In commemoration of the unnecessary suicide of another beautiful mind (Aaron Schwartz), I am watching this documentary on DANGEROUS KNOWLEDGE, a great documentary.
These are two video links for the documentary.
http://videos.escapeartist.com/player/embed_player.php?vid=1831&width=300&height=250&autoplay=yes
http://videos.escapeartist.com/player/embed_player.php?vid=1832&width=300&height=250&autoplay=yes
Dangerous Knowledge
In this one-off documentary, David Malone looks at four brilliant mathematicians – Georg Cantor, Ludwig Boltzmann, Kurt Gödel and Alan Turing – whose genius has profoundly affected us, but which tragically drove them insane and eventually led to them all committing suicide.
The film begins with Georg Cantor, the great mathematician whose work proved to be the foundation for much of the 20th-century mathematics. He believed he was God’s messenger and was eventually driven insane trying to prove his theories of infinity.
Ludwig Boltzmann’s struggle to prove the existence of atoms and probability eventually drove him to suicide. Kurt Gödel, the introverted confidant of Einstein, proved that there would always be problems which were outside human logic. His life ended in a sanatorium where he starved himself to death.
Finally, Alan Turing, the great Bletchley Park code breaker, father of computer science and homosexual, died trying to prove that some things are fundamentally unprovable.
The film also talks to the latest in the line of thinkers who have continued to pursue the question of whether there are things that mathematics and the human mind cannot know. They include Greg Chaitin, mathematician at the IBM TJ Watson Research Center, New York, and Roger Penrose.
Dangerous Knowledge tackles some of the profound questions about the true nature of reality that mathematical thinkers are still trying to answer today.
http://hutchcraft.us1.list-manage2.com/track/click?u=4982b673c348d54cfae116dbb&id=803047bb6a&e=d431eb688e
What the Storm Left Behind – #6788
Guns and Chainsaws
Latest Blog from
Ron Hutchcraft
I was a young teenager when I faced my first issue with gun control. My dad took me out hunting pheasants. I was a rookie with that 12-gauge shotgun. The first time a pheasant roared up out of those cornstalks, it scared me so much, I had no gun control. Couldn’t fire a shot.
But the so much deadly violence and so many heart-wrenching deaths of innocent victims have catapulted gun control issues to center stage again.
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Wednesday, January 16, 2013
Well, I did it again; managed to head right into a storm. Like the family vacation that got slammed by a hurricane. Yeah. The record rainstorm that swamped the airport when we took our daughter to college. Yeah. Oh, and the Halloween “Snowmageddon” I think they called it that we met me in Connecticut when we were there, and then Hurricane Sandy in New York.
Being a part of that “week like no other” in New York and New Jersey? Well, it ended up having God-marks all over it. Oh, it shut down some ministry opportunities, but it clearly opened up others. And, honestly, I got to see in the storm some lessons I think I’ll carry with me for years to come.
Like that lady in a store who loudly and kind of Jersey-style brazenly blurted, “Ya know, I’m not a religious freak, but you gotta wonder if God’s trying to make us stop and think.” And I turned to her and I said, “Hey, let’s go with that idea, ma’am. I think you’re onto something there!”
You know, my definition of a storm has grown – because the storms that affect us most deeply are not on the Weather Channel. They’re those deeply personal storms that come with things like a layoff at work, or bad news at the doctor’s office, that crisis with your spouse or your child, the death that changes everything. So, a storm is “a life-altering event, beyond your control.” Well, I’ve lived a few of those: In the surgery waiting room, the funeral home, the times with no money and no groceries, the near-deadly accident. One online news source had a day-after-storm one-word headline that said it all: “Powerless.”
I’m Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about “What The Storm Left Behind.”
Now, the Bible talks about “lightning and hail, snow and clouds, stormy winds that do His bidding” (Psalm 148:8). And it reveals that “the Lord has His way in the whirlwind and the storm” (Nahum 1:3). I’m glad for verses like that. Because they tell me that beyond the mayhem and the pain of a storm, there’s some meaning; there’s some purpose. As hard as it is to see at the moment, storms serve God’s higher purposes. I’m left feeling powerless so I can experience His power as never before, because suddenly there’s no “me” to depend on. I meet God at the end of my rope.
Storms force us to reevaluate everything; get the things that really matter from the margins of our life and back to the middle. And they expose weaknesses in a levee or building materials or emergency systems, or in a marriage, a family, priorities, a superficial faith. The storm isn’t meant to destroy those things. It’s to get us to fix them while there’s time.
And those “beyond my control” events birth some qualities that might not blossom any other way, like compassion, a tender heart for the hurting, patience and endurance. And sometimes, the fury of the storm blows away junk I’ve allowed in my life – sin, attitudes, and compromises that I would never face any other way.
During Hurricane Sandy, I read an amazingly timely description of another storm on the Sea of Galilee, and it spun the lives of Jesus’ disciples “out of control.” Well, their control anyway. A few phrases say it all: “It was dark…a strong wind was blowing…the waters grew rough.” We’ve all lived that; if not physically, at least emotionally or spiritually, dark, wind blowing, waters rough.
But in their dark and dangerous moment, three little words changed everything – our word today from the Word of God in John 6 beginning in verse 17, “They saw Jesus.” That’s exactly when you do see Jesus coming to you. Saying to us as He said to them, “It is I; don’t be afraid.”
It’s in those powerless moments that we realize, “I’m not enough. I can’t do this.” And we reach for the nail-pierced hand of the Man who took all the storm of all the judgment for my sin so I could go to His heaven. Jesus is the One who can finally calm that lifelong storm in your restless soul with His storm-proof peace. Because you’re safe, no matter what the wind and waves may do. Yes, the storm is bigger than you are, but your Jesus is bigger than your storm!
You want to be sure you belong to Him – to the Lord of the storm? Would you visit our website at YoursForLife.net. There’s life-changing news there!