http://www.the-american-interest.com/201...henomenon/

EXCERPT: We know atheism in its Jewish or Christian context, as a rejection of the Biblical God. What would atheism mean in a Muslim, or Hindu, or Buddhist context?

Adam Garfinkle, the editor of The American Interest, asked me this question. He told me that he had met a Saudi who claimed to be an atheist: What does this mean? We know atheism in its Jewish or Christian context, as a rejection of the Biblical God. What would atheism mean in a Muslim, or Hindu, or Buddhist context?

My short answer is: Yes, Atheism, as we know it, came out of a Judaeo-Christian context. But I would slightly re-phrase Garfinkle’s question. The dichotomy is not western/non-Western. It is Abrahamic/non-Abrahamic. It is a rebellion against the monotheistic faiths that originated in the Middle East–Judaism, Christianity, Islam. It makes much less sense in a non-monotheistic environment.

The rebellion is triggered by an agonizing problem: How can God, believed to be both all-powerful and morally perfect, permit the suffering and the evil afflicting humanity? This is the problem called theodicy, which literally means the “justice of God”; in the spirit of the rebellion it is also a demand that God has to justify himself.

[...] In Islam, the most recent in the trio of West Asian monotheisms, the motif of submission to God’s will is at the core of piety. The very name of the faith is derived from the Arabic word aslama–“to submit”. Every gesture of Muslim prayer is the bodily expression of this attitude. Again, it is in Sufism, the mystical undercurrent of Islam, that the austerity of mainstream piety is softened.

[...] Suffering is endemic to the human condition, and so is the urge to overcome or at least to explain it. Different attempts to satisfy this urge are not neatly divided geographically. Theodicy in its full force is unlikely to appear in contexts shaped by the religious imagination of the Indian subcontinent, as manifested in Hinduism and Buddhism (the latter could only arise from the former).

[...] The fundamental assumption of the Indian view of the cosmos is reincarnation–the linked realities of samsara and karma–the endless cycle of rebirths and deaths, and the cosmic law that the consequences of human actions, good or bad, are carried from one life to the next. I would propose that in this view the “Jerusalem” problem of theodicy evaporates.

This is why Max Weber called Hinduism (the same applies to Buddhism) “the most rational theodicy”: The individual cannot thank anyone but himself for his good fortune, or blame anyone else for his misery–what happens to the individual is the (so to speak) mathematically precise result of all his own past actions. The ultimate redemption is being able to escape from the endless death-laden cycle of rebirths. Of course there are very significant differences between Hinduism and Buddhism, and between various branches of these traditions...

http://www.the-american-interest.com/201...l-capital/

EXCERPT: [...] I suppose what I should have asked is this: Given the accelerating power of pluralization to upset and cast into doubt most traditional forms of religious belief, how will different forms of disbelief, emanating from different cultural contexts, differ (and not) from the forms of disbelief we in the West know best—that of atheism arising out of Christian and Jewish religion? So what I should have asked is broader—not just about belief or the lack thereof in an Abrahamic creator God, but about belief or lack thereof in any system of religious ideas. And the question flows from the assumption that any given form of rejected belief will take much of its shape from what it is rejecting. George Williams once noted that you should “be cautious when you choose your enemy for you will grow to be more like him”; I think one can apply this basic idea orthogonally to the question at hand in the sense that a former belief system becomes the enemy, so that what results from rejecting it may be closer in form to it than what the denier may suppose or hope....

I need to begin this week’s column with an apology. Due to a typo on my part in preparing notes for my files, I mistakenly indicated two weeks ago — Close Encounters in Joplin Area: Part One — that an encounter in Joplin took place in early August when it actually occurred on July 8. The full report is the subject of this column.

Then, it was so hectic when I was writing the column last week, that I completely forgot to give credit to the National UFO Reporting Center, the source of all but one of the sightings described. Sorry, Peter. Oh well. They say as you get older your memory is the second thing to go, but for the life of me I cannot remember what the first one is.

That being said, the incident that occurred that Tuesday evening was a UFOlogist’s dream: Three reputable witnesses, willing to be identified publicly, reporting a close encounter that left behind physical evidence of its reality. In addition, the initial witness possessed the training and experience to be considered an expert on objects and craft in the sky. He is an airline pilot.

At about 9:15 p.m. on July 8, Barry Powell, the pilot, was walking his dog when he noticed a strange craft with orange lights in the northern sky. He realized almost immediately that it was approaching him, descending as it did so, and his leashed dog started to jump excitedly in the object’s direction. At that point John Cruzan, general manager of the Joplin Globe newspaper, and his wife Traci, who is a technician in the medical field, came around a curve and were confronted with this strange scene. They immediately stopped and got out of their vehicle, joining Barry in trying to determine what they were all seeing.

As it approached, the confounded trio could make out a huge object, apparently soundless, displaying multiple lights of yellow, blue and orange on its underside. I said “apparently” because every dog within hearing distance was barking excitedly. Barry’s dog was even jumping up toward the craft to the extent his leash would allow.

When the UFO departed, still at slow speed, the witnesses followed in the Cruzan’s Jeep. They lost sight of it as it descended behind trees, but continued to an area they felt it might have landed. At that point, even stranger things began to happen. A spotlight they were using, which plugged into the cigarette lighter, dimmed but did not go out. The seatbelt warning buzzer began sounding intermittently, and the vehicle’s automatic transmission began to act up. None of these oddities had occurred previously, and, to my knowledge, none of them have been repeated since.

But the most chilling aspect of the incident showed up in its aftermath. On John Cruzan’s arm was a sizeable red spot that caused enough discomfort for him to go to a doctor, who told him it resembled an injury caused by a laser. It has since healed.

I spoke with Mr. Cruzan about his experience earlier this month. Although he did not express it in so many words, his attitude was clearly that of knowing the event was incredible but also knowing that many people would find it incredible. He was unwavering, however, in the fact that he was simply describing the event as completely and accurately as possible within the limits of human vocabulary. I came away from the visit convinced that he was one of the most credible witnesses I have interviewed in years.

Clusters of UFO sightings in a limited area within a relatively short period of time have occurred on several occasions before, and the diehard skeptics insist that they result from a single case of misidentification receiving publicity and triggering the imagination of others, making them even more prone to turning the lights of distant aircraft into an alien spacecraft. In this instance, however, the witnesses were in almost all cases unaware of the previous incidents prior to having their own encounter.

Special thanks to John Cruzan, Margie Kay and the rest of the team at Missouri Mutual UFO Network, and UFO Casebook for providing information used in writing this column."===http://ccheadliner.com/opinion/close-enc...95bef.html

"So who was the frugal genius who decided to stuff an animal’s meat into its own intestine? In other words, who invented sausage? The answer is not so simple. If we consider the meaning of the word “sausage,” it would lead us to the Latin word salsus, which means ‘to prepare by salting.’ As Latin is primarily associated with the Roman Empire, it is not a far stretch of the imagination to guess that the Romans graced us with sausage among their many legacies. But unfortunately, no credit can go to the Romans. The first men to make a sausages would do so by stuffing cooked intestines into animal stomachs, but they would do it thousands of years before the Romans.

These first sausages date back to the Sumerian culture in Mesopotamia, which is modern-day Iraq. This would have all happened around 3000 BC. Residents of China also get credit for being a close 2nd around 580BC. There is even a play by a Greek author entitled “The Sausage,” which was created around 550BC. Unfortunately, the brave soul who invented sausage by deciding to stuff meat scraps in an intestine is lost to history, so we can only wonder what his inspiration was. We like to believe that he or she was the first to really mix it up on leftover night."===http://www.ponderweasel.com/who-invented-sausage/

"The global average temperature over land and ocean surfaces for January to October 2014 was the highest on record, according to the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). It said October was the hottest since records began in 1880.

NOAA said the combined global land and ocean average surface temperature for the January-October period was 0.68°C (1.22°F) above the 20th century average of 14.1°C (57.4°F). For October, it was 0.74°C (1.33°F) above the 20th century average of 14.0°C (57.1°F).

The high October temperature was driven by warmth across the globe over both the land and ocean surfaces and was fairly evenly distributed between the Northern and Southern Hemispheres. The Southern Hemisphere had its hottest October on record and the Northern Hemisphere its third warmest.

October marked the third consecutive month and fifth of the past six with a record high global temperature for its respective month (July was fourth highest).

The Tokyo Climate Center, which is a WMO Regional Climate Centre, also reported that October was the hottest on record. The record was also confirmed by data from NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies."===http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/201...075729.htm

"The red supergiant star Betelgeuse is getting ready to go supernova, and when it does Earth will have a front-row seat. The explosion will be so bright that Earth will briefly seem to have two suns in the sky.

The star is located in the Orion constellation, about 640 light-years away from Earth. It's one of the brightest and biggest stars in our galactic neighborhood - if you dropped it in our Solar System, it would extend all the way out to Jupiter, leaving Earth completely engulfed. In stellar terms, it's predicted to explode in the very near future. Of course, the conversion from stellar to human terms is pretty extreme, as Betelgeuse is predicted to explode anytime in the next million years.

But still, whether the explosion occurs in 2011 or 1002011 (give or take 640 years for the light to reach Earth), it's going to make for one of the most unforgettable light shows in our planet's history. For a few weeks, the supernova will be so bright that there will appear to be two stars in the sky, and night will be indistinguishable from day for much of that time. So don't count on getting a lot of sleep when Betelgeuse explodes, because the only sensible thing for the world to do will be to throw a weeks-long global supernova party.

Physicist Brad Carter explains what Earth (and hopefully humanity) can look forward to:

"This is the final hurrah for the star. It goes bang, it explodes, it lights up - we'll have incredible brightness for a brief period of time for a couple of weeks and then over the coming months it begins to fade and then eventually it will be very hard to see at all."=====http://io9.com/5738542/earth-may-soon-have-a-second-sun

"Apparently, Ernest Hemingway was lunching at Luchow’s with a number of writers and claimed that he could write a short story that was only six words long. Of course, the other writers balked. Hemingway told each of them to put ten dollars in the middle of the table; if he was wrong, he said, he’d match it. If he was right, he would keep the entire pot. He quickly wrote six words down on a napkin and passed it around; Papa won the bet. The words were “FOR SALE, BABY SHOES, NEVER WORN.” A beginning, a middle and an end!

The six word story was also mentioned by author Arthur C. Clarke in a letter dated 11 Oct. 1991:

“My favourite is Hemingway’s—he’s supposed to have won a $10 bet (no small sum in the ’20s) from his fellow writers. They paid up without a word. . . .

Here it is. I still can’t think of it without crying—FOR SALE. BABY SHOES. NEVER WORN.”

Quote Investigator suggests possible sources for the story may be early advertisements from 1906 onwards; newspaper stories, the first from 1910; or even an essay on creative writing by William R. Kane from 1917.

Whatever the truth of the matter, this short story does succeed in telling a moving tale in just six simple words, and the anecdote about its origin does little to change Hemingway‘s position as one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century. Here’s how Mr. Hemingway described the author’s role in his Nobel Prize winning speech in 1954:

“Writing, at its best, is a lonely life. Organizations for writers palliate the writer’s loneliness but I doubt if they improve his writing. He grows in public stature as he sheds his loneliness and often his work deteriorates. For he does his work alone and if he is a good enough writer he must face eternity, or the lack of it, each day.

“For a true writer each book should be a new beginning where he tries again for something that is beyond attainment. He should always try for something that has never been done or that others have tried and failed. Then sometimes, with great luck, he will succeed.”====http://dangerousminds.net/comments/ernes...hort_story

Here's a list of shortest short stories submitted to Wired by famous people:

http://archive.wired.com/wired/archive/1...words.html

A walking irony. The art of posing as someone who is NOT posing. Yet another foray of the 20 somethings into the multidimensional realm of the countercultural.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jbTI7eWaQbk