After the sudden demonetization move from the government, a nearby working ATM is probably a top concern in minds of most people right now.

A Trinamool leader was killed in a violent attack in the Jagatdal area of North 24 Parganas district on Wednesday morning, amid the ongoing by-election to six assembly seats in West Bengal. Miscreants reportedly hurled bombs and fired bullets, leading to

Shrikant Shinde, son of Maharashtra's Chief Minister Eknath Shinde, has made a significant mark in politics. His journey mirrors his father's rise from adversity to prominence. Despite family challenges, including the loss of two siblings, Shrikant excelled academically, earning an MS

The Adani Group will invest USD 10 billion in US energy security and resilient infrastructure projects, aiming to create up to 15,000 jobs.

Unlike the broadcast networks that have traditionally served as the NFL's primary TV partners, Netflix has always generated most of its revenue from subscriber fees, not ad sales.

Sporadic incidents of unrest marred the West Bengal bypolls, with a local Trinamool Congress worker Ashok Shaw dying following a crude bomb attack in Bhatpara, an area adjoining Naihati assembly constituency where voting was underway.

I�m honestly lost and struggling to maintain my sobriety since my space left me two months ago, six months after my rehab Originally, I think we both had such a bright outlook She�s always had...

My professorial wife, Suzanne Shu, is doing some very interesting research in the marketing department of the Cox School of Business at Southern Methodist University. Recently, she was invited to give a talk on special consumer choice topics to the PR firm, The Richards Group. The Richards Group represents a number of well-known clients such as AIM Investments, Comcast, Corona Beer, Fruit of the Loom, The Home Depot, M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, Nortel, and Sub-Zero Freezer Company.

In any case, we are planning to cover some of the same topics presented to The Richards Group in a series of posts over the coming weeks. Thanks for tuning in!

Steve Shu
Managing Director
S4 Management Group
Email: sshu@s4management.com
Web: http://www.s4management.com

Note: once the current article 'Areas and Doctrines' is adequately summarized with about 25 Areas and Doctrines that are central and relevant to the Christian faith - The article is going to be made open to participation from others and for group (roundtable) discussion - Then a more finalized version of the article will be published similar to 'The Chicago Statement on Biblical Application' though with the working title of 'The Pierre Statement on Biblical Doctrines' by confessing Christians - The publishing of the document 'The Pierre Statement on Biblical Doctrines' by confessing Christians should be able to be accomplished sometime within 2012 - I'll update the post with an email that people can contact me with regarding the Pierre Statement on Biblical Doctrines - All the best, God bless everyone ~ David Anson Brown

Basic Christian: Links to Free Mp3s.

Oswald Chambers sometimes startled audiences with his vigorous thinking and his vivid expression. Even those who disagreed with what he said found his teachings difficult to dismiss and all but impossible to ignore. Often his humor drove home a sensitive point: "Have we ever got into the way of letting God work, or are we so amazingly important that we really wonder in our nerves and ways what the Almighty does before we are up in the morning!" Oswald Chambers was not famous during his lifetime. At the time of his death in 1917 at the age of forty-three, only three books bearing his name had been published. Among a relatively small circle of Christians in Britain and the U.S., Chambers was much appreciated as a teacher of rare insight and expression, but he was not widely known. Chambers was born in Aberdeen, Scotland, in 1874, the youngest son of a Baptist minister. He spent his boyhood years in Perth; then his family moved to London when Oswald was fifteen. Shortly after the move to London, Oswald made his public profession of faith in Christ and became a member of Rye Lane Baptist Church. This marked a period of rapid spiritual growth, along with an intense struggle to find God's will and way for his life. -- A gifted artist and musician, Chambers trained at London's Royal Academy of Art, sensing God's direction to be an ambassador for Christ in the world of art and aesthetics. While studying at the University of Edinburgh (1895-96), he decided, after an agonizing internal battle, to study for the ministry. He left the university and entered Dunoon College, near Glasgow, where he remained as a student, then a tutor for nine years. In 1906 he traveled to the United States, spending six months teaching at God's Bible School in Cincinnati, Ohio. From there, he went to Japan, visiting the Tokyo Bible School, founded by Mr. and Mrs. Charles Cowman. This journey around the world in 1906-1907 marked his transition from Dunoon College to fulltime work with the Pentecostal League of Prayer. During the last decade of his life, Chambers served as: • traveling speaker and representative of the League of Prayer, 1907-10 • principal and main teacher of the Bible Training College, London, 1911-15 • YMCA chaplain to British Commonwealth soldiers in Egypt, 1915-17. He died in Cairo on November 15, 1917, of complications following an emergency appendectomy. The complete story of his life is told in Oswald Chambers: Abandoned to God (1993).

Bacon, Francis, Lord Verulam, and Viscount St. Alban's, philosopher and statesman, was the youngest son of Sir Nicholas Bacon, Lord Keeper, by his second wife, a daughter of Sir Anthony Cooke, whose sister married William Cecil, Lord Burghley, the great minister of Queen Elizabeth. He was born at York House in the Strand on Jan. 22, 1561, and in his 13th year was sent with his elder brother Anthony to Trinity College, Cambridge. Here he first met the Queen, who was impressed by his precocious intellect, and was accustomed to call him "the young Lord Keeper." Here also he became dissatisfied with the Aristotelian philosophy as being unfruitful and leading only to resultless disputation. -- In 1576 he entered Gray's Inn, and in the same year joined the embassy of Sir Amyas Paulet to France, where he remained until 1579. The death of his father in that year, before he had completed an intended provision for him, gave an adverse turn to his fortunes, and rendered it necessary that he should decide upon a profession. He accordingly returned to Gray's Inn, and, after an unsuccessful attempt to induce Burghley to give him a post at court, and thus enable him to devote himself to a life of learning, he gave himself seriously to the study of law, and was called to the Bar in 1582. He did not, however, desert philosophy, and published a Latin tract, Temporis Partus Maximus (the Greatest Birth of Time), the first rough draft of his own system. -- Two years later, in 1584, he entered the House of Commons as member for Melcombe, sitting subsequently for Taunton (1586), Liverpool (1589), Middlesex (1593), and Southampton (1597). In the Parliament of 1586 he took a prominent part in urging the execution of Mary Queen of Scots. About this time he seems again to have approached his powerful uncle, the result of which may possibly be traced in his rapid progress at the Bar, and in his receiving, in 1589, the reversion to the Clerkship of the Star Chamber, a valuable appointment, into the enjoyment of which, however, he did not enter until 1608. -- About 1591 he formed a friendship with the Earl of Essex, from whom he received many tokens of kindness ill requited. In 1593 the offices of Attorney-general, and subsequently of Solicitor-general became vacant, and Essex used his influence on Bacon's behalf, but unsuccessfully, the former being given to Coke, the famous lawyer. These disappointments may have been owing to a speech made by Bacon on a question of subsidies. To console him for them Essex presented him with a property at Twickenham, which he subsequently sold for £1800, equivalent to a much larger sum now. -- In 1596 he was made a Queen's Counsel, but missed the appointment of Master of the Rolls, and in the next year (1597), he published the first edition of his Essays, ten in number, combined with Sarced Meditations and the Coulours of Good and Evil. By 1601 Essex had lost the Queen's favour, and had raised his rebellion, and Bacon was one of those appointed to investigate the charges against him, and examine witnesess, in connection with which he showed an ungrateful and indecent eagerness in pressing the case against his former friend and benefactor, who was executed on Feb. 25, 1601. This act Bacon endeavoured to justify in A Declaration of the Practices and Treasons, etc., of...the Earl of Essex, etc. His circumstances had for some time been bad, and he had been arrested for debt: he had, however, received a gift of a fine of £1200 on one of Essex's accomplices. -- The accession of James VI in 1603 gave a favourable turn to his fortunes: he was knighted, and endeavoured to set himself right with the new powers by writing his Apologie (defence) of his proceedings in the case of Essex, who had favoured the succession of James. In the first Parliament of the new king he sat for St. Alban's, and was appointed a Commissioner for Union with Scotland. In 1605 he published The Advancement of Learning, dedicated, with fulsome flattery, to the king. The following year he married Alice Barnham, the daughter of a London merchant, and in 1607 he was made Solicitor-General, and wrote Cogita et Visa, a first sketch of the Novum Organum, followed in 1609 by The Wisdom of the Ancients. -- Meanwhile (in 1608), he had entered upon the Clerkship of the Star Chamber, and was in the enjoyment of a large income; but old debts and present extravagance kept him embarrassed, and he endeavoured to obtain further promotion and wealth by supporting the king in his arbitrary policy. In 1613 he became Attorney-General, and in this capacity prosecuted Somerset in 1616. The year 1618 saw him Lord Keeper, and the next Lord Chancellor and Baron Verulam, a title which, in 1621, he exchanged for that of Viscount St. Albans. Meanwhile he had written the New Atlantis, a political romance, and in 1620 he presented to the king the Novum Organum, on which he had been engaged for 30 years, and which ultimately formed the main part of the Instauratio Magna. -- In his great office Bacon showed a failure of character in striking contrast with the majesty of his intellect. He was corrupt alike politically and judicially, and now the hour of retribution arrived. In 1621 a Parliamentary Committee on the administration of the law charged him with corruption under 23 counts; and so clear was the evidence that he made no attempt at defence. To the lords, who sent a committee to inquire whether the confession was really his, he replied, "My lords, it is my act, my hand, and my heart; I beseech your lordships to be merciful to a broken reed." He was sentenced to a fine of £40,000, remitted by the king, to be committed to the Tower during the king's pleasure (which was that he should be released in a few days), and to be incapable of holding office or sitting in parliament. He narrowly escaped being deprived of his titles. -- Thenceforth he devoted himself to study and writing. In 1622 appeared his History of Henry VII, and the 3rd part of the Instauratio; in 1623, History of Life and Death, the De Augmentis Scientarum, a Latin translation of the Advancement, and in 1625 the 3rd edition of the Essays, now 58 in number. He also published Apophthegms, and a translation of some of the Psalms. -- His life was now approaching its close. In March, 1626, he came to London, and shortly after, when driving on a snowy day, the idea struck him of making an experiment as to the antiseptic properties of snow, in consequence of which he caught a chill, which ended in his death on 9th April 1626. He left debts to the amount of £22,000. At the time of his death he was engaged upon Sylva Sylvarum. -- The intellect of Bacon was one of the most powerful and searching ever possessed by man, and his developments of the inductive philosophy revolutionised the future thought of the human race.

In 1643, during a period of civil war, the English "Long Parliament" (under the control of Presbyterian Puritans) convened an Assembly of Divines (mostly Puritan ministers, including a few influential Scottish commissioners) at Westminster Abbey in London. Their task was to advise Parliament on how to bring the Church of England into greater conformity with the Church of Scotland and the Continental Reformed churches. The Westminster Assembly produced documents on doctrine, church government, and worship that have largely defined Presbyterianism down to this day. These documents included a Confession of Faith (1646), a Larger Catechism (1647), and a Shorter Catechism (1647), often collectively called "the Westminster standards." Parliamentary efforts to reconstitute the established Church of England along Presbyterian lines were soon thwarted by the rise to power of Cromwell (who favored Independency) and the expulsion of Presbyterians from Parliament in 1648, and then the restoration of the monarchy in 1660, which quickly led to the reinstitution of Episcopacy and the suppression of Puritanism. -- But things were different in Scotland. The General Assembly of the Church of Scotland adopted the Confession of Faith in 1647 and the Catechisms in 1648. The Scottish Parliament ratified them in 1649 and again (after a time of political and religious strife) in 1690. The Presbyterian character of the Church of Scotland was safeguarded when Scotland and England were united under one crown in 1707. Numerous Presbyterian bodies have been formed since then, both in the United Kingdom and around the world, and they have always been constituted on the basis of the Westminster standards (although declension from them has sometimes followed). -- When the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America was formed in 1788, it adopted the Westminster standards, as containing the system of doctrine taught in the Holy Scriptures. However, it revised chapters 20.4, 23.3, and 31.2 of the Confession, basically removing the civil magistrate (i.e., the state) from involvement in ecclesiastical matters.

The Westminster Catechism was completed in 1647 by the Westminster Assembly and continues to serve as part of the doctrinal standards of many Presbyterian churches.

In 1643, the English Parliament called upon "learned, godly and judicious Divines", to meet at Westminster Abbey in order to provide advice on issues of worship, doctrine, government and discipline of the Church of England. Their meetings, over a period of five years, produced the confession of faith, as well as a Larger Catechism and a Shorter Catechism. For more than three centuries, various churches around the world have adopted the confession and the catechisms as their standards of doctrine, subordinate to the Bible. -- The Westminster Confession of Faith was modified and adopted by Congregationalists in England in the form of the Savoy Declaration (1658). Likewise, the Baptists of England modified the Savoy Declaration to produce the Second London Baptist Confession (1689). English Presbyterians, Congregationalists, and Baptists would together (with others) come to be known as Nonconformists, because they did not conform to the Act of Uniformity (1662) establishing the Church of England as the only legally approved church, though they were in many ways united by their common confessions, built on the Westminster Confession. -- Evangelical Presbyterian Church: The Evangelical Presbyterian Church, which broke from the United Presbyterian Church in the United States of America in 1981 in order to provide a conservative alternative to the older denomination, holds to the Westminster Confession of Faith composed of a combination of different editions, but based on the American version of the 1647 text.[4] The EPC holds to the Westminster Confession in light of a brief list of the essentials of the faith as drafted at its first General Assembly at Ward Church outside of Detroit, Michigan.

How the Obama Stole Christmas!

Hi All! I just got through making a widget that counts down the days, hours, minutes, and seconds until the release of Systm. This is a Konfabulator only widget.

*Note: The image below will not update as it is a screenshot. The real widget updates every second.


What is a widget? Its a small program usualy written in HTML and Javascript that is designed to do a simple task such as display the weather, a calender, to-do lists, clocks, etc. In order to work they need to be run in a program like Konfabulator or Dashboard.

UPDATE!
You can now download the widget here. Its set up on the Konfabulator widget gallery.

ou'll need to download Konfabulator to run it. I'm going to make a Dashboard version soon for all you Tiger users out there.

This is my 1st attempt at a widget, so any feedback will be most welcome.
+MacMan

Systm is here, NOW. Get the links on Systm. They've got a ton of different formats, so choose your favorite.

Kevin Rose announced that he has gotten out of his contract with G4 and will devote all of his time to Systm and theBroken. Get ready for a ton of content to be comming your way.

I'm at 20.2% downloaded on Systm. As soon as I watch it I'll post my feedback.

+MacMan

Yep, its true. They Might Be Giants (TMBG) has released their first podcast.

Here is TMBG's announcement:

They Might Be Giants' very first podcast is available right now right here. To subscribe to this unique free service subscribe here. This first episode is approximately 20 minutes long and features a number of exclusive recordings and some unusual tracks we suspect you'll find interesting. The host is the Duke of Dead Air- Cecil Portesque- broadcasting from an undisclosed, very rainy location. Future podcasts are already in the works. Please check it out, and we sincerely invite you to hip as many people you know about this show- especially you blogtopianists out there.

If you never podcasted before, you might want to check out your iTunes application if you are on a Mac or PC. Just open the application and click on the "Podcasts" button. Under "advanced" select "subscribe to podcast" and paste the below link in the field.

http://www.tmbg.com/_media/_pod/podcast.xml

If you don't have iTunes, it's avalible free from Apple. Go to apple.com to download it now.

+MacMan