Many Baha’is hold this quote predicts the creation of the Internet. A mechanism of world inter-communication will be devised, embracing the whole planet, freed from national hindrances and restrictions, and functioning with marvelous swiftness and perfect regularity. — Shoghi Effendi, The World Order of Baha’u’llah, p. 203 Perhaps what we know as the Internet is…
This is America! Equality! Liberty! Democracy! Arizona has a bill S.B. 1108 to legislate the forbidding of student groups who are against the principles of America. Specifically democracy, capitalism, pluralism, and religious tolerance must be upheld by all. A founding principle of the United States was dissent. Disagreeing with King George III, British Parliament, and…
The previous post regarding the FBI checking on whether a photographer was Middle Eastern reminded me…. The Civil Rights Movement occurred before I was born. However, my parents were afflicted by blatantly racist laws which continued for decades. State anti-miscegenation law [1] at the time prohibited White females from marrying outside of their race. Since…
An Even Better Reason to Celebrate has a nice longer version of this quote from a NYT OpEd piece on tomorrow being the bicentennial for the ablution of slave trade to the United States. WE Americans live in a society awash in historical celebrations. The last few years have witnessed commemorations of the bicentennial of…
Is the Internet really a bad invention? According to Doris Lessing, yes. We are in a fragmenting culture, where our certainties of even a few decades ago are questioned and where it is common for young men and women, who have had years of education, to know nothing of the world, to have read nothing,…
The xenophobes around us have cause to celebrate. We are making it difficult for aliens to find us. As Frank Drake explains for in an article, our improvements in transmissions means less bleeds out into space. The parallel he makes is alien civilizations may only have a 60 year blip where they pushed massive amounts…
So, 60 Minutes has broadcast a report on the tracing of DNA. Leslie made a statement, “The are just two bits of DNA which remain pure. The Y chromosome which passes directly from father to son. And something called mitochondrial DNA which passes unchanged from mother to child.” Logically speaking, if the mDNA really passes…