U.S. Confidence in Organized Religion at Low Point

July 12, 2012

Catholics' confidence remains significantly lower than Protestants'

by Lydia Saad

PRINCETON, NJ -- Forty-four percent of Americans have a great deal or quite a lot of confidence in "the church or organized religion" today, just below the low points Gallup has found in recent years, including 45% in 2002 and 46% in 2007. This follows a long-term decline in Americans' confidence in religion since the 1970s.



U.S. Confidence in Organized Religion at Low Point

Chinese Communist Party 'Members' Increasingly Attend Church

CNSNews.com) – More Communist Party members in the Peoples Republic of China are attending church, according to the U.S. State Department’s latest report on International Religious Freedom.

“Although CCP members are required to be atheists and generally are discouraged from participating in religious activities, their attendance at official church services in Guangdong Province was reportedly growing, as authorities increasingly chose to turn a blind eye to their attendance,” the report stated.

Representative Frank Wolf (R-Va.), who authored the International Religious Freedom Act of 1998, backed up claims that more Chinese Communists as well as members of the media are becoming Christians, despite continuing religious repression in China.

http://cnsnews.com/image/chinese-communist-party

"Microsoft is building your robot boss...."

REDMOND, Wash. (CNNMoney) -- This is part 3 of CNNMoney's series looking inside Microsoft's research lab.
When your boss is taking a holiday on some tropical island, it's usually cause for celebration. Soon, though, your supervisor could be in the office and on vacation at the same time.



http://money.cnn.com/2012/08/01/technology/microsoft-robot-boss/

Biometric id cards to ensure corporation staff attendance

KOCHI: Employees of Kochi Corporation will now be forced to think twice before they shirk work and stay away from office.
With the introduction of biometric attendance system from Wednesday, officers and staff will have to report for duty on time. The corporation had decided to introduce the system following public complaints regarding the absence of staff in the local body offices across the city.

http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2012-08-02/kochi/33000515_1_attendance-system-biometric-system-local-body

CORVALLIS, Ore. – The Southern Oregon coast is in danger of a major earthquake in the next 50 years, scientists at Oregon State University said in a study released Wednesday.
The study, written by researchers at OSU and published by the U.S. Geological Survey, concludes there is a 40 percent chance of an earthquake in the Coos Bay, Ore. region that could be nearly as devastating as the earthquake in Japan in March of 2011.
The Cascadia Subduction Zone, off the Pacific Northwest Coast, has had many earthquakes over the past 10,000 years, according to Chris Goldfinger, who authored the study. He says the Southern Oregon coast may be the most vulnerable based on the history of recurring quakes in the region.
http://www.kpic.com/news/local/Study-Coos-Bay-region-in-danger-of-megaquake-164645456.html

A Russian-Saudi-Turkish-Chinese alliance to contain the Muslim Brotherhood and Obama?

I suggested during our conference call yesterday that the only friend the Muslim Brotherhood has in high places is Barack Obama. I didn't mean that facetiously.

Turkey's application to join the SIno-Russian Shanghai Cooperation Organization following Prime Minister Erdogan's July 19 pilgrimage to Russia is a diplomatic humiliation for the United States, and of the first order. Just when Washington is demanding that Russia withdraw support for the Assad regime in Syria, and when Turkey is the linch-pin for American logistics in support of the Syrian opposition, Erdogan has proposed in effect to joint the Russian-Chinese club (without being compelled to hand in his NATO credentials). As AL Monitor wrote July 19:

Read on here:
http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/3232/a-russian-saudi-turkish-chinese-alliance-to

The pro-Islamist West versus anti-Islamist Russia, China?

Photo: REUTERS

In the present regional upheaval in the Middle East and North Africa, how could one characterize the responses of Western countries on the one hand, and those of Russia and China on the other? Are there any ideological stances we can discern in their policies? One answer came from Daniel Pipes, who in a blog post for National Review Online, argued: “Whereas the European Union and the US government are increasingly sympathetic to Islamism, in part as a way to tame their own Muslim populations, Moscow and Beijing have a history of open conflict with their Muslim populations and therefore adopt policies more hostile to Islamism in the Middle East.”

Pipes raises an important topic for discussion, but how valid is the thesis? One particularly important case to note here is that of France and Tunisia.

France has the largest Muslim population in Western Europe, most of whom are of North African descent. Yet the French government was eager to see Zine al-Abedine Ben Ali – the pro-Western president who was subsequently toppled in the protests against his rule that sparked off the Arab Spring – keep hold of power, approving the sale of tear gas grenades to Tunisia just two days before Ben Ali was ousted.

 

http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Op-EdContributors/Article.aspx?ID=279741&R=R1

Nanotechnology In Medicine: Huge Potential, But What Are The Risks?

Nanotechnology, the manipulation of matter at the atomic and molecular scale to create materials with remarkably varied and new properties, is a rapidly expanding area of research with huge potential in many sectors, ranging from healthcare to construction and electronics. In medicine, it promises to revolutionize drug delivery, gene therapy, diagnostics, and many areas of research, development and clinical application.

This article does not attempt to cover the whole field, but offers, by means of some examples, a few insights into how nanotechnology has the potential to change medicine, both in the research lab and clinically, while touching on some of the challenges and concerns that it raises.

What is Nanotechnology?

The prefix "nano" stems from the ancient Greek for "dwarf". In science it means one billionth (10 to the minus 9) of something, thus a nanometer (nm) is is one billionth of a meter, or 0.000000001 meters. A nanometer is about three to five atoms wide, or some 40,000 times smaller than the thickness of human hair. A virus is typically 100 nm in size.

The ability to manipulate structures and properties at the nanoscale in medicine is like having a sub-microscopic lab bench on which you can handle cell components, viruses or pieces of DNA, using a range of tiny tools, robots and tubes.

http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/244972.php

FDA Approves Ingestible Sensor That Tracks Health From The Inside

The US Food and Drug Administration has approved an ingestible digital sensor that can be swallowed in a pill to track health data from inside the body. The idea is that the data can be used not only by patients themselves, but also by caregivers and doctors to individualize their care.

The ingestible sensor, formerly known as the Ingestion Event Marker or IEM, is already approved for use in Europe.

It is the first "digital pill" to receive FDA approval, in a move that its maker Proteus Digital Health, whose headquarters are in Redwood City, California, sees as the start of a era where digital medicine "shifts the care paradigm".
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/248557.php

Wireless devices incite 'Medical Spring'

An army of novel implantable, ingestible wireless medical devices is mobilizing to march medicine into the future. These technologies show potential to improve patient care, reduce medical errors and lower costs.

One example: Researchers at Brigham and Women's Hospital, Boston, are providing a better endoscopy camera capsule. This one is steerable, a big improvement on current capsule endoscopy technologies, which merely tumble uncontrollably through the digestive tract. The BWH design allows radiologists to guide the device during MRI scans and aim the onboard camera to obtain real-time images of specific areas of interest. Ultimately, that may mean less invasive and less costly examinations of digestive tract disorders, particularly in the hard-to-reach small intestine.
The BWH device has a unique propulsion system. "We use both static and radio frequency magnetic fields available in MRIs to generate capsule propulsion," says Nobuhiko Hata, an associate professor in the BWH radiology department.

Another example: A new device wirelessly transmits data from sites of recent orthopedic surgeries. This one, from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, N.Y., promises cost-effective and less invasive post-surgery monitoring.

http://www.hhnmag.com/hhnmag_app/jsp/articledisplay.jsp?dcrpath=HHNMAG/Article/data/06JUN2012/0612HHN_FEA_Wireless&domain=HHNMAG

"Jerusalem Gay Pride Parade"

Some 5,000 people gathered in Jerusalem to take part in the capital’s 10th annual Gay Pride Parade on Thursday.

Participants assembled in Independence Park downtownwere addressed by Adam Russo, a member of the gay community, who was stabbed during the pride march in 2005. In an interview with Channel 10 news, Russo said that while it took him several years to overcome his distress over the attack, he has long since moved on. He also acknowledged that today the gay community does not feel the same hatred from the general population.

http://www.timesofisrael.com/gay-pride-parade-kicks-off-in-jerusalem/

"Humanistic Psychology in the Schools"

The cultural upheavals of the 1960s saw the rise of a so-called Third Force in American education. The leading figures of the Third Force were humanist psychologists Carl Rogers and Abraham Maslow. Maslow had worked on sexological research under the auspices of Edward L. Thorndike from 1935 to 1937. Thorndike had developed the purely behaviorist teaching method of SR, or stimulus-response, which reduced education to a form of animal training. But eventually Maslow rebelled against such pure behaviorism. As for his sexological research, feminist Betty Friedan believed that Maslow’s findings helped advance the feminist approach to psychology. Maslow, trained in behavioral psychology, began to moderate it with his own theory of self-actualization.

http://thenewamerican.com/reviews/opinion/item/12299-humanistic-psychology-in-the-schools#.UBrzOObJ0lg.twitter

"DOJ to CA: illigal immigrant not to practice law in CA"

The Department of Justice told California's high court on Thursday that it should not allow an illegal immigrant to practice law in the state even though he passed the bar exam and has the backing of state officials.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/08/02/us-usa-immigration-lawyers-idUSBRE8711WN20120802

"The Daniel 11 Prophecy & The Anti-Christ"

By Joel Richardson – “Among the many prominent end-time passages of the Bible, one of the clearest passages that proves the Antichrist and his coming armies will arise from the Middle East, is Daniel 11. In this chapter, a prophecy is given that begins with the historical Medo-Persian empire and concludes with the death of the Antichrist.

A large portion of Daniel’s prophecy (vv. 20-34) is focused upon the historical conflict between the infamous Antiochus IV Epiphanes, the king of the Seleucid Kingdom, who is called ‘the King of the North’ and King Ptolemy VI, the king of the Ptolemaic Kingdom who is called ‘the King of the South.’

The Seleucid Kingdom in the north included the region of modern-day Turkey, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Iraq, Iran and even Afghanistan and Pakistan. The Ptolemaic Kingdom in the south ruled Egypt and portions of modern-day Libya and Sudan.
Click link to finish article:

http://midnightwatcher.wordpress.com/2012/08/02/the-daniel-11-prophecy-and-the-antichrist/

The Rise of the Intolerance Brigade - Michael Brown - Page 1

In recent days, the extreme intolerance, bigotry, and exclusivity of some gay activists and their straight allies has been on prominent display in their attacks against Chick-fil-A. What makes this all the more ironic, not to mention Orwellian, is that their campaign is being carried out in the name of tolerance, inclusion, and diversity. As expressed by jurist Marvin Frankel (in his book Faith and Freedom: Religious Liberty in America), “The powerless call out for tolerance. Achieving power, they may soon forget.”
Today, words like “diversity” and “inclusion,” which have been on the lips of gay activists for years, have taken on an ominous tone that would make Orwell proud.

To continue reading:


The Rise of the Intolerance Brigade - Michael Brown - Page 1

Egypt's president wrote to Peres: I hope for peace and stability in Middle East - Israel News | Haaretz Daily Newspaper

 AW:  "We'll see.....Muslims lie to their advantage, by his fruits we shall know him."



 

Egypt's president wrote to Peres: I hope for peace and stability in Middle East - Israel News | Haaretz Daily Newspaper

Men can now wear skirts at Oxford

Oxford forced to change dress code for exams so as not to offender transgender students:


Men can now wear skirts at Oxford

Is Israel the CIA's top counterintelligence threat in the Near East?

 

The CIA considers Israel its No. 1 counterintelligence threat in the agency’s Near East Division, the group that oversees spying across the Middle East, according to current and former officials. Counterintelligence is the art of protecting national secrets from spies. This means the CIA believes that US national secrets are safer from other Middle Eastern governments than from Israel.

Israel employs highly sophisticated, professional spy services that rival American agencies in technical capability and recruiting human sources. Unlike Iran or Syria, for example, Israel as a steadfast US ally enjoys access to the highest levels of the US government in military and intelligence circles.

Is Israel the CIA's top counterintelligence threat in the Near East? | The Times of Israel

Modern-Day Noah Opens Doors Of Ark Creation

 

Modern-Day Noah Opens Doors Of Ark Creation

Catholic business owners score win against ObamaCare mandate | Fox News

 

 The Catholic family that owns a Colorado-based company won a court victory in their battle to stop the Obama administration from requiring them to provide insurance coverage for abortion-inducing drugs, sterilization and contraception, a mandate they say violates their religious beliefs and First Amendment rights.

Catholic business owners score win against ObamaCare mandate | Fox News

The Door to Hell: Giant hole in the Karakum Desert

The Door to Hell: Giant hole in the Karakum Desert has been on fire for more than 40 YEARS | Mail Online