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David G. Goodwin, professor of mechanical engineering and applied physics, emeritus, passed away at his home in Pasadena on Sunday, November 11, after a five-year battle with brain cancer and a struggle with Parkinson's disease that began in 1998. He was 55 years old. Born on October 15, 1957, Goodwin grew up in Rancho Cordova, a suburb of Sacramento, near the Aerojet plant where his father worked as an engineer. He came to Caltech in 1988 as an assistant professor of mechanical engineering, was promoted to associate professor of mechanical engineering and applied physics in 1993 and professor in 2000, and retired in 2011.
Goodwin was best known for developing ways to grow thin films of high-purity diamond. Diamond films—transparent, scratch-resistant, and efficient dissipaters of the heat generated by high-powered computer chips—are now routinely used to protect electronic and optical components, and diamond-coated drill bits can be found at any hardware store.
But the diamond work was just one facet of Goodwin's research. According to longtime collaborator David Boyd, once a postdoc of Goodwin's and now a Caltech staff member, "Dave's real passion was modeling. He felt that he never fully understood something unless he could model it. He had a keen insight into how things work. He would proffer an oftentimes very simple explanation that captured the essential physics, and was able to see how that applied in engineering terms. It's really unusual for an engineer to know that much physics, or a physicist to have that much engineering."
The Mideast oil crises of Goodwin's teenage years sparked a lifelong interest in energy issues, and much of his work revolved around the intricacies of combustion. He fluently translated the complex interplay of heat flow and atomic behavior within swirling mixtures of turbulent gases into detailed mathematical models that accurately predicted how real-world, industrial-scale chemical processors would operate.
After earning his BS in engineering from Harvey Mudd College in 1979, Goodwin joined the Stanford University High Temperature Gasdynamics Laboratory, which was working on an ultraefficient method for generating electricity by burning coal at very high temperatures to create an electrically charged plasma. The process proved too expensive to be practical, but the mastery Goodwin acquired of chemical kinetics—the mathematical descriptions of how reactions proceed—set the course of his career. He earned his MS and PhD in 1980 and 1986 respectively, both in mechanical engineering.
Goodwin arrived at Caltech amid an explosion of interest in growing diamond coatings via chemical vapor deposition. The process is high-tech, but the basic idea is simple. Playing a methane flame over an object deposits carbon atoms on its surface, and under the right conditions these atoms will organize themselves into a sheen of high-purity diamond instead of the usual smudge of soot. "People had found a process that worked," says Boyd, "but really did not know how or why it did." Goodwin's models explained it all, and the set of papers he published beginning in 1990 "really turned artificial diamond into an engineering material," says Harry Atwater, the Hughes Professor and professor of applied physics and materials science, and director of the Resnick Sustainability Institute.
But far beyond that, "Dave was one of these people whose impact you measure by the codes he wrote for others to use," Atwater says. Goodwin began writing code in earnest in the 1990s, when he led the Virtual Integrated Prototyping project for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. This sprawling endeavor, on which Atwater was a collaborator, created a set of simulations that began at the atomic level and went up to encompass an entire chemical reactor in order to figure out how to grow superconducting metal oxides and other thin films with demanding atomic arrangements. Atwater and Goodwin then built the reactor, which is still in use at Caltech and whose design has been widely copied.
Along the way, Goodwin wrote an extensive overhaul of CHEMKIN (for "chemical kinetics"), a collection of programs that had been developed at Sandia National Laboratories in the 1970s and had quickly gone into worldwide use. He then wrote—from scratch—his own software toolkit for modeling basic thermodynamics and chemical kinetics, which he dubbed Cantera. Breaking with the usual practice of creating a convoluted descriptor to yield a clever acronym, Cantera doesn't stand for anything, says Professor of Mechanical Engineering Tim Colonius. "He just wanted to give it a nice soothing, relaxing name, like pharmaceutical companies do. That was typical of his sense of humor." The open-source code is available pro bono and has been downloaded 120,000 times since 2004, according to Sandia's Harry Moffat, one of Cantera's current developers and the manager of the website. Says Moffat, "We have ventured into areas that CHEMKIN cannot go, including liquid-solid interactions and electrochemical applications such as batteries."
Goodwin also found time to court Frances Teng, an obstetrician-gynecologist at nearby Huntington Hospital, whose own parents had gotten married while postdocs at Caltech in the 1960s. Dave and Frances were married at the Athenaeum, Caltech's faculty club, in April 1993.
Goodwin eventually returned to the energy issues that had motivated him to become an engineer in the first place. "He really pushed us to start teaching some energy-related courses in the early 2000s," says Vice Provost Melany Hunt, the Kenan Professor of Mechanical Engineering, and the executive officer for mechanical engineering at the time. This led to ME 122, Sustainable Energy Engineering, which Goodwin inaugurated in 2008. ME 122 lives on as the centerpiece of the Energy Science and Technology option, now renumbered EST/EE/ME 109 and renamed Energy: Supply and Demand.
During that time Goodwin also collaborated on three major fuel-cell projects with Sossina Haile, professor of materials science and chemical engineering, in which he modeled the processes by which fuel molecules reacted with oxygen ions to produce electricity. "Dave was looking at it from a computational perspective, and we were looking at it from an experimental perspective," says Haile. "He pulled together all that we know from fundamental physics and chemistry to say, 'This is how the fuel cell works, and this is how to configure it so that it will actually deliver the power that you want.' Most people do a lot of parameter fitting and approximations, but he treated the problem in a very physics-based, solid way."
Goodwin was as active in the greater life of the Institute as he was in his lab. He served on the faculty board from 1996 to 1999 and from 2001 to 2005, the last two years as faculty chair. During that time, he successfully lobbied to extend the timetable for granting junior faculty tenure in cases of childbirth or adoption, Hunt says. "Dave was always concerned about diversity issues. He would say, 'Are there women coming in? Are there minority students coming in? We should make sure that we are doing things to ensure that we have a diverse group coming in to Caltech.'" Hunt recalls that when two young women wanted to take a class that wasn't offered that year, "Dave met with them in his office three times a week. He wanted to be helpful. He just felt a responsibility to do it."
"The thing that was remarkable about David Goodwin," says Haile, "was that when he was diagnosed with this rare form of cancer for which there is no rhyme or reason, he said, 'I'm so glad that I lived my life in a healthy way and that I didn't do anything that caused this,' not 'I can't believe I lived my life in such a healthy way, and it's so unfair that I got struck by this.' It was stunning. He had an incredibly optimistic view."
"Dave made you happy whenever you ran into him," says Kaushik Bhattacharya, the Howell N. Tyson, Sr., Professor of Mechanics and professor of materials science, and executive officer for mechanical and civil engineering. "You could go into his office and have a wonderful conversation about any topic in the world. He had an easy smile and a wicked sense of humor."
Goodwin's honors include five years as a National Science Foundation Presidential Young Investigator and two NASA Certificates of Recognition for his diamond-film work. He was a member of the Electrochemical Society, the American Chemical Society, the Combustion Institute, the American Physical Society, the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, and the Materials Research Society. He wrote or coauthored more than 60 papers.
In his spare time, Goodwin was an accomplished guitarist, a skilled woodworker who made several pieces of furniture for the family's Craftsman house, and a prolific painter in oils.
Goodwin is survived by his parents, George and Verma Goodwin, of Cameron Park, California; his sisters, Ellen Goodwin Levy of Sacramento and Jennifer Goodwin Smith of Elk Grove; his wife, Frances Teng; and his children, Tim, 18, and Erica, 15.
A memorial service will be held on January 12, 2013, at 1:00 p.m. at the Caltech Athenaeum, and an annual speakership in mechanical engineering is being established in his honor; contributions to the David Goodwin Memorial Lectureship can be made here.
Many new college graduates worry about getting jobs. Recent Caltech grads Cole Hershkowitz (BS '11) and Ka Suen (BS '12) don't—because they're trying a different route, working overtime as the cofounders and sole full-time staffers of Chai, a start-up marketing a mobile app that people can use to track and reduce their energy use at home. The two are among many students and young alumni taking advantage of opportunities at Caltech that prepare young entrepreneurs to succeed.
Hershkowitz and Suen first teamed up in a Caltech class in which they helped build a house—specifically, the Caltech–SCI-Arc entry in the U.S. Department of Energy's September 2011 Solar Decathlon (see "Houses That Build People"). They created an iPad-based home-energy-control app that was popular with the thousands of visitors who toured the Decathlon house. What stuck with Hershkowitz and Suen was that people wanted something like it in their own homes.
"Through the Decathlon, we saw things from the homeowner's perspective," says Hershkowitz. He and Suen looked for products homeowners could buy to manage their own energy use and what they found failed to impress them. Even though about a quarter of U.S. electricity customers have smart meters, which can transmit information about household energy use in real time, that information doesn't do homeowners and renters as much good as it could, because it doesn't show which appliances are using the energy. This kind of knowledge is power—literally. Hershkowitz and Suen cite a study from the Electric Power Research Institute showing that by actively monitoring their home energy use, residents can reduce it by 20 percent.
Hershkowitz, primed by a stream of talks and mixers he had attended over the prior year as president of Caltech's entrepreneurship club, immediately saw this gap in the market as an opportunity to start a business. He and Suen formed Chai, building a team with three Decathlon collaborators and using Hershkowitz's apartment as an office. They created an app that communicates information from a homeowner's or renter's smart meter to their iPhone or iPad and uses an algorithm to find patterns in energy use by appliances. Users tag the appliances they want to track—Hershkowitz, for example, has tagged his washer, dryer, refrigerator, TV, air conditioner, and even his teakettle—and then the app details how much energy each tagged appliance consumes, and sends alerts about things like the AC running on a 70-degree day, the TV drawing power when it's off, or the refrigerator doubling its energy use ("Did you leave the refrigerator door open?" the app will ask).
This past May, the Chai team competed against more than 30 others in the DOE First Look West (FLoW) clean-energy business-plan competition run by Caltech. The team didn't win, but the five-month judging process flooded them with feedback from experts in industry and tech transfer, including ways to improve their business model. Stephanie Yanchinski, the FLoW consortium program executive director, says, "FLoW targets a very early stage in the entrepreneurial process, dealing with people like Cole who are starting their first company. We are able to surround them with mentors who understand what it takes to set up a new venture. These advisors often help connect teams to potential partners and sources of funding." The mentorship also benefited Greenbotics, a Caltech-UCLA effort that won second place for its solar-panel-cleaning robots. All in all, a third of the FLoW finalists are now thriving start-ups.
In September, Hershkowitz and Suen attended Lean LaunchPad—an entrepreneurial boot camp hosted by Caltech visiting professor Ken Pickar and by Mani Chandy, Simon Ramo Professor and professor of computer science, and taught by Silicon Valley veterans Steve Blank and Jon Feiber. At the five-day workshop, Hershkowitz and Suen and nine other teams of Caltech students and postdocs talked with potential customers each day, making quick changes to their products and pitches between conversations. "The process is kind of painful, but it keeps you from developing products no one wants," says Hershkowitz. He found the customer feedback at the workshop so valuable that he is extending it by working with Caltech professors who have pitched in to further perfect the app, testing it in their own homes.
In one year, Hershkowitz and Suen—and peers who took advantage of the same opportunities—have learned more about commercializing an idea than most people could in 20 years without such mentorship.
This October, the Los Angeles CleanTech Incubator accepted Chai into its portfolio, offering Hershkowitz and Suen office space, wireless, coaching, and more. "Now we have a place to work," says Suen, anticipating the transition out of Hershkowitz's apartment. "We'll have good company—10 cleantech start-ups. It's a good atmosphere with lots of others around and plenty of support." Hershkowitz adds, "Plus, they have someone to clean the place."
Caltech clean-energy research is accelerating thanks to the renovation of the Earle M. Jorgensen Laboratory. Transformed into a cutting-edge facility for energy science, the lab unites two powerhouse programs: the Resnick Sustainability Institute and the Joint Center for Artificial Photosynthesis (JCAP).
At the lab's dedication on Friday, October 19, the public and the campus community toured the building and learned about the research happening there. "It is easy to grow cynical in the face of the challenges that humanity faces when we think about transitioning towards a sustainable energy future," said Caltech president Jean-Lou Chameau at the event. "Caltech is uniquely positioned to address such a global challenge."
Inside the newly renovated lab, teams of students, postdoctoral scholars, staff researchers, and faculty are working to invent revolutionary, clean, inexpensive methods for the generation of fuels and power. Through the Jorgensen renovation, researchers have gained new prototyping facilities for turning lab breakthroughs into market-ready inventions and experimental systems that are helping speed work on some of the toughest problems in energy science. These facilities include an advanced and customized ink-jet printer with which researchers can fabricate more than 100,000 sample materials per day. Each day, thousands of these materials can be tested for their ability to absorb light or to serve as catalysts for water-splitting—crucial steps in generating fuel from sunlight.
The Jorgensen Laboratory brings together researchers from Caltech's nationally top-ranked divisions of Engineering and Applied Science (EAS) and Chemistry and Chemical Engineering (CCE).
"Our researchers are working with Caltech's chemists and chemical engineers to challenge the status quo and translate scientific discovery into clean-energy innovations that will directly benefit society for generations to come," says Ares Rosakis, EAS division chair and the Theodore von Kármán Professor of Aeronautics and professor of mechanical engineering.
"This facility capitalizes on Caltech's extraordinarily collaborative culture. It equips our students and faculty to come together across fields to develop novel and viable approaches to renewable energy technologies," adds Jackie Barton, CCE division chair and the Arthur and Marian Hanisch Memorial Professor and professor of chemistry.
JCAP, a U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Energy Innovation Hub, is the nation's largest research effort focused on artificial photosynthesis. Its researchers aim to create a low-cost generator that uses sunlight, carbon dioxide, and water to make fuels—after which they hope to hand that prototype off to private-sector companies to launch a new solar-fuels industry.
"We would think about our energy problem so differently if we could get this card on the table," says Nate Lewis, JCAP director and Caltech's George L. Argyros Professor and professor of chemistry.
The Resnick Institute, for its part, is set up to foster Caltech-based research collaborations that have the potential to develop renewable-energy technologies that can be scaled up to power the planet.
Research supported by the Resnick Institute will yield tangible benefits even faster thanks to the new facilities, says Harry Atwater, the institute's director and Caltech's Howard Hughes Professor and professor of applied physics and materials science. He predicts, "Caltech will do for energy in the twenty-first century what it did for physics in the twentieth: reinvent it."
"We are passionately committed to finding alternative and sustainable energy solutions, and developing the breakthrough technologies we need to address the daunting challenges of energy security, rapidly accelerating energy demand, and climate change," said founding donors Lynda and Stewart Resnick in a statement. "We can think of no better partner in these efforts than Caltech."
The renovation walks its sustainability talk, even beyond its reuse of a midcentury laboratory. Project managers used sustainable materials, kept 82 percent of construction waste out of landfills, and donated the lab's old furniture. The lab now has high-efficiency lighting and HVAC systems, a living roof featuring evergreen and drought-tolerant grasses, and water-saving plumbing and landscaping. "The goal is LEED Platinum certification," says Ken Hargreaves, Caltech's senior director of facilities design and construction.
Support from the Resnicks, the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation and the Moores themselves, the Department of Energy, The Ahmanson Foundation, and others made this renovation—and its corresponding acceleration of science—possible.
"To move from petroleum and fossil-fuel dependence to a renewable, sustainable energy economy will require new discoveries across a wide range of disciplines," said W. F. Brinkman, director of the Department of Energy Office of Science, in a letter shared at the building dedication. "There is no doubt that the California Institute of Technology is in the very forefront of this research effort, mobilizing a formidable array of talent and resources in the quest for the energy technologies of the future."
Get ready to drop, cover, and hold on! On Thursday, October 18, Caltech will once again participate in the Great California ShakeOut, the annual statewide earthquake-preparedness drill. Caltech students, faculty, staff, and visitors are encouraged to join the more than 8 million Californians who will have the opportunity to practice how to protect themselves during an earthquake.
At 10:18 a.m., an alert will be sent via Caltech's emergency notification system to signify the start of the one-minute drill. The Institute will join businesses, nonprofits, government organizations, schools, neighborhoods, families, and others throughout the state in performing three vital action steps: drop, cover, and hold on. The recommended protocol is as follows:
Additionally, throughout the day, the campus will be engaged in emergency-response and recovery activities as the Institute activates its Emergency Response Plan.
"Building a disaster-resilient institute begins with everyone taking the time to learn what to do in emergency situations," says Jim Cowell, Caltech's associate vice president for facilities. "Participating in the annual ShakeOut exercise is a great opportunity for everyone on campus to practice their earthquake procedures and review their personal and departmental emergency plans."
Here are additional ways you can participate in this year's ShakeOut:
For earthquake safety tips and additional information on the Great California ShakeOut, visit www.shakeout.org.
Around this time next year, several students from Caltech and the Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc) will be having what seems to be an average day in their shared house: they'll be doing laundry, inviting neighbors over for dinner, watching TV, playing video games, doing homework. But monitors will stop by to weigh the towels the students launder. The neighbors will judge the dinner party. Every kilowatt that passes through the TV and computers will be noted. And all of this will happen in a house that has yet to exist.
For the second time, a SCI-Arc–Caltech team has won a spot in the Solar Decathlon, a biennial Department of Energy–sponsored competition to design and build a solar-powered house with the ideal blend of affordability, market appeal, design excellence, energy production, and efficiency. Twenty student teams from around the United States and the world will open the doors of 20 new houses in the Orange County Great Park, in Irvine, California, on October 3, 2013. During the 10-day competition, each team will put its house through the paces of normal life to simulate a real homeowner's experience—although most homeowners don't have hundreds of visitors tromping through daily. (All Decathlon homes will welcome visitors from 11:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. Thursday through Sunday both weeks of the event.)
After the Decathlon, the SCI-Arc–Caltech house will make an encore appearance at the California Science Center, which exhibited the team's inaugural entry, nicknamed CHIP for Compact Hyper-Insulated Prototype. CHIP actually produced more energy than it consumed, sharing first place in the contest for both energy balance and water heating, winning second in both engineering and home entertainment, and—though its architecture and advanced features suggested a luxury home—garnering third place for affordability.
Melany Hunt, an advisor for the 2013 project and Caltech's William R. Kenan, Jr., Professor of Mechanical Engineering, uses the Solar Decathlon project as teaching lab. She mentored several students this spring and summer as they brainstormed engineering concepts for the 2013 house's solar panels, the HVAC system, the radiant floor heating, and a unique phase-changing insulation. The insulation—something like bubble wrap filled with a wax-like material instead of air—will help keep heat in or out, as needed, as its filling melts and solidifies. The SCI-Arc architects are being equally innovative, envisioning a house that opens up in fine weather and actually moves so that its solar cells can catch more rays. Their Caltech counterparts—for their part—are engineering ways for the house to sense whether the cat is asleep in the path of the living room.
This summer, electrical engineering sophomores Brynan Qiu and Do Hee Kim optimized concepts for the house's solar panels. As part of their project, they looked at how dirt reduces power production for panels mounted at different angles. They used solar panels that had been exposed to L.A.'s dusty air for seven months on CHIP's roof, retrieving the panels from both flat and angled parts of the roof. "They were really disgusting," says Qiu. "We measured energy production and then cleaned the panels and measured again." They found that the dirty flat-mounted panels lost 20 percent of their power production—more than twice as much as those mounted at a 15-degree angle. With data in hand, they went to the architects . . . and the debate began.
"It's interesting working with the architects," Qiu says. "Engineers and architects have different modes of thought and tastes. While we might want to have our array tilted at the optimal angle for energy production, a large tilted roof may not be part of their vision." So Qiu and Kim are working to see through their partners' eyes, designing novel solar-panel configurations that will produce plenty of power while permitting a graceful and striking roofline. "Interacting with the architects helps me think more creatively and generate more ideas," Qiu says.
This academic year, Qiu and some 20 other students in Introduction to Multidisciplinary Systems Engineering will take the solar house from concept through construction with their SCI-Arc partners, while earning computer science, mechanical engineering, or electrical engineering credits. Hunt, who is leading the class, says the project itself is entirely student led. "I see my role as a supporter," she says. "I love the ideas the students come up with, and want to put them in the position of making all the decisions, thinking about things that are clever and unusual and inexpensive that we can put into this house."
The Decathlon gives Caltech's engineering students an opportunity to extend themselves as they learn to interact with their architect partners and with the media, corporate partners, and the public, says Elisabeth Neigert, a 2010 SCI-Arc graduate and a project manager for the 2011 team. (Neigert is the external relations program manager for the 2013 team, supported by Caltech's Resnick Sustainability Institute.) One key asset helps Caltech students stretch, she says: "They are incredible at collaboration. They're selfless. They are used to thinking about what's best for the team. It's always about the vision."
The Princeton Review has named Caltech to its "2013 Green Honor Roll." Caltech is among 21 schools that received the highest possible score—99—in an analysis that looked at 806 institutions and rated them on environmentally related practices, policies, and academic offerings. These "Green Rating" scores will be published on each school's profile in the new 2013 Princeton Review guidebooks.
Citing Caltech as "a giant in sustainability," a write-up on the review's website noted the pioneering use of self-managed green revolving funds, energy-efficiency projects, and contributions to cleaner air as highlights of the Institute's devotion to the green movement. The commendation also called attention to the campus's environmentally friendly buildings—such as the Annenberg Center and the Schlinger Laboratory—and the sustainability-focused classes and research opportunities available through the Joint Center for Artificial Photosynthesis, the Linde Center for Global Environmental Science, and the Resnick Sustainability Institute.
"This honor is exciting because it's not only a recognition of everyone's hard work across the campus, but also—and perhaps most importantly—it's encouragement to keep striving, each in our own individual ways, to be more effective stewards of Caltech," says John Onderdonk, director of sustainability programs at Caltech.
The Princeton Review's Green Rating measures a school's performance as an environmentally aware and responsible institution using criteria and questions developed in conjunction with ecoAmerica, a research- and partnership-based environmental nonprofit organization. The ratings consider, among other things, whether students have a healthy and sustainable campus quality of life; how well students are prepared for employment and citizenship in a world now defined by environmental challenges; and a school's environmental policies. More information can be found in the Princeton Review's press release.
Caltech's solar-powered toilet has won the Reinventing the Toilet Challenge issued by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Caltech engineer Michael Hoffmann and his colleagues were awarded $100,000 for their design, which they demonstrated at the Reinvent the Toilet Fair, a two-day event held August 14–15 in Seattle.
Last summer, Hoffmann, the James Irvine Professor of Environmental Science at Caltech, and his team were awarded a $400,000 grant to create a toilet that can safely dispose of human waste for just five cents per user per day. The lavatory can't use a septic system or an outside water source, or produce pollutants.
The challenge is part of a $40 million program initiated by the Gates Foundation to tackle the problems of water, sanitation, and hygiene throughout the developing world. According to the World Health Organization, 2.5 billion people around the globe are without access to sanitary toilets, which results in the spread of deadly diseases. Every year, 1.5 million people—mostly those under the age of five—die from diarrhea.
Hoffmann's proposal—which won one of the eight grants given—was to build a toilet that uses the sun to power an electrochemical reactor. The reactor breaks down water and human waste into fertilizer and hydrogen, which can be stored in hydrogen fuel cells as energy. The treated water can then be reused to flush the toilet or for irrigation.
The team built a prototype inside the solar dome on the roof of Caltech's Linde + Robinson Laboratory, and after a year of designing and testing, they—along with the other grantees—showed off their creation. The Gates Foundation brought in 50 gallons of fake feces made from soybeans and rice for the demonstrations.
The $60,000 second-place prize went to Loughborough University in the United Kingdom—whose toilet produces biological charcoal, minerals, and clean water—and the $40,000 third-place award went to the University of Toronto's design, which sanitizes feces and urine and recovers resources and clean water. Eawag (Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology) and EOOS won $40,000 as a special recognition for their toilet interface design.
At Caltech, hydrophilic researchers in the Division of Geological and Planetary Sciences take to the salty seas to gather data, explore the deep, and get a firsthand view of the beasts at the bottom. The briny treasures they collect along the way are helping them learn more about past, present, and future environmental conditions and hazards. Read about their ocean adventures in a feature-length story in the Summer 2012 issue of E&S magazine.
PASADENA, Calif.—There is an old trick for remembering the difference between stalactites and stalagmites in a cave: Stalactites hold tight to the ceiling while stalagmites might one day grow to reach the ceiling. Now, it seems, stalagmites might also fill a hole in our understanding of Earth's climate system and how that system is likely to respond to the rapid increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide since preindustrial times.
Many existing historical climate records are biased to the high latitudes— coming from polar ice cores and North Atlantic deep ocean sediments. Yet a main driver of climate variability today is El Niño, which is a completely tropical phenomenon. All of this begs the question: How do we study such tropical climate influences? The answer: stalagmites.
"Stalagmites are the ice cores of the tropics," says Jess Adkins, professor of geochemistry and global environmental science at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech). He and geochemist Kim Cobb of the Georgia Institute of Technology led a team that collected samples from stalagmites in caves in northern Borneo and measured their levels of oxygen isotopes to reconstruct a history of the tropical West Pacific's climate over four glacial cycles during the late Pleistocene era (from 570,000 to 210,000 years ago).
The results appear in the May 3 issue of Science Express. The lead author of the paper, Nele Meckler, completed most of the work as a postdoctoral scholar at Caltech and is now at the Geological Institute of ETH Zürich.
Throughout Earth's history, global climate has shifted between periods of glacial cooling that led to ice ages, and interglacial periods of relative warmth, such as the present. Past studies from high latitudes have indicated that about 430,000 years ago—at a point known as the Mid-Brunhes Event (MBE)—peak temperatures and levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide in interglacial cycles were suddenly bumped up by about a third. But no one has known whether this was also the case closer to the equator.
By studying the records from tropical stalagmites, Adkins and his team found no evidence of such a bump. Instead, precipitation levels remained the same across the glacial cycles, indicating that the tropics did not experience a major shift in peak interglacial conditions following the MBE. "The stalagmite records have glacial cycles in them, but the warm times—the interglacials—don't change in the same way as they do at high latitudes," Adkins says. "We don't know what that tells us yet, but this is the first time the difference has been recorded."
At the same time, some changes did appear in the climate records from both the high latitudes and the tropics. The researchers found that extreme drying in the tropics coincided with abrupt climate changes in the North Atlantic, at the tail end of glacial periods. It is thought that these rapid climate changes, known as Heinrich events, are triggered by large ice sheets suddenly plunging into the ocean.
"In the tropics, we see these events as very sharp periods of drying in the stalagmite record," Adkins says. "We think that these droughts indicate that the tropics experienced a more El Niño–like climate at those times, causing them to dry out." During El Niño events, warm waters from the tropics, near Borneo, shift toward the center of the Pacific Ocean, often delivering heavier rainfall than usual to the western United States while leaving Indonesia and its neighbors extremely dry and prone to forest fires.
The fact that the tropics responded to Heinrich events, but not to the shift that affected the high latitudes following the MBE, suggests that the climate system has two modes of responding to significant changes. "It makes you wonder if maybe the climate system cares about what sort of hammer you hit it with," Adkins says. "If you nudge the system consistently over long timescales, the tropics seem to be able to continue independently of the high latitudes. But if you suddenly whack the climate system with a big hammer, the impact spreads out and shows up in the tropics."
This work raises questions about the future in light of recent increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide: Is this increase more like a constant push? Or is it a whack with a big hammer? A case could be made for either one of these scenarios, says Adkins, but he adds that it would be easiest to argue that the forcing is more like a sudden whack, since the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has increased at such an unprecedented rate.
In addition to Adkins, Cobb, and Meckler, other coauthors on the paper, "Interglacial hydroclimate in the tropical West Pacific through the late Pleistocene," are Matthew Clarkson of the University of Edinburgh and Harald Sodemann of ETH Zürich. Cobb is also a former postdoctoral scholar in Adkins's group and has been collaborating on this project since her time at Caltech. The work was supported by the National Science Foundation, the Swiss National Science Foundation, the German Research Foundation, and by an Edinburgh University Principal's Career Development PhD Scholarship.
To help educate the community on living greener, Caltech's Office of Sustainability is sponsoring a series of events starting Tuesday in honor of Earth Week.
Four lunchtime lectures offer participants the opportunity to learn where Caltech's water comes from, how power is generated on campus, what happens to the waste generated on campus, and how to buy locally and sustainably grown produce. These informational sessions will be held Tuesday through Friday at noon in Winnett Lounge, and lunch will be provided to the first 25 guests in attendance at each event.
Anyone with a green thumb can pick up free vegetable seeds and compost from Chandler Café's composting program and find out how to get involved in sustainability organizations on campus at the student club fair on Wednesday from 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. on San Pasqual Walk. Then on Thursday, there is a screening of Living Downstream, a documentary about cancer and its connection to our environment, at 5 p.m. in Hameetman Auditorium.
The week wraps up with an e-waste roundup on Friday from 8 a.m. to noon at the Recycling Center, where you can properly dispose of your old computers, cell phones, batteries, DVDs, fax machines, stereos, monitors, scanners, and printers.
All events are open to the public. For more information on the full spectrum of Caltech's sustainability efforts, visit http://sustainability.caltech.edu/.


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Any help would be greatly appreciated.


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A Rich, Delicious, Moist Cream cheese Cupcake with a Candybar Melted in the Middle..... The CreamCheese is not a huge element in these cupcakes but it makes them ...
What you need: For the Cupcakes: 1 box white cake mix (eggs , oil and water, or whatever else you need to make your box cake mix) 4 ...
Cupcakes: In a medium bowl mix soft cream cheese and 4 tablespoons of powdered sugar until it forms a paste. Mix cupcake batter according to box directions in ...
Once cupcakes are cool, use a paring knife to cut a well into the center of each cupcake, don't forget to save the tops of the cupcakes that ...
Un wrap your mini candy bars and place one in each cupcake. Place Cupcakes with chocolate bar showing in the middle of the cupcakes into the microwave for ...
Once the chocolate is melted, replace the the cupcake tops to complete the cupcake. Let them cool again and its time to do the icing.
Here is how to make your Icing: Cream the Shortening with an electric mixer until is is fluffy. Add the powdered sugar, a little bit at a time, ...
I then added some red lip sprinkles for valentines day but you don't have to do that ;)
Don't forget to check out your awesome candybar centers!
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My 3 in 1 Mini Cupcakesby Pegsgottado
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Hello Fracking, Goodbye Saudis
Joergen Oerstroem Moeller | Posted 12.18.2014 | World
Read More: U.S. Oil, Fracking, Fracking u.s., Saudi Arabic Fracking, Saudi Arabia Oil, American Gas, Saudi Arabia, American Oil, Saudi Fracking, WorldPost Americas, Worldpost Global Order, WorldPost Middle East, World News
Since the Shah of Iran's fall in 1979, the world of oil has been governed by a tacit American-Saudi Arabian understanding that keeps a firm grip on Middle East politics. There have been ups and downs, but the partners have never questioned the understanding -- until now. Fracking in the U.S. is fracturing U.S.-Saudi ties.


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The Best Wireless IP Camera
After 20 hours researching and testing seven models hands-on, we found that the Nest Cam is the best wireless IP camera for most people. It offers a simple way to capture what's going on in your home while you're away and can alert you to unexpected sounds and movements. The Nest Cam provides a clear high-definition video stream with a field of view wide enough to encompass almost any room (larger than most competitors). Video is crisp and clear, with fine detail across a variety of lighting conditions; the Nest Cam performs as well or better than the other models we tested. It also sports an easy-to-use, frequently updated mobile app.
IP cameras stream live video from your local network to the Internet and let you watch that video on a computer, smartphone, or tablet. The ones we examined also let you play back recorded video and alert you when they're triggered by motion or sound. You might want one to check on whether the kids have returned home from school, see if a pet's behaving, or alert you to intruders—and provide the police with the incriminating video.
*At the time of publishing, the price was $190.
The Nest Cam comes from Alphabet's (formerly Google's) Nest division and is the latest evolution of a long-running product line (its predecessor, the Dropcam Pro, was our previous pick). The Nest Cam adds higher-resolution 1080p video output (the Dropcam Pro captured 720p video) but removes a much-liked feature for geofencing that is promised to return in a future software update.
If you need a multiple-camera setup or to place cameras far away from a power outlet, Netgear's Arlo offers an affordable but radically different approach, comprising a flexible system of wireless camera pods (powered by lithium batteries that can last for many months) that route through a special Ethernet-connected hub.
ArcSoft's Simplicam is nearly as good as the Nest Cam, but the narrower field of view will be a dealbreaker for many people. For smaller spaces, however, its lower cost per unit (and per year for cloud storage) may fit the bill. The initial and annual savings add up with multiple cameras.
By themselves, IP cameras don't offer the kind of comprehensive monitoring offered by complete home-security systems, which feature door and window sensors, a siren, and always-on professional monitoring. Two IP camera systems we tested—Canary Connect's Canary and Icontrol's Piper—incorporate some home-security system features, but both products have limitations that keep us so far from wholeheartedly recommending either.
Table of contents
- Flaws but not dealbreakers
- Truly wireless
- An alternative for smaller rooms
- The competition
- What to look forward to
Why you should trust us
Jason Snell was the lead editor at Macworld for more than a decade and has been reviewing technology products for two decades. He's been toying with live Internet cameras since the '90s, when Connectix released the QuickCam, a grayscale camera that could snap stills or jerky video when attached to a Mac, and he bought the original Dropcam when it first arrived on the scene.
Who should get this?
If you want an easy-to-use way to watch what's happening in or around your house while you're elsewhere or access video footage after something happens in your home—whether it's your kids dropping a dish or a burglar breaking in—an IP camera with a cloud-storage option can do the job.
These cameras allow you to watch live video of your house on a computer, phone, or tablet over an Internet connection from wherever you are. The ones we considered all provide recording services that let you watch and listen to what's happened from a few hours to a month ago, with recording often triggered by motion-detection features. Most also can send alerts to your phone if they detect motion or sound when they're not supposed to.
But an IP camera is not a replacement for a comprehensive home security system with sensors on all your doors and windows, an arming/disarming keypad, a siren, battery-operated or battery-backed sensors, and a direct connection to a monitoring service. Such systems may also detect temperature changes, water leaks, glass breaking, and other conditions.
Most of the cloud-connected IP cameras we tested are easy to set up and use and have great image quality. However, they have two big weaknesses: they don't have local video storage, so they're useless if your Internet connection goes down, and most don't have batteries, so they're useless if your power goes out. There are IP cameras without these weaknesses, but they're generally much harder to set up and use and have much worse image quality. We plan to test IP cameras with local storage in a future guide. Despite these weaknesses, however, we still think an IP camera like a Nest Cam is better for most people because of its ease of use and great image quality—just don't rely on it to replace a security system.
If you're suspicious about something, the cameras we recommend will let you review previously recorded video to see what actually happened—and if someone did break into your house, you can see who did it and show that video to the cops. But they won't contact a monitoring company, who can send police or a security guard if something does go wrong. Each service has different options for how long they store video and what you'll pay for the privilege. The default included with most plans is usually several days' worth, but some services allow you to pay more to store up to a month. Some cameras will only save video when they detect motion or sound, while others record everything that happens in front of their little lenses. We recommend cloud storage, because local-only storage in a memory card could be stolen or destroyed in a burglary, fire, or natural disaster for which you need evidence. Cloud archives are persistent.
How we picked
This category has exploded with options since we last covered it, and numerous competitors offer different mixes of ease of use, security features, home-automation integration, and portability.
In addition to our own research, we checked out reviews from sources such as CNET and PC Mag, as well as user reviews from Amazon. After considering more than a dozen models and narrowing it down, we called in the Nest Cam, D-Link's DCS-5020L, Belkin's NetCam HD+, ArcSoft's Simplicam, Icontrol's Piper, Canary, NetGear's Arlo, and Samsung's SmartCam HD Pro for testing.
We searched for cameras that are easy to set up and use, with mobile apps, as well as access from Macs and PCs. We wanted cameras that provided clear and detailed images in bright light, low light, and in the dark; DVR features; and alerts if they noticed anything suspicious.
We looked for wide-angle cameras that could take in a horizontal field of view of 100 degrees or more and that shot in 720p or higher. Remote cloud storage was a decider: many IP cameras include microSD as a local storage option but offer no remote storage or too little of it, either by storage size or number of days retained. Some only store clips triggered by motion, which can omit events that don't hit a threshold but turn out later to be important. We didn't consider bandwidth usage for cloud storage, although it's a concern we'll discuss later. (We plan a future, separate guide on budget IP cameras to look at affordable options with both live remote viewing and local storage.)
IP camera makers almost always list the diagonal field of view, which overstates the horizontal dimension by about 15 percent for an HD (16:9 ratio) camera frame: the Nest Cam's 130-degree diagonal is roughly 115 degrees horizontal, still enough to sweep in an entire room without being in a corner. For long, narrow rooms, you need a wide field of view so you can place the camera centrally and avoid losing detail at either end of space.Vertical field of view is much less important, as only an average floor-to-ceiling height needs to be captured, but it affects a camera's placement. (Some cheaper cameras have motors for panning and even optical zoom—one even detects motion and swivels towards it—but wide-field observation makes the most sense for passive monitoring purposes.)
Some IP cameras include a built-in speaker and support an two-way audio intercom feature with one-way video. You can also scare intruders by booming out, "Who goes there!" we suppose, or communicate more gently with a child or pet. In practice, we recommend putting IP cameras in locations that are unlikely to work well for this purpose, such as near the ceiling in a corner of a room. It strikes us an extraneous feature when you could far more easily just Skype or FaceTime.
We excluded outdoor-only cameras, since these typically have different requirements, like low-voltage wiring, power-over-Ethernet, or direct wiring. Some of the cameras we did look at could be used both indoors and out, usually as part of a bundle, but the exterior-only ones had additional or targeted features—like a rugged mounting bracket—that added expense and didn't work well inside.
How we tested
We unboxed and set up every camera on a home Wi-Fi network, except in the case of the Arlo, where we connected the included and required base station to the router via Ethernet. Each camera was set atop an upright piano against one wall in a very long room with eight-foot ceilings (measuring 40 feet by 12 feet) that acts as kitchen, dining area, and living room.
Because the cameras communicate over Wi-Fi, we didn't need to put them near an Ethernet jack or wire in additional Ethernet outlets. Only the Arlo requires a spare Ethernet port on a router or switch for its hub, but we didn't have to make any changes to our existing home network in order to set it up.
We placed our test cameras where they could cover the largest possible area while keeping critical points (like doors and windows) at high enough resolution to be useful. We did need to position most cameras within a few feet of a power outlet—all of the cameras we tested other than the battery-powered Arlo included a several-foot-long power cord, which allows some flexibility but won't let you place a camera in hard-to-reach spaces far from outlets. (Depending on the device, longer third-party USB power cords may be available at a nominal extra cost.) Mounting a camera above arm's reach in a corner might be best, if you're worried about it being reachable by an intruder.
We viewed live and recorded video on each camera via mobile and web apps and took image samples from the live video from each camera at midday and after dark with all the lights out. We compared samples for image quality and also compared each camera's field of view, which determines how wide a scene the camera can shoot–the wider the better.
Our pick
*At the time of publishing, the price was $190.
The Nest Cam is the best IP camera for people who want to easily check on activity at their house while away, thanks to a combination of excellent video quality and ease of use. Its video quality is among the best in the field (the Simplicam is not far behind), with strong colors and sharp details as well as an ability to adapt well to contrast differences. The Nest Cam is the update to our previous pick, the Dropcam Pro, adding higher-definition 1080p video output (the Dropcam captured only up to 720p) and removing a geofencing feature. (The company has said that geofencing will return in a forthcoming update.) Nest Cam offered one of the widest fields of view of any of the cameras we tested: it managed to capture a full swath of a very long living room.
The Nest Cam's video had accurate colors in daylight and managed to keep most of our living-room scene visible even when bright daylight was shining in from the windows, neither losing information in highlights or shadows. Small details could be resolved, like the writing on a Minecraft pillow and the face of a stuffed animal. The view wasn't distorted, and video motion was smooth. The Nest Cam's night-vision image is clear; its strong infrared illuminator evenly lit most of its field of view, barring the extreme edges, and brought all the details of the room into focus. However, it did add the infrared equivalent of "red eye" to any people who wandered into the room in the dark.
The Nest Cam's three-megapixel image sensor captures almost 50 percent more data than required for its maximum 1080p output, which allows a high digital zoom factor without loss of clarity, as it's not just enlarging pixels but showing more data. You can set the Nest Cam to record a smaller area than its entire field of view, and you can "zoom in and enhance" what you're seeing when you're watching live video.
Setting up the Nest Cam was fast and easy. We downloaded the Nest app, scanned a QR code on the back of the IP camera, entered in the home Wi-Fi network details, and were up and running. (You can also get set up by attaching the camera to a Mac or PC via the included USB cable.) Nest will let you set up more than one camera and view them all from the Nest app.
Nest Cam comes with a couple of mounting options: a nifty mount that you can set on a table or attach to a metal object (its base is magnetic) and pivot to get just the right angle, and a wall plate, which you can attach just about anywhere. The camera itself attaches to the wall plate with double-sided sticky tape, which is less than elegant. The cam also has a threaded socket for mounting on a standard photo tripod. Also, wherever you put the Nest Cam, you're going to need to run its included USB power cable—or a longer replacement—back to an electrical outlet.
The camera supports both 2.4GHz (802.11g/n) and 5GHz (802.11ac/n) networking, unlike our other two picks, which work over 2.4GHz networks only. That lower-frequency band can be crowded and full of interference, which can lower throughput and, with multiple cameras, potentially cause lower-quality streaming and cloud-based archiving. Having both options means the Nest should be able to keep up a higher quality video stream most of the time.
Nest Cam uses the Nest app on iOS and Android (the same one used by the company's smart thermostat and smoke-alarm products). Nest has kept the app current, taking advantage of new native features and operating system updates, unlike some of the apps offered by other IP camera manufacturers. The Nest app lets you cycle among cameras, view live footage, or view archived footage, clearly marked at moments at which motion or sound occurs. The app can optionally alert you when there's motion in your house—you can even be alerted based on movement in different areas of the frame. Nest's machine learning analysis marks stuff it thinks you should see, as opposed to just presenting raw footage, and Nest claims that it learns your house over time, resulting in fewer false alarms.
On a computer, I was able to easily set up a motion zone for my front door, avoiding the floor where a cat usually roams, to avoid getting notifications when they're not needed. If you've got a cloud subscription, the Nest web app lets you view live video and jump back and view your full timeline of recorded video over the past 10 or 30 days, depending on your subscription—not just clips triggered by motion alerts, as with some cameras. (Via the iOS and Android apps, you have more limited access — you can view live video or see a list of sound- or motion-triggered clips recorded within your subscription's buffer period.)
Nest lets you retain recordings longer than most other IP camera makers. For a 10-day video buffer, you pay $10/month or $100/year, while a 30-day buffer is $30/month or $300/year. Each additional camera adds a fee exactly half that of a single camera: $5/month or $50/year for a 10-day buffer, and $15/month or $150/year for a 30-day buffer.
If you're also using Nest's eponymous thermostat, the Nest Cam can automatically turn on when you set your thermostat to away, and turn itself back off when you return home. If you own a Nest Protect smoke alarm, you can set Nest Cam to automatically record video when an alarm goes off. You can see this in action in the video above, when we managed to trigger the Nest during some toaster testing at the Wirecutter/Sweethome test kitchen.
Nest has a small but growing Works With Nest program to connect all of Nest's devices to other smart-home devices and a low-power networking system called Weave, and they recently announced a compatible smart lock called the Linus with Yale Locks. That's encouraging, but right now Nest—like most other companies trying to build an Internet of things—hasn't quite managed to connect its devices to home-automation products from other manufacturers.
Who else likes it
CNET gave the Nest Cam 4.5 out of five stars and praised its image quality. Recode called it "simple and reliable." Joanna Stern of the Wall Street Journal enjoyed using it to spy on her puppy. Amazon reviewers gave the previous Dropcam Pro an average of four out of five stars, but reviews of the Nest Cam have not been as kind, mostly due to the removal of the geofencing feature.
PCMag's Eric Griffith the Dropcam Pro 4.5 out of five and declared it "the best consumer-grade video-surveillance camera" they'd seen. Laptop Mag's Michael A. Prospero also awarded the Pro with an Editors' Choice badge and four of five stars. Mark Sullivan of VentureBeat praised its easy setup and ability to maintain a Wi-Fi connection. USA Today's Ed Baig appreciated the hardware while questioning the cloud-storage subscription cost. Engadget's Roberto Baldwin similarly liked the hardware and warned about the extra monthly cost.
Flaws but not dealbreakers
Nest Cam has some minor flaws, although these are are shared by most of the products in his category.
First, you have to pay a recurring fee or you can't access most of its best features. Nest Aware costs $10/month or $100/year with a 10-day video recording buffer ($30/month or $300/year for a 30-day buffer) for a single camera. Each additional camera on the plan adds $5/month or $50/year to a 10-day plan, or $10/month or $150/year to a 30-day plan.)
Without a subscription, the Nest still works as a live camera, but you lose access to past events, can't record events, can't create activity zones to watch for motion in particular areas, can't use Nest's machine learning to lower the rate of false alarms, can't create and share clips from your camera like the one we embedded above, and can't view timelapses.
However, cloud-based video storage has several drawbacks. First, if you're concerned about privacy, you may find it disquieting that audio and video from inside your house is always being streamed to remote servers. If someone hacked into your account, they could listen in on every conversation you've had for a day, week, or month. (A future guide will look at budget IP cameras, which only store or optionally store video on a memory card.)
Nest Cam's scheduling feature mitigates this since you can just set the camera to turn on when you're usually out of the house, but if you leave the house for a vacation or anything else that's off your usual schedule, you have to remember to change the settings or you'll lose hours of coverage—which sort of ruins the point of the thing. The popular geofencing feature found in the Dropcam Pro (removed in the hardware and software update for the Nest Cam) turned on the camera automatically whenever you left the house and turned it off when you returned, addressing these privacy concerns and automatically reducing broadband throughput and data transfer usage when you were home. Nest says the feature is returning in a future release, but hasn't yet given a date.
Cloud-service costs add up, too. Nest's subscription rates are similar to those of its competitors, but there could be hidden costs from your broadband provider. Nest's online documentation says that when set to 1080p recording, each camera will upload from 140 GB to 380 GB each month. Some ISPs have cutoffs between 100 GB and 300 GB and charge overage fees thereafter.
The average upstream rate for 1080p video is 450 kbps, Nest says, but the peak rate is 1.2 Mbps. For those with common 1Mbps-to-5Mbps upstream bandwidth caps, this could have a real impact on uploading files while also increasing latency (the round-trip time for network tasks). With three cameras streaming high-resolution video, you could end up using close to your upstream bandwidth limit all the time and uploading anywhere from 300 GB to nearly one terabyte per month. You can drop to a lower resolution like 720p, but that gives up some of the finest detail, one of the reasons to buy this model in the first place.
Nest Cam is intended for indoor use. You can point it out a window, but it's not rated for exposure to the elements.
In November 2015, a security site posted news that setting a Nest Cam to "off" via its mobile app doesn't actually stop the unit from capturing audio and video. If you read the headline, you might be worried about whether Nest honors your privacy.
The site reported that when turned "off," a Nest Cam only slightly reduces its power use, which suggests that the audio/video components remain active. Nest confirmed this, but told the site that in this standby mode no audio or video is processed, no motion events are monitored, and no multimedia is streamed either to apps or to its cloud.
If Nest Cams were recording and streaming video when you thought they were turned off, this would be a reason for concern, because it would mean you were being monitored when you chose not to be, even if you, your family, or your office has sole control of the Nest account.
However, a separate issue was mentioned: the Nest app lets you turn off the green "active" LED even when the unit is recording (you may, for instance, want a room to be completely dark). That does leave room for confusion—those particularly worried about privacy might imagine a situation in which a third party obtained your account info, turned off the LED, and observed you, while you assumed the unit was powered down. Nest should consider modifying the software to put units into a deeper state of slumber so that the video camera and microphone aren't technically active at any time an owner might think the camera is actually turned off, or use different LED colors or dimmable LEDs for different levels of wakefulness.
Internet-based services that store archives in the cloud present a privacy risk if someone hacks into your account. If you're extremely concerned about privacy, you could follow our reviewer Jason Snell's example: he unplugs his wireless IP cameras when not in use, and plugs them back in when he leaves. He says he'd consider using an outlet timer switch if he wanted to have them in use at fixed, regular times.
Truly wireless
The downside to the lower per-camera cost and greater convenience is that Arlo cameras aggressively conserve battery usage by remaining on standby until motion is detected, at which point they fire up. This means they miss the first few seconds following the triggering action. Some sort of creature roamed through our front walkway one night and knocked an Arlo over, but we ended up with no video of the offender—just the aftermath. Arlo also records only video, not audio, which may be a concern depending on the kind of behavior you're trying to capture.
If you're concerned about having to change camera batteries all the time, don't be: it took several months for one of the units we tested to give any warning that it was starting to run out of juice. We've heard from Arlo users that batteries may drain faster in high-traffic areas due to more triggers activating the cameras. This can mean having to replace batteries after only a month or two. (And presumably if you leave them outside in cold climates, the batteries will die much more rapidly, as lithium-ion batteries can produce substantially less power as the temperature approaches freezing.)
As a single-camera kit that includes a required base station, the Arlo has somewhat worse specs than the other products in this category and at this price, such as omitting audio. But the Arlo base station supports up to 10 cameras: each subsequent camera costs, at the time of writing, $150 (purchased as part of a bundle) or $160 (purchased separately), which makes an extensive system cheaper.
Netgear also includes a rolling storage limit of one gigabyte and up to seven days recording for up to five cameras and one base station per account (not per camera) as part of the purchase price. Older video is deleted when your total uploads exceed that one-GB limit over any seven-day period. Two subscription plans are available. The first supports up to 10 cameras and one base station; it grants 10 GB of cloud storage over 30 days for $10/month or $100/year. The second supports up to 15 cameras and three base stations; it gives 100 GB of cloud storage space and up to 60 days of storage for $15/month or $150/year. This can substantially reduce the total ongoing cost of ownership compared to the Nest Cam, especially for multiple cameras. Four Nest cameras with a 30-day recording buffer would, at this publish date's prices, cost $750 per year in cloud storage fees; four Arlo cams with a 30-day buffer would only be $100 per year (though the Nest would have all 30 days' worth of footage; the Arlo is motion-activated, so it'd only have a month's worth of triggered clips)
An alternative for smaller rooms
ArcSoft's Simplicam has a lower initial price and ongoing cloud fees than the Nest Cam, though a narrower field of view makes it less useful unless you have rooms that are small enough to work with its limitations. It also offers lower resolution while still using up significant upstream bandwidth per camera. However, at around three-fourths the price of the Nest Cam and with cheaper cloud storage, it's worth considering if you're looking for a less-expensive option or live in a smaller space.
The Simplicam has attractive industrial design and setup was easy. The Closeli app (we were confused by the fact that the product's called Simplicam but the app and streaming service are called Closeli) has a clean, easy-to-use interface.
Simplicam's picture quality is good both day and night and compares favorably to our top pick, though images are not quite as sharp and full of detail. However, its field of view at 107 degrees (an effective 93 degrees horizontally) is disappointingly narrow compared with a Nest Cam (130 degrees or 115 horizontally). It just can't cover as much area, limiting its ability to monitor larger spaces—a dealbreaker for many, though not all, potential buyers. The Simplicam also records at maximum 720p instead of 1080p. Its facial detection feature didn't provide an advantage over Nest's motion detection, and its beta-stage facial-recognition option was confusing to set up and not particularly useful in practice.
Fees for cloud storage (at the time of writing) start at $50 a year (or $5 a month) for a one-day buffer and one hour of persistent clip storage and go up to 21 days of storage and five hours of clips for $230 a year (or $23 a month). Storage for additional cameras is available at 40 percent off those prices for each camera. Three Nest Cams on the cheapest plan total $200 a year or $20 a month, while Simplicam's storage for a similar system would total $110 a year or $11 a month. The company says each camera requires about 1 Mbps of upstream bandwidth, a significant burden.
The competition
We only tested Wi-Fi based cameras with high-definition video that didn't require batteries and offered access via mobile app, though the Arlo sneaked through as an oddball addition. We also required a 100-degree diagonal field of view or wider, and cloud based storage. We also didn't want to review cameras that were part of larger security systems and couldn't stand on their own. We scoured editorial reviews and looked at Amazon ratings and ordered in the best reviewed of all the models in the category. Only eight models made the cut.
We excluded from testing an enormous number of other IP cameras due to missing features, poor reviews, or time on the market. Models introduced this year, sometimes by startups founded exclusively to release cameras, aren't good candidates because we don't know how they will perform over time in real-world conditions. Our expectation is that our recommendations will work for several years, but because many cameras requires web and native apps to function, if a company abandoned a product line or went out of business, your cameras could wind up inoperable and without cloud-backed storage options. We'll look at newer cameras in a future update.
You may still see the Dropcam Pro (our previous top pick) for sale at some stores. Keep in mind that the Nest Cam is an update to the Dropcam Pro, with a slightly different design, an improved microphone and speaker, a better mount, and a bump from 720p to 1080p HD video output, although with the same 3-megapixel sensor. Nest has promised that 1080p mode is coming to the Dropcam Pro but aren't offering a timeline. And the cost of cloud pricing is the same as the current Nest Cam. So if you're looking to save money, unless you're getting a Dropcam Pro for less than $125, you're better off going with the Simplicam, which is cheaper to begin with, offers less expensive cloud recording, and is likely not to be refurbished or otherwise come with some sort of conditional warranty as might be the case with a closeout Dropcam. If you already own a Dropcam Pro, however, we don't recommend upgrading, as the difference isn't great enough except in extreme cases in which the extra resolution provides clarity to a distant portion of the field of view. Its one advantage is that it retains a geofencing option (removed in the current Nest Cam and yet to return, though Nest has said it will be enabled in a future update) that enables and disables the Dropcam automatically when you leave or return to your home.
Two products that we tested offer more security features and sensors but cost more than most standalone IP cameras (though they may represent the future direction of this type of product). The Canary Connect Canary offers temperature, humidity, and air quality monitors and a loud siren. Its iOS app is excellently designed, and its image quality is quite good. Unfortunately, Canary doesn't currently integrate with other smart home devices in any way.
Icontrol's Piper is quite similar to Canary in design and functionality and also has a siren and environmental sensors. Unfortunately, Piper's camera—which offered the widest field of view of any camera we tested—was quite poor. What Piper has going for it (since it's a Z-Wave hub) is integration with Z-Wave home security accessories such as door and window sensors.
Samsung's SmartCam HD Pro offers good video quality and an SD card slot, so if you're uncomfortable uploading your video to the cloud (or paying monthly fees), it provides a solid alternative. We'll look at it more closely in our future budget IP camera guide, where cloud storage isn't a requirement, though its price is on the high end.
The D-Link DCS-5020L was a nightmare to set up and requires a separate local recorder for video storage.
Amaryllo makes several models of IP camera, including the iCam Pro FHD and the iSensor. All lack a wide field of vision, though some include both tilt and pan controls, and one has a motion sensor that pivots the camera to where the action is. Customer reviews indicate the firmware and features on some models has shifted significantly over time, at one time using Skype's peer-to-peer mode to capture video in the Pro FHD model, and the company offers limited support.
While many owners like the Ankercam, it is new to market this year and lacks a robust cloud storage option: it only stores five hours of video total—all 20-second clips following a motion trigger. A manual trigger mode allows grabbing five-minute clips. The Y-Cam HomeMonitor HD similarly only stores clips of motion, whether using a free or paid cloud service.
Excluded for a too-narrow field of view were the D-Link Monitor HD DCS-935L, Foscam FI9826P, and Guardzilla.
What to look forward to
In a future update, we expect to look at new competitors, including the Flir FX and the Foscam C1, C2W, and R2W. Several other cameras are noted as shipping in the third quarter of 2015 and either aren't yet available (despite product pages saying so) or are in extremely limited quantities. We're curious about the Logitech Logi Circle, which can operate on a battery for up to three hours and offers a daily recap video summarized by events that stand out in its cloud-based analysis. It includes one day of rolling cloud storage. And we'll check out Samsung's SmartCam HD Plus, an update to the company's system that might help it keep pace with the Nest Cam.
The Netgear Arlo, our pick for a truly wireless system, has added the Arlo Q cam to its lineup. This wired camera is intended to be complementary to the wireless Arlo line, and it offers features that are similar to those of the Nest Cam. Netgear is also offering seven days of free cloud video storage, but you'll have to pay for a subscription fee for continuous recording instead of triggered.
We also expect that as the Internet of Things heats up, it will become more important for an IP camera to fit into an ecosystem of devices that work together and allow you to configure, manage, and monitor them through a single app or compatible apps and services. The industry isn't yet at a point to make a decision based on ecosystem, but we plan to look closely at cameras compatible with emerging protocols including Nest's Weave and Apple's HomeKit.
In June 2016, D-Link announced three new Wi-Fi cameras: the HD Wi-Fi Camera, the HD Pan & Tilt Wi-Fi Camera, and the HD 180-Degree Wi-Fi Camera. We've dismissed D-Link's previous offerings due to difficulty of use, a too-narrow field of view, and a lack of local recording for video storage, but these models will come with a simplified installation, wider viewing angles, and local recording, as well as sound and motion detection and night vision.
The HD Wi-Fi Camera and HD Pan & Tilt both feature a 720p camera with 4x digital zoom, but the HD Pan & Tilt also includes 340-degree pan and 110-degree tilt capabilities; you can change the angle of the camera from anywhere with an associated mobile app. The HD 180-Degree camera comes with a wide-angle lens, IFTTT support, and 802.11ac Wi-Fi.
In July 2016, Nest launched its first outdoor camera, the weatherproof Nest Cam Outdoor. It has the same specs as the indoor Nest Cam, including high-definition 1080p video output with a 130-degree view, plus a strong infrared illuminator. The Nest Cam Outdoor also plugs into an outlet instead of using batteries, so it's always recording and uploading footage to the cloud—but that also means camera placement is limited to where you have outdoor outlets, and if your home loses power, the camera becomes inoperable. The Nest Cam Outdoor is available for preorder now, and it will ship in the fall.
In the future we're also planning to look at budget models that allow only for local storage. These include the Annke and several D-Link models (DCS-2132L, DCS-5222L, and DCS-5029), as well as the HooToo HT-IP211HDP, LeFun, Lorex LNC204, Netatmo Welcome, SkyGenius, and Sundirect. (Some of these models also have a narrow field of view, and might not make the cut on those grounds.)
Nest Cam
Best Wireless IP Camera
*At the time of publishing, the price was $190
- Network Camera Critic , ,
- Dropcam Pro review: A big leap forward for wireless networked cameras, CNET, October 10, 2013 ,
- Dropcam Pro, PC Mag, October 21, 2013 ,
- Dropcam Pro Review, Laptop Magazine, October 9, 2013 ,
- Keep watch: 5 cloud security cameras, Computer World, June 25, 2013 ,
- Security camera showdown: Dropcam HD versus Belkin NetCam HD, Android Central, July 29, 2013 ,
- Review: Dropcam Pro Internet-connected monitoring system, Apple Insider, November 30, 2013 ,
Originally published: November 16, 2015
We actively moderate the comments section to make it relevant and helpful for our readers, and to stay up to date with our latest picks. You can read our moderation policy FAQ here.


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Has anyone experienced TubePress quitting after the upgrade to 2.1.1? I have several sites of which one refuses to show video's. None of them work with IE. I am kinda sorry for having upgraded.
If there are any quick answers out there, I am very interested in knowing about them... :-)


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IPOP (Inclusive Placement Opportunities for Preschoolers) Manual
Description: This manual was developed by the Virginia Department of Education and the state system of Training and Technical Assistance Centers to help local school divisions meet federal and state mandates that children with disabilities be educated in the Least Restrictive Environment (LRE). The manual contains 9 modules which provide critical information for understanding, building, supporting, and sustaining inclusive placement opportunities for young childen with disabilities in community-based early childhood programs. (Inclusion)


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Preview – Aviation Nation 2011
Folks, I've got a big backlog of pics to post including quite a few from this past weekend's airshow at Nellis AFB. I finally got through all the pics from Saturday at the airshow and I hope to have them posted tonight
Have fun and I hope to see you back here soon
2 comments to Preview – Aviation Nation 2011
Copyright © 2016 Parrothead Jeff & Friends - All Rights Reserved
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One of downtown Charleston's worst flooding problems will get some attention soon, as the U.S. Department of Transportation gave the city $10 million to begin work on the Crosstown Expressway.
Improvements to the six-lane highway, also known as U.S. Highway 17 and the Septima Clark Parkway, could begin later this year.
Mayor Joe Riley visited Washington on Wednesday to seal the deal, calling it an important step toward a comprehensive drainage solution. He said he hopes to present a construction contract to City Council by Thanksgiving.
The work will include new curbs and gutters and improving the roadbed, which was built partly atop filled-in creeks and has settled unevenly.
Riley said those steps will ensure that the road drains better during normal rains, but the road will continue to flood occasionally until the city finishes its planned $146 million West Side drainage project.
The upcoming $12 million project, which includes $2 million in city money, also will give the six-lane highway a new look.
Riley said the lanes will be narrowed enough to create a median landscaped with narrow trees and other plantings.
"It will be a tremendous transformation of the road visually," he said. The job also includes sidewalk upgrades and better street lighting.
The $10 million federal grant comes from the $787 billion stimulus bill that President Barack Obama and Congress passed last year.
The city had sought the full $146.3 million to complete its West Side drainage upgrade. While that bid fell short, the city received one of only 51 grant awards, beating out more than 1,300 competing projects.
Riley said the city hopes to secure a $25 million grant next year to make similar road improvements on western Spring Street and President Street, the second phase of the three-phase construction schedule.
And the city is continuing to look for funding sources to pay for the final and costliest phase, which involves building a network of 130-foot-deep tunnels and huge pumps to drain the 500 acres around the Crosstown.
Read a news release from the U.S. Dept. of Transportation
- Keywords


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Consumer Sentiment Highest Since July 2007
U.S. consumer confidence in the economy unexpectedly rose at the end of this month, according to data released Friday. Inflation expectations moderated despite the recent jump in energy prices.
The Thomson-Reuters/University of Michigan final July consumer sentiment index increased to 85.1 from a preliminary reading of 83.9 and a final June reading of 84.1, according to an economist who has seen the numbers. It is the highest reading since July 2007.
Economists surveyed by Dow Jones Newswires expected the final July index to be little changed at 84.
Consumers gave back some of their enthusiasm about the present economy. The current conditions index at the end of July slipped to 98.6 from a 6-year high of 99.7 earlier in the month.
The expectations index increased to 76.5 from 73.8.
Inflation expectations fell slightly, according to the Michigan report.
The one-year inflation expectations reading for early July dropped to 3.1% from an early-July reading of 3.3%. Inflation expectations covering the next five to 10 years declined to 2.8% from 2.9%.


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Do you want to learn to do ceramics, paint, or try installation works? Well there is a class or workshop for everyone of every age at The Art Center!
Registration for the Summer line up of classes and workshops is going on now. You can take classes in ceramics, watercolor, pastel, figure drawing/painting, basic drawing, collage, oil painting, fibers and children's classes.
The Summer session starts on June 1st, but if you want to participated you need to register by the Summer Program pre-registration deadline of Thursday May 21st.
For more information and to become a member of The Art Center and receive a discounted rate call 970-243-7337, ext. 2 or click the link below this story.


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Skip to comments.There is NO JUDGMENT for believers!!
Posted on 01/10/2011 6:45:01 PM PST by Benchim
I am stunned at the intentional misinterpretation of the Bible to keep you in the bondage of "works'. Christ died on the cross to ATONE for your sin if you believe in Him as the Son of God. You then stand imputed righteous !! There is nothing left to judge. THERE IS NO CONDEMNATION IN CHRIST JESUS. Romans 8:1. You are a joint heir with Christ himself . How could you be tried by Jesus? Look at the main scriptures used by professional Christians to make you do stuff.
(Excerpt) Read more at antinomianism-salvation.blogspot.com ...
You wouldn't be referring to the preponderance of white quarterbacks in the NFL would you?
If Christ did not Atone for our sins then this whole thing is a joke and He died for nothing.
We Christians don't joke about the Passion of Our Lord.
Will you please explain this post in plain english??
Even if you are saved and go to heaven your rewards are determined by how you spent your time, treasure and talent while here on Earth.
Now ask yourself, do you think that woman went out from Jesus' presence and "went back to work?" No.
I am not saying she never sinned again, no I am saying that thinking you can continue in your sin without suffering is not biblical, either,
But please, do not miss understand me, it's not a issue of salvation it's an issue of what we will reap in this life, and beyond. Be not fooled, when you sow wild oats, wild oats grow, not cherry trees. The good news is ....... God still loves you and your security (of the believer) is unshakable.
The only unforgivable sin is that of rejection of God. (Grieving the Holy Spirit).
Excuse me, but the White Throne judgment is ONLY for non-believers. We, who have accepted Jesus as our Lord and Savior, will be raised at the time of the Rapture some 1007 years before the White Throne (7 years of Tribulation and 1000 years of Millenial Kingdom). At the time of our death/rapture, we believers will face the judgment seat of Christ, where our actions will be judged and rewards will be awarded, but our final destination, heaven, was assured from the time we accepted Jesus!
Rom 8:31 What shall we then say to these things? If God be for us, who can be against us?
Rom 8:32 He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things?
Rom 8:33 Who shall lay any thing to the charge of God's elect? It is God that justifieth.
Rom 8:34 Who is he that condemneth? It is Christ that died, yea rather, that is risen again, who is even at the right hand of God, who also maketh intercession for us.
Rom 8:35 Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?
Believe whatever you want... but you will be in for a big surprise.
Lest any man boast. I can just see God who saved us and denies our boastful works handing out ribbons for works in heaven. This is a massive contradiction. Won't happen.
No, I'm just gonna bury my money in a jar in the backyard. I am afraid of the guy and just want to be done with it. Maybe if I make a couple of bucks with it I'll be ok. . . .
I don't know about you, I won't have anything to boast about! The New Testament describes at least 5 crowns that believers may receive. I want to see how many I can get... where I can cast them at the feet of Jesus.
AMEN! (and that's all I have to say)
It is so obvious that this legalism is contrived and designed to confuse and return to bondage those that are totally saved. If you don't do that you don't get a lot of donations on Sunday. I think it is from the devil.
Don't let what written in the Book of Life slow you down.
Rewards are a different thing. Believers will be rewarded according to their faithful stewardship.
There are five crowns mentioned in the New Testament that may be earned by a believer:
1. THE INCORRUPTIBLE CROWN (I Cor. 9:25: given for faithfully running the race for Jesus and being temperate in all things.
2. THE CROWN OF REJOICING (I Thess. 2:19): given to faithful soul-winners.
3. THE CROWN OF RIGHTEOUSNESS (II Timothy 4:8): given to all who are in love with the second appearing of Jesus.
4. THE CROWN OF LIFE (Revelation 2:10): given to martyrs for His name.
5. THE CROWN OF GLORY (I Peter 5:4): given to faithful pastors.
1 Cor. 9:24 --> Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one gets the prize? Run in such a way as to get the prize.
For every verse that seems to teach eternal security, I can give you five that shows that it is not scriptural.
Earlier, someone quoted, Romans 8:1. Yet, You have to read the context: "Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, 2 because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit who gives life has set you[a] free from the law of sin and death. 3 For what the law was powerless to do because it was weakened by the flesh,[b] God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh to be a sin offering.[c] And so he condemned sin in the flesh, 4 in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fully met in us, who do not live according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.
5 Those who live according to the flesh have their minds set on what the flesh desires; but those who live in accordance with the Spirit have their minds set on what the Spirit desires."
Jesus says in John 10, "My sheep hear my voice . . . they listen to me . . ."
1 John 3:6, "No one who lives in him keeps on sinning. No one who continues to sin has either seen him or known him."
1 Cor. 6:9, "Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor male prostitutes nor homosexual offenders . . ."
Wouldn't the word of God say about the above list, "Unless you've been born again?" if it didn't matter how you lived your life?
I believe that we are eternally secure as we walk in Christ. We are saved by grace through faith, not by works lest any man should boast. [however] We are God's workmanship created in Christ Jesus to do good works.
Read Ephesians 2:8-10.
Although we are saved by grace, unless we're walking the talk, we're only fooling ourselves.
One last verse: (I could give you many more) Jesus said, "A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, and a bad tree cannot bear good fruit. 19 Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. 20 Thus, by their fruit you will recognize them.
21 Not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord, will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. 22 Many will say to me on that day, Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and in your name drive out demons and perform many miracles? 23 Then I will tell them plainly, I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!
I'm not trying to argue—just share the truth.
Ill just take salvation. You can wear your hat around. It makes no difference to me.
The only way to prove that you believe is to live consistent with that belief.
If you think you can simply declare your belief and then cruise, you might want to explore the following:
Matt 7:21 - not everyone saying "Lord, Lord" will inherit the kingdom of heaven
Matt 24:13 - those who persevere to the end will be saved
Romans 11:22 - remain in his kindness or you will be cut off
Phil 2:12 - work out your salvation in fear and trembling
1 Cor 9:27 - drive your body for fear of being disqualified
1 Cor 10:11-12 - those thinking they are secure may fall
Gal 5:4 - separated from Christ, you've fallen from grace
2 Tim 2:11-13 - must hold out to the end to reign with Christ
Hb 6:4-6 - describes sharers in Holy spirit who then fall away
Heb10:26-27 - if you sin after receiving the truth, judgement remains
I think that's what ails some people (and I'm not talking about you, I don't know you). But they seem to think "I'm saved, there's nothing else I need to do". Yes, we are saved, but if we are saved we obviously love Jesus, and if we love Him we obey His commands! It's great to be saved, but we have our whole lives ahead of us. I'm not going to sit on my salvation, I intend to live for Jesus. I know certain things I do will be rewarded in heaven, but I could not do them in the first place if I hadn't been saved and if He didn't strengthen me. I won't deserve those crowns, I'll cast them at His feet. But I would like to have several to cast, with all my love!
Well now.We are saved or we are not? Which is it?? I go with "saved". I know the Bible is littered with irreconcilable contradictions (that is why I don't worship the Bible and consider it secretarial). but I go with John 3:16.
To believe you have to do "works" to be saved is to doubt that Christ died for your sins. Doubting God(not trusting), in itself, is a sin. God's Grace is a gift to us, nothing we can do to earn it. We aren't capable.
Is there a judgment for blogpimps?
Amen brother in Christ. At least some get it. I feel sorry for those who don't. Don't you?
I think it is a head/heart thing. I don't read God's Word trying to analyze and decipher every passage. I'm not smart enough. I let Him speak to my heart. I know that may sound kooky but that's the way it works for me. Same thing with my praying.
**White Thrown"??
What are you throwing? Footballs? Do you play for the Ducks?
Go Ducks!
As I remember it
Jesus saves but Moses invests
He died to give us the "opportunity" to be saved.
So once you declare your belief, there's nothing you can do to screw up?
did you read the last portion of my post? Or have you defined security the way you understand it?
According to Paul, if they fall away, there never were of the faith.
So the real problem is, although God (because he operates outside of time) knows who is saved (and not), we do not.
We believe we are saved. If, by our actions, we fall away, we have indeed fooled ourselves.
Note that this does NOT depend our particular "worthyness", rather it depends on us trusting in our Savior - that IS our security, as long as we persist in our identity in Christ, we will continue in the path.
Will God ever give up on us? NO there IS your eternal security,
Will we ever give up on God? Maybe. This is the problem. Man, not God.
God is not willing that ANY should perish! So the ONLY way to believe this verse is that either God is not omnipotent, or Man has some reckoning in his destination.
(Note that you cannot believe in 5 point Calvinism and believe the above — I do not believe the BIble needs John Calvin correct it)
"You then stand imputed righteous !!"
Is this the same as "deemed"?
3 Now by this we know that we know Him, if we keep His commandments. 4 He who says, I know Him, and does not keep His commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him. 5 But whoever keeps His word, truly the love of God is perfected in him. By this we know that we are in Him. 6 He who says he abides in Him ought himself also to walk just as He walked.
7 Brethren, I write no new commandment to you, but an old commandment which you have had from the beginning. The old commandment is the word which you heard from the beginning. 8 Again, a new commandment I write to you, which thing is true in Him and in you, because the darkness is passing away, and the true light is already shining. 9 He who says he is in the light, and hates his brother, is in darkness until now. 10 He who loves his brother abides in the light, and there is no cause for stumbling in him. 11 But he who hates his brother is in darkness and walks in darkness, and does not know where he is going, because the darkness has blinded his eyes. -- 1 John 2:3-11, NKJV
I read your poorly communicated statements earlier and now having been awakened by a cat and my mind racing as usual, a couple of thoughts flew by.
In regards to works James is the book to read first.
And when we are called by God, given the faith to believe, and accept the gift of salvation, I recall that we are to take up the cross. To me, Jesus calls, I have died for you, and now you can die for me. Death does not necessarily mean martyrdom, but sacrifice of all but life. Fits in quite well with an eye for an eye, a life for a life.
Also, there are many pagan references to living for someone in payment for that someone who saved their life.
So the professional Christians you mock may be trying to get our butts off the couch with threats, but it should be our honor and love for Jesus that inspires us to deny ourselves and live our life for Him.
Well, that is the difference in theology between you and me. You are to have life and more abundant life free of guilt and laws and duties and fear.I understand doing good to please the Father but you don't have to. James is an anomaly. It contradicts the the sinner Paul who wrote 13 out of 27 books in the new covenant. I have written on this in the Blog so I won't repeat it but you should chunk James as worthless. It should have been rejected when they editorially compiled the Bible. I'm not a cat person. I do love mu doggie.
There is no fear, no guilt, no duty, but love. The greatest love. All the fruits of the Spirit inspire us to serve even unto death. James grew up watching Jesus. I think he wrote from one point of view, Paul from the educated to the Gentile, and Apollos wrote Hebrews to the Jews. Just my opinion, no facts to substantiate. :)
Interesting. Who was Apollos? It has been my opinion that Hebrews doesn't fit just right. I agree with "love".
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Legco delays defer daunting workload
The end of the Legislative Council's annual session is always hectic as lawmakers rush to get unfinished business through. But the agenda is especially packed this time with the looming conclusion of another four-year term. Despite the pressure, though, the frenetic activity that should have been expected on Monday was absent as an extended meeting failed to get under way after lunch due to lack of a quorum. Just 29 of the 60 legislators bothered showing up. This further tarnished reputations after recent criticism over delaying tactics that were aimed at preventing chief executive-elect Leung Chun-ying from taking office with an expanded ministerial team. We have every right to be angry - personal interests have once more been put ahead of those of the people of Hong Kong.
A host of reasons have been given for legislators not being present. Regina Ip Lau Suk-yee was meeting supporters, while People Power's Albert Chan Wai-yip refused to enter the chamber, and other lawmakers said they simply forgot the session was being held. Nearly all pan-democrats were missing, as were 14 pro-government lawmakers. Legco president Tsang Yok-sing has every reason to make them work extra hours to catch up. A daunting workload remains, after all, with 10 government bills, among them important measures to regulate sales of new flats, and 17 resolutions. The latter includes Leung's restructuring plan, the reason behind radical lawmakers last month mounting a filibuster against the by-election bill to bring the legislative process to a grinding halt. Tsang that time opted for a never-used article to get the session back on track, which should have sent the clearest of messages about the mountain of remaining work. It has not sunk in.
An effort to clear the backlog by July 18 will be made, but the rush means the laws and resolutions are unlikely to be properly considered; the volume is such that some will lapse. Lawmakers are chosen to serve Hong Kong, not their own or limited interests. Those standing for election on September 9 have to ensure their heart is in the right place.


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Share Photo
People peer in the window of the Pop-Tarts World store, Monday, Aug. 9, 2010, in New York's Times Square. One of Kellogg Co.'s most popular brands is popping up in Times Square on Tuesday at Pop-Tarts World, with more than 3,000 square-feet dedicated to the toaster pastries. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)