The UNC* math professor said, "Now class, we know there are 60 seconds in a minute, 60 minutes in an hour, 24 hours in a day, and 365 days in a year, so who can tell me how many seconds there are in a year?" All the students looked baffled by the question except Rufus, who raises his hand and waves it excitedly. "Yes, Rufus, how many seconds are there in a year?" the math professor asked. Replied Rufus, "Twelve, sir. January second, February second, March second..."
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Albert Einstein's most famous formula is widely known: E=mc^2, which relates mass to energy. It says that the energy contained in matter is equal to its mass times the speed of light squared.
Since light travels very fast (300,000 kilometers per second, or 186,000 miles per second), there's a lot of energy wrapped up in a very small bit of matter. The energy of one gram (1/28 ounce) of matter would keep a 100-watt light bulb glowing for 28,500 years.
One of the most noticeable examples of the mass-energy relation is in the sun, where hydrogen is converted into helium by nuclear fusion. During the reaction, 0.7% of the hydrogen's mass is released as various forms of energy. The Creator pointed a tiny fraction of that energy toward our planet in order to keep the Earth from turning into a ball of ice. Did you happen to know that the Sun, light, & Einstein's Creator was that Babe in Bethleham?
Listen to Einstein himself explain it: http://www.aip.org/history/einstein/voice1.htm
College-level thought experiments on mass and energy: http://www.phys.virginia.edu/classes/252/mass_and_energy.html
Mathematical derivation of Einstein's equation: http://library.thinkquest.org/3471/energy_mass_equivalence.html
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Howdy says: FORWARD TO FRIENDS & YOUR MAMA First Published In Last Century - July 26,1997 Thought For The OPEN Mind - Humor From American Culture
Listen to the audio broadcast! http://www.gospelcom.net/cgi-bin/ramhurl?p=pnm&f=/rhm/sounds/awwy/awwy5021.rm
When I say this man is a veteran test pilot, I mean he's easily old enough to be comfortably retired. Instead, he's still blasting through the skies at these mind-boggling speeds, testing some of America's most advanced aircraft. He told his amazing life story recently on a national television program. It's a story of a lifelong adventure in the skies and a long spiritual search here on earth that ended - well, with the pilot of the universe piloting his life. As he concluded his story, he told about an incident where he was sent up in a state-of-the-art aircraft to help a pilot in distress.
The fog was thick; the weather was dangerous for flying, and a rookie pilot was lost in that fog and unable to get through the weather in a plane that wasn't equipped for it. Well, Mr. Test Pilot flew close to that imperiled aircraft until he was actually positioned at its left wing. And then he radioed the desperate pilot and he simply said, "Look to your left." Then he said, "Now stick with me. Turn when I turn." Then in a plane so advanced that the veteran said that it can make a game out of bad weather, he led his frightened fellow-pilot to that glorious point where they broke through the fog and they saw the bright lights of that landing strip below. When they landed safely, the rookie got out of his plane, ran to his rescuer, and hugged him as if he had saved his life. He probably had.
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Someone to Lead You Home."
A pilot lost, in a potentially fatal predicament. His only hope was someone who was equipped with everything needed to bring him safely home. We all need someone like that. Because we are all, in the word the Bible uses to describe our spiritual condition, "lost." If we're honest, we know that we really don't know how life's supposed to work, no matter how cool and together we look on the outside. When it comes to knowing why we're here, which way to go, and most importantly, how to land safely after we die, well, we're all lost. Our only hope is someone who's equipped with everything needed to lead us safely home; someone who will come beside us and take us the rest of the way through this life and into the life to come.
His name is Jesus. He came here for all of us lost pilots. He said so in His personal mission statement, recorded in Luke 19:10, our word for today from the Word of God. Jesus said of Himself, "The Son of Man came to seek and to save what was lost." Notice, He didn't come to start a religion called Christianity or just to give us a nice morality to live by. He came to rescue us from a spiritual predicament that will be eternally fatal unless we let Him lead us home. We're lost because we hijacked our life from Him. We took over the pilot's seat that God was supposed to occupy. That hijacking is called sin.
In the Bible's words, we are "sheep who have gone astray," and lost sheep just don't find their way home. Their only hope is if the Shepherd comes looking for the one who's lost. And Jesus did. He, in His words, came to "lay down My life for the sheep" (John 10:15). The only person who is equipped to lead you out of the guilt and the death penalty for your sin is the one who took all that guilt and all that dying on Himself. That's what Jesus did when He died on the cross. And then, He walked out of His grave under His own power! He's alive right now, and He's pulled up next to you today.
The tug you feel in your heart - that's Jesus seeking you so He can save you. He's your only hope, but you have to admit that. You have to tell Him that and start following where He leads you. Today you could begin your personal relationship with Him. I'd love to help you do that if you'll just visit our website. It's called yoursforlife.net, and there I've put a brief explanation of how you could be sure you belong to Him. Or, if you'd like the booklet, Yours For Life, just call us at 877-741-1200.
You don't have to fly in the fog one more day. You don't have to be lost anymore. You don't have to crash at the end. Jesus has come close to you today, and He's saying, "Look to Me. I'll get you safely home." Follow Him.
If you're not sure you belong to Jesus, and you would like to make sure today, Ron would like to send to you a free copy of the booklet, "Yours for Life: How to Have Life's Most Important Relationship." To read it online, click here: http://www.yoursforlife.net/
OR, to request your free copy of "Yours for Life," click here: http://rhm.gospelcom.net/yours/yflorder.html
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To find out how you can begin a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, please visit YOURS FOR LIFE: HOW TO HAVE LIFE'S MOST IMPORTANT RELATIONSHIP at: http://www.yoursforlife.net Or, call 1-888-NEED HIM.
If there's one thing we don't have enough of in this world, it's college students obsessing over sex.
Or so the WB network seems to believe. It recently premiered the new drama The Bedford Diaries about a group of college students taking a class on human sexuality. As you might expect, the show's take on sex is not something that most parents would want their kids to subscribe to.
As New York Times TV reviewer Alessandra Stanley observed, "The portrait of college life is torn from the headlines, not alumni magazines. . . . [M]uch of the students' time is spent drinking shots and double lattes, playing video poker in their dorm rooms and, of course, hooking up. [One girl's] roommate brings back a new lover she found in what she cheerfully describes as a 'street meet.'"
The pilot episode weaves together several plotlines, including a young man who starts to fall for a girl who survived suicide—because, in the young man's words, "there is something very hot about that kind of crazy." But the episode focuses mainly on the fallout from a student's affair with a married professor. While trying to prevent the school newspaper from reporting on the affair, the girl, Sarah, discovers that she was not the only student the professor slept with. She's devastated that what she thought was love was nothing more than just one more "hookup" for the professor. The young woman, who thought that she was mature and in control of her love life, suddenly finds herself hurt and confused.
"Does sex even mean anything anymore?" Sarah asks in a poignant moment near the end. But she concludes, "Opening yourself up, even if it means your heart and soul are crushed, that's what makes you stronger. That's what gives you the power to move on, put the past behind you—to get out there and get your heart stomped on all over again."
Well, there you have the real problem with The Bedford Diaries and other shows like it. It's not that they make extramarital sex look glamorous and fun, because as Alessandra Stanley pointed out in the Times, "It actually keeps making the point that sex without love is an expense of spirit in a waste of shame." The real trouble is that the show makes it look as if, no matter how bleak the situation gets, there's no way out of it. In this view, love is worth looking for, even if finding it is a hopeless and painful business. Everybody gets involved in the culture of free sex sooner or later, and if one sexual relationship doesn't work out, well, you just have to keep trying until you find the relationship that does. It's all, after all, a roll of the dice.
These kids are not just being bathed in moral rot. They are being fed pure existential angst, the discredited worldview of the 1960s. What a grim picture. And what I find truly chilling: This network aims for 12- to 14-year-old girls—12, mere children.
The good news is The Bedford Diaries did poorly in the ratings and may not be around much longer. But this tragic and frightening view of life will keep propagating itself in our nihilistic popular culture, until, that is, we Christians get busy and start teaching our kids a better, more hopeful vision of what love and sex and life are all about.
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Several years ago images from a high school hazing incident were captured on video and televised across the world. The video portrayed a swarm of kids attacking other kids while a small group of adults watched and cheered as spectators. The chilling images rightfully brought to mind many questions, and refueled the discussion on how and why we are failing to teach our children. In all, the incident generated several concussions, a broken ankle, and five hospitalizations. One journalist called it a "sobering reminder of the dangers of mob-think." It was clearly proof once more that when masked by the anonymity of a group, it is disturbingly easy to lose individual identity and personal moral boundaries, and to become fully capable of cruelties we would otherwise find unimaginable.
Psychologists have long noted the reality of mob-think as one of the many powerful motivators of human action. There are other examples of the power of social influence as well. Not only is human behavior influenced by the crowd as a whole, we are also greatly influenced by those in comparable social groups and categories--by those we perceive as similar to us. Likewise, a famous psychology experiment run by Stanley Milgram vividly portrays the motivator of authority on human behavior. In fact, his findings stunned the world, revealing extreme obedience to authority even when given radical orders that required the subjects to inflict tremendous pain upon innocent victims.
The power of social influence is indeed compelling; that it can become perilously compelling is a lesson of which we cannot be too aware. In fact, Milgram's experiment grew out of a desire to understand the obedience of the Nazi regime in the midst of such blatant wrongdoing. He felt certain there had to be unique reasons at work in the troubling obedience of Nazi officers. But the results of his experiment shocked even Milgram himself, and perhaps this itself points to the reason the discovery was so noteworthy. For those of us who would like to look at the men who carried out the Nazi orders as anything but ordinary, Milgram's results drastically call our minds to account. By all definitions, the men and women in his experiments were ordinary people. They were ordinary men and women who willingly delved out horrendous pain. Such findings exude a frightening question: Of what, then, am I capable?
Like the ordinary men and women of Milgram's experiment, the men who carried out the monstrous orders of the Nazi regime, or the kids involved in violence that baffles us, we, too, are capable of morally objectionable behavior, much more so than we probably want to realize. We are people whose ailment is far greater than bad teachers of right and wrong--Milgram's participants ranged in age, race, and moral conviction. We are entirely in need of something beyond ourselves. We are in need of what Christ freely offers. As the great hymn proclaims:
He comes to make his blessings flow, far as the curse is found, far as the curse is found.
In his letter to the Romans, the Apostle Paul exhorts the church not to conform to the patterns of this world, but to "be transformed by the renewing of your minds" (Romans 12:2). That is, put on a new form, recognize yourselves as new creations, and by the power of the one who has given you new life, continually set your minds to follow Him and his perfect will. Social influence is profound, the influence of our corrupted nature stronger still, but in Christ we find the authority and influence of one more compelling than these. May our actions today be motivated by his transforming presence.
-------------------------------- Ravi Zacharias International Ministries (RZIM) "A Slice of Infinity" is aimed at reaching into the culture with words of challenge, words of truth, and words of hope. If you know of others who would enjoy receiving "A Slice of Infinity" in their email box each day, tell them they can sign up on our website at http://www.rzim.org/publications/slice.php. If they do not have access to the World Wide Web, please call 1-877-88SLICE (1-877-887-5423).
If only CBS, CNN, ABC, NBC, NY & LA Times had covered WW II with today's technology:
Anchor: We switch you now to Auschwitz for this special report from our roving reporter...
RR: Good evening Peter from this peace loving town. I'm standing on the outskirts of a home for unemployed Jews & other minorities which the Third Reich has so graciously provided. As you can see way over in the distance, Nazi's children are picking daisies unaware of late yesterday's dastardly attack by American B-17's & B-24's on a nearby town and the factories where their poor parents were employed.
Anchor: Be careful RR of those American P-51's.
RR: Roger that Peter.
Anchor: Now we switch you to the bombed out Headquarters of the peaceful Gestapo, where American P-51's & P-38's destroyed this center where German minorities were aided medically during very troubled times in their lives... What? No we lost that story & our brave reporter from a roving P-51. Sorry! Now for this late breaking story from RR2 live with General Patton...
RR2: General Patton, sir, why are your supply lines stretched so thin and why did you shoot those beloved mules who were blocking your dastardly warmongering tanks - you have a "failed plan" and why did you just slap me. I'm telling my Mama!
Anchor: Well, there you have it folks! The cruel American General savagely & without provocation cruelly beat & humiliated our sensitive peace loving RR2. Now we switch you to the League of Nations...
RR3: That's right Peter, the French have filed a complaint about U.S.A & Brit's savage & unprovoked attach on their harmonious country on June 6, 1944 at Normandy. It was hoped by the French that the Allies would have allowed more time for diplomacy before the invasion.Even the nonbelligerent Germans are backing the French on this one.
Anchor: Shocking indeed because Germany never attacked the U.S. and the Japanese didn't meant to assail us at Pearl Harbor either - they were simply lost in a storm which is being "covered up" by the U.S. War Department. Now a word from our sponser: Messerschmitt Industries.