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The usual perception is that VoIP costs so little because everything costs less on the net. There’s fierce competition, and very low overheads etc. However you need to take into account the history of the telecommunication companies and how they relate to computer networks, and the way data actually gets around the net. An understanding of this is necessary to fully comprehend the mystery behind the VoIP vs. POTS pricing structure.

In the days before computer networks were pre-eminent telcos were using digital communication. At the start the very first digital voice circuit was used in Chicago in 1962 however ARPANET, the forerunner to today’s Internet, wasn’t in operation until 1969. The telecommunication companies used these digital circuits to make lots of voice connections over long distances something that analogue circuits did not have the capacity to do and they continue to use them for this purpose today.

Voice communication has a few unique characteristics. For one thing, it’s intrinsically real-time. You’d get annoyed if phone calls consisted of long periods of silence followed by several seconds of high-speed playback to catch up with the conversation on the other end. To keep this from happening digital voice circuits provide guaranteed Quality of Service (QoS). Once a connection is made, you’ll always get exactly the amount of bandwidth you need. It’s not just bandwidth though; latency is also taken care of by using small, fixed sized data packets. Essentially the infrastructure was specially designed to facilitate voice communication.

When computer networks began popping up in the late 1980s) the {telecommunication companies wanted in. They already had the infrastructure in place so they began looking at how they could send data over their existing phone lines. They came up with numerous technologies with different levels of success. But there was (and still is) an issue: data networks are essentially different from voice networks.

Data is transferred in packets, which can arrive out of order a long time after they’re requested, without causing problems. Internet Protocol (IP) was designed to provide best effort delivery. Telecoms companies had an expensive network in place, so there was a lot of incentive to use it. After a few misses Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) was created as a compromise technology that could carry both voice and data. However it’s much less efficient than a network intended purely for data. The overhead for data transfers on ATM is more than 10connection, compared to about one percent for an Ethernet running full-throttle.

As of late, gaming laptops were typically built to order by select companies. Even though they didn’t shift a large amount they still made the most in relation to other types of laptop computer. These popular notebooks were just too expensive. They were basically the best laptop computers that the technology was able to offer at that time. I reckon they would give us a preview of what’s to come but no one would actually buy laptop computers for gaming at that time. Sales will increase though now that global brands are entering the sector.

These notebook computers have a certain price point and these brands know they do not have to be price aggressively in this case. These days the standard notebook margins are extremely thin so it presents the opportunity for them to retrieve the gross margins. Convincing consumers to buy laptop computers is quite simple for bigger brands. I’m guessing what the the reaction from local manufacturers will be. I’m already noticing some price drops. With the capital at their disposal they could effortlessly finish the littler competition. I reckon the ignorant automatically feel at ease by purchasing from a brand they know.

The notebooks being introduced by brand name companies are all contending for the best laptop status. This holds the potential to be extremely promising for small companies. I do not believe consumers would prefer to have the same specification like everyone else in this kind of market. Generally this kind of purchaser is in the know in regards to the technology and can easily evaluate specifications. More often than not the specifications matter when compared to the styling for these sort of buyers. All consumers concur that its a favourable position. In the end, the prices will be dropped even further causing top end technology to be an alternative that we can afford. Even though that’s my take on it, its just my opinion and probably not what will take place. I doubt if the whole price of notebooks will decline but new laptops are typically at particular starting prices. Although I still believe outcomes will be good due to the saturating sector, we’ll have to see.

Often some one with religious beliefs which are very strong will enter the scientific research field and upon every experiment will insist that whatever the results they cannot conflict with the belief of their god? Recently one such nut case linear thinking human came to an online think tank claiming that man was made in gods image and her experiment would prove once and for all that man was different and divine from all other animals. She states;

“Everyone is free and entitled to there own opinions, truths and beliefs without discrimination. Does that make them hypocrites, arrogant or fanatics?”

I disagree, as if one adopts beliefs in contrary to observation, reality and research then humans generally use such terms as hypocrite, arrogant and fanatics. Indeed that is why these terms exist. In fact if you deny all the facts and still come up with a conclusion, which is 180 degrees out, you are wrong. And that would generally be due to being fanatical [dictionary definition], arrogant [personal trait allowing such] or a hypocrite [in this case claiming science and ignoring all collected data, facts and observations].

The religious nut case religious doctrine follower then stated; “I have stated my position and a simple explanation on why I feel this way towards the presentation of a genetic comparison as scientific evidence that humans are similar to humans. I have ample reason to feel this way and until I am convinced otherwise this is my position on that matter. I can say this without prejudice towards you or any other person who feels differently. More or less”

This did not sit well with one of the other think tank members in the online think tank who stated; “NO, that is incorrect. In that number one you have stated previously that your research has nothing to do with how you “feel” only scientific methods and research. Of which you have produced NONE. Only talk about scientific method, never one piece or shred of evidence. And in all your comments you have been unable to refute the evidence other than quick little trivial condemnations. Anyone can do that.”

And continued; “What I am saying is your position on the matter is IRRELEVANT as it is incorrect. How you feel about it is even more IRRELEVANT. If you feel un-convinced without further evidence, yet do so without reading any of the evidence I have presented then that is a personal problem and a problem of your person, which you will need to deal with. How you feel about me is IRRELEVANT. You are wrong. Unless you can refute the findings off all these top researchers presented and their 1000’s of references and/or know something that the top DNA researchers didn’t know and explain away all the research that backs up what I have said, along with the DNA proof, then you are blowing spit wads in the wind. And well, I just really wish you would do it somewhere else really.”

And continued some more; “You state everyone is entitled to their opinion? Sure they are and free speech, but do not claim to be researcher, scientist or seeker of truth if you deny what is right before your eyes. If you have proof then bring it on. But stop playing games.”

Wow, you know after reading all this debate it is a wonder that we do not immediately dismiss all religious followers from all research and scientific work. As this seems to be the only way we can indeed protect the integrity of the forward progression of the species and propel meaningful scientific study. Consider all this 2006.

“Lance Winslow” - Online Think Tank forum board. If you have innovative thoughts and unique perspectives, come think with Lance; http://www.WorldThinkTank.net/wttbbs/

There has been a big infactuation for laptop computers of late. Taiwanese companies have said part shortages will affect shipments this year due to the massive demands. It doesn’t look like anything will stop the rise of laptops at the moment. The technology intervals are so minute too which makes it all the more challenging.

Increasing numbers of consumers are buying laptops for gaming these days. These days you get a lot more for your money because the latest tech is always poised to be released. Playing games on laptops is indeed a reality now with the advancements in technology. I also feel that a couple gaming laptops look really good, with some slick, dominating features. With that mentioned gaming laptops should never be thought of in the same playing field as their desktop rivals. There will be a gap and the argument here is that its not a major deal for the masses. Gaming laptops will without a doubt become thinner and more quicker in the future and it will be fascinating to see.

Custom laptops will always be aquirable because the usual models do not provide the spec the certain niche markets require. Ram and disk drives are typically high performance branded parts in custom laptops which enthusiats users like. Defining what you need basically is the big benefit. Notebook computers distributed in stores are traditionally manufactured for the mass market and perhaps this isn’t you. For the niche users, custom laptops fill the void. I feel one also gets better service when purchasing a custom laptop. Big manufacturers are in fact being omitted because of this.

I feel lots of people are eagerly awaiting the upcoming wave of laptop computers. MiD’s seem to be a growing market as of now. I was not expecting so many consumers to like the concept. Supremely people would want an ultramobile laptop computer with a 15.4″ screen. Manufacturers must be busy on a solution to this as we speak. The way the market is going I predict gaming laptops will become portable. All the manufacturers are vying to come out with the next best thing so it’ll be exciting to see.

For the performance these are the best laptop computers.

How to Control
Search Engine Robots
Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to leave some code in your web site to tell the search engine spider crawlers to make your site number one? Unfortunately a robots.txt file or robots meta tag won’t do that, but they can help the crawlers to index your site better and block out the unwanted ones. First a little definition explaining: Search Engine Spiders or Crawlers - A web crawler (also known as web spider) is a program which browses the World Wide Web in a methodical, automated manner. Web crawlers are mainly used to create a copy of all the visited pages for later processing by a search engine, that will index the downloaded pages to provide fast searches. A web crawler is one type of bot, or software agent. In general, it starts with a list of URLs to visit. As it visits these URLs, it identifies all the hyperlinks in the page and adds them to the list of URLs to visit, recursively browsing the Web according to a set of policies. Robots.txt - The robots exclusion standard or robots.txt protocol is a convention to prevent well-behaved web spiders and other web robots from accessing all or part of a website. The information specifying the parts that should not be accessed is specified in a file called robots.txt in the top-level directory of the website. The robots.txt protocol is purely advisory, and relies on the cooperation of the web robot, so that marking an area of your site out of bounds with robots.txt does not guarantee privacy. Many web site administrators have been caught out trying to use the robots file to make private parts of a website invisible to the rest of the world. However the file is necessarily publicly available and is easily checked by anyone with a web browser. The robots.txt patterns are matched by simple substring comparisons, so care should be taken to make sure that patterns matching directories have the final ‘/’ character appended: otherwise all files with names starting with that substring will match, rather than just those in the directory intended. Meta Tag - Meta tags are used to provide structured data about data.
In the early 2000s, search engines veered away from reliance on Meta tags, as many web sites used inappropriate keywords, or were keyword stuffing to obtain any and all traffic possible.
Some search engines, however, still take Meta tags into some consideration when delivering results. In recent years, search engines have become smarter, penalizing websites that are cheating (by repeating the same keyword several times to get a boost in the search ranking). Instead of going up rankings, these websites will go down in rankings or, on some search engines, will be kicked off of the search engine completely. Index a site - The act of crawling your site and gathering information.How can the robots.txt file and meta tag help you? In the robots.txt you can tell the harmful ‘web crawlers’ to leave your web site alone, and give helpful hints to the ones you want to crawl your site. Here is an example on how to disallow a web crawler to search your site: # this identifies the wayback machine User-agent: ia_archiver
Disallow: /
ia_archiver is the crawler name for the wayback machine that you may have heard of, and the / after disallow tells ai_archiver not to index any of your site. The #<message here> allows you to write comments to yourself so you can keep track of what you typed. Type the above three lines into notepad from your computer and save it to the root directory of your web site as robots.txt. Web crawlers look for this document first at a web site before doing anything else. This helps the crawler to do its job, and helps the web site owner tell the spider what to do. Say for instance you have some data that you don’t want the crawlers to see. (Like duplicate content for other browser referrer pages) You can deter crawlers from indexing the ‘duplicate’ directory by typing this into your robots.txt file.
Or if you would like to have the robots.txt file created for you, visit www.rietta.com/robogen. To validate your robots.txt file to make sure it works properly you can visit

www.searchengineworld.com/cgi-bin/robotcheck.cgi User-agent: *
Disallow: /duplicate/
The * after user-agent says that this action applies to all crawlers and /duplicate/ after disallow tells all crawlers to ignore this directory and not search it. For each user-agent and disallow line there must be a blank space between them in order for it to function correctly. So this is how you would create the above two commands into a robots.txt file: # this identifies the wayback machine User-agent: ia_archiver
Disallow: /
User-agent: *
Disallow: /duplicate/
One thing to note that is very important: Anyone can access the robots.txt file of a site. So if you have information that you don’t want anyone to see don’t include it into the robots.txt file. If the directory that you don’t want anyone to see is not linked to from your web site the crawlers won’t index it anyway. An alternative to blocking indexing of your site is to put a meta tag into the page. It looks like this: <meta name="robots" content="noindex,nofollow">
You put this into the <head> tag of your web page. This line tells the robot crawlers not to index (search) the page and not to follow any of the hyperlinks on the page. So as an example <meta name="robots" content="noindex,follow">
tells the robots crawlers to not index the page, but follow the hyperlinks on this page.
Did you know that Google has its own <meta> tag? It looks like this: <meta name="googlebot" content="noindex,nofollow,noarchive">
This tells the Google robot crawler not to index the page, not to follow any of the links, and not to keep from storing cached versions of your web site. You will want this done if you update the content on your site frequently. This prevents the web user from seeing outdated content that isn’t refreshed because of storage in the cache. You can use the <meta> tag to specifically talk to Google’s robots to avoid complications or if you are optimizing your site for Google’s search engine. This concludes this month’s article. Until the next article have a great day! Copyright © Michael Rock
(You have permission to copy this article as long as it remains intact with the author’s byline)

Web development contractor (Web Design and Hosting) Internet Presence
www.TheInternetPresence.com

The owner of this registered company has over twenty years experience with DOS, windows business applications, numerous programming languages, artistic development, and web design. Other areas of interest include web marketing, web promoting, and business marketing and development. After the persuasion of those praising his work, he decided to go into business himself and highly suggests everyone else to do the same.

Internet Presence was founded in 2003 from a desire to become independent. Less than 1 year later Internet Presence has had accounts in three different states ranging from a locally owned auto collision repair shop to a glass packaging industry that sells its product worldwide.

O Presidente Americano George W. Bush, numa tentativa de salvar a sua reeleio, principalmente depois da péssima campanha da 2a guerra do golfo. O Sadam até que era um cara muito malvado, mas a “Coalizo” usou e abusou do poder, mas tudo isso é passado… Apesar do pau estar ainda quebrando com atentados e muitas mortes.

Voltando a Lua… O Menino agora est visando coisas mais elevadas e a pergunta sobre devemos ou no investir… Depois do término das misses Apolo, ninguém mais foi para a Lua. O filme 2001 mostrou um futuro tecnolgico possvel, se os investimentos continuassem… Mas o pblico americano e principalmente o mundial ficaram entediados com tais viagens, imagine, ficar entediado com a ida e volta para a LUA? NUNCAAAA! Principalmente que as caras viajavam em uma espaonave que mais pareceria uma lata de sardinhas, isso que era aventura…

Bom… Eu penso que se deve investir SIM. O mundo de hoje foi MUITO beneficiado com dois momentos do século XX, que foram:

As guerras mundiais, principalmente a segunda guerra, onde se desenvolveram os computadores, foguetes, energia nuclear e com isso, o incio da guerra fria. Com essa guerra fria, ambas as naes (EUA e URSS), investiram MUITO em melhorar seus arsenais, bem como as tecnologias de segurana e espionagem… Muito disso veio para o mercado na forma de tecnologias interessantes.

A corrida espacial, usou tudo de bom que havia sido criado na guerra fria. Usaram os computadores, materiais leves, novas tecnologias para gerao de energia, processos de filtragem de gua, ar e processamento de detritos. Estudou-se mais do que nunca a psique humana, o corpo, alimentos e com isso tudo foram criadas um monte de materiais e técnicas que hoje estamos usando no nosso dia a dia. Alimentos desidratados, dietas especiais, equipamentos de exerccios etc… Tudo criado pela corrida espacial. Tantas tecnologias foram criadas e hoje usamos, que esse blog no teria espao… Tudo de forma direta e indireta, j que os EUA investiram bilhes de dlares… Foi quase uma década de investimentos pesados, onde os cientistas viajaram nas idéias e conseguiram colocar o homem na lua e o melhor, voltar.

Tudo pelo bem da humanidade
Esse pensamento que deve ser o lema… A humanidade tem de tudo para se beneficiar com todas as tecnologias que podero sair com ambos os projetos, seja o de colonizar a Lua, como da estao espacial.

Quando o programa espacial iniciou, cada envio de um mdulo lunar gastava quase 1 bilho de dlares para ir e voltar da lua, tudo porque somente o mdulo poderia ser reutilizado. Hoje tem o Shuttle, que todo o equipamental é reutilizado, mas ainda precisa de um BIG lanador, que também custa caro. Eles tiveram diversas idéias onde no ser necessrio um lanador to caro, ou ainda ser somente um avio especial que entrar em rbita e de l, receber combustvel para seguir até a lua e voltar.

Penso que o investimento direto ter o impacto na indstria de novos materiais, sejam para uso em vestimentas, estruturas e equipamentos de construo e manuteno de equipamentos.

E os paises pobres? Os famintos do mundo?
Sempre que se fala em investimentos dessa monta, sempre se vem tona esse tipo de questionamento… Cada pas tem a sua estrutura, sua corrupo, seus problemas. O mundo parece que vive ainda sob jugo dos senhores de engenho. Dizem que os problemas do Brasil e outros paises so conseqncia dos colonizadores. Que nada, o Brasil é que administra errado seus recursos e ns Brasileiros é que somos os culpados, porque também no exigimos, s ficamos reclamando e olhando.

No acredito que devemos ficar pensando nisso, principalmente, porque existem programas que cuidam disso, os EUA esto querendo crescer e todos poderemos nos beneficiar com isso. Todos os estudos e pesquisas da NASA e outras agncias espaciais, somente conseguiram reduzir o custo do lanamento de satélites e misses no tripuladas, como também conseguiu aumentar a quantidade delas.

Existem muitas reas que seriam beneficiadas com fbricas em gravidade baixa ou zero, como a de crescimento de cristais e a possibilidade de criao de seqncias moleculares de carbono, onde seria possvel criar matérias resistentes como o diamante, leves como espuma de sabo.

Penso que O maior benefcio, ser o da unificao
A unificao das naes no mundo atual criando uma s nao chamada Terra… Ou que tenha outro nome. Uma explorao espacial, somente criar uma maior aproximao das naes, proporcionar utilizao comum de estaes espaciais, equipamentos e principalmente a troca de idéias e tecnologias, com isso, imagino que poderemos ter antes do final deste século a unificao e no a 3a guerra mundial ou até aniquilao da raa humana, como muitos ainda pensam que vai acontecer.

Devemos SIM
Pois é… E tudo isso comeou com a pergunta se os EUA ou o mundo deve planejar viagens tripuladas para a Lua. A minha resposta é um sonoro SIM! Principalmente o Brasil que tem muita gente boa, empresas e até tecnologias que podero ser contratadas pela NASA e outras agncias espaciais.

O Brasil tem até um aspirante astronauta, que é o Marcos Pontes, viste o site dele, que fica no http://www.marcospontes.net, vale a pena conhecer o site e saber um pouco mais desse Brasileiro que est na NASA.

Precisamos ficar atentos com as oportunidades, j que ns Brasileiros ficamos sempre esperando o bicho da oportunidade passar, para depois sair correndo… No podemos viver assim… Precisamos ficar esperando ele antes de passar, dar uma rasteira e agarr-lo bem forte para no soltar.

About the Author

Analista de Sistemas, especialista de projetos para Internet desde 1993, projetista e mantenedor de diversos sites no Brasil, como os sites da FAMEM e Porto do Itaqui

It seems obvious, but it’s often ignored. A good user interface design can spell the difference between acceptance of a software product and its failure in the marketplace. If the end-users find the software to be too cumbersome or difficult to understand, then an otherwise excellent product could be doomed to failure. The developer’s goal should be to make the software as professional-looking and easy to use as possible.

Sadly, I’ve found that a great many companiesespecially small or highly specialized software firmspay little attention to the mechanics of good user interface style. “As long as it works, that’s what matters!” seems to be their mantra, with little regard for the inconvenience that this imposes on the user.

Thankfully, that’s not how we operate at our company. Our team of developers invests considerable effort into making out user interfaces as intuitive and foolproof as possible, since we know that this is something our customers would appreciate. I’ve often commended my teammates for recognizing that excellence is worth pursuing.

Going back to the topic… I can’t remember how many times I’ve encountered software that was designed to work, but with little regard for ease of use. If the software forces the operator to constantly consult a manual or a cheat sheet, then that’s a pretty good indication that the user interface needs improvement. Similarly, the software should allow the user to perform tasks quickly and efficiently, without sacrificing power and flexibility. This seems intuitive, and yet these considerations are so often lacking.

The sad part is that these shortcomings can often be cured using a few simple guidelines. For example, it helps if the user can enter data using buttons and list boxes, instead of typing it in by hand. It helps if the software provides pop-up dialog boxes, to guide the user along the way. Even the judicious choice of icons and other graphics can turn a steep learning curve into a short and gentle slope.

For that matter, even such trivial matters as spelling and grammar deserve attention. Poorly phrased instructions can severely hinder an operatorand even if they don’t, they do reflect poorly on the developers of that application.

There is much more that can be said about the mechanics of good user interface design, but that’s a topic on which entire book can be (and have been) written. Suffice to say that a company that strives for excellence should pay close attention to the elements of software usability and flexibility. These are critical elements of software excellence, and they are worth pursuing.

About The Author

V. Berba Velasco Jr., Ph.D. is a senior electrical and software engineer at Cellular Technology Ltd (http://www.immunospot.com, http://www.elispot-analyzers.de http://www.elispot.cn) where he serves with great pride. He has seen how proper attention to software usability, maintainability and elegance can spell the difference between mediocre products and great ones.

Metaphysical circles often characterize incarnation as consisting of four bodies that work in concert to give us what we know of as a human. These are the physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual bodies. Each is important and their synergy is critical.

The Mastery of Learning is naturally aimed at the mental body although it has connections with the physical, emotional and spiritual bodies as well, for none can survive successfully as an island. These four highly individual and unique islands are distributed equally around the points of an imaginary square.

The island of the physical is known for its sands, clays, rich mineral and crystal deposits thus allowing you to fashion anything you desire. The island of the emotional body is more like a water park in the diversity of ways water bubbles, cascades, pools, flows, falls and collects. The island of the mental body is dynamic in its energy being dominated by a volcano that continually deposits more thus gradually enlarging the island, and the spiritual island has valleys and element sculptured mountains covered with tall trees all of which caress the ears with soft whispers as air masses play them endlessly in infinitely variable patterns.

Collectively this quadruplet of distinctive islands constitute a stable platform upon which can be erected the human ecosystem. Mastery of each is essential for eventual mastery of being human. The interesting aspect of mastery is that beginning the search on any one island eventually leads you to awareness of the center between the islands which is the true center of your being. When standing on an island you are afforded a unique perspective that changes from island to island, yet each time the others can be seen diminished in the distance. In the center between the islands each is seen as being equal in importance and the relative perspective never changes.

I explored the mental island first by writing The Mastery of Learning. This approach augments my ability to rapidly explore the remaining islands by giving me advanced exploration tools. As they are written, each new volume in the Mastery Series will explore a subsequent island. When the human archipelago has been characterized, each island will be found to be not so much an island as a gate leading to the center, the true goal in all paths. Once reached, the importance of the islands will fade as true perception provides proper understanding.

That is mastery.

About Melvin Lewis Thomas - I grew up in one of the most beautiful places in the world, Sedona, the heart of Red Rock Country in Arizona.

My college education molded me as a scientist with things as my subjects. Working at medical and human research laboratories, and as a teacher, shifted my focus to people. Eventually I became a metascientist and life became my focus, with reality my laboratory. That path led to this book. Along the way I changed jobs and even careers when what I was doing was no longer of interest. I grasped it, then moved on: stepping-stones in the process of education; the process never ends.

About the Author

Click here to find out more about Melvin Lewis Thomas

Professor Tejasen studied various articles concerning the Qur’n and modern embryology. He spent four days with several scholars, Muslims and non-Muslims, discussing this phenomenon in the Qur’n and Hadth. During the 8th Saudi Medical Conference in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia he stood up and said:

“In the last three years, I became interested in the Qur’n… From my studies and what I have learned throughout this conference, I believe that everything that has been recorded in the Qur’n fourteen hundred years ago must be the truth, that can be proved by the scientific means.

Since the Prophet Muhammad could neither read nor write, Muhammad must be a messenger who relayed this truth which was revealed to him as an enlightenment by the one who is eligible creator. This creator must be God, or Allah.

I think this is the time to say La ilaha illa Allah, there is no god to worship except Allah (God), Muhammad rasoolu Allah, Muhammad is Messenger of Allah…

The most precious thing I have gained from coming to this conference is La ilaha illa Allah, and to have become Muslim.”

About the Author

Chairman of the Department of Anatomy and is the former Dean of the faculty of Medicine, University of Chiang Mai, Chiang Mai, Thailand.

“Only knowledge from above can Move us forward.”

On Christopher Columbus’ fourth voyage to the New World in 1503, he and his crew became stranded on the island of Jamaica. Columbus’ food supply was almost gone, and his ship was too badly damaged to repair [worms had eaten through the wooden hull].

At first, the Jamaicans gave Columbus and his crew food and supplies. When Columbus and his crew were not rescued after many months, the Jamaicans finally refused to give them any additional food.

Columbus did not want his crew to starve, so he came up with a plan. Columbus could tell from his navigational tables that there would be a total lunar eclipse on February 29, 1504. He decided to schedule a meeting with the Jamaicans for that night.

At the meeting, Columbus told the Jamaicans that God was not happy about how they were treating him and his crew, so God was going to take away the Moon as a sign of his unhappiness! After Columbus told this to them, the lunar eclipse began. This terrified the Jamaicans! They pleaded with Columbus to bring back the Moon, and they said he could have all the food he wanted.

Columbus told them that he would have to go talk to God. Instead, he snuck away to watch an hourglass that he had timed so he would know exactly when the eclipse would end. Right before the lunar eclipse ended, Columbus returned and told the Jamaicans that God would give back the Moon. And, of course, the Moon reappeared.

The Jamaicans gave food and supplies to Columbus and his crew until they were rescued and returned to Europe. I guess one could say that knowledge from above or about the “above” is a good thing to have.

I find it very interesting that the Bible declares from the beginning that God created the lights in the sky. The greater light refers, of course, to the sun. The lesser, on the other hand, refers to the moon. What I want to say is this: It wasn’t until man became knowledgeable of the cosmos that he began to make strides forward in religion, philosophy, science, literature, and discovery. So pardon the pun, but it’s true. Knowledge from above can move us forward. Let me explain, please.

Before Nicolaus Copernicus (1473-1543) defied the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church by saying that the earth moves around the sun (the church believed that the earth was the center of the universe and the sun and stars revolved around it), he was risking his life.

But Copernicus was not afraid to speak out about his knowledge of the heavens, and the world of modern science owes him a debt of gratitude (Copernicus was a scientist and devout Christian). At the time, government and religious officials did not encourage original thought for fear that new ideas would create unrest. So, a free thinker like Copernicus had to come along with his knowledge of the stars in order to move us forward in our thinking.

Before Columbus could sail to a New World, there had to be a greater knowledge of the seas and navigation. When the ancient Phoenicians took to the seas, they hugged the coastline to keep from getting lost at sea. When the Vikings took to the seas a few centuries before Columbus, they were using primitive (caged ravens to determine proximity to shore), but albeit greater knowledge and technology than the Phoenicians.

There were two basic inventions during the Renaissance that made Columbus’ journey to the New World possiblethe magnetic compass and the astrolabe (forerunner to the modern sextant). Only by knowledge of the sun, moon, and stars, with a few simple instruments that measured distance between sun, moon, and stars did Columbus succeed in navigating the high seas. Here again, knowledge from above was necessary to move man forward.

Remember the importance of the stars to the wise men from the east when Jesus was born? Remember what Jesus said in Matthew 24 about His second return? What did He say would foretell His appearing? He told us the sun would turn dark and the stars would fall from the heavens. That’s interesting. Again, knowledge of the stars above will point to the soon coming King of Kings.

Now what am I saying? I’m saying that God put the stars in the sky for a purpose. Yes, they are beautiful, but there is more to them than just their beauty. The Bible declares that all His creation declares His glory. Even the stars in the sky speak of their Creator. Why can’t man do this? Why does man remain the only rebel in God’s creation who refuses to worship and adore his Creator? The Bible says that a man who says in his heart that there is no God is a fool.

There was good reason why the three wise men were called wise–they looked above them for guidance and it came to them in the form of a star. It just so happened that the star they discovered was the Christ child. The wisest discovery of all time.
(Sources cited are available)

About the Author

Pastor of Faith Fellowship Church in Broken Arrow, OK. (918-451-0270)