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Chosen biweekly for their relevance to personal care, Patent Picks are taken from publicly available sources. This edition features patents related to hair care, including cleansing, conditioning and color protection.
Surfactant composition
US Patent 8309510
Publication date: Nov. 13, 2012
Assignee: Kao Corp.
According to this patent, though fatty acid monoethanolamides and fatty acid diglycol amides are superior in thickening effect, they have drawbacks including a high melting point and are therefore deteriorated in solubility when formulated into detergents or cosmetics. In view of this, the inventors of the present invention started to search an anionic surfactant composition having a high thickening effect; that is, an anionic surfactant producing a high thickening effect even in the case where the concentration of the inorganic salt is low.
The inventors believe that if a surfactant composition having a high thickening effect is obtained in the development of an alcohol having both the advantageous effects given by an alcohol derived from petrochemical raw materials and an alcohol derived from oil and fats, respectively, and also in the development of various surfactants derived from these alcohols, applications for raw materials of various products including surfactant compositions derived from the alcohol can be expanded.
Detergent cosmetic compositions comprising four surfactants, a cationic polymer and a silicone, and use thereof
WIPO Patent Application WO/2012/149617
Publication date: Nov. 8, 2012
Assignee: L'Oreal S.A. and D. Alves
The present invention relates to novel detergent compositions comprising: a) one or more anionic surfactants chosen from ethoxylated alkyl sulfates, the corresponding acids, and mixtures thereof; b) one or more anionic surfactants other than the surfactant(s) in a); c) one or more amphoteric or zwitterionic surfactants; d) one or more alkylpolyglycoside nonionic surfactants; e) one or more non-silicone cationic polymers preferably with a cationic charge density of less than 4 meq/g; and f) one or more silicones, with the ethoxylated alkyl sulfate anionic surfactant/anionic surfactant b) weight ratio ranging from 0.5 to 1. These combinations make it possible to improve the deposition of silicone on keratin materials as well as cosmetic properties and can be used for cleansing and caring for the hair or skin.
Chemical structure comprising phosphates with polyol dubstructures for hair and skin cosmetics use
US Patent Application 20120283224
Publication date: Nov. 8, 2012
Assignee: Chemyunion Quimica Ltda.
Disclosed in this patent is a composition suitable for application to hair and/or skin that comprises phosphate esters such as xylitol phosphate esters and other polyol units phosphoric acid esters. This composition can be used to improve or treat skin, including scalp, conditions in cosmetic or pharmaceutical products for acne, dandruff, seborrheic dermatitis and malodor and/or can be incorporated in such formulations as a co-emulsifying agent or preservative, alone or in combination, to other emulsifying or preservative agents in order to increase such activities.
Non-petrochemically derived cationic emulsifiers that are neutralized amino acid esters, related compositions and methods
US Patent 8287844
Publication date: Oct. 16, 2012
Assignee: Inolex Investment Corp.
This invention includes a method of increasing the substantivity of a personal care composition to hair, skin or nails by preparing a composition of an aqueous phase, a non-aqueous phase and a neutralized amino acid ester that is a reaction product of a neutral amino acid having a non-polar side chain with a long chain fatty alcohol. The composition is substantially free of petrochemicals and/or derivatives of petrochemical materials. The aqueous phase and non-aqueous phases are emulsified by the neutralized amino acid ester. Other methods and an emulsifier that is the neutralized amino acid ester are included. Since the neutralized amino acid ester and compositions do not contain petrochemical-derived ingredients, the products are natural, and because of the ester's cationic structure, it is well-suited for personal care applications, particularly for conditioning hair and skin.
Use of repeat sequence protein polymers in personal care compositions
US Patent Application 20120276021
Publication date: Nov. 11, 2012
Assignee: Danisco U.S., Inc.
According to this patent, there remains a need in the art for personal care compositions that have desired characteristics without chemical modification of the proteins, and for methods to deliver a protein from a personal care composition in a useable form. Thus, disclosed herein is a personal care composition that includes an effective amount of a repeat sequence protein polymer for use in hair, skin and nail care compositions, cosmetic compositions or over-the-counter pharmaceutical compositions.
In one embodiment, the hair care composition is in a form selected from the group consisting of shampoo, conditioner, anti-dandruff treatments, styling aids, styling conditioner, hair repair or treatment serum, lotion, cream, pomade and chemical treatments. In another embodiment, the styling aids are selected from the group consisting of spray, mousse, rinse, gel, foam and a combination thereof. In another embodiment, the chemical treatments are selected from the group consisting of permanent waves, relaxers, and permanent, semi-permanent and temporary color treatments and combinations thereof.
Hair conditioning composition comprising silicone polymers containing quaternary groups
European Patent Application EP2517695
Publication date: Oct. 31, 2012
Assignee: The Procter & Gamble Company
This invention describes a hair conditioning composition incorporating silicone polymer-containing quaternary groups and a gel matrix. The composition can provide improved conditioning benefits such as smooth feel and reduced friction to both damaged hair and non-damaged hair, while providing other benefits such as slippery and slick feel on wet hair.
Process for inhibiting dyed hair fibers from losing color during shampooing
US Patent Application 20120269756
Publication date: Oct. 25, 2012
Assignee: L'Oreal
Described here is a process for inhibiting dyed hair fibers from losing their color during shampooing involving contacting the dyed hair fibers with a composition containing: a) at least one polyamine compound having at least two amino groups; b) at least one anionic silicone; and c) optionally, at least one surfactant, and wherein a) is present in the composition in an amount sufficient to inhibit the dyed hair fibers from losing their color during shampooing.
Mixture of amides and cosmetic compositions comprising said mixture
European Patent EP2370398
Publication date: Oct. 17, 2012
Assignee: Kao Corp.
The present invention relates to a mixture of specific amides and to cosmetic compositions comprising said mixture, particularly hair dyeing compositions. In the field of hair dyeing compositions, there is a need for compositions containing improved leveling agents that make the color of the dyed fibers more uniform, and provide intense and chromatic shades of low selectivity and good fastness while offering good stability of the compositions, good ease of application leading to uniform and regular colorations of the hair, and a good cosmetic condition to the treated hair. The authors of the present invention have surprisingly found that the mixture of amides according to the invention can provide similar or improved rheological and leveling properties compared to the amides already known in the art.


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"You Didn't Build That": How Fox News Crafted The GOP's Convention Theme
Written by Melody Johnson
After weeks of Fox News pushing the dishonest "you didn't build that" attack on President Obama, the Republican National Convention will reportedly adopt the Fox News lie by adopting "We Built This" as a convention theme. Independent fact checkers have said this line of attack is dishonest.
President Obama: Public Infrastructure Contributes To Business Success
Obama: Individual Drive, Infrastructure, Teachers Contribute To Small Business Success. During a July 13 speech in Roanoke, VA, Obama touted the role infrastructure and education, in addition to individual drive, plays in the success of business owners:
OBAMA: [L]ook, if you've been successful, you didn't get there on your own. You didn't get there on your own. I'm always struck by people who think, well, it must be because I was just so smart. There are a lot of smart people out there. It must be because I worked harder than everybody else. Let me tell you something -- there are a whole bunch of hardworking people out there.
If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you've got a business -- you didn't build that. Somebody else made that happen. The Internet didn't get invented on its own. Government research created the Internet so that all the companies could make money off the Internet.
The point is, is that when we succeed, we succeed because of our individual initiative, but also because we do things together. There are some things, just like fighting fires, we don't do on our own. I mean, imagine if everybody had their own fire service. That would be a hard way to organize fighting fires.
So we say to ourselves, ever since the founding of this country, you know what, there are some things we do better together. That's how we funded the GI Bill. That's how we created the middle class. That's how we built the Golden Gate Bridge or the Hoover Dam. That's how we invented the Internet. That's how we sent a man to the moon. We rise or fall together as one nation and as one people, and that's the reason I'm running for President -- because I still believe in that idea. You're not on your own, we're in this together. [WhiteHouse.gov, 7/13/12]
Fox Distorted Obama's Comments To Manufacture Outrage Over "You Didn't Build That"
Fox & Friends Deceptively Edited Obama's Comments On Small Business. Fox News deceptively edited Obama's remarks to make it seem as though he was claiming that small business owners do not deserve any credit for their own success. Obama's actual remarks made clear that he attributed the success of businesses to both the individual drive of business owners and to the benefits provided by influences such as great teachers, and government-created infrastructure. [Media Matters, 7/16/12]
Within Two Days, Fox Spent More Than Two Hours Of Airtime On "You Didn't Build That" Lie. In the two days that followed Fox's initial misrepresentation of Obama's remarks, the network devoted 42 segments and more than two hours of airtime to misrepresenting Obama's "you didn't build that" remarks. [Media Matters, 7/18/12]
Rupert Murdoch Endorsed The Falsehood On Twitter. In a post to his Twitter account, News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch wrote: "Yesterday Obama went off script, showed real self ie government omnipotent, individuals secondary. Must be big damage." [Media Matters, 7/19/12]
Fox Attacked Nonpartisan Journalists For Ignoring The Made-Up Story. Fox blasted mainstream media outlets for not covering Obama's remarks for four days, despite the fact that the remarks were ripped out of context. [Media Matters, 7/19/12]
Fox & Friends Tried To Rebut Charge That Video Was Deceptively Edited With New Deceptively Edited Video. Fox & Friends subsequently offered to rebut assertions that they had misrepresented Obama by showing the context of Obama's remarks. But the new clip that Fox & Friends played still omitted the relevant context. [Media Matters, 7/26/12]
Fox Hosted Karl Rove And His New Anti-Obama Attack Ad Repeating "Didn't Build That" Falsehood. Karl Rove produced an ad based on the misrepresentation of Obama's remarks and then touted that ad on Fox News' The O'Reilly Factor. [Media Matters, 7/25/12]
Romney Repeated The Fox Narrative
Mitt Romney Repeated Fox's "You Didn't Build That" Distortion. The day after Fox deceptively edited Obama's remarks, Romney repeated the distortion and characterized it as "insulting to every entrepreneur, every innovator in America, and it's wrong." [Media Matters, 7/17/12]
Romney Campaign Adopted The "You Didn't Build That" Distortion As A Major Part Of Its Campaign. The Romney campaign has put out press releases and television ads touting small business owners telling Obama that they did build their businesses. [MittRomney.com, 7/30/12; Breitbart.com, 7/30/12]
Independent Fact-Checkers Have Debunked The "You Didn't Build That" Narrative
Wash. Post's Kessler: "Focusing On One Ill-Phrased Sentence" Amounts To "Pretend[ing] That Obama Is Talking About Something Different." The Washington Post's Glenn Kessler criticized the Romney campaign for distorting Obama's comments in an attack ad:
Obama certainly could take from lessons from [Massachusetts Senate candidate Elizabeth] Warren or [Franklin Delano] Roosevelt on how to frame this argument in a way that is less susceptible for quote-snipping. And Romney certainly could answer Obama's argument by engaging in a serious discussion about whether the wealthy should pay much more in taxes as a matter of social good and equity. That would be grounds for an elevated, interesting and important debate.
But instead, by focusing on one ill-phrased sentence, Romney and his campaign have decided to pretend that Obama is talking about something different -- and then further extrapolated it so that it becomes ridiculous. That's not very original at all. [The Washington Post, 7/23/12]
FactCheck.org: "Taking Snippets Of" Obama's Speech "Ignores The Larger Context Of The President's Meaning." A FactCheck.org analysis criticized efforts to take Obama's comments out of context to distort the meaning:
There's no question Obama inartfully phrased those two sentences, but it's clear from the context what the president was talking about. He spoke of government -- including government-funded education, infrastructure and research -- assisting businesses to make what he called "this unbelievable American system that we have."
In summary, he said: "The point is ... that when we succeed, we succeed because of our individual initiative, but also because we do things together."
We don't know what the president had in mind when he uttered those words, and his intent is not clear. Regardless, our conclusion is the same: Taking snippets of his speech ignores the larger context of the president's meaning that a business owner does not become successful "on your own." [FactCheck.org, 7/23/12]
PolitiFact.com: "When You Read The Full Text Of [Obama's] Remarks, That Quote Distorts The Meaning Of Obama's Claim." A July 25 post to the Pulitzer Prize-winning website PolitiFact.com determined that it was false to use a portion of Obama's comments to accuse him of denigrating business owners:
In this item, we'll rate the claim that Obama was saying success "is the result of government," not "hard-working people," when he said, "If you've got a business, you didn't build that. Somebody else made that happen."
In case you didn't catch it the first 5,000 times the snippet ran on cable, yes, those words were uttered by Obama.
But as you can see when you read the full text of his remarks, that quote distorts the meaning of Obama's claim.
We believe, as do our friends at FactCheck.org and the Washington Post Fact Checker, that Romney has seriously distorted Obama's comments.
Romney cherry-picked a quote that made it sound like Obama was dismissive of businesses when in fact he was making a point that success comes from the combination of "individual initiative" and the fact that "we do things together." [PolitiFact.com, 7/25/12]
AP Fact Check: Republicans Have Taken Obama "Out Of Context." An August 12 AP Fact Check article noted that the "you didn't build that" attacks took Obama "out of context":
RYAN: "I'm proud to stand with a man who understands what it takes to foster job creation in our economy, someone who knows from experience, that if you have a small business -- you did build that."
THE FACTS: Ryan, like Romney and scores of Republicans in recent weeks, has used comments Obama made at July 13 campaign appearance in Virginia against him. But the rhetorical jab takes Obama out of context. Republicans have seized on only part of Obama's quote -- "If you've got a business, you didn't build that" -- but the full quote makes clear Obama is talking about the conditions that help businesses and individuals succeed, such as teachers and infrastructure.
The more complete quote from Obama: "If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you've got a business -- you didn't build that. Somebody else made that happen. The Internet didn't get invented on its own. Government research created the Internet so that all the companies could make money off the Internet." [AP, 8/12/12, via CBS News]
And Now Fox Is Reporting That The GOP Convention Has Adopted The Narrative As One Of Its Themes
FoxNews.com: "GOP Convention Session To Be Themed 'We Built This!' " A FoxNews.com article reported: "The GOP is turning what some see as a presidential slight aimed at business owners and entrepreneurs into a theme for a night of the Republican National Convention next week, titling Tuesday night's session 'We Built This!' " [FoxNews.com, 8/21/12]
Fox's Carlson: GOP Convention Theme Is Based On "Obama's Infamous Line." On the August 21 edition of Fox News' Fox & Friends, co-host Gretchen Carlson stated that the Republican convention theme was based on "Obama's infamous line a couple of weeks ago":
CARLSON: Maybe I shouldn't say what the theme of the convention is. Can we say what the theme of the convention is?
STEVE DOOCY (co-host): Winning.
CARLSON: No. I think it was something about building it based off of we built this based off of President Obama's infamous line a couple of weeks ago. And now the Republicans are going to capitalize on that and make that the theme of the Republican National Convention. [Fox News, Fox & Friends, 8/21/12]

subset: commoncrawl


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Comparison of the sperm motility and vitality between the different U sublineages revealed statistically significant differences in both motility (F = 3.37, P = 0.013) and vitality (F = 3.75, P = 0.011; ANOVA)
European haplogroup U subdivided into two major subhaplogroups, U5 and U1811.
To further investigate the genotypic basis for the phenotypic differences between U5 and U1811 spermatozoa, we characterized the potentially functional variants in subbranches of U5 and U1811. U5 subdivides into two primary branches: U5a and U5b (Achilli et al., 2005) (Fig. 1). U5a was founded by one cytb missense mutation: nt 14793G/H16R (CI = 54%) and the most abundant U5a sublineage, U5a1 has another cytb mutation nt 15218G/T158A (CI = 79%). The remaining U5 mtDNAs occupy a separate branch, U5b defined by two synonymous variants.
The U1811 lineage divides into several sublineages, including U4, Uk [previously defined as K haplogroup, (Torroni et al., 1996) and U1811rest, the later incorporating several small lineages. The U4 sublineage is founded by four synonymous variants and a cytb missense mutation at nt 15693C/M316T (CI = 74%). The Uk sublineage is founded by four synonymous variants and two non-synonymous mutations: a cytb mutation at nt 14798C/F18L (CI = 77%) and an ATP6 mutation at nt 9055A/A177T (CI = 85%). The U1811rest sublineages lack highly conserved nodal missense mutations.
The sublineages of U1811 were all lower than the U5 lineages, again confirming that the COIII nt 9477G mutation has a positive effect on ATP production. Within the U1811 sublineages, the rank order of sperm motility and vitality and therefore probable mitochondrial ATP production was Uk, U1811rest, and U4. U4 which harbours the cytb nt 15693C mutation had the lowest sperm motility and vitality, between 4% and 10% below those of Uk and U1811rest (Fig. 3).
Data from the literature was compiled on the European distribution of 1802 individuals harbouring haplogroup U mtDNAs (Table 2). This revealed a highly significant north–south geographic distribution of different haplogroup U sublineages (χ2 = 109.6, df = 5, P ≤ 0.001). For the U5 subhaplogroup, the U5a sublineage with cytb mutations was more prevalent in northern Europe (ratio = 1.9), while the U5b sublineage without cytb mutations was more common in southern Europe (ratio = 0.7). Of the U1811 subhaplogroup, Uk and U1811rest were equally distributed in both latitudes (ratio = 0.9 and 1.0, respectively), but the U4 sublineage was enriched in the north (ratio = 1.9). Moreover, the frequency of this subhaplogroup, as well as its proportion in the haplogroup U, increased eastwards, reaching maximum values in the populations of Northwest Siberia (Malyarchuk, 2004). Thus the combination of the cytb mutation-containing sublineages U4, Uk and U5a was in substantial excess in northern Europe.
Gene (Article in press)
Differences of sperm motility in mitochondrial DNA haplogroupnext term U sublineages
Francisco Montiel-Sosa et al.
We had previously shown that sperm from men harbouring haplogroup T mtDNAs swim less vigorously than those from haplogroup H. However, the biochemical basis of this motility was difficult to investigate because of the multiple mutations, the most important of which affected respiratory complex I for which there is no crystal structure. To more thoroughly study the relationship between mtDNA variation and differences in mitochondrial energy metabolism, we turned to the analysis of sperm baring haplogroup U mtDNAs. Haplogroup U is a monophyletic ancient and thus heterogeneous maternal lineage that is broadly distributed among European individuals. Several sublineages of haplogroup U were found to be associated with differences in sperm motility and vitality. These differences could be related to a highly conserved missense mutation in the mtDNA COIII gene (V91) and several equally conserved mutations in the cytochrome b (cytb) gene. Moreover, the lineages with the cytb mutations were substantially enriched in northern Europe, while those lacking these mutations were more prevalent in southern Europe. We suggest that some of these ancient conserved cytb missense mutations permitted our ancestors to adapt to cold by partially uncoupling mitochondrial oxidative phosphorylation (OXPHOS).


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Kansas Physicians and Midwives
This database is a compilation of the names of Kansas medical practitioners from two sources, the Kansas Board of Health's published reports for 1887-1900 and Dickman's Medical Directory published in 1881.
Applications for medical licenses of doctors formerly practicing in Kansas are in the records of the Kansas State Board of Healing Arts License Application Files, Medical Doctors, 1901-2001.
Fill in one or more of the following:
NOTE: Spelling of names in this index may vary. Be sure to check under all possible variants.
Entries in the Kansas Board of Health reports may contain the following information:
- place of residence
- age of individual
- number of years in practice
- medical school attended
- graduation date
- state or county of birth
Some of the dates of practice listed in the Board of Health reports are earlier than 1887.
The following information may be contained in Dickman's Medical Directory:
- place of residence
- name of medical school attended
- graduation date
- prior service as a Civil War military surgeon
Completion of this database was made possible by volunteer Irene Stillie. The index to applications in 1901 and after was completed by volunteer Darrell Schmitz.
For more informaton about these records, please contact the reference staff of the Kansas Historical Society.


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You can have your order delivered to your home or at a pick-up point.
Shipping cost per package to a Belgian address: € 4.95.Shipping cost per package to a Dutch address: € 4.95.
Free delivery from € 65.00 in Belgium.Free delivery from € 75.00 in the Netherlands.
The delivery time is 2 to 6 working days.
For more information or info regarding delivery in other countries, we would like to refer you to our FAQ.
You have up to 21 days after receipt to return ordered items.
Return cost per package in Belgium: € 3.95.Return cost per package in the Netherlands: € 4.95.
Use the return info form and the return instructions that you will find with your order or can be downloaded from the following URLs:
Complete the return form and follow the return instructions to create a return label.Please note:For orders with free delivery, the shipping costs for partial returns will still be charged when the residual value of the non-returned items falls below the amount for free delivery!
For more information or info regarding returns from other countries, we would like to refer you to our FAQ.


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Noctilucent Clouds
Noctilucent clouds (NLCs) or polar mesospheric clouds (PMCs) are found very high in the Earth's atmosphere (about 85,300 meters above the Earth's surface!). They are called Polar Mesospheric Clouds when they are viewed from space, and are referred to as noctilucent clouds when viewed by observers on Earth. Unlike lower clouds that are associated with weather, these clouds form at the very edge of space in the atmospheric layer called the mesosphere. Like some of the clouds we see more regularly, scientists think NLC's are made of frozen water or ice crystals.
NLCs are seen best just after sunset. They glow an electric, beautiful blue-white which makes sense as noctilucent actually means "night-shining". They are normally seen from locations near the poles of the Earth, but in recent years, they have been seen at much lower-latitude locations (like Colorado or Virginia in the U.S.). Its this change in the distribution of NLCs that makes scientist think they may be a sign of climate change on Earth, specifically global warming which is influenced by human activity.
These eerie looking clouds have only been studied in the recent past. Now there is an atmospheric mission, AIM (The Aeronomy of Ice in the Mesosphere), that will study these clouds more in depth. The AIM mission will specifically study how these clouds form and if they are an indicator for climate and global change.
Crews aboard the International Space Station routinely witness noctilucent clouds when flying over the Earth. You too can be an observer of these clouds and can even share that information with others on the Internet!


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This article is more than 1 year old
AMD chases servers with fanless FirePro GPU
One driver, three different workloads
There are a number of different annoying things about the fanless GPU co-processors that Nvidia and Advanced Micro Devices are peddling as adjunct computational engines for servers. First, these Tesla and FireStream co-processors, as their lines are respectively known, cost more than regular GPUs. And they also have a different set of drivers that deprecate their use as a graphics card.
What server buyers really want – or so AMD hopes – is a single device with a single driver that can be a graphics card for visualization jobs, a compute engine for HPC work, or a video card for virtualized PC instances in a virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) set up.
And so, AMD has cooked up the FirePro V7800P graphics card, which will swing any way you want it to and which is based on the "Cypress" GPU chip. The Cypress GPU has 1,600 SIMD engines and a slew of supporting electronics wrapped around them so they can do math for HPC applications or driving graphic displays. The Cypress GPU has full support for the DirectCompute 11 and OpenCL 1.1 graphics and number-crunching protocols embedded in its hardware, and also includes 32-bit atomic operations, flexible 32KB local data shares, 64KB global data shares, global synchronization, and append/consume buffers etched onto its silicon. With all 1,600 cores working properly, the Cypress GPU can deliver 2.72 teraflops of single-precision and 544 gigaflops of double-precision floating point performance.
The FirePro V7800P, like the FireStream 9350 and 9370 GPU co-processors launched last June, are fanless designs with heat sinks that make use of the air-flow in the server chassis to keep them cool. Rather than use the top-line V8800, with all of the 1,600 stream processors in the Cypress chip fired up, as the basis of its new server card, AMD decided to take it down a notch to the V7800 graphics card, which has only 1,440 stream processors and is rated at 2 teraflops single-precision and 400 gigaflops double-precision.
The device is akin to the FireStream 9350 that was announced in June, which has the SIMD engines running at 700MHz and 2GB of GDDR5 memory clocking at 1GHz. The FirePro V7800P has a maximum power draw of 138 watts, which is actually lower than the 150 watts of the FireStream 9350. Both the FirePro V7800P costs $1,249, while the FireStream 9350 costs $799 – the same as the normal FirePro V7800 graphics card with its cooling fan.
The other big difference between the FirePro V7800P and the FireStream 9350 aside from heat and the price is that the FirePro V7800P uses the same drivers for workstations or servers running Windows or Linux and can therefore be used to drive graphics or do calculations. The FireStream chips cannot be used for graphics and only function for calculations.
AMD's FirePro V7800P GPU co-processor and graphics card for servers
Ironically, both AMD and Nvidia are trying to charge more for a chip that is less versatile. If they are looking for reasons why GPU co-processors have taken off like blade servers (yes, that was sarcastic), this is one of the reasons.
The good news is that AMD seems to have figured out that companies want one card that can be deployed for many different jobs over its technical lifetime. A cluster of servers to drive calculations does not look that different from a cluster of servers to do visualization and rendering or a cluster to support virtualized PC instances over the local area network. And with the FirePro V7800P, you can do all three of these jobs on the card you plunk inside of your rack servers.
Mitchel Furman, senior product manager for the FirePro line at AMD, tells El Reg that the FirePro V7800P requires 10 cubic feet per minute of airflow to keep it cool, and that servers normally can deliver three to four times that rate in a peripheral slot. The card can be plugged into a server proper or can be hosted in an external PCI-Express 2.0 chassis. It is a half-length, full height card.
The other interesting thing about the FirePro V7800P is that because it is a graphics card, it can support Microsoft's RemoteFX graphics virtualization technology, which debuted with Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1. RemoteFX is a virtualization technology for graphics and media that Microsoft got through its acquisition of Calista Technologies in January 2008. Among many things that the RemoteFX software does to smooth out graphics and audio processing for Remote Desktop Protocol, it also allows for a single video card to be virtualized to host multiple VDI-driven PCs.
Furman says that a server running Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 can drive 16 VDI sessions off of one FirePro V7800P card, and a 1U or 2U server would easily be able to have two of these cards, or 32 VDI users per machine. In a super-dense tray server, you could pack a lot of VMs into a server.
And perhaps more interestingly, you could have a VDI farm during the day and a computational cluster that runs at night, doing risk analysis or some other HPC job.
AMD is really taking the price war to Nvidia with the FirePro V7800, too. And it has to if it hopes to compete.
The FirePro V7800P has twice the single-precision oomph, at 2 teraflops, as the Nvidia Tesla M2050 with 3GB of GDDR5 memory and the M2070 with 6GB of memory, which are both rated at 1.03 teraflops. Nvidia wins on the double-precision front with these cards, at 515 gigaflops compared to the FirePro V7800P's 400 gigaflops. The M2070 takes up two slots and both Nvidia GPU co-processors are rated at 225 watts compared to the 138 watts of the FirePro V7800P. The M2050 costs $2,699 and the M2070 costs $5,489, according to Furman, although technically Nvidia does not supply pricing for it.
Providing that these prices are correct (and they are in the ballpark of what you would expect a list price to be for the street prices that El Reg has seen for the cards), then the FirePro V7800P wins hands down on performance per watt, performance per dollars, and performance per dollar per watt.
AMD and partner Dell will be showing off the FirePro V7800P down at Microsoft's TechEd conference in Atlanta, Georgia, today, with Dell certifying that its full-height PowerEdge M610x blade server can pack two of these cards and support HPC, VDI, or visualization workloads, the latter including CAD, engineering, and digital content creation applications.
The FirePro V7800P GPU card for servers will start shipping on May 24. ®


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I've only recently posted about bitter melon but that recipe only got through half of it and at just over £6 for the vegetable I wasn't letting the other bit go to waste (even if the pointy end had gone a bit soft by the time I got around to it).
My first encounter with bitter melon was in stuffed form, the Chinese recipe where the gourd is sliced, the seeds are scraped out and the void is filled will minced pork and prawn before the meat and veg disks are cooked in black bean sauce. It's a lovely dish but Lizzie over on Hollow Legs has already blogged that so I thought I'd do something different, which looking at Lizzie's stuffing ingredients isn't actually that different. The starch thickened Chinese sauce is replaced with a punchy stock though which makes for a very moreish soup, the stock taking on flavours from both the vegetable and the stuffing, not to mention the big glug of fish sauce at the end.
If you're looking for provenance then I have eaten this in the middle of Vietnam and something very similar is served in Thailand too.
Stuffed Bitter Melon Soup
Serves 3
350gr bitter melon (half a decent sized one)
250gr minced pork
1 ts oyster sauce
1/2 ts salt
1 clove garlic, finely chopped
1/2 ts sugar
1/4ts white pepper
3-4 dried wood ear mushrooms, soaked
1.25 litres chicken stock, weak as it will reduce
1 TB fish sauce
Greens from two spring onions
Chop the bitter melon into three then scoop out the seeds, scraping the pith out with them. Give them a good coating in salt (not in ingredient's list) and leave in a colander or sieve over the sink for 15 minutes. This will help leech out some of the bitterness. Wash well and dry off.
Shred the reconstituted wood ear mushrooms then mix into the pork along with the oyster sauce, garlic, salt, sugar and white pepper. Stir well to combine, if you stir in one direction then the meat should come together and firm up.
Stuff each section of bitter melon with the pork and then place into the chicken stock, bring to the boil then simmering gently for 30-40 minutes till the bitter melon is tender and the pork cooked through. Top up the stock if it looks like it is reducing too much.
Place the stuffed bitter melon in three bowls then add the fish sauce to the stock before topping up each bowl. Before serving scatter the spring onion greens over the stuffed bitter melon soup.


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Peanut Butter Sandwich Cookies
- 1 cup butter-flavored shortening
- 1 cup creamy peanut butter
- 1 cup sugar
- 1 cup packed brown sugar
- 3 eggs
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 3 cups all-purpose flour
- 2 teaspoons baking soda
- ¼ teaspoon salt
- ½ cup creamy peanut butter
- 3 cups confectioners' sugar
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 5 to 6 tablespoons milk
In a large bowl, cream the shortening, peanut butter and sugars until light and fluffy, about 4 minutes. Beat in eggs and vanilla. Combine the flour, baking soda and salt; add to creamed mixture and mix well.
Shape into 1-inch balls and place 2-inches apart on ungreased baking sheets. Flatten to ⅜-inch thickness with fork. Bake at 375 degrees for 7–8 minutes or until golden. Remove to wire racks to cool.
For filling, in a large bowl, beat the peanut butter, confectioners' sugar, vanilla and enough milk to achieve spreading consistency. Spread on half of the cookies and top each with another cookie.


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28 October 2009 - Senior officials from Afghanistan, Iran and Pakistan met in Vienna on 27 October 2009 for a ministerial meeting of the UNODC-brokered Triangular Initiative. This Initiative, launched in June 2007, is designed to strengthen drug control among the three countries most seriously affected by Afghan opium. "Since more than 90 per cent of the world's opium comes from Afghanistan and most of it is going via Iran and Pakistan, improving counter-narcotics between these three countries is essential", said UNODC Executive Director Antonio Maria Costa.
For the past two years, UNODC has been working with all three parties to enhance cross-border counter-narcotics enforcement. Drugs pose a threat to the health and security of all three countries, and many others downstream. National efforts have been made to hold back the flow of drug trafficking, particularly in Iran, where hundreds of kilometres of ditches and walls have been built to stop traffickers. But there are limits to what any State can do alone through interdiction, especially in the inhospitable deserts and mountains along Afghanistan's borders. Success depends on information exchange and intelligence-led operations targeting the major transnational networks. That is what the Triangular Initiative is designed to do.
At the meeting in Vienna, the three parties agreed to appoint permanent liaison officers to the Triangular Initiative's joint planning cell in Teheran in order to enhance analytical and operational capacity. They also agreed to establish border liaison offices on each side of their respective borders. Furthermore, they agreed to step up the number of joint patrols and joint operations (three have already been carried out). They discussed the practical modalities of such operations, particularly the need for a common communication system and information exchange.
The Initiative is not only regarded as important for improving security, it can also build confidence among the parties. "Neighbours may have their differences, but when it comes to drugs, they realize the common threat and appreciate the self-interest in working together", said Mr. Costa.
The Triangular Initiative is part of the Rainbow Strategy, conceived in the framework of the Paris Pact, a UNODC-initiated partnership of more than 50 States and organizations designed to reduce the supply, demand and trafficking of Afghan opiates. The Triangular Initiative has recently been linked to a similar cooperative platform in Central Asia, the Central Asia Regional Information and Coordination Centre. A counter-narcotics intelligence-sharing centre is foreseen for the Persian Gulf as well.
At the end of the meeting, participants briefed major partners. "We all have a vested interest in the success of this Initiative", they said. "The more drugs can be stopped at the source, the less damage will be done downstream". For more on the impact of the Afghan drugs trade see Addiction, Crime and Insurgency: The Transnational Threat of Afghan Opium.
Triangular cooperation fights transnational trafficking


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Employee wellness has always played a part in employee engagement, productivity, and overall success. But given the current circumstances—namely Covid-19, the worldwide pandemic that's thrown every person and company for a loop—it's more important than ever. With anxiety and depression levels on the rise since the outbreak, this is a moment for managers and leaders to step up, promote resilience, and look out for their employees.
There are many ways to support an employee's well-being and measure their overall engagement and happiness. Here we look at absenteeism and presenteeism to understand why these two workplace issues are key indicators when measuring employee wellbeing, actionable steps managers can take, as well as a few stand-out examples of companies rising to the challenge.
What is Absenteeism & Presenteeism?
Absenteeism and presenteeism, though often grouped together, are two very different issues most managers will have crossed paths with at some point in their career.
Absenteeism is defined as unplanned employee absences; in other words, when employees call in sick, have to deal with family emergencies, can't find a babysitter, or other similar situations. Of course, we're all human, with lives outside of work; managers should realize this and expect (and plan for) at least some level of absenteeism on their team.
Presenteeism, on the other hand, is when employees are present at work, but they're not doing their job or being productive. This occurs when employees decide to work even when they are sick or don't feel 100%. Presenteeism is hard to quantify because, while employees show up for work, and might even outwardly look fine, underlying health issues might be driving down their motivation and productivity.
While some managers are obsessed with calculating and managing employees' absence rates, with a yearly cost of $150 billion in the US, presenteeism is the real sleeping dragon between the two.
What Are the Causes?
Remember, absenteeism to some degree can be expected in the office. However, if you notice abnormally high rates or trends among your employees, these factors among others might exacerbate the issue:
- workplace burnout
- disengagement
- high levels of stress
- depression
- lack of childcare or care for other family members
- injuries or illness
- job hunting
Presenteeism, on the other hand, can be sparked by having very few or no paid sick days, heavy workloads, high employer expectations, or a demanding workplace culture. Employees feel like taking time off is not an option and normalize coming to work at 75% capacity (or less).
While the definitions of and causes behind absenteeism and presenteeism are quite different, these two issues do share a common thread: The end result is a loss of productivity.
What Can Managers Do Today?
As you might've already noticed, the factors listed above are more likely to have come up when working during a pandemic, meaning employees probably have higher rates of both absenteeism and presenteeism.
"Today, Americans are reporting more symptoms and signs of depression, anxiety, and fear than historic norms," according to a Healthline article based on research from YouGov's COVID-19 tracker.
Where does that leave managers and leaders? What steps can they take to help curb absenteeism and presenteeism and the resulting loss in employee productivity?
- Measure absenteeism & presenteeism rates. Knowing your absenteeism and presenteeism rates is important; it can help you tap into underlying issues that you might not have even known existed. As mentioned above, measuring absenteeism rates is more straight-forward than measuring presenteeism. Context will be key here; understanding what these rates were pre-Covid-19 could help you make sense of what you're seeing. And if you'd like to try to address high absenteeism and presenteeism rates, the steps listed below are a good place to start.
- Freshen up on the legal requirements. As a result of the pandemic, new state and federal laws have been passed requiring actions be taken by employers. This overview touches on these new laws, which include implementing thorough work-from-home and technology policies and examining safety, hygiene, dress code, and leaves of absence.
- Provide the structure your employees need. This is not the time to go radio silent. If you haven't already, it's time to review and revise your employee handbook to take Covid-19 into account. This checklist from SHRM is a great place to start when reviewing your policies. When you present the updated handbook to your employees, take the time to walk them through your decision-making process, and give them the chance to ask questions and voice their concerns. This is the moment to make sure it's clear that their safety and wellbeing is a #1 priority.
- Make sure your employees feel safe. There's no excuse for not being in the know these days and, as an employer, it's your responsibility to ensure that not only do your employees know you're aware of the latest CDC recommendations but that you're putting them into practice. Keep your team up to date with weekly emails or create a digital bulletin board with best practices and what's been implemented in the office.
- Empathize with employees. This new reality isn't easy for anyone—employers included—and it might be good for your employees to hear that. Depending on your circumstances, you might even open up to your employees about your current struggles, offering the resources that are currently helping you. Professionals across the globe are finding their own ways to lead with empathy. Brian Sommer, a 2020 HR Executive tech influencer recently said in a live Twitter chat: "Reach out to employees—spend 2 hours every day on the phone or Zoom talking to different employees regardless of level—some will simply appreciate the interest and others may need your help."
- Find new ways to come together. If your team has gone from office workers to full- or part-time remote, you might notice team comradery is a bit lower than usual. This is a chance to find new ways to come together. Perhaps it's an early finish on Friday to share a drink together over Zoom, or an online team-building activity before a regular meeting.
Companies Making Changes in Today's World
As managers and leaders become more aware of presenteeism and absenteeism in the workplace—and of the debilitating effect they can have on employee wellbeing and overall productivity—many companies are making moves to improve their employee experience and combat the factors that increase absenteeism and presenteeism. Here are a few real-life examples of companies making it happen today.
- International Truck and Engine did a study to see how allergies were affecting the company's workforce, and they decided to offer employees a consultation with an allergist. That's exactly how one employee there found out she'd been previously misdiagnosed and was given new medication for her allergies. The result? She's more focused and alert than ever before, and, according to her, her productivity might've been affected by up to 25% before this discovery.
- With employees with children at home in mind, KPMG has modified its current programs to include more backup care and an expanded network of childcare centers. Additionally, they're offering their employees access to discounted tutoring, academic support, and homework assistance.
- To cope with the sudden move to working 100% remotely, Canopy decided to refund small employee spends (think yoga balls and houseplants) that made their transition to working from home a bit smoother. They also encouraged their staff of 100 to partake in a 30-day wellness program focused on physical, mental, and emotional well-being.
- Back in March, Truist Bank gave all employees making less than $100,000 a year a $1,200 pre-tax bonus, as well as an additional 10 days of paid leave to offset the challenges of school closings and other unexpected changes.
- Like Truist, e.l.f. Beauty Inc. also gave its employees a $1,000 bonus in March. They've also extended their policy on signing off at 2 p.m. on summer Fridays to the end of the year, taking into account the fact that people are working longer hours since they've cut out commuting.
What works for one company may not work for another. While it's great to get inspiration from real companies implementing changes in today's working landscape, it's important to look inward at your own team to identify their pain points and then find the best solution for them.
Absenteeism and presenteeism have always been workplace issues managers and leaders should've been aware of, but with the heightened sense of job insecurity, overall stress, and uncertainty enveloping much of today's workforce, it's more important to tune in now than ever.
These issues feed directly into overall employee happiness and wellness, which in turn, feeds into your team's capacity and productivity. Though absenteeism and presenteeism might not have seemed like big concerns in the past, the difficult times we're living in warrant a deeper look into both.
Facing tough times, businesses can either sink or swim; and while there are no guarantees, being resilient is certainly a step in the right direction. If you haven't started yet, it's time to take a deeper look at presenteeism and absenteeism within your own office and teams, understand what that means for you, and make the necessary changes now.
Copyright © 2024 SCORE Association, SCORE.org
Funded, in part, through a Cooperative Agreement with the U.S. Small Business Administration. All opinions, and/or recommendations expressed herein are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the SBA.


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And so, I relaxed at the Jarbidge Forks, before turning back to my truck. It was the second day on my journey to Jarbidge, and I was going to make it this time!
But first (from the first day), we'll take a quick look to the north, downstream in the canyon of the Jarbidge River. The geology of the canyon walls is a bit deceptive. The rocks are dark-looking from a distance, so it's easy to imagine they are all basalt. It's not that simple, though. The thin flow on the distant canyon rim in the above picture is composed of a basalt mapped as Tbf, basalt of Big Flat, on this map, a portion of which is shown below. All the rocks you see in the foreground on the right side of the canyon (on the east)—all those chocolate-colored brown rocks—are part of a thick, widespread, high-volume rhyolite mapped as Tdc: the rhyolite of Dorsey Creek, sometimes called the Dorsey Creek Rhyolite. It erupted from the Bruneau-Jarbidge eruptive center.
This southeast part of the mapped area just barely shows the Jarbidge Forks area: it's the easternmost canyon junction, located just a little below the center of this map snippet, below a "Tbf" label.
Looking upstream to the southeast (a view from the second day) we see a similar geologic situation in the East Fork of the Jarbidge River. The map shows that the uppermost flow is still the basalt of Big Flat. The basalt is underlain by a section of Tsl—lower undivided sediments—with the rhyolite of Dorsey Creek below that, underlain by another section of Tsl. The photo doesn't really show these units that well, but was taken more as an overview shot.
And finally, at about 12:30 pm on the afternoon of the second day, I left the Jarbdige Forks and forayed south toward Jarbidge. The flow on the canyon rim, if we are still inside the mapped area, may be Tda: the basalt of the Diamond A Desert. Like the basalt of Big Flat, this younger baslat is underlain in this area by the rhyolite of Dorsey Creek. The rhyolite pinches out rapidly to the south and is replaced by a thick section of Tsl, likely the slope former in this photo. I took the photo because of the cirrus clouds, and wasn't really thinking about the rocks at the time. Location of the photo is inexact due to a failure of my GPS-track–saving system.
The basalts are Pliocene or Miocene, the lower undivided sediments are Pliocene or Miocene (and Miocene where below the rhyolite of Dorsey Creek), and the rhyolite of Dorsey Creek is Miocene, dated at 8.1 Ma.
I then left Idaho and entered Nevada. There was, for once, a nice pullout—so I pulled over and took a photo of the Idaho sign, looking back to the north. The road was wider in Nevada. Yay!
While at the pullout, I shot a couple pictures of the hoodoos on the west side of the canyon—unknown formation, unknown rock type.
It was fall...
...beautiful, beautiful fall.
At 1:00 pm on the second day, I arrived in Jarbidge. The sign says: *JARBIDGE* PLEASE SLOW DOWN, THIS IS OUR TOWN.
Some References:
Bonnichsen, Bill, 1982, The Bruneau-Jarbidge Eruptive Center, Southwestern Idaho, in Bill Bonnichsen, and Roy M. Breckenridge, eds, Cenozoic Geology of Idaho: Idaho Geological Survey Bulletin B-26. p. 237-254.
Bonnichsen, Bill, and Breckenridge, R. M., eds., 1982, Cenozoic Geology of Idaho 1982: Idaho Geological Survey Bulletin B-26, 725 pp.
Bonnichsen, Bill and Jenks, M.D., 1990, Geologic map of the Jarbidge River Wilderness Study Area, Owyhee County, Idaho: U.S. Geological Survey, Map MF-2127, scale 1:50000.
Cathey, H. E., and Nash. B. P., 2009, Pyroxene thermometry of rhyolite lavas of the Bruneau–Jarbidge eruptive center, Central Snake River Plain [abs.]: Journal of Volcanology and Geothermal Research, Volume 188, Issues 1-3, p. 173-185.


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This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2013, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
It took half-a-dozen tries over several days. But Phil Sherburne struck gold on Saturday silver actually with family health coverage purchased on the Affordable Care Act's online exchange.
After plugging in particulars about his family of five, the Salt Lake City business owner was able to compare 38 plans and apply for tax credits to put toward his monthly premiums. He settled on a silver-level plan from Altius that retails for about $850 a month.
After tax credits, the Sherburnes will pay just $123 a month.
"It's a great deal. I'm thrilled to have coverage, period," said Sherburne, who was previously shut out of affordable insurance due to a pre-existing condition, a shoulder injury. "Once I got onto the site it took about an hour, start to finish."
Overwhelmed by high demand and technical glitches, healthcare.gov had a rough Oct. 1 launch. Early shoppers struggled to use the site, often getting bounced off or blocked by a "please wait" page.
Federal officials have since added server capacity and brought the website down for fixes. A week later, reports of successful shopping experiences are trickling in.
"I was able to finally get on. I could see rates and plans that are very comparable to what I have now, and for less money," said 61-year-old Sandy Crockett of Cottonwood Heights.
Read the fine print, though, warns Crockett, who formerly worked in human resources and is accustomed to vetting health plans. Many of the exchange plans have narrow provider networks, so it's wise to examine the "provider directory" links attached to the various plans to make sure the hospitals and doctors you want are covered before buying, she said.
Judging the affordability of the 96 exchange plans available to Utahns is difficult, because prices vary depending on where a family lives, how many in the family enroll and their ages.
Prices also hinge on subsidies offered to households with incomes below 400 percent of the federal poverty level.
The median family income in Salt Lake City was $68,578 in 2012, and the average-sized family is a family of three. Such a family, under the Affordable Care Act, would qualify for an annual subsidy of $897.88, or $74.82 per month.
Put toward the purchase of the second cheapest silver plan on the exchange Select Value Preference Benchmark Silver 1000, which retails for $7,412.88 per year this family's monthly insurance rate would be $542.92.
That's about double what the average employer-insured family pays in Utah because employers typically help pay for premiums. But exchange plans include a list of must-have benefits, such as mental health care, that many employer-based plans don't cover.
And the value of employer-based coverage has declined over the years as more of the costs are pushed onto workers in the form of high deductibles, co-insurance and co-payments.
Sherburne, self-employed and uninsured for years, found a plan with no deductible and zero co-pays.
"It's a big deal for our family," said Sherburne, who has been paying cash for doctor visits and the occasional emergency room visit. They've so far avoided the kind of health calamity that forces families into bankruptcy.
Leia Bell, his wife, "this year had a bout with gall stones. The ER bill was about $3,000," he said.
Sherburne and Bell own and run Signed & Numbered, a frame store in South Salt Lake. Business is steady, but they run on lean margins and a year-and-a-half after the shop's opening, they had to make cuts and jettison their health benefits.
Sometime later, Sherburne tore his rotator cuff playing softball, pushing rates further beyond reach.
"From that point on, I was denied by most insurers," he said. "We tried to get insurance for the business, but because of my injury they rated us up by 40 percent."
Eager to survey the exchange, Sherburne tried shopping it on the morning of Oct. 1. He couldn't get past the home page.
He tried again several times on Thursday, morning and night, and would make some headway only to get bumped off. He called the 1-800 number and hung up after spending 11 minutes on hold. Live chat operators on the website encouraged him to keep trying, but couldn't answer his questions.
But Saturday brought success.
"Each person in the family requires about a page of information, stuff like birth dates and income," he said. "It immediately told us what our tax credits would be and asked if we wanted to apply the money directly to the premium or take it at the end of the year."
Sherburne surveyed 38 different plans, and picked five for closer comparison.
"A link pops up and you can click it to compare the premium, deductibles and co-pay and yearly maximum out of pocket costs," he said. "We found a high deductible plan that would have cost us $5 a month after tax credits."
Sherbrune finally settled on a silver-level plan with the right set of benefits. "We didn't need stuff like pain management," he said.
He was able to click on a page where he could search to see if his sons' pediatrician was included. "It was really slick," he said. "Once they get the bugs worked out, it will work well and bring peace of mind to a lot of people."
Twitter: @kirstendstewart
Need help enrolling?
There are several options for those who need help shopping the Affordable Care Act's online health exchange:
Online chat at healthcare.gov
Toll-free call center at 1-800-318-2596
Go to http://www.takecareutah.org or call 211 to find the nearest trained navigator
Find a certified insurance broker near you at bit.ly/brokerfind
Calculate your subsidy
The new online marketplace at healthcare.gov was designed to allow shoppers to find out whether they qualify for subsidies, receive them and apply them toward the cost of premiums.
Those having trouble using the site can get an estimate using an online calculator from the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation here: http://kff.org/interactive/subsidy-calculator/
Americans who qualify for subsidies earn between 100 percent and 400 percent of the federal poverty level. In that window, individuals earn between about $11,000 and $44,000, and a family of four has an income between $33,000 and $92,000.


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UIA informs about the next regular flights to / from Tel Aviv
March 11, 2021: Due to high demand, as well as difficult conditions for air connections, Ukraine International Airlines (UIA) informs about the flights on the route Kyiv-Tel Aviv-Kyiv in the near future. The Israeli side included the city of Kyiv in the list of cities to which flights are allowed, based on the results of targeted measures taken by the Embassy of Ukraine in the State of Israel.
During the period of restriction of scheduled flights by the State of Israel, UIA has already implemented several flights by special agreement. UIA currently has confirmation of flights on the following dates:
- Kyiv (KBP) - Tel Aviv (TLV) - 2 flights on 14.03, 17.03, 18.03, as well as one flight on 15.03;
- Tel Aviv (TLV) - Kyiv (KBP) - one flight on 14.03, 15.03, 16.03, 17.03, 19.03 and 2 flights on 18.03;
- 14.03 / 15.03 (night flight), 17.03 / 18.03 (night flight), 18.03 / 19.03 (night flight), and 16.03 (night flight) respectively.
UIA flights to/from Tel Aviv have convenient connections with popular European and Eastern destinations. Through Boryspil Airport, KBP-TLV-KBP flights connect with Istanbul, Dubai, London, Milan, Paris, Amsterdam, Tbilisi, Baku, Prague, Vilnius, Minsk and the regions of Ukraine.
You can buy tickets for the above flights on the official website of the airline.
The following categories of citizens are allowed to leave Israel:
- Persons who have been vaccinated or recovered and have valid certificates from the Ministry of Health of Israel.
- Persons who have declared that they are not citizens or residents of Israel.
- Persons who have stated to the Exclusion Committee that Israel is not their permanent residence and have provided supporting documents.
- Persons authorized by the Exclusion Committee to leave Israel.
- It is mandatory to have a negative PCR test issued no earlier than 72 hours before boarding. It is necessary for passengers who have not been vaccinated, except for persons who have been exempted from the test by the Committee headed by the head Office of Population and Immigration Affairs, Director General of the Ministry of Health and Director General of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, or persons whose stay in Israel was less than 72 hours.
- Declaration of a passenger departing from Israel on the website of the Ministry of Health.
Arrival in Israel is allowed in the following cases:
- Citizens and residents of Israel;
- Foreign nationals approved by the Ministry of the Interior.
- Presence of a negative PCR test issued no earlier than 72 hours before boarding - except for persons who have been abroad for less than 72 hours or have been exempted from taking the test by decision of the Exemption Committee. This is a requirement for all passengers of all ages (including vaccinated passengers).
- Availability of PCR test performed upon entry into Israel at Ben Gurion International Airport (Flight Departure Room, Office №25).
- All passengers must undergo domestic quarantine, except for passengers who have a vaccination certificate or a recovery certificate issued in Israel.
- Declaration of a passenger entering Israel on the website of the Ministry of Health. The "Passenger Entry Online Application Form" must be completed no earlier than 24 hours prior to the departure of the flight to Israel. The form must be submitted before boarding the flight at the airport of departure.
In the absence of the above documents, passengers may be denied boarding. The above documents must be kept throughout the trip.
UIA recommends constantly monitoring up-to-date information on border crossings on the airline's official website.
Ukraine International Airlines applies safety standards and procedures in accordance with the recommendations of the World Health Organization, the International Air Transport Organization, the European Aviation Safety Agency, the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control, as well as the Ministry of Health of Ukraine and the State Aviation Service. Of Ukraine.
The peculiarities of passenger service at Boryspil Airport can be found by the link.
Safety measures on board aircraft can be found here.


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History of Seabrook
Seabrook, Texas: the name alone beckons visitors. Seabrook is a small town on the Texas coast just 30 minutes south of downtown Houston. Residents and visitors alike treasure this vibrant community for its resort-style experiences along Clear Lake and Galveston Bay.
Over 12,000 people call Seabrook home, and why not? Seabrook's relaxed lifestyle, business-friendly climate, and affordable waterfront property make it one of the country's most attractive areas to live, work, and visit.
While Seabrook recently celebrated its 50th anniversary in 2011, historic records date back to 1832 when Ritson Morris, a native Virginian, obtained a league of land from the Mexican government. A portion of the land was purchased by Seabrook W. Sydnor in 1895 and a plat was filed with the Harris County Courthouse the following year.
In March 1903, the Seabrook Company of Houston filed a revised layout of the proposed Seabrook townsite, which appealed to local farmers, fishermen, and merchants. Some years later, in 1961, local leaders had the city incorporated.
In 1964, not long after the city became incorporated, a bridge was built between Kemah and Seabrook plus State Highway 146 was established as a four-lane highway. The bridge and highway allowed easy access to Seabrook along Galveston Bay and the small town began to grow considerably.
Quality of life in Seabrook is enriched by its coastal location. Galveston Bay has a mixture of recreational and commercial resources that brings visitors from across the nation. Locals say visitors must taste the fresh seafood Seabrook has to offer; popular fish markets can be found throughout the city.
Old Seabrook is a must-see. Rich in history, Old Seabrook has an array of unique shops, fine dining, and cozy bed and breakfast-style lodging. Speaking of breakfast, Seabrook Waffle Company is a great way to start the morning followed by shopping in Old Seabrook. Shoppers will find something for everyone!
For those planning a vacation to the Texas Gulf, Seabrook is the perfect place to stay. Seabrook is conveniently located just minutes from several bay area attractions including the Kemah Boardwalk and NASA Johnson Space Center. Seabrook is also just a short drive from the Port of Galveston for those planning to take a cruise.
The hotels in the area are top quality and offer their guests several amenities and even discounts to local attractions. The Comfort Inn and Suites NASA, Comfort Suites Seabrook, the Hampton Inn, La Quinta, Quality Inn Yacht Club Basin, and the Spring Hill Suites Houston are just a few of the hotels in the area.
For those looking for bed and breakfast-style lodging, Seabrook has that, too. The Beacon Hill Guest House Bed and Breakfast, the Pelican's Nest, and the Old Parsonage House are some of Seabrook's finest B&Bs.
Both residents and visitors enjoy the many parks and amenities Seabrook has to offer. Seabrook parks cover over 100 acres and include two boat ramps, two public pools, two splash pads, plus a 1,000-foot saltwater fishing pier.
For the outdoor enthusiast, Seabrook has an extensive hike and bike trail system. The trail system connects several Seabrook parks and is perfect for those who enjoy nature. Each year in March, Seabrook is host to the Lucky Trail Marathon. This two-day event is great for hard-core runners, but also includes fun activities for the whole family. The marathon is run on the Seabrook trail system, so runners not only enjoy a great fun run but also get to take in Seabrook's scenic views.
Seabrook is a bird lovers paradise, home to approximately three hundred diverse species. As listed on the Great Texas Coastal Birding Trail, bird watchers are likely to spot several varieties of pelicans, ospreys, waxwings, warblers, sandpipers, buntings, and many migrant songbirds.
The 1,000-foot fishing pier can be found at Pine Gully Park. Pine Gully is more than fifty acres and encompasses a Karankawa Indian campsite, wetlands, wooded area, nature trails, and has several amenities such as restrooms, picnic tables, BBQ grills, and playgrounds.
The city pool, Pelican Bay, is located at Miramar Park and has a 30-foot water slide, two pools, and a splash pad. The pool is open during the summer and residents receive discount admission.
The Lakewood Yacht Club offers lakeside sailing schools and charters. Classes and charters are available daily, overnight, and on weekends. They even offer classes for children and dinner cruises. Houston Party Boats and The Spirit of Texas Paddlewheeler is located in Seabrook inside the marina on Nasa Parkway. Their boat rides are unique and fun and can be the perfect venue to hold an event, party, or even a wedding.
After a long day of site seeing, biking, fishing, sailing, and swimming several visitors and residents will enjoy a good meal in one of the many Seabrook restaurants. Seabrook is famous for its dining. Tookie's is nationally known for its juicy burgers, or for those wanting to grab a slice of pizza, Mario's Flying Pizza is sure to hit the spot. The Villa Capri on Clear Lake is home to a variety of seafood and Italian dishes prepared Capri-style and the Signature Bistro has an elegant but casual atmosphere perfect for lunch.
Outrigger's is the place to experience seafood at its best. Located under the bridge, customers will have a spectacular view of the ship channel, while enjoying just-caught seafood. Fresh seafood markets in Seabrook include Emery's Seafood, Golden Seafood, Rose's Seafood Market, Baybrook's Fresh Seafood, and Waterfront Seafood.
For those craving something Asian, Wong's Chef and Hama Bistro are two local favorites and Pier 8 is a buffet style Mongolian bbq and fresh seafood restaurant. Merlion is another great place to try and has won several awards.
Wanting authentic Mexican food? Then Laredo's is the place to be. Iguanas Ranas has a beautiful interior and personable staff, not to mention the food is fresh and flavorful. No time to sit and wait, then stop by Taqueria Nasa for quick a taco or burrito.
Wait, that's not all! Seabrook is also home to a variety of American diners, cafes, and restaurants. As mentioned Tookie's is famous for its burgers, but the Pelican Grill has been featured on the Food Network on the popular show Restaurant Impossible. Seabrook was Restaurant Impossible's first stop in Texas, and Chef Robert Irvine gave the local diner an amazing face-lift.
An old school diner experience can be found at the Seabrook Classic Café, a hometown diner atmosphere that serves great clam chowder. Sam's Boat and Hooters are great places to watch the game or just kick back with friends. Fast food restaurants in Seabrook include many popular chains and local spots such as Neptune Subs, Donald's Donuts, Village Pizza and Seafood, and several national chains.
No doubt those visiting Seabrook will find a great place to eat, but in addition to great restaurants and places to stay, Seabrook also has the perfect wedding destination venue: Carothers Coastal Gardens.
Carothers is nestled beside one of Seabrook's finest parks and is an eight and a half-acre property with a main house and guesthouse plus expansive gardens overlooking Galveston Bay. While ideal for weddings and special events, it is also the perfect place to host a business meeting or lunch. The grounds and architecture maintain the area's Spanish land-grant history, with connectivity to the city's trail system. Guests may tour or reserve Carothers by contacting the City of Seabrook at 281-291-5778.
May is the perfect month to have a wedding, plus it is the perfect time to visit Seabrook and check out the largest classic car and wooden boat show in the United States. The first weekend in May, Keels & Wheels will attract over 15,000 visitors to view more than 300 classic cars and boats from around the nation, all on display at the beautiful Lakewood Yacht Club on the shores of Clear Lake. The event is both educational and awe-inspiring, it is a great chance to become immersed in automotive and marine history.
For a fun family vacation or a romantic weekend getaway, come to Seabrook, Texas, and enjoy the relaxed care-free environment. Seabrook may be a small town but there is plenty to see and do in this delightful community.
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48. Jesus and the Religious Leaders
We all are familiar with the term "pharisaism." What is pharisaism? Let me tell you a story before I give you my own definition.
A teacher in a public school was teaching her third grade students about mammals in the sea. She mentioned that the whale is a large animal living in the sea. Even though it is one of the largest sea creatures, it has a very narrow throat, and so it cannot swallow an adult human being.
A girl in the class spoke up, "But it swallowed Jonah!"
"No," the teacher said, "It just cannot swallow an adult human being. Because, as I said, even though it is a large animal, it has a very narrow throat and so cannot swallow an adult human being."
The girl persisted, "Well, when I go to heaven, I will ask Jonah."
"What if Jonah is not in heaven; what if he is in hell?" the teacher asked.
The girl's response, "Then you ask him!"
You laughed, didn't you? Why? Because you made a value judgment on that teacher. You made a value judgment that the girl was going to heaven, the teacher was going to hell and, more important than that, you will be in heaven, because unlike that teacher, you believe the Word of God.
This gives us the definition of pharisaism. Pharisaism is making a value judgment on someone else based on one's own assumed secure position.
Of course, making a value judgment is not always wrong. We have to make value judgments all the time. Our value judgment on that teacher may not be wrong either. Because of the cultural environment we live in, because of the strong, humanistic philosophy in the field of education today, and because of the strong opposition towards evangelical Christianity today, we are probably safe to make such a value judgment.
However, what we have to be aware of is that before we make any value judgment on someone else, we have to examine how secure our own assumed position is. When it comes to pharisaism, sincerity really does not matter. You can be extremely sincere, and yet sincerely wrong!
The best examples of this, of course, are the religious leaders of Jesus' time, the chief among them being the Pharisees, from whom the word "pharisaism" is coined.
Who were the Religious Leaders of Jesus' Time?
Pharisees - The most known of the religious leaders were the Pharisees. They were a religious party. The word "Pharisee" literally means "Separatist," the name given to them by their opponents because of their "holier than thou" haughty attitude. Their supreme aim was to strictly follow both the written and oral law.
They looked down upon the common people who did not have the slightest chance of fulfilling the complex requirements of the Law. However, the common people admired the Pharisees as representing the ideal followers of Judaism. The Pharisees had such a hold on the common people that no governing power could afford to disregard them.
However, not all Pharisees were bad. Many of them actually tried to promote true spirituality and piety. Some of the well known men of the New Testament were Pharisees such as, Nicodemus (John 3), Gamaliel (Acts 5:34), and Paul himself (Philippians 3:5). Some of them became members in the early church (Acts 6:7). Paul used the title of Pharisee with great respect and as a title of honor (Philippians 3:5).
What Jesus condemned was their hypocrisy, as evidenced by their pride in their outward observance of the law but inward spiritual void, and their arrogant belief that they were more religious than the rest. They in return accused Jesus of blasphemy (Luke 5:21), in league with the devil (Matthew 9:34), and of breaking the law (Matthew 12:2) which prompted them to seek to destroy Him (Matthew 12:14).
Scribes - Their job was to study and expound the law. The Pharisees were a religious party, whereas the scribes held religious office. Most of the scribes belonged to the Pharisaic party, whereas not all Pharisees were scribes.
Scribes claimed positions of first rank, sought public acclaim of the people and wore long and expensive robes.
They were the strongest opponents of Jesus because He refused to be bound by the letter of the law (John 5:10; Mark 7:7-13). They kept close watch over whatever He said and did (Mark 2:16; Luke 5:30; 15:2).
Sadducees - Unlike the scribes and Pharisees, the Sadducees were a political party favorable to the Roman government. They were priests of Jewish aristocratic class. All Sadducees were priests, but not all priests were Sadducees. They accepted only the written law and rejected the traditions of the Pharisees. They denied bodily resurrection (Mark 12:18; Luke 20:27; Acts 4:1-2; 23:8), the existence of the angels (Acts 23:8), and the sovereignty of God over human affairs, and believed that man is the master of his own destiny.
Because of these theological differences, they did not have a cordial relationship with the Pharisees. However, they joined with the Pharisees in confronting Jesus to show them a sign from heaven (Matthew 16:1). They also raised a question to Jesus about the resurrection (Matthew 22:23).
Most of the criticism of Jesus was directed against the Pharisees, except on one occasion when He warned the disciples of the leaven of the Sadducees (Matthew 16:6, 11).
Herodians - The Herodians were neither a religious sect nor a political party. They were Jews who supported the Herodian dynasty. They also joined with the Pharisees to oppose Jesus and attempted to trap Him by asking Him whether it was proper to pay tribute to Caesar (Matthew 22:15-22 and Mark 12:13-17; 3:6 are the only mention of them in the New Testament.).
Although there were many theological and political differences among these four groups and they hated each other strongly, they united in a common cause against Jesus. However, Jesus' most scathing rebuke was reserved for the scribes and the Pharisees who joined together as a group in hatred and strong opposition of Him.
Jesus' major encounter with the Sadducees was only on one occasion when they raised the question about the resurrection and marriage (Matthew 22:23-33; Mark 12:18-27; Luke 20:27-38). Similarly, His only encounter with the Herodians was when they were incited by the Pharisees to raise the question about paying taxes to Caesar (Matthew 22:15-22; Mark 12:13-17). There is no mention of the Herodians acting by themselves to oppose Jesus. But as mentioned above, His most scathing rebuke was reserved for the scribes and Pharisees.
Why? Humanly speaking, if anybody needed the message of God's salvation, it would have been the Sadducees. Sadducees were the modern-day rationalists who did not see any need of God or the supernatural. Following a humanistic philosophy, they put man in the center of the universe as the master of his own destiny. If anybody needed the convincing proof of God and His revelation, it would have been the Sadducees.
Or, Jesus could have picked a fight with the Herodians. Like the present-day civil libertarians, they always argued for the separation of the state and organized religion. Or, like the modern day politicians, they tried to solve all the social and moral problems by the involvement of the government. If anybody needed to be taught that only God can solve the social problems and take care of the need of the human heart, it would have been the Herodians.
But Jesus reserved His most scathing rebukes for the Pharisees and the scribes who without doubt were the most religious people of His time. They followed the law extremely carefully and were guardians of the religious establishment of Jesus' time. Like Paul before his conversion, they lived according to the strictest code of the Jewish religious system (Acts 26:5; Philippians 3:5).
However, in their close scrutiny of the Law and in their best human efforts to keep the minutest details of the Law, they became blind even to the clearest revelation of the living Word of God. They were very sincere, but sincerely wrong in the value judgments they made about Jesus.
In their confrontation with Jesus, two basic issues were involved: 1) His relation with God the Father; His claims of being equal with the Father, and 2) His relationship with man; His mingling with the lowest class of people in the society; He came to serve and not to be served.
Dispute about His Relation with God the Father
The scribes and Pharisees opposed Jesus in relation to His claims of being equal with God, and they objected to every claim that He made about His being equal with the Father:
1) They objected to His use of the title "Son of God" for Himself. The Pharisees and scribes knew their theology well. When Jesus called God His Father, they knew what He meant was being of the same nature as God; i.e., equal with God, or God Himself:
But He answered them, "My Father is working until now, and I Myself am working." For this cause therefore the Jews were seeking all the more to kill Him, because He not only was breaking the Sabbath, but also was calling God His own Father, making Himself equal with God (John 5:17-18).395
John MacArthur states in his Study Bible notes on John 1:17-47:
These verses reveal the ultimate reason Jesus confronted the Jews' religious hypocrisy, i.e., the opportunity to declare who He was. This section is Christ's own personal statement of His deity. As such, it is one of the greatest Christological discourses in Scripture. Herein Jesus makes 5 claims to equality to God: 1) He is equal with God in His person (vv. 17,18); 2) He is equal with God in His works (vv. 19, 20); 3) He is equal with God in His power and sovereignty (v. 21); 4) He is equal with God in His judgment (v. 22); and 5) He is equal with God in His honor (v. 23).396
At another occasion where Jesus again asserted His deity by calling Himself equal with God, the Jews picked up stones, accusing Him of blasphemy:
"My Father, who has given them to Me, is greater than all; and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father's hand. I and the Father are one." The Jews took up stones again to stone Him. Jesus answered them, "I showed you many good works from the Father; for which of them are you stoning Me?" The Jews answered Him, "For a good work we do not stone You, but for blasphemy; and because You, being a man, make Yourself out to be God" (John 10:29-33).
2) They also objected to His using the title "Messiah" or "Christ." Again, they knew their theology and rightly understood that by using this title Jesus was claiming Himself to be the promised heir of David, who will sit on David's throne and rule for eternity. As the Gospel of Mark notes:
Again the high priest was questioning Him, and saying to Him, "Are You the Christ, the Son of the Blessed One?" And Jesus said, "I am; and you shall see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of Power and coming with clouds of heaven." And tearing his clothes, the high priest said, "What further need do we have of witnesses? You have heard the blasphemy; how does it seem to you?" And they all condemned Him to be deserving of death (Mark 14:61-64; also Matthew 26:63-66; Luke 22:67-71).
Another Messianic title that has been used for Jesus is "the Son of David." It has been used 15 times in the 3 Synoptic gospels. Although Jesus Himself never used this title for Himself, the Pharisees and the scribes objected to other people using it for Him. During the triumphal entry, the crowd shouted "Hosanna to the Son of David; blessed is He who comes in the Name of the Lord" (Matthew 21:9). Then Matthew notes,
"But when the chief priests and the scribes saw the wonderful things that He had done, and the children who were crying out in the temple and saying, 'Hosanna to the Son of David,' they became indignant and said to Him, 'Do You hear what these are saying?'" (Matthew 21:15, 16a).
What they meant to tell Him was that calling You the Son of David is blasphemy; why don't You stop them?
3) The Pharisees and scribes objected to His claim of supremacy over and existence before Abraham. This was another occasion when they picked up stones to stone Him:
"Your father Abraham rejoiced to see My day; and he saw it, and was glad." The Jews therefore said to Him, "You are not yet fifty years old, and have You seen Abraham?" Jesus said to them, "Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was born, I AM." Therefore they picked up stones to throw at Him; but Jesus hid Himself, and went out of the temple (John 8:56-59).
4) They objected to Jesus' claim to have authority to forgive sins. Again, the scribes and the Pharisees knew their theology well. They rightly understood that only God, against Whom every sin has been committed, has the right to forgive sins and anyone who claims to have that right, or who tries to exercise that right, makes himself equal with God.
In the incident of the healing of the paralytic man, instead of telling him to rise up and walk, Jesus told him, "Your sins are forgiven you." At this the scribes and the Pharisees began murmuring, "Who is this who speaks blasphemies? Who can forgive sins, but God alone?" And Jesus' response was, "But in order that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins " (Matthew 9:6; also Mark 2:7-10; Luke 5:21-24).
5) Because Jesus kept asserting His deity and making claims about His being equal to God the Father, the scribes and the Pharisees demanded that He provide them some proofs, some miraculous signs that would undoubtedly show that He was really who He was claiming Himself to be: God incarnate.
As Matthew, Mark, and Luke note:
Then some of the scribes and Pharisees answered Him, saying, "Teacher, we want to see a sign from you." But He answered and said to them, "An evil and adulterous generation craves for a sign; and yet no sign shall be given to it but the sign of Jonah, the prophet" (Matthew 12:38-39; also Matthew 16:4; Mark 8:11-12; Luke 11:29).
Similarly, John notes:
They said therefore to Him, "What shall we do that we may work the works of God?" Jesus answered and said to them, "This is the work of God, that you believe in Him whom He has sent." They said therefore to Him, "What then do You do for a sign, that we may see, and believe You? What work do you perform? Our fathers ate manna in the wilderness; as it is written, He gave them bread out of heaven to eat" (John 6:28-31).
Like most of us, they wanted to see God in great and miraculous things, so when they saw God in the humble servant, even the great miracles Jesus performed did not matter, and they missed the blessing. And so they committed the unpardonable sin, the sin against the Holy Spirit:
Therefore I say to you, any sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven men, but blasphemy against the Sprit shall not be forgiven. And whoever shall speak a word against the Son of Man, it shall be forgiven him; but whoever shall speak against the Holy Spirit, it shall not be forgiven him, either in this age, or in the age to come (Matthew 12:31-32; also Mark 3:28-30; Luke 12:10).
So, the first of the two basic issues raised by the scribes and the Pharisees in their opposition to Jesus was their denial of the deity of Christ. They would not accept Christ's claims as being equal to or one with God, the Father.
Dispute about His Relationship with Man
The second of the two most basic issues was about the way Christ related Himself to man.
1) He became a friend of "sinners." Luke notes:
"Now all the tax-gatherers and the sinners were coming near Him to listen to Him. And both the Pharisees and the scribes began to grumble, saying, 'This man receives sinners and eats with them'" (Luke 15:1-2).
This is where Jesus gave them various parables: the lost sheep, the lost coin, and the lost (prodigal) son, and spoke about "joy in heaven over one sinner who repents, than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance" (Luke 15:7).
All three of the Synoptic Gospels note the incident about Jesus having a feast at the house of Matthew, the tax collector turned disciple, and the Pharisees and the scribes grumbled about that:
And it came about that He was reclining at table at his [Matthew's] house, and many tax-gatherers and sinners were dining with Jesus and His disciples; for there were many of them, and they were following Him. And when the scribes and the Pharisees saw that He was eating with the sinners and tax-gatherers, they began saying to His disciples, "Why is He eating and drinking with tax-gatherers and sinners?" And hearing this, Jesus said to them, "It is not those who are healthy who need a physician, but those who are sick; I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners" (Mark 2:15-17; also Matthew 9:10-12; Luke 5:29-30).
2) He did not observe their traditions. Another issue the Pharisees and the scribes raised in opposition to Jesus was that in His social relations He did not observe their traditions. When they saw some of the disciples eating bread without first washing their hands according to the Jewish tradition, the Pharisees and the scribes questioned Jesus, "Why do Your disciples not walk according to the traditions of the elders, but eat their bread with impure hands?" (Mark 7:5).
On one occasion when Jesus was invited to the home of a Pharisee and He began to eat without first washing His hands, "when the Pharisee saw it, he was surprised that He had not ceremonially washed before the meal" (Luke 11:37-38).
3) He violated their Sabbath views. Many of His miracles of healing were performed on Sabbaths, and the religious leaders saw in it the blatant disregard to the sacred Law.
When the Pharisees saw the disciples pick heads of grain and eat on a Sabbath day, they questioned Jesus, "Behold Your disciples do what is not lawful to do on a Sabbath" (Matthew 12:1-8; Mark 2:23-28; Luke 6:1-5).
When they saw a man with a withered hand in the synagogue, they asked Jesus, "Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath? – in order that they might accuse Him" (Matthew 12:10). Jesus' answer was:
What man shall there be among you, who shall have one sheep, and if it falls into a pit on the Sabbath, will he not take hold of it, and lift it out? Of how much more value then is a man than a sheep! So then, it is lawful to do good on the Sabbath (Matthew 12:11-12).
On another occasion when Jesus was teaching in one of the synagogues on a Sabbath day and healed a woman, "who for eighteen years had a sickness caused by a spirit; and she was bent double and could not straighten up at all," Luke notes:
And the synagogue official, indignant because Jesus had healed on the Sabbath, began saying to the multitude in response, "There are six days in which work should be done; therefore come during them and get healed, and not on the Sabbath day. But the Lord answered him and said, "You hypocrites, does not each of you on the Sabbath untie his ox or his donkey from the stall, and lead him away to water him? And this woman, a daughter of Abraham as she is, whom Satan has bound for eighteen long years, should she not have been released from this bond on the Sabbath day?" (Luke 13:14-16).
At one time Jesus healed a man on a Sabbath day even at the house of one of the leaders of the Pharisees:
And it came about when He went into a house of one of the leaders of the Pharisees on the Sabbath to eat break, that they were watching Him closely. And there, in front of Him was a certain man suffering from dropsy. And Jesus answered and spoke to the lawyers and Pharisees, saying, "Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath, or not?" But they kept silent. And He took hold of him, and healed him, and sent him away. And He said to them, "Which one of you shall have a son or an ox fall into a well, and will not immediately pull him out on a Sabbath day?" And they could make no reply to this (Luke 14:1-6).
The man lying sick at the pool of Bethesda was also healed on a Sabbath day and John notes, "For this reason the Jews were persecuting Jesus, because He was doing these things on the Sabbath" (John 5:16).
The healing of the man born blind was performed on a Sabbath day (John 9:14), and some of the Pharisees said, "This man is not from God, because He does not keep the Sabbath" (John 9:16).
It seems that Jesus intentionally performed many of the miracles of healing on the Sabbath day just to make a point with the religious leaders about their blindness of keeping the letter of the Law at the cost of what the Law really required. Jesus told the religious leaders in the context of the Sabbath dispute, "But if you had known what this means, 'I desire compassion, and not a sacrifice,' you would not have condemned the innocent'" (Matthew 12:7 with Hosea 6:6). And, "It is lawful to do good on the Sabbath" (Matthew 12:12). He asked them,
"If a man receives circumcision on the Sabbath that the Law of Moses may not be broken, are you angry with Me because I made an entire man well on the Sabbath? Do not judge according to appearance, but judge with righteous judgment" (John 7:23-24).
Another point Jesus wanted to make by repeatedly "breaking" the Sabbath is that He was above the Sabbath: "The Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath" (Mark 2:28; Luke 6:5). By continuing His work on the Sabbath, He wanted to show Himself as equal with God. When the Jews were persecuting Him because He was doing these things on the Sabbath, His answer was:
"My Father is working until now, and I Myself am working." For this cause therefore the Jews were seeking all the more to kill Him, because He not only was breaking the Sabbath, but also was calling God His Father, making Himself equal with God (John 5:17-18).
So, they questioned His deity, and they objected to His service to humanity. Thus they violated the "golden" rule:
You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and foremost commandment. And the second is like it, 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' On these two commandments depend the whole Law and the Prophets (Matthew 22:37-40).
Prophesying to be wise, they became fools. Prophesying to be religious, they became godless. Prophesying to be righteous, they became evil. And the result was their outward show of religiosity with an inward void of spirituality.
For this reason Jesus condemned all their good works: their almsgiving (Matthew 6:2), their prayers (Matthew 6:5), their fasting (Matthew 6:16-18) and their tithing (Matthew 23:23). All these good works were performed for one purpose—to show off. All these practices brought pride for self and contempt for others, as seen in the incident of the tax-gatherer and the Pharisee praying together (Luke 18:9-14). But inside they were like white-washed tombs:
Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs which on the outside appear beautiful, but inside they are full of dead men's bones and all uncleanness. Even so you too outwardly appear righteous to men, but inwardly you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness (Matthew 23:27-28, and the rest of the chapter).
Who Is a Pharisee in My Life?
You see, all of us live with a Pharisee! It is not your spouse, not your neighbor, or a friend or a co-worker. No, it is not even your church leaders. The Pharisee we all live with is the capital "I."
As we condemn pharisaism, let us be careful to see the log in our own eyes. What is our attitude in worship? In good works? What is our attitude towards others? Is it judgmental? Am I putting myself first in everything? Am I always finding faults in others and never accepting my own? Am I always critical and negative, or, loving, kind, and understanding?
The golden rule of the Old Testament, to love the Lord your God and love your neighbor as yourself, was reiterated by Jesus in stark contrast to the pharisaism of the day (Matthew 22:37-40).
Remember the definition of pharisaism? It is making a value judgment on someone else based on my own assumed secure position. But before we make a value judgment on someone else, we need to check our own position to see how secure it is, because you may be very sincere, and yet sincerely wrong.
394 This is the edited manuscript of Lesson 65 in the From Creation to the Cross series prepared by Imanuel Christian on February 10, 2002.
395 Unless otherwise indicated, all the Scripture quotations are taken from the New American Standard Bible, ÓThe Lockman foundation, 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, La Habra, California.
396 John MacArthur, The John MacArthur Study Bible, (Nashville: Word Publishing, 1997) p. 1587.
Related Topics: Bibliology (The Written Word)


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text: OPTIMUS PRIME and Spike Witwicky have a chat that could define the future of AUTOBOT and human relations! But lest you think it's all talky-talk, back at RODIMUS' camp something big happens, something very big. A game-changing event in IDW's TRANSFORMERS, with a Don Figueroa double-page spread that has to be seen to be believed!