Here are a few specimens for your pleasure. The croc was taken from the Zambezi river in Africa. The steer at the end of the pictures resembles me some days.
Fr. Orthohippo
A FEW WORTHWHILE IMAGES
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started 11-13- 2011
PEOPLE OF THE ARK
Here is a real life experience foreign to most western Christians.
Check it out.
Fr, Orthohippo
As a dark curtain of rain drew near, my tour group made its descent down the hill, leaving the Ethiopian town of Lalibela behind us. In the distance, rows of lush green plateaus stretched out under the thunderclouds before plummeting down to the valley.
Only one thing could cause us to look away from this tropical Grand Canyon: a giant cross jutting out from the mud-red hillside.
Our group—myself, two couples from Chicago, and our tour guide—soon found itself on the edge of a gaping hole in the hillside. Inside was a full-sized church, hewn out of volcanic rock. A zigzag of stairs and trenches led to the Church of St. George—or, Bet Giyorgis in Amharic (the main Ethiopian language). From the base, the 17-story church towered above us, its finely carved four columns forming a Greek cross from base to roof. With volcanic red walls scarred by yellow splotches and green stains, the church conveyed a sense of time as well as timelessness.
We entered the church, after first removing our shoes—one of many ubiquitous holdovers from Jewish tradition that I would witness on my trip. The interior was bathed in a cave-like darkness, pierced only by shafts of light from spade-shaped windows high above us. As in other Orthodox churches in Ethiopia, there were no pews or chairs, just a mish-mash of plush carpets. What appeared to the untrained eye to be one room was actually two: the qene mahlet around the entrance, where the congregation sings hymns, and then the qeddest, where the faithful receive communion. A third room was hidden from view in the front: the maqdas, the Ethiopian equivalent of the Jewish Holy of Holies.
It is not for nothing that St. George has been dubbed the ‘Eighth Wonder of the World.’ Were it the only rock-hewn church there, the small northern Ethiopian town would still be worth the visit. But in fact, Lalibela has not one, two, or even three such churches, but a dozen.
How these churches of Lalibela came to be is the stuff of legend. Some modern historians have credited the Knights Templar with their construction. Ethiopian tradition, however, maintains that angels worked on the churches during the night, picking up where tired villagers had left off. Adding to the mystery is the fact that not a single tool has ever been found. “Maybe the angels took them away with them,” our guide quipped.
In the absence of material for carbon dating, no one is even really sure how old the churches are, although tradition holds that they were built after the 12th century King Lalibela received instructions for building them during a vision in which he was taken up to heaven.
The remaining 11 churches are clustered in two compounds elsewhere in town. Wandering through the maze of moss-covered trenches, stone archways, and tunnels that connect the churches within each group has all the thrill of a treasure hunt—but I was in it for more than the sights, as breathtaking as they were.
By day, these churches stood as architectural fossils of an ancient faith with nothing more than a lone priest here and there and the bones of pilgrims at one church to keep the occasional gaggle of tourists company. But one Monday morning, after 6 a.m., I witnessed one of these church compounds burst into life in the celebration of the daily liturgy.
Since I was more than half an hour late, I braced myself for the inevitable embarrassment of trying to sneak into whatever church was hosting the liturgy. Instead, I found the area still bustling with activity. Some white-clad worshippers were pouring into and out of one of the churches. Others were circulating through the compound, kissing the walls of each church or making the Sign of the Cross as they made their rounds. One man bowed repeatedly before a church wall while immersed in prayer. Another leaned against a church with an open book.
Apart from a sizable crowd that sat or stood on the ground above the compound, everyone else seemed oblivious to the rattle of the liturgy that belted out of the loudspeakers near one church. The whole scene had more in common with the pandemonium of an open-air market than the regimented order of the Mass.
But that did not seem to make the devotion of these Ethiopian Orthodox faithful any less intense or sincere. Inside the Church of Mary—across from where the liturgy was being celebrated—I sat on a bench, and, in my earnestness to participate, opened up a recent copy of Magnificat magazine. Next to me was a priest immersed in a book that he was speed reading. He seemed unperturbed by the interruption of a worshipper who asked for a blessing. A boy nearby sang softly while in the center of the church, a group of people kneeled, prostrated themselves, and then kissed the floors.
As a new Catholic convert at the time—this was the summer of 2009—I felt a spiritual kinship with these Ethiopian Orthodox devotees that would have been unthinkable when I was an evangelical Protestant. Their icons, their devotional customs, their traditions—all seemed very foreign to me, but so had many things about Catholicism. And so, I found the strangeness of Ethiopian Orthodoxy oddly familiar, even inviting.
What is it that has allowed Ethiopia to persevere as a Christian nation? Ultimately, as with any such question, one must acknowledge the grace of God.
Read on here Ark of the Covenant
Versions of this article were originally published in Parable, the diocesan magazine of Manchester, New Hampshire.
Obama Gives Catholics One Year to Learn to Violate their Consciences
January 21 was one of those day when a number of eventful things occurred. Below is one which details an attempt by the state to force the largest, most powerful American Christian denomination, the Roman Catholic Church, to violate its own teachings in order to bring them in line with the official government positions. At best, this is the state ordering which religious views are allowed. And we thought we in America were safe from such things. India or Iran maybe, but certainly not us. Fr. Orthohippo January 24, 2012
by Steve Ray on January 21, 2012Obama and Sebelius announce requirements that violate Catholic teaching and consciences
This morning President Obama called New York Archbishop Timothy Dolan to break the news. (Announced by www.CatholicVote.org) { this organization posted the news release. This link is an ad} Defenders of the Catholic Fai www.catholic-convert.com actual post
Secretary of Health and Human Services and pro-abortion Catholic Kathleen Sebelius just announced that the proposed mandate requiring all insurance plans to pay for contraception, sterilization and some abortion drugs is official — and Catholics cannot escape.
…and the fig-leaf exemption for religious groups will not be modified, apart from allowing some groups an additional year to comply.
Cardinal-designate Timothy M. Dolan responded minutes ago, saying: “In effect, the president is saying we have a year to figure out how to violate our consciences.”
Beginning August 1, 2012 (less than eight months from today), the insurance premiums we pay, including the insurance premiums paid by Catholics for employees of churches and schools — will be used to cover drugs and procedures that are in direct conflict with the teachings of our Church.
Cardinal-designate, Archbishop Timothy Dolan opposes Obama!That’s right. Our government will now force us to pay for insurance coverage for birth control, sterilization and even some abortion drugs.
President Obama ignored the organized efforts of Catholics across the country, including bold statements from the Bishops, university presidents (including Notre Dame’s Rev. Jenkins), and even his Catholic allies like Sr. Carol Keehan.
Instead, President Obama stood with his real friends — Planned Parenthood.
Make no mistake, this decision is a direct attack on you, our Church, and the religious liberty of all Americans.
Just yesterday, Pope Benedict XVI addressed the bishops from the United States who were completing their “Ad Limina” visit in Rome. The Holy Father specifically cited the “grave threats” to the freedom of the Church in America, and urged the Catholic community to respond, especially with “an engaged, articulate and well-formed Catholic laity.”
He’s talking to you and me. The Holy Father’s brief address is a must read (link below).
Catholics arrested in China. Wake up America!Finally, today marks exactly one year from Inauguration Day. In exactly 12 months, America will welcome a new president, or usher in four more years of Barack Obama and his assault on our liberties. This irony is not lost on us.
For on a day such as this, we realize that elections indeed have consequences. The Catholic vote must rise up like never before.
Mark Shea Chimes in “RESIST THE TYRANT
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/NCRegisterDailyBlog/~3/I3lVN7woz8c/im-not-normally-a-man-of-few-words
WHEN A RELIGIOUS COURT CHALLENGES THE STATE COURT ——-
One thought which has no modern historical answer is how can a religious court supplant the established secular court in your area. The answer is not a comforting one for American citizens. There have been proposals in the USA to allow Sharia (Muslim) courts standing when dealing with Muslim US citizens in the USA.
India is most definitely a multicultural nation. Second only to China in population, and projected to surpass China’s population in 2045, India is the world’s largest democracy. It has many cultural groups within its borders. As far as religions, Hinduism is, in central and southern India, the dominant religion. Islam holds dominance in Northwest and Northeast India including Kashmir State. Buddhism is common countrywide but rarely, except in small areas, the dominant religion. Sikhism has perhaps 25.000,000 worldwide, with 21,500,000 adherents and the dominant religion in the northern Punjab State. Christianity was introduced by St. Thomas in the 1st century AD. With about 24.000.000. it is the 3rd largest religion in India, found especially in the south of India.
The Constitution of India declares the nation to be a secular republic that must uphold the right of citizens to freely worship and propagate any religion or faith (with activities subject to reasonable restrictions for the sake of morality, law and order, etc.) The Constitution of India also declares the right to freedom of religion as a fundamental right.
This is not so differently worded as the US constitution on the matter of stating the place and position of religion in American society. With such similarities, the ruling of the Sharia Muslim court on the actions of a Catholic priest and a (Thomistic) Church of North India christian pastor may be a peek into the future of the USA. How the state courts of Kashmir will rule is not clear, despite their national constitution. We are back again to considering the requests in the USA for Sharia Court standing in our own state court systems.
Fr. Orthohippo January 23, 2011
January 21, 2012
Posted by geoconger in Church of England Newspaper, Church of North India.
Tags: All India Christian Council, Chander Mani Khanna, Kashmir, Sharia Law, Srinigar
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First printed in The Church of England Newspaper.
The All India Christian Council has condemned an indictment issued by a Sharia law court in Kashmir that charges two priests with blasphemy by enticing Muslims to convert to Christianity.
On 11 January 2012 Muslim leaders in the Northern Indian state issued a statement saying that “it was proved beyond doubt that the accused” the vicar of All Saints Church in Srinigar, the Rev Chander Mani Khanna of the Church of North India, “along with other accomplices was luring Muslim people to change their religion.”
A second priest, Fr. Jim Borst, a Roman Catholic missionary who has worked in Kashmir for 46 years, was also charged with converting Muslims to Christianity.
“The Kashmir situation is going through a critical phase and if such elements are not brought to book it will have a serious and negative impact on the (Kashmiri Muslim) society,” the Muslim leaders said.
“It is shocking and surprising that the state government was allowing such activities. Kashmir society will not tolerate such activities at all and we stand united against such elements,” Mufti Muhammad Nasir-ul-Islam said. The sentence from the court would be announced shortly, he added.
On 19 Nov 2011 Mr. Khanna was arrested by the Jammu & Kashmir police on charges of fomenting civil unrest. He was released on 1 Dec 2011 and has since left the state for fear for his life.
However, Christian leaders have denounced the indictment stating that Sharia courts have no civil standing. In a statement released on 13 January 2012, the All India Christian Council (AICC) said it was “deeply disturbed” by the Sharia court’s actions. “Such statements can encourage extremist elements to indulge in violence,” the Council said.
“It was hoped that religious and secular authorities, and the state government, would show maturity and responsibility,” the AICC said, “keeping in view the delicately poised public peace situation” in Kashmir.
The “Church does not accept as genuine any conversion brought about by fraud or force,” the AICC said, noting that a fact finding team which went to Srinagar shortly after the arrest of Mr. Khanna and “interviewed Church personnel, Ulema, school, authorities and the police, found no evidence of force or fraud in baptisms that have been carried out over a period of time. Each baptism has been proved to be voluntary.”
The head of the AICC, Dr John Dayal, said it “devolves on the Jammu and Kashmir Government, religious leaders and people of goodwill in the Kashmir valley to ensure that the nights of minorities are respected, their welfare assured, and communal harmony strengthened in the region which so desperately requires and environment of peace for its development and well being.”
EUROPE IN DEMOGRAPHIC DENIAL
Here is an article which shows how a population can retreat into a small minority, or even disappear 
entirely. These options are now a real possibility for the European countries. Yet most Europeans still ignore these statistics with all the fervor of young people who believe that it (whatever it is, such as death) can never happen to them.
Watch and marvel. Watch and notice that it is beginning here in North America. Across the St. Clair river above is Sarnia, Ontario. This demographic slide is more advanced in Canada than in the USA.
Fr. Orthohippo 1-22-12
An interesting site is http://www.un.org/popin/ which contains demographic information for various nations. Of particular interest are the population projections. What I have done here is chart, for European nations, the projected population for the year 2050 divided by the population in the year 2000 x 100. Thus, a rating of 100 = an unchanged population. A rating of 110 means that the population in 2050 is projected to be 110% of that in 2000. A rating of 80 means that the projected population in 2050 will be 80% of that in 2000. Keeping in mind that these are estimated projections, based on a number of variables, we observe the following data (based on a “medium-fertility variant”):
| Andorra 224 | Slovakia 87 |
| Luxembourg 164 | Germany 86 |
| Ireland 141 | Poland 86 |
| Albania 125 | Yugoslavia 86 |
| Iceland 119 | Greece 85 |
| Liechtenstein 118 | Belarus 82 |
| San Marino 111 | Czechia 82 |
| Norway 109 | Lithuania 81 |
| France 104 | Romania 81 |
| Malta 103 | Austria 80 |
| Holy See 100 | Spain 78 |
| Netherlands 100 | Switzerland 78 |
| UK 99 | Slovenia 77 |
| Denmark 95 | Hungary 75 |
| Belgium 94 | Italy 75 |
| Finland 91 | Latvia 72 |
| Croatia 90 | Russia 72 |
| Portugal 90 | Ukraine 60 |
| Sweden 88 | Bulgaria 57 |
| Bosnia 87 | Estonia 54 |
Some comments are in order. First, the relatively high numbers for the very small nations are due to, most probably, high projected growth due to current extensive immigration to those nations (attracted by economics, climate, etc.), and the small baseline populations of these nations in 2000 – not due to high fertility rates. Thus, Luxembourg has fertility at below replacement, but is still projected to grow (164). A much bigger problem with these data is that they do not distinguish between natives and immigrants, between indigenous Europeans and non-Europeans.
To read the entire article above, click on the link given at the start of the table.
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(next related article)
By Samuel Gregg on 1.20.12 @ 6:07AM
An even bigger form of denial than about the causes of Europe’s financial collapse.
If there is one word that captures many Europeans’ response to the continent’s financial crisis, it is denial. Witness the description by the editors of France’s newspaper-of-record, Le Monde, of France’s S&P credit-downgrade on January 13 as “un non-événement financier.” The fact that this “non-event” will increase France’s borrowing-costs (not to mention those of the EU’s own bailout fund) at a time when France’s government is already struggling to contain spending apparently escaped Le Monde’s attention.
This habit of ignoring reality, however, goes beyond blinkered reactions to one-off occurrences. It’s also reflected in many Europeans’ perceptible inability to acknowledge some of the deeper dynamics driving the crisis.
Here most of us think of unaffordable welfare states and other sinking ships to which many Europeans cling like limpets. But there is one element at work in Europe’s crisis that even fewer Europeans will openly acknowledge: the economic forces set in motion by Europe’s slow-motion population implosion.
The demographic facts concerning European population-trends are clear. The replacement level for a population (what keeps it stable) is a fertility-rate of 2.1 children per woman. According to the UN, the average fertility-rate of European women was 1.53 between 2005 and 2010. The figures for Greece (1.46), Spain (1.41), Portugal (1.36), Italy (1.38), and Germany (1.36) were especially depressing. France (1.97), Britain (1.83), and Sweden (1.9) did marginally better. Ireland alone managed to attain the 2.1 threshold. All these figures represented decline from 1955-1960 rates: Greece (2.27), Spain (2.7), Portugal (3.29), Italy (2.29), Germany (2.3), France (2.7), Britain (2.49), Sweden (2.23), and Ireland (3.58).
These developments translate into more old people, fewer young people, and, eventually, shrinking populations. But it also shifts what’s called “the dependency ratio”: the ratio of retirees per member of the labor force. On some estimates, Italy, Spain and Germany will have very high dependency ratios by 2050: every two workers will be supporting one retiree. Those working will also have to pay either greater contributions or higher taxes to fund existing pension systems.
The present situation is further worsened by another ominous trend: the growing exodus of tens of thousands of young EU citizens searching for work to Latin America, North America, and Asia. Similarly, hundreds of thousands of young immigrants to the EU from developing nations are heading home. The odds that many will return to Europe in the near-future are dim.
to read the rest of the article, click here.
THE STOLEN PEOPLE OF THE SINAI
“20/1/2012
Thousands of poor migrants from across Africa are being kidnapped by Bedouin gangs.
Refugees from sub-Saharan Africa are being kidnapped, tortured and ransomed for thousands of dollars in the Egyptian Sinai in what human rights activists say is the world’s forgotten hostage crisis. Over the past year, thousands of desperate migrants from Eritrea, Sudan and Ethiopia have been kidnapped by Bedouin tribesmen who are taking advantage of continuing instability in Egypt to ramp up their lucrative trade.
Migrants have reported being rounded up by gang members and held in specially constructed jails where they are frequently tortured until relatives in Europe or Africa come up with thousands of dollars.
Testimony compiled by human rights groups reveals that torture with electric cables and molten plastic is routinely used against victims as they make desperate calls home to plead for cash. Many kidnap victims claim to have been raped by their abductors, and there are reports that captives who have been unable to raise funds have had organs removed for sale on the black market.
Critics have accused the international community of standing idle in the midst of a kidnapping scandal that has drawn little attention compared with Somali piracy, whose victims are often white employees of multinational corporations rather than poor Africans.
Father Mussie Zerai, an Eritrean priest based in Rome, receives regular calls to his Vatican office from the families of kidnapped migrants as they try to liaise with loved ones or kidnappers. “There are no real efforts being made to save these people,” he told The Independent. “The inertia of the [international community] is a godsend for criminals who get rich. The millionaire business around this trafficking is forcing hundreds of families into debt for amounts that they will pay for decades, in order to save the lives of their son, daughter or husband. Many sell everything, or end up in the hands of usurers”.
Most of the sub-Saharan migrants making their way to the Sinai desert are from Eritrea, Ethiopia and Sudan – three impoverished African nations which have a history of persecuting political opponents and ethnic minorities. Most of those fleeing are hoping to reach Europe, where there are already sizeable populations from their countries.
Before the turmoil created by the Arab Spring, many migrants trekked through the Sahara to reach Libya, Algeria and Morocco in the hopes of finding work or catching a boat across the Mediterranean. Most now have no choice but to enter Europe via the Sinai and Israel, forcing them into the hands of Bedouin tribesmen who have long engaged in smuggling arms, drugs and people after years of chronic under-investment and prejudice from central government in Cairo.
Dr Khataza Ghondwe, an expert on sub-Saharan Africa working for the non-governmental organisation Christian Solidarity Worldwide, says the plight of kidnapped refugees has been ignored for too long. “The Sinai has been a pretty lawless place for years and [ousted President Hosni] Mubarak made no effort to halt the abuse of refugees by tribes there,” she said. “But since the revolution things have got even worse. Their plight has slipped off the radar entirely.”
She thinks people within Eritrea, and not just the Bedouin, could be benefiting from the smuggling routes. “I was in Kenya earlier last year speaking to an Eritrean man,” she said. “As we were talking, he got a call from his brother who was being held in the Sinai and asked for him to send money as soon as possible. The bank details he gave were for a branch in Asmara [the capital of Eritrea], not Egypt.”
According to a recent Israeli government report, an estimated 11,763 people were smuggled into Israel through the Egyptian border in 2010. Last week, the Knesset passed new legislation making it easier for the authorities to speed up deportations, leading to an outcry from human rights groups.
Doctors working for Physicians for Human Rights Israel, a charity which examines migrants on arrival, conducted interviews with 800 refugees, with 78 per cent reporting that they had been kidnapped, tortured or held for ransom at some point during their journey through the Sinai. A separate survey by the Hotline for Migrant Workers, based in Tel Aviv, found that 50 per cent of migrants had reported being raped in the Sinai, including many men.
Egypt’s ability to police the Sinai has been historically hindered by its 1979 peace treaty with Israel, which limits the number of troops Cairo is allowed to place on the country’s eastern flank. After a successful attempt by Islamist suicide bombers to infiltrate the Sinai border last August, Israel has allowed the Egyptians to increase troop numbers, but little of the extra resources have been put into tackling the human trafficking networks.
The migrants have given testimonies with detailed descriptions of where they were held. One group operating out of the Mansoura area is known to be run by a man called Abu Musa and his brothers Ali Hamed and Salim. They use two distinctive red houses with Chinese pagodas outside their gates to imprison their captives. The towns of Rafah, Mansoura and Al-Jorra are also known to contain purpose-built prisons for hostages. Despite the details provided, however, authorities are taking little action.
The most recent telephone call received by Father Zerai was last Thursday, when a woman said she was part of a group of 20 who had been taken captive, including six children. “The woman who called for help talks about continuous mistreatment, starvation and violence,” he said. The kidnappers reportedly demanded $30,000 for each captive and threatened to remove organs from those who could not pay.
“The situation is getting worse and worse,” added Father Zerai. “Something must be done.”
Tortured in the desert: Smugglers’ victims
TLS: A 19-year-old Eritrean woman
When I was still in Sudan, I agreed to pay the smugglers $2,500 to transfer me to Israel. When I arrived in Sinai, the smuggler sold me, along with a group of other people, to another smuggler named Abdullah. Abdullah demanded an additional $10,000 from me. I had no way to raise that sum of money. Abdullah raped me for five days and two other smugglers raped me as well. As a result of all these rapes, I got pregnant. Only after eight months was my father able to send the smugglers $5,000; they released me and allowed me to cross the border to Israel. I must have an abortion. My husband should not know what happened to me in the desert.
MN: A 35-year-old Sudanese man
The smugglers asked whether we knew anyone in Israel or Europe and asked for our relatives’ phone numbers. They would call our relatives and then bring a stick and beat us so that we could be heard shouting and crying. They told our relatives that if the money arrived that day, we’d be in Israel the following day. Sometimes they asked for $2,500 and sometimes for an additional $3,000. The more someone cried when they were beaten, the more money their relatives would send.
AIS: A 21-year-old Eritrean woman
So that we would convince our relatives to send money, the smugglers beat our shins with a stick. They also burned our arms and legs with a plastic stick with hot metal at the end. I still have wounds and scars from the beatings and the burns. I was a virgin when I arrived in the desert. During the first few times that I was raped I cried and resisted, but that didn’t help. They wouldn’t leave me alone. After that I stopped resisting. Only when $2,800 arrived did the smugglers unchain me. They transferred me to someone named Ibrahim and he transferred me and 30 other people to the Israeli border.”
There is more here.
article above is posted on The Orthodox info blog
http://theorthodoxchurch.info/blog/news/2012/01/forgotten-the-stolen-people-of-the-sinai/
IT CAN DO WHAT?
Except for those with the necessary security clearances, we ordinary citizens properly do not keep up with the new military hardware being developed. Here is some of that hardware being made public. Nothing stays still for long, nowadays. Thank you to Rudy Sloup for finding this. He was a “Coastie” (USCG) while I did a time in the Army (US), and am proud of a grandson who did a number of tours with the USMC
Fr. Orthohippo
This video linkis fresh (for the public). It was made just six weeks ago in the Atlantic, just off Newport News ( Hampton Roads), Virginia .
Theseare the latest sea trials of the F-35B on the USS Wasp. They were very successful, with 74 VL’s and STO’s in a three week period.
The media and the program critics had predicted that we would burn holes in the deck and wash sailors overboard.
Neither of which happened. You will notice a sailor standing on the bow of the ship as the jet rotates.
That was an intentional part of the sea trials.
Nocatapult… No hook…. It’s a new world out there!
The shape and scope of warfare – worldwide – just changed.
Click your mouse here: F-35B
UNEXPECTED BEAUTY WHERE YOU WOULD LEAST EXPECT IT
Fr Terry just posted this quote: “There is not one blade of grass, there is no color in this world that is not intended to make us rejoice.” (John Calvin) Thank you Anna for finding this.
Here are totally unexpected examples of beauty. It is in a commonplace and tiny form, Most of us have walked on, over, and sometimes through this beauty, completely oblivious to its presence.Creation is a vast wonder.
Fr. Orthohippo
photo below is in southern Israel on the drive to Eilat from Jerusalem
below
Viewed at a magnification of over 250 times real life, tiny grains of sand are shown to be delicate, colourful structures as unique as snowflakes.
When seen well beyond the limits of human eyesight, the miniature particles are exposed as fragments of crystals, spiral fragments of shells and crumbs of volcanic rock.
Professor Gary Greenberg who has a PhD in biomedical research from University College London said: ‘It is incredible to think when you are walking on the beach you are standing on these tiny treasures.
Fr. Orthohippo
Magnified:The grains are shown to be delicate, colourful structures each as unique as a snowflake.
Colourful: The miniature particles are exposed as fragments of crystals, spiral fragments of shells and crumbs of volcanic rock.HOW SAND IS MADE
Sand is tiny fragments of rock that have been worn away over thousands of years.
Contrary to popular belief, sand is made as rocks crash and break in rivers and streams on their way to the sea, rather than the ebb and flow of the tides.
Deposits left by breaking rocks in the sea turns to silt and is much lighter so is dispersed over a much wider area out to sea, rather than on the shore line.
Some of the rock is soluble, but other bits remain and as they are slowly rubbed down over time they get smaller and smaller until they become what we know as sand.
‘Every time I look through my microscope I am fascinated by the complexity and individuality created by a combination of nature and the repeated tumbling of the surf on a beach.’
Prof Greenberg, who searches through thousands of tiny rocks with acupuncture needles to find and arrange the most perfect specimens, then uses a painstaking technique to create his images.
He has spent five years searching the globe for remarkable sand grains like these to photograph.
More…
He said: ‘Extreme close up photography normally gives a very shallow depth of field so I had to develop a new process to make the pictures that I wanted.
‘I take dozens of pictures at different points of focus then combine them using software to produce my images.
‘Although the pictures look simple each grain of sand can take hours to photograph in a way that I am happy with.
‘The beach nearest my lab is Haiku, Hawaii but my pictures show sand from all round the world from Japan to Ireland.’
Gary’s pictures are available from his website sandgrains.com and his book ‘a grain of sand’ which is available on Amazon.
Incredible: We are walking on ‘these tiny treasures’SCIENCE AND THEOLOGY
Since the enlightment in Europe during the late 1700′s and early 1800′s there has been an increasing tension between science and theologies. Both sides have contributed to the rancor and misunderstandings.
Science has properly not labored to explain first causes, or the Why questions. Religion, including Christianity, generally has not spelled out the How and What questions. Many 
scientists and researchers continually chastize religion for not embrasing current scientific explanations, while the churches often are angry with “current” scientific explanations as the last word in knowledge and understanding. Fr. Ernesto mentions how scientific explanation manages to change, or even reverse the explanation. Such flip flops generate argument within the scientific community, not to mention the general public and Church theologies.
It is helpful for we Christians to understand the scientific method and development of theories. There is no real reason that tension and even rancor needs to exist here, at least on the part of the Church.
Fr. Ernesto, who as a worker priest, labors in a military hospital dealing with blood issues is both scientist and priest. His article below, along with some related posts, deal with these misunderstandings.
Fr. Orthohippo January 8. 2011
One of the things that most people do not understand about science is that one of the ways in 
which an accurate understanding of what we see, touch, hear, etc., is reached is by proposing alternate theories that try to explain what we see, touch, hear, etc. Then those alternate theories are tested against each other, by way of experiments and/or reasonable analysis until the results of the experiments and the analyses points more and more toward one of the theories (or none of them, in which case scientists start over).
The misunderstanding is that all too many people think that because there are different and competing theories means that science really knows nothing. That is, most people fail to notice that this method of competing theories has slowly led us to the development of the laptop on which I am writing, the Internet which makes blogging possible, etc. You see, the clash of competing theories allows for the more accurate theory to come out. Then a new clash ensues, and a better theory emerges. Sometimes, the clash is so violent that the preceding theory is completely thrown out and everything that we thought we knew on that subject is changed.
That type of event is called a paradigm shift. However, that type of major event is rare. Most of the time the changes are refinements or expansions on previously existing understandings. Even paradigm shifts do not fully wipe out what came before. For instance, the Einsteinian revolution in the conception of space/time did not invalidate the basic findings of Isaac Newton. To this day, for many basic daily mechanical calculations, Newtonian physics are as accurate as needed. But, when you get out to the level of GPS satellites, Newtonian physics no longer work for allowing GPS receivers to accurately calculate our locations on the surface of the Earth. You see, while Newtonian physics allow us to quite handily calculate orbits around the Earth, it takes Einsteinian space/time relativity to correctly calculate positions. It turns out that a clock in satellite runs slower in relation to the Earth than a clock on Earth. Thus, every GPS receiver has an adjustment, based on Einstein, that calculates the adjustment needed. And there are ways to adjust GPS satellite clocks periodically. But all that is to say that even as major a paradigm shift as general relativity did not totally undo the advances of prior centuries.
The problem today, I repeat, is that people think that just because they can quote a disagreement or because they know one or two holes in a theory that this means that they have clearly shown how bad the theory is. The reality is that the clash of theories means more than just being able to quote a disagreement. The clash is resolved by carrying out multiple experiments, by working on multiple mathematical models to see what results they predict, by looking at the long-term implications of certain theories and predicting what testable results we should see if that theory were to be true. More than that, it means that just claiming conspiracy theories or just pointing out some flaws is insufficient to claim that you have disproved a particular scientific theory. You cannot just point out flaws in someone else’s theory, you must actively prove that your theory is better and actively disprove the other.
And that is the main problem with the many people who say that in school we should “teach the controversy.” What they mean is that as long as they disagree with a particular theory then the school is duty bound to “teach the controversy.” However, I just commented that merely pointing out flaws is insufficient to disprove a theory. That is only sufficient for arguing that definitions need to be tightened up or some alternate pathways need to be considered. When teaching the controversy is merely based on clever argumentation, without significant amounts of confirmatory data, then there is no controversy, there is only endless philosophical debate whose sole purpose is to obfuscate and delay and cause sufficient “political” problems that the other side finally yields.
Mere controversy is insufficient to force the “teaching of the controversy.” If that approach were true, then schools would have to teach any of several theories of many issues. For instance, can you imagine a medical school being forced to teach every theory on the origins of certain diseases, regardless of whether the main consensus was on one particular theory? Would you care to be treated by physicians who had been told that many possible theories on [fill in the blank] were true and that many types of treatment were equally valid and could possibly be equally helpful? No, even the teaching the controversy folk do not want that type of medical training or that type of healthcare. They merely insist that on certain limited subjects, the principles of science must be suspended so that their pet theory, and only their pet theory, is taught as an alternative to the main consensus.
And that is what I have against the approach of the “teach the controversy” folk.
