http://www.theguardian.com/news/2014/oct...-john-gray

EXCERPT: [...] A radically dualistic view of the world, in which good and evil are separate forces that have coexisted since the beginning of time, was held by the ancient Zoroastrians and Manicheans. These religions did not face the problem with which Christian apologists have struggled so painfully and for so long – how to reconcile the existence of an all-powerful and wholly good God with the fact of evil in the world. The worldview of George W Bush and Tony Blair is commonly described as Manichean, but this is unfair to the ancient religion. Mani, the third-century prophet who founded the faith, appears to have believed the outcome of the struggle was uncertain, whereas for Bush and Blair there could never be any doubt as to the ultimate triumph of good. In refusing to accept the permanency of evil they are no different from most western leaders.

[...] In its official forms, secular liberalism rejects the idea of evil. Many liberals would like to see the idea of evil replaced by a discourse of harm: we should talk instead about how people do damage to each other and themselves. But this view poses a problem of evil remarkably similar to that which has troubled Christian believers. If every human being is born a liberal – as these latter-day disciples of Pelagius appear to believe – why have so many, seemingly of their own free will, given their lives to regimes and movements that are essentially repressive, cruel and violent? Why do human beings knowingly harm others and themselves? Unable to account for these facts, liberals have resorted to a language of dark and evil forces much like that of dualistic religions....

Book review: ‘The Brewer’s Tale,’ a history of beer, by William Bostwick

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/b...story.html

EXCERPT: ...In keeping with the maker culture we live in today, Bostwick wisely structures “The Brewer’s Tale” around the makers, starting with the Babylonians, then moving on to shamans, monks, farmers, patriots, industrialists and so on. In every chapter he describes the ancient methods once used to brew beer and the reasons behind them — the beer-spoiling length of a voyage to India, say, or an effort to ward off the plague — and then he attempts a modern re-creation of an old recipe. Bostwick admits to being a careless home brewer, keeping no records and throwing in handfuls of strange but historically accurate ingredients....

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/23...56896.html

EXCERPT: We're living longer than ever: The average American born in 2013 will be alive nearly four years longer than someone born 20 years ago. But until recently, it wasn't clear if the years we've added to our lives were good-quality years.

A recent study from the University of Massachusetts Medical School starts to answer that question. Researchers found that today, 25 year olds can expect to live "2.4 more years of a healthy life" and 65 year olds can look forward to 1.7 extra healthy years than people who lived two decades back.

However, those extra years are far from guaranteed. Childhood obesity and its associated diseases threaten to reverse the upward tick of American life expectancy, which is currently calculated by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to be just shy of 79 years.

Much of making it to your 100th birthday is beyond your control, as longevity is partly dictated by genetics and the medical history and health habits of your parents and grandparents. But there are also a handful (okay, a lot) of lifespan-enhancing practices that you can adopt today -- like taking your allotted vacation days, eating more leafy greens and getting enough sleep.

We scoured the research and sought advice from centenarians themselves. And while not all of these life-expanders are doable for everyone ("Be born in Japan," for example!), there is so much you can do to improve your odds of a long and healthful old age.

Find out what you're already doing right and where you can still improve in our list of 100 ways to live to 100....

Only in France! Say la vee!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DlcHLTenioA

I've always felt that being buried alive would be the worst. But now I'm informed it only takes 5.5 hours to die of suffocation in a buried coffin. That's not too bad if you could just calm down. Eventually you'd just go unconscious from lack of oxygen.

Eaten alive by crocodiles sounds pretty rough, especially when they start doing that body roll where they twist off your limbs as you scream in agony. Pain factor 8. Horror factor 10!

Here's some you may not have considered:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u51LgDbf9a8

http://plus.maths.org/content/do-infinit...t-nature-0

EXCERPT: What would you see if you came to the edge of the Universe? It's hard to imagine so it's tempting to conclude that the Universe doesn't have an edge and therefore that it must be infinite. That's not a necessary conclusion however. There are things that are finite in extent but still don't have an edge, the prime example being the surface of a sphere. It's got a finite area but when you walk around on it you'll never fall over an edge. The question of whether the Universe is finite or infinite is one that still hasn't been answered, and there are mathematical models that allow for both possibilities. More generally, the question of whether any infinite quantities can arise in the Universe is a deep one.

[...] "What people understood early on was that the inflationary theory gives a whole bunch of suggestive predictions, many of which have come true and many of which will be tested in upcoming experiments. That gives us a lot of confidence in inflation, but it also has very interesting side effects." [...] One of these side effects is that inflation might have gone on at different rates in different regions of the Universe. In some region, the rapid doubling in size will have stopped after a while, resulting in a region of observable Universe like ours. In other regions though, because of spatial variations in the make up of the universe, inflation might go on forever. "You have an infinite spacetime not because you've postulated spacetime is infinite, but because you thought of a process that naturally leads to an infinite spacetime," says Aguirre. "I think that's a very interesting difference, because you can test that process in other ways." If your tests make you believe that this is what actually happened, then the infinity of spacetime pops out as a result of a consistent theory.

Intriguingly, theory also suggests that the extent of space and time depend on your view point. With his general theory of relativity Einstein told us that time and space are inextricably linked, hence the term spacetime. If you want to say something about space or time separately, you need to chop that spacetime up mathematically. "It turns out that even questions like 'Is space finite or infinite?' can depend on how you define space and time separately," explains Aguirre. "There is spacetime, that's what Einstein teaches us; we can choose to cut it into space and time separately in many different ways. They're all fundamentally valid, they'll all give the same results to any particular experiment we think of, but they have different intellectual implications and some are much more convenient for certain purposes than others."

"If you've got an infinite spacetime, there will often be certain ways that you can cut it up so that it looks like the Universe is, say, finite and expanding. [It may be expanding] forever and getting infinitely big, but at any time it's finite. At the same time, the very same spacetime can be chopped up in such a way that at any time it's spatially infinite, so it's an infinite, expanding Universe." In an inflationary Universe it turns out that once the inflation stops there is a most natural way of chopping it up; a way in which the Universe is close to homogeneous. And this gives a Universe that is spatially infinite. "Inflation very naturally gives rise to homogeneous infinite universes that would evolve into something like what we see. I think it's really neat that we can get suggestive evidence for such a rich, and multifaceted, and interesting picture [in which] the Universe is infinite." [...]

http://plus.maths.org/content/coincidenc...and-chance

EXCERPT: Football fans pay attention! How would you like to make hundreds, maybe even thousands, of pounds each week by betting on your favourite team, guaranteed to get the result right every time? Well, now you can. I have devised a computer program, based on complex statistical algorithms, which is 100% accurate every time ... and I am willing to sell one of a limited number of copies to you for the modest sum of £1,000.

It may seem like a lot of money, but just think, you could make it all back in a single bet. I know you'll need convincing — after all, who wants to part with a thousand pounds without some sort of guarantee — so I'll give you the first prediction for free. In fact, I'll send you one free prediction every week for the next five weeks, and when you see I'm 100% accurate I can guarantee you'll be praying there is still a copy of the program left.

Imagine you received this email from me just before the start of the football season. Would you have taken up my offer and sent me £1,000? Of course not. But what if my first prediction had been correct? Luck, you'd have thought. But what when the second and third predictions were also correct? What about when all five turned out to be correct?

At some point, surely even you would have been convinced. After all, no one's luck is that good. Is it?

So, do you take me up on my offer: yes or no?

Well, if you said yes, I'm afraid you've just thrown away £1,000. Because there is no software, no statistical method. In fact, there isn't even luck. Just quantity....

http://www.theepochtimes.com/n3/1037968-...-the-past/

EXCERPT: ...If one day a time machine is built based on Dr. Mallett’s design, what may happen when the switch is flipped? A message from the future could instantly appear.

The time machine would only be able to send information along the timeline from when the machine is first turned on until when it is turned off. So, if it stays on for 100 years, binary messages could be sent to any time within those 100 years. Someone from the future may know that the machine will be activated on a given date and send a message through to that time.

In a BBC-Discovery Channel documentary featuring Dr. Mallett’s work, the narrator said that with time travel, “At stake is nothing less than what it means to be a human being.”

If we could go back in time and fix all the suffering of the world, if we could go back and prevent the bad things that happen in our lives, what would that do for personal growth and wisdom? How would our society change?...