WASHINGTON — Snow falls resolutely on a Saturday morning in Washington, but the festively lit basement of a church near the US Capitol is packed. Some 200 female members have invited an equal number of women for tea, cookies, conversation – and 16th-century evangelism. What newcomers at Capitol Hill Baptist Church (CHBC) hear is hardly ‘Christianity for Dummies.’ Nor is it ‘Extreme Makeover: Born-Again Edition.’ Instead, a young woman named Kasey Gurley describes her disobedience and suffering in Old Testament terms. ‘I worship my own comfort, my own opinion of myself,’ she confesses. ‘Like the idolatrous people of Judah, we deserve the full wrath of God.’ She warns the women that ‘we’ll never be safe in good intentions,’ but assures them that ‘Christ died for us so we wouldn’t have to.’ Her closing prayer is both frank and transcendent: ‘Our comfort in suffering is this: that through Christ you provide eternal life.’ It is so quiet you can hear an oatmeal cookie crumble. IN PICTURES: Calvinism at Capitol Hill Baptist Church Welcome to the austere – and increasingly embraced – message of Calvinism. Five centuries ago, John Calvin’s teachings reconceived Christianity; midwifed Western ideas about […]
Imagine a network of virus-driven computers so infectious that it could bring down the world’s top 10 leading economies with just a few strokes. It would require about 100 million computers working together as one, a ‘botnet’ — the cybersecurity world’s version of a WMD. But unlike its conventional weapons equivalent, this threat is the subject of no geopolitical row or diplomatic initiative. That’s because no one sees it coming — straight out of Africa. Cybercrime is growing at a faster rate in Africa than on any other continent in the world, according to statistics presented at a conference on the matter in Cote D’Ivoire in 2008. Cybersecurity experts estimate that 80 percent of PCs on the African continent are already infected with viruses and other malicious software. And while that may not have been too worrisome for the international economy a few years ago (just like the continuing war in the Democratic Republic of the Congo does not affect our daily lives), the arrival of broadband service to Africa means that is about to change. The new undersea broadband Internet cables being installed today will make Africa no further away from New York than, say, Boston, in the […]
WASHINGTON — Fed up with waiting, President Barack Obama announced Saturday he would bypass a vacationing Senate and name 15 people to key administration jobs, wielding for the first time the blunt political tool known as the recess appointment. The move immediately deepened the divide between the Democratic president and Republicans in the Senate following a long, bruising fight over health care. Obama revealed his decision by blistering Republicans, accusing them of holding up nominees for months solely to try to score a political advantage on him. ‘I simply cannot allow partisan politics to stand in the way of the basic functioning of government,’ Obama said in a statement. The 15 appointees to boards and agencies include the contentious choice of union lawyer Craig Becker to the National Labor Relations Board. Republicans had blocked his nomination on grounds he would bring a radical pro-union agenda to the job, and they called on Obama not to appoint Becker over the recess. Obama went ahead anyway, while also choosing a second member for the labor board so that four of its five slots will be filled. The labor board, which referees labor-management disputes, has had a majority of […]
At birth, Houston Tracy let out a single loud cry before his father cut the cord and handed him to a nurse. Instantly, Doug Tracy knew something was wrong with his son. ‘He wasn’t turning pink fast enough,’ Tracy said. ‘When they listened to his chest, they realized he had an issue.’ That turned out to be d-transposition of the great arteries, a defect in which the two major vessels that carry blood away from the heart are reversed. The condition causes babies to turn blue. Surgery would correct it, but within days of Houston’s birth March 15, Tracy learned that his application for health insurance to cover his son had been denied. The reason: a pre-existing condition. ‘How can he have a pre-existing condition if the baby didn’t exist until now?’ Tracy asked. New federal legislation that will prevent insurance companies from denying children coverage based on a pre-existing condition comes too late for the Tracys. The legislation, passed by Congress and signed by President Barack Obama this week, won’t go into effect until September. But Houston, who is hospitalized at Cook Children’s Medical Center in Fort Worth, needs coverage now. […]
Light can twist matter, according to a new study that observed ribbons of nanoparticles twisting in response to light. Scientists knew matter can cause light to bend – prisms and glasses prove this easily enough. But the reverse phenomenon was not shown to occur until recently. The researchers assembled strings of nanoparticles, which are tiny clumps of matter on the scale of nanometers (one nanometer is one billionth of a meter). In a darkened lab, the scientists linked nanoparticles together into ribbons. At first the nano ribbons were flat, but when a light was shone on them, they curled up into spirals. The discovery was so novel, the researchers were skeptical of their own results at first. ‘I didn’t believe it at the beginning,’ said lead researcher Nicholas Kotov, an engineer at the University of Michigan. ‘To be honest, it took us three and a half years to really figure out how photons of light can lead to such a remarkable change in rigid structures a thousand times bigger than molecules.’ The surface of the nanoparticles in this experiment were made of cadmium sulfide. To begin with, they had a slightly negative electromagnetic charge. But […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
