Aw the beautiful butterfly! ‘EFFICIENT BUTTERFLY FLIGHT reported in BBC News 20 January 2021, ScienceDaily 21 January 2021 and Journal of The Royal Society Interface 20 January 2021 doi: 10.1098/rsif.2020.0854. Two researchers at the Swedish Lund University have studied the fluttery flight of butterflies, which has been traditionally considered ungainly and inefficient. Per Henningsson and Christoffer Johansson commented in their report: “Butterflies look like no other flying animal, with unusually short, broad and large wings relative to their body size”. Henningsson and Johansson analysed the flapping flight of butterflies taking off in a wind tunnel and found their flight was very efficient due to having flexible wings and using a “clap technique”. During the upstroke of the wingbeat the flexible wings form a cup shape that traps a pocket of air. At the top of the upstroke the wings clap together forcing the air out backwards, which propels the butterfly forward. The downstroke of the wingbeat is then “used for weight support”, i.e. it keeps the butterfly in the air. Henningsson and Johansson confirmed the flexible wings and clap technique produced efficient flying by designing and building similar mechanical winged drones and testing them in the wind tunnel. They found “flexible wings dramatically increase the useful impulse (+22%) and efficiency (+28%) of the clap compared to rigid wings”. The researchers suggest the large wings and clapping technique gave them an evolutionary advantage by being able to escape quickly from predators. Per Henningsson told the BBC: “It’s a strong selective pressure then, because it’s a matter of life and death”. The researchers concluded: “Combined, our results suggest butterflies evolved a highly effective clap, which provides a mechanistic hypothesis for their unique wing morphology. Furthermore, our findings could aid the design of man-made flapping drones, boosting propulsive performance”.
Link: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/01/210121132059.htm
ED. COM. Escaping from predators will certainly give butterflies a selective advantage but it won’t make anything evolve. Butterflies that already had such efficient flight didn’t need to evolve. Selection can only eliminate the unfit. It cannot make anything unfit turn into something more fit.
Notice the inconsistency in the researchers’ conclusion: butterflies “evolved” their unique wing shape and efficient clap technique, but man-made flapping drones with the same flying ability will have to be designed and built by intelligent engineers. These researchers, who created their flapping model drones to test in the wind tunnel, are without excuse for failing to recognise the Creator of the natural butterflies, which are not only very efficient but more beautiful and do other things besides fly. Whenever you see a butterfly fluttering give praise the Creator who made it to fly efficiently, fertilise flowers and bring joy to people who see it.’https://creationresearch.net/
Science
This was in an email recently received from https://creationresearch.net/.
‘A lawyer was in the audience, so I asked him what a testimony was supposed to be. “The truth” he quickly replied! That by the way, is why lawyers are paid to probe, investigate, test and challenge any testimony in legal proceedings. They are looking for false testimonies.
However, it is just one testimony that concerns us today. A true testimony which many academics, scientists, church leaders and pew sitters sadly dismiss. It’s been labelled a testimony right from its origin. Not the testimony of man but of the Creator God. Remember the Ten Commandments? The record reports “God gave Moses, when he had finished speaking with him on Mount Sinai, the two tablets of the testimony, tablets of stone, written with the finger of God”. (Exodus 31:18) After the affair of the golden calf Moses smashed the first set of the tablets in anger. God then told Moses “Cut for yourself two tablets of stone like the first, and I will write on the tablets the words that were on the first tablets, which you broke.” (Exodus 34:1) After Moses spent a second time with God on the mountain, he came down the mountain “with the two tablets of the testimony”. (Exodus 34:29)
Nowhere does the Bible treat the Ten Commandments as anything but the actual Word or Testimony of the Lord, e.g. at the giving of the first set we read “God spoke all these words”. (Exodus 20:11) In his address to the people of Israel recorded in Deuteronomy, Moses reminded them: “And the Lord gave me the two tablets of stone written with the finger of God, and on them were all the words that the Lord had spoken with you on the mountain out of the midst of the fire on the day of the assembly.” (Deuteronomy 9:10)
As our lawyer friend addresses, if any part of a written or spoken testimony is not true, it is invalid. Including in this case the witness rule in the courts … ’you shall not bear false testimony’. (Ex 20:16) Note well that the Creator Christ testified in the commandments He made the world in six days. So all of those leaders of academia, theology or politics who dismiss the six days, actually have moved to dismiss all God’s commandments. No wonder they move on to legislate the mass murder of infants, block Gender Menders, promote BLM destruction, push climate lies and cash in on Covid-10 controls. Note well – you will all give eternal account to the One who is truth, for He cannot lie. He did make the heavens and the earth in just six days and His moral authority is based on that. You portray Christ any other way and you will be held accountable for calling him a liar – someone who gave false testimony, while taking the moral high ground in labelling false testimony a grievous sin.
Moses’ successor Joshua challenged the people to “… fear the Lord and serve him …. ‘choose this day whom you will serve’ … the gods of this world or the real God … But as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.” (Joshua 24:14-15)’
2 Peter 3:10“But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night; in the which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up.”
‘We live in a world – indeed, a universe – that is in continual change. Things have been designed that way for a very important reason. Unfortunately, some people choose to define evolution as simply change. However, that’s not the kind of continuous change that surrounds us.
The change we see around us serves to keep things the same. Biologists call this “stasis.” That might sound contradictory, but think about it for a moment. A baby is born – that’s change. The baby grows into a child and then a young adult. That’s more change. In the end, though, a new generation is born to replace the last generation, and things are as they were. It’s the cycle of life, common to all living things.
What’s more, the interrelated life cycles of all living things complement each other. Plants use sunlight and carbon dioxide to make oxygen and food, which are needed by the animal kingdom and human beings. Each generation of living things reproduces after its own kind, helping to keep this balance in tune.
The change we see all around us was designed by the Creator to renew the creation so that it might remain stable – the same. We can truly say that the more things change, the more they stay the same. However, this state of affairs will not go on forever. One day – and perhaps soon – the world will end. The Son of God, Who was the instrument of our creation and the instrument of our salvation, will return. Are you ready to meet Him?’https://creationmoments.com/sermons/designed-to-renew-2/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=designed-to-renew-2&mc_cid=38e629a331&mc_eid=00c1dcff3c
Whether one lives in the USA or Australia politics is pretty much the same. The Left has taken ahold of most of the pollies and they seem to determined to continue the path of national destruction. Professor David Flint writes that ‘Pilate’s contemptuous dismissal of truth echoes down the ages. Those who, like Pilate, wash their hands while authoritarians try to gag anyone they insist must not speak, ignore what distinguishes civilisation from the evil alternatives.
The search for truth is dependent on freedom of speech. As Robert Menzies warned: ‘Today’s truth is frequently tomorrow’s error…. If truth is to emerge and in the long run be triumphant, the process of free debate – the untrammelled clash of opinion – must go on’.
Menzies practised what he preached. When novice backbencher and subsequently Democrat leader Don Chipp decided to give notice that he would cross the floor over some government bill, Menzies replied, ‘If you feel that way, my boy, you must follow your conscience.’ This freedom is at the very heart of representative democracy. As Burke explained, we choose our representatives for their judgment. Any restriction is contrary to the ‘whole order and tenor of our constitution’.
Craig Kelly has been ordered not to repeat scientifically endorsed views on medicines or vaccinations, a Sydney TV host even ordering him to ‘be quiet’.
Following the US mainstream media, no longer adhering to the adage that ‘Comment is free but facts are sacred’, journalists will too often insert some adjective like ‘baseless’ about something which a responsible media once reported with curiosity and without condemnation, such as the fact that banned medicines may still enjoy reputable scientific support or that allegations of electoral fraud are supported by mountains of evidence. Such journalists will also readily dismiss comment by reference to some non-existent standard such as ‘the’ science.
Rather than limiting themselves to desk-based reporting, such journalists could visit a court room. There they would often see expert witnesses called by both sides.
They would come to understand that scientific truth is determined neither by majority nor even consensus, as demonstrated when Australian scientists won the Nobel Prize for showing that some gastric ulcers can be caused by a virus, Helicobacter pylori.
In the case of Craig Kelly, where the mainstream media have smelt blood, the Prime Minister unwisely surrendered just as he did over the National Anthem. Unsurprisingly, Kelly’s pre-selection is now in issue. On that surely it is time that our normally manipulated preselections be replaced by primaries where registered Labor, Liberal, etc., supporters in the relevant electorate or state actually decide who their candidates shall be.
Probably the strongest reason why there is a bi-partisan move to replace Craig Kelly, as there was with Trump, is that he embarrasses the politicians and their elite allies over the litany of burdens they impose on the people for which they will never have to answer.
Central to this is their endorsement not only of the increasingly discredited theory of man-made global warming but also both the Paris solution and the claim that the successors to the assorted dictators, thugs and dissembling politicians will deliver on their promises decades hence. Independent research suggests that at best this will barely reduce the temperature in 2100, saving about 2 per cent GDP at a cost of between 16 to 32 per cent of GDP. I doubt whether most politicians believe all this. If they did, they would not have ‘carbon’ footprints many times those of ordinary people, unless of course they are outrageous hypocrites.
Why then have they, as Alan Jones and Terry McCrann warned years ago, signed a national suicide note? What they and other elites want is for Craig Kelly and a few colleagues to stop reminding Australians of this. But ordinary Australians are not stupid. Only ten per cent of airline travellers buy ‘carbon’ credits, probably those elites who don’t themselves pay for their tickets.
As with their refusal to harvest water, as with their immigration programme designed to satisfy the fiction that the GDP is rising while wages are stable or falling, as with an education programme delivering declining standards, the politicians are running our great country into the ground. Hence their determination to throw anyone who exposes this out of parliament.
Meanwhile in America, Speaker Pelosi followed the answer given by the high priests when Pilate invited them to explain their case, ‘If he were not a malefactor, we would not have delivered him up unto thee’. There was need neither for evidence nor due process. The voice of Pelosi was sufficient. The so-called Senate trial is undoubtedly unconstitutional for any one of several grounds most of which have been mentioned in prior columns.
One arises out of reliance on Trump’s free speech-protected assertion that the 2020 election was fraudulent.
On that Time magazine has now confirmed the existence of a ‘conspiracy’ among a ‘well-funded cabal’ of ‘powerful people’ working together behind the scenes to ‘influence perceptions’, ‘change rules and laws’, ‘steer media coverage’ and ‘control the flow of information’.
They even admit to using the eight months of violent looting, burning and torching by Black Lives Matter to advance their agenda.
The key moment on the day of the election was 11pm. Trump was winning with a solid lead in the battleground states. In a Zoom call at that time, cabal architect Mike Podhorzer calmed conspirators by ‘presenting data’ to show a Biden victory was in hand. As it was.
Voting was then suspended in battleground states on the ruse there was a drainage overflow in one polling station.
Counting soon secretly resumed in the absence of Republican scrutineers. And as anyone with the slightest experience knows, this was obviously done for one reason and one reason only – fraud.
Biden’s vote suddenly advanced exponentially, massively and as Patrick Basham has demonstrated here, implausibly.
Rather than answering the mountain of evidence Donald Trump’s lawyers subsequently assembled, its existence was denied by the mainstream media with social media punishing anyone who mentioned it. Despite that, Trump still strikes terror into the hearts of the elites. He and anyone considering following him must be silenced.‘ https://www.spectator.com.au/2021/02/kellyleo/
Proverbs 3:7-8 “Be not wise in thine own eyes: fear the LORD, and depart from evil. It shall be health to thy navel, and marrow to thy bones.”
‘You’re not feeling well, and you have a fever. Is your increased body temperature good for you or should you try to lower it?
Medical researchers are learning what happens in the body when we develop a fever. They say that the body’s fever response is usually a very important part of our body’s defense against disease. Normally, the body’s temperature varies throughout the day. If the body’s temperature drops below 80° or climbs higher than 108° for a prolonged period, death usually results. Your body has a thermostat, called the hypothalamus, to keep its temperature within that range.
When disease germs are detected in your bloodstream, your white blood cells release a chemical called EP. EP quickly makes its way to the hypothalamus, where it raises the setting of your thermostat. This increase in temperature can make your body increase its production of T cells by 20 times or more to fight bacterial infection. It also increases the production of blood chemicals that fight viruses. EP also blocks bacteria’s ability to make use of the free iron in your blood at just the time bacteria are most in need of that iron. Even iguanas and fish are known to raise their body temperature when ill by moving into warmer environments.
Does the fever response just accidentally happen to help fight infection or was it designed to work the way it does? Clearly we must thank God for this cleverly designed defense against disease.’ https://creationmoments.com/sermons/heating-for-health-2/
‘For most commentators in Australia’s mainstream media, the prime minister of New Zealand should always be referred to as Saint Jacinda. She is the embodiment of progressive wokeness, including looking appropriately sorrowful when required.
Her positions on social and climate policy make her a standout leader and are in stark contrast to our pitiful prime minister whose commitment to Christianity makes him immediately suspect.
The fact that Ardern only first became prime minister after doing a pact with the devil in the form of Winston Peters – that dodgy, nationalistic political manipulator – is a fact overlooked by her many media admirers.
To be sure, she now governs in her own right after winning a Covid election in 2020. And while New Zealand, a small island nation, has controlled the virus well, it has done so at massive economic and fiscal cost.
She has also faced the ignominy of completely failing to achieve anything in terms of boosting affordable housing, a key pledge of her first term in government. There was a fanciful plan to build 100,000 additional homes under the KiwiBuild program. When the actual number came in at 258, she decided to scrap the whole program.
Super embarrassing, you might think. Actually, unremarked is more accurate.
The recent decision by the Ardern government to allow the city council of the People’s Republic of Auckland to continue to impose a hard border on any new housing developments means that house prices in New Zealand’s largest city will continue to rise from their stratospheric levels.
But if you are a saint, none of this stuff matters. She has committed New Zealand to net zero emissions by 2050. She has declared a climate emergency. She is listening to the science. She is a leader we should admire. Why can’t we have one like her?
Indeed, Laura Tingle recently wrote in the Quarterly Essay that New Zealand has taken the ‘high road’ and we should learn from it. New Zealand ‘has repeatedly jumped out of its comfort zone and changed direction harder, faster and for longer than Australia has done in the past half-century’.
Er, the fact that there is no upper house in the New Zealand parliament in combination with its crazy voting system might just explain the vast oscillations in policies that have occurred from time to time.
But here’s the key fact: per capita income in New Zealand is a mere three-quarters of the level in Australia. And over a very long time, there has been no significant narrowing of this gap.
Judged by the number of New Zealanders who live in Australia – there are close to 600,000 or 12 per cent of New Zealand’s population – the ‘high road’ is not a description that would ring true to these émigrés.
Let’s get back to New Zealand’s outstanding approach to climate change. The country makes up less than 0.2 per cent of world emissions. We could easily just denote this as an asterix and be done.
But as all progressives know, it’s the vibe that really matters. And just think how many countries around the world are trying to emulate New Zealand’s example. (Yep, none, but it’s a good try.)
Talking about asterixes, one should also be used in relation to the Ardern’s pledge to net zero emissions by 2050 because methane is excluded. That’s right: all those emissions from burping and farting cows and sheep are not counted.
It is was one reason why Saint Jacinda was denied a speaking part at the international climate talkfest organised by wallowing UK prime minister, Boris Johnson, the French and the UN last year.
Mind you, a number of media commentators in Australia moaned loudly about our exclusion from the same event while forgetting to mention New Zealand also failed to make the team.
In an act of seeming political misjudgment by the Ardern government, a Climate Change Commission has been appointed to provide advice on appropriate measures that should be adopted by the government. (We had a similar arrangement once – the one chaired by mammologist Tim Flannery – but Tony Abbott had the good sense to get rid of it.)
Now the zealots who make up this commission are not of a mind to give those belching animals a free pass. Indeed, the commission’s chair likened farmers to whalers and we all know what happened to whalers, even the good one. That’s right: New Zealand agriculture is the past, not the future.
And giving Saint Jacinda a further touch of heartburn, the other recommendations of the commission include: a massive increase in walking, cycling and public transport; cities that are smaller in terms of their footprint than now (anyone for living in a high-rise dog box?); and 50 per cent of all vehicles being electric by 2027, just 6 years away. (Two per cent of vehicles in New Zealand are currently electric.)
And this one will be popular: a complete ban on the importation of petrol/diesel powered vehicles from 2032. Did I also mention that coal and gas consumption must drop by three-quarters by 2035 with herd sizes for all farm animals to be reduced as well?
Of course, these are only recommendations to the government, but given the Ardern government’s missteps in other policy areas, it’s unclear which ones from this climate lucky dip she won’t implement.
In the past, New Zealand governments have had very bad records in terms of meeting any climate change targets made, including its pledge under the Kyoto treaty.
Were it not for its overinvestment in forests, which are now encroaching on valuable arable land, the Ardern government would be a very long way from meeting its commitments under the Paris agreement. It’s also trying to fudge the figures by using an absolute figure for 2005 and a net figure for 2030, hoping no one notices.
But let’s face it, four-fifths of two-thirds of nothing is nothing. And that’s the level of interest the world is generally taking in New Zealand’s self-destructive climate actions.
But Saint Jacinda can be guaranteed extravagant and unalloyed adulation from the green-left media in Australia, with unfavourable comparisons made with our knuckle-dragging, close-to-climate denying prime minister thrown in for good measure. I’m pretty sure Scott Morrison isn’t too worried.’https://www.spectator.com.au/2021/02/saint-jacindas-climate-change-lucky-dip/
Psalm 40:5“Many, O LORD my God, [are] thy wonderful works [which] thou hast done, and thy thoughts [which are] to us-ward: they cannot be reckoned up in order unto thee: [if] I would declare and speak [of them], they are more than can be numbered.”
‘Though God created the entire living kingdom in only a few days, the variety and creativity of what He made seems nearly unlimited by our standards. One of the more unusual creatures He made was thought extinct until it was rediscovered in 1958.
The kakapo parrot lives in New Zealand. The most unusual parrot on Earth, it is one of only a few known parrots that prefers to sleep during the day and becomes active at night. Weighing in at five pounds, it is also the world’s heaviest parrot. It is, perhaps not surprisingly, the world’s only non-flying parrot.
The Creator’s unusual expression of inventive creativity in designing the kakapo did not end here. The mating habits of the kakapo are especially peculiar for birds. In mating season, the males gather in locations that are used year after year for mate selection. Female parrots come to these places to inspect the males to select a mate. However, in most un-bird-like fashion, the males provide absolutely no help building the nest or rearing the young.
The kakapo is remarkable because of its many strange traits, most of which would make it least fit for survival. In other words, not only is it an unusual creature, but its more unusual characteristics seem to put it at a disadvantage as far as evolution is concerned. So while evolution would not have made the kakapo, our inventive Creator did, perhaps as a witness against evolution.’ https://creationmoments.com/sermons/a-truly-strange-bird-2/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=a-truly-strange-bird-2&mc_cid=77f54b9349&mc_eid=00c1dcff3c
Victoria, Australia has already done it and now in Scotland ‘LGBT activists and their political allies are trying to criminalise ‘conversion therapy’ through the back door in Scotland. They are behind an amendment by the Green Party to the Scottish Hate Crime Bill which would remove the freedom to criticise homosexual behaviour or to ask someone to refrain from or modify homosexual behaviour. This would have a profound and widespread impact on churches, counsellors, parents, teachers and others across Scotland.’https://christianconcern.com/comment/will-conversion-therapy-ban-be-sneaked-into-scottish-hate-crime-bill/
I received this email today concerning the communist state of Victoria in Australia. ‘Last night, something happened in the Victorian Parliament which affects all Australians.
The Andrews’ Labor Government successfully passed its so-called Change and Suppression (Conversion) Practices Prohibition Bill.
The bill purports to ban so-called “gay conversion therapy”, both in secular and faith-based settings.
“Conversion therapy” conjures up images of violence and harm – something no one supports – but is really a smokescreen by which to attack freedom of religion and belief.
This shocking legislation will ban any “practice or conduct” towards a person, even if undertaken with the person’s consent, aimed at “changing or suppressing the sexual orientation or gender identity of the person”.
BUT, people would still be permitted to participate in any practice that “supportive of or affirms a person’s gender identity or sexual orientation”. This includes conduct aimed at supporting gender transitions and expression of “gender identity”.
Parents should be alarmed. Any attempt to even counsel or pray with their own children over matters of their sexuality or gender could see them charged with an offence.
And churches and faith organisations are specifically targeted. Aside from secular services such as psychiatric therapy, the bill prohibits “carrying out a religious practice, including but not limited to, a prayer based practice, a deliverance practice or an exorcism.”
The penalties for breaching the legislation are serious.
For more serious offences, individuals face up to 10 years’ jail, a fine of up to $198,264, or both. For organisations, the fine rises to a maximum of $991,320.
Every single amendment moved last night – including one to exempt family discussions – was defeated.
The bill was ultimately passed 27 votes to 9.
This is shocking enough for Victorians – especially Victorian parents – but how is it relevant for those in other states and territories?
Firstly, the Victorian bill recognises no borders. Anyone who engages with a Victorian (either within or outside of Victorian borders) for the purpose of “changing or suppressing” will potentially be engaging in a criminal act.
Secondly, Victoria has in recent times been a “first mover” in terms of extreme social legislation. Consider its euthanasia and assisted suicide laws. Or its radical abortion-to-birth laws, carried way back in 2008.
If the Victorian Government feels confident enough to so drastically intrude into the private sexual lives of individuals, the prayer and counselling of churches and medical professionals, and even into the very family home, all Australians should be alarmed at the precedent this poses.
On a practical note, then: what is to be done?
For a start, those in other states and territories must be alert to any attempt to imitate this draconian and intrusive legislation.
And, as we’ve seen on a range of issues, having the best argument or even making the most noise is irrelevant if its fall on deaf ears. In that sense, we need better people in our parliaments.
Nothing much has changed since the 4th century BC, when Plato rightly said:
“The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men.”
Definitely worth thinking about.’https://www.austfamily.com.au/
1 Corinthians 15:22 “For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive.”
‘One of the most frequently asked questions when I appear on a radio phone-in program is whether there is a gap between the first and second verses of Genesis chapter 1. Some people have been taught that a gap of millions of years between the original creation of the Earth and the Earth we know today can explain the fossil record and the millions of years proposed by evolution.
Also called the ruin-reconstruction theory, this idea says that an earlier creation existed that was judged by God. Those who believe in this theory usually place Satan’s fall, dinosaurs and so-called “cave men” into this earlier creation.
The gap theory was first proposed about two centuries ago by Rev. Thomas Chalmers as a response to the growing popularity of long evolutionary ages. It was widely spread among Christians in the notes that first appeared in the Scofield Reference Bible of 1917.
The gap theory, however, does not satisfy evolutionists; neither does the Hebrew of Genesis support it. Most importantly, the Bible teaches us that death first came into the world when humans began to sin. The Bible repeats many times that sin and death began with Adam and not before. This is such an important point that the Bible links the beginning of sin and death with the first Adam … and the victory over sin and death with Jesus Christ, spoken of as the Second Adam.’ https://creationmoments.com/sermons/is-there-a-gap-in-genesis-one-2/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=is-there-a-gap-in-genesis-one-2&mc_cid=1694c3ee35&mc_eid=00c1dcff3c
When interpreting the Scriptures one should always remember that when plain sense makes good sense seek no other sense lest it result in nonsense!
whatyareckon 