Magic Statistics

I thought Benny Hinn's gig was healing the sick and disabled.  Well, no, it turns out, not all: Only those with silent and invisible afflictions are eligible.

Last Friday in New Zealand, Mr Hinn made it clear that he demands peace, quiet, and proper decorum while he is speaking.

It's Friday night and Benny's in the house - the house of God - and in Benny's house no kids are allowed in the aisles, no talking during the anointing and, apart from an occasional "amen" and "hallelujah", no chatter permitted at all.

And that's without exceptions, as one woman apparently suffering from Tourette's syndrome discovered when she was rudely ushered out of Benny's house, Auckland's Vector Arena.

"Shut up. You cannot be speaking when I am preaching. Nobody can do that here. We cannot allow people to be speaking back to me when I am ministering the word," Hinn yelled.

He admonished parents for allowing young children to play in the aisles and rebuked a lone man seen "wandering around the auditorium".

"Would you please find a seat? You must understand, distraction kills the anointing and I won't allow no one to distract me, so sit down now. I am not going to change," Hinn snapped.

"Distraction kills the anointing"?  Then Benny Hinn admits that he can never be an agent for healing Tourette's syndrome, advanced Parkinson’s Disease, cerebral palsy, or any number of other cerebral and psychiatric disorders.

Crowd noise, epileptic seizures, and other distractions don’t seem to have hindered Jesus’ ability to heal.

h/t: Religion News Blog

New technology to transform coal into a green fuel by removing carbon pollutants from emissions has been touted recently.  Last month, we heard that Canada's CANMET Energy Technology Centre has applied for a federal grant to evaluate its process.  Now researchers at Stanford University, California, are working on the same idea.

While solar power and hybrid cars have become popular symbols of green technology, Stanford researchers are exploring another path for cutting emissions of carbon dioxide, the leading greenhouse gas that causes global warming.

Carbon capture and storage, also called carbon sequestration, traps carbon dioxide after it is produced and injects it underground. The gas never enters the atmosphere. The practice could transform heavy carbon spewers, such as coal power plants, into relatively clean machines with regard to global warming.

“The notion is that the sooner we wean ourselves off fossil fuels, the sooner we'll be able to tackle the climate problem,” said Sally Benson, executive director of the Global Climate and Energy Project (GCEP) and professor of energy resources engineering. “But the idea that we can take fossil fuels out of the mix very quickly is unrealistic. We're reliant on fossil fuels, and a good pathway is to find ways to use them that don't create a problem for the climate.”

Storing the carbon dioxide captured by sequestration is a major problem.  Significant leakage of sequestered CO2 into the atmosphere would obviously defeat the primary purpose of the exercise.

h/t: Faith-Science News

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• Coal: The latest green fuel
• New technology to reduce CO2 emissions
• Ontario Liberal policy on coal power plants: Keep on polluting