TBC NewsWatch

Dinosaur Algae Alive and Well Today

ICR.org, 9/14/17, “Dinosaur Algae Alive and Well Today” [Excerpts]: Botanists recently discovered Lychnothamnus barbatus, a large form of green algae known from European and Asian freshwater lakes, in North America. Before this discovery, the only hints of this particular water plant in the Americas came from their fossils mixed with dinosaurs in Argentina. If this type of algae’s fossils were deposited tens of millions of years ago, then how has it avoided evolutionary tinkering ever since? How could it remain unchanged for over “65 million years?”

Drexel University botanist Richard McCourt coauthored a technical report of the find published in the American Journal of Botany. He suggested to DrexelNow news that the algae could have migrated to the St. Lawrence Seaway in ships’ ballast waters. But he missed a bigger issue by offering no suggestion on how the plant avoided evolution for more than 65 million years, the minimum supposed time since its Cretaceous System fossils formed.

(https://goo.gl/sZhkiE)

The Invisible Christians of North Korea

ChristianHeadlines.com, 9/15/17, “The Invisible Christians of North Korea: Surviving by God’s Grace Alone” [Excerpts]: If you think North Korea’s dictators are bad for the world, just imagine what it’s like to be a Christian there.

According to the Operation World prayer guide, “From the first Protestant church planted in 1884, South Korea now has possibly 50,000 Protestant congregations,” and 15 million Christians of all kinds. It’s also a missionary powerhouse, currently sending more than 21,000 missionaries to about 175 countries. Amazing!

But the Christians of North Korea? They’re virtually invisible—though of course not in the eyes of the Lord Jesus!  According to the Providence Journal, “a Presbyterian medical doctor named Horace Allen…received royal permission to proselytize after saving the life of a royal family member.... Presbyterian and Methodist missionaries from the United States followed.... [In 1910] Korean Christians numbered over 200,000, two thirds of them Presbyterians and Methodists, in a country of approximately 13 million people.”

If the city of Seoul was receptive to the gospel, and it was, Pyongyang was even more so. Following a series of revivals in and around the “Jerusalem of the East,” by 1910 the region was the most heavily Christian in all of Korea.

Of course, most of us know what happened next. After World War II, the communist regime of Kim Il-sung attempted to stamp out all foreign religions, especially Christianity, which was branded a tool of “Western imperialism.”

(https://goo.gl/fDdbRy)

Facebook: Jew Haters and Advertisers

Propublica.com, 9/14/17, “Facebook Enabled Advertisers to Reach ‘Jew Haters’” [Excerpts]: Want to market Nazi memorabilia, or recruit marchers for a far-right rally? Facebook’s self-service ad-buying platform had the right audience for you.

Until...we asked Facebook about it, the world’s largest social network enabled advertisers to direct their pitches to the news feeds of almost 2,300 people who expressed interest in the topics of “Jew hater,” “How to burn jews,” or, “History of ‘why jews ruin the world.’”

To test if these ad categories were real, we paid $30 to target those groups with three “promoted posts” ...Facebook approved all three ads within 15 minutes.

After we contacted Facebook, it removed the anti-Semitic categories—which were created by an algorithm rather than by people—and said it would explore ways to fix the problem.... Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg [had written] that “there is no place for hate in our community,” and pledged to keep a closer eye on hateful posts and threats of violence on Facebook. “It’s a disgrace that we still need to say that neo-Nazis and white supremacists are wrong—as if this is somehow not obvious,” he wrote.

But Facebook apparently did not intensify its scrutiny of its ad-buying platform. In all likelihood, the ad categories that we spotted were automatically generated because people had listed those anti-Semitic themes on their Facebook profiles as an interest, an employer, or a “field of study.” Facebook’s algorithm automatically transforms people’s declared interests into advertising categories.

(https://goo.gl/C3MfBr)