Now I understand everything

It's always good to be able to categorize and explain relationships in the world.

I'm going to have to ponder this further, though. The Mummy is clearly in the same region as Frankenstein, but does the infectious nature of lycanthropy put the Wolfman in the same category as Dracula? I guess if zombies count as converters, so do werewolves. Curiously, the modern monsters of slasher flicks, the Freddies, the Michael Myerses (no relation), the Jasons, seem to have avoided the converter/contagion element of other movie monsters.

Discuss.

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David Chalmers and the Singularity that will
probably not come

Philosopher Massimo Pigliucci argues that Chalmers, and other advocates of the possibility of a Singularity, reads too much science fiction, and is apparently unable to snap out of the necessary suspension of disbelief when he comes back to the real world.

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Seattle team wins $900,000 in Space Elevator
Games

A Seattle team has collected a $900,000 prize in a NASA-backed competition to develop the concept of an elevator to space ? an idea spurred by science fiction novels.

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I get email

Some crazy lady in British Columbia named either Sonia or Tanja Jensen has me on a mailing list. I'm in good company; also on the list are the president of my university, Bob Bruininks, as well as Nancy Pelosi, Hillary Clinton, the Governor of Alaska, Greenpeace, Angela Merkel, and the German Balkan Trust. Strangely, NASA is not on the list. Without exception, all of her emails are raving mad. Here's her latest, which I think is one of the finest examples of her output.

COULD NASA CAUSE THE SUDDEN DEATH OF EVERY LIVING THING ON EARTH? - "... the moon will not give its light ..." Matthew 24:27-29

DEAR NASA:
DO YOU REALIZE BOMBING THE MOON COULD CAUSE THE SUDDEN DEATH OF EVERY LIVING THING ON EARTH, INCLUDING MANKIND. YOU COULD ALSO INTERFERE WITH THE MOON'S ABILITY TO LIGHT UP THE EARTH AT NIGHT, SO DON'T COMPROMISE THE PLANETS BY RECKLESSLY BOMBING THE MOON!

I saw on the OCTOBER 9, 2009 news that NASA has been bombing the moon to see if there is water on it. You can't find water by bombing! See the article below.

I heard the bomb did not detonate and is lodged inside the moon's crater. I heard NASA sent another bomb to the moon last week (October 31), but the rocket malfunctioned.

If there is a live, unexploded bomb in the moon's crater and another bomb is driven into it, this could cause a large nuclear reaction on the moon, perhaps causing a huge chunk of the moon to dislodge and hurtle through space.

That's not a good idea, as the bomb could push the moon out of orbit and cause part or all of it to crash, with a worst case senario, to crash into the sun or the earth!

A collision of moon rock with the earth could cause such a dust cloud, that it could affect the earth's atmosphere and destroy our air supply.

NASA has an underground bunker with life support, the human race does not. Don't euthanize the human race by bombing planets!

NASA, you don't have the right to destroy the human race by driving pieces of planets into space or into the earth, affecting us all.

The Bible prophesied the moon would not give it's light at the end time at Matthew 24:27-29:

"For just as the lightening comes from the west, so shall the coming of the son of man be ... the sun will be darkened and the moon will not give its light, and the stars will fall from the sky and the powers of the heavens will be shaken."

Jesus said at the 'end time', mankind would be separated into the 'wheat' and the 'weeds'. In other words, if we don't repent of our reckless chicanery, we will be destroyed.

HARVEST

"Gather My Godly Ones to Me"
Psalms 50:5,6 says: "Gather My Godly ones to Me, those who have made a covenant with Me by sacrifice. And the heavens declare His righteousness, for God Himself is judge."

"Be Ashamed of Your Harvest"
Jeremiah 12:13 says: "They have sown wheat and have reaped thorns, they have strained themselves to no profit. But be ashamed of your harvest because of the fierce anger of YHWH."

"The Workers are Few"
Matthew 11:37 says: "The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field."

"Allow Both to Grow Together"
At Matthew 13:26-30, Jesus said: "But when the wheat sprouted and bore grain, then the tares became evident also. ... And he said to them, 'An enemy has done this!' The slaves said to him, 'Do you want us, then, to go and gather them up?' But he said, 'No, for while you are gathering up the tares, you may uproot the wheat with them. Allow both to grow together until the harvest; and in the time of the harvest I shall say to the reapers, 'First gather up the tares and bind them in bundles to burn them up; but gather the wheat into my barn'."

"The Harvest Has Come"
Mark 4:26-29 states: "The Kingdom of God is like a man who casts seed upon the ground and goes to bed at night and gets up by day, and the seed sprouts up and grows, how, he himself does not know .... But when the crop permits, he immediately puts in the sickle, because the harvest has come."

"He Who Does Not Gather With Me Scatters"

Luke 11:23 says: "He who is not with me is against me, and he who does not gather with me, scatters."

"The Crop for Eternal Life"

John 4:35-38 says: "I tell you, open your eyes and look at the fields. They are ripe for harvest. Even now the reaper draws his wages, even now he harvests the crop for eternal life, so that the sower and the reaper may be glad together. Thus the saying 'One sows and another reaps' is true. I sent you to reap what you have not worked for. Others have done the hard work and you have reaped the benefits of their labor."

GATHER THE ELECT
"His Spirit Has Gathered Them"
Isaiah 14:16,17 says: "Seek from the book of YHWH, and read: Not one of these will be missing; none will lack its mate. For His mouth has commanded, and His spirit has gathered them. And He has cast the lot for them, and His hand has divided it to them by line. They shall possess it forever; from generation to generation they shall dwell in it."

"For the Sake of the Elect, Those Days Will Be Shortened"
Jesus said at Matthew 24:21,22: "For then there will be great distress, unequalled from the beginning of the world until now - and never to be equaled again. If those days had not been cut short, no one would survive, but for the sake of the elect those days will be shortened.

"So as to Mislead, if Possible, Even the Elect"
Matthew 24:24 says: "For false Christs and false prophets will arise and will show great signs and wonders, so as to mislead, if possible, even the elect."

"They Will Gather His Elect from the Four Winds"
Matthew 24:31 says: "He will send his angels with a loud trumpet call, and they will gather his elect from the four winds, from one end of the heavens to the other."

"Lead Astray, if Possible, the Elect"
Jesus warned at Mark 13:22: "... false Christs and false prophets will arise, and will show signs and wonders, in order to lead astray, if possible, the elect."

"Justice for His Elect"
Luke 18:7 says: "Will not God bring about justice for His elect who cry to him day and night, and will He delay long over them?"

If we bomb the moon, we could throw it out of orbit, it could terrify mankind. Luke 21:25,26 confirms this:
"Men will faint from terror ..."

Please find attached my bible summary. Please look up END TIME in my summary attached and see that Jesus, the true prophet, and our Saviour, prophesied about these things occuring over 2,000 years ago.

The Bible's message does offer hope, as at Daniel 2:44, God promised a kingdom that 'will never be brought to ruin' and that he would 'wipe the tears from our eyes' ... 'death and mourning will be no more'

Please look these scriptures up in my attached Bible summary!

God loves each and every one of us and the Bible offers hope for all!!

Let's start to follow the Golden Rule and 'love god and our neighbour'!

Here's the article about the bombing of the moon that I took from the internet:

[There was no link to any article actually included--pzm]

More topics
Home Inspector Reviews. | Permission | Spp | Space Junk | Bomb Threat
Who gave NASA permission to bomb the moon? Is it legal for NASA to bomb the moon?

It is not like their latest quest to mine for water on the moon was based on the major consensus of the American people. I think I speak for many when I say I was horrified by NASA's latest expedition.

It reminded me of the 2008 Olympic event held in Beijing, where Chinese officials strategically attempted to control the weather with cloud seeding. They had rockets filled with pellets of Silver Iodide on stand by just in case any rain clouds were to approach Beijing. If ominous weather

were to threaten the Olympic events Chinese officials would give the OK to shoot the rockets into the atmosphere in order to make the rain clouds dump out all of its precipitation before reaching Beijing. What ramifications would this have had on the atmosphere we share? How would traces of silver iodide impact our lungs, our ozone, our water, or those with sensitive respiratory ailments, etc?

U.S. flags have been emblematically planted on the Moon, although no nation can claim ownership of any part of the Moon's surface. According to the World Space Guide there are currently 11 countries sponsoring space agencies with space launch capabilities. 4 of those 11 countries have space agencies with manned spaceflight capability.

Reasonable men know it's wrong to travel to the moon, bomb it or otherwise interfere with it's orbit, as it is a lights for our night sky, influences the tides and is a valuable planet.

Let's not interfere with the ecology of the moon!

Sincerely,

Tanja Jensen

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Income inequality drives church attendance

The Dutch press is reporting a new study with an international perspective on what drives church attendance (the authors are Stijn Ruiter, senior researcher at the Netherlands Institute for the Study of Crime and Law Enforcement, and Frank van Tubergen, a professor of sociology in Utrecht).

What they set out to do was to compare the major theories on what causes religion, using data from the World Values Survey and other sources. Broadly speaking, you can summarize these theories like this:

• Religious regulation: a close relationship between state and church tends to turn people off it.
• Education: better educated people abandon religion
• Economic security: if people don't have to worry about their future, gods lose their appeal.
• Individualization: religion is a social phenomenon, and people are only religious because everyone around them is.

What Ruiter and van Tubergen did was a multi-level analysis. In other words, they looked at the characteristics of individuals and compared them with their churchgoing habits. And they also looked at the characteristics of nations, and looked to see what effect that had on individual churchgoing.

This multilevel analysis is a very powerful. But one downside is that it needs a lot of data, and the sort of data it needs aren't available for a lot of countries. In fact, it's mostly available only for rich, Christian countries. Still, they included 60 in their analysis, which is quite a pool.

By far and away the strongest predictor of how often a person goes to church is whether they had religious parents. That's not too surprising. But what is surprising is that, even after controlling for that effect, one of the most powerful predictors is how religious everyone else' parents are. In other words, one of the major deciding factors in whether or not you go to church is whether you grew up in a religious country.

Another important factor was religious regulation. In countries with a strong state interference in religion, attendance goes down. Other studies suggest that's probably because when people feel pressured into going to Church, they don't enjoy it.

One thing that didn't have much effect was education. There was no clear effect of average education in a country. But there was a slight effect of individual education - more educated people are slightly less likely to be churchgoers.  That's probably because education is double-edged when it comes to religion. It decreases beliefs, but it also increases 'community-mindedness'. In other words, educated people tend to get involved in community activities.

The final factor was income inequality. In line with other studies, they found that both income inequality and low state welfare spending are associated with more religion:

...we find that attendance rates are particularly high in countries with more socioeconomic inequalities and fewer social welfare expenditure. This effect equally applies to both poor and rich people, which is in line with the idea that because of economic mobility and the possibility of unemployment in the (nearby) future also the more affluent population feels more insecure in countries with more inequalities and without a well-developed social welfare system.

We also see that people with a lower income and who are unemployed attend religious meetings more often, and we find an enduring effect of growing up in times of war. In summary, the results of our study suggest that personal and societal insecurities play a crucial role in explaining cross-national variation in religious attendance.

Now this is particularly interesting because it backs up what I found in my own study, published earlier this year. In that study, I looked (in a rather simpler analysis) at the country-level factors that correlate with how often people pray. I found that income inequality was one of the strongest.

So the two studies complement each other. Religious attendance and religious belief are related, but they are not the same. At yet both these two key aspects of religion decrease in countries with strong social systems where people have less to worry about.

But by now people have probably spotted the potential flaw, which is shared by all these kinds of correlational studies: correlation does not mean causation! So which is it? Does inequality really cause inequality? Or could it be that religion causes inequality?

That's a good question - and it's a topic for the next post!

Hat tip: David Flint of Humanists4Science.

__________________________________________________________________________

Stijn Ruiter, & Frank van Tubergen (2009). Religious Attendance in Cross-National Perspective: A Multilevel Analysis of 60 Countries American Journal of Sociology (November)

This article by Tom Rees was first published on Epiphenom. It is licensed under Creative Commons.

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The Lost World of Antarctica's Lake Vostok -
NASA's Prelude to Exploring Jupiter's Europa

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Carl Sagan Day live stream!

My friend, the magician Andrew Mayne, is here at Carl Sagan Day, and told me that he will be live streaming the entire event on UStream! I’ve embedded the video viewer below (hopefully it won’t start playing automatically). If you go to the[...]

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Lakes of Antarctica Isolated for Millions of
Years Discovered with New, Unknown Viruses

Like a modern, micro version of The Thing, Antarctica's icy lakes have been discovered to house a surprisingly diverse community of viruses, including some that were previously unidentified. The finding could shed light on whether microbial life evolved independently in Antarctica, which has been isolated for millions of years, or they were introduced there more recently.

Some of these lakes which are frozen nine months of the year, have little animal life and are dominated by microorganisms, including algae, bacteria, protozoans and viruses. A virus is little more than a package of DNA surrounded by a capsule structure. To survive, viruses must hijack, or infect, living cells and use the host's equipment to replicate.

Antonio Alcami, a researcher from the Spanish Research Council and his colleagues analyzed DNA from viruses found in water samples collected from Antarctica's Lake Limnopolar, a surface lake on Livingston Island. They found nearly 10,000 species, including some small DNA viruses that had never before been identified. In total, the viruses were from 12 different families, some of which may be completely new to science, the researchers suggest.

With few animal and microbial predators around, viruses likely play an important role in controlling the abundance of other microorganisms, the researcher say. However, these viruses have been historically hard to study since many cannot be grown in a laboratory. But thanks to new genome sequencing technology, scientists can identify viruses without needing to grow them in a lab.

"We are just starting to uncover the world of viruses, and this is changing the way we think about viruses and the role they play in microbial ecosystems," said Antonio Alcami, a researcher from the Spanish Research Council.

The results reveal this Antarctic lake supports a virus community that's more diverse than most aquatic environments studied in the world so far - a surprising find considering that the polar region is generally thought to have low biological diversity due to the extreme environmental conditions. The scientists speculate the newly discovered viruses may have adapted specifically to thrive in such harsh conditions.

The team also found the community of viruses changed dramatically depending on the season. When the lake was ice-covered in the spring, the liquid water under the ice was inhabited by mostly small viruses, but in the summer months when the ice melted, the lake was home to mostly larger viruses.

"It looks like a completely different lake in summer," Alcami said. The scientists think the shift might be due to an increase in algae in the summertime, which the larger viruses infect.

The paper was published in the Nov. 6 issue of the journal Science.

Casey Kazan

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Image of the Day: A Spectacular Starburst Galaxy

N 2403 is a showy face-on spiral starburst galaxy in Camelopardalis- The Giraffe, with numerous many bright emission nebulae which can be seen as bright pink regions in the spiral arms. This galaxy extends well beyond this field of view- note the very blue arms reaching towards the edges of the frame. This galaxy is estimated to be around 12 million light years away. It is associated with a nearby group of galaxies called the M81 group. The blue patch is an unresolved cluster of young luminous stars. It seemingly miraculous transformation is due to one of these (massive) stars in the cluster exploding. 

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Happy Carl Sagan Day!

Today is Carl Sagan Day — I think that means you are officially expected to be filled with awe of the cosmos all day long, while also being thoroughly skeptical of the supernatural. Hang on…I think that means I celebrate Carl Sagan Day every day.

If I want to do something different, maybe I should make an apple pie from scratch.

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Another thing you can do is consider the importance of science on social policy. It could be a very busy day!

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