Links to articles that may be of interest. Not my words, nor necessarily my views… Tim
The Immigration Crisis and the Great Commission
However, there’s no place for the dehumanization or degradation of immigrants. Irresponsible comments that broadly paint immigrants as terrorists, rapists, and murderers only breed anger at and fear of people who are trying either to escape persecution or to make a better life for their family.
If we’re talking specifically about Latino migration to the United States, an immigrant from Mexico or Latin America is more likely to be an evangelical pastor than a murderer.
What We Get Wrong About ‘In the World, Not of the World’
Being “in” the world means that we are supposed to recognize the things that are wrong with it—not so we can simply try to stay away from them, but so that we can help fix them. That’s what praying “on earth as it is in heaven” is all about.
It appears that many churches are struggling with the groups ministry of the church. It can happen in multiple environments; on campus, off campus, homes, bookstores, and coffee shops. It goes by a myriad of names; Sunday School, small groups, Bible study fellowships, or Life Groups. But no matter where it is or what it’s called, these smaller gatherings are a critical part of our spiritual development.
The best words of comfort we could ever say are: “I love you,” and “I am here for you.” It should also be noted that nothing takes the place of our presence. One of our own should never grieve alone. We need each other; it’s just that simple. When we’re hurting, we need a hug, we need an ear to listen, we need a shoulder to cry on. More than pithy sayings, we just need you to be there.
Of the various explanations for group polarization, the most relevant involves a potentially insidious effect of confirmation itself. Once people discover that others agree with them, they become more confident — and then more extreme.
In that sense, confirmation bias is self-reinforcing, producing a vicious spiral. If people begin with a certain belief, and find information that confirms it, they will intensify their commitment to that very belief, thus strengthening their bias.
Most visited Wikipedia articles by language in 2015
Data for this report come from Pew Research Center analyses of publicly available sources. Data for the number of overall page views for different language versions were compiled from stats.wikimedia.org, and only the 10 language versions of Wikipedia with the most page views in 2015 were included. For the data regarding the top pages by language, Pew Research Center compiled and analyzed the hourly raw page count files posted by Wikimedia, the foundation that runs Wikipedia. Additional analysis was performed using data compiled by Johan Gunnarsson and Wikitrends. Only articles were included, as the home page and search pages were excluded. Researchers also checked each page count total for abnormalities in the data.
Force Awakens’ Starkiller Would Actually Fling Everyone Into Space
If you want something to calculate on your own, here are some suggestions:
- Suppose you build a super awesome Starkiller Base that can shoot at stuff in another star system. How hard would it be to aim this weapon? Estimate the angular accuracy you would need to hit just one planet in a star system one lightyear away. Make a comparison to shooting something with a gun.
- If momentum is conserved during the firing of this Starkiller, what is the recoil velocity of the planet? You will need to estimate the speed of the stuff fired from the weapon (I assume it is all the mass of the absorbed star).
- Pretend you are a writer for Star Wars. Come up with a plausible method for Starkiller Base to shoot vast distances in just a few hours.
- Would the process of a Starkiller Base sucking up a star create gravitational waves? Would they be detectable at Earth’s position? Is this the rumored gravitational wave detected by LIGO?
Russian official suspected of stealing 30 miles of road
About 7,000 concrete slabs of paved road were carted off and sold to a private company in 2014 and 2015. The heist might have cost the Russian government about $80,000.