text:
Are you getting the most out of your Internal Audits?
It's quite often the first thing a new client asks me… "We do our Internal Audits but we continually receive non-conformances from External Audits?". The plain truth in many food businesses is that they aren't conducting Internal Audits in a manner which meets the requirements of their GFSI, Industry and Customer Standards and to ensure they are getting the most out of their Quality Assurance Programs.
In short… they really aren't getting the maximum benefit out of their Internal Audits! Internal Audits are intended not only to Verify Compliance… they are an integral element of any business' ability to improve their management systems and face 'risk' head on!
A properly scheduled, planned and implemented Internal Audit Program will identify system conformance, failure and opportunities for improvement, but to achieve this you'll need to ensure appropriate levels of human and financial resources are available to support the process. No doubt there'll be some readers who'll be rolling their eyes at the mere notion of the required "human and financial resources" for their Food Safety and Quality Program, but a strong and well-structured Internal Audit process is guaranteed to save your business money… even in the short term!
I recall discussing Food Safety and Quality 'resourcing' requirements with a Food Sector Client a few years ago, and I conducted a simple review activity with the CEO and Quality Assurance Manager of the large multi-site Food Production Company based in the USA. We worked out the cost (to the business) of facilitating Internal Food Safety and Quality System Audits over the prior 3 years, and compared this to the cost of rectifying Food Safety and Quality System Non-conformances raised at External Audits (conducted to GFSI, Industry and Customer Standards).
It was no surprise to me (based on my experience) that there was a massive in-balance between the two outcomes. Even when we removed the cost of the physical (I.e. required maintenance works and equipment replacement) improvements required to rectify the non-conformances, the cost of rectifying such non-conformances represented a premium of at least 600% to the cost of their Internal Audit processes.
Part of my recommendation in this scenario was to suggest additional Internal Audit 'time' to at least triple that of the prior identified levels. I participated as a mentor to the business for their Internal Audit Processes (among other Food Safety and Quality System elements). Within 12 months, the ratio of 'Internal Audit Cost' to 'External Audit non-conformance cost' had reduced to just 50%, so the business was well on their way to significantly lowering their compliance expenditure. It is important within this example to acknowledge that such a stellar turn-around was only achieved with the genuine commitment of Management through a strategic approach to providing the required human and financial resources. Download the full version here...


text:
Let's open our Bibles to 1 John chapter 2, we want to get right into the lesson tonight. I have a lot to say and a lot to sort out in my mind as we work our way through.
When I was a little kid I used to get the Reader's Digest when it came to our house and I would open it up and I would rush right to the section that said, "The most unforgetable character I ever met." Remember that section of the Reader's Digest? There was always some really strange or unique personality that was described in those little articles every month. And as I look back over my life, there are a lot of people that fit into that category. I have met a lot of unforgetable characters, you know, Clayton Erb, Phil Johnson, they're literally...there's a long, long list of unforgetable characters that I've met in my life. But as a boy there was man that stood out, one man. I became personally acquainted with this man. His name was Fred Demarra(?), that name may ring a bell with you because he was known when I was young as the great imposter. And they actually made a Hollywood movie about his life. He was really a remarkable man. And I knew him because in the midst of all his amazing feats, he joined our church and I got to know him.
He made all kinds of claims, falsifying all kinds of documents, forging all kinds of different identities, moving all over the United States of America performing functions in such a manner that they tended to confirm his claims. He never was educated beyond high school and yet he became a university president chosen by the board because of his formidable educational past, all falsified. The United States Government hired him as a prison warden because of his training in prison science, police science and law. He became a dentist and practiced for a number of years. He became a teacher and that's where he came into my life, he taught at my high school and he was good. He became a surgeon, practiced surgery for a number of years. One hand on the scalpel, the other hand to turn the pages of the book. He claimed to be all of these things at one point in his life and it was so preposterous that he could do what he did that they made a movie called The Great Imposter. You might find it in an old film library and it's true.
Believe me, this goes on in the church all the time...all the time. It's loaded with great imposters. And so it introduces to us the question...how do we know who's real? How do we know who's a true Christian? And how do we know that we are? They say that some people get so good at deception, they actually deceive themselves. It's really a critical important issue. It's important to be able to discern who is a true Christian so we know how to deal with those people, so that we can be a help to them. And it's certainly important to know what our own condition before God is.
And this brings up the very, very important subject of assurance...assurance of salvation.
Is it really possible to have full assurance of one's salvation? To really know that you're saved and you're on your way to heaven? Well the Scripture says yes it is possible. Not only does the Bible teach that assurance is possible, the Bible commands us to pursue the path where that assurance lies. In 2 Peter 1:10 Peter wrote, "Be diligent to make sure about God's calling and choosing you." You have to apply a certain diligence to the pursuit of that certainty. Assurance is not only possible, it's commanded. It is also a privilege, it's part of your birthright as a Christian. You ought to know that you're secure. That is a privilege that you should enjoy. You ought to know that you are saved. That's a birthright that you have as a believer. And frankly, assurance is the best of blessings. I mean, assurance is the true taste of heaven on earth, isn't it? A person who doesn't have assurance about their salvation is in the worst misery. People ask me all kinds of questions every Sunday in all the years of my life and the most painful question, the most painful question asked is the question of the person who says, "I don't know if I'm really saved. I think I might not be a Christian. Can you help me?" That is a massive despair. That's why Fanny Crosby wrote the hymn that says, "Blessed Assurance, Jesus is mine," and the next line, "O what a foretaste of glory divine." It's the taste of heaven to know you're saved. It's a taste of hell to think you're not.
And yet, in contemporary Christianity assurance is, as a subject, very often ignored. It's ignored by people who assume that if you pray a prayer, walk an aisle, make some kind of statement, or even are baptized that you're saved and it's not even a question. Why talk about assurance? You're saved. You did what you're supposed to do. So those kinds of people who preach that sort of shallow message, decisional regeneration, you could call it, in some cases baptisimal regeneration, they don't want to talk about assurance because that would be to pose doubts where there shouldn't be any.
It's also ignored by people who claim that you could lose your salvation and so rather than feeling assured about your salvation, you're better off to be really nervous about it. I'm sure there are millions of people in group one who believe they're saved, but they're not. But they've been told they shouldn't even ask the question. There are other people who are certain they might be lost and are supposed to live in a perpetual state of fear that in fact even if they were saved they might lose their salvation. So don't get too assured.
Assurance is a marvelous reality in the Word of God, but it has been seriously attacked through the years. And we need to understand it. There are people, as I said, in group one, this is more common today, who don't ever examine themselves as the Bible tells us to do, examine yourself whether you be in the faith, 2 Corinthians 13:5. They don't do that because they think there's any reason to do that, of course they're Christians. They go to church. They prayed a prayer. They believe in Jesus. And any doubt that they have about that comes from Satan or from poor self-esteem. In either case it's pretty dangerous to your spiritual well-being to believe any of that. So in evangelicalism typically today assurance isn't an issue. I can't remember how long it's been since I heard anybody preach on or saw anybody who wrote on the issue of assurance. Why everybody is sure they're saved. In fact, now the new trend is even people who don't believe in Jesus ought to be sure they're saved. Let's go around the world and tell everybody who believes in God however they imagine Him to be that they are saved. I read an article in The Times today from a few weeks back, one of the popular television preachers has now come to the conclusion that everybody is saved who believes in God at all, therefore everybody will be in heaven, quote, "Except just a few folks." I don't know who they are. We're sure that everybody who believes in Jesus is saved. We're sure everybody who has prayed the prayer or made the quote/unquote decision is saved. We're even pretty sure that people who never heard about Jesus but believe in God are probably saved, so why would we worry about a silly thing like assurance?
Through history it's been a major issue. Give you a little bit of history. You can read the details of this in my book, The Gospel According to the Apostles, or Faith Works, both titles of the same book. You start with Roman Catholicism. Roman Catholicism denies in its theology, denies that anyone can have the assurance of salvation...anyone. It says, "No one can have the assurance of salvation, no one." Because salvation is a joint effort between God and the sinner. God will always do His part, but the sinner might not always do his part. So no one can be assured of their salvation until they finally get to heaven. And in that same sort of category you'd put Wesleyanism and Arminian theology where you really can't be sure of your salvation, you might have it now, lose it tomorrow, have it later, lose it tomorrow, so you don't know how it's going to end up when you die. You don't know where you're going to be when you die in terms of your condition.
One of the things that the Reformation dealt with when the gospel was recovered by the great Reformers was this issue of assurance of salvation. And the Reformers taught that the believer can be and should be fully assured of salvation. Calvin, John Calvin actually taught that assurance is of the essence of faith...assurance is of the essence of faith.
Now let me get a little bit theological on you. When you put your trust in Jesus Christ, you know you're doing that. You experience that. Justification is a forensic act by God, you don't experience it. Faith you experience, you didn't believe and now you believe. You've come to recognize the meaning of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. You've come to understand the gospel and it awakens your dead heart to your sinful condition. You repent of your sin, you reach out in faith, you embrace Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord, and you know you're doing that. That's faith. Faith is something you experience. There's a mental aspect of it. You understand the truth and you understand that it is the truth. There's an emotional response to that, your heart awakens and you want to move away from your past and you want to embrace that truth. And then there's an action that follows your emotion and that is the actual act of confessing Jesus Christ as Lord. And you're in on all of that. That's happening in you. And the moment someone trusts Christ for salvation, that person who embraces Christ has a real sense of their own faith and they know that the Bible promises that you are saved by grace through faith so they therefore know that based on the promise of the Word of God they are saved. Calvin was right. There is in faith itself a component of assurance. If I believe the Bible enough to change my view about myself, see myself not as a righteous person but as a sinner, if I believe what the Bible says about my condition, the wickedness of my heart, the condemnation that awaits me, alienation from God, all of that, if I now instead of thinking good about myself see myself as evil, see myself as wretched, miserable, naked, blind, cut off from God, separated, doomed, damned to hell, and all of that, the reason that I've come to that conviction is because I understand and believe the Bible's diagnosis, right? That's why it says faith comes by hearing the Word. Faith is a response to the truth that captures my mind, my emotions and my action.
So when I read the Scripture and the Scripture says, "But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to be called the children of God," if I believe that and I receive Him, then there is assurance in that faith based upon the same Scripture that caused me to act in faith. I embraced Christ because the Bible said He's my only hope. I repented because the Bible said I must repent. I acknowledge Jesus Christ as Lord because the Bible says He is Lord. But the Bible also says when I do that I'm saved, and so based upon what Scripture says there is inherent in my faith a component of assurance. If I can believe that I'll be saved by turning to Christ, then I know when I do that I'm saved. Calvin was right and I believe that's exactly what Calvin was saying that there is in the essence of faith a component of assurance.
It seems then that this is exactly what everyone should expect. You should expect that when you embrace the Lord Jesus Christ as Savior, you'll be saved. You'll be saved. "God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son that whosoever believes in Him shall not perish but have everlasting or eternal life." That's what it says. So if you believe in Him, you're going to have eternal life. And that's the reason you believe in Him so you can have eternal life. So when you trust Him, put your faith in Him, coming along with that is the promise that you have eternal life. There is that essential assurance in the very act of faith because it's based upon what Scripture says is true.
And yet there is essential assurance in faith, and yet it has limits...it has limits. That assurance that we have in the act of faith comes from the promise of Scripture. That...I'll say it again, that assurance that we have in the act of faith comes from the promise of Scripture. He says it so I believe it so I am assured it is so. That's a sort of cognitive assurance, sort of a cognitive assurance. It's in my mind because I know the Bible is true because I believe it's true, I embrace Christ, He saves me because I've done what He asked, I've repented of my sin and embraced Him as Savior and Lord. And if I've done that it says I'm saved and so I'm saved. And therein is that cognitive assurance.
It's not perfect assurance, that's why we read Mark 9:24 the man who said, "I do believe, help my...what?...my unbelief." The Apostles in Luke 17:5 said, "Increase our faith." It's not a full assurance. In Hebrews chapter 10 we are commanded, "Draw near with full assurance of faith." But we don't all have always full assurance because there are two other elements to assurance. There's that cognitive element that comes right out of the promises of Scripture. And secondly, there's that subjective element of assurance that comes by the witness of the Holy Spirit...the witness of the Holy Spirit in us. And there's a third element, there's what I'll call the behavioral assurance that comes because we see how we live our lives. In a sense, it starts in the mind, it moves to the emotions, senses, and then it goes to the life. All three of those contribute to a full assurance.
Now what we have in evangelicalism in the contemporary scene is nothing but number one. Well I prayed the prayer, I did the thing, and the Bible says if I do that then I'm saved, and so that's that. Even though the prayer may have been superficial, the faith may have been non-saving faith, less than genuine. The first is only true. You can only bank on that cognitive assurance based upon the promise of Scripture if you have the second affirmation of assurance, the subjective working of the Spirit of God in you and the third one, the manifestation of the life of God in you by the way you live.
It's amazing how the Reformers grappled with this issue. Some of the reformed theologians didn't agree with Calvin. They...they felt that there was no real assurance in faith because they didn't want people to feel assured just because they had that moment of faith or because they had that experience of faith. They didn't want them just to think that because of that they were secure and they could live any way they wanted to life. And so because of the threat of antinomianism, that is people living against the Law, nomos is the old word in Greek for the Law, antinomos means lawless living. They were concerned that people who made some profession of faith in Christ if they were reinforced to have assurance about their salvation strictly on that cognitive basis of taking the promise of Scripture and nothing more that they would then feel free to live any ole way they wanted to live. And so the Westminister Confession of faith which articulated reformed theology in 1646 said this, "This infallible assurance doth not so belong to the essence of faith, it does but not to the degree that a true believer may wait long and conflict with many difficulties before he be partaker of it." They were trying to find some balance. They said it is not the kind of assurance that eliminates the fact that a true believer may wait long and go through much conflict before he really partakes of that assurance.
So they were saying, in a sense, it's a...it's...it's the first category of assurance but it doesn't give you the full assurance. And I think that was appropriate. I think Calvin's emphasis was point one, their emphasis was point two and three, there's more to make it a full assurance. They felt that assurance was something other than faith. Calvin thought it was essentially in faith. They thought it was something other than faith. I think there was truth on both sides. Calvin was right, there was a...there was a cognitive, mental, rational response to the actual promise of God that was inherent in the act of faith. I'm putting my faith in Christ because that's how I will be saved, therefore I'm assured I am. But the Westminster Confession Divines were also right when they said that's not all there is to it, that's not the full assurance of faith.
Well along came the Puritans. Many of us love the Puritans and rightly so, the seventeenth century English reformers. And they really took that idea of the Westminster Confession that you need to wait long and through much conflict come to assurance. And frankly they just got absolutely carried away and they...they demanded, actually, that preachers preach to produce widespread lack of assurance. That was the idea. Make people feel insecure. And what happened under the preaching of the Puritans was people became frightened, fearful, and they became obsessed with the fact that they might not be elect. Preach hard election, as the Puritans did and then on the other hand make people feel that they're not saved and therefore they're not elect. And the people were caught between believing the doctrine of election and not knowing whether they were really saved. They lapsed into morbid introspection. People lapsed into utter despair. Puritans tended to emphasize the inward introspective assurance of self-examination. And it got to the point that it was almost endless self-examination. And if you read widely in Puritan literature, you find that Puritan literature, much of it, much of it is written for people struggling with whether they're saved because their preachers have been preaching them into that condition.
Now we come to today. What preacher does that? Nobody would dare do that. Preachers today want to make the gospel minimal, just believe this, you're in. We don't ever talk about the fact that you might not be saved. There are no calls to holiness. There is no emphasis that if you see sin in your life you might be lost. One of the most prominent evangelists in this country over the first half of this last century and almost to the end lived a long life, told me with his own mouth that he didn't want to deal with issues like this because if he did he would have to go back and realize that many of the people that he told were saved were not. He couldn't handle that. Even if you take a little four-law book, take somebody through the four spiritual laws, you come to the end, they say, "Now tell this person they're really saved and here's the little formula. You prayed the prayer therefore you're really saved, don't question that." That was opposite where the Puritans were. The Puritans said, "If you look at your life and you see things there that shouldn't be there, you might be lost." And they pounded people literally into this morbidity where they were fearful that they were not elect.
So there are some people who have false assurance. And there are some people who have no assurance. But there is middle ground. Aren't you glad? The Bible encourages true believers with the promise of eternal salvation. The Bible does not teach that you can lose your salvation, right? It doesn't teach that. It teaches that if you're saved, you're saved forever. So the Bible encourages true believers with the promise of secure and eternal salvation. And the Bible even encourages the believer to pursue the path that makes their calling and election sure.
But at the same time, the Bible also makes false Christians insecure by demanding that they examine themselves, by never settling for an event kind of salvation without a transformation. The Bible intends to make false Christians uncomfortable. It intends to make false Christians fearful by attacking their deceptive sense of security. This is very important. If we confuse the issue of assurance, we will produce multitudes on the one hand whose lives are crippled by doubt and an absence of joy. And if we don't talk about the issue of assurance, other multitudes are going to expect to go to heaven and some day hear, "I never knew you, depart from Me, you workers of iniquity." It's really important that we understand this.
How can we have what Hebrews 10:22 calls full assurance of faith? How can we have that? Well the answer comes in the same verse, Hebrews 10:22, by having our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water. Let me put it to you very simply. There is no assurance of salvation without sanctification. There is no assurance of salvation without sanctification. It isn't enough to know in your mind that the Bible promises that if you put your trust in Jesus Christ, you're going to be saved and you can have a measure of assurance there but that's sort of minimal. That's sort of entry-level assurance. Full assurance is connected to sanctification. And where there is in your life a lack of sanctification, a lack of holiness, there will be with it a lack of assurance.
Now let's look at the second and the third elements of assurance. That assurance which comes in us by the witness of the Holy Spirit and then that assurance which shows up outside of us by our conduct and our behavior. These are so very, very important. If you would turn to the eighth chapter of Romans and going to...as I said, I'm going to have to pick and choose because we can't cover everything we ought to cover. But in Romans chapter 8 verses 14 to 16, verse 14, "For all who are being led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God." All right, there's a starting point. If you've been led by the Spirit of God, you're a child of God. Verse 15, "You have not received a spirit of slavery leading to fear again, but you've received a spirit of adoption as sons by which we cry out Abba Father." There's the second element.
First of all, if you have experienced in your life the direction and the leading of the Spirit of God, verse 14 says, you're God's son. If you've been led to believe the truth about yourself, about Christ, about salvation, if you have been led to embrace the Word of God and to believe it and to love it, if you have seen the Spirit of God directing in your life through the use of spiritual gifts, through ministry, through circumstances of your life that put you in a place where unusual spiritual blessing unfolded, not of material but of a spiritual nature, then you've been led by the Spirit.
I look at my life, I've been led by the Spirit. How many times has the Lord led me across the path of somebody who needed the gospel, the gospel unfolded, it was a circumstance that appeared to me to be utterly serendipitous and yet it was planned from eternity past, the Spirit of God led me to be exactly where I was when I was there. You've had that. I've lived long enough now to have the confidence that I am led by the Spirit of God. I was led here by the Spirit of God. At the time there weren't any bells or whistles and no red light went on on top of my head to make sure that I knew it was God leading me. I was following my heart the best way I knew. There weren't any ways in my senses to distinguish that, but I came here and as I look back I see now that it was the leading of God.
How many times have I received mail at Grace To You where somebody says, "I was about to kill myself, I was about to divorce my wife, my life was in shambles, I turned on the radio, you came on, I was saved?" Well you were led by the Spirit of God to turn the radio on. And then you were led by the Spirit of God to believe. And you were led by the Spirit of God to love the truth and embrace the truth and grow in the truth.
Second thing he says in verse 15 is that you've received the spirit of adoption, as sons by which we cry out Abba Father. Another way the Spirit of God leads you is He leads you to intimacy with God. He leads you to look up to God without fear. You know, the pagan world, the gods were to be feared. We don't feel that way about God. There is in the life of the believer that eagerness to rush into the presence of God with every problem, every issue, every struggle. And the more difficult life becomes, the easier it is to pray. Is that not true? When everything is going well you're not too good at it. But when somebody gets a terminal disease your prayer life gets cranked up immediately. Or when you lose your job, or when you don't have enough money at the end of the month to do what you need to do. Or when your child is on drugs, or whatever and you rush into the presence of God and you unload and that's the Spirit of God within you that makes you know you're a son and you have a right to go out and cry Daddy, Abba Father means Daddy, I have a need.
In verse 16 the Spirit Himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God. And I think this comes even from the Word of God. As you study the Word of God, the Spirit bears witness through the promises of Scripture that you are His child, that as many as received Him to them He did give the right to become the children of God. This is the assurance that the Holy Spirit gives to us.
Paul demonstrates that in a personal way in 2 Corinthians, I think in that wonderful verse chapter 1 verse 12. When he was responding to the criticisms that were going on in Corinth against him, he has a very interesting response in verse 12 of 2 Corinthians 1. They had accused him of everything. You remember when we studied 1 Corinthians...or 2 Corinthians, these false teachers had come in and they wanted to teach lies but Paul was so beloved there they had to destroy their confidence in Paul so they went on a all-out attack on Paul and they lied about him, they said he was sinful and immoral and a liar and a deceiver and had no credentials and wasn't a true apostle. And they attacked everything about him. And his response is always fascinating to me. In 2 Corinthians 1:12 he says, "Our proud confidence is this," pretty bold statement, you're attacking me, you're accusing me, you're saying I have a hidden life of shame, etc., etc., I'm telling you this, "Our proud confidence is this, the testimony of our conscience that in holiness and godly sincerity not in fleshly wisdom but in the grace of God we've conducted ourselves in the world and especially toward you."
Paul said...Let me tell you something, you can hit me all you want on the outside, but there is a witness in me that says I have been faithful. There is a witness in me that gives testimony to the fact that I have done what God asked me to do and I have in holiness and godly sincerity not in fleshly wisdom, but in the grace of God conducted myself in the world. You may be accusing me on the outside, but I'm not being accused on the inside.
One of the ministries of the Holy Spirit on the inside is conviction, isn't it? That's another way the Holy Spirit leads us. When you feel rotten about your sin, when you feel wretched about your failures and your weaknesses and your dishonoring of the Lord, that is affirmation that you're a child of God. Another way that you know the Spirit of God is at work in your life is when chastening comes, connection with sin.
So there is the cognitive element of assurance that's inherent in faith because it's tied to the promises of salvation. Then there is that...that sort of inner conscience down in us, it's not just rational, it's the working of the Spirit of God in our conscience and in our emotions so that we feel the weight of our sin. We feel the longing to rush into the presence of God. We see how He directs and leads us, not through our ability to assess all the circumstances and be in the right place but through our desires to go here or go there and we show up and it was where He wanted us to be.
So Paul says you can know your saved if you just take the promises mentally, you can know you're saved if down deep in your heart you see the direction that the Spirit of God is moving, working, unfolding in your life. But there's a third element of assurance and this element of assurance takes us to our text. We always get there eventually. Was that helpful? Just kind of sorting that out? Well good, I know you would say nothing other than it was, but...not in public anyway. But it makes me feel better.
You come to this other component and that is what we find in verses 3 through 6, just take that section. "By this we know that we've come to know Him." Boy, that's good, isn't it? That says it. We want to know if we're really knowing the Lord. Here's how, "By this we know we've come to know Him if we keep His commandments. The one who says I've come to know Him, doesn't keep His commandments, he's a liar, the truth is not in him. But whoever keeps His Word, in him the love of God has truly been perfected, by this we know that we are in Him. The one who says he abides in Him ought himself to walk in the same manner as He walked." Walk is simply a metaphor for living your life. And if you're a Christian you're going to live your life like Jesus lived His life.
Bottom line, this is the moral test and this is only an element of the moral test. This is the element of obedience. Next passage, verses 7 to 11, is the element of love which is another element of the moral test. And I say moral in the sense that it's talking about a spiritual kind of morality, a biblical kind of morality, a Holy Spirit led morality. Here we come then to the objective, visible proof that you're a Christian, obedience. The work of the Holy Spirit in prompting us, directing us, moving us through our desires, our wants, our longings, the hunger for intimacy with God, that's invisible. But here's a visible way to know you're saved. Here's a visible path to assurance. This will give you the full assurance. You can see this. This is the behavior test by which you can know that you are a believer.
Now in this text the test is stated, the test is applied and the test is exemplified. It is stated, it is applied and it is exemplified. It is stated in verse 3. "And by this we know that we have come to know Him if we keep His commandments."
Now let's remember this is getting us to the heart of the book. Here we are really where John intends us to be because if you go over to chapter 5, you ought to underline this, but an asterisk by it, identify it, it's the key verse, 1 John 5:13, "These things I have written to you who believe in the name of the Son of God in order that you may know that you have eternal life. And this is the confidence which we have before Him, if we ask anything according to His will He hears us." I want you to have that confidence that you can go to God with all that's on your heart and know that He'll hear you, the confidence that rises out of the assurance that you know Him and that's why I'm writing what I'm writing. So as we get into this particular section, we're really at the heart of the epistle and he starts out by saying, "By this we know that we've come to know Him." That's the purpose of the epistle, that you may know that you have eternal life.
Now the introductory words "and by this" is a transitional phrase used to introduce a new subject. We're done with the prior section on sin and one's view toward sin and the advocacy and the propitiation of Jesus Christ. Now we're transitioning into a new section in which we're looking at the tests that verify salvation. Or how to have full assurance, how to know...to borrow the language of chapter 1...you're really walking in the light, how to know you're really in the fellowship, how to know your fellowship is with God the Father and Jesus Christ the righteous, or how to know you know Him. How to know you really know Him, whether it's walking in the light, being in the fellowship, or knowing Him...those three phrases are synonymous. They all refer to the same thing and that is salvation, a true relationship with God. This is wonderful. This is exciting for a believer. Here it says, "By this we know," not we hope, we think, we wish, we know, ginoskomen(?), present tense, we continually know. And ginosko means to actually experience that knowledge, it is to perceive by experience.
So what he is saying here is we can have a measure of assurance by believing what Scripture says. We can have a measure of assurance by the invisible subjective mighty work of the Spirit of God moving in our lives. But this knowledge we can actually experience. Here is the test by which we can reach that full assurance. And I'll tell you right now, this is critical. You're going to question what the Bible says, you're going to question whether the Holy Spirit is leading in your life unless you see this in your life. And that's what I said a moment ago, and I repeat, there's no assurance of salvation apart from sanctification. And now we're in the sanctification zone. We're out of the revelation zone. We're out of the sovereign and providential zone. And we're into the sanctification zone.
"And by this we know that we have come to know," it's a different form of the Greek, it's a perfect tense. It looks at a past action with continuing results. "By this we continue to know that at some point in the past we came to know Him." Tell me how, please tell me how. How can we know? If we keep His commandments...if we keep His commandments.
Let's talk about knowing. This is really new, not to me or you but to the world of John. Forty times in the little tiny epistle here he uses some form of the word "know." It's either ginosko or oida the two main Greek words for know over 40 times. This is about knowing. First John 5:13, "That you may know that you have eternal life." This is about knowing. And it's set against the backdrop of people who thought they had attained the true and elevated knowledge. There are people like that in our world, aren't they? The ascended masters, they call themselves, these gurus, these mystics, these people who are the enlightened in the religious world. Well they were around in John's day. They were sort of what we know as pre-Gnostics. Gnostic is something that came in a couple of centuries later and Gnostic comes from gnosis, to know. They were in the know. They had the secret knowledge. Remnants of the Gnostic mentality is found in modern New Age and modern philosophy, psychology, even shows up in places like the Masons, secret knowledge. It's in all kinds of religions.
So there were people in John's day who thought they had the secret knowledge, the transcendent knowledge. They had elevated themselves above the hoi-polloi, above the crowd, above the motley people who were the riff-raff of life. It was really a system of salvation by knowledge and it was a self-knowing. They had a system of self-salvation through attaining knowledge. And there are two ways they attained the knowledge. They attained it, some of them, by reason. They just stood on the planet Earth and they just reasoned up into the supernatural realm and put it all together in their minds with the aid of demons. Some of them came to their knowledge not so much by reason but by experience. They engaged themselves in every imaginable kind of experience...drugs, that's not new, sex, any kind of euphoric experience by which they assumed that they were elevating themselves to another dimension. They ascended to the lofty, high, esoteric transcendent knowledge. Knowing was the way to self-salvation. It was the way to superiority. It was the way to religious and mental advancement.
This really developed along two lines, by the way. One line was the sort of the philosophical line. Classic Greek knowing was that you could reason upward to grasp the universe. You could reason upward to ultimate truth, Plato, Aristotle and all flowed out of that, even to modern philosophy. All comes out of that same idea that man can sort out universal realities, not material realities, but the universal invisible realities behind the material world. That's what philosophy is. Philosophy is coming to understand the invisible, coming to understand the realities behind what you can see and feel and touch and smell and taste. That's philosophy. It's the elevation of the mind. Now through the Dark Ages it came back, re-surging through the enlightenment. Philosophy had its heyday, Kant, Hegel, DeCarte(?), all the way down the pipeline and it effects everything. It doesn't matter what people think.
Have you noticed something about philosophy? Knowing by means of philosophy has no connection to morality. Have you noticed that? Go get Paul Johnson's book called The Intellectuals and read it. It is stunning. You'll read about the people who shaped all the western world and you will read these great philosophers and you will see that they lived the most wretched, immoral, gross, indescribably wicked lives more than you would ever imagine. That is the single most important philosophical book I've ever read and it's called The Intellectuals. It's great reading. And you will find that the architects of philosophy that governs the western world had reached the highest levels of rationalism. They saw themselves as the ascended intellects who had attained to the knowledge of the universal behind the visible and their lives would make a black mark on a piece of coal. It had absolutely no connection to how they lived.
There was another strain of Greek philosophy that found its way not into the mind but into the body. And it came to the place where it took on the forms of hedonism and hedonism basically said that fulfillment is in feelings. Whatever feels good, do it. They pursued, the Greeks did, another concept that ultimate truth was not rationally gained. Ultimate truth was found through experience, through fulfilling every emotion, fulfilling every desire, every longing. Jean-Paul Sartre went on that path and ended up bankrupt.
You know, those two strains of philosophy that you come to knowing through the mind, you come to knowing through the body, the impulses, the drives. But just like philosophy, hedonism which really is a kind of philosophy, had absolutely no connection to morality. Philosophies of the world have no required moral standards. And certainly those who live for pleasure have no moral standards so that neither case, whether you were coming to the ascended knowledge through your mind or through your body, there was no connection between that kind of knowing and how you lived your life. Really those two strains are still with us. The first one through the mind is Modernism. The second, through the body and feelings, is Post-Modernism. But in either case they had no connection to behavior. The rationalist lives in sin and the libertine lives in sin. Absolutely no bearing on how they live.
Paul says in Titus 1:16, "Such people may claim to know God," listen to this, "but in their works they deny Him." You don't know God until it shows up in how you live. Bottom line, you don't know God until it shows up in how you live. The true knowing changes your conduct and the only ones who really know God, not the ascended Gnostics, and not the descended hedonists, the only ones who really know God are those who have been affected by that knowledge toward holy conduct. That is absolutely consistent with what the New Covenant teaches.
Let me take you back to the New Covenant. In Jeremiah 31, Jeremiah 31, the New Covenant is the covenant of salvation and I just want to show you that this is there, it's in the New Covenant. Jeremiah 31:31, "The days are coming, says the Lord, I'll make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, it's not going to be like the covenant I made with their fathers in the day I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt." It's not going to be like the Sinaitic covenant, the Mosaic covenant, the covenant of law, the covenant which, of course, they broke. "This is a covenant which I'll make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord." Here is the covenant. "I'll put My Law within them, on their heart I'll write it."
You know how you can tell a New Covenant person? Not because they made a profession of faith in God. Not because of something they did outwardly. You can...something they did at a moment in time outwardly. You can tell a person who is truly a New Covenant person who has genuinely been converted, who has been saved because God's Law is in them written on their hearts. And He says, "I'll be their God and they will be My people." It is the people who live by the Law of God not because it's imposed on them from the outside, but because it's planted on the inside. "They shall not teach again each man his neighbor, each man his brother saying, 'Know the Lord, they will know Me. I will forgive their iniquity, their sin I'll remember no more'."
How do you know the ones who know Him? Because His Law is written on their heart and whatever is in a man's heart controls how he lives, right? "As a man thinks in his heart, so is he." You know, Israel is the greatest illustration of the connection between knowing God and obeying Him. Israel is the greatest illustration of that. Israel always said, "We know God, we know God, God is our God, we worship the true God." And God continually judged them for what? Disobedience...disobedience...disobedience...you don't know Me...you don't know Me. And He proved by His judgment that that nation while claiming to know Him didn't know Him at all. To know God, to know Christ is to be compelled on the inside to obey the Law that God wrote there. People have said actually to me, "I don't go to your church, too legalistic." My first concern is they're not Christians because they see the Law of God as something imposed on them on the outside. I would be more prone to say, "Boy, I can't go to your church because you don't love the Law of God from the heart. I couldn't be in a church like that." You see, that's where the law was written in the New Covenant, it was written in the heart.
So what do we have here? We have a collection of people who love the Law of God from the heart. Why are you here? You can't have a Sunday-night service today, it doesn't work. People aren't going to come. They're certainly not going to come and listen to a talking head for an hour and five minutes. They're surely not going to come and listen to theology. You can't get young people to come to church, are you kidding? By the way, over the five years, the last five years just since we've studied, 89 percent of the people that joined our church are 35 and under.
"Oh, you can't reach those kind of people, you can't reach a slick, cool generation standing up there talking theology out of the Bible and singing antiquated hymns." Really? Do you know what's going on here? These people have the Law of God written in their hearts. I'm not imposing something on you, am I? Aren't you here because you want to know the Law of God? Aren't you here because you want to live the Law of God? This is not burdensome to you, is it?
See, people are so...they don't even get it. You've got a whole Christian world out there, they don't get it. They don't understand that if you get up and preach the Law of God the way God wrote it, you're not going to cause the true believers to leave because that is in their heart. This is not a legal obedience imposed on us on the outside, this is a gracious obedience driven from the inside. Now that's a...that's a third, you know, element of full assurance. You look at your life, do you love the Law of God? Can you say like the Apostle Paul, "Even though I don't do what I ought to do, and often do what I ought not to do, O how I love Your Law?" Can you say that with David? You love the Law of God, it was his delight? That's, you know, that's the third and visible component that brings assurance.
Well our time is gone, more than gone. Okay, I have more to say on this next week. I think...is next week communion...Sunday night? So I'll finish it up. The introduction is longer than the sermon so...will you pray with me?
Father, it's just so thrilling for us to see how the Word clarifies this critical matter. But thank You that You have given us assurance. We don't have to live without assurance. We don't have to live in constant fear, doubt. We can have that sort of entry-level assurance that is essential to our initial faith, else we wouldn't have put our trust in Christ if we didn't believe it would save. And we can enjoy and experience that second divine subjective marvelous kind of assurance that's the working of the Spirit of God in us to convict us of sin, to chasten and discipline and to direct us to cry out to You in our times of need and seek intimacy. That assurance of the Spirit of God's leading that we see in the providences of life as things unfold that are so clearly Your direction, they have no other explanation. We see that. But help us to know that the full assurance awaits the manifestation of our obedience from the heart, loving obedience. May we pursue that obedience with all our hearts that we might enjoy the full assurance of faith, coming into Your presence with a clean heart and a body washed so that we might enjoy the assurance of our salvation that is granted in its fullness when there is manifest sanctification. We thank You for this great truth in Your Son's name. Amen.
This article is also available and sold as a booklet.
This sermon series includes the following messages:
Please contact the publisher to obtain copies of this resource.Publisher Information

subset: commoncrawl


text: I take bathtime very seriously. Atmosphere is everything, and candles are always a necessary part of the equation. But they certainly aren't all created equal. Last week, I noticed that a portion of my wall tile was black and chalky because one of my candles was burning black. It was a very luxe candle by a brand I adore but it had to go. Not only was it creating a mess, breathing in that air during bathtime is all sorts of wrong. I've since gone all brand loyal during bathtime with Archipelago Botanicals. They have all sorts of beautiful candles — pieces of art if you will — but I'm partial to the AB Travel Tins. Not only are they a budget-friendly $12, especially when burn time is limited to bath time, and they burn clean and evenly. For about 55 hours in total, to be precise. The tins are packaged simply and neatly and the scents are so unique. Arugala and Agave. Cucumber and Rhubarb. Jasmine and Peony. Eucalyptus and Lemongrass. Don't you just love them?


text:
Netflix is already giving schedules the flick
For the past year, headlines have been declaring: "Netflix is coming."
In truth, however, the applecart-upsetting online TV streaming business Netflix is already here.
Unofficial estimates put Australian subscriptions to the US service at between 150,000 and 200,000, which translates into $2 million per month in revenue. And that's without opening a shopfront, hiring employees or buying a single hour of content in the Australian TV market. As business models go, it's breathtaking.
"There is huge demand for Netflix," says Ten's chief digital officer Rebekah Horne. Like Foxtel, which has launched FoxtelPlay, and its rivals Seven and Nine, Ten will move into the streaming space "sooner rather than later", Horne says.
Netflix was created in 1997 as a DVD mail-order business in the US, but expanded into digital streaming of movies and TV shows. It now has about 40.4 million subscribers globally, about 33 million of whom are in the US. It is expanding its European businesses, one factor in the delay of the Australian launch.
It offers a mix of feature films and television series on demand, much like its principal US competitors, Hulu Plus, Amazon Prime, iTunes, Google Play and Crackle.
Significantly, it has pushed into original content, airing House of Cards, a fourth season of Arrested Development and Orange is the New Black. It has become a byword for the consumer-is-king content revolution.
While much of the buzz about Netflix is built on the grass-is-greener perception that it offers US consumers something Australians are being denied, in truth it is not a $10-a-month miracle pill that will solve everyone's programming and piracy woes.
Like most of its peers, it is an online library of content, only a segment of which is first-run or exclusive.
In marketing terms, however, the truth is almost beside the point; for evidence look no further than the queues that greeted the launch of other attractive international brands such as Zara and H&M in Australia.
But a change of play is coming. Netflix will set up an Australian business, most likely next year.
For Netflix, the Australian market is ripe for the picking.
Innovation has been stifled for a long time, creating a dangerously wide disconnect between consumers and traditional players, such as free-to-air broadcasters. And content, once locked up in studio output deals, is gradually flowing back onto the market as networks either abandon output deals, or partially dismantle them.
The net effect is this: Seven and Nine have deals in place that effectively keep the ABC Studios (Disney) and Warner Bros libraries, respectively, in their hands. Two other deals, Sony and NBC Universal, were left to lapse by Nine and Seven respectively, and are on the market.
Ten's deal with CBS Studios was recently carved open, pushing a large slab of CBS content onto the open market, while Ten's other deal – a 20th Century Fox output deal it shares with Foxtel – is still in place, but some shows, unsuitable to Ten, are being offered elsewhere.
For the already established players on the Australian landscape, there can be no doubt Netflix represents a serious threat. Free-to-air television audiences will continue to erode as a finite number of eyeballs is divided between an ever more infinite amount of content.
And the ABC and Foxtel, the two most innovative players on the Australian landscape, risk having their digital businesses hit a plateau as consumers take up an attractive new player, with the added sex appeal of a premium US brand.
Foxtel's Bruce Meagher is unperturbed. The arrival of Netflix, he says, "will raise awareness and hopefully grow the market for everyone, and we intend to be a very active participant. We expect to claim a reasonable share of that as it grows".
When Netflix launches in Australia, it will join a market where a handful of players are already jostling for space. In addition to Foxtel Play there are EzyFlix, Fetch TV, Quickflix, BigPond Movies, Playstation Network and XBox Live.
To that we can add the ABC's iView and streaming businesses from Seven and Nine (via StreamCo) and Ten. Foxtel's subscription TV service will also significantly ramp up its on-demand content.
The CEO of StreamCo Mike Sneesby anticipates rapid growth in the sector. "We are launching the service with the expectation that competition will increase in this space," he says.
Significantly, he says StreamCo's offering will be positioned "at a price point comparable to international platforms." Netflix and Hulu Plus are priced at about $US10 per month. That will be seen as a major price pressure for more expensive services, such as Foxtel's cable offering.
There are still some hurdles, however. While Australia's internet is carrying its present load without too many issues, the arrival of Netflix may pose challenges. Netflix accounts for 34 per cent of all internet traffic in the US.
Australian capped internet "plans" are also an issue; in the US, internet plans are uncapped as an industry standard, allowing consumers unlimited data downloads.
Meagher says the network is, to date, coping with the volume of traffic.
''The NBN [national broadband network] in whatever form will help enormously and, at the other end, compression technology is constantly improving,'' he says. ''Even if the pipe's not so big, the ability to put more stuff through it is improving.''
Michael Idato is entertainment editor-at-large of The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.


text:
Americans now stand a greater chance of dying from the effects of austerity than being killed in a car crash. At least that's what a new report suggests, if you read between the lines. The study, authored by a West Virginia University professor and published in the American Journal of Public Health last week, says that suicide now kills more Americans than car crashes. While the study doesn't draw a direct connection between the recession and the spike in suicides over the last ten years, it really doesn't have to.
More Americans now commit suicide than die in car crashes, making suicide the leading cause of injury deaths, according to a new study.
In addition, over the last 10 years, while the number of deaths from car crashes has declined, deaths from poisoning and falls increased significantly, the researchers report.
"Suicides are terribly undercounted; I think the problem is much worse than official data would lead us to believe," said study author Ian Rockett, a professor of epidemiology at West Virginia University.
…For the study, Rockett's team used data from the U.S. National Center for Health Statistics to determine the cause of injury deaths from 2000 to 2009.
The leading causes of unintentional deaths were car accidents, poisoning and falls, and for intentional deaths they were suicide and homicide.
Deaths from intentional and unintentional injury were 10 percent higher in 2009 than in 2000, the researchers noted.
And although deaths from car crashes declined 25 percent, deaths from poisoning rose 128 percent, deaths from falls increased 71 percent and deaths from suicides rose 15 percent, according to the study.
Can it be a coincidence that the rise in U.S. suicides occurred simultaneously with America's biggest economic crisis since the Great Depression — when millions of Americans found themsleves suddenly facing foreclosure, long-term unemployment, homelessness, and hunger? Possibly, but a significant increase in suicides doesn't "just happen," anymore than do economic meldtowns. As with any other socio-cultural trends, there are likely to be one or more factors driving it.
You don't have to be a college professor to connect the dots. Back in April, I began writing a series of posts about the human costs of austerity in Europe, after the suicide of 77-year-old Green pensioner Dimitris Christoulas made headlines around the world. Christoulas set his suicide in the context of the devastating conesquences of austerity for Greek citizens when he chose to take his in a public square located near Parliament, and left a suicide note directly blaming the government's austerity measures for the desperation and despair that pushed him to take his own life.
Christloulas' public suicide, and his posthumous indictment of the Greek government's austerity measures sparked protests from middle- and working-class Greeks who bear the brunt of Greece's austerity-shrunken economy, and its 21% unemployment rate (51% for Greeks between the ages of 15 and 140). It also reflected an increase in suicides not just in Greece, but across Europe — in every country caught in the vice grip of austerity.
Austerity has brought another change to Greece. Prior to 2007, suicides among Greeks under 65 fell sharply. In face, Greece had the lowest rate of suicides. Not surprising since suicide is so deeply stigmatized in Greece that the Greek Orthodox Church rejects the bodies of suicides for burial.
The economic downturn reversed that trend, as suicides increased among people under 65 increased between 2007 and 2009. The increase coincided with a 35% increase in suicides across the EU, with the sharpest increases in Greece, Ireland and Latvia — three countries in which people live under severe austerity policies. Of the three, Greece leads the pack with the fastest rising suicide rate in the EU — a 20% increase from 2007 to 2009.
Austerity has added its impact to the that of the economic crisis, to overcome the cultural stigma against suicide. Greece's suicide rate has increased 40% since 2009. Perhaps what made Dimitris Christoulas different from so many others was that he chose to meet his end, not in some quiet room, but practically on the doorstep of Greece's government.
As I wrote back in April, America is not Greece. Americans' have yet to experience the soul-crushing brand of austerity that has become the "new normal" for Greek citizens.
Since imposition of austerity upon Greece, there has been no shortage of news stories the impact on ordinary Greeks.
- In Athens, police spent five hours talking Lambrousi Harikleia down from a ledge. Harikleia threatened to jump from the the Labor Housing organization building, after another harsh round of cost cutting threatened to lay off workers at the agency where she and her husband worked.
- Last month, 61-year-old father of two Dimitrios Manikas shot and wounded his former boss and another worker, and took a third worker hostage at a small factory in Greece. Manikas, who had been laid off from his job about seven months earlier, was said not to have eaten for four days, and demanded back pay the company said was not owed to him.
- Just before Christmas, a teacher in Athens found a note attached to one of her pupils. It read, "I will not be coming to pick up Anna today because I cannot afford to look after her. Please take good care of her. Sorry. Her mother." This is not an isolated incident, but is becoming more common because austerity has left many Greek parents too poor to care for their children.
- In the City of Perama, things have gotten so bad that some are calling it a humanitarian crisis. Almost 60% of the population is unemployed, nearly triple the national average. Thousands are unable to buy food, parents often send children to school hungry, and some families have been without electricity for five to eight months.
- Greek doctors report seeing more sick children, as parents are unable to pay for health care. Drug shortages have made common drugs like aspirin increasingly harder to find.
- Thousands of Greek workers have left the country in the past year. Applications for work permits to countries like Australia and Canada have doubled. For many, returning to Greece is not on the horizon. One worker put it bluntly: "There is no work, there are no services. What is there to stay for? …Even if we do find jobs, there is no way to earn a sustainable living any more"
- Support for Greece's mentally ill has disintegrated after two years of austerity. Staff shortages and facility closures have left many mentally ill stranded on the streets. Many remain there because their families can't afford to help them.
The Guardian's Jon Henley travelled through Greece and recorded his experiences in a searing series of reports he titled "Greece on the Breadline." Reporting a mixture of fury and solidarity among Greeks, hears from them how austerity has changed their lives. In Athens, a woman who uses her professional experience to coach the unemployed asked, "[W]hat kind of society have we become, that we are kicking homeless pregnant women on to the streets?" He finds the school children of Athens are too hungry to underfed to do P.E. In Thessaloniki, a student postponed lessons to get in line for potatoes. Young people in Athens — raised with an emphasis on education and a "career mindset" — spoke of living with their parents again, taking odd jobs just to survive, and declared "We've watched our futures go up in smoke." Across the country, "savage cuts" in Greece's health services budget have allowed HIV/AIDS and malaria to make a comeback. Newborn testing for up to 40 diseases like cystic fybrosis and sickle cell are "effectively grinding to a halt, ensuring that children will die from diseases that are easily detected and treated.
Is it any wonder that desperation times have led some Greek citizens to commit desperate acts?
Given the impact of recession on the lives of millions of Americans, it's a wonder we haven't seen more people taking the kind of desperate measures on the rise in Europe.
We have been surrounded by the results so long that — except in cases like the Tuscon shooting — we can easily miss them, because they are becoming our "new normal," of "anxiety, distrust and an array of mental and physical ailments."
- A majority of Americans, 57%, cited economic conditions as a cause of stress in their lives.
- The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration reported that 1 in 5 Americans had some form of mental illness in 2009, a slight increase over the previous year.
- Meanwhile, states facing budget crises are cutting back on mental health services. (Such was the case in Pima County, AZ, where the Giffords shooting occurred, and which dropped nearly 50% of its mental health services.)
- Drug and alcohol consumption are proving recession-proof. Americans' drinking habits have not only remained steady during the recession, but more people are drinking, and more doing their drinking at home, alone. Meanwhile, illegal drug use has increased, particularly marijuana, ecstasy, and prescription drugs.
- In states like Oregon, suicide and drug and alcohol help lines have experience marked increases in calls, along with other mental health services, at the same time that state have fewer resources to support such services.
- We may not know for some time exactly how much the recession has fueled suicides or suicidality, but early data suggests that suicides have risen during the recession. In many cases job loss or financial devastation were cited as "last straw" events.
- Foreclosure-related suicides became regular news items, as waves of foreclosures spread across the country.
- Likewise, reports of workplace violence became more common during the recession, as unemployment rates remain at record highs.
- Family-related violence seems to have gone up, with increases in reports of domestic violence and child abuse.
Combine all of the above with the easily obtained firearms, plus the 250 million already in private hands, and even with out the addition of inflammatory political rhetoric, it's almost a miracle that we haven't seen more violence events like the Tucson shooting — a miracle, or just an run of incredibly good luck. All it takes is a spark, after all.
Conservatives claim they are not to blame if someone who may be mentally unstable takes their rhetoric "the wrong way," and acts out violently. But they are accountable, as all politicians should be, for using rhetoric responsibly, and dousing the fire when the ballots are counted and the results finalized — before the flames grow into a destructive force.
Yet, Americans have shown similar symptoms of austerity-driven desperation.
To anyone paying attention, the link between the recession and body count on Main Street, is as obvious as the wailing sirens, flashing lights, and crime scene markers that may be coming to a neighborhood near you. The stories of foreclosure driven suicide are as old as the once headline-making suicides of Raymond and Deanna Donaca, Carlene Balderama, the attempted suicide of Addie Polk, and the Karthick Rajaram murder-suicide. It's also a new as stories of foreclosure-driven "suicide-by-cop" in the cases of James Ferrario and Kurt Aho.
As early as 2008, seven in ten Americans were worried about maintaining their standard of living in the midst of economic crisis. As CAF noted at the time, in a report titled "The Stress Test," seven years of conservative economic policies leading up to the crisis left living standards under stress after the crisis hit. Nearly four years later, foreclosures are a symptom of our untreated economic sickness, and the American Psychological Associations Annual "Stress in America" report, indicates that money, work and the economy are the most frequently cited causes of stress for Americans — and have been for the past 5 years. It's also making us mad. The APA reports that "irritability or anger" tops the list of reported symptoms of stress, followed by "feeling nervous or anxious," and "feeling depressed or sad."
Foreclosure suicides are just one indicator. "Going postal" has been a frightening reality in American workplaces at least since the term was first coined in 1986, but experts see the recession playing a role in recent incidents of workplace violence like the 2010 shootings in Manchester, Connecticut, and St. Louis, Missouri.
Thus far, Americans have been spared a full-tilt, Euro-style austerity debacle. Instead, we've had the next-worst thing; what Paul Krugman called a "de facto austerity", in the form of "huge spending and employment cuts at the state and local level." This "de facto" austerity is largely the result of conservatives obstructing of any and all job creation bills — including proposals to keep teachers, police officers, and fire fighters working — and demanding cuts that would cost hundreds of thousands of state and local jobs. The result is a loss of some 440,000 federal, state, and local government jobs, accounting for more than half of jobs lost in many states.
At the state level, government accounted for more than half of all job losses for industries that lost jobs since Aug. 2010 in 27 states, and made up 100 percent of losses for industries that lost jobs in Arizona, Idaho, Massachusetts, North Dakota, Oregon, Pennsylvania, and Texas. Government losses also made up more than 50 percent of losses in seven of the 10 states with the largest number of jobs lost, and six of the 10 states with unemployment rates above 9.5 percent.
Of course, the private sector will absorb some of these losses and thankfully we have seen a positive net change in employment for most of these states since Aug. 2010. But make no mistake, the idea that drastic cuts to public budgets would somehow spur private-sector growth is a myth that has undermined recovery efforts both in the United States and in Europe. In reality, cuts to public-sector budgets have a significant negative private-sector impact. As my colleague Ethan Pollack has demonstrated, "for every dollar of budget cuts, over half the jobs and economic activity will be lost in the private sector." Net change in employment since Aug. 2010 may be positive for most states, but it's frustrating to think how much better these job numbers might be if we hadn't spent the past 16 months shooting ourselves in the foot.
How much worse can things get if the result of the election is an economic agenda that slashes public sector spending, bleeds the public sector even more, increases unemployment, hobbles what currently passes for a recovery, aand primarily benefits Wall Street and the one percent? Take a look at what's happening in Europe, and what starting to happen here, and it isn't hard to guess.


text:
Reliable Garage Door Service near Allen Park, MI
Go-to Garage Door Service for over 20 years!
The exceptional service provided by our technicians at Town & Country Door make us the best among any garage door service throughout garage door service and surrounding areas. We've operated this family-owned business with great pride since 1995. Earning yearly awards from reputable business reviewers like Angie's List and the US Commerce Association for our quality installation and repair services, you can certainly trust the safety of your home or building to us. We'll make sure that your installation, garage door replacement, and even spring or opener repair is completed properly the first time.
Why Choose Town & Country Door?
- Over 20 Years of Experience
- Experts in Installation & Repair
- Extended Hours
- Rapid Response
- Fully Licensed & Insured
- Open evenings and weekends
- Angie's List Super Service Award Winners Since 2011
- 5-Time Bloomfield Hills, Michigan "Best Small Business" Award Winner
- Highly Competitive Pricing
- and more!
Garage Door Installation & Services in Allen Park
We have been a team for over two decades in garage door installation, keeping safety the highest priority. We recommend that you trust an experienced and licensed Garage Door Service like Town & Country Door in order for you to stay safe and free from dangerous injury prone garage installation or spring repair. When you work with us, our technicians will educate you on all of your options, providing only honest and fair information and estimates. We offer 9 different and beautiful collections of garage door styles, each with numerous panel designs and colors to choose from.
At Town & Country Door, we specialize in repairing all makes and models of garage doors, garage door springs, automatic garage door openers, garage door cables, rollers, hinges, and more! Whether we installed them initially or not, our experienced technicians can accurately diagnose any issue and repair the damages quickly. With extended hours, we also provide same-day service and always try to get to you right away. We value our customers' time, which is why we have mastered fast service that maintains quality.
Our services include:
- Garage Door Installation/Replacement
- Garage Door Spring Repair/Replacement
- Automatic Garage Door Opener Installation/Repair
- Replacement Parts including rollers, hinges and cables
- Garage Door Opener Replacement/Diagnosis
- Service & Repairs on ALL Makes & Models
Keeping Customers Satisfied in Allen Park MI & the Surrounding Area
Having experience with all makes and models of garage doors, we have provided our services to those who live in Southeast Michigan for quite some time. We value what our customers have to say - if you need a new garage, or a repair to an existing one don't hesitate to give us a call!
We just had Justin out to fix our garage door from Town and Country. It is by far the best company for Garage doors. They are always responsive which is great because it is never a good thing when you need them. We left a message at 11:00pm last night and they were here before 10 this morning. Justin is so personable and knows his stuff. He leaves us with confidence and always offers tips and advice on maintenance. Very happy.Debi*
Excellent service! I called for an appointment to have a technician come out to diagnose an issue with my garage door opener. I was able to get an appointment the same day. The technician, Brian, was extremely knowledgeable, professional, and friendly. He explained the reasons for the issue and the gave me options for the solution. I opted to have a new door opener installed. Brian quickly installed the opener the same day. Brian showed me the features of the new opener and helped me code the key pad and set up the link to my car. I recommend this company for all of your garage door needs.Kim*
Had Ryan W out last night to repair my opener. He did an amazing job and was super polite and kept me super informed. In my eyes he went beyond where a normal repair person would. If you call Town and Country and they send Ryan. You will be nothing but pleased with him.Meghan*


text:
British singer Leona Lewis wants to be married by the age of 30.
The "Bleeding Love" hit maker, 27, split from German dancer Dennis Jauch earlier this year, but the single star is eager to find a lasting relationship and settle down.
She tells Britain's Look magazine, "I never used to think I'd get married, but then at my brother's wedding (in 2010) it hit me that I do (want to), and since then I've had loads of ideas.
"I know exactly where I want to get married, it's a beautiful place in Europe. I'd like to be married just before I'm 30, when I'm 29, but I don't know if it will happen."


text:
James Fallows of The Atlantic — a highly-recommended journalist and blogger, for those who have not come across his writing yet — recently re-expressed his dissatisfaction with Gmail's new UI; and mulled switching to Thunderbird but worried about memory usage.
|From Screenshots
As someone who did the same transition a while back, I remember going through that issue and then some. Memory usage, lack of integration with Google Contacts (exacerbated with the seamless contact sync of Android phones), a UI that makes it hard to manage multiple email accounts, and vertical space being taken up by the menu bar.
- Memory usage – a well-documented problem; the solution is to not synchronize your All Mail folder.
- Using Gmail folders – While you're at it, Thunderbird's auto-configuration for Gmail accounts does not use the special folders by default; you'd want to set them in Copies & Folders and Junk Settings. You'd probably also want to visit Server Settings and disable "Check for new messages" (so TB would use Push-IMAP instead of polling) and set the deletion behavior to "mark it as deleted" instead of moving it to Trash – remember that Google would archive your mail instead of deleting it. Optionally disable Message Archives in Copies & Folders – just use the web interface to find old messages
- Drafts folder – an advantage of using Gmail's drafts folder, instead of the local one, is that you can access drafts from other computers. A drawback, though, is that TB auto-saves regularly as you edit your message, and if you use an IMAP folder, it discards old drafts by moving them to trash. The Auto Save Drafts Folders extension let you adjust this behavior (in Copies & Folders); just use the local drafts folder for auto-saved copies.
- Handling multiple inboxes – View->Folders->Unified. This really ought to be the default…
- Contact sync – there's an extension for that. It's flawless for reading your Google Contacts; I'd not use it to edit contacts though, just in case some information gets lost due to mismatches in available fields
- Compact menu – Firefox's main menu has recently been reworked, but Thunderbird's has not; you can use this extension if, say, you use a widescreen laptop and want to recover vertical space real estate.
Hope that's of some use to some folks!


text:
Rejoice, Nintendo fans! One of the best pinball games of all time has been recently rated, and is probably set to hit the 3DS' Virtual Console at some point. Kirby's Pinball Land was not only one of the best portable pinball options at the time, but it ended up becoming a general Game Boy classic. Chalk this up as a win for Kirby fans, alongside the recent unveiling of the Wii collection.
Sadly, Kirby's Dream Course is still nowhere to be found -- it's my person dream to make sure every Nintendo fan plays that game. Well, with one more pinball game out of the way, now all we need is a Pokemon Pinball release, with an optional Club Nintendo 3DS rumble pack add-on. A former Nintendo Power subscriber can dream, right?
Kirby's Pinball Land listing [Australian Classification Website via Nintendo Life]
You are logged out. Login | Sign up


text:
So benchy says he'd pick Watson as a specialist bat for India/the Ashes whatever happens. Burgey'd move him to #6. I say that he's not picking his own place in the side without his bowling. I'm sure spikey had something useful to say, but I must have missed it, and uvelocity won't read the debate for six hours anyway.
Safe to say that there's conflicting thoughts on what we do with the all-rounder who often resembles a particularly thoughtlessly laid out china shop during an earthquake.
Thoughts, ****s?


text:
I will vote yes for the Bayou Cane Fire Department renewal, but I will vote no on the Bayou Cane new millage.
I will vote yes for the Bayou Cane Fire Department renewal, but I will vote no on the Bayou Cane new millage.
Why a no vote? Members are saying all paid staff will receive a pay raise on top of the 2 percent annual increase. Most are not blessed with any salary increase, let alone an additional amount paid by the taxpayers. Isn't 2 percent enough?
Why a no vote? In a Capital Items Needed document provided by the department, the new millage is being requested for items not necessary to efficiently run a department. The public is being told that without this new tax, firefighters will be laid off. Here are some of the items for which the millage would be used:
n $4,000 to replace carpet.
n $10,000 for a new sign.
n $5,000 for landscaping. (Why not have the firefighters do landscaping while waiting on calls?)
Why a "no" vote for the new tax request? Many residents of Terrebonne Parish District 3 have contacted me about the excessive number of fire engines and staff members seen on every emergency run. I have also been contacted about fire department employees using fire department vehicles when they are out eating, shopping or other places in public while on the clock. It sounds like a bad joke, but how many Bayou Cane firemen are needed to look at shorts at a local sporting goods store or pick up lunch?
It is your right and responsibility as a U.S. citizen to vote. Be informed on the issues and candidates. Do research. Call Bayou Cane Fire Department or drop by and ask your questions. Contact me for a copy of the Capital Items Needed document. You, the taxpayer, provide the money for these services. You are making an investment. Choose wisely.
Folks, I am not condemning the Bayou Cane Fire Department or any member of the department. In fact, I am thankful for and respect them for protecting and serving our community. As a retired captain with the Houma Police Department and now a councilman for Terrebonne Parish District 3, I know it takes dedication and a love of community to serve the public. Please join me in voting yes for the Bayou Cane Fire Department renewal levy. We need to keep the services currently being provided. And, please join me and vote no for the Bayou Cane Fire Department new millage.


text:
The Readers of Broken Wheel RecommendBook - 2016
From the critics
Community Activity
CommentAdd a Comment
Utterly delightful. Sara travels from Sweden to meet her long-time pen pal in Iowa, only to find that Amy has died before she arrives. Sara and the town save each other. Full of references to other great books!
I'm three quarters of the way through this book and it has been a struggle to get that far. The story plods along so slowly and is not engaging enough for me to read more than a few pages at a time. I hate to give up that far into a book, but it's just soooo slow and not very interesting.
Things I liked about this book: the setting in Iowa (my home state), Sara and Amy's friendship which is the catalyst in bringing her to Iowa, all the books(!) and the ways a "bookstore" transforms Broken Wheel. It was gratifying to watch the lives of the citizens of Broken Wheel improve for the most part in the story arc.
Some of the relationships in the book -- I'll refrain from specifying to avoid spoilers rang false to me and/or were not respectful to my high view of marriage.
An unexpected gem of a find. The book unfolds quietly but rather joyously to me.
It is the story of two women exchanging letters and books. Vastly different ages and locations.
Sara, the younger, decides to visit Amy after her bookstore job in Sweden is eliminated. She arrives in Broken Wheel, Iowa to find herself in time for Amy's funeral/wake. She decides to stay and soon finds herself adopted by the townspeople as their "tourist".
With no one accepting payment for food or lodging, she decides to open a bookstore with Amy's personal library as a sort of community center and the project is adopted by all in varying ways.
The bookstore struggles to find its way even as Hope's wealthier residents arrive to peruse the shelves. Something that prompt BW's residents to show themselves as more cosmopolitan and cultured.
Little by little changes occur to the residents and none more so than prim and proper Caroline.
A lovely ode to books and their readers.
What a delightful book! Love the characters, love the story, and love seeing how many books referenced were also on my bookshelves. Fun, quirky characters in this tiny little town will steal your heart. Makes a great book group discussion selection.
For book lovers and those who want a great people story. I can see this book becoming a movie with its great characters.
4 stars for the story not necessarily for the literary style of writing. I'll take a good story over a fabulous writing style most of the time. Broken Wheel is a "blink and you'll miss it" town. The author took us down main street in a very slow yet detailed manor, rich in the inner lives of its inhabitants and those it affects. Life is what you make it!
Broken Wheel isn't a quiet little town. It isn't a greasy burger joint off Route 66. It's somewhere in between, a town where people have lost interest, where businesses have been boarded up for years, a town abandoned by the young folk to seek their fortune in the nearest big city, Hope IA, and a place where the older people have settled to die of polite boredom. Enter Sara, a Swedish tourist who's come to meet her pen pal—only to be informed that she died shortly before Sara arrived.
Sara isn't one of those volatile personalities who arrive to shake up everybody with dancing, wild outfits or outré outlooks on life. She's a book nerd who believes that books are better than people and has the shy, retiring nature to show for it. So I liked her at once.
This book takes a while to get going. Its glacial pacing means that you're slowly immersed in the lives of Broken Wheel's inhabitants: the town drunk Poor George with his on-again, off-again sobriety; the neighborhood religious pillar of righteousness Caroline and the town loose woman named Grace (although her real name is Madeleine), descended from a long line of Graces who pride themselves in their wrong decisions and outlaw ways, to name a few.
These people are far more interesting than Sara is at the start and that seemed wrong to me. Surely the protagonist is the one who should capture the attention! But Sara sees herself as a minor player in her own life, even as she slowly but surely acts as a catalyst for change.
This is a novel I would recommend for people who like to take their time to settle into a book. Far from being a novel you plunge into headfirst, the book, like Broken Wheel itself, creeps up on you with a steady pull. And, yes, it does promote the adoration of books, that grand passion that can seize even the wary.
A fun and light read with real warmth! Readers will feel a real sense of place in this novel, and enjoy it's wonderful cast of characters as they follow Sarah during her stay in Broken Wheel, Iowa. A great read for book lovers and for those who enjoy reading about small town life through multiple characters.
I highly recommend listening to the audio book - the narrator is fantastic with accents and bringing the characters to life!
SummaryAdd a Summary
What's a young woman from Sweden doing in a teensy mid-west Iowa town? Well, she is not seeing the sights, that's for sure. She is also not meeting her elderly pen-pal, Amy, who passed away right before she arrived on her trans-Atlantic flight.
What she is doing, for the first time in her life, is living life outside of the books she loves to read and re-read. Sara and Amy's love of books forged them a friendship across the miles and when Sara arrives in Broken Wheel to find her one living friend no longer living, she feels more alone than ever. The townspeople don't know what to make of her – she is so quiet, undemanding and, well… lost. But so are they, as Sara comes to learn, and she decides to give them something for the kindness they've shown her – the town's first bookstore. With the Oak Tree Bookstore comes a sense of a sense of civic pride, a sense of family, some mending of long-broken fences, and a new sense of hope to the dying town's residents.
In fact, The Readers of Broken Wheel Recommend is a story wrapped around an ode to the small mom-and-pop bookstores that are slowly disappearing, and to the shopkeepers who know their wares so intimately they can instinctively find the book you need as well as the book you want. It is also an ode to book lovers and books of all shades of noir, romantic pink and yes, grey. As a matter of fact in reading this novel, you'll find references to so many great books that your to-be-read pile is sure to grow!
AgeAdd Age Suitability
There are no ages for this title yet.
NoticesAdd Notices
There are no notices for this title yet.
QuotesAdd a Quote
There are no quotes for this title yet.


text:
Introduction to Econometrics
Wiley, May 8, 2001 - Business & Economics - 664 pages
Introduction to Econometrics has been significantly revised to include new developments in the field. The previous editions of this text were renowned for Maddala's clear exposition and the presentation of concepts in an easily accessible manner.
* New chapters have been included on panel data analysis, large sample inference and small sample inference
* Chapter 14 Unit Roots and Cointegration has been rewritten to reflect recent developments in the Dickey-Fuller (DF), the Augmented Dickey-Fuller (ADF) tests and the Johansen procedure
* A selection of data sets and the instructor's manual for the book can be found on our web site
Comments on the previous edition:
'Maddala is an outstanding econometrician who has a deep understaning of the use and potential abuse of econometrics...'
'The strengths of the Maddala book are its simplicity, its accessibility and the large number of examples the book contains...'
'The second edition is well written and the chapters are focused and easy to follow from beginning to end. Maddala has an oustanding grasp of the issues, and the level of mathematics and statistics is appropriate as well.'
What people are saying - Write a review
We haven't found any reviews in the usual places.
Statistical Background and Matrix Algebra
Simple Regression
16 other sections not shown
Other editions - View all
Common terms and phrases
2SLS a x*-distribution adaptive expectations analysis assumptions asymptotic autocorrelation autoregressive bootstrap Chapter cointegration compute confidence interval consider consistent estimates constant term data sets defined demand function denote dependent variable discussed in Section dummy variables Econometrica Econometrics economic endogenous error term errors in variables exogenous variables explanatory variables F-test forecast given Hence heteroskedasticity Illustrative Example independent instrumental variable least squares estimators least squares residuals logit matrix measure multicollinearity multiple regression normal distribution Note null hypothesis observations obtained OLS estimation omitted variables parameters plim probit probit models problem procedure random variables rational expectations regression equation regression model regressors relationship residual sum root tests sample serial correlation significance level standard errors studentized residuals suggested sum of squares supply function Suppose t-ratios Table test statistic time-series unbiased uncorrelated unit root unit root tests values vectors zero
References to this book
Regression Models for Categorical and Limited Dependent Variables
J. Scott Long
Limited preview - 1997
All Book Search results »
Modelling Binary Data, Second Edition
David Collett
No preview available - 2002


text:
Stockton, CA
Jean Laguna Gemmill
Nov. 24, 1944 - Oct. 14, 2013
Retired SUSD 30 yrs, ladies auxiliary Sr. Vice VFW Luneta Post 52.
Survived by husband Lou
Gemmill. Sisters; Teresa Martinez, Isabel Gazeta, Christina Geister. Children; Robert Valtierra Jr.,
David Valtierra Sr., Arthura Valtierra, Leslie Wall, 12 grandchildren, 20 great-grandchildren.
Visitation 11:00-6:30 pm, Rosary at 6:30, Tues. Oct. 22nd, Casa
Bonita, 2500 Cemetery Ln. Mass 10:00 am, Oct. 23rd at Cathedral of Annunciation, 425 W. Magnolia. Committal at Jan Joaquin Catholic Cemetery 719 E. Harding Way.


text: These images are of Daenerys Targaryen from the series 'Game of Thrones. Daenerys in the gown given to her by Illyrio in "Winter Is Coming."Daenerys in her wedding dress in "Winter Is Coming."Daenerys and her new husband Khal Drogo in "Winter Is Coming."Daenerys about to receive her wedding present from Drogo in "Winter Is Coming."Drogo and Daenerys' wedding night in "Winter Is Coming."The KingsroadDrogo gifts his new wife a mare on their wedding day.Irri tends to Daenerys' sores in "The Kingsroad."Lord SnowDoreah teaching Daenerys the joys of sex in "The Kingsroad."Daenerys in the Dothraki Sea in "Lord Snow."In A Golden Crown.Promo for Lord SnowDaenerys in the Dothraki Sea in "Lord Snow."Daenerys reveals her pregnancy to Drogo in "Lord Snow."Daenerys stands as the Dosh Khaleen chant at the prophesy ceremony in "A Golden Crown".Daenerys places one of her dragon eggs into a brazier in "A Golden Crown."Drogo and Daenerys discuss the Iron Throne in "You Win or You Die."Daenerys and her handmaids tour the markets of Vaes Dothrak in "You Win or You Die."Daenerys rushes to her injured husband in "The Pointy End."Daenerys tends to Drogo after he falls from his horse in "Baelor."Daenerys in "Baelor."Daenerys at Drogo's side in "Baelor."Daenerys awakens from her injuries in "Fire and Blood."Daenerys reassures Jorah Mormont before stepping into the flames in "Fire and Blood."Entertainment Weekly (EW) photo of Emilia Clarke in costume as Daenerys Targaryen.EW photo of Clarke.Daenerys in "The North Remembers."Daenerys in "The Night Lands."Daenerys in "The Night Lands."Daenerys holds Irri as she cries in "The Night Lands."Daenerys after arriving in Qarth in "The Ghost of Harrenhal."Dany in Season 2 "Valar Morghulis".Daenerys teaching Drogon to cook meat with Doreah in "The Ghost of Harrenhal"Daenerys and Jorah meet with Pyat Pree in Qarth in "The Ghost of Harrenhal."Daenerys at Xaro Xhoan Daxos's reception for her arrival in Qarth in "The Ghost of Harrenhal."Daenerys in the dress given to her by Xaro in "The Ghost of Harrenhal."Daenerys waiting on the Spice King with Xaro Xhoan Daxos in "The Old Gods and the New"A promotional image of Daenerys in Qarth in "The Old Gods and the New."Daenerys after her meeting with the Spice King in "The Old Gods and the New."Daenerys in "A Man Without Honor."Daenerys wants Ser Jorah to find her dragons in "A Man Without Honor".A promotional image of Daenerys Targaryen and Jorah Mormont in "Valar Morghulis."Daenerys' costume on display at Wondercon 2011.Dany in "Second Sons"Dany in "Season 3"Dany in "Season 3"Dany in "Season 3" gains her armyDany, Jorah and Barristan in "Season 3"Dany in Season 3Daenerys with Drogon at Yunkai in "The Bear and the Maiden Fair".Dany in "Second Sons".Dany in "Second Sons"Dany in "The Rains of Castamere".Missandei, Dany and Jorah in "Mhysa".Dany in "Mhysa".Season 4 PosterDaenerys in "The Children".EW cover promoting Season 5.EW Promotional image for Season 5EW Promotional image for Season 5Daenerys with Hizdahr zo Loraq in "The Dance of Dragons"Drogon saves Daenerys in Daznak's PitDaenerys and newborn DrogonDaenerys rides DrogonDany and DrogonDany is surrounded by Dothraki in Mother's MercyDaenerys lost while Drogon restsDany with the Dothraki peopleDany speaks with the KhalDany in the Hall of Faces Promo imageDaenerys as she appears in the video game.Daenerys in "Oathbreaker".Daenerys wearing her own dragon designed livery collar.Daenerys gazes at Khal Moro as the temple burns.Dany in Season 8Dany and Jon in Season 8Add a photo to this gallery Retrieved from "https://gameofthrones.fandom.com/wiki/Gallery:_Daenerys_Targaryen?oldid=413532" Categories: Gallery Image Galleries Languages: Русский Community content is available under CC-BY-SA unless otherwise noted.


text:
Quadrant EPP'S Borotron® Enhanced HDPE Used in Radiation Shielding.
Borotron® HD050 from Quadrant Engineering Plastic Products (Quadrant EPP) is a high-density polyethylene (HDPE) formulation enhanced with 5% elemental boron that has been used to provide extra shielding against neutron radiation. The combination of boron within a matrix of HDPE, a naturally hydrogen rich material, is used nuclear shielding applications. Hydrogen rich materials attenuate neutrons extremely well and boron has an affinity for absorbing thermalized neutrons.
Potential uses include shielding for radiation therapy rooms, where the product in plate form is integrated into the wall structure. Other application environments where its properties bring similar benefits include nuclear research centers, nuclear power plants, power generation areas in nuclear submarines, production areas for nuclear detection devices and the equipment itself, and spacecraft exposed to radiation.


text:
Dear faithful readers, email subscribers, RSS-feeders, Twitter followers, the Temptress, and anyone else reading this–THANK YOU!
Thank you for two great years of "devilbloggging" but I've decided to move on to other things. As I mentioned last year at the 1-year anniversary, Satan's Blog was something of an experiment for me, and I committed from the beginning to one year. Last year I decided to continue, but two years is enough. It's been fun. I hope it's been both entertaining and seriously thought-provoking. All in all it was not a bad run. I am pushing up against 90,000 page views, with over 2000 comments. I have 106 subscribers (thank you to each of you!) and 102 Twitter followers (yee-hah!).
But, alas, all good things must come to an end. I will give up the "bloggingsatan" URL, but this blog will continue to live at www.devilbloggger.wordpress.com for your reading enjoyment. I will keep my gmail account, which is devilbloggger (at) gmail. (note there are 3 g's!)
One last gasp of possibility: if any of my wonderful readers have connections in the publishing industry, and could convince a "real" publisher (as opposed to self-publishing, POD, etc.) to publish and distribute into bookstores "The Best of Satan's Blog" I can compile a book-length collection of the best posts. And I might reconsider blogging. Let me know. Have the publisher contact me.
So long.
Ha ha ha ha ha.


text:
Kevin Sumlin has one slot remaining to round out his first staff at Texas A&M: linebackers coach.
On Monday, Sumlin officially announced the hire of Marcel Yates, who's spent the last nine seasons as defensive backs coach at Boise State, his alma mater. He will serve as co-defensive coordinator (along with Mark Snyder) and defensive backs coach at A&M.
"Marcel is another terrific recruiter who has a proven record in developing the young men he coaches," Sumlin said. "He's done a great job at Boise State and will be an excellent addition to our staff here at Texas A&M."
The Aggies are entering the Southeastern Conference this summer. Sumlin, hired from Houston in December, has now filled all of his assistant slots outside of linebackers coach.