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March 14, 2015 March 14, 2015 Marcus Ampe20 Comments
When we look at different myths about creation we can see that in several of them that though details may differ the essential lines of the stories or the elements of the astronomical and biblical accounts of Genesis are the same. For people it was found important to tell what happened in the past and by the years the stories grew. Having continents getting out of each other, spacing out by sees in-between people got estranged from each other and stories went their own way.
The Hubble Ultra Deep Field, is an image of a small region of space in the constellation Fornax, composited from Hubble Space Telescope data accumulated over a period from September 3, 2003 through January 16, 2004. The patch of sky in which the galaxies reside was chosen because it had a low density of bright stars in the near-field. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Those who want to analyse the beginning of the world will always come to a point where there shall be something which they are not able to place. Some of them may think that there is nothing that exists that they cannot analyse under the rules of science, say the Big Bang theory can only be explained by other theories that sound like faith. Honest and maybe agnostic scientist should come to realise that in the previous centuries it where humans who did not want to see what was really explained in the Bible being close to the theories they scientifically could find. Man has to agree that the Bible said it all a long time before science got there.
That the Big Bang theory proposes that the universe started from a singularity – a dense wad of matter that for reasons not yet known suddenly exploded outward in an immense pulse of energy and light, is in a way not contradiction with the void spoken of in the Holy Scriptures. Scientific consensus has pretty much decided that is how the universe we currently live in started, but they still cannot explain more or say what made the mass to have a black hole or an action taking place somewhere in time.
That time could be placed under the name of day or phase, but at the start there was not such an indication because light and darkness were the elements to be forming the differences in time. The book of Genesis wants to give the synopsis of Creation in a few sentences, saying it took six periods or phases of coming into existence. In the later books of the Bible it is indicated that people do have no idea about the space and about the time in God's eyes. Time for God is totally different than for the creatures who can find darkness and light as elements dividing the space in countable or measurable units to give an indication of the now, before and after. The indication of that time also changed in the course of history, bringing it to seconds, minutes and hours, days, weeks, months and years which may be divided differently or follow another calendar. Man should know, according Scriptures, that for the eternal Creator our time indications are like nothing to hold on, because what is a day to an eternal Being when there was no sun to calculate a time period and when there is no beginning and no end to Its existence.
Book of Genesis, Ningpo Bible. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
The gods we may find in all the different myths are not self consistent and are not exactly creators of all elements. Though the God presented in the Scriptures and presented by the Israelites, the people of God or People of Jehovah, is One God Who was before everything and Who is responsible Himself for everything. The oral tradition brought the history of mankind and the Word of God from one person to the other. That it was penned later than other stories of the beginning of the world does not make it less believable or untrue. The way the story was presented had to bring understanding to all, educated and non- educated and it should have been able to tell it from one generation to another. Short lines were the easiest to get it recounted; told over and over again, making sure it got through time with the same lines. That not everything is exactly the same in the genesis stories we can find by the different cultures takes not away that we can see the 'grosso mode similar line'. The perspective by which is looked at the beginning of the elements says a lot of the people but also can give an indication of the connection of the people with that Creator, having the Israelites having kept their relationship on good terms and seeing human being as major part of creation and as the only elements being in the image of that Creator, placing them more in the centre than in other cultures. For them it was also more important to know what their function is in this creation and where they stand opposite the Creator.
In the God's People version of the beginnings of the universe the Elohim as Most High All-knowing Supreme Being wanted Him to be known and supplied a description of Who He is, who man is and why man existed and then allowed the people of that era to cast it into terms that they could understand rather than in terms that we would readily recognize in the 21st century.
Coming to the creation of human beings in the image of God
Scripture about Creation and Creator Deity
God, the Father, the Sole Creator of Heaven and Earth
Something from nothing
Means of creations
Creator and Blogger God 9 A Blog of a Book 3 Blog about Prophecy
Trusting, Faith, Calling and Ascribing to Jehovah #7 Prayer #5 Listening Ear
One Hundred Years of Relativity (project-syndicate.org)
Einstein's theory not only describes our universe, from the Big Bang to black holes; it has also taught physicists the relevance of geometry and symmetry – lessons that spread from particle physics to crystallography. But, despite the similarities that Einstein's theory has with other theories in physics, it stands apart by its refusal to fit together with quantum mechanics, the theory that explains the dominant behavior of matter at the atomic and subatomic scale.
Today's Scrip-Bit 2 March 2015 Psalm 27:10 (randyobrien50.wordpress.com)
Can you imagine too that we're already into March, and it seems like only yesterday we were singing Old Lang Syne, and wishing each other a Happy New Year. It's already been a couple of weeks too since we were singing: 'Mas in yuh mas! Play mas!'
And all of that was just to say my people that time is swiftly moving by and who knows what will happen, or when, so it is essential that we get our house in order, just in case…just in case Jesus returns unexpectedly and we're not ready. The same way we're seldom ready for Monday mornings. The big difference though is that we have something to counteract our Monday morning blues – our Monday Morning Battle Hymn.
1 Samuel 13 (asorensen.wordpress.com)
The people of Israel see they are in trouble, and cry out to God. Saul is waiting for Samuel to show up and seek the Lord about the situation. When he doesn't come as quickly as Saul expects, Saul takes things into his own hands and offers a burnt offering to the Lord on his own.
The Word (carolynwebbrussell.wordpress.com)
Secular scientists suggest that Big Bang Theory is different than creation that they are two different things. I'm not going to even bring up evolution because Darwin himself just thought it was a theory and didn't even believe it.
I feel that if in the book of Genesis it is written that God spoke everything into existence. The sound of His voice, brought form to this world, hung the stars and called them each by name all in 7 days. All throughout the Bible it talks about how powerful God's voice is. We read that it can make mountains tremble and so much more. So…what if when God spoke everything into motion at that moment that is when the "Big Bang Theory" happened. God created even that theory that scientists have come up with in trying to figure out all He created. As I study the voice and essential oils through science it keeps pointing me back to the fact that God is so much bigger than "science" because He created it all because He loves us so much.
aurorawatcherak
There are well recognized parallels between Genesis 1 and 2 and other ancient Near Eastern creation myths. Archeologists tell us that the Mesopotamian and Egyptian myths predate the Biblical account.
Oh, my! I've been wrong about this faith thing all this time! Thank you for setting me straight!
No, seriously – my faith does not rest on scientific or archeological research. I find the study of these things interesting, but the study of creation should never take precedence of the Creator.
Before the mid-19th century it was possible to read the Old Testament in isolation and marvel at the creation stories in Genesis, to believe without equivocation that they were a unique special perfect revelation delivered to Moses during the sojourn in the wilderness.
Multitudinous discoveries over the last two centuries have challenged this view in deep and profound ways. Tablets were found dating from the mid-7th century…
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February 24, 2015 Christadelphians30 Comments
Is it possible to get something from nothing?
When we hear the story of the creation of the universe we might get that impression.
WMAP image of the (extremely tiny) anisotropies in the cosmic background radiation (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
In the Holy Scriptures we get to read that there was void or a " Containing of no matter". There was or was not something with something " completely lacking". At first there was a "Having no legal force or validity" but than out of nowhere seemed to come a Voice of Some One Who spoke.
The Bible tells us that every time that One Spoke His Voice brought into being. We do find the principle of something not being there but "God said…" and it was done. The prophet Isaiah quotes the Lord as saying:
I have made the earth, and created man upon it: I, even my hands, have stretched out the heavens, and all their host have I commanded (Isaiah 45:12).
So, there was not only The Voice but there where also Hands. Out of nothing we do seem to get Sound, from emptiness creating things. This means that there was a power. This incredible Power we consider to be the Most High Power. It is the Force of bringing to life, or the Force of life.
Galaxies are very important fundamental building blocks of the Universe. Some are simple, while others are very complex in structure. As one of the first steps towards a coherent theory of galaxy evolution, the American astronomer Edwin Hubble, developed a classification scheme of galaxies in 1926. Although this scheme, also known as the Hubble tuning fork diagram, is now considered somewhat too simple, the basic ideas still hold… (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
This creative Power of God is mentioned many other times in the Scriptures, but, as always, the mechanistic details are not supplied. It is hard to imagine, for example, what would have happened if instead of saying let there be light, the Bible had written out Maxwell's equations of electromagnetism. Even if the Bible had given us the formulas explaining the physical details, no one in ages past would have understood them, or if somehow they could have achieved comprehension, they would surely have abused the information!
There was the void or open space which could or could have not a continuity or a break in continuity, a vacate space.
About when and how the universe came into being, science and scripture may come up with the same unambiguous result, namely, in the beginning (Genesis 1:1).
The scientist is not let off the hook, for an eternal universe would also have solved a whole host of scientific problems. According to the model pictured by classical physics, an eternal, everlasting static universe would have been just fine, but these ideas were overturned by the astronomer Hubble in 1929, and still later unambiguously verified by observations made in the mid-1960's on the universal microwave background.
In 1929, Edwin Hubble, an astronomer working at the Mount Wilson Observatory in Southern California, discovered that all the galaxies in the universe appeared to be moving away from the earth and the further away they were from us the faster their speed of recession. The conclusion was that the universe could not be static but was undergoing dynamic expansion. (See e.g. G. E. Christianson, Edward Hubble: Mariner of the Nebulae, (1995) )
Arno Allan Penzias (born 26 April 1933) is an American physicist, radio astronomer and Nobel laureate in physics who is co-discoverer of the cosmic microwave background radiation, which helped establish the Big Bang theory of cosmology.
In 1965, two physicists at Bell Laboratories in New Jersey studying antenna noise discovered that the entire universe appeared to be bathed in a radiation afterglow of a singular event of vast energy taking place in the far distant past. This event has come to be known in popular terms as the "Big Bang". We will have more to say about this in a later chapter. See: A. Penzias and G. Wilson, A Measurement of Excess Antenna Temperature at 4080Mc/s, ApJ, 142, 419, (1965).
The book of Genesis does not want to present a factual account but in a certain way wants to bring a tale or narrative comprehensible for most people.
Genesis simply and beautifully describes God's initial creation, as well as His declaration of His creative purpose. It then describes the coming of sin into the world through the choices made by Adam and Eve, and the consequences of those choices for them and their descendants. Then Genesis follows their descendants' decline into lawless violence — a decline that God brought to an end by sending a great flood, while saving eight people for a new beginning.
Genesis bringing an account from the creation of the world to the death of Joseph in Egypt, we may later find references to the course of events by the New Testament writers, by which John loves to construct his books in the same manner as the Bereshith, talking of the Word spoken and a Word bringing into being. He looks at the Old world and compares the happenings to the New World. He was convinced that in the Garden of Eden the Word spoken by God, the promise made to the first male and female creature of the human line or human tree, had come into existence with the birth of the Nazarene Jeshua from the lineage of king David.
Physics of Sound Sensory System of the Inner Ear & Space Time Continuum – By Doctor Emad kayyam (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Out of nothingness there was sound. That What had been for ever and is everlasting, has no beginning and no end, has no birth but also no dying or no death, and Which is an incredible Power, a Supreme Being, the Only One capable to create something from nothing. this may be very difficult to believe and is what we consider the only dogma a person of faith has come to take for truth. All other thoughts in our faith are easy to proof and are particularly explained in the Book of books,which we consider the infallible Word of that One and Only One God Who is One.
The question of how to reconcile suboptimal design with special creation is one that has puzzled many Christian groups as well as the Christadelphian community.
While the existence of suboptimal design is not 'proof' of evolution, for any special creationist who appeals to design in nature as evidence of special creation, the existence in nature of suboptimal design that directly leads to morbidity and mortality is a problem that is too often ignored.
Too many people want to take the Bible as an minute per minute or literal day to day account, forgetting that one day in the eyes of God is like a thousand years in the eyes of man. And they are also forgetting that perhaps God does not see any reason to have a detailed scientific account of all things when the uneducated also has to understand His Word.
God has given man, created in His image the possibility to see, hear, speak and think, using their brains to make up their minds and to come to conclusions. God has given in nature proof for all things. In it we should come to see how and what and should come to understanding.
In this contemporary world there are still too many Christians who do not want to see what God provided in nature and which treasures He left behind to be discovered by man in time.
The challenge of how to explain the scientific evidence for a very old earth, filled with fossil remains of countless generations of extinct species which are increasingly complex, has been faced by Christadelphians since the earliest days of our community.
Brother Roberts and other early expositors explained this evidence as the product of numerous creations being made and destroyed by God in succession. [1] [2] [3] Later Christadelphian commentators found this solution unsatisfying. Brother Walker objected to it on scientific grounds, pointing out that there was no break in the fossil record providing evidence for the destruction of a previous creation, and that the fossils showed earlier extinct animals had a close physical relationship to modern species which were still alive, indicating a continuity of life rather than a break.[4]
However, a far more challenging problem with which Christadelphian commentators have wrestled, is the issue of sub-optimal features within the creation. Our community has long recognized the imperfections of the human eye, acknowledging it has a blind spot.[5]
We should learn from geology, geographic changes, and take not of the many findings of people who studied several sciences. We not always should accept that they are totally right. Look at some findings, which a few years ago where considered the discovery of the time and the truth which are now considered as outdated and no longer valable and incorrect.
We should not have to expect from the Bible to give a detailed account, but should see the general line. This over the whole line of the canonical Bible Books has been proven to be happened like it is told and should be enough information to be provided for all people to come to understanding the Works of God.
The Book of the Beginnings teaches us much; it speaks of a time and creation on this earth when animal life was not like it is now and people did not look like we recognise other human beings today. Appearance was totally different.
We should not expect the Bible giving us all details of the creatures, how they looked like or how they behaved. It does not want to specify that humans and apes have are missing an enzyme that would allow them to make their own vitamin C, like other animals do.
To come to faith people do not need to know all sub-optimal features of all living elements.
Many creatures may have features which are sub-optimal, and may let people think this would not be the work of an omnipotent and omniscient Designer. In fact brother Matthew's description of creation was that "the evidence implies problem, failure and imperfect solution".[6]
There are several people who also do want to believe like Brother Matthew who proposed that the angels were responsible for creation, rather than God and suggested that since angels are less powerful than God, and closer to humans, it should be expected that their characters and work would be subject to weaknesses and limitations similar to those of humans. Because of that we can see so many 'faults' in creation.
But we should know better and follow the Biblical account which explains what went wrong with creation. The Bereshith tells us how the first human beings reposted and went against the wishes of their Maker, resulting them willing to go on their own, God allowing them to be their own master, with all consequences, we having to face so many problems.
We do not believe God left the work to unskilled, uninformed, and largely unsupervised agents who were compelled to learn on the job as they muddled through generation after generation of mistakes. We do know that every high person speaks in the plural form, using the pluralis majestatis or Royal we, to have their words being taken seriously and as important.
When looking at creation we should consider that it all happened over a long period of time, many thousands of years. God was the Only One Maker Who established a natural biological process of speciation, which accounts for the variety of creatures in the fossil record and those we see today. That process followed rules established by God in the beginning, and was not blind, random, or accidental. Man revolting against their Maker choose to go their own way and where allowed to go into their own universe. In their own world they could give plants and animals and everything they created a name. they themselves had to cultivate it and work it out how to survive in the world they chose themselves. However, being a natural process without constant guidance from an intelligent being, its results were imperfect. God has always been prepared to work with a less than perfect creation, and it is a Biblical principle that His glory shines with great brightness when His character is reflected by fallible creatures.
The tendency for the evangelical Christian church to source their information outside of mainstream science [7] tends however to blunt the impact of such scientifically informed Christian warnings both against science denialism and basing first principles on demonstrably false views of the natural world. Deconversion anecdotes such as these, culled from a 2002 TalkOrigins post of the month [8] are representative of the one-way traffic towards unbelief that often results when science and faith are pitted against each other.
Young earth creationist organisations remain stubbornly wedded to an a priori commitment to a fundamentalist reading of Genesis. Terry Mortenson, a YEC theologian and historian regards adherence to Biblical literalism as important because he regards it as fundamental to his theological world view:
None of us, including any particular scholar (no matter how respected he is), or even the majority of scholars or Christians, can be the final authority for determining truth. God's Word must be the authority. And it clearly teaches creation in six literal days about six thousand years ago and a global catastrophic Flood at the time of Noah. We must graciously but uncompromisingly contend for the literal historical truth of Genesis 1–11, which is absolutely fundamental to all other doctrines in the Bible. [9]
What Mortenson fails to so convincingly is justify why a Christian must interpret Genesis 1-11 literally or exactly how our salvation depends on recent creation in six days or a literal world-wide flood. Instead he damns respected 19th century Christian scholars such as Torrey, Warfield and Dana as 'compromisers' for being willing to follow the scientific evidence where it led them, even if it contradicted with a particular interpretation of the creation narratives.
This refusal to engage with modern science is particularly acute given that the scientific evidence is overwhelmingly against flood geology and recent creationism, and in fact was recognised by conservative Christians well before Darwin. To be blunt, any Christian doctrine that hinges on a literal world-wide flood that laid down the fossils or recent creation in six days has been falsified, and no amount of appeal to a literal reading of Genesis will change observable reality. [10] Mortenson and his colleagues at Answers in Genesis may pride themselves on not compromising on what they believe to be a fundamental principle, but all they are doing is forcing believers to choose between observable reality and dogma, which as the Barna Group has shown is not a strategy for long-term growth of Christianity. More importantly, it is forcing believers to base fundamental doctrines on a description of the natural world that is demonstrably false.
[1] 'Interested Stranger.—No doubt the earth has gone through changes. Christadelphian. — Have not these changes been in the nature of progress—an advance from a crude to a more perfect state? Interested Stranger.—It has doubtless been so. Christadelphian.—From what sort of a state did this process make its start? Interested Stranger.—That, I think, we cannot ascertain. Christadelphian. — Not in an exact sense perhaps; but are we not justified in saying that if we go far enough back in the record of the earth's physical history, as written in the rocks, we come to a time when the earth was a molten mass, incapable of sustaining life, either vegetable or animal? Interested Stranger.—That is believed by the geologist; and I do not see that any thing can be said against it.', Roberts, 'A Page for the Interested Stranger – No. 2', The Christadelphian (22.255.405), 1885.
[2] 'Geology teaches us much; it speaks of a time and creation on this earth when animal life, if not totally, was nearly unknown, and only the lower order of vegetable life covering its face, and this must have existed many thousands of years; and during the whole of that long period, the earth was undergoing wonderful and necessary changes to fit it for a creation of a higher order, and evidently with the creature man in view. There are evidences to show that when this early period had done its work, it was replaced by a creation of a higher order , when animal and vegetable forms of a far more wonderful structure were brought into existence and most admirably adopted to the atmosphere, climate, and peculiarities of that creation; and this, again, must have lasted for many thousands of years, and in its turn been swept away, and a grander creation built on its ruins. And so on, stage after stage.', Simons, 'Why Man was not at once made Perfect', The Christadelphian (21.238.177), 1884.
[3] 'There can be no reasonable doubt that when the non-fossiliferous rocks were first formed t he heat of the earth's matter was too intense for vegetable and animal life to exist. There can be no reasonable doubt that it was only in a later age that the lower forms of plant and animal life could exist . And there can be no reasonable doubt that the succeeding ages allowed the creation of still higher and more perfect forms, till we reach the age called the "Tertiary," and the "Post-pliocene" period of that age, when we are told remains of man are found for the first time. All of this, I say, I do not doubt. The facts of old mother earth's storehouse are too convincingly inscribed upon her crust to allow me to doubt. At the same time, and amid it all, I have the most implicit faith and unbounded trust in God and His sacred word.', Welch, 'Knowledge.- No., 12 Geology', The Christadelphian (28.329.416), 1891.
[4] 'If we suppose a sudden and absolute break some 6,000 years ago, or before, resulting in the destruction of all life, and that the creation account of Genesis describes a new creation following, we ought to find some evidence of the break, and we cannot well account for the apparently close relationship that obtains between extinct and existing forms. There are forms becoming extinct in our own day from slow and natural causes. May it not have been so in pre-Adamic times? The professors tell us for instance that some of these ancient birds, whose strides we can see for ourselves from their footprints were from four to six feet long, were like gigantic ostriches.', Walker, 'Genesis', The Christadelphian (47.557.501), 1910.
[6] "So to take the human elements, the frustration, the changes of plan and the solution along with God allowing that process to work its way through, and applying it to a creative environment where the evidence implies problem, failure and imperfect solution.", Matthew Wigzell, email on his email list "Watchmen", 17 January, 2013; (brother Matthew has explained this email list was not private, and both he and other members have shared publicly emails by various members of the list.)
[7] Giberson K "Why Evangelicals Are Fooled Into Accepting Pseudoscience" Huffington Post 23rd September 2011
[8] http://www.talkorigins.org/origins/postmonth/nov02.html
[9] Mortensen T "Exposing a Fundamental Compromise" Answers June 3rd 2010
[10] See for example Alan Hayward's "Creation and Evolution – The Facts and Fallacies" (Triangle Books, 1985). Although his arguments against evolution were flawed even in the early 1980s, and are utterly dated now, his critique of flood geology and young earth creationism still hold up today.
Genesis – Story of creation 1 Genesis 1:1-25 Creation of thing
Please do find to read:
Bible and Science (2): In the Beginning
Suboptimal design and special creation
Understanding God's Word through His Creation -2
Here is why an increasing number of Christadelphians are accepting evolution
YECS: don't compare yourself to Galileo. Unlike you, he had evidence on his side.
The "aha" moment – Biblical Scholars Tell Their Stories. Part 5
Andrew Perry shows how not to discuss evolution and creation – 1
Bible and Science: Scientific Facts and Theories
Is it "Wrong" to Believe that the Earth is a Sphere?
Cosmogony
Science, scepticism, doubts and beliefs
Ian Barbour connecting science and religion
Are Science and the Bible Compatible?
Reconciling Science and Religion
Science and God's existence
Challenging claim 2 Inspired by God 1 Simple words
Interpretation of archaeological data
Science, 2013 word of the year, and Scepticism
The Immeasurable Grace bestowed on humanity
Sharing thoughts and philosophical writings
Additional related articles:
Discovering or Destroying the "Recipe for Belief in Creationism"?
Do Evolutionists Believe Darwin's Ideas about Evolution?
Deep Time Evolution
6 significant steps in the quest to find the shape of the universe (royaldockside.com)
The latest immersive spectacular at the Peter Harrison Planetarium at Greenwich's Royal Observatory is the exquisitely rendered exploration of the structure and history of the universe.
Narrated by Neil deGrasse Tyson, Dark Universe moves from Edwin Hubble's discovery of an expanding universe to the enigma of dark matter and dark energy.
In between, the design team of astrophysicists and visualisation experts, commissioned by the American Museum of Natural History, take the viewer through time and space in a series of sweeping journeys.
After the Fact (briankoberlein.com)
One of the common accusations made about cosmology is that it is just a kludge model to explain away all the strange things we see in the universe. Galactic redshift? Invent the big bang. Galaxies don't move the right way? Invent dark matter and dark energy. Tweak any model enough and you can make it fit data. Part of the reason for this is the way scientific discovery is represented. The lone genius has a revolutionary idea that clears away all the stuffy old models. But that's not how science gets done. Scientific models are often proposed to explain strange data, but the real test is whether the predictions they make hold up under scrutiny. Take, for example, the story of the cosmic microwave background.
The CMB was actually discovered 25 years before Penzias/Wilson "stumbled" across it… In a 1940 paper, Canadian astronomer Andrew McKellar (1910-1960) published "excellent coincidences obtained between the wave lengths of three of the unidentified, sharp, interstellar lines and lines arising from the lowest states of the CH, NaH, and CN molecules" (from spectral analysis). Based on data obtained, McKellar stated that "the maximum 'effective' temperature of interstellar space would be 2.7K" — no reference to "ghost radiation" from the "birth of the Universe"… McKellar's findings have apparently been largely forgotten.
Could it be that the CMB has been misinterpreted? Could it simply be thermalized starlight, the "temperature of space"?
NASA Has Revisited the Pillars of Creation and It's Stunning (nerdist.com)
In 1995, after one servicing mission to repair a warped mirror, Hubble took the iconic image of the so-called "Pillars of Creation." It revealed in unprecedented detail three giant columns of cold gas bathed in hot ultraviolet light in the Eagle Nebula. It's an evocative image. Inside those pillars of gas are the building blocks of solar systems like our own.
"Dark Universe" Opens January 16 in the Hansen Dome Theatre (clarkplanetarium.org)
Dark Universe starts 100 million light years away from Earth. After flying to our own Milky Way Galaxy, visualized using the latest scientific data, and to our own planet, viewers arrive at California's Mount Wilson Observatory, where Edwin Hubble's discovery that the universe is expanding gave the first hint of the Big Bang. That initial discovery, and ever more sensitive instruments on the ground and in space, led to other breakthroughs that give astronomers an increasingly detailed and precise picture of how our universe formed and evolved.
But these revelations have also uncovered intriguing new mysteries. What is the mysterious Dark Energy accelerating cosmic expansion? What is the invisible Dark Matter underlying galaxies that, together with dark energy, account for at least 95 percent of the universe? What lies beyond our cosmic horizon?
In stunningly detailed scenes based on authentic scientific data, including a NASA probe's breathtaking plunge into Jupiter's atmosphere and novel visualizations of unobservable dark matter, Dark Universe explores this new age of cosmic discovery and reveals the myst
On Lorser Feitelson's Life Begins (greg.org)
:Life Begins is oil and collage on a shaped masonite panel around two feet square. The painted elements are the blue space, which often gets called a sky, and a half peach and pit on a small plate. The collage elements are two black&white photographs, or close to it, of a doctor holding a newborn baby, cropped to preserve the caption, which gives the work its title; and an astronomical feature.
Transmitting Live from Mount Wilson: How KCET's Signal Comes to You (kcet.org)
Television, by its own design, seems like magic — you turn on a box (or, nowadays, a panel), and images and sound magically appear out of nowhere. Of course, how those images and sounds find their way to you isn't as magical as the experience of enjoying the content that's being broadcast, but we all know that television signals reach our sets via antenna, cable, or satellite dish.
The exact journey of how those signals travel from the television station to your set is something we usually take for granted, or fail to think about at all, yet it has been a fundamental concern to the people who perform the day-to-day task of keeping KCET on the air for the past 50 years.
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Nothing, none, something or more present
For many people the beginning of everything is a very big mystery. Some think there was just emptiness or a void or that there was darkness and only Chaos. According to Greek mythology, the origin of everything, and the first thing that ever existed was Chaos. It was the primordial void, the source out of which everything was created, including the universe and the gods.
Plural form
For many there were gods who took care of everything coming into being. Also lots of Christians do believe that there were gods who created everything together. The biggest mistake those so called Christians make, is that they believe that there was a God the Father, a god the son and a God the Spirit who together created the universe and everything around. They do not understand that The Creator is, was and always shall be the Most High Being and as such has not only the title of god, like any high being, but also speaks in the plural form with the Pluralis Majestatis or Royal We.
Speakers employing the "royal we" use it to distinguish their private life with their function, or when they are directors, editors, writers, etc., they use it to avoid the personal I or to represent a collective viewpoint. A person in function, like the Creator, the Maker and makers of things, creators of pieces (artists, theatre and film directors, choreographers, etc.), directors (bosses or managers of institutions, universities, schools, factories, industrial or technological sites), leaders of a Courtney or group (kings, queens, presidents, führers, popes, cardinals, priests, pastors, youth-leaders, club-leaders, cheerleaders) will use the plural form when they speak as creator, artist, director or in function.
Gods and Big Bang
16th century manuscript of Theogeny: "the genealogy or birth of the gods" poem by Hesiod (8th – 7th century BC) describing the origins and genealogies of the Greek gods, composed circa 700 B.C. It is written in the Epic dialect of Homeric Greek.
We may find people who believe in mythology where out of the void appeared Erebus, or an other god as the personification of the deep darkness and shadows and brother of Gaea (earth), Tartarus (underworld) a god, third in rank after Chaos and Gaea, preceding Eros (love), and Nyx (night).
There are a various amount of viewpoints on creation, but we want to stick to the one which is told by the Divine Creator Himself.
We, as Christians do believe in an eternal Creator divinity, and as such in a spiritual Supreme Being or eternal Spirit God, which had no beginning, has no birth and no ending, cannot die. That Supreme Being out of the darkness created "Light". You might call it "Big Bang" or the "Supreme Light", that does not matter so much, but important is that you can find yourself in accepting that from nothing something came into being and there came light.
All those who say that this or that was there or that the Big Bang was the first thing, should wonder how and out of what this big bang came into being. For sure they would say that "Before" the Big Bang there was Blackness, nothingness, something, void and should wonder what was the next thing "after" the Big Bang.
Crepuscular rays of light shining through clouds in the sky
In the knowledge that "one day" for God is in the eyes of man a "thousand years" we can think of it that there have been a long period over this coming into being from one element into the next one, because on the second day of God sky or celestial dome was created. It was or is what we do know as the wideness which includes the atmosphere and outer space.
Coming into being
The "void" or "emptiness" and the "atmosphere" came into being because that One and Only One God Who declared to be the "One that is the One Who is the Being" (The "I Am the I am" or "The I Am Who Is"): I am that I am Ehyeh-Asher-Ehyeh אהיה אשר אהיה
3 Syllables Name: Je-Ho-Vah, by which the whole world should know God's Name
He presented Himself with a tetragrammaton, a word with three syllables, which makes it unlikely the two syllable word Yahweh or Jahweh would be His preferred name. He said: "אני יהוה ani Ye-ho-vah." This is the famous tetragrammaton, or name of three syllables and four letters, which we write Jehovah Yehovah, Yehveh, Yeveh, Jhuh, Javah, etc. The letters are Y H U H or YHWH. The religious Jews never pronounce it, and the true pronunciation is utterly unknown, but when you ask a Jew how they would pronounce it or speak yourself Hebrew you will find out that Jehovah is the right rendering of God's Name of which God Himself says "That is my name – A name peculiar to myself."
אני יהוה הוא שׁמי וכבודי לאחר לא־אתן ותהלתי לפסילים׃
"I am Jehovah, that is my name; and my glory will I not give to another, neither my praise unto graven images." (Isaiah 42:8 ASV)
7 ስለዚህ የዕውሮችን ዐይን ታበራለህ፤ በጨለማው ጒድጓድ እስር ቤት ውስጥ ያሉትን እስረኞችን ታወጣለህ።
All people in the world should come to know the Name of God. He does find it important that His creatures should know Him by His Name and know that He only is the Most High ever. Probably shall find no other people called the same because God the Divine Creator said He is the only One with that Name, which may not be taken in vain.
'That men may know that thou, whose name alone is JEHOVAH, Art the Most High over all the earth." (Psalm 83:18 Lange)
Psa 83:17 (83:18) יבשׁו ויבהלו עדי־עד ויחפרו ויאבדו׃
Exo 20:7 לא תשׂא את־שׁם־יהוה אלהיך לשׁוא כי לא ינקה יהוה את אשׁר־ישׂא את־שׁמו לשׁוא׃
"Thou shalt not take the name of Jehovah thy God {1} in vain; for Jehovah will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name {1} in vain. {1) Or [for vanity] (or [falsehood])}" (Exodus 20:7 ASV)
Later He reminded Moses of His great name and that He is the covenant-making and covenant-keeping God, who will absolutely fulfil His promises (Exodus 6:2-5). The name denotes not Who is the eternal existence and that unchangeable truth and omnipotent Power which give fulfilment to His promises. It were as though He said, "I am Jehovah, for I am now to do what I have declared to be My purpose." Compare, for further illustration of this name, Exodus 7:5 and Ezekiel 28:22.
Exo 6:2 וידבר אלהים אל־משׁה ויאמר אליו אני יהוה׃
Exo 6:3 וארא אל־אברהם אל־יצחק ואל־יעקב באל שׁדי ושׁמי יהוה לא נודעתי להם׃
"2 And God spake unto Moses, and said unto him, I am Jehovah: 3 and I appeared unto Abraham, unto Isaac, and unto Jacob, as {1} God Almighty; but {2} by my name Jehovah I was not {3} known to them. {1) Heb [El Shaddai] 2) Or [as to] 3) Or [made known]}" (Exodus 6:2-3 ASV)
Exo 7:5 וידעו מצרים כי־אני יהוה בנטתי את־ידי על־מצרים והוצאתי את־בני־ישׂראל מתוכם׃
"And the Egyptians shall know that I am Jehovah, when I stretch forth my hand upon Egypt, and bring out the children of Israel from among them." (Exodus 7:5 ASV)
Eze 28:22 ואמרת כה אמר אדני יהוה הנני עליך צידון ונכבדתי בתוכך וידעו כי־אני יהוה בעשׂותי בה שׁפטים ונקדשׁתי
"and say, Thus saith the Lord Jehovah: Behold, I am against thee, O Sidon; and I will be glorified in the midst of thee; and they shall know that I am Jehovah, when I shall have executed judgments in her, and shall be sanctified in her." (Ezekiel 28:22 ASV)
It was not at the creation that The Divine Creator would let His Divine name be known, but that does not mean it was not important not Him bringing everything to existence.
The world came to know Who had created everything and all people should be fully aware of that.
Jer 32:17 אהה אדני יהוה הנה אתה עשׂית את־השׁמים ואת־הארץ בכחך הגדול ובזרעך הנטויה לא־יפלא ממך כל־דבר׃
"Ah Lord Jehovah! behold, thou hast made the heavens and the earth by thy great power and by thine outstretched arm; there is nothing too {1} hard for thee, {1) Or [wonderful]}" (Jeremiah 32:17 ASV)
Already in the first book of Mozes (the Bereshith, the book of the Beginnings or Genesis) we are told that it where no gods but God alone Who created man in His image and how heaven and earth were created.
Gen 1:27 ויברא אלהים את־האדם בצלמו בצלם אלהים ברא אתו זכר ונקבה ברא אתם׃
"And God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them." (Genesis 1:27 ASV)
Gen 2:4 אלה תולדות השׁמים והארץ בהבראם ביום עשׂות יהוה אלהים ארץ ושׁמים׃
"These are the generations of the heavens and of the earth when they were created, in the day that Jehovah God made earth and heaven." (Genesis 2:4 ASV)
Continues with:
Additional literature:
I am that I am Ehyeh-Asher-Ehyeh אהיה אשר אהיה
Being Religious and Spiritual 1 Immateriality and Spiritual experience
Philosophy hand in hand with spirituality
Jehovah Yahweh Gods Name
God about His name "יהוה"יהוה
YHWH and Love: Four-letter words
Pure Words and Testimonies full of Breath of the Most High
A viewpoint on creation
The World framed by the Word of God
Creation gift of God
Cosmos creator and human destiny
Did the Inspirator exist
Science and the Bible—Do They Really Contradict Each Other?
How do trinitarians equate divine nature
A Call To My Greek Mythology Bloggers – which Greek God is this? (clairecatacouzinos.wordpress.com)
My only guess is that this statue is of the Greek God "Adonis" – Aphrodite's lover, and the god of beauty and desire. Or perhaps, but not likely, the Greek Hero, Hyakinthos – Apollo's lover who died by a discus.
'Olympus' Coming To Syfy Channel: Greek Action Drama Promises Battle Of The Gods [Video] (designntrend.com)
A new series about the life of mortals living among the many gods and monsters of Olympus is on its way to SyFy channel. The 13-episode mythology action drama began filming in August of 2014 in Vancouver. No specific release date has been set so far, but it's slated to air in the spring of 2015.According to the Hollywood Reporter, the synopsis for the series centers on how a handful of brave men and women banished the gods to the realm of the Underworld, otherwise known as the Kingdom of Hades.
Re: Pantheon: (Dis)Grace of the Gods (bay12forums.com)
At the dawn of time, or perhaps, simply a beginning, since there were no sun to determine a "dawn" yet, there were 6 deities.These deities crafted a world over which to reside, and declared themselves to each be rulers of their own regions, that the others would not interfere in the others' places.The three Gods of Domain were Althax, Lord of the Sky, Enthros, Lord of the Sea, and Darus, Lord of the Earth.The three Goddesses of Dominion were Enya, Lady of Creation, Ori, Lady of Destruction, and Juno, Lady of Balance.
Phoenix (mythology) (en.memory-alpha.org)
The Phoenix was a bird from Greek mythology that was known for being reborn as it arose from the flames of its predecessor.
All Mighty God, Trinity, Universe and World, Word of GodAtmosphere of Earth, Beginning of everything, Beginning of life, Beginning of the universe, Beginning of the world, Beginnings, Bereshith, Big Bang, Celestial dome, Chaos, Christians, Creation, Darkness, Divine Creator, Emptiness, Erebus, Eros, Eternal Spirit God, Gaea, Genesis, God the Father, God the son, God the Spirit, God's Name, Gods, Greek mythology, I Am, I am that I am, In God's image, Jehovah, Light, Most High, Most High Maker, Mother Earth, Mystery, Nothingness, Nyx, One day, Origin of everything, Outer space, Pluralis Majestatis, Royal We, Supreme Being, Tartarus, Tetragrammaton, Theogeny, Titles of God, Universe, Yahweh, YHWH

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


text:
Te Waikoropupū Springs Scenic Reserve Bylaws 2011
as at 4 October 2013
(SR 2011/296)
Changes authorised by subpart 2 of Part 2 of the Legislation Act 2012 have been made in this reprint.
These bylaws are administered by the Department of Conservation.
Pursuant to section 106(3) of the Reserves Act 1977, the Minister of Conservation makes the following bylaws.
4 Meaning of formed road
5 Reserve's waters closed to public
7 Litter
8 Fires
9 Camping
10 Hunting and fishing
11 Watercraft
14 Temporary structures
15 Fossicking
16 Portable generators, public address systems, and loud hailers
17 Noise
18 Exceptions
19 Offences
21 Other proceedings for offences
22 Revocation
These bylaws are the Te Waikoropupū Springs Scenic Reserve Bylaws 2011.
These bylaws come into force on the 28th day after the date of their notification in the Gazette.
In these bylaws, unless the context requires another meaning,—
Act means the Reserves Act 1977
camp includes to stay overnight in a vehicle
companion dog means a dog certified by the Top Dog Companion Trust as a companion dog or a dog under training as a companion dog
department means the Department of Conservation
guide dog means a dog certified by the Royal New Zealand Foundation of the Blind as a guide dog or a dog under training as a guide dog
hunt or kill has the meaning given to it by section 2(1) of the Wild Animal Control Act 1977
litter has the meaning given to it by section 2(1) of the Litter Act 1979
official notice means a notice that—
(a) contains information as to conduct in the reserve; and
(b) is publicly displayed; and
(c) is conspicuous
protected New Zealand object has the meaning given to it by section 2(1) of the Protected Objects Act 1975
(a) means Te Waikoropupū Springs Scenic Reserve, which is land that—
(i) is in the Tasman District of the Nelson Land District; and
(ii) is Part Lot 1 DP 6769 (Computer Freehold Register NL7C/567); and
(iii) is Lot 1 DP 11091 (Computer Freehold Register NL7A/516); and
(iv) is Section 1 on SO Plan 13886; and
(v) is Sections 301 and 302 Takaka District on SO Plan 13005; and
(vi) comprises 25.6963 hectares more or less; and
(b) includes any other land that becomes part of the reserve under the Reserves Act 1977; and
(c) excludes any land that ceases to be part of the reserve under the Reserves Act 1977
vehicle has the meaning given to it by section 2(1) of the Land Transport Act 1998, and includes a contrivance that would be a vehicle within that definition if it still had its wheels, tracks, or revolving runners
watercraft means every kind of vessel and includes a hovercraft
waters does not include water in a pipe, tank, or system that is provided for the use of visitors to the reserve
wild animal has the meaning given to it by section 2(1) of the Wild Animal Control Act 1977.
(1) Formed road means a road formed and maintained by the department for the public to use their vehicles on in the reserve, and includes the road's bridges, culverts, and fords.
(2) Formed road does not include an unformed legal road.
(1) The reserve's waters are closed to the public.
(2) A person must not enter the reserve's waters, remain in the reserve's waters, or make contact with the reserve's waters by any means at all.
(1) A person must not throw anything into the reserve's waters.
(2) A person must not wilfully or carelessly in the reserve—
(a) pollute the reserve's land or waters; or
(b) spill oil, petrol, or a similar substance; or
(c) cause oil, petrol, or a similar substance to be spilled.
(1) A person must not bury litter in the reserve.
(2) A person must not leave litter in the reserve.
(3) However, a person may leave litter in the reserve if the person leaves the litter in a bin that is in the reserve and is provided for the kind of litter that the person leaves in it.
(1) A person must not light or attempt to light a fire in the reserve.
(2) However, a person may light a fire in the reserve if—
(a) the person lights it on a portable stove fuelled by gas, oil, vaporised petrol, or a similar substance; and
(b) the stove is in a vehicle.
A person must not camp in the reserve.
(1) A person must not hunt or kill a wild animal in the reserve.
(2) A person must not fish or attempt to fish in the reserve.
(1) A person must not place a watercraft on or in the reserve's waters.
(2) A person must not use a watercraft on or in the reserve's waters.
(1) A person must not take a vehicle into the reserve.
(2) A person must not use a vehicle in the reserve.
(3) However, a person may take a vehicle into the reserve and use a vehicle in the reserve if the person does so on—
(a) a formed road; or
(b) a formed car park accessible by a formed road.
(4) A person taking a vehicle into the reserve or using a vehicle in the reserve must comply with the directions of a departmental employee or an official notice as to taking the vehicle into the reserve or using the vehicle in the reserve. If there are no directions, the person must take the vehicle into the reserve or use the vehicle in the reserve in a safe and considerate manner.
(1) A person must not take an animal into the reserve.
(2) This bylaw does not apply to—
(a) a blind or partly blind person who takes the person's guide dog into the reserve; or
(b) a person who takes the person's companion dog into the reserve; or
(c) a member of the Police, a Customs officer, or a search and rescue person who takes a dog into the reserve on official duty.
A person must not erect a temporary structure in the reserve.
(1) This bylaw applies to a thing in the reserve that is a fossil, stone, mineral, or protected New Zealand object or any similar thing.
(2) A person must not—
(a) fossick for the thing; or
(b) damage part or all of the thing; or
(c) remove part or all of the thing.
(1) A person must not take into the reserve—
(a) a portable generator; or
(b) a public address system; or
(c) a loud hailer.
(2) A person must not use in the reserve—
A person must not cause or produce in the reserve a noise that—
(a) unreasonably annoys or disturbs a person in the reserve; or
(b) is likely to unreasonably annoy or disturb a person in the reserve.
(1) Bylaws 5 and 8 to 17 do not apply in an emergency involving danger to life or property.
(2) The Minister may decide that 1, some, or all of bylaws 5 and 10 to 14 do not apply if the Minister considers it necessary for the bylaw or bylaws not to apply to facilitate the reserve's beneficial and proper administration, control, or management.
A person commits an offence against these bylaws if the person breaches or fails to comply with any of the provisions of the bylaws.
A person who commits an offence against these bylaws is liable, on conviction, to the penalty specified in section 104(c) of the Reserves Act 1977.
Bylaw 20: amended, on 4 October 2013, by regulation 3(2) of the Criminal Procedure (Consequential Amendments) Regulations 2013 (SR 2013/409).
These bylaws do not limit or prevent the taking of proceedings under any Act for an offence committed in the reserve.
The Pupu Springs Scenic Reserve Bylaws 2007 are revoked.
Dated at Wellington this 14th day of July 2011.
Kate Wilkinson,
Minister of Conservation.
Issued under the authority of the Acts and Regulations Publication Act 1989.
This is a reprint of the Te Waikoropupū Springs Scenic Reserve Bylaws 2011 that incorporates all the amendments to those bylaws as at the date of the last amendment to them.
Reprints are presumed to correctly state, as at the date of the reprint, the law enacted by the principal enactment and by any amendments to that enactment. Section 18 of the Legislation Act 2012 provides that this reprint, published in electronic form, will have the status of an official version once issued by the Chief Parliamentary Counsel under section 17(1) of that Act.
Editorial and format changes to reprints are made using the powers under sections 24 to 26 of the Legislation Act 2012. See also http://www.pco.parliament.govt.nz/editorial-conventions/ .
Criminal Procedure (Consequential Amendments) Regulations 2013 (SR 2013/409): regulation 3(2)


Red Velvet photographed in Seoul, South Korea on June 2, 2015.
Like the lazy final days of summer, the Korean music scene slowed down a bit last month as artists prepped for the onslaught of September. While acts like CL, EXO, I.O.I, VIXX, NCT Dream, BlackPink, and Girls' Generation all released new music last month, August was relatively quiet ahead of September, which is traditionally one of the K-pop scene's busiest seasons.
Things went into full swing on Sept. 6 (Sept. 7 in South Korea) when the ladies of Red Velvet and iKON's Bobby released brand-new music to usher in the upcoming rush of releases from some of K-pop's most popular acts.
Following up last year's brassy hit "Dumb Dumb," the doll-esque quintet returned to slay the hearts of fans with their bubblegum technopop single. While a bit more saccharine than their typical sound, "Russian Roulette" was accompanied by a bubbly, athletic-themed music video that offered fun times for all as a murderous ode to The Simpsons' impish duo Itchy and Scratchy and killing your friends for the sake of love. Or just for fun, it's not quite clear.
The single is the title track off of their latest EP, an upbeat "red"-oriented album that followed March's smoother The Velvet. The paired album concepts play up the dichotomy of the group's name; "Red" usually characterizes their more upbeat pop releases while "Velvet" embodies their smoother R&B sound, both of which are characteristic of Red Velvet's increasingly diverse musicality and style.
The same day as Russian Roulette came out, rapper Bobby released the first single from his collaborative MOBB project with WINNER's Song Mino. After gaining fame through television appearances and a variety of collaborations, "Holup!" is Bobby's first solo track since he debuted as a member of iKON last year. The song is a hip-hop banger that livens things up through Bobby's gruff rap style and his bombastic lyrics.
Built to liven up a party, "Holup!" features wailing horns and a pounding, building beat that will have everyone dancing. It's the first song from the MOBB collaboration and will be followed by Song Mino's solo "Body" on Sept. 8, the pair's "Hit Me" and "Full House" the next day. While the pair are from different groups, they're both housed under YG Entertainment. It is the first intergroup project since WINNER debuted in 2014 and iKON joined the scene in 2015.
"Holup!" and "Russian Roulette" went to the top of the U.S. iTunes K-pop chart, battling it out for the top spot upon their releases, but it's unclear whether either song will be able to dominate for long with the overflow of K-pop this September. Along with Red Velvet and MOBB, this week will also see a return from Brown Eyed Girls' Gain with her End Again EP on Sept. 9. After making waves last year with her religiously colored Hawwah, all eyes are on the controversial soloist to see what she does next.
The following week will see new music from the charismatic boy band 2PM as they drop their sixth album, Gentlemen's Game, on Sept. 13 following last year's No. 5. And retro-pop with an orchestral twist will likely come into play on Sept. 19 when INFINITE releases their first Korean album of 2016, their sixth EP INFINITE Only.
The rest of the month will be filled with comebacks from high profile K-pop boy bands like SHINee, GOT7, BTOB, B1A4, must-watch rookies KNK, and '90s icons Sechs Kies. And, although they haven't announced any dates, BTS has been teasing fans with cinematic videos for their Wings project.
And while the month is pretty testosterone-dominated, girl groups like T-ara, who was declared the winners of Billboard's Fan Army Face-Off earlier this month, sweet APink, DIA (who are teasing fans with a Harry Potter-inspired concept), and quirky Crayon Pop all announced upcoming returns. Soloists Ailee and Secret member Song Jieun also reportedly have plans for new music over the next few weeks, but with K-pop's fast-paced release calendar it's likely that September will hold a few surprises. Here's to a busy month!


text:
Five Ways to Make Your World Feel Lived In
May 28th, 2016 by Oren Ashkenazi
You probably don't have time to give them all a backstory.
Creating a three-dimensional setting is no easy feat, especially since you have to do it while focusing on a relatively small group of characters. Recently, Brian Byars had a question for us along these very lines.
"I was wondering if you have ever covered the idea of population in fiction. There are some stories you read where it feels as if there are only a dozen or so people in the whole world. Other stories, you get the sense of a full population in the world. What are the tricks of the trade that give a story a sense of a fully populated world?"
Brian's question got me thinking about how a setting can feel like a complete world or merely cardboard displays put up on either side of the main character. Even a sprawling series like A Song of Ice and Fire can't focus on more than a tiny fraction of the people within its setting, so how are we to give readers the impression that our stories are filled with real people and not NPC mannequins? You can't just bombard the reader with an endless list of characters* because they'll blur together and become meaningless. Fortunately, I have a few thoughts on the matter.
1. Establish Characters From All Walks of Life
Flags at the United Nations Headquarters by Damzow used under CC BY-SA 3.0
When telling a story of adventure and daring, it's easy to focus on a homogenous group of characters. Resist this temptation. Making all your characters hard-bitten soldiers or wealthy nobles might save you time on writing backstories, but it will make your setting feel flat. If all your characters are from the same group, then readers get the impression that the world is populated entirely by that group.
Instead, vary the backgrounds of your major and minor characters whenever possible. This works in both globe-trotting epics and smaller-scale stories that take place within a single town. Human groups are fractal, you see. Whenever you zoom in on one, you find it's made up of many smaller groups.
For stories with a large setting, characters may hail from different cities, different nations, or even different continents. For stories with a smaller setting, the characters will be from different neighborhoods or even different blocks within the same neighborhoods. No matter the setting's scale, characters can come from different economic groups as well.
The Temeraire books do this really well, especially among the dragons. The titular Temeraire is a Chinese dragon raised in Britain. Among his companions are dragons from Turkey, the Incan Empire, and Australia. The human characters are also fairly diverse, hailing from every point of the compass.
This diversity not only reminds readers that China, Turkey, and so on exist but also gives them the feeling of a connected world. After all, if dragons and humans exist in the dozen or so places the characters are from, it stands to reason they must exist elsewhere as well.
2. Use Amenities to Indicate People
Appropriately sized doughnut shops are the most important amenity there is.
Creating a diverse cast is a good first step, but it won't fix everything. You can only have so many characters, and the larger groups they represent can get rather abstract. More direct description of the people around your characters will help, but crowds described in a blank space won't seem very real. To address this, consider what people build in the places they live.
Most of the time, people build things because they'll be used, and the types of amenities in a place can tell you a lot about who lives there. In the film Zootopia, the main city is clearly designed for animals of all kinds to live together. This starts with the different climate zones, so animals from far ranging habitats can live close together comfortably. From there, we see different systems of mass transit so that smaller animals can get to work without being crushed and stores with second-story service counters for catering to the very tallest citizens.
Zootopia's complex amenity systems create the feeling of thriving population that comes in all shapes and sizes. The film doesn't spend much time on it, and a prose story doesn't have to either. Readers will quickly understand the idea and be comfortable in the knowledge that this world is well populated by all sorts of people.
This technique is easy to adapt for your own uses. If you're describing a town that sees a lot of travelers, mention the many inns that have sprung up to house the visitors. If your country is home to a fantasy species that's much larger than humans, the roads are likely to be wider and the doorways taller, unless that species is the target of deliberate discrimination. Once you've settled on the amenities available in your setting, any people you describe will feel more real in the reader's mind.
3. Describe Effects From Events Outside the Characters' Control
Sisko thought this would be a good day, until he heard news from the front.
We want our protagonists to be the main drivers of a story, to have agency in their own lives. That's good to a point, but taken too far it creates the feeling that everyone else in the setting is entirely passive. They seem to just sit on their hands, waiting for the main character to arrive so they can finally do something.
That's not a feeling you want for your story, but it's a natural side effect of using a single point of view (POV). We don't want important events to happen where the reader can't see them, so that means they have to occur when the POV character is present. One solution is to use multiple POVs, but that has limits. Instead of everything needing to happen in the presence of one character, important events will be split among a handful, which isn't much better. Besides, many stories benefit from the intimacy of a single POV, and we shouldn't have to throw that away.
Instead, your characters can be affected by events they neither witness nor have any control over. This happens all the time in real life. I played no part in the 2008 housing crash, but it still wrecked my chances of getting a job after graduation. Readers instinctively know what it feels like to be blindsided by a problem they weren't responsible for, and characters who suffer the same indignities are instantly more relatable.
Your story's climax shouldn't hinge on events the protagonist has no voice in; that would be unsatisfying to the extreme, but the rising action is a perfect place for lack of control to surface. If your characters are fighting a war, they might think things are going well, only to find out their side has suffered a crushing loss elsewhere on the front. Characters who engaged in delicate court intrigue might have all their plans upset when the Empress decides on a whim to relocate the capital.
Deep Space Nine pulls off this trick with flying colors. In season six, the characters have retaken their station and pushed the Dominion-Cardassian alliance back into its own space. Things seem to be going well until the Dominion launches a surprise attack and conquers Betazed. This staggering blow, which happens completely off screen, forces the characters to secure new allies by any means necessary. It reminds viewers that while the main characters are important, they are not the only ones fighting.
4. Illustrate Different Access to Resources
You can guess who has and who does not in this picture.
Amenities and off-screen events are all well and good, but if you don't want your world to feel like it's inhabited by a faceless mass of people, you have to illustrate the differences between groups. We're all human, even orcs and elves, but the culture we're raised in has a major effect on who we are. The same is true of characters. Of course, showing all the depth of a culture is challenging, but there's an easy shorthand: focus on who has what resources.
Showing that people don't all have access to the same things will make your world more lifelike, as it more closely resembles the one readers live in. The most obvious difference in resource access happens on the scale of rich and poor. In a steampunk story, wealthy characters can afford to take airship taxis anywhere they want to go and enjoy all the benefits of indoor plumbing. Their clothes will be fancy and covered in lace. A poor person in that same society will need to walk everywhere, use an outhouse, and wear threadbare shirts.
Differences like these can occur across geographic and political lines. A dwarf growing up in the tunnels of an iron mine might consider swords and armor a common commodity. Meanwhile, across the mountains, an elf harvests so many delicious fruits that they seem commonplace. When this dwarf and elf meet, both are astounded by the other's possessions. The elf is used to a life where iron is a rare treasure, and the dwarf has never tasted such fantastic produce.
Focusing on what resources a group has access to allows you to illustrate differences without falling into the trap of cultural stereotyping. It reinforces in the readers' minds that your world has depth and complexity rather than engaging in the all-too-common tropes of monoculture or the planet of hats.
5. Create Culture Clashes
Here we see two cultures both assuming the other culture enjoys arrows to the face.
So you've either done the work to create your own cultures from scratch or thoroughly researched existing ones. That's good, but how do you make them stick in the readers' minds? Simple, use them to create conflict!
Cultural differences are ripe for misunderstandings that can exacerbate an already fraught situation. For example, we shall return to the Temeraire books, because this is something they do particularly well. When the characters first travel from Britain to China, they have a devil of a time* understanding the complex forms of etiquette around the Imperial court. While the Chinese try to give instruction, it sometimes doesn't occur to them that the British don't know what to do.
On the flip side, the British obsession with naval power leads to several incidents as well. The characters react with extreme hostility to any threat towards their ships, regardless of the circumstances. This leads the representatives of other countries, China included, to think the British unreasonable and violent.* Needless to say, in a book series that's largely about dragon diplomacy, this causes a lot of problems.
The upshot of all this culture clashing is that it makes your world come alive. No one will see your world as monolithic or static when the different factions within it are feeding the plot. Your story need not be about globe-trotting dragon diplomats to use culture clashing. Even characters from the same country or city may have strong cultural differences in the right circumstances. A by-the-book military officer will certainly struggle if put into a story where they need to work alongside a cutthroat mob family.
The one drawback is that if you're not careful, culture clash stories can end up being about how one group is superior to the other, which is particularly problematic in real-world settings. The author of the Temeraire books avoids this by presenting two-sided conflicts and researching the subject matter well, but it's something to be aware of.
Making a complete world with living people in it is a challenge, even in the extended space of a novel. Fortunately, you don't need to describe every single aspect of your setting to make it feel lived in. You only have to provide the tools for readers to fill everything else in themselves. So long as you create the impression of a dynamic world, your audience won't ever feel like your setting is just a dozen people following the protagonists around and putting on different costumes.
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This isn't Wheel of Time, after all.
As they would put it.
And, to be fair, the British of the 1800s were really violent.
Not really related to this post, sorry (feel free to delete it) but I don't see an "About Us" page. I nominated you guys for a Leibster Award, which is not a formal award – being nominated means you won! More details here https://unbookreport.wordpress.com/2016/05/27/the-un-book-report-got-a-liebster-award-nomination-it-sounds-like-fun/ . Feel free to disqualify yourselves if you think you're not a small blog anymore (there is no one to notify, this is mostly for fun) (also I apologize for the rambling).
I love your blog though, which is why I chose you guys. I hope you enjoy. Bye.
Reply to Kim
Hey Kim, we're really glad you're enjoying the blog! I don't know if we'd qualify as a "small" blog for the standards of the Leibster Award or not, but we'll take it regardless. I can't speak for anyone else at Mythcreants, but I'd be happy to answer your questions.
1. What's your favorite author (all-time or current) and what is it about them you love so much?
Terry Pratchett. His combination of excellent characters, clever wit, and razor sharp social critique kept me coming back every time.
2. Now what's your favorite book/series and what's the best thing about it?
Discworld, if it wasn't obvious. The best thing about it is everything, but to be more specific, I love how it always questions. Nothing is sacred, not even previous books.
3. What's your favorite podcast and why?
Radiolab. Their in-depth reporting is informative and reminds us that the truth defies simplicity.
4. What's the scariest unexpected scary scene you've ever read/watched/listened to?
I really did not expect the film Moon to be as terrifying as it is.
5. Of the movie adaptations you've seen, what do you think was the best casting (whole show/movie or single character)?
I firmly believe that the Lord of the Wrings films remains among the best book to movie adaptations ever made, and the casting reflects that.
6. What was the latest, best piece of media (including books) that you consumed…or were consumed by?
I picked up His Majesty's Dragon expecting to only read a few chapters, and suddenly I'd read all eight novels of the series.
7. I'm drawn to stories about clever young women who forge their own paths—what are your favorite kind of stories or characters?
The Biologist from The Southern Reach isn't super young, but she's an amazing character who definitely solves her own problems. In so much as her problems are solvable.
Cordelia Naismith from Shards of Honor is a scientist and space captain who has to negotiate a delicate situation of being caught behind enemy lines at the start of a war. I was sad she isn't featured much in the later books of that series.
Yeine Darr, from the Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, is a wonderful character thrust into a situation she doesn't understand, making deals with fallen gods and the like.
8. What's the silliest thing you've recently done?
Started researching the collapse of stars for a story, ended up reading about the Meiji Constitution.
9. When was the last time you just curled up and read a good book/watched a good movie?
Does going to the theater to see Zootopia count? That movie is amazing.
10. What was a book/movie/show/podcast that you were surprised you liked?
Sawbones: a podcast about hilarious medical history. It sounded a little hokey at first, but it's very informative and funny.
cerabobble
Oren, I have no idea if you can edit your comment, but it should be "Lord of the Rings" (not "Lord of the Wrings") in your answer to #5.
(as for why I'm replying to a 2-year-old comment, the article was featured on the top bar)
Reply to cerabobble


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By the Instrument Flight Rules Aircraft weight limited to 3500 Kg
Maximum Airspeed of 180 Knots
I must have a second, independently powered, VHF radio,
The Tribunal felt that my experience was an important consideration in reaching its conclusion. The decision is important in many respects. Firstly, the Tribunal put to rest once and for all the notion that the colours of navigation lights on aircraft are of any consequence. Pilots do not use them in the way claimed by the Department and the colour defective pilot is not disadvantaged by not being able to distinguish them. The bright strobes and anti-collision beacon provide all the cues necessary for collision avoidance long before the navigation lights come into view.
The use of coloured lights around aerodromes, similarly, was seen to be of little consequence when considering the degree of handicap suffered by the colour defective pilot. I am most grateful to Dr R McKelvey, who Ioaned me his slides of night time aerodrome environments, and which were of great value as evidence in the Tribunal.
The Tribunal found that an experienced pilot would not be at any disadvantage in interpreting the "too Iow" signal on the T-Vasis. The Tribunal did, however, express concern for the ability of the colour defective pilot in using the new EFIS type instrumentation and the speed with which a colour defective might recognize the red obstruction lights, particularly the Iow intensity, non-flashing type of obstruction light. It was with these two concerns in mind that the Tribunal indicated the need to restrict me to the less sophisticated, lower speed type aircraft tor night flying. The issue of whether a colour defective would in fact be slower or less reliable in interpreting EFIS type displays was not, however, fully explored in this hearing. The fuller examination of the experiment of Professor Barry Cole, in which he found that colour defective NON PILOTS were slower and made more errors will have to be done at some future hearing, and for that we are already well equipped.
As for obstruction lights, it is open to the Department to move away from the use of steady red lights to flashing red, or better still, flashing white lights for this purpose. That would remove all potential barriers to completely abandoning the colour perception standard.
The result of my case will no doubt be of immediate benefit to some deutans (green deficient) who have an instrument rating and considerable experience. They may want to follow suit and apply for a similar dispensation. There are others, however, who will not benefit unless there is a change in the Department's philosophy, and it is to this end that I now want to direct my energies.
As stated by Dr Watkins in a letter to AOPA earlier this year, the technical changes required for a complete removal of the colour vision standard are not extensive. Put very simply, it would involve the substituting of white lights where red is currently used, thereby removing any difficulty the Protan (red deficient) group may have in seeing red lights. I have no doubt in my mind that colour defectives of all types would be able to use EFIS type instruments as competently as any colour normal and I will be urging the Department to take another Iook at this particular concern of theirs.
It is an indisputable fact that colour defective pilots are already using the airways both by day and by night.
They include the classes currently permitted by the Department to fly at night and the pilots who fly international jet aircraft into this country from other countries that have far less stringent colour vision requirements (e.g. the United States, New Guinea, New Zealand and more). Some severely colour defective pilots are using the system NOW, as it stands. It is imperative that to make the system completely safe for all, the system should be changed, and not the pilots. This will be not only for the colour defective pilots of today, but for the generations to come.
I believe the Department will eventually see the logic of this approach, but they will see it more readily if colour defective pilots unite and present a coordinated appeal. To that end I urge ALL colour defective pilots (I estimate. there must be some two thousand of us) to contact me and register their interest. I need to have some basic details such as names, addresses, phone numbers, birthdates, licence level, ratings, experience in hours, and if known, the type of colour vision abnormality of each one. Once I have your name on my database, I will keep each one informed of any progress and developments.
Finally, I would like to thank the many who have offered moral and financial support to me in coming this far. That includes particularly AOPA, the Australian Federation of Airline Pilots, Dr Robert McKelvey, Dr Norm Roth, Surgeon Commander Michael Flynn RAN, Capt Ray Vullermin, Capt Max Langshaw, Capt Danny Murphy, Capt Allan Mellor, ATC Officer D Charles Stuart (who all provided invaluable evidence at the Tribunal). I believe I had the finest possible legal team in Mr Laurie Gruzman QC, Mr Kevin Bell, and Mr Lawrence Maher (of Howie and Maher). Their efforts went far beyond the call of duty and are particularly appreciated. Finally, there are the many who contributed funds or offered to appear as witnesses, too many to list. In particular though, I thank Ben Buckley of "ALHARG" who donated $1,000 to the cause.


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Learning from COVID-19 to strengthen food and nutrition security in the Indo-Pacific
By Robyn Alders, Steve Crimp, Lisa Robins, Federico Davila and Michael Bourke
Life for 'Jane' as a local fish trader in Papua New Guinea has become more precarious since the COVID-19 state of emergency. "Day in and day out we have worked hard to keep going and to survive during this COVID-19 period," she said of her situation and that of other women who trade fish from the Sepik River.
A growing body of research demonstrates that women like Jane, together with girls and other vulnerable groups, have been hardest hit by the pandemic. Put plainly, she said: "No money means no food."
The shock of the pandemic has adversely impacted the lives and livelihoods of smallholders like Jane across the developing world. The Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research (ACIAR) funded a team of 30 researchers led by The Australian National University and the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation to conduct an assessment of food and nutrition security over the first six months of the COVID-19 crisis. The resulting report, COVID-19 and food systems in the Indo-Pacific: An assessment of vulnerabilities, impacts and opportunities for action was published online last week.
The research focuses on five geographies – Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, seven Pacific Island Countries, The Philippines and Timor-Leste – and identifies cross-cutting themes of broader relevance to the Indo-Pacific region. Each assessment applied the same analytical framework, while recognising the existence and operation of very different agrifood systems. The work highlights many opportunities for governments, communities and private sector organisations throughout food value chains to help 'build back better' to achieve more effective, resilient and sustainable food systems.
All five geographies were found to experience these ten pre-existing vulnerabilities, which served to exacerbate the effects of the pandemic:
Dependence on food imports
Exposure and sensitivity to climate change and extreme weather events
Pre-existing and persistent nutritional challenges (e.g. micronutrient deficiencies, stunting in children, overweight and obesity)
Growing informal labour and economic marginalisation
Pre-existing and persistent gender inequity
Baseline data gaps for: agriculture, fisheries, ecosystem integrity, gender, health, nutrition
Patchy biosecurity, animal and plant health services
Fragmented value chains and food systems governance
Rapid population growth, inequity between generations and between rural and urban populations
Poorly adapted risk communication.
The COVID-19 crisis has placed all levels of government across all sectors under enormous pressure as they grapple with the multitude of issues affecting public health, their economies and societies. Collectively, the assessments revealed significant loss of employment and incomes, disrupted value chains due to both local and international restrictions on logistics, and resultant increases in food prices and growing food and employment insecurity.
More generally, food producers are concerned about the limited availability and/or access to agricultural supplies, particularly with respect to the upcoming growing seasons. These input constraints are likely to result in further reductions in food production, extending food insecurity in the region. Declining food demand and access, and increased gender-based discrimination, were also identified as concerning impacts in most but not all geographies studied.
The potential for food systems to recover varies within and between countries. For some of the case studies, social protection has played an important role in the pathway to recovery. While the ability of food systems to anticipate, absorb and recover from the COVID-19 shock suggests that regional food systems are far from resilient, there are also indications of regional economic communities collectively envisioning and moving towards a transformation of their food systems.
Six factors of significance to recovery and resilience were identified in all or most geographies studied:
Availability of imported staple foods
Variable functionality of food system governance
Heightened recognition of the importance of food systems
Significant scope for social protection to build resilience
Local value chains contributing to food and nutrition security
Evidence of local food system agility.
The review proposes investment options at three timescales for research and development to strengthen food systems in each of the focal geographies to address the immediate concerns around recovery and to embed the principles associated with "building back better". Recognition of the interconnectedness of the vulnerabilities identified and the compounding effects these have had on food production and security, reiterates the importance of not focusing on only one crisis at a time to avoid inadvertently exacerbating other crises, such as the ongoing climate risk.
The world has changed in 2020 and agriculture and food systems must change with it, especially for people like Jane, who reminds us: "There are a quite a lot of us in this situation. Not just me."
This post is part of the #COVID-19 and international development series.
About the author/s
Robyn Alders
Dr Robyn Alders is an Honorary Professor at the Development Policy Centre. She is also a Senior Consulting Fellow at the Centre on Global Health Security at Chatham House and Chair of the Kyeema Foundation.
Steve Crimp
Dr Steven Crimp is a climate applications scientist with the Climate Change Institute at the Australian National University.
Lisa Robins
Dr Lisa Robins has almost 30 years experience working in natural resource management. She has been an affiliate with the Australian National University's Fenner School of Environment and Society since 2009, and Principal of Robins Consulting since 1998.
Federico Davila
Federico Davila is a Research Principal (Food Systems) at the Institute for Sustainable Futures, University of Technology Sydney.
Michael Bourke
R.M (Mike) Bourke is an Honorary Associate Professor in the College of Asia and the Pacific at the Australian National University.
Link: https://devpolicy.org/learning-from-the-covid-19-crisis-to-strengthen-future-food-and-nutrition-security-in-the-indo-pacific-20201026/
Date downloaded: January 22, 2021


Housing and Construction Minister Sajith Premadasa has called for immediate re-imposition of the capital punishment though Sri Lanka has assured the UN and EU that the death penalty will not be carried out.
Hambantota District MP Premadasa has urged the government to hang those who had been found guilty of narcotic related offences.
Premadasa said capital punishment was needed as a deterrent to tackle the growing drug menace. The UNP Deputy Leader was addressing a gathering after handing over a passenger bus worth Rs 2.1 mn to Debarawewa National School last week.
Sri Lanka suspended death penalty in mid 70s.
Referring to a spate of high profile detection of heroin as well as an attack on the sleuths of the Police Narcotics Bureau (PNB) at Piliyandala in the recent past, Minister Premadasa assured that the yahapalana government would never protect heroin dealers. The Janadhipathi Mandiraya and Temple Trees wouldn't intervene on behalf of heroin dealers, Minister Premadasa said, adding that law enforcement authorities had been given instructions to deal with the problem firmly.
Minister Premadasa said that he felt the re-implementation of the death penalty was required to save children from the heroin menace.
Minister Premasdasa said Sri Lanka could follow the Singaporean and Indonesian example in dealing with heroin convicts.
However, President of the Bar Association of Sri Lanka (BASL) U. R. de Silva, PC, yesterday told The Island that lucrative heroin trade couldn't be tackled by the implementation of the death penalty. Calling for cohesive law enforcement and judicial efforts to tackle the import and distribution network, de Silva said that they would have to take various agreements now in place, an obvious reference to Sri Lanka's international commitments.
The lawyer emphasized the pivotal importance of improving and enhancing investigation procedures. Acknowledging that there had been shortcomings on the part of law enforcement authorities, the recently elected BASL chief said that an efficient system should be put in place to rehabilitate those who had been arrested for heroin offences first time.
Foreign Minister Mangala Samaraweera last September reassured the Geneva-based United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) that death penalty wouldn't be implemented.


Up until last year, I couldn't understand the allure of audio books. I somehow purchased an Audible subscription and tried sample after sample but nothing hooked me. I tried classics (too boring) and then non-fiction (it was hard to get into the story). My favorite podcast had recently released a novel, The Welcome To Night Vale Novel, so I purchased it, knowing the narrator and world well. To my surprise, it was so similar to the best parts of the podcast, it was easy to slip into without even trying.
After that ecstatic experience, I was back at square one! In a calculated effort to find my next pick, I examined what made my audio book of my podcast novel so perfect.
The narrator of my audio book was already familiar to me and I loved his voice. So my next audio book had to have a narrator with a beautiful voice.
The allure of the Welcome to Night Vale novel that the world was already built for me after listening to so many episodes. The ease of a fictional world can be hard to create, so maybe starting with a realistic and modern fictional world would be easy to slip into.
Having those two starting points wasn't much, but it encouraged me to check out the Audible Channels for some free, streaming audiobooks for that might fit the criteria. I saw two titles on the Editor's Picks that caught my eye: H is for Hawk and Everything I Never Told You. The description of Everything I Never Told You seemed to fit the profile so I decided to stick it out to at least the first hour. Everything I Never Told You is a fictional account of a family in 1970's Ohio dealing with the death of the oldest daughter.
Luckily for me, the story opens so beautifully, it like was like slipping into a warm embrace. In fact, I loved the audiobook so much, I had to get a physical copy so I could go over some passages and really savor the beautifully written sentences.
How did you make your way into audiobooks?


GPS Empowered includes three prevention services offered to our school districts; Geauga Teen Pregnancy Prevention (TPP), Youth Led Prevention (YLP), and Digital World.
Geauga Teen Pregnancy Prevention (TPP) is an integrated positive youth development program that teaches skills youth need for healthy relationships and positive decision making. Classroom programs take place in grades 5-10, in addition to parent education programs, teen parent services, and school support initiatives.
Youth Led Prevention (YLP) is an evidence based leadership program for middle and high school students that provides students the opportunity to affect change in their schools and communities on issues they see as important. The ultimate goals being to both promote healthy lifestyles, and empower youth to be active citizens.
Digital World is the most recent addition to prevention services. This program focuses on the potential impact of 24/7 exposure to social media, the Internet and digital communication across all age groups. Classroom presentations for students, parent and community programs, opinion surveys, and community involvement opportunities provide a multi-level approach to digital awareness.


A short distance from Arbroath on a private estate where there are approx 90 homes. There is a separate area for caravans but no facilities for occasional caravans. Within walking distance of the park is a small parade of shops and restaurants nearby in Auchmithie and Meadowbank. If you wish to go further afield, a bus stop is onsite.
There are sea and town glimpses from the lounge windows .


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Judith Nibbs murder trial: 'She betrayed me – so I cut off her head'
Sam Gelder
Published: 6:56 PM April 5, 2016 Updated: 10:40 AM October 14, 2020
Judith Nibbs. Picture: Metropolitan Police/PA Wire . - Credit: PA
A man has described the chilling moment he cut off his partner's head and flushed it down the toilet because she had "betrayed" him.
Dempsey Nibbs, 69, is on trial at the Old Bailey for the murder of Judith Nibbs, 60, his partner for 30 years.
Giving evidence today he explained how he confronted her in the living room of their home in Charles Estate, Hoxton on April 10, 2014.
Nibbs said he had intended to "slap her about a bit" because he believed she had been seeing another man and transferring his money to him, but said he did not intend to kill her.
After striking her with a padded bar and shoving it in her mouth he saw her eyes roll back in her head and thought she was dead.
"I was upset," he said. "I started to call her every name under the sun – 'you f****** traitor', 'you f****** snake, I'll cut your head off'."
His defence counsel Ian Henderson asked why he was saying these things.
"Back in the day you hanged murderers and cut the head off a traitor," he explained. "She betrayed me."
Nibbs then told the court he dragged her body out of the living room and into the hallway because he didn't want the room "to be a mess".
After placing her on a tarpaulin bag he used a knife from the kitchen to cut her head off, intending to flush it down the toilet. "It [the toilet] wasn't big enough, obviously, that's why I had to smash it up," he continued.
Nibbs said he struck her head once with a hammer and flushed it before cleaning up the living room.
He then explained how he tried to shoot himself.
"I was trapped and there was no way out other than a bullet to my head," he said.
Nibbs said he wrote a note and left some money for his son Kirk. He then placed documents, including bank statements showing money transfers, on Judith's body for police to find, as an explanation for what had happened.
After dialling 999 he tried to shoot himself in the bath but the gun misfired so he stabbed himself once. At this point the police arrived.
Nibbs admitted he had been "snooping" on Judith, who he thought was having an affair, and had hired a lawyer. By February 2014 they were sleeping in separate bedrooms but Nibbs "always hoped" they would enjoy their retirement together as planned.
But he said that changed when he found bank statements showing a money transfer to the man he thought she was seeing. Nibbs thought she had transferred money from a £20,000 payout he had entrusted her with after he discovered it wasn't in their joint account.
"All my hope was gone," he told the court. "I suspected she was having an affair but the statement was proof."
Nibbs told prosecutor Crispin Aylett that he had never asked Judith about the money, which he now knows was in a savings account. Mr Aylett explained the cash transfer to the other man was done as a favour and was not Judith's money, or Nibbs'.
Doctors have said Judith was alive at the time of her beheading. When asked by Mr Aylett about that Nibbs said: "She looked dead to me."
Nibbs claims he killed Judith Nibbs in self-defence. He denies murder and obstructing the coroner from holding an inquest by disposing of her decapitated head.
The trial continues.


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