BBC NEWS | UK | Magazine | What do you get if you divide science by God?

BBC A prize-winning quantum physicist says a spiritual reality is veiled from us, and science offers a glimpse behind that veil. So how do scientists investigating the fundamental nature of the universe assess any role of God, asks Mark Vernon.

Writing in Faith

Writing in Faith i just love the serendipity of the net. but this is a bit like campbell's bliss following!

i started wanting to search for more current videos of marcus borg - hopefully some lectures. spent a half day sunday routing through the oysters of google search to find the 3 new pearls of living the questions. so i think, let's ask google to recommend a better search engine. i know, rather a paradox. but i did. i asked for video search engines and google obligingly did so - a long list. first was blinkx.com

put in marcus borg. wow. 41 hits. and they line right up and start playing in little screens. started plowing through. have the first 20, but then i see "to be" a videopoem by sandy carlson, inspired by borg "...and a bit of love". lovely.

so i chase down her site that leads here to her blog. what a busy lady. do check out her poetry. and her other endeavors are worthy as well.

Truthdig - Arts and Culture - Chalmers Johnson on the Myth of Free Trade

Bad Samaritans Another Truthdig piece. Ha-Joon Chang is a Korean economist at Cambridge (UK) that raises a critical voice against the economic principles presently running the world. This piece is a marvellously deep and educational (and long) piece in the form of a review of Chang's new book.

I found this piece searching the book title after listening to a 20 minute interview today (wed mar 11)with Chang and wanting to learn more about him. Democracy Now with Amy Goodman. You might want to check that out. Amy does a daily one hour news broadcast in the tradition of Bill Moyer. It is a rare bit of good journalism on news simply not covered in the mainstream.

Truthdig - Ear to the Ground - Saudi Woman, 75, Faces Lashing for Letting In Delivery Men

A special piece of wahabi horror. There is much fear of the fundamentalist fervour. It's hard to imagine a worse example of human behaviour than a legalism that would lash an old lady for letting the bread delivery guys into her home because they were not her relatives. Let's hope the international outcry halts this travesty.

eBooks@Adelaide: Free Web Books, Online

eBooks@Adelaide: Free Web Books, Online Australian law puts books into the public domain whose authors died in 1956. This makes available a considerable number of books that are not available in the US. A good new resource. From Tactitus to Orwell.

Stephen Lewis

Stephen Lewis Lewis addressing the Chautauqua Symposium in his usual enthusiastic way. He may well be the most emotive speaker alive today, and the cause he espouses the most needful of it.

Introduction to the Cosmic Microwave Background

In a series of easy tutorials, Wayne Hu tells the story of the CMB. Rather well done. He shows how we are bathed in primoridial light, briefs us on the strange geometry of time and distance in cosmology and shows why we need to know this stuff.

London from above, at night - The Big Picture - Boston.com

London from above, at night - The Big Picture - Boston.com Jason Hawkes shares 10 brilliant photographs of London, taken from a helicopter at night with a gyro-stabilized camera.

roger hollander

roger hollander Here's a news and opinion blog of the highest quality. Roger's a socialist from Toronto with an interest, and some high level of expertise on the new South American politics. A quality place of "news and opinion" worth checking from time to time.

UCTV--University of California Television

Dead Sea Scrolls - A Review wow! here is a spell binding 85 minute presentation by professor lawrence schiffman. slides of everything. background info. intrigue. controversy. history illuminated. and perhaps the essenes were dissadent saducees?

here is a treasure from the 1800 videos recently gifted by the university of california.

WHO | Commission on Social Determinants of Health - Final Report

WHO | Commission on Social Determinants of Health - Final Report Here is an important report from the World Health Organization proposing we get on with closing the health gap in the world.

tao te ching @ mattpaul.org

tao te ching Matt Paul has done a lovely index of this ancient wisdom.

Peking Olympialaiset 2008 - Urheilukuvaajan päiväkirjasta

Peking Olympialaiset 2008 - Urheilukuvaajan päiväkirjasta This is the olympic blog of Finnish sports photographer Kari Kuuckka. His work is terrific. The blog is written in Finnish but can be translated to poor english. Google Translation of this page. A few of his shots are 360 degree panoramas. Check this out Photographers just before Men's 100 Meter If you hit the F11 key you'll get full screen. If you click drag from any spot, the picture will scroll in that direction and accelerate. Try up and down also - it's a half sphere.

China's All-Seeing Eye : Rolling Stone

Naomi Kline this amazing article by naomi kline in rolling stone is the story of her visit to china and the meaning of "security" in this place in this time. how very orwellian. it would be just slightly alarming to hear what she describes on the usual grounds of privacy and surveillance and police use of high technology. but as she describes how the notion the world had that the chinese were villains suppressing the tibetans, and so somewhat chastized before the olympics, we are amazed to here quite the opposite is the case in china. read how she shows chinese use of hi tech is used quite skillfully for suppression. part of the story is how american technology helped out. here's a link to the software that she points out helps the chinese surveillance. http://www.l1id.com/pages/71-facial-screening

Turtle Box Stories

Turtle Box Stories this is a lovely little space where some quakers are sharing personal stories of holy encounter. the theme is of turtles, where turtles represent the ancient archetype of bridge between heaven and earth.

FORA.tv - Niall Ferguson & Peter Schwartz on Human Progress

Human Progress Here is a most worthy and rather long 1hr41min debate. Distributed on fora.tv this talk from the Long Now Foundation.

If you can only see a key bit jump to time 1:29 for a lovely Q&A summary of history and violence.

It is a debate that ranges over history in consideration of the history of violence. It is respectful and entertaining debate between the perspectives history:future and pessimism:optimism. Peter Schwartz, an engineer futurist, and Niall Ferguson, an historian. Ferguson's makes much reference to his current book The War of the World - 20th Century Conflict and the Descent of the West.

Wordle - Beautiful Word Clouds

Wordle A lovely little amusement. Johnathan Feinberg has put up a website to make "word clouds". Just paste in some words you like and they are randomly and artistically made into a picture.

Oaxaca in revolt again: the Zócalo reoccupied, motorway tollbooths "liberated", roads blockaded | libcom.org

Oaxaca as an example of new media

Many of us question the utility and truth of the new over the old media. Here is an interesting sequence that demonstrates the strength of the new media over the old.

I had received a video documentary "Uprising in Oaxaca" from a subscription to Adelante! - a Latin American documentary feed from MIRO. It was about a suppressed teacher's rebellion in Mexico. To learn more of this interesting story, a Google search led to articles and blogs on the Oaxacan teachers revolt. It became quickly apparent that the events of the documentary in 2006 were a special event in a 30 year annual teachers strike, and that just a few weeks ago, it had resurfaced.

This internet "newspaper" follows the story with blog-like immediacy of qualified voices in dialogue rather than long-after-the-fact editor moderated letters. How informative that citizens and visitors in Oaxaca inform our view here.

The site is not quite any of but a little of each of news site, blog, history site around the themes of solidarity and public protest and shows how ordinary folks are participating in this new worldwide information culture.

"The libcom group is a small collective of libertarian communists based in and around London ... Our name, libcom, is an abbreviation of "libertarian communism" - and its goals of liberty and community - the political current we identify with. However our primary focus is always on how best to act in the here and now to better our circumstances and protect the planet."

Dawg's Blawg: Harper's apology to Canada's aboriginal peoples

Dawg's Blawg Here's an acerbic critic worth checking into. He puts caution to Harper's excellent apology by pointing out some of the blatant hurtful present policies.

last lecture - Google Video

Randy Pausch Came across this guy last night. He's dying of pancreatic cancer and only has a few months left, but boy is he upbeat! Very inspirational. Put a video for his kids (just babies now) for when they grow up, and as a "Last Lecture" at Carnegie Mellon where he's a computer prof. Worth listening too. Then looked up his website and found a real treasure. Turns out what he wanted to be remembered for is his Time Management lecture, so I tracked that down. Very excellent. It's 86 minutes. Here's the link:
Time Management Two very good lectures.