Where Have All Believers Gone?
The British Social Attitudes survey of religious belief in Britain shows the decline in Christianity generally and Anglicanism in particular continuing. But what it does not show is any concommitant rise in atheism. “Religious decline in Britain is generational” say the authors, David Voas and Rodney Ling:
“the gap between age groups arises not because individuals become more religiously committed as they get older, but because children are less religious than their parents. The results suggest that institutional religion in Britain now has a half-life of one generation, to borrow the terminology of radioactive decay. Two non-religious parents successfully transmit their lack of religion. Two religious parents have roughly a 50/50 chance of passing on the faith. One religious parent does only half as well as two together.”
Guardian (thanks, Tiram)
Kansas dad somehow lifts car off 6-year-old girl
“OTTAWA, Kan. – A Kansas mother is praising a neighbor as “Superman” after her 6-year-old daughter told her he somehow found the strength to lift a car off her. The girl escaped with minor injuries after she and neighbor Nick Harris said she was pinned under the vehicle.
“He really is Superman,” Kristen Hough, the child’s mother, said Friday of Harris, the man she said saved her daughter, Ashlyn.
Harris, 32, said he doesn’t know how he managed to lift the Mercury sedan off the child. The 5-foot-7, 185-pound Harris said he tried later that day to lift other cars and couldn’t.
“But somehow, adrenaline, hand of God, whatever you want to call it, I don’t know how I did it,” he said.
Harris was dropping off his 8-year-old daughter at school last week when he saw a driver backing her car out of a driveway and over the child, Harris said. “I didn’t even think. I ran over there as fast as I could, grabbed the rear end of the car and lifted and pushed as hard as I could to get the tire off the child,” he said.”
Read more at Yahoo News
Incredible animation of the known universe
click the HD button, go full screen, sit back and watch this incredible animation (thanks Godmachine)
Pregnant Women Develop Emotion-Reading Superpowers
RAGING hormones during pregnancy prompt mood swings, but may also lead to a heightened ability to recognise threatening or aggressive facesMovie Camera. This may have evolved because it makes future mothers hyper-vigilant, yet it could also make them more vulnerable to anxiety.
Previous studies have suggested that a woman’s ability to correctly identify fearful or disgusted facial expressions varies according to her stage of the menstrual cycle, with perception heightened on days associated with high levels of the hormone progesterone. Since levels of progesterone and other hormones rise dramatically in late pregnancy, Rebecca Pearson and her colleagues at the University of Bristol in the UK investigated whether the ability to read faces varies during pregnancy.
New Scientist (thanks, SuZi)
Bank Robber Hypnotized Tellers
MOSCOW, Russia — Bank robbers have threatened tellers with knives, shot their way into banks and tunnelled up into vaults. But one woman in southern Russia chose a more peaceful method: Police say Galina Korzhova hypnotised a bank teller into handing over tens of thousands of dollars in what is believed to be just one in a series of daring, if non-violent, bank robberies.
Galina Korzhova was arrested, said Anton Kornoukhov, a spokesman for police in the southern city of Volgograd, on suspicion of hypnotising a bank teller in the nearby town of Volzhky into giving her more than $80,000. She is suspected of having robbed up to 30 additional banks in what Russian media have called a “grand tour” around the country.
Global Post (thanks, SarahWoo)
Police Sent On Hypnosis Courses
Officers are being encouraged to sign up to a course by Tom Silver, who is better known as a ‘celebrity hypnotherapist’ on American chat shows, in an attempt to gain more information from suspects.
Mr Silver, who has appeared on the Montel Williams and Ricki Lake chat shows on US TV, where he gave a guest an “orgasmic handshake”, normally charges £1,000-a-day for courses in his home country.
But after being contacted by PC Mark Hughes, of Cheshire police, Mr Silver – a master hypnotist – agreed a ‘free one day taster course’ for cops before they sign up to his six day course, costing £1,500.
Telegraph (thanks, Tammy)
Cigarettes Kill, But Don’t Tell Smokers?
SINGAPORE (Reuters) – Cigarette pack warnings that remind smokers of the fatal consequences of their habit may actually make them smoke more as a way to cope with the inevitability of death, according to researchers.
A small study by psychologists from the United States, Switzerland and Germany showed that warnings unrelated to death, such as “smoking makes you unattractive” or “smoking brings you and the people around you severe damage,” were more effective in changing smokers’ attitudes toward their habit.
This was especially the case in people who smoked to boost their self-esteem, such as youth who took up the habit to impress or fit in with their peers and others who thought smoking increased their social value, the researchers said.
Reuters (thanks, Berber)
Underwater Sculptures Installed In Cancun
An underwater exhibition is being installed in the Mexican Caribbean.
Located in the National Marine Park, on the west coast of Isla Mujeres, Punta Cancun and Punta Nizuc, the sculpture museum will include 400 statues that will be laid on the seabed over the next 13 months.
The gallery was created by Jaime Gonzalez Cano of The National Marine Park, Roberto Diaz of The Cancun Nautical Association and renowned British underwater sculptor Jason deCaires Taylor.
Telegraph (thanks, KirstyJ)
Predator drones use less encryption than your TV, DVDs
“Militants have been recording video from US Predator drones in Iraq and Afghanistan using laptops and $30 software, thanks to a total lack of encryption. What three-letter Internet acronym best fits the bizarre news out of Iraq and Afghanistan that militants there have been intercepting US Predator drone video feeds using laptops and a $30 piece of Russian software: LOL, WTF, or OMG?
Actually, all three are appropriate for something this farcical, horrible, and brain-numbing. The reason that the transmissions could be picked up easily by a cheap satellite recording program? They were broadcast in the clear between the drone and ground control. That’s right—no encryption was used.
Perhaps, you might be thinking to yourself in a mental bid to make the military seem competent here, no one could have suspected this would happen. But they did suspect it, because it had been happening for a decade already. The Wall Street Journal, which broke the story, included this tidbit in its report: “The potential drone vulnerability lies in an unencrypted downlink between the unmanned craft and ground control. The US government has known about the flaw since the US campaign in Bosnia in the 1990s, current and former officials said. But the Pentagon assumed local adversaries wouldn’t know how to exploit it, the officials said.”"
Read more at Arstechnica
Company Plans To Pull Solar Energy From Orbit
“Negotiators in Copenhagen have been trying to figure out just how far they will have to go to curb global warming. A Southern California company thinks it has the answer: 22,000 miles straight up. The Solaren Corp. wants to produce solar power in space. The location has a lot going for it: There is sunshine 24/7, and the real estate is free.
But the challenges are huge. How do you get all of the components into space and connect them once they’re there? Scientists have spent decades trying to figure that out. “The thing in space was going to be so heavy, it was going to take hundreds or thousands of rockets to put in orbit and thousands of astronauts,” explains Gary Spirnak, Solaren’s CEO.
So about eight years ago, Spirnak got together with a bunch of engineers he knew from his years at Hughes Aerospace. “They’d been in the business for 20, 30 years,” he says. “They’d solved just impossible problems working on government programs that you can’t talk about.” They began trying to figure out how to make an orbiting solar power plant light enough that it could be launched relatively cheaply. The solution they came up with was not to build one big power plant, but to put as many as four separate modules in the same geo-synchronous neighborhood. The components would track each other with radar and use small thrusters to maintain their positions.
Each component has a different function. Part 1 is essentially a big mirror that collects and focuses sunlight on Part 2, the solar panels. Those beam energy to Part 3, a really huge antenna that focuses and beams power back to earth in the form of radio waves.”
Read more at NPR
