Tuesday, December 27, 2005

Has God Answered Your E-mail?

Has God Answered Your E-mail?

You know the one I am talking about, the one where you stripped away your inhibitions and used your imagination to compose a prayer in the form of an imaginary e-mail to God. Has he answered you yet? Are you listening for his words of wisdom?
Please, what ever you do, don’t delete his message of kindness and caring.
When you learn to use your imagination to help you build your faith in God, you will be able to receive the words of the Lord. You will be able to call yourself a Person of Faith.
You are a good and worthwhile person and you are entitled to have your prayers answered. You can communicate with God. When you do you will begin to believe in that which you cannot see or understand. That’s why you need to use your imagination.
You need to allow yourself to dig deep down within your imagination and find your faith. Your imagination holds the key to finding your faith. It is the act of unlocking your imagination that will enable you to reveal your deepest feelings of faith to yourself.
Opt in to having faith in God. Opt in to a life of merit, virtue, and bliss.
When you do, you will shortly discover a wonderful state of peace of mind. You will begin to feel secure. You will stop worrying about acts of terrorism and natural disasters. You will begin to feel wonderful. You will begin to rely on your faith.
Stop trying to patch yourself together with temporary patches and pills when the only patch you really need is a patch of faith. Create your own faith patch from your imagination. It can become your symbol of faith.
Don’t relegate your true feelings of faith to your junk folder or spam control. Allow your feelings of faith to burst forth. Learn how to express your feelings of faith. You are entitled to declare yourself a Person of Faith. You are entitled to have faith.
We are all genetically predisposed to have faith. It is an inborn gene that our creator endowed us with from the beginning of mankind. It is your inalienable right to have faith in God. It is your right to believe in God any way that you chose. God gave us all the right to make choices. That’s what makes us human.
Do not deny yourself your faith in God. You are entitled.
When you discover that you are a good and worthwhile person, you will start to realize that you have a right to believe in God any way that you want. You will begin to get the resolve that will help make you a Person of Faith. Do not deny yourself.
Listen closely for the words of God. If you have enough faith you will be able to hear his message of love. Listen closely for his words of wisdom.
It doesn’t matter how you listen or receive the words of the Lord. It doesn’t matter whether they are in the form of an imaginary e-mail. All that really matters is that you receive him into your heart. All that really matters is that you find your faith in God. The important thing is to believe and have faith.
The important thing is to find your faith in God

Monday, December 26, 2005

Tell Me A Story, Please!

Tell Me A Story, Please!

I was eavesdropping on the other passengers’ conversation as we waited for more passengers to fill that small jitney at Market-Market Mall at around 10 o’clock PM giving me a glimpse of their lives. It’s no big deal, however, for these are no private but only casual conversations of salesperson’s experiences of the day; besides, there are no other things to catch my attention.
We love stories like Peter Pan, Cinderella, Snow White, and more. We love watching good movies and in every good movie is a good story.
Have you read the latest adventure of Harry Potter or the best-selling novel The DaVinci Code?
These stories entertain and even give us their own brand of reality.
(Could it be that a person’s search for meaning leads him to search even on novels? What if novels tell the truth, you know? Could it be that our search for truth leads us to search anywhere just to find it?)
I know of another story – the story of Jesus. It is the never ending story for after reading about the good news of salvation through Jesus Christ, you are now faced with the decision of either receiving a brand-new life or continuing in your unredeemed old life leading to death.
(You may not like that statement but your attitude towards the truth doesn’t change the truth at all.)
Please allow me to quote Deuteronomy 30:19 saying “I call heaven and earth to witness against you today, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse. Therefore choose life, that you and your offspring may live…” (ESV)
Buddha or Confucius never said “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” (John 14:6 ESV) Only Jesus can say that!
Now face it, either Jesus was lying or Jesus was telling the truth. Either he is the only way (as he claimed he was) or he was only confused when he said those words.
In closing, consider these words: “Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life.” (1 John 5:12 ESV)
Man, these are heavy words today.

Holy! Holy! Holy! (…holy?)

Holy! Holy! Holy! (…holy?)


Holy Cow! Can we just go back to basics now?
What does holy mean?
To be holy means to be perfect or nearly perfect, right? It means piety, righteousness, uprightness. It means not sinning.
Actually, that is not accurate.
To be holy means to be separate!
Separate from what?
Let's consider a soldier and a boxer for a moment. They are trained to be good at their field by adhering to a rigorous set of discipline. A soldier doesn't behave like an ordinary citizen. His hair is kept short that when battle comes, he will not bother combing his hair before taking up his gun. In the same light, a boxer is physically trained for fights and doesn't smoke cigarettes or take intoxicating drinks.
Why? In his pursuit of excellence, he needs to separate from the pack.
Achievers are disciplined people. It makes more sense now why there are a lot more losers than winners, eh?
Let's take another example. Consider your drinking glass, will you use it to hold thinner for cleaning your paint brush? Of course not! You want it to be absolutely clean. Why? You don't want contamination.
To be holy means to be separate from the common group of people that you may be used effectively of God.
Think again, would you like to live your life like everybody else barely making any difference at all?
In objection a friend of mine said, "If you'll be so holy all of the time, then, you will be a loner -- no one will be hanging out with you. You can't go out with the guys at the local Saturday Night hangout. You'll be real lonely, man?"
Please allow me to be serious on this for a moment.
The bible says that God will give you the desires of your heart. Don't pick the common interpretation here. What this means is that God will cleanse your heart of its sinful desires, put new desires, and will make you to desire to do His will.
Delight yourself in the Lord, and he shall give you the desires of your heart. (Psalm 37:4 - ESV)
What this means is that those who become Christians become new persons. They are not the same anymore, for the old life is gone. A new life has begun! (2 Corinthians 6:7 - NLT)
Man, I really want you to take a fresh look on these things and don't let your preconceived philosophy go in the way again.

Thursday, December 22, 2005

Cytology

Cytology

The retina contains two forms of photosensitive cells - rods and cones. Though structurally and metabolically similar, their function is quite different, though they are equally important to vision. Rod cells are highly sensitive to light allowing them to respond in dim light and dark conditions. These are the cells which allow humans and other animals to see by moonlight, or with very little available light (as in a dark room). However, they do not distinguish between colours, and have low visual acuity (a measure of detail). This is why the darker conditions become, the less colour objects seem to have. Cone cells, conversely, need high light intensities to respond and have high visual acuity. Different cone cells respond to different colours (wavelengths) of light, which allows an organism to see colour.The differences are useful; apart from enabling sight in both dim and light conditions, humans have given them further application. The fovea, directly behind the lens, consists of mostly densely-packed cone cells. This gives humans a highly detailed central vision, allowing reading, bird watching, or any other task which primarily requires looking at things. Its requirement for high intensity light does cause problems for astronomers, as they cannot see dim stars, or other objects, using central vision because the light from these is not enough to stimulate cone cells. Because cone cells are all that exist directly in the fovea, astronomers have to look at stars through the "corner of their eyes" (averted vision) where rods also exist, and where the light is sufficient to stimulate cells, allowing the individual to observe distant stars.Rods and cones are both photosensitive, but respond differently to different frequencies of light. They both contain different pigmented photoreceptor proteins. Rod cells contain the protein rhodopsin and cone cells contain different proteins for each colour-range. The process through which these proteins go is quite similar - upon being subjected to electromagnetic radiation of a particular wavelength and intensity (ie. a colour visible light) the protein breaks down into two constituent products. Rhodopsin, of rods, breaks down into opsin and retinal; iodopsin of cones breaks down into photopsin and retinal. The opsin in both opens ion channels on the cell membrane which leads to the generation of an action potential (an impulse which will eventually get to the visual cortex in the brain).This is the reason why cones and rods enable organisms to see in dark and light conditions - each of the photoreceptor proteins requires a different light intensity to break down into the constituent products. Further, synaptic convergence means that several rod cells are connected to a single bipolar cell, which then connects to a single ganglion cell and information is relayed to the visual cortex. Whereas, a single cone cell is connected to a single bipolar cell. Thus, action potentials from rods share neurons, where those from cones are given their own. This results in the high visual acuity, or the high ability to distinguish between detail, of cone cells and not rods. If a ray of light were to reach just one rod cell this may not be enough to stimulate an action potential. Because several "converge" onto a bipolar cell, enough transmitter molecules reach the synapse of the bipolar cell to attain the threshold level to generate an action potential.Furthermore, colour is distinguishable when breaking down the iodopsin of cone cells because there are three forms of this protein. One form is broken down by the particular EM wavelength that is red light, another green light, and lastly blue light. In simple terms, this allows human beings to see red, green and blue light. If all three forms of cones are stimulated equally, then white is seen. If none are stimulated, black is seen. Most of the time however, the three forms are stimulated to different extents - resulting in different colours being seen. If, for example, the red and green cones are stimulated to the same extent, and no blue cones are stimulated, yellow is seen. For this reason red, green and blue are called primary colours and the products of mixing two secondary colours. The secondary colours can be further complimented with primary colours to see tertiary colours.[edit]
AcuityMain article: Visual acuity Visual acuity can be measured with several different metrics.Cycles per degree (CPD) measures how much an eye can differentiate one object from another in terms of degree angles. It is essentially no different from angular resolution. To measure CPD, first draw a series of black and white lines of equal width on a grid (similar to a bar code). Next, place the observer at a distance such that the sides of the grid appear one degree apart. If the grid is 1 meter away, then the grid should be about 8.7 millimeters wide. Finally, increase the number of lines and decrease the width of each line until the grid appears as a solid grey block. In one degree, a human would not be able to distinguish more than about 12 lines without the lines blurring together. So a human can resolve distances of about 0.73 millimeters at a distance of one meter. A horse can resolve about 14 CPD (0.62 mm at 1 m) and a rat can resolve about 1 CPD (8.7 mm at 1 m).A diopter is the unit of measure of focus.[edit]
Dynamic rangeAt any given instant, the retina can resolve a contrast ratio of around 100:1 (about 6 1/2 stops). As soon as your eye moves (saccades) it re-adjusts its exposure both chemically and by adjusting the iris. Initial dark adaptation takes place in approximately four seconds; full adaptation through adjustments in retinal chemistry (the Purkinje effect) are mostly complete in thirty minutes. Hence, over time, a contrast ratio of about 1,000,000:1 (about 20 stops) can be resolved. Full adaptation is dependent on good blood flow; thus dark adaptation may be affected by poor circulation, and vasoconstrictors like alcohol or tobacco.

Anatomy

Anatomy
Light from a single point of a distant object and light from a single point of a near object being brought to a focus.The structure of the mammalian eye owes itself completely to the task of focusing light onto the retina. All of the individual components through which light travels within the eye before reaching the retina are transparent, minimising dimming of the light. The cornea and lens help to converge light rays to focus onto the retina. This light causes chemical changes in the photosensitive cells of the retina, the products of which trigger nerve impulses which travel to the brain.
Light enters the eye from an external medium such as air or water, passes through the cornea, and into the first of two humours, the aqueous humour. Most of the light refraction occurs at the cornea which has a fixed curvature. The first humour is a clear mass which connects the cornea with the lens of the eye, helps maintain the convex shape of the cornea (necessary to the convergence of light at the lens) and provides the corneal endothelium with nutrients. The iris, between the lens and the first humour, is a coloured ring of muscle fibres. Light must first pass though the centre of the iris, the pupil. The size of the pupil is actively adjusted by the circular and radial muscles to maintain a relatively constant level of light entering the eye. Too much light being let in could damage the retina, too little light would be blinding. The lens, behind the iris, is a convex, springy disk which focuses light, through the second humour, onto the retina.
To clearly see an object far away, the circularly arranged ciliary muscles will pull on the lens, flattening it. Without muscles pulling on it, the lens will spring back into a thicker, more convex, form. Humans gradually lose this flexibility with age, resulting in the inability to focus on nearby objects, which is known as presbyopia. There are other refraction errors arising from the shape of the cornea and lens, and from the length of the eyeball. These include myopia, hyperopia, and astigmatism.
On the other side of the lens is the second humour, the vitreous humour, which is bounded on all sides: by the lens, ciliary body, suspensory ligaments and by the retina. It lets light through without refraction, helps maintain the shape of the eye and suspends the delicate lens.
Wrapped around these tissues are three layers of tissue surrounding the vitreous humour. The outermost is the sclera which gives the eye most of its white colour. It consists of fibrin connective tissue and both protects the inner components of the eye and maintains its shape. On the inner side of the sclera is the choroid, which contains blood vessels that supply the retinal cells with necessary oxygen and removes the waste products of respiration. Within the eye, only the sclera and ciliary muscles contain blood vessels. The choroid gives the inner eye a dark colour, which prevents disruptive reflections within the eye. The inner most layer of the eye is the retina, containing of the photosensitive rod and cone cells, and neurons.
To maximise vision and light absorption, the retina is a relatively smooth (but curved) layer. It does have two points at which it is different; the fovea and blind spot. The fovea is a dip in the retina directly opposite the lens, which is densely packed with cone cells. It is largely responsible for colour vision in humans, and enables high acuity, such as is necessary in reading. The blind spot is a point on the retina where the optic nerve pierces the retina to connect to the nerve cells on its inside. No photosensitive cells exist at this point, it is thus "blind".
In some animals, the retina contains a reflective layer (the tapetum lucidum) which increases the amount of light each photosensitive cell perceives, allowing the animal to see better under low light conditions.

Eye

Eye
The human eyes are sometimes metaphorically called "the windows to the soul." An eye is an organ that detects light. Different kinds of light-sensitive organs are found in a variety of creatures. The simplest eyes do nothing but detect whether the surroundings are light or dark. More complex eyes are used to provide the sense of vision. Many complex organisms including some mammals, birds, reptiles and fish have two eyes which may be placed on the same plane to be interpreted as a single three-dimensional "image" (binocular vision), as in humans; or on different planes producing two separate "images" (monocular vision), such as in rabbits and chameleons.