Sometimes the world can feel out of control so it's nice to think that the one thing we do have control of is what goes on inside our own heads. But, what if this wasn't as true as we'd like to believe?

CJ reviews two of 2017's best films.

They're small, feisty and loud and chances are, you have several living in your home. Asian house geckos are one of the most successful invasive species in Australia, and biologists are concerned they're spreading from suburbia into bushland. Curious Brisbane investigates.

Energy policy is confusing. There are no shortage of acronyms and the policies change almost as often as the leaders do. Here we've tried to answer your questions.

Australian icon Les Hiddins is back and instead of publishing another book, the Bush Tucker Man has gone digital, with a searchable website and a social media account.

Sixty per cent of all barramundi consumed in Australia comes from overseas and half the fish-eating population, according to new research, has no idea.

The transitional return to work is thankfully on – but companies still face the challenge of maintaining social distancing guidelines while preserving business productivity.

The Office of Student Life created two kind Zoom backgrounds you can use to spread virtual kindness...

IBM Business Partners can listen to this series of short, powerful discussions and learn how to help their clients deal with the pain points of the current complex economic environment.

Now IBM Business Partners can incorporate the Smarter Planet vision and innovative way of thinking into their marketing and Web presence by embedding the new Smarter Planet widget on their site. It's easy, and there's no cost.

To celebrate 40th anniversary of "Friday the 13th," take this quiz to test your knowledge of the iconic horror series.

Shirley (June 5, VOD) Elisabeth Moss plays celebrated novelist Shirley Jackson in Josephine Decker’s Sundance-award winning drama. The film premiered to strong reviews and word of mouth at last year’s Toronto International Film Festival.

Many talented, creative clients and colleagues have physical limitations, such as blindness or visual impairment, deafness or limited mobility. When you schedule a meeting, do you take potential disabilities into consideration? These 10 steps should help you design your meeting and include everyone.

Phishing scammers need a little help scamming you!

A very long scam e-mail from Linda Zhong who lives in another dimension in time.

We have a friend from Flipora, which we did not know we had... Oh sorry our mistake, iyaloo27@gmail.com is not our friend, he/she is a spammer and spammers are our enemy.

Mr Larry Smith's rely to our questions.

A fake Chase e-mail that has PHISHING written all over it.

Margaret Loughrey wants to give you some of her winnings... not really... 419 scammers are piggybacking on her story, which is already OLD news.

Phishing scammers using UCount awards as bait to steal your Standard Bank Internet Banking login details.

New Happy Song "Your Turn Me All Around" By CHICAGOBOY Out Now

Dynamic Interviews With Ordinary People Doing Extraordinary Things

By Rob Stein, Carmel Wroth, Alyson Hurt

To safely phase out social distancing measures, the U.S. needs more diagnostic testing for the coronavirus, experts say. But how much more?

The Trump administration said on April 27 that the U.S. will soon have enough capacity to conduct double the current amount of testing for active infections. The country has done nearly 248,000 tests daily on average in the past seven days, according to the nonprofit COVID Tracking Project. Doubling that would mean doing about 496,000 a day.

Will that be enough? What benchmark should states try to hit?

One prominent research group, Harvard's Global Health Institute, proposes that the U.S. should be doing more than 900,000 tests per day as a country. This projection, released Thursday, is a big jump from its earlier projection of testing need, which had been between 500,000 and 600,000 daily.

Harvard's testing estimate increased, says Ashish Jha, director of the Global Health Institute, because the latest modeling shows that the outbreak in the United States is worse than projected earlier.

"Just in the last few weeks, all of the models have converged on many more people getting infected and many more people [dying]," he says.

But each state's specific need for testing varies depending on the size of its outbreak, explains Jha. The bigger the outbreak, the more testing is needed.

On Thursday, Jha's group at Harvard published a simulation that estimates the amount of testing needed in each state by May 15. In the graphic below, we compare these estimates with the average numbers of daily tests states are currently doing.

Two ways to assess whether testing is adequate

To make their state-by-state estimates, the Harvard Global Health Institute group started from a model of future case counts. It calculated how much testing would be needed for a state to test all infected people and any close contacts they may have exposed to the virus. (The simulation estimates testing 10 contacts on average.)

"Testing is outbreak control 101, because what testing lets you do is figure out who's infected and who's not," Jha says. "And that lets you separate out the infected people from the noninfected people and bring the disease under control."

This approach is how communities can prevent outbreaks from flaring up. First, test all symptomatic people, then reach out to their close contacts and test them, and finally ask those who are infected or exposed to isolate themselves.

Our chart also shows another testing benchmark for each state: the ratio of tests conducted that come back positive. Communities that see about 10% or fewer positives among their test results are probably testing enough, the World Health Organization advises. If the rate is higher, they're likely missing a lot of active infections.

What is apparent from the data we present below is that many states are far from both the Harvard estimates and the 10% positive benchmark.

Just nine states are near or have exceeded the testing minimums estimated by Harvard; they are mostly larger, less populous states: Alaska, Hawaii, Montana, North Dakota, Oregon, Tennessee, Utah, West Virginia and Wyoming.

Several states with large outbreaks — New York, Massachusetts and Connecticut, among others — are very far from the minimum testing target. Some states that are already relaxing their social distancing restrictions, such as Georgia, Texas and Colorado, are far from the target too.

Jha offers several caveats about his group's estimates.

Estimates are directional, not literal

Researchers at the Global Health Initiative at Harvard considered three different models of the U.S. coronavirus outbreak as a starting point for their testing estimates. They found that while there was significant variation in the projections of outbreak sizes, all of the models tend to point in the same direction, i.e., if one model showed that a state needed significantly more testing, the others generally did too.

The model they used to create these estimates is the Youyang Gu COVID-19 Forecasts, which they say has tracked closely with what's actually happened on the ground. Still, the researchers caution, these numbers are not meant to be taken literally but as a guide.

Can't see this visual? Click here.

If social distancing is relaxed, testing needs may grow

The Harvard testing estimates are built on a model that assumes that states continue social distancing through May 15. And about half of states have already started lifting some of those.

Jha says that without the right measures in place to contain spread, easing up could quickly lead to new cases.

"The moment you relax, the number of cases will start climbing. And therefore, the number of tests you need to keep your society, your state from having large outbreaks will also start climbing," warns Jha.

Testing alone is not enough

A community can't base the decision that it's safe to open up on testing data alone. States should also see a consistent decline in the number of cases, of two weeks at least, according to White House guidance. If their cases are instead increasing, they should assume the number of tests they need will increase too.

And, Jha warns, testing is step one, but it won't contain an outbreak by itself. It needs to be part of "a much broader set of strategies and plans the states need to have in place" when they begin to reopen.

In fact, his group's model is built on the assumption that states are doing contact tracing and have plans to support isolation for infected or exposed people.

"I don't want anybody to just look at the number and say, we meet it and we're good to go," he says. "What this really is, is testing capacity in the context of having a really effective workforce of contact tracers."

The targets are floors, not goals

States that have reached the estimated target should think of that as a starting point.

"We've always built these as the floor, the bare minimum," Jha says. More testing would be even better, allowing states to more rapidly tamp down case surges.

In fact, other experts have proposed that the U.S. do even more testing. Paul Romer, a professor of economics at New York University, proposed in a recent white paper that if the U.S. tested every resident, every two weeks, isolating those who test positive, it could stop the pandemic in its tracks.

Jha warns that without sufficient testing, and the infrastructure in place to trace and isolate contacts, there's a real risk that states — even those with few cases now — will see new large outbreaks. "I think what people have to remember is that the virus isn't gone. The disease isn't gone. And it's going to be with us for a while," he says.

Can't see this visual? Click here.

Daniel Wood contributed to this report.

By Ezra David Romero

As the state slowly begins to reopen there’s a lot of mixed messages about what it means for Californians because counties, cities and the state are opening at different paces. 

CapRadio recently asked our audience about what concerns them about the reopening beginning to take place. We heard everything from California is opening prematurely so officials should take more caution to relief that some people can go back to work. 

There was an air of anxiety in their responses like this: “I think it is too early, and people just need to calm down. We need more testing before we start making plans to reopen so we can know what we are dealing with.”

Our listeners noted that they’re concerned because there are new transmissions and deaths from COVID-19 almost daily in the state. As of May 6 there were 60,614 cases in the state and 2,504 deaths. 

But how do we move forward? CapRadio’s region encompasses many counties and two states all with different rules. Imagine living in one county with a strict stay-at-home order and working in another where restrictions are limited. That’s the reality for many of our listeners and it’s producing anxiety for some.

We reached out to experts to find out how to meander through all the noise, news and changing guidelines.

What we looked into:

• How to find meaning within this crisis and how to fight off anxiety
• Precautions moving forward
• How do vulnerable communities move ahead? 
• Is it safe to go out into the natural world?

#62ndGrammyAwards #GrammyAwards #GrammyNominations #MelissaB

#62ndGrammyAwards #Blues #GrammyAwards #GrammyNominations

Passion is a wonderful thing. But it should not be the sole means by which we discern calling.

Having been unemployed for months at a time over the past few years, I have taken part in more than a few interviews for pastoral positions. In these interviews, there is always one question that flummoxes me more than any other, and that is when a search committee asks me what I'm passionate about, or what I feel called to, or have a heart for, or any Christian-ese variant of the question. And I totally understand what they are asking when they pose such a query, and I know what response I should give, that I am passionate about this aspect of faith or the other, that I feel called to serve a particular community. It's a standard question to ask any pastoral candidate.

My answer? "..." Confounded silence.

The easy answer would be to say that I have a heart for two things: to help the church reclaim a biblical theology of suffering, and encourage us also to embrace our calling to racial reconciliation. That is what I have found myself doing for the last four years, and is probably the kind of answer that the search committee is looking for. But there's a reason why I don't simply blurt such an answer.

You see, I never really had a passion for those who are suffering, nor for multi-ethnic ministry. That's not to say that I'm against either in any way, because they are incredibly important movements of faith. It's just that I didn't have any natural or personal inclination towards those ministries. I had no internships at inner city churches, never attended a multi-ethnic church conference, never scoured academic texts in search of the answer to the problem of pain. I always thought my passion and heart were in music and leading worship, more than anything else.

The reason ...

Continue reading...

The 3,014 square-foot residence at 565 Mountain Village Blvd. sits in the central plaza location of Telluride's Mountain Village and had a recent face lift.

"It's always neat to see them. For me, it's springtime -- hope and renewal. I just like to see them and know that they're surviving and that I can provide them with something right now."

In time for Mother’s Day, here are 12 local florists and growers to support.

#62ndGrammyAwards #Blues #GrammyAwards #GrammyNominations

The world needs people who love their enemies like Christ.

If you read the news or watch TV, you cannot escape the rise of extremism in the world. There are Islamic extremists, Hindu extremists, and even atheist extremists. Violence and hatred often mark the presence of extremism, but what if it was faced by something even stronger —love?

Maybe we need to see the rise of Christian extremists who use love to change the dark places. The world needs to be overrun with Christians who are driven, shaped, and compelled by Jesus’ words in Matthew 5:43–45: “You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven” (NIV).

Christian extremists are those whose hearts are so filled with the love of Jesus that they supernaturally love their enemies. The apostle Paul describes this extreme love in Ephesians 3:16–21, saying:

“I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.

Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen” (NIV).

America and the world need Christian extremists who love so beautifully ...

Continue reading...

His case is so convincing, so true, that it is beyond a shadow of a doubt that you are guilty.

Once you surrender your life to Christ, from that point on, when God looks at you, he sees Jesus—not your past failures or even your accomplishments. He sees Jesus in you. God’s grace is just that amazing.

It seems too incredible to believe, doesn’t it? This is why the gospel means “good news.” Because of our union life with Jesus, we are no longer sinners. Instead, we are made free from the penalty and power of sin.

We just need to learn how to walk in the freedom that has already been won by Jesus.

Picture in your mind a courtroom.

You are on trial for treason against God.

You are sitting on the left side of the room, alone. The prosecuting attorney is seated on the right. In front is a Judge whose righteousness is so blinding you can’t see his face; all you can see is his glory.

The well-dressed prosecuting attorney approaches the Judge. He turns on a 20-foot, high-definition television. For hours he assaults you with everything you’ve ever done. His case is so convincing, so true, that it is beyond a shadow of a doubt that you are guilty. You are guilty of being a sinner.

As you stand to receive your well-deserved sentence of eternity in hell from the Judge, the creaking sound of the door opening echoes through the courtroom. It’s your defense attorney. He’s wearing a ripped-up, blood-soaked robe. You notice he has holes in his wrists. As your attorney approaches the bench, a hush descends over the crowded courtroom, and under the silence you hear, “He’s never lost a case.”

The prosecuting attorney objects to your defense attorney representing you. He tells the Judge that he wants you to represent yourself.

The Judge speaks. ...

Continue reading...

Six keys to being more productive in life and ministry.

Pastors have a lot going on. We have to be present mentally, emotionally, and physically in many circumstances throughout each week. We often have families that are, or should be, a priority. We have responsibilities that pull us in many directions daily.

As the lead pastor for a church as well as a speaker, author, and doctoral student, I’m often asked, “Pastor, what is the key to your productivity?” Here are some principles I like to remember in order to be productive and try to maximize my God-given potential.

1. Know your calling

We are all first called to receive, embrace, and live from the life of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. In response to the love of God, through the Holy Spirit’s power, we grow in our love for God.

For me, after that, I am called to love my wife and then my children.

I am called to serve and shepherd Transformation Church.

I am called to influence and encourage other pastors.

I am called to be an author.

I am called to complete a doctorate in the New Testament in context.

The specifics of your calling will differ, but by knowing and stewarding our callings, we can be free of the “tyranny of the urgent.” Once we clearly define our priorities, then if it’s not on that list, we really need to consider if it’s the best use of our time and other resources.

2. Simplify and declutter your life

A lack of productivity in people’s lives is often the result of not knowing our calling and having a cluttered life, filled with activities but not production.

In our 21st-century world, choices are everywhere, and we often clutter our lives with too many options because we are afraid we are going to miss out on something. ...

Continue reading...

You can reduce water use not by forgoing the recommended eight daily glasses of water, showering less often, or draining the fishbowl but by cutting back on grass, the turf kind, that is.

My body, your choice? Re: “Inside state’s growing anti-shutdown movement,” April 27 news story

#62ndGrammyAwards #GrammyAwards #GrammyNominations #MelissaB