I was reading a book”: The new warrior cop is out of control. Sal Culosi is dead because he bet on a football game — but it wasn’t a bookie or a loan shark who killed him. His local government killed him, ostensibly to protect him from his gambling habit. Several months earlier at a local bar, Fairfax County, Virginia, detective David Baucum overheard the thirty- eight- year- old optometrist and some friends wagering on a college football game. After overhearing the men wagering, Baucum befriended Culosi as a cover to begin investigating him. During the next several months, he talked Culosi into raising the stakes of what Culosi thought were just more fun wagers between friends to make watching sports more interesting. Eventually Culosi and Baucum bet more than $2,0. Under Virginia law, that was enough for police to charge Culosi with running a gambling operation. And that’s when they brought in the SWAT team. On the night of January 2. Baucum called Culosi and arranged a time to drop by to collect his winnings. When Culosi, barefoot and clad in a T- shirt and jeans, stepped out of his house to meet the man he thought was a friend, the SWAT team began to move in. Seconds later, Det. George Church is a real-life Dr. Frankenstein. The inventor of CRISPR and one of the minds behind the Human Genome Project is no longer content just reading and. So yeah, this episode is all about pee. More specifically, pee dribbles. Do you know that there’s a formal term for pee dribbles?! There is, and I’m utterly. NG You know, I was in China in 2007, and it was the first ever state-sponsored, Party-approved science-fiction convention. They brought in some people from the west. Deval Bullock, who had been on duty since 4: 0. AM and hadn’t slept in seventeen hours, fired a bullet that pierced Culosi’s heart. Sal Culosi’s last words were to Baucum, the cop he thought was a friend: “Dude, what are you doing?”In March 2. Fairfax County Police Department issued a press release warning residents not to participate in office betting pools tied to the NCAA men’s basketball tournament. The title: “Illegal Gambling Not Worth the Risk.” Given the proximity to Culosi’s death, residents could be forgiven for thinking the police department believed wagering on sports was a crime punishable by execution. In January 2. 01. Culosi family accepted a $2 million settlement offer from Fairfax County. That same year, Virginia’s government spent $2. The raid on Sal Culosi was merely another red flag indicating yet more SWAT team mission creep in America. It wasn’t even the first time a Virginia SWAT team had killed someone during a gambling raid. In 1. 99. 8 a SWAT team in Virginia Beach shot and killed security guard Edward C. Reed during a 3: 0. AM raid on a private club suspected of facilitating gambling. Police said they approached the tinted car where Reed was working security, knocked, and identified themselves, then shot Reed when he refused to drop his handgun. Reed’s family insisted the police story was unlikely. Reed had no criminal record. Why would he knowingly point his gun at a heavily armed police team? More likely, they said, Reed mistakenly believed the raiding officers were there to do harm, particularly given that the club had been robbed not long before the raid. Statements by the police themselves seem to back that account. According to officers at the scene, Reed’s last words were, “Why did you shoot me? I was reading a book.”As the Texas Hold ’Em craze picked up momentum in the mid- 2. Police in many parts of the country responded with SWAT raids. In 2. 01. 1, for example, police in Baltimore County, Maryland, sent a tactical unit to raid a $6. Lynch Point Social Club. From 2. 00. 6 to 2. The Concept and Teaching of Place-Value Richard Garlikov. An analysis of representative literature concerning the widely recognized ineffective learning of "place. Health news with a focus on fitness news, wellness coverage and living a healthy Southern California life. ACT I SCENE I. A room in CLEOPATRA's palace. Enter DEMETRIUS and PHILO PHILO Nay, but this dotage of our general's O'erflows the measure: those his goodly. Lingering sense of ennui creeping in? Concerned about our crumbling infrastructure? Allow me to temporarily assuage your problems by offering up some lovely images of. 15 Things You Should Give Up To Be Happy. Here is a list of 15 things which, if you give up on them, will make your life a lot easier and much, much happier. SWAT teams in South Carolina staged a number of raids to break up poker games in the suburbs of Charleston. Some were well organized and high- stakes, but others were friendly games with a $2. Players said the tactics were terrifying. One woman urinated on herself. When police raided a San Mateo, California, poker game in 2. The games had buy- ins ranging from $2. Under California law, the games were legal so long as no one took a “rake,” or a cut of the stakes. No one had, but police claimed the $5 the hosts charged players to buy refreshments qualified as a rake. In March 2. 00. 7, a small army of local cops, ATF agents, National Guard troops, and a helicopter raided a poker game in Cary, North Carolina. They issued forty- one citations, all of them misdemeanors. A columnist at the Fayetteville Observer remarked, “They were there to play cards, not to foment rebellion. Until we get this sorted out, better not jaywalk. There could be a military helicopter overhead.”Police have justified this sort of heavy- handedness by claiming that people who run illegal gambling operations tend to be armed, a blanket characterization that absurdly lumps neighborhood Hold ’Em tournaments with Uncle Junior Soprano’s weekly poker game. And in any case, if police know that people inside an establishment are likely to be armed, it makes even less sense to come in with guns blazing. Police have also defended the paramilitary tactics by noting that poker games are usually flush with cash and thus tend to get robbed. That too is an absurd argument, unless the police are afraid they’re going to raid a game at precisely the same moment it’s getting robbed. Under either scenario, the police are acknowledging that the people playing poker when these raids go down have good reason to think that the men storming the place with guns may be criminals, not cops. Indeed, that’s exactly what happened to seventy- two- year- old Aaron Awtry in 2. Awtry was hosting a poker tournament in his Greenville, South Carolina, home when police began breaking down the door with a battering ram. Awtry had begun carrying a gun after being robbed. Thinking he was about to be robbed again, he fired through the door, wounding Deputy Matthew May in both arms. The other officers opened fire into the building. Miraculously, only Awtry was hit. As he fell back into a hallway, other players reporting him asking, “Why didn’t you tell me it was the cops?” The raid team claimed they knocked and announced several times before putting ram to door, but other players said they heard no knock or announcement. When Awtry recovered, he was charged with attempted murder. As part of an agreement, he pleaded guilty and was sentenced to five years in prison. Police had broken up Awtry’s games in the past. But on those occasions, they had knocked and waited, he had let them in peacefully, and he’d been given a $1. The poker raids have gotten bad enough that the Poker Players Alliance, an interest group that lobbies to make the game legal, has established a network of attorneys around the country to help players who have been raided and arrested. But the mission creep hasn’t stopped at poker games. By the end of the 2. SWAT teams to enforce regulatory law. In August 2. 01. 0, for example, a team of heavily armed Orange County, Florida, sheriff’s deputies raided several black- and Hispanic- owned barbershops in the Orlando area. More raids followed in September and October. The Orlando Sentinel reported that police held barbers and customers at gunpoint and put some in handcuffs, while they turned the shops inside out. The police raided a total of nine shops and arrested thirty- seven people. By all appearances, these raids were drug sweeps. Shop owners told the Sentinel that police asked them where they were hiding illegal drugs and weapons. But in the end, thirty- four of the thirty- seven arrests were for “barbering without a license,” a misdemeanor for which only three people have ever served jail time in Florida. The most disturbing aspect of the Orlando raids was that police didn’t even attempt to obtain a legal search warrant. They didn’t need to, because they conducted the raids in conjunction with the Florida Department of Business and Professional Regulation. Despite the guns and handcuffs, under Florida law these were licensure inspections, not criminal searches, so no warrants were necessary. That such “administrative searches” have become an increasingly common way for police to get around the Fourth Amendment is bad enough. More disturbing is the amount of force they’re opting to use when they do. In the fall of 2. New Haven, Connecticut, sent a SWAT team to a local bar to investigate reports of underage drinking. Patrons were lined up at gunpoint while cops confiscated cell phones and checked IDs. There have been similar underage drinking SWAT raids on college fraternities. The Atlanta City Council recently agreed to pay a $1 million settlement to the customers and employees of a gay nightclub after a heavy- handed police raid in which police lined up sixty- two people on the floor at gunpoint, searched for drugs, and checked for outstanding warrants and unpaid parking tickets. Police conducted the September 2. But the police never obtained a search warrant. Instead, the raid was conducted under the guise of an alcohol inspection. Police made no drug arrests, but arrested eight employees for permit violations. Federal appeals courts have upheld these “administrative searches” even when it seems obvious that the real intent was to look for criminal activity as long as the government can plausibly claim that the primary purpose of the search was regulatory. In the case of the Orlando raids, simply noting the arrests of thirty- four unlicensed barbers would be enough to meet the test. But the Fourth Amendment requires that searches be “reasonable.” If using a SWAT team to make sure a bar isn’t serving nineteen- year- olds is a reasonable use of force, it’s hard to imagine what wouldn’t be. At least a couple of federal appeals courts have recognized the absurdity. In 2. 00. 9 the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit struck a small blow for common sense, allowing a civil rights suit to go forward against the sheriff’s department of Rapides Parish, Louisiana, after a warrantless SWAT raid on a nightclub thinly veiled as an administrative search. And in 1. 99. 5 the US Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit made an even broader ruling, finding that having probable cause and a warrant for the arrest of one person in a club did not justify a SWAT raid and subsequent search of the entire club and everyone inside. But other legal challenges to paramilitary- style administrative searches have been less successful. Things You Should Give Up To Be Happy — Purpose Fairy. Here is a list of 1. We hold on to so many things that cause us a great deal of pain, stress, and suffering – and instead of letting them all go, instead of allowing ourselves to be stress- free and happy – we cling on to them. Not anymore. Starting today we will give up on all those things that no longer serve us, and we will embrace change. Here we go: 1. Give up your need to always be right There are so many of us who can’t stand the idea of being wrong – wanting to always be right – even at the risk of ending great relationships or causing a great deal of stress and pain, for us and for others. It’s just not worth it. Whenever you feel the . What difference will that make? Is your ego really that big? Give up your need for control. Be willing to give up your need to always control everything that happens to you and around you – situations, events, people, etc. Whether they are loved ones, coworkers, or just strangers you meet on the street – just allow them to be. Allow everything and everyone to be just as they are and you will see how much better will that make you feel.“By letting it go it all gets done. The world is won by those who let it go. But when you try and try. The world is beyond winning.”Lao Tzu. Give up on blame Give up on your need to blame others for what you have or don’t have, for what you feel or don’t feel. Stop giving your powers away and start taking responsibility for your life. Give up your self- defeating self- talk Oh, my. How many people are hurting themselves because of their negative, polluted and repetitive self- defeating mindset? Don’t believe everything that your mind is telling you – especially if it’s negative and self- defeating. You are better than that.“The mind is a superb instrument if used rightly. Used wrongly, however, it becomes very destructive.” Eckhart Tolle. Give up your limiting beliefs. Give up your limiting beliefs about what you can or cannot do, about what is possible or impossible. From now on, you are no longer going to allow your limiting beliefs to keep you stuck in the wrong place. Spread your wings and fly!“A belief is not an idea held by the mind, it is an idea that holds the mind”Elly Roselle. Give up complaining Give up your constant need to complain about those many, many, many things – people, situations, events that make you unhappy, sad and depressed. Nobody can make you unhappy, no situation can make you sad or miserable unless you allow it to. It’s not the situation that triggers those feelings in you, but how you choose to look at it. Never underestimate the power of positive thinking. Give up the luxury of criticism. Give up your need to criticize things, events or people that are different than you. We are all different, yet we are all the same. We all want to be happy, we all want to love and be loved and we all want to be understood. We all want something, and something is wished by us all. Give up your need to impress others. Stop trying so hard to be something that you’re not just to make others like you. It doesn’t work this way. The moment you stop trying so hard to be something that you’re not, the moment you take off all your masks, the moment you accept and embrace the real you, you will find people will be drawn to you, effortlessly. Give up your resistance to change. Change is good. Change will help you move from A to B. Change will help you make improvements in your life and also the lives of those around you. Follow your bliss, embrace change – don’t resist it.“Follow your bliss and the universe will open doors for you where there were only walls” Joseph Campbell. Give up labels Stop labeling those things, people or events that you don’t understand as being weird or different and try opening your mind, little by little. Minds only work when open. Give up on your fears. Fear is just an illusion, it doesn’t exist – you created it. It’s all in your mind. Correct the inside and the outside will fall into place.“The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” Franklin D. Roosevelt. 12. Give up your excuses. Send them packing and tell them they’re fired. You no longer need them. A lot of times we limit ourselves because of the many excuses we use. Instead of growing and working on improving ourselves and our lives, we get stuck, lying to ourselves, using all kind of excuses – excuses that 9. Give up the past. I know, I know. Especially when the past looks so much better than the present and the future looks so frightening, but you have to take into consideration the fact that the present moment is all you have and all you will ever have. The past you are now longing for – the past that you are now dreaming about – was ignored by you when it was present. Stop deluding yourself. Be present in everything you do and enjoy life. After all, life is a journey, not a destination. Have a clear vision for the future, prepare yourself, but always be present in the now. Give up attachment. This is a concept that for most of us is so hard to grasp and I have to tell you that it was for me too, (it still is) but it’s not something impossible. You get better and better at with time and practice. The moment you detach yourself from all things, (and that doesn’t mean you give up your love for them – because love and attachment have nothing to do with one another, attachment comes from a place of fear, while love. You will get to a place where you will be able to understand all things without even trying. A state beyond words. Give up living your life to other people’s expectations. Way too many people are living a life that is not theirs to live. They live their lives according to what others think is best for them, they live their lives according to what their parents think is best for them, to what their friends, their enemies and their teachers, their government and the media think are best for them. They ignore their inner voice, that inner calling. They are so busy with pleasing everybody, with living up to other people’s expectations, that they lose control over their lives. They forget what makes them happy, what they want, what they need. Her acclaimed blog post. Things You Should Give Up To Be Happy , was shared by over 1. Facebook. Later on, it became the heart of her book, 1. Things You Should Give Up To Be Happy., book that was published by Penguin Random House.
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Who created God? But God by definition is the uncreated creator of the universe, so the question Who created God? And if God doesn't need a cause, why should the universe need a cause? In reply, Christians should use the following reasoning: Everything which has a beginning has a cause. The universe has a beginning. Therefore the universe has a cause. Its important to stress the words in bold type. The universe requires a cause because it had a beginning, as will be shown below. God, unlike the universe, had no beginning, so doesn't need a cause. In addition, Einstein's general relativity, which has much experimental support, shows that time is linked to matter and space. So time itself would have begun along with matter and space. Since God, by definition, is the creator of the whole universe, he is the creator of time. Therefore He is not limited by the time dimension He created, so has no beginning in time God is the high and lofty One that inhabiteth eternity (Isaiah 5. In physical cosmology, cosmic inflation, cosmological inflation, or just inflation is a theory of exponential expansion of space in the early universe. Therefore He doesn't have a cause. In contrast, there is good evidence that the universe had a beginning. This can be shown from the Laws of Thermodynamics, the most fundamental laws of the physical sciences.
Get free online Physics courses from the world's top universities. Download audio & video courses straight to your computer or mp3 player. Download 1,250 free online courses from the world's top universities -- Stanford, Yale, MIT, & more. Over 40,000 hours of free audio & video lectures. Law: The total amount of mass- energy in the universe is constant. Law: The amount of energy available for work is running out, or entropy is increasing to a maximum. If the total amount of mass- energy is limited, and the amount of usable energy is decreasing, then the universe cannot have existed forever, otherwise it would already have exhausted all usable energy the heat death of the universe. For example, all radioactive atoms would have decayed, every part of the universe would be the same temperature, and no further work would be possible. So the obvious corollary is that the universe began a finite time ago with a lot of usable energy, and is now running down. Now, what if the questioner accepts that the universe had a beginning, but not that it needs a cause? But it is self- evident that things that begin have a cause no- one really denies it in his heart. All science and history would collapse if this law of cause and effect were denied. So would all law enforcement, if the police didn't think they needed to find a cause for a stabbed body or a burgled house. Also, the universe cannot be self- caused nothing can create itself, because that would mean that it existed before it came into existence, which is a logical absurdity. In Summary. The universe (including time itself) can be shown to have had a beginning. It is unreasonable to believe something could begin to exist without a cause. The universe therefore requires a cause, just as Genesis 1: 1 and Romans 1: 2. God, as creator of time, is outside of time. Since therefore He has no beginning in time, He has always existed, so doesn't need a cause. Objections. There are only two ways to refute an argument: Show that it is logically invalid. Show that at least one of the premises is false. Is the argument valid? A valid argument is one where it is impossible for the premises to be true and the conclusion false. Note that validity does not depend on the truth of the premises, but on the form of the argument. The argument in this article is valid; it is of the same form as: All whales have backbones; Moby Dick is a whale; therefore Moby Dick has a backbone. Does the universe have a beginning? Oscillating universe ideas were popularized by atheists like the late Carl Sagan and Isaac Asimov solely to avoid the notion of a beginning, with its implications of a Creator. But as shown above, the Laws of Thermodynamics undercut that argument. Even an oscillating universe cannot overcome those laws. Each one of the hypothetical cycles would exhaust more and more usable energy. This means every cycle would be larger and longer than the previous one, so looking back in time there would be smaller and smaller cycles. So the multicycle model could have an infinite future, but can only have a finite past. Also, there are many lines of evidence showing that there is far too little mass for gravity to stop expansion and allow cycling in the first place, i. According to the best estimates (even granting old- Earth assumptions), the universe still has only about half the mass needed for re- contraction. This includes the combined total of both luminous matter and non- luminous matter (found in galactic halos), as well as any possible contribution of neutrinos to total mass. Some recent evidence for an open universe comes from the number of light- bending gravitational lenses in the sky. Also, analysis of Type Ia supernovae shows that the universes expansion rate is not slowing enough for a closed universe. It seems there is only 4. Incidentally, this low mass is also a major problem for the currently fashionable inflationary version of the big bang theory, as this predicts a mass density just on the threshold of collapse a flat universe. Finally, no known mechanism would allow a bounce back after a hypothetical big crunch. As the late Professor Beatrice Tinsley of Yale explained, even though the mathematics say that the universe oscillates, There is no known physical mechanism to reverse a catastrophic big crunch. Off the paper and into the real world of physics, those models start from the Big Bang, expand, collapse, and that's the end. Denial of cause and effect. Some physicists assert that quantum mechanics violates this cause/effect principle and can produce something from nothing. For instance, Paul Davies writes: spacetime could appear out of nothingness as a result of a quantum transition. Particles can appear out of nowhere without specific causation Yet the world of quantum mechanics routinely produces something out of nothing. But this is a gross misapplication of quantum mechanics. Quantum mechanics never produces something out of nothing. Davies himself admitted on the previous page that his scenario should not be taken too seriously. Theories that the universe is a quantum fluctuation must presuppose that there was something to fluctuate their quantum vacuum is a lot of matter- antimatter potential not nothing. Also, I have plenty of theoretical and practical experience at quantum mechanics (QM) from my doctoral thesis work. For example, Raman spectroscopy is a QM phenomenon, but from the wavenumber and intensity of the spectral bands, we can work out the masses of the atoms and force constants of the bonds causing the bands. To help the atheist position that the universe came into existence without a cause, one would need to find Raman bands appearing without being caused by transitions in vibrational quantum states, or alpha particles appearing without pre- existing nuclei, etc. If QM was as acausal as some people think, then we should not assume that these phenomena have a cause. Then I may as well burn my Ph. D. This universe can't have any properties to explain its preferential coming into existence, because it wouldn't have any properties until it actually came into existence. Is creation by God rational? A last desperate tactic by skeptics to avoid a theistic conclusion is to assert that creation in time is incoherent. Davies correctly points out that since time itself began with the beginning of the universe, it is meaningless to talk about what happened before the universe began. But he claims that causes must precede their effects. So if nothing. happened before the universe began, then (according to Davies) it is meaningless to discuss the cause of the universes beginning. But the philosopher (and New Testament scholar) William Lane Craig, in a useful critique of Davies,1. Davies is deficient in philosophical knowledge. Immanuel Kant (1. Craig says: The first moment of time is the moment of God's creative act and of creation's simultaneous coming to be. Some skeptics claim that all this analysis is tentative, because that is the nature of science. So this cant be used to prove creation by God. Of course, skeptics can't have it both ways: saying that the Bible is wrong because science has proved it so, but if science appears consistent with the Bible, then well, science is tentative anyway. A final thought. The Bible informs us that time is a dimension that God created, into which man was subjected. It even tells us that one day time will no longer exist. That will be called “eternity.” God Himself dwells outside of the dimension He created (2 Timothy 1: 9, Titus 1: 2). He dwells in eternity and is not subject to time. God spoke history before it came into being. He can move through time as a man flips through a history book. Because we live in the dimension of time, it is impossible for us to fully understand anything that does not have a beginning and an end. Simply accept that fact, and believe the concept of God's eternal nature the same way you believe the concept of space having no beginning and end—by faith—even though such thoughts put a strain on our distinctly insufficient cerebrum. Paul S. Taylor, adapted from author Ray Comfort. Further Reading. More information can be found in the following works. Unfortunately they are too friendly towards the unscriptural big bang theory with its billions of years of death, suffering and disease before Adams sin. But the above arguments are perfectly consistent with a recent creation in six consecutive normal days, as taught by Scripture. Craig, W. L., Apologetics: An Introduction (Chicago: Moody, 1. Craig, W. L. But in this article, I am referring to the efficient cause, the chief agent causing something to be made. Return to text. Novikov, I. D. B., “Physical Processes Near Cosmological Singularities”, Annual Review of Astronomy and Astrophysics, 1. Return to text. Schramm, D. N. Return to text. Watson, A., “Clusters point to Never Ending Universe,” Science, 2. Return to text. Perlmutter, S. Perspective by Branch, D. Destiny and destiny. Same issue, pp. Return to text. Glanz, J., “New light on the fate of the universe,” Science, 2. Return to text. Guth, A. H. Return to text. |
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