OT: Bending the light with a tiny chip - March 10, 2014
Excerpt: Imagine that you are in a meeting with coworkers or at a gathering of friends. You pull out your cell phone to show a presentation or a video on YouTube. But you don't use the tiny screen; your phone projects a bright, clear image onto a wall or a big screen. Such a technology may be on its way, thanks to a new light-bending silicon chip developed by researchers at Caltech.,,,
Traditional projectors—like those used to project a film or classroom lecture notes—pass a beam of light through a tiny image, using lenses to map each point of the small picture to corresponding, yet expanded, points on a large screen. The Caltech chip eliminates the need for bulky and expensive lenses and bulbs and instead uses a so-called integrated optical phased array (OPA) to project the image electronically with only a single laser diode as light source and no mechanically moving parts.
Hajimiri and his colleagues were able to bypass traditional optics by manipulating the coherence of light—a property that allows the researchers to "bend" the light waves on the surface of the chip without lenses or the use of any mechanical movement,,,
"By changing the relative timing of the waves, you can change the direction of the light beam," says Hajimiri. For example, if 10 people kneeling in line by a swimming pool slap the water at the exact same instant, they will make one big wave that travels directly away from them. But if the 10 separate slaps are staggered—each person hitting the water a half a second after the last—there will still be one big, combined wave, but with the wave bending to travel at an angle, he says.
Using a series of pipes for the light—called phase shifters—the OPA chip similarly slows down or speeds up the timing of the waves, thus controlling the direction of the light beam.
http://phys.org/news/2014-03-tiny-chip.htmlbornagain77
March 11, 2014
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OT: Cosmos with Neil deGrasse Tyson: Same Old Product, Bright New Packaging - Casey Luskin - March 10, 2014
Excerpt: Another sign that Cosmos has a materialistic agenda is the fact that its executive producer is celebrity atheist Seth MacFarlane (the creator of Family Guy),,,,
http://www.evolutionnews.org/2014/03/cosmos_with_nei083031.htmlbornagain77
March 10, 2014
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OT: Structure of the Molecular Machine (type IV secretion system) that Bacteria use to exchange genetic information elucidated. March 9, 2014
Excerpt: Professor Waksman said: "This work is a veritable tour de force. The entire complex is absolutely huge and its structure is unprecedented. It is the type of work which is ground-breaking and will provide an entirely new direction to the field. Next, we need to understand how bacteria use this structure to get a movie of how antibiotics resistance genes are moved around."
Using electron microscopy the team were able to reconstruct the system as observed in the bacteria E. coli. They saw that the mechanism consists of two separate complexes, one in the outer membrane of the cell, and the other in the inner membrane, which are connected by a stalk-like structure that crosses the periplasm -- the space between the two membranes. The complexes at both the inner and outer membranes form pores in the membrane, via which substances can be secreted.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/03/140309150544.htm
Of related note:
New class of antibiotics discovered by chemists - March 7, 2014
Researchers who screened 1.2 million compounds found that the oxadiazole inhibits a penicillin-binding protein, PBP2a, and the biosynthesis of the cell wall that enables MRSA to resist other drugs.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/03/140307165953.htmbornagain77
March 10, 2014
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OT: Seaweed crab - video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-d5G_yqw4ekbornagain77
March 9, 2014
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A book about the handicapped girl is available:
Carly's Café - Experience Autism Through Carly's Eyes - video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KmDGvquzn2k
Carly's Voice: Breaking Through Autism - book
http://www.amazon.com/Carlys-Voice-Breaking-Through-Autism/dp/1439194157
Writing inspired by my son, and also by Carly Fleischmann - who has shared what she's gone through in the book, "Carly's Voice"
https://soundcloud.com/joel-manzer/unable-to-express-a-thought-vobornagain77
March 9, 2014
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Of somewhat related note, this following video is also very touching. Although the girl in the video was written off as hopelessly retarded by everyone except her loving father, through the persistent effort of her loving father, an effort of Herculean patience, a breakthrough eventually happened with the girl that finally revealed that there is/was indeed a gentle intelligence, an “I”, within the girl that is/was trapped within her body. A gentle “I” that is/was unable to express herself properly to others because of the disorder of her physical body.
Severely Handicapped Girl Suddenly Expresses Intelligence At Age 11 – very moving video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vNZVV4Ciccg
Verse:
1 Samuel 16:7
,,,For the Lord sees not as man sees: man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.”
Not that I'm not also guilty of judging by outward appearances, but in much the same way as that handicapped girl, I find materialists/naturalists to be trapped 'inside the box' of materialistic/naturalistic thinking:
Inside the box - drawing
http://qualityjunkyard.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/out-of-box-4.jpg
This trapped 'inside the box' thinking as is clearly illustrated in this following study. Even though the researcher in this following study found evidence directly contradicting what he had expected to find, he was/is so wedded to his materialistic/naturalistic view of reality, the view of “I’ am my body”, that it seems sadly impossible for him to even conceive that he may be wrong in his naturalistic presupposition, and to even admit to the possibility of the soul, i.e. admit to the “I’ am a soul distinct from my body” view of reality.
'Afterlife' feels 'even more real than real,' researcher says - Wed April 10, 2013
Excerpt: "If you use this questionnaire ... if the memory is real, it's richer, and if the memory is recent, it's richer," he said.
The coma scientists weren't expecting what the tests revealed.
"To our surprise, NDEs were much richer than any imagined event or any real event of these coma survivors," Laureys reported.
The memories of these experiences beat all other memories, hands down, for their vivid sense of reality. "The difference was so vast," he said with a sense of astonishment.
Even if the patient had the experience a long time ago, its memory was as rich "as though it was yesterday," Laureys said.,,,
It's your brain, Laureys tells you
Laureys strongly disagrees. "There is no evidence there can be conscious experience without brain activity," he said.,,,
It's a vivid hallucination, Laureys' report surmises. "It was a normal brain activity that produced their extraordinary perceptions."
http://www.cnn.com/2013/04/09/health/belgium-near-death-experiences/
Yet, the funny thing with 'scientific atheists' who think they are being completely rational in denying anything and everything that is outside the physical/material order, is that science, and even rationality itself, demands a perspective that is outside the material/physical order so as to stay rational:
Sam Harris's Free Will: The Medial Pre-Frontal Cortex Did It - Martin Cothran - November 9, 2012
Excerpt: There is something ironic about the position of thinkers like Harris on issues like this: they claim that their position is the result of the irresistible necessity of logic (in fact, they pride themselves on their logic). Their belief is the consequent, in a ground/consequent relation between their evidence and their conclusion. But their very stated position is that any mental state -- including their position on this issue -- is the effect of a physical, not logical cause.
By their own logic, it isn't logic that demands their assent to the claim that free will is an illusion, but the prior chemical state of their brains. The only condition under which we could possibly find their argument convincing is if they are not true. The claim that free will is an illusion requires the possibility that minds have the freedom to assent to a logical argument, a freedom denied by the claim itself. It is an assent that must, in order to remain logical and not physiological, presume a perspective outside the physical order.
http://www.evolutionnews.org/2012/11/sam_harriss_fre066221.html
“It seems to me immensely unlikely that mind is a mere by-product of matter. For if my mental processes are determined wholly by the motions of atoms in my brain, I have no reason to suppose that my beliefs are true. They may be sound chemically, but that does not make them sound logically. And hence I have no reason for supposing my brain to be composed of atoms. In order to escape from this necessity of sawing away the branch on which I am sitting, so to speak, I am compelled to believe that mind is not wholly conditioned by matter”.
J. B. S. Haldane ["When I am dead," in Possible Worlds: And Other Essays [1927], Chatto and Windus: London, 1932, reprint, p.209.
Physicalism and Reason - May 2013
Summary: So we find ourselves affirming two contradictory propositions:
1. Everything is governed by cause-and-effect.
2. Our brains can process and be changed by ground-consequent logical relationships.
To achieve consistency, we must either deny that everything is governed by cause-and-effect, and open our worldviews to something beyond physicalism, or we must deny that our brains are influenced by ground-consequence reasoning, and abandon the idea that we are rational creatures.
Ask yourself: are humans like falling dominoes, entirely subject to natural law, or may we stand up and walk in the direction that reason shows us?
http://www.reasonsforgod.org/2012/09/physicalism-and-reason/
Verse, Music and Quote:
John 3:3-12
Jesus answered and said unto him, “Verily, verily I say unto thee, unless a man be born again, he cannot see the Kingdom of God.”
Nicodemus said unto Him, “How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter a second time into his mother’s womb and be born?”
Jesus answered, “Verily, verily I say unto thee, unless a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the Kingdom of God.
That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.
Marvel not that I said unto thee, ‘Ye must be born again.’
The wind bloweth where it will, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh and whither it goeth: so is every one that is born of the Spirit.”
Nicodemus answered and said unto Him, “How can these things be?”
Jesus answered and said unto him, “Art thou a master of Israel, and knowest not these things?
Verily, verily I say unto thee, we speak what we know and testify what we have seen; and ye receive not our witness.
If I have told you earthly things and ye believe not, how shall ye believe if I tell you of heavenly things?
Live - Heaven (official music video)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ff3NUP-xzqQ
"Descartes said 'I think, therefore I am.' My bet is that God replied, 'I am, therefore think.'"