An atheist

Richard Dawkins on Elder with Andrew Denton

2009-12-30T14:08:00.002+11:00

Richard Dawkins is the essence of scientific reason, an evolutionary biologist, a best-selling author, and strident atheist. He's been declared one of the most influential - and provocative - thinkers of our time. He's our guest in the last episode of this series of Elders.
RICHARD DAWKINS: I'm a scientist. I believe there is a profound contradiction between science and religious belief. There is no well demonstrated reason to believe in God and I think the idea of a divine creator belittles the elegant reality of the universe.
[Reading] Everything Darwin said is wrong and evolution has never been proven and nothing is evolving now the bible is the best book ...(deep breath!)
The time has come for people of reason to say enough is enough.
ANDREW DENTON V/O: Richard Dawkins is the essence of scientific reason. An evolutionary biologist. A best-selling author. And, strident atheist. He's been declared one of the most influential - and provocative - thinkers of our time.
ANDREW DENTON: Richard, thanks very much for inviting us to your house. You've described being moved to tears by the natural world. When has that happened? Why does it move you to tears?
RICHARD DAWKINS: I think we are social animals. We have deep emotions, we have the emotions of empathy and sympathy and sadness and love and happiness and I think it's part of being human, part of being a social animal to have these intense emotions and I don't find it that surprising to be moved by the natural world. But that includes things like looking up at the Milky Way and looking up at the sheer number of stars, being overwhelmed by the scale of the universe. And that to me gives a sort of overwhelming feeling of being, it's a feeling of exultation in that case.
ANDREW DENTON: You've described science rather beautifully actually as the poetry of reality. Where is the poetry in science?
RICHARD DAWKINS: Science is opening your eyes to the wonderfulness of what's there. It's, it's as though you've got tiny little, I've used the analogy of a burka, you know those dreadful ghastly black tents that Muslims wear, and you've got this tiny slit, rip open the burka. That's what science does, and the light floods in, and that's poetry. The poetry of the expanding universe, the poetry of geological time, the poetry of the deep complexity of life, all these things, which we're not normally equipped to understand and the science gives it to us.
ANDREW DENTON V/O: Richard was born Africa, in 1941. It was an environment that helped trigger his lifelong passion for nature.
ANDREW DENTON: You spent your early childhood in Kenya. When you go back to Africa, what response does that stir in you?
RICHARD DAWKINS: The smells, the sights of Africa, the sounds of Africa. They are immensely evocative. Whether it's just the evocativeness of childhood itself, I think perhaps everybody looks back to their childhood, especially if it was a happy childhood, with the same kind of sense of heightened awareness. I've never actually taken an hallucinogenic drug, but I've read accounts by Aldous Huxley and others of somehow everything you look at has a sort of enhanced... you're looking at with enhanced perception and my memory of childhood is that that's what it was like, that there's a sort of Garden of Eden feeling about it.
ANDREW DENTON: You talk about your childhood feeling heightened. I'm interested, you have such rigour in the way you think and such a fierce logic in the way you've approached your work. What shaped you as a child? What shaped that drive?
RICHARD DAWKINS: Gosh, I don't know. I mean heredity and environment. I suppose my parents are both interested in living things, in biology. My father read botany at Oxford and was a much better naturalist than I ever was and my mother too, was a better naturalist than I ever was. My father must have instilled in me a kind of scientific way of thinking. I had a happy, fulfilled childhood with plenty of things going on, plenty of opportunity to question and discuss and talk, seeing different parts of the world. I suppose that arouses one's curiosity.
ANDREW DENTON V/O: As a child Richard was quite devout; the idea of a 'Designer' of the natural world captured his imagination. But, in his teenage years he began to doubt the existence of God.
The complexity of life and the universe seemed better explained by Darwin's theory of evolution. In his thirties, he published his first best-seller, The Selfish Gene. He argued that we living things are mere survival machines, designed to allow genes to replicate. It was an idea that made him famous. Today, thirty years, nine books and several TV series later, he unabashedly pits logic and science, against faith and God.
ANDREW DENTON: Your friend the late Douglas Adams, laughingly quoted you once, saying your words, "I wouldn't say I was arrogant, but I find it hard to be patient with those who don't share my humility in the face of facts."
RICHARD DAWKINS: [Laughter] ... That sounds better than me. I think that's Douglas himself probably.
ANDREW DENTON: He was very good at that. When you face people who in your view are ignorant or who are superstitious, how have you dealt with your anger?
RICHARD DAWKINS: I'm virtually never angry with somebody who's honestly seeking after truth. I mean if somebody is ignorant, well that's no crime. If somebody's stupid, that's no crime. But I think, if I find somebody who is a charlatan, who is actually a fake, who is actually pretending to be something that he isn't and is particularly bamboozling young people, I think that's probably what makes me angry and when you ask how I deal with this, I probably don't very well.
ANDREW DENTON: I'm just reminded of that encounter with Ted Haggett in the "Root of all Evil"...
RICHARD DAWKINS: Oh yeah...
ANDREW DENTON: Where you were clearly angry. You could see you were flushed...
RICHARD DAWKINS: Yeah, I well I got a bit angry then, but I mean I kept control. I didn't lose it.
[FOOTAGE]
Ted Haggett: You do understand that this Issue right here of intellectual arrogance is the reason why people like you have a difficult problem with people of faith. I don't communicate an air of superiority over the people because I know so much more, and if you only read the books I know and if you only know the scientists I knew, then you would be great like me. Well. Sir, there could be many things you know well, there are other things that you don't know well but as you age you will find yourself wrong on some things, right on some other things .... But please, in the process of it, please, don't be arrogant.
ANDREW DENTON: When do you think a belief is important?
RICHARD DAWKINS: Belief in what?
ANDREW DENTON: Belief in whatever it is an individual believes in, belief as a driving force.
RICHARD DAWKINS: Well, belief I suppose is a strong conviction that something is the case based upon evidence. It better be based upon evidence or it doesn't deserve the title of belief I think.
ANDREW DENTON: Is evidence always necessary? Do we need to understand why a piece of music, for example, moves us to accept that it does?
RICHARD DAWKINS: You don't need to understand why it does but it clearly does. I mean the evidence for that is the evidence of what you. I mean you actually do feel moved by it, you actually feel moved to tears, indeed I could be moved to tears by music and that to me is evidence for the belief that I'm moved by music. I don't have to understand what's actually going on in the nervous system in order for that to happen.
ANDREW DENTON: Is it possible to explain love?
RICHARD DAWKINS: I think it in principle can be explained but I don't actually have the internal wherewithal to explain it. I just experience it.
ANDREW DENTON: Of course if somebody says to you well, I have a love of a God, I don't need to explain it, that, that is my belief. How does your logical brain respond to that?
RICHARD DAWKINS: Well, I think what you're getting at is that even if God doesn't exist the person has an experience an internal experience, which feels to them as real as my love for another human being or a dog, and I don't doubt that the experience that they feel is real to them in the same way as my experience of loving a, a person is, is real. The thing that they love doesn't exist, but that doesn't stop them loving it. I mean in, in a sense you could say it's a hallucination, but it will feel very real to them.
ANDREW DENTON: For many people, God is what gives their life meaning. What gives your life meaning?
RICHARD DAWKINS: Well when they say that God gives their life meaning, I wonder what that really means. I mean they've got an imaginary friend which I guess might be nice for them. In some cases they're just using the word God as another name for that which gives their life meaning. Most people- meaning's rather a grand name for what we're talking about- I don't mind using a grand word like meaning for science, I mean that does give my life meaning, my work.
ANDREW DENTON: What's your definition of success?
RICHARD DAWKINS: ...Oh dear, I don't really answer that kind of question...
ANDREW DENTON: Why not?
RICHARD DAWKINS: ...I'm just trying, well, because I just think of it as a dictionary word, which has a dictionary definition and you can go and look it up. I don't have a personal...
ANDREW DENTON: Well, you don't have a marker in your life for what would be achievement?
RICHARD DAWKINS: No, it's cause it's either you just give a dictionary definition or it becomes very complicated and personal. No, I don't really think I've got a got a good answer to that.
ANDREW DENTON: At Douglas's funeral, Douglas Adams' funeral you read a eulogy in which you said one of his chief charms was his ability to laugh at himself.
RICHARD DAWKINS: Yes.
ANDREW DENTON: When do you laugh at yourself?
RICHARD DAWKINS: ...Are all the questions going to be like this?
ANDREW DENTON: Not all... do you find these very difficult?
RICHARD DAWKINS: Yes.
ANDREW DENTON: Well, why is that?
RICHARD DAWKINS: Um ... because they're about me, I suppose.
ANDREW DENTON: Some of the questions are about you and some are about your observation of other people.
RICHARD DAWKINS: Yes...
ANDREW DENTON: If you like I can come back to that and we can talk more generally.
RICHARD DAWKINS: I might. I mean...I might laugh quite a lot and I'm sure I laugh at myself a lot, but I'm not sure I can think of particular examples.
ANDREW DENTON: I don't wish to make you uncomfortable, so why don't we park that and come back to it.
ANDREW DENTON V/O: Richard lives in Oxford, with his third wife Lalla Ward. An actress, beloved of Dr Who fans, Lalla now illustrates and narrates Richard's books. Richard has one daughter from a previous marriage, Juliet.
ANDREW DENTON: You wrote a letter which has been published to your daughter, Juliet, when she was ten. Can you tell me about that?
RICHARD DAWKINS: Yes, it is an attempt to encourage her to ask questions and think for herself. It begins by saying, how do we know the things that we know? And so it's a kind of hymn to evidence, it's kind of trying to encourage this ten year child to always look for the evidence for anything that you're asked to believe. And it specifically singles out for scepticism, things like tradition, authority, and revelation, which are not ways of knowing anything. Evidence is the way you know anything that you know, and I tried to put into language that a ten year old might understand- how we get evidence, and how we evaluate it.
ANDREW DENTON: It was a beautifully written but a complex letter for a ten year old. I assume you've talked it through with Juliet over the years?
RICHARD DAWKINS: Not much actually, no. I mean at that time she was living with her mother from whom I was divorced. Her mother has since died and so she then did come to live with us. We get on very well, we have a very good relationship. But we don't really talk about those things very much. I dedicated the book to her when- on her eighteenth birthday, when the book in which it was reprinted, "A Devil's Chaplain", so that was a kind of nice- in a way closure of that particular episode.
ANDREW DENTON: I'm guessing that the Tooth Fairy didn't have a very long life in your family.
RICHARD DAWKINS: Well no, I mean all that kind of thing you know, the Tooth Fairy and Father Christmas, we went along without all of that.
ANDREW DENTON: I think my son was ten when we told him there wasn't Santa and I can still see his tears squirting across the room.
RICHARD DAWKINS: Seriously?
ANDREW DENTON: Yes, well I'm not sure if it was about the presents or about Santa, but ...
RICHARD DAWKINS: ... Um yeah, um well that's rather a sad story. I think most children kind of guess don't they, before they're told. It is a puzzle to me why children virtually all accept that they've been mislead, actually lied to, by their parents about Father Christmas and about the Tooth Fairy. And yet it doesn't tumble to them that maybe the same thing applies to God. I do wonder sometimes whether magical fiction- where you have spells and princes turning into frogs and things like that- whether that actually might have a pernicious effect upon the child mind.
ANDREW DENTON: In what way?
RICHARD DAWKINS: By giving the child the idea that anything goes, that there's no discipline to reality. I'm only kind of asking the question. Is it possible that teaching children about fairies with magic wands and sleeping beauties and frogs turning into princes, that that actually does set up a kind of counter reality view of the world, which might pre-dispose them to religion, which is also magical in the same sense, but also might undermine the tendency to a sceptical take on reality, which I think is important, and actually wonderful. Because the world, the real world, the real universe is wonderful. You don't need the cheap and tawdry magic of frogs turning into princes, you've got a much better magical in a better sense- reality out there.
ANDREW DENTON: Are perhaps, fairy tales for example, speaking to that part of the human consciousness which is absolutely not rooted in reality, which is imagination and our desire to feed imagination and to play ...
RICHARD DAWKINS: ... Well that's a good point but I mean imagination is enormously important and in science as much as anything else, and scientific theory, scientific hypothesis depend upon imagination dreaming up imaginative ideas.
ANDREW DENTON: So look at someone like Salvador Dali and his vaulting imagination, isn't the flipside of fairy stories and things like that, isn't that appealing to our sense of wonder, our playfulness with the universe?
RICHARD DAWKINS: Dali isn't actually saying that there are objects that assume these surreal qualities that he paints. So he's boring into our subconscious and stimulating our minds to think in imaginative ways. He's not actually lying to children about the way reality is. Saying that frogs turn into princes is a lie. It's not just because it hasn't ever happened. It couldn't ever happen. It would violate a deep, deep scientific principle for anything like that to happen. I think there might be better ways of stimulating the imagination. I mean we've got dinosaurs, we've got the universe, we've got the whole world of nature. Don't you think a child could have its imagination stimulated by these unfamiliar and yet wonderful, magically wonderful in the good sense of magically, aspects of reality?
ANDREW DENTON: After 68 years of looking at human beings are you optimistic for the future of humanity?
RICHARD DAWKINS: At an intellectual level, I'm not entirely optimistic...
ANDREW DENTON: Why?
RICHARD DAWKINS: Well I take note of the crises that are upon us – global warming – I mean they're familiar enough, the technology to do terribly destructive things is becoming cheaper and easier and there are all sorts of reasons to be pessimistic intellectually. Emotionally, I'm not an emotional pessimist, I don't sort of fret all night about the future of the world, like some people do.
ANDREW DENTON: In your gut do you feel good about human beings?
RICHARD DAWKINS: Yeah, I'm optimistic about the goodwill, the pleasantness, the niceness, the kindness of most people. Most people don't like to see suffering; most people will feel sympathy for somebody who is suffering and try to bring it to an end.
ANDREW DENTON: What's your moral code?
RICHARD DAWKINS: I suppose it's a version of the Golden Rule, don't do unto others what you wouldn't wish them to do to you. I do feel intense vicarious sadness when I encounter sadness in others. It doesn't have to be in my own species, I mean it could be of another species as well. My moral code is definitely nothing to do with the sort of busy-bodyish religious moral code that cares about what people do in private. What they do with their sex organs and things like that, seems to me to be an utterly private matter, nothing to do with morals. I despise that kind of alleged morality, deeply despise it.
ANDREW DENTON: And how do you deal with that sense of despising something?
RICHARD DAWKINS: What can I do right about it? Speak about it, my weapons are words.
ANDREW DENTON: What would you like to live long enough to know the answer to?
RICHARD DAWKINS: I'm not a physicist but physicists talk about a theory of everything, talk about understanding those corners of physics, of the universe, of the cosmos, which we still don't yet have a grasp of. And it's not impossible that that will come in the next few decades, even in the next couple of years perhaps.
ANDREW DENTON: That concept to me is my small brain is starting to explode thinking about that...
RICHARD DAWKINS: Well me too, yes, I mean I agree with that, and I'm pretty pessimistic that I would personally understand the theory of everything. I don't know enough physics or mathematics to do that, but I think if the theory of everything said, we now understand where the laws of physics come from, where the physical constants come from, why there is a universe at all, how it started, if indeed "started" means anything. I think physicists are not far from that now and it may just need one more little push and they might they might be there.
ANDREW DENTON: That question of starting, the ultimate question. Does it not, it does me, does it not drive you mad trying to think of that, whatever the original thing was ...
RICHARD DAWKINS: ... Well yes it does ... yeah it does...
ANDREW DENTON: ...and what it formed from.
RICHARD DAWKINS: I mean physicists, many of them will say that you're not allowed to ask the question, what was there before the Big Bang. And I can't deal with that.
ANDREW DENTON: But you say you can't deal with that but you have to accept it?
RICHARD DAWKINS: I think I'm humble enough to feel well what I can't deal with doesn't necessarily mean that it's undealable with. I'm coming perilously close to a sort of faith position where I'm saying, I've got faith in, well in an immediate proximal sense, in other scientists that they understand it. I'm fully aware that I can't understand some things that other scientists can. And so there's a kind of element of faith. But it's a faith that's borne out by the experience of what works.
ANDREW DENTON: What do you believe in that you can't prove?
RICHARD DAWKINS: If there is life on other planets, (this is something I've written about quite often), then I believe that it will turn out to be Darwinian life in the sense that it's based upon some version of Darwinian natural selection. I can't prove it in the sense that I can't see life on other planets- but I can make it plausible by setting out an argument based partly upon, it's not really based upon life on this planet, but almost based upon logic actually. But it's not something I can prove.
ANDREW DENTON: Where this show started was actually that T.S. Eliot quote, "Where is the wisdom we've lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we've lost in information?" which to me suggested that there is an innate or core knowledge learnt from experience, which isn't necessarily something that's gained from books. it's from observation and from having lived life. How would you define wisdom?
RICHARD DAWKINS: Uh I don't do... let's not have any definitions.
ANDREW DENTON: Oh no definitions, okay.
RICHARD DAWKINS: There's a perfectly good dictionary on the shelf. You can go and look it up.
ANDREW DENTON: Well, I guess the operative word there was "you"...?
RICHARD DAWKINS: But I'm not going to get into the business of defining words that already have dictionary definitions.
ANDREW DENTON: I will not ask you for another definition.
RICHARD DAWKINS: Ok
ANDREW DENTON: I promise. You present always as, as very confident and very clear in your arguments. When you do you doubt yourself?
RICHARD DAWKINS: (laughs) When people ask me how I define words that I have no particular specialised knowledge of. I doubt myself sufficiently to decline to answer the question.
ANDREW DENTON: Was that doubt or is that dismissal?
RICHARD DAWKINS: No, it's doubt.
ANDREW DENTON: Really?
RICHARD DAWKINS: I have nothing to add to the dictionary definition of a word like wisdom...
ANDREW DENTON: It's interesting though because, and again I really am not trying to trap you here, as I said the operative word was "you". What I'm interested in is what you draw from it, but your way of responding to that is to say, no, you're after a dictionary definition.
RICHARD DAWKINS: Okay, well, I doubt myself enough to feel that that why should anybody be interested in... I mean I should expect people perhaps to be interested in what I can tell them about evolution, which I've spent a lifetime talking about, but I don't feel I've got anything very wise, I suppose, to say about wisdom.
ANDREW DENTON: What do you see when you look in the mirror?
RICHARD DAWKINS: [Pause] Ah...I don't have an interesting answer to that. I mean I see myself. No, cut that one. I guess I've probably dodged all the questions that you've been told to put to everybody.
ANDREW DENTON: No, not that I've been told, that I've chosen to. No, not all of them, but many, yes. Most of the personal ones. But that is your choice.
RICHARD DAWKINS: My choice is that I don't think people should be interested in me, but I hope I may have something interesting to say about the world.
ANDREW DENTON: Indeed you do, and I guess it's that, as I said when I first met you, that rigour, the way you have so rigorously approached the way you've examined the world, that does make you interesting.
RICHARD DAWKINS: Well that's nice, I'm glad you think that. But perhaps let it stand at that rather than ask me to say it myself and to define anything about myself.
ANDREW DENTON: I do have one final question, having read some of your work, having looked at a lot of your work, I'm curious, what star sign are you?
RICHARD DAWKINS: [Pause] ...You serious?
ANDREW DENTON: No, I just wanted to see your response! [Laughter] And it was worth it! Richard, thank you very much.

Science year in review: 2009

2009-12-27T22:30:00.003+11:00

Climate change and it effects dominated the news in 2009 (Source: David Gray/Reuters)
The News in Science team will be taking a break during the Christmas-New Year period, but you can still enjoy the following highlights from 2009.

The highlight for Australian science in 2009 would have to be Dr Elizabeth Blackburn becoming the first Australian-born female scientist to receive a Nobel Prize. Her work in discovering telomeres and their role in ageing saw her receive the Nobel Prize in Medicine with fellow researchers Dr Carol Greider and Dr Jack Szostak.
CSIRO also scored big in 2009 when they reached a settlement with a number of companies regarding the use of its patented Wi-Fi technology. The organisation received more than $200 million in licensing fees and its creator, Dr John O'Sullivan, received the Prime Minister's Science Prize.

Heavens above

As the world celebrated the 400th anniversary of Galileo pointing a telescope to the night sky and 40 years since Neil Armstrong walked on the Moon, the most viewed story in 2009 was about our impending doom: a French study found there is a 1% chance Jupiter will kick start a game of 'planetary snooker' in the next five billion years.
This year astronomers admitted they were baffled as to why the giant red star Betelgeuse is rapidly shrinking, and NASA scientists predicted the current solar minimum to be the quietest in almost 100 years.
The number of planets outside our solar system continued to grow in 2009 and astronomers peered deeper into our universe than ever before.
The European Space Agency successfully launched two space telescopes to look deep into the universe, while NASA deliberately crashed a spacecraft into the Moon and tested its space shuttle replacement, the Ares 1 rocket.

Climate issues

The debate surrounding climate change reached a fever pitch in the lead up to the UN Copenhagen climate conference.
While some studies found the world is warming faster and sea levels are rising quicker than previously predicted, others found it is occurring as predicted and that glaciers and ice cover are actually growing.
Plans to reduce CO2 levels through ocean fertilisation and biochar were brought into question, while experts debated whether governments should implement a carbon tax or cap-and-trade scheme.
Australian researchers identified a strong link between the patterns in the Indian Ocean and reduced rainfall in southeastern Australia, which they believe contributed towards Victoria's Black Saturday bushfires.
Researchers suggested the dust storm that blanketed eastern Australia in September was caused by weather events a year earlier. The dust later caused an explosion of phytoplankton in the Tasman Sea.

Health

This year geneticists identified what might cause autism, motor neurone disease, vaccine memory, brittle bones and even curly hair.
There were a number of studies questioning the use of tests for prostate, breast and cervical cancers, as well as heart disease.
Researchers also found that thunder thighs may be good for the heart, red wine prevents tooth cavities, vitamin C wards off gout and daily sex increases the number of healthy sperm men have.

Animals

Sex in the animal kingdom continues to intrigue researchers ... and readers. This year found that females of a species of Australian lizard roll over to avoid sex, chimpanzees exchange sex for food, being a desirable fruit fly comes at a cost, and male redback spiders that provide inadequate foreplay quickly become dinner.
Scientists revealed that a lack of genetic diversity could be the undoing for three Australian icons - the koala, Tasmanian devil and grey nurse shark.
They also showed being a free-range chicken doesn't guarantee a worry-free existence, the cocker spaniel is the meanest breed of dog, serotonin causes locusts to swarm, a tiny marsupial soaks up the sun like a lizard, and the true colour of the extinct moa using its DNA.
Meanwhile, palaeontologists unearthed three new species of dinosaur in outback Queensland and found the world's earliest 'willy' in Western Australia.

Nano pros and cons

The benefits of nanotechnology featured heavily in the news throughout 2009. They included nanorods for increased data storage and nanotransistors for faster quantum computing, through to gold nanospheres that cook cancer cells and vibrating iron-nickel nanodiscs that cause cancer to self-destruct.
But there were also concerns regarding the use of nanotechnology in bandages and underwear, exposure of workers in 'nanomanufacture' and the ability of nanoparticles to affect cells remotely.

Weird science

During his stay on the International Space Station, Japanese astronaut Koichi Wakata conducted a number of unusual experiments including, flying on a carpet, using eye drops in microgravity and wearing a pair of wash-free underwear for more than a month.
Researchers investigated ways to harness the power of hamsters running in a wheel, trained bacteria to draw on an agar plate, and grew fully-functional artificial penises that allowed dismembered rabbits to once again breed … like rabbits.
From ABC Science's News in Science team have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. We'll be back publishing on 11 January 2010.
ref: http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2009/12/18/2771151.htm

Ten Science Stories That Changed Our Decade

2009-12-26T20:30:00.005+11:00

There is no doubt that science has become more like science fiction in the past decade, with amazing innovations and discoveries that increased our understanding of the universe. We list ten of the biggest science stories from the past decade.

This was the decade of the first face transplant, the first extinct species brought back from the dead, and printable human tissue; a decade that brought us closer to synthetic life forms and the invisibility cloak. But we've whittled it down to ten of the decade's biggest science stories, with discoveries, advances, and topics that are sure to change our lives in the next ten years.
It's Full of Planets: This was a big decade for planets, and not just because Pluto got a downgrade. In 2005, astronomers discovered Eris, a dwarf planet larger Pluto (as well as smaller dwarf planets Haumea and Makemake). Eris' discovery prompted the International Astronomical Union to actually define the term planet, leading to Pluto's demotion to dwarf planet. But the discovery of Eris after all this time suggests there is still a lot to learn about our solar system.
We also got our first direct look at exoplanets, worlds outside our solar system, thanks to the Hubble Telescope. In 2008, astronomers at the Keck and Gemini captured the first images of planets orbiting distant stars. And the planetary discoveries just keep getting more exciting; just this week, astronomers announced that they had observed a super-Earth that might be made largely of liquid water.

Water, Water Everywhere: The world watched on as the Phoenix Lander dug through the Martian terrain for signs of water on the Red Planet. In the summer of 2008, NASA announced it had found definitive proof of water ice on Mars. More recently, scientists discovered that large deposits of water ice exist beneath the planet's surface. This fall, the moon became the center of our watery attention when astronomers found evidence of water throughout the moon's surface. Although the supervillainous plot to bomb the moon didn't seem as initially impressive as we had hoped, the probe did confirm researchers' suspicions that the moon does, in fact, contain a significant amount of frozen water. These discoveries not only reveal more about our solar system, they indicate that, should humans try to colonize Mars or the moon, there will be resources to make survival a little easier.

Shaking Up the Human Family Tree: Humanity got a new great-great-grandmother (or perhaps she's our great-great-great-aunt) in Ardi, a fossilized hominid skeleton found in Ethiopia. Granted, Ardipithecus ramidus was discovered in 1992, but it wasn't until 2009 that she was revealed as a significant addition to our family tree. Although there's technically no "missing link" because humans didn't evolve from chimpanzees, Ardi is, so far, our closest link to chimps, and brings us closer to the common human-chimp ancestor than ever before. Analysis of Ardi's skeleton and probably anatomy reveals just how unlike either chimps that common ancestor is bound to be. One of the Ardi researchers even quipped that when we find that common ancestor, it might look less like we evolved from a chimp-like creature and more like chimps evolved from creatures more like us.

The Book of Life Recorded: Our understanding of human genetics reached a new milestone with the mapping of the human genome. The Human Genome Project announced a rough draft of the human genome in 2000, followed by a more complete version in 2003; the sequence of the last chromosome was published in 2006. Though the genome hasn't been 100 percent mapped, the Human Genome Project has completed its mapping goals. We still have to interpret the sequences we have recorded, but hopefully as we translate the book of our genetic lives, we will get a better understand of how our genes interact and improve our treatment of genetic diseases. Plus, the project has paved the way for sequencing other critters and plants, and, just this week, the lung cancer and melanoma genomes were sequenced.

Changing Your Genes: The promises of genetic engineering have really begun to bear fruit in the last few years, in ways far beyond Alba, the glowing transgenic bunny that grabbed headlines in 2000. In 1999, an 18-year-old with a, inherited liver disease died during a gene therapy trial, after suffering an unanticipated immune reaction to a viral vector. But in more recent years, gene therapy and genetic engineering have shown their promise. In 2000, scientists reported the first gene therapy success, having provided a patient with severe combine immunodeficiency (commonly known as "Bubble Boy" syndrome), though SCID gene therapy treatments were halted when patients developed leukemia. This year, gene therapy successfully treated children with a congenital form of blindness, giving them the ability to see for the first time in their lives. Meanwhile, genetic engineering experiments on animals have cured color blindness in monkeys, created super-strong monkeys, created drug-producing rats, and enabled animals to pass their altered genes to their offspring.

Stem Cells Grow Up: Embryonic stem cells have been a source of contention for years, but in 2007, Shinya Yamanaka helped sidestep that issue when he found a way to reprogram adult skin cells into induced pluripotent stem cells. Stem cells themselves have continued to aid important medical advances. In 2008, researchers generated motor neurons from elderly patients with ALS, an advance that could help researchers better understand the disease. A newly released study has suggested that a mini stem cell transplant could reverse sickle cell disease, and stem cell research has lead to advances in HIV research and the treatment of heart disease.

Climate Change Takes Center Stage: One of the biggest science stories of the decade has been less about scientific advances than about how the public responds to scientific research. Reports that the glaciers are melting faster than expected, a decade of record warmth, and Al Gore's Nobel Prize have all been part of the conversation on climate change and to what extent humans are responsible.

Commercial Spacecrafts Prepare to Take Flight: Amidst NASA budget cuts, commercial spaceflight has come to the forefront. The Ansari X Prize, first offered in 1996 for the first private enterprise that could fly a three-passenger vehicle 100 kilopmeters into space twice in one week. In 2004, the prize was finally won by Mojave Aerospace Ventures' SpaceShipOne. That same year, Virgin Galactic was founded to further space tourism. The company recently unveiled SpaceShipTwo, the first commercial spacecraft. 2004 also saw the certification of the Mojave Air and Space Port, the first licensed facility for horizontal launches of reusable spacecraft in the US. In anticipation of the spaceflight business, one company claims it's readying a space hotel.
Our Cyborg Present: In the last decade, humans and machines have gotten closer than ever. We have machines that can read our memories, computers that let us type with our brains, and robotic arms controlled by monkey minds. Perhaps the most impressive cyborg advances have come in the last few months, with researchers hooking amputees up to robotic arms that not only respond to electrical signals from the human brain, but also provide tactile feedback.

The LHC Comes Online: The Large Hadron Collider has just begun colliding proton beams, but its construction represents one of the most ambitious scientific undertakings ever. The immense particle accelerator will hopefully give us first-hand observations of aspects of the universe that have been, thus far, the realm of theoretical physics. Despite fears from doomsayers that the LHC would destroy the world and a series of mishaps that led to claims that the device was being sabotaged from the future, the LHC came online this year and quickly got to smashing protons at record-breaking speeds.
最大粒子對撞機創紀錄
(明報)2009年11月30日星期一 20:05
歐洲核子研究中心宣布，大型強子對撞機內的兩束質子流加速到1.18萬億伏特的能級，創下了新的世界紀錄。
歐洲科學家表示，這是一個重要里程碑，他們明年將做更多實驗，以解開宇宙物質來源的秘密。新紀錄打破了美國創下的紀錄。

ref : http://io9.com/5430073/ten-science-stories-that-changed-our-decade

Bushbaby & Potto

2009-08-14T21:02:00.003+10:00

寫完 Coquerel Sifakas (Lemurs), Tarsiers & Lorises 後, 心思思想睇吓另兩種類 Potto & Galagos 是什麼樣子的, 於是由上網找資料了.

Bushbaby (Galagos) :

Hahahahhhhhhhhhh!!!!! just 攪吓笑吧了.... 哈哈哈!!!

bush baby name for several small, active nocturnal primates of the loris family, found in forested parts of Africa. Bush babies, also called galagos, form the subfamily Galaginae. The smallest are about 1 ft (30 cm) long, including the long, furry tail. All have fluffy fur, small pointed faces with large eyes, and naked, highly mobile ears. The very large eyes are adapted for nocturnal vision and their pupils contract so as to be almost invisible. The long hind legs are specialized for jumping; the fingers and toes are long and slender, with fleshy terminal pads; and the thumb and big toe are opposable. Extremely swift and agile, bush babies leap like squirrels from branch to branch and hop on their hind legs on the ground. They feed on gums, insects, fruit, and vegetable matter. Senegal bush babies ( Galago senegalensis ) are familiar as pets. They are gregarious and spend much time grooming each other with their front teeth. Bush babies are classified in the phylum Chordata , subphylum Vertebrata, class Mammalia, order Primates, family Lorisidae.

Potto :

Perodicticus Potto

The potto is a mammal of the primate order and the prosimian suborder.
Physical Characteristics
The potto is 12 to 16 inches with a 1 1/2 to 6 inch tail. It weighs 1 3/4 to 3 /14 pounds. Its joints are very mobile and allow it to reach out at any angle to grasp branches. It has fur that may be gray, brown, or red. Its ears and eyes are small. Its body is slender and long.

Behavioral Characteristics
The potto is nocturnal, sleeping during the day. It is arboreal, living among the trees and is a careful but skilled climber. In order to escape the attention of predators, the potto has the ability to stay completely still for hours. If it is attacked, it tucks its head down and batters its attacker with a "shield" of horny skin that covers the spiny bones on the potto's upper back. Its slow movements, coloration, small size, use of little vocalization and the its nocturnal habits all also help protect the potto from predation.
Life Cycle
The potto's breeding season is yearlong; however, it usually occurs at such a time that the births will take place when fruit is most bountiful. Also, the breeding only occurs once per year. The gestation or pregnancy of the female potto lasts around 200 days. The one young suckles the mother's teats for 120 to 180 days or 4 to 5 months. The young potto becomes independent between 6 and 8 months. Both males and females become sexually mature at about 18 months old. The maximum lifespan of the potto is over 25 years.
Diet
The potto's diet consists of fruits, sap, gum and small animals. They eat more fruit then anything else in their diet. Species that have a fruit diet are often referred to as being frugivorous.
The potto is sometimes part of the diet of the African palm civet. However the African palm civet, like the potto is usually mostly frugivorous.
Habitat
The potto is located in western and central Africa. It lives in habitats of thick rainforest. It requires trees in order to survive.

The end.

Pygmy Slow Loris:

2009-08-13T22:26:00.004+10:00

續上篇 Tarsiers……….

在 Prosimians 下的 Coquerel Sifakas ( Lemurs), Tarsiers 同Lorises 是我暫時覺得最可愛的, 所以要來紀錄一下:

Pygmy Slow Loris:

Key Facts

Adult Size : 0.8 - 1.0 pounds

Natural Range : Vietnam, Laos, and parts of Cambodia

Social life : Solitary nocturnal forager

Habitat : Secondary forests, formally in primary rainforests

Diet : Fruits, other vegetation, and occasional small mammals and birds

Lifespan : 20 years, observed in captivity

Sexual maturity : females 9 months, males 17 - 20 months

Mating : Once every 12 - 18 months

Gestation : 188 days

Number of young : 1 - 2 offspring every 1 - 1 ½ years

DLC Naming theme : Insect names (Grasshopper and Skimmer.)

Interesting Facts

Pygmy lorises sleep rolled up in a ball with their head between their legs.
Pygmy lorises often hang upside-down from branches by their feet so they can use both hands to eat.
The native habitat of pygmy lorises was devastated during the Vietnam War. They are the most endangered of the non-lemur prosimians.
Pygmy lorises are often sold in the markets in Vietnam.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pygmy_Slow_Loris

The End. ……..

Tarsiers

2009-08-13T21:49:00.001+10:00

續上篇 Coquerel sifaka
在 Prosimians 下的 Coquerel Sifakas ( Lemurs), Tarsiers 同Lorises 是我暫時覺得最可愛的, 所以要來紀錄一下:

Tarsiers:

tarsier , small, nocturnal, forest-dwelling prosimian primate , genus Tarsius.
There are at least three species found in the Philippines, in Sumatra and Borneo, and in Sulawesi.
Tarsiers are about 6 in. (15 cm) long with a 10 in. (25 cm) hairless tail, and weigh about 4.5 oz (130 g).
The body is covered with dense brown fur. Enormous round eyes are set close together in a flat face.
Tarsiers' legs are specialized for climbing and jumping and end in long, thin digits bearing adhesive pads.
They feed on insects and reptiles.
They are believed to mate for life and to form family groups.
Tarsiers are classified in the phylum Chordata , subphylum Vertebrata, class Mammalia, order Primates, family Tarsiidae.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarsier

to be contiued……….

Coquerel sifaka

2009-08-13T20:38:00.001+10:00

看完 The link : Uncovering the earliest our acestor, 使我對Lemur 發生勁大興趣, 上網看了一下資料.
我們的 Evolution tree 原來是這樣的:

在 Prosimians 下的 Coquerel Sifakas ( Lemurs), Tarsiers 同Lorises 是我暫時覺得最可愛的, 所以要來紀錄一下:
Coquerel Sifakas ( Lemurs) :

Key Facts
Adult Size : 7.3 - 9.9 pounds
Social life : Sociable, small family groups of 3 - 10 animals of varying ages
Habitat : northwestern dry deciduous forest
Diet : young leaves, flowers, fruit, bark and dead wood in the wet season, mature leaves and buds in the dry season
Lifespan : 25 - 30 years
Sexual maturity : 2 - 3 years
Mating : very seasonal, January - February in the wild
Gestation : approximately 162 days, infants are born between June and July in the wild
Number of young : one per year
DLC Naming theme : Roman Emperors (Julian, Marcella, Nigel, etc.)
Malagasy names : Tsibahaka, Sifaka, Ankomba Malandy
Interesting Facts

The Malagasy name 'sifaka' comes from the distinct call this animal makes: "shif - auk".
The DLC houses the only breeding colony of Coquerel's sifaka.
Our very own Jovian, a young male Coquerel's sifaka, is the star of the children's television show, Zoboomafoo.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coquerel's_Sifaka

to be continued………………………………

The link: Uncovering Our Earliest Ancestor? –5

2009-08-12T17:21:00.002+10:00

Laser scanners combined with a computerized photographic model produce a digital code of her body, which once processed creates an accurately 3D model.

Ida is a warm blood creature covered with thick fur, she is just under one meter long including her tail, which she used for balance as she scampered on all fours along the rain forest canopy, her opposable thumbs and toes gripped the branches.

Ida is probably activity at night, like us, her two large forward facing eyes gave her excellence stereoscopic vision.

How significant is she to our understanding of our evolution? Does she belong on the evolutionary branch that leads to us???

The Eocene period in which she lived was a crucial time in the history life, without the developments that happened we will not exists now.

At some point during this new dawn, the primates split into two major groups.
The Prosimians (the non human branch) which still survive today, mainly as a modern lemurs.
The other branch the Antropoides has developed into monkeys, apes and ultimately us - humans.

The advantage of having a skeleton that is so completed, hopefully will let us make the connection to what came later. In the sense, studying primate evolution is all about looking at the diversity living today and tracing that back through time. What we are interested here to see is how apes & monkeys traced back, how lemurs traced back and which of these or all of them can we find in the Eocene.

The first guess of cause, because of the other specimen that were found in the Messel locality, of course is to say that this is a primitive lemur.

Most lemurs are of the size of monkeys, they have similar habits and life styles, but they are evolutionary side branch, they hardly changed fundamentally in 47 million years.

Prosimians species : Lemurs, Tarsiers, Loris, Galagos, & Pottos

Lemurs : Coquerels sifaka

Ring-tailed lemur

Lemurs second digit has a long grooming claw, on the hind foot.

Lemurs are using this for groom their fur.

Checking their teeth

Their front teeth in the lower jaw are a tooth comb.

Ida does not have a tooth comb and no grooming claw, she only has nails like humans. Ida does not belonging to the lemurs.

to be continued…………………..

The link: Uncovering Our Earliest Ancestor? –4

2009-08-09T12:34:00.001+10:00

50 million years ago, Europe was very different then today. Continents have drifted and sea levels changed. The world climate is more humid and tropical.

The primate’s home around the lake was a lush and tropical rainforest.

This is where our fossil lived out her life as a pre-historic primate.
She lived in a dense jungle of tall trees and vines.

As the team continued to examine her skeleton they were able to deduce how she lived:

Looking at her thumb and her hands and legs they could see that these were grasping hands and grasping feet. Evidently these were hands and feet designed for living on the top of the trees, no doubt about that.

Her arm and leg bones are quite strong for such a little animal, indicating that she had quite a lot of muscles.

To understand what she did eat, the team looked at her teeth.

According to the x-ray of her teeth, we know she did eat fruit and leaves and probably supplementing it with insects. The team even found seeds in her gut.

She has an extraordinary large number of teeth.
The team made a 3D CT scan analysis of her teeth and realized that she had her baby teeth as well as her unerupted adult teeth still in her jaw. This primate was a youngster.

She is a young female with an equivalent age of a human somewhere between 6 and 12 years old

The investigating scientist has a daughter, 5 years old who had a similar teeth situation at the time, so he decided to name the fossil Ida, after the name of his own daughter.

to be continued………………..

The Link: Uncovering Our Earliest Ancestor? - 3

2009-08-03T13:48:00.001+10:00

By studying the fossil’s Teeth

Dr. Holly Smith, a dental anthropologist, studying the teeth of fossils can establish the fossil’s age, what it ate and how it relates to the other primates.

Dr. Jens Lorenz Franzen, a renowned fossil expert, can’t wait to discover this unique fossil, which has a complete skeleton, complete soft body outlines and the complete gut content!

Prof. Philip Gingerich, he spends his whole life searching for the link between earlier and modern mammals.

Starting analysis:

They could not find the willy’s bone, so they know it is a female.

Now, here comes the question, where does she come from?
The way her delicate body was preserved gave the clue. The body was cast into a polyester resin and scientists know that there is only place in the world where this technique is used, and that is Germany, the Messel Pit, there is no other place in the world like this.

All the fossils found here, are complete and unique, not in little pieces

This is a fossil rabbit

This is a fossil snake

this is a fossil reptile

This is a fossil crocodile

this is a fossil bird

this is a fossil fog

this is a fossil big ant

this is a fossil bat

The technique of preserving the fossil in plastic:

then, we can study the fossil, bone by bone.

Some 50 million years ago, the Messel Pit was a volcano that explode and filled with muddy water lacking oxygen, that’s where little Ida drank, fell in and perished!

……………… to be continued.

The Link: Uncovering Our Earliest Ancestor? - 2

2009-08-01T20:29:00.002+10:00

47 million year old fossilised remains
The most complete fossil proimate ever found
A missing link to the origins of man?

47 million years ago, the dinosaurs were already long extinct, the early mammals established themselves, the tropical rain forest covering the earth created a home for small primates, amongst them the ancestor of all of us.

Scientists searching for our early ancestors in East Africa.

In 1970, scientists found the link between the ape and humans, a distant female ancestor called Lucy, proving that humans started walking up-right some 3.2 million years ago

In 1984, the skeleton of a boy was found, providing proof that 1.5 million years ago, humans lost their hair and take their first step on to the ground of the earth.

Scientist hoped to find more earlier mammal fossils on earth, to confirm the link between the ape and men.

Then in December 2006, in a fossil fair in Hambury, Germany.

we found Ida, a young female fossils which can explain the evolution of humans, a link between the lemur, the ape and ourselves.
The fossil is 96 percent complete and did cost over one million dollars.

A scientific examination using X rays confirmed that the fossil was genuine and showed detailed internal structure, including bone marrow.

The common feature we share with all primates is that we have four fingers with nails, not claws, and an opposable thumb, Ida shares this feature with us.

………………. to be continued.

The Link: Uncovering Our Earliest Ancestor? - 1

2009-08-01T14:58:00.001+10:00

http://www.abc.net.au/tv/guide/netw/200907/programs/ZX0319A001D30072009T203000.htm

Millions of years ago, a little girl was born. It's time to meet our 47-million-year-old ancestor...
The Link: Uncovering Our Earliest Ancestor? tells the story of the 47-million-year-old fossil known as Ida, which scientists believe could be an indication of one of the roots of anthropoid evolution - the point at which our primate ancestors began first developing the features that would evolve into our own.
Lying inside a high-security vault, deep within the heart of one of the world's leading natural history museums, this scientific find of a lifetime connects to everyone.
Kept secret for two years, Ida is the most complete early primate fossil ever found.
With exclusive access to Ida and the team of scientists who have examined her, this documentary follows the University of Oslo's two-year journey to secretly analyse and verify Ida, piecing together her forensic secrets.
The film shows how various techniques were used to examine and re-create the creature, revealing that this early primate was a previously unknown species and one of our earliest ancestors.
Discovered in Messel Pit, Germany, Ida is 20-times older than most fossils that explain human evolution, and is 96 percent complete.
Narrated by Sir David Attenborough, The Link: Uncovering Our Earliest Ancestor? brings Ida to life, using 3-D animations and imaging technologies to re-create Ida and the world that she would have inhabited.

… to be continued

Us and Them - ABC Foreign Correspondent

2009-07-24T00:34:00.002+10:00

http://www.abc.net.au/foreign/content/2009/s2631046.htm

300 多年前, 在 Northern Ireland, 大概有一大部份人是來自Ireland, 他們相信 Catholicism. 而剩下的另一大部份人是來自Scotland & England, 他們相信Protestantism 新教教會(應是Anglicans, 請看以下解說). 於是他們互相憎恨, 當然Catholics 都想趕走那些Protestants, 咁 Ireland 就可統一了, 但是 Northern Ireland 是英國領土, 英政府說Protestant 住了那麼久, 點可搬走他們呢. 於是為了平亂, 便建了一圍牆分隔兩教住民了.
{ Protestant 原自 Catholics (當然, Catholics 也是原自 Christians), 自 Martin Luther (1483-1546 德國人)從天主教教庭分列出來後. 便自立門戶來反對羅馬教宗而成立了Protestantism. 在英國的 Henry the Eight (1491-1547)睇到 Martin Luther 的成功, 為了廢除現在皇后, 娶個女侍官. 於是佢又要出來反對羅馬教庭而成立了 Anglicans 聖公會(因為他們也是反對天主教的POPE, 所以都叫Protestant). Henry the eight, 成立了聖公會後, 斬鬼咗個第二個老婆個頭, 前前後後共娶了6位老婆!!!!} 0依!!! 睇嚟做男人, 信聖公教會好過天主教囉, 可以不斷換老婆!!!! 哈哈哈!!!!
Kilometres of high concrete walls snake through Belfast in Northern Ireland - graffiti daubed and grim. They divide catholic neighbourhoods from Protestant.
They’re called the Peace Walls.
But do they keep the enduring hatred and suspicion locked outside or inside?
The consensus among the locals participating in this story is pretty clear – if the walls came down there would be a swift return to the bad old days of intractable sectarian violence.
'If you pull that wall down there’ll be murder, mayhem, there’ll be blood spilt, you can guarantee now, there’ll be big, big trouble.'
William Brown, loyalist resident.
Even as Europe Correspondent Phil Williams was putting the final touches to his story on the quality of peace in Northern Ireland, he found himself in the middle of a dangerous melee. Petrol bombs and water cannon exploded as police tried to break up a riot that had erupted around one of the traditional annual Orange Day parades.
It was a frightening example of what happens when Catholic and protestant communities chafe, undivided by the so-called peace walls.
“Well it’s ugly, it’s horrible, but at the minute, it’s necessary. But there’s also walls of prejudice … walls that were built 300 years ago here and they're still here in legislation, in prejudice and bigotry. So those are the walls that are going to have to come down first.” Sean McVeigh, Republican resident
Despite marked political progress since the signing of the 1998 Peace Agreement, steps towards mending the enduring divisions between some Catholic and Protestant communities have been much slower.
In recent months the killing of two soldiers, a policeman and a Catholic community worker indicate that the tensions of The Troubles still lurk very close to the surface.
Are the Peace Walls monuments to the past or vital and necessary peace-keepers in the present and the future?
_________________________________

Transcript

WILLIAMS: Like veins they snake through the city streets, across parks, through schools. Twenty kilometres of suspicion and hatred separated by bricks, metal and wire. But as well as providing protection from the rocks, bottles and pipe bombs, the so-called ‘peace walls’ also offer opportunity, employment and a sense of purpose.
China has its Great Wall – Berlin used to have one and now no visit here is complete without a tour of the mighty walls of Belfast.
SEAMUS KELLY: We’re now in Comway Street and I remember this particular street in 1969 as a 16 year old. I remember the gunfire coming from the Shankill, which is only fifty metres ahead of us here. You can actually see the dividing peace wall and I just remember running, jumping into the houses to get down out onto the safety of the Falls Road at that particular time. Quite an experience.
WILLIAMS: In his wildest dreams Seamus Kelly could not have foreseen that he would end up as a tour guide, explaining the troubles from a Nationalist point of view and how he and so many of his friends ended up in prison after fighting for a united Ireland.
SEAMUS KELLY: [Republican tour guide] “It’s emotional, but there’s been much more things that have happened since then, between then and now that have been much more emotional. When I relate to the H blocks and the hunger strikes and the comrades who I knew, spent time with, who actually died on hunger strike - that to me is very, very emotional. That’s raw, that’s like yesterday, although it’s twenty-eight years ago. That’s very, very raw.
WILLIAMS: The tour takes in the murals and the memorials to the fallen and provides jobs for former IRA prisoners like Seamus Kelly.
“You wouldn’t consider going through these gates yourself and doing the tour on the other side?”
SEAMUS KELLY: “It wouldn’t be practical. I wouldn’t be talking about a…. ah coming from a unionist perspective, so that’s why loyalist ex prisoners would do that”.
WILLIAMS: [Handover to other tour guide on other side of the wall] Through these gates it’s loyalist territory and time for a change of guide and side.
“Twenty years ago you’d have been trying to kill each other”.
SEAMUS KELLY: “That’s correct, but times move on. There’s a whole new political dispensation here in Ireland at the moment. Projects such as this help… that understanding”.
WILLIAMS: Neither side has changed fundamental beliefs but the days of assassinations and knee cappings appear to be over.
WILLIAM SMITH: “It’s like the fear of being killed, it’s like the fear of being blown up…”.
WILLIAMS: Loyalist tour guide, William Smith, also spent time in prison during the troubles. The transformation from war zone to tourist town was unimaginable a few years ago.
WILLIAM SMITH: [Loyalist tour guide] “I was in prison for attempted murder, but I mean that may sound… you know really, what would you call it, bizarre now at this particular time, but in that, in 1970, thousands of young men went to prison. I will always say that that was a lost generation”.
WILLIAMS: At least some in that generation are now finding a new sense of purpose, explaining their side of the conflict to visitors who’ve left thousands of messages on the walls.
WILLIAM SMITH: “Tourists from all over the world will come here and they will write a message”.
WILLIAMS: “I can see one here from Sara Nicolas from Australia”.
WILLIAM SMITH: “Oh yeah, yeah there’s plenty of Aussies”.
WILLIAMS: While we walk the wall, more tourists draw their conclusions on it. Here the writing on the wall is almost exclusively from foreigners.
TOURIST: “I think it is kind of an odd thing, I think it would make more sense to see locals coming to sign the wall instead, so….. and that would make it a peace wall for sure”.
WILLIAMS: It’s an extraordinary transformation when tourism supplants terrorism. This is enormous progress but while the visitors come and go, the walls remain, splitting two communities.
“It may seem strange that years after the Good Friday Agreement was signed, although there was political progress and measurable, as chaotic as it may sometimes be, here at the interface where Catholic meets Protestant these walls are still as they were. In fact there have been more built because the people here see them not as dividing communities but protecting them”.
And this is what can happen where there are no walls. In the north Belfast area of Ardoyne there’s been a tradition of violence handed down from one poisoned generation to another. It erupted again during the annual Orange Order marches. Hopes had been so high that this was over - and the day begun so differently.
NELSON MCCAUSLAND: [Culture Minister, Northern Ireland] “Well the 12th of July is a special occasion, it’s one of the most important dates for me in the year. As you can see it’s a great carnival, a great festival. You’ve only to look at the parade itself and see the artistry of the banners, the music of the bands, the colour of the occasion, the great crowds that are out. It’s a family occasion. You’ve grandparents, parents and children. It’s a day really that could be enjoyed by anyone”.
WILLIAMS: You won’t see many Catholics here. Most see this celebration of the Protestant victory at the battle of the Boyne in 1690 as offensive and a provocation. The majority stay away, but four years of relative peace came to a violent end this time.
[On street] “You can see things are getting very tense here. The marchers are expected to come up through this area, a Catholic area very soon and there’s a large police presence trying to hold the Catholic protestors back. This is just an expression of the sort of tension this day evokes and at the moment, it’s getting very rough”.
The Ardoyne has long been a flashpoint. It’s where Catholic and Protestant territories meet. No wall keeping them apart. No place either for an Orange order march according to these people. Everyone here is used to the rocks and even the petrol bombs - and in reply, the baton rounds and the water canon. But for the first time since the 1970’s, someone fired a gun here - a worrying new threat that had police on edge.
Eventually the Orange Order did pass as the rocks and abuse rained down on them. Sinn Fein’s, Gerry Kelly was quickly on the scene, blaming the Orange Order for marching here, but also dissident Republican groups like the Real IRA for organising the attacks.
“What does this say about the peace process?”
GERRY KELLY: [Sinn Fein MLA] “The peace process is solid, the political process is solid, let us not exaggerate what happened here. These are small micro groups who incidentally came together when they thought they saw the opportunity to bring down the peace process. In a single incident, in a single night they will not achieve that. They will feel…. they have already felt…... They have no strategy… they are going nowhere”.
MARTIN MCGUINNESS: [Deputy First Minister, Northern Ireland] “It’s very important not to, and it’s even important for the Australian Broadcast Media not to distort what happened over the last couple of days from the overall picture which has I think been a very good news story world wide for some fifteen years”.
(News reports of the killing of two soldiers)
WILLIAMS: It’s an optimism not reinforced by recent events, a series of killings over the last few months. The first left two soldiers dead - shot at an army post - and two days later, the Dissident Continuity IRA was blamed for the murder of Constable Stephen Carroll – the first policeman killed in a terrorist attack in Northern Ireland for twelve years.
KATE CARROLL: “He was my life - my son and my husband were my life and I just feel now that I’m dead inside”.
WILLIAMS: Another funeral, this time forty nine year old Catholic community worker Kevin McDaid. He was beaten to death as he tried to help a friend being attacked by a mob. His wife was bashed too. Amongst the mourners was Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness.
MARTIN MCGUINNESS: “We have to see all of this in a proper perspective. The big story of the killings over the last number of weeks has been the way in which the political process has come together to repudiate the activities of those who would try to plunge us back into the past. You cannot compare, under any circumstances, the way things are today from where they were fifteen or twenty years ago. We are in a fundamentally different and better place”.
WILLIAMS: It is true despite the recent setbacks, it’s still a long way from the bad days of open sectarian warfare and ironically the very structures that divide, also secure.
WILLIAM BROWN: “In a perfect world it would be great to see peace but let’s face it, it’s Belfast, Northern Ireland - and there’s never going to be peace here”.
WILLIAMS: Loyalist William Brown and his family have lived for years across the road from one of the walls. Talk of knocking them down is not seen here even as a faint possibility.
MRS BROWN: “No, definitely not. For everyone’s sake it’s best just to keep the wall up, to keep the peace”.
WILLIAM BROWN: “Aye if you pull that wall down, there’ll be murder, mayhem, there’ll be blood spilt. You can guarantee now, there’ll be big, big trouble”.
WILLIAMS: “So we’re just coming on dark now, is this about when the rioting would start when you were young?”
WILLIAM BROWN: “Yes when the night falls and the rain falls, that’s when we’d come out”.
WILLIAMS: William Brown takes me the few hundred metres from his house to the same place where the political tours do their handovers.
WILLIAM BROWN: “I don’t trust anyone. I wouldn’t trust anyone with my life”.
WILLIAMS: “No chances of peace?”
WILLIAM BROWN: “There’s no peace here and there’ll never be peace”.
WILLIAMS: “That’s a pretty pessimistic view isn’t it?”
WILLIAM BROWN: “Well I’m the one living on the peace line. I know, I’ve seen it. You will always have your factions. This place is like, like the Palestinians and the Israelis – this is the same scenario”.
WILLIAMS: On the Republican side, Sean McVeigh cannot escape the shadow of the walls. He lives too close to forget this has been a war zone and his family and home attacked.
“How do you feel about this wall now? Would you like to see it down?”
SEAN MCVEIGH: “Well it’s ugly, it’s horrible but at the moment it’s necessary. You know it’s, in my mind, walls aren’t only physical, aren’t only made of mortar or steel or wire, but there’s also walls of prejudice. There’s walls that were built 300 years ago here and they’re still here in legislation and the prejudice and bigotry so those are the walls that are going to have to come down first”.
WILLIAMS: It’s a sentiment echoed across this city – it’s attitudes, not masonry that need dismantling…. and Father Aiden Troy has learned from bitter experience.
FATHER TROY: [2001 footage] “I was terrified, but I was terrified not for myself so much but I was terrified some child was going to be killed or very badly injured - and with that a live device, a bomb was thrown over. In that split second it dawned on me, this is beyond anything that anyone could have imagined”.
WILLIAMS: Back in 2001, Father Troy found himself in the middle of one of the ugliest confrontations in recent years as Protestants tried to stop Catholic children from walking through their area on their way to school.
FATHER TROY: “We were always very conscious that once we got through the gate they moved without looking left or right, right into the school”.
WILLIAMS: “Now that terrible period is over but the conflict isn’t over is it?”
FATHER TROY: “No I think this is one of the very sort of worrying aspects that I think I’ve learnt so much from this. I this peace is very much a gradual process and I think there is genuinely a move forward but there’s always the danger of slipping back”.
WILLIAMS: There are no riots here. At Hazelwood Integrated Primary in North Belfast, Catholics and Protestants share the playground, and the classroom. The main lesson here is if you educate people together, you can break the cycle of distrust.
PEACHES MCCORRY: “If it was a Catholic school only Catholics could go there”.
WILLIAMS: “And what do you think about that?”
PEACHES MCCORRY: “I don’t know”.
WILLIAMS: “Do you think that’s a good idea or not?”
PEACHES MCCORRY: “I don’t think it is because it’s good to let other people in your school”.
WILLIAMS: “Do you think about if they’re a Catholic or a Protestant?”
FEMALE STUDENT: “No, it doesn’t really matter”.
WILLIAMS: Despite the obvious success here, few of Northern Ireland schools are integrated and for Principal Jill Houston, it’s been a frustrating struggle against entrenched opposition.
JILL HOUSTON: [Principal Hazelwood Integrated Primary] “Opposition from government, opposition from parents, opposition from churches but a total belief that having children educated together is sensible. It shouldn’t be something that’s different. It should be the total norm in any normal society”.
WILLIAMS: “And yet there’s only about five per cent of Northern Ireland children in schools like this.”
JILL HOUSTON: “Yes. Basically I regret to say our politicians and our senior civil servants and our people who’ve come over from English rule, have not seen the value and don’t want to upset the local politicians I think by ensuring that most schools should be integrated”.
WILLIAMS: “And yet for you it’s a no brainer”.
JILL HOUSTON: “Total no brainer”.
WILLIAMS: Integration is something happening in some unexpected places. In this Belfast commercial art gallery, two street mural artists are working side by side – that’s new. But what’s also unique is that they come from diametrically opposed backgrounds.
DANNY DEVANNY: “I’m just recreating a picture of Bobby. It’s a mural I did several….. well, many years ago on the Falls Road”.
WILLIAMS: This is Danny Devanny’s iconic mural of Bobby Sands, the IRA hunger striker who died in prison. Devanny’s artistic talents are well known in Republican areas. He was imprisoned for attempting to rob a bank to raise money for the IRA. Now he shares a gallery with Mark Irvine, the son of a Loyalist politician who was gaoled for fighting the IRA. It’s a level of collaboration unthinkable just a few years ago.
Danny Devanny hasn’t changed his political views. His work reflects a worldview of revolutionary struggle, but both he and Mark Irvine have bridged the religious and political divide. Their message, that with goodwill anyone can do it.
DANNY DEVANNY: [Mural artist] “We totally are appalled by the issues of sectarianism where young people are divided apart because of their religion. In fact the irony is, me and Mark live about a hundred yards from each other and we’d never met each other. His father would have been the same age as mine and in the end when we did meet we got on very well together. We have so much in common”.
WILLIAMS: “Do you worry it could descend back to the bad old days again?”
MARK IRVINE: [Mural artist] “You’ve always got that worry, but I can’t see sort of how that could happen. I think we’ve moved too far forward and I think that the general populous don’t want it. They just want to live a normal peaceful life and get on with their lives. I don’t think anybody wants to go back to the way it was”.
WILLIAMS: “Have you had any luck convincing him about the Unionist cause and vice versa?”
MARK IRVINE: “No. But we agree to disagree”.
WILLIAMS: Inside the glass and steel of a modern Belfast shopping mall, the dominant ideology is consumerism. It’s part of a new world where old brands seem unnecessary – Catholic, Protestant, Loyalist or Republican – and in the city streets and many residential areas, people do live peacefully side by side and yet it seems most in the city still see the removal of the walls a long way off.
FATHER TROY: “People still are fundamentally distrustful of each other and I think that’s why we have so many peace walls – “peace walls” in quotes - in Belfast. It’s bridges we need to build in this society and yet we’re very poor bridge builders. We’re actually brilliant here in Belfast at building walls”.
WILLIAMS: If ever a place was captive to its history then this is it. And yet there is real change. The camera-toting tourists are a clear sign of that. But the walls remain, and there’s not enough confidence to change that for now. Still, this was the only masked man we saw and with luck and goodwill, when he grows up, perhaps all of this will be gone.
MARTIN MCGUINNESS: “Those walls are obviously something that we would like to see removed and I think as the political process goes from strength to strength, that the day will come but I think that decision has to be in the hands of the people who live on both sides of the walls. Our job is to, within the political process, continue to make the gains that I know the vast majority of people welcome. Build a better future that our people want to see, and build a situation where people feel comfortable to remove those walls”.
WILLIAMS: In some areas the fires of sectarianism will continue to burn no matter what the politicians say. At this Loyalist bonfire, Republican flags and posters are destroyed. More often than not, nights like this use to end in violence. Not now. Perhaps the best that can be hoped for in these places is peaceful coexistence. Around here, that’s huge progress.

Why does the Moon seem to follow us when we drive?

2009-07-23T18:13:00.001+10:00

在冬天, 我們這裡的月亮在下午3或4點就升起來的了, 每次我同EDWARD行沙灘的時候, 總覺月亮永遠跟著我們一樣, 我每次都想問EDWARD為什麼, 但次次都沒記在心裡. 今天記起, EDWARD就舉了一個實例和畫了一圖來解釋(請看兩附圖).

以下是網上資料:
Why does the Moon seem to follow us when we drive?
By Kathy Wollard
Why does the Moon seem to follow us when we drive? asks a 4th-grade class in Lancaster, OH.
Feel like you're being followed? While it seems like the Moon is always just over your shoulder on a moonlit night, the Sun is also shadowing you as you drive on a sunny afternoon. And then there are those distant mountains to worry about…

According to astronomers, the reason why the Moon and the Sun seem to be following us is because they are so far away. The Moon, for example, is about 240,000 miles away; the Sun about 93 million miles. And no matter how fast we drive, we just can't pass them.
When you drive by a stand of trees or a series of telephone poles near the road, you pass them very quickly. So you see roadside objects first ahead of you, then next to you, and finally behind you, receding into the rear-view mirror.
But when you drive (or stroll) by the Moon, it's a different story. Because the Moon is so far away, the angle you view it from will change very little as you move along. So mile after mile, the Moon will remain in roughly the same spot of sky. And just as you can't “pass” the Moon, neither can you shake the presence of the Sun, planets, or stars. Even very distant mountain ranges appear nearly stationary as we drive by. And far-away farms and city skylines seem to move by very slowly.
Since we can't pass the Moon, we can't pass its reflection, either. When you walk along the beach at night, the river of moonlight reflected off the water moves right along with you. Try to wade out into the moonlight, and you'll find it remains tantalizingly out of reach, just as a shimmering patch-of-water mirage retreats down the road as you drive toward it.
When you stand on the beach, moonlight bounces off the water and into your eyes at a nearly fixed angle. As long as the Moon is in the same spot of sky and the water level doesn't rise or fall much, the angle of reflection will remain roughly the same. So if you can see the entire ribbon of moonlight, your eyes are at just the right height to intercept the rays of light bouncing off the water from the horizon to the beach.
Once you wade out into the water, however, you've also moved your eyes. The moonlight bouncing from the water at your feet doesn't strike your eyes; instead, it shoots right past you at a lower height. So the water at your feet looks dark.
Friends on the beach behind you, however, will see you standing right in the moonlight road, and could even snap a picture of it. So to bathe in moonlight, simply sit down in the water, where your eyes can catch the silvery light at the right angle.
Meanwhile, just as every car on the road thinks the Moon is following them, so every walker on the beach sees their own ribbon of moonlight, stretching towards the horizon.
http://www.word-detective.com/howcome/moonfollow.html

The Hour: Religulous

2009-06-10T20:44:00.004+10:00

Religions

2009-06-10T20:36:00.001+10:00

I don’t believe we should allow religions to tear our lives apart!!! I believe we should allow our brains to be objective and base our lifestyle on scientific evidence instead of fiction!!

Religulous

2009-06-10T20:24:00.001+10:00

If u have a brain, I think u should look at this!

Religulous-excerpts from beginning & end

2009-06-10T20:14:00.000+10:00

Bill Maher’s “Religulous”

2009-06-10T19:26:00.001+10:00

Bill Maher on “Religulous”

2009-06-10T17:21:00.000+10:00

Religious people believe that they are not destructive, but they really are!!! It is not good enough to portray them as innocent and naïve fools, they really are the most dominant contributors to all violence and evil on this earth!!

Beautiful Birdies in our backyard

2009-06-09T22:26:00.000+10:00

Dear God - The Atheists Prayer

2009-05-23T19:50:00.001+10:00

Dear God - XTC

2009-05-23T19:28:00.003+10:00

Dear God - w/ lyrics

2009-05-23T18:25:00.001+10:00

Dear God

2009-05-23T18:17:00.002+10:00

God love u???

2009-05-22T17:56:00.000+10:00

OK, if God let me live forever without being sick or in pain!!!! Hahahahah..... I will belive in God!!!

However! god is an arshole!!!! he would like to see u tortured to death!!!!Hahahahha!!!! I'm telling u the truth! Wouldn't I ????

God loves all of us?

2009-05-22T17:49:00.000+10:00

I feel so sad that people can't believed their talent and ablity! They lose all the confidence when they get scared of dying or illess or lose all their money! And then they suddenly come up with their God believing he can do everything for them!!!! "Thank you God!" "Thank's God" they say!!! Hahaah...... God loves all of U!!! God will not let U down, God will let U live forever with your little brain!!

愛爾蘭教會強姦虐童60年

2009-05-22T17:41:00.000+10:00

http://news.hk.msn.com/international/article_3_21571_1.asp

愛爾蘭教會強姦虐童60年

2009/05/22 來源：on.cc

愛爾蘭一份官方調查報告，正式揭露教會院舍向數以千計院童施虐六十多年的黑暗歷史。上世紀三十年代至九十年代，超過二百五十間孤兒院和感化院兒童因教團和政府的縱容，遭教士和修女虐待。經過九年調查，官方發表的報告詳述數以千計受害兒童遭強暴、毒打、欺凌和勞役。

教育部巡查不力
愛爾蘭當年有超過三萬名兒童入住孤兒院和感化院，自十多年前起，愛爾蘭教會陸續被揭連串神職人員孌童事件，逾一萬四千人聲稱是受害人。官方機構虐待兒童調查委員會星期三發表長達二千六百頁的報告，是有關醜聞迄今最詳細的述。這些個案可追溯到上世紀三十年代，主要發生於教會的孤兒院和感化院，當中披露教會對事件隻眼開隻眼閉，亦批評教育部一直巡查不力，容忍院舍對孩子施虐逾半世紀。
委員會訪問了逾千名當年受害的院童，他們被虐手法包括性侵犯、虐打、欺壓和勞役，有女孩被一些專門施以「最大痛苦」的器具折磨，全身被毆。報道指男童遭強暴的情況，在基督教兄弟會的院舍內尤其普遍，而女童遭修女虐打則在仁愛修女會的院舍最盛行。
愛爾蘭的布拉迪樞機主教向受害者致歉，表示「深感抱歉和羞愧」，愛爾蘭副總理稱這是該國歷中上「最黑暗的一頁」，教育部聲言會以這段歷史為鑑。但不少受害者指報告不但未有指出施虐者的姓名，亦未建議當局提出刑事起訴，虐待兒童生還者組織周三在當局發表報告的酒店外抗議。

Church abuse: Irish case reignites calls for local

2009-05-22T17:25:00.000+10:00

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/05/21/2577458.htm

Church abuse: Irish case reignites calls for local probe

By Barbara Miller for The World Today

Posted Thu May 21, 2009 5:24pm AEST
Updated Thu May 21, 2009 7:09pm AEST

The Australian Catholic Church says while it is ashamed at the findings from Ireland, there is no need for such a commission. (ABC News: Gary Rivett)

The head of the Catholic Church in Ireland says he is profoundly ashamed and sorry about the findings of an extensive investigation into child abuse at Church-run institutions.

Ireland's Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse report found that thousands of children were beaten, raped and humiliated, and that the Church and state knew of the abuse and did nothing to punish the perpetrators.

In response to the report, victims of abuse by members of the clergy here in Australia have renewed their calls for a royal commission into the matter to be set up here.

Dr Wayne Chamley, a spokesman for the Broken Rites group, says previous Senate inquiries into the treatment of children in care do not go far enough.

"The problem with Senate inquiries is that they don't have powers of subpoena or powers to put witnesses under oath so many people won't come forward. They don't feel they have the right protections," he said.

The Australian Catholic Church says while it is ashamed at the findings from Ireland, there is no need for such a commission.

Sister Angela Ryan is with the Church's National Professional Standards Office.

"There has been a Senate inquiry. There's been a police royal commission in New South Wales," she said.

"Whatever is needed to check is needed but it's really important that people who have been abused come forward and that the matters are followed through now."

She says she is ashamed by the findings of the Irish report and admits it is possible that priests known to be sex offenders were transferred to Australia.

"It's certainly possible. If it happened and if there's been abuse in Australia, we would certainly want to deal with that," she said.

"There certainly are procedures in place now [to check]. Whether those procedures were in place 50, 60 years ago I would doubt, but they certainly are in place now."

The Christian Brothers ran many of the institutions in Ireland for boys and more allegations were made against the Brothers than all the other male orders combined.

Brother Brian Brandon is the executive officer for professional standards with the Christian Brothers Oceania Province.

He says he is shocked and saddened by the allegations but is confident none of the perpetrators are now working in Australia.

"We don't have any Irish Christian Brothers in Australia today, so that's not possible. Whether it happened in the first instance I'm not sure. I'd be very sorry if it did happen," he said.

But Brother Brandon concedes that the Christian Brothers here have much work to do in dealing with victims of abuse by its members.

"I work full-time in this position and I spend a lot of time talking with victims. I was in Canberra last Monday, I was in Perth for three days last week," he said.

"Unfortunately in one sense there's plenty of work to do, but we are committed to doing it."

Calls for Royal Commission into church abuse

2009-05-22T16:58:00.000+10:00

Establishing a Royal Commission in Australia in light of a damning report into abuse at Catholic-run institutions in Ireland is an overreaction, a Christian lobby group says.

http://www.facebook.com/ext/share.php?sid=90173557282&h=3yQnb&u=4sxin&ref=mf

Australian sex abuse victims have renewed calls for a commission, following the release of a report in Ireland which found abuse is the church is rife.

The long-awaited report, released in Dublin on Wednesday, outlined the terror of rampant sexual abuse, rapes and beatings inflicted on thousands of children over a 60-year period by priests, nuns and lay staff.

Spokesman for advocacy group Broken Rites Dr Wayne Chamley told ABC Radio he is concerned about Irish clergy members who are now residing in Australia.

"We are aware of a number of Irish-ordained priests (who) have been brought before the courts in Australia," he told ABC Radio.

"There needs to be a ... Royal Commission ... because we believe that the real figures would be revealed." But the Australian Christian Lobby (ACL) said calls for a Royal Commission were an "overreaction". "Churches in Australia have looked at this very diligently in the past few years," ACL managing director Jim Wallace said.

"I hope that has satisfied the need to get rid of this scourge from religious institutions and schools."

Google is very quick

2009-05-22T16:42:00.000+10:00

The news about:

The monkey-like creature was preserved through the ages in Germany's Messel Pit, a crater rich in Eocene Epoch fossils

I found Google is so quick to have this on their website at the same day:

The Atheist

2009-05-21T16:34:00.001+10:00

Phillip, I would like you to know that I am sincerely grateful for every single comment you have made tonight on the ABC's Compass "The Atheists"; it is extraordinarily comforting to me to know that we have people like yourself in our country, people with a voice and such an uncompromisingly realistic understanding of ourselves; I am on an absolute high tonight, you have made my day, I am thrithrilled and absolute

Jesus Appears in a Toilet

2009-05-20T15:58:00.000+10:00

Jesus Appears in a Toilet :
http://www.abc.net.au/tv/chaser/#/videoarchive/S02E22jesusface/

Missing link: 47-million-year old ancestor found

2009-05-20T15:25:00.000+10:00

http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/1018479/Missing-link:-47-million-year-old-ancestor-found

Scientists in New York have unveiled the skeleton of what could be the common ancestor to humans, apes and other primates.

The tiny creature, officially known as Darwinius masillae, but dubbed Ida, lived 47 million years ago and is unusually well preserved, missing only part of a leg, or five per cent of the skeleton.
The finding, described on Tuesday in the PloS ONE scientific journal, was displayed at a press conference at New York's Natural History Museum, and is due to be the subject of a television documentary.
Scientists led by Norway's fossil expert, Professor Jorn Hurum, worked for two years on Ida, who was first discovered in 1983 by private collectors who failed to understand her importance - and split the bones into two lots.
The monkey-like creature was preserved through the ages in Germany's Messel Pit, a crater rich in Eocene Epoch fossils.
Human characteristics
Although bearing a long tail, she had several human characteristics, including an opposable thumb, short arms and legs, and forward facing eyes.
She also lacked two key elements of modern lemurs: a grooming claw and a row of lower teeth known as the toothcomb.
"This is the first link to all humans - truly a fossil that links world heritage," Prof Hurum said in a statement.
David Attenborough, the renowned British naturalist and broadcaster, said the "little creature is going to show us our connection with all the rest of the mammals".
"The link they would have said until now is missing... it is no longer missing," he said.
Clues to last meal

Ida gives a glimpse into a time when the world was just taking its present shape. Dinosaurs were extinct, the Himalayas were forming and a huge range of mammals thrived in vast jungles.
According to the international team, Ida had suffered a badly broken wrist and this might have been her undoing. The theory is that while drinking from the Messel lake she was overcome by carbon dioxide fumes and fell in.
"Ida slipped into unconsciousness, was washed into the lake, and sank to the bottom, where the unique conditions preserved her for 47 million years," a statement said.
Her last meal shows she was a herbivore. Gut contents revealed remains of fruits, seeds and leaves.
"This fossil is so complete. Everything's there. It's unheard of in the primate record at all. You have to get to human burial to see something that's this complete," Hurum said.

The son of god

2009-05-19T12:52:00.000+10:00

The son of God :

How many follower he has!

http://www.abc.net.au/iview/#/program/373360

The name of the son of god is Michael, he said that God called him to have sex with that 14 & 16 years old little girls. Hahhahaaaa. Yes, how good to become the son of God than to be God!!! Because God doesn't have a willy?? Hahahhahah!!!

------------------------------------------------------

Inside a Cult: Messiah on Trial

Reporter: National Geographic and Channel 4

Broadcast: 18/05/2009

Last year the program told the story of Michael Travesser, formerly Wayne Bent, who claims to be the son of God.

This week a gripping follow-up as filmmaker Ben Anthony documents the story of Wayne Bent's prosecution on charges of underage sex. The charges are serious and could see him jailed for over thirty years.

Ben Anthony is there for every moment of the trial, talking to Wayne Bent, his followers and the people who once revered "their messiah" only to later denounce him.

His followers simply call him "Michael". His real name is Wayne Bent. He says he is "divine" and he led a group of people into an isolated part of New Mexico, in the United States, to prepare them for the end of the world.

Two years ago this new age messiah allowed filmmaker Ben Anthony access to his compound called "Strong City", and to speak to his followers. What Anthony documented shocked many viewers. Here was a man who wielded unfettered power over the people around him. Most of them had signed over their possessions to him. All offered utter obedience. But his demands were many. Using psychological manipulation Wayne Bent convinced the women in the group that they should sleep with him. Those men that objected were sent packing.

Intent on extending his influence, he then began a campaign to encourage the young girls in the group to come before him naked so they might fully know God. His actions began to concern some of the families involved. They also drew the attention of the local law enforcement agencies.

Last year Wayne Bent was tried for committing sex crimes against two of those girls. Once again filmaker Ben Anthony was there to record the proceedings and the results of his work are, "Inside a Cult: Messiah on Trial". Made with the assistance of the National Geographic Channel and Channel 4 it goes to air on Monday 18th May, at 8.30pm on ABC 1. It will be replayed on the 19th May at 11.35pm.

The Atheist Cartoon

2009-05-17T12:32:00.000+10:00

Secret Files Of The Inquisition-4

2009-05-10T12:22:00.000+10:00

The End of Inquisition - The series concludes focussing on Napoleon and how he spread the ideas of the Enlightenment, conquered Italy, abolished the Inquisition and ordered its files sent to Paris. It also looks at a Spanish priest who devoted his life to exposing the brutal historical records. The kidnapping of a young Jewish boy secretly baptised was one of the last desperate attempts at exerting the Inquisition's power before the documents were locked away. (From the UK, in English) (Documentary Series) (Final) (Rpt) PG CC WS

Episode Four - The End of Inquisition
Napoleon spreads the ideas of the Enlightenment, conquers Italy, abolishes the Inquisition and orders its files sent to Paris. Spain’s greatest painter, Goya, will depict the Inquisition for the first time – and then run for his life. A Spanish priest devotes his life to exposing the brutal historical records. The Secret Files of the Inquisition are locked away for centuries.
The kidnapping of a young Jewish boy secretly baptised will be one of the desperate last attempts at exerting the power of the Inquisition. A devoted father fights to get back his son. The boy becomes a symbol for a Pope who is about to lose his dominion on earth.

Secret Files Of The Inquisition-3

2009-05-10T12:01:00.000+10:00

Lost Worlds - The War On Ideas - This episode looks at how the decadence of a Medici Pope in Rome outrages Martin Luther, a devout priest in Germany. In the face of the Protestant Reformation, a fanatical monk sets out to obliterate the heresy. On his path to power he will create the Roman Inquisition and become the most hated Pope in history. Powerful leaders of the Catholic Church are arrested and imprisoned, accused of reading books banned by the Church. Free-thinking students are silenced and the Roman Inquisition will leave a legacy that lasts into the 20th century. (From the UK, in English) (Documentary Series) (Part 3 of 4) (Rpt) PG CC WS

Episode Three - The War on Ideas
The decadence of a Medici Pope in Rome outrages Martin Luther, a devout priest in Germany. In the face of the Protestant Reformation, a fanatical monk sets out to obliterate the heresy. On his path to power he will create the Roman Inquisition and become the most hated Pope in history.
Powerful leaders of the Catholic Church are arrested and imprisoned, accused of reading books banned by the Church. Free-thinking students are silenced. The Roman Inquisition will leave a legacy that lasts into the 20th century.

Secret Files Of The Inquisition-2

2009-05-10T11:47:00.000+10:00

The Tears of Spain - For centuries, the historical records of the Inquisition have been locked away to become the subject of myth and legend. In 1998, after years of pressure from historians, scholars and critics in search of the truth, the Vatican opened some of these archives for the first time. Tonight's episode looks at how Christians, Muslims and Jews lived in tolerance for centuries along the Iberian peninsular. However by 1468 changes were afoot. The young rulers, Isabella and Ferdinand had proclaimed themselves the Catholic Monarchs and began an Inquisition. Jews who had converted to Christianity were accused of secretly sabotaging the Christian faith. Thousands perished in a ritual called the Act of Faith. (From the UK, in English) (Documentary Series) (Part 2 of 4) (Rpt) PG CC WS

Episode Two - The Tears of Spain
The Iberian peninsular is a land where Christians, Muslims and Jews have lived in tolerance for centuries. However by 1468 changes were afoot. The young rulers, Isabella and Ferdinand have proclaimed themselves the Catholic Monarchs and begin an Inquisition. Jews who had converted to Christianity are accused of secretly sabotaging the Christian faith. Thousands perish in a ritual called the Act of Faith.
In Zaragossa, mothers die to protect their children, the highest in the land pay the ultimate price and the Inquisitor is assassinated, setting off a wave of reprisals.

Secret Files Of The Inquisition-1

2009-05-10T11:19:00.001+10:00

Root Out Heretics - Based on secret documents from the Vatican, this four part docu-drama series investigates the Catholic Church's 500 year struggle to remain the world's only true Christian religion. Winner of two Leo Awards for Best Cinematography and Best Original Score, the series, directed by David Rabinovitch, spans medieval France, 15th century Spain and Renaissance Italy, revealing how the most powerful church on earth created the Inquisition to attack its enemies and preserve the unquestioned authority of the Pope. Part one begins with the rise of the dissident Christian movement known as Catharism in southern France during the 13th century and the threat it posed to the power of the papacy. It also tells the story of Jacques Fournier (Eugenio Alvares), an Inquisitor who was to become the Pope Benedict XII, and of Boruch, a Jew who was forcibly converted to Christianity yet tried to defend his right to return to his original faith. (From the UK, in English) (Docu-drama Series) (Part 1 of 4) (Rpt) PG CC WS

Episode One - Root Out Heretics
The year is 1308 and heresy has taken hold in France. At a time when the Church of Rome proclaims itself the one true religion, the Pope sends the Inquisitors of Heretical Depravity to deal with heretics. Non-believers are hunted down, condemned and burned. The entire village of Montaillou is taken prisoner by the Inquisition. No one is safe, not even the village priest and the chatelaine of Montaillou’s castle.

About God

2009-05-08T11:09:00.000+10:00

我還記得小學聖經上說, 神愛世人, 想起來, 如果真是有天主, 牠真是虛偽之極了!!!! 如果牠愛我們, 為什麼要給我們疾病? 為什麼有這麼多宗教戰???? 想, 父母親的愛, 沒有一位父母會子女亙相殘殺!! 沒有一位父母想兒女有病痛的!!!!!!!! 我總想不出一個理由去相信聖經!!!!

I can remember that the bible told me that god loves us all, when I was in primary school! If we really do have a god, he seems to be very hypocritical. We are all gods children, christians, muslims and jews and yet he seems to enjoy himself that we, his children, fight each other to death, and he does nothing, absolutely nothing about it. It seems to give him great pleasure to introduce more suffering to his children by introducing diseases, like aids and encouraging his children to kill each other. I really can’t find any reason to believe in this god or love this god.

Ancient 'hobbits' a new species after all

2009-05-08T10:55:00.000+10:00

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/05/07/2562944.htm

Ancient 'hobbits' a new species after all

Posted Thu May 7, 2009 6:40am AEST
Updated Thu May 7, 2009 12:52pm AEST

New species: A 'hobbit' skull (REUTERS)

Diminutive humans whose remains were found on the remote Indonesian island of Flores in 2003 truly are a new species, and not pygmies whose brains had shrivelled with disease, researchers say.

Anthropologists have been arguing about the identity and origins of Homo floresiensis - dubbed "the hobbit" due to its small size - since it was unearthed by an Australian-led research team.

Measuring about a metre tall and weighing in at 30 kilograms, the tiny, tool-making hunters may have roamed the island for which they were named as recently as 8,000 years ago. The fossils are about 18,000 years old.

Many scientists have said H. floresiensis were prehistoric humans descended from Homo erectus, stunted by natural selection over millennia through a process called insular dwarfing.

Others countered that even this evolutionary shrinking, well known in island-bound animals, could not account for the hobbit's chimp-sized grey matter of barely more than 400 cubic centimetres, a third the size of a modern human brain.

And how could such a being have been smart enough to craft its own stone tools?

The only plausible explanation, they insisted, was that the handful of specimens found suffered from a genetic disorder resulting in an abnormally small skull or - a more recent finding - that they suffered from "dwarf cretinism" caused by deficient thyroids.

Two new studies in the British journal Nature go a long way toward settling this debate, even as they raise new quandaries that are sure to stoke further controversy.

A team led by William Jungers of the Stony Brook University in New York tackled the problem from the other end by analysing the hobbit's foot.

In some ways it is very human. The big toe is aligned with the others and the joints make it possible to extend the toes as the body's full weight falls on the foot, attributes not found in great apes.

But, in other respects, it is startlingly primitive: far longer than its modern human equivalent, and equipped with a very small big toe, long, curved lateral toes, and a weight-bearing structure closer to a chimpanzee's.

Recent archeological evidence from Kenya shows that the modern foot evolved more than 1.5 million years ago, most likely in Homo erectus.

So unless the Flores hobbits became more primitive over time - a more-than-unlikely scenario - they must have branched off the human line at an even earlier date.

For Dr Jungers and colleagues, this suggests "that the ancestor of H floresiensis was not Homo erectus but instead some other, more primitive, hominin whose dispersal into southeast Asia is still undocumented," the researchers conclude.

Companion studies, published online in the Journal of Human Evolution, bolster this theory by looking at other parts of the anatomy, and conjecture that these more ancient forebear may be the still poorly understood Homo habilis.

Either way, their status as a separate species would be confirmed.

Even this compelling new evidence, however, does not explain the hobbit's inordinately small brain.

That's where hippos come into the picture.

Eleanor Weston and Adrian Lister of the Natural History Museum in London compared fossils of several species of ancient hippos found on the island of Madagascar with the mainland ancestors from which they had evolved.

They were surprised to find that insular dwarfing - driven by the need to adapt to an island environment - shrank their brains far more than had previously been thought possible.

"Whatever the explanation for the tiny brain of H floresiensis relative to its body size, our evidence suggests that insular dwarfing could have played a role in its evolution," they conclude.

While the new studies answer some questions, they also raise new ones sure to spark fresh debate, notes Harvard professor Daniel Lieberman in a comment, also published in Nature.

Only more fossil evidence will tell us whether the hobbits of Flores evolved from Homo erectus, whose traces have been found throughout Eurasia, or from an even more ancient lineage whose footsteps have not yet been traced outside Africa, he said.

In either case, however, it now seems unlikely that they were cretins, in any sense of the word.

-AFP/ABC

The Atheist

2009-05-04T21:27:00.000+10:00

http://www.abc.net.au/compass/s2517600.htm

Summary

Compass talks to atheists of different stripes.Eminent philosopher John Gray; science writer and editor of Skeptic magazine Michael Shermer; historian and writer Inga Clendinnen and Australia best known atheist Phillip Adams, all explore the philosophical and practical consequences of being an atheist.
How does their atheism shape their attitudes to science and the big questions of our time such as war and global warming? Is conflict between atheists and believers inevitable and necessary? Or, is this debate generating more heat than light?

Story producer: Dina Volaric

Story researcher: Dina Volaric

Story

Mike Shermer
The problem with the word atheism is that it has become very pejorative. In America, you may as well call yourself a child molester or a rapist or something, a communist.
Inga Clendinnen
I just a common or garden variety of atheist. A person who has found no reason to believe there is any supernatural force existing outside this world and directing it.
John Gray
I belong to no religion and I have no religious beliefs. I would define myself as a skeptic.
Phillip Adams
Atheism is nothing but everything. Atheism is now the fastest-growing faith ?or faithlessness it is growing even faster than Islam in the United States.
Narration
Whether theye called godless Communists, sceptics, secularists or humanists, atheists are raising their voices ?especially in the west. So who are they and what do atheists believe?
Who are the atheists?
Phillip Adams
I’ve been an atheist for 65 years and I didn’t even know the word for the first ten, I didn’t know there was such a thing as atheists.
Narration
Broadcaster and writer Phillip Adams is arguably Australia best known atheist. Over the years he discussed religion with believers and non-believers of many kinds; on and off air. But he himself dismissed the Almighty at an early age.
Phillip Adams
When I was five I found I couldn’t believe in god. Not that I wouldn’t but I couldn’t. I tried very hard to believe in him because everyone around me believed in him. It was after all the family business of my father a Christian minister. But I found I just couldn’t find any sensible, rational reason or even irrational reason for believing in him. And it came, I have to tell you it was a great shock.
Phillip Adams
I asked one simple question. If everything had to have a beginning there had to be a creation, and if god was the beginning, who begun god? Now I asked that at four. When I passed this thought on to my grandmother she boxed my ears which made the question seem incredibly significant.
Inga Clendinnen
I not in a condition of doubt about this. I might have been in some doubt between the ages of perhaps 7 and 10, but after that Ie had no doubts at all.
Narration
Inga Clendinnen is a celebrated historian and writer whose interest in other peoples and times began early.
As a child her curiosity about other cultures led her to wonder about ?and to doubt ?the existence of God.
Inga Clendinnen
I early discovered that other people in other places had extraordinary ideas about religion.
As soon as you know that there are a variety of gods. That means that god becomes a problematical entity
When you consider the great range of different characters that gods are attributed. When you think of how the Aztecs defined their god. When you think that Aborigines didn define a god at all and that the dreaming creatures were pretty much like humans in their fallibilities and their courage and their lusts and their wants. As soon as you become aware of that, why you should project some old patriarchal figure with very strong views about women modesty and call it god, I don know, and I think that the question.
Mike Shermer
Well I was a born again Christian for a while and then I became something of a born again atheist. You know, going around knocking on those doors and telling people not to believe. And it sort of reminds me of that joke about what do you get when you cross a Jehovah Witness with an atheist: Someone who knocks on your door for no reason at all.
Narration
Michael Shermer is an American science writer and the editor of Skeptic magazine. He founded the Skeptics Society in the United States, a group dedicated to exposing and debunking pseudo-science.
Mike Shermer
In my case it was a change of milieu, different friends, a set of arguments, exposure to science and evolutionary theory, exposure to anthropology, to comparative world religions. You know you sort of put all that together.
I just remember one day taking out my little ichthus ?I had this little fish with the Greek symbols that stand for esus Christ, Son of God, Saviour.?I remember my girlfriend had given this to me and I just felt hypocritical wearing it, so I took it off and I guess that it, I guess I not a Christian any more.
As I got older I mellowed out more, and I decided at first that rationally agnostic is actually the right term.
When T H Huxley coined the term in 1869 he meant it to be, it not knowable.
Not,  not sure, could go this way, could go that way. I waiting for just a little more evidence you know.?That not what agnosticism is.
Agnosticism says it isn possible to know. So therefore no belief in god, because it isn possible to know. That agnosticism. I guess that probably what I am.
John Gray
I belong to no religion and I have no religious beliefs. I would define myself as a sceptic. I prefer not to think, to describe myself as an atheist or an agnostic because that is too restrictive a set of categories.
Narration
John Gray is one of the world most eminent and provocative political philosophers. Until recently he was Professor of European Thought at the London School of Economics.
John Gray
Well sceptic isn one who has no beliefs. A sceptic is one who keeps belief to a minimum, and also doesn always insist on making a definite decision about which beliefs one has.
Narration
Gray philosophical framework is rigorous and uncompromising.
John Gray
I have no reason to think that human life goes beyond bodily death for example, so I take that as a basic assumption. I don believe that humans are especially privileged creatures in the universe in the way that theists think they are; that they have souls which other animals don have; that they have a kind of free will that other animals don have. So I do have a variety of beliefs about humans and their situation in the world, but I try to work with as few as I can get by with.
Why does atheism matter?
Narration
For more than a century atheists assumed that with the advance of science religions would die out ?but theye refused to go quietly. Indeed theye turned up the volume, to the alarm of the atheists.
Phillip Adams
We sit in a world now which is on the edge of total disaster because of raging crusades between Christian and Muslims. The hatreds between the major religions and within them have never been more intense.
Inga Clendinnen
Now there is clearly more aggression on the part of fundamentalist sects as we call them, whether theye Christian or Islamic or whatever. But I think there also a notable increase in aggression on the part of the great organised religions; a new readiness to intervene politically.
Narration
The turning point came at the start of the new millennium with an event that shook the world.
Mike Shermer
Since 9/11 the game has changed. It become clear that religions in the modern world can still be very dangerous. And it not that only religious people become fanatics. There are Marxist ideologists that become fanatics for example, but that isn who is doing that now. At the moment it extreme religionists that are causing the problem.
John Gray
Secularisation was expected to be, believed to be up until quite recently, up until maybe the last 10 or 20 years an almost inexorable almost unstoppable process all over the world.
Now it true that some countries have become somewhat more secular, for example. Ireland, is a lot more secular than it was 20 years ago. In Britain most people have long since ceased to be practising Christians.
But on the other hand the great secular parties, the mass movements and the great secular ideologies that existed like Marxism have really crumbled away and the vitality, the energy in the world, and also to some extent the violence in the world, is coming from religions. So wee really living it seems to me in a post secular period. And in a post secular period when religion has vitality you expect what in fact you find, which is a revival of atheism.
Narration
The revival is marked by a torrent of words. In books and the media atheists are taking on religion. Their best-known proponents are Richard Dawkins & Christopher Hitchens ?leaders of the New Atheists.
Richard Dawkins ?Root Of All Evil Part 1
The time has come for people of Reason to say enough is enough. Religious faith discourages independent thought, it divisive and it dangerous.
Christopher Hitchens ?Foreign Correspondent 7 November 2001
Civilisation consists of the leaving behind of the religious mentality ?of the mentality of faith, of the mentality of fanaticism, of the mentality of certainty, of the mentality of Holy Books and the Word of God ?civilisation begins where that stops, in all societies.
Phillip Adams
I don’t disagree with Dawkins arguments. I don’t disagree with Hitchins arguments. I disagree with the atmosphere of their arguments. I disagree with adding, with fanning the flames of bigotry on this planet by taking positions which are that strong.
John Gray
All these new atheists want to convert the world from belief to unbelief. And like Christian missionaries like Christian evangelists they believe that if they can alter human beliefs on a large scale then the world will be better.
In fact we have plenty of historical evidence from the Soviet Union and elsewhere that when attempts are made to eradicate religion, to eliminate religion from human life, to de-convert people from religious belief to some other type of belief or unbelief, the results are generally pretty disastrous.
Mike Shermer
The evangelical kind of atheism is not my thing because I not a strong atheist. I just don believe. I don think we can prove there is no god. I just don think it is necessary to do that.
Look if you encounter somebody whose deepest most cherished belief is god and you say, t all bullshit man, why do you believe this crap for??That the end of the conversation. It over. Youe lost them. You have no hope of converting them.
Inga Clendinnen
On the whole atheists seem to me peaceable beings because they have no vision that they have some understanding of what is truth, which they have a moral duty to impose on others.
Mike Shermer
The problem with the word atheism is that it become very pejorative. In America, you may as well call yourself a child molester or a rapist or something, a communist. That how atheists are treated. Which is why the New Atheist Movement is something of a political social movement, because it is our way of saying, ey look, wee not going to put up with that any more. You can't say things like atheists are not moral. That's wrong. You might as well say blacks are not moral, that women are not as smart ?that kind of thing. Well you can say those other things any more, and you can say that about atheists anymore.?BR>
What do atheists believe?
Narration
But what do the non-believers agree on? Their views are diverse and they don all answer to the name atheist, yet most do share a respect for science.
Mike Shermer
These are part of our science education program. We are pro-science, wee not an anti-religious group. Religion comes up a lot. That simply because it has been such a hot button issue in the last 10 years in America.
Narration
Shermer latest book defends Darwin theory of evolution by arguing the case against Intelligent Design.
Mike Shermer
But in the long run we want to be in favour of something, not just against. Wee not just against Big Foot, UFOs, psychic power. We address those things. What are we for? Wee for critical thinking, rationality, reason, science.
Mark Simkin
Forget what you were taught in school. According to this museum, the Earth is just 6,000 years old; there were dinosaurs on Noah Ark.
Ken Ham
We believe that Christians, those that believe in the Bible, are going to be more equipped to be able to defend their faith and uphold the authority of God word
Inga Clendinnen
When I think of the rise of the Intelligent Design people, the new Creationists, I am truly appalled because Charles Darwin is to me one of my great heroes. Here is a quiet reclusive country gentleman with a giant network of fellow amateur naturalists who had such respect for facts and for care in thinking that he could come up with a theory which shook the world. And which rendered intelligible to us this whole experienced world around us in a new and absolutely thrilling way.
Now I don want to see him not taught in the schools because of some dimwit who wants to go on believing in a six day creation and one day off routine. There is something to my mind obscene about that denial of human reason and its glory.
Phillip Adams
I thought of a new term about six months ago and I rather proud of it. Faitheist. And I think in some ways I a faitheist because I have faith in science. The same way as my religious friends have faith in god, I have faith in Einstein. I have faith in the great brains that have been trying to push back the darkness through rational thought.
Where do atheists find meaning?
Narration
But is faith in science and rationality enough? Do atheists have a sense of wonder? And, where do they find meaning?
Mike Shermer
People who don believe in god are no less spiritual than those who do. I don think religion has a monopoly on spirituality.
For me my spirituality comes from an awareness of something grander than me, than you than us, something beyond the material world; whatever you want to call that, the beauty of nature.
For me just like looking at a Hubble Space Telescope photograph of galaxies expanding you know that triggers that feeling of transcendence, like there is something so much grander than me. I am so unimportant you know. And that what religious people describe.
Inga Clendinnen
I find deep gratification in trying to understand the cultural world of people different from myself. And that keeps me very happy and it gives me a sense of discovery, and even occasional bliss.
So I suspect I have some of the pleasures of religion from my secular base. Some of the pleasures typically associated with religion.
Phillip Adams
I borrow the word numinous from the vocabulary of the religious because I think it a great word. The sense of the numinous is when you stand outside at night at the farm and you look up at a clear sky unpolluted by the metropolis, and youe looking at billions and billions and billions of stars. More suns out there than there are grains of sand in the Sahara.
And if youe not overcome by a sense of the numinous ?which is a mixture of awe and wonderment and dread ?there something wrong with you. It a great emotion. It the emotion I think that drives religion and philosophy and science.
Narration
Does nature or even science hold all the answers? Can a greater understanding of our universe guarantee human progress?
John Gray
Science cannot save humanity. Science is itself a human construction, a human achievement. It embodied in growing knowledge which gives humans greater power to do what they want to do, but science does not make humans wiser or more reasonable. It leaves them as much ruled by folly as they ever were.
However, science is indispensable. Science is the only way in which we can accommodate ourselves I think to climate change for example.
Why do we need science?
Narration
It climate change that is bringing atheists and some believers closer, as Christian ideas about life on earth are changing.
Phillip Adams
The Bible got us off to a bad start with a line of argument that said, it all here for you to use folks, enjoy. Very kind of god. And until very recently that was pretty much the hard line of the hard religious right.
Mike Shermer
There is a small branch of Christians, sort of Millenarians and apocalyptic-oriented, who say, t doesn really matter what we do with the earth; it all coming, like next Saturday Jesus is coming, look busy!?
Phillip Adams
For a long time the Bible bashers, the hard right, religious right, took that view and therefore climate change was a great big left wing conspiracy.
Suddenly that has changed and it changed emphatically. And although there not much of a hint in the good book that we have environmental responsibilities, people are finding it. And many of the most ardent campaigners now to do something about climate change come from religious organisations.
Mike Shermer
I think it more important that I understand and embrace religion because we need to work together to solve say the global warming problem, rather than my first trying to convert them all into secularism and then wel solve the global warming problem. That isn going to happen. Before global warming has its problems, OK, we need to address the problem now.
Does religion have a future?
Narration
So rather than confronting believers, many atheists are now accepting the human need for religion.
Phillip Adams
I think basically it may be a virus. Ie always hoped that the CSIRO would find a virus so people could be cured of religion. But short of that, it a fact of life and I think wee all got to try and get on a bit better with each other ?atheists with God-botherers, God-botherers with us.
John Gray
It seems almost self-evident to me on the basis of anthropology, literature, observation, that the human animal comes into the world with a variety of needs to which religions answer.
John Gray
That being the case one would then think that if one doesn believe in any supernatural creator one should accept religion is part of human beings, part of human life. It like it an impulse like or like the sexual need. Repressing it or attempting to eradicate it, trying to think of a world in which there is no religion would then seem to me like thinking of a world in which there is no sex.
Phillip Adams
The great problem in discovering that you don believe in god is you feel an intense, an all-pervasive sense of loneliness.
And when I found that I didn need to believe in him, I still felt a great sense of desolation and a high degree of fear.
Ie always understood the religious impulse, the great overwhelming fear of death, of annihilation which is a part of most of it, and a desperate need to find a meaning in a universe which really doesn have one.
If you want to know what happens after, think about what happened before; infinite, infinite nothingness. Wee all been dead. We live briefly, we go back to the same state. Why can people see it as simple as that?
Inga Clendinnen
I don think we can underestimate the need for explanations among humans. And some humans will have a greater desire for their daily lives to be made intelligible than others. Their search for meaning, to coin a phrase, is going to be more intense. I suspect this has got something to do with individual psychologies and individual childhoods.
Mike Shermer
I think it is probably safe to say religion will not fall into disuse any time soon, so the John Lennonesque, Imagine no religion, I think is probably not realistic in terms of our social needs.
We may even have something in our brains that hardwires us to believe in supernatural entities, whether it is animistic spirits, ghosts, demons, multiple gods, single gods the monotheistic - whatever it is I think we our brains lead us to interpret certain events in the world to be caused by hidden spirits of some kind.
John Gray
The question is, can the point of living as a human being be simply to see. That to say to look at the world to see it as it is or as close as we can get to seeing it as it is, the finding in it perhaps what is of beauty in it. Can humans adopt seeing as the meaning of their lives?
Phillip Adams
I still think wee at the end of the religious era. It may be, what we see now is the great storms before the lull.
I think in a hundred years almost all of the religious animosities wee experiencing now will be ancient history. I think they will ebb away from exhaustion.
And I still believe that as science advances, god recedes; I still believe that little by little the world is becoming excited by a new form of the numinous as they realise that we are learning more and more and more and more than the people who wrote the Bible and other good books could possibly have imagined.

卡拉季奇被捕

2008-07-28T20:34:00.000+10:00

卡拉季奇被捕, 前兩天是大新聞!
我對東歐也是一點認識也沒有的, 以前讀地理, 也只不過知道有個叫南斯拉夫(Yugoslavia)的國家, 也不曉得他竟在1992年解體, 四分五裂(現分為Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzogovina, Serbia, Kosovo, Monte Negro, Macedonia),
看到新聞, 我跟老公說:"裡條友留到齊臉鬍鬚, 我在街邊看到他都會懷疑他不是好人啦!"

易容逃亡13年的卡拉季奇

隨著, 便追問老公為何要追捕他了知道了後, 便上網找到了 The Srebrenica Massaacre 的資料了.

很奇怪的是這件繼第2次世界大戰後發生在歐洲的最嚴重的一次大屠殺(斯雷布尼察屠殺

)什麼被國際法庭確認為種族滅絕的???? Serbia跟 Bosnia-Herzogovina 他們根本是同一種族的, 都是南斯拉夫人或是又可說是Eurasian! 依此, 他們並不可視之為種族滅絕! 而且事件的起因亦不為了滅絕種族! 而是完完全全的是為了滅絕在Bosnia-Herzogovia 裹的 Muslims.

我看很多中文網都沒有寫出這最要因素! 都只是記 Serbia 軍隊殺 Bonsnia 人而已!

事實是在Bonsnia 裹住著兩種宗教(基督教Orthodox Christians與穆斯林Muslims)的同種族人,於是他們互相就有排斥了, 而在塞爾維亞卻是絕大部份人都是基督教的.

在波士尼亞和黑塞哥維那於1991年宣佈獨立時, 有部份的波士尼亞內的基督徙也不想分離出去. 於是,塞爾維亞便開始砲轟波士尼亞的首都薩拉熱窩Sarajevo,於是聯合國便於Srebrenica 開設了safe haven (實為Muslims haven)安全地帶,叫穆斯林快來躲避! 明顯連聯合國都知道了是一場宗教滅絕的屠殺!
當穆斯林信徒都跑到Srebrenica, 塞族共和國總統拉多萬·卡拉季奇下令駛入Srebrenica, 他們將穆斯林男人和男童挑出來進行屠殺(gendercide以此滅絕他們下一代),殺了8000多名的穆斯林!
p.s. 原來薩拉熱窩Sarajevo,是引起第一次世界大戰的地方, 因為奧地利的太子被殺於此. 哈哈! 我不愛讀歷史!!!

The Srebrenica massacre is the largest mass murder in Europe since World War II.^[7] In 2004, in a unanimous ruling on the "Prosecutor v. Krstić" case, the Appeals Chamber of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) located in The Hague ruled that the Srebrenica massacre wasgenocide,^[8] the Presiding Judge Theodor Meron stating:

By seeking to eliminate a part of the Bosnian Muslims [Bosniaks], the Bosnian Serb forces committed genocide. They targeted for extinction the forty thousand Bosnian Muslims living in Srebrenica, a group which was emblematic of the Bosnian Muslims in general. They stripped all the male Muslim prisoners, military and civilian, elderly and young, of their personal belongings and identification, and deliberately and methodically killed them solely on the basis of their identity.^[9]

The Screbrenica Massacre III

2008-07-27T19:30:00.000+10:00

在維基百科和國際法庭上, 說是種族滅絕:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Srebrenica_massacre

如果你看了之前我的POST(the screbrenica Massacare (http://meiwechner.blog.sohu.com/95770680.html) 再跟以下網圖來比較, 你便可知道事實就是宗教排除!

http://www.serbianna.com/features/srebrenica/001.shtml

我不管你基督教殺得較多Muslims, 還是Muslims殺得較多基督教, 2000多年來你們互相殘殺, 只是為了誰是真主!

也真攪鬼了, In study of Bible history, Jews invented bible,in their bible, they said that son of the god will come soon and save the world! And then year and year later, Chistians belived that they found the son of the god, he is Jesus. Unfortunately Jewish did not belived it. Then they killed Juses. Then Juses was killed, Christian not happy about that, so they killed Jews!! They hated each other!

Then come another guy called Mohamed he invented another story, the Koran, his god is Allah, he is a lot better then the Christian Jesus. Hahhah!!! Sure, this is the main cause start, Muslime hate Christian and Christian hate Muslime and killed eacher other!

The most interesting is that all the three evil religions have the same ancestor, they are all the children of Abraham, they all agree on that in their books and still see the need to contiunue to kill each other 2000 years later on the basis of a trivial, fictitional difference.

Their God is same God ar!!!!!!!!

我記得小時候, 讀聖經, 它說主7天創造了宇宙, 有4000年歷史, 但科學家發現宇宙己 14 billion years!!!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_the_universe

就最反感來說, 主創造了人類, 攪咪鬼, 你比人類有性, 但你不計夏娃同阿當去做呀! 跟住就話有罪, 降罪給世人!!!

跟著, 你創造了同性戀, 總比AID 去攪到有同性戀的人和不是同性戀和不是同性戀的人和不是同性戀的人和小孩都要受罰, 你玩哂喇!!!

我有腦嫁!!!!

Srebrenica, July 1995-2

2008-07-27T17:37:00.000+10:00

Photo Gallery II

7. The refugees are evacuated as a group from the Potocari base.

8. A Serb officer outside the gates (top left) gestures
for the men to be separated from the women.

9. Men of all ages are marched away to the trucks.

A voice commands, "Follow him! Behind him! ... No, no, you lot to the left ... One by one."

10. Men are loaded onto the trucks.

11. Dutch Officer at Srebrenica.

"When I was standing there, and the men and the women were separated, I felt like a combination of Schindler's List and Sophie's Choice was passing in front of me. It was terrible to be aware of this and not be able to do something ..."

12. The Warehouse.

Commentator: "Some of the men from the town were taken to a large agricultural warehouse.
A few of them survived."

13. A survivor of the massacre.

"The Serbs started shooting at us with everything they had, inside and outside the warehouse. People were dropping all over the place."

14. Aftermath of the warehouse massacre.

Srebrenica, July 1995

2008-07-27T17:10:00.000+10:00

Photo Gallery I

1. Countryside around Srebrenica.

2. The outskirts burn.

3. Serb tanks fire on Srebrenica.

4. Ratko Mladic, indicted Serb war criminal, arrives to take charge of Srebrenica.

"On to Potocari!" Mladic is shouting - he wants to occupy the Dutch UN base immediately

5. Mladic and his troops stroll through downtown Srebrenica.

6. Potocari: the Dutch UN base.

The ribbon across the main entrance marks the point at which many of the men were separated from women and turned over to the Serbs for eventual execution.

Continue to Photo Gallery II

The Srebrenica MassacreII

2008-07-27T16:59:00.000+10:00

The Srebrenica
Massacre, July 1995

Who is responsible?

Chuck Sudetic writes of the Srebrenica massacre that "the men who carried out the executions were reportedly under orders handed down by General [Ratko] Mladic and Radislav Krstic, a colonel in the Bosnian army who was promoted to general and named commander of the army's Drina corps by Mladic within a few days of the killings. Among the units that took part in the killings was the Tenth Commando squad, which answered directly to Mladic's headquarters ... Men from Srebrenica, Bratunac, Kravica, Milii, Visegrad, Bajina Basta, Loznica, Zvornik, and other towns also participated." (Sudetic, Blood and Vengeance, pp. 317-18.)

In 1996, the International Criminal Tribunal indicted Mladic and Krstic for crimes of humanity committed at Srebrenica. Joining them on the list of indicted war-criminals was Radovan Karadzic, leader of the self-styled "Republika Srpska" or Serb-controlled territories in Bosnia. Karadzic was intimately involved in planning the "endgame" in the Bosnian war, for which Srebrenica was to serve as a centerpiece. In July 1999, the Tribunal found that these mass murderers had been operating under "a direct chain of military command" from Belgrade and the Serbian President, Slobodan Milosevic. For the first time, the Tribunal defined the Bosnian war as "an international conflict," recognizing both Bosnian independence and Serbian aggression . As yet, however, Milosevic remains unindicted for the atrocities he directed in Bosnia.

The United Nations must shoulder a large share of responsibility for allowing the massacre to take place under the noses of its troops. In November 1999, the UN released a highly self-critical report on its performance, stating that "Through error, misjudgment and the inability to recognize the scope of evil confronting us, we failed to do our part to save the people of Srebrenica from the Serb campaign of mass murder." (See Barbara Crossette, "U.N. Details Its Failure to Stop '95 Bosnian Massacre", The New York Times, November 16 1999.)

The blame surely extends to the member states of the United Nations -- perhaps especially to its most powerful member, the United States. As The Economist magazine has noted,

The received version [of events] ... is that Bill Clinton and Al Gore vowed to "bomb the Serbs" and end the war when they were shocked to learn that thousands of Muslims had been massacred at Srebrenica. But, the reader cannot help asking, was news of this impending massacre -- the worst in Europe since 1945 -- really not available to America's two most powerful figures beforehand?
At earlier stages in Bosnia's war, when Muslim strongholds like Gorazde or Bihac had been on the verge of falling, America had worked (without the promise of ground troops) to galvanise its allies -- insisting that battle-plans be drawn up, and threats of bombing be issued, so as to warn off the Serbs. Yet in the final days and hours of the advance on Srebrenica, which American intelligence could monitor closely, Washington fell strangely silent. Srebrenica duly fell, with consequences which were unspeakable in human terms, but not inconvenient diplomatically.

Perhaps it is conspiratorial to assume that America's tardy reaction to Srebrenica reflected calculation rather than negligence. But the question needs asking ... ("Inside Out," The Economist, September 8, 2001).

The aftermath

Extensive forensic investigations of the Srebrenica massacre sites has so far turned up some 3,000 bodies. Only a few have been successfully identified. They are held at a combined memorial and mortuary in Tuzla (see photo at the top of this page). The forensics teams who worked on the Srebrenica and Vukovar sites gathered vital experience in their exhumation of the graves, and were able to employ their skills anew in the Kosovo gendercide four years later. (See Stover and Peress, The Graves: Srebrenica and Vukovar.)

The memory of Srebrenica's men was kept alive by their womenfolk. They stormed Red Cross offices in Tuzla in early 1996 to protest the stalled investigations into the fate of their missing men, and did so again on the fourth anniversary of the massacre in 1999. Organized as "The Women of Srebrenica," they have recently launched their own website (www.srebrenica.org). The group's list of primary demands reads as follows:

The full facts of Srebrenica should be revealed and publicised.
All graves should be exhumed and bodies identified without delay.
Any survivors of Srebrenica held prisoner in Republika Srpska [Bosnian Serb territories] or the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia should be released immediately.
The people of Srebrenica should be enabled to return to their homes.
There should be a full & open international investigation into the failure of the UN to protect the Safe Area of Srebrenica.
All indicted and suspected war criminals, including Radovan Karadzic, Ratko Mladic and Slobodan Milosevic, and all those complicit with genocide, should be arrested and brought to trial.

In March 2003, the first 600 identified victims of the Srebrenica massacre were returned to the town and buried in a powerful ceremony (see "Srebrenica Finally Buries Its Dead", BBC Online, March 31, 2003.)
............to be continued........

The Srebrenica Massacre

2008-07-27T16:45:00.000+10:00

The Srebrenica
Massacre, July 1995

[See also the case study of Bosnia-Herzegovina, and the Gendercide Watch photo gallery of the events surrounding the massacre.]
Summary
In the Bosnian silver-mining town of Srebrenica in July 1995, one of the most notorious modern acts of gendercide took place. While the international community and U.N. peacekeepers looked on, Serb forces separated civilian men from women and killed thousands of men en masse, or hunted them down in the forests.
The background
The events at Srebrenica mark the climax of the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina, the most vicious and genocidal battlefront in the Balkans conflict. The conflict in Bosnia-Herzegovina began in 1992 and featured largescale genocidal and gendercidal atrocities from the first. These are dealt with in a separate Bosnia case study. One of the largest massacres of the early part of the war took place at a gymnasium in the village of Bratunac in April 1992, when an estimated 350 Bosnian Muslim men were tortured to death and massacred by Serb paramilitaries and special police. Bratunac lay just outside Srebrenica, and would again serve as a killing ground when the city fell to Bosnian Serb forces in July 1995.
Although the Serbs seized Bratunac, they were not able to take Srebrenica itself. The city was defended by Naser Oric, a Rambo-like figure whose troops (and associated squads of civilian torbari, or "bag people") inflicted a number of smaller atrocities on Serb villages around the Srebrenica pocket. Eventually, in April 1993, Serb forces closed in for a final crushing of the town and Oric's forces. Serb General Ratko Mladic made it plain that he held a special grudge against the menfolk of Srebrenica, armed or unarmed. In scenes that gripped the attention of the world, hundreds of women and children were evacuated from Srebrenica before the Serb noose tightened and shut off all refugee flow. The plight of the city prompted the international community to declare Srebrenica one of five "safe areas" in Bosnia (the others were Zepa, Gorazde, Tuzla, Sarajevo, and Bihac in northwestern Bosnia). The meaning of the ambiguous term "safe area" was never properly defined, and sufficient forces were never committed to ensuring the safety of the Bosnian inhabitants. As events at Srebrenica two years later so grimly demonstrated, "the safe areas were among the most profoundly unsafe places in the world" (Silber and Little, The Death of Yugoslavia, p. 274.)
The gendercide
In June 1995, Bosnian Serb forces, pushing for a resolution to the ethnic "anomaly" of the Muslim enclaves, closed their noose around Srebrenica and the other "safe areas." In Srebrenica, mass panic took hold of the civilian population. Women and children gathered at the U.N. base of Potocari, together with about 1,700 men,while most of the "battle-age" males -- mostly unarmed non-combatants -- took to the hills in a desperate attempt to flee to Muslim-held territory to the west. At Potocari, Dutch troops meekly allowed the Serbs access to the camps and the refugees they held. Then, the following day -- July 11 -- some 1700 men, disproportionately the elderly and infirm, were separated from women and children. The peacekeepers "stood inches away from the Serb soldiers who were separating the Muslim men, one by one, from their families" (Sudetic, Blood and Vengeance, p. 306). At Serb command, the Dutch drew up a registry of 242 Bosnian men remaining in the camp, again mostly elderly and infirm. Then they handed the men over to the Serbs. Not one of the 242 men is known to have survived. The children and women were bused, with isolated exceptions, to safety in Tuzla. Men, almost without exception, were carted away to their deaths. (Note: Other sources cite 239 as the total number of men named on the list; for an account of how the 242 total was eventually arrived at, see the letter from Hasan Nuhanovic posted to the Women of Srebrenica website. The letter also gives a harrowingly detailed account of the separation of men and boys from the remainder of the population at the U.N. base, and the blatant Dutch complicity in the process. Thanks to Kate Myers for bringing this source to our attention.)
Satellite photo of Nova Kasaba mass graves.
Many of the men were killed in the school gymnasium in Bratunac that had already served as the site of a gendercidal massacre in the Bosnian war. Many hundreds more were massacred at a football field near Nova Kasaba, the worst killing ground of the entire five-day slaughter. Human Rights Watch recorded the testimony of one eyewitness to the gendercidal massacres at Nova Kasaba. The Serbs, he said,

picked out Muslims whom they either knew about or knew, interrogated them and made them dig pits. ...During our first day, the Cetniks [Serbs] killed approximately 500 people [men]. They would just line them up and shoot them into the pits. The approximately one hundred guys whom they interrogated and who had dug the mass graves then had to fill them in. At the end of the day, they were ordered to dig a pit for themselves and line up in front of it. ... [T]hey were shot into the mass grave. ... At dawn, ... [a] bulldozer arrived and dug up a pit ..., and buried about 400 men alive. The men were encircled by Cetniks: whoever tried to escape was shot." (Quoted in Mark Danner, "The Killing Fields of Bosnia", New York Review of Books, September 24 1998.)

A great many of the men who had sought to flee through the hills to Tuzla were doomed as well. The Bosnian Serb commander, Gen. Radivoj Krstic, in a radio transmission intercepted by western eavesdroppers, told his forces: "You must kill everyone. We don't need anyone alive." (Mark Danner, "Bosnia: The Great Betrayal", New York Review of Books, March 26 1998.) Serb forces took special pleasure in isolating trees where men had sought to hide, and riddling them with shrapnel from anti-aircraft guns.
Trapped in the hills under Serb bombardment, sleepless and thirst-maddened, men succumbed to hallucinations, paranoia, and despair. "The psyches of the men ruptured. Muslims mistook other Muslims for infiltrators. They threw hand grenades and fired their automatics at one another. ... Men shot themselves hoping the Serbs would show the wounded mercy" (Sudetic, Blood and Vengeance, p. 301). Many committed suicide. Thousands finally surrendered to Serb troops along the "Ring of Iron," who lured them with the sight of captured UN vehicles and promises of safe passage. All of those captured were taken to nearby fields and warehouses, executed, and buried in mass graves.
Summarizing the catastrophe in 1997, David Rohde -- who as a journalist with the Christian Science Monitor won a Pulitzer Prize for uncovering the first mass graves around Srebrenica -- offered a blistering critique of the moral lapse on the part of the "safe area's" alleged guardians: "The international community partially disarmed thousands of men, promised them they would be safeguarded and then delivered them to their sworn enemies. Srebrenica was not simply a case of the international community standing by as a far-off atrocity was committed. The actions of the international community encouraged, aided, and emboldened the executioners. ... The fall of Srebrenica did not have to happen. There is no need for thousands of skeletons to be strewn across eastern Bosnia. There is no need for thousands of Muslim children to be raised on stories of their fathers, grandfathers, uncles and brothers slaughtered by Serbs." (Rohde, Endgame, pp. 351, 353.)
How many died?
The Red Cross lists 7,079 dead and missing at Srebrenica. Other estimates range as high as 8,000 or 10,000. David Rohde notes that the massacre "accounts for an astonishing percentage of the number of missing" from the brutal Balkans conflict as a whole. "Of the 18,406 Muslims, Serbs and Croats reported still missing ... as of January 1997, 7,079 are people [men] who disappeared after the fall of Srebrenica. In other words, approximately 38 percent of the war's missing are from Srebrenica." By any standard, it was one of the worst and most concentrated acts of gendercide in the post-World War II era -- and the worst massacre of any kind in Europe for fifty years.
Who is responsible?
Chuck Sudetic writes of the Srebrenica massacre that "the men who carried out the executions were reportedly under orders handed down by General [Ratko] Mladic and Radislav Krstic, a colonel in the Bosnian army who was promoted to general and named commander of the army's Drina corps by Mladic within a few days of the killings. Among the units that took part in the killings was the Tenth Commando squad, which answered directly to Mladic's headquarters ... Men from Srebrenica, Bratunac, Kravica, Milii, Visegrad, Bajina Basta, Loznica, Zvornik, and other towns also participated." (Sudetic, Blood and Vengeance, pp. 317-18.)
In 1996, the International Criminal Tribunal indicted Mladic and Krstic for crimes of humanity committed at Srebrenica. Joining them on the list of indicted war-criminals was Radovan Karadzic, leader of the self-styled "Republika Srpska" or Serb-controlled territories in Bosnia. Karadzic was intimately involved in planning the "endgame" in the Bosnian war, for which Srebrenica was to serve as a centerpiece. In July 1999, the Tribunal found that these mass murderers had been operating under "a direct chain of military command" from Belgrade and the Serbian President, Slobodan Milosevic. For the first time, the Tribunal defined the Bosnian war as "an international conflict," recognizing both Bosnian independence and Serbian aggression . As yet, however, Milosevic remains unindicted for the atrocities he directed in Bosnia.
The United Nations must shoulder a large share of responsibility for allowing the massacre to take place under the noses of its troops. In November 1999, the UN released a highly self-critical report on its performance, stating that "Through error, misjudgment and the inability to recognize the scope of evil confronting us, we failed to do our part to save the people of Srebrenica from the Serb campaign of mass murder." (See Barbara Crossette, "U.N. Details Its Failure to Stop '95 Bosnian Massacre", The New York Times, November 16 1999.)
The blame surely extends to the member states of the United Nations -- perhaps especially to its most powerful member, the United States. As The Economist magazine has noted,

The received version [of events] ... is that Bill Clinton and Al Gore vowed to "bomb the Serbs" and end the war when they were shocked to learn that thousands of Muslims had been massacred at Srebrenica. But, the reader cannot help asking, was news of this impending massacre -- the worst in Europe since 1945 -- really not available to America's two most powerful figures beforehand?
At earlier stages in Bosnia's war, when Muslim strongholds like Gorazde or Bihac had been on the verge of falling, America had worked (without the promise of ground troops) to galvanise its allies -- insisting that battle-plans be drawn up, and threats of bombing be issued, so as to warn off the Serbs. Yet in the final days and hours of the advance on Srebrenica, which American intelligence could monitor closely, Washington fell strangely silent. Srebrenica duly fell, with consequences which were unspeakable in human terms, but not inconvenient diplomatically.
Perhaps it is conspiratorial to assume that America's tardy reaction to Srebrenica reflected calculation rather than negligence. But the question needs asking ... ("Inside Out," The Economist, September 8, 2001).

The aftermath
Extensive forensic investigations of the Srebrenica massacre sites has so far turned up some 3,000 bodies. Only a few have been successfully identified. They are held at a combined memorial and mortuary in Tuzla (see photo at the top of this page). The forensics teams who worked on the Srebrenica and Vukovar sites gathered vital experience in their exhumation of the graves, and were able to employ their skills anew in the Kosovo gendercide four years later. (See Stover and Peress, The Graves: Srebrenica and Vukovar.)
The memory of Srebrenica's men was kept alive by their womenfolk. They stormed Red Cross offices in Tuzla in early 1996 to protest the stalled investigations into the fate of their missing men, and did so again on the fourth anniversary of the massacre in 1999. Organized as "The Women of Srebrenica," they have recently launched their own website (http://www.srebrenica.org/). The group's list of primary demands reads as follows:

The full facts of Srebrenica should be revealed and publicised.
All graves should be exhumed and bodies identified without delay.
Any survivors of Srebrenica held prisoner in Republika Srpska [Bosnian Serb territories] or the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia should be released immediately.
The people of Srebrenica should be enabled to return to their homes.
There should be a full & open international investigation into the failure of the UN to protect the Safe Area of Srebrenica.
All indicted and suspected war criminals, including Radovan Karadzic, Ratko Mladic and Slobodan Milosevic, and all those complicit with genocide, should be arrested and brought to trial.

In Spring 2000, General Radislav Krstic, "the highest-ranking Bosnian Serb commander before the UN War Crimes tribunal in The Hague," stood trial for the genocidal atrocities at Srebrenica. (See "Peacekeeper Tells of Serb Massacre", The Sydney Morning Herald, April 8, 2000.) In August 2001, Krstic was convicted and sentenced to 46 years in prison.
In March 2003, the first 600 identified victims of the Srebrenica massacre were returned to the town and buried in a powerful ceremony (see "Srebrenica Finally Buries Its Dead", BBC Online, March 31, 2003.)
.......to be continued................

美國基督教劣行

2008-07-20T15:57:00.000+10:00

美國基督教科威爾牧師是開創電台, 電視台傳導的風氣的人, 他更加成功利用這些節目和自己巨大的影響力, 動員美國保守派基督徒參與政治. 列根總統和小布殊總統的兩次當選, 這些保守派基督徒團體實功不可沒!

西方國家的主流意見向來主張宗教政治不應混為一談, 但在美國, 科威爾牧師成功打破這個規則, 他公開呼譽基督徒選民不應投票給非基督徒, 他跟追隨者亦在反對墮胎, 幹細胞研究(stem cell), 同性戀和同性婚姻, 以及女權解放等方面, 形成一股巨大的勢力.

科威爾最主名的言論包括愛茲病是神施予同性戀者的懲罰, 因為美國充滿支持墮胎和同性戀的人, 所以上帝不再保護美國, 因而產生了9.11事件.

他更加在電視直播上宣稱回教先知穆罕默德是恐怖份子, 他後來要為部份過激言論道歉! 即使如此, 科威爾牧師政教合一的做法嚴重分化了美國人.

以上一段, 是我聽香港電台的藍地球( 04 / 06 / 2007)節目聽到的. 我一字不漏的記錄下來了!

節目主持人說科威爾牧師已在2007年5月下旬去世, 相信會改變了國內的政治和宗教之間的微妙關係, 從而影響了美國今年的總統大選大選. 但我不太認同, 因為今次兩大黨派候選人(民主黨的奧巴馬Barack Obama 和共和黨的麥凱恩John Mc Cain)都是信奉基督教的!

p.s. :

我對天主教和基督教會反對幹細胞研究, 實屬反感之極! 幹細胞研究是絕對幫助科學家認識了人類腦部的疾病, 進而可以得到醫治. 我看了一個醫學的電視節目, 講述未來醫學可以用幹細胞來復製人類內臟(如心臟, 腎臟等), 人類的未來可以因而治療更多的疾病.

我反對同性戀歧視, 我尊重他們選擇自己的生活方式!

我支持保護女性, 如果一些不幸發生而必須墮胎, 我們必須不要讓這不幸持續下去!!

愛茲病是神施予同性戀者的懲罰, 如依據聖經來說, 那是一句不合邏輯的講話. 因為上帝是愛人類的!! 當然, 這些矛盾也剛好証明了相信宗教的人不合邏輯, 沒有科學頭腦! 更甚的是, 連新聞都不看, 可知道非洲, 印度, 中國等, 那麼多人受了愛茲病的感染, 很多小孩都是無辜受染, 難道他們也應受罪嗎, 他們可不是同性戀啊! 再者, 難道上帝不知道這樣會延害無辜嗎? 如他是一切造物主的話, 那麼如此推論, 他不是好神, 是魔鬼才對!!!!! 不是嗎???

今天統計了悉尼有200百萬青年露宿, 只為了做教宗的最後一天world youth day 的彌撒! 那些青年來自世界各地! 這是我感害怕的! 如果我們的下一代不去思考, 跟隨了以上教會的言論, 試問我們人類還有未來嗎??

ABC AandQ II

2008-07-20T15:47:00.000+10:00

my views on a recent discussion panel at the ABC QANDA (questions and answers)

the first question raised referred to Kevin Rudd’s statement at the catholic churches youth day in Sydney, in which he said:

“Religion and Logic are not incompatible”

I was delighted by the response from David Marr, he said:

“ Religion and Logic are completely in-compatible; Religion is filled with logicalities that are impossible to square with any natural belief; I mean the catholic church has imported a dead body to be venerated in churches in Sydney ? ---- what could be logical about that????”

furthermore I liked his response to a statement made by a religious member of the discussion panel Angela Shanahan about sexuality and the church;

David Marr :

“ the churches refusal to understand the scientific basis of human sexuality causes immense distress and harm all around the world;-------- what would you say to a woman struggling to bring up her nine children in abject poverty, just because your god did not allow her to use a condom while she was repeatedly raped over the years?----- you people have no idea how unspeakably nasty and cruel you are towards your god’s creatures----- your lot tells people to be celibate and that they go to hell if they have sex, this is nothing but pure bigotry, cruelty and hatred ”

on the subject of **********ity and the suggestion by Angelica Shanahan that god loves all the people in the same way; David Marr replied that if that would be the case, he would let them also go into the church and take clergy positions; but such is your bigotry, you claim to love them and at the same time throw them out of the church;

further David Marr added: “the struggle between the church and science has always been won by science and will always be won by science, only logic will take us forward”

I agree with him entirely it took the church 300 years to accept that Galileo was right; whom they nearly burnt at the stake for his scientific work because it clashed with the totally illogical and stupid teaching of their perverse religion;

it seems inconceivable that even now, in the twenty-first century these criminals prevent some of our children to learn all about Darwin’s theory of evolution, in a vain attempt to prevent them to develop a logical mind; ---- there should be a law against such criminal stupidity

ABC Q&A

2008-07-19T15:34:00.000+10:00

當有人反駁我這幾篇反宗教的文章的時候! 我倒很高興, 我希望他們能提出証據指出人類是上帝所製造的, 又或有上帝的存在, 又或聖經不是人寫的......等等!

在17/7/2008 晚上, 我看了ABC 的 A&Q 電視節目討論了, 因為最近的在悉尼的大型"World Youth Day", 教宗來到出巡, 神父孌童/強姦案的事件等等, 在城中熱爆了的話題!

最吸引我的是 Mr. David Marr (An author, journalist and broadcaster) 和 Angela Shanahan (speciality is social and family affairs & She is a Catholic) 的言論了. 這些, 我要有時間才能節錄了, 但大家有興趣, 可以去以下看看:

http://www.abc.net.au/tv/qanda/txt/s2300527.htm

在節目中主要是討論了以下的問題:

With the pope in town and a record-breaking number of people attending masses around Sydney, punters will not be surprised that religion took centre stage in last night’s debate. The panellists (討論小組人員) faced a number of tricky questions about the role of faith in our society. Issues raised included the relationship between religion and science, paedophilia(孌童) and the church, the Catholic Church’s stance on **********ity (同性戀)and the place of religion in politics (if there is one). Punters had a range of views on the discussion. Some believed that certain panellists had conflated religion with compassion. Others wanted to see greater transparency when it came to the church’s internal investigation processes in dealing with allegations of child sex abuse by the clergy. Many were divided over the church’s refusal to accept gay Catholics, and wondered why secular governments begin parliament with the Lord’s Prayer. With ex-Foreign Minister, Alexander Downer, on the panel there was also some discussion of foreign policy decisions made during the Howard era and much interest in Downer’s plans post-politics.

我對以上一些問題有以下的答案:

Q. the relationship between religion and science. 宗教與科學的關係.

A. 宗教是一些神話, 一些由人創作出來的人物小說. 以宣傳信念來規限人類道德行為思想.

科學是要有事實証據, 是要有跡可尋, 是要實驗辨証, 是要講求邏輯推論, 不可天馬行空.

Q. the Catholic Church’s stance on **********ity & many were divided over the church’s refusal to accept gay Catholics 為何同性戀者不可參加彌撒不可為教徒, 被教會拒諸門外呢?

A. 如果是由上帝創造了人類, 即同性戀者都是他的傑作吧???? 為什麼會被教會拒諸門外?

難道你可以說同性戀者是上帝製造出來懲罰現世紀人類的性愛氾濫嗎(我真聽過有人這樣說的!)? 如果真如此, 那豈不更攪笑??? 這樣的上帝恐怕是魔吧!!!!

(這點討論, 在討論會上更是精.....)

Q. the place of religion in politics (if there is one) & wondered why secular governments begin parliament with the Lord’s Prayer 澳洲聲稱自己是,非宗教政府, 為何在議會前必須祈禱?

A. 宗教入侵政治, 那不單只是澳洲, 在美國是最鮮明不過了. 我亦不久前聽了電台廣播, 講及了這在美的事實.

Q. paedophilia and the church & Others wanted to see greater transparency when it came to the church’s internal investigation processes in dealing with allegations of child sex abuse by the clergy. 對於教會內部調查, 發生在神職人員上的孌童 / 強姦案, 要求透明度!

A. 在這些神職人員標榜著他們的聖潔操守時, 我們將深愛的孩童交付到他們身上! 那些受害人, 被教會隱瞞事情的真相而做成的長期折磨!!!

待續....

劉嘉兒案受害人索償千萬元

2008-07-19T15:20:00.000+10:00

在我另一blog, 有網友質疑我對香港教會刪除錄音帶証據一事, 大家看一下星島日報報導吧:
如果沒有這鐵証, 我不相信教會會無情情給你庭外賠款!!!!

----------------------------------------------------

劉嘉兒案受害人索償千萬元

( 星島日報報道 ) 引起社會廣泛關注的本港首宗天主教神父狎童案，並未因犯案前神父劉嘉兒判監四年半而告一段落。據本報得悉，劉嘉兒及案發時所屬天主教香港教區，將要面對受害人的巨額民事索償，成為亞洲首例同類個案。消息透露，受害人聲稱因遭性侵犯患上精神分裂症，要求劉嘉兒及教區賠償他十一年來的醫藥費、精神創傷及性生活受影響等多項損失，合共一千零九十九萬多元。

天主教神父狎童案餘波擴大，在劉嘉兒案中現年廿八歲的受害人準備提出民事索償，而且態度頗為強硬，限令劉嘉兒及教區須於四月廿一日，即後日下午五時半前作出合理賠償，否則會正式入稟高等法院，訴諸法律為自己討回公道。

據悉，教區及正在赤柱監獄服刑的劉嘉兒，於上周三接獲由法援處委派律師行代受害人發出的索償通知信及入稟狀草擬書，限期一周內答覆。 消息指教區今次被列入索償對象 ，是由於受害人認為教區是劉嘉兒的僱主或主事人，對劉嘉兒有監管責任，故須一併為性侵犯事件作出賠償。受害人自八七年開始便是牛頭角聖若瑟天主教堂的輔祭，劉嘉兒則帶領該輔祭會。

消息又稱，受害人指控教區對他受性侵犯一事上有疏忽，九五年教區曾透過一名姓趙的神父，安排受害人與劉嘉兒在一教堂會面，當時姓趙神父以錄音機收錄二人的對話內容。席間，劉嘉兒向受害人承認侵犯及道歉。後來，趙神父將會面紀錄向已故胡振中樞機報告，劉嘉兒終在同年六月廿九日被胡振中下令暫停神父職務，三個月後再自行離職。

受害人歸咎教區清楚知悉他被性侵犯，卻未有報警，再加上那次會面對話的錄音帶事後被刪除， 令警方調查困難，因而延長受害人的精神創傷，所以教區亦須負上責任。

消息又透露，受害人指劉嘉兒於九一年一月四日在教堂宿舍，藉詞「性愛治療」，把受害人帶進廁所，多次撫弄受害人陽具，後來受害人臥在脇上再度遭劉嘉兒狎弄陽具，其間劉指示受害人睡在他身上，要受害人模仿女性，撫吻劉的乳頭，劉更一度企圖雞姦受害人。

受害人認為劉嘉兒身為修士，有責任照顧及保護教會輔祭，及應做出良好榜樣，而受害人亦對劉非常信賴，但劉竟破壞誠信，最終令受害人患上精神分裂症。

據悉受害人對劉嘉兒所作出的性侵犯行為，不但感到被羞辱，更認為劉嘉兒的所作所為，絕非一名天主教神父應有的行為。

劉經審訊後，被裁定於九一年一月四日及五日和九二年暑假非禮及企圖雞姦罪成，判監四年半，上月上訴庭又駁回劉嘉兒的上訴，受害人認為這正好支持他所提出的索償。

面對首次性醜聞索償的天主教香港教區，主教陳日君極度關注，連日來召開多次會議，商討對策，並商討各種可能性。而至截稿為止，教區暫未公布事件或對事件作出回應。
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前天, 我看了一個ABC Q and A 節目, 我想很人一真的要再寫一下宗教的問題!!!!!

教會荼毒人類世世代代 II

2008-07-17T14:13:00.000+10:00

去年我在澳洲電視節目報導美國教會的事件, 我那時很反感, 立即在網上反宗教的論壇去發表如下:

近日看到電視報導美國教會如何龐大, 美國人對教會如何痴迷! 甚至教會教育小朋友不要相信進化論, 在一個宣導會中, 貼出猿猴的照片, 問在座的小朋友, 甚至家長是否相信自己的祖先是長這樣子的, 大家都哈哈大笑, 訪問小朋友, 小朋友都說不相信! 相信是主創造了人類! 這樣的下一代不相信了科學証據!人類還有什麼希望!

於是竟有人用英文說進化論不是科學!!!!

於是, 我叫老公回答他:

How can U say that??? " Darwin’s "Theory of Evolution" is a well established, and proven science, there are thousands of examples that confirm the validity of this theory. Please read "The Origin of Species" by Charles Darwin and you will be convinced (that is if your brain has kept up with the pace of evolution).

為什麼要信有上帝, 有神呢??? 問一下自己吧??

將時間花在看歷史書, 自然科學書..... 都好過看那本由人寫的聖經!!! 原本聖經就是應用神話的娛樂書看看便好了! 話知你出幾多個版本! 又或你認為那一個版本才是真實才是你認為的真主! 那都是大家娛樂一下好了, 就像大家看了場電影! 如果原先就是如此! 戰火就不會繼續到現在了!!!

完.....

教會荼毒人類世世代代 I

2008-07-17T13:50:00.000+10:00

這幾天澳洲熱聞就是天主教會在悉尼攪的這個叫" World Youth Day"!

教宗肯定很怕被人射殺喇!! 我都沒有看過那一個國家元首要坐這種防彈車的!

昨晚ABC Lateline 就報導了一對姊妹花, 在墨爾本讀小學時被神父強姦了. 最後姊姊因父母8年來用盡金錢與教會打官司而自殺, 妹妹淆酒至被車撞倒,變成了殘廢!!! 澳洲主教原本說要道歉, 最終反口,並要求教會律師盡量減少賠款!! 這個家庭完全破碎!!

http://www.abc.net.au/lateline/content/2008/s2305932.htm

受害姊妹父母:

受害一家:

澳洲主教 George Pell:

Shortly after the abuse was reported, Cardinal George Pell apologised unreservedly. However in later letters church lawyers refused to accept liability and fought ferociously to limit a payout.

BISHOP ANTHONY FISHER, WORLD YOUTH DAY: Happily, I think most of Australia was enjoying, delighting in the beauty and goodness of these young people and the hope for us doing these sorts of things better in the future, as we saw last night. Rather than dwelling crankily, as a few people are doing, on old wounds.

這位主教ANTHONY FISHER 竟可說出這樣無人性的說話, 說受害人父母不應在年青人如此高興在一起慶祝做好美好未來的時候, 有些人(指受害人)仍然坐在原處狂妄地想著自己舊傷口.

看到了那些瘋狂慶祝和期盼教宗的青少年, 他們人數之多,實在使我痛心!

我自小學到大學都是讀天主教會辦的學校! 我自小被迫讀聖經, 聖經說我是帶著原罪來此世界!! 我那時很害怕! 星期日去教堂, 彌撤做完便很想去吃那塊小圓餅, 又或去向神父告解, 又或去洗聖水, 以為這樣可能可以減輕原罪!

到14歲, 有男仔追, 被男仔掂了一下手, 我立刻想到要去教堂跪拜在天父前認錯去!

為什麼要強迫我們讀聖經, 簡直是殘害我們弱小心靈呀! 如果我長大了仍笨拙的相信聖經, 那我豈不是到死都覺得自己是醜陋和有罪的 my whole life is full of shame and guilty???

待續....

教會-回應

2008-07-16T13:37:00.000+10:00

剛有位網友看了我的宗教日記給我回應:

哎，道貌昂然的伪君子呀！
一句话，伪君子远比真小人可怕，诸位信徒，小心啦！
我覺得應該再來寫一下教會:
大家可能說這是樹大有枯枝! 錯不在教會.....

最可恨的是,

這兩件孌童案, 澳洲和香港的教會的做法實屬可恥的!
香港天主教會將証據的錄音帶消滅, 加強警察查案難度, 使受害人要經歷更長時間的精神煎熬! 雖然案件在四年前判案! 受害人是拿著要教會精神賠償再向法庭伸訴的!
收藏或消滅証據, 這豈不是共犯!!!!
而澳洲這單也是一樣! ABC訪問澳洲主教, 他回答中也明顯他早知內情而有意隱瞞事件!!
這些做法,豈不也一樣是共犯嗎???

Q: 上帝创造了邪恶吗?

A: 上帝是由人創造出來的，依此推論，明顯邪惡亦是一樣！
懂了嗎？

Q: 旧约:是上帝用异象与他所选定的人,在地上为他传送实施旨意.新约:是上帝差遣他的独生子,与世人直接对话.现在:是圣灵在他所选定的人面前,用异象来传达实施上帝的旨意.圣灵是否象上帝,耶稣.离开世人.我无所知晓.但是有一样我可以告诉你:我除了到教堂以外.我就回到秭妹为我的提供的小屋里画画.不跟任何人讲话.我不看他们的行为.更不听他们讲话.连上帝都救不了的世人,有谁还会与其相处呢?我是连环画专业创作.现在广州东山堂朝曦杂志义务画插图.编剧.作曲.现有圣曲八部.虽我独身一人.但我心以上帝为大.我不需要任何属世的东西.如果你需要图画.请与:13178873474或QQ:704750652联系.我只为上帝而做

A: HoohOOO
god doesn't have a willie, U better stay alone and pray for your god!!!!!!

教會

2008-07-15T13:15:00.000+10:00

澳洲這兩天熱聞要算是:
1.神憎鬼厭的神父Dennis Ferguson
2. 教宗將訪澳洲

那麼巧,香港又一單新聞關於教會的. 三件事一起發功!
3.前神父劉嘉兒案.

首先講那位神父Dennis Ferguson:

Ferguson's accommodation the best option for now: Bligh

他是剛監獄釋放出來的,天主教神父曾經sexual abused 性侵犯很多小童而被判入獄.
因為澳洲出獄後,不可改名換姓的(前兩天才知道紐西蘭是可以的! 當地才發生一年青女生被出獄者殺害,正是一名改了名姓的剛出來的監犯!) 於是這位神父便被傳媒追蹤到他出獄後住在那裡了!
當然了那裡的居民便群起反對了! 於是所有傳媒的討論節目都在討論,究竟應什麼做! 政府的人當然說他是服法, 大家應接受他! 居民當然大吵,最好送他到你(官員)的後園住.

我就寫了以下去ABC 的 "have your say"

send him to the pope! 送他給教宗!
God will love him! 主會愛他的.

事實,他由來裹教出來的, 也應物歸原主吧!

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2. 教宗訪澳, 澳洲教會為了迎接他, 也真攪好多慶祝,好大場面!

但是有一幫反對人事已準備抗議了! 他們主要是對教宗不贊同男人用避孕套和不准科學家用stem cell 作研究而群起, 一於在教宗來臨之日示威!
他們穿起"This is no God" T- 恤和手舉教宗頭載避孕套皇冠的海報在傳媒前預演.

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3.神父孌童案召陳日君作供
教區臨時變陣決讓主教出庭另要求受害人露臉則遭法官拒絕

前神父劉嘉兒非禮15歲男信徒案，受害人早前入稟高院向劉及天主教香港教區民事索償，涉款逾1000萬元，成為香港首宗神職人員性侵犯信徒的索償案。

雖然案件是受害人和教會於庭外和解, 但是香港人都相信教會可能不用付出1000萬元, 但是數目也不會低過於900萬!

哎! 香港的教友會否想想, 自己辛苦來的錢於星期日去教堂作奉獻的! 是一個什麼樣的用法呢???

An atheist

Richard Dawkins on Elder with Andrew Denton

Science year in review: 2009

Heavens above

Climate issues

Health

Animals

Nano pros and cons

Weird science

Ten Science Stories That Changed Our Decade

Bushbaby & Potto

Perodicticus Potto

Pygmy Slow Loris:

Key Facts

Interesting Facts

Tarsiers

Coquerel sifaka

The link: Uncovering Our Earliest Ancestor? –5

The link: Uncovering Our Earliest Ancestor? –4

The Link: Uncovering Our Earliest Ancestor? - 3

The Link: Uncovering Our Earliest Ancestor? - 2

The Link: Uncovering Our Earliest Ancestor? - 1

Us and Them - ABC Foreign Correspondent

Transcript

Why does the Moon seem to follow us when we drive?

The Hour: Religulous

Religions

Religulous

Religulous-excerpts from beginning & end

Bill Maher’s “Religulous”

Bill Maher on “Religulous”

Beautiful Birdies in our backyard

Dear God - The Atheists Prayer

Dear God - XTC

Dear God - w/ lyrics

Dear God

God love u???

God loves all of us?

愛爾蘭教會強姦虐童60年

http://news.hk.msn.com/international/article_3_21571_1.asp

Church abuse: Irish case reignites calls for local

Church abuse: Irish case reignites calls for local probe

Calls for Royal Commission into church abuse

Google is very quick

The Atheist

Jesus Appears in a Toilet

Missing link: 47-million-year old ancestor found

The son of god

Inside a Cult: Messiah on Trial

The Atheist Cartoon

Secret Files Of The Inquisition-4

Secret Files Of The Inquisition-3

Secret Files Of The Inquisition-2

Secret Files Of The Inquisition-1

About God

Ancient 'hobbits' a new species after all

Ancient 'hobbits' a new species after all

The Atheist

http://www.abc.net.au/compass/s2517600.htm

Summary

Story

卡拉季奇被捕

The Screbrenica Massacre III

Srebrenica, July 1995-2

Photo Gallery II

7. The refugees are evacuated as a group from the Potocari base.

8. A Serb officer outside the gates (top left) gestures for the men to be separated from the women.

9. Men of all ages are marched away to the trucks.

11. Dutch Officer at Srebrenica.

12. The Warehouse.

13. A survivor of the massacre.

Srebrenica, July 1995

4. Ratko Mladic, indicted Serb war criminal, arrives to take charge of Srebrenica.

6. Potocari: the Dutch UN base.

The Srebrenica MassacreII

The Srebrenica Massacre

美國基督教劣行

ABC AandQ II

ABC Q&A

劉 嘉兒案受害人索償千萬元

8. A Serb officer outside the gates (top left) gestures
for the men to be separated from the women.

劉嘉兒案受害人索償千萬元