Your sins are red
Dripping with blood
The blood of people hurt
by word or neglect
Feel the cleansing flow
The Blood of Christ
Washing you clean
White as fresh snow
Turn to God
Turn from your sin
Let God’s huge love
Recreate His likeness in you.
Not So Much Water On Mars After All
Remember all the hype about evidence of flowing water on Mars and the possibility of life being there?
Well NASA is now saying that the gullies on Mars were not caused by erosion due to water, although the presence of some salty deposits that indicate water has not yet been ruled out.
A lot less sexy than the “life on Mars” meme but not unexpected.
From the ABC:
Mars gullies not caused by flowing water, NASA says
New NASA research has shown the gullies on Mars were not formed by flowing liquid water.
Key points:
- Study of gullies on Mars found no evidence of water or its by-products
- Scientists say gullies could have been formed on Mars by freezing and thawing carbon dioxide frost
- Previous research showed signs of water on slopes and streaks on Mars
The data from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter released on Monday will allow researchers to narrow down theories about how Martian gullies formed and reveal more details about Mars’ geologic processes, NASA said in a statement.
The gullies are different to another prominent feature of Mars— slopes and streaks called recurring slope lineage (RSL) which are distinguished by seasonal darkening and fading.
Water in the form of hydrated salt was identified at RSL sites in September last year, also using Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter data.
Chemical analysis of dark streaks on the surface of the planet identified the presence of hydrated salts that are the signature of liquid salty water.
But the new research — which focused solely on gullies — found no trace of water, by looking at the gully formation process and adding composition information to previous imaging, NASA said.
Researchers from the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Maryland in the US examined high-resolution compositional data from more than 100 gully sites throughout Mars.
NASA said the findings showed no mineralogical evidence of liquid water or its by-products.
The research suggested the gullies could have been formed by the freeze and thaw of carbon dioxide frost.
The findings were published in Geophysical Research Letters.
“On Earth and on Mars, we know that the presence of phyllosilicates — clays — or other hydrated minerals indicates formation in liquid water,” lead paper author Jorge Nunez said in a NASA statement.
“In our study, we found no evidence for clays or other hydrated minerals in most of the gullies we studied, and when we did see them, they were erosional debris from ancient rocks, exposed and transported down-slope, rather than altered in more recent flowing water.
“These gullies are carving into the terrain and exposing clays that likely formed billions of years ago when liquid water was more stable on the Martian surface.”
Babylon Bee- Sermon On Tithing Moves Congregation To Commit 10% Of Their Attention To It
GOSHEN, IN—A message on tithes and offerings at Maple Street Methodist Church received a surprisingly warm welcome Sunday as congregants responded by giving a full ten percent of their attention to the well-prepared sermon.
“I’m impressed by their generosity,” Pastor Larry Williams told reporters Monday. “We have to start somewhere—just pay a small amount of attention to a word here, a word there. Heck, sometimes I’m happy if the congregation even shows up for these services.”
An encouraging Monday morning staff meeting revealed the remarkable return, giving hope to the financially struggling body of Christ.
“I usually try to focus and really absorb about 12–13% of the sermon, so I’m doing way more than my part,” longtime church member Ruth O’Neill told reporters. “Once in a while, I’ll listen to the entire thing as a special, one-time love offering of my time and attention.”
Member David Spangler admitted to giving only 1% of his attention, blaming the pastor for scheduling the message in the prime of golf season, on the weekend of a major. “I have to prioritize, you know?” he explained.
From the Babylon Bee
The Regulation of Common Sense
In Australia we force people to wear helmets under threat of massive fines. Maybe we should just let them use their own common sense and work out what is a safe environment and what is not.
From “As Easy As Riding A Bike”
The helmet on the handlebars
At the FreeCycle event in central London on Saturday, there were, of course, large numbers of people wearing helmets and hi-viz tabards – not least because the latter were, as always, being handed out to participants.
But as I cycled around the event during the course of the day, I began to notice a distinct phenomenon. Something dangling from people’s handlebars.
Read the full article here
Today’s Sermon
Today’s Sermon
Reflection on Luke 11:1-13
Passage: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Luke+11.1-13
Scripture
“If you then who are evil know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him.”
Observation
After Jesus finishes praying on one occasion, the disciples ask Him to teach them how to pray. Jesus responds by giving them the prayer we now call the Lord’s Prayer.
Jesus goes on to give an example of going to a friend in the middle of the night to ask for some bread to feed an unexpected guest. If you are persistent, the friend will give you what you ask for.
We must ask and it will be given, search and we will find, keep on knocking and the door will be opened.
Earthly fathers give their children good things, How much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to His children.
Application
Jesus teaches that words are not so important in prayer as our trust in the goodness of God. For many people the Lord’s Prayer is a collection of words that we must say. Jesus intended that the words should be taken as a template for prayer, a framework on which build a life of conversation and dependence on God.
If we pray without ceasing, trusting that God is indeed good, we will see remarkable, supernatural, astounding answers.
Prayer
Thank you God for your love for me. Than you that you do answer my prayers. Help me to look to you each day and to trust you for everything. Amen.
World’s Smallest Hard Drive
Wow! So it’s just a starting point and you can only use it at temperatures of about -200 C, but this is just incredible
From the SMH:
World’s ‘smallest hard drive’ means every book written can now be stored on a stamp
July 19 2016 – 1:08PM
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Marcus Strom, Science Editor
When Johannes Gutenberg invented the printing press he changed the world.
Now a team of scientists in the Netherlands has taken this to the ultimate extreme. Through the manipulation of single atoms they have made the world’s smallest hard drive. It is so dense the technology could store all the world’s books on device the size of a postage stamp.
“It is as if we have invented the atomic-scale printing press,” lead researcher Sander Otte at Delft University told Gizmodo.
Using a scanning tunnelling microscope to push single atoms around, Associate Professor Otte’s team created a stable grid of 8000 chlorine atoms where each can represent the one (1) or zero (0) that make up binary digital data.
This means a storage density of 78 terabits per square centimetre, many hundreds of times greater than the best hard disks available.
IBM estimates that humanity is creating about 2.5 billion gigabytes of data a day – and that was in 2012. So the ability to store data efficiently is as a global challenge.
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The researchers at Delft hope their research, published this week inNature Technology, will be a step towards dealing with this data management conundrum.
“In theory, this storage density would allow all books ever created by humans to be written on a single post stamp,” Professor Otte said.
Read the rest here
Today’s Sermon
Oswald Chambers: My Utmost For His Highest
The Concept of Divine Control
Jesus is laying down the rules of conduct in this passage for those people who have His Spirit. He urges us to keep our minds filled with the concept of God’s control over everything, which means that a disciple must maintain an attitude of perfect trust and an eagerness to ask and to seek.
Fill your mind with the thought that God is there. And once your mind is truly filled with that thought, when you experience difficulties it will be as easy as breathing for you to remember, “My heavenly Father knows all about this!” This will be no effort at all, but will be a natural thing for you when difficulties and uncertainties arise. Before you formed this concept of divine control so powerfully in your mind, you used to go from person to person seeking help, but now you go to God about it. Jesus is laying down the rules of conduct for those people who have His Spirit, and it works on the following principle: God is my Father, He loves me, and I will never think of anything that He will forget, so why should I worry?
Jesus said there are times when God cannot lift the darkness from you, but you should trust Him. At times God will appear like an unkind friend, but He is not; He will appear like an unnatural father, but He is not; He will appear like an unjust judge, but He is not. Keep the thought that the mind of God is behind all things strong and growing. Not even the smallest detail of life happens unless God’s will is behind it. Therefore, you can rest in perfect confidence in Him. Prayer is not only asking, but is an attitude of the mind which produces the atmosphere in which asking is perfectly natural. “Ask, and it will be given to you…” (Matthew 7:7).
