IMHO VBG

IMHO=In My Humble Opinion VBG=Very Big Grin

This blog is devoted to topics that interest me and perhaps I'll post information that "the mainstream media" chooses to ignore or deemphasize. The point here is not to debate what I post, just consider it another point of view if you disagree with it, you know, be "open minded" and "tolerant."

Proverbs 3:5 "Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding."

Wednesday, October 11, 2006

October 11, 2006

Tourniquet: Bad Advice for a Snake Bite
Oct 04 South of Nashville :
A Rockvale man discovered that Western films aren't a good source of emergency medical advice for a snakebite. Mike Edwards, 46, was bitten by a timber rattlesnake Saturday while working on his Rockvale farm...


...As Edwards and his wife, Andrea, waited for the ambulance to arrive, a good Samaritan tried to help using advice gleaned from Hollywood .

"She put a tourniquet on his arm," Andrea Edwards said. "We were on the phone with the EMT who was on his way to us, and he said to take it off."

"The toxicologist at Vanderbilt said the tourniquet just kept all of the venom in one place, and it swelled, which made it harder for the antivenin to get to it," Mike Edwards said…

...Beier said there are rare circumstances when using a tourniquet would have helped, such as in the cases of the victim going into shock and to slow the spread of the venom. But Beier said the method of cutting a wound and sucking out the venom is never recommended…
http://www.breitbart.com/news/2006/10/04/D8KI5DKO0.html

Russian ban on Salvation Army overturned
Earlier decision said Christian aid group was 'paramilitary' foreign power

The Russian government's determination that the Salvation Army was a "paramilitary" representative of a foreign power has been overturned, clearing the way for the Christian aid organization to regain official permission to operate there…
http://worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=52377

Volunteers take on, defeat Chinese Bible ban
Effort allows Christians to mail packages without government interference

A new program launched by Voice of the Martyrs is targeting restrictions imposed on Bibles by the Chinese government, allowing Christians to send packages directly to those who are seeking God's word.

Officials for the Bibles Unbound (http://etools.ncol.com/a/jgroup/bg_biblesunbound_wnd-email_263.html ) outreach say while there actually are some Bibles printed in China , the numbers are controlled and never approach the demand. One expert estimate said at a publication rate of a million Bibles a year, it would take more than 100 years to meet the requests from the current population.

Shipments of the Bible into China also are limited, but VOM, an aid organization that helps persecuted Christians worldwide, said the new effort coordinates the names and addresses of those in China who are asking for Bibles with volunteers in the free world who are willing to buy a few each month, remailing them directly to homes and offices in China and other nations with Bible import restrictions.

The program counts on the fact that not even government efforts can catch every New Testament as they move through the mail system one at a time...

...The program works this way: volunteers in free nations sign up to receive five or more New Testaments per month, in the appropriate language, with all the needed packing and postage to mail them directly to a Christian in a restricted nation.

Right now the program is set up to mail Bibles into China or Egypt , but the procedures are being assembled for sending the Word into additional nations, VOM said.

..."This is an incredible opportunity to partner with today's persecuted church in sharing the gospel in today's highly restricted nations," VOM said.

Costs are covered by monthly contributions from volunteers, officials said...
http://worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=52285

The Quiet Witness of the Amish Can Be Our Witness, Too

See: http://headlines.agapepress.org/archive/10/102006gst.asp

Court Gives Green Light to Lawsuit Challenging School Christmas Music Ban
October 10, 2006 (AgapePress) - Although a lower court dismissed the complaint, a federal court has now ruled that a legal challenge to a New Jersey school district's ban on Christmas music can proceed to trial.

In December of 2004, administrators with the South Orange/Maplewood School District banned the playing of Christmas music during year-end celebrations in its public schools. The Thomas More Law Center sued on behalf of a district parent and his two school-age children…

…Robert Muise is trial counsel with the Thomas More Law Center . He says the district's policy is another example of the hostility that is currently being directed toward Christians and Christmas. "It's sort of a systematic attempt on the part of many people to remove any vestige of religion from the public square," he says, "and one of their main targets is to remove anything that has to do with Christmas, a national holiday, out of the public schools."

...A systematic assault on Christmas has been launched and is well under way, Muise contends -- an attack that he says is being led by the ACLU and others. "And we're not just going to sit back and let it happen," he insists...
http://headlines.agapepress.org/archive/10/102006b.asp

Movie has no blood, no nudes, no admission fees!

Independents launch 'I Flunked Sunday School' family movie next weekend

October 11, 2006

...Assembled by independent movie makers Steve McCurdy and Ken Bailey, "I Flunked Sunday School by Silk Purse Entertainment is the story of a man who as a kid flunked Sunday School. But now he's called upon by God to be a personal preacher, who is, according to leading character Lloyd Boyd, "a little more personal."

...But one of the biggest differences is the marketing, because it's not going into theaters for its launch.

"We are recruiting scores of churches in the Houston area to run the movie for free throughout the October 13th weekend," said McCurdy. "Moviegoers will be given a postcard with a web address outlining what they can do to facilitate the success of 'I Flunked Sunday School' and other projects of this kind, ensuring their production and wide distribution."

There will be a second weekend of free showings the first part of November, officials said, and after an estimated 10,000 churches nationwide have screened the movie, it will appear in 80-plus cities as a theatrical release...

...There is a moral hidden in the movie: for those who ever felt they've failed God or who wonder how God can let terrible things happen.

Which points to the title with the message that no one can really flunk Sunday school.

...Just two weeks earlier, "Facing the Giants," a church production that was released in theaters, held its own against Hollywood 's big boys, grossing $1.4 million on only 441 screens.

Officials say the production, by Sherwood Baptist Church in Albany, Ga., was released by Samuel Goldwyn Films and ranked No. 12 for all films over its first weekend, even though other films had up to eight times as many screens. Its per-screen average of $3,149 was fourth among the top 10 grossing weekend films...

http://worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=52340

American Minute with Bill Federer October 11

On October 11, 1798, President John Adams wrote to the First Brigade of the Third Division of the Militia of Massachusetts:

"We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge, or gallantry, would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other."

British Statesman Edmund Burke told the National Assembly, 1791: "What is liberty without virtue? It is the greatest of all possible evils...madness without restraint. Men are qualified for civil liberty in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral chains upon their own appetites... Society cannot exist, unless a controlling power upon will and appetite be placed somewhere; and the less of it there is within, the more there must be without."

U.S. Speaker of the House Robert Winthrop stated on May 28, 1849: "Men, in a word, must be controlled either by a power within them, or a power without them; either by the word of God, or by the strong arm of man; either by the Bible or by the bayonet."

http://www.americanminute.com/

Hybrids aren't so green after all

3/31/06 U.S.News & World Report

Trying to decide if you should buy a hybrid to do your bit for the environment? The decision just got more complicated.

A new study shows that over the lifetime of a vehicle—from the moment it is conceptualized at a design studio until it ends up in the scrap heap—hybrids actually consume a lot more energy than even big SUVs. One reason is that hybrids contain more moving parts than conventional vehicles, which require more energy to manufacture and process. In addition to an internal combustion engine, for instance, hybrids also have an electric motor and a sizable battery pack. That adds to disposal costs, too, once the car has run its last mile—especially for the lead-acid batteries.

The study, by consulting firm CNW Marketing Research in Bandon, Ore., analyzed hundreds of variables that contribute to energy costs—including the fuel they burn while being driven–into an index that measures the energy cost per mile for more than 300 vehicles. All five hybrids on the list—the Toyota Prius, the Honda Accord and Civic hybrids, the Honda Insight, and the Ford Escape hybrid–perform below average. For all vehicles, the average was $2.28 of energy consumption per mile. The Prius hybrid came in at $3.25 per mile, even though it is one of the highest-mileage cars in the world, getting about 45 miles per gallon in real-world driving. The Honda Accord hybrid consumed $3.30 of energy per mile, about the same as the hulking Ford Excursion SUV. The conventional Accord came in at just $2.18 per mile.

The data don't change anything about the equation an average buyer faces when deciding whether a hybrid makes financial sense. Hybrids typically cost about $2,000 to $3,000 more than similarly equipped conventional models. They get better mileage, but in normal driving it takes about seven years before the savings at the pump offset the higher price.

But for car buyers concerned about the overall environmental implications of the car they choose to drive, the CNW study should cause some rethinking. There's not a single hybrid among the 10 most energy-efficient cars, for instance. But the Scion xB, at the top of the list, requires just 48 cents of energy per mile—about one seventh as costly as a Prius–and the Ford Escort, at No. 2, just 57 cents. At the other end of the list, there are few surprises. The $380,000 Maybach ultraluxe chariot is the least energy-efficient vehicle, requiring $11.58 worth of energy per mile. See list at http://www.usnews.com/usnews/biztech/articles/060331/31hybrids.htm

Note the date (year) of this article...
Albright: North Korea 'Cheated' on Clinton Nuke Agreement
Sept. 12, 2004
Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright admitted for the first time on Sunday that under the Clinton administration's Agreed Framework arms control treaty with Kim Jong-il, North Korea "cheated."

Asked point-blank if North Korea developed nuclear weapons during the Clinton administration, Albright told NBC's "Meet the Press," "No, what they were doing, as it turns out, they were cheating."

"The worst part that has happened under the Agreed Framework," Albright said, was that "there [were] these fuel rods, and the nuclear program was frozen."
But because of North Korea 's cheating, she explained, "those fuel rods have now been reprocessed, as far as we know, and North Korea has a capability, which at one time might have been two potential nuclear weapons, up to six to eight now, we're not really clear."

...In a February 2003 interview, Albright boasted to NBC, "When we had the Agreed Framework, we did freeze those fuel rods, and had we not, in the last years, we would have somewhere, people calculate, 50 to 100 nuclear weapons."

A 1999 congressional study determined that Pyongyang was cheating on the agreement, but Albright disregarded the warning and continued to claim that the Agreed Framework was a success.
http://www.newsmax.com/archives/ic/2004/9/12/221552.shtml

McCain, McLinton, and McOrea

Said McCain yesterday: "I would remind Senator Clinton and other Democrats critical of the Bush administration's policies that the framework agreement her husband's administration negotiated was a failure. The Koreans received millions and millions in energy assistance. They've diverted millions of dollars of food assistance to their military."

Gas Price Drop Due to Market, Not Conspiracy, Analysts Say
October 11, 2006
Over the past few months, the price of gasoline has fallen about 75 cents per gallon because of market forces and not, as some liberals have alleged, because of a secret conspiracy to help Republicans in the upcoming mid-term elections, according to several analysts....

"This is basic economics," said H. Sterling Burnett, a senior fellow with the National Center for Policy Analysis (NCPA) in a news release. "Markets, when not encumbered by foolish legislation to 'fix' a problem, work."

Burnett attributes the recent price drop to three main factors:

Increased supply. Previously high prices are bringing more oil to market -- drilling rigs and production are up, refineries are being expanded here and built in other countries for the first time in years, and new technologies are being applied to exploit traditional and non-traditional sources;

Decreased demand. In response to high prices, consumers are conserving. For example, sales of SUVs have fallen, and more fuel-efficient cars are flying off the shelf; and
Decreased risk. Tensions in the Middle East have eased as more Iraqi oil is reaching the market, Iran seems unlikely to face sanctions, and Israel has left Lebanon , while the hurricane season has been milder than predicted. Therefore, inventories have remained high.

According to the American Petroleum Institute (API), about 60 percent of the cost of a gallon of gas is directly connected to the price of crude oil, and another 20 percent comes from taxes at various levels of government.

Refining and a combination of distribution and marketing each costs roughly 15 percent, so for every dollar that a barrel of oil goes up or down, gasoline prices move about three cents.

"The very idea that we have a command-and-control oil economy is silly," said Rayola Dougher, manager of energy market issues at API. "I think if politicians were really in charge of oil prices, they'd be low. In fact, they'd probably be free right now!"
http://www.cnsnews.com/ViewNation.asp?Page=/Nation/archive/200610/NAT20061011a.html

Is global warming debate really 'over'?
Posted: October 11, 2006
1:00 a.m. Eastern

By Michael J. Shaughnessy Jr., adjunct professor of Biology at the University of Central Oklahoma .

Over the past week, activists, scientists and politicians have taken to the airwaves to declare the debate on global warming over. The established position is that global warming is clearly occurring and it is also clearly caused by human activities. But what does it really mean for a scientific debate to be "over." Scientifically, what this means is that all available data (or very nearly all available data) relating to the subject of the debate have been collected, analyzed and interpreted, the result of which yields one single, inescapable conclusion. Some other scientific ideas for which the debate is "over" include: gravity (at least the physical phenomenon on planet Earth), the Laws of Thermodynamics (again, at least here on Earth) and the Ideal Gas Law (PV=nRT). Add to this list Human-caused Global Warming!

In truth, scientific ideas must pass through three levels of certainty before they are accepted as scientific truths. The first and least certain level is the hypothesis. A hypothesis is merely the formal statement of an idea – for instance, "Sunlight causes plants to grow." To test this hypothesis, a scientist would conduct an experiment that controls all other variables (water, minerals, etc.) and subjects plants to varying amounts of light. The scientist would then measure and analyze the growth rates of the plants receiving different amounts of light. From this conclusions are drawn. If differences in growth are detected, the scientist can then conclude that sunlight influences growth. However, one thing that is frequently lost on the non-science public is that these experiments must be repeated, many times, in order to verify results. It is possible in any experiment that the scientists' results occurred because of some error, mistake in experimental design or merely by chance. As a result, experiments are supposed to be repeated to verify the results and interpretations...
rest of article at: http://worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=52381

David Bennett <><

http://www.freewill-predestination.com

http://www.knology.net/~lonesomedove