Brits obsessed with sex and divorce - bishop

[ [ [['Connery is an experienced stuntman', 2]], 'http://yhoo.it/KeQd0p', '[Slideshow: See photos taken on the way down]', ' ', '630', ' ', ' ', ], [ [['Connery is an experienced stuntman', 7]], ' http://yhoo.it/KpUoHO', '[Slideshow: Death-defying daredevils]', ' ', '630', ' ', ' ', ], [ [['know that we have confidence in', 3]], 'http://yhoo.it/LqYjAX ', '[Related: The Secret Service guide to Cartagena]', ' ', '630', ' ', ' ', ], [ [['We picked up this other dog and', 5]], 'http://yhoo.it/JUSxvi', '[Related: 8 common dog fears, how to calm them]', ' ', '630', ' ', ' ', ], [ [['accused of running a fake hepatitis B', 5]], 'http://bit.ly/JnoJYN', '[Related: Did WH share raid details with filmmakers?]', ' ', '630', ' ', ' ', ], [ [['accused of running a fake hepatitis B', 3]], 'http://bit.ly/KoKiqJ', '[Factbox: AQAP, al-Qaeda in Yemen]', ' ', '630', ' ', ' ', ], [ [['have my contacts on or glasses', 3]], 'http://abcn.ws/KTE5AZ', '[Related: Should the murder charge be dropped?]', ' ', '630', ' ', ' ', ], [ [['have made this nation great as Sarah Palin', 5]], 'http://yhoo.it/JD7nlD', '[Related: Bristol Palin reality show debuts June 19]', ' ', '630', ' ', ' ', ], [ [['have made this nation great as Sarah Palin', 1]], 'http://bit.ly/JRPFRO', '[Related: McCain adviser who vetted Palin weighs in on VP race]', ' ', '630', ' ', ' ', ], [ [['A JetBlue flight from New York to Las Vegas', 3]], 'http://yhoo.it/GV9zpj', '[Related: View photos of the JetBlue plane in Amarillo]', ' ', '630', ' ', ' ', ], [ [['the 28-year-old neighborhood watchman who shot and killed', 15]], 'http://news.yahoo.com/photos/white-house-stays-out-of-teen-s-killing-slideshow/', 'Click image to see more photos', 'http://l.yimg.com/cv/ip/ap/default/120411/martinzimmermen.jpg', '630', ' ', 'AP', ], [ [['Titanic', 7]], 'http://news.yahoo.com/titanic-anniversary/', ' ', 'http://l.yimg.com/a/p/us/news/editorial/b/4e/b4e5ad9f00b5dfeeec2226d53e173569.jpeg', '550', ' ', ' ', ], [ [['He was in shock and still strapped to his seat', 6]], 'http://news.yahoo.com/photos/navy-jet-crashes-in-virginia-slideshow/', 'Click image to see more photos', 'http://l.yimg.com/cv/ip/ap/default/120406/jet_ap.jpg', '630', ' ', 'AP', ], [ [['xxxxxxxxxxxx', 11]], 'http://news.yahoo.com/photos/russian-grannies-win-bid-to-sing-at-eurovision-1331223625-slideshow/', 'Click image to see more photos', 'http://l.yimg.com/a/p/us/news/editorial/1/56/156d92f2760dcd3e75bcd649a8b85fcf.jpeg', '500', ' ', 'AP', ] ]

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Anti-aging Smoothies ? For Good Health!

Start off your day with ?smoothies? and pack in a punch of rich anti-oxidant blends of fruit, vegetables and nut milk, perhaps! Part of the excitement of going for smoothies is the concept of putting together your favourite selection of fruits and vegetables and walking right out the door with a homemade cool, nutritious drink. They are a good replacement meal and can be used for weight loss or for weight gain. Plus, all you need besides your ingredients is a reliable blender. ?

Smoothies have been around since the 1930s in the United States when health food stores started selling pureed fruit drinks. As this trend meshed-in with the rise in popularity of the Waring Blendor in the 1940s, the recipes for these fruity blends took an interesting change of direction. This was met with open arms by health advocates.

With a thick, milk-shake like consistency these plant based beverages are typically good for you, easy to prepare and takes the hassle out of cooking.

They can contain any food of your choice and have been popular with yoghurt, whey powder, soya and nut milks. Not all thick, plant-based beverages are alike. Some are just plain self-indulgent and condensed with unnecessary calories from added sugars that they become only marginally nutritious.

For healthier alternatives take the opportunity to blend as your means of including ingredients that are insufficient in your diet; foods such as your greens and fibre grains. When you do, you will feel satisfied and totally energised and healthy; while getting quality amounts of nutrients in each condensed liquid meal.

Anti-Aging ingredients of green smoothies
Try starting your day with oatmeal cereal and raisins using old fashioned rolled oats with the germ of the grain still intact, uncooked and softened after being soaked (1 minute) in cold nut milk. I personally don?t vary much from that, unless it?s to have a smoothie using similar ingredients from my cereal (without the raisins), with a banana added and poured over crushed ice.

With this beverage you will remain full for up to 3 to 4 hours. It?s packed with high amounts of protein, fibre, potassium, calcium, and other minerals and vitamins. You will also have sustained energy as the sugars are slowly released in the body keeping you invigorated for the next few hours; unlike refined sugars added into some blends that are absorbed quickly and gives you only a short burst of energy followed quickly by a big ?crash? or listlessness.

Green smoothies are easy ways to get polyphenols and chlorophyll and other rich plant nutrients in the diet by adding a green vegetable into the fruit blend. You can experiment with kale, spinach, and cucumber but choose a variety of greens throughout your week to get the anti-aging benefits from each source. You will notice your cravings for greens go up as your appetite for less nutritious foods decline.

Try to have one or two blended beverages for the day, if not more for weight balance purposes.

The trick with blended beverages is to watch how much you drink. Because they are a drink, they can be very deceiving. Consider blends as meals by themselves and don?t have anything thing else to eat for at least 2 ? hours afterwards, but still remember to keep up your liquid intake.? Fruit blends can be high in calories, some as much as 800 kilocalories or more. If this is combined with other foods in one sitting, you can see how easy it will be to gain weight.

Washing your fruits and vegetables are smart first steps before consuming them. When making your smoothies try freezing them ahead of time in a zipped lock bag; this trick eliminates the ice in the recipe, saves time and you will get a rich, thick, creamy consistency every time you blend.
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Vaishali: Mindful in the Modern Age of Technology

In today's technology-saturated world, our attention is bombarded with stimuli and distractions on an incredibly wide scale. Computers and laptops, cell phones, smartphones, not-so-smart phones, the Internet, bluetooth, Blu-ray, texting, Tweeting, videogames, iPads. Even our cars and appliances have become tainted with a technological look and feel. But does all this mental movement make us a more mindful nation, community, individual?

Does anyone today even know what mindful means? Outside of the occasional practicing Buddhist or Eastern philosophical student, does anyone even consider or value mindfulness? For the sake of clarity, let's define mindfulness as a state of complete engagement with "what is" in the present moment. In our modern world, that is an experience as common as a winning lottery ticket. Instead, today what passes for experiential normal is walking into traffic while texting because you were oblivious to anything other than your keyboard, running a red light or missing a turn because you were sucked into a cell phone conversation, missing a birthday or other important social event because you were addicted to a videogame or could not break away from updating your status on a social media site.

Mindfulness, on the other hand, is being aware of what is going on inwardly: feeling your body make contact with the chair or your feet touching the ground, sensing the air temperature against your skin. It also encompasses attention directed outwardly: listening to the sounds and noises around you. Maybe it is the wind-chimes just outside your window, or the sound of a dog barking down the street, or the sound the air-conditioning makes. It is being aware of the light around you, be it an early morning ray of sunshine coming through the window or the slight flicker of the fluorescent lights overhead in your office. Being mindful is integrating all that sensory organ information into one embodied, gentle focus that actually allows you to take in more: to be completely aware of the present moment and not just reactive to a particular portion of it.

In other words, being mindful is a relationship with the information gathered by the sensory organs in a manner that heightens your experience of "what is" as opposed to the sensory organ information fragmenting, distracting and constricting your awareness into one myopic, reductionist point of focus. Like Alice in Wonderland's pills, one form of awareness makes you big and the other makes you small.

Mindfulness allows the mind to reorganize and empty itself, much in the same way that fasting can support the body in cleansing and releasing toxins. Mindfulness is the point of meditation and deep relaxation therapies. I have been diagnosed terminal twice and have lived with extreme levels of pain and agony for many years. Practicing mindfulness allowed me to be with the pain, to live through the pain without being shattered and broken by it. When I practiced mindfulness, I was able to reduce the pain to a moment-to-moment reality. I was no longer trying to figure out how I was going to live with all of this mind-bending suffering for the rest of my life. I was not attempting to solve all future-moment problems in a single second. I was just being here, now. I only had to live with the pain one moment at a time. And that in and of itself freed me to manage the anguish each moment brought to bear.

I found it to be the same with loneliness, worry and depression. When focusing awareness on being present with "what is" there was space to process, digest and release the emotional stress. The practice of mindfulness offers the liberation of witnessing the movement of challenging forces without identifying with them as personal and contracting helplessly around them.

There is another interesting aspect of attention, and that is its fleeting potential; it is rarely here now. Even though life gives us one day at a time, one minute, one second, one moment at a time, most of us experience our attention as all over the time continuum. One instant we are thinking about a future possible moment, then within the blink of an eye we are reliving and reviewing some past event. Then, faster than the speed of thought, we are back to imagining something else ahead in the future that may or may not ever happen. Attention is so easily projected and retracted, like the breeze it can shift direction and where it will go nobody knows. Mindfulness is the practice of reseating the focus to being here now with increased consistency and ease. Mindfulness at its best rests in the present moment without an agenda. It is pure awareness minus the tyranny of the intellect.

Want to work on being a better listener? To make yourself available to really hearing those around you instead of always being preoccupied by what you want to say next? Try mindfulness. Try allowing your attention to ground you in the moment when someone else is speaking. When the attention shifts from inner dialogue mode to being aware of where your body is and the sounds around you, the receptivity to authentic listening finds a place within you to open and flourish. Sound only happens in the present moment. It does not live in the past or the future, just in the now. Mindfulness is a time-honored way of tapping into that present moment, "be here now" gateway.

Mindfulness is a practice and it requires a willing heart and spirit. There are no shortcuts in the practice of mindfulness and no matter how advanced we get, in spite of all the great technological achievements humankind will ever make, one thing is for sure. When it comes to achieving mindfulness you will never hear someone say, "They have an app for that."

For more by Vaishali, click here.

For more on mindful living, click here.

Vaishali is the author of Wisdom Rising and You Are What You Love. She is an international health & wellness speaker who has appeared on The Dr. Oz Radio Show and Oprah.com. Vaishali learned to transform her life from the threat of two terminal disease diagnoses, domestic abuse and financial devastation. Join Vaishali in Los Angeles July 21st & 22nd for a one or two day 'Create Your Health Holistically Though Chi Nei Tsang & Ayurveda" and/or "Spirituality 505" To: learn more visit here.

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Follow Vaishali on Twitter: www.twitter.com/vaishalipurplev

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Coffee Maker Reviews ? How to Choose the Perfect Espresso ...

As cliche as it may sound, java is more than just a new hot brown in order to black drink manufactured from beans. It is a lifestyle that millions of people have adopted and loved so much so that coffee makers are must-have appliances in many residences and offices. When acquiring one, many try coffee maker reviews to produce the right decision.

What exactly These Are

To put it simply, espresso maker product reviews are the authentic impressions, opinions and experiences of actual users as well as professional time intensive of the coffee makers into consideration. As you might expect, most of these product reviews outline the advantages and disadvantages of each coffee maker using the corresponding rating, that is certainly usually expressed during number of stars from to five.

If you face a coffee machine overview that extols the virtues of a particular device without touching on a demerits that other reviewers nay have mentioned, well then, your most likely reading a subscriber list marketing hype. Of course, there is nothing wrong with a producer prommmoting its product or service but when you want honest-to-goodness coffee maker reviews, then accomplish your best to adopt a more skeptical attitude.

Finding

Product reviews of everything out of baking whisks to huge refrigerators can be found in countless online sites. In the case of coffee makers, product reviews are available from the reseller sites, committed coffee web pages, and even from personal websites of coffee enthusiasts.

Just enter the keywords and phrases like coffeemaker as well as coffee machine reviews as well as the search engine will provide tons of results. People recommend going for the very best ten or 20 or so results for the better critiques.

When to Use

It needs to be emphasized that these reviews are just guides when shopping for the right products. Your requirements and preferences in an espresso maker will always be the primary criteria to keep in mind in choosing from among the numerous items in the store drawers or in the home page?s pages.

As instructions, these reviews are useful when determining the pros and cons of a certain coffee machine without the cost of really purchasing and using it all. Think of it as having a voyeuristic experience into the opinions from the actual users so that you can make use of their own experiences.

How to Use

The best way to use these coffee machine reviews is to defeat notes mentally although we prefer doing this with pen and paper. Write down the logo and models you are considering for purchase, list down the pros and cons as being the reviewers say these individuals and then make your own findings.

Of course, you may want to check out stores to see http://www.411coffeemakers.com/ what sort of coffee machine actually works ( blank ) a few stores undertake allow this kind of evaluating. When you have made ones selection, you can then check out online sites for far better deals on the brewer. You will definitely Keurig coffee machines enjoy the primary advantages of online shopping.

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Where have all the hummingbirds gone?

Public release date: 1-Jun-2012
[ | E-mail | Share ]

Contact: Cheryl Dybas
cdybas@nsf.gov
703-292-7734
National Science Foundation

Glacier lilies and broad-tailed hummingbirds out of sync

The glacier lily as it's called, is a tall, willowy plant that graces mountain meadows throughout western North America. It flowers early in spring, when the first bumblebees and hummingbirds appear.

Or did.

The lily, a plant that grows best on subalpine slopes, is fast becoming a hothouse flower. In Earth's warming temperatures, its first blooms appear some 17 days earlier than they did in the 1970s, scientists David Inouye and Amy McKinney of the University of Maryland and colleagues have found.

The problem, say the biologists, with the earlier timing of these first blooms is that the glacier lily is no longer synchronized with the arrival of broad-tailed hummingbirds, which depend on glacier lilies for nectar.

By the time the hummingbirds fly in, many of the flowers have withered away, their nectar-laden blooms going with them.

Broad-tailed hummingbirds migrate north from Central America every spring to high-mountain breeding sites in the western United States. The birds have only a short mountain summer to raise their young. Male hummingbirds scout for territories before the first flowers bloom.

But the time between the first hummingbird and the first bloom has collapsed by 13 days over the past four decades, say Inouye and McKinney. "In some years," says McKinney, "the lilies have already bloomed by the time the first hummingbird lands."

The biologists calculate that if current trends continue, in two decades the hummingbirds will miss the first flowers entirely.

The results are reported in a paper in the current issue of the journal Ecology. In addition to McKinney and Inouye, co-authors of the paper are Paul CaraDonna of the University of Arizona; Billy Barr of the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory in Crested Butte, Colo.; David Bertelsen of the University of Arizona; and Nickolas Waser, affiliated with all three institutions.

"Northern species, such as the broad-tailed hummingbird, are most at risk of arriving at their breeding sites after their key food resources are no longer available, yet ecologists predict that species will move northward as climate warms," says Saran Twombly, program director in the National Science Foundation's Division of Environmental Biology, which funded the research.

"These conflicting pressures challenge society to ensure that species don't soon find themselves without a suitable place to live."

Broad-tailed hummingbirds that breed farther south have fewer challenges.

"In Arizona, for example," says Inouye, "there's no obvious narrowing of the timing between the first arriving males and the first blooms of, in this case, the nectar-containing Indian paintbrush."

Higher latitudes may be more likely to get out of sync ecologically because global warming is happening fastest there.

As the snow continues to melt earlier in the spring, bringing earlier flowering, says Inouye, the mountains may come alive with glacier lilies long before hummingbirds can complete their journey north.

"Where have all the flowers gone?" then will be "where have all the hummingbirds gone?"

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AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.

Public release date: 1-Jun-2012
[ | E-mail | Share ]

Contact: Cheryl Dybas
cdybas@nsf.gov
703-292-7734
National Science Foundation

Glacier lilies and broad-tailed hummingbirds out of sync

The glacier lily as it's called, is a tall, willowy plant that graces mountain meadows throughout western North America. It flowers early in spring, when the first bumblebees and hummingbirds appear.

Or did.

The lily, a plant that grows best on subalpine slopes, is fast becoming a hothouse flower. In Earth's warming temperatures, its first blooms appear some 17 days earlier than they did in the 1970s, scientists David Inouye and Amy McKinney of the University of Maryland and colleagues have found.

The problem, say the biologists, with the earlier timing of these first blooms is that the glacier lily is no longer synchronized with the arrival of broad-tailed hummingbirds, which depend on glacier lilies for nectar.

By the time the hummingbirds fly in, many of the flowers have withered away, their nectar-laden blooms going with them.

Broad-tailed hummingbirds migrate north from Central America every spring to high-mountain breeding sites in the western United States. The birds have only a short mountain summer to raise their young. Male hummingbirds scout for territories before the first flowers bloom.

But the time between the first hummingbird and the first bloom has collapsed by 13 days over the past four decades, say Inouye and McKinney. "In some years," says McKinney, "the lilies have already bloomed by the time the first hummingbird lands."

The biologists calculate that if current trends continue, in two decades the hummingbirds will miss the first flowers entirely.

The results are reported in a paper in the current issue of the journal Ecology. In addition to McKinney and Inouye, co-authors of the paper are Paul CaraDonna of the University of Arizona; Billy Barr of the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory in Crested Butte, Colo.; David Bertelsen of the University of Arizona; and Nickolas Waser, affiliated with all three institutions.

"Northern species, such as the broad-tailed hummingbird, are most at risk of arriving at their breeding sites after their key food resources are no longer available, yet ecologists predict that species will move northward as climate warms," says Saran Twombly, program director in the National Science Foundation's Division of Environmental Biology, which funded the research.

"These conflicting pressures challenge society to ensure that species don't soon find themselves without a suitable place to live."

Broad-tailed hummingbirds that breed farther south have fewer challenges.

"In Arizona, for example," says Inouye, "there's no obvious narrowing of the timing between the first arriving males and the first blooms of, in this case, the nectar-containing Indian paintbrush."

Higher latitudes may be more likely to get out of sync ecologically because global warming is happening fastest there.

As the snow continues to melt earlier in the spring, bringing earlier flowering, says Inouye, the mountains may come alive with glacier lilies long before hummingbirds can complete their journey north.

"Where have all the flowers gone?" then will be "where have all the hummingbirds gone?"

###

---

[ | E-mail | Share ]

?

AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.

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Remember, You're Dating Your Neighbor | glory from dust

I don?t often rave about books. I am a lover of books, and I read a lot of them, but I rarely do any raving. And if I do anything approaching raving, it?s usually to tout some old solid Puritan volume ? Richard Sibbes?s recently published collection of sermons on the Song of Solomon, for example.

But then a genuine gem comes along, and, lo and behold, I can?t help but rave about it. That gem of a book is?Sex, Dating, and Relationships: A Fresh Approach, published in February 2012 by Crossway and written by Gerald Hiestand and Jay Thomas, two wise and well-equipped pastor-theologians. (You can get yourself a copy on Amazon for about $10).

I hope to convince you that every pastor, discipler, parent, and young adult should read, study, and discuss this book.

What We?re Not Talking About (Well)

We evangelicals talk a lot about marriage. Whether it?s defending against perversions of the institution from within and without the church, or sitting down at the feet of sage pastors and pastors? wives to hear the lessons they have to teach about what Christian marriage is and is not, we spill a lot of ink and spend a lot of breath and write a lot of blog posts about marriage. That is partly because in our particular cultural moment it?s a conversation we need to have, and, I think, mainly because Biblically speaking it?s a conversation whose contours are relatively clear. No pastor can honestly say the Bible has nothing to say about marriage and married life.

But that is not the case ? or at least it hasn?t seemed to be the case ? with dating. Pastors routinely say to their congregations, and especially the young folks and college groups, that the Scriptures have little to nothing to say about romantic relationships pre-wedding. To earnest questioners who want to know what dating should look like and how it should work, many pastors give a less than pastoral answer: ?Well, beyond the rule about not having sex before your wedding night, you know, it?s really up to you and the Lord as to how to find your future spouse and what romance will look like as you date.? How supremely unsatisfying!

The Antidote

Enter pastors Gerald Hiestand and Jay Thomas. These men, wielding God?s truth well and winsomely, are like superheroes swooping in to save the day ? or at least to save dating. They enter a realm already populated by ideas and perspectives (some good and some bad ? probably mostly bad). And while cleaning up the debris and putting things back in their places, the authors do a great deal to elevate, reframe and refocus, and bring gospel simplicity to the topic of dating, all with a refreshing clarity and firm-but-gentle pastoral tone. It is truly a fresh approach: God-centered where we are strongly tempted ? and have tended ? to focus on ourselves.

Here?s the book?s main argument in the authors? own words:

[T]he Bible is silent about sexual boundaries within a dating relationship precisely because God does not view a dating relationship as something distinct from the neighbor relationship. Further, the Bible?s silence regarding dating relationships is not an instance of the Bible?s being silent on dating because it did not exist when the Bible was written, such as one could argue about cars or computers. On the contrary, sexual propriety is an issue the Bible pays a great deal of attention to. While God has not explicitly prescribed the means by which we are to move from the neighbor relationship to the marriage relationship (i.e., courting, dating, arranged marriages), he has clearly prescribed how he expects all men and women to act outside the marriage relationship. Far be it from us to invent our own guidelines of sexual propriety based on our relatively modern way of conducting premarital relations. (p. 53)

By showing that God does offer direction for dating relationships in his Word, if slightly indirectly, Hiestand and Thomas open up a treasure trove of Biblical wisdom. Dating is no longer a relational and sexual free-for-all; it has clear boundaries, not vague ones that you and your boyfriend or girlfriend devise for yourselves ? which, the authors point out, is never a good idea.

The reason for this, which the authors so ably lay out in the first two chapters and then continue to weave through the rest of the book, is that sexual propriety is not about God?s placing arbitrary restrictions on our relationships with the opposite sex. Indeed nothing God calls us to is wanton or capricious. God?s commands are all ?about what brings him the most glory? (p. 14). And what brings him the most glory is our reflecting his holiness and his grace more perfectly. Sex is all about the gospel (ch. 1), and from this reality flow all kinds of implications for how we should relate inside?and?outside of marriage, the only proper realm for sexual activity. Propriety in sexual matters is actually a means of protecting the Good News, where impropriety (sin is the better word) garbles and miscommunicates and mishandles that Good News.

The authors admit from the start that their message will be countercultural even within the church (p. 15). Yet it is my sense that even though it may cut against the grain, the fact that the radicalism of the authors? exhortation to purity comes not from within themselves but from God?s own heart means the Holy Spirit will use this book to convict and encourage in a big way.

Should We Kiss Dating Goodbye?

So what do we do about it? Readers do not have to wonder how to put all this into practice. Hiestand and Thomas are men of great knowledge and understanding, to be sure, but they impart truth not only through solid theological formulations but also with wise pastoral counsel. And though what they are saying is radical in a sense, they are not overly reactionary in their approach.

Sex, Dating, and Relationships?is not about abolishing dating. (That?s some good news for some of you who may be trembling by this point.) It?s about reforming dating in light of our sinful ways and God?s good design.

And what does that entail? Well, for the authors it?s important to point out that dating, while an acceptable precursor to marriage, is not a Biblical category of male-female relationship. The person you are going out on dates with is not your pre-spouse but a neighbor, and he or she does not cease to be a neighbor (with whom sexual activity is not permitted) until marriage (when sexual activity, according to Paul, is in fact commanded!).

We should not be swayed into believing otherwise by descriptions of ?committed? dating relationships. Commitment, Hiestand and Thomas remind us, is found in a solemn and rock-solid wedding vow, not in a temporary relationship that is only ?permanent for now.? Dating is always casual until/unless it becomes an engagement. (So the authors speak directly to women: ?In years gone by, a man would court a woman to be his wife. But in our day, a man courts a woman to be his girlfriend. How lame is that?? [p. 63])

How should dating be different? Hiestand and Thomas put forward a solution they call ?dating friendships.? These cut out the romantic and sexual overtones of typical dating relationships and structure the dates around getting to know one another as good friends. This is guided by four principles (backed up by Scriptural passages throughout the book):

1. ?Maintaining the guidelines of sexual and romantic purity found in the neighbor relationship;
2. Communicating clearly about one?s intentions;
3. Viewing dating as an activity rather than a category of relationship; and
4. Considering a relationship?s exclusivity as voluntary? (p. 93).

Is this a good solution? I think so! Is it the only solution based on the problems laid out in the book? Probably not. I think the proof is probably somewhere in the pudding. What would it look like for a pastor of college ministries, say, to begin counseling all students under his care to date in the way Hiestand and Thomas recommend? Does it go well, or could it go better if the counsel were tweaked? As for me, I think this is something to be tested and figured out in the crucible of the local church.

Why Read It?

To finish up my rambling ramshackle review, I want to enumerate some of the reasons I think this book should be widely read. First off, the book covers much more than I?ve been able to summarize. It deals with some interesting issues in places, like whether sexual desire is biologically determined and incapable of being controlled, and also features later chapters on taking this notion of radical purity into your lifestyle (beyond dating) and on singleness.?Sex, Dating, and Relationships offers much more than a discussion of dating, in other words; and whether or not all the chapters hang together as well as they could, every page of the book is nonetheless well written and well argued and well worth reading.

Secondly, and I hope this has been obvious, this book and the issues it touches on are so relevant for the church today and every day. What is accomplished in the book merits reading and consideration by pastors (especially the ones who go around teaching that everyone can just figure out dating for themselves!), those who are involved in the lives of single people in the church, including lay disciplers, student ministers, and the like, and perhaps most of all by parents and singles themselves.

Thirdly, the book has been expertly enriched with questions for reflection at the end of each chapter. These make?Sex, Dating, and Relationships quite useable as a book for small groups as well as for extended individual study and grappling.

If we as a church want to be built up by healthy marriages and healthy celibates, the issues tackled in Hiestand and Thomas?s book are critical for us to understand, wrestle with, and work out in our own lives and in the lives of others. Tolle lege!

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Wi-Fi network names reveal Obama sentiments in your city

3 hrs.

Devin Coldewey

When you set up your home's wireless router, you might pick a name like "Devin's Place,"?or just?leave it as the default -- or maybe you'll use it as an opportunity to advertise your political leanings. "Voteobama," for instance, or perhaps "obamasux." OpenSignalMaps, a service that tracks and maps Wi-Fi signals, tracked routers being used for this purpose all over the country; you can?see who's waving their Obama flag in your city using their interactive map.

Their database has nearly 75 million Wi-Fi access points mapped, and somewhat surprisingly, less than a thousand of those expressed some political leaning, or at least one that mentions the President.

There is a regional bias, though it's not so strong as one might expect. New York is fairly pro-Obama:

While southern Florida is far more negative:

The breakdown was more or less even when accounting for errors, such as the erroneous labeling of a Wi-Fi name as positive when it is in fact negative, and that sort of thing. Internationally, there was much more of a net positive in Obama mentions.

The blog post also contains a snapshot of Buenos Aires, where there are scores of Wi-Fi names that support the president of Argentina, Cristina?Fernandez de Kirchner, and hundreds more that may refer to her (but are just as likely, perhaps, to belong to someone named Cristina):

Of course, it is a rather rough and crude method, but fun nevertheless. No one would use it for a serious indicator of the partisan status of any particular city or region, but such highly public displays of political views are still interesting.

You can explore the Obama and?Cristina maps over at OpenSignalMaps' blog post.

Devin Coldewey is a contributing writer for msnbc.com. His personal website is coldewey.cc.

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