An amazing camera

I recently took my Kodak digital camera to the shop for repair but was told that it would be cheaper to buy a new camera.

I ended up buying a new Canon IXUX 8015 (10 megapixels) for under $200 and was amazed when it arrived. It is so tiny yet packs a giant amount of functionality into its small case. It even records up to an hour of sound video in high resolution. It has all sorts of incredible functions that are fully automated such as panoramic shots that automatically join each part of the panorama together, automatic red-eye reduction, facial memory to make sure a person’s face remains in focus when the camera is moved, automatic movement detection when picture taking, 12 zoom.  I could go on and on, yet the camera is so tiny (90 mm x 60 mm x 20 mm approx.) It does way more than my older camera at a fraction of the size and less than 1/5 of the cost.

I’d recommend it to anyone wanting a smll, low cost camera still and movie camera that really packs a punch.

GREAT BOOK—Dealing with Jerks and Difficult People

This one of the most practical books I’ve read in a long time. While written from a Christian perspective, most of the practical issues can be applied by people of any religious persuasion.

Here are some snippets from Chapter 1.

• “In its simplest form, being a jerk means “being selfish.”
• The root cause of jerkiness is a sense of selfish “entitlement” that is both inborn and learned.”Entitlement” simply says, I deserve to act, be or have what I want.
• Roughly speaking, we see the general population breaking down this way:
  40 percent First-Degree Jerks
  40 percent Second-Degree Jerks
  10 percent Nth-Degree Jerks.
  …you will see that that adds up to only 90 percent…Somewhere out there are people who have conquered all their jerky tendencies. We call these people Mature Adults.
• Contrary to popular opinion, men (as a group) are not more jerky than women…according to records kept on the MMPI [Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory] the millions of males and millions of females who have taken the test have scored equally.
• In our clinics, we have observed the enormous grief and human suffering that have occurred due to the tragic emotional fallout of the Me Generation.
• In the following chapters I want to show you:
  • How to recover from jerk abuse
  • How to strongly prevent or at least curtail abuse from jerks
  • How to deal with your masochistic tendencies and their roots such as false guilt, and a sense of pervading shame that you probably aren’t even aware of, but it all sets you up for jerk abuse, just the same.

Below are extracts from the tables listing the characteristics of the 3 different degrees of jerks followed by the Maturity test.

*****************************************

 

*****************************************

*****************************************

*****************************************

 

 

I can’t recommend this book highly enough. It’s also a good book for determining whether you are one of those jerks he talks about.

Elderly — delirium — hallucinations — oxygen

Some time back my aged father (mid 90’s) was taken to hospital suffering with severe hallucinations. At the time, most people thought it was the medication he was on. This has continued on and off for weeks, much to Dad’s discomfort and stress.

We’ve recently discovered that a major cause has been lack of oxygen, which in turn has been a major contributing factor to his sleep apnoea.

Lack of oxygen can be a primary cause of delirium and hallucinations.

All this means that those caring for aged people need to take particular care with their diagnosis.  The hostel where Dad lives has decided to keep him there, manage his oxygen intake and not keep sending him to hospital.

Here are some useful links.

Diagnosis and Prevention of Delirium in Elderly People

Delerium (sudden confusion)

Postoperative delirium: treatment with supplementary oxygen

Ohiohealth.com – Health topics – Delirium

British Geriatrics Society - Guidelines-delirium in older people in hospital

God has a plan to heal Michael Jackson

Some readers will not agree with the religious sentiments in this article, but it is the most well balanced piece of journalism on Michael that I have ever read. written by my friend William Bowmer, it is well worth reading through just to see what balanced journalism is like.

“Deeply loved by his fans, Michael Jackson was nevertheless a polarizing figure. Will he be remembered for the wide-eyed exuberance he showed as a pre-teen sensation in The Jackson 5? Will he be lauded for “We Are the World” and its charitable outreach to starving Africa? Or will he simply be “Wacko Jacko”—a confused narcissist and alleged pedophile who literally seemed uncomfortable in his own skin, who by the end of his life had become a walking advertisement for the dangers of too much plastic surgery?”

READ MORE…

Cancer

In December 2008 I wrote to many of my friends, telling them about the cancer i had developed. Since then I’ve had many requests for an update which I prepared and sent back individually. I’ve really appreciated the concerns and since there have been so many requests I thought it easier to just add the update to a special blog and keep it up to date on a regular basis.

You will find the blog here: Living with tonsil & Lymph Cancer.

Supermarket salads—hidden danger

We’ve been buying packaged salads—”ready to eat” according to the supermarkets and no need to wash first. They helped save a lot of time, which has been valuable to us given our circumstances.

However, we discovered yesterday how they do it.

They wash the salads in Chlorine solution.

So we’ve decided to continue growing salad greens in our own organic garden and washing them ourselves.

————————-

Treorchy Male Choir

Last night Trish and I went to the Llewellyn  Hall at the Canberra School of Music to see and listen to the Treorchy Male Choir. It was a belated wedding anniversary event for us but well worth the night out—something we ought to do more often. We had a fantastic night and the opening brought tears to my eyes as the choir sang “With a Voice of Singing”, a choral item that I have conducted many times over the years, but nowhere like the sound that this choir produced.

The music was wide ranging from opera to an Abba medley as well as soloists and a magnificent organist and pianist to accompany them.

It was the best night out we’ve had in years, in spite of the Canberra cold winter’s night.

The Treorchy Male Choir is still touring Australia and New Zealand and worth seeing.

I had first joined a choir as a boy at Canterbury Boys High School in Sydney. We had a superb choir there under the direction of James Gormley, the school’s music master. The choir was so good that it was selected to sing at the Anzac Concert each year in the Sydney Town Hall. Below is a photograph taken at the concert in 1955.

Later I was to sing in various church choirs and also to conduct on many occasions, which was a tremendous experience. Seeing the Treorchy choir brought back many magnificent memories.

————————————————–

Evolution madness

The recent news item about the discovery of a fossil nicknamed ‘Ida’ and claims that the discovery proves to be the ‘missing link’ that proves evolution is true, is so unscientific that it is just madness. I’m amazed that normally intelligent people make such statements.

Do those who claim it is a missing link really believe that giving it a human name such as Ida and pointing out a handful of features such as baby teeth, opposable big toe, finger tips and nails that humans have proves their point?

A report in the Wall Street Journal had this to say: ‘Several of its features can be commonly seen in modern-day primates, including baby teeth and an opposable big toe. Instead of claws, “she’s got fingertips with nails like we do,” said Jorn Hurum of the Natural History Museum in Oslo, who led the research’. Yet the pictures show an animal that looks very much like a cat rather than a human. Of course, many scientists claim that it isn’t a missing link but the people who do must be desperate!

What amazes me even more is that a well known natural history broadcaster really believes it is a missing link on such limited ‘evidence’.

Why can’t broadcasters and scientists take the evidence of the human body (and the whole of nature for that matter) for what it is and see that rather than proving evolution, it actually proves design and therefore needs a designer. I recently purchased a small publication that shows this very clearly. In God’s Image is written by Stuart Burgess, a design engineer.

Now I must admit that many Christians do themselves a disservice by claiming that the whole universe was created only 6,000 years ago. The Bible doesn’t say that. It just says ‘in the beginning’. It goes on to say in most English translations that the “earth WAS without form and void”. But the Hebrew original could just as easily have been translated as “the earth BECAME without form and void” (emphasis mine). Most Bible Dictionaries will explain this. So Adam and Eve may have been created around 6,000 years ago, but the universe was created many millions of years before that and the evidence is that there were creatures on the Earth BEFORE Adam and Eve, but that in a great catastrophe they were destroyed. One of the best books I’ve seen explaining this is “The First  Genesis: A New Case For Creation” by William F. Dankenbring. Creationists would have a much sounder argument if they took the Bible literally instead of reading into it their preconceived ideas.

————————————————–

Book review — LINCOLN: an illustrated biography

For a long time I’ve been wanting to read a biography of Abraham Lincoln and was pleasantly surprised when I found this magnificent volume.

The thing that makes it so different to most biographies is that while there is plenty of descriptive text, it is primarily a photographic biography of his life from early childhood to his death by assassin. The 432 pages are packed with photographs, both color and black and white. There are double page spreads illustrating each month of his presidency as well as photographs of his contemporaries.

I found it a great visual insight into life in America in Lincoln’s time and far more informative than just reading 400 pages of text. A large part of the text is in Lincoln’s own words, which gives valuable insight into his thinking. There are also plenty of quotes from his contemporaries, which means what we learn what happened at the time rather than what historians think happened.

Being from Australia, it was interesting to learn about one of America’s most important historical characters. We hear his name often and see a lot about him when we go to Washington D.C., but to see his life in pictures in this way and to read his own words was most intriguing.

I have no doubt that there are many other books on Lincoln’s life that provide even further insight into the life of the man, but I can highly recommend the book to anyone who wants to know more about him.

Lincoln: An Illustrated Biography by Philip B. Kunhardt, Jr.; Philip B. Kunhardt III and Peter W. Kunhardt – ISBN 0-679-40862-2

———————————————————-

Is pork fit for human consumption?

Given the current stare of swine flu, this has become a controversial question. But it need not be. If you believe God exists and that the Bible is His instruction book for mankind, then the answer is obvious. If you don’t believe this, then there’s not much point in reading further.

The Bible is very clear that pig meat is not to be consumed. Some people claim that this was just for the Jews or that it was part of the ritualistic laws introduced in the days of Moses, but that it not true. The prohibition on eating pork occurred long before there ever was a Jewish nation and long before the days of Moses. Even Noah new about clean and unclean animals when he put them on the Ark.

So what do we know about pig meat and what the Bible teaches?

The following links will provide some useful background.

Here are two useful articles by Dr Douglas Winnail.

• Article 1.
• Article 2.

Here are three articles by Norbert Link:

• Article 3.
• Article 4.
• Article 5.

Below are two more articles I found very valuable.

• Article 6—a comprehensive PDF article published in 1967 (2MB).
• Article 7—an PDF article that was very controversial by Dr Kellogg (of cornflakes fame).

Of course, many Christians will claim that we shouldn’t use the Old Testament and that it isn’t relevant for Christians. I find this strange given that in the First Century it was all they had. There was no New Testament. Jesus Christ used it, Paul, John and the other apostles used it exclusively to teach the gospel. So if it was what the founder of the Christian Church and ALL the early leaders at that time used, why shouldn’t we use it? The best overall summary I have read can be found in this PDF booklet, which deals with the old and new covenants.

—————————————–