NASA has a gallery of amazing images – sign up for their “image of the day”. Click on the image to see more. Tags: NASA, Space, Astronomy

Battered by rising petrol prices and despairing of the ability of politicians to ease their pain, Americans are turning to the one figure they think can help – God. Campaigners are holding religious vigils at petrol stations throughout the US, harnessing the power of prayer to ask a higher power for lower pump prices. Prayer at the pump for lower petrol prices – Telegraph. Tags: Prayer, US, America, Petrol+pumps

“We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to reprimand MP Iris Robinson on her recent comments about Homosexuality.” Details of Petition: “MP for Strangford has recently suggested that all homosexuals should receive psychiatric treatment to help ‘cure’ them. These comments are not fitting of a MLA let alone an MP. They show narrow minded views and the belief that in Northern Ireland that bigotry is acceptable.” Number10.gov.uk » Robinson-Gay – epetition response.

More about Sam Harris on his website Tags: YouTube, Sam+Harris, Conversation

Fighting fashionable nonsense – philosophy and opinion

This is just from the ‘A’ section – go to the Butterflies and Wheels website for more. Acceptance Nice, warm, cooperative way of evaluating ideas, much better than argument. Accuracy Exploded concept. Foolish, Platonic notion that we can get our facts straight. Alphabet The opposite of the Goddess. “But one pernicious effect of literacy has gone largely unnoticed: writing subliminally fosters a patriarchal outlook. Writing of any kind, but especially its alphabetic form, diminishes feminine values and with them, women’s power in the culture.

As part of their community cohesion work, the Government has proposed in its White Paper ‘Face to Face and Side by Side: A Framework for Partnership in our Multi Faith Society’ to champion the role of ‘faith groups’ and ‘inter faith’ work in local social dialogue and action. We [The British Humanist Association] believe that the paper gives disproportionate support to ‘faith groups’ and overplays the importance of ‘inter faith’ work in social cohesion.

You know what organised religion needs? More power and influence. Thank God, then, that Channel 4 are on hand to give it the helping hand it so desperately requires in the form of Make Me A Christian (Sun, 7pm, C4), a spiritual makeover show in which four hardcore Goddites attempt to convert a rag-tag band of sinners into full-blown Jesus freaks in just three weeks. Charlie Brooker’s screen burn: Make Me A Christian | Culture | The Guardian.

Each year in Britain around two and a half thousand people are buried alone. No one claims them, and no one attends their funeral. Others have lain dead and undiscovered for weeks, or even years, before they are found and relatives traced. Driven by a desire to find out more about these lonely individuals from the people who knew and loved them, Lucy Cohen’s bittersweet, first film pieces together two peoples’ lives, and asks how – in crowded, hectic, connected, modern Britain – it is possible for anyone to simply slip through the cracks and disappear.

The Artic meltdown is speeding up, satellite images show. Do something now, for our children’s sake, says Thomas Friedman: Most people assume that the effects of climate change are going to be felt through another big disaster, like Hurricane Katrina. Not necessarily, says Minik Thorleif Rosing, a top geologist at Denmark’s National History Museum and one of my travelling companions. ‘Most people will actually feel climate change delivered to them by the postman,’ he explains.