Yul

My cardiologist seems like a nice man but he's putting me on blood-thinning pills for 4 weeks before zapping me with a defibrillator to try to eradicate my recently diagnosed AF (atrial fibrillation). 

Can I be sure these blood-thinners, called Xarelto (aka rivaroxaban), won't cause permanent damage to my heart, requiring me to be on medications and become yet another contributor to pharmaceutical companies' wealth for the rest of my life? Am I being paranoid? He says I need to take the pills for 4 weeks to prevent a stroke caused by blood clots forming in my heart and being released by the defib procedure. That sounds reasonable but with all the disinformation being circulated lately around the covid "vaccines" I don't have a lot of faith in the pharmaceutical companies or their products.

Anyone else gone down this treatment route for AF and had success?

I obviously have a problem, when I do a gym workout now I get shortness of breath and head-spins, so I need to do something. I guess I'll ask Jesus to protect me and and go ahead and follow my cardy's instructions. Sometimes you just have to put your faith in a human as well as the Son of Man as he liked to call himself. What's the worst that can happen, no one lives forever and my 74th birthday's coming up soon.

Btw, check out the new series called "The Chosen" that you can find online via google etc. It's awesomely life-changing and a big comfort when you discover you’re not going to outlive everyone around you    : )

Even allowing for just 130 generations, as if Noah's Flood was the starting point, a population of 7 billion today represents a mean growth rate of only 1.12 per generation.

For 10,000 generations, our mean growth rate would be just 1.0022 per generation. Is that possible?

I just watched the movie and I swear there was a scene where Tom's in prison and the guard comes in to quell an argument Tom's having with the court-appointed shrink, and I swear the guard is a young (he'd have been 23 then) Bill Hader.

Or did I imagine it?

If not, how about any outside our spiral arm of the MW, which I'm told is the Orion Arm?

What's the most distant space object yet detected and where is it located?

I guess the background radiation comes from outside the MW (our galaxy)?

Yes I'm space-ignorant, 'would appreciate any help.

Bible scholars usually come up with a predictable interpretation of this text but I suspect there's something going on here that's never been understood by scholars.

For one thing YHVH doesn't mention making the snakle out of brass. And for another the word "snake" isn't mentioned either.

What YHVH says, literally, according to the original Hebrew text, is: "make to you a fiery (or a poisonous) and set it above as a banner and it will be that all the bitten and having seen it shall have lived".

It is merely assumed that the word "saraph", which literally means "fiery" or "poisonous" is meant to include the unwritten noun "snake".

Anyone know something a bit more imaginative to explain this whole matter? Why would God make it that looking at a snake on a pole would heal snake-bit patients? It sounds like nonsense to me.

It's version 12.3.6. It hadn't happened for a few days then this morning it happened again. I retreived the document, fixed it up to include the amendments lost when it crashed, saved it again, and it crashed again.

So far I've changed the file name, twice, converted any hypertext to unformatted, and deleted footnotes, hoping this might stop it from crashing. But nope, it's still crashing.

I've got 22.8gb available on my hard drive, which is a 160gb capacity drive. The computer is a 5 - 6 year old Macbook Pro.

Can anyone suggest how I might overcome this extremely annoying problem - without having to shell out for a new iMac and the latest version of Office for Mac, the bank account is kinda empty.

It's commonly referred to by a set of initials and it gets updated from time to time as treatment protocols change. Might start with "American" but not sure.

This might be a dumb question, apparently the Cosmic Microwave Background that can be observed today through radio telescopes is actually photons emitted at the Big Bang.

If this is right, and if the Big Bang occurred so long ago that the stuff that eventually formed our planet has had time to travel from the Big Bang site, go through whatever happened next - forming stars which later exploded etc - and much later ended up in planet earth and the rest of our solar system, why haven't all the photons produced by the Big Bang explosion shot past us a long time ago and disappeared into the distance?

Why is there still background cosmic radiation being detected around us?

I want a book that tells me what is known about what has happened to everything, i.e. all the space and matter produced in that initial explosion, since the Big Bang.

I'd like to find out what is it that cosmologists and astrophysicists are seeing when they look through the Hubble telescope?

I.e. given that they see only stars and planets that have existed long enough and are situated close enough for their light to reach here, how long approximately is long enough?

How close is close enough?

What factors come into play in determining what things (planets, stars, other things) are now visible and will later become visible through earth telescopes?

Are they all situated on the outside of the expanding universe?

Did all the matter end up forming an outside layer, like the skin of a rapidly inflating balloon moving away from the site of the Big Bang in the centre?

Since you'd expect all the matter to move away from the centre at the Big Bang explosion, is the part of the universe inside the balloon completely empty apart from space?

How do they know how long ago the Big Bang was (viz 13.8 billion years)?

Is the "visible universe" all located on a (relatively small) diaphragm-shaped patch on the balloon surface that's situated around us, with earth in the centre? Or can we also see some light that originated from the other side of the centre of the balloon?

How can they tell how far away a given star is?

All these and more are questions I’d like to know the answers to.

Thanks very much for any help you can give me.

As distinct from the world's oldest ever MAN.

Was the first DNA, presumably residing in the first life form that emerged (is that correct?), very short - as might be expected given that the first life form is believed to have been (is it?) just a single-celled amoeba?

If it was very short, how do evolutionists explain it’s transition to become the 3 billion base-pair length of the human genome? Was this just due to mutation caused by random free radical damage to genetic material, guided by natural selection?

If it wasn’t very short, if the first life form was thought to have DNA which was already up near our 3 billion base-pairs, how is it believed this long DNA in the first living thing came into existence?

Was evolution possible before life existed?

I'm happy to go along with the theory of evolution if I can just get this question/s answered.

Thank you very much for any help any scientists/geneticists out there can give me.

Ever since I became a Christian a few years ago I listen to Christian music - hymns, praise music, etc - of all types whenever I get a spare moment. I no longer seem to find worldly music appealing.

Can anyone suggest some artists I might like whose music I can buy online through iTunes?

I want to make something warming for lunch. It's a very cold day up in the hills, town is a 65+ km drive (40 miles), and the cupboard is almost bare.

The vegies in the fridge include a few potatoes, onions, zuccini, half a pumpkin.

Any thoughts?

Is there a third alternative for Christians? From what I can see, calvinists basically believe in predestination and Arminians don't.

I know (from Wikipedia) there are variations on each, e.g. Wesleyan Arminians and "3 point Calvinists".

I'm a nominal Seventh Day Adventist and I get the impression that both of these theologies are rejected by SDAs. I don't know enough about Christianity, I've only been in it for 7 years, to know if there are any other denominations that agree with SDAs on this issue.

Can anyone shine some light on this for me?

Btw I know a couple of renegade SDAs who believe that it's possible to achieve a state of sinlessness in this life, and I think I've heard their ideas referred to disparagingly, by the rest of the church members, as "Arminian".

I live in Northern NSW and want to buy an ex-police BMW motorcycle.

Whom can I contact to find out where and when they are sold - presumably at auction?

What's the procedure?

I'm in the process of ordering a fibreglass canopy for my Hilux 4x4 ute. I've asked the manufacturer twice in emails if it will keep the contents dry when it rains and each time he has omitted to answer that particular question.

I'm wondering if he doesn't wan't to talk about it for a reason.

Anyone have any experience with fibreglass canopies and their waterproofness?

This company name appears in the John LeCarre novel "The Honourable Schoolboy", Vientiane being the capitol of Laos.

At what stage did some bright spark say "Hang on, that's enough work. Six sunrise/sunsets in a row. Let's take a day off."

Presumably when they tried it once the idea caught on and they started doing it habitually after every sixth sundown.

Has anyone ever come across research into this anthropological phenomenon?

In the Old Testament (Torah), the book of Exodus (Shemoth), we read in chapter 16 the first mention of the Sabbath, the 7th day. There is no mention of a week (in the sense of 7 days) prior to that.

It might be speculated that it was at the time of the events described in chapter 16 that the Israelites first started observing the Sabbath - their day of rest every 7th day.

This happened when God, in response to their complaints, started showering them with quail in the evenings and manna in the mornings. He told them then that they must desist from collecting them on the 7th day which was to be a day of rest. In fact they were to collect a double supply on the 6th day.

Could it be that that practice is actually what got people recognising a 7 day week for the first time ever? That taking every seventh day off to observe God's Sabbath rest was where our week originated, and before that it never occurred to anyone to count up to 7 days and then start from one again?

Any thoughts?