An alternate universe

While trying to go our blog and see exactly how long its been since we posted (a long time) I mistakenly typed in "http://brianandchristine.blogspot.com" and entered a completely different world, with -- in my opinion -- way too many baby pictures :-)

http://brianandchristine.blogspot.com/

Best regards to the very happy parents, Brian and Christine!

Nice promo for BBC Motion Gallery

This is a beautiful video that promotes BBC Motion Gallery:

And the Motion Gallery also has a very cool effect on the homepage too, so check it out >:

The future of the web!

This is the most amazing thing I have seen in years. Truly the future of the web:

Ubiquity

Why Religion Matters

Here is a very interesting article that I came across today. The author takes on the role of Religion in a modern civilization. Here is an extract:

Why Religion Matters

"...I’m drawn to what I call “the vast middle” between the poles of competing religious certainties that have hijacked our cultural discourse. In the vast middle, faith is as much about questions as it is about answers. It is possible to be a believer and a listener at the same time, to be both fervent and searching, to honor the truth of one’s own convictions and the mystery of the convictions of others. The context of most religious virtue is relationship—practical love in families and communities, and care for the suffering and the stranger beyond the bounds of one’s own identity. These qualities of religion should enlarge, not narrow, our public conversation about all of the important issues before us. They should reframe it."

Read the article >

Another article on climate change from Thomas Friedman

It appears that Thomas Friedman is becoming a climate evangelist -- and so am I. The good news is that one of us has a better way of saying it -- and a much larger audience :-)

So here is small segment of a great Op-Ed from the NYTimes:

Learning to Speak Climate

"...There has been a 30 percent increase in the melting of the Greenland ice sheet between 1979 and 2007, and in 2007, the melt was 10 percent bigger than in any previous year, said Konrad Steffen, director of the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences at the University of Colorado, which monitors the ice. Greenland is now losing 200 cubic kilometers of ice per year — from melt and ice sliding into the ocean from outlet glaciers along its edges — which far exceeds the volume of all the ice in the European Alps, he added. “Everything is happening faster than anticipated...”

Read more >

What kind of a problem is it?

Thomas Friedman in the NYTimes has a very insightful commentary regarding the current gas crisis. While he makes some pretty pointed criticisms of politicians in the US --which I prefer not to get into personally -- he makes a great point about what the real source of the problem is:

"We don’t have a “gasoline price problem.” We have an addiction problem. We are addicted to dirty fossil fuels, and this addiction is driving a whole set of toxic trends that are harming our nation and world in many different ways. It is intensifying global warming, creating runaway global demand for oil and gas, weakening our currency by shifting huge amounts of dollars abroad to pay for oil imports, widening “energy poverty” across Africa, destroying plants and animals at record rates and fostering ever-stronger petro-dictatorships in Iran, Russia and Venezuela.

"When a person is addicted to crack cocaine, his problem is not that the price of crack is going up. His problem is what that crack addiction is doing to his whole body. The cure is not cheaper crack, which would only perpetuate the addiction and all the problems it is creating. The cure is to break the addiction.

"Ditto for us. Our cure is not cheaper gasoline, but a clean energy system. And the key to building that is to keep the price of gasoline and coal — our crack — higher, not lower, so consumers are moved to break their addiction to these dirty fuels and inventors are moved to create clean alternatives."

Update on the Baha'is of Iran

It's been a few weeks since we updated this blog on the situation of the Baha'is in Iran. As some of you may know, on May 14, 6 leaders of the Baha'i Faith were arrested and detained in the notorious Evin prison -- joining another Baha'i who was arrested in March. After nearly 8 weeks they have not been charged with any crime, have not been able to contact a lawyer and have only had brief contact with their families by phone on one occasion 2 weeks ago. It is yet another example of the Iranian authorities efforts to destroy the Baha'i Faith in that country.

Well, last week six Nobel Peace Prize laureates have issued a statement calling on the Iranian government to free these Baha'is immediately. Additional concerns have been raised by other governments and prominent people in an effort to win their release. To see a full update on this click here >

However I just saw this posting on another blog that I wanted to share. It's a recording of a sermon given by a Mullah that attacks the Baha'is on the grounds that they are such upright and good people that they put their fellow Muslims to shame! A translation of the sermon includes this statement:

"A Bahai girl, in a school of 800 girls, has studied herself to such a degree and carries herself in such a way that everyone is amazed. Are you aware of this?! She is so dignified that anyone who doesn’t know her, thinks that she is probably the daughter of an Ayatollah… but shes a Bahai!

"...I myself had a Bahai student, a Jewish student, a Christian student. I swear to that I would give 20/20 to a bahai for their personality and behaviour …because I cant give them 30!"

See the posting and hear the sermon here. He does sound pretty riled up about this....