Thoughts on God and life from a Christian perspective
Okay, this is just too cool.
Homemade Flying Hovercraft (Video length: 1:15)
New Zealander Rudy Heeman has been showing off his latest garage invention — a hovercraft which takes off at 70 km/h. Heeman hopes to sell his invention at $13,000 USD per unit.
HT: Neatorama
Related posts:
• Get Ready for Flying Cars?
• Jet Pack in Flight
I am fascinated with the emergence of the Ebook market and try to read everything I can on the subject. I would have loved to attend the O’Reilly Tools of Change for Publishing Conference this week (my brother was there), but now that they are putting some of the addresses online, I am doing my best to catch up. Here is a great presentation on Ebooks and how technology is impacting the publishing industry.
Are Ebooks Dead? -Skip Prichard (Video length: 19:52)
Michael Hyatt of Thomas Nelson Publishing has a good summary of the conference here: The O’Reilly Tools of Change for Publishing Conference, along with some great quotes from the conference. The money quote as far as I am concerned? “Obscurity is a bigger problem for authors than piracy.” (Tim O’Reilly; see also linked article below) As the book industry enters the digital age, publishers need to look carefully at the early missteps taken by the music industry and avoid making the same mistakes.
What are your thoughts on Ebooks and how they will change book reading and publishing?
Related article: David Pogue Revisits DRM Question about Ebooks
… the iguanas start falling out of the trees.
Update: We actually found some iguanas lying around like statues on the church property yesterday. As soon as it gets warm, many of them will be up and running again. Apparently the larger ones have a better chance for survival than the smaller ones. I also heard about a man who put a bunch of frozen iguanas in his truck. Of course he had the heat on which revived the iguanas and he soon found them crawling all over the place while he was trying to drive. Weird stuff!
This is why they don’t let me drive a forklift.
This took place in a liquor warehouse in Moscow. The boxes contained bottles of vodka and cognac. The damages were estimated at 5 million rubles ($150,000). And … the driver escaped with only a minor leg injury.
HT: Presurfer
Here is a very cool costume.
HT: Verum Serum
Cute.
Orange Telecom by PES (video length: 1:05)
In this video Pastor Matt Carter from Austin Stone Community Church in Texas shares what they learned as a church about how to form authentic, Biblical, missional small groups. Matt planted Austin Stone Community several years back along with Christian artist Chris Tomlin, and he talks frankly about some of the mistakes they made in their first years as a church. Here is the money quote on small groups:
What we found is when we aimed simply for community, we got neither community nor mission. But when we aimed for mission, we got mission and community almost every single time.
(Video length: 16:09)
HT: MMI
William Castleman captured this stunning time-lapse video of the Milky Way rising over a Texas Star Party in April. This is absolutely gorgeous. (It takes just a minute to load, but it is well worth the wait.)
(Video length: 0:48)
Details:
- Texas Star Party; Night Sky Time-Lapse Video
- 9:20 PM to 6:43 AM CDT; April 21-22, 2009
- Canon EOS-5D (modified) and EF 15mm Fisheye Lens @ f/2.8
- Camera on Tripod facing East South East
- 20 second exposure each minute per frame; 15 frames per second
“When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him, the son of man that you care for him?” (Psalm 8:3-4)
Yesterday I posted part of an interview with Scott Klusendorf, author of The Case for Life: Equipping Christians to Engage the Culture. Here is a later part from the same interview where Scott talks about some of the alternatives to Embyronic Stem Cell Research (ESCR). The bottom line is that there are positive ways to continue stem cell research without destroying human embryos in the process.
Not only is embryonic stem cell research immoral, but it may be unnecessary. First, numerous peer-reviewed studies indicate that adult stem cells are more effective at treating disease than previously thought. Unlike embryo stem cell research, we can extract these adult cells without harming the donor. Critics of the pro-life view, like the late actor Christopher Reeve, insist that these adult cells won’t work. However, the evidence suggests just the opposite. So far, adult stem cells are outperforming their embryonic counterparts.
Second, new research suggests we can pursue embryo cell treatments in morally acceptable ways. Altered Nuclear Transfer (or ANT) is one new technology which seeks a morally acceptable means of producing pluripotent stem cells (the functional equivalent of embryonic stem cells) without the creation and destruction of human embryos. Instead, researchers will use biological entities that have some of the properties of embryos, but are not living organisms. In 2007, researchers in Japan and the United States, using slightly different methods, successfully coaxed ordinary adult skin cells to function just like pluripotent embryonic ones. This remarkable breakthrough demonstrated that pluripotent cells can be obtained without destroying human embryos. This should come as thrilling news for everyone in the cloning debate intent on using embryo cells.
Here is an interesting video clip from Oprah where Doctor Oz proclaims the stem cell debate closed and explains the benefits of Induced Pluripotent Stem Cell Research (IPS Cell Technology) to Oprah and fellow guest Michael J. Fox. This new technology takes skin cells and makes them embryo-like, thus avoiding both the moral problems of destroying embryos for research as well as the practical problems involved with using embryonic stem cells, such as the risk of tumors in the recipient. (Video length: 3:13)
Related posts:
• Scott Klusendorf on Embryonic Stem Cell Research
• They’re Going to Die Anyway
This is neat. The Hancock Wildlife Foundation has live webcams (Pacific Time) of eagles in their natural habitat. They were pretty active when I tuned in, but this is wild and this is live, so you may have to be patient.
The mission of the Hancock Wildlife Foundation is to promote the conservation of wildlife and its habitats through science, education, and stewardship. You can view more wildlife web cams here.
HT: Don Surber
The Bigsby Show has a great video and song to help children (and adults) learn the books of the Bible. Music is a great way to memorize. I still use the song that I learned as a child for the New Testament books to get the order right (and that’s after going to seminary!).
(Video length: 2:57)
Need some more Bigsby before you go? Here’s “Frogs, Frogs, Frogs” from the Lake Charles show. (Video length: 1:11)
Can’t wait for the new Hobbit movie in 2012? The Hunt for Gollum releases May 3, 2009.
‘The Hunt For Gollum’ is a ‘Lord Of The Rings’ Fan Film made by fans for fans. Inspired by notes in the appendices from ‘The Lord of the Rings’ book, ‘The Hunt For Gollum’ follows Aragorn as he sets out to find the creature Gollum and discover the truth about the Ring … (TheOneRing.net)
The Lord of the Rings trilogy is one of my favorite book and movie series. So I am looking forward to this fan-made film made for, well, fans like me! The production values look impressive for a home-made film. (I read somewhere they did this for only $3,000? That doesn’t seem possible.) Started over two years ago, the 40-minute film will be available for free download or live streaming at the official Hunt for Gollum website on May 3, 2009.
Update: Commenter Theresa corrects the $3,000 amount to £3,000 (approx. $4,500). Thanks Theresa!
Click here for more Tolkien related posts.
Related post: Storming Omaha Beach on a Shoestring
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