Post Examiner & Daily Tribune Star
The Solar Oracle - Online News Network
Earth Global News
Oct 05, 2011 05:21PM
Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 (unless otherwise noted)
The Los Angeles Report
May 19, 2012 10:45PM
Kevin on Jan 01, 1970 01:00AM
Zuckerberg updates status to 'Married'
Instead of the Saturday graduation party they thought they were attending, invited guests at Mark Zuckerberg's home in Palo Alto saw the Facebook founder and his longtime girlfriend, Priscilla Chan, get married.
Kevin on Jan 01, 1970 01:00AM
In praise of Hawaii's ukulele (via Portugal)
The stringed instruments that define so much Hawaiian music all came from somewhere else — and not so very long ago. In the case of the ukulele, that was from Portugal's Madeira Islands. Hawaii's King David Kalakaua embraced the four-stringed instrument after it arrived about 1879, and the rest kind of is history, as Los Angeles writer Swati Pandey explores at the Daily.
Kevin on Jan 01, 1970 01:00AM
Two arrested in killing of USC students from China *
The LAPD says robbery was the motive for the April 11 killings of Ming Qu and Ying Wu as they sat in a car about a mile from the USC campus. Two men were arrested Friday, possibly based on cellphone signals and forensic evidence tying the gun to other recent crimes.
Kevin on Jan 01, 1970 01:00AM
Urasawa the second most expensive restaurant in US
The Daily Meal did a web exercise of deciding the 25 most expensive restaurants in the United States. Urasawa in Beverly Hills came in at number two, after Masa in New York City. The average bill at Urasawa is said to be $1,111. But there are alternatives.
Kevin on Jan 01, 1970 01:00AM
One LA career with growth potential: parking cop
Mayor Villaraigosa's budget calls for adding 50 more part-time parking officers to walk foot beats in crowded areas such as Downtown, Hollywood and North Hollywood. There already were 100 of these part-timers hired last year. It's all about bringing in more fines.
Global Disaster Alert and Coordination System
May 19, 2012 10:47PM
May 19, 2012 08:03PM
On 5/20/2012 2:03:52 AM, an earthquake occurred in Italy potentially affecting 6510000 people within 100km. The earthquake had magnitude 6M and depth 5.1km.
May 19, 2012 09:00PM
From 19/05/2012 to 20/05/2012, a Tropical Storm (maximum wind speed of 83 km/h) ALBERTO-12 was active in Atlantic. The cyclone affects these countries: United States (vulnerability Low). Estimated population affected by category 1 (120 km/h) wind speeds or higher is 0.
May 17, 2012 08:00PM
On 5/18/2012 2:00:41 AM, an earthquake occurred in Chile potentially affecting No people within 100km. The earthquake had magnitude 6.2M and depth 10km.
May 15, 2012 06:59PM
On 5/16/2012 12:59:34 AM, an earthquake occurred in Papua New Guinea potentially affecting 150000 people within 100km. The earthquake had magnitude 6M and depth 154km.
May 19, 2012 09:00AM
From 15/05/2012 to 19/05/2012, a Tropical Depression (maximum wind speed of 74 km/h) ALETTA-12 was active in EastPacific. The cyclone affects these countries: [unknown] (vulnerability [unknown]). Estimated population affected by category 1 (120 km/h) wind speeds or higher is 0.
XDR2NET News Releases
May 19, 2012 10:49PM
Apr 06, 2012 10:45PM
XDR2NET: After much work the new site has been launched, and XDR2NET has a new updated look, check it out at http://t.co/PLXca93o. Save 5% use 5NC25.
News in Rick's world
david on 2011-07-22T08:44:50Z
Left vs Right v1.5Information Is Beautiful
An update of our fabled Left vs Right concept map. Written and art-directed by David McCandless. Designed by Stefanie Posavec.
I?ve finally updated this image after lengthy (and sometimes heated) discussion with right wingers. The goal was to smooth out my biases, really. As a left-leaning journalistic type, I had subtly ? and unconsciously ? biased the diagram to make the Left seem better than than the Right. But taking in feedback ? and no small-amount of fireballs in the comments ? I?ve refined the wording and changed a few other subtle elements to hopefully rebalance the image.
If you?re curious and beady-eyed, I?ve set up a little spot-the-difference image. There are five differences.
The image is also on the Guardian Datablog today and printed in the paper. There, I?ve gone into a bit more detail about the process of making the image. Enjoy!
I love this diagram. And I?m really happy to offer you a fresh new gorgeous A2 print of it on FSC-certified Munken art paper. Check out the store. (All monies go back into the website, for paying our lovely contributors etc).
See the US version. See the Rest-of-the-World Version.
Design: Stefanie Posavec
Sources: Encyclopedia Brittanica, Wikipedia, Conservative-Resources.com
maddieh on 2011-07-13T19:48:27Z
Hebrew Bible Written By Humans, Computer Scientists SayUniversal Life Church Monastery Blog
The accelerating pace of technological advancement is almost mind-blowing, but modern-day computers are not only able to beat human beings at chess?they are now able to determine who probably wrote the Tanakh, or the Hebrew Bible. According to the results, multiple styles and voices were used in composing many of these ancient, sacred Hebrew texts. Naturally, this finding undermines the evangelical belief in the inerrant, divine inspiration of the holy book of the Judeo-Christian tradition. What ultimately matters, though, may not be whether the book was divinely inspired, but whether, despite its authorship, it offers insight into living a good and moral life.
The study was carried out by a team of computer scientists at Bar Ilan University in Ramat Gan, Israel, using a software program that analyzes differences in writing style, and the results were summarized in an article in The Anglican Journal. Traditionally, scholars have distinguished two different major styles in the Hebrew Bible (which includes the Torah, also known as the Pentateuch, or Five Books of Moses)?a ?priestly? style, and a lay style, the former being associated with the priests of the temple in Jerusalem, and the latter, with the laity. The researchers found that the computer-generated analysis duplicated the findings of scholars with ninety per cent accuracy, showing regular difference in style and diction (such as the words for God, staff, if, and but). In a paper presented at the Annual Conference of the Association for Computational Linguistics in Portland, Oregon, they said that they had ?been able to largely recapitulate several centuries of painstaking manual labor with our automated method?. The implication of this clergy-laity distinction is that the Bible is not necessarily inspired by an almighty deity, but by human beings with their own idiosyncrasies and foibles.
But maybe it does not matter whether the Bible is divinely inspired. As The Anglican Journal reports, the research team were hesitant to conclude categorically that these founding documents and holy texts of the Jewish faith tradition, which also inform Christian theology and doctrine, were definitely conceived by human minds alone. The reason books of the Old Testament like Genesis show differences in style, word choice, and idiom could be that God chose to author the text in different ways, they admit, pointing out that scientific research will never satisfactorily answer whether the Bible is the work of God. Do we need to answer this question, though? Perhaps we should be satisfied in the understanding that certain parts of the Bible (not the part about how to sell your daughter into slavery, of course) serve as a guide for living a healthy, happy, productive, fulfilling life, and to do good things for other people. If morals are good for their own sake, we can live by them for their own sake, whether or not they were prescribed by God.
The most astonishing thing revealed in the Anglican Journal article is not simply that scholars have been observing the Bible?s stylistic discrepancies for centuries, but that these observations have been corroborated by researchers through modern-day computer-generated analysis. It is probably more difficult to inject one?s bias into a research project when one is employing the cold, uncompromisingly objective genius of a software program. Consequently, the fact that both biblical scholars, in the course of centuries, and a software program, in just minutes, can come to the same conclusion about the probable human provenance of the Bible, is telling. But we need not be discouraged by the prospect that it was just old Jewish patriarchs with their own very earthly human agendas who composed the beloved and venerated works of the Hebrew Bible, because we can distil a sense of moral purpose from these anyway.
We are curious to know what our priests, ministers, and rabbis ordained online think about this issue. Does the suggestion that the Bible may have been written by multiple humans, and not God, affect the way you view the Bible? Does it compromise the sense of purpose you may have previously derived from the book, or does it make little difference to you either way? Does the ?word? of God remain as such to you in either priestly or non-priestly phraseology, or does it mirror the errancy and imperfection of human nature?
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(author unknown) on 2011-07-02T23:00:54Z
Southern California Pushes for SecessionABC News: Top Stories
(author unknown) on 2011-06-27T05:00:00Z
maddieh on 2011-06-25T03:35:15Z
New York State Legalizes Same-Sex MarriageUniversal Life Church Monastery Blog
In a decision that passed 33-29, New York State has legalized same-sex marriage. New York is now the sixth state to allow gay marriage and is, and with a population of nearly 19 million, the largest of its kind.
The New York Democratic assembly is expected to pass a newer version of the bill, with more religious exemptions, next week.
In light of President Obama?s recent admonishment of DOMA, his announcements regarding his support of gay rights, and his encouragement toward lawmakers in their effort to legalize same-sex marriage, gay rights activists are hoping that the United States will experience a sea-change in favor of marriage equality.
We at the Universal Life Church Monastery congratulate the people of the New York, and see in this monumental decision a beacon of hope for freedom in the United States.
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