Ginny
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Saturday, February 14, 2009
Chicago news, sports, photos, video, blogs, Chicago weather, business, travel, tourism, entertainment and jobs -- chicagotribune.com
http://www.chicagotribune.com/iphone/#_4
Thursday, February 12, 2009
T(witter)-shirts
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T(witter)-shirts
Nicole Stewart, the wonderful talent responsible for the graphic design of my website, has come up with some (IMHO) magnificent T-shirts which we hope will appeal. We are selling them through mysoti.com and if you have any issues regarding pricing, ordering and delivery you can be in touch with them direct via ask@mysoti.com or tweet @mysoti where Steve will be happy to help you out. Prices are determined automatically by location and currency. Plenty of t-shirts on the market are cheaper than ours, but plenty are more expensive too. We think, given the work behind the design, that the price we've settled on for our shirts is fair and reasonable. I trust you'll agree. If not, don't worry. The option not to buy is also available (while stocks last).
I Tweeted @stephenfry T-Shirt © Samfry Ltd 2009
This is certainly not about me profiting from my net presence. The volume of traffic that my website receives costs me a great deal. The more who visit, the more I pay for hosting: this is an ineluctable law that many may not be aware of yet which, on further thought, is inevitable. The running costs are rising monthly. I don't complain, but I would like my site to come reasonably close to paying for itself. I should hate to have to close it down simply because so many people visited it. I have too a matchless team of designers who need to be paid a proper reward for their creativity, industry and commitment.
I hope you will find the opportunity proudly to own and wear one of these t-shirts a merry part of the ceaselessly splendid pleasures that the Worldwide Web, Twitter and the digital age has brought us. Pleasures we continue to share with such never ending wonder and surprise.
x Stephen
© Stephen Fry 2009
Ginny
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Saturday, February 07, 2009
Darwin, Lincoln: Peers who changed the world
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Darwin, Lincoln: Peers who changed the world
Influence of Charles Darwin, Abraham Lincoln strong as their bicentennial nearsTwo hundred years ago Thursday, two of the most influential men of all time were born on the same day—one in a three-story country mansion in Shrewsbury, in Shropshire, England, and the other in a one-room, dirt-floor frontier log cabin in Kentucky.
Ginny
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Hummingbird Babies Webcam
Check out this video on UStream:
http://www.ustream.tv/channel/Hummingbird-Babies-Webcam
http://www.ustream.tv/channel/Hummingbird-Babies-Webcam
Ginny
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The Lede: 25 Tips for the Busy Facebook User
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The Lede: 25 Tips for the Busy Facebook User
Help is at hand for Facebook users too busy to even think of 25 Random Things.Ginny
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Wednesday, February 04, 2009
Darwin's 200th birthday is focus of February 15 bulletin inserts
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Darwin's 200th birthday is focus of February 15 bulletin inserts
The theories put forth by Charles Darwin in The Origin of Species rocked the scientific and religious world 150 years ago. Episcopal Life Weekly bulletin inserts for February 15 mark the 200th anniversary of the scientist's birth and outline his contributions to 20th and 21st-century ideas about God, creation and the beginnings of humankind.Ginny
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Tuesday, February 03, 2009
Texas creationists sink to a new low
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Texas creationists sink to a new low
It's getting hot and nasty in the battle over the Texas science standards. Donna Garner, one of the members of the forces of darkness, has distributed a letter in which she claims that the atheists are winning Texas (I wish!), and that those of us who are working to teach evolution must be opposed more fiercely. And, of course, any accusation levied against scientists is perfectly fair. The kicker in her letter is a bit of slander:
Jeffrey Dahmer, one of America's most infamous serial killers who cannibalized more than 17 boys before being captured, gave an [sic] last interview with Dateline NBC nine months before his death, and he said the following about why he acted as he did: "If a person doesn't think that there is a God to be accountable to, then what's the point of trying to modify your behavior to keep it within acceptable ranges? That's how I thought anyway. I always believed the theory of evolution as truth, that we all just came from the slime. When we died, you know, that was it, there was nothing...." (Dateline NBC, The Final Interview, Nov. 29, 1994).
Well, yes, of course! Why didn't we think of consulting a convicted and confessed sexual sadist and serial killer on matters of ethics and science? I guess this is one perspective in which the religious have an advantage over us atheists — they're already accustomed to regarding the clergy as authorities.
Read the comments on this post...
Ginny
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Monday, February 02, 2009
Jonathan Wells' weird notions about development
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Jonathan Wells' weird notions about development
Jonathan Wells recently gave a talk in Albuquerque at something called the "Forum on Science, Origins, and Design", a conference about which I can find absolutely nothing on the web. I wasn't there, of course, and I don't get invited to these goofy events anyway, but I did get a copy of Wells' powerpoint presentation from an attendee. It's titled "DNA Does Not Control Embryo Development" — shall we look at it together? It's really a hoot.
Ginny
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Sunday, February 01, 2009
Darwin 200
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Darwin 200
A few of us wild and crazy evo people, including Richard Dawkins, wrote up pieces for an issue of the BBC Focus magazine. You'll find me arguing with Steve Jones about whether evolution has stopped, Richard Lenski is highlighted, and Carl Zimmer makes an appearance. If you've got a flash player, you can read it online right now. It's pretty good stuff, if I do say so myself.
Read the comments on this post...
Ginny
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Saturday, January 31, 2009
Rival rips Feigenholtz for being on 'clout lists'
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Rival rips Feigenholtz for being on 'clout lists'
State Rep. Sara Feigenholtz is positioning herself as a progressive Democrat in the race to succeed Rahm Emanuel in Congress representing the North Side of Chicago and some of the west suburbs.
Ginny
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Thursday, January 29, 2009
Of Darwin Dover And (un)intelligent design
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Of Darwin Dover And (un)intelligent design
February 2009
Feature
Of Darwin, Dover And (Un)Intelligent Design
Scholar Says The Future Of Science –; And Church-State Separation –; Are At Stake In The Creationism/Evolution Conflict
Kenneth R. Miller was one of the leading witnesses in a lawsuit challenging "intelligent design" creationism in Dover, Pa., public schools. In a sweeping defeat for the Religious Right, a federal district court ruled in Kitzmiller v. Dover in 2005 that teaching religion in science classes violates the Constitution. Miller, a professor of biology at Brown University, has now written Only A Theory: Evolution and the Battle for America's Soul (Viking/Penguin Group, 2008). The book looks at the ongoing drive to teach religious concepts in public school science classes and why that crusade must not succeed. Church & State recently asked him some questions.
Q. You were an expert witness in the lawsuit against "intelligent design" creationism in Dover, Pa., public schools. What did you think of the trial and its outcome?
A. Naturally, like everyone on the plaintiffs' side of the Kitzmiller case, I was delighted with the outcome –; and that wasn't just because of the judge's decision. I was especially impressed with the businesslike way in which the trial moved along. Both sides played by the rules and did their best to keep matters focused on the issues at hand. And the judge, John E. Jones III, did an extraordinary job of moving things along fairly and openly. At the end, I think that both sides had to admit that they had been given every opportunity to make their cases. The experience impressed me with the fairness and openness of the federal judicial procedure and renewed my confidence in our court system.
Q. What surprised you most about the trial?
A. Two things. First, the willingness of certain members of the school board to come into court and tell obvious lies. That might seem a little harsh, but that's exactly how the judge put it too, even to the point of lecturing a witness in open court about contradictions in his testimony. The second surprising thing was the public collapse of intelligent design (ID) during the defense phase of the trial. While many scientists, myself included, have written about the scientific flaws of ID, it was genuinely shocking to see them exposed so clearly under cross-examination. By the end of the defense phase of the trial, any contention that ID formed a coherent scientific theory had vanished. At that point, it was clear to everyone in the courtroom that the verdict would favor the plaintiffs.
Q. There was a lot of press attention focused on the trial. What was the public reaction to your ...
Ginny
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Wednesday, January 28, 2009
Attenborough's response to creationists' hate mail
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Attenborough's response to creationists' hate mail
Sir David Attenborough gets a lot of hate mail because he doesn't give credit to God in his documentaries.In an interview with this week's Radio Times about his latest documentary, on Charles Darwin and natural selection, the broadcaster said: "They tell me to burn in hell and good riddance."Telling the magazine that he was asked why he did not give "credit" to God, Attenborough added: "They always mean beautiful things like hummingbirds. I always reply by saying that I think of a little child in east Africa with a worm burrowing through his eyeball. The worm cannot live in any other way, except by burrowing through eyeballs. I find that hard to reconcile with the notion of a divine and benevolent creator."
Attenborough's response to creationists' hate mail
Ginny
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Saturday, January 24, 2009
Texas board moves closer to new science standards
Hi Steve,
Here's a current story about the Texas school board, and how free speech issues were used as part of the creation/intelligent design faction's strategy.
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Texas board moves closer to new science standards
AUSTIN, Texas -- The State Board of Education moved a step closer to dropping a 20-year-old science curriculum requirement that critics say is used to undermine the theory of evolution.
Ginny
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Friday, January 23, 2009
“Traditional” vs. “Contemporary”?
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"Traditional" vs. "Contemporary"?
By Donald Schell
For the healthy future of our church we've got to stop thinking and talking as if 'traditional' and 'contemporary' were opposites. This hackneyed dichotomy reduces us to a lose/lose battle between caricatured factions – do we want to be a backward-looking 'traditional' church bound by nostalgic practices of the last two hundred years or a 'trendy,' 'relevant' church whoring in uncritical embrace of 'contemporary' culture.
Only a church that's deeply traditional and truly contemporary can live fearlessly into creativity and mission. To find our way to deep traditional roots and a lively present, we'll need to relearn that the words 'tradition' and 'traditional' live in a creative process, an inspired engagement with our Christian past and discernment of the God-given opportunities and challenges of each present moment.
Hear Vladimir Lossky, a bold 20th Century Russian Orthodox theologian described tradition,
"…to be within the Tradition, is to keep the living truth in the Light of the Holy Spirit, or rather – it is to be kept in the Truth by the vivifying power of Tradition. But this power preserves by a ceaseless renewing, like all that comes from the Spirit." [Tradition and Traditions, Lossky's introduction to The Meaning of Icons, (Leonid Ouspensky and Vladimir Lossky, 1952 and 1969]
Lossky tells us that tradition is a creative process for the church and the work of the Holy Spirit among us. When the Spirit's steady hand harnesses the powerful troika of humble memory, faithful curiosity, and innovative imagination, the church has a powerful team for an exhilarating ride.
When other rabbis scolded Jesus' disciples for skipping the ritual hand washing that began the meal, those teachers' concern wasn't hygiene but sacrilegious violation of ritual purity. They understood a prophetic sign. Jesus was defying religious purity laws to show people the impatient welcome of his all-merciful Father. Hand washing was ritualized preparation for the sacred.
Jesus' deep faithfulness to the tradition he received had provoked him to break the rubrics (official rules) of the ritual meal of a rabbi with his close disciples.
Jesus teaching God's mercy on the Sabbath was good rabbinic practice. But to some his healing and feeding people to embody that mercy was more sacrilege. The Sabbath was the center of rabbinic Judaism's liturgy. Once again traditionally-grounded rule-breaking led Jesus to liturgical innovation and a new vision for works of mercy in community. Liturgy and his mission of compassionate love were inseparable.
Making his ritual choices to reshape the ritual of a rabbi's holy meal with close disciples, Jesus showed the fulfillment of Isaiah's promised feast, on the mountaintop, God's messianic banquet for all people. And he was using one tradition to reshape another. Isaiah and Israel's...
Ginny
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Thursday, January 22, 2009
The New York Times
http://mobile.nytimes.com/login?e=Invalid%2520username%2520or%2520password
Ginny
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