June 7, 2009

the god that croaks?

Paganism at its worst: a frog that changes color is being worshiped as a god in India:

Hundreds of curious followers flock to Reji Kumar’s home every day to pray and ask for miracles.

Now one of the country’s top zoologists plans to study the rainbow frog. But Reji, 35, who keeps the creature in a glass bottle after finding it while out watering plants, is afraid it might CROAK first.

He said: “My one problem is that this frog does not appear to eat. I keep trying to feed it but it doesn’t eat anything. I don’t know what else to give it.”

The frog was a dazzling white color when Reji, from Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala, first spotted it.

What kind of god is this? The fragile and dying impotent animal is a hopeless path for those who seek salvation and a blasphemous substitute for living eternal God. Why worship a frog when the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord?

Posted by tim at 8:49 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

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March 15, 2009

The Progressive Youth Pastor

Ignatius from travis hawkins on Vimeo.

HT: Slice

Posted by tim at 1:32 PM

October 27, 2008

Born Alive Truth Targets Obama

Abortion survivor Gianna Jessen states,

Seen this ad? In it, Senator Obama personally attacks me. I've dealt with worse; I survived an abortion. State Senator Barack Obama voted 4 times against laws to protect babies who survive abortions. Meanwhile, U.S. Senators voted 98-0 for Born Alive Infant Protections. Senator Obama says deciding when babies get human rights is above his pay grade. Tell him abortion survivors deserve legal protections too.

Isn't about time someone told the truth about Barack Obama: BornAliveTruth

Posted by tim at 9:28 PM | Comments (1)

August 27, 2008

A Victory for Stem Cell Researchers

Controversy surrounding embryonic stem cells has consumed an elicit amount of time and unethical research in this area has been unabashedly promoted on the basis of hype and ill-formed promises. An amazing breakthrough involving adult stems cells ought to silence those in favor of harvesting cells from early humans:

Scientists have transformed one type of fully developed adult cell directly into another inside a living animal, a startling advance that could lead to cures for a variety of illnesses and sidestep the political and ethical quagmires associated with embryonic stem cell research.

[snip]

The experiments, detailed online yesterday in the journal Nature, raise the prospect that patients suffering from not only diabetes but also heart disease, strokes and many other ailments could eventually have some of their cells reprogrammed to cure their afflictions without the need for drugs, transplants or other therapies.

Despite the long road ahead prior to human application, the new technology is a remarkable achievement and the researchers ought to be congratulated.

Earlier this year, ESCR received (another) fatal blow by published research which concluded that human embryonic stem cells are rapidly rejected by the immune system. Of course, the FDA has yet to approve any clinical trial with embryonic stem cells because these cells (whether growing or even pre-differentiated) have a nasty tendency to form cancerous tumors (FRC Blog).

Unfortunately, the technological failures and identification of a replacement for ESCR doesn't resolve the clash of worldviews and moral standards that remain at the heart of the issue.

Individuals and societies who are involved in and support ESCR view themselves as moral because their actions follow from an ethical standard that both justifies and motivates their decisions. In fact, the humanistic ethic that enables the murder of the unborn or the diseased, when pressed, will find little support in the absolute sense for the sanctity of human life that is not unborn or diseased because such sacredness can only be persuasive when derived from a transcended source (God).

Rejection of God means the acceptance of something else, some other ultimate authority or purpose from which standards for right and wrong are derived. This active replacement of Christian ethics with principles upon which ESCR is justified has practical consequences and will lead nations to progressively adopt increasingly oppressive practices that target the weak and defenseless based upon their utilitarian value to others.

Posted by tim at 7:46 PM

May 4, 2008

Amazon's Kindle Back in Stock

Amazon’s Kindle is a unique technology that is positioned to deliver electronic and print media, including books and newspapers, in a package that is highly mobile yet provides a reading experience matching a typed page. The product rapidly sold out late last year and Amazon's supply chain seemingly collapsed. Those issues are over and it appears that a warehouse full of product awaits consumers.

The low power grayscale screen provides highly readable text and wireless connectivity, without a monthly service charge, enables readers to access the Kindle store from most locations.
With over 100,000 electronic books available, the innovative device is likely to achieve significant market penetration for mainstream book readers. In my estimation, the current offering will fail to capture many of the classic texts of interest to Christians, instead emphasizing books likely to generate significant sales. Even so, the Kindle represents the coming change to fully electronic media, in which vast libraries are at the command of the reader. An incredible amount of content is “just there”, wherever you go, in a highly readable format.

Because the electronic books are of little value once reader, I would prefer a subscription service that charged a monthly fee for unlimited books, a rental rather than purchase. This would truly place a mobile library at my fingertips without significant (initial) investment.

Posted by tim at 6:49 PM

March 23, 2008

A Lesson from ER

I stopped watching ER more years ago than I can remember. However, this scene from a reason episode has a lesson worth considering.

Posted by tim at 5:41 AM

December 21, 2007

Blogs For Life Set for January 22, 2008

FRC will host the third-annual Blogs For Life conference on January 22nd, 2008 at Family Research Council Headquarters in Washington, D.C. beginning at 8:00a.m. This event will precede the March for Life, which will mark the 35th anniversary of the Roe v. Wade decision.

A webcast will be available for those who can't make it to D.C..

Speakers to include:

Hadley P. Arkes

Michael Illions

Eric Schiedler

Jill Stanek

Star Parker

Details and registration are developing, so check back for more details after the new year.

Posted by tim at 8:42 AM

December 13, 2007

Tyranny Reigns in Zim

Once a regional breadbasket, Zimbabwe has grappled with rampant inflation during seven years of recession. Shortages of foreign exchange, fuel and food have been widely blamed on mismanagement by the government of President Robert Mugabe.

On a monthly basis, the consumer price index rose by 18.6 percent, according to the Central Statistical Office (CSO).

The central bank has forecast inflation to rise to between 700-800 percent by March before it starts to slow down, although some analysts say Zimbabwe could for the first time record four digit inflation figures this year.

Its inflation rate is one of the highest in the world.

"The whole of housing expenditure, education and food and non-food items have contributed more to the annual inflation figure," CSO acting director Moffat Nyoni told journalists.</blockquote>Few countries have been so devastated by the policies put in place by one man. Mugabe, who last year denied the obvious widespread food shortages, now blames the country's economic nightmare on others:<blockquote>Mugabe denies charges that his policies are responsible for the economic crisis, maintaining the economy has been sabotaged by Western powers opposed to the seizures.</blockquote>His lies are apparent - inflation results from <strong>government</strong> creation of money.

Despite all of this and much more, President Robert G. Mugabe's party nominated him as its candidate in the presidential election in March.

Posted by tim at 10:08 PM

July 30, 2007

We’ve been deceived in the most profound manner

Man vs Wild macho man Bear Grylls checked into hotels during his survival adventures and had his crew help out in difficult situations:

But this British adventurer is now the subject of an investigation by U.K.'s Channel 4, which already has confirmed that Grylls checked into motels on a few occasions when he was depicted on TV having slept under the stars. Other allegations have been made suggesting that the crew that records Grylls in action isn't as hands-off as it might appear to viewers.

[snip]

For all its self-professed realism, "Man" always required some suspension of disbelief. Grylls often commented on the painful loneliness of being alone in the wild, but unless his camera crew was staffed by bears, he did have some company out there.

In retrospect, Grylls' preternatural unflappability in even the most dire of circumstances always seemed a bit too good to be true. In one episode, he made an interminable slog through hip-deep snow drifts in the French Alps. Braving the frigid conditions, his frustration was evident only in the following comment: "I'd really murder for a cup of tea."

For all we know now, perhaps he was sipping English Breakfast on fine china between takes.

Perhaps at this point we should pause and question the legitimacy of educational/nature reality shows in which the actors unnecessarily risk life and limb in a portrayal of bravery and survival tactics. Do we really expect to a person to purposefully put themselves in a dire situation so that we can be thrilled by their eventual survival?

Posted by tim at 5:47 PM

July 20, 2007

That Intelligent Checkers Game

There are 500,995,484,682,338,672,639 possible different checkers play positions and a computer program, called "Chinook", knows them all. If you play your game perfectly the best possible outcome against the computer is a draw. You can never win.

Chinook was developed by scientists at the University of Alberta who used an average of 50 computers for two years (876,000 computational hours) to determine the best move to play in every situation of a game.

The leader of the team described the feat this way:

"We've taken the knowledge used in artificial intelligence applications to the extreme by replacing human-understandable heuristics [rules of thumb] with perfect knowledge. It's an exciting demonstration of the possibilities that software and hardware are now capable of achieving."

The assembled knowledgebase of checkers combinations is rather impressive but don't you find it somewhat ironic that the strictly deterministic algorithm, with "perfect knowledge", is called "intelligent"? Leading up to this pinnacle, algorithms were created to mimic human thought by employing heuristics, Bayesian networks, expert systems and other automated inference engines.

Continue reading "That Intelligent Checkers Game"

Posted by tim at 11:18 PM