NASA's Kepler Mission Confirms Its First Planet in Habitable Zone of Sun-like Star

12.05.11

NASA's Kepler mission has confirmed its first planet in the "habitable zone," the region where liquid water could exist on a planet’s surface. Kepler also has discovered more than 1,000 new planet candidates, nearly doubling its previously known count. Ten of these candidates are near-Earth-size and orbit in the habitable zone of their host star. Candidates require follow-up observations to verify they are actual planets.

The newly confirmed planet, Kepler-22b, is the smallest yet found to orbit in the middle of the habitable zone of a star similar to our sun. The planet is about 2.4 times the radius of Earth. Scientists don't yet know if Kepler-22b has a predominantly rocky, gaseous or liquid composition, but its discovery is a step closer to finding Earth-like planets.

Previous research hinted at the existence of near-Earth-size planets in habitable zones, but clear confirmation proved elusive. Two other small planets orbiting stars smaller and cooler than our sun recently were confirmed on the very edges of the habitable zone, with orbits more closely resembling those of Venus and Mars.

"This is a major milestone on the road to finding Earth's twin," said Douglas Hudgins, Kepler program scientist at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "Kepler's results continue to demonstrate the importance of NASA's science missions, which aim to answer some of the biggest questions about our place in the universe."

Kepler discovers planets and planet candidates by measuring dips in the brightness of more than 150,000 stars to search for planets that cross in front, or "transit," the stars. Kepler requires at least three transits to verify a signal as a planet.

"Fortune smiled upon us with the detection of this planet," said William Borucki, Kepler principal investigator at NASA Ames Research Center at Moffett Field, Calif., who led the team that discovered Kepler-22b. "The first transit was captured just three days after we declared the spacecraft operationally ready. We witnessed the defining third transit over the 2010 holiday season."

The Kepler science team uses ground-based telescopes and the Spitzer Space Telescope to review observations on planet candidates the spacecraft finds. The star field that Kepler observes in the constellations Cygnus and Lyra can only be seen from ground-based observatories in spring through early fall. The data from these other observations help determine which candidates can be validated as planets.

Kepler-22b is located 600 light-years away. While the planet is larger than Earth, its orbit of 290 days around a sun-like star resembles that of our world. The planet's host star belongs to the same class as our sun, called G-type, although it is slightly smaller and cooler.

Of the 54 habitable zone planet candidates reported in February 2011, Kepler-22b is the first to be confirmed. This milestone will be published in The Astrophysical Journal.

The Kepler team is hosting its inaugural science conference at Ames Dec. 5-9, announcing 1,094 new planet candidate discoveries. Since the last catalog was released in February, the number of planet candidates identified by Kepler has increased by 89 percent and now totals 2,326. Of these, 207 are approximately Earth-size, 680 are super Earth-size, 1,181 are Neptune-size, 203 are Jupiter-size and 55 are larger than Jupiter.

The findings, based on observations conducted May 2009 to September 2010, show a dramatic increase in the numbers of smaller-size planet candidates.

Kepler observed many large planets in small orbits early in its mission, which were reflected in the February data release. Having had more time to observe three transits of planets with longer orbital periods, the new data suggest that planets one to four times the size of Earth may be abundant in the galaxy.

The number of Earth-size and super Earth-size candidates has increased by more than 200 and 140 percent since February, respectively.

There are 48 planet candidates in their star's habitable zone. While this is a decrease from the 54 reported in February, the Kepler team has applied a stricter definition of what constitutes a habitable zone in the new catalog, to account for the warming effect of atmospheres, which would move the zone away from the star, out to longer orbital periods.

"The tremendous growth in the number of Earth-size candidates tells us that we're honing in on the planets Kepler was designed to detect: those that are not only Earth-size, but also are potentially habitable," said Natalie Batalha, Kepler deputy science team lead at San Jose State University in San Jose, Calif. "The more data we collect, the keener our eye for finding the smallest planets out at longer orbital periods."

NASA's Ames Research Center manages Kepler's ground system development, mission operations and science data analysis. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., managed Kepler mission development.

Ball Aerospace and Technologies Corp. in Boulder, Colo., developed the Kepler flight system and supports mission operations with the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at the University of Colorado in Boulder.

The Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore archives, hosts and distributes the Kepler science data. Kepler is NASA's 10th Discovery Mission and is funded by NASA's Science Mission Directorate at the agency's headquarters.

Under the same sky

We all live under the same sky, but we don’t all have the same horizon.

Konrad Adenaue

A Blow to Europe's Far-Right: Denmark Reshapes Its Immigration Policies

Posted by WILLIAM LEE ADAMS Thursday, October 6, 2011 at 3:00 pm

When the Liberal-Conservative coalition led by Lars Lokke Rasmussen came to power in Denmark in 2001, it relied on support from the right-wing and staunchly anti-immigrant Danish People's Party (DPP). As a result of that union, Denmark passed some of the strictest immigration and asylum laws in Europe. Among other things, its policies restricted benefits to immigrants, limited their ability to work and required Danes marrying a foreigner to post an $11,600 bond. The number of asylum seekers and relatives of immigrants applying for entry into the country dropped by nearly 70% over nine years, and the DPP moved closer to its goal: a complete end to immigration from non-Western countries.

But Helle Thorning-Schmidt, Denmark's new prime minister, has plans to change all that. Thorning-Schmidt, who led a left-leaning, three-party alliance to victory on Sep. 15 and formed her government on Oct. 3, has already announced bold policy moves that will dramatically alter the tone of Denmark's debate on immigration.

The government's common policy outlines a number of concrete changes. They include automatic citizenship for children born and raised in Denmark, regardless of their parents' citizenship; equal welfare rights for immigrants and Danes; vast reductions in application fees and cash securities; expanded work benefits for asylum seekers; and the possibility of dual citizenship, which will ease the naturalization process. The coalition also plans to ease family reunification rules, which have seen 800 children denied residency permits since 2005, frequently leading to the separation of children and their parents. (In March, the immigration minister resigned after it emerged 36 stateless Palestinians had been wrongly denied citizenship. The government subsequently contacted 400 Palestinian young people who had not been informed of their rights and entitlement to apply.)

Thorning-Schmidt has also binned the previous government's plans to erect permanent customs control points along the Danish border. The previous government had, at the behest of the DPP, insisted on the checkpoints to curb crime and reduce illegal immigration. But the European Commission and Germany, Denmark's neighbor to the south, complained they would violate the continent's visa-free travel rules. "In cooperation with our neighbours, Denmark will carry out an effective customs control based on a mobile, flexible and intelligence-based effort in keeping with the common rules in effect in the E.U.," the government's policy plan says. German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle, who had criticized Denmark's border plans, praised the about-face. "This is a decision in favour of liberty for European citizens," he said in a statement.

Denmark's coalition will abolish the Immigration Ministry—a strong signal that the far-right's grip on immigration really is over. Its functions and its 300 employees will be divided between the Ministry of Social Affairs and the Ministry of Justice. That reallocation of responsibility hints that asylum and immigration should be dealt with against a backdrop of justice and not separate from it. Just as symbolic, perhaps, is the appointment of Indian-born Manu Sareen as the head of the Equality Ministry, making him the country's fist minister of immigrant origin.

Symbolism, of course, will do little to dampen resentment from the moderate and right-wing politicians who oppose the government's more open approach. Speaking to Denmark's Berlingske newspaper, Søren Pind, the outgoing immigration minister, suggested that the new policies will unleash a flood of problems. "This is open borders and an open till," he said. "We will see an increase in people on public assistance who do not come from Denmark. And abolishing the point system will just bring the Anatolian Plateau that much closer. This is certainly not what they promised during the election."

William Lee Adams is a staff writer at the London bureau of TIME. Find him on Twitter at @willyleeadams. You can also continue the discussion on TIME's Facebook page and on Twitter at @TIME.

Read more: http://globalspin.blogs.time.com/2011/10/06/a-slap-to-europes-far-right-denmark-reshapes-its-immigration-policies/#ixzz1a55o9sga

Feel the rain.

Question everything

Question Everything.

--Why?

Youth

Youth has nothing to do with birthdays, only with livedness of spirit, so even if your hair is grey, Daddy, you can still be a boy.

Jean Webster, Daddy-Long-Legs

Logic and Imagination

Logic will get you from A to Z.

Imagination will get you everywhere.

--Albert Einstein

Revealed! Six facts about the female orgasm

While female orgasm has been the subject of so many myths and folk beliefs, scientists are trying their best to know more about the mystery behind the phenomenon.

And now, after some intense field research, a team of experts have uncovered six facts about the female orgasm, as revealed by modern science, reports New Scientist magazine.

The six facts are as follows:

The G spot is real

The G spot is a small region in the vagina that, if stimulated, can produce wildly intense orgasms - or so goes the popular claim. But, since decades, strong evidence for the region''s existence was harder to find than the spot itself.

However, in 2008, an Italian research team solved the mystery after they found anatomical differences between women who could have G-spot orgasms and women who couldn''t. And since then, researchers have since begun teaching women with G spots how to put them to use.

The brain switches off

It''s folk wisdom that people can''t think straight when they have sex on their minds, and a brain scanning study showed that many areas of women''s brains were deactivated during orgasm, including those involved in emotion.

Many women can't have orgasms

According to a 1999 survey, around 43 per cent of women in the US have some sort of problem with their sex lives.

Female sexual dysfunction (FSD) is so common that the very idea that it is a medical disorder has come under attack and thus efforts to develop drugs to treat it are underway.

Genes affect orgasm frequency

According to the first genetic study of the female orgasm, up to 45 per cent of the variation in women''s ability to have them could be down to genes.

Many women never have orgasms during intercourse, and some also cannot have them through masturbation. Some of this may be down to external factors like upbringing, but the study showed the genetic factor is significant.

Technology can help

Perhaps the most extreme solution for sexual dysfunction among women is the so-called "orgasmatron"-an implant inserted into the spinal cord, which stimulates the user when switched on via a remote control.

Despite an initial struggle to find subjects for clinical testing, the device is now in development.

Some mystery remains

The female orgasm is a puzzle for evolutionary biologists. It is unclear why women should have orgasms at all, and it is particularly baffling that so many women should be unable to have orgasms during penetrative sex, but able to have them by masturbation.

According to researcher Elisabeth Lloyd, this implies that female orgasms are an evolutionary accident. Like male nipples, they persist simply because there is no good reason to get rid of them.

Sex, Lies, and Survey Results

There is a seemingly ceaseless stream of studies that reduce each gender to a vaguely irritating stereotype. The men fear commitment, the women crave intimacy. One study suggests that a coquettish attitude and coy game-playing pave the road to seduction.
The two studies below have a characterization of gender that nearly describes the male and female leads of a formulaic romantic comedy. Though they come from peer-reviewed journals, their simplicity and repetition is reminiscent of Cosmo’s 500 variations of “500 Ways to Please Your Man – TONIGHT!”

Cuddling: Not A Male Priority
The Journal of Sex Research’s recent study “Sex Differences in Post-Coital Behaviors in Long- and Short-Term Mating: An Evolutionary Perspective” focuses on the intimacy gap between men and women after sex.
The study, conducted by Susan Hughes and Daniel Kruger at the University of Michigan, surveyed 170 college-aged students. The online survey listed options for the participant to rate their post-sex inclinations: talking, sleeping, cuddling, leaving the room, smoking and drinking, asking for favors, eating, and considering “the likelihood that pregnancy may have resulted.”
Women listed bonding activities like chatting and cuddling highest on the list of post-sex activities, while men preferred eating, smoking, or making a drink—generally activities that involved withdrawing into the next room.
The evolutionary analysis of this study explained: “Males tend to mate more opportunistically,” while females “are less likely to dissociate coitus from emotional involvement.” The “pair-bonding” activities were initiated and preferred much more by women than men, both in short-term and long-term mating. Enlightening: women prefer intimacy while men are programmed to sow their wild oats.
While these results are not particularly groundbreaking, the study of post-sex behavior is: this is one of the first studies to examine people’s predilections after sex. The vast majority of studies in human reproductive strategies discuss behaviors leading to sex: mating dances, primping, courtship rituals, and demonstrations of strength and desirability. But Hughes’s and Kruger’s study stresses that reproductive strategies don’t stop after intercourse. Mates are analyzed as long-term or short-term based on their actions following the main event. “These findings may not seem surprising, as they are consistent with evolutionary psychological theory,” Hughes and Kruger write, “but, to our knowledge, this is the first attempt to document and quantify post-coital preferences.”

Women Love Them Some Relationship Games
Meanwhile, another recent study in Psychological Science concluded that women are most attracted to men who make their feelings unclear. Conducted by two University of Virginia professors, Erin Whitchurch and Timothy Wilson, and Daniel Gilbert of Harvard, the “He Loves Me, He Loves Me Not…” study found that men who send mixed signals are the most desirable.
The test surveyed about fifty female undergrads at UVA. Each girl was shown four men’s Facebook profiles (fabricated for the study, but the participants believed they were real). The girls were told these men had viewed her profile along with those of a dozen or so other coeds. A third of the girls were told they were the most highly rated, a third were told they were rated as average, and a third were told they were rated either the most highly or average. It was the third group—the group uncertain about their male prospect’s attraction—that ranked the males as most attractive.
The study noted that while hearing that someone is attracted to you is affirming, it is not thrilling. “In contrast,” the study reports, “when people are uncertain about an important outcome, they can hardly think about anything else.” The study concludes with this statement: the “popular dating advice is correct: Keeping people in the dark about how much we like them will increase how much they think about us and will pique their interest.” Does this conclusion, then, encourage people to play games in their relationships? To keep everyone guessing because they’re worried they will turn their crushes off if they show some straight-up affection?
Perhaps, but only in the beginning. It seems that the study, rather than looking at substantive attraction, focused on initial frequency of thoughts. In the beginning, it is the uncertainty that heightens the attraction. “I don’t think it’s that people enjoy the chase,” Erin Whitchurch wrote in an email, “but that uncertainty increases our thoughts about a person in a very subtle way and that is what, to a certain extent, increases attraction.”
Furthermore, it’s worth nothng that the researchers chose to examine this initial attraction through a virtual medium. This lens of removal, Whitchurch says, helped her and her co-writers build a more believable situation. Certainly, the scenario was believable—people do peruse and pursue their potential crushes on Facebook—but in reality, relationships are hardly built solely on the Facebook interface; they’re usually just sparked there, in the same way that seeing someone at a party might spark a little crush.
“This study only explored initial romantic attraction—so no, this study does not support the idea of playing games once in a relationship,” Whitchurch writes. “Personally though, the advice I give my friends is to play the game to the point there is an obvious attraction—right to the point where you both want to admit your feelings—then wait until the next conversation, text, date to do that.” After all she warns, too much uncertainty can cause a partner to “get frustrated and quit.”

PLEASE YOUR MAN TONIGHT
Implicitly, these studies offer some form of advice, since empirical studies have an implied relationship to truth. In the case of these sex/love studies, they appear to shed light on the true predilections of members of the opposite sex.
The language often pits the genders against one another, and implies that there is an irresolvable gap between them. This might be why these peer-reviewed studies seem so close to magazine headlines. “16 Dirty Guy Phrases – Translated!,” actual Cosmo headline, runs off the same steam. Both these studies and “16 Dirty Guy Phrases” offer a translation of behavior between the two sexes.
Ostensibly, the information from these studies will wiggle into some advice offered in Cosmo or Maxim, as a sure-fire way to seduce the object of your desire. Though these studies are backed by empirical research, both will offer the same simplified vision of romance, sex, and love.

The Senate has passed the debt deal.

The U.S. House of Representatives on Monday voted 269-161 to approve a deal to raise the debt limit in a bill that would cut government spending by trillions and effectively raise the debt ceiling through the end of 2012.

The bill, which was brokered in last-minute negotiations between the White House and Congressional leaders, passed with the support of 174 Republicans and 95 Democrats, CBS reported this evening.

Why Americans Hated the Debt Debate and Why It’s Not Going to Change

Mutually Assured Revulsion: Why Americans Hated the Debt Debate and Why It’s Not Going to Change
By MICHAEL SCHERER Tuesday, August 2, 2011

Pew came out with a new poll on Monday confirming what we all already knew: The American people think the last several weeks in Washington have been a disgrace. In fact, the words most often volunteered to the pollsters were “ridiculous,” “disgusting,” and “stupid.” The response was negative from 75% of Republicans, 72% of Democrats and 72% of independents. More than twice as many people have a more negative view of President Obama (38%) because of the debate than a more positive view (18%). Three times as many people have a more negative view of Speaker John Boehner (34%) than a more positive view (11%).

There were, in short, no winners in the last few weeks of debt debate. White House officials pointed to this fact in a briefing with reporters on Sunday night, when they explained why Republicans gave up their demand for another debt limit vote early next year. “The case against it made itself,” an official said. “I think people said, ‘Why on Earth would we want to go through this again?’”

(MORE: Trading Hostages: Why Lobbyists Are Key to the Debt-Limit Deal)

There is also little evidence that Republican and Democratic leaders learned their lessons. There will still be at least two more big Washington showdowns over the next 15 months. They are likely to follow in form, if not substance, the same pattern as the debt debate: lots of phony posturing, theatrical walk-outs, discussion breakdowns, selfish preening, non-factual assertions and, finally, at the last minute, an agreement. In December, Congress will have to cut $1.5 trillion more from 10-year deficit projections, or face draconian cuts to Medicare providers and the military. A year later, in December of 2012, Congress will have to reach a deal on tax reform, or watch all of the George W. Bush tax cuts from 2001 expire, effectively raising rates on millions of middle-class families, a policy which neither party favors.

Can Washington learn from its mistakes? Don’t get your hopes up. We live in an era of micro-markets, where the common good easily gives way to the partisan good, or the talk radio good, or the MSNBC good. And as the Pew numbers show, even though each party did great damage to itself, Republicans tended to blame Obama and Democrats to blame Boehner. This suggests that the lesson for many Americans was to deepen their tribal partisan identities, not to reject them. For example, 29% of Republicans said they had a more favorable view of Republicans in Congress after the ordeal, while only 19% had a less favorable view. Similarly, 28% of Democrats saw their own party more favorably, compared to 11% who felt less favorably. Independents, predictably, rejected both parties and both Obama and Boehner. By a margin of 38% to 13%, independents viewed Obama less favorably. By a margin of 34% to 7%, they viewed Boehner less favorably.

(PHOTOS: Gabby Giffords’ Jubilant Return to Congress)

In other words, leaders of both parties were able to shore up their bases, even as they repulsed the country. Which is a pretty neat summary of national politics these days. Appeal to the base, alienate your opponents, and hope the political center is so turned off it doesn’t even bother coming to the polls.

Of course, President Obama is trying to change this dynamic, because he needs independents and infrequent voters to turn out for him again in the 2012 election. And it is for this reason that Obama may have been the biggest loser of this debate. But being the biggest loser in Washington these days is a bit like being the shortest hobbit.

(MORE: Five Things for Liberals to Like in the Debt Ceiling Deal)



Read more: http://swampland.time.com/2011/08/02/the-debt-limit-debate-as-bipartisan-suicide-pact/#ixzz1Tsruh2EX

Robot Apocalypse News of the Week: Machines That 'Dream'

By Chris Gayomali on July 29, 2011

Read more: http://techland.time.com/2011/07/29/robot-apocalypse-news-of-the-week-machines-that-dream/#ixzz1TVjRv7WN

Most of the robots we're vaguely familiar with are good at menial tasks, like welding car parts or assembling microchips. But that isn't to say that what they do isn't difficult: Those tasks require ultra-precise data to be programmed beforehand. And though there are practical applications for spatially aware technology--like the Roomba--the algorithmic decision-making process is still eons away from the actual human thought process.

(VIDEO: The Creepiest Robotic Singing Mouth of All Time)

But an article from this month's issue of National Geographic takes a look at some of the new robot technologies that may be making their way into everyday life in the near-future. In it, a new Segway-wheeled humanoid bot dubbed "HERB" is engaging in processes a bit more akin to human consciousness: HERB can visualize and analyze his shifting surroundings before acting on them.

"I call it dreaming," says HERB's builder, Siddhartha Srinivasa. "It helps people intuitively understand that the robot is actually visualizing itself doing something." It's not dreaming in the sleeping sense, per se, but like humans it allows the robot to adapt to a dynamic environment with a number of factors constantly changing it (like other humans).

It allows HERB to envision the future similarly to the way we do. Some might even call it a primitive form of imagining. Here's a key passage:

In the lab one of Srinivasa's students taps a button, issuing a command to pick up a juice box sitting on a nearby table. HERB's laser spins, creating a 3-D grid mapping the location of nearby people and objects, and the camera locks on a likely candidate for the target juice box. The robot slowly reaches over and takes hold of the box, keeping it upright. On command, he gently puts it down. To the uninitiated, the accomplishment might seem underwhelming. "When I showed it to my mom," Srinivasa says, "she couldn't understand why HERB has to think so hard to pick up a cup."

The rest of the piece is equally fascinating, but I think one of the main takeaways is that soon machines won't be as rigidly assigned to rudimentary tasks -- they'll be able to adapt on the go. Of course, this has practical applications in industries like home health care for the elderly or disabled, and if carried out effectively, could help improve the quality of living for lots of people who need it.

(MORE: WATCH: Robots Win the World Cup Of Soccer)

Couple that in with IBM's Watson--which we've covered extensively here--and his ability to intake unstructured data (like human speech), and it's pretty easy to picture robotic "helpers" making their way into households within the next 20 or so years.

Is it scary? Kind of, yeah. But at this point, robots becoming a part of our daily lives feels more like an inevitability than anything.

Chris Gayomali is a writer-reporter at TIME. Find him on Twitter at @chrigz, on Facebook, or on Google+. You can also continue the discussion on TIME's Facebook page and on Twitter at @TIME.

Read more: http://techland.time.com/2011/07/29/robot-apocalypse-news-of-the-week-machines-that-dream/#ixzz1TVj8rid7

This is how it works

Why an Antarctic Glacier Is Melting So Quickly

Posted by BRYAN WALSH Monday, June 27, 2011 at 1:03 pm

From the outside, the science of warming-related sea level rise doesn't seem that complicated. Carbon enters atmosphere, planet warms up, land ice melts and runs into the oceans, sea level rises. Minus the greenhouse effect, you can pretty much see that reaction in action by heating an ice-cube over a stove.

In the real world, however, ice-sheet modeling is incredibly complex, which means it's surprisingly difficult for scientists to predict just how quickly glaciers will melt—and sea levels will rise—as global temperatures increase. That's one of the reasons that the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) put forward a rather conservative prediction for sea levels in its 2007 report, estimating that they would rise by just 7 to 23 inches by 2100. The models around polar ice sheets were so uncertain at the time that the IPCC decided to largely disregard the role they might play in sea-level rise over the next century—focusing instead on thermal expansion of water as the oceans themselves warm—even though melting is already underway.

We already know that Arctic ice is melting faster than expected, and that sea level rise will likely bust the IPCC predictions. Now, thanks to a new paper published yesterday in Nature Geoscience, we have a better idea of why. Researchers from the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) and Columbia University examined the Pine Island Glacier in West Antarctica—one of the frozen continent's largest glaciers—and found that it was melting more than 50% faster than it had been just 15 years ago, when an earlier group of scientists visited it. The glacier is now losing 80 cu. km of ice a year, up from 50 cu. km in 1994.

(More from TIME: Unfrozen Tundra)

Though the water in Pine Island Bay has warmed by 0.2 C over the same amount of time, that heating alone isn't enough to account for the accelerated melting. (I told you ice-sheet modeling was tricky.) The researchers sent an autonomous submarine—named, not very creatively, the Autosub—to explore beneath the ice shelf. The robot found an underwater ridge on the seafloor that they believe might have once slowed the glacier as it flowed into the sea. Once the glacier broke free of the ice shelf, however, warmer water from the depths of the ocean could flow into the underbelly of the glacier, opening up a cavity inside it. The more the cavity grew, the more warm water that could flow in, accelerating the melting and allowing the glacier to speed towards the sea. (Or at least, speed in the glacial sense.) Said study co-author Adrian Jenkins of the BAS in a statement:

The rate at which the ice shelf is melting has increased significantly, because more warm water is circulating in the cavity beneath it...The inner cavity didn't exist at all before, so this is the most likely explanation for why a subtle change in temperature can have a huge effect.

Pay attention to the second part of Jenkins' statement. Those who are skeptical of the scientific consensus on climate change often make use of the uncertainty inherent in climate models. If we can't be sure of the weather a few days hence, how can we be sure of changes in the climates over decades or even longer? And who's to say the uncertainty might flow the other way, that climate change might turn out to be much smaller than many of us thought.

(Photos from TIME: Greenland Odyssey)

It might—and let's hope it does. But it seems more likely that uncertainty will flow the other way, that relatively small changes in the Earth's temperature may have a large effect on the climate system, and the planet we live in. (If you really want to get scared, look at the possibility of positive feedback cycles in Arctic warming.) In his Rolling Stone essay last week—not all of which I agreed with—Al Gore summed up the state of climate science:

Scientists used to caution that we were increasing the probability of such extreme events by "loading the dice" — pumping more carbon into the atmosphere. Now the scientists go much further, warning that we are "painting more dots on the dice."  We are not only more likely to roll 12s; we are now rolling 13s and 14s. In other words, the biggest storms are not only becoming more frequent, they are getting bigger, stronger and more destructive.

Thanks to humans, polar melting may be ready to go to 11—even faster than we expected.

Read more: http://ecocentric.blogs.time.com/2011/06/27/why-an-antarctic-glacier-is-melting-so-quickly/#ixzz1QV9LFAfa

Anguished English

In a Tokyo Hotel: Is forbitten to steal hotel towels please. If youare not person to do such thing is please not to read notis. In another Japanese hotel room: Please to bathe inside the tub.

In a Bucharest hotel lobby: The lift is being fixed for the next day. During that time we regret that you will be unbearable.

In a Leipzig elevator: Do not enter the lift backwards, and only when lit up.

In a Belgrade hotel elevator: To move the cabin, push button for wishing floor. If the cabin should enter more persons, each one should press a number of wishing floor. Driving is then going alphabetically by national order.

In a Paris hotel elevator: Please leave your values at the front desk.

In a hotel in Athens: Visitors are expected to complain at the office between the hours of 9 and 11 A.M. daily.

In a Yugoslavian hotel: The flattening of underwear with pleasure is the job of the chambermaid.

In a Japanese hotel: You are invited to take advantage of the chambermaid.

In the lobby of a Moscow hotel across from a Russian Orthodox monastery: You are welcome to visit the cemetery where famous Russian and Soviet composers, artists, and writers are buried daily except Thursdays.

In an Austrian hotel catering to skiers: Not to perambulate the corridors in the hours of repose in the boots of ascension.

On the menu of a Swiss restaurant: Our wines leave you nothing to hope for.

On the menu of a Polish hotel: Salad a firm's own make; limpid red beet soup with cheesy dumplings in the form of a finger; roasted duck let loose; beef rashers beaten up in the country people's fashion.

In a Hong Kong supermarket: For your convenience, we recommend courteous, efficient self-service.

Outside a Hong Kong tailor shop: Ladies may have a fit upstairs.

In a Bangkok dry cleaner's: Drop your trousers here for best results.

Outside a Paris dress shop: Dresses for street walking.

In a Rhodes tailor shop: Order your summers suit. Because is big rush we will execute customers in strict rotation.

Similarly, from the Soviet Weekly: There will be a Moscow Exhibition of Arts by 15,000 Soviet Republic painters and sculptors. These were executed over the past two years.

In an East African newspaper: A new swimming pool is rapidly taking shape since the contractors have thrown in the bulk of their workers.

In a Vienna hotel: In case of fire, do your utmost to alarm the hotel porter.

A sign posted in Germany's Black Forest: It is strictly forbidden on our black forest camping site that people of different sex, for instance, men and women, live together in one tent unless they are married with each other for that purpose.

In a Zurich hotel: Because of the impropriety of entertaining guests of the opposite sex in the bedroom, it is suggested that the lobby be used for this purpose.

In an advertisement by a Hong Kong dentist: Teeth extracted by the latest Methodists.

A translated sentence from a Russian chess book: A lot of water has been passed under the bridge since this variation has been played.

In a Rome laundry: Ladies, leave your clothes here and spend the afternoon having a good time.

In a Czechoslovakian tourist agency: Take one of our horse-driven city tours -- we guarantee no miscarriages.

Advertisement for donkey rides in Thailand: Would you like to ride on your own ass?

On the faucet in a Finnish washroom: To stop the drip, turn cock to right.

In the window of a Swedish furrier: Fur coats made for ladies from their own skin.

On the box of a clockwork toy made in Hong Kong: Guaranteed to work throughout its useful life.

Detour sign in Kyushi, Japan: Stop: Drive Sideways.

In a Swiss mountain inn: Special today -- no ice cream.

In a Bangkok temple: It is forbidden to enter a woman even a foreigner if dressed as a man.

In a Tokyo bar: Special cocktails for the ladies with nuts.

In a Copenhagen airline ticket office: We take your bags and send them in all directions.

On the door of a Moscow hotel room: If this is your first visit to the USSR, you are welcome to it.

In a Norwegian cocktail lounge: Ladies are requested not to have children in the bar.

At a Budapest zoo: Please do not feed the animals. If you have any suitable food, give it to the guard on duty.

In the office of a Roman doctor: Specialist in women and other diseases.

In an Acapulco hotel: The manager has personally passed all the water served here.

In a Tokyo shop: Our nylons cost more than common, but you'll find they are best in the long run.

From a Japanese information booklet about using a hotel air conditioner: Cooles and Heates: If you want just condition of warm in your room, please control yourself.

From a brochure of a car rental firm in Tokyo: When passenger of foot heave in sight, tootle the horn. Trumpet him melodiously at first, but if he still obstacles your passage then tootle him with vigor.

Two signs from a Majorcan shop entrance:

English well talking

Here speeching American

Some additions to anguished English from Israeli menus:

1) sechel [Hebrew/Yiddish for intelligence] = brains

2) fresh bread daily daily [apparently yom yom]

3) planted egg salad = eggplant salad

Noting to say

It is ... a highly ironical and pathetic circumstance that the world has discovered how to say everything everywhere at the very same moment in all history when it has nothing to say.

G.K. Chesterton

Good Books

Do you know why books such as this arre so important? Because they have quality. And what does the word quality mean? To me it means texture. This book has pores. It has features. This book can go under the microscope. You'll find life under the glass, streaming past in infinite profusion. The more pores, the more truthfully recorded details of life per square inch you can get on a sheet of paper, the more 'literary' you are. ... Telling details. Fresh details. The good writers touch life often. The mediocre ones run a quick gand over her. The bad ones rape her and leave her for the flies.

Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451

Latin Pronunciation

The "Oxford" pronunciation is an English peculiarity, still used in some legal phrases such as "sine die" (pronounced "sigh-knee die" where "die" rhymes with "sigh"). It was, I believe, once used extensively in England, and made a contribution to the development of the Westminster system of government. You see, when the German-speaking George I became King of England, he ordered cabinet meetings (at which the King presided) to be held in Latin. Alas, he found he could no more understand the ministers' spoken Latin than their English - so he stopped attending Cabinet, and ordered one minister to bring him a written summary instead. Thus developed the important office of Prime Minister - or so I was once told!

Puff the Magic Dragon

      Puff, the magic dragon, lived by the sea

      And frolicked in the autumn mist in a land called Honalee.

      Puff, the magic dragon, lived by the sea

      And frolicked in the autumn mist in a land called Honalee.

Puff, the magic dragon, lived by the sea
And frolicked in the autumn mist in a land called Honalee.
Little Jackie Paper loved that rascal Puff
And brought him strings and sealing wax and other fancy stuff, oh

Together they would travel on boat with billowed sail
Jackie kept a lookout perched on Puff's gigantic tail
Noble kings and princes would bow whene'er they came
Pirate ships would lower their flags when Puff roared out his name, oh

A dragon lives forever, but not so little boys
Painted wings and giants's rings make way for other toys.
One grey night it happened, Jackie Paper came no more
And Puff that mighty dragon, he ceased his fearless roar.

His head was bent in sorrow, green scales fell like rain
Puff no longer went to play along the cherry lane.
Without his lifelong friend, Puff could not be brave
So, Puff that mighty dragon sadly slipped into his cave, oh

Lies

It's amazing how lies grow. You start with a small one that seems easy to cover, then you get boxed in and tell another one. Then another. People believe you at first, and they act upon your lies, and you catch yourself wishing you'd simply told the truth. (John Grisham, The Client)

Area 51, Revisited

Posted by MARK THOMPSON Wednesday, May 18, 2011 at 11:52 am

The latest on Area 51

Why does people's skepticism go out the window when it comes to military matters -- especially any that are secret? Granted, the recent dispatch of Osama bin Laden does make the U.S. military look all-but-omnipotent. But it's important to note that grand success was striking...because it was so rare.

Annie Jacobson's new book -- AREA 51: An Uncensored History of America's Top Secret Military Base -- is the 398th touching on the Nevada site, according to Amazon's roster. But some of it needs to be taken with a grain of salt. (Video: Watch Jacobson discuss her most provocative Area 51 findings)

She has interviewed 74 pilots and engineers, among others, who used to work there, and uncovered lots of details about their ground-breaking work in developing the U-2 spy plane, the F-117 stealth fighter-bomber and other aviation assets that helped the U.S. win the Cold War. There are amusing tales of trying to turn pigeons and cats into animal-kingdom 007s.

PHOTOS: The UFO Congress

Part of Area 51's intrigue is that the government still declines to discuss it. That adds to its mystique, because truth...tends to be boring. It's the same way with the SEALs who offed bin Laden -- there is no quicker way to render a hero humdrum than to meet him. (Gosh -- he's so normal!)

Area 51 suffers one flaw. Jacobsen's tale of the UFO that fell from the sky near Roswell, N.M., in 1947, is just that: a tale. The U.S. government transported the "spacecraft" to Area 51, where it was subject to all kinds of probing. It has generated endless controversy and confusion since then. All government efforts to explain what it was -- usually a weather balloon of some kind -- have merely thrown gasoline on the conspiracists' fires. (See the top 10 conspiracy theories of all time)

Jacobson suggests in the book (as well as in recent TV interviews) that the UFO was, in reality, a Nazi-inspired Soviet spy plane manned by midget teen-agers. Josef Stalin purportedly had Josef Mengele provide surgically-tweaked mini-pilots who were supposed to disembark from the aircraft, pretend to be space aliens, and scare Americans to death.

Someone's DVD player has been stuck on Close Encounters of the Third Kind for too long. When stories like this pop up, I like to impose what I call the "human nature" rule. Why would they have wanted to keep this tale secret, if it had happened this way? More critically, could the U.S. government have kept it a secret? Just because a fair number of Americans become unhinged when discussing UFOs and military matters is no reason for the rest of us to tag along. (See the top 10 strangest government secrets)

"Facts are often more fantastic than fiction," publisher Little, Brown's website for the book says, "especially when the distinction is almost impossible to make." Most of Area 51 is solid and well done, but its dubious claim regarding the Roswell UFO makes one wish all involved had tried a little harder to separate fact from fiction, before printing the later as the former.

Read more: http://battleland.blogs.time.com/2011/05/18/area-51-revisited/#ixzz1MmHsPgwa

Genesis 50：20

²⁰ You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives. 


 ²⁰vos cogitastis de me malum et Deus vertit illud in bonum ut exaltaret me sicut inpraesentiarum cernitis et salvos faceret multos populos


²⁰You thought evil against me: but God turned it into good, that he might exalt me, as at present you see, and might save many people.


 ²⁰ וְאַתֶּ֕ם חֲשַׁבְתֶּ֥ם עָלַ֖י רָעָ֑ה אֱלֹהִים֙ חֲשָׁבָ֣הּ לְטֹבָ֔ה לְמַ֗עַן עֲשֹׂ֛ה כַּיֹּ֥ום הַזֶּ֖ה לְהַחֲיֹ֥ת עַם־רָֽב׃

Good Books

Do you know why books such as this are so important? Because they have quality. And what does the word quality mean? To me it means texture. This book has pores. It has features. This book can go under the microscope. You'll find life under the glass, streaming past in infinite profusion. The more pores, the more truthfully recorded details of life per square inch you can get on a sheet of paper, the more 'literary' you are. ... Telling details. Fresh details. The good writers touch life often. The mediocre ones run a quick hand over her. The bad ones rape her and leave her for the flies.

Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451

after you die...

When I was a boy my grandfather died, and he was a sculptor.He was also a very kind man who had a lot of love to give the world, and he helped clean up the slum in our town; and he made toys for us and he did a million things in his lifetime; he was always busy with his hands. And when he died, I suddenly realized I wasn't crying for him at all, but for all the things he did. I cried because he would never do them again, he would never carve another piece of wood or help us raise doves and pigeons in the back yard or play the violin the way he did, or tell us jokes the way he did. He was part of us and when he died, all the actions stopped dead and there was no one to do them just the way he did. He was individual. He was an important man. I've never gotten over his death. Often I think what wonderful carvings never came to birth because he died. How many jokes are missing from the world, and how many homing pigeons untouched by his hands. He shaped the world. He did things to the world. The world was bankrupted of ten million fine actions the night he passed on.

Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451

U.S. Study Says Teens Are Having Less Sex

U.S. Study Says Teens Are Having Less Sex
By ASSOCIATED PRESS Friday, March 4, 2011

Fewer teens and young adults are having sex, a government survey shows, and theories abound for why they're doing it less.

Experts say this generation may be more cautious than their predecessors, more aware of sexually spread diseases. Or perhaps emphasis on abstinence in the past decade has had some influence.

Or maybe they're just too busy.

"It's not even on my radar," said 17-year-old Abbey King of Hinsdale, Ill., a competitive swimmer who starts her day at 5 a.m. and falls into bed at 10:30 p.m. after swimming, school, weight lifting, running, more swimming, homework and a volunteer gig working with service dogs for the disabled. (More on Time.com: More Than 10% of Young Adults With STDs Claim Abstinence)

The study, released Thursday, is based on interviews of about 5,300 young people, ages 15 to 24. It shows the proportion in that age group who said they'd never had oral, vaginal or anal sex rose in the past decade from 22 percent to about 28 percent.

The findings are sure to surprise some parents who see skin and lust in the media and worry that sex is rampant.

"Many parents and adults look at teens and sex and see nothing but a blur of bare midriffs. They think things are terrible and getting worse," said Bill Albert, chief program officer for the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy.

There are other surveys of sexual behavior, but this is considered the largest and most reliable. "It's the gold standard," Albert said.

Health scientist Anjani Chandra of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention described the decline in sex as small but significant. She declined to speculate on the reasons. It's difficult to look for a trend earlier than 2002 because previous surveys did not gather as much detail about various types of sex, she added.

However, data over the years on vaginal intercourse among never-married adolescents shows a steady decline since 1988. That seems to be in sync with other CDC studies showing an overall drop in teen pregnancy. (More on Time.com: Too Many One-Night Stands? Blame Your Genes)

That the trend began in the late 1980s seems to undermine the idea that abstinence-only sex education — heavily emphasized during the 2001-2009 presidency of George W. Bush — is the explanation, Albert said.

But it is possible those messages contributed, he added.

Comprehensive sex education — which includes abstinence but also teaches contraception and safer sex skills — didn't go away during the Bush years, said Elizabeth Schroeder, executive director of Answer, a national sex education organization at Rutgers University.

"We have been redoubling efforts and it has made an impact on these statistics," Schroeder said.

Sam Dercon, a 17-year-old high school junior from Princeton, N.J., said he's learned to worry about the consequences of having sex.

"I do think that sexual education is taking away that idea that you are invincible," said Dercon, who is also a contributing writer to www.sexetc.org, a project of Rutgers-based Answer. (More on Time.com: Teen Girls More Likely to Have Risky Sex Than Teen Boys)

"There's always that fear of something going wrong with consequences that could screw up your future," he said.

The leading influence on sexual activity among young adults is what parents teach and what peers are doing, experts said. And for whatever reason, smaller proportions are "doing it" than in the past.

King, the busy Illinois teen, said she broke up with a boyfriend because "we didn't have time to hang out as much as we wanted to. We were both swimmers and the majority of the time we saw each other was at practice."

She is on the junior board for Robert Crown Center for Health Education, a nonprofit organization that teaches sex ed to students in the Chicago area.

She sees sex, alcohol, smoking and drugs as distractions to her goal of getting a college scholarship in swimming, she said.

"This generation is very focused on their future and not necessarily getting laid," agreed Washington, D.C.-based sex educator Yvonne Fulbright. (More on Time.com: Does the Pill Lower Sex Drive?)

But she also suggested that some young men aren't making time for relationships.

"Some guys, at the end of the day, they'd rather channel their energy into music, playing their guitar or playing computer games," Fulbright said. "That's immediate gratification. People forget it takes work to woo somebody and keep her happy."

The study showed that 27 percent of young men and 29 percent of young women reported no sexual contact.

It looked at older adults, too. It was based on in-person interviews of about 13,500 men and women ages 15 to 44, conducted in the years 2006 through 2008. The results were compared with those of a similar survey done in 2002.

Participants were offered $40 for sitting for the interview, which usually lasted an hour and included answering very specific questions on a computer about oral sex, anal sex and other sexual activities. (More on Time.com: 5 Little-Known Truths About American Sex Lives)

Among other findings:

— More than half of young people who had oral sex said they did that before vaginal intercourse; that pattern was much more common in whites than blacks or Hispanics.

— Among young adults, the proportion who had had vaginal or oral sex declined. But the proportion who had anal sex held steady, at about 21 percent.

— For all ages in the study, women were more than twice as likely to have had sex with a same-gender partner than men were. That was true despite the fact that about the same proportion of male and female survey respondents described themselves as homosexual.

The explanation for that finding seems to be that women are much more willing to describe themselves as bisexual, or to at least acknowledge they find others of their gender attractive.

That may have a lot to do with television shows and other pop culture, which at times seems to celebrate woman-on-woman sexual contact, but not the same kind of behavior among men, said Michael Reece, director of Indiana University's Center for Sexual Health Promotion.

"My guess is women are just more likely to feel that's OK," he added.

There is an assumption that sex between females is more common among more educated women, perhaps experimenting with their sexuality during their college years. But the CDC study found that such behavior was more common among less educated women, Chandra said.

Mike Stobbe reported from Atlanta and Carla K. Johnson reported from Chicago.

Find this article at:
http://healthland.time.com/2011/03/04/u-s-study-says-sex-down-among-young-adults-teens/


Read more: http://healthland.time.com/2011/03/04/u-s-study-says-sex-down-among-young-adults-teens/print/#ixzz1LuxIS2aR

Mrs. Snow

Mrs. Snow had lived forty years, and for fifteen of those years she had been too busy wishing things were different to find much time to enjoy things as they were.

Eleanor H. Potter, Pollyanna

Onan

Genesis 38

6 Judah got a wife for Er, his firstborn, and her name was Tamar.
7 But Er, Judah’s firstborn, was wicked in the LORD’s sight; so the LORD put him to death.
8 Then Judah said to Onan, “Sleep with your brother’s wife and fulfill your duty to her as a brother-in-law to raise up offspring for your brother.”
9 But Onan knew that the child would not be his; so whenever he slept with his brother’s wife, he spilled his semen on the ground to keep from providing offspring for his brother.
10 What he did was wicked in the LORD’s sight; so he put him to death also.

6dedit autem Iudas uxorem primogenito suo Her nomine Thamar
7fuitque Her primogenitus Iudae nequam in conspectu Domini et ab eo occisus est
8dixit ergo Iudas ad Onam filium suum ingredere ad uxorem fratris tui et sociare illi ut suscites semen fratri tuo
9ille sciens non sibi nasci filios introiens ad uxorem fratris sui semen fundebat in terram ne liberi fratris nomine nascerentur
10et idcirco percussit eum Dominus quod rem detestabilem faceret

Five Most Intriguing Changes in the Updated NIV

Posted in New Testament, Old Testament, Translation Philosophy by Collin Hansen on February 28th, 2011

Last year I enjoyed the privilege of moderating the Perspectives in Translation forum at Bible Gateway. This work put me in touch with some of the world’s most gifted Bible scholars, men and women committed to helping us understand God’s Word in many varied contemporary English translations.

We launched this project around the same time the Committee on Bible Translation (CBT) released the updated NIV at Bible Gateway. NIV translators Doug Moo and Craig Blomberg participated in the Perspectives forum. But so did translators and/or supporters of several other versions, including the NLT, ESV, HCSB, CEB, and NET. That made for some vigorous discussion, especially regarding the best way to render passages related to gender roles. We welcomed such debate, because translation is a serious matter that carries serious consequences for Christian faith and practice.

Now the scholars have returned to their regular tasks of teaching and writing, so we will only update the Perspectives forum if we see occasion and reader demand to convene a group discussion. We’re grateful for the significant interested readers have shown in the forum and welcome any tips for special topics we might cover.

To recap our discussion so far, I wanted to look back on the updated NIV and observe what I regard as the five most intriguing changes unveiled in last year’s edition compared to the 1984 NIV. Scholars discussed most of these changes at Perspectives in Translation. Others were covered in the translation notes released by the CBT.

5.) Philippians 4:13

1984 NIV: “I can do everything through him who gives me strength.”

2010 NIV: “I can do all this through him who gives me strength.”

Here we have one of the most popular and frequently memorized verses in the entire Bible. According to data compiled by Bible Gateway, this is the number four most-read Bible verse. It’s easy to memorize and packs a punch. But the 2010 translation helps us to understand the apostle Paul’s intent more clearly by encouraging us to examine the context of his remark. God granted him contentment in all circumstances, whether rich or poor, well fed or hungry. Indeed, we know from Philippians 4:7 that the “peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.” God does not promise to protect believers from all hardship. But he does promise to preserve us in it.

4.) Psalm 23:4

1984 NIV: ‟Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me.”

2010 NIV: ‟Even though I walk through the darkest valley, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me.”

I don’t remember much from Sunday school as a child, but I remember memorizing Psalm 23. The King James Version of 1611 conveyed the beauty of this chapter with lyrical, rhythmic phrasing like the “valley of the shadow of death,” retained in verse four of the 1984 NIV. Some modern translations, such as the ESV an NASB, have preserved this beautiful language. The 2010 NIV, however, has joined the HCSB, NLT, NRSV, and NET by opting for broader comprehension with a simpler modern phrase: “darkest valley.” No matter how dark things appear in our lives, God will never leave us. There can be no greater hope!

3.) Romans 8:8

1984 NIV: “Those controlled by the sinful nature cannot please God.”

2010 NIV: “Those who are in the realm of the flesh cannot please God.”

I could have selected several other verses to illustrate this same change. The CBT’s translation notes explain that particularly in Paul’s letters, the word “sarx can mean either part or all of the human body or the human being under the power of sin.” Paul uses the word both ways, just as we use the same words today with both literal and figurative meanings. The 1984 NIV aimed to help readers by offering the figurative meaning whenever translators believed they could establish Paul’s intent. The 2010 NIV takes a more hands-off approach, more frequently translating sarx as flesh and urging the readers to make their own decisions about when Paul means to reference the sinful nature that misleads us.

Blomberg explained on the Perspectives forum more about the misconceptions prompted the CBT to make a change:

Through my seminary studies . . . I came to learn that it wasn’t as though Christians had two compartments to them, one in which the Spirit resided and one in which the flesh resided, so that one could speak of their spiritual and their sinful natures. The Spirit always indwells us, and sometimes fills us, but when he doesn’t it is because we are not fully yielded to him. Thus the flesh, as the common Scriptural opposite, is most naturally likewise understood as a power to which we can yield, to varying degrees.

2.) 2 Corinthians 5:17

1984 NIV: ‟Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!”

2010 NIV: ‟Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!”

However you translate it, this is one of the most encouraging verses in the Bible. Believers cling to this promise when overwhelmed with the weight of our sin and its effects on the ones we love. The 2010 NIV helps us to more clearly understand something profound: our union with Christ has cosmic implications! Far from minimizing the significance of the new birth, Paul teaches us that same re-creative power that raised Jesus from the dead now regenerates us, who were helpless in our sins. Indeed, Jesus is making all things new.

The CBT tells us more about Paul’s teaching:

Given his overall theology that the coming of Christ and the new era he inaugurated began the period of the restoration of all things that would culminate in new heavens and new earth, it is likely that Paul is making a much more sweeping claim than just the salvation of the individual believer. A new universe is in the works!

Blomberg argued at the Perspectives forum that Paul employs an attention-grabbing structure in the original Greek in order to show us that our individual conversions are part of God’s grand creative plan. This example demonstrates how translators consider both a verse’s sentence construction as well as the broader context of biblical theology.

1.) Philippians 2:6


1984 NIV: “Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped.”

2010 NIV: “Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage.”

This verse belongs to a beloved section of Scripture, Philippians 2:6-11, which explains the humiliation Jesus suffered on the earth and the exaltation he enjoys in heaven. Paul tells us we have the same mindset, looking not to our interests but to the interests of others, as Jesus did by enduring death on the cross.

This verse also bears tremendous theological importance. In particular, scholars have long debated the meaning of the rarely used Greek word harpagmos. The 1984 NIV translated it “something to be grasped.” But what does it mean that Jesus did not grasp equality with God? Isn’t he in very nature God? What’s the difference?

The CBT considered new scholarship in the last 25 years that led them to believe that harpagmos carried the meaning of someone who possesses something he does not use for his own advantage. Blomberg explained more on the Perspectives forum:

The point then of the verse is not that Christ, in choosing to give up his position, metaphorically, at the right hand of the Father in order to become human, gave up his deity or even his divine attributes, but that he didn’t consider them as something to be used to his own personal advantage. Evangelical theologians have often spoken of Christ giving up the independent exercise of his divine attributes apart from when it was his Father’s will.

More than any other change, I think, this verse illustrates how Bible translators serve the rest of us. A verse that has baffled me for so long now comes into clearer focus thanks to careful study of the original language in its ancient context. And now that I know more clearly what Jesus Christ did for me, I praise him and ask for the Spirit’s help in serving others to the glory of God the Father.

Collin Hansen serves as editorial director for The Gospel Coalition and editor of the Perspectives in Translation forum at Bible Gateway. He is the co-author of A God-Sized Vision: Revival Stories That Stretch and Stir.