The Spiritual Workouts God Intends For Us Chris

Now, I’m not saying that using Bible tracts to evangelize is totally fruitless. I’m sure there are more cases than I know where one of these has led a person to the Savior. They do contain very vital information, present the Gospel in a concise manner and they offer an easy way to share the Good News. The problem is, in most cases, people are just not interested.

They look at the cover, see it’s something that looks “religious,” and without giving it a second thought, toss it away. Some do this because they think they already know who God is, what “Christianity” is all about and believe they’re “good” with God…but they have no interest in pursuing what they perceive as “religion” or learning anything more than they think they already know.

People also have extremely short attention spans, and Bible tracts often contain a lot of information in very small type font, packed into a very small booklet. And while these same people will spend countless hours scrolling through nonsense on social media, all those words in tiny print look intimidating. People know they’d have to take time to read that “fine print,” and they’re just not interested…any more than they’re interested in political fliers or other junk mail that comes in their mailbox. //

So how do we reach the lost? The most effective way, obviously, is having a deep, meaningful one-on-one conversation with someone who’s not only willing to listen, but also engage in discussion, ask questions, be open about what you’re sharing and then, by God’s grace, develop a craving for the truth and the many revelations His Book contains…we want them to want to study God’s Word for themselves.

But situations and opportunities like this are rare. If ever you’re blessed to have such an divine appointment, don’t waste it. “…and be ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you…”

Still, the printed word holds great power. When presented in an appealing way, the printed word can literally change hearts, minds and lives. Unlike digital things that are constantly changing; here today and gone tomorrow, the printed word is printed, tangible and not going away.

Emily Katz Anhalt’s latest book, Ancient Wisdom for Polarized Times, makes a powerful case for relearning the lessons of Herodotus.

Though ancient Greek historian Thucydides is arguably the father of political science, he was preceded on the scene by the father of history, Herodotus. Though some have called him the father of lies because of the tall tales he tells in his Histories, Herodotus’ account of the war between Greece and Persia marks the first attempt in the West to analyze battles, cultures, and political leaders in such a way as to construct a meaningful narrative that sheds light on the forces that propel history. //

In today’s volatile political environment, reality is under siege. Influential voices at all extremes of the political kaleidoscope—some cynical opportunists, some blinded by ideological certainties—craft narratives and interpretations drawn not from fact but from fantasy. Purveyors of falsehoods prey on human gullibility.  … Extremists gain powerful support from anyone uninterested in learning facts or unwilling to moderate an opinion based on evidence and logic. Some argue that we are each entitled to our own reality, or that objective facts are inherently prejudicial, or that factual evidence is fake news. Captivated by misleading and demonstrably false narratives, we forfeit our capacity for compassionate, humane interactions and we imperil human survival itself.

What Herodotus offers to moderns trapped in such an environment is a method for assessing the past and the present that is grounded in evidence and the proper interpretation of that evidence. “Herodotus introduced the concept of objective truth, derived not from personal preference or authoritative pronouncement (whether by a political or divine authority) but from factual investigation and empirical deduction and analysis,” Anhalt notes. Though it is true that Herodotus includes fanciful stories and bizarre legends in his Histories, he also provides the necessary criteria for evaluating their veracity.

Whereas Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey and Hesiod’s Theogony and Works and Days begin with invocations of the muse, Herodotus writes on his own authority; indeed, the first word of his book is his name! Like Homer, he recounts memorable deeds, but he does so in a way that excludes the actions and interventions of the gods. Instead, he “concentrates on human conduct, beliefs, and choices and their consequences. Not divine but human behavior emerges as a potent force for change in human events.” //

“For Herodotus, the human capacity for self-deception constitutes an unseen but determinative force in human life. Three powerful autocrats—Croesus, Astyages, Cyrus—deceive themselves into thinking that supernatural signs validate their desires and confer control over future events. … Nothing compels Croesus to attack Persia, Astyages to try to kill his grandson, or Cyrus to attack the Massegetai. They just want to,” she writes. “Lust for greater territory and power, like a king’s lust for his own wife [Candaules] or sailors’ greed for a passenger’s money, needs no further explanation. But self-deception feeds human appetites and makes supernatural signs worse than useless.”

The human propensity for self-deception is often highlighted in the Histories, a fatal flaw that can only be overcome by “self-reflection and self-restraint,” the very things that Herodotus’ barbarian autocrats lack. And yet, the Athenians are not above a little self-deception of their own. //

Why then, if the Greeks are as susceptible to deception as the barbarians, were they able to defeat the Persians? Because their sense of history and of the repeated patterns of cause and effect that connect one generation to the next empowered them to learn from the past. (Anhalt intriguingly argues that the Greek word for truth, aletheia, means “not forgetting.”)

Persian autocrats like Darius and Xerxes, on the other hand, refused to study, consider, or be instructed by past errors. “While discussion enables the Greeks to absorb facts and recognize wise counsel, the Persians ignore factual evidence and fail to learn from previous experience,” she notes. In his preparation for the decisive naval battle of Salamis, she further observes, “Persian king [Xerxes] makes unilateral decisions. He lacks discernment and access to dissenting opinions. He draws incorrect inferences from misleading external appearances. In contrast, Greeks benefit from constructive debate.”

Another way of saying this that most readers will recognize from their schooldays is that Xerxes falls prey to the consequences of hubris. However, whereas most of us were taught that hubris means overweening pride, Anhalt argues that “hubris in Greek meant excessive, unrestrained desire, ambition, and overconfidence. It frequently involved impulsive, short-sighted violence, specifically violence redounding to the harm of the perpetrator. … In Greek, the opposite of hubris is not ‘humility’ or ‘modesty’ but sōphrosunē, meaning ‘wisdom,’ ‘prudence,’ ‘self-restraint,’ ‘moderation,’ even ‘chastity.’ … [Hubris is that which] liberates the ruler’s most violent impulses and frees him to wreak havoc.” It makes him believe that he can, like the gods, fulfill his sexual lusts without consequences. So fall the tyrants of the earth.

It's a plot device beloved by science fiction: our entire universe might be a simulation running on some advanced civilization's supercomputer. But new research from UBC Okanagan has mathematically proven this isn't just unlikely—it's impossible.

Dr. Mir Faizal, Adjunct Professor with UBC Okanagan's Irving K. Barber Faculty of Science, and his international colleagues, Drs. Lawrence M. Krauss, Arshid Shabir and Francesco Marino have shown that the fundamental nature of reality operates in a way that no computer could ever simulate.

Their findings, published in the Journal of Holography Applications in Physics, go beyond simply suggesting that we're not living in a simulated world like The Matrix. They prove something far more profound: the universe is built on a type of understanding that exists beyond the reach of any algorithm. //

"Drawing on mathematical theorems related to incompleteness and indefinability, we demonstrate that a fully consistent and complete description of reality cannot be achieved through computation alone," Dr. Faizal explains. "It requires non-algorithmic understanding, which by definition is beyond algorithmic computation and therefore cannot be simulated. Hence, this universe cannot be a simulation."

Co-author Dr. Lawrence M. Krauss says this research has profound implications. "The fundamental laws of physics cannot be contained within space and time, because they generate them. It has long been hoped, however, that a truly fundamental theory of everything could eventually describe all physical phenomena through computations grounded in these laws. Yet we have demonstrated that this is not possible. A complete and consistent description of reality requires something deeper—a form of understanding known as non-algorithmic understanding." //

More information: Mir Faizal et al, Consequences of Undecidability in Physics on the Theory of Everything, Journal of Holography Applications in Physics (2025). DOI: 10.22128/jhap.2025.1024.1118. On arXiv: DOI: 10.48550/arxiv.2507.22950 https://dx.doi.org/10.48550/arxiv.2507.22950

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The J.R.R. Tolkien encyclopedia built by fans

Appendix F in The Lord of the Rings explains the languages and races of Middle-earth during the time of the story, as well as commenting on some of the difficulties of translating all of these languages into modern English for today's readers.

According to Tolkien scholar Tom Shippey, Tolkien believed that people had an innate ability to "hear" subtle differences in names and dialects, even if they didn't full understand why things sounded different.

Accordingly, in the area of the Shire, he gave things names dervied from English and in the area of Bree he gave things names derived from Welsh. Examples of the former are Bywater, Overhill and Willowbottom . Examples of the latter include Archet (from ar chet, "the wood"), Combe (from cwm, "valley") and Bree itself (which means "hill" in Welsh).

His aim was to drop a hint to the reader that, as the party travelled from the Shire to Bree, things had changed slightly. This was a new country, if not entirely foreign. He hoped the change in linguistics would be enough to communicate this.

There are other examples. Many dwarvish names derive from old Norse, while the Riders of Rohan, obviously, name things in old English.

But this always made me wonder: he obviously did the same thing with his fictional languages (i.e. Lothlorien - the "dream flower") but are there any other examples of this in his work derived from real-world language?

NASA and The Ohio State University have created a brand-new metal called GRX-810, a printable superalloy engineered to withstand extreme heat inside jet and rocket engines. It is being called one of the most significant breakthroughs in high-temperature materials in recent years. NASA says GRX-810 is twice as strong as the best 3D printed superalloys available today, more than a thousand times more durable at high temperatures, and twice as resistant to oxidation. The team demonstrated it using laser 3D printing and believes it could lead to stronger and longer-lasting parts for airplanes, spacecraft, and high-performance engines.

GRX-810 is what materials scientists refer to as an oxide dispersion strengthened alloy. In essence, it is a nickel, cobalt, and chromium-based metal reinforced with tiny ceramic particles. These nano-oxides, specifically yttrium oxide (Y₂O₃), make up about one percent of the alloy by weight. NASA coats the metal powder with these nanoscale oxides before printing, and then fuses the powder together layer by layer using laser powder bed fusion.

As the part solidifies, the oxide particles remain locked inside the metal matrix like rebar in concrete. This reinforcement stops the metal from deforming or cracking when exposed to both high heat and heavy load. The alloy’s recipe involves nine different metallic elements along with the nano-oxides, and this combination was optimized through computational alloy design rather than trial and error.

A Concorde flew so high over the Red Sea that the mighty US Navy got scared and rushed F-14 Tomcats to intercept it. So fast was the jet that only when a veteran pilot chasing it took out his camera and zoomed, he realized their blazing target was the supersonic airliner //

“As we swung our nose in the direction of the vector we got, I got an immediate lock on an extremely fast and high-flying aircraft,” recalled David “Hey Joe” Parsons, the Radar Intercept Officer in the rear seat. The AWG-9 radar displayed a large lead cue, something you only see when the target is moving extraordinarily fast at altitude. The Tomcat began to climb. //

The Television Camera System should have provided a magnified visual, but the angle and altitude difference made the picture blur into haze. Parsons reached down into his flight bag and pulled out his personal 300 mm camera lens. He spotted a thin white contrail far above them. He steadied the lens, focused, and the shape came into clarity. “As I twisted the lens, the beautiful silhouette of the Concorde came into focus.” There was no threat. Only grace. //

Contrary to popular imagination, the Tomcat did not chase the Concorde speed-for-speed. An F-14 does not drag race a Mach 2 airliner. Instead, it turns toward the point the radar predicts the target will be, accelerates, climbs, and allows closure rate to do the work. For a moment, two icons of aviation existed in the same piece of sky, one built to defend, the other built to outrun time.

ESCAPADE’s path through space, relative to the Earth, has the peculiar shape of a kidney bean. In the world of astrodynamics, this is called a staging, or libration, orbit. It’s a way to keep the spacecraft on a stable trajectory to wait for the opportunity to go to Mars late next year.

“ESCAPADE has identified that this is the way that we want to fly, so we launch from Earth onto this kidney bean-shaped orbit,” said Jeff Parker, a mission designer from the Colorado-based company Advanced Space. “So, we can launch on virtually any day. What happens is that kidney bean just grows and shrinks based on how much time you need to spend in that orbit. So, we traverse that kidney bean and at the very end there’s a final little loop-the-loop that brings us down to Earth.”

That’s when the two ESCAPADE spacecraft, known as Blue and Gold, will pass a few hundred miles above our planet. At the right moment, on November 7 and 9 of next year, the satellites will fire their engines to set off for Mars.

An illustration of ESCAPADE’s trajectory to wait for the opportunity to go to Mars. Credit: UC-Berkeley
There are some tradeoffs with this unique staging orbit. It is riskier than the original plan of sending ESCAPADE straight to Mars. The satellites will be exposed to more radiation and will consume more of their fuel just to get to the red planet, eating into reserves originally set aside for science observations.

The satellites were built by Rocket Lab, which designed them with extra propulsion capacity in order to accommodate launches on a variety of different rockets. In the end, NASA “judged that the risk for the mission was acceptable, but it certainly is higher risk,” said Richard French, Rocket Lab’s vice president of business development and strategy.

The upside of the tradeoff is that it will demonstrate an “exciting and flexible way to get to Mars,” Lillis said. “In the future, if we’d like to send hundreds of spacecraft to Mars at once, it will be difficult to do that from just the launch pads we have on Earth within that month [of the interplanetary launch window]. We could potentially queue up spacecraft using the approach that ESCAPADE is pioneering.”

The owners of a stunning five-bedroom Nantucket, MA, home worth $5 million want to give it away for free. The catch? You have to move it off their property in the next 180 days.

It's being done during what's known as "house moving" season, which runs from Sept. 15 to June 15—a common practice on the island off Cape Cod.

Local laws state that anyone wishing to demolish an existing home on the island must first offer it up for free to any takers.

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We were disappointed, and honestly, angry over our New Jersey polling.

Our first September Labor Day poll showed Sherrill +10.

By late September, after debates, campaign controversies, and the Kirk assassination, everything changed. The race tightened fast.

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NJ Map Guy
@nnjpolitics
Belleville, New Jersey (50% Hispanic)
(Mayor endorsed Jack)

🔵Mikie Sherrill - 6,280 - 62.6%
🔴Jack Ciattarelli - 3,700 - 36.9%

2016: Clinton +25
2020: Biden +13
2024: Harris +4
2025: Sherrill +26
4:07 PM · Nov 6, 2025

But wait until you hear this: Right Angle News Network points to some eyebrow-raising numbers out of the race. Somehow, from 2021 to 2025, the state’s number of voters in the gubernatorial election jumped 500,000 — over twice the pace of population growth — and virtually all of those new votes went Democrat, even though Republicans have had the advantage in new voter registrations. It’s the kind of “coincidence” that’s starting to look a lot less like chance and a lot more like something worth investigating. //

It certainly raises some eyebrows. The polling was off by double digits, the turnout surge defied demographic trends, and the lack of voter ID requirements combined with lax enforcement of mail-in ballot rules created an environment ripe for abuse. Whether you call it irregularities, anomalies, or something more sinister, the New Jersey results deserve a closer look. Republicans got shellacked in a race that everyone believed was more competitive.

Something happened in New Jersey, and until someone can explain where half a million Democratic voters came from and why every pollster in the country got it so spectacularly wrong, the questions aren't going away.

It might have the first-ever version of UNIX written in C

A tape-based piece of unique Unix history may have been lying quietly in storage at the University of Utah for 50+ years. The question is whether researchers will be able to take this piece of middle-aged media and rewind it back to the 1970s to get the data off.

Archaeologic Microsoft veteran Raymond Chen has shared the origin story behind the Windows 3D Pipes screensaver.

Respecting users choices and offering a hardcore mode among key suggestions.

Retired Microsoft engineer Dave Plummer has waded into the argument over where Microsoft has gone wrong with Windows, suggesting that perhaps the OS needs a hardcore mode to offset some of its fluffier edges.

Plummer comes from what was arguably a golden era for the Windows operating system: the final days of Windows NT 3.5x and the advent of Windows NT 4. Although it has been decades since he was last involved in the Windows codebase, his code can likely still be found in the OS, in part, due to the blessing and curse of Windows's obsession with backward compatibility.

Plummer's complaints boil down to two main areas: a desire for a hardcore mode that optionally removes all the fluffiness added to the operating system for the benefit of non-technical users, and a combination of transparency and an end to the 'Microsoft knows best' attitude that has plagued recent releases. //

2 days
DoctorNine
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Re: He is so right
With Windows 10, you could mostly stop the dog chewing on itself by constructing a registry cone around its head. Windows 11 though, is M$'s latest attempt to ensure we are unable to stop it gnawing a hole in its rear end, and not only that, there are freaking cameras in the room to record us even trying to do so. I can't even. //

1 day
vtcodgerSilver badge
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Re: I watched the video. He's basically describing Linux.
The Windows registry would require comprehensive documentation -- which it doesn't have, has never had, and probably will never have -- to even begin to approach the utility of the Unix application specific configuration files. //

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If O/Ss were airlines - for those who've never seen it...

https://www.webaugur.com/bibliotheca/field_stock/os-airlines.html. //

https://www.oo-software.com/en/shutup10

https://github.com/Open-Shell/Open-Shell-Menu/releases/tag/v4.4.196

The atmosphere of our church service was pregnant with expectation: four candles of the Advent wreath and the colored lights from the tree and wreaths lit the darkened room. My wife and I were among the tens of millions gathered on Christmas Eve to rehearse the Nativity story again. As one of the readers read aloud Luke 2:5, I was struck by the New International Version (NIV) translation: “Mary, who was pledged to be married to him and was expecting a child.” Chronologically, the narrative had advanced some eight months from Luke 1:26-27, where it stated that Gabriel was sent to a virgin named Mary “pledged to be married to a man named Joseph.” The Greek verb mnēsteuō was translated identically in both verses.

The translation suggested to me that an unmarried Jewish couple was traveling a long distance unaccompanied by other family members. And the woman—still only pledged in marriage—was in an advanced state of pregnancy. If such a situation is still scandalous in the Middle East, how much more in first-century Judea!1 //

Returning to Joseph, he would have paid the bride price to Mary’s father at their engagement (Matthew 1:20; Luke 1:27). Despite his misgivings, Joseph then obeyed the angel’s command to marry Mary (Matthew 1:20). The time of formal engagement, whether a full year or not, had passed between them. So Joseph and Mary had begun to live together except for sexual relations (Matthew 1:25). Luke’s understanding of mnēsteuō must be expanded to include both the betrothal/engagement as well as marital cohabitation. Therefore a better translation of Luke 2:5 would be: “Mary his wife who was expecting a child.” (The NKJV attempts a hybrid with “betrothed wife.”) English translations that suggest the couple was still only in the engagement stage of fiancé/fiancée must be discarded. Joseph and Mary traveled to Bethlehem as a full husband and wife under ancient Jewish law.

I remember one day resolving to do arduous work in 2 Chronicles. Studiously plowing through the reigns of Solomon through Jehoshaphat, I came to 2 Chronicles 21:20 and laughed outright. The text reads, “Jehoram was thirty-two years old when he became king, and he reigned in Jerusalem eight years. He passed away, to no one’s regret, and was buried in the City of David, but not in the tombs of the kings” (italics added). Being a wordsmith myself, I smiled at this bygone scribe relieved at this monarch’s death. Evidently Jehoram was not well liked. The editorial statement provides a light touch—comic relief, if you will—to the Chronicler’s usually routine kingship formula.

As I study and teach, I find I read the Bible ever more slowly, and as I do, I smile more and more frequently. I listen for its humor. My emotions span sorrow, understanding or joy as I empathize with the characters who cross its pages. I chuckle at many passages, even while acknowledging the sadness they may contain. Consequently, I believe it’s possible to read many verses, stories and even books through the lens of humor, indeed to see portions of the Bible as intended to be very funny. An appropriate response is laughter. I’ve come to this conclusion: Humor is a fundamental sub-theme in both testaments.

Internal documents have revealed that Meta has projected it earns billions from ignoring scam ads that its platforms then targeted to users most likely to click on them.

In a lengthy report, Reuters exposed five years of Meta practices and failures that allowed scammers to take advantage of users of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp.

Documents showed that internally, Meta was hesitant to abruptly remove accounts, even those considered some of the “scammiest scammers,” out of concern that a drop in revenue could diminish resources needed for artificial intelligence growth.

Instead of promptly removing bad actors, Meta allowed “high value accounts” to “accrue more than 500 strikes without Meta shutting them down,” Reuters reported. The more strikes a bad actor accrued, the more Meta could charge to run ads, as Meta’s documents showed the company “penalized” scammers by charging higher ad rates. Meanwhile, Meta acknowledged in documents that its systems helped scammers target users most likely to click on their ads.

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