Day's Headlines: Point, Click, Hover; Printed Car Closer; Electronic Synapses; Modern Jewish Kingdom in Ancient Babylon; UN Gasps!; Not Pharaoh; Mr. Mandela Goes to Palestine; NK Readying Next Missile; Abu Who?; Fruit Ninja Weather; 12 Black Holes, Sitting in a Row; Ken Ham Caricature; Methodists Pressure North Carolina; Church of Norway Exodus; Digital Money Tracks Well; and If End Time Theology was a Popularity Contest

Tuesday, April 26, 2016

Point, Click, Hover; Printed Car Closer; Electronic Synapses; Modern Jewish Kingdom in Ancient Babylon; UN Gasps!; Not Pharaoh; Mr. Mandela Goes to Palestine; NK Readying Next Missile; Abu Who?; Fruit Ninja Weather; 12 Black Holes, Sitting in a Row; Ken Ham Caricature; Methodists Pressure North Carolina; Church of Norway Exodus; Digital Money Tracks Well; and If End Time Theology was a Popularity Contest

Got a crazy mashup of worldviews today! From bashing Ken Ham because public school students go to his museum, to denying that the Biblical Pharaoh was Egyptian, to Methodists lobbying for whatever-you-say-you-are bathrooms in North Carolina. Also Nelson Mandela has been "raised" in the West Bank with a cry of peace and death to Israel.


Drones

The Hover Camera will follow you around and record your entire life mashable v

The Hover Camera is also unlike drones in that it truly hovers after powering it on. You simply let go of it and it'll hover in the air at the altitude (up to 164 feet high) which you let it go at

Personal, small flying drones that can pick indivduals out of a crowd, follow them, and record what they are doing. What could go wrong? For a fuller story on the company, itself, see Zero Zero's Camera Drone Could Be a Robot Command Center in the Future v

3D Printing

Siemens, Local Motors partner for large scale 3D printed car development 3ders.org v

Though numerous car manufacturers have been showing off concept cars that feature 3D printed interiors, this Arizona-based startup is working on the real deal: the world’s first road-ready LM3D 3D printed car, which will be available for preorder as early as this year. To cope with the immense logistic challenges that open source development and large scale 3D printing production bring to the table, Local Motors has just revealed a partnership with German engineering giant Siemens. This will enable Local Motors to use Siemens’ product lifecycle management (PLM) software technology to realize the release of the revolutionary LM3D car and its successors.

The article is, yawn, boring. But it has an interesting video.

Artificial Brain

Physicists build “electronic synapses” for neural networks innovationtoronto t

“In a simpler version, memristors are promising binary non-volatile memory cells, in which information is written by switching the electric resistance – from high to low and back again. What we are trying to demonstrate are much more complex functions of memristors – that they behave similar to biological synapses,” said Yury Matveyev, the corresponding author of the paper, and senior researcher of MIPT’s Laboratory of Functional Materials and Devices for Nanoelectronics, commenting on the study.

Israel

A Jewish kingdom in ancient Babylon (Opinion) jpost

Although Bar Bokhba was the last leader of a sovereign Jewish state in the Land of Israel, almost 1,900 years before the founding of the State of Israel in 1948, there are a few examples of Jewish kingdoms that existed in the Diaspora long before the modern Jewish state arose.

This was an interesting bit of "modern" (post-Christ, pre-Israeli state) history on Israel 'kingdoms' in the Babylon area.

U.N. council voices alarm at Israeli statements on Golan Heights reuters

"Council members expressed their deep concern over recent Israeli statements about the Golan, and stressed that the status of the Golan remains unchanged," China's U.N. Ambassador Liu Jieyi, president of the 15-nation Security Council this month, told reporters after a closed-door meeting.

Senior Egyptian archaeologist: Israeli claim that Pharaoh was Egyptian is a lie jpost

In an unprecedented declaration that challenges the story told in the Passover Haggadah, a senior Egyptian archaeologist said that ancient king Pharaoh was not Egyptian, as claimed in the ancient Jewish text.

The insanity of this claim is made further ludicrous because of it's appeal not to history or archeology, but to the Quran (written some 2,000 years after the event in question) as the authority on this subject.

To prove his thesis, Waziri presented his conclusions from a study he conducted about the subject. He said that reviewing the Koran, he has not seen that the word "Pharaoh" is used to describe Egypt or Egyptians.

Palestines

Palestine unveils statue of former President Nelson Mandela sabc.co.za v w!

South Africa’s principled stance of supporting the freedom of the people of Palestine has been reaffirmed.

Just a heads up that I looked at several reports about this and they were all anti-Israel. I think this one gets the point across without too much on the anti-'occupier' language. Also Palestinians unveil gift of giant Mandela statue.

North Korea

North Korea was seen preparing another ballistic missile test launch businessinsider

North Korea appears to be preparing a test-launch of an intermediate-range ballistic missile, South Korea's Yonhap news agency said on Tuesday, after what the United States described as the "fiery, catastrophic" failure of the first attempt.

Terrorism

WHO ARE THE FILIPINO MILITANT GROUP ABU SAYYAF? newsweek

It had threatened to behead Ridsdel if a large ransom, some $8 million, was not paid by an imposed deadline of 3 p.m. local time and the worst fears of the Canadian authorities were realized. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau called it an “act of cold-blooded murder” by a group that his country would now “pursue.” The group holds three other hostages, another Canadian national Robert Hall, a Norwegian male and a Filipina female—fears will now grow about their fate. But what are the aims and origins of this jihadi group?

Weather

'Giant' Hail And Some Strong Tornadoes Are Possible On The Plains Today forbes

Today’s weather is expected to produce the full spectrum of severe weather, from tornadoes to large hail. A “strong” tornado is one that could wind up with a damage rating of EF-2 or higher, which is strong enough to seriously damage or destroy even well-built homes. The SPC called today’s possible hail “giant,” potentially growing up to 4.00″ in diameter. Hail that large is the size of a grapefruit, which is big enough to total a vehicle, break through a roof, and leave small craters in the ground.

I'm sorry - did they say potentially grapefuit-sized hail? :)

Space

A Dozen Black Holes are Mysteriously Spewing Energy in the Same Direction gizmodo.co.uk

...a survey of 64 galaxies located halfway across the known universe has revealed a bizarre alignment between the energy jets erupting from a handful of black holes, all of which are located within a hundred million light years of each other. A pattern like this shouldn’t exist, unless it’s being dictated by an even larger structure in our universe.

I've been seeing this in the news the last week and finally couldn't resist.

Evolution

A Day With Ken Ham slate w!

Ken Ham, the Ayatollah of Appalachia and founder of Kentucky’s Creation Museum, is at the pulpit of Covington’s First Baptist Church in Louisiana. He’s railing that young people are “taught not to think” by “secular museums” and schools. Behind Ham, there’s a blown-glass picture of Jesus wreathed in flames.

It's Slate, so don't expect them to say anything nice about Ken Ham :) This relatively young author's (Zack Kopplin, 23ish) hatred of the Bible is just an example of the irrational (not based in facts) hatred permeating society under the guise of being scientific. To my knowledge, Ken Ham has not posted a response to this specific article, but he did address 'brainwashing' in education with regards to defending against attacks from this man a couple years ago. What's important, besides pointing out falacies, is Ken's concern for Zack's salvation. In fact it appears as if Zack had the opportunity to speak with Ken for the latest article, and Ken must have known how Zack would have twisted his answers and yet he still spoke with him. Really it's a good example of engaging the most hostile critic with kindness - even when their arguments lack substance (which is probably why they are so hostile in the first place!). Quote from Ken Ham's other response:

Atheistic evolutionists do not want any talk of “critiquing” or “thinking critically” about evolutionary ideas, because it is their way of explaining life without God, which is why we call the evolutionary worldview a religion. Despite their claims to the contrary, atheists use evolutionary ideas as their religion to replace God. The evolutionary worldview is a foundation for their set of beliefs about life and how it arose, just as the biblical creation worldview, as described in Genesis, is our set of beliefs about how life arose. Atheists blindly hold to evolution because of their rejection of Christ.

Society

Methodist bishops call for HB2 repeal wral

All eight bishops of the United Methodist Church in North Carolina have called for state lawmakers to repeal a new law that prohibits discrimination protections from being extended to gay and transgender people.

People leaving Church of Norway in droves over blessing of same-sex couples freerepublic

Representatives of the Church of Norway report that as many as 4200 people have resigned their membership in the denomination since the beginning of 2016, with most leaving the Church in April.

Global Currency

UK looking at bitcoin technology for tracking taxpayer money theguardian

The cabinet office minister Matt Hancock said the government was examining how the technology could be used to manage and keep track of the distribution of public money, such as grants and student loans, saying it could “foster a new culture of trust”.

See also EU lawmakers to hold off from regulating blockchain for now

End Times

Sorry, 'Left Behind': Only One-Third of Pastors Share Your End Times Theology christianitytoday

A third of America’s Protestant pastors expect Christians to be raptured—or taken up in the sky to meet Jesus—as the end times begin. About half think a false messiah known as the Antichrist will appear sometime in the future.

I don't know WHAT the rest of them are thinking ;)

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