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Why would a Christian denomination pay a lecturer to speak at their events who does not believe Jesus physically rose from the dead? Why would the same denomination recommend and use that lecturer's teaching resources when he doesn't even believe God exists? Those are good questions every lay person should be asking the leadership of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. The lecturer I am referring to is John Dominic Crossan, co-founder of the Jesus Seminar (read about it here) and popular New Testament scholar. Let me first show you the multitude of ways the ELCA has sought Crossan and...

Veteran Manchester Republican activist Mike Biundo, the former national campaign manager for Rick Santorum, has signed on with the Mitt Romney campaign in a key post organizing conservative voters for the presumptive presidential nominee. UnionLeader.com has learned that after guiding Romney's chief rival's presidential effort, Biundo has now been hired for the general election as the Romney campaign's deputy national director of coalitions. “Mike Biundo ran an outstanding campaign for Senator Santorum,” said Romney spokesman Ryan Williams. “We are excited that he has agreed to bring his considerable skills and abilities to our team.” Williams said Biundo's decision to join...

Microscopic-scale medical robots represent a promising new type of therapeutic technology. As envisioned, the microbots, which are less than one millimeter in size, might someday be able to travel throughout the human bloodstream to deliver drugs to specific targets or seek out and destroy tumors, blood clots, and infections that can't be easily accessed in other ways. One challenge in the deployment of microbots, however, is developing a system to accurately "drive" them and maneuver them through the complex and convoluted circulatory system, to a chosen destination. Researchers from Korea's Hanyang University in Seoul and Chonnam National University in Gwangju...

A hair-thin electronic patch that adheres to the skin like a temporary tattoo could transform medical sensing, computer gaming and even spy operations, according to a US study published Thursday. The micro-electronics technology, called an epidermal electronic system (EES), was developed by an international team of researchers from the United States, China and Singapore, and is described in the journal Science. "It's a technology that blurs the distinction between electronics and biology," said co-author John Rogers, a professor in materials science and engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. "Our goal was to develop an electronic technology that could...

Seth Shostak, a top astronomer at SETI has recently suggested that instead of trying to listen for standard transmissions from advanced alien biological lifeforms like ourselves, we should probably be listening for AI transmissions. This is based on our own experience, we as humans developed radio transmissions only a short while ago, considering the length of time our civilization has been advancing. And if we're any indication of the general route technologically capable life evolves, the galaxy is probably full of sentient AI collectives, not biological lifeforms. In an interview with the BBC, Dr Shostak said:"If you look at the...

You may be familar with the Obama "I Pledge" video from Youtube. This, hoever, is a funny rebuttal video. As for my pledge, I pledge to defend my country against all enemies foreign and domestic (wink)

Japan is getting prepped to drop $21 billion on a solar power station in space. The whole deal is being put together by Mitsubishi Electric Corp. and industrial design company IGI Corp. The plan involves a gigantic solar panel floating around in space, soaking up a gigawatt of energy and beaming it to Earth without the use of cables. And they hope to have it ready to rock within four years.

July 27, 2009 Your nuclear pursuit is futile, Hillary Clinton tells Iran Tim Reid in Washington, Sheera Frenkel in Jerusalem Hillary Clinton's comments came as US officials arrived in Israel for peace talks Hillary Clinton sought to calm Israeli fears about a nuclear-armed Iran yesterday after she appeared to suggest last week that the Obama Administration was resigned to Tehran getting the bomb. Israeli officials expressed concern after the US Secretary of State said in Thailand that a nuclear-armed Iran could be contained by a US “defence umbrella”. Her words went beyond the Obama Administration’s publicly stated Iran policy, which...

STRAIGHT FROM CPAC: A Speech for the Ages From Rush Cal Thomas: Rush Limbaugh’s extemporaneous speech to CPAC was a tour de force. It was Reagan-plus. It had vision, passion, humor, ridicule (not only for liberals, but for “conservatives” and Republicans who want to accommodate rather than dominate) and power. Congressional Republicans and those who seek the presidency ought to listen and re-listen to this speech. Rush embodies real leadership: he knows where he wants the country to go and he is unapologetic about giving directions. He properly ridiculed liberals for their abject and proven failure to deliver the poor...

Part I: Non-ContradictionChapter VII: The Exploiters and the ExploitedSynopsisWe meet Mr. Mowen of Amalgamated Switch and Signal of Connecticut, who needs training from Rearden’s men before he can handle Rearden Metal, all the while bleating about whether the metal is real or a fraud. In Colorado, Dagny is having problems with the Rio Norte Line. Ben Nealy isn’t up to the job, and she and Hank have had to buy up bankrupt companies and shuttered plants to make the necessary equipment. Her chief engineer balks at reinforcing an ancient bridge with Rearden Metal. Ellis Wyatt shows up and gives Dagny...

I remember being a 10 year old "patriot" wondering whatever happened to Swedish tennis after McEnroe defeated Borg. Then came Wilander. Then came Edberg. By today, I no longer conceive of my "tiny" Sweden as a nation that, for divine reasons, forever will dispose of magnificent tennis players. Today, Sweden sooner is the foremost breeding ground of UN careerists and suchlike people found on this planet. But despite undeniable, widespread PC idiocy, there's something I still feel is right about our little Viking nation. Ambition. If you decide to confront this challenge, I say: Go, Stefan Edberg!

Gigantic mobile super city to make the whole world become China 17.09.2008 Source: Pravda.Ru URL: http://english.pravda.ru/science/tech/106379-superstar-0 The city of the future aims skyward in a new incredible concept designed by the Chinese company MAD Architects. The city, dubbed as The Superstar, will have a completely self-sufficient structure and will be capable of producing all necessary energy and raw materials by means of processing its own wastes. Designed as a future renovation of the contemporary Chinatown, The Superstar will be traveling over the world providing other ground-based cities with electric power, commercial and cultural activities, InFuture.ru website reports. The city, which...

Bionics – a word formed from biology and electronics – has become a quickly expanding research field, exploring ways and materials to bridge the interface between electronics and biology Basically, there are three levels of biocommunications where electronics and biology could interface: molecular, cellular and skeletal. For any implanted bionic material it is the initial interactions at the biomolecular level that will determine longer term performance. While bionics is often associated with skeletal level enhancements, electronic communication with living cells is of interest with a view to improving the results of tissue engineering or the performance of implants such as...

The picture says it all...

Update title to: Microsoft hoses user data - again! For most users the Office SP3 means that they won’t be able to recover their old documents. They won’t know to install Open Office, access Microsoft support or edit the registry. But bowing to complaints that the data is not literally “destroyed” I’m updating the title here. But anyone who doesn’t think that most users will be baffled and hurt by this doesn’t know many average users. End update. Will Microsofties ever learn? Without warning the Microsoft Office SP3 update blocks over a dozen common document formats, including many Word, Powerpoint...

President Bush has set out his goals on immigration reform to the American people. "There is," he said, "a rational middle ground between granting an automatic path to citizenship for every illegal immigrant, and a program of mass deportation." I agree that a rational middle ground can be found -- but amnesty is not the middle ground. Instead, I will soon be introducing legislation, the Border Integrity and Immigration Reform Act. ...It will include a guest worker program -- but it will not include an amnesty...I believe this legislation is a strong alternative to the amnesty plan passed by the...

Ray Kurzweil, an inventor and futurist, has stumbled on a discovery of earth-shattering importance. It is the arrival of "singularity," and according to him it will happen in 2045. "Gradually," he writes at the beginning of "The Singularity Is Near," "I've become aware of a transforming event looming in the first half of the 21st century … the impending Singularity in our future is increasingly transforming every institution and aspect of human life, from sexuality to spirituality." Singularity, Kurzweil says, is a development "representing a profound and disruptive transformation in human capability" and a "radical upgrading of our bodies' physical...

JESUS "dies" every year on Good Friday but rises on Easter Sunday and church attendance is resurrected with him. More than 4.5 million Australians will make time for tomorrow's services of remembrance or Sunday's services of rejoicing. Some will do both. Secular citizens should not assume such devotion is automatic. Some believers stay away, and some of those who go are not really believers, at least not in the bodily resurrection. The latter include some high-powered Christians. Attesting to this is one of the Church of England's heaviest hitters, the Bishop of Durham, Tom Wright, who was in Australia recently...

The Stanford University Symbolic Systems Program and the Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence announced today the Singularity Summit at Stanford, a one-day event free to the public, to be held Saturday, May 13, 2006 at Stanford Memorial Auditorium, Stanford, California. The event will bring together leading futurists and others to examine the implications of the "Singularity" -- a hypothesized creation of superintelligence as technology accelerates over the coming decades -- to address the profound implications of this radical and controversial scenario. "The Singularity will be a future period during which the pace of technological change will be so rapid, its...

This month, SAP's Shai Agassi referred to open-source software as "intellectual property socialism." In January, Bill Gates suggested that free-software developers are communists. A few years earlier, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer called the open-source operating system Linux "a cancer."