Sam Kneller's Blog, page 46

Water Resources: Coral Reefs, Sodas, Colorado River and Crops

Water resources cover the entire range of human activities. From recreation, thirst quenching, bathing and crop production. This is a commodity we cannot do without. Humans need clean water.

Water resources are a key to the existence of life. From coral reefs in the vast salty oceans to glaciers, rivers and ponds for fresh water. Every drop plays its part.

Coral Reef Destruction

The increase of carbon dioxide by 41 percent since 1990 in the atmosphere is causing its excessive dissolving and the formation of carbonic acid in the oceans. A study by Timothy Wootton of the University of Chicago revealed that this is happening 10 times faster than simulations expected. The result is an increase in acidity by .036, or 23 times more than predicted, of the salt water, resources which can disrupt marine life.

(Audit of the Universe chapter 3.6)

The acidity or pH, which is 8.1 (Galacti shows us that the neutral pH level is 7.0) has already started to attack billions of carbonate calcium shells of marine organisms in all oceans around the world. The acidity is causing ‘osteoporosis’ in coral reef polyps, which, when alive, provide an important part of the marine food chain (feeding on small animals) and shelter for clownfish, raccoonfish, blue tang, and eels, for example. When the coral polyps die, their skeletons build the Great Barrier Reef or the coral reefs of the Hawaiian Islands.

There is another reason to care about the coral reefs and pollution, if not just for ethics’ sake or as humanitarians: for health reasons. Many pharmaceuticals are being developed from the diversity and extraordinary resistance of reef-dwelling marine life.

Water resources are a key to life. From the salty oceans to fresh water. Every drop plays its…
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Pepsico, Voss and Shoes For Water

We learn that drinkable, clean water resources are a scarce commodity for some 780 million people worldwide, 2.5 times the population of the United States. They lack access to an improved water resources, approximately one in nine people. Two-thirds of Africa lacks access to drinkable water, and many Middle Eastern countries must import 90% of their drinking water.

Who is acting to reverse this trend?  Will international organizations such as church groups, charities, and even corporations provide drinkable water to ‘water-stressed’ parts of the world such as sub-Saharan Africa, Haiti, South America, and so on?  Well, yes, companies such as TOMS Shoes and Voss Water as well as charities such as Shoeman Water Projects are all using commerce as the vehicle to fund water projects such as clean-water wells in Ethiopia and drinking water in a school in Haiti.

What are the concrete results, as we drink bottles of Voss water and wear pairs of TOMS glasses specifically sold to raise funds for water resources projects?  These corporate-charity partnerships have funded more than 8,000 projects, helping bring clean and safe drinking water to more than 3.2 million people in twenty countries.

Sodas and Corporate Water Privatization

Ah, but for every corporate project intended to ease water stress, we have the reach of ‘globalization’ using up more resources. That picture is changing, thanks to factories such as one owned by Pepsico in India. Pepsico reduced overall water consumption in its plants by 20 percent in 2015. Already Pepsico conserves more water resources than its actual plants consume via water regeneration programs and has saved 16 billion liters of water from 2006 to 2011, with an additional 45 percent reduction in water consumption in India from the 2005 base. But India is facing severe water contamination and shortage from agriculture and lack of monsoon precipitation.

However, corporations also buy up water resources from countries and sell water back to the people in bottled water form or manage the water as they please. In France, the companies Suez/Veolia had a bottled water monopoly and free access to Paris water until Paris voted to reclaim its water services. As a digression, bottled water serves a purpose, especially in so many countries in which you have to boil the water and sterilize it in order to drink it—however, again, let’s question why the waterways of Kuala Lumpur, Jakarta, Buenos Aires or Acapulco are in such a poor state that we can’t even brush our teeth in a hotel bathroom.

The debate over bottled water misses this fundamental point–and there is plenty to debate over–many parks under the umbrella of the U.S. National Park Service have eliminated bottled water from all these international tourist spots such as the Grand Canyon, Zion National Park in Utah and Hawaii Volcanoes National Park.

So why do organizations such as the World Bank continue to fund private water companies such as Suez/Veolia and Thames/RWE, which appropriate water from communities worldwide and do not do the job of providing water services in the Philippines, for example?

Corporations and states do come to a mutual compromise that is ‘benevolent,’ for example in September 2017 Southwestern water and the U.S. government confirmed the U.S.-Mexican agreement for sharing the distressed Colorado River water. The U.S. will invest in the vicinity of $31.5 million to support Mexico’s water infrastructure and upgrade their farmland production. In exchange, Mexico agreed to reduce its portion of river allotment should the U.S. reduce its own water allotment in case of severe shortages, in view of drought conditions.

The 1.9 billion cubic meters of water from Mexico’s share of the Colorado River, about 10% of the total flow of the 21 billion cubic meters, allotted to the U.S. and Mexico, supports the bathing, washing, and nourishing needs of 200,000 families for a year. In addition, the compromise involves selling Colorado water back to Mexico at a later date. To Mexican farmers who want irrigation canals in Mexicali restored, the compromise seems worthwhile.

This brings us full circle back to the land and to crops and water resources.

We have seen how Israel has smartened its water practices, but other countries have their own processes for recycling and reusing water. In the areas surrounding Mexico City, the wastewater is all that is available to the farmers, who use the tainted water to grow crops. We shake our heads as we realize we cannot eat certain fruit that comes from Mexico or markets in Taiwan or China.

In some areas, wastewater is all that is available to farmers, who use the tainted water to…
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In these countries the term ‘organic’ does not take into consideration ‘environmental contamination’ only no use of immediate and locally used products like fertilizers and pesticides. In fact the earth and/or the water might be polluted and produce can still be exported and marketed–which is the case. What’s in the water winds up in our food.

We take a drink from a clear crystal stream and we view the ability to cleanse, bathe, have free access to water from our sink or from a glass, sail the oceans, and harness hydroelectric power as a ‘glass half-full.’ We look at waste disposal, chemical dumping and poor management as a ‘glass half-empty.’

This blog post is an excerpt from chapter 3.6 of Audit of the Universe

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Learn how to play Take Inventory – The Interconnectivity Game (free) that nourishes your neurons and is taking the world by storm. Play a round with family and friends. View the above videos and use the tags at the end of this blog for dozens of ideas to play Take Inventory – The Game.

See the index of the book Inventory of the Universe to find a specific chapter and read it online.

Purchase Inventory of the Universe at Amazon – Purchase the Kindle version

Google Play – Barnes@Nobles – Kobo – iTunes

Unlock Bible meaning via Biblical Hebrew … with no fuss. The free video course that puts you in the driver’s seat to navigate the Bible as never before. Join now

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the opening scene between God and humans,

** 4.4** (700)

 

We’re not finished with the above scene, there are other basic points to glean so as to gather more comprehension. This is the opening scene between God and humans, and we’re hanging on each word so we don’t miss the slightest implication, the smallest clue that can help us unlock where the narrative is going and its ultimate climax.

More disclosures from the Garden of Eden scene:

God is in command
He makes the rules
He gives the instruction
Man is the recipient of this instruction
Man receives the rules
Man has the choice to apply the rules or not
There’s no coercion from God… just clear instruction—God is not a ‘bully’
Man has free choice to follow or to not follow that instruction

Let’s come down to earth and put government and leadership, any governing body of any organization in the driver’s seat, and apply these same eight principles.

This ‘organization which oversees’, whatever form it might take—top down, collegiate, bottom up—is necessary to establish the orderly conditions that bring ‘peace’. Peace is not the cause of ‘organization’ and ‘order’, peace does not precede union and stability; it’s the other way round. Organization and order are mainstay reasons for ‘peace’. Orderliness leads to harmony. There is no anarchy in the Garden of Eden, for example.

Organization has a number of clear-cut stages, which we’ll see below. Where these elements are absent, the result is the opposite of peace: chaos. (Of course, some chaos creates drama, as we’ll see later on!)

Organization of the Leadership – Chain of Command – Hierarchy (of the garden of Eden scene)

God is in command
God decides what to do
Man is / can be the follower… not the leader
This hierarchy is set… man can do and say whatever he likes… but in the script of our ‘play’ God is in charge




Existence of Rules

There are rules
The Supreme Being who wrote the play makes the rules
These rules are for the benefit of man and woman just like keeping our hand out of fire is beneficial to us
Those rules are inexorable, in effect, always. If man follows them, there can be short and long-term benefits, if man breaks them there can be short and long term consequences.

Inexorable includes the notion that the rules are there whether man and woman know them or not. And the consequences of following or not following those rules occur whether man and woman are aware of them or not.  Galacti pretends to be hungry, picks a mushroom in the garden and eats it, then shortly thereafter mimics sickness and pain. Even he isn’t sure if the mushroom species is poisonous, but by eating it, he accepts the consequences. He refrains from a ‘stage death’ to make his point: he may have eased his hunger in the short term, but he could have died.

Responsibilities and Consequences for God (we’re simply drawing conclusions from this scene)

Establishing rules

Correct rules that can be applied by Man


Making those rules known and teaching them
Establishing the consequences of following or disobeying those rules : In this scene short and long term Life and Death




Responsibilities and Consequences for Man

A freely made decision to be open to and listen to God’s instruction
A freely made decision to apply or not apply that instruction
A realization that man accepts the consequences of his decisions: short and long term life or death

Hierarchy, Rules, Responsibilities, Consequences, Life, Death. We haven’t defined parameters of what they specifically are. Right now, we’re keeping you in suspense.

The next important thing to remember is that these four concepts—Organization, Rules, Responsibilities and Consequences of God and man—are part of the central point of this book. Each one has the ‘why, how, when, where, who’ to be looked into and it isn’t what you’ve heard before. We shall expand them and go into details.

For now we’re still setting the stage. Here comes the villain.

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Learn how to play Take Inventory – The Interconnectivity Game (free) that nourishes your neurons and is taking the world by storm. Play a round with family and friends. View the above videos and use the tags at the end of this blog for dozens of ideas to play Take Inventory – The Game.

See the index of the book Inventory of the Universe to find a specific chapter and read it online.

Purchase Inventory of the Universe at Amazon – Purchase the Kindle version

Google Play – Barnes@Nobles – Kobo – iTunes

Unlock Bible meaning via Biblical Hebrew … with no fuss. The free video course that puts you in the driver’s seat to navigate the Bible as never before. Join now

Since you read all the way to here… you liked it. Please use the Social Network links just below to share this excerpt of Inventory of the Universe, the opening scene between God and humans,

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Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance – Valid Bible Study Aid … or not?

Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance is the tool that helped me find the verses in the preceding posts about Biblical Hebrew. It’s simply a study tool–like a hammer if you’re a carpenter.

Strong’s Concordance of the Bible. A study tool to help you locate English words and their original Hebrew and Greek. You don’t need to buy the book … you can consult it online.

Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance, like Dr. James Strong its author, comes under more or less heavy criticism in certain theological circles. Make no mistake about it, you’ll read a fair bit of negativism about this duo, I have. And I agree, just as you can smash your fingers with a misplaced hammer blow, so can you be misled by mis-using Strong’s concordance.

(Origin of the Universe chapter 3.3)

On the other hand a carpenter wouldn’t go anywhere without a hammer and knows that it’s an integral part of their toolkit. Just like one needs training and experience in the use of a hammer, so it is with Strong’s. However, you’ve got to have the right trainer and the right apprenticeship.

There are other concordances/tools available for Bible study and they all have their positive and negative points like hammers and putters. I have chosen Strong’s because it is one of the oldest and because it is simple to follow for Bible students not acquainted with Hebrew or Greek. In saying ‘it’s simple to use’ I don’t mean that Strong’s is simplistic in its approach. In fact many detractors don’t know how to use Strong’s to reveal its full potential in helping students progress with their Bible study.

Now, if you just happened to click on a link that brought you to this page you might very well be wondering what this is all about. I would suggest that you take a few moments (it won’t take long) and go back to the beginning of this section by reading, in order: Why Theology?, Sacred Books, The Bible and Biblical Hebrew. This will give you the overview to put you at ease and allow you to follow along with the development of this important subject.

From now on we’re going to get very practical not only showing how to use Strong’s exhaustive concordance but how to dig for Bible understanding. Frankly, the two books: Inventory and Audit of the Universe and the beginning of this book, Origin of the Universe, give the overview and are essential to understand why we have no alternative but to broach the Biblical Hebrew of the Bible. You disagree? OK, then please show me where we are going to find answers to the big questions in life. Where is coherent completeness? That’s your challenge.

Dr. James Strong

Dr. James Strong was born in New York in 1822 and settled in Flushing where he built, organized and became president of the Flushing railroad. He was also heavily into Theology and Divinity. He taught for some three decades and was Professor of Exegetical Theology at Drew University in Madison, NY, then known as Drew Theological Seminary, before he died in 1894. You can read a short but interesting article about his varied life achievements here. His ultimate contribution to Bible study, as an etymologist, studying words and their meaning from the context, is Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance.

It’s Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance that I’ve made accessible online for Bible Study. Actually all Strong did (and that is not intended to be negative in any way–to the contrary, we owe him a great deal of respect considering there were no computers in his day!) was FIND and GATHER ALL English words in the King James Version (KJV) of the Bible (translated in 1611) in the Old Testament that had the SAME HEBREW origin. Same for the New (Greek) Testament.

Another way of putting this is: Strong made a list of ALL the unique Hebrew words in the Hebrew Bible. There are some 8600 such Hebrew words. He, and his team, then went through the entire King James Bible and for EACH English word they found its Hebrew origin and tied/associated it with one of the approximate 8600 Hebrew words. He did the same for the Greek which has about 5000 words in the New Testament.

For ease of reference he attributed a number to each original language word: from H1 to H8675 in Hebrew and G1 to G5625 in Greek. Now, people who don’t speak these biblical languages can locate any word in English in the Bible and then easily find and study the corresponding Hebrew and Greek original words.

So, what you have essentially is a Hebrew word from the Old Testament manuscripts followed by ALL the translations the King James translators attributed to each display of the word in the KJV. By using the online concordance you can quickly and easily find:

ALL the English translations given to any one of the 8600 Biblical Hebrew words
The verse location of ALL these English words. That means everywhere this unique Hebrew, or Greek, word is found in the Bible.

Bottom image shows Strong’s annotations and the King James Version  translations for Hebrew word 7225 (reshiyth).

This was a humongous task, but it is a precious ongoing legacy to aid Bible study. Essentially you have access to the Hebrew and Greek original languages. There’s nothing like studying something FIRSThand rather than an imitation or copy or even an interpretation.

In the above example of H7225 we see its translation in the statement ‘in the beginning’ and we see its relation to H7218 which means ‘head’ as we discussed in key 3 of mastering Biblical Hebrew. In the next post I’ll show you how to access a Bible concordance and verify this yourself.

Strong’s Definitions – Notes – Annotations

There are some reflections on the Hebrew and Greek word Concordance, but these are few and far between in comparison to the vehemence one can find with regard to Strong’s definitions. These definitions for each Hebrew and Greek word are quite limited in length and scope. In fact I would say they are rather simplistic. Many modern, especially online, concordances add additional information, from various other sources to ‘beef up’ and maybe ‘diminish’ Strong’s definitions.

No theological work, be it the King James Translation of the Bible or Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance or any other is ‘perfect’. Each has its positives and negatives. However, if we want to make progress, then we need to learn how to make the best use of the best, but imperfect, tools available to us.

In the upcoming Origin of the Universe there’s a chapter devoted to Strong’s Concordance where I develop some of the positives and negatives. In online video courses, I’ll be further explaining the pros and cons of Strong’s Concordance and especially how to use it to aid Bible study while being aware of its foibles.

For now, keep in mind what Strong’s Concordance is NOT. It is NOT theology, the study of “Theos”, God. It does not give any “new” knowledge, it reveals no truths, does not layout any religious concepts, draws no theological conclusions. All it does is “organize words based on their roots” and gives some guidance notes which we can analyze.

I will conclude by saying that I’m using Strong’s so that visitors know I’m not doing my own translations or using my own words. This is a 3rd party. James Strong, just like the one hundred translators of the King James Bible, is criticized like all other authors, for his ‘authenticity’ and ‘orientation’. But the fundamental question is, are they honest and truthful in what they render? Are they trying to be true and faithful to the original? These are works done in the late 1600’s and 1800’s before a lot of scientific information about the nature of the universe, the nature of man, neurons and the mind was around.

Today, some 300-400 years later, despite their weaknesses, outweighed by their strengths, both the KJV translation and Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance are considered mainstays in the quest to understand and unlock Bible meaning.

How to Unlock Bible Meaning – Using Biblical Hebrew with No Fuss

This blog post is an excerpt from chapter 3.3 of Origin of the Universe

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Learn how to play Take Inventory – The Interconnectivity Game (free) that nourishes your neurons and is taking the world by storm. Play a round with family and friends. View the above videos and use the tags at the end of this blog for dozens of ideas to play Take Inventory – The Game.

See the index of the book Inventory of the Universe to find a specific chapter and read it online.

Purchase Inventory of the Universe at Amazon – Purchase the Kindle version

Google Play – Barnes@Nobles – Kobo – iTunes

Unlock Bible meaning via Biblical Hebrew … with no fuss. The free video course that puts you in the driver’s seat to navigate the Bible as never before. Join now

Since you read all the way to here… you liked it. Please use the Social Network links just below to share this excerpt of Inventory of the Universe, Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance – Valid Bible Study Aid … or not?

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Nourishing Water: Fish, Fishing Villages, Dead Zones and Shipwrecks

Water, the natural habitat of fish, nourishes one billion people on our planet. We might tend to shy away from this slithery nourishment, but for many it is life.

A ship (encircled) leaves a wake as it plows through Baltic Sea dead zone algae, A Khmer fishing village with an abundant catch of nourishing fish. What are we doing with our water?

Life in a Cambodian Fishing Village

We are floating on the Tonle Sap River in Cambodia observing the traditional lake/river village floating houses built of bamboo and anchored by boats, also made of bamboo, as well as a boat market where the residents set up the houses for selling, as well as a floating gym, battery shops, and medical clinic. We watch the daily life of the Cambodian or Khmer ‘lake-dwellers,’ who have been building their floating homes, living on the lake, fishing, and growing rice for food. The Khmer fishermen harvest fish from the lake’s 150 species of fish in the same manner their ancestors did a thousand years ago.

(Audit of the Universe chapter 3.5)

They use the traditional large bamboo baskets in order to fish, as well as smaller baskets to harvest tiny shrimp. The fishermen submerge their fish and shrimp traps overnight, anchoring the shrimp baskets to trees. As the water fills the bamboo basket traps, so, too, do fish fill the baskets. When the fishermen draw the basket traps from the water the next morning, the small and large baskets are filled with shrimp and fish, respectively, packed together.

Traditionally Khmer people, Cambodian people, are farmers and fishermen and rice-growers; the urban planning in the ancient city of Angkor, which once supported 1 million people, was based on water technology; unfortunately, ‘poor stewardship’ used up that water and the Khmer abandoned it. The farmers follow the seasons and the regime of water, but Galacti observes that they also obey government regulations and avoid catching shrimp from June to September, the shrimp-breeding season.

The fishermen obey Order 001 and do not fish from July to October. Otherwise the government burns the fish traps, fishing tools and shrimp baskets! Family fish farms (aquaculture), where fish and tiny shrimp are raised, assist in the food supply. Indeed, the lake has been historically responsible for feeding an empire.

The lake made the building of Angkor Wat and all other great Khmer temples possible, since the rice paddies, watered by the lake and fed by the reservoirs, could feed the 300,000 people who built Angkor Wat in 30 years. In addition, the lake is also a source of food. We see a history review of the ancient Khmer people in 800 A.D., settling in this area rich with water resources coupled with the supply of building material in the mountains and forests (stone for the temples, wood for houses) and additional food sources, such as wild game, in the forest.

We notice from watching the historical review that the ancient Khmer exist in harmony with the water just as their ‘modern’ counterparts do. Their modern counterparts have cell phones made by a company in Vietnam, and the houseboats have battery-powered televisions, but the modern Khmer and the ancient Khmer both let their bamboo houses move with the tide rather than radically changing their environment to suit them.

It is thought-provoking to see a culture live peacefully with nature on the lake, in a country whose recent past has been difficult to say the least. Even though there has been deforestation affecting the Tonle Sap River and Lake in Cambodia, the fishing solution seems to work well as opposed to ‘dead zones’ worldwide.

Extremes: “Dead Zones”

As we look at the photos we have taken of the Tonle Sap fishing village, our boat takes us into one of the 500 ‘dead zones’ of oceans and seas on the planet, most of which we find along the eastern coast of the United States, and the coastlines of the Baltic States, Japan, and the Korean Peninsula. The Baltic Sea in particular is thought to be the world’s largest ‘death zone’.

The Baltic Sea, which borders Poland, Germany, Russia, Finland, Denmark, Sweden, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, is called “the world’s most polluted sea.”  It is not just the 60,000 tons of World War II era mustard gas and arsenic, lying dormant in a military wreck, that might be released and contaminate the water; it’s that contaminated bilgewater, oil spills, wastewater treatment runoff, and industrial waste have been a problem in the Baltic since 2002, and now the ‘dead zone’ is as large as the entire border state of Latvia.

Simply put, a ‘dead zone’ is a section of water in which pollution causes mass algae blooms; in turn, the algae removes all the oxygen supply needed by the fish and other marine life—the result is fish dying off. Dead cod and whiting rot in the open air while trawlers and fishing boats continue to catch them. Plants such as eelgrass, necessary to cleanse nitrogen from the water of the Baltic Sea, have died because their oxygen has been eliminated by a concentration of the hazardous substances twenty times greater than, for example, in the North Atlantic dead zones on the Eastern US/Canada and Western European Atlantic coasts—the concentration is denser in the Baltic.

To explore the pollution damage from these substances, international teams conduct deep-water surveys of Baltic marine fauna: blue jellyfish, hermit crabs, Atlantic butterfish, Baltic cod, and colorful young sea snails–unfortunately, dead white blue jellyfish as well as other sea creatures have gone ‘belly up’. In addition to pollution, overfishing of Baltic cod triggers an ‘algae bloom storm,’ since Baltic cod eat herring (sprats), which eat zooplankton, which eat algae. In short: fewer Baltic cod > more sprats > fewer zooplankton > more algae.

Algal blooms threaten human life too, when washed up on Baltic Sea coastlines and beaches such as Sopot in Poland and the beaches of Gotland in Sweden. Swimmers in these waters and young children playing on the algae dumps in the beach experience severe health problems: skin irritation, eye irritation, allergic reactions, gastrointestinal upset, serious illness and death.

What can be done to correct the damage? Well, it is difficult; unlike most lakes and seas, the Baltic Sea has too much volume of water to be oxygenated or dredged for trash and chemicals as land-locked lakes are. The Baltic Sea problem is so pervasive that Russia, Finland, and ten other Baltic and European nations including Poland, which has its own ideas, have met to promote biodiversity, reduce pollution from ships, and in keeping with this, eliminate the 49,000 square kilometers morass of algae that originally choked the waters of the Baltic in 2010.

The Baltic States reported that the algae blooms are due in part to annual emissions of 36,000 British metric tonnes of phosphorus and 737,000 tonnes of nitrogen. In order to achieve this goal, the Baltic and other European states need to reduce those emissions by 15,000 tonnes of phosphorus and 135,000 tonnes of nitrogen annually–according to the latest report, because of measures such as improving wastewater treatment plants and sludge treatment in Riga and Jurmala, Latvia, Gdansk, Poland, Brest, Belarus and Turku, Finland,

Finland is using the mineral gypsum in the fields to reduce the leaching of dangerous chemicals. How does gypsum do this? Well, this mineral changes the structure of soils, especially acid sandy soils (which Finland has), and inhibits leaching of phosphorus, for example. That solution is less than successful in Poland: a large phosphor-gypsum waste pile in Gdansk, which is slowly leaking, could release more chemicals into the water than all of the disposal sites located near Finland’s cities combined.

Shipwrecks as a Solution

Fishermen in these ‘dead zones’ trawl for fish on the floor in the depths, wrecking the habitat and crushing, snaring or leaving vulnerable the fish that escape the boats. In many cases there is no more fishing to be had or fishing is banned entirely. Species diversity decreases, although different species may make the wrecked habitat their new home. Annually, deep-bottom trawling worldwide destroys a seabed area twice the size on the continental United States—the very dry seabed we are standing on.

Shipwrecks, and sinking old hulks causes them to calcify into coral reefs. It is deliberate and mariners in some cases wreck ships in order to encourage new coral reefs. The shipwrecks have two major complementary effects: providing homes for all manner of fish, crustaceans and other sea life, and encouraging invasive species to grow.

A program in the USA, mainly in the Gulf of Mexico, called Rigs-for-reefs, considers that the offshore oil platforms are already artificial reefs having been in place 10 and up to 30 or 40 years. Marine life concentrates around them and the project simply reduces their height or topples them over. A way to protect and promote the environment that nourishes so many people worldwide.

This blog post is an excerpt from chapter 3.5 of Audit of the Universe

Dig Deeper into The Explanation

Join The Explanation Newsletter to stay informed of updates. and future events. No obligations, total privacy, unsubscribe if you want. Your gift is a free pdf of The Explanation and a free pdf of Answering the Big Questions in Life

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Learn how to play Take Inventory – The Interconnectivity Game (free) that nourishes your neurons and is taking the world by storm. Play a round with family and friends. View the above videos and use the tags at the end of this blog for dozens of ideas to play Take Inventory – The Game.

See the index of the book Inventory of the Universe to find a specific chapter and read it online.

Purchase Inventory of the Universe at Amazon – Purchase the Kindle version

Google Play – Barnes@Nobles – Kobo – iTunes

Unlock Bible meaning via Biblical Hebrew … with no fuss. The free video course that puts you in the driver’s seat to navigate the Bible as never before. Join now

Since you read all the way to here… you liked it. Please use the Social Network links just below to share this excerpt of Inventory of the Universe, Nourishing Water: Fish, Fishing Villages, Dead Zones and Shipwrecks

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Biblical Hebrew Roots to Anchor your Bible Comprehension

Hebrew Word Roots are the base on which the Bible is written. They’re impossible to fully translate. How can they be fully understood?

Biblical Hebrew roots are impossible to fully translate. Therefore it is impossible to fully understand the meaning in your native language.

Biblical Hebrew roots and Hebrew word stories are the final two keys or our series to master Biblical Hebrew. Both of these principles are basic, especially the latter. Yet, most Bible readers are not aware of them. Even religious (as differentiated from ‘intellectual’) Bible scholars are unaware of the most important seventh key.

(Origin of the Universe, chapter 3.2.3)

6. Biblical Hebrew Word construction is based on ‘Roots’

Each biblical Hebrew word has a ‘base’, a common denominator on which it’s built. Here’s an English example of a family of words with a common thread: ocular, utrocular, monocle, monocular, binoculars, oculus, oculist. You might not know the meaning of all these words but you can spot the common denominator: oculus – pertaining to the eye.

In English we practically never refer to the ‘common root’ of words but, in Biblical Hebrew (and in modern Hebrew) we do. Roots are a fundamental key to understanding meanings and relationships.

The Hebrew Bible actually only contains about 8600 different words repeated over and over to compose the text. These 8600 words are built on about 2000 roots, or fundamental building blocks like ‘oculus’, from which other words are constructed. Understanding this, helps us grasp the relationships between words, some, even most, of which are not evident as first sight.

The Hebrew Bible only contains about 8600 different words constructed on a mere 2000 roots.
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We’ve already seen examples of this with ‘rosh – head – beginning’ and ‘noah – quiet – rest’ as well as with ‘lechem – eat – war’. Every word in Biblical Hebrew is either a root or the derivative of a root. It is impossible to see this in your native language where totally different unrelated translated words, like the three examples above: head/beginning, quiet/rest and eat/war), cannot render full meaning when taken separately.

Another factor to do with the 2000 roots is that some of them are inter-related, further enhancing the relationships and meanings. I can’t get into it here but, for those who know a little Hebrew, here’s the transliteration of three words: yashav, shevet, shoov. Their basic meanings include: ‘sit’, ‘Sabbath’ and ‘return’. I say ‘basic meanings’ because, as we saw with ‘noah’ there are multiple native language translations for each of these three roots.

When you read any of these three words in your native language there’s absolutely no way of even knowing they have a common root, let alone realizing there’s an indelible relationship between those three concepts. I’ll even go so far as to say that for most scholars who read and study Biblical Hebrew this relationship is unknown.

For those not aware of this, the common denominator of yashav, shevet and shoov consists of the 2 letters ‘shin’ and ‘beth’ (pronounced here as a ‘vav’). Needless to say, it is impossible to see these roots and hence these intricate and revealing relationships in any translation. I repeat, the native language translations of these words are correct. But they reveal a very, very limited amount of information. It is impossible to have complete understanding.

If you reread the above points, you’ll now realize that each Biblical Hebrew word: elohim, rosh and noah is either a root (rosh is the only one here) or a derivative of a root. The point being you’re beginning to see fundamental concepts in Biblical Hebrew that open up more complete understanding of this best-seller, the Bible. Whether you believe the Bible or not, it’s full of ‘words’ that will open up this literary marvel as never before.

I’ll show you how to easily and quickly identify Biblical Hebrew word roots and find all the derivatives and their meanings. We’ll be discussing this in the Hebrew course and soon you’ll be able to get a much more complete understanding of full Biblical Hebrew word meanings.

7. Biblical Hebrew Words tell Stories

This takes us full circle back to point 1. The King James translators (and other translators for all other translated versions in all languages) ended up using MULTIPLE words in English to translate ONE Biblical Hebrew word. The result being that sometimes we end up with a jumble of ‘foreign language’ words that don’t seem to make sense.

Yet somewhere, somehow, there’s a relationship between them. I call that association of words a story. Yes, practically each word, and especially the roots, has a tale to tell. It is these accounts that unlock Bible meaning. There’s an exciting story behind shevet, noah, rosh, lechem and hundreds of other roots.

Understand that we’re not talking about ‘counting letters’ or ‘hidden code’ or ‘deciphering symbols’ or anything of that nature. We’re talking about Biblical Hebrew vocabulary and the dictionary meaning of words. Just like in your native language, if you don’t understand a word, you take a dictionary and look it up. That’s exactly what we’ll be doing. Looking at the meaning, the FULL meaning of Biblical Hebrew words. It’s this full meaning that is the ‘word story’.

One Biblical Hebrew word can have up to 50 translations. Those 50 words tell a story--and…
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I will say bluntly, you’ve never heard these stories before. Without these word stories it is impossible to grasp a full understanding of what the A(a)uthor of what we call the Old Testament has in mind.

I’l conclude this section by bringing us back to another key principle. As mentioned in point six, there’s a relationship between the three roots yashav, shevet, shoov, they are interconnected, each telling its own story and each being a part of a larger story. This is what I call ‘coherent completeness‘.

Well, ‘coherent completeness’ goes much farther than that: The 2000 roots are interconnected, not grammatically but figuratively. The 8600 Biblical Hebrew words are interconnected. In the end, I believe, they all tell ONE story. Each ‘Biblical Hebrew word’ is a puzzle piece.

In Inventory and Audit of the Universe I turned over all the pieces that constitute our physical and non-physical Universe. Turning them right side up, giving you an overview of what this Universe is all about and what state it’s in right now. In Origin of the Universe we’re going to turn the Biblical Hebrew words of Genesis over, one by one. We’re going to see their relationship with each other as well as their relationship with the Universe we live in.

We’re going to make ‘coherent completeness’ out of all this information. The combined and interrelated stories of the Biblical Hebrew roots will tell us the story of our Universe. They will tell us the Origin of the Universe.

Bonus

Active – Passive Verbs

Here’s a short example to illustrate this point: In English we could say, ‘the teacher taught a course to the students or learners’.

Think about what’s happening here: there’s a subject being taught, let’s say math.

One person is ‘giving’ the math and the others are ‘receiving’ the math. The first, the teacher, is the active element. The others, the learners, are the passive elements. In English we use two separate words ‘teach/learn’. In Hebrew we can use the same root with interspersed modifications, like vowels, to express this: melamad and talmid. The root being the lamed, mem and daled (lmd).

Once again, translations are a great introduction to begin to understand the Bible but it is impossible to see the word roots and hence the various concrete and abstract, literal and figurative meanings as well as the word relationships and hence their stories. Translations are limited in their scope. This is something that Bible readers are not aware of and is one point that leads to incomplete comprehension.

In the course ‘7 keys to master Biblical Hebrew, a study method to Unlock Bible Meaning’ I’ll expand each one of these keys that I’ve evoked in the last 3 blog posts, by using real Biblical Hebrew word examples.

There’ll be Biblical Hebrew word mysteries that you’ll solve, I’ll help you, using the freely accessible online tools. But, the goal of this course is for YOU to ACQUIRE a STUDY METHOD so you can unlock Bible meaning yourself. All I want to do is help you study your Bible better.

Here’s the challenge

Here’s the first mystery you’ll crack … in fact, it’s the first conundrum that I ran across in Biblical Hebrew some 30 years ago that helped me develop this master-course to Unlock Bible Meaning applying Biblical Hebrew. Remember that we’re not focusing on Biblical Hebrew per se, Biblical Hebrew is only a means to understand what the Bible is telling us.

In the book of Genesis, the Bible states that Adam and Eve were ‘naked’, in the following verse it states that the serpent was ‘subtil’ (old King James English spelling where we’d put ‘subtle’ Gen 2.29, 3.1). Well the ‘mystery’ is that, in Biblical Hebrew, both these words are practically identical (I’d even say identical and I’ll explain why during the course) and definitely come from an identical root (aram). You can use the Interlinear Bible at www.UnlockBibleMeaning.com to verify this.

The question is what’s the full story being told by this word and its use in this context in Genesis immediately after the ‘creation’ story … again, I repeat, whether you believe the creation story or not … it doesn’t change the way this story was recorded however longtime ago it was.

When you solve this mystery, which we’ll do during the first lessons of the course, you’ll have an answer to one of the most asked questions about today’s society worldwide. I guarantee you’ll be amazed. But even more important than that answer is the Bible study method you’ll begin to incorporate for your own ongoing studies.

Enroll in this course here and solve the mystery of naked and subtil — very revealing

This blog post is an excerpt from chapter 3.2.3 of Origin of the Universe.

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Wastewater or Chemically Cleaned Water, that’s Today’s Norm

Bathing and cleansing in wastewater–what a paradox. Unfortunately a reality in poorer countries around the world. Is the glass half-full or half-empty?

Wastewater, cremations… Ganges, India. Where millions drink, bathe and cleanse.

Is our worldwide water supply headed towards wastewater or clean water? It’s sad that we even have to ask or think about such a question. But there are huge organizations devoted to just this cause.

(Audit of the Universe, chapter 3.4)

Cleansing

From the kitchen in the Water Cycle Café  we watch village women bathing and washing in the Irrawaddy River in the country of Myanmar (Burma). While baths and bathrooms are the norm for much of the world, in several nations such as India, Myanmar, China, and several Africa countries, river bathing and washing is common.

Remember when you were a child swimming in ‘the old swimming hole’ or a nearby river or lake? Remember that clean, refreshing feeling from the water? In Western societies, in Asia and in the Middle East, bathing and showering are a necessity, part of good grooming, cleanliness and hygiene—Japanese often cleanse themselves in sex-segregated hot springs or onsen.

If we ask most of our tour group what the greatest inventions of mankind are, plumbing is high on, if not top, of the list. Galacti passes out replicas of the earliest known ancient earthenware plumbing pipes (2700 B.C.), reinforced with asphalt to guard against leaks, used by the Indus River Valley civilization.

We visit, via the café, Borobudur Temple in Indonesia and view the ancient plumbing being restored in the temple. We pull up a keystone and see the drainage pipes that connect to the 8th century crocodile and dragon statues, which, like ornamental but functional gargoyle water spouts on Notre-Dame de Paris in France and on Greek temples, drain the excess water or wastewater from the temple. In the throne room of Borobudur the ancient Indonesians placed the nexus of the water drainage system. All of this facilitates cleansing of the temple and of the people.

‘So is there anything ‘wrong’ with this emphasis on cleanliness?” Galacti wonders. ‘Certainly bathing is necessary for health. But I wonder, does everyone have the access to clean water for washing and the toilette?”

We’ve gone from cleansing being a necessity, with worldwide access to enough clean water being the ideal, to countries having to be aware of wasting water in bathing. For example, the average UK citizen taking a daily eight-minute power shower uses around 136 liters/29 UK gallons of hot water, or 16 liters a minute, whereas the total amount of water an African family uses in a day is 23 liters a day ( 8300 liters per year).

Our daily shower uses about 3.6 gallons/minute, whereas an African family uses 5 gallons/day.
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Many African countries have no running water to shower or wash in; instead, in countries such as Kenya, Malawi, Zambia and Uganda, the people have created a household device called a ‘tippy-tap,’ a bottle attached to a tree by string, in which a makeshift foot pedal activates the water flow for washing hands—one of these devices is available for us to examine at the café, and we find it does the job but takes a lot of effort.

In 2012 over 100,000 households in Kenya, Malawi and Zambia made ‘tippy-taps’ because there was no option to install plumbing and sinks. Clearly if you contrast this with a London home in which a sink with running water is the norm, the ‘tippy-tap,’ while a workable solution, just shows the inequities… but how did the situation get this way? Which reminds us: we’re talking mainly clean water… what about countries in which people bathe in filthy wastewater?

The Ganges River in India flows through the café, allowing us to observe an astonishing ritual. Benares (Varanasi), considered by Hindus to be the most sacred city in India, is crowded with corpses on rafts and with fecal matter. Human waste leaks into it; however, the Hindus still float their decomposing dead on rafts in the water and then bathe ceremonially in the polluted wastewater. Hindus traditionally place great significance on bathing in the Ganges or coming to India’s holiest city to die, be cremated and/or floated in the Ganges.

According to figures, Hindu Brahmins (priests) and mourners in Hindu death rituals release 35,000 bodies into the river each year since crematoriums are in disrepair and cannot handle the sheer numbers of bodies–imagine the stench of decomposition in the water, the bacteria and diseases released.

Yes, this practice is important in a religious sense, but is water quality sacrificed? The Ganges mysteriously ‘clouds’ this issue by seemingly ‘cleansing itself’ of bacteria, for example eliminating a strain of Eschericia coli (E.coli) in three days, as scientific experiments have proven. Scientists think this mysterious phenomenon may be attributed to macrophages eating bacteria or the river’s high oxygenation, for example.

However, the river’s ‘cleansing’ properties face a challenge because of progress, namely dams being constructed to supply hydroelectric power to India. Because India suffered a blackout in 2012 that left 2 percent of the country’s 1.2 billion people without power and is third in fossil-fuel carbon dioxide emissions in the world, Indian government plans 300 such projects near the Himalayan glaciers in the north of India. Yet the dams’ filtration system will interfere with the natural water flow, therefore reducing the river’s ability to ‘renew itself’.

Furthermore, the hydroelectric power generated by the dams by 2030 will amount to 100,000 MW, or 6 percent of the country’s energy needs, or enough to power the national capital territory of Delhi (the world’s fourth-largest city) for 29 days (Delhi’s average power demand is 3,500 MW per day).

Adding to the problem, Varanasi lacks a stable electricity supply and thus cannot run wastewater treatment plants to cleanse the water of the decomposing bodies, fecal matter, and 40-78 percent of city waste that makes its way from the streets of Varanasi into the water supply. What we have here is bathing taken to its extreme—cleansing that is not truly cleansing because of pollution and diversion of water. Yes, generating more renewable energy is desirable in a surging population, but as with the Ethiopian dam, there are costs…

There are many other Ganges situations in the world, and they don’t all involve bathing; more strikingly, they involve not being able to satisfy an even more basic human function. Galacti notes that according to UN statistics, 2.6 billion people, or 1/3 of the world’s population and twice the population of China, lack toilet facilities. In many countries worldwide, more people have a mobile phone than a toilet.

Why are we concerned about this?

Pollution

The oceans cover 71 percent of the Earth’s surface and contain 1,460,000,000 tons of water. If we piled it on the visible land it would reach 1,100 km high! That’s into outer space, not even planes fly that high. If you dropped a bottle of ink in such a volume within seconds it would dissipate, never to be seen again. It’s hard to imagine that such a volume could be contaminated. Well, it’s headed in that direction. We have to ‘chemically treat’ water in order to use it.

Fluoride, Chlorine, Chemical Treatment

The tap water you use today, the pool you swim in, everything you eat or use that contains water (most goods), all of these are likely altered by chlorine and chloramine. Water needs to be ‘disinfected’ of bacteria and pollutants for human consumption and use–it also needs to be ‘filtered’ and ‘distilled’.

Joining the exhibits in the Water Cycle Café is a chlorinated swimming pool.

Chlorine has purified water but the question is: are those chemicals beneficial?  Chlorine kills bacteria and other contaminants by breaking down the cell walls of the bacteria through acids and ions, and if you drink it for a long time, you may become ill.

Environmental Contamination

Next up for inspection is the Huang He or Yellow River or “Mother River” in Northern China, whose delta is 36,272 square kilometers, slightly larger than the Netherlands. It provides water for 12 percent of China’s 1.3 billion population and 15 percent of its farmland. This is not just the source of water diverted during the Beijing Summer Olympics—it’s the birth of Chinese civilization, its lower portion is home to 1.9 million people, and now it is the polluted Mother River of China.

From fishermen in small boats that coexist with factory emissions, to villagers taking samples of waters that run red because of the pollution, the people must share a water supply that is one-third unusable. In addition, the population is distressed because the Yellow River is drying up and coal companies are diverting more water from it, since 85 percent of China’s coal lies in that region.

The water that remains gets polluted by 80 million tons of largely untreated wastewater from the coal mines, every year–to put this in perspective, 80 million tons of wastewater would fill 3200 Olympic swimming pools. Visualize all that waste choking the Yellow River. While not quite an ‘open pit toilet’ compared to several rivers (including the Ganges), the Yellow River and its condition have troubled Chinese citizens, environmental groups, and scientists worldwide.

Remember the example of people such as Erin Brockovich, who called attention to pollution of water with chromium-6 in the USA—worldwide, there are ‘voices’ speaking about pollution, such as, in the case of the Yellow River. International agencies and even water companies such as Veolia and Thames/RWE and government officials in China, and Greenpeace have been airing concerns since 2006 about the water in the Yellow River being undrinkable.

Is there a solution to the pollution? Governments have tried: the Malaysian government imposed the death penalty on would-be polluters, and China has unveiled a similar measure.

Water pollution at the point where countries impose the death penalty on would-be polluters
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Yes, the situation is that dire, Galacti says. Worldwide, water sources such as rivers in the UK, where 40 percent of otters test positive for the flu-like illness Toxoplasmosis that is particularly deadly to people with HIV and weakened immune systems, and Egypt’s Nile River, which carries 60 percent of rural waste disposal and 40 percent of urban waste disposal and is responsible for 17,000 children dying of dysentery each year. Water-borne diseases such as dysentery and diarrhea are killing more children than malaria or HIV.

There must be some more ‘positive’ news, and there is, just in time for lunch, which we have as the café transforms into a restaurant in Cambodia.

This blog post is an excerpt from chapter 3.4 of Audit of the Universe

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Learn how to play Take Inventory – The Interconnectivity Game (free) that nourishes your neurons and is taking the world by storm. Play a round with family and friends. View the above videos and use the tags at the end of this blog for dozens of ideas to play Take Inventory – The Game.

See the index of the book Inventory of the Universe to find a specific chapter and read it online.

Purchase Inventory of the Universe at Amazon – Purchase the Kindle version

Google Play – Barnes@Nobles – Kobo – iTunes

Unlock Bible meaning via Biblical Hebrew … with no fuss. The free video course that puts you in the driver’s seat to navigate the Bible as never before. Join now

Since you read all the way to here… you liked it. Please use the Social Network links just below to share this excerpt of Inventory of the Universe, Wastewater or Chemically Cleaned Water, that’s Today’s Norm

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Each Biblical Hebrew Word is a Precious Jewel to be Discovered

A Biblical Hebrew word is like a door, waiting to be pried open, eager to ramble across the threshold and explore the dazzle of a thrilling discovery.

The same Biblical Hebrew word, ‘lacham’ means both ‘eat’ and ‘war’. How can the same word have such opposite meanings?

Each Biblical Hebrew word is like a rough stone to be dug up, cleaned off and viewed under a magnifying glass to reveal its glitter and perfection. We continue with five more principles to master Biblical Hebrew: points 2-6

(Origin of the Universe, chapter 3.2.2)

2. A Biblical Hebrew word can have Opposite Meanings

Here’s a word most people are aware of: elohim. If you asked someone for its translation I think 100% of the time you’d hear ‘God’ and that is correct. But it can also refer to angels, judges, gods and goddess.

In Gen 31.30 the translation ‘gods’ refers to idols. Ex 12.12 talks about the ‘gods’ of Egypt using the word elohim. Obviously this has nothing to do with ‘God’ (whether you believe in idols and God or not). In fact, even the context shows that ‘gods of Egypt’ is the opposite as the verse says the Lord will smite their gods-elohim.

In Psa 82.6 human-beings are called ‘elohim’ … how do you explain that? As an added interesting biblical fact, in the New Testament we see the term ‘god of this world’ (2 Cor 4.4) with the Greek ‘Theos’ which refers to ‘God’ but in this verse, God is in opposition to ‘god’. Do you know who this ‘god’ is (even from a literary point of view)?

Thinking that ‘elohim’ is ‘God’ is correct but that comprehension is not complete. Not understanding the total opposition of the meaning of Hebrew words can lead to serious misunderstandings. This is just one point in what I refer to as coherent completeness. Elohim = God is correct but INcomplete.

Furthermore, these ‘oppositions’ go further, in that they teach us lessons about life. Another translation example amongst dozens that I’ll show you how to spot in the Bible course: The biblical Hebrew word for ‘eat’ and ‘war’ is ‘lacham’, the common word used in modern Hebrew today for bread derives from this: lechem. We all eat, basically every day, even multiple time in a day. It is one of the most common human activities. Why is the same Hebrew word also used for ‘war’?

In Biblical Hebrew 'eat' and 'war' come from the same word: 'lachem'. Why such different…
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Why did the author leave such ambiguity? What is the implication of this?

3. The same Biblical Hebrew word can have both a Concrete and Abstract meaning.

How would you express ‘hand’ on a piece of paper or stone? You’d draw its outline, this is very ‘concrete’. But now, how would you represent the concept of success, or the idea, ‘you did it’. Well, you could use a variation of something concrete to denote a notion, sentiment or feeling, like this:

Water to Transport People and Goods or a Giant Garbage Patch

Vegetable patch or garbage patch? We’ll take the former anytime. But, humankind is creating the latter in our oceans, of all places.

Yearly plastic input from rivers into oceans and Boyan Slat’s Ocean Cleanup project.

Simply put, water transports more than ocean vessels—in plants and in most living creatures it carries nutrients, chemical reactions take place through water transport, and water facilitates travel. One of the functions of a river is to transport nutrients and minerals and raw metals in sediment, such as tin, gold, calcium, platinum, silica, salt deposits, and so forth to the soil and to oceans and lakes, similar to the way water in the body functions.

(Audit of the Universe, chapter 3.3)

However, as a direct result of humankind’s inventiveness and our ability to transform these same raw materials into usable commodities like various forms of temperature resistant, resilient and dense plastic, our rivers and waterways now transport various but numerous products of our throw-away societies around the world.

When it comes to plastic objects–you name it, we even now have 3D printers creating replacement body parts–not just for cars but for the human body. Coupled with this we’ve developed more ways to divert water such as pipes and canals which transport our sewage and junk via stream and rivers ultimately reaching deltas and estuaries only to be carried out to sea where the salt water both breaks this trash into minuscule irrecoverable size chunks as well as swelling our garbage laden oceans.

The Garbage Patch Nation

“The ocean currents transport stuff that ancient peoples could not have dreamed,” Galacti says. “Shipwrecks and debris were common, and cargo and debris washed up on shore. But now with globalization, you can transport plastic bottles, which would have been unheard of a century or two ago.”

In this Water Cycle Café we are standing on top of an island made of plastic water bottles as well as other synthetic detritus. We are looking at the infamous Great Pacific Garbage Patch, also called the North Pacific Gyre or the Great North Pacific Vortex. Galacti notes there are five such expanses of waste in the world, including the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, the Indian Ocean Garbage Patch, North Atlantic Garbage Patch, a.k.a. the Sargasso Sea. The North Pacific Gyre is estimated to be anywhere from the size of Texas to almost twice the area of continental United States.

UNESCO has designated them collectively as a symbolic federal state called “Garbage Patch”. These garbage patches/gyres are ‘plastic smorgasboards’ of water bottles, beach balls, plastic forks, DV cases, Styrofoam containers, plastic bags, and other trash blown into the ocean from landfills or even dumped overboard by oceangoing ships.

UNESCO has designated these plastic islands as a symbolic state called “Garbage Patch”
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Although plastic endures, its components break down rapidly in water. Galacti points to a Styrofoam container and, with his microscopic vision, observes its polystyrene molecules, heavier than the water molecules, break down and dissolve in the ocean, creating small fragments called nurdles. Most of the plastic however can last for decades or longer.

We feel buried in all this plastic, about 50,000 pieces of trash per one square mile of ocean or given the 614,517,609 square miles of ocean, 7 trillion penny-sized pieces of trash or enough to fill the U.S. Sears Tower three times. What does this avalanche of plastic mean for the water, for animals and for man?

Consider fish and birds such as the albatross. Albatross chicks in the Pacific ingest five tons of objects such as a plastic cigarette lighter from Japan, a plastic child’s toy, and bottle caps; as a result, many of these chicks die because of the space the plastic takes up in their stomach, punctured lungs, and harmful chemicals that attach to the trash.

As for the fish, primarily small filter feeders such as herring, tilapia, and goldfish, they suck in the nurdles, about the size of fish food pellets, and ingest all the harmful chemicals such as BPA, PCBs and phthalates, which kill the fish or change their sex from male to female and vice versa. If the fish survive their phthalate (cancer-causing chemical) diet, the plastic toxins get passed on to birds, larger fish, sharks, and humans that consume fish.

Ocean Cleanup

In 2013 a visionary 18 year old, Boyan Slat, launched Ocean Cleanup, an organization dedicated to ridding the Oceans of the truckload of plastic, specifically targeting these monstrous garbage patches.

They have developed technology with buoys and skirts to garner huge quantities of this trash and concentrate it for easier removal, bringing it onshore where it can be treated and recycled into needed raw materials. Ocean Cleanup has done many tests in the North Sea where oceanic conditions are much more severe than in the Pacific. Their plan is to deploy the first experimental cleanup system in the Pacific in 2018. They project being able to rid that garbage patch of 50% of its noxious contents in 5 years. The least that can be said is here’s a concerted effort to try to overcome this blight.

We can’t put the responsibility for trash and pollution in the ocean solely on seafarers. the vast majority of the plastic is disposed of or tossed away on land. We add some 5,000 tons of plastic solids, the equivalent weight of 65 space shuttles, to the oceans every day. Now it’s time to not only start removing it but stop feeding the garbage patch.

We add some 5,000 tons of plastic, the weight of 65 space shuttles, to the oceans every day.
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Is the bottle half-full or half-empty, or in this case, are the world’s oceans getting trashier or cleaner?

This blog post is an excerpt from chapter 3.3 of Audit of the Universe

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Join The Explanation Newsletter to stay informed of updates. and future events. No obligations, total privacy, unsubscribe if you want. Your gift is a free pdf of The Explanation and a free pdf of Answering the Big Questions in Life

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Learn how to play Take Inventory – The Interconnectivity Game (free) that nourishes your neurons and is taking the world by storm. Play a round with family and friends. View the above videos and use the tags at the end of this blog for dozens of ideas to play Take Inventory – The Game.

See the index of the book Inventory of the Universe to find a specific chapter and read it online.

Purchase Inventory of the Universe at Amazon – Purchase the Kindle version

Google Play – Barnes@Nobles – Kobo – iTunes

Unlock Bible meaning via Biblical Hebrew … with no fuss. The free video course that puts you in the driver’s seat to navigate the Bible as never before. Join now

Since you read all the way to here… you liked it. Please use the Social Network links just below to share this excerpt of Inventory of the Universe, Water to Transport People and Goods or a Giant Garbage Patch

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Your Native Language does Not Render the Fullness of Biblical Hebrew

Whatever native language you speak and read, when it comes to the Bible and its translation, all native languages worldwide cannot translate the full meaning of each of the Biblical Hebrew words we find in the original texts.

One Biblical Hebrew word ‘davar’ is translated in the KJV Bible by FIFTY different English words and phrases. Bible readers don’t know this and certainly don’t know why this happens. Do you?

Let’s start at the beginning. You might have little or no knowledge of the Bible, that’s fine. You might consider the Bible to be a bunch of fables of no particular interest other than tales to tell kids, frankly, that’s fine too. You might even believe that the Bible is full of lies and actually is a ‘negative book’, well, you’re entitled to your viewpoint.

(Origin of the Universe chapter 3.2.1)

If you’re wondering how and why we’re even talking about the Bible, why The Explanation went from Inventory and Audit of the Universe–all about our planet, humankind and how we humans work then please quickly look here: Why Theology?, Sacred Books and The Bible. You’ll better understand why this page talks about Biblical Hebrew.

All of that said, one point remains. The Bible is the best-seller of all times and one way or the other, it is a ‘piece of literature’. If not for any other reason, but general knowledge, it behooves you to have even a cursory knowledge of its contents. So let’s take a closer look. I guarantee you it is going to be very revealing.

Bible Translations

The vast majority read the Bible in their own native language, That’s normal. Because the Bible has such a widespread audience it has been translated into 636 languages. The New Testament into 1442 languages and portions of the Bible into yet another 1145 languages, making it the most translated book of all times with new translations still appearing.

In a nutshell, Bible translations (which have taken a lot of effort and scholarship) are very helpful but they are incomplete for one very good reason. The original words, mainly in Hebrew and Greek, have more meaning than what can be rendered in any one translated word or phrase. How can I affirm this? Simply because if you take any translation you’ll see that a SINGLE original word–let’s say in Hebrew–has been translated with MULTIPLE words in the translation, no matter what the language.

The original Hebrew words have more meaning than what can be rendered in any one translated…
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If it were so simple, every single Hebrew word would only have ONE and the SAME translated word. But each word has more than one–some have fifty different translations. Yes, you read that correctly–50 different renderings for the same Hebrew word as we’ll shortly see.

You need to ask the fundamental question: How can ONE Hebrew word have FIFTY different translations? Done by expert linguists and Bible scholars who are doing their utmost to stay faithful to the original text.

The answer to that question is why I wrote this article and why I am developing a free video course:

7 Keys to Master Biblical Hebrew – A Study Method to Unlock Bible Meaning

Biblical Hebrew is the original language of the Bible. You need to understand why a single Biblical Hebrew word can be rendered CORRECTLY with up to 50 words in your native language. The vast majority of the original language words have multiple translations. With that understanding in mind, I think you can easily and quickly realize that when you read ONE word, or ONE short phrase in your native language you are getting understanding but–your understanding is INcomplete.

Don’t misunderstand what I’m saying here. Your native language translation in 99.99% of cases is correct. You can understand what the a/Author of those words is saying even if sometimes it is difficult. What I’m saying is that understanding of the Bible in any of the 636 or thousands of translations is only PARTIAL understanding.

And partial understanding can lead to erroneous comprehension of the text. Just like partial understand of any and all subjects be they, science, humanities, geography or mathematics, can lead to error. Especially when we think we are making conclusions based on complete comprehension–because that’s what we believe or have been given to believe.

Following is just a short answer to the above fundamental question regarding multiple native language translations for one Biblical Hebrew word. It really is a preview of the online course with the same title where you’ll discover a number of unspoken characteristics of Biblical Hebrew. If you want to understand the Bible, you need to be aware of these principles.

You may not be aware of some to the examples I evoke here–all the more reason to join the course (online very soon) and increase your general knowledge. A friend of mine told me recently that he was playing a quiz game with some friends and a Bible related question came up and he answered it to the surprise of everyone there! He told me he knew the answer because of a conversation we’d had. You never know when this information is going to come in handy. Not that that’s your main motivation.

I’ll even go so far as to say that most people with some knowledge and interest in the Bible are not aware of these seven keys and certainly not of this study method to unlock Bible meaning.

Here’s an overview:

Biblical Hebrew words have Various Meanings.

I’ve already mentioned this one. Here’s an example that I think everyone is aware of because of ‘The Ten Commandments’. Again, remember, I’m not asking you to believe that this story ever took place or even that Moses really existed and received the Ten Commandments from God. Just consider this as literature, written originally in Biblical Hebrew, if you want. The Hebrew word used in this context for ‘commandment’ (Ex 24.38) is ‘davar’. It’s used about 1400 times in the Hebrew Bible. Here is a simple list of over 50 words and phrases used as translations in the English language King James Bible:

act, advice, affair, answer, because of, book, business, care, case, cause, certain rate, commandment, counsel, decree, deed,  due, duty, effect, errand, evil favored, hurt, language, manner, matter, message, thing, oracle, portion, promise, provision, purpose, question, rate, reason, report, request, sake, saying, sentence, some (uncleanness), somewhat to say, speech, talk, task, thing (concerning), thought, tidings, what(-soever), which, word, work.

Why can one ‘simple’ word have so many different translations? What is the implication of this?

The Hebrew word used in conjunction with the Ten Commandments (Ex 24.38) is ‘davar’. It has 50…
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This means that sometimes, when you read the KJV and come across one of these 50 words, in actual fact, it is the same word as ‘commandment’ as in the Ten Commandments. This is only one example of how ‘translation’ affects comprehension. Think about this: practically EVERY SINGLE word in Biblical Hebrew has MULTIPLE translation in your native language. This Biblical Hebrew course will explain why this is so.

This blog post is an excerpt from chapter 3.2.1 of Origin of the Universe

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Learn how to play Take Inventory – The Interconnectivity Game (free) that nourishes your neurons and is taking the world by storm. Play a round with family and friends. View the above videos and use the tags at the end of this blog for dozens of ideas to play Take Inventory – The Game.

See the index of the book Inventory of the Universe to find a specific chapter and read it online.

Purchase Inventory of the Universe at Amazon – Purchase the Kindle version

Google Play – Barnes@Nobles – Kobo – iTunes

Unlock Bible meaning via Biblical Hebrew … with no fuss. The free video course that puts you in the driver’s seat to navigate the Bible as never before. Join now

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The Aral Sea Story – How Humanity Uses and Misuses Water

The Aral Sea is just one example of water shortage and humanities role in wasting this prime commodity.

The Aral Sea in 1989 and 2014. Diverting water has wasted this Sea and wrecked havoc with the livelihoods of those generations which depended on it.

The Aral Sea Story

 “Next on the menu, food from Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, and water from the Aral Sea, and souvenir T-shirts for everyone,” Galacti says, as the structure of the Water Cycle Café expands to accommodate the ancient lake. The problem is, the Aral Sea is shrinking, its water pumped out of the Water Cycle Café into cotton fields being worked by Uzbekistan farmers.

(Audit of the Universe chapter 3.2)

One of less than twenty existing ancient lakes in the world, the Aral Sea borders Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan, but its impact is large: Like the drying up of Lake Chad, once one of the largest lakes in the world, straddling Niger, Chad and the Sudan, the shrinking of the Aral Sea has complicated other problems of the region.

During the past 60 years, the Aral Sea has diminished to one-fifth of its historic size and former volume. The mighty sea in our Water Cycle Café fractures into three smaller bodies of water totaling 13,000 square kilometers—ponds compared to the Aral Sea’s 64,500 square kilometers in 1957. Kazakhstan has turned the Northern Aral Sea around and whereas its shoreline was 100 kilometers from the port of Aralsk it is now only 20-25 km away, depending on the season of the year.

The Aral Sea in 1957, 64,500 square km, in 2014 three ponds totaling 13,000 square km.
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In Uzbekistan, cotton farmers and cotton producers have withdrawn and diverted the waters (much as the ancient Khmer did) through a network of channels in order to produce cotton, their national‘oqoltyn (white gold)’, for international export and local livelihood—Uzbekistan is one of the world’s leading cotton fiber manufacturers along with India, China, America and Pakistan.

The fate of the Aral Sea water goes something like this: the water is diverted to soak the cotton fields for fibers to make T-shirts like the one Galacti is wearing that takes 2,720 liters of water to produce. As changes in the Aral Sea alter weather patterns, the growing season for cotton shrinks to 170 days (200 days are normal), endangering the cotton crops as unproductive farmland increases.

As a side effect of wasting water, desertification converts 45,000 square kilometers of land to barren waste that yields 100 million tons of saline-laden dust that creep into the lungs of children and livestock, causing pneumonia in children and suffocating cattle. In Aralsk, Kazakhstan and Muynak, Uzbekistan, towns on the Uzbekistan-Kazakhstan border, villagers with respiratory illnesses, anemia, kidney and liver diseases, cancer, and tuberculosis from drinking polluted water, leave their homeland in hopes of reversing worsening health.

The story is a little more encouraging as we look to the southwest of the Aral Sea and change the ‘menu’.

Israeli Conservation

In Israel, the major sources of water such as the Sea of Galilee and the Coastal Aquifer, which provide fifty percent of the water to Israeli households, were mismanaged: lead and other pollutants seeped into drinking water, dead fish lined dry bed areas of rivers, sea pollution closed beaches, a growing population increased the demand for water and decreased the water available for agriculture. Thirty-three years ago, the problem was so severe farmers faced losing their farms. At present, Israel has reversed its national trend of pollution, salination and overconsumption of water. The country’s Water Authority and major companies located in Israel have worked in concert to correct the water deficiency and misuse.

The country now recycles 80 percent of its wastewater or 400 million cubic meters, which, if we use the figure of 1600 cubic meters of water per ton of cereal grains, specifically wheat, is enough to produce 250,000 short tons of wheat—that’s nearly a quarter of all domestic wheat consumption in Israel from 2011-2012 (900,000 tons).

Although drought is challenging the nation’s wheat production, Israel is the only nation that has doubled its water productivity in agriculture, reducing its per-hectare water use in its crop fields by 37 percent and using highly treated wastewater for irrigation. In addition, seawater desalination plants transform water from the Mediterranean into potable water and treat brackish groundwater. Israel’s water reclamation success is so great that it now sells water-cleaning tablets to UNICEF, which uses them in humanitarian aid to Syria.

We eat Israeli wheat at the café to celebrate Israel’s accomplishments. However, even with this positive news, we view sobering visuals of experts predicting in 2009 that in 50 years the world’s water supply will collapse… can we possibly ‘create’ water, and what from?

Making More Water

The Water Cycle Café offers a demonstration of water bottles that can create water from evaporation and condensation in the air, as well as other nifty inventions.

Scientists have extended their imagination globally to address the problem of water shortages. First, collaboration by a corporation involving scientists in America and Ireland is creating a nanotechnology bottle that extracts water from air to refill itself, based on the biology of the Namib Desert beetle in Africa. However, in operation now, the “Waterboy,” an American invention, is extracting water from air in Manila in the Philippines.

The US-Philippines team has chosen Manila because plastic water bottles clog the drainage systems in the city, disrupting the water cycle and causing major flooding during typhoon season. To address this problem, the WaterBoy takes condensation/vapor from the air to produce water, cutting down on 11,000 half liter plastic bottles that would otherwise wind up in landfills and drains. That’s enough bottles to build almost two ‘bottle schools’ (two classrooms each) using plastic bottles and other construction materials in Guatemala and El Salvador, half a world from the Philippines. While the ‘bottle schools,’ conceived of as a way to productively reuse throwaway plastic, can educate and assist, a better option might be to eliminate the trash altogether.

WaterBoy takes condensation/vapor from the air to producing up to 30 liters of water/day,…
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What about the water we do have? What are we doing with it?  Aside from industrial uses, water has three main functions in human life: transport, cleansing, and nourishing (this includes animals, crops, and drinking water).

This blog post is an excerpt from chapter 3.2 of Audit of the Universe

Dig Deeper into The Explanation

Join The Explanation Newsletter to stay informed of updates. and future events. No obligations, total privacy, unsubscribe if you want. Your gift is a free pdf of The Explanation and a free pdf of Answering the Big Questions in Life

TheExplanation.com

Email address:

Learn how to play Take Inventory – The Interconnectivity Game (free) that nourishes your neurons and is taking the world by storm. Play a round with family and friends. View the above videos and use the tags at the end of this blog for dozens of ideas to play Take Inventory – The Game.

See the index of the book Inventory of the Universe to find a specific chapter and read it online.

Purchase Inventory of the Universe at Amazon – Purchase the Kindle version

Google Play – Barnes@Nobles – Kobo – iTunes

Unlock Bible meaning via Biblical Hebrew … with no fuss. The free video course that puts you in the driver’s seat to navigate the Bible as never before. Join now

Since you read all the way to here… you liked it. Please use the Social Network links just below to share this excerpt of Inventory of the Universe, The Aral Sea Story – How Humanity Uses and Misuses Water

The post The Aral Sea Story – How Humanity Uses and Misuses Water appeared first on The Explanation with Sam Kneller.