The Southern border finally controlled, but by who? A Limerick.

From Judicial Watch: Months after six Middle Eastern men who entered the U.S. illegally through Mexico were arrested in Arizona state authorities have uncovered an extensive money trail between the Middle East and Mexico. This includes more than a dozen wire transfers sent from the Middle East to known Mexican smugglers in at least two different regions of the Latin American nation, according to the Arizona Attorney General’s Office.

The border secured, but by who?

We don’t seem to know what to do.

But the drug cartel knows;

controls immigrant flows.

Lets ISIS for money pass through.

 

New field to high school mandatory reading curriculum: Cli-fi or Climate Change Fiction. A Limerick.

Our schools push the Climate Change Fiction

as truth, not a mere contradiction.

You take heed, it is real

you must read. Then you feel

The Climate Change Fiction Addiction.

Background: Montpelier, Vt. (AP) — Colleges and universities worldwide are incorporating into their curriculums the evolving genre of literature that focuses on the changes coming to Earth as the result of climate change — “cli-fi.”

Some of the books and movies now being considered part of the genre are old classics, while others were written more recently in direct response to today’s changing climate.

“It’s a very, very energized time for this where people in literature have just as much to say as people who are in hard science fields, or technology and design fields, or various social-science approaches to these things,” said Jennifer Wicke, an English professor at the University of Virginia who will be teaching a course this June on climate fiction at the Bread Loaf campus of Middlebury College in Ripton, Vermont.

 

 

One more verse to the Hillary Nursery rhyme. Immunity for Hillary’s e-mails?

Washington Post, March 2, 2016. The Justice Department has granted immunity to a former State Department staffer, who worked on Hillary Clinton’s private email server, as part of a criminal investigation into the possible mishandling of classified information, according to a senior law enforcement official.

The official said the FBI had secured the cooperation of Bryan Pagliano, who worked on Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign before setting up the server in her New York home in 2009.

This adds one more verse to the Hillary Nursery rhyme:

Hillary, Hillary, where have you been?

“It’s none of your business, for  am the queen.”

…………………

Hillary, Hillary, are you immune?

“I’m too big to jail, what do you impugn?”

The whole nursery rhyme: https://lenbilen.com/2015/05/17/hillary-clinton-as-a-nursery-rhyme/

Carbon free sugar. A Limerick.

The Settled Science of Carbon Pollution has reached a new level. Now there is certified carbon free sugar.

Rejoice, diabetics, hear hear!carbonfreesugar

The Carbon free sugar is here!

No more Splenda for me

I’ll take sugar in tea

It’s Domino’s sugar this year!

(Disclaimer. Maybe, just maybe that is not what they meant?)

Give thanks for “the pause” and clouds. A Limerick.

The cause for the Climate change pause:

The CO2 increase; because

there’s more clouds in the sky

make more snow, that is why

the climate is stable. Applause!

During the last Ice-age snowfall over Greenland was less than half what it is now. As the Earth came out of the ice-age temperatures rose sharply, CO2 rose with a lag of about 800 years, snowfall increased until the Minoan temperature optimum was reached. Since then there has been a slow decrease in global temperatures until the little ice age, after which there has been a temperature recovery. At the same time CO2 levels have increased, and there seemed to be a correlation from 1950 until “the pause”. What controls temperature is not CO2 but clouds. Check the chart below:

Chart 14 - Greenland temperature with snow accumulationWe are still in the coldest 1000 years since the end of the ice-ageGreenlandgisp-last-10000-newThere is a strong correlation between temperature and CO2, not in the temperatures themselves, but in the temperature adjustments, also called homogenization. The adjustments are made to make old temperatures conform better to the climate models. The chart:

tempC02

 

 

 

 

Thought for the day. The Pope, The Trump, walls and bridges.

He that hath no rule over his own spirit is like a city that is broken down, and without walls. (Proverbs 25:28)

“A person who thinks only about building walls, wherever they may be, and not building bridges, is not Christian.”  Pope Francis.

The Vatican City’s old wall.Vatican_City_map_EN

A sign they’re not Christians at all?

For the Pope said as much

about Trump, walls and such.

Humpty Dumpty did fall, I recall.

The moral of this story: Be careful not to make off the wall remarks.

Joking aside, I took a look at how many times the word wall was used in the Bible and where it was used. There are so many tidbits we can learn from a word study. The first is in Leviticus 25: 29-31 ‘Likewise, if a man sells a dwelling house in a walled city, then his redemption right remains valid until a full year from its sale; his right of redemption lasts a full year. But if it is not bought back for him within the space of a full year, then the house that is in the walled city passes permanently to its purchaser throughout his generations; it does not revert in the jubilee. The houses of the villages, however, which have no surrounding wall shall be considered as open fields; they have redemption rights and revert in the jubilee.

This is old Mosaic law, and gives clear guidance that the law in a protected place with borders is different from the law in places without borders, and property rights are clearly established. As a civil society we no longer follow Mosaic Law, that would be as ridiculous as if anyone demanded we should follow Sharia Law.

Moving on, there are the walls of Jericho, the wall of Jerusalem, Nehemiah rebuilding the wall of Jerusalem and the watchmen on the wall.

Then in the New Testament walls are not mentioned at all in the Gospels (In the parable of the tenants in Matthew and Mark it is literally a hedge, not a wall) and only Revelation describes the walls of the new Jerusalem. So the Pope is right, building walls does not appear in the Gospels. Neither does the word bridge appear anywhere in the Bible, so that part is extra-biblical, if one is to take his admonition literally. So if Sarah Palin as Governor refused to build “the bridge to nowhere”, does that make her a non-Christian? (A Limerick from way back comes back to memory)

Sarah Palin did not even think of Nantucket

when plans for that infamous bridge kicked the bucket.

But profligate waste

and spending with haste:

She ordered the spendthriftest Congress to chuck it!

Joking aside, the Pope probably meant spiritual walls and bridges, but by saying it right near the U.S. Mexican border it is easy to assume he meant a literal border. If so, where is the literal bridge?

 

 

The Pope and off the wall remarks. A Limerick.

“A person who thinks only about building walls, wherever they may be, and not building bridges, is not Christian.”  Pope Francis.

The Vatican City’s old wall.Vatican_City_map_EN

A sign they’re not Christians at all?

For the Pope said as much

about Trump, walls and such.

Humpty Dumpty did fall, I recall.

The moral of this story: Be careful not to make off the wall remarks.

 

Thought for the day. Is it for Christ or in Christ?

51i+Y3xmiiL._SX316_BO1,204,203,200_“Two little lines I heard one day,
Traveling along life’s busy way;
Bringing conviction to my heart,
And from my mind would not depart;
Only one life, ’twill soon be past,
Only what’s done for Christ will last.”  C.T.Studd.

Only what’s done for Christ will last. This verse has often been used to motivate Christians to get on with it and join in the work for the Lord. And so it is, we get excited and work what we believe is for the Lord.

Isn’t that putting the cart before the horse? We can see in Ephesians 2:8-10 For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—  not by works, so that no one can boast.  For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.

The old hymn-writer John Newton understood this. The old hymns have a reverence for God and how we can praise and worship Him with the proper perspective.

So it was one crisp fall evening on the night of a full moon. Our church had a family hayride through the countryside, and we sang the old hymns, one after another. The next night, when it was time to put the children to bed, as it was time to sing the good night song for my five year old daughter she said: “Daddy, daddy, sing Crazy waisy.” There was no way I could figure out what she meant, but she said “We said it yesterday at the hayride” I was clueless so she helped me: “You know the one about lost and found”. This rang a bell so we both sang:

Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound,
That saved a wretch like me,
I once was lost but now am found,
Was blind, but now, I see.

This is what separates true Christianity from all other religions. It is not man seeking God. It is God seeking man.

Thought for the day. Jesus Christ and gravity waves.

 The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation.  For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him.  He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.  (Colossians 1:15-17, NIV)

In 1905 Albert Einstein proposed that the speed of light in vacuum is the same, regardless of the speed relative to the observer. That being the case, if the relative speed of light does not change, then something else must change. After much thinking and a few false starts he determined the dimension that changes is time, and published the theory of specific relativity. He then spent 10 years  trying to include acceleration in his equations and published his theory of general relativity in 1915. In it, he determined that massive objects cause a distortion in space-time, which is felt as gravity.

The equation for general relativity is elegant in its simplicity:

Rmn – ½ gmnR = 8pG Tmn.

It is not as simple as it seems, the suffix mn  describes curved space-time and the equations grow until the whole blackboard is filled, and then, that was just the beginning.

ImageForArticle_940(1)

 

 

 

 

 

On Feb 11 it was published that Einstein’s prediction of gravity waves were confirmed. A billion dollar set of gravity detectors verified gravity waves from a pair of rapidly rotating black holes. This was a giant step forward of science, we now can understand mathematically what holds the universe together.gravity-probe-b

gravity-wave-spaceAt the other end of the space-time spectrum is the question: What holds the nucleus of an 1d4e605e0

atom together? Using the curvature of space-time as a model the scientists derived mathematically 11 total dimensions that can explain the glue that holds everything together. They stopped there, for the 12th dimension would be  an alternate time, and since we are bound in space-time there is no way to verify the existence of alternate time.

All of these mathematical formulas describing the universe and how it is stable assume that the laws of Physics are unchangeable through time and space. This is the universal question: If the laws of Physics cannot change, how come we exist? There must have been a creation. Current scientific thinking is the Big Bang, creating the whole universe out of a singularity, and maybe an anti-universe as well filled entirely with anti-matter. But even this indicates there was a beginning, during which time the laws of Physics were established.

This begs the question: Are we really only a product of time plus chance plus nothing? The probability of this being the case is much less than finding the needle in a haystack, more like finding the right elementary particle in the universe. Yet, that is what is taught in school.

It is far more reasonable to assume the existence of a God, a God that created it all including the mathematical formulas which rules the universe.

The Bible explains Creation in the first three verses of Genesis: In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.  Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light.

To believe the Biblical account requires a step of faith; it is free from all scientific explanations, concentrating on the spiritual truths. In the first three verses it introduces all three members of the Godhead, the Father, the Word and the Spirit. (In other passages of scripture Jesus Christ is described as the Word: And the word became flesh and dwelt among us.)  Reading the Bible from a spiritual perspective made a believer out of me, and this explains the meaning of Colossians 1:15-17.

Now the little song for kids makes perfect sense:

He’s got the whole world in His hands,
He’s got the whole world in His hands,
He’s got the whole world in His hands,
He’s got the whole world in His hands.

He’s got my brothers and my sisters in His hands,
He’s got my brothers and my sisters in His hands,
He’s got my brothers and my sisters in His hands,
He’s got the whole world in His hands.

He’s got the sun and the rain in His hands,
He’s got the moon and the stars in His hands,
He’s got the wind and the clouds in His hands,
He’s got the whole world in His hands.

He’s got the rivers and the mountains in His hands,
He’s got the oceans and the seas in His hands,
He’s got you and he’s got me in His hands,
He’s got the whole world in His hands.

He’s got everybody here in His hands,
He’s got everybody there in His hands,
He’s got everybody everywhere in His hands,
He’s got the whole world in His hands.

 

Thought for the day. Real love on Valentine’s day.

 Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. (John 15:13)

Once at bible study as we studied John 15, a great chapter on love, this verse came up and the leader asked if we really were willing to die for someone we loved. Trying to be spiritual I volunteered I probably could die for my wife. She immediately answered “Oh no, you don’t get away that easy; you have to live for me.” She has a way to put things in perspective. I had forgotten all about that episode until one day I heard Ravi Zacharias speak on the air, and he said: All love is costly.   Suddenly I realized, this is true for all real love.

When we got married we gave our vows, for better or worse, for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health until death do us part. There is no excuse. We have to live for each other. This is God’s plan for our lives.

Looking around at recent trends this seems to be more and more a minority view.

My grandson goes to preschool. As Valentine’s day approached his teachers came up with rules what to do on this very special day to celebrate its core message: Love. So the little ones were encouraged to make Valentine’s cards, but as they did, they had to write identical messages to every other person in the class, something like: Be my Valentine (printed) , make a heart and add the names. To do any less would hurt some student’s feelings, causing envy and strife. Group harmony must be enforced.

This is how far we have come in our understanding of love. We are only important as a part of a collective, no longer equal opportunity, but equal outcome. This seems to be designed to stamp out initiative and the entrepreneurial spirit from preschool on. They get indoctrinated in collective thinking, so by the time they finish high school they are convinced individual responsibility is no longer in, it has been replaced by collective thinking. That is in my opinion why so many of the millennials are ready to campaign for Bernie Sanders, even to the point of giving it all in the campaign.

What I still cannot understand is why so many New Hampshireans agonized over whether they should vote for Trump or Sanders.  All I know is that love has nothing to do with it.