Quite often, men of the world refer to believers as troublemakers; as Ahab called Elijah a “troubler of Israel” (1 Kings 18:16-18). Interestingly, Jesus might appear more of a troublemaker than a peacemaker, as people could not agree about him. Jesus explains, “Do not think that I came to bring peace on earth. I did not come to bring peace but a sword,” (Matthew 10:34).
Dr. Ron Susek, in his book Firestorm, shares the difference between a peacekeeper and a peacemaker. Dr. Susek explains, “Peacekeepers tend to be passive, preferring to avoid conflict…. On the other hand, peacemakers tackle conflict head on, determined to bring peace based upon truth, mutual understanding, and forgiveness…. While peacekeepers try to sweep things under the rug, peacemakers try to sweep issues out the door.”
As we hear more and more about the World Court from the United Nations, we find a prophecy of the Lord coming as the ultimate judge in Psalm 96:10-13. We are also told he will lift the curse upon creation in Romans 8:18-23. that Jesus Christ will preside over a world court in John 5:22. We are consoled by the words of Abraham: “Shall not the judge of all the earth do right?” (Genesis 18:25). Is this is the new world order men so desperately desire?
We are told there will be a perfect peace and harmony between heaven and earth (Isaiah 11 and 12). The blessings from peace and harmony flow through the believer’s life.

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Marc Gopin of George Mason University explores what makes peacemakers tick in Bridges Across an Impossible Divide. The book emanates from the “Unusual Pairs” film project, a series of videos that focuses on Israeli and Palestinian partners in the quest for peace.
The narrative unfolds in the words of the peacemakers themselves as they search for common ground with their adversaries. No well-known politicians are featured – these are truly unsung heroes. Gabriel Meyer, son of the late Rabbi Marshall Meyer, and his partner, Ihab Balha, are among the pairs. Meyer describes the difficulties that they encountered during the 2006 Lebanon war; Balha writes, “Peace is not a simple word, an easy word.”

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A new book that tells a story set in war-torn Iraq sends a straightforward message applicable to everyday Americans: Get to know your neighbors.
Greg Barrett, who worked in The Charlotte Observer’s Rock Hill bureau in the early 1990s, recently spoke at Covenant Presbyterian Church, where he told the story of his book “The Gospel of Rutba.”
The book recounts the story of a small group of American Christian peacemakers rescued by Iraqi Muslims after their vehicle crashed in 2003. Four years later, Barrett returned to Iraq with the peacemakers as they thanked the Iraqi good Samaritans.

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For the past decade, the Peace Corps has released an annual ranking of the top large, medium and small schools that graduate students who then serve overseas for a little more than two years. The organization, an independent U.S. government agency that has been around for more than 50 years, has more than 8,000 volunteers in more than 75 countries.
This year, the top schools in each category were in Washington state: the University of Washington on the large-schools list with 107 graduates-turned-volunteers, Western Washington University on the medium-schools list with 73 volunteers, and Gonzaga University in Spokane on the small-schools list with 24.
It’s the first time that one state has swept all three categories, said Carrie Hessler-Radelet, acting director of the Peace Corps. “It just seems to be the kind of state that’s very progressive and shares some of the same values as the Peace Corps,” said Hessler-Radelet, who volunteered in Western Samoa in the early 1980s and is part of a family in which four generations have participated.
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Most 3D printers use a technique called extrusion, through which the printer melts plastic and lays it down in layers to create a 3D object. But the Form 1 features stereolithography, which uses a laser to cure liquid resin into microscopic layers, resulting in much more precise creations.

For $3,300, the Form 1 package includes the 3D printer, software, and post-processing kit that comes with a finishing tray to hold components, rinsing solution to remove excess resin, water bath, dipping basket, scraper to remove excess material, tongs and drip trough.

The idea of a relatively affordable desktop 3D printer has shaken up the competitive landscape. Lesser models can be as cheap as $1,300, while some of the top models can run over $100,000.

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Last week, the U. S. House of Representatives voted, by a count of 285-144, to approve a three-month extension of the debt limit in a bill that concurrently pressures lawmakers to adopt a budget or have their pay withheld. The bill, known as the No Budget No Pay Act of 2013, directs both chambers of Congress to adopt a budget resolution for fiscal year 2014 by April 15, 2013. If either body fails to pass a budget, members of that body would have their paychecks put into an escrow account starting on April 16 until that body adopts a budget. Any pay that is withheld would eventually be released at the end of the current Congress even if a budget doesn’t ever pass. Is this a joke?

No, it’s just another example of Our Legislature’s deceptive practices. This is one of the best examples of the difference between the way a government treats it’s subjects, and how self-serving politicians treat themselves. For most of us, no work means no pay. It doesn’t mean our un-earned pay is held in a savings account to collect interest, or as security for a loan. It means, if we don’t do our job, we lose our job, and any money withheld is gone forever.

Our position is simple. If these so-called public servants don’t do their friggin’ job, they should forfeit their pay. No escrow, no pay for the lapsed time, period. Apply their forfeited pay towards the deficit they created and as restitution for their breach of trust while habitually dipping into the Social Security Trust Fund. We all need to understand their true motivations for putting Social Security in play. They don’t plan to make the trust fund whole, for the money they stole. They squandered our security by paying their puppeteers through tax gimmicks. No matter which political persuasion we each embrace, we can at least agree on the fundamentals, that poli + tics = many + blood sucking creatures.

We cannot go directly after the pay of our pampered politicians. After all, each branch of government has all kinds of extra-constitutional conveniences and immunities borrowed from the days when the King and the Pope were considered infallible. We can, however, hold every legislator accountable for any pay they take from the escrow fund, and for all the ways they have prostituted themselves politically. We can force them to answer for it at all future political events. We can follow them and follow up with questions about their automatic pay raises. We can teach the lemming-like press to ask probing questions. And we can eventually pry the most self-serving incumbents from their form fitting-seats.

Let’s get it done! Contribute your opinion to this web log. Subscribe, to consider a variety of viewpoints in a world of competing ideas. Post your favorite opinions to Facebook and Google+. Tweet and re-tweet those posts and comments that resonate the most with you. And, don’t forget to help us build the School of Statesmanship while calling upon our elected representatives to start acting in accordance with the principles of true statesmanship.   —  Robert H. Kalk
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The Filabot brings a miniature recycling plant to your desktop, grinding down everyday plastic waste and transforming it into ready-to-use material for your 3d printing. Water pipes, drink bottles, plastic wrappers and Lego bricks can be fed into the machine which grinds, melts and extrudes the plastic into a filament of either 3mm or 1.75mm diameters. It can also melt down unused 3D prints, allowing for increased experimentation..
Filabot brings affordability and sustainability to 3D-printing. The debut model is still under development and no official price has been announced. The company will launch a range of machines, at different levels of completion. Users can adapt and develop their own kit – from the Filabot Core (which comes without a grinder), to the open-source Filabot Wee, which users can build from downloadable plans.
The home-manufacturing revolution is well under way. And, thanks to an invention by American college student Tyler McNaney, it’s affordable.
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 Consider the First Source!

When we align our objectives with the Divine will, when we strive for the attainment of a worthy goal, when we begin our work with a well defined plan, and when we have ability to work together with others effectively, we have already achieved the trajectory for success. For we know that “all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.”

Learn how to enjoy boundless opportunity and unlimited progress!

The Optical Cavity Furnace is a relatively new type of furnace that uses light and optics rather than other sources to create silicon-based photovoltaic (PV) cells. The new process uses only half the amount of energy to make conventional PVs.
The recent innovation uses a series of lamps in a reflective chamber to create temperature uniformity at high-heat levels throughout the chamber. It’s so uniform that, when heated up to 1,000 degrees Celsius, the entire furnace interior only varies by a few degrees. The heat is used to convert silicon wafers into fully functional photovoltaic cells.
Light Has Multiple Advantages in Furnaces. Photons have special qualities that prove useful in creating solar cells. When light is shined on silicon atoms that are bonded electronically to each other it changes their potential.
The Optical Cavity Furnace shines visible and near-infrared light to heat the solar cell, and also shines ultraviolet light to take advantage of photonic effects that occur deep within the atomic structure of the cell material. This combination offers unique capabilities that lead to improved device quality and efficiency.
Iron and other impurities can degrade the silicon quality quickly. But shining the right light on it can remove that impurity from the silicon. Optics can also make a lot of things happen at the interfaces in a cell, where, for example, metal can reflect the light and speed the diffusion of impurities. The lamps in the furnace help fool the impurities in the silicon into moving out of the way, by creating vacancies.
Bhushan Sopori, NREL Principal Engineer said “We call it injecting vacancies.” A vacancy refers to the lack of a silicon atom. “If the atom is missing, you have a vacancy here, an empty space.” Those spaces prompt the impurities such as iron to feel much more like moving – and they do so at a much lower temperature than would otherwise be required. The iron moves in with the aluminum, creating an aluminum-iron mix that, happily, is needed anyway as a contact point.
Removing impurities can change a cell’s efficiency from 13 percent to 17 percent. What that means is that 17 percent of the photons that hit the improved cell are converted into usable electricity.
The absence of cooling water and confinement of energy in the OCF proves to be a big advantage for lowering the energy payback time of solar cells.
Other advantages of the photonic approach:
Silicon cells often have silver contacts in front and aluminum contacts in back. They usually are fired simultaneously as the cell is being formed. The OCF by selectively heating the interfaces of silicon and metal can better control the process, and thus create stronger field surfaces and improved cell performance.
The Optical Cavity Furnace uses photons of light to remove weak, cracked wafers from the processing line. Photons can more easily produce a thermal stress in a wafer and screen out bad wafers. The photon process tests the wafers’ integrity right after they are cut. The conventional method requires physical twisting and bending of the wafers to test for weakness.
“Its main purpose is to process the wafers into solar cells. We have developed the furnace configurations for major steps used in silicon solar cell fabrication, junction formation, oxidation, and metallization firing,” Sopori said.
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Need a new knocker for the front door? Select a design and push the print button. How about that fork that got damaged in the garbage disposal? Scan one of the remaining ones and print a replacement. Printing 3d objects at home is now possible although the choices of material are somewhat limited.
Soon, very soon, new picture frames, eating utensils, a replacement piano leg for the one the dog chewed up, that weird looking fastener that was missing from the new bookshelf kit, bookends, crown molding, coat hangers, phone chargers, earrings, Toynbee convectors, and flux capacitors will be had by giving a voice command to a StarTrek like replicator.
A new era of Consumer Sovereignty will come to light as additive layer manufacturing technology allows us to bypass those inconvenient economies of scale. Instead of having to purchase a pound of drywall screws, we can just buy one.
Big companies have already bought in to the technology. They envision a future where Home Depot and Kinkos-style shops fill local needs while online markets focus on larger projects and more intense customization. Amazon is planning to install commercial printers in all of its U.S. factories and Staples is rolling out 3D equipment in its European stores.
Thanks, in part, to a variety of open source projects, the Home Depot and Staples models aren’t likely to be as popular as home printing in the long run. Why? Because the mother-may-I product chain is just too bloated and unpleasant. Even today, an item priced at less than four dollars doesn’t justify supermarket shelf space. A service bureau experience marked by overpricing, long lines, outmoded software, outdated hardware, poorly trained staff, and sluggish execution times is seen by most as something to be avoided.
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The problem with trickle-down economics is that evaporation occurs at twice the rate of flow. — Robert H. Kalk