August 2007 Archives

Controversy surrounds several of this year's entries for Australia's Blake Prize for Religious Art. Luke Sullivan's statue "The Fourth Secret of Fatima," depicts the Virgin Mary in a blue Taliban-era burqa. Priscilla Brack's entry, "Bearded Orientals: Making the Empire Cross," is a holographic image that juxtaposes Osama bin Laden and Jesus by having one morph into the other as the angle of view changes. The two have been accused of blasphemy and worse. PM John Howard admits he has not seen the pieces, but has roundly condemned them as "gratuitously offensive to the religious beliefs of many Australians."

Read brief comments from Rev. Rod Pattenden, Chair of the Blake Prize, and Rev Dr Jione Havea, one of the judges of this year's Prize, here. Priscilla Bracks' comment on her entry and the controversy is here.

Recent studies of college students' attitudes toward religion suggest that the academy is no longer the bastion of secularism it was once assumed to be. And these studies further reveal that the spiritual landscape on today's college campuses is virtually unrecognizable from what we've seen in the past. Evangelicalism--often in the form of extra-denominational or parachurch campus groups--has eclipsed mainstream Protestantism. Catholicism and Judaism, too, are thriving, as are other faiths.

To help make sense of these changes, the SSRC offers this online guide, which was derived from a series of essays it commissioned from leading authorities in the field of religion and higher education.

In this concise essay, Daniel Dennett questions the connection between faith and morality.

Daniel C. Dennett: OnFaith on washingtonpost.com

Mother Teresa's agonies of doubt are surely not all that unusual. What is unusual is that she put them in writing and now they are being revealed to the world, in spite of her explicit wish that they be destroyed.

Dennett refers to letters from Mother Teresa published in a new book, profiled here in Time Magazine.

Mother Teresa's Crisis of Faith

Although perpetually cheery in public, the Teresa of the letters lived in a state of deep and abiding spiritual pain. In more than 40 communications, many of which have never before been published, she bemoans the "dryness," "darkness," "loneliness" and "torture" she is undergoing. She compares the experience to hell and at one point says it has driven her to doubt the existence of heaven and even of God. She is acutely aware of the discrepancy between her inner state and her public demeanor. "The smile," she writes, is "a mask" or "a cloak that covers everything." Similarly, she wonders whether she is engaged in verbal deception. "I spoke as if my very heart was in love with God -- tender, personal love," she remarks to an adviser. "If you were [there], you would have said, 'What hypocrisy.'"

The Peace Racket by Bruce Bawer, City Journal Summer 2007

"If you want peace, prepare for peace."

This purports to be wise counsel, a motto for the millennium. In reality, it's wishful thinking that doesn't follow logically from the history of the cold war, or of any war. For the cold war's real lesson is the same one that Sun Tzu and Vegetius taught: conflict happens; power matters. It's better to be strong than to be weak; you're safer if others know that you're ready to stand up for yourself than if you're proudly outspoken about your defenselessness or your unwillingness to fight. There's nothing mysterious about this truth. Yet it's denied not only by the Peace Center film but also by the fast-growing, troubling movement that the center symbolizes and promotes.

ColorBlender.com | Your free online color matching toolbox

Welcome to ColorBlender - your free online tool for color matching and palette design!

To get started, choose a preferred color using the color picker below, and a 6-color matching palette (a "blend") will be automatically calculated.

Agreeing Only to Disagree on God's Place in Science - New York Times

It was on the second day at Cambridge that enlightenment dawned in the form of a testy exchange between a zoologist and a paleontologist, Richard Dawkins and Simon Conway Morris. Their bone of contention was one that scholars have been gnawing on since the days of Aquinas: whether an understanding of the universe and its glories requires the hypothesis of a God.

A nation's brutal approach to punishment - Independent Online Edition

The persistence of the death penalty is only one way in which the United States stands out from the rest of the Western world on crime and punishment.

It also has the highest incarceration rate of any country, with more than two million people behind bars. (China, second in the rankings, has an estimated 1.5 million, and Russia just short of 900,000.) The US has just 5 per cent of the world's population, but 25 per cent of its overall prison population.

Children's Books Online: the Rosetta Project, Inc.

This online library of illustrated books is a volunteer-driven project. It has grown slowly since 1996 from the work of a single man and a handful of books, to a vibrant volunteer-driven organization publishing new books and translations every week.

45 Excellent Blog Designs | Design Showcase

Designing a blog is easy. Whatever engine you are using and whatever style you prefer, you'll always find a number of templates you can apply to your weblog in seconds. No styling is necessary, no playing with colors is needed and no mind jogging about content presentation is required. However, not every weblog should look like a typical blog

God Bless Me, It's a Best-Seller! -- vanityfair.com
A 2001 study found that those without religious affiliation are the fastest-growing minority in the United States. A generation ago the words "American atheist" conjured the image of the slightly cultish and loopy Madalyn Murray O'Hair. But in the last two years there have been five atheist best-sellers, one each from Professors Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett and two from the neuroscientist Sam Harris.

Ethical Relativism

Ethical relativism is the theory that holds that morality is relative to the norms of one's culture. That is, whether an action is right or wrong depends on the moral norms of the society in which it is practiced. The same action may be morally right in one society but be morally wrong in another. For the ethical relativist, there are no universal moral standards -- standards that can be universally applied to all peoples at all times. The only moral standards against which a society's practices can be judged are its own. If ethical relativism is correct, there can be no common framework for resolving moral disputes or for reaching agreement on ethical matters among members of different societies.

Sex, shopping and thinking pink | Economist.com

The brains of men and women are, indeed, different. WOMEN really are better than men at shopping. And they really do prefer pink. And, surprisingly, it is possible that these facts are connected. The first conclusion was drawn by Joshua New of Yale University and his colleagues. The second was drawn by Anya Hurlbert and Yazhu Ling of Newcastle University in England. The connecting theme is that in the division of labour that forms the primordial bargain of human hunter-gatherer societies, it is the men who do the hunting and the women who do the gathering.

Higher Games -- by Daniel Dennett in Technology Review Magazine

Silicon machines can now play chess better than any protein machines can. Big deal. This calm and reasonable reaction, however, is hard for most people to sustain. They don't like the idea that their brains are protein machines. When Deep Blue beat Kasparov in 1997, many commentators were tempted to insist that its brute-force search methods were entirely unlike the exploratory processes that Kasparov used when he conjured up his chess moves. But that is simply not so.

Wiki becomes textbook in Boston College classroom

In one Boston College professor's classroom, however, wikis have become a primary learning tool, replacing textbooks and allowing improved collaboration among students. The wiki is even used to let students submit possible questions for examinations, many of which actually appear on tests.

Gerald Kane, assistant professor of information systems at the Chestnut Hill, Mass., school, has been using a wiki from SocialText Inc. as the primary teaching tool in his classroom since October, relying on the technology to integrate content from other Web 2.0 technologies like social book-making tools, RSS systems, and Google for his "Computers in Management" courses.

best.online.docus - Best Online Documentaries

Why We Teach Digital Writing -- Texas Tech University

Computers are not “just tools” for writing. Networked computers create a new kind of writing space that changes the writing process and the basic rhetorical dynamic between writers and readers. Computer technologies have changed the processes, products, and contexts for writing in dramatic ways—and rhetoric theory, composition practice, and writing instruction all need to change to suit how writing is produced in digital spaces.

The Best Online Research Apps/Sites You've Never Heard Of | OEDb

Research can be a time consuming and sometimes tedious task. How can you make it easier for yourself? While there is no complete substitute for a good old-fashioned trip to the library, you can find a wide variety of information with many research tools. Here are a few sites listed in alphabetical order. You might not be familiar with some of the resources, but they can help supplement and improve your research.

We often hear the proposition that everyone is entitled to his or her own beliefs, whatever they are. In his famous essay, the philosopher William Clifford argued against the notion. Instead, Clifford proposes that it is always wrong to believe anything on insufficient evidence. Is Clifford right?

Offered here is an edited excerpt from The Ethics of Belief (1877) by William Clifford. You can read the entire essay by following the link at the bottom of this page.

I. THE DUTY OF INQUIRY

A shipowner was about to send to sea an emigrant-ship. He knew that she was old, and not overwell built at the first; that she had seen many seas and climes, and often had needed repairs. Doubts had been suggested to him that possibly she was not seaworthy.

The Sacred and the Human -- Prospect Magazine

Today's atheist polemics ignore the main insight of the anthropology of religion—that religion is not primarily about God, but about the human need for the sacred. As René Girard argues, religion is not the cause of violence, but the solution to it

Our Lives, Controlled From Some Guy’s Couch -- New York Times Online

Until I talked to Nick Bostrom, a philosopher at Oxford University, it never occurred to me that our universe might be somebody else’s hobby. I hadn’t imagined that the omniscient, omnipotent creator of the heavens and earth could be an advanced version of a guy who spends his weekends building model railroads or overseeing video-game worlds like the Sims.

The Simulation Argument -- Nick Bostram

This paper argues that at least one of the following propositions is true: (1) the human species is very likely to go extinct before reaching a “posthuman” stage; (2) any posthuman civilization is extremely unlikely to run a significant number of simulations of their evolutionary history (or variations thereof); (3) we are almost certainly living in a computer simulation.

Comment is free: Andrew Keen v Emily Bell

So is today's internet killing our culture? Let me begin this exchange with three simple questions:

1) Is the internet good or bad for consumers of culture (the audience)?

2) Is the internet good or bad for creators of culture (writers, film makers, musicians, journalists)?

3) Is the internet good or bad for the cultural economy?

What Really Buys Happiness? Arthur C. Brooks

The egalitarians' argument usually starts with the assertion that prosperity is all relative. So long as we are above the level of basic subsistence, they say, we care more about our financial position relative to others than about our absolute income. Experimental evidence, they continue, supports this claim. In one study, two-thirds of subjects said that they would be happier at a company where they earned $33,000 while their colleagues earned $30,000 than at one where they earned $35,000 while their colleagues earned $38,000.

Neat fonts - Discover Free fonts from all over the web

This site offers a comprehensive index of philosophers with links to online resources for each.

Philosophers: Chronological Index

Anaxagoras (500-428 BCE)
Anaximander (c. 610-546 BCE)
Anaximenes (d. 528 BCE)
Apollonius (c.4 BCE - ? CE)
Aristotle (384-322 BCE)
Augustine (354-430 CE)
Democritus (c.460-c.370 BCE)
Diogenes (c.400-325 BCE)
Epictetus (c.55-135 CE)

Becoming an Effective Skpetic -- Lifehack.org

"I don’t know.”

Perhaps the three hardest words to say in the English language. But perhaps they are also words we should be using more often. You don’t have to look far back into history where people believed things that we would now see as ridiculous: a flat Earth, a sun that orbits us or that blood letting was an effective medical practice.

British Library - Showcases :: Landmarks in literature, art, history and printing

The British Library contains many millions of books, manuscripts, maps, newspapers, magazines, patents, music scores, sound recordings, photographs and stamps. Choose a showcase to learn about some of the most important and beautiful books in the world or hear historic and unique sound recordings.

How the world really shapes up | the Daily Mail

Rather than defining each country by size, these computer-generated modified maps - or cartograms - redraw the globe with each country's size proportionate to its strengths, or weaknesses, in a whole series of categories.

For instance, when it comes to military spending, the U.S. appears bloated, but Africa is huge when HIV prevalence is mapped.

http://chronicle.com/wiredcampus/article/2291/educators-debate-voice-in-second-life

Last week Linden Lab, the operator of Second Life, unveiled a much-anticipated voice-chat feature that allows avatars to communicate using the voices of their operators. Many educators have hailed the move. Andy Powell, of Britain’s Eduserv, a nonprofit group that promotes information technology in research and teaching, has even made a YouTube video about how to activate the voice feature.

Top 100 Tools for Learning

-- this list is being updated continually ---

This list has been compiled from the TOP 10 FAVOURITE TOOLS lists of 88 learning professionals (consultants, analysts, developers, practitioners, academics, etc) who responded to our open invitation. Thanks to all of them! We are aiming for 100 contributions, so LET US KNOW your Top 10 tools.

-- And, check out this resource from the same Website --

The Learning Toolbox

The Learning Toolbox offers recommendations and suggestions for tools to use for different learning activities. The Learning Toolbox consists of two parts:

1 - Personal Toolset: tools to access and view content as well as communicate with others (for your own personal learning/working)

2 - Producer's Toolset: tools to develop and deliver content and other learning solutions (for yourself and others)

An Evolutionary Theory of Right and Wrong -- New York Times

Who doesn't know the difference between right and wrong? Yet that essential knowledge, generally assumed to come from parental teaching or religious or legal instruction, could turn out to have a quite different origin.

Threat Level - Wired Blogs

There are well-established psychological consequences to being watched, observed consistently in studies. People change, tailoring their behavior to fit what they believe the observer wants (or in some cases actively rebelling against those wishes).

Now imagine a society where everyone knows they are or may be watched as they walk through the streets, or while surfing online. That – as in societies like Hitler's Germany or Soviet Russia – will have tangible and widespread psychological consequences, reinforcing conformity, and literally crippling the ability to make autonomous and ethical decisions, he argued.

An analogy might be the well-studied population of children with overprotective mothers, the philosopher said. Studies show that such children tend to be indecisive, dependent on others, have little "ethical competence," and often live suppressed and unhappy lives.

"Surveillance stabilizes totalitarianism, and destabilizes democracy..."

Blatant benevolence and conspicuous consumption -- The Economist

Altruism, according to the text books, has two forms. One is known technically as kin selection, and familiarly as nepotism. This spreads an individual's genes collaterally, rather than directly, but is otherwise similar to his helping his own offspring. The second form is reciprocal altruism, or "you scratch my back and I'll scratch yours". It relies on trust, and a good memory for favours given and received, but is otherwise not much different from simultaneous collaboration (such as a wolf pack hunting) in that the benefit exceeds the cost for all parties involved.

Humans, however, show a third sort of altruism--one that has no obvious pay-off. This is altruism towards strangers, for example, charity. That may enhance reputation. But how does an enhanced reputation weigh in the Darwinian balance?

Glenn C. Loury: Why Are So Many Americans in Prison?

According to a 2005 report of the International Centre for Prison Studies in London, the United States--with five percent of the world's population--houses 25 percent of the world's inmates. Our incarceration rate (714 per 100,000 residents) is almost 40 percent greater than those of our nearest competitors (the Bahamas, Belarus, and Russia). Other industrial democracies, even those with significant crime problems of their own, are much less punitive: our incarceration rate is 6.2 times that of Canada, 7.8 times that of France, and 12.3 times that of Japan...

In the 1970s, the sociologist David Garland argues, the corrections system was commonly seen as a way to prepare offenders to rejoin society. Since then, the focus has shifted from rehabilitation to punishment and stayed there. Felons are no longer persons to be supported, but risks to be dealt with.

For more information and discussion, visit: TED Talks.

For more information and discussion about Dawkins' Talk, link here: TED Talks.

For more information on Shermer's Talk, link here: TED Talks.

For more details and discussion on Rosling's Talk link here: TED Talks.

Link here for more information and discussion on Dawkins' talk. TED Talks

85 Free Web Design Programs

Here I’ll give the info that could take you ages to find by yourself or another designer to tell (maybe because of lack of time or selfishness). I tried to cover most of the aspects that will help you in your journey, in a total of 15 aspects.

45 Freeware Design Programs among literally thousands and thousands. It was a great quest, and it was worth it.

Colorcell Home

Colorcell wants to find the most beautiful color combinations. Please participate in the Colorcell project.

Who's Minding the Mind -- New York Times

The study participants, college students, had no idea that their social instincts were being deliberately manipulated. On the way to the laboratory, they had bumped into a laboratory assistant, who was holding textbooks, a clipboard, papers and a cup of hot or iced coffee — and asked for a hand with the cup.

That was all it took: The students who held a cup of iced coffee rated a hypothetical person they later read about as being much colder, less social and more selfish than did their fellow students, who had momentarily held a cup of hot java.

Findings like this one, as improbable as they seem, have poured forth in psychological research over the last few years. New studies have found that people tidy up more thoroughly when there’s a faint tang of cleaning liquid in the air; they become more competitive if there’s a briefcase in sight, or more cooperative if they glimpse words like “dependable” and “support” — all without being aware of the change, or what prompted it.

For more information and discussion on Dennett's Talk link here: TED Talks.

Optical Illusions and Visual Phenomena

These pages demonstrate visual phenomena, and 'optical' or 'visual illusions'. The latter is more appropriate, because most effects have their basis in the visual pathway, not in the optics of the eye. When I find the time I will expand the explanations, to the degree that these phenomena are really understood; any nice and thoughtful comment welcome.

Does it pay to be skeptical, even (or especially) about things you really hope are true?

Technology Review: Battery Breakthrough?

"I get a little skeptical when somebody thinks they've got a silver bullet for every application, because that's just not consistent with reality," says Andrew Burke, an expert on energy systems for transportation at University of California at Davis.

That said, Burke hopes to be proved wrong. "If [the] technology turns out to be better than I think, that doesn't make me sad: it makes me happy."

Study debunks full-moon injury beliefs - Yahoo! News

Ever whacked your thumb with a hammer, or wrenched your back after lifting a heavy box, and blamed the full moon? It's a popular notion, but there's no cosmic connection, Austrian government researchers said Tuesday.

For more information and discussion on Dennett's talk, link here: TED Talks.

For a video of Rick Warren's talk, link here: TED Talks.

38 Ways To Win An Argument
by Arthur Schopenhauer

1. Carry your opponent’s proposition beyond its natural limits; exaggerate it. The more general your opponent’s statement becomes, the more objections you can find against it. The more restricted and narrow your own propositions remain, the easier they are to defend.

Atheist doctors more likely to care for the poor than religious ones

Researchers from the University of Chicago and Yale New Haven Hospital report that 31 percent of physicians who were more religious--as measured by "intrinsic religiosity" as well as frequency of attendance at religious services--practiced among the underserved, compared to 35 percent of physicians who described their religion as atheist, agnostic or none.

"This came as both a surprise and a disappointment," study author Farr Curlin, MD, said. "The Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu and Buddhist scriptures all urge physicians to care for the poor, and the great majority of religious physicians describe their practice of medicine as a calling. Yet we found that religious physicians were not more likely to report practice among the underserved than their secular colleagues."

Eternity for Atheists

If death is not extinction, what might it be like? That’s a question the Harvard philosopher Robert Nozick, who died five years ago, enjoyed pondering. One of the more rococo possibilities he considered was that the dying person’s organized energy might bubble into a new universe created in that person’s image. Although his reflections were inconclusive, Nozick hit on a seductive maxim: first, imagine what form of immortality would be best; then live your life right now as though it were true. And, who knows, it may be true. “Life is a great surprise,” Vladimir Nabokov once observed. “I do not see why death should not be an even greater one.”

SkepticReport * Those Naughty Vestigial Bits and Other Bad Engineering

Then for the final insult, human (the pinnacle of creation) eyes are clearly an engineering mistake! The retinas are inside out. The nerves and blood vessels come out through the light-sensitive area of the retina, producing a blind spot, then spread over the front of the light-receptor cells, so that light has to get past the fibers into the receptors. Why aren't the nerves and capillaries behind the receptors, where they would be out of the way and there would be no need for a blind spot? Squid eyes are arranged just that way. Since ours aren't, one is reminded of the maxim that evolution has to work with the materials at hand, adapting systems already in place, with results that often seem jury-rigged or needlessly complicated. Would an Ultimate Engineer make such an obvious blunder, especially having got it right in creatures created earlier?