Tag Archive: Science

What’s Melting the Antartic Ice?

First there was this headline:

Melt of Key Antarctic Glaciers ‘Unstoppable,’ Studies Find | Climate


In another report we read these words of alarm: the retreat of ice in the Amundsen sea sector of West Antarctica was unstoppable, with major consequences – it will mean that sea levels will rise one metre worldwide. What’s more, its disappearance will likely trigger the collapse of the rest of the West Antarctic ice sheet, which comes with a sea level rise of between three and five metres. Such an event will displace millions of people worldwide.



Get the whole report http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/may/17/climate-change-antarctica-glaciers-melting-global-warming-nasa

This should make us all stop what we are doing and immediately start to cut our carbon footprints so as not cause global flooding. The problem is there is an entirely natural explanation for all this sea ice melting and it has nothing to do with “global warming.”

BREAKING NEWS: Mantle Plumes Cause of Antarctic Glacial Melt

A new study finds subglacial volcanoes and mantle plumes are melting Thwaites Glacier, a major river of ice that flows into Antarctica’s Pine Island Bay. Areas of the glacier that sit near geologic features thought to be volcanic are melting faster than regions farther away from plumes, said Dustin Schroeder, the study’s lead author and a geophysicist at the University of Texas at Austin.

The melt caused by mantle plumes could lubricate the ice sheet from beneath, hastening its flow toward the sea. To understand how much the supper-heated viscous rock contributes to this flow and what that means for the future of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet – glaciologists and climate scientists will have to include the new finer-grained findings in their models. Schroeder and his colleagues also plan to expand their study to other glaciers in the region.

In other words volcanic activity beneath the ice is what is causing them to heat up and melt. So you can take a deep breath and exhale that CO2 into the atmosphere without the fear that you are causing polar bears to die and glaciers to melt.


Animation of the structure of a section of DNA...


The notion is to try to end genetic diseases by splicing out “bad” genes and replacing them with good ones. via FDA Could Green Light Genetically Modified Humans.

They say that art imitates life but perhaps the reverse is true in this case. Scientists are looking at ways to splice together DNA from three individuals to produce a genetically superior offspring. I guess their attempts at cloning individuals had not worked out so well.

In the FOX sci-fi thriller “Almost Human” set in the year 2048 technology has evolved to a place where a person can replace lost body parts with fully functioning biotic limbs (think the bionic man of yesteryear.) Additionally science has attempted to produced the perfect human through genetic engineering.

In the latest episode “Beholder” a creepy, bandaged home invader has killed folks…but nobody puts the fact that they have a serial killer on their hands until he kills a “chrome,” one of the Almost Human world’s genetically perfect citizens.

“Chromes” by design don’t die of natural causes (this guy’s weapon of choice is designed to make it look like they died of natural causes), and suddenly, the case is linked to the mysterious and sudden deaths of seven other citizens. The only apparent connection? They’re all attractive.

These genetically modified chromes form a cliché and are very secretive and dismissive of any normal human infiltration. I guess you could say they are rather snobbish. But when one of them gets killed we get a behind-the-scenes look at these laboratory enhanced humans. They consider themselves to be privileged. Even science can not make decent human beings out of the self-important.

The killer was part of a test group who was being treated with an advanced form of plastic
surgery which used nanobots to do the surgery from inside and not externally. The experiment went terribly wrong and our killer finds himself with a very distorted view of himself. (His face was horribly disfigured.) The reason he goes on a killing spree is because he is harvesting facial features from his victims to reconstruct his face before he presents himself to his online girl friend who just happens to be blind.

Apart from the irony this little trip down fantasy lane may actually shed a light on the human condition. All these scientific attempts to manipulate nature, and to find a way to genetically modify life, is science’s attempt to play god and ultimately to cheat death. In the end it always turns out the same. The attempt to produce the perfect human always ends in failure. What the world needs is not more technology or biology. What the world needs is not man-made fixes to personal shortcomings. The world needs a cure for the inward disfigurements of life caused by sin. The world needs to be transformed. This life-changing transformation can not be manufactured in a laboratory, or produced by nanobots, it must be accepted as a free gift from God through Jesus Christ.

Oh yes someone had to die so that your remake could be completed, but that someone gave his life willing for you so that you could live.

person to enter the kingdom of God.” Those who heard him asked, “Who, then, can be saved?” Jesus said, “The things that are impossible for people to do are possible for God to do.” Luke 18:25-27 (GW)

In other words you can not buy yourself a ticket to heaven. So you see art does imitate life.

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How Best to Annoy a Liberal

Read from the Holy Writ.

Nothing is more sacred to a liberal then his or her own ideology. No one has greater insight then they, no one understands all of life’s issues as well as they. ALL other writs or ideologies must acquiesce to their superior wisdom. No one but they hold the entirety of earth’s wisdom. None can compare to their superior knowledge and inerrancy.

You will notice that they never make a bad decision nor enact a bad or inferior law. All laws, writs, traditions, ideologies are subject to revision by these intellectual giants with only one exception, anything they write or legislate, those laws and writs are sacrosanct and can not be questioned, argued, challenged, or amended. Even the very constitution of this great nation can be rewritten, re-interpreted and even ignored, but nothing these intellectuals set to print is ever up for rebuke, rebuttal, or revocation.

Is it any wonder then that the inerrant word of God would offend these self-appointed arbiters of all that is right?

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Mark Regnerus’s report today that lesbian couples’ children turn out worse than straight couples ignited a firestorm, drawing cheers on the social right and denunciations from the gay rights movement.

The study was the latest in a series that have made Regnerus, an associate professor of sociology at UT Austin and married father of three, a darling of the right: His other findings tout the benefits of early marriage and the costs of “hookup culture.”

Regnerus’s most recent study, published this month in the journal Social Science Research, found that the children of parents who had ever had a same-sex relationship differed in important ways from kids of married, straight parents. Those whose moms ever had a relationship with another woman, especially, were significantly more likely to be unemployed as adults than children of still-married straight parents; they were also more likely to seek treatment for mental illness, and to report having sex with someone else while married or co-habitating.


Critics of the study were quick to downplay the findings of the study.

Gary J. Gates, author of The Gay and Lesbian Atlas and Williams Distinguished Scholar at UCLA Law School, criticized Regnerus’s comparison between children of intact heterosexual families and children whose parents had at some point had a same-sex relationship — the latter group, he noted, had experienced divorce, step-parent arrangements, and foster care, all of which are known to affect children’s lives no matter what the sexual orientation of their parents.

Although Gary was very vocal concerning the studies findings he did notice one obvious fact; broken homes make for broken children. This has long been the argument for supporting strong, stable families. Stable households make for a stable society which is why for centuries marriage was regarded in high esteem. Societies have long known that a stable family makes for stable communities which makes for a stable, civil society.

In fact even Mark’s critics had to admit as much. I am sure that Gary Gates did not mean to make a case for marriage but that is exactly what he did do when he said: “All he’s shown us is that family instability isn’t good for kids.”

I could not have said it any better. Let’s talk about the kids shall we? Where do children come from? The relationship between a man and a woman produces offspring. Children are not produced without a father and a mother. Yes it is true that science has found a way to fertilize a woman’s egg without the need for a sexual encounter but it does not nullify the egg must be fertilized with male sperm. Therefore to produce children you need a MAN and a WOMAN, and since CHILDREN are the scope of this study and the protection of children is the intent of civil laws in regards to family, reason should have us conclude that the union that produced offspring should be guarded and honored to protect the offspring.

This of course is not the goal of proponents of same-sex marriage. Such proponents would like to make the case that the only criteria for which to base a marriage is the affections of the people who wish to marry. If marriage was simply the legal joining of two people then there would be no argument. Any two people regardless of sex could enter into marriage. Since this type of union can not biologically produce offspring there would be no need for legislation to protect children of such unions. I would argue there really would be no need for MARRIAGE then.

Mark acknowledges there’s a “subtext” to his work: the belief that “the project of profound, radical expressive individualism […] is a poor one for human flourishing.”

We are all constrained by social phenomena, he said, and that’s not a bad thing — “constraints can produce much good in our lives, whether we like the constraints or not. Liberty run amok can create extraordinary personal disaster.”

In other words if we are all permitted in a civil society to only pursue our own interests without restraint, civil society would downgrade into chaos. The freedoms afforded by a structured civil society would erode as a result of the chaos of unrestrained personal pursuits. This chaos would then have to be strictly controlled by rigid laws or the society would eventually destroy itself. Recognizing marriage between a man and a woman for the benefit of protecting the progeny is good civil policy. it is clear, easy to understand, and without ambiguity. By contrast calling any relationship a marriage causes a great deal of confusion, ambiguity, civil unrest, and is bad public policy.

This is the way I see it. What say you?

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Which Came First, The Chicken or the Egg?

Christians know the answer to this question is the Chicken came first. But for a scientist determined to believe that everything started off in some embryonic state this is not possible so they study, research and study some more only to find that the egg can not exist outside a chicken thusly the Chicken had to come before the egg. Just think how much time and energy not to mention money could have been saved if they would have only read the first couple chapters of the bible.

Amplify’d from theweek.com

British scientists claim to have cracked one of the oldest philosophical riddles — the chicken came before the egg, they say. Case closed?

Which came first? The answer lies in the shell.

It has inspired countless chin-scratching conversations, but researchers in the U.K. says they have finally answered the classic unanswerable question about chickens and eggs:

So why did the chicken come before the egg?
Scientists from Sheffield and Warwick in the U.K. have found that egg shells can only be formed by a particular protein found in a chicken’s ovaries. Ergo, an egg can only exist if it has emerged from a chicken. 

What do the creationists say?
Chickens came first, according to John D. Morris of the Institute for Creation Research. On the fifth day of Creation, God created “every winged fowl after [their] kind,” then blessed them saying “be fruitful and multiply” (Genesis 1:21-22). “For the chickens, this meant lay chicken eggs. Problem solved.”

Read more at theweek.com


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