Watch it all.

Update: I see Time has an interesting article on this over here.

Two anxieties dominate most of our lives. We are anxious in the face of our unchangeable past; we long to recreate segments of our private histories, but we are stuck with them. We are anxious in the face of our unpredictable futures; we long to control our destinies, but we cannot bring them under our management. Thus, two basic longings, lying at the root of most others, are frustrated: we cannot alter a painful past or control a threatening future.

God offers two answers to our deepest anxieties. He is a forgiving God who recreates our pasts by forgiving them. He is a promising God who controls our future by making and keeping promises. By forgiving us, he changes our past. By promising, he secures our future.

By his grace we participate in his power to change the past and control the future. We, too, can forgive, and must forgive….

Read it all–quoted by yours truly in this morning’s sermon.

In the 21st century, parenthood and paranoia often walk hand in hand.

For some, the blessed event is followed by high-tech surveillance – a monitoring system tracks the baby’s breathing rhythms and relays infrared images from the nursery. The next investment might be a nanny cam, to keep watch on the child’s hired caregivers. Toddlers and grade schoolers can be equipped with GPS devices enabling a parent to know their location should something go awry.

Read it all.

Challenging the cultural climate is a major component of the new apologetics, said Sean McDowell, head of Worldview Ministries. “The apologetics resurgence has been sparked ultimately by teens who are asking more questions about why people believe the things they do,” he said. “Those who thought that kids in a postmodern world don’t want an ideology were wrong.”

Greg Stier, founder of Dare 2 Share Ministries, agrees. “[Teens] are aware of the latent apologetic conversations in culture””Harry Potter, for example””and want to react,” he said.

Read it all.

O God, who hast brought life and immortality to light by the gospel, and hast begotten us again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead: Make us steadfast and immovable in the faith, always abounding in the work of the Lord, who died for our sins and rose again, and now liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, world without end.

–James Mountain

O God, thou art my God, I seek thee, my soul thirsts for thee; my flesh faints for thee, as in a dry and weary land where no water is. So I have looked upon thee in the sanctuary, beholding thy power and glory. Because thy steadfast love is better than life, my lips will praise thee. So I will bless thee as long as I live; I will lift up my hands and call on thy name.

–Psalm 63:1-4

“There is so much inbredness in this profession….They all read the same sources. They all use the same data sets. They all talk to the same people. There is endless extrapolation on extrapolation on extrapolation, and for years that is what has been rewarded.”

—Economist Carmen Reinhart of the University of Maryland.

Check it out carefully.

Scenes of joy and praise played out as hundreds of Christians who attended the rededication and reopening ceremony celebrated the completion of the project. The Anglican archbishop, Henry Luke Orombi, led the mass in which the church was rededicated to God before it was symbolically re-opened by fisheries minister Ruth Nankabirwa who represented President Yoweri Museveni.

Museveni and Prime Minister Amama Mbabazi were some of the individuals who were honoured in absentia with accolades and certificates in recognition of their outstanding contribution towards the renovation.

Read it all.

Confined to their hospital beds, patients can only fantasize about stripping off all the wires that connect them to monitors and bolting for the door.

Suppose, however, that all of a convalescent patient’s electrode patches were consolidated into a single, nearly invisible and weightless version ”” as thin as a temporary, press-on tattoo. And suppose that a tiny radio transmitter eliminated the need for any wires tethering the patient to monitoring machines.

“Epidermal electronics” ”” a term coined by researchers who have produced prototype devices at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign ”” may enable constant medical monitoring anywhere.

Read it all.

Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir has declared a state of emergency in the Blue Nile State following heavy fighting in the region, the Sudan Tribune reported on Saturday.

Bashir has also dismissed Blue Nile state governor Malik Agar, who is also chairman of the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement North (SPLM-N), amid reports of aerial bombardments in the region. He instead appointed the commander of Sudanese army (SAF) base in the Blue Nile’s capital of al-Damazin, Major General Yahya Mohamed Khair, as a military ruler of the state.

Read it all.

Peter Spiegel, Brussels bureau chief, reviews his interview with Amr Moussa, former secretary general of the Arab League and candidate in the upcoming Egyptian elections. He considers Mr Moussa’s message to Col Gaddafi and what threat extremism pose to Egypt’s future.

Watch it all (just over two minutes).