Jonathan's blog

From a slate.com article by Nick Schulz sub-titled "Why the auto-flushing toilet must die" (it's good to know I'm not the only one):

To understand why hands-free toilet technology stinks, you must first understand three things that any well-designed loo should permit you to do. 1) Clean the pool. You must be able to flush the toilet easily before sitting down, in case any detritus remains from a previous, inconsiderate visitor. 2) Clean the pool, again. You must be able to flush more than once after you are done. Some of us are more prolific than others, and courteous patrons will want to ensure that Point 1 is unnecessary for whomever follows. 3) Issue a courtesy flush. If you plan to settle down with the sports page, you should flush immediately after dropping the kids at the pool. There's no need to let the kids linger any longer than absolutely necessary. This is for the benefit of other visitors. Remarkably, the automatic-flush toilet makes all three of these tasks more difficult.

When Jesus was walking on water, was he really walking on ice? From a story by Sara Goudarzi on MSNBC.com:

Rare conditions could have conspired to create hard-to-see ice on the Sea of Galilee that a person could have walked on back when Jesus is said to have walked on water, a scientist reported Tuesday. The study, which examines a combination of favorable water and environmental conditions, proposes that Jesus could have walked on an isolated patch of floating ice on what is now known as Lake Kinneret in northern Israel.

It's an interesting hobby, I guess...searching for natural explanations for the many supernatural events described in the Bible. Sure, some more or less far-fetched explanation could be concocted for each individual event, but it's not likely there's only only one or two of them. It's be quite a coincidence if all of the supernatural events described in the Bible each happened to have a natural explanation. Take them at face value and believe them or not...don't try to make them more believable.

From the March 3, 2006, issue of The Week (my favoite mag), p. 33:

The Civil Rights Act mandates religious tolerance at work, said Matt Villano in The New York Times. By law, the religious practices of employees should be accom­modated, as long as they don't interfere with day-to-day tasks. An employee can pray in the office, for example, but if he keeps asking colleagues to join in despite repeated nos, he "may have crossed the line into a form of harassment." But harassment goes both ways. Repeatedly asking a religious co-worker to join a basketball tournament betting pool or to go for a round of drinks after work could violate his rights. Just remember, said Robbie Blinkoff of the Context-Based Research Group, that "religion is a tough issue for everyone." A proposed law could soon expand the rights of religious workers, said Gil A. Abramson in the Baltimore Daily Record. The Workplace Religious Freedom Act would require employers to engage in an "affirmative and bona fide effort" to accommodate on-the-job religious prac­tices, such as a time and place for prayer in the office or the use of vacation time for religious holidays. The act would also require companies to accommodate reli­gious employees unless the concessions would cause "significant difficulty or expense," a stricter standard for employ­ers to meet.

From YouTube, video of a goofy, dancing stormtrooper (it runs a little long):

The other day I blogged the recent study that showed prayer didn't aid heart patients' recoveries. I later saw the following press release from the Ayn Rand Institute:

"The Harvard medical study showing that prayer has no effect on recovery from heart surgery is shocking," said Dr. Yaron Brook, executive director of the Ayn Rand Institute. "It is not shocking that prayer has no medical effects--what's shocking is that scientists at Harvard Medical School are wasting their time studying the medical effects of prayer." "Science is a method of gaining knowledge by systematically studying things that actually exist and have real effects. The notion that someone's health can be affected by the prayers or wishes of strangers is based on nothing but imagination and faith. Such blind belief represents the rejection of reason and science, and is not worthy of serious, rational consideration. What's next? A study of the medical effects of blowing out birthday candles?" "Every minute these doctors spend conducting this sort of faith-based study is one minute less spent on reality-based research--research that actually has hope of leading to real medical cures."

I kind of think they have a point though of course I don't share their perspective that imagination and faith are equivalent and both are associated with things that don't "actually exist." I can see why it would seem pretty silly to try to test the possible effectiveness of expressions of faith via the tools of science.