Images physicians should know

Read the rest here.

Medicine and the Meaning of Healing

(Jean Bethke Elshtain)

Every odd integer larger than 1 is the sum of at most five primes

A new number theory from Terence Tao.

Bogus Mathematics Index

Keith Devlin writes about the misuse of math in science (e.g. DNA profiling). This is his follow-up.

A tale of two tweets

"What if Charles Dickens and his characters had written for Twitter?"

NKT cell

Was blind but now I see

"Retinal Implant Brings Eyesight To The Blind"

"Sight Seen: Gene Therapy Restores Vision in Both Eyes"

Cancer breath test

Wrt lung cancer.

Malcolm Reynolds

Dark Knight

Misotheists

Bear essentials

Sith Bird

Bats gone batty

What People Think I Do / What I Really Do

More here.

Doctor Hoo

From head to toe

The human body from head to toe:



(frame by frame)

Double trouble

MRI of two women, one 250 lbs and the other 120 lbs:



(source)

Sedentary vs. triathlete

MRI cross sections of leg muscles:


(source) (source)

War is hell

War is ugly. Physically, psychologially, emotionally, socially, morally, etc.

If we must wage war, let us wage war in such a way as to break the enemy's will to ever fight again. Show no mercy. Utterly shame and decimate the enemy if necessary. As long as people have sinful hearts full of pride, lust, greed, etc., people will be moved by their pride, lust, greed, etc. to wage war. Thus to defeat them and best ensure no future war with them one may need to completely humble and shame their proud hearts. I believe this is more or less the argument scholars like Victor Davis Hanson and Donald Kagan have made in books like The Western Way of War, The Father of Us All, and On the Origins of War and the Preservation of Peace.

That is, think not Germany after WWI. But think Germany after WWII. After WWI, Germany was defeated but unbowed. The German government surrendered even though German troops were still physically occupying territory on the Western front and even though Germany had won on the Eastern front against Russia. So Germany sought to avenge their defeat at an opportune time. But after WWII, Germany was defeated and bowed to their knees. They knew they had lost. Soviet armies crushed Germany from the east and Anglo-American armies from the west. Germany lay in ruins.

This seems to be the best way to ensure a lasting peace. And, as a friend points out, this can potentially save more lives in the long run.

I suspect this is one reason why God commanded the Israelites to show the Canaanites no mercy if they insist on war. If it's going to be war, then let it be all-out or total war such that the enemy will absolutely know he is defeated, have his will to fight broken and shattered to pieces, and never seek to fight again.

I realize this sounds harsh. But we live in a fallen world. These are the sorts of harsh realities we're often forced to face. These are the difficult choices we're often forced make.

Sledgehammer

Eugene Sledge was a Marine in the Pacific Theater during WWII. If I recall, he was in his late teens when he enlisted. His nickname was "Sledgehammer."

He wrote a book titled With the Old Breed in part about the horrors of war which he saw with his own eyes.

Sledge also featured as a character in the HBO miniseries The Pacific produced by Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks.

Indeed Sledge saw terrible brutalities in the war. He felt an ever present fear. He knew firsthand the filth and stench of dead bodies strewn everywhere. The hatred and loathing in one's innermost being for some of the enemy's atrocities.

For instance, Sledge describes a moment when he came across the mutilated bodies of three fellow Marines. One of the dead Marines had had his genitals cut off and shoved into his mouth by Japanese soldiers. It sickened him.

He witnessed many other grotesque events while fighting in the Pacific. He entered the war as a young teenager hoping to have the experience of a lifetime, which he did; but he also came back home mature beyond his years. In many respects, he came back a shattered man, a man with a heavy, pained heart, who had witnessed his friends die before him and much worse. It was as if someone had struck Sledge's heart with a sledgehammer, rending it into pieces.

Although he went on to obtain a PhD in biology, marry a beautiful bride, and raise happy children and grandchildren, these memories never left him. They were forever seared into his mind. Indelible, terrible nightmares.

Later in life, in fact if I recall it was toward the end of his life, and at the encouragement of his wife and other loved ones, he decided to write out about his experiences. Mainly for his friends and family as well as to unburden himself. So he did.

The Marines weren't allowed to keep a diary back then for fear if they were killed in action and their bodies searched, a diary might reveal military secrets to the enemy. However, they were each given a Bible. He had written some notes in his Bible during the war. So he used these notes and his memory to write With the Old Breed.

He didn't expect it to be published let alone to sell so many copies. But it did. Today it's considered a military classic. The book is recommended and sometimes required reading at our military academies and at other universities and institutes.

Sledge ends his book in this way:

Until the millennium arrives and countries cease trying to enslave others, it will be necessary to accept one’s responsibilities and be willing to make sacrifices for one's country - as my comrades did. As the troops used to say, if the country is good enough to live in, it’s good enough to fight for. With privilege goes responsibility.

The End of Infidelity

Hot off the presses! Check out The End of Infidelity.

By the way, Triablogue has a new eBooks section on their right hand sidebar.

Assad

"Assad emails leaked, tips for ABC interview revealed"

Just two quick comments:

1. If you're intent on an iron-fisted dictatorship, you might want to use a more secure password than "12345."
   
   
2. If ABC News handing "prep notes" to Bashar al-Assad (who is also part of the same Ba'ath Party that Saddam Hussein used to lead) isn't consorting with the enemy, then I don't know what is. Sadly I have a feeling this will be under reported by the mainstream media.

Meet the numbers

(Although I can chuckle at it, the only depiction I'm not too terribly amused about is irrational number.)

One more episode of Battlestar Galactica

Stick figure theology

More about Annie Vallotton and her work here.

Before Watchmen

News here.

Obviously Alan Moore is less than enthused about this project. Word is Dave Gibbons was asked to participate in the new prequel series but respectfully declined.

Lots of comic industry heavy-hitters to work on the prequel. I've always appreciated Jae Lee's art. I most look forward to J. Michael Straczynski's series of stories.

Blue marble

More images here.

A different, ginormous image here.

Phyllobates terribilis

Scientific method

Ebola virus

(source)

Fibonacci's pendulum

(source)

A jealous God

"[Y]ou shall worship no other god, for the LORD, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God" (Exodus 34:14).

Charles Spurgeon addresses Christians:

The Lord Jesus Christ, of whom I now speak, is very jealous of your love, O believer. Did he not choose you? He cannot bear that you should choose another. Did he not buy you with his own blood? He cannot endure that you should think you are your own, or that you belong to this world.

He loved you with such a love that he could not stop in heaven without you; he would sooner die than that you should perish; he stripped himself to nakedness that he might clothe you with beauty; he bowed his face to shame and spitting that he might lift you up to honour and glory, and he cannot endure that you should love the world, and the things of the world.

Be careful, Christians, you that are married to Christ; remember, you are married to a jealous husband.

How I see things vs. how my cat sees things

No exit

The following excerpt is from Bertrand Russell:

That man is the product of causes that had no prevision of the end they were achieving; that his origin, his growth, his hopes and fears, his loves and his beliefs, are but the outcome of accidental collocations of atoms; that no fire, no heroism, no intensity of thought and feeling, can preserve individual life beyond the grave; that all the labors of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius, are destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system, and that the whole temple of man's achievement must inevitably be buried beneath the debris of a universe in ruins - all these things, if not quite beyond dispute, are yet so nearly certain that no philosophy which rejects them can hope to stand. Only within the scaffolding of these truths, only on the firm foundation of unyielding despair, can the soul's habitation henceforth be safely built.

By the way, here are the top five regrets of the dying. Of course, if Russell's statement is true, then the regrets are ultimately meaningless. They, too, are headed for the black.

Now please check out this article.

Web equations

Very cool math handwriting recognition in Javascript.

Discombobulation of the Daleks

I haven't been in China for 400 years

Dalek invaders

eTARDIS reader

Dungeons & Doctors

Dalek on ice

Wibbly wobbly timey wimey

More here.

Porta-Who

It's the Doctor, Charlie Brown!

Made in America

A hilarious Shakespearean rendition of the three little pigs nursery rhyme by comedian John Branyan:



HT: Tim Challies.

Moshe the Beadle

The following is from Elie Wiesel's Night:

They called him Moshe the Beadle, as though he had never had a surname in his life. He was a man of all work at a Hasidic synagogue. The Jews of Sighet--that little town in Transylvania where I spent my childhood were very fond of him. He was very poor and lived humbly. Generally my fellow towns people, though they would help the poor, were not particularly fond of them. Moshe the Beadle was the exception. Nobody ever felt embarrassed by him. Nobody ever felt encumbered by his presence. He was a past master in the art of making himself insignificant, of seeming invisible.

Physically he was as awkward as a clown. He made people smile, with his waif like timidity. I loved his great, dreaming eyes, their gaze lost in the distance. He spoke little. He used to sing, or, rather, to chant. Such snatches as you could hem told of the suffering of the divinity, of the Exile of Providence, who, according to the kabbalah, awaits his deliverance in that of man. I got to know him toward the end of 1941. I was twelve. I believed profoundly. During the day I studied the Talmud, and at night I ran to the synagogue to weep over the destruction of the Temple.

One day I asked my father to find me a master to guide me in my studies of the kabbalah.

"You're too young for that. Maimonides said it was only at thirty that one had the right to venture into the perilous world of mysticism. You must first study the basic subjects within your own understanding."

My father was a cultured, rather unsentimental man. There was never any display of emotion, even at home. He was more concerned with others than with his own family. The Jewish community in Sighet held him in the greatest esteem. They often used to consult him about public matters and even about private ones. There were four of us children: Hilda, the eldest; then Bea. I was the third, and the only son; the baby of the family was Tzipora.

My parents ran a shop. Hilda and Bea helped them with the work. As for me, they said my place was at school.

"There aren't any kabbalists at Sighet," my father would repeat.

He wanted to drive the notion out of my head. But it was in vain. I found a master for myself, Moshe the Beadle.

He had noticed me one day at dusk, when I was praying.

"Why do you weep when you pray?" he asked me, as though he had known me a long time.

"I don't know why," I answered, greatly disturbed.

The question had never entered my head. I wept because - because of something inside me that felt the need for tears. That was all I knew.

"Why do you pray?" he asked me, after a moment.

Why did I pray? A strange question. Why did I live? Why did I breathe?

"I don't know why," I said, even more disturbed and ill at ease. "I don't know why."

After that day I saw him often. He explained to me with great insistence that every question possessed a power that did not lie in the answer. "Man raises himself toward God by the questions he asks Him," he was fond of repeating. "That is the true dialogue. Man questions God and God answers. But we don't understand His answers. We can't understand them. Because they come from the depths of the soul, and they stay there until death. You will find the true answers, Eliezer, only within yourself!"

"And why do you pray, Moshe?" I asked him.

"I pray to the God within me that He will give me the strength to ask Him the right questions."

We talked like this nearly every evening. We used to stay in the synagogue after all the faithful had left, sitting in the gloom, where a few half-burned candles still gave a flickering light.

One evening I told him how unhappy I was because I could not find a master in Sighet to instruct me in the Zohar, the kabbalistic book, the secrets of Jewish mysticism. He smiled indulgently. After a long silence, he said: "There are a thousand and one gates leading into the orchard of mystical truth. Every human being has his own gate. We must never make the mistake of wanting to enter the orchard by any gate but our own. To do this is dangerous for the one who enters and also for those who are already there."

And Moshe the Beadle, the poor barefoot of Sighet, talked to me for long hours of the revelations and mysteries of the kabbalah. It was with him that my initiation began. We would read together, ten times over, the same page of the Zohar. Not to learn it by heart, but to extract the divine essence from it.

And throughout those evenings a conviction grew in me that Moshe the Beadle would draw me with him into eternity, into that time where question and answer would become one.

Then one day they expelled all the foreign Jews from Sighet. And Moshe the Beadle was a foreigner.

Crammed into cattle trains by Hungarian police, they wept bitterly. We stood on the platform and wept too. The train disappeared on the horizon; it left nothing behind but its thick, dirty smoke.

I heard a Jew behind me heave a sigh.

"What can we expect?" he said. "It's war...."

The deportees were soon forgotten. A few days after they had gone, people were spying that they had arrived in Galicia were working there, and were even satisfied with their lot.

Several days passed. Several weeks. Several months. Life had returned to normal. A wind of calmness and reassurance blew through our houses. The traders were doing good business.

The students lived buried in their books, and the children played in the streets. One day, as I was just going into the synagogue, I saw sitting on a bench near the door, Moshe the Beadle.

He told his story and that of his companions. The train full of deportees had crossed the Hungarian frontier and on the Polish territory had been taken in charge by the Gestapo. There it had stopped. The Jews had to get out and climb into lorries. The lorries drove toward a forest. The Jews were made to get out. They were made to dig huge graves. And when they had finished their work, the Gestapo began theirs. Without passion, without haste, they
slaughtered their prisoners. Each one had to go up to the hole and present his neck. Babies were thrown into the air and the machine gunners used them as targets. This was in the forest of Galicia, near Kolomaye. How had Moshe the Beadle escaped? Miraculously. He was wounded in the leg and taken for dead.

Through long days and nights, he went from one Jewish house to another telling the story of Malka, the young girl who had taken three days to die, and of Tobias, the tailor who had begged to be killed before his sons.

Moshe had changed. There was no longer any joy in his eyes. He no longer sang. He no longer talked to me of God or of the kabbalah but only of what he had seen. People refused not only to believe his stories, but even to listen to them.

"He's just trying to make us pity him. What an imagination he has!" they said. Or even: "Poor fellow. He's gone mad."

And as for Moshe, he wept.

Of course, Moshe the Beadle is a Cassandra figure.

But can I make a singular point without, I hope, in any way detracting from the Jewish plight and the horrors of the Holocaust, nor in any sense equating the evil Nazis with God? That is, inasmuch as Moshe the Beadle was a Cassandra for his town, so too were many of the prophets and apostles, and so too are many Christians today.

After all, who wants to listen to Christians warning people to turn away from sin and turn back to God by flying for refuge in Jesus Christ? Who believes our report (Isa 53:1), who flees from the wrath to come (Luke 3:7), who flees from God's coming judgment against sinners living in sin?

So unless we turn back to God, begging for mercy and forgiveness for our sin, we will all likewise perish (Luke 13:3).

And as for Jesus, he wept (Luke 13:34-35).

"Reflections on the Church in Great Britain"

Unless he was aiming for a British sense of sarcasm, it appears Mark Driscoll recently took the British to task for their lack of celebrity pastors: "Let's just say this: right now, name for me the one young, good Bible teacher that is known across Great Britain. You don't have one – that's the problem. There are a bunch of cowards who aren't telling the truth."

On the plus side, I guess Northern Ireland pastors are aite in Driscoll's book.

Anyway, D.A. Carson responds (with a good measure of wit, to boot) to his good friend in a post titled "Reflections on the Church in Great Britain."

While we're on the topic, Carson's article "Observations of a Friend" (1995) on the Anglican Communion is likewise helpful to read. Although it should be noted there have been significant developments within Anglicanism since the article was published (e.g. GAFCON, St. John's Vancouver aka J.I. Packer's church leaving the Anglican Church of Canada).

It should also be said there are several fine British pastors and teachers in the United States. I'm thinking of men like Alistair Begg, Sinclair Ferguson, Liam Goligher, Mark Johnston, Robert Norris, Derek Thomas, and Carl Trueman. By the way, one of my favorite 9Marks interviews features Norris.

Intelligent dissent

One of the significant criticisms leveled against Intelligent Design is ID shouldn't be considered a valid form of scientific inquiry because ID proponents haven't published any articles in any peer reviewed journals.

1. Of course, this isn't true (e.g. see here). ID proponents have published articles in scientific journals. Sure, it hasn't been a huge amount, but there have been enough and enough notable instances to qualify.

2. In any case, it seems to me the climate in academia toward ID is extremely hostile. Take the case of Richard Sternberg. Or several other examples in the movie Expelled.

In fact, I'd think it's arguably similar enough to the climate toward democracy in modern China. If this is true, then it's amazing any ID articles have been published at all!

And, if this is true, then it's a bit unfair of ID-critics to allege, on the one hand, that ID hasn't published any peer reviewed articles, but, on the other hand, attempt to keep them from publishing peer reviewed articles.

Such behavior strikes me as duplicitous. If so, then it, in itself, would seem to be further evidence of suppression.

3. Doubtless those who suppress ID don't see it this way. Rather, if it is suppression, they'd probably argue it's akin to suppressing the teaching of astrology. What's wrong with suppressing teaching astrology to students at major universities?

Of course, given postmodernism including its overvaluation of tolerance, its insistence on tolerance of all viewpoints at any cost, how can any such university consistently suppress teaching anything, really?

More importantly, how do we know astrology is bunk? Because of poor evidence, poor arguments, contradictory science, and so forth.

But ID hardly fits into these categories. At a minimum, ID makes reasonable arguments. One might not agree with the arguments, but the arguments aren't on par with arguments for astrology.

4. The best way to debunk ID is to engage and debunk their arguments. However, many if not most major academic institutions seek to silence ID before the arguments are even presented.

Let's grant (arguendo) ID is mistaken. Even so, such an absolutist attitude coupled with authoritarian strongarm measures to suppress ID at major academic institutions is more poisonous to academia than ID ever could be.

The central dogma

The people groaned because of their slavery and cried out for help. Their cry for rescue from slavery came up to God. And God heard their groaning, and God remembered. God saw the people, and God knew.

Then the LORD said, "I have surely seen the affliction of my people who are in bondage to scientism and have heard their cry because of their taskmasters. I know their sufferings, and I have come down to deliver them out of the hand of the scientific dogmatists and metaphysical-methodological naturalists, and to bring them up out of that land to a good and broad land, a land flowing with reason and intelligence. And now, behold, the cry of my people has come to me, and I have also seen the oppression with which the secularists oppress them. Come, I will send you to the President of the United States that you may bring my people out of captivity."

So the LORD said to William Dembski and Stephen Meyer, "Go in, tell the President to free my people from the tyranny of the scientific establishment." Dembski and Meyer did as the LORD commanded. In the sight of the President and in the sight of his cabinet he lifted up reason and evidence and sound argumentation and struck down the modern evolutionary synthesis, and the theory turned into nonsense. And the evolutionary paradigm died, and stank, so that the New Atheists could not drink from its source. There was confusion throughout all the land of secular science. But the secular scientists did the same by their secret arts by adding facilitated variation, Gaia hypothesis, macromutation theory, natural genetic engineering, neo-Lamarckian inheritance, ontogenic evolution, phyletic gradualism, punctuated equilibrium, punctuated gradualism, the selfish gene, symbiogenesis, etc. So the President's heart remained hardened, and he would not listen to them, as the LORD had said. The President turned and went into his house, and he did not take even this to heart. And all the evolutionary biological research assistants, doctoral candidates, postdocs, and assistant professors hoping for tenure looked for truth to drink, for they could not drink from these vague half-truths.

Then the LORD said to Dembski and Meyer, "Go in to the President and say to him, 'Thus says the LORD, Let my people go, that they may come and reason with me. But if you refuse to let them go, behold, I will plague all your country with scientific dissent.'" And the LORD said to Dembski, "Say to Meyer, 'Stretch out your hand with your staff over the universities, over the laboratories and over the research centers, and make scientific dissent come up on the land!'" So Meyer stretched out his hand over ivory tower institutions, and scientific dissent came up and covered the land. But the secular scientists did the same by their secret arts and made scientific dissent come up on the land. Richard Dawkins, Henry Gee, Stephen Jay Gould, Marc Kirschner, Richard Lewontin, Lynn Margulis, Ernst Mayr, James Shapiro, John Maynard Smith, E.O. Wilson, Carl Woese, Lewis Wolpert, etc. created various modifications and theories within theories of evolution. And the President hardened his heart and would not listen to Dembski and Meyer.

Then the LORD said to Dembski, "Say to Meyer, 'Stretch out your staff and strike the dust of the earth, so that life might come forth.'" And they did so. Meyer stretched out his hand with his staff and struck the dust of the earth, and life came forth. All the dust of the earth became life in all the land. The secular scientists called upon their secret arts including the clay model, the Miller-Urey experiment, Mycoplasma laboratorium, the PAH and RNA world hypotheses, and panspermia. The secular scientists tried by their secret arts to produce life, but they could not. Then the secular scientists said to the President, "This is the finger of God." But the President's heart was hardened, and he would not listen to them, as the LORD had said.

Now the secular scientists were more crafty than any other scientist in the field of neo-Darwinian evolution. They said to some Christians, "Did God actually say, 'You shall not believe evolution is true'?" And these Christians said to the secular scientists, "We may believe evolution is true, but God said, 'You shall not believe evolution is true if you want to be rational, neither shall you so much as think about evolution, lest you become irrational.'" But the secular scientists told these Christians, "You will not surely become irrational if you so much as think about evolution. For God knows that when you think about it your eyes will be opened, and you will see the panoply of life, the universe, and everything like God." So when these Christians saw that there was nothing wrong with thinking about evolution, that it was fascinating, that there were endless forms most beautiful, and it made them feel as if they were in step with modern academic and scientific opinion, they took hold of evolution and fed deeply upon it. Then their eyes were opened, and they knew that they were theistic evolutionists. And they joined hands with like-minded scholars including theologians who denied the historical Adam and made themselves an organization called BioLogos.

Plymouth

As we know, the Pilgrims founded Plymouth Colony in Massachusetts in 1620. I believe Plymouth Colony was named after the town of Plymouth in England from which the Pilgrims originally set sail on the Mayflower.

Several years later in 1625 the Pilgrims sent two ships back to England loaded with goods like beaver skins and dried fish to trade for other supplies the colony needed. Governor William Bradford wrote about what happened next in his journal Of Plymouth Plantation. I've updated the language.

As the two ships went joyfully home together, the bigger ship towing the lesser all the way till they are shot deep into the English channel, almost within sight of Plymouth; and yet there she was unhappily taken by a Turkish man-of-war, and carried off to Sally, where the master of the ship and the men were made slaves, and many of the beaver skins were sold for four pence apiece. Thus were all their hopes dashed, and the joyful news they meant to carry home turned to heavy tidings. Some thought this a hand of God for their too great exaction of the poor plantation, but God's judgments are unsearchable, neither dare I be bold therewith; however it shows us the uncertainty of all human things, and what litle cause there is of joying in them or trusting to them.