Blog Heap o' Urantiana Links

There is a Unitarian joke server on the web at https://stoney.sb.org/uujokes.html

My favorites so far:
UU Prayer: "Dear God, if there is a God, if you can, save my soul, if I have a soul."

and

What do you get when you cross a Unitarian Universalist with a Jehovah's Witness?

Someone who knocks on your door for no apparent reason.

…The four of us were going to do the dinner-and-movie thing. Before we even got to the restaurant, I sensed a distinct chill in the air. It only got worse at the restaurant. The food came with frost forming on it.…

A groundbreaking discovery in Australia is giving new meaning to the term natural remedy. Using hundreds of honeybees, a new study reveals the venom in these insects’ stingers quickly kills breast cancer cells.

Dr. Ciara Duffy says honeybee venom destroys multiple types of breast cancer, even the hard to treat triple-negative variety.…

Meanwhile, in California, growers are switching away from fruits and vegetables and planting almond trees because the price of almonds is so high.

Bearing Nuts. According to the "Sunset National Garden Book," you must have two almond trees in order to get fruit, and the trees take a minimum of three years to produce fruit. DavisWiki says that almond trees offer their best nut production in years six to 10 but can produce nuts for up to 50 years.

You plant olive trees for your great grandkids
It takes about five years for an olive tree to produce fruit, according to Texas A&M University. The lifespan of the tree is extraordinary, with many living -- and producing fruit -- for more than 500 years.

A rogue planet has been discovered outside of our solar system… skirting the boundaries of our solar system — just 20 light years from Earth… roughly 200 million years old and around 12 times the size of Jupiter… independent of a sun… The surface… is roughly 1,500 degrees Fahrenheit (816 Celsius), sitting “right at the boundary between a planet and a brown dwarf, or ‘failed star…’”

…“ultralow surface temperatures” in East Antarctica that surpass the coldest temperatures ever recorded on the earth’s surface. some 100 different locations on the East Antarctic Plateau reached temperatures of -98° C (-144° F) during the Antarctic polar night between 2004–2016.…

…She finally awoke from a medically-induced coma with no recollection of the 21st century. The trapped-in-the-past victim knew she was married, but believed it was to her first husband — who passed away in 1998. She didn’t recall marrying Jeff two years later. Her teenage daughter remained a toddler in Sartin-Hartung’s mind.… None of it was enough to keep Hartung away from the hospital as his bride slowly recovered.…

…a 49-year-old woman whose breast cancer had metastasized through her body so far that she was planning her own death has been completely cured by treatment that used her own immune cells to destroy the cancer cells. …has now been cancer-free for two years after the treatment…

After growing up and retracting his controversial account of “coming back from heaven,” 20-year-old Alex Malarkey is now suing the Christian publisher who made his story famous, then infamous.…

…At an estimated 85 feet in length, the newly discovered ichthyosaur might just be the biggest prehistoric creature ever recorded.… 25 percent larger than the largest ichthyosaur jaw ever discovered…

People recreate photos of their grandparents…

Dating tip: Never ask a woman where she wants to eat. Ask her to guess where you’re taking her then take her to her first guess.

…Until his dying day, he believed that communism was a malevolent attempt to usurp the sovereignty of God on earth.

But he changed in how he thought Christians should behave towards Communists—the people, not the ideology—and in how he thought the gospel should be presented to regimes that officially rejected Christianity.…

I found our today on the news that its "frowned upon" to use a taser to get your kid out of bed for church. I just don't recognize this country any more.

There were no grammar police in the 1st century.
__________________________________

Yeah, Biblical scholars still argue about "Let's eat, Jesus" and "Let's eat Jesus" communion thingy.

…I don't care how old a "boy" gets, when some men get sick they need some mom and some hot soup.…

Headline: 'National Geographic' delves into its past: 'For decades our coverage was racist'…

…a buildup of cement-like ear cerumen. Lacking access to professional equipment for its removal, ingenuity was required. A child's Super Soaker Max-D 5000 proved to be the solution… filled with body-temperature water and then mildly pressurized using the blue hand-pump.…

A Parkinson’s patient lived an incredible moment when doctors were able to stop the severe tremors she had endured for the last seven years.

Surgeons in India were able to cut into the woman’s brain while she was awake and destroy a key pathway, instantly stopping the involuntary movements.…

"These tremors do not respond very well to medicines, so to get the precise 'spot' during surgery is 'critical' to get near-perfect results…”

…These are only a few of the wonders and miracles which 45 of our parishioners and I heard yesterday when we visited this Tender Heart Icon of the Virgin Mary. Fr. Mark told us that October 13th will mark three years since the icon has been exuding this holy, fragrant myrrh. And not just a drop or two. Fr. Mark began his talk by holding up the icon and walking around the church, allowing the myrrh to drip from the icon into the hands of each of us. Imagine, this icon of wood has been continuously overflowing with myrrh for three years!…

Stanford University researchers have reported 97 percent laboratory success eliminating metastasized tumors in mice by injecting vaccines directly into tumors to activate T cells.…

Justin Trudeau has become Captain Soyboy of the Tide-Pod Army

Men are often capable of greater things than they perform. They are sent into the world with bills of credit, and seldom draw to their full extent.
--Horace Walpole, novelist and essayist (1717-1797)

…If the earth was flat, cats would have pushed everything off by now.

Charles and Marilee Scott, both 85, of Bartlesville [OK], shared more than 62 years of loving marriage together before passing on the same day, Tuesday, Jan. 23, from a recent illness. The high school sweethearts were classmates who fell in love and grew up together.…

…To look at 79-year old Ted Rubin nowadays, one would come face to face with a slight soft-spoken man with earthy wit and graying hair. Beneath this unassuming façade, beats the heart and soul of a heroic and just man. He has personally suffered evil and deprivation, but still remains a good man that you would be honored to talk with even if you did not know his story. And what a story it is.…

…A month later Charlie was born. Charlie changed my world. From the moment i found out about him, he began to save me. Charlie transformed me from a directionless fuck up to a man with a purpose…

The longest day must have its close — the gloomiest night will wear on to a morning. An eternal, inexorable lapse of moments is ever hurrying the day of the evil to an eternal night, and the night of the just to an eternal day.
--Harriet Beecher Stowe, abolitionist and novelist (1811-1896)

J.K. Rowling, recently expressed her belief that God is a black woman…

Pope Francis has suggested he wants to make a change to The Lord's Prayer… he would prefer to adjust the phrase “lead us not into temptation,” saying that it too strongly suggested that God leads people to sin.…

…“All of our observations find a complete symmetry between matter and antimatter, which is why the universe should not actually exist,” Christian Smorra, the study’s lead author, said in a statement. “An asymmetry must exist here somewhere but we simply do not understand where the difference is. What is the source of the symmetry break?”

Good luck with that.…

…March 7, 1932 - October 2, 2017…
…His earliest years included a move to California, where the small family briefly shared living quarters in a railroad boxcar with three other families. By the time he started school, the family was back in Oklahoma… married in June 1950, driving to Arkansas so they could wed at an earlier age, shortly before he reported for active duty in the US Army… emergency appendectomy prevented him from shipping out with his unit to Korea… transferred to oversee a typing pool, and later joked, "I'd have (almost) preferred being shipped out." …leaves behind his loving wife of 67 years… three sons… eight grandchildren, who were all his favorites… and eleven great-grandchildren

A candidate for the United States' Congress has said she stands by her claims she was abducted to an alien spaceship at age seven, but that the incident shouldn't detract from what she's done here on Earth since then. … Bettina Rodriguez Aguilera … "I believe it is real. But I was seven years old. It was an experience I had a thousand years ago."…

An Oklahoma man is hoping to change the law after he was ordered to pay child support for a baby that’s not his. … When Thomas' high school girlfriend got pregnant, he married her. Five months later she had a little boy and he believed he had a son, but, as happens to a lot of young marriages, theirs fell apart. The boy was three when Thomas decided to take a paternity test.… At first, the judge ruled Thomas was off the hook financially, but then reversed that decision because Oklahoma law says men must question paternity within two years of the child's birth.…

…His intention was to approximate the location of Yeshua’s house in old Nazareth. From the descriptions in The Urantia Book, he guessed roughly where the house might be. The descriptions were quite detailed. …

…extraterrestrial life… a new scientific report theorizes that strange modulations among a small star cluster may be be coming from extraterrestrial intelligence that is looking to alert us to their existence. …not all scientists are rushing to join in the consensus…

Interestingly, a piece of an exotic aluminum alloy that appears to be the product of advanced technology was recently discovered in Romania. This find, determined to be 250,000-year-old in one test, is being used as evidence that aliens once visited Earth.…

A federal judge has ruled that a preliminary injunction against the Obama directive governing transgender access to public school restrooms applies nationwide.…

A San Antonio, Texas family is thanking a young man for saving a little girl from a heartbreaking moment.

Addie Rodriguez, 9, was performing at a football game at Central Catholic High School when the other cheerleaders on her squad were joined by their fathers and lifted onto their shoulders.

But Addie's father wasn't there. He'd deployed for training in California the previous day, and her mother had missed the memo about the parent day ceremony.…

Pope to Christians: You’re Hypocrites, If You Don’t Want Refugees…

The number of exorcisms has been rising sharply in Italy, with some 500,000 Italians requesting an exorcism each year and not nearly enough exorcists to meet the rising demand… exorcist Father Ildebrando Di Fulvio… says that there are a number of external signs that can help distinguish between someone under the influence of Satan from someone who is mentally ill. Such signs include “a deformed facial expression; a cavernous voice; spitting out food or metallic objects they never ingested; speaking in archaic languages they don’t know consciously like Hebrew, ancient Greek, Latin, and Aramaic; an unnatural physical strength they don’t normally possess; and violent reactions to deliverance prayers and holy water.”… also noted that often people become possessed after participating in séances or Satanic masses, or after joining Satanic sects and cults.…

A study finds an unborn baby’s first heartbeat occurs as early as 16 days after conception.…

…The witness said the metallic object had a humanoid form and may have been a robot. The strange humanoid, robot-like object appeared in only one of a series of photos taken seconds apart outside his home in Guthrie, Oklahoma.

This suggested to alien hunters that the object was a mobile unit that had moved out of sight by the time the camera took the next image seconds later.

An image taken of the same space near the witness’s home, about seven hours later, did not contain the mysterious robotic object, but visible in the distance was a rocket-shaped UFO flying in the sky.…

…Most of the laws of physics …are symmetric with respect to time… except one. The Second Law of Thermodynamics… is the reason why you can mix stuff but you can't unmix it…

…Now scientists analyzing more than 150 galaxies find that dark matter might not explain their new observations, which they say hints that dark matter might not exist and that a new law of nature might be needed to solve all these mysteries.…

Sep 28 - Dr. Everett Piper, president of Oklahoma Wesleyan University, announced today that OKWU will not participate in this year’s NAIA cross country championship unless it is returned to the state of North Carolina. Piper’s statement is in response to the decision made Monday by the NAIA Council of Presidents to pull the national meet out of North Carolina because of the state’s so called “bathroom bill”, which specifies that men and women should use the restrooms appropriate to their biological sex.…

Scientists say the first baby has been born from a new technique that combines DNA from three people.

The goal is to prevent the child from inheriting a fatal genetic disease from the mother.…

This was not a march against sexual orientation. This was a march against the state imposing their view upon the church, that they must recognize homosexual marriages in their religious practices.

usa today-

Tens of thousands of people marched through Mexico City on Saturday in opposition to President Enrique Pena Nieto’s push to legalize same-sex marriage.…

…Socially indoctrinating young children toward accepting transgenderism is rampant today in public schools. …By infiltrating the curriculum in our nation’s public schools, LGBT activists can groom the next generation of participants. …The problem with taking the steps to transition physically—cross-gender hormones and surgeries—is that physical changes are likely permanent, but the feelings driving the desire may change, especially for young people.…

…This event is called “Jesus & Beer” and it’s part of an effort by some Christian groups throughout the country to recruit parishioners, connect with people struggling with faith or provide a relaxed outlet to talk religion.

Call it pint-size salvation.…

The European Space Agency (ESA) has released the largest, most detailed map yet of the Milky Way. It pinpoints the 3D positions of 1.1 billion stars, almost 400 million of which were previously unknown to science.… suggests that the Milky Way is slightly bigger than previously estimated…

DUNCAN, Okla. – A mother and daughter from Oklahoma are accused of having an incestuous marriage.… [Mother] told officials she didn’t think she was breaking any laws by marrying Misty because her name is no longer listed on her daughter’s birth certificate.… Court records show this isn’t the first time Patricia has married one of her own children.…

…Brown University… announced that they will be providing tampons for both men’s and women’s bathrooms across the university this academic year… because ‘both sexes menstruate’…

A Texas Supreme Court Justice has issued a dissenting opinion stating that while the U.S. Supreme Court has declared that same-sex couples may marry, the U.S. Constitution does not necessarily require cities to offer benefits to same-sex spouses of employees. While marriage may be a fundamental right, spousal benefits are not. He says that the same constitutional strict scrutiny does not apply to employment benefits.…

Pope Francis declared Mother Teresa of Calcutta a Saint on Sunday morning…

“Mother Teresa, in all aspects of her life, was a generous dispenser of divine mercy,” the Pope said in his homily before the more than 100,000 people overflowing Saint Peter’s Square, “making herself available for everyone through her welcome and defense of human life, those unborn and those abandoned and discarded.”…

Ars was among the first news outlets to report on discussions among astronomers about observations of an intriguing "signal" that may have originated from a distant, Sun-like star. We cautioned readers that, because the signal was measured at 11Ghz, there was a "significant chance" it was of terrestrial origin, likely due to some military activity.

Well, it apparently was.…

Tulsa …Lindley was at work operating a saw, and, in an instant, his hand was severed at the wrist.

"Six surgeons and 14 hours - they had it back on and I was home in six days," he said.

The scarring's beginning to fade, but the damage was severe; the wrist had to be re-built, there were skin grafts and all blood vessels and nerves had to be re-attached.

But all the work is paying off.

…Slowly re-opening the pathways from his brain to his hand, and it is working. Rhinehart said the progress is miraculous.

…What he's working hardest at is holding a drumstick. Lindley was a drummer with lots of bands over the years. He loved it, and his goal is to play again…

…in the early 20th century a local group in Rio called the Catholic Circle saw a need to reclaim the city for Christ.

“In the wake of World War One, [Catholic Circle] feared an advancing tide of godlessness. Church and state had been separated when Brazil became a republic at the end of the previous century, and they saw the statue as a way of reclaiming Rio – then Brazil’s capital city – for Christianity.…”

A host of workers started construction on the massive statue in 1922 and completed it in 1931. It was built using metal scaffolding and cranes with the materials being carried up the mountain by railway.

The statue was officially opened to visitors on October 12, 1931…Philip Kosloski

In an astonishing breakthrough, patients left paralysed by severe spinal cord injuries have recovered the ability to move their legs after training with an exoskeleton linked to their brain – with one even able to walk using two crutches.

Scientists developed the Walk Again Project, based in Sao Paulo, Brazil, thinking that they could enable paraplegics to move about using the exoskeleton controlled by their thoughts.

But they were surprised to discover that during the training, the eight patients all started to regain the sense of touch and movement below the injury to their spine.… researchers now believe that a few nerves survived and these were reactivated by the training, which may have rewired circuits in the brain.…

…The country its currently updating its very longitude and latitude to correct a divergence with global satellite navigation systems. Geoscience Australia, a part of the Australian government, is behind the project of getting the Geocentric Datum of Australia, the country's national coordinate system, up to code and bring it in line with international data.…

…Back in the 1960s, Harvey and Mildred Wosika met while she was working at his brother’s cafe. The couple hit it off and they were married on Aug. 5, 1966.

Together they have a total of 11 children, 35 grandchildren, 20 great-grandchildren, and three great-great-grandchildren.

Nearly 150 family and friends joined them in their hometown of Newkirk, Oklahoma, to help them celebrate their 50th anniversary last week.…

Harvey got down on one knee, held his wife’s hands, and serenaded her with Bing Crosby’s classic song “Let Me Call You Sweetheart.” Harvey even added some of his own lyrics into the song.…

…The mother of a 5-year-old transgender girl [i.e., boy she pretends is a girl] in Pearland, Texas, is continuing her fight against the Pearland Independent School District to allow her [son] to use the girls’ bathroom.…

An Ottawa-area woman is appealing an Ontario Human Rights Tribunal ruling that Mount Sinai Hospital did not discriminate against her when it refused last May to abort one of her healthy twins.…

'My husband is with his girlfriend and I've never felt so lonely': Polyamorous people reveal the downsides to having multiple lovers on secrets-sharing app
Polyamorous people have spoken via the secrets-sharing app, Whisper
Men and women reveal the downsides to having multiple partners
Many touch on feelings of jealousy, loneliness and shame …

Groundbreaking radio telescope has discovered 1,300 galaxies in the sky
It discovered them in small area where only 70 had previously been spotted
South Africa's MeerKAT radio telescope will eventually boast 64 receptors
When it spotted the galaxies the system was only working at a quarter of its eventual capacity

Jenna and Jillian were born in a 'one in 10,000 monoamniotic birth'. At the time when they were delivered, the twins immediately reached out to hold each other's hands…

Mission to Mariana Trench Records Dozens of Crazy Deep Sea Creatures

The Okeanos Explorer has spent three months mapping the seafloor and recording deep sea life in the ocean's depths…

…Through conversations with friends and family, the “United We Stand” campaign was born. Our simple effort to educate parents exploded into a national campaign to tell the White House and Obama “No.”

Our message was that this radical agenda of subjective “gender fluidity” and unrestricted shower and bathroom access actually endangers all.…

Imagine a planet with triple sunrises and sunsets every day for part of the year, and nonstop daylight at other times.

Astronomers revealed such a place Thursday: a strange new world in the Constellation Centaurus that has not one, not two, but three suns. What's more, a year there lasts half a millennium from Earth's perspective.…

…This type of treatment is called “precision medicine” because it uses the patient’s genetic information to help target a precise molecule in cancer cells. … Allison took two pills each day for two months and when she went back for a brain scan, doctors there couldn't find any trace of the cancer.…

…According to the EU Commission president, “Following BREXIT, leaders of other planets are worried”
During a speech on the 28th of June in the European Parliament in Brussels, EU Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker confused attendees when he started talking about what appear to be extraterrestrials.…

…a group of researchers digging through amber mined in Burma uncovered a sample with a pair of tiny bird-like wings frozen inside… At around 99 million years old, these wings are some of the most pristine fossilized feathers ever found.… Astonishingly, the amber preserved every minute detail of the wings. If you look closely enough, you can see traces of hair, feathers, bones, and how they were all arranged. Even the feathers’ color has survived the eons and is still visible.…

…“The viewers truly feel they are there with Jesus and his disciples,” director David Hansen said in a statement. “This is the most powerful story of all time and virtual reality is the perfect way to tell it.”…

Two types of experimental Zika vaccines, a DNA vaccine and an inactivated virus vaccine, were each able to completely protect mice with one dose, researchers report Tuesday in Nature.…

…1. The court’s interpretation of “undue burden” is confusing as hell.

Today’s opinion does resemble Casey in one respect: After disregarding significant aspects of the Court’s prior jurisprudence, the majority applies the undue-burden standard in a way that will surely mystify lower courts for years to come.…

…narcissists aren’t just attractive to themselves. They are, at least superficially, attractive to other people; that’s why they’re overrepresented in fields where being at the center of attention is an asset, like entertainment, entrepreneurship, or politics. They also they have more sexual partners. And as a new study of speed dating led by Emanuel Jauk of the University of Graz, in Austria, finds, people rate them as more attractive and more dateable.…