It is a common myth in science--this idea of the context-free object. As if the reason behind something is totally inherent to it, encoded in its cells, or neurons, or atoms. Meaning as compositional not circumstantial. But is this even true? What is the sense in talking about one unit alone, or one part of a whole, when that unit's or part's function is entirely dependent on its relations to other units or parts? There is a temporal process involved in the dynamic situation of the unit or part, such that it cannot even be understood apart from it. Neglecting this informative context fosters a further myth of understanding as reducibility of the whole to parts, which are further reduced to wholes defined by their parts, which totally leaves out the relationships that make up the structure of the parts. This structure IS the context in which the part is defined. There is no information in a pile of bricks defining those bricks as parts of a house. The house as a whole is the defining spatio-temporal matrix by which the bricks will acquire their "partness", their contribution and weighted value in the coherence of the house. This is even more obvious with the human being, a social unit in a complex pattern of spatio-temporal relationships to the world around it. The meaning or understanding of a human being cannot be reduced down to cells or neurons or atoms. They are defined by the living changing context or structure of their environment, a story of relationships and interactions and events that we collectively refer to as THEIR life experience.

Mary Wollstonecraft
(1759-1797)

"A self-taught native of London, Mary Wollstonecraft worked as a schoolteacher and headmistress at a school she established at Newington Green with her sister Eliza. The sisters soon became convinced that the young women they tried to teach had already been effectively enslaved by their social training in subordination to men. In Thoughts on the Education of Daughters (1787) Wollstonecraft proposed the deliberate extrapolation of Enlightenment ideals to include education for women, whose rational natures are no less capable of intellectual achievement than are those of men.

Following a period of service as a governess to Lord Kingsborough in Ireland, Wollstonecraft spent several years observing political and social developments in France, and wrote History and Moral View of the Origins and Progress of the French Revolution (1793). Her A Vindication of the Rights of Men (1790) is a spirited defense of the ideals of the Revolution against the conservative objections of Burke. Upon her return to England, she joined a radical group whose membership included Blake, Paine, Fuseli, and Wordsworth. Her first child, Fanny, was born in 1795, the daughter of American Gilbert Imlay. After his desertion, she joined the radical activist William Godwin, a long-time friend whom she married in 1797. Wollstonecraft died a few days after the birth of their daughter, Mary (who later married Percy Bysshe Shelley and wrote Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus and other novels).

Wollstonecraft's lasting place in the history of philosophy rests upon A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792). Wollstonecraft In this classical feminist text, she appealed to egalitarian social philosophy as the basis for the creation and preservation of equal rights and opportunities for women. The foundation of morality in all human beings, male or female, is their common possession of the faculty of reason, Wollstonecraft argued, and women must claim their equality by accepting its unemotional dictates. Excessive concern for romantic love and physical desirability, she believed, are not the natural conditions of female existence but rather the socially-imposed means by which male domination enslaves them. The posthumously-published Maria, or the Wrongs of Woman develops similar themes in a fictional setting, by showing that the plight of working women differs little from imprisonment."====http://www.philosophypages.com/ph/woll.htm

Washington (AFP) - "Experimental tailor-made vaccines targeting melanoma patients' individual genetic mutations have given encouraging preliminary results, researchers have said.

The clinical test on three patients with this form of aggressive skin cancer in an advanced stage is unprecedented in the United States.

The vaccines appear to boost the number and diversity of T-cells, which are key to the human immune system and attack tumors, researchers said in a report published Thursday in the journal Science.

Melanoma accounts for around five percent of all new cancer cases diagnosed in the United States, but that proportion is rising.

Last year 76,000 Americans were diagnosed with melanoma and nearly 10,000 died of it, according to the National Cancer Institute.

The vaccines were developed by sequencing the genomes of the three patients' tumors and comparing them to samples of healthy tissue to identify proteins that had mutated. These are known as neoantigens, and are unique to cancer cells.

The researchers then used computer programs and laboratory trials to predict and test the neoantigens most likely to trigger a strong immune response and thus be added to the vaccine.

The vaccine was administered to patients whose tumors had been removed but without preventing cancer cells from spreading to the lymph nodes, which is an indication that the melanoma is going to reappear.

The initial clinical results have been good enough to start a phase 1 clinical trial approved by the US Food and Drug Administration on six patients.

If this broader test proves the vaccines work, it would pave the way for immunotherapy that prevents melanoma from resurfacing in patients.

The study was led by Gerald Linette, an oncologist at the University of Washington in St. Louis, Missouri.

Although the test was preliminary, it was based on the breadth and diversity of the T-cells, meaning these vaccines are promising as a therapy, he said.

But the researchers cautioned that it was too early to say if these vaccines would continue to work long-term.

None of the three patients tested so far have suffered major negative side effects.

Immunotherapy, already used with success against melanoma, is a promising new strategy against very aggressive cancer cells for which there is currently no effective treatment."===http://news.yahoo.com/us-scientists-repo...00624.html

Sunday Assembly Portland 19th April 2014 by Cheryl Ann Lewis under Uncategorized

"Sunday Assembly is a secular alternative to church, a global movement that celebrates life without dogma, doctrine or deity and promotes good. Many people worldwide seek community, positivity and compassion and are looking for non-religious alternatives to provide them. The one thing we want most to communicate is Good is Great! The Sunday Assembly is a global movement of wonder and good who come together regularly across the world in a godless congregation to celebrate this one life we know we have and help one another. Sunday Assembly Portland offers a live band and speakers of interest to our community.

There are many opportunities to get involved with the non-theist community. The FCA has over 9,000 ordained ministers, people who would like to work with non-theist community-building. Sunday Assemblies are starting up in many cities world-wide. Join a Sunday Assembly Planning Committee Meetup, or join a Smoup, Small Group. If there isn’t yet a Smoup that you are interested in at your local Sunday Assembly, start one! If you don’t have a local Sunday Assembly in your city, start one! There are dozens of small, individual non-theist Meetup groups in Portland. Sunday Assembly Portland offers the opportunity to organize a small interest group under the umbrella of a larger organization, and benefit from being part of a congregation with a location and community publicity. There are opportunities to volunteer in the community and raise public awareness of non-theists. Visibility is key to furthering public acceptance of non-theists of every stripe."===http://www.sundayassemblypdx.org/

How fast can sugar ferment?
Why doesn't it build up speed and explode?

Good honest view from the most famous primate researcher of the past century. You tell'em Jane!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H_NieflUN90

WASHINGTON, D.C.—"In an unusual press conference here today, NASA released a batch of bizarre sound recordings and video from the Messenger spacecraft moments before it impacted the surface of Mercury. Scientists are struggling to decipher what the data mean, but some contend they sound like human voices crying out in agony.

Messenger had been orbiting Mercury since 2011, but it used up nearly all of its propellant and was drifting closer to the surface of the planet. So last week, NASA officials decided to point the probe nose downward for a controlled crash. “We were hoping it would kick up some soot for spectroscopic analysis,” says Messenger Principal Investigator Angra Mainyu, a planetary scientist at Columbia University. Just what it did find instead is not entirely clear.

At the press conference, Mainyu played grainy recordings of what sounded like anguished voices in various languages. And she showed even grainier images of what appeared to be writhing figures. When asked by a reporter how NASA interpreted the data, Mainyu shrugged her shoulders and said, “How the hell should I know?”

Reactions to the news were swift and, in some cases, decisive. Welcoming what he called “ineluctable evidence of hell,” Father Felix Flammis, a spokesperson for the Vatican Observatory in Italy, said: "This wonderful discovery shows that science and religion can work together to discover the truth." But Richard Dawkins, the famed evolutionary biologist and atheist, rejected the finding. "This is clearly a bunch of drivel," he says. "Wind whistling past the spacecraft, electronic noise—there obviously has to be some other explanation." Even if the evidence holds up, he quips, "proof of the devil ain't the same as proof of God."

The findings are somewhat of a surprise, because Venus had long been the leading contender, in our solar system at any rate, for harboring Hades. With a mean surface temperature of 462°C, an oppressive atmosphere, and sulfuric acid rains, it certainly seems to fit biblical descriptions. “Plus, it’s much closer to Earth, so lost souls would be only a hop, skip, and a jump from hell,” says Thor Kölski, an astrophysicist at the University of the Valkyrs in Reykjavik. Kölski has pinpointed the likely epicenter of hell as Venus’s Ganiki Chasma, a rift zone where infrared flashes were first observed last year—phenomena that he asserts are new arrivals to the underworld.

Still others think there may be multiple hells within our solar system. "Everything we know about string theory tells us that the ‘Many Hells theory’ isn't only plausible, it highly likely," says Franklyn Stein, a theoretical physicist at University College London.

Luminaries in the scientific community are by and large embracing the notion of hell. Even Stephen Hawking is on board. The cosmologist stirred controversy in 2010, when he wrote in his book The Grand Design that “[i]t is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the universe going." Earlier today, Hawking tweeted: “The devil is a different story. All hail Messenger!”

The discovery should provide a major shot in the arm to NASA, whose fortunes in Washington have faded since it retired the space shuttles in 2011. “This is a proud day for the space agency,” says Don Tey, a spokesperson for the Planetary Society in Pasadena, California, who insists that it’s merely a coincidence that the announcement was made on April Fools’ Day. “Congress told NASA to go to hell, and, by Jove, they made it."----

http://news.sciencemag.org/space/2015/04...ns-mercury

Anti-Semitism in US spikes after nearly a decade of decline
http://www.religionnews.com/2015/03/31/a...e-decline/

EXCERPT: Anti-Semitic incidents in the U.S. spiked 21 percent last year, according to the Anti-Defamation League, unsettling many American Jews who had thought that hatred of Jews and Judaism was on the decline, at least here at home. The ADL has released a spring report that, for nearly the past 10 years, showed fewer incidents targeting American Jews. That downward trend contrasted sharply to the rising tide of anti-Semitism in Europe [...] “The United States still continues to be unique in history” as a safe place for Jews, said Abraham Foxman, the ADL’s national director. But this new ADL report casts a shadow on the idea....

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Atheists mourn the slaying of a second Bangladeshi blogger in a month
http://www.religionnews.com/2015/03/31/a...ger-month/

EXCERPT: Atheists, humanists and other nonbelievers are speaking out against the brutal slaying of an atheist blogger in Bangladesh, the second such killing in a month. Washiqur Rahman, 27, was attacked and killed Monday morning (March 30) in the capital city of Dhaka by three men wielding knives or other sharp weapons. Police say they have two suspects in custody, both students at religious schools....