Sleepless in San Diego

As of February of this year, San Diego police will no longer issue citations to the homeless population for sleeping on public sidewalks and in doorways at night. Now the homeless, unless they are doing something illegal, can sleep on city property between the hours from 9 p.m. to 6 a.m. Prior to this new policy, the city police had issued thousands of illegal-lodging tickets: 11,414 between January of 2003 and May of 2006. When one considers the cost differential between providing a homeless shelter to these individuals as compared with the alternatives, the choice becomes clear.

A homeless shelter: $17 per day
Jail: $66.05 per day
Psychiatric Hospital (for the homeless mentally ill) $513 per day
Emergency Room (for injuries suffered during drunkenness or fighting) $1456.21 per day

Illegal-lodging tickets had been issued to people who sat or lay down on the street or in a doorway between the hours of 9 p.m. to 6 a.m. The homeless individuals could walk around all night, but they couldn’t sit down or lie down without fear of getting a ticket. Consequently, many of them could be seen sleeping in the parks during the daytime.

The problem stems from the fact that there are only about 4000 beds to accommodate over 9600 homeless in the city. As one person said regarding the lack of sleeping facilities: “ ...look, people biologically have to sleep; they can’t not sleep,” he said. “I don’t have to drive 85 on the freeway. If I choose to do so, then I risk a ticket. In this case, if you have nowhere to sleep, you can’t help but sleep on the street. And to give someone a ticket for that, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals has said that’s illegal.”

The attorney for the city of San Diego declared, “You cannot make it against the law, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, to prohibit people from using public property to sleep or to sit. You can do it sometimes; you can do it in some areas. What you can’t do [according to the 9th Circuit decision] is make it a blanket rule: ‘No, you can never sleep in the city anytime no matter what your situation is as far as shelters are concerned.’”

The Relationship Between Science and the Bible

As a followup to the post on Dinosaurs, Faith, and Science Education, this post introduces some related excerpts from the Ravi Zacharias International Ministries regarding the relationship between science and the Bible:

The Bible is not a science textbook. It is a book that is pre-scientific in time and non-scientific in purpose. It was never meant to be a textbook of science. While science is concerned with function and mechanism, the Scripture engages itself with purpose and meaning. Its goal is moral and its central theme is relationship - a relationship between humankind and [a Supreme Power].

Science seeks cause and effect relationships in the universe primarily through empirical research, observation and experiment, as the domain of science is space-time-matter. This is why science can give us only mechanisms that explain natural processes but never meaningfully explain the 'why' behind them! For instance, science may say that the universe originated by a Big-Bang but it can never tell us why it originated in the first place. The Big-Being behind the Big-Bang cannot be precipitated in a laboratory through empirical method!

While science and the Bible do exist for different purposes they need not necessarily exist at cross purposes. Even though the Bible is non-scientific, it does not mean that it is unscientific - its primary focus is not a scientific explanation of the phenomena it describes! The age of the universe, the why and what of dinosaurs, or whether the earth was inhabited by hominids long ago are really fascinating questions. But they are not Biblical questions, since our faith or salvation do not depend on such information. God has chosen not to elaborate such subjects in the Bible for His purpose is very different.

It becomes important to recognize that science does not holistically address all human issues. It merely works in the domain of cause and effect, avoiding explanations for their reality. It is the hope today that all reality in this physical world will be explained in terms of mechanisms and God will have less and less territory to live in. But mechanisms are not everything. What about beauty, values, relationships etc. that do not fall under the domain of science? A sunset is not just electromagnetic radiation! Neither is a kiss an act of simple contact of two pairs of lips with reciprocal transmission of carbon dioxide. No, all reality cannot be reduced to physics and chemistry.

Scientific knowledge is touted as the key to understanding ourselves and our world. But history has shown us that this philosophy leads to hopeless despair. A clockwork universe cannot give us meaning and hope. The security that emerges out of our relationship with an Infinite-Personal-Relational God makes it possible for us to face the future with hope.

(NOTE: Since the purpose of this post is promote discussion across the spectrum of beliefs about the relationship between science and religion, I request that in order to ensure productive civil discourse, that all bloggers respect the following guidelines:

1. Recognize a person’s right to advocate ideas that are
different from your own
2. Show respect for others
3. Discuss ideas, not people
4. Use helpful, not hurtful language)

DONE! I have successfully installed the recovery program on my computer. I read a newspaper while the recovery program did its work (about 30 minutes). Then I spent less than a hour bringing everything back to the way it was. I want to thank all of you who tried to help. Blogstream bloggers are the best!

Help! Help! SOS to Computer Geeks

I messed up on the password for login for Windows 98SE. Now I can't remember the password. Every time I try to access Outlook Express, the login for Windows appears; when I can't type the correct password in it, opening OE to send and receive e-mails is not possible. Any solutions short of reinstalling Windows available?

PLEASE REPLY IN THE COMMENT SECTION FOR THIS POST.

Dinosaurs, Faith, and Science Education

I have found it fascinating to compare information gathered about dinosaurs from four different sources: Encyclopedia Britannica Online; Wikipedia; United States Geological Survey (USGS); and a new Web site encyclopedia called Conservapedia, founded for Young Earth Creationists by Andrew Schlafly, son of conservative activist Phyllis Schlafly, to counter the perceived bias of the liberal academic and journalistic media in the Wikipedia):

Excerpt from Encyclopedia Britannica Online:

Dinosaur:

“The common name given to a group of reptiles, often very large, that first appeared in the Late Triassic Period about 215 million years ago and thrived worldwide for some 150 million years. Most died out by the end of the Cretaceous Period, about 65 million years ago, but many lines of evidence now show that one lineage evolved into birds about 150 million years ago.

Dinosaurs are well documented by abundant fossil remains recovered from every continent on Earth, and the number of known dinosaurian taxa is estimated to be 10–25 percent of actual past diversity.

Their remains are found in sedimentary rock layers (strata) dating to the Late Triassic Period (227 million to 206 million years ago). The abundance of their fossilized bones is substantive proof that dinosaurs were the dominant form of terrestrial animal life during the Mesozoic Era (248 million to 65 million years ago).”

Excerpt from Wikipedia:

“Dinosaurs were vertebrate animals that dominated terrestrial ecosystems for over 160 million years, first appearing approximately 230 million years ago.

Approximately 65 million years ago, a catastrophic extinction event ended dinosaurs' dominance on land. One significant group of dinosaurs has survived until the present day; taxonomists consider modern birds to be the direct descendants of theropod dinosaurs.

For much of the dinosaur era, the smallest sauropods were larger than anything else in their habitat, and the largest were an order of magnitude more massive than anything else that has since walked the Earth. Giant prehistoric mammals such as the Indricotherium and the Columbian mammoth were dwarfed by the giant sauropods, and only a handful of modern aquatic animals approach or surpass them in size — most notably the blue whale, which reaches up to 190,000 kg (209 tons) and 33.5 m (110 ft) in length

Excerpt from United States Geological Survey (USGS):

“Dinosaur communities were separated by both time and geography. The "age of dinosaurs" (the Mesozoic Era) included three consecutive geologic time periods (the Triassic, Jurassic, and Cretaceous Periods). Different dinosaur species lived during each of these three periods. For example, the Jurassic dinosaur Stegosaurus already had been extinct for approximately 80 million years before the appearance of the Cretaceous dinosaur Tyrannosaurus. In fact, the time separating Stegosaurus and Tyrannosaurus is greater than the time separating Tyrannosaurus and you.”

Excerpt from Corservapedia (founded by Andrew Schlafly, son of conservative activist Phyllis Schlafly, to counter the perceived bias of the liberal media in the Wikipedia):

“Of those Christians who reject evolution, the Young Earth Creationists believe, based primarily on Biblical sources, but also drawing on archaeological and fossil evidence, that dinosaurs were created on the sixth day of the Creation Week approximately 6,000 years ago; that they lived in the Garden of Eden in harmony with other animals, eating only plants; that pairs of various dinosaur baramins were taken onto Noah’s Ark during the Great Flood and were preserved from drowning; that fossilized dinosaur bones originated during the mass killing of the Flood; and that some descendents of those dinosaurs aboard the Ark still roam Earth today.”

Excerpt from "Current Affairs, Education, Religion, Science", Wednesday, August 16, 2006:

"As we continue to work to improve the abysmal state of science education in our schools, we will continue to battle those who feel that knowledge is a threat to faith. But when we win minor skirmishes, as we did in Kansas, we must remember that the issue is far deeper than this. We must hold our elected school officials to certain basic standards of knowledge about the world. The battle is not against faith, but against ignorance.”

Faith and science can live together in the same world. We cannot tolerate ignorance in any world and expect that world to be a worthwhile place to live. Food for thought.

Tips for Using Your Cell Phone Wisely

(I have noted that a couple of other bloggers have posted these tips in whole or in part on their blogs; but since I prepared this post a couple of weeks ago, I shall post it here for those viewers who might not have seen it before.)

A friend of ours recently forwarded this information to us by e-mail. We found a number of useful tips in it and thought they might be useful to other members of Blogstream. If you have not seen this list, it might be worth your while to read it.

Your Cell Phone

There are a few things that can be done in times of grave emergencies. Your mobile phone can actually be a life saver or an emergency tool for survival. Check out the things that you can do with it:
]
FIRST

Subject: Emergency

The Emergency Number worldwide for Mobile is 112. If you find yourself out of the coverage area of your mobile network and there is an emergency, dial 112 and the mobile will search any existing network to establish the emergency number for you, and interestingly this number 112 can be dialed even if the keypad is locked. Try it out.

SECOND

Subject: Have you locked your keys in the car?

Does your car have remote keyless entry? This may come in handy someday. Good reason to own a cell phone: If you lock your keys in the car and the spare keys are at home, call someone at home on their cell phone from your cell phone. Hold your cell phone about a foot from your car door and have the person at your home press the unlock button, holding it near the mobile phone on their end. Your car will unlock. Saves someone from having to drive your keys to you. Distance is no object. You could be hundreds of miles away, and if you can reach someone who has the other"remote" for your car, you can unlock the doors (or the trunk).

THIRD

Subject: Hidden Battery Power

Imagine your cell battery is very low. To activate, press the keys *3370# Your cell will restart with this reserve and the instrument will show a 50% increase in battery. This reserve will get charged when you charge your cell next time.

FOURTH

How to disable a STOLEN mobile phone?

To check your Mobile phone's serial number, key in the following digits on your phone: *# 0 6 #. A 15 digit code will appear on the screen. This number is unique to your handset. Write it down and keep it somewhere safe. When your phone get stolen, you can phone your service provider and give them this code. They will then be able to block your handset so even if the thief changes the SIM card, your phone will be totally useless. You probably won't get your phone back, but at least you know that whoever stole it can't use/sell it either. If everybody does this, there would be no point in people stealing
mobile phones.

And Finally....

FIFTH

Cell phone companies are charging us $1.00 to $1.75 or more for
411 information calls when they don't have to. Most of us do not carry a telephone directory in our vehicle, which makes this situation even more of a problem. When you need to use the 411 information option, simply dial: (800) FREE 411, or (800) 373-3411 without incurring any charge at all. Program this into your cell phone
now.

For some important additional information about this post, please refer to the comments made by PuriChristos and Wild Pig UK.