in life when raised by same-sex couples. There are scientific studies that prove otherwise and I would use that information, studies linked to homosexual behavior, instead of a Bible verse.
termyt
I agree with the sentiment, anyways. Our culture is not a place where "God said so" or "the Bible says so" is a compelling reason to do or refrain from anything.
If we are going to convince anyone that our lifestyle is one that breeds peace and prosperity, we need to be able to defend it through example and discourse that shows it in terms they agree are valid.
Even though the Bible is authoritative and true, using it as evidence to someone one who disputes its authority is not even a little bit compelling (= interest evoking) to them.
Strat-M16
I'm disappointed in Laura Ingraham. I expect her to say "First and foremost, I defend marriage by the definition of marriage, as defined by GOD. Every other argument is just a supporting argument."
But, Bill (the rino) is right, when he says the Biblical argument is a losing one. The world has decided to ignore God. The world will have to answer to God on that score.
Coach54
Calling a Christian a "Bible thumper" has been used as a derogatory term for eons. It speaks volumes about the depth of B.O.'s beliefs. The Bible is the ONLY basis for moral absolutes.
Same-sex "marriage" is about overthrowing cultural norms that have for centuries set traditional marriage apart from other household forms on the basis of tradition, legal precedent, and social-science evidence.
Marriage has always been properly and appropriately discriminatory, as when it denies a man the right to marry his mother, daughter, sister, a child, someone already married or someone of the same gender.
It is erroneous to assert that homosexuals are being denied the right to enter the marriage union when the immovable foundations of natural law dictate that marriage is by definition a heterosexual institution - a union between one man and one woman - because men and women are the only categories of human beings that can bring forth the next generation.
Limiting marriage to one man and one woman cannot be construed to be discriminatory. It is a necessary condition for marriage. The church's obligation to protect the sanctity of marriage is based upon creation, nature, human physiology, the authority of Scripture, the protection of family and children, and safeguarding the ability to build strong, sustainable societies based on good moral values.
KainAnderson
I'm highly disappointed in some of the Blaze readers commenting here.
Bill O is correct. You can't make political policy based on religious beliefs!!! Those of you who think you can ARE the PROGRESSIVES, not Bill O. Legislating morality is the kind of thinking that brought us prohibition. There are Christian sects who believe divorce (ALL DIVORCE) is wrong, or instrumental music in worship is wrong, or women teaching men. Should we outlaw it all? What about modest clothing and who gets to decide that?
While I believe all of you to be sincere in your religious beliefs, you are the people who lost this debate for us. The real debate is whether government has any business in marriage whatsoever. By allowing government to deal favors, tax and otherwise, based on marital status, we've created this problem because gays (rightly so) should be allowed the same rights as the rest of us. That's where we should have been attacking the government. Instead, all of you on the religious right sucked this debate into "Bible Thumping" which is a loser argument. Now Big Government will win because all of you have been marginalized and the real debate around the role of Government in marriage has been lost. Bill O has always stated he's against gay marriage, but that you can't create law based on "the Bible says...". I'd have thought with all the libertarians here I wouldn't have found this comment pool devolving into a modern day Progressive prohibition mob.
*) Originating from typically southern US fundamentalist Christian sects given to evangelizing in a very outgoing, rumbunctious**) way, often characterized by a religious bigot standing on a street corner, with or without foam around his mouth, shouting about how we should all turn to Christ, whilst vigorously thumping his soft covered bible for emphasis. Their actions usually do more harm than good to their cause and bring into disrepute and ridicule those more reticent Christians.
He's a bible thumper, so don't go near him.
He thinks everything in the bible should be taken literally; he's a foolish bible thumper.
**) rumbunctious - opposite of calm, orderly, peaceful
Related: Thump the Bible' Controversy Leads Bill O'Reilly to Give This Response
- 'Thump the Bible': Bill O'Reilly and Laura Ingraham Clash in Explosive Gay Marriage Debate ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
The GCG comment below is placed on the Yahoo News
"Joel Osteen Turns the Other Cheek on Internet Hoax"
Comment by Global Church of God - GCG
- church for the modern world -
The First Worldwide Community Church with Biblical principles for all people
by Dr. Christian von Christophers, Ph.D., N.D., D.D. - Lead Pastor, GCG
(1) The revenge is in God's hands (Romans 12:19)
Pastor Olsteen knows The Bible and follows it.
"Fortune favors the bold" (Latin saying)
There is nothing wrong being financially successful. God's word in The Bible states that God wants you and everyone else being rich but not idolizing money as a god. Instead The Bible guides us to use it wisely = investing & making the money grow and then using the money for the good of the mankind.
Any person has the right to have the very best in life if he/she can afford.
Our country is based on the Christian, Biblical Principles - that's the statement by the historians. The Bible was in the hands of our founding fathers.
The Bible, (two of them: (1) MLK's & (2) Pres. Lincoln's), was used in President Obama's inauguration ceremony. Mr.Obama states his religion is the Biblical Christian.
God gave a free will to us humans. Our health, happiness & the length of our lives depends on our own choices - including your wealth in this life.
Everyone of us can decide our own ways as long as we do not hurt other people.
It is no man's right to criticize anyone based on their personal choices.
Any kind of an act of discrimination is against the Biblical success teachings.
A huge question for all of us humans: How to have a mentally, physically, financially happy & successful life?
As the founder of Successology ® (Reg.US.Pat.Off.1991) - the new science for life success - I am honored, no matter what your background, homeless, a President or a King or anything between, to show light for finding a road to your worthy goals and getting them fulfilled.
Visit for further information GCG's website & another affiliated, science & success website introduced there.
GCG is a for the modern world - our teaching for life success is always based on two elements:
(1) The Biblical Text and (2) the most updated modern human science. Based on the latest science facts GCG proves every statement we make in our teaching.
GCG's presence is needed in D.C. in the U.S. Congress (House & Senate) to remind of our founding fathers' idea for our country. GCG is needed in D.C. to give reminders of ethics & reasonability in our choices as the nation's lawmakers.
GCG's presence is needed in the White House to give truthful Biblical success counseling as it is in The Bible not as it is in our own desires.
Listen to GCG's, Inc.'s popular Radio Show - you'll get free CEU & College-University credits.
To find the Show link use in your web search: "Dr. Christian von Christophers, Ph.D., N.D., D.D., Pastor - The Miracle Show ".
Use in web search: "Dr. Christian, Ph.D., N.D., D.D., Pastor, Global Church of God Ministry, New York;"
Respectfully,
Christian von Christophers, Ph.D., N.D., D.D.
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________
The Hoax article: APril 2013
Joel Osteen Turns the Other Cheek on Internet Hoax
It may be a little late for an April Fools' Day joke but that didn't stop some on the Internet from pulling off an elaborate hoax targeting televangelist Joel Osteen, which included telling his many followers that he was denouncing the Christian faith.
A website posing as Osteen's official webpage unveiled a " special announcement," claiming the pastor of the Lakewood Church in Texas was leaving the Christian faith and bashed the Bible for being a "fallible, flawed, highly inconsistent history book."
Osteen spoke with ABC News overnight and said he found the entire hoax mildly amusing.
"You know, I'm really not angry. I don't feel like a victim," Osteen said. "I feel too blessed, that life is too short to let things like this get you down."
The fake website also rolled out a video complete with a screen grab of CNN's website with the headline. "Pastor of mega church resigns, rejects Christ." A Drudge headline proclaimed, "Osteen: I am no longer a Christian."
The bogus site featured a letter title "I am leaving the Christian faith."
"I believe now that the Bible is a fallible, flawed, highly inconsistent history book that has been altered hundreds of times. There is zero evidence the Bible is the holy word of God. In fact, there is zero evidence 'God' even exists," Osteen was quoted saying in the letter.
There was an accompanying Twitter account that has now been suspended.
True to form, Osteen is turning the other cheek and spinning this bit of adversity as part of his core message.
"You can't stop everything from happening, but you can choose to say, 'God, it's in your hands'. I'm going to move forward. I'm going stay full of joy and I'm going enjoy this day," Osteen told ABC News.
While the leader of the 45,000 member church is adopting a forgiving attitude, he did not rule out taking some sort of legal action.
The website's domain was registered to a group called BMG Enterprises in Milwaukee and it went live on April Fools' Day. BMG did not return ABC News' request for comment.
COMMENTS from the public:
(1) Would Jesus wear a Rolex on his television show? (2) Did you know that Televangelists are among the wealthiest people in the world but always tell you not to get down as they drive home to their $40 million Mega Mansion, pool, tennis court, 8 car garage ..(3) Turning the other cheek would not involve suing. Just saying..., (4) He will turn this into a multimillion dollar income event. The prosperity gospel is not what Jesus taught. (5) EVEN IF you don't believe in God , you can't help but feel positive listening to this guy. Give it a try.
________________________________________________________________________
Rules for Claiming the Charitable Contribution Deduction
Your gift of cash or property must meet certain criteria in order to be tax-deductible.
- You must actually donate cash or property. A pledge or promise to donate is not deductible until you actually pay.
- You must contribute to a qualified tax-exempt organization. Charities will let you know if they have received their 501(c)(3) tax-exempt status. Some organizations are not required to obtain 501(c)(3) status from the IRS. These include churches and other religious organizations.
- You must be able to itemize. Giving to charity is a great tax planning strategy, but it only works for people who are eligible to itemize their deductions.
- You must meet record keeping requirements. This includes saving canceled checks, acknowledgment letters from the charity, and appraisals for donated property.
Keeping Records of Your Charity
Taxpayers are required to keep excellent records of their charitable contributions. Under thePension Protection Act, you must keep written records of all cash donations. Your records must indicate the name of the charitable organization, the date of your contribution, and the amount your contribution. Canceled checks work well as a written record, since the name of the charity, the date of the gift, and the amount of the gift will all be recorded on the check. Bank statements showing a gift paid by debit card and credit card statements showing a gift paid by credit card are also contain these same elements needed for your records.Charitable organizations will often provide donors with a written letter acknowledging the gift or with a receipt for the donation. These acknowledgment letters should also be kept with your tax records. If a tax return is audited, the IRS can disallow charitable donations of $250 or more if you don't have the written acknowledgement from the charity that documents your gift. The IRS advises, "If you made more than one contribution of $250 or more, you must have either a separate acknowledgment for each or one acknowledgment that lists each contribution and the date of each contribution and shows your total contributions" (from Publication 526).
Non-Cash Contributions of PropertyContributions of property (other than cash) are subject to strict record keeping and substantiation rules. You must be able to substantiate the fair market value of the goods or property you donated, plus keep any written acknowledgments you receive from the charity.Fair Market Value of
Contributed Property
You must make an assessment of the fair market value of the property you contribute.
Non-Cash Contributions Totalling More Than $500
You must attach IRS Form 8283 if your total non-cash contributions exceeds $500.
Car Contributions: Must Have Written Acknowledgement
If you contribute a car, truck, boat, airplane, or other vehicle, and the vehicle is worth more than $500, you must received a written acknowledgement from the non-profit before you can claim a tax deduction.
Non-Cash Contributions over $5,000: Must Have Written Appraisal
If you contribute property worth more than $5,000, you must obtain a written appraisal of the property's fair market value.
Limits on the Charitable Contribution Deduction
Your charitable contribution tax deduction may be limited. There are limits specific to charitable contributions, and there are general limits on itemized deductions.
50%, 30%, and 20% Limits on Charitable Contributions
- Generally, you can deduct cash contributions in full up to 50% of your adjusted gross income.
- Generally, you can deduct property contributions in full up to 30% of your adjusted gross income.
- Generally, you can deduct contributions of appreciated capital gains assets in full up to 20% of your adjusted gross income.
Not Tax DeductibleContributions are not tax deductible if given to any of the following:
- Political parties, political campaigns, or political action committees.
- Contributions given to individual people.
- Fees or dues paid to professional associations.
- Contributions to labor unions, chambers of commerce, or business associations.
- Contributions to for-profit schools and hospitals.
- Contributions to foreign governments.
- Fines or penalties paid to local or state governments.
- The value of your time for services rendered to a non-profit.
- Publication 526, Charitable Contributions
- Instructions for Form 8283, Noncash Charitable Contributions
- Form 8283, Noncash Charitable Contributions (PDF)
- Instructions for Schedule A
- Schedule A (PDF)
- Form 1040 (PDF)
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More About Charitable Giving
Related Articles
- Charitable Contributions - Deductions for Charitable Contributions
- Record Keeping Tips for Charitable Contributions
- Tax Deductions for Charitable Donations
- Charity Donations are Tax Deductible
- In-Kind Contributions - Starting and Running a Nonprofit _______________________________________________________________________________
.
101 Scientific Facts & Foreknowledge
Introduction
Foreknowledge = Awareness of something before it happens or exists.
Synonyms prevision - foresight - prescience - anticipation - prediction - prophecy - prognostication - forecast - augury
_________________
In order to understand correctly this important information,
it is necessary to first study this introduction
and
study this in a careful manner in all details.
The Bible states: God dictated The Bible for us as our book of success in life. Hundreds of people apart from each others and knowing nothing about the other individuals wrote the Bible texts. God used these people as His earthly secretaries. Yet, even written apart from the other writers and not even knowing that "The Bible" was being created, the whole Bible text is written like one person would have written it. Everything follows logically from everything else. But, see, it is "written" by one "person", God, who alone, as a one and only entity, dictated everything to His earthly secretaries. In addition, all these people wrote down in The Bible text science facts, detailed predictions tens, hundreds & thousands of years in the future, science facts and future history details these human secretaries could not have known. Yet they recorded in their writing the true facts. That means that someone who knew the future and knew the science & the secrets of the universe must have told these facts in the dictation process. That someone is not any other human being. The Bible states: "God dictated the Bible text".
Do we have a choice to believe God did not dictate the Bible text? If not God, as the Bible tells God did, who else then?
God placed enough evidence in the Bible dictation that the text must have been dictated, as the text says, by someone else than by a human being and then also gives an answer by whom. By God. By logical thinking and accepting the easy-to-understand facts we humans can only draw one conclusion: The Bible is dictated by God.
Because the hundreds correct science facts and correct, detailed future predictions are there and no human anywhere could have known any of them, and they all are true statements, do we have any reason NOT to believe that also the statement that God dictated the text must be true? The 101 science facts and correct future predictions quoted from the Bible prove the case - all are dictated by God. Then it is fully logical that also (1) the rest of the whole Bible text is fully based on the true facts and (2) is fully dictated by God (because the Bible states so). This means: when you study the Bible and when you now will teach your children to study the Bible and learn to know these facts, then you can trust fully that the whole Bible and its every word and its every sentence and every statement is always a fact and always fully true. When The Bible states "do this or do that to have a successful, healthy, financially rich, long life in this world", believe it without any doubt and then DO IT, do what The Bible teaches to do and teach that all to your children also. When The Bible states that you and your children (as anyone else also who accepts these facts and follows the biblical success guidance) will inherit the eternal life God is providing to every person who accepts the biblical truth and takes God's only begotten son, Jesus, as his/her door to the eternal paradise to live forever without any sickness, without any wars and with deep satisfaction and enjoyable happiness.
Study first the 101 facts listed below with your whole family including with your children
before you start any systematic Bible studying with your family.
When you study these 101 facts God placed in the Bible as the evidence that the text is dictated by God himself, then you, your children and your whole family has a much easier time to accept the rest of the Bible text also as God's dictation leading to a high-level quality of life (as God states in his word, The Bible). Accept every word in the Bible as true and as a success guide. Teach your children do the same.
Then you, your children and your whole family will be blessed with knowledge and wisdom how
to create a healthy, happy, financially rich and long, successful life for every member in your family.
_________________
And one more paragraph for all you in your study group to study before you start studying the 101 facts.
Click:
Below click colored areas for further info
The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament shows His handiwork. Day unto day utters speech, and night unto night reveals knowledge. There is no speech nor language where their voice is not heard. Jeremiah 10:12 – He has made the earth by His power, He has established the world by His wisdom, and has stretched out the heavens at His discretion.
Romans 1:20 – For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse.
_________________
Etymology (= origin) of the word 'science':
LAT. 'scire' = to know, LAT. 'scientia' = knowledge, science; especially : knowledge based on demonstrable and reproducible data
Science means knowledge, and true science always agrees with the observable evidence. I assume, you will also.
Below
the list of the 101 facts with observable evidence
proving that the Bible info was not created by any humans but, as the Bible states, is dictated by God to those humans He "hired" as His earthly secretaries. Mostly the "secretaries" where Jewish. One reason is that the Jewish people had one of the most advanced writing technology in their use. The other reasons come up in the actual biblical text. The Bible is the Book of Life-Success for us humans. To apply in our life the biblical success advice keeps us healthy, gives us a long, happy and also a financially rich life.
Scientific research continues to unfold the wonders and mysteries of our universe. Interestingly, there is one book that has anticipated many of these scientific facts.
That book is the Bible. The only source in the world history with hundreds of correct science facts of foreknowledge tens, hundreds and even thousands of years before they happened. In addition, Christianity is the only religion in the world in which the founder (= Jesus) has died and returned back to life. The historians testify those things did happen. Even Jesus' birth, ministry & death were recorded in The Bible with correct details & times hundreds of years before they happened. Perhaps because of all these provable facts, Christianity is the number wise biggest religion in the world. Click: The Global Religious Landscape
Create a family study & discussion group
It is an effective method to reach a higher quality of life
If you live alone study these facts now either alone or create your own study & discussion group - invite some of your friends to share the learning.
Later, when you have a family, help your spouse and children learn these facts also. Then you need to revisit all your earlier studies.
When you apply the biblical principles you will learn now, the benefits will be appearing in your life immediately. Then it will also be easier to teach other people in these facts. Perhaps you would like to professionally teach these to others. Become an ordained minister - contact our church GCG for that purpose.
Send a letter to: GCG - P.O. Box 1555, New York, NY 10163-1555, USA. In the letter include your email address and your postal address.
Many of these 101 facts listed below were penned centuries before they were discovered. Scientific foreknowledge found only in the Bible offers one more piece to the collective proof that the Bible is truly the inspired Word of the Creator.
How does this affect you? The list of 101 below provides the answer – you need to read & study the 101 statements carefully. Study these together as a family, explain and teach these facts to your children and apply the Bible guidance together as the whole family. Then your family and every member in your family will succeed in this life and beyond. Remember: your children do what they see their parents doing, not what the parents tell them to do.
If you live alone do all this studying alone or create your own weekly study group made of your friends: work place friend(s), friend(s) found in your church, or any other group of friends. Even 2 - 3 friends can form an enjoyable & effective study & discussion group. If you have a family later on in your life, create a new study group with your spouse (and perhaps with few friends) and then add your children in the group when the children come to your life. For your children you need to teach all facts; this means you need to revisit the material what you had yourself already studied and learned. That's the role of a teacher. When you may be later blessed with even additional children they all have to learn the same. Perhaps your older children would be capable of the repeated teaching job. It is good to know also that when you teach others you learn yourself more. The study group is an excellent personal & family success motivator and can make a huge difference in your children's success in their adult life.
Start studying the whole Bible (will take years) as a whole family and apply the success laws you all find in the Bible.
As you study the Bible you will find continuously statements that you have seen presented by the modern-day motivational speakers. That's, because all of them admit that they have copied the Bible in many of their success teaching principles. So have I, Dr. Christian, the founding pastor of the GCG, one of these motivational writers & speakers and the founder of Successology (Reg.U.S.Pat.Off.1991), the new science for today's success and the developer or many other related success training materials.
In my research I have come to understand the Bible being full of results-bringing guidance for life success fit for every person. Just alone the Ten Commandments are such success principles. The 2 most important commandments (= success laws), as Jesus was teaching are: (1) Love God and (2) Love your neighbor. Loving God means accepting to follow His word and (life success) guidance in The Bible and apply the rest of the 10 success laws (= 10 Commandments) in our daily life. These following two cover the rest of the 10 Commandment says Jesus. These 2 are also called "The Great Commandment" or "The Greatest Commandments" (as said: the today's English word and meaning for a "commandment" is a "success law").
Matthew 22:36-40: 36 Jesus was asked: “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?” 37 Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’' 38 This is the first and greatest commandment. 39 And the second is: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’, 40 All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”
The Proverbs are also clear success principles, so is the rest of the Old and New Testament. You will recognize all this when you start your whole family study group.
How to start a weekly family study group - an important tool for your family and for your children's future families - If you have no family, yet, study alone or with 1 or more friends ( a group can discuss different views and clarify text comprehension).
A good, widely tested way to study is to have a weekly family meeting. Every family member will be present in the study & discussion meeting, also the smaller ones, the toddlers & the baby. The baby may be sleeping: the info goes into the awareness even when sleeping - every baby catches information already in the womb
Click: Babies learn in the womb - Click: Birth Psychology
During the week every family member reads = studies the same agreed material. Then the material is discussed in your weekly family meeting (1-2 hours+). In the meeting you agree how to apply the discussed material together in your family. The weekly family study group is a one of the most important foundations for the family's and your children's present & future success in life.
First you all study in fractions (= takes several weekly meetings) the "101 Facts And Foreknowledge" = the material in this tab.
Why these first? This information, as you discuss the 101 statements all together in your family meeting, will lay a reliable foundation to then to understand the Bible text and see the Bible as a true source of correct knowledge. Without these 101 facts many would not understand the Bible truth.
When you have finished the 101 Bible statements in your study group,
Then: Start the Bible study
Take material from 6 (six) different locations (listed here) - how much from each? After a few meetings you'll know how much to take from each part
(1) Start from the Proverbs (= easy reading, practical success guidance), click: Proverbs 1 - Bible Gateway
Use a modern language Bible. If English is not your first language, use 2 printed Bibles OR study both on the internet if you have access to the internet (depending in what country you live): (1) a modern language version Bible in your first language and (2) a modern language version in English (like the one you see in the Proverb link above = NIV (New International version). The English Bible versions are on the internet - study what the link (copy+search) Bible.Gateway can provide. If English is not your first language, you could study in both languages and learn English at the same time during the years to come.
(2) add material (small parts) from the Old Testament (= represents the past with the old covenant) &
(3) from the New Testament (= represents the present with the new covenant) and
(4) small parts from the Revelation (= represents the future of the world).
(5) Add also family material from our sister organization's Save The American Family - Staff, Inc., -not-for-profit- website, from its tab: services, sub-tab: Restoring any marriage-RAM = the website's family tab.
(6) Add to your weekly study small parts also taken from this GCG's website.
For every week's study program take little from all of these 6 (six) groups. The weekly family meeting is meant to exist as long as any child is still with the parents.
For each weekly family meeting decide together one week beforehand what you will, as a family, study during the week to be discussed and handled in the weekly family meeting. Have every member present in your family meeting, including the baby and the toddlers - then everyone learns early on. The babies learn already in the womb - see the 2 links above relating to the "baby learns already in the womb". Have, on a rotating basis, someone leading the family meeting, then also your children will learn to lead a group and can shine in their schools with their new skill. Have the family meeting as long as your children are adult and gone and even after that with your spouse (and perhaps with some of your friends). Your children will thank you forever for this weekly family meeting because it will guide them to full success in their life. Handle also the financial and investment matters in your family meetings and start all, including your children, practice investing early on. Investing material you can find on STAF, Inc.'s website in tab "more". there in sub-tab "Credit & Credit cards
God placed these 101 pieces of evidence in the Bible so that all humans, including you and I, could believe that the Bible was dictated by God himself to function as our success guide for the good in our life.
The research proves that people who follow the Biblical success principles, apply them in their lives and guide their children to know and apply the same principles in their lives are always in the longer run and in every way the most successful people one earth.
_______________________
Matthew 10:32
"Every one therefore who shall confess me before men, him will I also confess before my Father who is in heaven."
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The detailed information below is prepared & provided by the ICR - The Institute for Creation Research - www.icr.org
© 1994-2013 Institute for Creation Research. All Rights Reserved. www.icr.org
ICR provides Indepth scientific and biblical information regarding the creation/evolution controversy
The information below is from: www.ICR.org visit the ICR website - give donations to ICR to help them in their important work. Meet the ICR Science Team
Who are the scientists engaged in ICR’s mission to conduct quality scientific research within the realms of origins and earth history?
Click below the orange "click here" to meet the team of individuals who are applying their training and expertise to questions that impact our understanding of the Genesis account of creation, the Flood, the science facts & the predictions and beyond.
Click here (1) for the bios of the ICR Science Team & (2) for the ICR website
.
.
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Before you look at these 101 statements of evidence below,
study (with every member of your family) above the introduction to this list of 101
In order to understand the meaning of this list it is a must to study the above introduction
________________
Next study the end paragraph of this 101 list: (1) hold the key Ctrl and then add (2) at the same time holding the key End - it will connect to the end paragraph -- all group members need to study that (then back to the beginning of this list the key Ctrl and the key Home same way
Below on the list click colored areas for further info
Below on the list the colored Bible link connects to that same spot in The Bible
Below on the list:
Most of these 101 statements have an additional information link to visit (some have several) -
click that invitation while you are still with that statement number and study the additional info
immediately because it relates to that statement # info
1. The earth free-floats in space (Job 26:7), affected only by gravity. While other sources declared the earth sat on the back of an elephant or turtle, or was held up by Atlas, the Bible alone states what we now know to be true – “He hangs the earth on nothing.”
Notice: Under each numbered statement is another link for further info relating to that specific topic
Click colored areas for further info
2.
Creation is made of particles, indiscernible to our eyes (Hebrews 11:3). Not until the 19th century was it discovered that all visible matter consists of invisible elements.
Visit:
click: All About Atoms (Jefferson Lab)
3.
The Bible specifies the perfect dimensions for a stable water vessel (Genesis 6:15). Ship builders today are well aware that the ideal dimension for ship stability is a length six times that of the width. Keep in mind, God told Noah the ideal dimensions for the ark 4,500 years ago.
Visit:
The Ark’s perfect dimensions (Answers In Genesis)
Safety investigation of Noah’s Ark in a seaway (Answers In Genesis)
Noah’s Flood and the Gilgamesh Epic (Answers In Genesis)
4.
When dealing with disease, clothes and body should be washed under running water (Leviticus 15:13). For centuries people naively washed in standing water. Today we recognize the need to wash away germs with fresh water.
Visit:
Why do I need to wash my hands?
5.
Sanitation industry birthed (Deuteronomy 23:12-13). Some 3,500 years ago God commanded His people to have a place outside the camp where they could relieve themselves. They were to each carry a shovel so that they could dig a hole (latrine) and cover their waste. Up until World War I, more soldiers died from disease than war because they did not isolate human waste.
Visit:
The First Book Of Public Hygiene (Answers In Genesis)
Modern medicine? (Answers In Genesis)
6.
Oceans contain springs (Job 38:16). The ocean is very deep. Almost all the ocean floor is in total darkness and the pressure there is enormous. It would have been impossible for Job to have explored the "springs of the sea." Until recently, it was thought that oceans were fed only by rivers and rain. Yet in the 1970s, with the help of deep diving research submarines that were constructed to withstand 6,000 pounds-per-square-inch pressure, oceanographers discovered springs on the ocean floors!
Visit:
Springs of the Ocean (ICR)
7.
There are mountains on the bottom of the ocean floor (Jonah 2:5-6). Only in the last century have we discovered that there are towering mountains and deep trenches in the depths of the sea.
Visit:
Numerical Simulations Of Precipitation Induced By Hot Mid-Ocean Ridges (ICR)
8.
Joy and gladness understood (Acts 14:17). Evolution cannot explain emotions. Matter and energy do not feel. Scripture explains that God places gladness in our hearts (Psalm 4:7), and ultimate joy is found only in our Creator’s presence – “in Your presence is fullness of joy” (Psalm 16:11).
9.
Blood is the source of life and health (Leviticus 17:11; 14). Up until 120 years ago, sick people were “bled” and many died as a result (e.g. George Washington). Today we know that healthy blood is necessary to bring life-giving nutrients to every cell in the body. God declared that “the life of the flesh is in the blood” long before science understood its function.
Visit:
Life in the Blood (ICR)
10.
The Bible states that God created life according to kinds (Genesis 1:24). The fact that God distinguishes kinds, agrees with what scientists observe – namely that there are horizontal genetic boundaries beyond which life cannot vary. Life produces after its own kind. Dogs produce dogs, cats produce cats, roses produce roses. Never have we witnessed one kind changing into another kind as evolution supposes. There are truly natural limits to biological change.
Visit:
Things You May Not Know About Evolution (ICR)
Creation - Evolution (ICR)
Evolution and the Bible (ICR)
The Fossil Record: Intermediate Links (ChristianAnswers.net)
Archaeopteryx A Feathered Reptile? (ChristianAnswers.net)
The Ape-Man: Missing Link (ChristianAnswers.net)
Biological Evolution Darwin's Finches (ChristianAnswers.net)
11.
Noble behavior understood (John 15:13; Romans 5:7-8). The Bible and history reveal that countless people have endangered or even sacrificed their lives for another. This reality is completely at odds with Darwin’s theory of the survival of the fittest.
12.
Chicken or egg dilemma solved (Genesis 1:20-22). Which came first, the chicken or the egg? This question has plagued philosophers for centuries. The Bible states that God created birds with the ability to reproduce after their kind. Therefore the chicken was created first with the ability to make eggs! Yet, evolution has no solution for this dilemma.
Visit:
What Came First, the Chicken or the Egg? (ICR)
The Egg/Chicken Conundrum (ICR)
13.
Which came first, proteins or DNA (Revelation 4:11)? For evolutionists, the chicken or egg dilemma goes even deeper. Chickens consist of proteins. The code for each protein is contained in the DNA/RNA system. However, proteins are required in order to manufacture DNA. So which came first: proteins or DNA? The ONLY explanation is that they were created together.
Visit:
Things that are Made (ICR)
Evolution Hopes You Don't Know Chemistry: The Problem with Chirality (ICR)
Origin of Life: Critique of Early Stage Chemical Evolution Theories (ICR)
The Origin of Life: Theories on the Origin of Biological Order (ICR)
14.
Our bodies are made from the dust of the ground (Genesis 2:7; 3:19). Scientists have discovered that the human body is comprised of some 28 base and trace elements – all of which are found in the earth.
Visit:
The elements of the periodic table sorted by their presence in human body. (Lenntech)
The Bible is a Textbook of Science (ICR)
15.
The First Law of Thermodynamics established (Genesis 2:1-2). The First Law states that the total quantity of energy and matter in the universe is a constant. One form of energy or matter may be converted into another, but the total quantity always remains the same. Therefore the creation isfinished, exactly as God said way back in Genesis.
Visit:
Modern Scientific Discoveries Verify the Scriptures (Institute For Creation Research)
16.
The first three verses of Genesis accurately express all known aspects of the creation (Genesis 1:1-3). Science expresses the universe in terms of: time, space, matter, and energy. In Genesis chapter one we read: “In the beginning (time) God created the heavens (space) and the earth (matter)…Then God said, “Let there be light (energy).” No other creation account agrees with the observable evidence.
17.
The universe had a beginning (Genesis 1:1; Hebrews 1:10-12). Starting with the studies of Albert Einstein in the early 1900s and continuing today, science has confirmed the biblical view that the universe had a beginning. When the Bible was written most people believed the universe was eternal. Science has proven them wrong, but the Bible correct.
Visit:
Modern Scientific Discoveries Verify the Scriptures (Institute For Creation Research)
18.
The earth is a sphere (Isaiah 40:22). At a time when many thought the earth was flat, the Bible told us that the earth is spherical.
Visit:
Does the Bible Teach a Spherical Earth
Did Bible writers believe the earth was flat? (CristianAnswers.net)
19.
Scripture assumes a revolving (spherical) earth (Luke 17:34-36). Jesus said that at His return some would be asleep at night while others would be working at day time activities in the field. This is a clear indication of a revolving earth, with day and night occurring simultaneously.
20.
Origin of the rainbow explained (Genesis 9:13-16). Prior to the Flood there was a different environment on the earth (Genesis 2:5-6). After the Flood, God set His rainbow “in the cloud” as a sign that He would never again judge the earth by water. Meteorologists now understand that a rainbow is formed when the sun shines through water droplets – which act as a prism – separating white light into its color spectrum.
Visit:
What causes a rainbow? (CristianAnswers.net)
The Rainbow And The Cloud (ICR)
21.
Light can be divided (Job 38:24). Sir Isaac Newton studied light and discovered that white light is made of seven colors, which can be “parted” and then recombined. Science confirmed this four centuries ago – God declared this four millennia ago!
22.
Ocean currents anticipated (Psalm 8:8). Three thousand years ago the Bible described the “paths of the seas.” In the 19th century Matthew Maury – the father of oceanography – after reading Psalm 8, researched and discovered ocean currents that follow specific paths through the seas! Utilizing Maury’s data, marine navigators have since reduced by many days the time required to traverse the seas.
Visit:
Modern Scientific Discoveries Verify the Scriptures (Institute For Creation Research)
23.
Sexual promiscuity is dangerous to your health (1 Corinthians 6:18; Romans 1:27). The Bible warns that “he who commits sexual immorality sins against his own body,” and that those who commit homosexual sin would “receive in themselves” the penalty of their error. Much data now confirms that any sexual relationship outside of holy matrimony is unsafe.
Visit
Sex Habits Linked to Early Death, Disability (Fox News)
24.
Reproduction explained (Genesis 1:27-28; 2:24; Mark 10:6-8). While evolution has no mechanism to explain how male and female reproductive organs evolved at the same time, the Bible says that from the beginning God made them male and female in order to propagate the human race and animal kinds.
25.
Incalculable number of stars (Jeremiah 33:22). At a time when less than 5,000 stars were visible to the human eye, God stated that the stars of heaven were innumerable. Not until the 17th century did Galileo glimpse the immensity of our universe with his new telescope. Today, astronomers estimate that there are ten thousand billion trillion stars – that’s a 1 followed by 25 zeros! Yet, as the Bible states, scientists admit this number may be woefully inadequate.
Visit:
The Stars of Heaven (Institute For Creation Research)
26.
The number of stars, though vast, are finite (Isaiah 40:26). Although man is unable to calculate the exact number of stars, we now know their number is finite. Of course God knew this all along – “He counts the number of the stars; He calls them all by name” (Psalm 147:4). What an awesome God!
Visit:
The Stars of Heaven (Institute For Creation Research)
27.
The Bible compares the number of stars with the number of grains of sand on the seashore(Genesis 22:17; Hebrews 11:12). Amazingly, gross estimates of the number of sand grains are comparable to the estimated number of stars in the universe.
Visit:
The Stars of Heaven (Institute For Creation Research)
28.
Rejecting the Creator results in moral depravity (Romans 1:20-32). The Bible warns that when mankind rejects the overwhelming evidence for a Creator, lawlessness will result. Since the theory of evolution has swept the globe, abortion, pornography, genocide, etc., have all risen sharply.
Visit:
Evolution and the American Abortion Mentality (ICR)
Is Creation One of the Traditional Values? (ICR)
Darwin's Influence on Ruthless Laissez Faire Capitalism (ICR)
Would China Benefit from Christianity? (ICR)
29.
The fact that God once flooded the earth (the Noahic Flood) would be denied (2 Peter 3:5-6). There is a mass of fossil evidence to prove this fact, yet it is flatly ignored by most of the scientific world because it was God’s judgment on man’s wickedness.
30.
Vast fossil deposits anticipated (Genesis 7). When plants and animals die they decompose rapidly. Yet billions of life forms around the globe have been preserved as fossils. Geologists now know that fossils only form if there is rapid deposition of life buried away from scavengers and bacteria. This agrees exactly with what the Bible says occurred during the global Flood.
Visit:
The Origin of Coal (ICR)
31.
The continents were created as one large land mass (Genesis 1:9-10). Many geologists agree there is strong evidence that the earth was originally one super continent – just as the Bible said way back in Genesis.
32.
Continental drift inferred (Genesis 7:11). Today the study of the ocean floor indicates that the landmasses have been ripped apart. Scripture states that during the global Flood the “fountains of the great deep were broken up.” This cataclysmic event apparently resulted in the continental plates breaking and shifting.
Visit:
Recent Rapid Uplift of Today's Mountains (ICR)
Continental Drift, Plate Tectonics, and the Bible (ICR)
33.
Ice Age inferred (Job 38:29-30). Prior to the global Flood the earth was apparently subtropical. However shortly after the Flood, the Bible mentions ice often – “By the breath of God ice is given, and the broad waters are frozen” (Job 37:10). Evidently the Ice Age occurred in the centuries following the Flood.
Visit:
Recent Rapid Uplift of Today's Mountains (ICR)
Continental Drift, Plate Tectonics, and the Bible (ICR)
The Ice Age and the Genesis Flood (ICR)
34.
Life begins at fertilization (Jeremiah 1:5). God declares that He knew us before we were born. The biblical penalty for murdering an unborn child was death (Exodus 21:22-23). Today, it is an irrefutable biological fact that the fertilized egg is truly an entire human being. Nothing will be added to the first cell except nutrition and oxygen.
Visit:
Is the unborn human less than human? (CristianAnswers.net)
Cloning: Redefining When Life Begins Exposing Flaws in the Preembryo-Embryo Distinction (ICR)
35.
God fashions and knits us together in the womb (Job 10:8-12; 31:15). Science was ignorant concerning embryonic development until recently. Yet many centuries ago, the Bible accurately described God making us an “intricate*) unity” in the womb. *) intricate = 1. Having many complexly arranged elements; elaborate. See Synonyms at elaborate.2. Solvable or comprehensible only with painstaking effort. See Synonyms at complex.
Visit:
Does The Human Embryo Go Through Animal Stages? (ICR)
36.
DNA anticipated (Psalm 139:13-16). During the 1950s, Watson and Crick discovered the genetic blueprint for life. Three thousand years ago the Bible seems to reference this written digital code in Psalm 139 – “Thine eyes did see my substance, yet being unperfect [unformed]; and in Thy book all my members were written, which in continuance were fashioned, when as yet there was none of them.”
Visit:
Curiously Wrought (ICR)
37.
God has created all mankind from one blood (Acts 17:26; Genesis 5). Today researchers have discovered that we have all descended from one gene pool. For example, a 1995 study of a section of Y chromosomes from 38 men from different ethnic groups around the world was consistent with the biblical teaching that we all come from one man (Adam)
Visit:
One Blood: The biblical answer to racism (CristianAnswers.net)
Where Did The Races Come From? (ICR)
38.
Origin of the major language groups explained (Genesis 11). After the rebellion at Babel, God scattered the people by confounding the one language into many languages. Evolution teaches that we all evolved from a common ancestor, yet offers no mechanism to explain the origin of the thousands of diverse languages in existence today.
Visit:
Language, Creation and the Inner Man (ICR)
On the Origin of Language (ICR)
39.
Origin of the different “races” explained (Genesis 11). As Noah’s descendants migrated around the world after Babel, each language group developed distinct features based on environment and genetic variation. Those with a genetic makeup suitable to their new environment survived to reproduce. Over time, certain traits (such as dark skin color for those closer to the equator) dominated. Genesis alone offers a reasonable answer to the origin of the races and languages.
Visit:
Where did the human races come from? (CristianAnswers.net)
Evolution and Modern Racism (ICR)
40.
God has given us the leaves of the trees as medicine (Ezekiel 47:12; Revelation 22:2). Ancient cultures utilized many herbal remedies. Today, modern medicine has rediscovered what the Bible has said all along – there are healing compounds found in plants.
41.
Healthy dietary laws (Leviticus 11:9-12). Scripture states that we should avoid those sea creatures which do not have fins or scales. We now know that bottom-feeders (those with no scales or fins) tend to consume waste and are likely to carry disease.
Visit:
The Dietary Law (Pacific Heath Center)
Bulletin Of The History Of Medicine (Johns Hopkins Institute)
42.
The Bible warns against eating birds of prey (Leviticus 11:13-19). Scientists now recognize that those birds which eat carrion (putrefying flesh), often spread disease.
Visit:
The Dietary Law (Pacific Heath Center)
Bulletin Of The History Of Medicine (Johns Hopkins Institute)
43.
Avoid swine (Deuteronomy 14:8). Not so long ago, science learned that eating undercooked pork causes an infection of parasites called trichinosis. Now consider this: the Bible forbid the eating of swine more than 3,000 years before we learned how to cook pork safely.
Visit:
The Dietary Law (Pacific Heath Center)
Relationship between pork consumption and cirrhosis. (NCBI)
Bulletin Of The History Of Medicine (Johns Hopkins Institute)
44.
Radical environmentalism foreseen (Romans 1:25). Two thousand years ago, God’s Word stated that many would worship and serve creation rather than the Creator. Today, nature is revered as “Mother” and naturalism is enshrined.
Visit:
Earth Day, Environmentalism, and the Bible (ICR)
The Bible, Creation, and Ecology (ICR)
The Hyper-Environmentalists (ICR)
45.
Black holes and dark matter anticipated (Matthew 25:30; Jude 1:13; Isaiah 50:3). Cosmologists now speculate that over 98% of the known universe is comprised of dark matter, with dark energy and black holes. A black hole’s gravitational field is so strong that nothing, not even light, escapes. Beyond the expanding universe there is no measured radiation and therefore only outer darkness exists. These theories paint a seemingly accurate description of what the Bible calls “outer darkness” or “the blackness of darkness forever.”
Visit:
The Outer Darkness (ICR)
46.
The Second Law of Thermodynamics (Entropy) explained (Psalm 102:25-26). This law states that everything in the universe is running down, deteriorating, constantly becoming less and less orderly. Entropy (disorder) entered when mankind rebelled against God – resulting in the curse(Genesis 3:17; Romans 8:20-22). Historically most people believed the universe was unchangeable. Yet modern science verifies that the universe is “grow(ing) old like a garment” (Hebrews 1:11). Evolution directly contradicts this law.
Visit:
Modern Scientific Discoveries Verify the Scriptures (Institute For Creation Research)
Cosmic Evolution: The Big Bang and the Second Law of Thermodynamics (ChrisitanAnswers.net)
47.
Cain’s wife discovered (Genesis 5:4). Skeptics point out that Cain had no one to marry – therefore the Bible must be false. However, the Bible states plainly that Adam and Eve had other sons and daughters. Cain married his sister.
Visit:
Where did Cain get his wife? (CristianAnswers.net)
Cain's Wife: It Really Does Matter! (ICR)
48.
Incest laws established (Leviticus 18:6). To marry near of kin in the ancient world was common. Yet, beginning about 1500 B.C., God forbid this practice. The reason is simple – the genetic mutations (resulting from the curse) had a cumulative effect. Though Cain could safely marry his sister because the genetic pool was still relatively pure at that time, by Moses’ day the genetic errors had swelled. Today, geneticists confirm that the risk of passing on a genetic abnormality to your child is much greater if you marry a close relative because relatives are more likely to carry the same defective gene. If they procreate, their offspring are more apt to have this defect expressed.
Visit:
The Blind Gunman (ICR)
49.
Genetic mixing of different seeds forbidden (Leviticus 19:19; Deuteronomy 22:9). The Bible warns against mixing seeds – as this will result in an inferior or dangerous crop. There is now growing evidence that unnatural, genetically engineered crops may be harmful.
50.
Hydrological cycle described (Ecclesiastes 1:7; Jeremiah 10:13; Amos 9:6). Four thousand years ago the Bible declared that God “draws up drops of water, which distill as rain from the mist, which the clouds drop down and pour abundantly on man” (Job 36:27-28). The ancients observed mighty rivers flowing into the ocean, but they could not conceive why the sea level never rose. Though they observed rainfall, they had only quaint theories as to its origin. Meteorologists now understand that the hydrological cycle consists of evaporation, atmospheric transportation, distillation, and precipitation.
51.
The sun goes in a circuit (Psalm 19:6). Some scientists scoffed at this verse thinking that it taught geocentricity – the theory that the sun revolves around the earth. They insisted the sun was stationary. However, we now know that the sun is traveling through space at approximately 600,000 miles per hour. It is literally moving through space in a huge circuit – just as the Bible stated 3,000 years ago!
52.
Circumcision on the eighth day is ideal (Genesis 17:12; Leviticus 12:3; Luke 1:59). Medical science has discovered that the blood clotting chemical prothrombin peaks in a newborn on the eighth day. This is therefore the safest day to circumcise a baby. How did Moses know?!
Visit:
Biblical Accuracy and Circumcision on the 8th Day (Apologetics Press)
53.
God has given us just the right amount of water to sustain life (Isaiah 40:12). We now recognize that if there was significantly more or less water, the earth would not support life as we know it.
Visit:
The Anthropic Principle: Is the Earth Fine-Tuned for Life? (ChristianAnswers.net)
54.
The earth was designed for biological life (Isaiah 45:18). Scientists have discovered that the most fundamental characteristics of our earth and cosmos are so finely tuned that if just one of them were even slightly different, life as we know it couldn't exist. This is called the Anthropic Principle and it agrees with the Bible which states that God formed the earth to be inhabited.
Visit:
The Earth: Unique in All the Universe (ICR)
Design in Nature: The Anthropic Principle (ICR)
55.
The universe is expanding (Job 9:8; Isaiah 42:5; Jeremiah 51:15; Zechariah 12:1). Repeatedly God declares that He stretches out the heavens. During the early 20th century, most scientists (including Einstein) believed the universe was static. Others believed it should have collapsed due to gravity. Then in 1929, astronomer Edwin Hubble showed that distant galaxies were receding from the earth, and the further away they were, the faster they were moving. This discovery revolutionized the field of astronomy. Eisntein admitted his mistake, and today most astronomers agree with what the Creator told us millennia ago – the universe is expanding!
Visit:
The Battle for the Cosmic Center (ICR)
56.
Law of Biogenesis explained (Genesis 1). Scientists observe that life only comes from existing life. This law has never been violated under observation or experimentation (as evolution imagines). Therefore life, God’s life, created all life.
Visit:
Chemical Evolution: Spontaneous generation; Stanley Miller Experiment (ChristianAnswers.net)
Evolution is Biologically Impossible (ICR)
The Myth Of Chemical Evolution (ICR)
Virgil's Aeneid, by Chance Alone? (ICR)
The Origin of Life: Theories on the Origin of Biological Order (ICR)
57.
Animal and plant extinction explained (Jeremiah 12:4; Hosea 4:3). According to evolution, occasionally we should witness a new kind springing into existence. Yet, this has never been observed. On the contrary, as Scripture explains, since the curse on all creation, we observe death and extinction (Romans 8:20-22).
Visit:
How did bad things come about? (CristianAnswers.net)
Extinction (ICR)
Chicxulub and the Demise of the Dinosaurs (ICR)
58.
Light travels in a path (Job 38:19). Light is said to have a “way” [Hebrew: derek, literally a traveled path or road]. Until the 17th century it was believed that light was transmitted instantaneously. We now know that light is a form of energy that travels at ~186,000 miles per second in a straight line. Indeed, there is a “way” of light.
Visit:
Light travels in a path was foretold in the Bible hundreds of years before scientists discovered it(creationists.org)
59.
Air has weight (Job 28:25). It was once thought that air was weightless. Yet 4,000 years ago Job declared that God established “a weight for the wind.” In recent years, meteorologists have calculated that the average thunderstorm holds thousands of tons of rain. To carry this load, air must have mass.
60.
Jet stream anticipated (Ecclesiastes 1:6). At a time when it was thought that winds blew straight, the Bible declares “The wind goes toward the south, and turns around to the north; The wind whirls about continually, and comes again on its circuit.” King Solomon wrote this 3,000 years ago. Now consider this: it was not until World War II that airmen discovered the jet stream circuit.
61.
Medical quarantine instituted (Leviticus 13:45-46; Numbers 5:1-4). Long before man understood the principles of quarantine, God commanded the Israelites to isolate those with a contagious disease until cured.
Visit:
The First Book Of Public Hygiene (Answers In Genesis)
Modern medicine? (Answers In Genesis)
62.
Each star is unique (1 Corinthians 15:41). Centuries before the advent of the telescope, the Bible declared what only God and the angels knew – each star varies in size and intensity!
Visit:
The Stars of Heaven (Institute For Creation Research)
63.
The Bible says that light can be sent, and then manifest itself in speech (Job 38:35). We now know that radio waves and light waves are two forms of the same thing – electromagnetic waves. Therefore, radio waves are a form of light. Today, using radio transmitters, we can send “lightnings” which indeed speak when they arrive.
64.
Laughter promotes physical healing (Proverbs 17:22). Recent studies confirm what King Solomon was inspired to write 3,000 years ago, “A merry heart does good, like medicine.” For instance, laughter reduces levels of certain stress hormones. This brings balance to the immune system, which helps your body fight off disease.
Visit:
Benefits of Laughter (Personal-Development.com)
Humor and Laughter: Health Benefits and Online Sources (helpguide.org)
65.
Intense sorrow or stress is harmful to your health (Proverbs 18:14; Mark 14:34). Researchers have studied individuals with no prior medical problems who showed symptoms of stress cardiomyopathy including chest pain, difficulty breathing, low blood pressure, and even heart failure – following a stressful incident.
Visit:
The Physical Dangers of Stress (Fitness Article)
66.
Microorganisms anticipated (Exodus 22:31). The Bible warns “Whatever dies naturally or is torn by beasts he shall not eat, to defile himself with it: I am the LORD” (Leviticus 22:8). Today we understand that a decaying carcass is full of disease causing germs.
67.
The Bible cautions against consuming fat (Leviticus 7:23). Only in recent decades has the medical community determined that fat clogs arteries and contributes to heart disease.
68.
Do not consume blood (Leviticus 17:12). A common ritual in many religions in the ancient world was to drink blood. However, the Creator repeatedly told His people to abstain from blood (Genesis 9:4;Leviticus 3:17; Acts 15:20; 21:25). Of course, modern science reveals that consuming raw blood is dangerous.
69.
The Bible describes dinosaurs (Job 40:15-24). In 1842, Sir Richard Owen coined the word dinosaur, meaning “terrible lizard,” after discovering large reptilian-like fossils. However in the Book of Job, written 4,000 years earlier, God describes the behemoth as: the largest of all land creatures, plant eating (herbivore), with great strength in its hips and legs, powerful stomach muscles, a tail like a cedar tree, and bones like bars of iron. This is an accurate description of sauropods – the largest known dinosaur family.
Visit:
The Great Dinosaur Mystery (CristianAnswers.net)
How Do The Dinosaurs Fit In? (ICR)
Did Dinosaurs Survive The Flood? (ICR)
Dragons in Paradise (ICR)
Leviathan (ICR)
Dinosaurs And The Bible (ICR)
Dinosaur Mania and Our Children (ICR)
70.
Pleasure explained (Psalm 36:8). Evolution cannot explain pleasure – even the most complex chemicals do not experience bliss. However, the Bible states that God “gives us richly all things to enjoy” (1 Timothy 6:17). Pleasure is a gift from God.
71.
Life is more than matter and energy (Genesis 2:7; Job 12:7-10). We know that if a creature is denied air it dies. Even though its body may be perfectly intact, and air and energy are reintroduced to spark life, the body remains dead. Scripture agrees with the observable evidence when it states that only God can give the breath of life. Life cannot be explained by raw materials, time, and chance alone – as evolutionists would lead us to believe.
Visit:
Breath And Spirit (ICR)
72.
Origin of music explained (Psalm 40:3). Evolution cannot explain the origin of music. The Bible says that every good gift comes from God (James 1:17). This includes joyful melodies. God has given both man and angels the gift of music-making (Genesis 4:21; Ezekiel 28:13). Singing is intended to express rejoicing in and worship of the Lord (Job 38:7; Psalm 95:1-2).
Visit:
Music or Evolution
Music—evidence of creation (Answers In Genesis)
73.
Our ancestors were not primitive (Genesis 4:20-22; Job 8:8-10; 12:12). Archeologists have discovered that our ancestors mined, had metallurgical factories, created air-conditioned buildings, designed musical instruments, studied the stars, and much more. This evidence directly contradicts the theory of evolution, but agrees completely with God’s Word.
Visit:
Ancient civilizations and modern man (Answers In Genesis)
The mystery of ancient man (Answers In Genesis)
Language, Creation and the Inner Man (ICR)
74.
Cavemen described in the Bible (Job 30:1-8). Four thousand years ago, Job describes certain “vile men” who were driven from society to forage “among the bushes” for survival and who “live in the clefts of the valleys, (and) in caves of the earth and the rocks.” Therefore “cavemen” were simply outcasts and vagabounds – not our primitive ancestors as evolutionists speculate.
75.
Environmental devastation of the planet foreseen (Revelation 11:18). Though evolution imagines that things should be getting better, the Bible foresaw what is really occurring today: pollution, destruction and corrupt dominion.
Visit:
Creation and the Environment (ICR)
The Bible, Creation, and Ecology (ICR)
76.
The seed of a plant contains its life (Genesis 1:11; 29). As stated in the Book of Genesis, we now recognize that inside the humble seed is life itself. Within the seed is a tiny factory of amazing complexity. No scientist can build a synthetic seed and no seed is simple!
77.
A seed must die to produce new life (1 Corinthians 15:36-38). Jesus said, “unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it produces much grain.” (John 12:24). In this verse is remarkable confirmation of two of the fundamental concepts in biology: 1) Cells arise only from existing cells. 2) A grain must die to produce more grain. The fallen seed is surrounded by supporting cells from the old body. These supporting cells “give their lives” to provide nourishment to the inner kernel. Once planted, this inner kernel germinates resulting in much grain.
78.
The order of creation agrees with true science (Genesis 1). Plants require sunlight, water, and minerals in order to survive. In the first chapter of Genesis we read that God created light first(v.3), then water (v. 6), then soil (v. 9), and then He created plant life (v. 11).
Visit:
What is the order of events in the biblical Creation? (CristianAnswers.net)
79.
God created “lights” in the heavens “for signs and seasons, and for days and years” (Genesis 1:14-16). We now know that a year is the time required for the earth to travel once around the sun. The seasons are caused by the changing position of the earth in relation to the sun. The moon’s phases follow one another in clock-like precision – constituting the lunar calendar Evolution teaches that the cosmos evolved by random chance, yet the Bible agrees with the observable evidence.
80.
The Bible speaks of “heaven and the highest heavens” (Deuteronomy 10:14). Long before the Hubble Space Telescope, Scripture spoke of the “heaven of heavens” and the “third heaven” (1 Kings 8:27; 2 Corinthians 12:2). We now know that the heavens consist of our immediate atmosphere and the vast reaches of outer space – as well as God’s wonderful abode.
81.
Olive oil and wine useful on wounds (Luke 10:34). Jesus told of a Samaritan man, who when he came upon a wounded traveler, he bandaged him – pouring upon his wounds olive oil and wine. Today we know that wine contains ethyl alcohol and traces of methyl alcohol. Both are good disinfectants. Olive oil is also a good disinfectant, as well as a skin moisturizer, protector, and soothing lotion. This is common knowledge to us today. However, did you know that during the Middle Ages and right up till the early 20th century, millions died because they did not know to treat and protect open wounds?
82.
Man is “fearfully and wonderfully made” (Psalm 139:14). We are only beginning to probe the complexity of the DNA molecule, the eye, the brain, and all the intricate components of life. No human invention compares to the marvelous wonders of God’s creation.
Visit:
Mankind- The Pinnacle of God's Creation (ICR)
83.
Beauty understood (Genesis 1:31; 2:9; Job 40:10; Ecclesiastes 3:11; Matthew 6:28-30). Beauty surrounds us: radiant sunsets, majestic mountains, brightly colored flowers, glowing gems, soothing foliage, brilliantly adorned birds, etc. Beauty is a mystery to the evolutionist. However, Scripture reveals that God creates beautiful things for our benefit and His glory.
Visit:
Beauty (oldpaths.com)
84.
Strong and weak nuclear force explained (Colossians 1:17; Hebrews 1:3). Physicists do not understand what binds the atom’s nucleus together. Yet, the Bible states that “all things consist” – or are held together by the Creator – Jesus Christ.
85.
Atomic fission anticipated (2 Peter 3:10-12). Scripture states that “the elements will melt with fervent heat” when the earth and the heavens are “dissolved” by fire. Today we understand that if the elements of the atom are loosed, there would be an enormous release of heat and energy (radiation).
86.
The Pleiades and Orion star clusters described (Job 38:31). The Pleiades star cluster is gravitationally bound, while the Orion star cluster is loose and disintegrating because the gravity of the cluster is not enough to bind the group together. 4,000 years ago God asked Job, "Can you bind the cluster of the Pleiades, or loose the belt of Orion?" Yet, it is only recently that we realized that the Pleiades is gravitationally bound, but Orion's stars are flying apart.
87.
Safe drinking water (Leviticus 11:33-36). God forbade drinking from vessels or stagnant water that had been contaminated by coming into contact with a dead animal. It is only in the last 100 years that medical science has learned that contaminated water can cause typhoid and cholera.
Visit:
The First Book Of Public Hygiene (Answers In Genesis)
Modern medicine? (Answers In Genesis)
88.
Pest control (Leviticus 25:1-24). Farmers are plagued today with insects. Yet God gave a sure-fire remedy to control pests centuries ago. Moses commanded Israel to set aside one year in seven when no crops were raised. Insects winter in the stalks of last year’s harvest, hatch in the spring, and are perpetuated by laying eggs in the new crop. If the crop is denied one year in seven, the pests have nothing to subsist upon, and are thereby controlled.
89.
Soil conservation (Leviticus 23:22). Not only was the land to lay fallow every seventh year, but God also instructed farmers to leave the gleanings when reaping their fields, and not to reap the corners (sides) of their fields. This served several purposes: 1) Vital soil minerals would be maintained. 2) The hedge row would limit wind erosion. 3) The poor could eat the gleanings. Today, approximately four billion metric tons of soil are lost from U.S. crop lands each year. Much of this soil depletion could be avoided if God’s commands were followed.
90.
Animal instincts understood (Job 39; Proverbs 30:24-28; Jeremiah 8:7). A newly hatched spider weaves an intricate web without being taught. A recently emerged butterfly somehow knows to navigate a 2,500-mile migration route without a guide. God explains that He has endowed each creature with specific knowledge. Scripture, not evolution, explains animal instincts.
Visit:
Instinct, Wise Behavior, Unlearned Knowledge And Abilities (oldpaths.com)
91.
Animals do not have a conscience (Psalm 32:9). A parrot can be taught to swear and blaspheme, yet never feel conviction. Many animals steal, but they do not experience guilt. If man evolved from animals, where did our conscience come from? The Bible explains that man alone was created as a moral being in God’s image.
92.
Pseudo-science anticipated (1 Timothy 6:20). The theory of evolution contradicts the observable evidence. The Bible warned us in advance that there would be those who would profess: “profane and idle babblings and contradictions of what is falsely called knowledge (science).” True science agrees with the Creator’s Word.
93.
Science confirms the Bible (Colossians 2:3). These insights place the Bible far above every manmade theory and all other so-called inspired books. In contrast, the Koran states that the sun sets in a muddy pond (Surah 18:86). The Hadith contains many myths. The Book of Mormon declares that Native Americans descended from Jews – which has been disproven by DNA research. The Eastern writings also contradict true science.
Visit:
DNA Evidence And The Book Of Mormon (CristianAnswers.net)
94.
Human conscience understood (Romans 2:14-15). The Bible reveals that God has impressed His moral law onto every human heart. Con means with and science means knowledge. We know it is wrong to murder, lie, steal, etc. Only the Bible explains that each human has a God-given knowledge of right and wrong.
95.
Love explained (Matthew 22:37-40; 1 John 4:7-12). Evolution cannot explain love. Yet, God’s Word reveals that the very purpose of our existence is to know and love God and our fellow man. God is love, and we were created in His image to reflect His love.
Visit:
Is Man a "Higher" Animal? (ICR)
96.
The real you is spirit (Numbers 16:22; Zechariah 12:1). Personality is non-physical. For example, after a heart transplant the recipient does not receive the donor’s character. An amputee is not half the person he was before loosing his limbs. Our eternal nature is spirit, heart, soul, mind. The Bible tells us that “man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart” (1 Samuel 16:7).
97.
The cause of suffering revealed (Genesis 3; Isaiah 24:5-6). The earth is subject to misery, which appears at odds with our wonderfully designed universe. However, the Bible, not evolution, explains the origin of suffering. When mankind rebelled against God, the curse resulted – introducing affliction, pain and death into the world.
98.
Death explained (Romans 6:23). All eventually die. The Bible alone explains why we die – “The soul who sins shall die” (Ezekiel 18:20). Sin is transgression of God’s Law. To see if you will die, please review God’s Ten Commandments (Exodus 20). Have you ever lied? (White lies and fibs count.) Ever stolen? (Cheating on a test or taxes is stealing.) Jesus said that “whoever looks at a woman to lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart” (Matthew 5:28). Have you ever looked with lust? Then you’re an adulterer at heart. Have you ever hated someone or called someone a fool? If so, the Bible says you are guilty of murder (Matthew 5:21-22; 1 John 3:15). Have you ever used your Creator’s name (Lord, God, Jesus, or Christ) in vain? This is called blasphemy – and God hates it. If you have broken these commandments at any time, then by your own admission, you are a blasphemer, a murderer, an adulterer, a thief, and a liar at heart. And we have only looked at five of the Ten Commandments. This is why we die.
99.
Justice understood (Acts 17:30-31). Our God-given conscience reveals that all sin will be judged. Down deep we know that He who created the eyes sees every secret sin (Romans 2:16). He who formed our mind remembers our past offense as if it just occurred. God has declared that the penalty for sin is death. Physical death comes first, then the second death – which is eternal separation from God in the lake of fire (Revelation 21:8). God cannot lie. Every sin will be judged. His justice demands it. But God is also rich in mercy to all who call upon His name. He has made a way for justice to be served and mercy to be shown.
100.
Eternal life revealed (John 3:16). Scientists search in vain for the cure for aging and death. Yet, the good news is that God, who is the source of all life, has made a way to freely forgive us so that we may live forever with Him in heaven. “But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8). “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life”(John 3:16). God desires a loving, eternal relationship with each person – free from sin, fear, and pain. Therefore, He sent His Son to die as our substitute on the cross. “The wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 6:23). Jesus never sinned, therefore He alone qualified to pay the penalty for our sins on the cross. He died in our place. He then rose from the grave defeating death. All who turn from their sins and trust Him will be saved. To repent and place your trust in Jesus Christ, make Psalm 51 your prayer. Then read your Bible daily, obeying what you read. God will never let you down.
101.
The solution to suffering (Revelation 21). Neither evolution nor religion offers a solution to suffering. But God offers heaven as a gift to all who trust in His Son. In heaven, “God will wipe away every tear from their eyes; there shall be no more death, nor sorrow, nor crying. There shall be no more pain, for the former things have passed away” (Revelation 21:4).
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The Bible is inspired and dictated by God
Therefore it is no surprise
that life’s ultimate questions are answered within The Bible pages.
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The Bible reveals the purpose of our existence. Scripture alone explains where our conscience came from. And no other source explains the root cause of death. Seeing that all die, wouldn’t it be wise to search for the remedy in the only book that proves it was inspired by God? The Bible offers the only remedy for sin, suffering, and death. God’s Word presents the only perfect, sinless Savior – one who died for our sins and rose from the dead. Jesus is the Creator (John 1; Colossians 1). He said “I and My Father are one” (John 10:30). He said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me” (John 14:6). And He promises His followers: “I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish” (John 10:28). Your eternal destiny will be determined by your choice. There is only one provision for sin. Jesus died in your place. Only by faith in Christ’s finished work will you be saved. This is God’s free gift, gift of Grace, offered to all. Please do not let pride, religion, opinions, or love for sin separate you from God. No sin is worth an eternity in hell. Please heed Jesus’ words – “Repent, and believe in the gospel” (Mark 1:15). If you do, you will live in heaven with our awesome Creator forever or you and your family will be granted place in the new Paradise!
Click: Divine grace
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The above information is from: www.ICR.org visit the ICR website - give donations to ICR
© 1994-2013 Institute for Creation Research. All Rights Reserved. www.icr.org
Meet the ICR Science Team
Who are the scientists engaged in ICR’s mission to conduct quality scientific research within the realms of origins and earth history? Meet the team of individuals who are applying their training and expertise to questions that impact our understanding of the Genesis account of creation, the Flood, the science facts & the predictions and beyond.
Click here (1) for the bios of the ICR Science Team & (2) for the ICR website
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Additional articles by ICR - Click Modern Science In An Ancient (ICR)
© 1994-2013 Institute for Creation Research. All Rights Reserved. www.icr.org
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© 1994-2013 Institute for Creation Research. All Rights Reserved. www.icr.org
Meet the ICR Science Team
Who are the scientists engaged in ICR’s mission to conduct quality scientific research within the realms of origins and earth history? Meet the team of individuals who are applying their training and expertise to questions that impact our understanding of the Genesis account of creation, the Flood, the science facts & the predictions and beyond.
Click here (1) for the bios of the ICR Science Team & (2) for the ICR website
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Additional articles by ICR - Click Modern Science In An Ancient (ICR)
© 1994-2013 Institute for Creation Research. All Rights Reserved. www.icr.org
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Jesus will show you
the road to a new
happy, healthy, debt free,
prosperous life
the road to a new
happy, healthy, debt free,
prosperous life
Matthew 10:32
"Every one therefore who shall confess me before men, him will I also confess before my Father who is in heaven."
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