What were the builders of Chartres Cathedral thinking and what were they trying to convey? Here is a review of an interesting book, Universe of Stone: Chartres Cathedral and the Triumph of the Medieval Mind by Philip Ball (by the way, the US edition is titled: Universe of Stone: A Biography of Chartres Cathedral. Hmm....so if you want a more exciting title, get the imported version).

Chartres cathedral is a marvel but also a mystery. Nobody knows who designed it or what they were trying to express. Begun in 1200 and finished in 1226, it was the crowning example of the gothic style and marked, Philip Ball suggests in this lucid and resplendent book, a shift in the way the western world thought about God, the universe and man's place in it. Romanesque churches with their vast walls and narrow windows had been dark and inward-looking, and signified, he argues, monastic seclusion. Chartres changed all that. Its walls were diaphanous membranes of glass set in cobwebs of stone. On the outside, flying buttresses propped them up to prevent them collapsing under the soaring vaults of the roof. It was “transparent logic”, a celebration of the light of reason, banishing the old gloom, and progressing from an age when God was feared to one where his works could be understood.

That, at any rate, is the theory. Ball makes no pretence to have thought it up himself. It had been aired in the 19th century, and was elaborated in the 20th by the great German art historian Erwin Panofsky. What makes it plausible is that the school of Chartres, in the decades before work on the cathedral began, had become one of the great centres of European learning, a principal conduit for Arabic science and mathematics, and a pioneer in the rediscovery of Plato, Aristotle and Euclid. It was progressive and humanist, encouraging a rational understanding of the physical world, advancing geometry, and promoting the belief that the universe was a system of eternal order based on numerical proportions.

Ok, this does sound very cool. But the reviewer has some doubts regarding this theory:

Is this what Chartres cathedral was trying to say, and if so how were these ideas imparted to the people who actually built it? Ball finds Panofsky's vision inspiring, but sees difficulties fitting it to the facts. Nine successive teams of contractors seem to have worked on the building, so continuity of design must have been imposed by someone, but there is no evidence it was anyone connected with the school of Chartres. The idea of an architect in the modern sense had not yet developed, and decisions may have been taken piecemeal by clerics or patrons or by the master builders, whoever they were. No plans survive, and quite likely none were made, as there was no tradition of architectural drawing. The builders may have carried the design in their heads like mental arithmetic.

There is evidence that bishops were spurred on in their building projects by pride and envy, and it seems possible that the brilliantly ostentatious architecture of Chartres was conceived to satisfy these passions rather than to convey universal rationality. Ball's idea that the building of Chartres began “the age of reason” is the shakiest part of his case. As he points out, the cathedral's most precious relic was the tunic that the Virgin Mary wore when giving birth to Jesus. A later acquisition was the head of Mary's mother, Anne. These rarities attracted pilgrims and wealth, but it is hard to see them as congruent with rational thought in any other respect.

But there is a Muslim connection also:

His section on how to build your own medieval cathedral, backed up by stylish diagrams, is a model of explanatory writing. It makes clear, even to the least mathematical, how the vast tonnage of masonry in a barrel vault can actually strengthen the building under it, and why a pointed gothic arch is less likely to fall down than a round one. Pointed arches were common in Islamic architecture from the 8th century, and they may have been brought to the West by Muslim workers. The superior masonry skills of Muslims have been detected in the 12th-century stonework of Winchester Cathedral. This is typical of the fascinating data that Ball unearths.

And on faith and reason:

The impulse, after finishing Ball's book, to catch the next Eurostar, and head out to Chartres from Paris, is strong. He says that if you sit in the cathedral late in the day, when the tourists have gone, you can believe that the place embodies the last moment when a reconciliation of faith and reason seemed possible. It seems likelier that it embodies a time when no reconciliation of faith and reason seemed needed, because it was assumed that reason, like faith, would lead the mind to God.

While the reviewer is somewhat right in pointing out that no reconciliation was needed between faith and reason, the philosophies of Aristotle and Averroes still loomed large and had to be brought within the Christian thought (i.e. a reconciliation of reason and faith) - and this was done by people like Thomas Aquinas and William of Ockham in the later decades of the 13th and early 14th centuries.

Read the full review here. (tip from 3quarksdaily)
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At a time when hundreds of thousands of people have died in the Burmese cyclone and the Chinese earthquake, Peter Singer questions the (supposed) goodness of God.

Do we live in a world that was created by a god who is all-powerful, all-knowing, and all good? Christians think we do. Yet a powerful reason for doubting this confronts us every day: the world contains a vast amount of pain and suffering. If God is all-knowing, he knows how much suffering there is. If he is all-powerful, he could have created a world without so much of it - and he would have done so if he were all good.

He goes through and briefly analyzes the standard list of reasons cited to rescue God in this context. Singer also recently debated conservative commentator, Danish D'Souza, and cites D'Souza's last excuse on behalf of God, and then responds to it:

Finally, D'Souza fell back, as many Christians do when pressed, on the claim that we should not expect to understand God's reasons for creating the world as it is. It is as if an ant should try to understand our decisions, so puny is our intelligence in comparison with the infinite wisdom of God. (This is the answer given, in more poetic form, in The Book of Job.) But once we abdicate our powers of reason in this way, we may as well believe anything at all.

Moreover, the assertion that our intelligence is puny in comparison with God's presupposes just the point that is under debate - that there is a god who is all-knowing, all-powerful, and all good. The evidence of our own eyes makes it more plausible to believe that the world was not created by any god at all. If, however, we insist on believing in divine creation, we are forced to admit that the God who made the world cannot be all-powerful and all good. He must be either evil or a bungler.

Read the full article here. (tip from 3quarksdaily)
Here is a (slightly) lighter look at the problem of evil.

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E-mails will never really match up to this (sigh!). Einstein's letter in which he talks clearly about religion (no abstract metaphors...) has been auctioned off for $404,000. Richard Dawkins tried to buy it, but didn't get it at the end (also hear Dawkins discuss this letter and Einstein's concept of God on BBC). Thats too bad...

A letter the physicist wrote in 1954 to the philosopher Eric Gutkind, in which he described the Bible as “pretty childish” and scoffed at the notion that the Jews could be a “chosen people,” sold for $404,000 at an auction in London. That was 25 times the presale estimate.

The Associated Press quoted Rupert Powell, the managing director of Bloomsbury Auctions, as describing the unidentified buyer as having “a passion for theoretical physics and all that that entails.” Among the unsuccessful bidders, according to The Guardian newspaper, was Oxford evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins, an outspoken atheist.

The price makes the Gutkind letter one of the best sellers among Einstein manuscripts. That $404,000 is only a little less than the $442,500 paid for the entire collection of 53 love letters between Einstein and his first wife, Mileva Maric, at an auction at Christie’s in New York in 1996. At that same auction a paper by Einstein and his best friend, Michele Besso, attempting a calculation that would later be a pivotal piece of his crowning achievement, the General Theory of Relativity, went for $398,500.

Read the full story here.
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[This is a blog and the information contained within each entry is time sensitive, meaning prices are subject to change and information due to new discovery can change as well.]
Before our next lesson on the importance of having an observation hive, I want to show you how we removed a hive from a house last Friday.
As more and more people learn that you are a beekeeper, you'll eventually be asked to remove a swarm from a tree or a hive from a house.
This is a great promotional opportunity for honey bees and a great occasion for you to educate bystanders about the important role honey bees play in our survival. And you'll probably get a front page spot in the local newspaper like we did. Front Page Paris Beacon News Article Online
Removing a hive from an existing structure requires much work. Shaking a swarm from a branch is easy compared to removing a full grown hive from a structure, having to tear out walls and remove every bee including the queen.
Last Friday, with the help of my father-in-law, Bill Henness, we removed a hive from a house. I want to share the step by step process with you so that you can tackle these removals with confidence.
First, we have the owner sign a release form giving us permission to remove the hive and for them to repair any damage.
Next, we gather up essential tools for the job. This is critical.
Having done my share of these removals, I have found that several tools are essential for me, but you may not need them all. Minimally you will need a smoker, a bee suit, gloves and tools to remove whatever is covering the bees. But, for me to get the job done, I use a bee vac, an alternate power source such as a auto inverter or a generator to run my saws and bee vac, a saws-all, a good bee suit, containers for the brood and honey not to mention demolition equipment such as crow bars, hammers, ladders etc.
Here's the entry point of hive at the corner of the house. You can click on the pictures to enlarge the photos. This is a courageous undertaking. It is not for the weak or timid. It is very tedious and time consuming because when you first start all you see is where the bees are going in. You don't know if they are going up or down or sideways. You really can't listen to the wall and determine much either because of the way sound travels through wood. So you just have to cowboy up and start tearing away either the inside or outside wall. We prefer to do it all from the outside. It makes too much of a mess from the inside. The house will smell like smoke and you'll track honey and propolis in the house too. So do it from the outside when possible.
Next, we started by removing the outside siding to expose the comb. In this picture we were fortunate enough to venture a good guess at where the hive was and you can see a new section of brood comb freshly made just below the existing section of older comb with brood intact. Notice the crowbar as Bill pries off another piece of wood siding. It's impossible to be gentle or quiet in this sort of work, so suit up well! Although the above picture makes it look easy because other than the two bees on his back, there are no bees on the comb.
That's because with the bee vacs we sell and use, we safely vacuumed them into their holding cage. Here is what it looks like before we used the vac. Trust me, without a bee vac, it is almost impossible to herd 80,000 away from their home.

With the bee vac, we can clean off all the bees and then remove the comb. It is very tedious because you just have to peel away sections at a time, carefully search for the queen while vacuuming.

Piece by piece pieces of the comb are handed down, brood comb placed in one container and honey in another. I carefully inspect for any diseases such as heavy mite infestation, American Foul Brood, Small Hive Beetle or other noticeable problems.
Like most hives the honey is store far away from the opening. I started at the bottom, now I'm about four feet from the top and finally I've reached the honey frames protected by the bees which are on the comb in the picture, soon to be vacuumed safely into their transportation cage.
In fact, this was our second cage and look at all the bees! It takes two hands to hold this package! Bill makes our bee vac with a special "secret" so that hardly no bees are killed by being vacuumed into their cage within the bee vac's outer box. This "secret" is visible in the picture, but if I told you he would have to kill me :) But I was impressed that I noticed only about a handful of dead bees several days when I inspected them in their new hive. Way to go Bill!

Here's a new bee, about to emerge from her cell and wondering what all the morning racket is all about! Workers are not helped out of their cages like drones are. Instead, they must wiggle and climb their way out all on their own and then they have to clean their own cell.
That's a lot of brood foundation. This was a pretty large colony.
Sometimes we take the brood and place it into our own frames and then place it into the hive. This is essential if you cannot be sure the queen is save with the bees.
Of course, the treat of raw honey is wonderful, and you never know how many pounds of honey you'll get from a job like this. But, not as much during early spring because the bees consumed most of it during the winter and have not yet had time to replenish their supply.
Finally, the job is done, the bees are safely caged away and the space between the studs is clear of comb and bees. My father-in-law sprays some soapy water to keep the stray bees from coming back or another swarm to decide to move in.
So, get ready beekeepers! It's up to you to help save honey bees rather than have them destroyed. Go get 'em. Just make sure you have some spare hives sitting around so that you can put these captured swarms and hives into a new home. If you don't have a spare hive, call us today and place your order, or order a bee vac before you get your first call! 217-427-2678.
Our next lesson will address the need for all beekeepers need to have an observation hive. I believe it is essential for your success and I'll tell you why, and how to keep one going.

For now, this is David & Sheri Burns thanking you for joining us today and remember, BEE-Have Yourself!

David & Sheri Burns
Long Lane Honey Bee Farms
217-427-2678
Email: david@honeybeesonline.com
WEBSITE: www.honeybeesonline.com

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Here is a discussion of web spam so you can avoid it:
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Please check out this excellent op-ed piece by Ken Miller on the ID-nonsense movie, Expelled.

"Intelligent Design," the relabeled, repackaged form of American creationism, has always had a problem. It just can't seem to produce any evidence. To scientists, the reasons for this are obvious. To conservative Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer, Intelligent Design is nothing more than a "phony theory." No data, no science, no experiments, just an attempt to sneak a narrow set of religious views into US classrooms.

Advocates of Intelligent Design needed a story to explain why the idea has been a nonstarter within the scientific community, and Ben Stein has given it to them. The story line is that Intelligent Design advocates are persecuted and suppressed. "Expelled" tells of this terrible campaign against free expression, and mocks the pretensions of the closed-minded scientific elite supposedly behind it.

After going through specific examples of false information and/or blatant lies in the movie (including the idiotic connection of Darwin with the Holocaust), Miller gets to the heart of the matter:

Why is all this nonsense a threat to science? The reason is Stein's libelous conclusion that science is simply evil. In an April 21 interview on the Trinity Broadcast Network, Stein called the Nazi murder of children "horrifying beyond words." Indeed. But what led to such horrors? Stein explained: "that's where science in my opinion, this is just an opinion, that's where science leads you. Love of God and compassion and empathy leads you to a very glorious place. Science leads you to killing people."

According to Stein, science leads you to "killing people." Not to cures and vaccines, not to a deeper understanding of nature, not to wonders like computers and cellphones, and certainly not to a better life. Nope. Science is murder.

"Expelled" is a shoddy piece of propaganda that props up the failures of Intelligent Design by playing the victim card. It deceives its audiences, slanders the scientific community, and contributes mightily to a climate of hostility to science itself. Stein is doing nothing less than helping turn a generation of American youth away from science. If we actually come to believe that science leads to murder, then we deserve to lose world leadership in science. In that sense, the word "expelled" may have a different and more tragic connotation for our country than Stein intended.

Read the full article here.
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Einstein's quotes are appropriated by both religious and non-religious in defense of their respective ideas. But it has often been hard to paint him in a black & white picture (oh...nuances...why do you have to make life so complicated?). Now, at least some of the confusion has been cleared and we clearly know his views, at least about conventional religion, towards the end of his life (he died in 1955):

Einstein penned the letter on January 3 1954 to the philosopher Eric Gutkind who had sent him a copy of his book Choose Life: The Biblical Call to Revolt. The letter went on public sale a year later and has remained in private hands ever since.

In the letter, he states: "The word god is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honourable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish. No interpretation no matter how subtle can (for me) change this."

And to be more precise, he considered religion a "childish superstition":

"For me the Jewish religion like all others is an incarnation of the most childish superstitions. And the Jewish people to whom I gladly belong and with whose mentality I have a deep affinity have no different quality for me than all other people. As far as my experience goes, they are no better than other human groups, although they are protected from the worst cancers by a lack of power. Otherwise I cannot see anything 'chosen' about them."

That still leaves some room for some "cosmic religious feeling", however one views it (check out an earlier post on Einstein's God):

In his later years he referred to a "cosmic religious feeling" that permeated and sustained his scientific work. In 1954, a year before his death, he spoke of wishing to "experience the universe as a single cosmic whole". He was also fond of using religious flourishes, in 1926 declaring that "He [God] does not throw dice" when referring to randomness thrown up by quantum theory.

His position on God has been widely misrepresented by people on both sides of the atheism/religion divide but he always resisted easy stereotyping on the subject.

And here is John Hedley Brooke on Einstein's religion:

"Like other great scientists he does not fit the boxes in which popular polemicists like to pigeonhole him," said Brooke. "It is clear for example that he had respect for the religious values enshrined within Judaic and Christian traditions ... but what he understood by religion was something far more subtle than what is usually meant by the word in popular discussion."

Despite his categorical rejection of conventional religion, Brooke said that Einstein became angry when his views were appropriated by evangelists for atheism. He was offended by their lack of humility and once wrote. "The eternal mystery of the world is its comprehensibility."

Read the full story here.
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As part of Hampshire College Lecture Series on Science & Religion, George V. Coyne from the Vatican Observatory gave a lecture on The Dance of the Fertile Universe in late March. There are many misconceptions regarding the Vatican observatory - many people have this idea that the Church is still upset with Galileo or that the purpose of the telescopes must be to search for God's hideout, or something like that. Well...check out this talk. George V. Coyne is the Director Emeritus of the Vatican Observatory and you can get his views directly here. He is an excellent speaker and he is very funny. If you don't have time to watch the whole talk, please listen to the Q&A session (about 50 minutes into the video) and you will get a very good idea of Coyne's views about science and religion - and the value he places on scientific inquiry. Here is the abstract and the video:

Abstract

The Dance of the Fertile Universe

Did we come about by chance or by necessity in the evolving universe? Did God make us? Can we conclude that there is Intelligent Design to the universe? To what extent can the natural sciences address these questions? As to chance or necessity the first thing to be said is that the problem is not formulated correctly. It is not just a question of chance or necessity because, first of all, it is both. Furthermore, there is a third element here that is very important. It is what we might call the 'fertility' of the universe. So the dance of the fertile universe is a ballet with three ballerinas: chance, necessity and fertility. What this means is that the universe is so fertile in offering the opportunity for the success of both chance and necessary processes that such a character of the universe must be included in the search for our origins in the universe. In this light I am going to try to present in broad strokes what I think is some of the best of our modern scientific understanding of the universe and then return to the questions above.

George V. Coyne, S.J. is a Jesuit Priest and an astronomer. He is Director Emeritus of the Vatican Observatory and Adjunct Professor of Astronomy at the University of Arizona. He is the author of Wayfarers in the Cosmos: The Human Quest for Meaning.


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We've had rain for the past 36 hours but I didn't even mind it. I got the laundry washed and folded (that's right, it's not put away) and caught up on my black sea of emails. I had tea parties with little love and out of the rain, we found ourselves some trains (our bookstore has a train display for little ones and Ava spent more than an hour playing with it and even then I had to prod her away).

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LobotoME gave a sneak peak of some must-see products that are soon to be released. You must check them out.

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I've decided that cup holders are to a car what storage space is to a house: they are easily overlooked when you're busy falling in love with with the ooh ahh elements but are quickly discovered when the honeymoon is over (or maybe not even started). Agree?

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A small step

Yesterday little love was frustrated because she couldn't screw a top back on the bottle (mind you, she's JUST two). Her poppy taught her "lefty loosey, righty tighty" on vacation and she figured it out on the hose within three tries. Now she's moved onto bottles, which are a little more difficult because it requires some exaction on the line up. Anyway, when she gets frustrated she does this shaking thing with her hands--sound doesn't usually accompany it because she's too busy holding her breath while she does it--so I decided that it is not too early to teach that little one to breath. So all day yesterday we breathed in through our nose and then out through our mouth. I told her that every time she started to feel frustrated, that is what she should do instead.

So today, I'm going to take my own advice.

Splurge Session

I signed up for a writing workshop with the author of The Writer Mama. It starts in August and I can't wait!

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Intelligent Design/Creation proponents often whip out a list of scientists (numbering around a 100) who doubt evolution of species via natural selection (i.e. natural selection cannot account for the complexity we see on Earth). [Of course, this prompted Project Steve - and they just registered 884th scientist named Steve that accept biological evolution]. There is a newer list of dissenters, but the overall message is the same. But who are these scientists who reject evolution? And do they really? Here is an analysis of the list. (tip from Open Parachute)


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A few months back I had posted a link to an interview with Shalom Auslander. I recently finished reading Foreskin's Lament: A Memoir, and its fantastic. Its dark humor (and yes, its very dark - but always very funny) reminded me of Catch-22. If you have some time, give it a read. In the mean time, here is a short clip from the book:


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Natural disasters happen - but at least lets not blame the victims. It appears that God was responsible for Hurricane Katrina, then punished people with the Tsunami in East Asia and expressed His displeasure by killing thousands with an earthquake in the northern areas of Pakistan. Not to be left behind, it seems that bad karma is now responsible for the cyclone that has killed 100,000 people in Myanmar (Burma):

About 80 percent of Myanmar's estimated 52 million people are Buddhist, and many there rely on the principle of karma to explain the storm, scholars say.

Specifically, many Myanmar people believe Cyclone Nargis is a karmic consequence of military rulers' brutal crackdown on Buddhist monks last fall, said Ingrid Jordt, an anthropology professor at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee who was once a Buddhist nun in Myanmar and maintains ties there.

"The immediate explanation was: This is retribution for killing monks," Jordt said. "In any cataclysm, human beings seek to make sense of something that completely destroys the continuity of life. It's an attempt to bring the world back into harmony."

Dear Karma: There must be another way to punish these rulers without drowning, say... a 100,000 people.

American Zen Buddhist and author Brad Warner said blaming Myanmar's cyclone on bad karma hues uncomfortably close to those ideas.

"To me it sounds like we're just substituting karma for God," he said.

And with so many innocent victims, karma seems a harsh and indiscriminate explanation, Warner said.

Hmm...yes. Obvious on both points. Or may be just stick with natural explanations for natural phenomena - without any wrath or karma. Didn't Voltaire lay to rest some of these issues in the 18th century? Not the full Candide, but here is Voltaire's poem, The Lisbon Earthquake, written after seeing the destruction of Lisbon caused by an earthquake in 1755:

OH WRETCHED man, earth-fated to be cursed;
Abyss of plagues, and miseries the worst!
Horrors on horrors, griefs on griefs must show,
That man's the victim of unceasing woe,
And lamentations which inspire my strain,
Prove that philosophy is false and vain.
Approach in crowds, and meditate awhile
Yon shattered walls, and view each ruined pile,
Women and children heaped up mountain high,
Limbs crushed which under ponderous marble lie;
Wretches unnumbered in the pangs of death,
Who mangled, torn, and panting for their breath,
Buried beneath their sinking roofs expire,
And end their wretched lives in torments dire.
Say, when you hear their piteous, half-formed cries,
Or from their ashes see the smoke arise,
Say, will you then eternal laws maintain,
Which God to cruelties like these constrain?
Whilst you these facts replete with horror view,
Will you maintain death to their crimes was due?

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Vacation is so good for you, but it can be oh so bad for you too.

I'll start with the bad and stick with the major (as opposed to the minor, like finding sand in places I didn't know existed for the next three months).

The Bad

Most who know me well know that I love breakfast (make the "o" extra long in love). I especially love eating breakfast out, like at one of those Formica counter-topped diners with big streaky windows and pictures of famous people who are not famous to me hanging crooked on the walls. Those places.

So when my husband asked me if I wanted to go to one of those places for breakfast this morning in honor of Mother's Day and I said "no" he studied my face like he did when we first fell in love. Not in the "you are the most perfect person in the world to me and I want to know everything there is to know about you" kind of way--but in the "I know everything about you already but you saying no to breakfast out makes me think I ought to pay a little more attention" kind of way.

It's not that deep though--he doesn't need to worry. I said no because we are ten hours back from a week long vacation that, sure, was filled with sand and sea salt, flat fast runs and fresh smells; but it was also filled with too much cheese and extra fries, a little nacho here and a little nacho there (which, adds up to lots of nachos period), and an ice cream cone (or two) on top (figuratively, of course).

Ta da, major bad number one:

When it comes to vacation. what is lost in stress can easily be gained in fat.

Applied: Just the thought of breakfast out after vacation makes me want to binge on water and muesli. (I don't really know what muesli is, but if it is how it sounds then I'm thinking grainy and earthy .)

The Good

Now for the good, which there is plenty of but it's not nearly as dramatic, so I'll keep it short:

1. I read two novels. I haven't read A novel in more than two years and I will say that even if I have to wipe out my 2008 goals to read two more, I just might do it. The two I read (and I selected them because I snagged them for $3 a piece in the overstock pile at the bookstore) included:

• Harvesting the Heart, Jodi Picoult. A good hard story that had me shaking my head in disbelief (and disgust) on one page and feeling a bit of sympathy on the next (a wee bit). I didn't "relate" to most of the main character's decisions, but that is where I disagree with many on what makes books good: I don't have to relate, most of the time don't want to relate. Give me another experience, one that I haven't had or won't ever have and make me believe that someone else has.
  

• Love Walked In, Marisa de los Santos. Okay, I picked this book up because of the price and because of the cover (I know, I know, two very shallow reasons). And it was good. I loved the tone, the style, and the tempo of this story but it had too many holes to make it into the great category (which, so far, is owned by Mark Haddon's Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time). Again, it gave me some experiences I've never had and most likely never will, but I wasn't satisfied with the character's preparedness for and response to those experiences (boy does that sound risk management-y).
  

Good number one: Vacation should be renamed Relax.

Applied: Relaxation--it's the purpose, it's the point, it's the pleasure. Reading is a pleasure and I'd forgotten just how much. Vacation helped me to remember and I'm going to try hard not to forget.

2. Little one had a smile on her face from the minute she woke up in the morning until the minute she fell to sleep (she might have even been smiling then, but it was dark and I couldn't see). I get peaceful at the ocean, but always peaceful and happy little one became even more so, if you can imagine it. I can't attribute who she is to anything or anyone in particular, but I do know that sunshine, Mother Nature's rhythm, and family at every turn enhanced the rays of her light.

Husband felt it too. He doesn't require much, never has. But when we were sitting at the beach he'd turn his head and look at me (I think he was looking at me, he has these fancy sunglasses that make it difficult to tell) and just smile and not say a word and then look back out at the water again, I knew he felt that everything he has is just the right amount. Not too much, not too little, just enough. That is satisfying.

Good number two:

Watching those you love love the moment they're in.

Applied: Whether on the beach or the backyard, we have a lot to learn from people who know how to love the moment they are in. It's just that vacation gives us that opportunity to see how life can be everyday when you put first the big things, like loving and being loved.

3. Vacation has meant the same place for the past 15 (or is it 16 years). It's something my parents started for us as kids and that we've all kept up as adults. Tradition. And while there are all kinds of new and exciting places to explore, sometimes all you want, all you need, is the one place that is familiar.

Good number three:

Protected time and space to spend with those you love.

Applied: We've been going on vacation to the same place (different houses though) for more than 15 years and we keep going back. We look forward to it together, we experience it together, we remember it together, and we miss it together.

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A Small Step

Making more time to read

Splurge Sunday

I do feel like a hot drink from the coffee shop, but not coffee. So I'm going to get myself a tall decaf skim extra hot mocha. Six words seems like five too many where a drink is concerned, doesn't it?

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There have always been questions about the finances of the organization run by Adnan Oktar, known usually by his pen-name Harun Yahya. Last year he made headlines by sending his 800 page Atlas of Creation, free of cost, first to French public schools and then to biology and anthropology departments across the US. The science (if you call it science), of course, is lifted from the US creationists, but the printing quality is fantastic (I recently acquired a copy from an anthropologist at UMass). Hmm...how does his organization finance itself? Well, the news is that Adnan Oktar has now been sentenced to 3-years in prison "for creating an illegal organization for personal gain" (tip from Secular Outpost).

Oktar had been tried with 17 other defendants in an Istanbul court. The verdict and sentence came after a previous trial that began in 2000 after Oktar, along with 50 members of his foundation, was arrested in 1999.

In that court case, Oktar had been charged with using threats for personal benefit and creating an organization with the intent to commit a crime. The charges were dropped but another court picked them up resulting in the latest case.

It is not clear how it will impact his movement. He is certainly the most prominent creationist in the Muslim world. His books (probably written by a pool of authors) are widely available in different languages and his organization has made "science" documentaries defending his brand of creationism that run frequently in Muslim countries (in fact, daily on one of the channels in Pakistan). I hope his finances gets disclosed but there is also a potential of the Turkish government turning him into a martyr. Stay tuned.
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13 Tips for creating a successful new online productFrom the article: "There is much talk these days about building a product for a niche and making a lifestyle business out of it. Much of the online literature about starting up is focused on how to create some fantastic product which will gather millions of visitors and make you a billionaire, and the “new wave”, so to speak, proposes that
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Here is a good example of science-religion cooperation: Saving "Gods's creation" unites scientist, evangelical leader:

A Nobel laureate scientist and a leader of the evangelical Christian movement walk into a restaurant.

It sounds like the setup for a joke, a scenario that is screaming for a punch line that plays off the seemingly endless disagreements between faith and science.

But this is a true story, and Dr. Eric Chivian and the Rev. Richard Cizik have come up with a zinger no one could expect. They went to lunch together to agree on something - the need to curb negative human impact on the Earth. And the partnership they formed that afternoon in 2005 has led this odd couple of the environmental movement to be named, today, to Time Magazine's list of the 100 most influential people in the world.

"I must admit I approached that meeting with some anxiety," said Chivian (pronounced chih-vee-an), director of the Center for Health and the Global Environment at Harvard Medical School, "I'm involved in evolutionary biology. I support stem cell research. I have gay friends who are married. I felt I had positions that would be at odds with his."

Cizik (pronounced sigh-zik), vice president for governmental affairs for the 45,000-church National Association of Evangelicals in Washington, D.C,, had similar reservations. But, as they point out, they were not there to discuss their differences. What brought them together is what Chivian calls "a deep, fundamental commitment to life on earth."

Together, they formed the Scientists and Evangelicals Initiative, which aims to unite the two communities to help bring an environmental message into the large and powerful evangelical movement.

But evolution can still be a problem for evangelicals. Here is an example where many reject science altogether:

The problem, according to Cizik, is that many in the evangelical community have built a barrier between themselves and the scientific community because of the way they have been treated for their belief in creation over evolution. As a consequence, many have made what Cizik calls the illogical decision to turn a deaf ear to what science has to say about climate change.

How did they make this thing work without a conflict:

On the whole, both Chivian and Cizik said their scientist-evangelical partnership has gone smoother than either anticipated. Before bringing both sides into the same room, Chivian consulted with conflict resolution specialists; they never needed them. The scientists have agreed to refer to the natural world as the creation, and evangelicals have painted the broader issue under the umbrella term "creation care." (Chivian, personally, thinks "Armageddon in slow motion" is a more apt description.)

So is there a problem for scientists to call the natural world as "the creation"? Hmm...its a close call (how about - "the creation" [of the Earth from natural processes]?). Environment is a serious issue right now - and if this is what it takes to bring a large segment of the population on board, then perhaps its ok. Of course, there should not be any compromise on evolution or on mentioning the age of the Earth in billions of years. Carl Sagan in the late 80s and in the 90s reached a similar conclusion and considered environmentalism to be an excellent place for science & religion cooperation. The Scientists and Evangelicals Initiative is one example of how this cooperation may look like.

Read the full article here.
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50 More Excellent Blog DesignsFrom the article: "Designing blogs is easy. Designing blogs in a unique way is hard. Whatever blog engine you are using, there are literally thousands of templates available which you can apply directly, without any significant code modifications. That’s efficient, but it’s not creative, because using a default blog-template you risk to end up with some wide-spread
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A nice short segment on the evolution of the eye from the National Center for Science Education. This is part of Expelled Exposed. (tip from Greg Laden's blog)



and while at it, check out this news about a squid with eyes the size of a soccer ball (hmm...fried calamari eyes...)
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Without the queen the hive will perish, and perish fast! New beekeepers fail to realize how crucial it is to have a healthy queen, and how fast a hive will die when the queen perishes. Sure, the colony will try to raise another queen, but to do that several factors have to work perfectly. Needless to say, we do not live in a perfect world and the colony does not always get the job done in time and remain queenless and perish--and fast!
Because of this, queens are in short supply and in extreme high demand.There are plenty of apiaries that sell queens, but usually you have to wait two weeks or more before they can ship. Here's the problem: Queens that die now, say in May, are hard to find replacement for until June. A hive will be too far gone if a they have to wait more than two weeks for a queen.
You must have a queen supplier's number in your speed dial! You must have a good source for queens or else you could lose your hive fast. Think about this for a moment. We pay as much as $100 for a package of bees, but if we lose the queen, we can lose the entire colony and the entire cost of the package. Queens sell for between $10 to $30 which is a small investment to keep the hive alive and growing.
For the most part, queens stay out of trouble and avoid calamity. But, not always. As she ages, she can be ousted by the bees due to her poor performance in laying eggs. Not to mention our inspections pose the greatest threat to her. Moving frames, smashing lids down, prying hive bodies apart and smashing them together can lead to the queen being killed. I accidentally smashed and killed a queen Sunday. I know to watch carefully, but this time I never saw where she was and smashed her dead. It happens. We must be more careful not to kill the queen when working our hives.
I've never been too keen on marking queens. For one, it is costly and time consuming. And since there are no Africanized hives in Illinois, I'm not worried about my queens being superceded by Africanized queens. Without marked queens, you can never tell if your original queen has been replaced.
But I'm changing my mind about marking queens. A marked queen is beneficial because it aids the beekeeper in identifying the queen more quickly, thus knowing where the queen is so as not to accidentally kill her. It also allows us to keep detailed records on a specific queen, particularly her age and performance.
Also, when making splits, the queen can get moved around, so by having her marked and numbered you'll always know the history of that particular queen no matter where you place her.
In the past I would occasionally mark certain queens by picking them up and holding them by their legs and mark their thorax. Even whiteout works fine. Testers model paint works better but takes a few minutes longer to allow it to dry.
But I decided that I needed a better way to track not only my queens, but specific bees in my observation hive. I'm building this awesome and huge observation hive that holds 8 deep frames. In it I hope to study various habits of these marked bees. So, I've decided to number all my queens and specific bees for my observation hive. Everyone should have an observation hive. Really, it is a blast!! I've studied the whole observation matter for some time now, and at first shied away from it because it can be hard to operate. However, after attempting to overcome some common problems, it really is a great research and educational tool for the beekeeper. Not to mention it is a huge attention getter! I'll do my next lesson on the "how to" of an observation hive.
Also, I've number a great number of my bees, and I can actually watch their behavior and even find number 15 out on a flower.
Let me show you how you too can number/color code your queens yourself. It is very easy and you'll feel like a professional entomologist when you're done.
First, you must know that there is an International Color Code system for marking queens. Do not just mark your queens any ole color. You'll forget what year you started with them.  Here's how the color code works:

So, this year, queens should be marked in red. The span between years is 5 years. It would be next to impossible for the queen to live that long, so you would not have to wonder if the red dot meant 2008 or 2013.
So how in the world can you mark a queen. We sell the complete kit for marking your queens or bees too, but let me walk you through step by step.

Okay, first open up your hive and locate your queen. Here's mine. I found her fast because it was a newly install package, and not a full hive.
Next I gently chase her down and pick her up by her wings or thorax, the middle section just behind her head.
In the field, I have my marking system in hand, which is a plastic tube with a removable plunger in one end, and a screened opening in the other. I place her in there while holding everything over the hive, incase she falls off, she's back in her hive and not in the grass somewhere.
Next, I slowly push up the plunger being careful not to snag a leg or wing. I wait until the queen stands on the plunger, then I slide her up to the screen. When she is close to the top, I slow down and carefully slide the plunger until the top of her thorax pokes up through the screen. It may seem like you are smashing her, but you don't want to push any harder than just to hold her thorax in a screen square as in this picture. You can click on the picture for a larger view.
Next, I punch out one of the numbers from the numbering kit that comes with this complete marking kit. For this queen, I've chosen number 4 and of course in keeping with the International Color Coding system, I've chosen the color red. This kit also comes with non-toxic glue. I put a little glue on the back side of the number, and carefully place it on her thorax. I press down gently to give it a good seat. I hold her in this position for a minute or two allowing the glue to dry. I have big hands so I wear a jeweler's magnifying glass for better placement and control. We sell these as well if you need one. At 48, my close up eyesight is not what it used to be :)

Now, she is numbered and ready to be returned to her hive. I make sure she is over the hive, very close down to a frame before pulling out the plunger. Some times she does not immediately drop out so I gently shake her out on to the frames.
For your sake, I pulled out the frame to show you how proud she is of her new number and notice how impressed all the other bees are as they stare and marvel over her new red number four.
Also, now I can keep a notebook and make any kind of notations on queen number 4 that I want. If she is ever replaced, I'll know it as well, because her replacement will not wear the number 4.
Marking worker bees is a bit harder because this system is made for a larger queen and the smaller workers squeeze through the top screen. But, with a little patience I was able to pin them at just the right moment and number them.
You don't have to use numbers if you don't want to mess with the glue and numbering system. We sell a paint pen, so that when you pin her thorax up through the screen, you can put on a touch of paint.
In summary, a marked queen is not essential. However, there are benefits that make it worth the while as you have discovered in this lesson. The marking systems are affordable and easy to use.

To order the queen marking kit, just give us a call at: 217-427-2678.
Thanks for joining me for another beekeeping lesson.
Remember to BEE-Have yourself!
David & Sheri Burns
Long Lane Honey Bee Farms
217-427-2678
www.honeybeesonline.com
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Couple of months back the Templeton Foundation had asked several scientists and scholars, Does the universe have a purpose? Dawkins was not included in the group. However, here he is answering a question about purpose of the universe (with Lawrence Krauss), and I think his answer gets to the heart of the matter and makes a lot of sense.

The above clip is from a dialogue between Lawrence Krauss and Richard Dawkins (an extension of an online conversation: Should science speak to faith?) and you can see the whole session here.

However, here is another clip where they are talking about this belief, usually promoted by creationists, that in order to accept evolution one has to be an atheist or that evolution necessitates a disbelief in God.

But here Dawkins not just makes the same claim but he also adds that "[his] goal is to kill religion". Hmm...where is the science PR firm when we really need it. Yes, he clarifies mildly later that you don't have to be an atheist to believe in evolution - but I'm not sure if he really believes that. I actually like Dawkins (and his consciousness awareness regarding atheism), but he routinely goes too far in linking science/evolution to atheism. This bit about directing messages different audiences is fine - Krauss to people who are religious or those who are taking a more nuanced view of religion, and Dawkins to atheists only - but Dawkins is the most prominent contemporary scientist and his audience does not include just atheists. So there is a mismatch here. He is considered as the spokesperson for science and his message is heard far beyond the core group he is referring to here. The consciousness raising is great, but how many people get turned off to science, and evolution, in particular, after he gives them an option between evolution and atheism? Part of the problem is that Dawkins is defining religion only in terms of belief in the supernatural (and since there is no evidence for it, he wants it to go). But for most people, religion serves lot more functions - provide social structure, suggests ways of living, address moral questions, etc. All of these can come from alternative systems - but, at present, for 85% of the US population they don't. So we have to realize that when Dawkins talk about the destruction of religion, it is not interpreted simply as letting go of the supernatural, but also the associated social structure. For most, despite the evidence, if it comes down to evolution or religion, the choice is quite straight forward - and this is the danger in Dawkins' approach.
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[NOTE: If you receive this blog as an email, your email program security may not allow you to view the video or pictures. Be sure and go to our blog to access all pictures or set your email program to allow pictures and images from our blog. Also, please note that in reading older blogs, they are time sensitive especially with pricing. Thanks!]









Below is a video of us getting bees off the truck that arrived in Illinois from Florida. The bees were off loaded from the truck, seen at the end of the video and placed on this trailer that we used to carry them to our farm.







One of our customers has even started his own blog. Charles Holmes got some hives from us and some packaged bees and set them all up Friday. Check out his blog: http://tuffstreetapiary.blogspot.com/
Here I am giving a demonstration to customers, showing them how to locate the queen. Plan to join us on our farm in October for our beekeeping class.
NOW FOR TODAY'S LESSON...



Let's face it. Most of us keep bees in order to gather the honey! It's a blast. Very few things excite me as much as seeing honey flow out of my extractor. It has such a wonderful smell and color. All the hard work, stings and expenses all seem worth it when the honey starts flowing.
I realize that some keep bees for reasons other than the honey. But for those of us who must harvest honey, I want to share the details of how to do it. I'll give a quick outline, then I'll elaborate on each topic in more detail.
1). Make sure it is capped (ripe).
2). Harvest for individual types of honey.
3). How to rob honey from your hive and live to tell about it.
4). What to do with combs full of honey.
5). Various harvesting methods.
6). How much should honey be filtered?
7). Should honey be heated?
8). A clean honey room and processing procedure.
9). Getting rid of air bubbles.
10). Bottling honey.
MAKE SURE IT IS CAPPED (RIPE)Honey bees ripen nectar by removing the moisture and when the moisture level is to their satisfaction, they seal it off with wax, like putting a lid on a jar. This prevents the honey from drawing any additional moisture.
You must be patient and wait for the bees to cap the honey comb before you remove it. If you remove the super of honey prior to it being sealed your moisture level in the honey will be too high and could cause the honey to ferment which will cause your customers to complain and want their money back. So do not remove the honey combs until all frames are completely capped.
Here's a picture of one of my sons using a hot knife to cut off the cappings. We sell these for around $100. Notice what the sealed area looks like. The capped area is white because the newly made wax is a bright color at first. As it ages through the years it becomes darker.






Here's a photo of one of my nicely sealed frames and it looks like this bee had just woken up and had not done her hair yet, so she was too embarrassed for a photo and hid between the comb and frame.



You can click on all photos for a full size image.
If you pull out the frames prior to the caps being completely sealed, you can leave the frames in a room with a dehumidifier for a day or two and it will draw out moisture.

HARVEST FOR DIFFERENT TYPES OF HONEY
Honey from specific flowers does have a different taste. I would not begin to describe the difference but believe me it is different. Here's how to harvest specific honey. Essentially you must remove your honey supers after that particular flower stops giving nectar, and place new supers on before the bees change to a different source. This way, the honey will not be mixed from different sources. Of course, some mixing may happen, but you'll get more of the type that had the largest nectar flow.
HOW DO YOU ROB HONEY FROM THE HIVE AND LIVE TO TELL ABOUT IT?
Bees aren't going to freely hand over their honey to you. You have to figure out some way to remove the stored honey from the hive by first removing the bees from the honey supers.
What works best is to remove the bees from the honey super so that you can carry the entire super full of frames of honey to your honey room. There are several common practices: Leaf blower or an official bee blower, a fume product such as Fischer's Bee Quick, a bee escape or a feather. Though there are many other methods, these are the common practices.
A blower works well and many beekeepers do use leaf blowers to blow the bees out from between the frames of a super. I've found that bees are agitated by the engine on a leaf blower. They feel the vibration of the engine and it bothers them. So I do not use the blower method. Others use a fume product which is a chemical that the bees do not like. To use it, you pour some of the liquid fume on a fume board and place it on top of the super you want to remove. The bees run out of the super to get away from the bad smell and the super is empty within 5 minutes of bees. Many love this easy method. I'm skeptical of the product being absorbed into the wax or honey and having an overall effect on the hive. However, many people use this with no signs of ill effect.
Another method has been common for many, many years. It is a method that I started out using. Simply pick up each full frame of honey and either shake or brush the bees off. This works pretty good, however, bees do not like to be brushed off and I always get stung alot whenever I use a brush. Old time beekeepers used a large feather and many still do. They brush off the bees with a feather.
Finally, many people use a bee escape. The bee escape is a plastic device invented by Mr. Porter in 1891 and commonly referred to as the porter escape. It fits into the oval shaped hole in the inner cover, and then the inner cover is placed below the super you want to empty. As the bees depart the super through the escape, they can get out, but they cannot get back in. This works real well for me most of the time but not always. We do sell a lot of these.
What I have found works great for me is a modification of the leaf blower. I blow my bees gently out of the super with compressed air.
We are able to drive our truck near the hives, and in the back of the truck are two important items. A generator and a 15 gallon air compressor. The air compressor is powered by the gas generator. We then stand a honey super on edge and with the air compressor we gently spray off all the bees toward the front of their hive. They simply fly back into their hive. Since we have a long air hose, the noise of the generator and air compressor are kept a considerable distance away. The bees just think it's a windy day. Then, we place the bee free honey supers in the truck and drive them back to our honey room.
HOW MUCH SHOULD YOU FILTER YOUR HONEY?
Once in the honey room, the individual frames are loaded into our automatic cowen uncapper which uncaps the sealed combs. But, most beekeepers with smaller operations use what is called a hot knife. We sell these and they work great at slicing off the caps on each cell so that the honey can be extracted. Some people who do not wish to pay $100 for the knife simply scratch open the comb with a kitchen fork.
Once the comb is uncapped, now the honey must be extracted. In the simplest way, a frame can be left upside down to drip out over night. It would need to be a warm room, atleast 80 degrees. Then the comb would have to be reversed and the same done to the other side. If you cannot afford to purchase an extractor, this may be your best option. You can squeeze or crush out the honey from the comb, but this destroys precious drawn comb that you could reuse and it mixes in too much wax with the honey.
Once uncapped, we then, placed the frames into our 33 frame extractor which spins at a high rate of speed, slinging the honey out of the comb. You can purchase a very simple plastic extractor for just over $100 but a more common extractor is a stainless steel hand crank 2 frame extractor for just over $300. This is our best seller. If you can afford a little more, then a 4 frame extractor does 4 frames at a time. It runs just under $400.
Once the honey is slung out it collects in the bottom of your extractor which has a value on the bottom. At this point, you can bottle it, although you'll have pieces of wax, bee legs and wings and other things that came off your frames. So most beekeepers filter their honey.
We are against heating honey. Honey does not need to be heated or pasteurized. It is a pure and natural product and the only food that never spoils. Heating honey destroys precious elements within honey. It does not need refrigerated and can be kept at room temperature forever without spoiling.
We filter our honey through micron filters, usually a 600 or 400 micron filter. We sell a lot of these filters that fit down over a 5 gallon bucket. These filters are $10 and can be washed and reused over and over again. The honey flows very fast through these filters and important elements of the honey are allowed to stay within the honey but foreign particles are filtered out.
We like our honey to be free of air bubbles. So we allow our honey to sit after it has been filtered. It sits for at least one week. Then we bottle it. We have a 500 gallon settling tank which allows all air bubbles to float up to the top. Then we drain from the pure honey at the bottom of the tank. You can do the same in a 5 gallon bucket with a valve on the bottom which we sell too.
Most honey will become hard, known as crystallizing. This is normal and does not mean the honey is bad. It means it simply crystallized. This can be remedied simply by leaving a jar in warm water for a while.
A CLEAN HONEY ROOM
Keep a clean honey room. One drop of honey on the floor soon gets tracked all over the place. It is a messy job, but fortunately honey cleans up very nicely with water. So, after you are finished harvesting your honey, clean all your equipment up.
When processing honey, since it is a natural product and all you are doing is bottling it, there are very little guidelines. If you giving away your honey or selling it, here are some common practices you should follow.
Wear a hairnet, clean clothes and keep your hands clean and properly wash all equipment including bottles. If you are selling honey, your processing room should not be in your house. The room should be kept very clean, lights covered and walls and floors washable.
If you are just keeping the honey for yourself, you should still practice cleanliness and you can use your own kitchen.
BOTTLING HONEYBottles are expensive. We use a combination of glass and plastic bottles. Many of our customers enjoy the small well known teddy bear bottles. Bottles must be cleaned well and dry, free of any foreign objects and dust. Most of our bottles come with lids that have the safety seal within the lid. So once we secure the lid, the safety seal is activated and the customer is the only one who breaks that seal.
A common bottle for us to sell is the quart jar. Most of our customers buy the one quart size and the traditional canning jar with canning lid is very cost effective. Some customers return their jar when finished.
There you go! I hope this lesson has been helpful and I hope within the next few weeks, you'll be harvesting the spring honey crop!
We'd like to thank all of our fantastic customers for how nice and encouraging you have been to the Burns family here at Long Lane Honey Bee Farms! We love receiving your photos and video of your hive operation. And why not consider starting your own blog too! It's really simply and free at http://www.blogspot.com/
For all your honey harvesting needs, such as filters, extractors, buckets, and supers give us a call. 217-427-2678!!
Sheri and I are busy building a store on our farm now, where we will also hold our fall and spring beekeeping classes. We are building a very large observation hive as well for study and demonstration.
See you next time and remember to BEE-have yourself!

David & Sheri Burns
Long Lane Honey Bee Farms
217-427-2678
EMAIL US AT: david@honeybeesonline.com

Visit our website at:
http://www.honeybeesonline.com/
Fax: 217-427-2678
We are a family business manufacturing our own hives and selling every thing you need to keep bees.
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Here is a contentious Point of Inquiry interview with Chris Hedges. While Hedges goes a bit too far in labeling the New Atheists as "fundamentalists", his overall criticism is quite interesting (and perhaps valid) - especially on the caricatured depictions of Muslims by the New Atheists (mostly Sam Harris). In response to the question about the promotion of secularism in the Muslim world, it was good to see him bring up "which Muslim country" - Bosnia, Turkey, Morocco? Or Saudi Arabia, Sudan? The interviewer, DJ Grothe, is usually very good - but here he sounds a bit defensive and he kept on making huge generalizations (such as the attitude of the "left" towards Islamic fundamentalism or "Muslim" reaction to the West). On the other hand, the skepticism of Hedges towards reason to potentially improve our lives is also discomforting. Do check out the interview as it raises good questions and, at the same time, I'm sure you'll find things in here to vehemently disagree (or angry) with.

Here is Chris Hedges bio:

Chris Hedges is a journalist and author who focuses on American and Middle Eastern politics and society. He is currently a senior fellow at The Nation Institute in New York City and a Lecturer in the Council of the Humanities and the Anschutz Distinguished Fellow at Princeton University. He spent nearly two decades as a foreign correspondent in Central America, the Middle East, Africa and the Balkans. He has reported from more than fifty countries, and has worked for The Christian Science Monitor, National Public Radio, The Dallas Morning News and The New York Times, where he spent fifteen years. He is the author of What Every Person Should Know About War and American Fascists. His newest book is I Don't Believe in Atheists.

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This may be ok on the Moon, but definitely not here on Earth. Check out this absolutely insane custom of dropping babies from a 15-meter tower - for luck and health!! (tip from Nizam Arain)


Of course the organizers are going to claim that no accidents have taken place. But it is simply too hard to believe that there have been no accidents (even fractures? concussions?) over hundreds of years of this idiocy. This is certainly a case of bad memes taking over - and the result is this ritual gone wild.
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This article from Time magazine:Google's Art of War — With FacebookContains this paragraph: "Facebook rocked Google's world last summer when it opened up its network to software developers and invited them to launch tiny applications there. The apps (also known elsewhere as widgets and gadgets) were fun and allowed people to communicate better or just horse around. Because there was more to do
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While controversies regarding evolution/ID make a bigger splash, here is a refreshing story about Francisco Ayala - an evolutionary biologist/geneticist and a former Dominican priest (and while we are at it, he is also on the boards of Opera Pacific and the Pacific Symphony and owns vineyards in California! Hey forget about the idiotic evolution/ID controversies, he would be an interesting person to talk to about pretty much any thing). He makes it clear that evolution does not make belief in God impossible (also see his book, Darwin's Gift: to Science and Religion). Again this underscores the fact that evolutionary biologists have a spectrum of beliefs - and all these views should be respected. In fact Ayala, goes a step further and believes that the evolutionary theory can actually provide a solution to the pesky problem of evil:

Dr. Ayala, a former Dominican priest, said he told his audiences not just that evolution is a well-corroborated scientific theory, but also that belief in evolution does not rule out belief in God. In fact, he said, evolution “is more consistent with belief in a personal god than intelligent design. If God has designed organisms, he has a lot to account for.”

Consider, he said, that at least 20 percent of pregnancies are known to end in spontaneous abortion. If that results from divinely inspired anatomy, Dr. Ayala said, “God is the greatest abortionist of them all.”

Or consider, he said, the “sadism” in parasites that live by devouring their hosts, or the mating habits of insects like female midges, tiny flies that fertilize their eggs by consuming their mates’ genitals, along with all their other parts.

For the midges, Dr. Ayala said, “it makes evolutionary sense. If you are a male and you have mated, the best thing you can do for your genes is to be eaten.” But if God or some other intelligent agent made things this way on purpose, he said, “then he is a sadist, he certainly does odd things and he is a lousy engineer.”

That is also the message of his latest book, “Darwin’s Gift to Science and Religion” (Joseph Henry Press, 2007). In it, he writes that as a theology student in Spain he had been taught that evolution “provided the ‘missing link’ in the explanation of evil in the world” — a defense of God’s goodness and omnipotence, despite the existence of evil.

“As floods and drought were a necessary consequence of the fabric of the physical world, predators and parasites, dysfunctions and diseases were a consequence of the evolution of life,” he writes. “They were not a result of a deficient or malevolent design.”

Again, one doesn't have to subscribe to his theistic views, but it is interesting to see him applying evolutionary ideas to religious problems. But he does see a problem when evolution gets linked to atheism:

He said he was saddened when he saw the embrace of evolution identified with, as he put it, “explicit atheism,” as in the books of the evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins or other writers on science and faith.

Neither the existence nor nonexistence of God is susceptible to scientific proof, Dr. Ayala said, and equating science with the abandonment of religion “fits the prejudices” of advocates of intelligent design and other creationist ideas.

Read the full article here.
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