One of the most popular art and hobby to date is the collection of autographs. Autograph collectors can be started by anyone. You can collect as many autographs as you'd like ranging from TV personalities to popular sports icon. Some even hunt for autographs of local stars and celebrities they are a fan of.
Some people started out the hobby by being simple followers to their favorite athletes or celebrities. They would buy posters as well as memorabilia which they would have autographed by these popular stars. Teenagers tend to like autographed items of their favorite bands, pop idols, and well-known movie stars. While there are individuals whose inclination would be a specialized genre like rock bands, golf superstars, or American Idol singers for instance. They would gather as much autographed items they could ever find that catches their fancy.
How can a collector build his autographed collection? This is no longer a secret, because autographed items can be easily obtained these days. One common ways of getting a signed item would be attending an event where your favorite celeb is. They will easily hand out self addressed stamped envelopes or they may offer autographed goodies like shirts, caps, mugs, or posters to waiting fans. A lot of collectors would opt collecting items where the autographs of the stars where obtained by themselves as opposed to purchasing them from someone who got it for themselves. This is exactly where the sentimental value of the autographed item attaches and where the entire thrill and gratification of the conquest comes in.
For every collector, the autographed item is a conquest, a won battle that not everyone is capable of acquiring. Autograph collection is not a mere hobby; it is a work of art.
Autograph collectors find thrill and pure happiness in the acquisition of their signed collections. They meticulously take race of these tiny bits of paper and handle them with extra caution. Because of this, we have seen a lot of autographed collections and were stunned at how valuable they eventually became through the years. Without these collectors, we may have not seen a glimpse of the past, of how grandiose the entertainment, sports, or any field way back when it was most gloriously celebrated, which we may have never seen today.
The collection of autographed stuff is very popular as well as lucrative that you can earn money buying, selling, and trading signed items. An even wider market may be dealing with counterfeit and forged autographed collectibles so be sure to exercise caution when dealing with these traders. Ascertain your dealer's reputation and determine from reviews if they are indeed selling authentic autographed items or not. Autographs are basically judged on a basis of several criteria, uniqueness, whose signature it is , condition and how well the autograph is presented. Start your own collection today!
Tuesday, October 26, 2010
Some Information On Tarp Uses
Although many people do not give much thought to tarps, this product is extremely versatile and useful. A tarp can be used for all kinds of things, such as camping, protecting items, and artwork. If you are looking for information on this product and its uses, the information in this article can help.
A tarpaulin is a sheet of strong and flexible cloth or canvas that is coated with a waterproof coating, such as urethane. They are also made of plastic, like polyethylene. Because of their waterproof and durable nature, they are useful for many things.
Campers use this product to build tents and canopies of all shapes and sizes. They can be fixed to the ground with pegs and formed into traditional tents in the same manner a store-bought tent would be erected. Some also purchase additional equipment and create canopies.
Most people use these poly sheets to protect their belongings. For instance, they are very popular car covers, especially since they are more affordable then traditional car covers. Some people also use them to protect tools and other items that are left outside for extending periods of time. The tarpaulins provide these items with cover from the rain and other elements.
Truckers use poly tarps to protect the cargo that they are hauling. Before they embark upon their journeys, very large sheets are placed over the cargo and affixed to the sides of the truck. This protects the cargo from rain, sun, and wind.
Artists use tarps for many different reasons. While painters may use them to protect the ground from paint splatter, others actually incorporate them into their work. There have been many art pieces that have been created with tarpaulins, including videos about surfing.
A tarp has many uses, both practical and creative. This durable product is incredibly useful and versatile, making it the perfect product for all kinds of different projects.
A tarpaulin is a sheet of strong and flexible cloth or canvas that is coated with a waterproof coating, such as urethane. They are also made of plastic, like polyethylene. Because of their waterproof and durable nature, they are useful for many things.
Campers use this product to build tents and canopies of all shapes and sizes. They can be fixed to the ground with pegs and formed into traditional tents in the same manner a store-bought tent would be erected. Some also purchase additional equipment and create canopies.
Most people use these poly sheets to protect their belongings. For instance, they are very popular car covers, especially since they are more affordable then traditional car covers. Some people also use them to protect tools and other items that are left outside for extending periods of time. The tarpaulins provide these items with cover from the rain and other elements.
Truckers use poly tarps to protect the cargo that they are hauling. Before they embark upon their journeys, very large sheets are placed over the cargo and affixed to the sides of the truck. This protects the cargo from rain, sun, and wind.
Artists use tarps for many different reasons. While painters may use them to protect the ground from paint splatter, others actually incorporate them into their work. There have been many art pieces that have been created with tarpaulins, including videos about surfing.
A tarp has many uses, both practical and creative. This durable product is incredibly useful and versatile, making it the perfect product for all kinds of different projects.
Proud Photography Review | ProudPhotographyReview| ProudPhotography.com
If you have been enrolled with photography school you might have realizes how expensive it is and most of the lessons cover on un-necessary topics just to prolong the course and charge student more money. Fortunately, an online photography course known as "Proud Photography" is a cost and time effective lesson that anyone can afford.
Proud Photography is an online interactive photography lesson that would cost lessens than other schools. You will learn everything that you need to know about photography without paying much. Isn't it is a worthwhile investment? Most photography schools would charge you a fortune to enroll into their classes, the curriculum has a little of the art for you to learn and their tutors unwilling to share their secrets with you. But the personal tutors at Proud Photography are more altruistic toward their students.
Since Proud Photography is an interactive lesson, it provide student to experience a class-room like learning environment irrespective of learning online. The lesson is designed with a purpose to provide fruitfulness learning for both beginners and advance learners.
The creator of Proud Photography, Mr. Peter Timko who has won many awards for photography is well-known in the commercial photography industry. The website is ideal for people who have passive for photography but cannot afford the high enrollment fee and being time constraint. It shares its constructive lecture on the subject to expand the community.
Proud Photography is made by professional photographers and is well written and framed intended to teach beginners and those who are inter-mediate or advance level students. The entire course is separated into 13 sections that focus on a particular topic with straight-to-point to make the learning more productive. You will have an in-depth and comprehensive contents right at your hand. Proud Photography course covered the entire lesson on photography without the un-necessary information. The course will help you to develop the art of photography to a greatest level.
As you have read above, it is yours decision to decide whether the Proud Photgraphy course is a worthwhile investment for you or not?
Proud Photography is an online interactive photography lesson that would cost lessens than other schools. You will learn everything that you need to know about photography without paying much. Isn't it is a worthwhile investment? Most photography schools would charge you a fortune to enroll into their classes, the curriculum has a little of the art for you to learn and their tutors unwilling to share their secrets with you. But the personal tutors at Proud Photography are more altruistic toward their students.
Since Proud Photography is an interactive lesson, it provide student to experience a class-room like learning environment irrespective of learning online. The lesson is designed with a purpose to provide fruitfulness learning for both beginners and advance learners.
The creator of Proud Photography, Mr. Peter Timko who has won many awards for photography is well-known in the commercial photography industry. The website is ideal for people who have passive for photography but cannot afford the high enrollment fee and being time constraint. It shares its constructive lecture on the subject to expand the community.
Proud Photography is made by professional photographers and is well written and framed intended to teach beginners and those who are inter-mediate or advance level students. The entire course is separated into 13 sections that focus on a particular topic with straight-to-point to make the learning more productive. You will have an in-depth and comprehensive contents right at your hand. Proud Photography course covered the entire lesson on photography without the un-necessary information. The course will help you to develop the art of photography to a greatest level.
As you have read above, it is yours decision to decide whether the Proud Photgraphy course is a worthwhile investment for you or not?
carmen Electra born on april 20,1972.she is an American glamour model, actress, television personality, singer, dancer and sex symbol. She gained fame for her appearances in Playboy magazine, on the MTV game show Singled Out, on the TV series Baywatch, and dancing with the Pussycat Dolls.Electra was born in Sharonville, Ohio, the daughter of Patricia, a singer, and Harry, a guitarist and entertainer.Carmen Electra also attended the School for Creative and Performing Arts (SCPA) in the Cincinnati Public School District.She has Irish, German, and Cherokee ancestry.Electra started her professional career in 1990 as a dancer at Kings Island amusement park in Mason, Ohio in the show "It's Magic", one of the more popular shows in the park's history.In 1991, she moved to California and met Prince.In 1995, Electra started appearing in television programs. In May 1996 she was featured in a nude pictorial in Playboy magazine, the first of several. This exposure led to higher profile television appearances, including Baywatch (cast member from 1997–1998, as Leilani "Lani" McKenzie) and MTV's Singled Out. She returned to Baywatch for the 2003 reunion movie, Baywatch: Hawaiian Wedding. Electra has appeared in films such as American Vampire 1997, Good Burger 1997, The Mating Habits of the Earthbound Human 1999, the horror spoof Scary Movie 2000 and also appeared in Meet the Spartans 2008, Scary Movie 4 2006, Epic Movie 2007, Date Movie 2006, Disaster Movie 2008, She won an MTV Movie Award best kiss for Starsky & Hutch. She also appeared in an episode of House in which she portrayed herself as an injured golfer and an injured farmer, playing out House's fantasy.Electra married basketball star Dennis Rodman in November 1998. Their wedding took place at Little Chapel of the Flowers in Las Vegas, Nevada.However, the marriage did not last long, and Electra filed for divorce in April 1999.On November 22, 2003, Electra married Dave Navarro, lead guitarist for the rock band Jane's Addiction. The couple documented their courtship and marriage in an MTV reality television show called 'Til Death Do Us Part: Carmen & Dave.On July 17, 2006, she and Navarro announced their separation, and Electra filed for divorce on August 10. It was finalized on February 20, 2007. Read more: http://www.articlesbase.com/culture-articles/sexy-women-sexy-model-hollywood-sexiest-3548835.html#ixzz13TfqvWXE Under Creative Commons License: Attribution
Autograph collection is one of the most engaged hobbies of all time. Obtaining a collection of your most admired celebrity can truly be fulfilling and enjoyable. Aside from being a worthwhile and fun hobby, autograph collecting may end up as a profitable trade. A very good and rare collection can be everybody's envy as well as a potential source of income for bartering, selling, and trading.
In order for you to kickstart your hobby, you need to first ascertain whose autograph you are willing to collect, in other words narrow down your collection. You can target the sports icons, movie or TV stars of your own choosing. It will help to start with a collection that you'll be most interested with. Go for someone whom you truly follow and idolize, that way it'll be easy to start building your entire collection of memorabilia and signed items.
After you have determined your choice of celebrity to follow, educate yourself as to what autographed stuff is easily available within said option. Determine pricing, how to obtain them and then familiarize yourself as to the authenticity and look of your favorite icon's autograph to ensure you get genuine items which in turn will make your collection more valuable.
Here's the fun part, after you've completed steps one and two, you are on the road toward the most thrilling part of the hobby: collecting! Always keep close track of important events in your area which may feature your fave celeb; like shop opening, book signing, or CD launching for instance, to ensure you get first-hand the autograph of that particular celebrity you fancy.
If luck is on your side, you will be able to personally get the autograph of your favorite star! How cool is that? But never annoy them or you will end up shooing them away. Be polite, courteous, and nice in requesting for a possible autograph signing when the opportunity arrives.
Once you are able to create your own prized collection, you must ensure you keep your collection safe and organized in a scrap book or hobby box where you can neatly file them away for safety.
In order for you to kickstart your hobby, you need to first ascertain whose autograph you are willing to collect, in other words narrow down your collection. You can target the sports icons, movie or TV stars of your own choosing. It will help to start with a collection that you'll be most interested with. Go for someone whom you truly follow and idolize, that way it'll be easy to start building your entire collection of memorabilia and signed items.
After you have determined your choice of celebrity to follow, educate yourself as to what autographed stuff is easily available within said option. Determine pricing, how to obtain them and then familiarize yourself as to the authenticity and look of your favorite icon's autograph to ensure you get genuine items which in turn will make your collection more valuable.
Here's the fun part, after you've completed steps one and two, you are on the road toward the most thrilling part of the hobby: collecting! Always keep close track of important events in your area which may feature your fave celeb; like shop opening, book signing, or CD launching for instance, to ensure you get first-hand the autograph of that particular celebrity you fancy.
If luck is on your side, you will be able to personally get the autograph of your favorite star! How cool is that? But never annoy them or you will end up shooing them away. Be polite, courteous, and nice in requesting for a possible autograph signing when the opportunity arrives.
Once you are able to create your own prized collection, you must ensure you keep your collection safe and organized in a scrap book or hobby box where you can neatly file them away for safety.
Sexy Women | Sexy Model | Hollywood sexiest Read more: http://www.articlesbase.com/culture-articles/sexy-women-sexy-model-hollywood-sexiest-3548835.html#ixzz13TfjSbEr Under Creative Commons License: Attribution
carmen Electra born on april 20,1972.she is an American glamour model, actress, television personality, singer, dancer and sex symbol. She gained fame for her appearances in Playboy magazine, on the MTV game show Singled Out, on the TV series Baywatch, and dancing with the Pussycat Dolls.Electra was born in Sharonville, Ohio, the daughter of Patricia, a singer, and Harry, a guitarist and entertainer.Carmen Electra also attended the School for Creative and Performing Arts (SCPA) in the Cincinnati Public School District.She has Irish, German, and Cherokee ancestry.Electra started her professional career in 1990 as a dancer at Kings Island amusement park in Mason, Ohio in the show "It's Magic", one of the more popular shows in the park's history.In 1991, she moved to California and met Prince.In 1995, Electra started appearing in television programs. In May 1996 she was featured in a nude pictorial in Playboy magazine, the first of several. This exposure led to higher profile television appearances, including Baywatch (cast member from 1997–1998, as Leilani "Lani" McKenzie) and MTV's Singled Out. She returned to Baywatch for the 2003 reunion movie, Baywatch: Hawaiian Wedding.
Electra has appeared in films such as American Vampire 1997, Good Burger 1997, The Mating Habits of the Earthbound Human 1999, the horror spoof Scary Movie 2000 and also appeared in Meet the Spartans 2008, Scary Movie 4 2006, Epic Movie 2007, Date Movie 2006, Disaster Movie 2008, She won an MTV Movie Award best kiss for Starsky & Hutch. She also appeared in an episode of House in which she portrayed herself as an injured golfer and an injured farmer, playing out House's fantasy.Electra married basketball star Dennis Rodman in November 1998. Their wedding took place at Little Chapel of the Flowers in Las Vegas, Nevada.However, the marriage did not last long, and Electra filed for divorce in April 1999.On November 22, 2003, Electra married Dave Navarro, lead guitarist for the rock band Jane's Addiction. The couple documented their courtship and marriage in an MTV reality television show called 'Til Death Do Us Part: Carmen & Dave.On July 17, 2006, she and Navarro announced their separation, and Electra filed for divorce on August 10. It was finalized on February 20, 2007.
Electra has appeared in films such as American Vampire 1997, Good Burger 1997, The Mating Habits of the Earthbound Human 1999, the horror spoof Scary Movie 2000 and also appeared in Meet the Spartans 2008, Scary Movie 4 2006, Epic Movie 2007, Date Movie 2006, Disaster Movie 2008, She won an MTV Movie Award best kiss for Starsky & Hutch. She also appeared in an episode of House in which she portrayed herself as an injured golfer and an injured farmer, playing out House's fantasy.Electra married basketball star Dennis Rodman in November 1998. Their wedding took place at Little Chapel of the Flowers in Las Vegas, Nevada.However, the marriage did not last long, and Electra filed for divorce in April 1999.On November 22, 2003, Electra married Dave Navarro, lead guitarist for the rock band Jane's Addiction. The couple documented their courtship and marriage in an MTV reality television show called 'Til Death Do Us Part: Carmen & Dave.On July 17, 2006, she and Navarro announced their separation, and Electra filed for divorce on August 10. It was finalized on February 20, 2007.
What the Heck is an Affiliate Marketer
Affiliate marketing would have to be one of the easiest ways to get started online if you want to work from home and earn an income. Basically you are promoting somebody else's product and earning a commission. And by promoting somebody else's product you do not need to have a product of your own or need to worry about trying to make a product of your own. This is an ideal setup if you are new to computers, and in particular, new to the Internet.
If you look at the words affiliate and marketing, you will see that they say exactly what they do, except in this case most affiliate marketing takes place online. Offline the term is usually agent or representative.
An affiliate sells something on behalf of someone else, usually a product creator. The product creator pays the affiliate a portion of the sale as a commission, which can be anywhere from 5% up to 75% of the sale price. Some product creators even give the affiliate the full 100% of the sale price as they are more interested in getting the buyers contact details so they can sell them a much higher priced item.
Marketing is how the affiliate gets the buyer to look at the product. There are many ways to do this on the Internet. The affiliate will usually tease the buyer with only a brief glimpse of the product's benefits or they will only supply a small amount of information about the product so the buyer is left wanting to know more details.
If the affiliate's marketing efforts have worked, the buyer will make their purchase by clicking through to the product creator's website. This click is tracked to ensure the commission is allocated to that particular affiliate. The affiliate will receive their commission at a later pre-determined time either by the product creator or by a third-party processor.
Being an affiliate marketer is an easy way to get started without all of the product creation hassles. And after you've been an affiliate for a while you'll get the hang of things and may even want to start creating your own products.
If you look at the words affiliate and marketing, you will see that they say exactly what they do, except in this case most affiliate marketing takes place online. Offline the term is usually agent or representative.
An affiliate sells something on behalf of someone else, usually a product creator. The product creator pays the affiliate a portion of the sale as a commission, which can be anywhere from 5% up to 75% of the sale price. Some product creators even give the affiliate the full 100% of the sale price as they are more interested in getting the buyers contact details so they can sell them a much higher priced item.
Marketing is how the affiliate gets the buyer to look at the product. There are many ways to do this on the Internet. The affiliate will usually tease the buyer with only a brief glimpse of the product's benefits or they will only supply a small amount of information about the product so the buyer is left wanting to know more details.
If the affiliate's marketing efforts have worked, the buyer will make their purchase by clicking through to the product creator's website. This click is tracked to ensure the commission is allocated to that particular affiliate. The affiliate will receive their commission at a later pre-determined time either by the product creator or by a third-party processor.
Being an affiliate marketer is an easy way to get started without all of the product creation hassles. And after you've been an affiliate for a while you'll get the hang of things and may even want to start creating your own products.
Amazing True Stories - Marathon Challenge For A Great Charity - 2011 Read more: http://www.articlesbase.com/news-and-society-articles/amazing-true-stories-marathon-challenge-for-a-great-charity-2011-3549028.html#ixzz13Tf6TBLj Under Creative Commons License: Attribution
In 2011 I will be running 365 Half Marathons in 52 different Cities, in the hope to raise my target of £100,000 for 'The MS Society', which is the UK's largest charity for people affected by multiple sclerosis (MS).
Multiple sclerosis (MS) is the most common disabling neurological condition affecting young adults. Around 100,000 people in the UK alone have MS.
Please support me in anyway you can in the biggest challenge of my life !
I am not a famous athlete or a movie star ! I don't own a big fancy house and I definitely do not drive a flash car. I am an average guy who has become another victim of this down economy, and decided not to go back to the Corporate world of Sales and Marketing.
I lost my job due to cut backs and have decided to combine my education, career experience and personality to promote local businesses online and through Social Media.
Not only do I want to do something that I enjoy, and that I am good at, I wanted to achieve something that makes a difference and has an impact on peoples lives.
Throughout my whole life I have seen what impact Multiple Sclerosis has on peoples lives, both to the person who suffers with the disorder, and to the loved ones of that person. My Dad suffers withMultiple Sclerosis (MS for short), and the 'MS Society' is very close to my heart.
My aim in 2011 is to run 365 Half Marathons in 52 Cities and raise as much money for 'The MS Society' as possible.
Along the way, through Social Media, I will be connecting amazing brands and businesses with people who are following my progress every day; using innovative, unique and cost effective campaigns, contests and giveaways to bring new traffic to their websites and increase profits.
If you or your company would like to get involved, please feel free to contact me, to find out what advertising is available for your very generous donations.
Running Half Marathons For Charity Challenge - 2011 - UK
Multiple sclerosis (MS) is the most common disabling neurological condition affecting young adults. Around 100,000 people in the UK alone have MS.
Please support me in anyway you can in the biggest challenge of my life !
I am not a famous athlete or a movie star ! I don't own a big fancy house and I definitely do not drive a flash car. I am an average guy who has become another victim of this down economy, and decided not to go back to the Corporate world of Sales and Marketing.
I lost my job due to cut backs and have decided to combine my education, career experience and personality to promote local businesses online and through Social Media.
Not only do I want to do something that I enjoy, and that I am good at, I wanted to achieve something that makes a difference and has an impact on peoples lives.
Throughout my whole life I have seen what impact Multiple Sclerosis has on peoples lives, both to the person who suffers with the disorder, and to the loved ones of that person. My Dad suffers withMultiple Sclerosis (MS for short), and the 'MS Society' is very close to my heart.
My aim in 2011 is to run 365 Half Marathons in 52 Cities and raise as much money for 'The MS Society' as possible.
Along the way, through Social Media, I will be connecting amazing brands and businesses with people who are following my progress every day; using innovative, unique and cost effective campaigns, contests and giveaways to bring new traffic to their websites and increase profits.
If you or your company would like to get involved, please feel free to contact me, to find out what advertising is available for your very generous donations.
Running Half Marathons For Charity Challenge - 2011 - UK
Philanthropy Forecast for 2010 and Beyond
October 2009 has been an incredibly turbulent ride financially. The stock exchange has been hit hard, the dollar is down and we're still trying to recover from the worldwide recession. For organizations depending on fundraising for their worthy causes how is this going to affect 2010 and upcoming years?
Buckle Up
People will have to look after themselves more and it will take a bigger percentage of their dollar to do that. With large financial issues at stake companies will have to make decisions affecting many people. People will think twice about the frequency of contributions and the total given to charities. In a recent USA today poll conducted recently it was found that although two-thirds of Americans expected to donate the same amount or more in the coming year as they did in the past year, 72% said their finances affect their philanthropy.
Americans are known as being one of the most giving people in the world. There will be fluctuations in the New Year but not everything is bleak. One of the most reassuring signs is asked again later in the same USA today poll. When asked how much they are planning on donating to charities in 2010, 51% responded with the same amount and a whopping 26% said they were planning on contributing more!
How This Will Affect Fundraising Campaigns
Until the picture is clear as to what kind of recession is coming people may be unsteady on giving. People limit donations during an economic downturn even if their personal finances are not affected because they have a "recessionary mind-set," says Rick Dunham of Dunham + Company, a consultant to religious charities.
What's the Right Course of Action for Fundraising in 2010?
A lot of contradictory information, so what is the best course of action while the financial crisis gets sorted out? Fundraising campaigns are going to have to be prepared to work a little harder for there money.
The best course of action is to consult a professional fundraising company to find a campaign and product best suited to your goals. Potential donors best respond to items in exchange instead of services rendered campaigns. Advertising for campaigns and volunteer incentives will have to be more humble. In economic downturns it never hurts to stay in touch with the donors you know for contributions. They are there because they believe in the cause and it doesn't cost any money to go out and find them.
Bello, Marisol, Poll: Donors feel fiscal squeeze , http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/charity/2008-10-07-charity-poll_N.htm , October 29, 2008.
Buckle Up
People will have to look after themselves more and it will take a bigger percentage of their dollar to do that. With large financial issues at stake companies will have to make decisions affecting many people. People will think twice about the frequency of contributions and the total given to charities. In a recent USA today poll conducted recently it was found that although two-thirds of Americans expected to donate the same amount or more in the coming year as they did in the past year, 72% said their finances affect their philanthropy.
Americans are known as being one of the most giving people in the world. There will be fluctuations in the New Year but not everything is bleak. One of the most reassuring signs is asked again later in the same USA today poll. When asked how much they are planning on donating to charities in 2010, 51% responded with the same amount and a whopping 26% said they were planning on contributing more!
How This Will Affect Fundraising Campaigns
Until the picture is clear as to what kind of recession is coming people may be unsteady on giving. People limit donations during an economic downturn even if their personal finances are not affected because they have a "recessionary mind-set," says Rick Dunham of Dunham + Company, a consultant to religious charities.
What's the Right Course of Action for Fundraising in 2010?
A lot of contradictory information, so what is the best course of action while the financial crisis gets sorted out? Fundraising campaigns are going to have to be prepared to work a little harder for there money.
The best course of action is to consult a professional fundraising company to find a campaign and product best suited to your goals. Potential donors best respond to items in exchange instead of services rendered campaigns. Advertising for campaigns and volunteer incentives will have to be more humble. In economic downturns it never hurts to stay in touch with the donors you know for contributions. They are there because they believe in the cause and it doesn't cost any money to go out and find them.
Bello, Marisol, Poll: Donors feel fiscal squeeze , http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/charity/2008-10-07-charity-poll_N.htm , October 29, 2008.
Unique Gifts For Grandma And Grandpa - Buy Unexpected Gifts Read more: http://www.articlesbase.com/internet-marketing-articles/unique-gifts-for-grandma-and-grandpa-buy-unexpected-gifts-3549365.html#ixzz13TeKNU45 Under Creative Commons License: Attribution
Grandma and Grandpa are one of the most difficult groups of people to buy gifts for. They probably have accumulated a fair amount of things and received many different gifts over the years. This makes it difficult to buy for them. With careful thought, we can still find some great and unexpected gifts that grandma and grandpa will still be pleasantly surprised to receive.
First, a spa or massage gift will be well appreciated. Elderly people are likely less worried about looks and appearances. Some may not have the stress of an office job if they are retired. However, this does not mean they would not appreciate a special treatment of a massage or a spa. This can be exhilarating and can make them feel young again.
Many people tend to buy gifts that consist of photographs of the grandchildren as this is something that grandparents love to receive. Why not be different, have a popart created of your grandparents. This is fun, different and unique. Different types of popart are available. The most popular is the Warholstyle which is a classic, original art inspired by the genius Andy Warhol. Others include Retropop, a combination of vintage, retro, antique and modern art; Lichstyle is a comic style portrait, in solid primary colors, just like the original Roy Lichtenstein modern portraits. Lastly, Silhouettes art is created following the vintage style that traces back to mid-18th century France, where this form of art was created.
One may not associate toys and games with the elderly but certain toys are great to buy for grandma or grandpa. They are fun and will bring out the youth in them. Grandpa would probably love something like a remote controlled helicopter. It requires some skills and technique in operating the helicopter. This is something grandpa can do with the grandson which makes it both fun and a challenge.
For grandma who likes a bit of mental stimulation, there are many great puzzles available. One unique puzzle that I like is the Nueve puzzle. There is no right answer or winning move, the Nueve is designed solely to artfully amuse and entertain. Unlike a traditional puzzle or game with only one solution or outcome, Nueve offers countless beginnings and endings. The Nueve will be appreciated by the curious and creatively spirited. Another fun puzzle that provides light entertainment is the 3D Magna Jigsaw Puzzle. The puzzle consists of 64 magnetic puzzles which can be solved on the fridge!
Studies have shown that laughing is a great recipe for living longer. Therefore, I would recommend a gag or novelty gift for grandma or grandpa. The Wind Up Racing Grannies and Fighting Grandads are extremely hilarious. Although some elderly may not appreciate the joke, if your grandma and grandpa have a sense of humor, they will appreciate the funny side of these toys.
Another unique gift is a Personal Newspaper Headlines. Nothing is more special and personal than a gift that is made especially for that person. You can make the headline as serious or as funny as you like.
Finally, this gift may not be unexpected but it is certainly unique and special. It is the New York Times Birthdate Yearbook. This is a genuine archive newspaper published on the precise day of someone's birth, wedding or other special occasion. It is truly the perfect way to commemorate the event. The book is beautifully gold embossed making it a unique and personal gift.
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First:
First, a spa or massage gift will be well appreciated. Elderly people are likely less worried about looks and appearances. Some may not have the stress of an office job if they are retired. However, this does not mean they would not appreciate a special treatment of a massage or a spa. This can be exhilarating and can make them feel young again.
Many people tend to buy gifts that consist of photographs of the grandchildren as this is something that grandparents love to receive. Why not be different, have a popart created of your grandparents. This is fun, different and unique. Different types of popart are available. The most popular is the Warholstyle which is a classic, original art inspired by the genius Andy Warhol. Others include Retropop, a combination of vintage, retro, antique and modern art; Lichstyle is a comic style portrait, in solid primary colors, just like the original Roy Lichtenstein modern portraits. Lastly, Silhouettes art is created following the vintage style that traces back to mid-18th century France, where this form of art was created.
One may not associate toys and games with the elderly but certain toys are great to buy for grandma or grandpa. They are fun and will bring out the youth in them. Grandpa would probably love something like a remote controlled helicopter. It requires some skills and technique in operating the helicopter. This is something grandpa can do with the grandson which makes it both fun and a challenge.
For grandma who likes a bit of mental stimulation, there are many great puzzles available. One unique puzzle that I like is the Nueve puzzle. There is no right answer or winning move, the Nueve is designed solely to artfully amuse and entertain. Unlike a traditional puzzle or game with only one solution or outcome, Nueve offers countless beginnings and endings. The Nueve will be appreciated by the curious and creatively spirited. Another fun puzzle that provides light entertainment is the 3D Magna Jigsaw Puzzle. The puzzle consists of 64 magnetic puzzles which can be solved on the fridge!
Studies have shown that laughing is a great recipe for living longer. Therefore, I would recommend a gag or novelty gift for grandma or grandpa. The Wind Up Racing Grannies and Fighting Grandads are extremely hilarious. Although some elderly may not appreciate the joke, if your grandma and grandpa have a sense of humor, they will appreciate the funny side of these toys.
Another unique gift is a Personal Newspaper Headlines. Nothing is more special and personal than a gift that is made especially for that person. You can make the headline as serious or as funny as you like.
Finally, this gift may not be unexpected but it is certainly unique and special. It is the New York Times Birthdate Yearbook. This is a genuine archive newspaper published on the precise day of someone's birth, wedding or other special occasion. It is truly the perfect way to commemorate the event. The book is beautifully gold embossed making it a unique and personal gift.
Alice Duong is the owner of Click Here To Visit Facebook Fan Supply
Facebook Fan Supply always supplies REAL FANS targeted to your specific: Age Group, Keyword and Location.
Second: Order Your Facebook Fan Supply Package of 1,000; 2,000 or 5,000 Guaranteed Facebook Fans
Your new fans will arrive in 3 - 4 weeks and all fans are REAL FANS guaranteed to stick to your fanpage. Buy Facebook Fans today and boost your businesses online presence overnight.
Now Pay Close Attention --
Using your Facebook Fan Page to increase your business exposure and revenue is simpler than you've been told. Everyone with a facebook fan page faces the same two problems:
[Problem #1] How To Find Interested Facebook Users
[Problem #2] How To Bring Them To Become Your Fans
Facebook Fan Supply has been solving these two problems for hundreds of satisfied customers. The Facebook Fan Supply has been tried and tested and known to produce excellent results.
First:
Gifts For Boys - Gift That a Young Boy Will Love This Year Read more: http://www.articlesbase.com/internet-marketing-articles/gifts-for-boys-gift-that-a-young-boy-will-love-this-year-3549367.html#ixzz13Te6UDb4 Under Creative Commons License: Attribution
Most children really love to receive gifts from people special to them. These gifts can mean a lot to them. There are a lot of gifts that you can give to your son or to any young boy close to your heart. You can give them gifts during special occasions or whenever you like to. There are some tips that you need to remember for you to give a gift that he will surely love.
VIDEO GAMES
Most young individuals today love to play video games. It is one of the most treasured passions of young people. They always love to play video games with their friends and family. You can buy this gift as a cool present that he will surely treasure. There are games that require the player to move and these are really good for him.
BALL
Boys always love to play indoors and even outdoors. Ball is one cool gift that you can give him. You can give him foot ball or basket ball depending on what sport he is seemed to be inclined with. This is also a good way to bond with him. It keeps him healthy and active all the time.
LEARNING TOYS
Learning toys are very beneficial for him. He can surely enhance his mind and will make him better intellectually. There are a lot of toys that stimulate learning. You can visit stores near you and explore their wide selections. Try to choose those that are highly enjoyable.
COOL SHOES
There are a lot of cool shoes that you can find in the market. These shoes are really good for young boys because it will make them happy and satisfied. These shoes are enjoyable and bring a lot of excitement. There are gravity defying shoes that you can buy for him.
REMOTE CONTROL TOYS
Most boys really enjoy playing with remote control toys. They are really fun and exciting. There are various toys that you can see in toy stores that are controlled by remote controls. There are airplanes and cars. Just choose the one that he likes the most.
There are various gifts that young boys will surely enjoy. You have lots of choices that you can choose from. Just make sure that you will choose those that are safe and highly enjoyable. Keep in mind that young boys love to play and they will surely enjoy receiving cool gifts from y
Now Pay Close Attention --
Using your Facebook Fan Page to increase your business exposure and revenue is simpler than you've been told. Everyone with a facebook fan page faces the same two problems:
[Problem #1] How To Find Interested Facebook Users
[Problem #2] How To Bring Them To Become Your Fans
Facebook Fan Supply has been solving these two problems for hundreds of satisfied customers. The Facebook Fan Supply has been tried and tested and known to produce excellent results.
First: Click Here To Visit Facebook Fan Supply
Facebook Fan Supply always supplies REAL FANS targeted to your specific: Age Group, Keyword and Location.
Second: Order Your Facebook Fan Supply Package of 1,000; 2,000 or 5,000 Guaranteed Facebook Fans
Your new fans will arrive in 3 - 4 weeks and all fans are REAL FANS guaranteed to stick to your fanpage. Buy Facebook Fans today and boost your businesses online presence overnight.
VIDEO GAMES
Most young individuals today love to play video games. It is one of the most treasured passions of young people. They always love to play video games with their friends and family. You can buy this gift as a cool present that he will surely treasure. There are games that require the player to move and these are really good for him.
BALL
Boys always love to play indoors and even outdoors. Ball is one cool gift that you can give him. You can give him foot ball or basket ball depending on what sport he is seemed to be inclined with. This is also a good way to bond with him. It keeps him healthy and active all the time.
LEARNING TOYS
Learning toys are very beneficial for him. He can surely enhance his mind and will make him better intellectually. There are a lot of toys that stimulate learning. You can visit stores near you and explore their wide selections. Try to choose those that are highly enjoyable.
COOL SHOES
There are a lot of cool shoes that you can find in the market. These shoes are really good for young boys because it will make them happy and satisfied. These shoes are enjoyable and bring a lot of excitement. There are gravity defying shoes that you can buy for him.
REMOTE CONTROL TOYS
Most boys really enjoy playing with remote control toys. They are really fun and exciting. There are various toys that you can see in toy stores that are controlled by remote controls. There are airplanes and cars. Just choose the one that he likes the most.
There are various gifts that young boys will surely enjoy. You have lots of choices that you can choose from. Just make sure that you will choose those that are safe and highly enjoyable. Keep in mind that young boys love to play and they will surely enjoy receiving cool gifts from y
Now Pay Close Attention --
Using your Facebook Fan Page to increase your business exposure and revenue is simpler than you've been told. Everyone with a facebook fan page faces the same two problems:
[Problem #1] How To Find Interested Facebook Users
[Problem #2] How To Bring Them To Become Your Fans
Facebook Fan Supply has been solving these two problems for hundreds of satisfied customers. The Facebook Fan Supply has been tried and tested and known to produce excellent results.
First: Click Here To Visit Facebook Fan Supply
Facebook Fan Supply always supplies REAL FANS targeted to your specific: Age Group, Keyword and Location.
Second: Order Your Facebook Fan Supply Package of 1,000; 2,000 or 5,000 Guaranteed Facebook Fans
Your new fans will arrive in 3 - 4 weeks and all fans are REAL FANS guaranteed to stick to your fanpage. Buy Facebook Fans today and boost your businesses online presence overnight.
2010 Valentines Day Gifts For Him - Secrets to Selecting the Best Valentines Day Gift For Him Read more: http://www.articlesbase.com/internet-marketing-articles/2010-valentines-day-gifts-for-him-secrets-to-selecting-the-best-valentines-day-gift-for-him-3549372.html#ixzz13TdrlwD0 Under Creative Commons License: Attribution
When women look to buy the perfect Valentines day gifts for our boyfriends, most of the time we don't know what to choose. Either that you and him haven't dated for sometimes for you to know what he really wants or you just don't know what to get him. This is very common problems simply because there are so many options and merchandises you can buy online.
However, ladies, there is one thing you need to know before buying the Valentines gifts for your boyfriends. Most guys don't really care about Valentines day as much as women do. We tend to be more sensitive and romantic about this special day of the year. With that being said, most guys don't have such a high expectations for Valentines day gifts and would be happy with almost anything. My trick is to buy him something that he can use and almost seems pretty unromantic in women's views.
Since men don't care much about feelings, it is best to buy something that he can enjoy using. Something like golf clubs or golf bags are great gifts for your guy if he likes to play golf. If he is a gamer, a PS3 or Xbox 360 could be something he will enjoy using. If he is an outdoor enthusiast, you could buy him a new pair of running shoes or sport pants. The key is to know his hobby or something he loves to do and find the gifts related to that.
If your relationship is long term, you could buy him more expensive gifts that you know he really wants. Something like the Guitar Hero III, a car GPS system or a flat screen TV could be a perfect gifts for him. Make sure don't use expensive gifts for recent boyfriends and try to keep it light and simple. You can also dress up in sexy outfits and play the fantasy games if you guys are into that kind of stuff. It can add more fire into the special night.
It is not really difficult to find the perfect gifts for you men, the key is to try not to confuse and complicate yourself. Stick to the hobby rules and you can easily find what he really likes. If he is a more romantic kinda guy, you can get him chocolate, flowers, or a romantic candle light dinner with personalized wine bottles and love notes.
Note: For more information about V
Now Pay Close Attention --
Using your Facebook Fan Page to increase your business exposure and revenue is simpler than you've been told. Everyone with a facebook fan page faces the same two problems:
[Problem #1] How To Find Interested Facebook Users
[Problem #2] How To Bring Them To Become Your Fans
Facebook Fan Supply has been solving these two problems for hundreds of satisfied customers. The Facebook Fan Supply has been tried and tested and known to produce excellent results.
First: Click Here To Visit Facebook Fan Supply
Facebook Fan Supply always supplies REAL FANS targeted to your specific: Age Group, Keyword and Location.
Second: Order Your Facebook Fan Supply Package of 1,000; 2,000 or 5,000 Guaranteed Facebook Fans
Your new fans will arrive in 3 - 4 weeks and all fans are REAL FANS guaranteed to stick to your fanpage. Buy Facebook Fans today and boost your businesses online presence overnight.
However, ladies, there is one thing you need to know before buying the Valentines gifts for your boyfriends. Most guys don't really care about Valentines day as much as women do. We tend to be more sensitive and romantic about this special day of the year. With that being said, most guys don't have such a high expectations for Valentines day gifts and would be happy with almost anything. My trick is to buy him something that he can use and almost seems pretty unromantic in women's views.
Since men don't care much about feelings, it is best to buy something that he can enjoy using. Something like golf clubs or golf bags are great gifts for your guy if he likes to play golf. If he is a gamer, a PS3 or Xbox 360 could be something he will enjoy using. If he is an outdoor enthusiast, you could buy him a new pair of running shoes or sport pants. The key is to know his hobby or something he loves to do and find the gifts related to that.
If your relationship is long term, you could buy him more expensive gifts that you know he really wants. Something like the Guitar Hero III, a car GPS system or a flat screen TV could be a perfect gifts for him. Make sure don't use expensive gifts for recent boyfriends and try to keep it light and simple. You can also dress up in sexy outfits and play the fantasy games if you guys are into that kind of stuff. It can add more fire into the special night.
It is not really difficult to find the perfect gifts for you men, the key is to try not to confuse and complicate yourself. Stick to the hobby rules and you can easily find what he really likes. If he is a more romantic kinda guy, you can get him chocolate, flowers, or a romantic candle light dinner with personalized wine bottles and love notes.
Note: For more information about V
Now Pay Close Attention --
Using your Facebook Fan Page to increase your business exposure and revenue is simpler than you've been told. Everyone with a facebook fan page faces the same two problems:
[Problem #1] How To Find Interested Facebook Users
[Problem #2] How To Bring Them To Become Your Fans
Facebook Fan Supply has been solving these two problems for hundreds of satisfied customers. The Facebook Fan Supply has been tried and tested and known to produce excellent results.
First: Click Here To Visit Facebook Fan Supply
Facebook Fan Supply always supplies REAL FANS targeted to your specific: Age Group, Keyword and Location.
Second: Order Your Facebook Fan Supply Package of 1,000; 2,000 or 5,000 Guaranteed Facebook Fans
Your new fans will arrive in 3 - 4 weeks and all fans are REAL FANS guaranteed to stick to your fanpage. Buy Facebook Fans today and boost your businesses online presence overnight.
The Psychological Messages Underlying Gifts For That Special Guy Read more: http://www.articlesbase.com/internet-marketing-articles/the-psychological-messages-underlying-gifts-for-that-special-guy-3549378.html#ixzz13TdXP5dW Under Creative Commons License: Attribution
Some people are especially talented when it comes to choosing gifts for that special guy. The gift is perfect even for the guy who thought he had everything and the psychological message underlying it suits the stage of the relationship ever so subtly. That special guy feels that his partner is suitably devoted and understands his taste, lifestyle, hopes and dreams; and all because of a clever gift. What is even better about this skill is that the presents do not have to cost the earth or anywhere close.
This type of gift buying avoids the cliches and also that horrible moment when he receives, smiles, kisses and thanks you, but you know it is a facade of politeness. Underneath he is somewhat bored, although pleased you bought him something whilst inside he is thinking if you know him as well as he hoped. Like many skills this can be learnt with advice and practice so you can be the envy of your friends by always having a great gift plan up your sleeve. Here are some tips to start.
What about the gorgeous special guy who likes to cook? This should be encouraged and nurtured so he will do more of it. If he needs some kind of a kitchen appliance by all means buy it once the relationship is not too early stages. Remember men like to solve problems and if you solve something like this he will be happy. Show that you appreciate his style and his sense of humour by finding something cool for the kitchen that is amusing and will make him laugh. Buy him a vintage steel wall plaque. If he likes to tipple when he is cooking there is a steel wall plaque that says "I cook with wine. Sometimes I even add it to the food." There are ranges of these steel wall plaques that are cool, humorous and funny.
If he is stylish and appreciates the finer things in life you can show him that you approve of his chic nature by finding unusual but functional drinking or dining accessories. If he likes champagne for example buy him a culinary concepts champagne bath which is stunning and equally suitable for wine also. As it holds up to six bottles he will appear like the perfect host and not be caught out by running short of the delicious cool drinks he is serving. He will know that you value his excellent tastes and feel that you see him as a charming, elegant guy.
Show appreciation for his sensuality and looks by finding unusual useful, pampering products. Think about his daily routine and find something to make this more pleasurable such as I Coloniali shaving balm. This includes mango oil which will help him have a smoother shave and prevent irritations. It also provides a long lasting sensation of relief and peace that he can carry with him throughout his day. He will see that you care about his well being and you see him as a sensuous guy.
These are some tips to start with and the underlying idea is for him to feel that you appreciate some important aspect of his nature while solving some problem all at the same time- the perfect turn on.
Now Pay Close Attention --
Using your Facebook Fan Page to increase your business exposure and revenue is simpler than you've been told. Everyone with a facebook fan page faces the same two problems:
[Problem #1] How To Find Interested Facebook Users
[Problem #2] How To Bring Them To Become Your Fans
Facebook Fan Supply has been solving these two problems for hundreds of satisfied customers. The Facebook Fan Supply has been tried and tested and known to produce excellent results.
First: Click Here To Visit Facebook Fan Supply
Facebook Fan Supply always supplies REAL FANS targeted to your specific: Age Group, Keyword and Location.
Second: Order Your Facebook Fan Supply Package of 1,000; 2,000 or 5,000 Guaranteed Facebook Fans
Your new fans will arrive in 3 - 4 weeks and all fans are REAL FANS guaranteed to stick to your fanpage. Buy Facebook Fans today and boost your businesses online presence overnight.
This type of gift buying avoids the cliches and also that horrible moment when he receives, smiles, kisses and thanks you, but you know it is a facade of politeness. Underneath he is somewhat bored, although pleased you bought him something whilst inside he is thinking if you know him as well as he hoped. Like many skills this can be learnt with advice and practice so you can be the envy of your friends by always having a great gift plan up your sleeve. Here are some tips to start.
What about the gorgeous special guy who likes to cook? This should be encouraged and nurtured so he will do more of it. If he needs some kind of a kitchen appliance by all means buy it once the relationship is not too early stages. Remember men like to solve problems and if you solve something like this he will be happy. Show that you appreciate his style and his sense of humour by finding something cool for the kitchen that is amusing and will make him laugh. Buy him a vintage steel wall plaque. If he likes to tipple when he is cooking there is a steel wall plaque that says "I cook with wine. Sometimes I even add it to the food." There are ranges of these steel wall plaques that are cool, humorous and funny.
If he is stylish and appreciates the finer things in life you can show him that you approve of his chic nature by finding unusual but functional drinking or dining accessories. If he likes champagne for example buy him a culinary concepts champagne bath which is stunning and equally suitable for wine also. As it holds up to six bottles he will appear like the perfect host and not be caught out by running short of the delicious cool drinks he is serving. He will know that you value his excellent tastes and feel that you see him as a charming, elegant guy.
Show appreciation for his sensuality and looks by finding unusual useful, pampering products. Think about his daily routine and find something to make this more pleasurable such as I Coloniali shaving balm. This includes mango oil which will help him have a smoother shave and prevent irritations. It also provides a long lasting sensation of relief and peace that he can carry with him throughout his day. He will see that you care about his well being and you see him as a sensuous guy.
These are some tips to start with and the underlying idea is for him to feel that you appreciate some important aspect of his nature while solving some problem all at the same time- the perfect turn on.
Now Pay Close Attention --
Using your Facebook Fan Page to increase your business exposure and revenue is simpler than you've been told. Everyone with a facebook fan page faces the same two problems:
[Problem #1] How To Find Interested Facebook Users
[Problem #2] How To Bring Them To Become Your Fans
Facebook Fan Supply has been solving these two problems for hundreds of satisfied customers. The Facebook Fan Supply has been tried and tested and known to produce excellent results.
First: Click Here To Visit Facebook Fan Supply
Facebook Fan Supply always supplies REAL FANS targeted to your specific: Age Group, Keyword and Location.
Second: Order Your Facebook Fan Supply Package of 1,000; 2,000 or 5,000 Guaranteed Facebook Fans
Your new fans will arrive in 3 - 4 weeks and all fans are REAL FANS guaranteed to stick to your fanpage. Buy Facebook Fans today and boost your businesses online presence overnight.
How to Get Work From Medical Transcription Companies and General Transcription Companies Read more: http://www.articlesbase.com/careers-articles/how-to-get-work-from-medical-transcription-companies-and-general-transcription-companies-3549261.html#ixzz13Td2exK0 Under Creative Commons License: Attribution
One of the more popular ways of earning income from home today is being a transcriptionist, or more specifically, a medical transcriptionist. Medical transcription companies usually screen and employ transcriptionists to perform services from their homes or from anywhere else they are located. Many of those who wish to get into this line of home business are often put off by the thought that they would need hours of training to familiarize themselves with medical terminologies and technicalities. There are many yet who are quite clueless as to where to get in touch with medical and non-medical transcription companies to get work from home jobs. If you are one of these people, you are in luck. There are people who have gone through the same experiences that you are going through today. In fact, there are materials already available online that can help you get started with your new work from home business.
You will learn that although the medical transcription enjoys much of the lime light, its non-medical counterparts are equally as lucrative. Instead of having to spend hours trying to complete the training requirements of medical transcription companies, you can actually start right away with general transcription companies. The good thing about working from these transcriptionists is that they take care of giving you a steady stream of clients. Once you have passed the initial screening requirements, you can actually start working on your transcription job orders. These transcription companies would often require you to complete a test transcription to see if you have the necessary skills to do the work. This usually involves a short 10 to 15 minutes of audio material to be transcribed within a given time frame. Transcription companies, both medical and non-medical, accept applications from people like you. The difference is that you will have to go through months of training with a medical transcription company before you will be able to take on jobs.
There are a lot of medical and non-medical transcription companies around. You want to be able to get access to these transcription companies so that you can find out what their requirements are. You also want to do business only with legitimate transcription companies. If you want to learn how to get online medical transcription training and how to get transcription jobs without specialized training, get my free report, How to Avoid Transcription Scams.
You will learn that although the medical transcription enjoys much of the lime light, its non-medical counterparts are equally as lucrative. Instead of having to spend hours trying to complete the training requirements of medical transcription companies, you can actually start right away with general transcription companies. The good thing about working from these transcriptionists is that they take care of giving you a steady stream of clients. Once you have passed the initial screening requirements, you can actually start working on your transcription job orders. These transcription companies would often require you to complete a test transcription to see if you have the necessary skills to do the work. This usually involves a short 10 to 15 minutes of audio material to be transcribed within a given time frame. Transcription companies, both medical and non-medical, accept applications from people like you. The difference is that you will have to go through months of training with a medical transcription company before you will be able to take on jobs.
There are a lot of medical and non-medical transcription companies around. You want to be able to get access to these transcription companies so that you can find out what their requirements are. You also want to do business only with legitimate transcription companies. If you want to learn how to get online medical transcription training and how to get transcription jobs without specialized training, get my free report, How to Avoid Transcription Scams.
Working in Audio Visual Media: The Fulfilling Process Read more: http://www.articlesbase.com/recruitment-articles/working-in-audio-visual-media-the-fulfilling-process-3549276.html#ixzz13TcpwvEv Under Creative Commons License: Attribution
There are many industries for someone looking forward to working in audio visual media. Perhaps the most common field is in the entertainment. Audio/visual jobs are also offered in corporations and advertising, too. Careers in this field can take many avenues, depending on one's specific area of training, experience, and skill.
Employment in audio visual media comes easier to those already interested in recording and producing music and films. These production enthusiasts most usually end up becoming producers. Others become professional cameramen/women. The actors onscreen are not the only ones who work their magic and influence on the ordinary audience.
Interactive media like computer games and websites are the result of computer-savvy AV staff.
Animators come from proficient audio and visual workers. As you can notice, many careers in entertainment spring out of this type of learning. Several professionals start out as audio visual technicians in radio and television stations. Working as a disc jockey is a common early experience for various audio visual professionals.
Sound engineers are a sort of jack-of-all-trades, in the audio department. They can work in special audio effects, or on radio programs or TV commercials.
Another area of media where audio visual skills are wanted is in advertising. There are at least three options to enter the world of advertising: you can be a freelancer, you can join an advertising outfit, or a company will take you up as their official advertising specialist. This last trend occurs especially to those very talented in the said area.
Parallel to advertising are special effects services. Companies that offer these have audio visual teams that specialize in conceptual designs, or film set operations and equipment. They are often employed by commercial and movie producers. Music videos and television shows are also some of the products of these companies. They aid in creating realistic or fantastic effects to support the overall commercial or show, depending on what is needed.
In a world of global communications, film studios and media crossovers with other businesses are common. This provides a wide range of opportunities for a wide range of AV-learned job seekers. Even programmers have a spot in the audio visual arts if they specialize in troubleshooting.
AV media also allows an exchange of different cultural ways of thinking, and even influences peoples all over the world.
To qualify for working on an audio visual job, high levels of technical proficiency are of course required, and this comes from a formal education in the field. Musical backgrounds and a good eye for details is a needed plus, too, as well as communication skills and competitiveness. A job like working in audio visual media is always about being better than the rest.
Employment in audio visual media comes easier to those already interested in recording and producing music and films. These production enthusiasts most usually end up becoming producers. Others become professional cameramen/women. The actors onscreen are not the only ones who work their magic and influence on the ordinary audience.
Interactive media like computer games and websites are the result of computer-savvy AV staff.
Animators come from proficient audio and visual workers. As you can notice, many careers in entertainment spring out of this type of learning. Several professionals start out as audio visual technicians in radio and television stations. Working as a disc jockey is a common early experience for various audio visual professionals.
Sound engineers are a sort of jack-of-all-trades, in the audio department. They can work in special audio effects, or on radio programs or TV commercials.
Another area of media where audio visual skills are wanted is in advertising. There are at least three options to enter the world of advertising: you can be a freelancer, you can join an advertising outfit, or a company will take you up as their official advertising specialist. This last trend occurs especially to those very talented in the said area.
Parallel to advertising are special effects services. Companies that offer these have audio visual teams that specialize in conceptual designs, or film set operations and equipment. They are often employed by commercial and movie producers. Music videos and television shows are also some of the products of these companies. They aid in creating realistic or fantastic effects to support the overall commercial or show, depending on what is needed.
In a world of global communications, film studios and media crossovers with other businesses are common. This provides a wide range of opportunities for a wide range of AV-learned job seekers. Even programmers have a spot in the audio visual arts if they specialize in troubleshooting.
AV media also allows an exchange of different cultural ways of thinking, and even influences peoples all over the world.
To qualify for working on an audio visual job, high levels of technical proficiency are of course required, and this comes from a formal education in the field. Musical backgrounds and a good eye for details is a needed plus, too, as well as communication skills and competitiveness. A job like working in audio visual media is always about being better than the rest.
About Getting Work In The Events Industry
The events industry covers a wide area and uses every kind of skill that is available. From television to a wedding to a style show, they are all events that require workers. These workers may be permanent or temporary employees but getting work in the events industry offers the chance for anyone to obtain a lucrative job and advance to higher levels.
Fashion trade shows, for example are a vital part of the Apparel and Textile industries. These industries include events such as runway shows, apparel displays and many other things. This offers a huge opportunity for employment in all areas of their events. From setting up runways and props to being a model there are endless openings to get a start, with many chances for advancement to a higher position.
Other opportunities await for anyone with special skills and there are many chances to have on-the-job training. A number of companies will take someone who has been working and showed their ability and dependability and gradually work them up into higher positions. Many very successful people started out this way.
There are public events, such as ball games, parades and others that offer temporary jobs. People are needed to put on these happenings and usually it is an hourly wage job compared to those who work for corporations and businesses that are constantly organizing special events. The corporations and businesses are the ones who offer full time employment.
People who have special skills are especially needed for these events. Anyone who is good at graphic arts and/or writing is especially welcomed. These are the people that present the happening to the public in such a manner as to gain attention and, therefore, attendance.
Being able to plan and organize things is a skill that is especially valued in this industry. Planning and carrying out this kind of occurrence usually proceeds at a very rapid rate, from beginning to end. When reading the newspaper or magazines, listening to the radio or watching television, there is always something scheduled for the public's attention and participation, which has been very carefully planned.
In addition to checking the Internet, one will find advertisements for jobs in a number of magazines. The most popular ones are the trade magazines, which can also be viewed online. If living in the UK one also has the advantage of event recruitment agencies which list various jobs available. If these leads are followed, getting a job in the event industry should not be difficult.
Read more: http://www.articlesbase.com/recruitment-articles/about-getting-work-in-the-events-industry-3549282.html#ixzz13Tckj9Ym
Under Creative Commons License: Attribution
Fashion trade shows, for example are a vital part of the Apparel and Textile industries. These industries include events such as runway shows, apparel displays and many other things. This offers a huge opportunity for employment in all areas of their events. From setting up runways and props to being a model there are endless openings to get a start, with many chances for advancement to a higher position.
Other opportunities await for anyone with special skills and there are many chances to have on-the-job training. A number of companies will take someone who has been working and showed their ability and dependability and gradually work them up into higher positions. Many very successful people started out this way.
There are public events, such as ball games, parades and others that offer temporary jobs. People are needed to put on these happenings and usually it is an hourly wage job compared to those who work for corporations and businesses that are constantly organizing special events. The corporations and businesses are the ones who offer full time employment.
People who have special skills are especially needed for these events. Anyone who is good at graphic arts and/or writing is especially welcomed. These are the people that present the happening to the public in such a manner as to gain attention and, therefore, attendance.
Being able to plan and organize things is a skill that is especially valued in this industry. Planning and carrying out this kind of occurrence usually proceeds at a very rapid rate, from beginning to end. When reading the newspaper or magazines, listening to the radio or watching television, there is always something scheduled for the public's attention and participation, which has been very carefully planned.
In addition to checking the Internet, one will find advertisements for jobs in a number of magazines. The most popular ones are the trade magazines, which can also be viewed online. If living in the UK one also has the advantage of event recruitment agencies which list various jobs available. If these leads are followed, getting a job in the event industry should not be difficult.
Read more: http://www.articlesbase.com/recruitment-articles/about-getting-work-in-the-events-industry-3549282.html#ixzz13Tckj9Ym
Under Creative Commons License: Attribution
How to Get Transcription Employment Without Specialized Training Read more: http://www.articlesbase.com/careers-articles/how-to-get-transcription-employment-without-specialized-training-3549316.html#ixzz13TcT4ROq Under Creative Commons License: Attribution
It is not difficult to get transcription employment even without specialized training. You might have been told that you need a particular degree or that you have to go through months of training to get into transcription work. This might be true with medical transcription work. But, not all transcription work have such requirements. You can actually transcribe anything that is recorded and make a living out of it. Transcribing involves converting audio files into written form. If you are a good listener and a fast typist, you can actually go into transcription work without having to go through specialized training. Apart from medical and legal transcription, there are general transcription jobs that you can take on. This type of transcription work spans various industries and materials of various topics for various purposes. You can easily get into this type of transcription work through various transcription companies.
As a starter, it might be wiser for you to get transcription employment with a transcription company. This builds your reputation as a reliable transcriptionist. Such a reputation is what companies are looking for in the transcriptionists that they hire. If they see that you turn in quality work all the time, the probability of you getting repeat business from these companies is high. These transcription companies would have varying requirements in transcriptionists. The most common requirement would have to be a transcription test where you will do an actual transcription of a short audio material. Once you pass the transcription test, you can already take on transcription assignments and earn money from it. They payment modes and periods would also vary from one employer to another.
When you are just starting you really cannot afford to become choosy. What you really need to make sure of is that the transcription employment that you are getting into is legitimate. There are a lot of scammers out there who prey on the uninitiated. Do not get fooled by these scammers. Make sure that the transcription job you are applying for is what it actually is. You do not want to do all the work only to find out that you will never get paid for it. Also, your reputation could also be tainted by working with such shady companies. You want to be able to start your career with a reputable transcription company and then eventually move on to start taking on clients directly through your very own transcription business. You can get started on how to get online medical transcription training and how to get transcription jobs without specialized training. Get my free report, How to Avoid Transcription Scams.
As a starter, it might be wiser for you to get transcription employment with a transcription company. This builds your reputation as a reliable transcriptionist. Such a reputation is what companies are looking for in the transcriptionists that they hire. If they see that you turn in quality work all the time, the probability of you getting repeat business from these companies is high. These transcription companies would have varying requirements in transcriptionists. The most common requirement would have to be a transcription test where you will do an actual transcription of a short audio material. Once you pass the transcription test, you can already take on transcription assignments and earn money from it. They payment modes and periods would also vary from one employer to another.
When you are just starting you really cannot afford to become choosy. What you really need to make sure of is that the transcription employment that you are getting into is legitimate. There are a lot of scammers out there who prey on the uninitiated. Do not get fooled by these scammers. Make sure that the transcription job you are applying for is what it actually is. You do not want to do all the work only to find out that you will never get paid for it. Also, your reputation could also be tainted by working with such shady companies. You want to be able to start your career with a reputable transcription company and then eventually move on to start taking on clients directly through your very own transcription business. You can get started on how to get online medical transcription training and how to get transcription jobs without specialized training. Get my free report, How to Avoid Transcription Scams.
Advantages you can look forward to in Online Scientific Calculators Read more: http://www.articlesbase.com/college-and-university-articles/advantages-you-can-look-forward-to-in-online-scientific-calculators-3548441.html#ixzz13Tbp2CEA Under Creative Commons License: Attribution
In the good old days, people had unique ways to calculate things. Items and objects like leaves, sticks, and even beans were made use of largely for calculation purposes. This method though was in use for a very long period, soon became obsolete. And at times, the result of a calculation largely depended upon the honesty and integrity of the person entrusted with role of calculating things. These situations finally lead to the invention of a wooden calculator called abathia. The wooden framed calculator came with wires into which beads were to be assembled for calculation purposes. Interestingly, these calculators were used in offices for quite a long time for easy and normal calculations. But, limited in their functionalities, they were sidelined and thus came other forms of calculators into the picture.
With the economies and technologies growing at a rapid pace, the need had been felt wide and across to have calculators that could perform all basic functions automatically and quickly. This lead to emergence of basic calculators that were capable of performing minor calculations like ‘plus', ‘minus', ‘multiplication' and ‘division'. Programmable calculators were later invented to make complicated calculations. The scientific calculators that we see today are latest inventions that came about in these segments. There are now widely used in companies and universities for calculation processes. With the advent of internet, these calculators have further been modified to be made available in online version.
Online scientific calculators are capable of carrying out functions like square root, trigonometry, logarithms, binary functions, and so on. Given below are their main benefits:
A] Easy: - The edge that these online scientific calculators have on other forms is that they are far easier to use. Also, in most of these calculators you will get to see help or manual functions that will assist you in calculation purposes should you get confused with them or not sure which buttons are to be used for calculations.
B] Convenience: - Online scientific calculators are perfect for carrying out different types of complicated functions. Also, Wi-Fi is made available in most areas and as long as you can access the internet from your place, using online scientific calculators for your calculation purposes shouldn't be really tough.
C] Different types of Calculations: - As mentioned earlier, online scientific calculators can be used to carry out different types of calculations with great effect. These calculators can therefore be used by different professionals, students and even business people. Different types of calculations including those related to property taxes, insurance, income tax benefits, and house loans can be easily carried out by these calculators.
D] User friendly Interface: - Most of the calculators that we see today do not have an interface that is user friendly. The features present in these interfaces can easily confuse even a veteran calculator user. Under such a scenario, the emergence of online scientific calculators comes as a big relief to all those who rely on these tiny machines for calculation purposes. The interface that you will get to see here is simple and can be easily navigated upon by anyone. The buttons are well placed just like in the case of standard calculators.
In the good old days, people had unique ways to calculate things. Items and objects like leaves, sticks, and even beans were made use of largely for calculation purposes. This method though was in use for a very long period, soon became obsolete. And at times, the result of a calculation largely depended upon the honesty and integrity of the person entrusted with role of calculating things. These situations finally lead to the invention of a wooden calculator called abathia. The wooden framed calculator came with wires into which beads were to be assembled for calculation purposes. Interestingly, these calculators were used in offices for quite a long time for easy and normal calculations. But, limited in their functionalities, they were sidelined and thus came other forms of calculators into the picture.
With the economies and technologies growing at a rapid pace, the need had been felt wide and across to have calculators that could perform all basic functions automatically and quickly. This lead to emergence of basic calculators that were capable of performing minor calculations like ‘plus', ‘minus', ‘multiplication' and ‘division'. Programmable calculators were later invented to make complicated calculations. The scientific calculators that we see today are latest inventions that came about in these segments. There are now widely used in companies and universities for calculation processes. With the advent of internet, these calculators have further been modified to be made available in online version.
Online scientific calculators are capable of carrying out functions like square root, trigonometry, logarithms, binary functions, and so on. Given below are their main benefits:
A] Easy: - The edge that these online scientific calculators have on other forms is that they are far easier to use. Also, in most of these calculators you will get to see help or manual functions that will assist you in calculation purposes should you get confused with them or not sure which buttons are to be used for calculations.
B] Convenience: - Online scientific calculators are perfect for carrying out different types of complicated functions. Also, Wi-Fi is made available in most areas and as long as you can access the internet from your place, using online scientific calculators for your calculation purposes shouldn't be really tough.
C] Different types of Calculations: - As mentioned earlier, online scientific calculators can be used to carry out different types of calculations with great effect. These calculators can therefore be used by different professionals, students and even business people. Different types of calculations including those related to property taxes, insurance, income tax benefits, and house loans can be easily carried out by these calculators.
D] User friendly Interface: - Most of the calculators that we see today do not have an interface that is user friendly. The features present in these interfaces can easily confuse even a veteran calculator user. Under such a scenario, the emergence of online scientific calculators comes as a big relief to all those who rely on these tiny machines for calculation purposes. The interface that you will get to see here is simple and can be easily navigated upon by anyone. The buttons are well placed just like in the case of standard calculators.
With the economies and technologies growing at a rapid pace, the need had been felt wide and across to have calculators that could perform all basic functions automatically and quickly. This lead to emergence of basic calculators that were capable of performing minor calculations like ‘plus', ‘minus', ‘multiplication' and ‘division'. Programmable calculators were later invented to make complicated calculations. The scientific calculators that we see today are latest inventions that came about in these segments. There are now widely used in companies and universities for calculation processes. With the advent of internet, these calculators have further been modified to be made available in online version.
Online scientific calculators are capable of carrying out functions like square root, trigonometry, logarithms, binary functions, and so on. Given below are their main benefits:
A] Easy: - The edge that these online scientific calculators have on other forms is that they are far easier to use. Also, in most of these calculators you will get to see help or manual functions that will assist you in calculation purposes should you get confused with them or not sure which buttons are to be used for calculations.
B] Convenience: - Online scientific calculators are perfect for carrying out different types of complicated functions. Also, Wi-Fi is made available in most areas and as long as you can access the internet from your place, using online scientific calculators for your calculation purposes shouldn't be really tough.
C] Different types of Calculations: - As mentioned earlier, online scientific calculators can be used to carry out different types of calculations with great effect. These calculators can therefore be used by different professionals, students and even business people. Different types of calculations including those related to property taxes, insurance, income tax benefits, and house loans can be easily carried out by these calculators.
D] User friendly Interface: - Most of the calculators that we see today do not have an interface that is user friendly. The features present in these interfaces can easily confuse even a veteran calculator user. Under such a scenario, the emergence of online scientific calculators comes as a big relief to all those who rely on these tiny machines for calculation purposes. The interface that you will get to see here is simple and can be easily navigated upon by anyone. The buttons are well placed just like in the case of standard calculators.
In the good old days, people had unique ways to calculate things. Items and objects like leaves, sticks, and even beans were made use of largely for calculation purposes. This method though was in use for a very long period, soon became obsolete. And at times, the result of a calculation largely depended upon the honesty and integrity of the person entrusted with role of calculating things. These situations finally lead to the invention of a wooden calculator called abathia. The wooden framed calculator came with wires into which beads were to be assembled for calculation purposes. Interestingly, these calculators were used in offices for quite a long time for easy and normal calculations. But, limited in their functionalities, they were sidelined and thus came other forms of calculators into the picture.
With the economies and technologies growing at a rapid pace, the need had been felt wide and across to have calculators that could perform all basic functions automatically and quickly. This lead to emergence of basic calculators that were capable of performing minor calculations like ‘plus', ‘minus', ‘multiplication' and ‘division'. Programmable calculators were later invented to make complicated calculations. The scientific calculators that we see today are latest inventions that came about in these segments. There are now widely used in companies and universities for calculation processes. With the advent of internet, these calculators have further been modified to be made available in online version.
Online scientific calculators are capable of carrying out functions like square root, trigonometry, logarithms, binary functions, and so on. Given below are their main benefits:
A] Easy: - The edge that these online scientific calculators have on other forms is that they are far easier to use. Also, in most of these calculators you will get to see help or manual functions that will assist you in calculation purposes should you get confused with them or not sure which buttons are to be used for calculations.
B] Convenience: - Online scientific calculators are perfect for carrying out different types of complicated functions. Also, Wi-Fi is made available in most areas and as long as you can access the internet from your place, using online scientific calculators for your calculation purposes shouldn't be really tough.
C] Different types of Calculations: - As mentioned earlier, online scientific calculators can be used to carry out different types of calculations with great effect. These calculators can therefore be used by different professionals, students and even business people. Different types of calculations including those related to property taxes, insurance, income tax benefits, and house loans can be easily carried out by these calculators.
D] User friendly Interface: - Most of the calculators that we see today do not have an interface that is user friendly. The features present in these interfaces can easily confuse even a veteran calculator user. Under such a scenario, the emergence of online scientific calculators comes as a big relief to all those who rely on these tiny machines for calculation purposes. The interface that you will get to see here is simple and can be easily navigated upon by anyone. The buttons are well placed just like in the case of standard calculators.
Unsecured Business Loan Bad Credit
I recently filmed a video on how to get unsecured business loans with bad credit, but I wanted to expand on it a little.
Most of the time, people are referring to bad PERSONAL credit, not bad BUSINESS credit. So the answer is simple- If you have bad personal credit, all you need to do is build good business credit to get unsecured business loans. If you set up your business credit correctly, your personal credit should not be a a factor. Now, as I said in my video, this does not happen over night. Unsecured business loans would follow the same requirements as a construction loan, which I discussed in a previous video. It would generally be handled as a bank line of credit and the current lending criteria for such a bank loan would be: over 12 business creditor accounts reporting favorably with a 6 month minimum payment history on those accounts. In addition, an 80 Paydex score, and two years in business from the date of incorporation.
But there is another, more creative solution to this problem. If the small business owner has build perfect business credit from the ground up, as I teach, than within 12 months they would have acquired several cash credit cards. What are cash credit cards? Visa, Mastercard, Discover, AMX. This is opposed to vender credit cards such as: Home Depot, Officemax, etc.
Do you see where I am going with this? If you have an unsecured business credit card with a $50,000 credit limit, is not that basically a bank line of credit? Sure it is. And it is much easier to access than having to go the traditional route of getting a bank line of credit. So as a much quicker solution to the question is to get business credit cards without personal guarantees, which is exactly what I teach in my free 5 day eCourse for small business owners. If they follow my step by step plan of attack, they should have close to $100,000 in unsecured business credit lines.
As an added benefit, unlike personal credit, the more one uses their business credit, the better their business credit gets. You have probably heard that in order to have excellent personal credit, one should not use more that 30% of the available credit, right? Well with business credit, those rules do not apply. The more you use, the better your score gets.
If you found this inside information helpful, I have put together more video tips as well as a Free 5 day email Course on how to do establish perfect Business Credit from the ground up. It is a step by step, from A to Z eCourse on how to do it right the first time. I also include the fantastic company that successfully cleaned up my personal credit for me. They really were a life saver. Just visit my website at: http://www.BuildBizCredit.com for all of the Free info.
Most of the time, people are referring to bad PERSONAL credit, not bad BUSINESS credit. So the answer is simple- If you have bad personal credit, all you need to do is build good business credit to get unsecured business loans. If you set up your business credit correctly, your personal credit should not be a a factor. Now, as I said in my video, this does not happen over night. Unsecured business loans would follow the same requirements as a construction loan, which I discussed in a previous video. It would generally be handled as a bank line of credit and the current lending criteria for such a bank loan would be: over 12 business creditor accounts reporting favorably with a 6 month minimum payment history on those accounts. In addition, an 80 Paydex score, and two years in business from the date of incorporation.
But there is another, more creative solution to this problem. If the small business owner has build perfect business credit from the ground up, as I teach, than within 12 months they would have acquired several cash credit cards. What are cash credit cards? Visa, Mastercard, Discover, AMX. This is opposed to vender credit cards such as: Home Depot, Officemax, etc.
Do you see where I am going with this? If you have an unsecured business credit card with a $50,000 credit limit, is not that basically a bank line of credit? Sure it is. And it is much easier to access than having to go the traditional route of getting a bank line of credit. So as a much quicker solution to the question is to get business credit cards without personal guarantees, which is exactly what I teach in my free 5 day eCourse for small business owners. If they follow my step by step plan of attack, they should have close to $100,000 in unsecured business credit lines.
As an added benefit, unlike personal credit, the more one uses their business credit, the better their business credit gets. You have probably heard that in order to have excellent personal credit, one should not use more that 30% of the available credit, right? Well with business credit, those rules do not apply. The more you use, the better your score gets.
If you found this inside information helpful, I have put together more video tips as well as a Free 5 day email Course on how to do establish perfect Business Credit from the ground up. It is a step by step, from A to Z eCourse on how to do it right the first time. I also include the fantastic company that successfully cleaned up my personal credit for me. They really were a life saver. Just visit my website at: http://www.BuildBizCredit.com for all of the Free info.
Why You Should Take Classes for Excel
MS Excel is a good program for corporate and industrial work. If you are working in the human resources department, you might be using Excel in order to create quizzes or tests for further training for your employees. If you are working in the accounts department, you might be using Excel in order to keep track of your accounts, whether personal or corporate. If you are working in the payroll division, you might be using Excel in order to keep your payroll running smoothly each week or month. And if you are in sales, Excel can help you keep track of both your investments in your venture, as well as your profits.
All of these make Excel a handy, versatile tool. But they also mean that Excel has so many more properties than you would think or believe. This means that you need to take classes in Excel. First, you need to learn all about these different ways that Excel can be used. You will need Excel not just for making graphs for your presentation, or looking at your data in organized tables. Classes can teach you how to program your own spreadsheets and make the most out of Excel as an all-around business tool.
Moreover, Excel is always changing. Its format has altered greatly from the Windows of yesteryear, and it's only bound to keep on changing. By taking classes often, you are updated regularly with the changes that Excel is undergoing: you will know where yesterday's buttons have transferred, and you will even find out that some tasks that took forever to complete last year are now just a cinch, and a click away!
By taking classes in Excel, you will also allow yourself to make the most out of the software. Not many people know about all the features in Excel, and when they take classes, they find out that they can do a lot with Excel even without any numbers involved. Spreadsheets do make life easier in many ways, and Excel can help you fashion spreadsheets so that you can keep your life in order.
If you are interested in taking Excel classes, talk to your human resources department, or check online for different training modules that will help you be better acquainted with Excel. If you know more about the software, you can figure out ways to organize your life, and you can improve on your daily productivity. Moreover, you can keep updated and still use Excel no matter what version of the operating system you are using.
All of these make Excel a handy, versatile tool. But they also mean that Excel has so many more properties than you would think or believe. This means that you need to take classes in Excel. First, you need to learn all about these different ways that Excel can be used. You will need Excel not just for making graphs for your presentation, or looking at your data in organized tables. Classes can teach you how to program your own spreadsheets and make the most out of Excel as an all-around business tool.
Moreover, Excel is always changing. Its format has altered greatly from the Windows of yesteryear, and it's only bound to keep on changing. By taking classes often, you are updated regularly with the changes that Excel is undergoing: you will know where yesterday's buttons have transferred, and you will even find out that some tasks that took forever to complete last year are now just a cinch, and a click away!
By taking classes in Excel, you will also allow yourself to make the most out of the software. Not many people know about all the features in Excel, and when they take classes, they find out that they can do a lot with Excel even without any numbers involved. Spreadsheets do make life easier in many ways, and Excel can help you fashion spreadsheets so that you can keep your life in order.
If you are interested in taking Excel classes, talk to your human resources department, or check online for different training modules that will help you be better acquainted with Excel. If you know more about the software, you can figure out ways to organize your life, and you can improve on your daily productivity. Moreover, you can keep updated and still use Excel no matter what version of the operating system you are using.
If Darwin Had Known About DNA
From the Depths of the Universe
to the DNA Molecule
Too small to be seen with the naked eye, DNA serves as the data bank of our cells. Information about all the living things around you is concealed within this miniaturized data bank inside every cell of every organism. All the structural characteristics of a rose, an orange, a sparrow, a tiger or a human being are present in the nuclei of the cells that comprise these organisms. Look at your hand that is holding this book. These data stores exist in the nucleus of every single one of the cells that compose that hand.
These DNA molecules are invisible to the naked eye but in terms of their contents and data-storage capacity, they are equal to a library consisting of tens of thousands of books. As you observe the miraculous aspects of DNA, which can be seen only by magnifying it thousands of times, you will also appreciate how such minute essential component of life places the theory of evolution in an insuperable quandary. Examining the details of this extraordinary structure will give you the opportunity to ponder the infinite might, incomparable knowledge, scope and dominion of our Lord, Allah (God) and the universe He has created.
Every day, new discoveries are being made about the universe we inhabit. Billions of galaxies lie hundreds of thousands of light years away from one another. Millions of stars that fill those galaxies, whose dimensions defy our powers of conception. Giant planets constantly revolve in a complex order at speeds of thousands of kilometers without ever colliding with one another. Here, on one of the smaller of these planets, we examine the cells, the building blocks of life on Earth, themselves no bigger than a mere speck, under the electron microscope, an invention of the 20th century.
Each of the conditions that makes this planet suitable for life is indispensable to it. The Earth's environment exists and persists by the mercy of Allah.
Albert Einstein, one of the 20th century's most eminent scientists, expressed man's difficulty in comprehending the order in the universe in these terms:
The human mind is not capable of grasping the Universe. We are in the position of a little child entering a huge library filled with books in many languages. The child knows someone must have written those books. It does not know how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written. The child dimly suspects a mysterious order in the arrangement of the books, but doesn't know what it is. 1
Human beings have been equipped with all the systems they need within this extraordinary environment. The more details that we learn about the body, the more we realize how miraculous our lives are. As they discover the systems concealed inside their bodies, many people--who would otherwise live without reflection, caught up in the daily course of their lives--will reflect on the purpose behind their existence and become aware of their responsibilities to Allah, their Creator. Indeed, various scientists have acquired faith in the existence of Allah by seeing the greatness of His knowledge and the perfections He has created.
But some of them continue to refuse to see that they live in need of Allah, even though their consciences may tell them otherwise. Yet their refusal to admit the truth will not alter the facts. Allah reveals some people's approach in the Qur'an:
Do not mix up truth with falsehood and knowingly hide the truth. (Surat al-Baqara, 42)
O Humanity! You are the poor in need of Allah whereas Allah is the Rich Beyond Need, the Praiseworthy. (Surah Fatir, 15)
INTRODUCTION
The Most advanced Data Bank Known: DNA
The truth revealed by science as it progresses is that living things possess flawless and highly complex structures that could never have emerged by chance. This is evident proof that our Almighty and Omniscient Lord has created living things. The theory of evolution, which rejects the idea of our Creator and pins its hopes on coincidences, has been dealt one of its most severe blows by developments in the field of molecular biology, which demolishes–with clear and irrefutable evidence, the fundamental of Darwinism, which maintains that life originated based on supposedly simple structures.
As scientists discovered the complex structures inside the cell, which some have referred to as a "molecular machine," they also clearly saw that these could never have come into being as the result of chance.
One such structure is DNA, the cell's data bank, discovered in the 1950s with the invention of the electron microscope. DNA is a giant molecule contained in every cell. On that long molecular chain is encoded all the information that determines the physical and chemical structure of that cell and of the entire organism to which that cell belongs. However, the presence of such a data bank within the cell means nothing by itself. The information within that DNA must be read as needed, and processes carried out in the light of that information. It is impossible for inanimate substances to write and decipher codes, take progressive precautionary measures, and to establish a system to ensure that the information they possess comes to no harm.
Molecules made up of chemical elements from the earth and air cannot be expected to do these things spontaneously. Yet Darwinists are so blindly devoted to their theory of evolution that, as you shall see in the chapters that follow, they insist on claims that are utterly unscientific, violating reason and logic, solely for the sake of convincing themselves and others that everything is a coincidence.
Despite being an evolutionist, Francis Crick–a Nobel Prize-winning biochemist and one of the scientists who discovered DNA–admits the facts in his book Life Itself:
An honest man, armed with all the knowledge available to us now, could only state that, in some sense, the origin of life appears at the moment to be almost a miracle.2
Richard Dawkins, known for his evolutionist views, describes the complexity concealed within the cell:
Physics books may be complicated, but . . . the objects and phenomena that a physics book describes are simpler than a single cell in the body of its author. And the author consists of trillions of those cells, many of them different from each other, organized with intricate architecture and precision--engineering into a working machine capable of writing a book. . . . Each nucleus . . . contains a digitally coded database larger, in information content, than all thirty volumes of the Encyclopedia Britannica put together. And this figure is for each [individual] cell, not all the cells of the body put together.3
If you had found a CD on your desk 25 years ago, and even if you had never seen one before, you would still never try attempt to account for its existence in terms of chance. Despite its being a very thin, flat, round piece of plastic, the regularity of its shape would still make it clear that it had been produced by an intelligent, knowledgeable human being. Even if you never met the person who designed and manufactured that CD, you would still never claim that metals and plastics had assumed such a perfect form as the result of successive accidents.
And what if you learned, through a detailed examination of the CD's structure, that in indentations and protrusions on its surface, there was information coded in the form of the numbers 0 and 1? At first glance it appeared like just a flat plastic disc, but were it enlarged to the size of a football stadium, the indentations on it would be approximately the same size as grains of sand.4
All the CD's indentations and protrusions represent coded data containing text, sounds and images. The fact that dozens of books' worth of data has been compressed into this flat disk makes it obvious that intelligent, knowledgeable minds have had a hand in its manufacture. No one could possibly maintain anything different. On the contrary, the presence here of a highly advanced technology, the processes of recording, coding and compression of data are evidence that this CD was consciously produced, and for a specific purpose.
Yet some people, who see that claims of chance are impossible to account for a flat disk of plastic, fail to employ the same honest logic in the face of DNA's perfect creation. They maintain that the DNA molecules, too small to be seen with the naked eye but containing enough compressed and encoded data to fill thousands of encyclopedias, came into being as the work of chance. Yet the human brain that produced the CD and wrote the information it contains also consists of cells that function thanks to the information contained in DNA.
The illogicality here is obvious. In the same way that the information in the CD implies that it has been written there by someone, DNA–a far more comprehensive data bank with a far superior technology–shows the existence of a superior intellect, of a Creator. That intellect is the infinite mind of our Almighty Lord. DNA is a miracle of Allah, the sublime nature of the creation of which we have been able to comprehend through 20th-century technology.
Our Lord reveals the purpose of the things He created in one of the verses:
It is Allah Who created the seven heavens and of the Earth the same number, the Command descending down through all of them, so that you might know that Allah has power over all things and that Allah encompasses all things in His knowledge. (Surat at-Talaq, 12)
CHAPTER 1
Aspect of The Cell Discovered
In the 20th Century
In the second half of the 20th century, advances in the field of molecular biology entirely altered our perspective on the miniaturized world inside the cell. With today's rapidly developing technology, biologists have become aware of the flawless and complex mechanisms possessed by the cell, realizing that these could not have come into being by chance or spontaneously. Most of the systems that constitute the cell are smaller than the wavelength of visible light. Some details in the cell can be examined only by advanced techniques such as X-ray crystallography. However, at the time when Darwin launched his theory, the level of science was extremely backward. Not even the basic structure of the cell had been revealed, let alone the discovery of the helix structure and data capacity of the DNA molecule, which James Watson and Francis Crick revealed nearly 100 years after the publication of Darwin's book The Origin of Species
Darwin had no means of foreseeing the advances that molecular biology would subsequently make. Clearly, his theory of evolution built on fundamentally flawed knowledge and hypotheses cannot account for the existence of a structure like DNA, which amazes scientists.
The well–known Cambridge University philosopher Dr. Stephen C. Meyer compares modern science with that of Darwin's day:
During the last half of the twentieth century, advances in molecular biology and biochemistry have revolutionized our understanding of the miniature world within the cell. Research has revealed that cells--the fundamental units of life-store--transmit, and edit information and use that information to regulate their most fundamental metabolic processes . . . biologists now describe cells as, among other things, "distributive real-time computers" or complex information processing systems. Darwin, of course, neither knew about these intricacies nor sought to explain their origin. Instead, his theory of biological evolution sought to explain how life could have grown gradually more complex starting from "one or a few simple forms" . . . in the 1870s and 1880s, scientists assumed that devising an explanation for the origin of life would be fairly easy. For one thing, they assumed that life was essentially a rather simple substance called protoplasm that could be easily constructed by combining and recombining simple chemicals such as carbon dioxide, oxygen, and nitrogen.5
However, some scientists, the heirs of Darwin, still consider that atoms spontaneously combined to give rise to complex living things. In the light of the extraordinary advances made in the field of molecular biology especially over the last 50 years, it is quite astonishing that Darwin's claim should have survived this long. This state of affairs is admitted in a statement by Dr. Richard Lewontin, an evolutionist and Harvard University biologist and geneticist:
. . . evolution is not a fact, it's a philosophy. The materialism comes first (a priori), and the evidence is interpreted in light of that unchangeable philosophical commitment. 6
Because of their devotion to materialism, the inheritors of the theory of evolution are generally unable to accept scientific facts. They therefore insist on trying to carry an outdated 19th-century scientific conception into the present day. However, the facts are too evident to be covered up by any superstitious philosophy.
In the Qur'an, Allah reveals that there will be those who "use fallacious arguments to deny the truth" (Surat al-Kahf, 56). In another verse, He tells us:
Rather We hurl the truth against falsehood and it cuts right through its brain and it vanishes clean away! Woe without end for you for what you portray! (Surat al-Anbiya', 18)
The Cell Is More Complex
Than a Major City
Some four billion years ago, according to the evolutionist scenario, various inanimate chemical substances entered into reactions in the primitive Earth's atmosphere; these then combined with the effects of lightning and earthquakes–and thus the first living cell emerged. The fact is, however, that the structure of the cell is more complex that even the most populous and technologically advanced city. A great many systems operate non-stop with a flawless organization, from power stations that produce energy inside the cell to protein-producing factories, from a freight system that transports raw materials to decoders that translate DNA, and a dense and constant communications system.
For evolutionists to believe that the cell came into being by chance is as illogical and nonsensical as claiming that all the buildings, roads, transportation systems, electricity and water networks in a city such as Istanbul, with its almost 15 million population, came into existence spontaneously as the result of such natural phenomena as storms and earthquakes.
Prof. Gerald L. Schroeder, an Israeli scientist working in the fields of physics and biology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) describes the order inside the cell:
The human body acts as a finely tuned machine, a magnificent metropolis in which, as its inhabitants, each of the 75 trillion cells, composed of 1027 atoms, moves in symbiotic precision. Seldom are two cells simultaneously performing the same act, yet their individual contributions combine smoothly to form life. 7
Despite being an evolutionist, the late astrobiologist Carl Sagan speaks of the amazing order in the cell as if it were a work of art:
A living cell is a marvel of detailed and complex architecture. Seen through a microscope, there is an appearance of almost frantic activity. On a deeper level it is known that molecules are being synthesized at an enormous rate. Almost any enzyme catalyzes the synthesis of more than 100 other molecules per second. In ten minutes, a sizeable fraction of total mass of a metabolizing bacterial cell has been synthesized. The information content of a simple cell had been estimated as around 1012 bits, comparable to about a hundred million pages of the Encyclopedia Britannica. 8
The nucleus inside the cell bears the DNA, the most important genetic material. Mitochondria inside the cell turn glucose (in the form of food products) into energy packets. Microscopic tubes extend throughout the cell, constituting vital pathways along which proteins and other required substances can be carried to the appropriate location. In addition, the billions of cells in our bodies build all their systems out of molecules, at the same time consistently maintaining and repairing themselves. As well as performing their own tasks, they also renew themselves.9 They also obtain their own energy.
Prof. Werner Gitt, director of the German Federal Institute of Physics and Technology, emphasizes how the cell is far superior to any machinery made by human beings: "The biological energy conversion system is brilliantly and cleverly designed that energy engineers can only watch, fascinated. Nobody has yet been able to copy this miniaturized and extremely efficient mechanism."10
In his book Blind Faith: Evolution Exposed, the science writer Howard Peth states that there is no such thing as a simple cell:
Formerly, it was thought that a cell was composed of nucleus and a few other parts in a "sea"' of cytoplasms, with large spaces in the cell unoccupied. Now it is known that a cell literally "swarms."' That is, it's packed full of important functioning units necessary to the life of the cell and the body containing it. The theory of evolution assumes life developed from a "simple"' cell - but science today demonstrates that there is no such thing as a simple cell.11
In conclusion, cells are not simple sacs of jelly, as was imagined in Darwin's day. On the contrary, as the 20th century physicist and astrobiologist Prof. Paul Davies puts it, they resemble computers with the most highly advanced technology, or complex cities.
CHAPTER 2
The Source of the Data of Life
DNA, the basic genetic material of all living things, is a long molecule resembling a spiral staircase, whose details we shall be examining in due course. DNA exists in all living things–human beings, flowers, birds, flies, and even bacteria. It contains all the necessary information regarding the features of the living cell and its regular operations. In addition, detailed information regarding a living thing's external appearance, the kind of structure it will have, how it will grow and how its organs will work, are all determined beforehand in DNA. For example, an individual's DNA contains information about such details as height, eye color and physical structure, how the body will defend itself in the face of which dangers, and how it will produce proteins, the building blocks of the cell. The DNA of a rosebush contains millions of pieces of detailed, coded information about its flower's scent and color, the structure of its thorns, the shape of its leaves and the thickness of its stems. DNA molecules are rather like blueprints that determine how a living thing will be constructed and function.
Human beings carry this molecule, which exhibits far greater knowledge than themselves, in every one of their cells. For example, a DNA chain is packaged in every cell in your eyes as you read these lines. There are DNA molecules in every cell in the fingers that turn over the pages of this book, in the cells of your heart and bones, and in every cell that makes up your body. What is more, they are constantly at work to keep the individual alive.
The information theoretician Dr. Werner Gitt expresses the extraordinary range of the data in DNA:
It seems necessary to assume that in addition to its protein-coding portions, DNA contains countless additional levels of structure and function. Such stored information concepts are just as much required to code for the development of the smallest organelles such as the mitochondria and ribosomes, as for building the large organs (e.g., heart, kidneys, brain) and the overall integrated organism. As yet, no one has been able to decode this incredibly complex system.12
As noted by Professor Gitt, the sphere of operation of the DNA's information is very broad. DNA does not determine just physical characteristics; at the same time it plans thousands of different functions throughout the cell, the body's organs and systems. Thanks to the information placed in DNA:
*The bones grow in exactly the right place, shape and size. The skull, ribs, pelvic bone and vertebrae all have special shapes and thickness in line with specific purposes. The vertebrae, for instance, possess just the right shape for the vitally important spinal cord to be able to pass through them. Similarly, the skull has been specially shaped to protect the brain, and the ribs to shield the lungs and heart. The balanced development of every one of these is part of the total blueprint recorded in the DNA.
*The 206 separate bones in the human body are connected to one another by ligaments and muscles in such a way as to allow them to move. The elasticity and mobility of these muscles that allows us to go up and down stairs, run, bend down and stand up again is again recorded in DNA. Thanks to the information set out by Allah in DNA, we can move our muscles in almost any direction we desire. Thus a human being can hold a glass of water, turn the pages of a book, sit in a chair without falling out of it, or carry packages weighing many kilograms.
*The cartilage that prevents friction between bones is a very special tissue in terms of its shape, structure and position. In the knees, for example, cartilage acts as a shock absorber that allows those joints to carry the whole weight of the body–tens of kilograms–without feeling stress. The detailed blueprint for the knee is also set out in DNA.
*The veins that stretch approximately 100,000 kilometers (62,140 miles) and carry vitally important blood to nourish all the body's tissues. The veins work jointly with the heart's special pumping system. Some are thinner than a hair, carrying red blood cells to every corner of the body, from the eyelids to the fingertips, from the brain to the kidneys.
*The way that the nerves interpenetrate the entire body lets them react very quickly to changes that the senses perceive, allowing different parts of the body to work together as a single unit.
*The 200 or so different kinds of cell in the body possess the same basic features and mechanisms, but perform very different activities. A liver cell, for example, carries out 500 different chemical processes within a matter of milliseconds (thousandths of a second), while a heart cell can produce its own electricity over a whole lifetime.
*The production of the energy you need to stand up and walk, remain standing, breathe and to open and close your eyes–in short to survive–is part of the blueprint recorded in each cell. Thanks to this blueprint, every cell knows how to obtain the most energy from foodstuffs consumed and how to make the most efficient use of them.
*The stomach secretes acids that digest meat, but do not break down its tissues. Up to 20 enzymes go into action to make blood clot during the repair of a deep cut. These are just two of the precautionary measures recorded in DNA.
*The hormonal system is a highly efficient communications system among the cells, permitting the regulation of all the balances in the body. It functions according to the information set out in DNA. How much of which substances the body will use, and how surpluses are to be stored or expelled, are also included in this specific blueprint.
*On the other hand, DNA also determines how the cells in the immune system are to exchange information. In the event of a tissue being wounded or infected, for instance, the immune system initiates reactions. Defense cells identify the site of the wound in a very short time to counter-attack the microbes entering the body through the injury. They then analyze the threat and transmit messages that begin the war against those microbes.
Whole libraries of books could be written about the details in the human body, both known and as yet undiscovered. All are parts of a blueprint recorded in the DNA's data bank. In short, DNA acts as a planning center in every living thing, literally undertaking the responsibilities of architects, engineers, scent experts, botanists, laboratory technicians, interior designers, designers, artists, doctors and countless other experts and scientists. At every moment, Our Almighty Lord creates and controls these molecules that are in constant operation so that you can read these lines, see, breathe, think and in short, remain alive.
This fact is revealed in one verse of the Qur'an:
[Hud said,] "I have put my trust in Allah, my Lord and your Lord. There is no creature He does not hold by the forelock. My Lord is on a Straight Path." (Surah Hud, 56)
As a very simple example, compare the information in DNA with a book. Obviously, no book can write itself. Even if we assume that this was in some way possible, it still will be absolutely impossible for anything written in that book to be meaningful. Based on this analogy, Prof. Phillip Johnson states that random coincidences can have no such power, ability or intelligence:
. . . just everybody (including Richard Dawkins) agrees that it is essentially impossible to produce a coherent book of average length by randomly combining letters, spaces and punctuation marks. Even a single sentence–like "In the beginning was the Word"–is extremely unlikely to come from pouring out a random mix of letters and spaces.13
No doubt that the data recorded in DNA have an incomparable structure more complex than the sentence. In the beginning was the Word, and that this complex structure cannot possibly have come into existence spontaneously or by chance. Moreover, all the trillions of DNA molecules possessed by billions of living things for millions of years have all been encoded with a perfect system, placed within an area too small to be seen with the naked eye and yet used in the most rational manner. That being so, there is a Creator Who plans and arranges human beings, their cells and their DNA in that flawless and perfect manner. That Creator is Almighty Allah. To maintain the opposite is to ignore the facts, reason and logic.
However, many who would quickly agree it is impossible for letters to arrange themselves into even three small words still manage to listen with no objection to the deceit that millions of atoms combined together by chance, one by one, in a specific sequence to create a molecule containing the equivalent of whole libraries of information. The sole reason for this is their blind devotion to Darwinism, which prevents some intelligent people from seeing the evident fact of Creation and leads them into the most irrational beliefs. Everyone freed from this preconception to use his intellect will clearly see that an infinite data bank such as DNA can only come into existence through being created.
When they are told, "Follow what Allah has sent down to you," They say, "We are following what we found our fathers doing." What, even though their fathers did not understand a thing and were not guided! The likeness of those who do not believe is that of the beast which, call out to it as one may, can hear nothing but a shout and a cry. Deaf–dumb–blind. They do not use their intellect. (Surat al-Baqara, 170-171)
CHAPTER 3
The DNA Molecule's Miraculous Structure
In discussing the chemical structure of the DNA molecule, our objective is not simply to provide the kind of information you can find in a great many books on biology, but to show the details in human creation and the extremely sensitive order on which our existence depends–and thus, to properly appreciate our Lord's greatness and His mercy upon us.
Some people prefer to remain far removed from technical details and don't want to tire their minds with them. But they reflect that same superficial perspective in their analyses, comments and statements. In fact, there is sublime wisdom in every detail of creation, and each of those details has been created for a specific purpose.
In one verse of the Qur'an our Lord tells us that:
We did not create the heavens and Earth and everything between them, except with truth. The Hour is certainly coming, so turn away graciously. Your Lord, He is the Creator, the All-Knowing. (Surat al-Hijr, 85-86)
Let's examine some of the details in the creation of the DNA in the trillions of cells inside every one of the billions of people on Earth.
Chemical Structure of the DNA Helix
The giant molecule of DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) that plays a role in all the cell's vital functions consists of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen and phosphate atoms. There are billions of these atoms in a single human DNA molecule,14 all arranged in a manner particular to that individual.
DNA is an acronym of the words deoxyribo, nucleic and acid that express the molecule's chemical structure. This molecule in the nucleus of every human cell consists of nucleic acid arranged in a helix shape like a miniature sphere just 5 microns in diameter.15 (One micron equals one thousandth of a millimeter.) Nucleic acids are exceedingly important compounds, despite making up only 2% of our bodies. The basic structural units of nucleic acids are nucleotides. Some 6 billion nucleotides combine in the double helix that gives rise to DNA.16
The DNA molecule's structure resembles a spiral staircase, and its architectural regularity amazes scientists. The sides of the staircase, made up of various sugars and phosphates, represent the DNA molecule's dual backbones. The steps, on the other hand, consist of pairs of four conjoined chemical substances known as bases: adenine, thymine, cytosine and guanine. Bases are molecules consisting of between 12 and 16 atoms including carbon, oxygen, hydrogen and nitrogen.17 These chemicals are also specially arranged on the DNA spiral. Only two combinations of arrangements are possible: adenine (A) always bonds to thymine (T), and cytosine (C) always bonds to guanine (G).18
Scientists have established the special sequence in which the atoms making up DNA give rise to nucleotides. But knowing the structure of the building blocks of life is not the same thing as producing them. Indeed, although the correct materials–atoms and the technology to combine them–are available to scientists, they are utterly incapable of making a living DNA molecule.
In the Qur'an our Lord reveals that:
It is He Who gives life and causes to die. When He decides on something, He just says to it, "Be!" and it is. (Surah Ghafir, 68)
Your deity is Allah alone, there is no deity but Him. He encompasses all things in His knowledge'. (Surah Ta Ha, 98)
A special creation is evident in the arrangements of the atoms. Every nucleotide contains some 34 atoms. Since there are 6 billion nucleotides in DNA, 204 billion atoms (34 times 6,000,000,000) need to combine chemically to form a single DNA molecule.19 Were you able to process one atom a second and worked eight hours a day for 350 days a year, it would still take you longer than 20,000 years to produce a single DNA molecule.20 Since this is beyond the capacity of even rational human beings, can anyone imagine that the DNA molecule came into existence by chance? Such a thing is of course out of the question. In addition, bear in mind that in the absence of DNA molecules, living things could not exist.
Indeed, the slightest error in DNA's structure gives rise to very serious consequences, as the well-known science writer Richard Milton describes:
… [E]ach nucleotide has to be "written" in precisely the correct order and in precisely the correct location in the DNA molecule for the offspring to remain viable, and as described earlier, major functional disorders in humans, animals, and plants are caused by the loss or displacement of a single DNA molecule, or even a single nucleotide within that molecule.21
Every base sequence in the DNA strip–the arrangement of the nucleotides adenine, thymine, cytosine and guanine in the cell nucleus–constitutes a genetic text containing information needed for the building of essential proteins. From that point of view, it is noteworthy that DNA maintains its regular structure on the one hand while on the other having an arrangement that permits information diversity.
The DNA Strip is Wound around Bobbins
A single DNA strip in human cells consists of around 3 billion base pairs and is approximately 2 meters long. Both chains of that length need to be reduced in size to dimensions invisible to the eye. Similarly to the way in which a long thread is wound around a reel, the DNA is packaged and installed in the nucleus through a similar cellular mechanism. The DNA strip is packaged by being wound around nucleosomes, which give rise to chromosomes. The job of the nucleosomes is undertaken by proteins known as histones.
There is a 15-turn section of the DNA spiral in one nucleosome; and this is the length of 150 nucleotides.22 This 15-turn section is wound twice around a protein nucleus, made up of eight histones containing a large number of positively charged amino acids. These perfectly complement the negatively charged phosphates on the DNA.
When information written anywhere on the DNA is needed for protein production, the nucleosome opens and the DNA strip is released for "reading." After this, the DNA winds back around the histones, protected from the damaging effects of the molecules around it, until the next time need arises. Genetic data require not just content, but also a sensitive order in their structure and in the features of the surrounding environment.
This order is just one of the works of our Almighty Lord, Creator of the Earth and sky. In one verse, we are told that:
. . . My Lord is kind to anyone He wills. He is indeed All-Knowing and All-Wise. (Surah Yusuf, 100)
Genes: Data Packages
A single cell nucleus, invisible to our eyes, contains a DNA strip that is 4 meters (13.12 feet) long, packaged inside the nucleus in the form of groups known as chromosomes. The nuclei of the cells in your body contain a total of 23 chromosome pairs. When chromosomes are magnified under an electron microscope, the DNA molecule inside these chromosomes are seen to be compressed in a spiral form. Despite occupying a very small volume, this packaging system possesses a stunning data-storage capacity, as you'll see in a later chapter.
DNA strips contain all the information required to form proteins of all kinds–enzymes, molecular motors, hormones and other building blocks.23 The information encoded in the DNA molecule determines the symmetrical formation of the eyes and ears, the pumping of blood by the heart, the transportation of oxygen to the cells via that blood, the gastric acid that breaks down foodstuffs, and all the body's other physical features. There are around eighty thousand of these kinds of information packets, known as genes, in the human body.24
If the total amount of genetic information–the genome, in other words–is compared to a library, every book in that library represents a chromosome, and the chapters in the books are genes. Genes are rather like the headings in a giant encyclopedia, containing a detailed blueprint of a human being's biologic characteristics.25
The chromosomes passed on by way of inheritance are determined by the different arrangements of the four chemical bases constituting the DNA steps. Thousands of these steps, or base pairs, constitute a single gene. James Watson, one of the co-discoverers of DNA's structure, notes that base sequences are the source of the differences in genes:
The four nucleotides were not however, completely different, for each contained the same sugar and phosphate components. Their uniqueness lay in their nitrogenous bases, which were either a purine (adenine and guanine) or a pyrimidine (cytosine and thymine) . . . If the base sequences were always the same, all DNA molecules would be identical. And there would not exist the variability that must distinguish one gene from another.26
From these four base sequences, Allah has created billions of different human beings and keeps creating. Thanks to the flawless order that Allah created in DNA, human beings emerge with a detailed and complex structure and the rich characteristics they possess.
In verse 45 of Surat an-Nur it is revealed that:
. . . Allah creates whatever He wills. Allah has power over all things. (Surat An-Nur, 45)
DNA is a Stable Molecule
DNA is the most suitable molecule for carrying information. Chemists refer to it being stable, which means the molecule is not easily damaged or dissolved. Scientists engaged in research in the field of molecular biology are well aware of the importance of this stability, because DNA's structure is far more resistant than most biochemicals used in the laboratory. Unlike many biochemicals, it can preserve its stability for months in solution, even at room temperature.27 Prof. Daniel Dennet expresses the stable nature of the bases in DNA:
One of the important features of DNA is that all the permutations of sequences of adenine, cytosine, guanine, and thymine are about equally stable, chemically. All could be constructed, in principle, in the gene-splicing laboratory, and, once constructed, would have an indefinite shelf like a book in a library.28
All shows that the DNA molecule is specially created to contain and conceal information. It is absolutely impossible for all of DNA's properties to have come into existence togather instantaneously, as the result of chance. Each one of these has been consciously brought together at our Almighty Lord's command.
In one verse of the Qur'an, Allah reveals that:
. . . That is Allah, your Lord. The Kingdom is His. Those you call on besides Him have no power over even the smallest speck. (Surah Fatir, 13)
The Astonishing Order in DNA's Spiral
Structure
Imagine the coiled cord that leads from a telephone receiver. A long cable has been squeezed into a much shorter distance, but in such a way that it can be extended if necessary. Nobody seeing that cable could possibly imagine that it had assumed that shape by chance, because the place where the cable is used, its purpose and the ease it affords are all signs of an intellect and conscious knowledge.
The DNA in human cells has a similarly spiral shape, but is far more regular, longer and more convoluted. There is enormous wisdom behind the use of this shape. DNA's extraordinary data capacity, which we shall be discussing shortly, and the way it is compressed into a minute space, are made possible thanks to this special form. DNA, which measures 4 meters (13.12 feet) when its spiral is fully extended, takes up no more space than one two millionth of a millimeter, and is hard to see even under an electron microscope.29
DNA is Reminiscent of a Highly Regular
Spiral Staircase
The DNA molecule is a coiled helix, consisting of two spirals, rather like a staircase. The coils in the DNS spiral have an exceedingly regular structure. The vertebrae consisting of sugar and phosphate in both DNA chains revolve at an equal distance around a common axis and twist in the same direction, from right to left. Moreover, there is no haphazard sequencing in the steps between the two arms. The bases that make up the rungs form an angle of 90 degrees to the spiral axis, giving the DNA strip its highly regular, staircase-like appearance.
The steps are joined to one another with a special locking system. The four different components of the rungs –adenine, guanine, cytosine and thymine– are of different sizes. The adenine and guanine bases are large, and cytosine and thymine are small molecules. The dimensions of the molecules that will be opposite one another have been determined in such a way as to ensure equal spaces at every point on the spiral staircase.
In order for the steps to be always regular, guanine always pairs with cytosine, and adenine with thymine. Thus small bases always being opposite large ones in the DNA molecule means the distance is stable at every point. The result is a regular staircase extending with no interruptions. However, if the base adenine were to be paired with guanine just once, instead of with thymine, it would be impossible for the helix structure to proceed in a regular manner. Any error in the sequence might thus entirely impair the molecule's chemical structure and prevent the data being used, copied and transmitted. This again indicates that the sequence cannot be the work of chance.
The distance between the turns of neighboring base pairs is also stable. This system ensures equidistance between the staircase coils, some 10 base pairs –in other words, 10 steps– form a complete revolution of 360 degrees.30 DNA coils a billion times a second, and the staircase steps twist by performing their spiral movement.31 This action plays a very important role in DNA's performing two vital functions--directing the formation of protein and self-replication.
Prof. Werner Gitt, director of the German Federal Institute of Physics and Technology, says this about this special structure:
The coding system used for living beings is optimal from an engineering standpoint. This fact strengthens the argument that it was a case of purposeful design [Creation] rather than fortuitous chance .32
Importance of the Bonds used in the Building
the Spiral
The dual backbones of the long DNA molecule –or the banisters of the staircase– are very strong, made up of consecutive sugar and phosphate molecules. These molecules attach to one another with a special bond known as ester covalent bonds. These are exceptionally strong and it is very difficult to break them. This strength provides protection against harmful factors that might impair genetic information.33 The existence of these bonds makes the DNA molecule resistant and stable even while the DNA molecule is in a single-strand form.
However, there is a risk of damage to the DNA spiral structure as the coils unfold. For that reason, the spiral needs to be strong and stable enough to protect its structure but also elastic enough to be opened up very quickly so that the information can be easily used. In fact, a combination of powerful covalent bonds that protect DNA's basic molecular structure of, and weaker hydrogen bonds that can be broken more quickly, enables the elasticity-solidity problem to be overcome. Since the hydrogen bonds forming between the four opposed nucleotides are not as strong as ester bonds, they can easily be separated with less energy by means of such factors as pH variation (acid-base equilibrium), heat, and pressure. Weak bonds play a very important role in the shaping of the large molecules in an organism, and endow with elasticity the substance they compose. However, no breakage in the bonds ever takes place. Thanks to this distinguishing feature of hydrogen bonds, the information in the DNA molecule can be used whenever required.
The significance of the elasticity in the bonds is that the vital function of protein production is made possible by DNA being copied when cells divide, and that transmission is made possible by the elastic property of the bonds between them. Since the two chains of the DNA molecule are attached to one another only by hydrogen bonds, they can easily be unraveled and separated from one another. They can also, when necessary, recombine and form a new helix structure. No breakage or impairment ever takes place in the nucleotides that constitute the steps of the DNA chain during detachment or separation. While the hydrogen bonds in the center can easily separate from one another, no breakage or stretching ever develops in the long chains at either side, attached by means of covalent bonds.
The molecular biologist Michael Denton describes the perfection in the biochemical structure of DNA:
The geometric perfection of the molecule is particularly evident in the fact that the strength of each of the five hydrogen bonds –the two between adenine and thymine and the three between guanine and cytosine– is optimal because each of the hydrogen atoms points directly at its acceptor atom, and the bond lengths are all at the energy maximum for hydrogen bonds. This is most remarkable, for it confers great stability on the molecule and makes for highly accurate base pairing during replication.34
On the one hand, there is a need for a sound and stable structure for the containing of genetic information, while on the other a flexible structure is required for the genes to be read and copied. So the strength of the bond between the two arms that make up the DNA helix has to be just right for it to fulfill its essential functions. And indeed, the DNA helix does have just the right level of strength and elasticity. If the bond between the DNA strips were any stronger, the two arms would stop moving and become fixed. But if the bond were weaker, the molecule would break apart.35 Yet by the will of Allah, the bonds that constitute DNA have the ideal structure to make the helix both highly regular and exceedingly functional.
The Importance of Phosphate in DNA
Phosphates keep together the nucleotide bases on DNA, because the DNA helix functions in an environment containing water, and water breaks down the bonds between phosphates and sugars. Thus it is both advantageous and essential that the phosphate groups in DNA be negatively charged. That negative charge eliminates the danger of the DNA being broken down in the watery environment surrounding it.
What compounds, other than phosphates, could establish a chemical bond and still manage to remain negatively charged? There are various possibilities. Yet none of these can form genetic information in the way that phosphate does. Silicic acid and arsenic esters break down rapidly in water. Although citric acid dissolves more slowly in water, it lacks the stability to maintain the molecule's geometry.36
Therefore, if phosphate did not have its own unique properties, the DNA's double helix could not form. No self-replication biochemical system could be established, and life would be impossible. The well-known professor of chemistry Frank Henry Westheimer says this: "All of these conditions are met by phosphoric acid and no other alternative is obvious."37 This situation and all the other details we have examined so far clearly show that our Lord has created the DNA molecule with miraculous properties. In one verse of the Qur'an, it is revealed that:
He knows what is in front of them and behind them. But their knowledge does not encompass Him. (Surah Ta Ha, 110)
CHAPTER 4
DNA's Extraordinary Data-storge Capacity
Modern technological progress in the field of data storage is truly amazing. Computer hard discs, CDs, diskettes, data sticks and similar products are becoming more advanced and efficient every day. Computer firms are seeking answers to how the maximum amount of data can be stored in the minimum space without being impaired, and how that information can be downloaded in the fastest possible manner. Even though whole encyclopedias of data can be compressed onto a single CD, it is still large enough to cover your hand. The astonishing data-miniaturizing or data-compression ability of DNA, on the other hand, far surpasses modern technology.
According to calculations by Leonard Adleman of Los Angeles South California University, just 1 gram (0.0022 pounds) of DNA can contain the equivalent amount of data to 1 trillion CDs.38 This shows that data are concealed in a million, million times more efficiently in DNA than in a CD.39
The volume of a human being's DNA is 3 billionths of a cubic millimeter (3 x 10-9 mm3).40 According to G. G. Simpson, if all the features of all the species that have ever lived were to be loaded onto DNA, the resulting total volume of DNA would fill only a small part of a teaspoon. Enough space would even be left over the rest of the teaspoon to contain all the books that have ever been written.41
Dr. Leonard Adleman, the inventor of the DNA computer, which represents a new sphere of technology, says this about the mechanism in DNA and the cell:
If we look inside the cell, we see extraordinary machines that we couldn't make ourselves. It's a great tool chest. 42
According to Darwinists, however, this giant data bank in the cell –capable of holding the equivalent of tens of thousands of books– came into being spontaneously as the result of chance. In the eyes of Darwinists, who have no qualms about building another total impossibility on top of that one, chance has compressed all the data in a library large enough to fill an entire football stadium, undamaged, into a space too small to be seen with the naked eye. Darwinists still blindly advocate such a total impossibility. Yet neither the cell nor DNA, its data bank, can emerge from the chance combination of unconscious atoms. Even the very smallest components of living things have been created for a specific purpose, and every one of them are far too complex to admit any possibility of chance.
Michael George Pitman, a professor of biology from University of Sydney, uses the German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer's words to express how life is not just a collection of inanimate substances:
Every organism is organic through and through in all its parts, and nowhere are these, not even in their smallest particles, mere aggregates of inorganic matter.43
If we were to express the volume of data in DNA in numerical terms, then a 4-meter (13.12-foot) long DNA molecule has been packaged and compressed into a cell only 3 to 5 microns in diameter (1 micron = 1/1000 millimeter). If the DNA codes in every one of the body's 100 trillion cells were laid out end to end, the resulting length would stretch to the Sun and back 600 times.44
Prof. Jerry Bergman, known for his scientific papers, emphasizes the engineering in DNA in an analogy:
Suppose you were asked to take two long strands of fisherman's monofilament line –125 miles [201 kilometers] long– then form it into a double-helix structure and neatly fold and pack this line so it would fit into a basketball. Furthermore, you would need to ensure that the double helix could be unzipped and duplicated along the length of this line, and the duplicate copy removed, all without tangling the line. Possible? This is directly analogous to what happens in the billions of cells in your body every day. Scale the basketball down to the size of a human cell and the line scales down to six feet [2 meters] of DNA. . . . The DNA packing process is both complex and elegant and is so efficient that it achieves a reduction in length of DNA by a factor of 1 million. 45
The molecular biologist Michael Denton describes the extraordinary nature of DNA's data compression ability:
. . . it is clear that cells are immensely complex entities. . . more than a number in a jumbo jet. . . the complexity of a jumbo jet packed into a speck of dust invisible to the human eye. It is hardly conceivable that anything more complex could be compacted into such a small volume. Moreover, it is a speck-sized jumbo jet which can duplicate itself quite effortlessly46
DNA's ability to hold information is so efficient that all the data concerning to a human being can be compressed into an area weighing just a few trillionths of a gram.47 According to Yale University's Prof. George Gaylord Simpson, the data belonging 1 billion living things can be squeezed with ease into a single grain of salt.48
Prof. Francis S. Collins, a physicist and geneticist and also director of the National Human Genome Research Institute, describes the results of his study of DNA:
Now fifty years since Watson and Crick unraveled the structure of the double helix, I think it is amazing to contemplate the elegance of DNA carrying information . . . This digital code allows, in a very easily copyable form, such a massive amount of information to be carried inside each cell of the human body. This double helix DNA is made up of base pair letters. The whole human genome consists of three billion of these base pairs all packaged inside the cell's nucleus. . . The three billion letters are able to direct all of the biological properties of a human being.49
The well-known molecular biologist Michael Denton mentions that biological information to be packed into the tiny volume of the cell nucleus seems to be specifically arranged for human beings.50 If DNA did not have this data compression ability, the cell would have to be very much larger in order to hold irregular DNA strips. But it is impossible for cells to be any larger, because the cell's sources of oxygen and nutrients are efficient only given the existing diameter of the cell.51 From that point of view, the cell's size and therefore, its ability to hold DNA, is of vital importance.
This glorious packaging system is made possible by the DNA molecule's ability to coil and form long spirals that bend and give rise to intertwined, regular helixes. This packaging technology evidencing highly advanced engineering, can be seen in the nucleus of every cell. By means of this packaging system that our Almighty Lord created in our cells, millions of kilometers of DNA "letters" remain contained in a volume we cannot see with the naked eye.
The Giant Encyclopedia in the Human Cell
So extraordinary is the amount of information recorded in DNA that a single DNA molecule contains enough information to fill a million encyclopedia pages. To put that another way, 1,000,000 pages of data that control the functioning of the human body have been encoded inside the nucleus of every cell. You can obtain a better idea of this amount when you consider that even the 23-volume Encyclopedia Britannica, has only 25,000 pages. This gives rise to an extraordinary picture. Inside the nucleus, itself far smaller than the microscopic cell in which it is contained; is a data bank 40 times larger than one of the largest encyclopedias on Earth, equivalent to a 920-volume encyclopedia. Research has shown that this giant encyclopedia contains some 5 billion different pieces of information. Let's repeat those two words, "contains information"
We now need to stop and think about what this means. It is easy enough to say that a cell contains billions of pieces of information. However, we are discussing not a computer or a library, but an area 100 times smaller than a millimeter made up solely of protein, fat and water molecules. It would be astonishing for only a single piece of information, let alone millions, to be contained inside this tiny molecule. Moreover, books and encyclopedias are inert and inanimate. Someone possessed of consciousness needs to read the information and act on the instructions it contains. Yet DNA is a living source of information that does not just contain data, but also uses that information and acts upon it.
How can a chain consisting of atoms arranged one behind the other, in a space just a billionth of a millimeter in diameter, possess such knowledge and memory? While each of the 100 trillion cells in your body are capable of learning a million pages by heart, how many pages could you –an intelligent individual– learn during the course of your lifetime? Any rational person will conclude that the cell is the work of a superior mind and superior knowledge. It is impossible, as evolutionists maintain, for DNA to have arisen by chance in one single cell, let alone in an organism consisting of billions. Almighty Allah (is the Creator of all things. Allah reveals in one verse of the Qur'an as follows:
They do not measure Allah with His true measure. Allah is All-Strong, Almighty. (Surat al-Hajj, 74)
The Data Storage Technology in DNA
Is Greater Than That of Computers
The computer is the most advanced technology through which large quantities of information can be stored. The information possessed by room-sized computers 50 years ago can now be stored on small discs. Yet the latest computer technology, developed by human intelligence as the result of centuries of accumulated knowledge and many years of effort, comes nowhere near to approaching the data-storage capacity of DNA.
A strand of DNA is only one 2 millionth of a millimeter in thickness. Despite this extraordinary thinness and the fact it is 4 meters (13.12 feet) long, DNA strips never become tangled up with one another. Thanks to its special structure, the DNA is folded up perfectly inside the cell's nucleus - an example of incomparable engineering.
One of the main goals of computer engineers is to be able to store as much information as possible in as small a space as possible. At present, the highest level storage capacity on Earth is that belonging to DNA molecule.52 In his book The Road Ahead, Bill Gates, the president of Microsoft, writes:
Human DNA is like a computer program but far, far more advanced than any software we've ever created.53
The well-known American philosopher Prof. Daniel Dennet describes the density of information contained in DNA in his book Darwin's Dangerous Idea:
Even to those of us accustomed to the "engineering miracles" of the computer age, the facts are hard to encompass. Not only molecule-sized copying machines, but proofreading enzymes that correct mistakes, all at blinding speed, on a scale that super computers still can not match. Biological macromolecules have a storage capacity that exceeds that of the best present-day information stores by several orders of magnitude.54
The sequencing of the codes in DNA resembles that of the digits in a computer system. The numbers in a computer environment can contain an image, the instructions for a computer game, or the text of a book. The codes in DNA contain information that serves to produce new proteins.55 But no computer engineer can imitate DNA, which contains sufficient information to fill a million encyclopedia pages in a space invisible to the naked eye. To claim that DNA emerged by chance is even more irrational than maintaining that the most advanced computers could have done so. DNA exhibits evident proofs of Allah's sublime creation. Allah reveals this matchless creation in the Qur'an:
He is the Originator of the heavens and the Earth. . . (Surat al-An'am, 101)
Astonishing Comparisons That Elucidate
the Giant Data Capacity in DNA
Instead of using units of measurement, scientists resort to various comparisons to emphasize the vast amount of genetic data in human beings. Here are some examples that stress the breadth of the data capacity in DNA:
*If the information in the human genome could be written down using the alphabet, it would fill 1,000 books of 1,000 pages each, each page containing 3,000 letters.56 1,000 books times 1,000 pages times 3,000 letters equals 3,000,000,000 (3 billion) letters.
*If those 3 billion letters in the human genome were written out as a single sentence, it would stretch from the North Pole to the Equator. Someone working at a typewriter at a rate of 300 letters per minute for 8 hours a day, 220 days a year, would take 95 years to complete the task.57
*For the genetic information to be written out would require 12,000 160-page books. Compared with computer chips with a 16 MB capacity (a megabyte is 1 million bytes, the smallest data units in a computer), the DNA strip in the human genome contains 1,400 times more information.58
*If a pinhead 2 millimeters (0.078 of an inch) in diameter were stretched out to the thinness of the DNA molecule, it would be 33 times longer than the Equator.59
*The information in DNA is sufficient to fill a library consisting of 100 sets of a 30-volume encyclopedia.60
*Were the information in DNA to be placed in books piled one on top of the other, those books would attain a height of 70 meters (229 feet). Alternatively, that information could fill 200 phone books of 500 pages each.61
*If the DNA in all the cells in the human body were flattened out and laid end to end, they would stretch for some 50,000,000 kilometers (31,070,000 miles.) That distance is enough to go from the Earth to the Solar System. Light would take approximately two days to travel the entire length of the DNA in your body.62
*According to professor Jérôme Lejeune, a genetics expert, the genetic data belonging to all the human beings on Earth could be contained in a quantity of DNA no larger than a few aspirin tablets.63
*The information in the DNA in a single human cell could fill 1 million encyclopedia pages. Individuals could not live long enough to read their own genetic data. Where they to read the DNA code every day, 24 hours a day, non-stop, it would take 100 years to complete the task.
*To envisage the density of the data in the DNA molecule, assume that you have enough DNA to cover a pinhead. Now consider that this same information is written down in books of 160 pages each. The data in such a small amount of DNA could fill 15 trillion (15 times 1012) of those 160-page books. If you placed that many books one on top of the other, their height would be 500 times the distance between the Earth and the Moon (384,000 kilometers, or 238,600 miles). Alternatively, if these books were equally distributed among the 6 billion or so people in the world, every individual would receive 2,500 volumes.64
The boundless information that these examples try to express is stored inside every cell nucleus. The presence of DNA, storing the equivalent amount of information to a large library, in some 100 trillion cells, means 100 trillion of these libraries. Were we to compare that level of information with the level so far achieved by mankind, we would be unable to find an example sufficiently large. In addition, if we multiplied that quantity by the 6 billion people currently living on the Earth and the billions of others who lived in the past, a boundless quantity of data would appear before us.
Moreover, we are now speaking only of human genetic information. Bearing in mind the genetic information possessed by the millions of living creatures that have ever existed, the level rises to heights that exceed comprehension. The knowledge that our Omniscient and Almighty Lord has manifested in DNA leaves absolutely no room for claims based on chance.
In one verse, it is stated that:
There is no one in the heavens and Earth who will not come to the All-Merciful as a servant. He has counted them and numbered them precisely. (Surah Maryam, 93-94)
Rather We hurl the truth against falsehood and it cuts right through it and it vanishes clean away! Woe without end for you for what you portray! (Surat al-Anbiya', 18)
DNA Is an Example of the
Artistry and Intellect of Allah,
the Lord of Infinite Knowledge
The basic claims of the theory of evolution are based on blind chance, which cannot give rise to information. If the chemical formula for a drug that cures cancer is written down one day, all the authorities would join forces to identify the discoverers and even give them an award. Nobody would wonder if that formula was the result of ink being spilled on the page, Any rational mind would think that it could have been written only by someone with expertise in chemistry, physiology, oncology (the branch of medicine that studies cancer) and pharmacology (the branch that studies drugs).
Evolutionists seek to account for the origin of
to the DNA Molecule
Too small to be seen with the naked eye, DNA serves as the data bank of our cells. Information about all the living things around you is concealed within this miniaturized data bank inside every cell of every organism. All the structural characteristics of a rose, an orange, a sparrow, a tiger or a human being are present in the nuclei of the cells that comprise these organisms. Look at your hand that is holding this book. These data stores exist in the nucleus of every single one of the cells that compose that hand.
These DNA molecules are invisible to the naked eye but in terms of their contents and data-storage capacity, they are equal to a library consisting of tens of thousands of books. As you observe the miraculous aspects of DNA, which can be seen only by magnifying it thousands of times, you will also appreciate how such minute essential component of life places the theory of evolution in an insuperable quandary. Examining the details of this extraordinary structure will give you the opportunity to ponder the infinite might, incomparable knowledge, scope and dominion of our Lord, Allah (God) and the universe He has created.
Every day, new discoveries are being made about the universe we inhabit. Billions of galaxies lie hundreds of thousands of light years away from one another. Millions of stars that fill those galaxies, whose dimensions defy our powers of conception. Giant planets constantly revolve in a complex order at speeds of thousands of kilometers without ever colliding with one another. Here, on one of the smaller of these planets, we examine the cells, the building blocks of life on Earth, themselves no bigger than a mere speck, under the electron microscope, an invention of the 20th century.
Each of the conditions that makes this planet suitable for life is indispensable to it. The Earth's environment exists and persists by the mercy of Allah.
Albert Einstein, one of the 20th century's most eminent scientists, expressed man's difficulty in comprehending the order in the universe in these terms:
The human mind is not capable of grasping the Universe. We are in the position of a little child entering a huge library filled with books in many languages. The child knows someone must have written those books. It does not know how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written. The child dimly suspects a mysterious order in the arrangement of the books, but doesn't know what it is. 1
Human beings have been equipped with all the systems they need within this extraordinary environment. The more details that we learn about the body, the more we realize how miraculous our lives are. As they discover the systems concealed inside their bodies, many people--who would otherwise live without reflection, caught up in the daily course of their lives--will reflect on the purpose behind their existence and become aware of their responsibilities to Allah, their Creator. Indeed, various scientists have acquired faith in the existence of Allah by seeing the greatness of His knowledge and the perfections He has created.
But some of them continue to refuse to see that they live in need of Allah, even though their consciences may tell them otherwise. Yet their refusal to admit the truth will not alter the facts. Allah reveals some people's approach in the Qur'an:
Do not mix up truth with falsehood and knowingly hide the truth. (Surat al-Baqara, 42)
O Humanity! You are the poor in need of Allah whereas Allah is the Rich Beyond Need, the Praiseworthy. (Surah Fatir, 15)
INTRODUCTION
The Most advanced Data Bank Known: DNA
The truth revealed by science as it progresses is that living things possess flawless and highly complex structures that could never have emerged by chance. This is evident proof that our Almighty and Omniscient Lord has created living things. The theory of evolution, which rejects the idea of our Creator and pins its hopes on coincidences, has been dealt one of its most severe blows by developments in the field of molecular biology, which demolishes–with clear and irrefutable evidence, the fundamental of Darwinism, which maintains that life originated based on supposedly simple structures.
As scientists discovered the complex structures inside the cell, which some have referred to as a "molecular machine," they also clearly saw that these could never have come into being as the result of chance.
One such structure is DNA, the cell's data bank, discovered in the 1950s with the invention of the electron microscope. DNA is a giant molecule contained in every cell. On that long molecular chain is encoded all the information that determines the physical and chemical structure of that cell and of the entire organism to which that cell belongs. However, the presence of such a data bank within the cell means nothing by itself. The information within that DNA must be read as needed, and processes carried out in the light of that information. It is impossible for inanimate substances to write and decipher codes, take progressive precautionary measures, and to establish a system to ensure that the information they possess comes to no harm.
Molecules made up of chemical elements from the earth and air cannot be expected to do these things spontaneously. Yet Darwinists are so blindly devoted to their theory of evolution that, as you shall see in the chapters that follow, they insist on claims that are utterly unscientific, violating reason and logic, solely for the sake of convincing themselves and others that everything is a coincidence.
Despite being an evolutionist, Francis Crick–a Nobel Prize-winning biochemist and one of the scientists who discovered DNA–admits the facts in his book Life Itself:
An honest man, armed with all the knowledge available to us now, could only state that, in some sense, the origin of life appears at the moment to be almost a miracle.2
Richard Dawkins, known for his evolutionist views, describes the complexity concealed within the cell:
Physics books may be complicated, but . . . the objects and phenomena that a physics book describes are simpler than a single cell in the body of its author. And the author consists of trillions of those cells, many of them different from each other, organized with intricate architecture and precision--engineering into a working machine capable of writing a book. . . . Each nucleus . . . contains a digitally coded database larger, in information content, than all thirty volumes of the Encyclopedia Britannica put together. And this figure is for each [individual] cell, not all the cells of the body put together.3
If you had found a CD on your desk 25 years ago, and even if you had never seen one before, you would still never try attempt to account for its existence in terms of chance. Despite its being a very thin, flat, round piece of plastic, the regularity of its shape would still make it clear that it had been produced by an intelligent, knowledgeable human being. Even if you never met the person who designed and manufactured that CD, you would still never claim that metals and plastics had assumed such a perfect form as the result of successive accidents.
And what if you learned, through a detailed examination of the CD's structure, that in indentations and protrusions on its surface, there was information coded in the form of the numbers 0 and 1? At first glance it appeared like just a flat plastic disc, but were it enlarged to the size of a football stadium, the indentations on it would be approximately the same size as grains of sand.4
All the CD's indentations and protrusions represent coded data containing text, sounds and images. The fact that dozens of books' worth of data has been compressed into this flat disk makes it obvious that intelligent, knowledgeable minds have had a hand in its manufacture. No one could possibly maintain anything different. On the contrary, the presence here of a highly advanced technology, the processes of recording, coding and compression of data are evidence that this CD was consciously produced, and for a specific purpose.
Yet some people, who see that claims of chance are impossible to account for a flat disk of plastic, fail to employ the same honest logic in the face of DNA's perfect creation. They maintain that the DNA molecules, too small to be seen with the naked eye but containing enough compressed and encoded data to fill thousands of encyclopedias, came into being as the work of chance. Yet the human brain that produced the CD and wrote the information it contains also consists of cells that function thanks to the information contained in DNA.
The illogicality here is obvious. In the same way that the information in the CD implies that it has been written there by someone, DNA–a far more comprehensive data bank with a far superior technology–shows the existence of a superior intellect, of a Creator. That intellect is the infinite mind of our Almighty Lord. DNA is a miracle of Allah, the sublime nature of the creation of which we have been able to comprehend through 20th-century technology.
Our Lord reveals the purpose of the things He created in one of the verses:
It is Allah Who created the seven heavens and of the Earth the same number, the Command descending down through all of them, so that you might know that Allah has power over all things and that Allah encompasses all things in His knowledge. (Surat at-Talaq, 12)
CHAPTER 1
Aspect of The Cell Discovered
In the 20th Century
In the second half of the 20th century, advances in the field of molecular biology entirely altered our perspective on the miniaturized world inside the cell. With today's rapidly developing technology, biologists have become aware of the flawless and complex mechanisms possessed by the cell, realizing that these could not have come into being by chance or spontaneously. Most of the systems that constitute the cell are smaller than the wavelength of visible light. Some details in the cell can be examined only by advanced techniques such as X-ray crystallography. However, at the time when Darwin launched his theory, the level of science was extremely backward. Not even the basic structure of the cell had been revealed, let alone the discovery of the helix structure and data capacity of the DNA molecule, which James Watson and Francis Crick revealed nearly 100 years after the publication of Darwin's book The Origin of Species
Darwin had no means of foreseeing the advances that molecular biology would subsequently make. Clearly, his theory of evolution built on fundamentally flawed knowledge and hypotheses cannot account for the existence of a structure like DNA, which amazes scientists.
The well–known Cambridge University philosopher Dr. Stephen C. Meyer compares modern science with that of Darwin's day:
During the last half of the twentieth century, advances in molecular biology and biochemistry have revolutionized our understanding of the miniature world within the cell. Research has revealed that cells--the fundamental units of life-store--transmit, and edit information and use that information to regulate their most fundamental metabolic processes . . . biologists now describe cells as, among other things, "distributive real-time computers" or complex information processing systems. Darwin, of course, neither knew about these intricacies nor sought to explain their origin. Instead, his theory of biological evolution sought to explain how life could have grown gradually more complex starting from "one or a few simple forms" . . . in the 1870s and 1880s, scientists assumed that devising an explanation for the origin of life would be fairly easy. For one thing, they assumed that life was essentially a rather simple substance called protoplasm that could be easily constructed by combining and recombining simple chemicals such as carbon dioxide, oxygen, and nitrogen.5
However, some scientists, the heirs of Darwin, still consider that atoms spontaneously combined to give rise to complex living things. In the light of the extraordinary advances made in the field of molecular biology especially over the last 50 years, it is quite astonishing that Darwin's claim should have survived this long. This state of affairs is admitted in a statement by Dr. Richard Lewontin, an evolutionist and Harvard University biologist and geneticist:
. . . evolution is not a fact, it's a philosophy. The materialism comes first (a priori), and the evidence is interpreted in light of that unchangeable philosophical commitment. 6
Because of their devotion to materialism, the inheritors of the theory of evolution are generally unable to accept scientific facts. They therefore insist on trying to carry an outdated 19th-century scientific conception into the present day. However, the facts are too evident to be covered up by any superstitious philosophy.
In the Qur'an, Allah reveals that there will be those who "use fallacious arguments to deny the truth" (Surat al-Kahf, 56). In another verse, He tells us:
Rather We hurl the truth against falsehood and it cuts right through its brain and it vanishes clean away! Woe without end for you for what you portray! (Surat al-Anbiya', 18)
The Cell Is More Complex
Than a Major City
Some four billion years ago, according to the evolutionist scenario, various inanimate chemical substances entered into reactions in the primitive Earth's atmosphere; these then combined with the effects of lightning and earthquakes–and thus the first living cell emerged. The fact is, however, that the structure of the cell is more complex that even the most populous and technologically advanced city. A great many systems operate non-stop with a flawless organization, from power stations that produce energy inside the cell to protein-producing factories, from a freight system that transports raw materials to decoders that translate DNA, and a dense and constant communications system.
For evolutionists to believe that the cell came into being by chance is as illogical and nonsensical as claiming that all the buildings, roads, transportation systems, electricity and water networks in a city such as Istanbul, with its almost 15 million population, came into existence spontaneously as the result of such natural phenomena as storms and earthquakes.
Prof. Gerald L. Schroeder, an Israeli scientist working in the fields of physics and biology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) describes the order inside the cell:
The human body acts as a finely tuned machine, a magnificent metropolis in which, as its inhabitants, each of the 75 trillion cells, composed of 1027 atoms, moves in symbiotic precision. Seldom are two cells simultaneously performing the same act, yet their individual contributions combine smoothly to form life. 7
Despite being an evolutionist, the late astrobiologist Carl Sagan speaks of the amazing order in the cell as if it were a work of art:
A living cell is a marvel of detailed and complex architecture. Seen through a microscope, there is an appearance of almost frantic activity. On a deeper level it is known that molecules are being synthesized at an enormous rate. Almost any enzyme catalyzes the synthesis of more than 100 other molecules per second. In ten minutes, a sizeable fraction of total mass of a metabolizing bacterial cell has been synthesized. The information content of a simple cell had been estimated as around 1012 bits, comparable to about a hundred million pages of the Encyclopedia Britannica. 8
The nucleus inside the cell bears the DNA, the most important genetic material. Mitochondria inside the cell turn glucose (in the form of food products) into energy packets. Microscopic tubes extend throughout the cell, constituting vital pathways along which proteins and other required substances can be carried to the appropriate location. In addition, the billions of cells in our bodies build all their systems out of molecules, at the same time consistently maintaining and repairing themselves. As well as performing their own tasks, they also renew themselves.9 They also obtain their own energy.
Prof. Werner Gitt, director of the German Federal Institute of Physics and Technology, emphasizes how the cell is far superior to any machinery made by human beings: "The biological energy conversion system is brilliantly and cleverly designed that energy engineers can only watch, fascinated. Nobody has yet been able to copy this miniaturized and extremely efficient mechanism."10
In his book Blind Faith: Evolution Exposed, the science writer Howard Peth states that there is no such thing as a simple cell:
Formerly, it was thought that a cell was composed of nucleus and a few other parts in a "sea"' of cytoplasms, with large spaces in the cell unoccupied. Now it is known that a cell literally "swarms."' That is, it's packed full of important functioning units necessary to the life of the cell and the body containing it. The theory of evolution assumes life developed from a "simple"' cell - but science today demonstrates that there is no such thing as a simple cell.11
In conclusion, cells are not simple sacs of jelly, as was imagined in Darwin's day. On the contrary, as the 20th century physicist and astrobiologist Prof. Paul Davies puts it, they resemble computers with the most highly advanced technology, or complex cities.
CHAPTER 2
The Source of the Data of Life
DNA, the basic genetic material of all living things, is a long molecule resembling a spiral staircase, whose details we shall be examining in due course. DNA exists in all living things–human beings, flowers, birds, flies, and even bacteria. It contains all the necessary information regarding the features of the living cell and its regular operations. In addition, detailed information regarding a living thing's external appearance, the kind of structure it will have, how it will grow and how its organs will work, are all determined beforehand in DNA. For example, an individual's DNA contains information about such details as height, eye color and physical structure, how the body will defend itself in the face of which dangers, and how it will produce proteins, the building blocks of the cell. The DNA of a rosebush contains millions of pieces of detailed, coded information about its flower's scent and color, the structure of its thorns, the shape of its leaves and the thickness of its stems. DNA molecules are rather like blueprints that determine how a living thing will be constructed and function.
Human beings carry this molecule, which exhibits far greater knowledge than themselves, in every one of their cells. For example, a DNA chain is packaged in every cell in your eyes as you read these lines. There are DNA molecules in every cell in the fingers that turn over the pages of this book, in the cells of your heart and bones, and in every cell that makes up your body. What is more, they are constantly at work to keep the individual alive.
The information theoretician Dr. Werner Gitt expresses the extraordinary range of the data in DNA:
It seems necessary to assume that in addition to its protein-coding portions, DNA contains countless additional levels of structure and function. Such stored information concepts are just as much required to code for the development of the smallest organelles such as the mitochondria and ribosomes, as for building the large organs (e.g., heart, kidneys, brain) and the overall integrated organism. As yet, no one has been able to decode this incredibly complex system.12
As noted by Professor Gitt, the sphere of operation of the DNA's information is very broad. DNA does not determine just physical characteristics; at the same time it plans thousands of different functions throughout the cell, the body's organs and systems. Thanks to the information placed in DNA:
*The bones grow in exactly the right place, shape and size. The skull, ribs, pelvic bone and vertebrae all have special shapes and thickness in line with specific purposes. The vertebrae, for instance, possess just the right shape for the vitally important spinal cord to be able to pass through them. Similarly, the skull has been specially shaped to protect the brain, and the ribs to shield the lungs and heart. The balanced development of every one of these is part of the total blueprint recorded in the DNA.
*The 206 separate bones in the human body are connected to one another by ligaments and muscles in such a way as to allow them to move. The elasticity and mobility of these muscles that allows us to go up and down stairs, run, bend down and stand up again is again recorded in DNA. Thanks to the information set out by Allah in DNA, we can move our muscles in almost any direction we desire. Thus a human being can hold a glass of water, turn the pages of a book, sit in a chair without falling out of it, or carry packages weighing many kilograms.
*The cartilage that prevents friction between bones is a very special tissue in terms of its shape, structure and position. In the knees, for example, cartilage acts as a shock absorber that allows those joints to carry the whole weight of the body–tens of kilograms–without feeling stress. The detailed blueprint for the knee is also set out in DNA.
*The veins that stretch approximately 100,000 kilometers (62,140 miles) and carry vitally important blood to nourish all the body's tissues. The veins work jointly with the heart's special pumping system. Some are thinner than a hair, carrying red blood cells to every corner of the body, from the eyelids to the fingertips, from the brain to the kidneys.
*The way that the nerves interpenetrate the entire body lets them react very quickly to changes that the senses perceive, allowing different parts of the body to work together as a single unit.
*The 200 or so different kinds of cell in the body possess the same basic features and mechanisms, but perform very different activities. A liver cell, for example, carries out 500 different chemical processes within a matter of milliseconds (thousandths of a second), while a heart cell can produce its own electricity over a whole lifetime.
*The production of the energy you need to stand up and walk, remain standing, breathe and to open and close your eyes–in short to survive–is part of the blueprint recorded in each cell. Thanks to this blueprint, every cell knows how to obtain the most energy from foodstuffs consumed and how to make the most efficient use of them.
*The stomach secretes acids that digest meat, but do not break down its tissues. Up to 20 enzymes go into action to make blood clot during the repair of a deep cut. These are just two of the precautionary measures recorded in DNA.
*The hormonal system is a highly efficient communications system among the cells, permitting the regulation of all the balances in the body. It functions according to the information set out in DNA. How much of which substances the body will use, and how surpluses are to be stored or expelled, are also included in this specific blueprint.
*On the other hand, DNA also determines how the cells in the immune system are to exchange information. In the event of a tissue being wounded or infected, for instance, the immune system initiates reactions. Defense cells identify the site of the wound in a very short time to counter-attack the microbes entering the body through the injury. They then analyze the threat and transmit messages that begin the war against those microbes.
Whole libraries of books could be written about the details in the human body, both known and as yet undiscovered. All are parts of a blueprint recorded in the DNA's data bank. In short, DNA acts as a planning center in every living thing, literally undertaking the responsibilities of architects, engineers, scent experts, botanists, laboratory technicians, interior designers, designers, artists, doctors and countless other experts and scientists. At every moment, Our Almighty Lord creates and controls these molecules that are in constant operation so that you can read these lines, see, breathe, think and in short, remain alive.
This fact is revealed in one verse of the Qur'an:
[Hud said,] "I have put my trust in Allah, my Lord and your Lord. There is no creature He does not hold by the forelock. My Lord is on a Straight Path." (Surah Hud, 56)
As a very simple example, compare the information in DNA with a book. Obviously, no book can write itself. Even if we assume that this was in some way possible, it still will be absolutely impossible for anything written in that book to be meaningful. Based on this analogy, Prof. Phillip Johnson states that random coincidences can have no such power, ability or intelligence:
. . . just everybody (including Richard Dawkins) agrees that it is essentially impossible to produce a coherent book of average length by randomly combining letters, spaces and punctuation marks. Even a single sentence–like "In the beginning was the Word"–is extremely unlikely to come from pouring out a random mix of letters and spaces.13
No doubt that the data recorded in DNA have an incomparable structure more complex than the sentence. In the beginning was the Word, and that this complex structure cannot possibly have come into existence spontaneously or by chance. Moreover, all the trillions of DNA molecules possessed by billions of living things for millions of years have all been encoded with a perfect system, placed within an area too small to be seen with the naked eye and yet used in the most rational manner. That being so, there is a Creator Who plans and arranges human beings, their cells and their DNA in that flawless and perfect manner. That Creator is Almighty Allah. To maintain the opposite is to ignore the facts, reason and logic.
However, many who would quickly agree it is impossible for letters to arrange themselves into even three small words still manage to listen with no objection to the deceit that millions of atoms combined together by chance, one by one, in a specific sequence to create a molecule containing the equivalent of whole libraries of information. The sole reason for this is their blind devotion to Darwinism, which prevents some intelligent people from seeing the evident fact of Creation and leads them into the most irrational beliefs. Everyone freed from this preconception to use his intellect will clearly see that an infinite data bank such as DNA can only come into existence through being created.
When they are told, "Follow what Allah has sent down to you," They say, "We are following what we found our fathers doing." What, even though their fathers did not understand a thing and were not guided! The likeness of those who do not believe is that of the beast which, call out to it as one may, can hear nothing but a shout and a cry. Deaf–dumb–blind. They do not use their intellect. (Surat al-Baqara, 170-171)
CHAPTER 3
The DNA Molecule's Miraculous Structure
In discussing the chemical structure of the DNA molecule, our objective is not simply to provide the kind of information you can find in a great many books on biology, but to show the details in human creation and the extremely sensitive order on which our existence depends–and thus, to properly appreciate our Lord's greatness and His mercy upon us.
Some people prefer to remain far removed from technical details and don't want to tire their minds with them. But they reflect that same superficial perspective in their analyses, comments and statements. In fact, there is sublime wisdom in every detail of creation, and each of those details has been created for a specific purpose.
In one verse of the Qur'an our Lord tells us that:
We did not create the heavens and Earth and everything between them, except with truth. The Hour is certainly coming, so turn away graciously. Your Lord, He is the Creator, the All-Knowing. (Surat al-Hijr, 85-86)
Let's examine some of the details in the creation of the DNA in the trillions of cells inside every one of the billions of people on Earth.
Chemical Structure of the DNA Helix
The giant molecule of DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) that plays a role in all the cell's vital functions consists of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen and phosphate atoms. There are billions of these atoms in a single human DNA molecule,14 all arranged in a manner particular to that individual.
DNA is an acronym of the words deoxyribo, nucleic and acid that express the molecule's chemical structure. This molecule in the nucleus of every human cell consists of nucleic acid arranged in a helix shape like a miniature sphere just 5 microns in diameter.15 (One micron equals one thousandth of a millimeter.) Nucleic acids are exceedingly important compounds, despite making up only 2% of our bodies. The basic structural units of nucleic acids are nucleotides. Some 6 billion nucleotides combine in the double helix that gives rise to DNA.16
The DNA molecule's structure resembles a spiral staircase, and its architectural regularity amazes scientists. The sides of the staircase, made up of various sugars and phosphates, represent the DNA molecule's dual backbones. The steps, on the other hand, consist of pairs of four conjoined chemical substances known as bases: adenine, thymine, cytosine and guanine. Bases are molecules consisting of between 12 and 16 atoms including carbon, oxygen, hydrogen and nitrogen.17 These chemicals are also specially arranged on the DNA spiral. Only two combinations of arrangements are possible: adenine (A) always bonds to thymine (T), and cytosine (C) always bonds to guanine (G).18
Scientists have established the special sequence in which the atoms making up DNA give rise to nucleotides. But knowing the structure of the building blocks of life is not the same thing as producing them. Indeed, although the correct materials–atoms and the technology to combine them–are available to scientists, they are utterly incapable of making a living DNA molecule.
In the Qur'an our Lord reveals that:
It is He Who gives life and causes to die. When He decides on something, He just says to it, "Be!" and it is. (Surah Ghafir, 68)
Your deity is Allah alone, there is no deity but Him. He encompasses all things in His knowledge'. (Surah Ta Ha, 98)
A special creation is evident in the arrangements of the atoms. Every nucleotide contains some 34 atoms. Since there are 6 billion nucleotides in DNA, 204 billion atoms (34 times 6,000,000,000) need to combine chemically to form a single DNA molecule.19 Were you able to process one atom a second and worked eight hours a day for 350 days a year, it would still take you longer than 20,000 years to produce a single DNA molecule.20 Since this is beyond the capacity of even rational human beings, can anyone imagine that the DNA molecule came into existence by chance? Such a thing is of course out of the question. In addition, bear in mind that in the absence of DNA molecules, living things could not exist.
Indeed, the slightest error in DNA's structure gives rise to very serious consequences, as the well-known science writer Richard Milton describes:
… [E]ach nucleotide has to be "written" in precisely the correct order and in precisely the correct location in the DNA molecule for the offspring to remain viable, and as described earlier, major functional disorders in humans, animals, and plants are caused by the loss or displacement of a single DNA molecule, or even a single nucleotide within that molecule.21
Every base sequence in the DNA strip–the arrangement of the nucleotides adenine, thymine, cytosine and guanine in the cell nucleus–constitutes a genetic text containing information needed for the building of essential proteins. From that point of view, it is noteworthy that DNA maintains its regular structure on the one hand while on the other having an arrangement that permits information diversity.
The DNA Strip is Wound around Bobbins
A single DNA strip in human cells consists of around 3 billion base pairs and is approximately 2 meters long. Both chains of that length need to be reduced in size to dimensions invisible to the eye. Similarly to the way in which a long thread is wound around a reel, the DNA is packaged and installed in the nucleus through a similar cellular mechanism. The DNA strip is packaged by being wound around nucleosomes, which give rise to chromosomes. The job of the nucleosomes is undertaken by proteins known as histones.
There is a 15-turn section of the DNA spiral in one nucleosome; and this is the length of 150 nucleotides.22 This 15-turn section is wound twice around a protein nucleus, made up of eight histones containing a large number of positively charged amino acids. These perfectly complement the negatively charged phosphates on the DNA.
When information written anywhere on the DNA is needed for protein production, the nucleosome opens and the DNA strip is released for "reading." After this, the DNA winds back around the histones, protected from the damaging effects of the molecules around it, until the next time need arises. Genetic data require not just content, but also a sensitive order in their structure and in the features of the surrounding environment.
This order is just one of the works of our Almighty Lord, Creator of the Earth and sky. In one verse, we are told that:
. . . My Lord is kind to anyone He wills. He is indeed All-Knowing and All-Wise. (Surah Yusuf, 100)
Genes: Data Packages
A single cell nucleus, invisible to our eyes, contains a DNA strip that is 4 meters (13.12 feet) long, packaged inside the nucleus in the form of groups known as chromosomes. The nuclei of the cells in your body contain a total of 23 chromosome pairs. When chromosomes are magnified under an electron microscope, the DNA molecule inside these chromosomes are seen to be compressed in a spiral form. Despite occupying a very small volume, this packaging system possesses a stunning data-storage capacity, as you'll see in a later chapter.
DNA strips contain all the information required to form proteins of all kinds–enzymes, molecular motors, hormones and other building blocks.23 The information encoded in the DNA molecule determines the symmetrical formation of the eyes and ears, the pumping of blood by the heart, the transportation of oxygen to the cells via that blood, the gastric acid that breaks down foodstuffs, and all the body's other physical features. There are around eighty thousand of these kinds of information packets, known as genes, in the human body.24
If the total amount of genetic information–the genome, in other words–is compared to a library, every book in that library represents a chromosome, and the chapters in the books are genes. Genes are rather like the headings in a giant encyclopedia, containing a detailed blueprint of a human being's biologic characteristics.25
The chromosomes passed on by way of inheritance are determined by the different arrangements of the four chemical bases constituting the DNA steps. Thousands of these steps, or base pairs, constitute a single gene. James Watson, one of the co-discoverers of DNA's structure, notes that base sequences are the source of the differences in genes:
The four nucleotides were not however, completely different, for each contained the same sugar and phosphate components. Their uniqueness lay in their nitrogenous bases, which were either a purine (adenine and guanine) or a pyrimidine (cytosine and thymine) . . . If the base sequences were always the same, all DNA molecules would be identical. And there would not exist the variability that must distinguish one gene from another.26
From these four base sequences, Allah has created billions of different human beings and keeps creating. Thanks to the flawless order that Allah created in DNA, human beings emerge with a detailed and complex structure and the rich characteristics they possess.
In verse 45 of Surat an-Nur it is revealed that:
. . . Allah creates whatever He wills. Allah has power over all things. (Surat An-Nur, 45)
DNA is a Stable Molecule
DNA is the most suitable molecule for carrying information. Chemists refer to it being stable, which means the molecule is not easily damaged or dissolved. Scientists engaged in research in the field of molecular biology are well aware of the importance of this stability, because DNA's structure is far more resistant than most biochemicals used in the laboratory. Unlike many biochemicals, it can preserve its stability for months in solution, even at room temperature.27 Prof. Daniel Dennet expresses the stable nature of the bases in DNA:
One of the important features of DNA is that all the permutations of sequences of adenine, cytosine, guanine, and thymine are about equally stable, chemically. All could be constructed, in principle, in the gene-splicing laboratory, and, once constructed, would have an indefinite shelf like a book in a library.28
All shows that the DNA molecule is specially created to contain and conceal information. It is absolutely impossible for all of DNA's properties to have come into existence togather instantaneously, as the result of chance. Each one of these has been consciously brought together at our Almighty Lord's command.
In one verse of the Qur'an, Allah reveals that:
. . . That is Allah, your Lord. The Kingdom is His. Those you call on besides Him have no power over even the smallest speck. (Surah Fatir, 13)
The Astonishing Order in DNA's Spiral
Structure
Imagine the coiled cord that leads from a telephone receiver. A long cable has been squeezed into a much shorter distance, but in such a way that it can be extended if necessary. Nobody seeing that cable could possibly imagine that it had assumed that shape by chance, because the place where the cable is used, its purpose and the ease it affords are all signs of an intellect and conscious knowledge.
The DNA in human cells has a similarly spiral shape, but is far more regular, longer and more convoluted. There is enormous wisdom behind the use of this shape. DNA's extraordinary data capacity, which we shall be discussing shortly, and the way it is compressed into a minute space, are made possible thanks to this special form. DNA, which measures 4 meters (13.12 feet) when its spiral is fully extended, takes up no more space than one two millionth of a millimeter, and is hard to see even under an electron microscope.29
DNA is Reminiscent of a Highly Regular
Spiral Staircase
The DNA molecule is a coiled helix, consisting of two spirals, rather like a staircase. The coils in the DNS spiral have an exceedingly regular structure. The vertebrae consisting of sugar and phosphate in both DNA chains revolve at an equal distance around a common axis and twist in the same direction, from right to left. Moreover, there is no haphazard sequencing in the steps between the two arms. The bases that make up the rungs form an angle of 90 degrees to the spiral axis, giving the DNA strip its highly regular, staircase-like appearance.
The steps are joined to one another with a special locking system. The four different components of the rungs –adenine, guanine, cytosine and thymine– are of different sizes. The adenine and guanine bases are large, and cytosine and thymine are small molecules. The dimensions of the molecules that will be opposite one another have been determined in such a way as to ensure equal spaces at every point on the spiral staircase.
In order for the steps to be always regular, guanine always pairs with cytosine, and adenine with thymine. Thus small bases always being opposite large ones in the DNA molecule means the distance is stable at every point. The result is a regular staircase extending with no interruptions. However, if the base adenine were to be paired with guanine just once, instead of with thymine, it would be impossible for the helix structure to proceed in a regular manner. Any error in the sequence might thus entirely impair the molecule's chemical structure and prevent the data being used, copied and transmitted. This again indicates that the sequence cannot be the work of chance.
The distance between the turns of neighboring base pairs is also stable. This system ensures equidistance between the staircase coils, some 10 base pairs –in other words, 10 steps– form a complete revolution of 360 degrees.30 DNA coils a billion times a second, and the staircase steps twist by performing their spiral movement.31 This action plays a very important role in DNA's performing two vital functions--directing the formation of protein and self-replication.
Prof. Werner Gitt, director of the German Federal Institute of Physics and Technology, says this about this special structure:
The coding system used for living beings is optimal from an engineering standpoint. This fact strengthens the argument that it was a case of purposeful design [Creation] rather than fortuitous chance .32
Importance of the Bonds used in the Building
the Spiral
The dual backbones of the long DNA molecule –or the banisters of the staircase– are very strong, made up of consecutive sugar and phosphate molecules. These molecules attach to one another with a special bond known as ester covalent bonds. These are exceptionally strong and it is very difficult to break them. This strength provides protection against harmful factors that might impair genetic information.33 The existence of these bonds makes the DNA molecule resistant and stable even while the DNA molecule is in a single-strand form.
However, there is a risk of damage to the DNA spiral structure as the coils unfold. For that reason, the spiral needs to be strong and stable enough to protect its structure but also elastic enough to be opened up very quickly so that the information can be easily used. In fact, a combination of powerful covalent bonds that protect DNA's basic molecular structure of, and weaker hydrogen bonds that can be broken more quickly, enables the elasticity-solidity problem to be overcome. Since the hydrogen bonds forming between the four opposed nucleotides are not as strong as ester bonds, they can easily be separated with less energy by means of such factors as pH variation (acid-base equilibrium), heat, and pressure. Weak bonds play a very important role in the shaping of the large molecules in an organism, and endow with elasticity the substance they compose. However, no breakage in the bonds ever takes place. Thanks to this distinguishing feature of hydrogen bonds, the information in the DNA molecule can be used whenever required.
The significance of the elasticity in the bonds is that the vital function of protein production is made possible by DNA being copied when cells divide, and that transmission is made possible by the elastic property of the bonds between them. Since the two chains of the DNA molecule are attached to one another only by hydrogen bonds, they can easily be unraveled and separated from one another. They can also, when necessary, recombine and form a new helix structure. No breakage or impairment ever takes place in the nucleotides that constitute the steps of the DNA chain during detachment or separation. While the hydrogen bonds in the center can easily separate from one another, no breakage or stretching ever develops in the long chains at either side, attached by means of covalent bonds.
The molecular biologist Michael Denton describes the perfection in the biochemical structure of DNA:
The geometric perfection of the molecule is particularly evident in the fact that the strength of each of the five hydrogen bonds –the two between adenine and thymine and the three between guanine and cytosine– is optimal because each of the hydrogen atoms points directly at its acceptor atom, and the bond lengths are all at the energy maximum for hydrogen bonds. This is most remarkable, for it confers great stability on the molecule and makes for highly accurate base pairing during replication.34
On the one hand, there is a need for a sound and stable structure for the containing of genetic information, while on the other a flexible structure is required for the genes to be read and copied. So the strength of the bond between the two arms that make up the DNA helix has to be just right for it to fulfill its essential functions. And indeed, the DNA helix does have just the right level of strength and elasticity. If the bond between the DNA strips were any stronger, the two arms would stop moving and become fixed. But if the bond were weaker, the molecule would break apart.35 Yet by the will of Allah, the bonds that constitute DNA have the ideal structure to make the helix both highly regular and exceedingly functional.
The Importance of Phosphate in DNA
Phosphates keep together the nucleotide bases on DNA, because the DNA helix functions in an environment containing water, and water breaks down the bonds between phosphates and sugars. Thus it is both advantageous and essential that the phosphate groups in DNA be negatively charged. That negative charge eliminates the danger of the DNA being broken down in the watery environment surrounding it.
What compounds, other than phosphates, could establish a chemical bond and still manage to remain negatively charged? There are various possibilities. Yet none of these can form genetic information in the way that phosphate does. Silicic acid and arsenic esters break down rapidly in water. Although citric acid dissolves more slowly in water, it lacks the stability to maintain the molecule's geometry.36
Therefore, if phosphate did not have its own unique properties, the DNA's double helix could not form. No self-replication biochemical system could be established, and life would be impossible. The well-known professor of chemistry Frank Henry Westheimer says this: "All of these conditions are met by phosphoric acid and no other alternative is obvious."37 This situation and all the other details we have examined so far clearly show that our Lord has created the DNA molecule with miraculous properties. In one verse of the Qur'an, it is revealed that:
He knows what is in front of them and behind them. But their knowledge does not encompass Him. (Surah Ta Ha, 110)
CHAPTER 4
DNA's Extraordinary Data-storge Capacity
Modern technological progress in the field of data storage is truly amazing. Computer hard discs, CDs, diskettes, data sticks and similar products are becoming more advanced and efficient every day. Computer firms are seeking answers to how the maximum amount of data can be stored in the minimum space without being impaired, and how that information can be downloaded in the fastest possible manner. Even though whole encyclopedias of data can be compressed onto a single CD, it is still large enough to cover your hand. The astonishing data-miniaturizing or data-compression ability of DNA, on the other hand, far surpasses modern technology.
According to calculations by Leonard Adleman of Los Angeles South California University, just 1 gram (0.0022 pounds) of DNA can contain the equivalent amount of data to 1 trillion CDs.38 This shows that data are concealed in a million, million times more efficiently in DNA than in a CD.39
The volume of a human being's DNA is 3 billionths of a cubic millimeter (3 x 10-9 mm3).40 According to G. G. Simpson, if all the features of all the species that have ever lived were to be loaded onto DNA, the resulting total volume of DNA would fill only a small part of a teaspoon. Enough space would even be left over the rest of the teaspoon to contain all the books that have ever been written.41
Dr. Leonard Adleman, the inventor of the DNA computer, which represents a new sphere of technology, says this about the mechanism in DNA and the cell:
If we look inside the cell, we see extraordinary machines that we couldn't make ourselves. It's a great tool chest. 42
According to Darwinists, however, this giant data bank in the cell –capable of holding the equivalent of tens of thousands of books– came into being spontaneously as the result of chance. In the eyes of Darwinists, who have no qualms about building another total impossibility on top of that one, chance has compressed all the data in a library large enough to fill an entire football stadium, undamaged, into a space too small to be seen with the naked eye. Darwinists still blindly advocate such a total impossibility. Yet neither the cell nor DNA, its data bank, can emerge from the chance combination of unconscious atoms. Even the very smallest components of living things have been created for a specific purpose, and every one of them are far too complex to admit any possibility of chance.
Michael George Pitman, a professor of biology from University of Sydney, uses the German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer's words to express how life is not just a collection of inanimate substances:
Every organism is organic through and through in all its parts, and nowhere are these, not even in their smallest particles, mere aggregates of inorganic matter.43
If we were to express the volume of data in DNA in numerical terms, then a 4-meter (13.12-foot) long DNA molecule has been packaged and compressed into a cell only 3 to 5 microns in diameter (1 micron = 1/1000 millimeter). If the DNA codes in every one of the body's 100 trillion cells were laid out end to end, the resulting length would stretch to the Sun and back 600 times.44
Prof. Jerry Bergman, known for his scientific papers, emphasizes the engineering in DNA in an analogy:
Suppose you were asked to take two long strands of fisherman's monofilament line –125 miles [201 kilometers] long– then form it into a double-helix structure and neatly fold and pack this line so it would fit into a basketball. Furthermore, you would need to ensure that the double helix could be unzipped and duplicated along the length of this line, and the duplicate copy removed, all without tangling the line. Possible? This is directly analogous to what happens in the billions of cells in your body every day. Scale the basketball down to the size of a human cell and the line scales down to six feet [2 meters] of DNA. . . . The DNA packing process is both complex and elegant and is so efficient that it achieves a reduction in length of DNA by a factor of 1 million. 45
The molecular biologist Michael Denton describes the extraordinary nature of DNA's data compression ability:
. . . it is clear that cells are immensely complex entities. . . more than a number in a jumbo jet. . . the complexity of a jumbo jet packed into a speck of dust invisible to the human eye. It is hardly conceivable that anything more complex could be compacted into such a small volume. Moreover, it is a speck-sized jumbo jet which can duplicate itself quite effortlessly46
DNA's ability to hold information is so efficient that all the data concerning to a human being can be compressed into an area weighing just a few trillionths of a gram.47 According to Yale University's Prof. George Gaylord Simpson, the data belonging 1 billion living things can be squeezed with ease into a single grain of salt.48
Prof. Francis S. Collins, a physicist and geneticist and also director of the National Human Genome Research Institute, describes the results of his study of DNA:
Now fifty years since Watson and Crick unraveled the structure of the double helix, I think it is amazing to contemplate the elegance of DNA carrying information . . . This digital code allows, in a very easily copyable form, such a massive amount of information to be carried inside each cell of the human body. This double helix DNA is made up of base pair letters. The whole human genome consists of three billion of these base pairs all packaged inside the cell's nucleus. . . The three billion letters are able to direct all of the biological properties of a human being.49
The well-known molecular biologist Michael Denton mentions that biological information to be packed into the tiny volume of the cell nucleus seems to be specifically arranged for human beings.50 If DNA did not have this data compression ability, the cell would have to be very much larger in order to hold irregular DNA strips. But it is impossible for cells to be any larger, because the cell's sources of oxygen and nutrients are efficient only given the existing diameter of the cell.51 From that point of view, the cell's size and therefore, its ability to hold DNA, is of vital importance.
This glorious packaging system is made possible by the DNA molecule's ability to coil and form long spirals that bend and give rise to intertwined, regular helixes. This packaging technology evidencing highly advanced engineering, can be seen in the nucleus of every cell. By means of this packaging system that our Almighty Lord created in our cells, millions of kilometers of DNA "letters" remain contained in a volume we cannot see with the naked eye.
The Giant Encyclopedia in the Human Cell
So extraordinary is the amount of information recorded in DNA that a single DNA molecule contains enough information to fill a million encyclopedia pages. To put that another way, 1,000,000 pages of data that control the functioning of the human body have been encoded inside the nucleus of every cell. You can obtain a better idea of this amount when you consider that even the 23-volume Encyclopedia Britannica, has only 25,000 pages. This gives rise to an extraordinary picture. Inside the nucleus, itself far smaller than the microscopic cell in which it is contained; is a data bank 40 times larger than one of the largest encyclopedias on Earth, equivalent to a 920-volume encyclopedia. Research has shown that this giant encyclopedia contains some 5 billion different pieces of information. Let's repeat those two words, "contains information"
We now need to stop and think about what this means. It is easy enough to say that a cell contains billions of pieces of information. However, we are discussing not a computer or a library, but an area 100 times smaller than a millimeter made up solely of protein, fat and water molecules. It would be astonishing for only a single piece of information, let alone millions, to be contained inside this tiny molecule. Moreover, books and encyclopedias are inert and inanimate. Someone possessed of consciousness needs to read the information and act on the instructions it contains. Yet DNA is a living source of information that does not just contain data, but also uses that information and acts upon it.
How can a chain consisting of atoms arranged one behind the other, in a space just a billionth of a millimeter in diameter, possess such knowledge and memory? While each of the 100 trillion cells in your body are capable of learning a million pages by heart, how many pages could you –an intelligent individual– learn during the course of your lifetime? Any rational person will conclude that the cell is the work of a superior mind and superior knowledge. It is impossible, as evolutionists maintain, for DNA to have arisen by chance in one single cell, let alone in an organism consisting of billions. Almighty Allah (is the Creator of all things. Allah reveals in one verse of the Qur'an as follows:
They do not measure Allah with His true measure. Allah is All-Strong, Almighty. (Surat al-Hajj, 74)
The Data Storage Technology in DNA
Is Greater Than That of Computers
The computer is the most advanced technology through which large quantities of information can be stored. The information possessed by room-sized computers 50 years ago can now be stored on small discs. Yet the latest computer technology, developed by human intelligence as the result of centuries of accumulated knowledge and many years of effort, comes nowhere near to approaching the data-storage capacity of DNA.
A strand of DNA is only one 2 millionth of a millimeter in thickness. Despite this extraordinary thinness and the fact it is 4 meters (13.12 feet) long, DNA strips never become tangled up with one another. Thanks to its special structure, the DNA is folded up perfectly inside the cell's nucleus - an example of incomparable engineering.
One of the main goals of computer engineers is to be able to store as much information as possible in as small a space as possible. At present, the highest level storage capacity on Earth is that belonging to DNA molecule.52 In his book The Road Ahead, Bill Gates, the president of Microsoft, writes:
Human DNA is like a computer program but far, far more advanced than any software we've ever created.53
The well-known American philosopher Prof. Daniel Dennet describes the density of information contained in DNA in his book Darwin's Dangerous Idea:
Even to those of us accustomed to the "engineering miracles" of the computer age, the facts are hard to encompass. Not only molecule-sized copying machines, but proofreading enzymes that correct mistakes, all at blinding speed, on a scale that super computers still can not match. Biological macromolecules have a storage capacity that exceeds that of the best present-day information stores by several orders of magnitude.54
The sequencing of the codes in DNA resembles that of the digits in a computer system. The numbers in a computer environment can contain an image, the instructions for a computer game, or the text of a book. The codes in DNA contain information that serves to produce new proteins.55 But no computer engineer can imitate DNA, which contains sufficient information to fill a million encyclopedia pages in a space invisible to the naked eye. To claim that DNA emerged by chance is even more irrational than maintaining that the most advanced computers could have done so. DNA exhibits evident proofs of Allah's sublime creation. Allah reveals this matchless creation in the Qur'an:
He is the Originator of the heavens and the Earth. . . (Surat al-An'am, 101)
Astonishing Comparisons That Elucidate
the Giant Data Capacity in DNA
Instead of using units of measurement, scientists resort to various comparisons to emphasize the vast amount of genetic data in human beings. Here are some examples that stress the breadth of the data capacity in DNA:
*If the information in the human genome could be written down using the alphabet, it would fill 1,000 books of 1,000 pages each, each page containing 3,000 letters.56 1,000 books times 1,000 pages times 3,000 letters equals 3,000,000,000 (3 billion) letters.
*If those 3 billion letters in the human genome were written out as a single sentence, it would stretch from the North Pole to the Equator. Someone working at a typewriter at a rate of 300 letters per minute for 8 hours a day, 220 days a year, would take 95 years to complete the task.57
*For the genetic information to be written out would require 12,000 160-page books. Compared with computer chips with a 16 MB capacity (a megabyte is 1 million bytes, the smallest data units in a computer), the DNA strip in the human genome contains 1,400 times more information.58
*If a pinhead 2 millimeters (0.078 of an inch) in diameter were stretched out to the thinness of the DNA molecule, it would be 33 times longer than the Equator.59
*The information in DNA is sufficient to fill a library consisting of 100 sets of a 30-volume encyclopedia.60
*Were the information in DNA to be placed in books piled one on top of the other, those books would attain a height of 70 meters (229 feet). Alternatively, that information could fill 200 phone books of 500 pages each.61
*If the DNA in all the cells in the human body were flattened out and laid end to end, they would stretch for some 50,000,000 kilometers (31,070,000 miles.) That distance is enough to go from the Earth to the Solar System. Light would take approximately two days to travel the entire length of the DNA in your body.62
*According to professor Jérôme Lejeune, a genetics expert, the genetic data belonging to all the human beings on Earth could be contained in a quantity of DNA no larger than a few aspirin tablets.63
*The information in the DNA in a single human cell could fill 1 million encyclopedia pages. Individuals could not live long enough to read their own genetic data. Where they to read the DNA code every day, 24 hours a day, non-stop, it would take 100 years to complete the task.
*To envisage the density of the data in the DNA molecule, assume that you have enough DNA to cover a pinhead. Now consider that this same information is written down in books of 160 pages each. The data in such a small amount of DNA could fill 15 trillion (15 times 1012) of those 160-page books. If you placed that many books one on top of the other, their height would be 500 times the distance between the Earth and the Moon (384,000 kilometers, or 238,600 miles). Alternatively, if these books were equally distributed among the 6 billion or so people in the world, every individual would receive 2,500 volumes.64
The boundless information that these examples try to express is stored inside every cell nucleus. The presence of DNA, storing the equivalent amount of information to a large library, in some 100 trillion cells, means 100 trillion of these libraries. Were we to compare that level of information with the level so far achieved by mankind, we would be unable to find an example sufficiently large. In addition, if we multiplied that quantity by the 6 billion people currently living on the Earth and the billions of others who lived in the past, a boundless quantity of data would appear before us.
Moreover, we are now speaking only of human genetic information. Bearing in mind the genetic information possessed by the millions of living creatures that have ever existed, the level rises to heights that exceed comprehension. The knowledge that our Omniscient and Almighty Lord has manifested in DNA leaves absolutely no room for claims based on chance.
In one verse, it is stated that:
There is no one in the heavens and Earth who will not come to the All-Merciful as a servant. He has counted them and numbered them precisely. (Surah Maryam, 93-94)
Rather We hurl the truth against falsehood and it cuts right through it and it vanishes clean away! Woe without end for you for what you portray! (Surat al-Anbiya', 18)
DNA Is an Example of the
Artistry and Intellect of Allah,
the Lord of Infinite Knowledge
The basic claims of the theory of evolution are based on blind chance, which cannot give rise to information. If the chemical formula for a drug that cures cancer is written down one day, all the authorities would join forces to identify the discoverers and even give them an award. Nobody would wonder if that formula was the result of ink being spilled on the page, Any rational mind would think that it could have been written only by someone with expertise in chemistry, physiology, oncology (the branch of medicine that studies cancer) and pharmacology (the branch that studies drugs).
Evolutionists seek to account for the origin of
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