Relatively constant? Roll over, Einstein!

**New York Times details investigations going on that may alter the standard of the speed of light as a constant. E and mc2: Equality, It Seems, Is Relative Read whole article

Guided by ambiguous signals from the heavens, and by the beauty of their equations, a few brave — or perhaps foolhardy — physicists now say that relativity may have limits and will someday have to be revised.
. . .Any hint of breakage of relativity, scientists say, could yield a clue to finding the holy grail of contemporary physics — a "theory of everything" that would marry Einstein's general theory of relativity, which describes how gravity shapes the universe, to quantum mechanics, the strange rules that govern energy and matter on subatomic scales. . . The field, while still small, is destined for at least 15 minutes of fame next year with the publication in February of "Faster Than the Speed of Light," by Dr. João Magueijo, a cosmologist at Imperial College London. The book is a racy account of Dr. Magueijo's seemingly heretical effort to modify relativity so that the speed of light is not constant, and he will promote it on a long lecture tour."Ruling out special relativity by 2005 is a bit extreme," Dr. Magueijo said in a recent e-mail message, referring to the coming centennial of Einstein's famous paper, "although I would be very surprised if by 2050 nothing beyond relativity has been found."

E and mc2: Equality, It Seems, Is Relative Read whole article

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A cool animated clock

INDUSTRIOUS CLOCK
Other groovy flash stuff at surface.yugop.com

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How does Sugar Nation do "moderation?"

** Dr. Robert C. Atkins, the low carb king, comments on recent statements by the Sugar Association that sugar "in moderation" isn't all that bad for you. Which must be the reason why we'll be treated to commercials for Funky Fries and pudding in a tube! (via Atkins newsletter email)

We have it on the testimony of the president of the Sugar Association, Richard Keelor, that "There is no evidence that sugar in moderation has any ill effects." Since our Constitution protects free speech, I guess I can consider this remark as a fascinating and instructive expression of opinion. Before I even begin to think of what he means by "no evidence," I must ask myself where the word "moderation" came from. Should we assume that the present situation in which nearly 25 percent of the total caloric intake in the United States comes from sugar and high fructose corn syrup is an example of moderation? If not, is the Sugar Association advising that Americans decrease their consumption of sugar? Um. . . . Mr. Keelor seems to have put himself between a rock and a hard place.

. . . These are boom days for sugar products. A case in point: As part of its Funky Fries line, Heinz 57 is rolling out frozen french fries whose slender nutritional profile is enhanced by the addition of chocolate and cinnamon sugar. Applesauce enhanced with sweet strawberry flavor is now manufactured in a tube so that with the dexterous opposition of thumb and forefinger, you can press out some extra carbs just about anywhere you happen to be. Chocolate pudding has made it into a tube as well. And chocolate-covered caramel popcorn has arrived. Every sign in the constellation points to payoff.

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Get a head start on New Year's resolutions

CNN Newswatch - Article How about making a commitment to be more creative rather than make another list of self-serving goals? Radical theologian Matthew Fox says the world is suffering more from a lack of creativity than anything else.

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RX: A healthy dose of forgiveness

**The Christian Science Monitor's Jane Lampman reports on latest research on the therapeutic effects of forgiveness.

There's no getting around it - forgiveness is good for you and holding a grudge is not.

While many people believe that to forgive someone is to let that other guy off the hook, maybe undeservedly, evidence is mounting that it's the one who stops holding a grudge who finds a new lease on life - and on health and well-being.

Read full article: Forgive and your health won't forget

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Do we really want to kill "Hussein's own hostages?"

**Bill Moyers in his PBS Web page tells of what he learned as Lyndon Johnson's press secretary as the Vietnam war was beginning. He calculates the costs of war in mothers, on both sides, deprived of their kids and husbands. Very moving. Let's continue to give "candles and prayers" a chance.

NOW: Commentary - Bill Moyers on the Costs of War | PBS
To launch an armada against Hussein's own hostages, a people who have not fired a shot at us in anger, seems a crude and poor alternative to shrewd, disciplined diplomacy.

Don't get me wrong. Vietnam didn't make me a dove; it made me read the Constitution. That's all. Government's first obligation is to defend its citizens. There's nothing in the Constitution that says it's permissible for a great nation to go hunting for Hussein by killing the people he holds hostage, his own people, who have no choice in the matter, who have done us no harm.

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And now there's "cyberchondria"

** Found this in Rebecca's Pocket. Makes you think about what actually causes illness:

Internet makes hypochondria worse
Too much information can exacerbate condition

By R. Morgan Griffin
WEBMD
Health information on the Web is valuable to most people, but for hypochondriacs, it can be too much information. Their condition can worsen into a modern malady called ‘cyberchondria.

Read the MSNBC.com article: Internet makes hypochondria worse

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Dems could have a Lott on their wish list

From Talking Points Memo: by Joshua Micah Marshall

What I think most Republicans understand is that a lot of Democrats would actually prefer Lott stay as Majority Leader. They'd like him to get battered and be wounded politically -- and that's pretty much already taken care of. But they'd really prefer he stay in place. Because as long as he's Senate Majority Leader, politically speaking, he's the gift that just keeps on giving.

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Whole Lott-a doubletalk going on

** Paul Krugman in The Other Face the NY Times for December 13, 2002 points out that while Trent Lott's "apology" and George Bush's rebuke hit the right buttons with the tolerant majority, there is also a tacit statement to the racist minorities that is the exact reverse.

Bear in mind that while Mr. Bush has finally denounced Mr. Lott's remarks, he and his party benefit from the strategy that allows the likes of Mr. Lott to hold so much power.

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More Christmas myth-busters

** (This originally appeared on Beliefnet.com and I would post a link but the article is no longer available.) Though I'm in favor of demystifying spiritual themes, I still don't fully agree with his conclusion in the last paragraph. I suspect the standard explanation of the "Incarnation" is itself a myth.

No Room at the Inn?
By Ben Witherington III

The whole notion of the Holy Family being left shelterless by the world was probably no part of the original story.

Whenever Christmas rolls around, and the stories of Jesus' birth are read or heard in word and song, various images of what happened back then in Judea are conjured up. The problem is that these stories have been embroidered in the human imagination and in print in so many ways during the past two millennia that it is hard to get back to the original story and hear it in a fresh and clear way. In this and in subsequent columns during the Christmas season, we will rethink these stories and see if we can get back to what the New Testament writers were trying to tell us.

Let us take, for example, the story in Luke 2:4-7. Joseph and Mary must return to Bethlehem, Joseph's ancestral home, to be registered for tax purposes. Bethlehem, then as now, was a very small town that may not even have had a wayside inn. Whether it did or not, the likely place a poor couple would stay when making such a visit, especially with a pregnant woman involved, is with Joseph's relatives. The Greek word in question in Luke 2:7, "kataluma," while it can mean "inn," also has as a normal meaning "guest room," which is in fact precisely what it means else-where in Luke-Acts, including in the story of the last supper. Furthermore, Luke uses a very different word for "inn" elsewhere (for example, in the parable of the Good Samaritan).

What then happens to our story if we make a simple and likely variation in the translation of the word "kataluma"? First, there is no image conveyed of the holy family being told there is no room in a wayside inn. What they learn is that they have arrived at their relatives too late to be accommodated in the guest room. But this is not the end of the matter.

Far too many Christmas sermons have been based on the assumption that the family then ended up in a barn somewhere. This, too, is doubtful. Peasant families with only a few precious farm animals in ancient Israel regularly brought their animals into the back of their own homes for safekeeping, especially at night and in winter. It is historically far more plausible that Jo-seph's relatives made room for the holy family in the back or lower part of their own home, where the animals were. In short, the whole notion of the holy family being cast out by the world is probably no part of the original story.

They may not even have had to share the space with farm animals. Notice that Luke 2:7 does not mention there were animals present--unlike the next story, in Luke 2:8, which explicitly be-gins out in the fields, where there are shepherds and sheep. It is entirely possible that Mary's placing Jesus in the corn crib is an act that bespeaks the absence of the animals in the home at this juncture.

Somehow, when we allow the Christmas stories and their legendary accretions to be blended together in our minds, we not only miss the original thrust of the story, we even mislead those who would like to believe in the stories. At heart, this story is about what John Donne said it was about: "Twas much that man was made like God long before; But that God should be made like man--much more." The Christmas story does not call us back to a faith in the fractured fairy tales of childhood. It calls us forward to deal with the miracle of the Incarnation. If there is to be a mental wrestling in an age of doubt, let it be with the real substance of the real story.

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What is Christianity coming to?

** The advent of Christianity changed the world forever. But by the 16th century it had degenerated into a politicized state religion drained of spiritual vision and its original healing genius. The Reformation sought to remedy all that and to re-establish Christianity's original energy and its empowerment of the individual. Alas, it, too, has fallen victim to the drag of materialism.

In The Next Christianity, a longish article in the October 2002 Atlantic Monthly, Philip Jenkins posits a spooky apocalypic conflict between southern Christianity, which is a throwback to the Counter-Reformation -- ultra-conservative, supernaturalistic and antagonistic to the all that is the basis for Western progress and identity -- and northern Christianity, which he sees as the basis for all that the West has become, good and bad.

And yet, at the core of Christianity is an idea so powerful that it will not stay suppressed forever. Perhaps we need yet another Reformation, where the "primitive Christianity" espoused by the south can be expressed within the context of individual freedom of thought and action. It would be regressive to adopt the mob-think of ultra-conservative religionists, and yet Jenkins foresees a clash between the two systems that is anything but a slam dunk for modernity. Here's the precis:

We stand at a historical turning point, the author argues—one that is as epochal for the Christian world as the original Reformation. Around the globe Christianity is growing and mutating in ways that observers in the West tend not to see. Tumultuous conflicts within Christianity will leave a mark deeper than Islam's on the century ahead.

Read the whole article online at: The Atlantic | October 2002 | The Next Christianity

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No more mailing list

** Just to clarify an earlier entry, I am no longer using an outside mailing list service so there's no risk of spam. However, if you'd like me to notify you when I've put something especially groovy on the site, just click this gimme feedback button.

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"Prey" tell

** A scientist assesses Michael Crichton's heavily promoted new book, Prey. Via nanodot.org

The book is not just wrong; it's stupid. The science is bogus. The technology is broken. And even the real-world stuff is impossible. . . . it doesn't work as a book, and you certainly can't learn any science from it.

Full critique

More on nanotechnology:

Attack of the Killer Dust, by Heather Green, published in Business Week Dec. 2, 2002, uses the release of Michael Crichton's latest novel Prey to point out that "nanotech has a scary side".

Business Week on Crichton novel - Nanodot

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Bobble -- but boldly!

Lutherans break out the fun with Martin Luther bobblehead Martha Sawyer Allen, Minneapolis Star Tribune - Dec. 7, 2002 It's not always easy being Lutheran. Be proud, but not too proud. Boast, but only to yourself. Eat Jell-O, but not too much. And have fun? Well . . . Two Lutheran guys in Moorhead, MN decided that even Lutherans could have fun and started a Web site: oldlutheran.com Full article

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Teen abstinence - the gross-out factor

** Steve Waldman, founder of Beliefnet.com, maintains kind of a blog/column on that site. His December 3 entry takes a look at some trends in the movement for teen celibacy today.

Lecturing to hormone-crazed teenagers about abstinence actually works? That seems to be the implication of a recent study by the Centers for Disease Control showing a 16% drop in the number of teens having intercourse compared to ten years earlier. And, according to the Newsweek cover story that brought this issue once again to our attention, the youngsters now pledging abstinence were influenced by in-school abstinence programs, like the ones President Bush wants to fund.
....
I also figured the abstinence approach was based partly on a false premise; that many teens really would rather not have sex but were feeling pressured into doing it. My memory of adolescence was that most teens wanted to have sex but felt there wasn't enough supply to fill the demand, in part because it was taboo. This may reveal a bit too much about my own adolescent frustrations, but I assumed this was the reality of the world.

Instead, it turns out President Bush and other advocates of abstinence programs were right: there is a large group of teens in a gray area – they would rather not have sex but need some good reasons or peer support to say no.

But judging from the Newsweek article they are not abstaining primarily for moral reasons. These programs seem to be at their most effective when they stress not Sodom and Gomorrah but syphillus and gonorrhea. Chris, one of the celibate teens profiled, joined a Christian abstinence group called Teen Advisors. “We watched their slide show in eighth grade and it just has pictures of all these STDs [sexually transmitted diseases],” he says. “It’s one of the grossest things you’ve ever seen. I didn’t want to touch a girl, like, forever.”

Read the article

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Regulating for a free Internet

** Paul Krugman in NYT suggests that some regulation may actually preserve the Internet's freedom.

Until recently, the Internet seemed the very embodiment of the free-market ideal — a place where thousands of service providers competed, where anyone could visit any site. And the tech sector was a fertile breeding ground for libertarian ideology, with many techies asserting that they needed neither help nor regulation from Washington.

But the wide-open, competitive world of the dial-up Internet depended on the very government regulation so many Internet enthusiasts decried.

Full article: Digital Robber Barons?

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Musings on "The Matrix"

** A new collection of essays, "The Matrix and Philosophy" explores that film's provocative philosophical implications. Reviewed by Laura Miller at Salon.com. Excerpts from her review:

For those few souls who haven't seen it, "The Matrix" describes the travails of Neo, a young programmer whose vague sense that there is "something wrong with the world ... a splinter in the mind" comes to fruition when he meets the unspeakably cool Morpheus (Laurence Fishburne). He takes a pill Morpheus offers, and after a few trippy effects, discovers that his late-20th-century urban life is merely a virtual reality simulation (the Matrix). He and almost all of the rest of humanity are actually kept in womb-like cells, where they supply energy to a vast computerized artificial intelligence, while their minds are occupied with a completely fake "existence."

Morpheus is the leader of that small band of rebels that always turns up in such stories, and Neo joins them in their fight to free humanity...
….
The philosophers contributing to "The Matrix and Philosophy" … find the implied and explicit ontological questions posed by the film intriguing. "What is real? How do you define real?" Morpheus asks Neo at one point. "If you're talking about what you can feel, what you can smell, what you can taste and see, then real is simply electrical signals interpreted by your brain."
….
Since the senses have been known to lie, since when we're dreaming we often do not realize that we are dreaming (and therefore are having an "unreal" experience we mistakenly consider real), the ordinary sensory evidence we rely on to tell us what is true cannot necessarily be trusted. Can we really be sure that any of it is authentic?
….
A member of Morpheus' crew, Cypher, decides he's had enough and betrays his leader in exchange for being reabsorbed into the Matrix with his memory of reality erased and a new virtual life as a wealthy actor. "After nine years, do you know what I realize?" he tells one of the agents. "Ignorance is bliss."
….
The nature of reality and the validity of Cypher's choice are the two substantive philosophical questions the movie poses.

Full review: Salon.com Books | "The Matrix and Philosophy" by William Irwin, ed.

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What if Saddam is telling the truth?

** This Salon piece entertains the possibility that Saddam will give hawks just the excuse they need to start shooting - denial that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction. But what if he's telling the truth? "The ultimate irony -- if Iraq really had no weapons of mass destruction, but we went to war anyway," says David Albright, a former U.N. weapons inspector.
Salon.com News | Blind man's brinksmanship

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Pope says nope to carbs

** ...but yup to low fat. Oh well, if it's good enough for Madonna....

Ananova - Pope losing pounds on Zone Diet
Pope John Paul II has reportedly started to lose the pounds after starting on the Zone Diet earlier this year.

Italian newspaper Il Messegero says he has been looking slimmer since going on the diet in the spring.

The Zone Diet has also been adopted by celebrities such as Madonna and Demi Moore.

The Pope reportedly went on the diet to help his arthritis and shaking. Sources at the Vatican have said his face is less swollen and he is also speaking more coherently.

The diet, which centres around creating a 40/30/30 balance of carbohydrate, protein and fat, was created by diet guru Dr. Barry Sears, who said he found it "humbling but gratifying" to have the Pope following his plan.

However he added that he had no plans to ask him to star in advertisements for the diet.

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Quote of the moment

** "The difference between communism and capitalism is that communism is
man's inhumanity to man, while capitalism is exactly the opposite."

- Joke making the rounds in Budapest cafes, as quoted by George Lang, author, in Saveur (April 2002) via Utne.com

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What about "the day after" we topple Saddam?

** In a live chat today from Baghdad via spirituality.com Scott Peterson, correspondent for the Christian Science Monitor and an expert on Middle East affairs, had this to say about the consequences of a US invasion of Iraq:

Gentry/Utah: Do you think life will be better if the Americans take out Saddam and put in a regime that the US government sees fit?
Scott Peterson: The hazards of trying to reengineer a new government in Iraq possibly outweigh the benefits. Because if chaos is allowed to grip the country -- as many Iraqis predict -- then it could result in a virtually ungovernable country.

That doesn't mean that it is going to split into three ethnic based regions, but what it does mean is that there could be a large degree of violence associated with revenge attacks and people getting back at those who they feel have caused them the most pain in the last 30 years.

The problem for American strategic planners is that while Iraqis may not be entirely in favor of their own government they are also deeply suspicious of American motives and they often blame the United States for ensuring that UN sanctions imposed upon Iraq for the last 12 years have been among the most strict in history.

They often accuse the US of being interested in controlling Iraq only for its oil resources and they believe the regime when it tells that the US has been responsible for the deaths of 100,000s of Iraqi children who the government says have died as a result of those sanctions.

This means that any government that is seen to have been imposed by the US will face an uphill battle in order to appear legitimate before most Iraqis.

And it's one of the reasons that Iraqi exiles -- some of whom are being considered by Washington to form part of a future government -- are so concerned about the "day after."
...............
One other aspect of reporting here is that you do have a greater understanding of why many Iraqis think the way they do and it is a value to Americans to read counter-intuitive analysis such that even if Iraqis don't care for their regime that doesn't necessarily mean that they want America to change it for them.
………………………………………….
Paula/Boston: What do you think American schoolchildren should know about Iraq and Iraqis?
Scott Peterson: …that not everyone here is Saddam Hussein.

When I visit the United States I am often surprised at how shallow the common understanding of Iraq is among Americans who see every aspect of this country through the visage of that one man. Regardless of their regime, many Iraqis are very well educated. They work very hard to feed their families. They have the same concerns about getting a decent education that we all share. They wonder when their country is going to be able to use its oil wells to rebuild itself.

And they are concerned about the future, as any of us would be, if that future included a war that promised to be so severe and so resolute that we have seen nothing like it for decades.
……………………………………………
moppo/boston: Tom Friedman in a recent NYTimes piece suggested that this is the time for Iraqi scientists and officials to defect. But a letter to the editor claimed this would actually hurt Iraqis more than help: "A potential Iraqi defector may decide to withhold his information, for fear of consequences to his country. Any revelations will trigger a devastating American invasion costing thousands of Iraqi lives." Is there that kind of patriotism there?

Scott Peterson: There is no doubt that Iraqis are worried about the consequences of a war and anything that might be seen to trigger that war could be seen as something that would yield many Iraqi casualties as well as American casualties.

While some Iraqis and many Americans may argue that a greater good could come from a war, many Iraqis themselves who have settled with this way of life for a generation are now as concerned about the consequences of dramatic changes and how they could affect their families and their lives.

In this respect, I think many Iraqis now are weighing up what they have with what the possibilities may be, and as pressure increases on Iraq from outside people will begin to make decisions about how they want their future to be.

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At last. PROOF that you know how to tie your shoes.

There are many millions of different possibilities but, reassuringly, the proof shows that centuries of human trial and error have already selected the strongest lacing patterns. However, the pattern using the least amount of lace possible, the decorative "bowtie" lacing, is usually only seen in shoe shop displays. Via New Scientist. Read full article

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Thatzit, no more carbs!

Via Reuters....
Refined Foods May Be Cause of Pimples and Acne

Wed December 4, 2002 02:03 PM ET
LONDON (Reuters) - Eating too much refined bread and cereal, rather than chocolate and greasy foods, could be the cause of teenage acne and pimples.

Loren Cordain and scientists at the Colorado State University in Fort Collins have published research showing that refined carbohydrates unleash a series of reactions in the body which increase the production of bacteria that cause acne.

"There's a lot of anecdotal evidence," Neil Mann, a nutrition researcher at RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia told New Scientist magazine Wednesday.

Mann and his colleagues are planning to test the theory and will be putting 60 teenage boys on low-carbohydrate diets for three months to see if it has an impact.

"Dermatologists will tell you they have put patients on low-carbohydrate diets and seen improvements. This will be the first controlled study," he added.

Although acne makes teenagers in developed countries miserable, it is almost unknown in some societies such as the Kitava Islanders in Papua New Guinea where processed foods are at a minimum.

According to Cordain, the Inuit people in Alaska did not suffer from pimples until the arrival of the Western diet.

"Acne may not be the only problem caused by eating large quantities of highly refined starches. Such diets have also been blamed for causing short-sightednesand contributing to adult-onset diabetes," New Scientist said.

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What do you know about Christmas?

** This came via email from a friend.

"A Religious Santa Claus Story
   - By John Shelby Spong

The birth narrative of Jesus shouldn't be taken literally.
Part One of a series about the Nativity.

The symbols are everywhere: on radio and television, in newspapers and magazine ads, in store windows, and eventually in our own homes. Sometimes they depict a jolly old elf dressed in red, sometimes accompanied by reindeer and a sleigh. Sometimes they show a manger, a baby, angels singing to shepherds, or wise men following a star. Some of the symbols rotate around the North Pole, the others around a little town named Bethlehem.

Most people do not literalize the story of Santa Claus. He is a symbol--a powerful symbol, but still just a symbol. I suggest that the birth narratives of Jesus, too, cannot be taken literally. They, too, are symbols, a religious version of Santa Claus. Some religious people will be offended by that suggestion. I invite them to reconsider."

Full Text of article
The original article appeared on Beliefnet.com.
See also: Easter: the historicity that matters

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Can one good man save Iraq?

** "Wisdom is better than weapons of war," concludes the writer of the Bible book of Ecclesiastes. He tells how “There was a little city, and few men within it; and there came a great king against it, and besieged it, and built great bulwarks against it: Now there was found in it a poor wise man, and he by his wisdom delivered the city." Eccl 9:14-18

Citing another Bible story, New York Times columnist Tom Friedman suggests that today such "wisdom" might take the form of "information" from a courageous Iraqi scientist or official. See 'Sodom' Hussein's Iraq.

Maybe we should be praying to strengthen the courage of that one "poor wise man."

PS: Here's a thought from a letter to the editor about Friedman's article.

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Intimations of incorporeality

** The Internet is giving us realistic experiences daily in the incorporeality of the spiritual universe. Through email, instant messaging, bulletin boards and Web sites, people are engaging with each other on the basis of ideas instead of material bodily factors. This blog at this moment is an example. It doesn't really matter where you are right now, how old you are, what gender, size, shape of your body, or what time of day it is -- you are interacting with me on the basis of some common interest -- in other words, in ideas.

Could this be the step prior to the realization that reality is ultimately non-material? Could it be that what great spiritual thinkers have been trying to tell us for ages is about to become universally experienced?

Here's a New York Times story about an early computer innovator who got intimations of incorporeality back in 1974. Speaking mind to mind

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