Timothy Wilken, MD writes: Recently my studies have led me to look at a some writings (1880 to 1905) described collectively as the Divine Science. In part, they teach:

Divine
Science is based on the changeless truth that God constitutes the
nature of all being and that God fills the invisible and visible realms
of existence. This truth has never changed. All truth is as available
to humanity now just as it was available to Moses, Elijah and Jesus.
Nothing a person does or fails to do will ever separate him or her from
the Source out of which we are created. Paul reminds us, “in God we
live, and move and have our being.”

True
prayer is not begging for more wisdom, more supply, or more good.
Infinite, all-embracing Being cannot give us more than Itself. In
sharing Itself with us It has given us all that we can possibly need.
Our part is to accept.

Divine
Science teaches that the fullness of Spirit is forever pouring Itself
through the mind of man, limited only by the way a person thinks and
feels about life in general and about certain conditions and situations
in particular. Therefore, all change begins as an activity in mind and
through the law of cause and effect mind manifests as a personal
experience.

The
physical evidence of any teaching lies not in the authority or history
of an organization, but in the ability of an individual to prove the
teaching. And so it is that Divine Science is recognized as a teaching
which is rooted not in hierarchy but in the demonstration of the
principles of Divine Science through a person’s life and works. …

The
foundation
truth of Divine Science is that limitless Being, God [GOOD],
is equally present everywhere and is the ALL of everything. God is pure
Spirit, absolute, changeless, eternal, manifesting in all creation. God
is everywhere, therefore God is here. What God is, is everywhere,
therefore what God is, is here. The logical conclusion is
that there can be no other presence than God-presence; no other power
than God-power; no other knowledge than God-knowledge. …

If GOOD is omnipresent, what becomes of evil? What happens to the
darkness which fills a room when the light is turned on? The darkness
does not move out and go somewhere else, it simply does not exist in
the presence of light. Darkness is not a reality, it is merely the
absence of light. In the same way when the individual thought is
centered upon the omnipresence of good, evil thought does not move out
and continue to exist elsewhere; it simply becomes nonexistent. Evil
has no reality within itself; it can have existence only so long as an
individual supports it by his belief in it. …

It
was a pleasant surprise to see that these 19th century thinkers
realized that science and religion must be ONE — must be unified. I
think they would have had no problems accepting today’s ever growing
knowledge and technology. As long as that knowledge and technology, was
used to service GOOD. This brings me to the final quote from Divine
Science:

There is no unity without equality. The Infinity and Omnipresence of
Being, its action and result, comprising the one self-existing ALL,
includes the unity and equality of man within itself. Or, as Jesus of
Nazareth said, “I and my Father are one.”

This brief introduction to Divine Science becomes a perfect preamble to the Principle of Synergic Equality. (05/14/09)
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Barrack Obama speaking at the 2009 Arizona State University Graduation ceremony: Now, before I begin, I’d
like to clear the air about that little controversy everyone was
talking about a few weeks back. I have to tell you, I really thought it
was much ado about nothing, although I think we all learned an
important lesson. I learned to never again pick another team over the
Sun Devils in my NCAA bracket. And your university President and Board
of Regents will soon learn all about being audited by the IRS.

In
all seriousness, I come here not to dispute the suggestion that I
haven’t yet achieved enough in my life. I come to embrace it; to
heartily concur; to affirm that one’s title, even a title like
President, says very little about how well one’s life has been led -
and that no matter how much you’ve done, or how successful you’ve been,
there’s always more to do, more to learn, more to achieve.

And I
want to say to you today, graduates, that despite having achieved a
remarkable milestone, one that you and your families are rightfully
proud of, you too cannot rest on your laurels. Your body of work is yet
to come.

Now, some graduating classes have marched into this
stadium in easy times - times of peace and stability when we call on
our graduates to simply keep things going, and not screw it up. Other
classes have received their diplomas in times of trial and upheaval,
when the very foundations of our lives have been shaken, the old ideas
and institutions have crumbled, and a new generation is called on to
remake the world.

It should be clear by now the category into
which all of you fall. For we gather here tonight in times of
extraordinary difficulty, for the nation and the world. The economy
remains in the midst of a historic recession, the result, in part, of
greed and irresponsibility that rippled out from Wall Street and
Washington, as we spent beyond our means and failed to make hard
choices. We are engaged in two wars and a struggle against terrorism.
The threats of climate change, nuclear proliferation, and pandemic defy
national boundaries and easy solutions.

For many of you, these
challenges are felt in more personal terms. Perhaps you’re still
looking for a job - or struggling to figure out what career path makes
sense in this economy. Maybe you’ve got student loans, or credit card
debts, and are wondering how you’ll ever pay them off. Maybe you’ve got
a family to raise, and are wondering how you’ll ensure that your kids
have the same opportunities you’ve had to get an education and pursue
their dreams.

In the face of these challenges, it may be
tempting to fall back on the formulas for success that have dominated
these recent years. …

So
graduates, it is now abundantly clear that we need to start doing
things a little differently. In your own lives, you’ll need to
continuously adapt to a continuously changing economy: to have more
than one job or career over the course of your life; to keep gaining
new skills - possibly even new degrees; and to keep taking risks as new
opportunities arise.

And as a nation, we’ll need a fundamental
change of perspective and attitude. It is clear that we need to build a
new foundation - a stronger foundation - for our economy and our
prosperity, rethinking how we educate our children, and care for our
sick, and treat our environment.

Many of our current challenges are unprecedented. There are no standard remedies, or go-to fixes this time around.

That
is why we are going to need your help. We’ll need young people like you
to step up. We need your daring and your enthusiasm and your energy.

And
let me be clear, when I say “young,” I’m not just referring to the date
on your birth certificate. I’m talking about an approach to life - a
quality of mind and heart.

A willingness to follow your
passions, regardless of whether they lead to fortune and fame. A
willingness to question conventional wisdom and rethink the old dogmas.
A lack of regard for all the traditional markers of status and prestige
- and a commitment instead to doing what is meaningful to you, what
helps others, what makes a difference in this world.

That’s the
spirit that led a band of patriots not much older than you to take on
an empire. It’s what drove young pioneers west, and young women to
reach for the ballot; what inspired a 30 year-old escaped slave to run
an underground railroad to freedom, and a 26 year-old preacher to lead
a bus boycott for justice. It’s what led firefighters and police
officers in the prime of their lives up the stairs of those burning
towers; and young people across this country to drop what they were
doing and come to the aid of a flooded New Orleans. It’s what led two
guys in a garage - named Hewlett and Packard - to form a company that
would change the way we live and work; and what led scientists in
laboratories, and novelists in coffee shops to labor in obscurity until
they finally succeeded in changing the way we see the world.

That
is the great American story: young people just like you, following
their passions, determined to meet the times on their own terms. They
weren’t doing it for the money. Their titles weren’t fancy - ex-slave,
minister, student, citizen. But they changed the course of history -
and so can you.

With a degree from this university, you have
everything you need to get started. Did you study business? Why not
help our struggling non-profits find better, more effective ways to
serve folks in need. Nursing? Understaffed clinics and hospitals across
this country are desperate for your help. Education? Teach in a
high-need school; give a chance to kids we can’t afford to give up on -
prepare them to compete for any job anywhere in the world. Engineering?
Help us lead a green revolution, developing new sources of clean energy
that will power our economy and preserve our planet.

Or you can
make your mark in smaller, more individual ways. That’s what so many of
you have already done during your time here at ASU - tutoring children;
registering voters; doing your own small part to fight hunger and
homelessness, AIDS and cancer. I think one student said it best when
she spoke about her senior engineering project building medical devices
for people with disabilities in a village in Africa. Her professor
showed a video of the folks they’d be helping, and she said, “When we
saw the people on the videos, we began to feel a connection to them. It
made us want to be successful for them.”

That’s a good motto for
all of us - find someone to be successful for. Rise to their hopes and
their needs. As you think about life after graduation, as you look in
the mirror tonight, you may see somebody with no idea what to do with
their life. But a troubled child might look at you and see a mentor. A
homebound senior citizen might see a lifeline. The folks at your local
homeless shelter might see a friend. None of them care how much money
is in your bank account, or whether you’re important at work, or famous
around town - they just know that you’re someone who cares, someone who
makes a difference in their lives.

That is what building a body
of work is all about - it’s about the daily labor, the many individual
acts, the choices large and small that add up to a lasting legacy. It’s
about not being satisfied with the latest achievement, the latest gold
star - because one thing I know about a body of work is that it’s never
finished. It’s cumulative; it deepens and expands with each day that
you give your best, and give back, and contribute to the life of this
nation. You may have set-backs, and you may have failures, but you’re
not done - not by a longshot.

Just look to history. Thomas Paine
was a failed corset maker, a failed teacher, and a failed tax collector
before he made his mark on history with a little book called Common
Sense that helped ignite a revolution. Julia Child didn’t publish her
first cookbook until she was almost fifty, and Colonel Sanders didn’t
open up his first Kentucky Fried Chicken until he was in his sixties.
Winston Churchill was dismissed as little more than a has-been, who
enjoyed scotch just a bit too much, before he took over as Prime
Minister and saw Great Britain through its finest hour. And no one
thought a former football player stocking shelves at the local
supermarket would return to the game he loved, become a Super Bowl MVP,
and then come here to Arizona and lead your Cardinals to their first
Super Bowl.

Each of them, at one point in their life, didn’t
have any title or much status to speak of. But they had a passion, a
commitment to following that passion wherever it would lead, and to
working hard every step along the way.

And that’s not just how
you’ll ensure that your own life is well-lived. …

I know starting your careers in troubled times is a challenge. But it is also a privilege.

Because
it is moments like these that force us to try harder, to dig deeper, to
discover gifts we never knew we had - to find the greatness that lies
within each of us. So don’t ever shy away from that endeavor. Don’t
ever stop adding to your body of work. I can promise that you will be
the better for that continued effort, as will this nation that we all
love. (05/14/09)
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Ilarqi at The Automatic Earth writes: As you may know, I have for a long time said that home prices, in the
US and many other places, will fall 80% or more from their peaks. All I
have to do now is sit back and wait for that prediction to come true.
Which it will, there are no other options available, it just takes time
for people to understand why. Very few homes would sell these days
stateside without Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which are nothing but
government vehicles to buy your neighbor a home with your money.

So
far, Fannie and Freddie have received some $70 billion in bail-out
checks. Today, the US Office of Management and Budget reports that they
will need at least $92.2 billion next year. But those are just the
losses that cannot be hidden, there are hundreds of billions more that
should be written down, but are not. Alt-A and OptionARM resets are
bound to raise the loss numbers manifold. How about half a trillion
this time next year? And then there will come a day when the government
will not be able to buy all mortgages, which means no more homes will
be sold to people who can’t pay cash. And the few that still can may
think twice.

Mike White, a mortgage broker in Chicago, explains in Our American Homes. They All Fall Down - Much Further
that a simple math extrapolation of the Case/Shiller index indicates
that US home prices will fall 45% more from their current prices, and
62% in total peak to trough. A broker who advises people to rent, maybe
there’s still hope.

What Mike ignores in his simple model is that even Robert Shiller himself, as I often have, has predicted that because of the huge and rapid movement in prices, they are bound to violently swing way below the bottom the index seems to point to. That is what I’ve always maintained, and it confirms my prediction of an 80%+ loss. In the past few years, there have been quite a few graphs like the one of the Case/Shiller index, with data based on historical price ranges, and it always seemed very simple to me that prices would have to come back to the trendline. And then break it downward, as least as much as it had broken it on the upside. I’m not saying that to pound my chest, but because there are still millions walking wide open eyed into a debt servitude trap, whereas this has been obvious for a long time.

And there’s more. You can look at these graphs and not see more than a 50-60% drop in home prices, if you take the high road and the sunny scenario. But what you miss, then, is that it is that 50-60% drop that will of necessity lead to an additional 20-30% drop, because it will tear apart the entire economic system. The vast majority of mortgage holders owe more than 20% on their loans, so the vast majority will be underwater. Equity will virtually disappear, and what will remain is debt; lots of it. At the end of 2009, there will probably be about 20 million Americans without a job, which makes it impossible to pay off any debts. There will be tens of millions more who do have work, but still can’t afford to pay back what they owe. (05/14/09)
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BBC Nature — A record number of bird species are now listed as threatened with extinction, a global assessment has revealed. The IUCN Red List evaluation considered 1,227, or 12%, of all known bird species to be at risk, with 192 species described as Critically Endangered.

The main threats affecting bird numbers continued to be agriculture, logging and invasive species, the report said. However, it added that where conservation measures had been put in place, bird populations had recovered.

“It is extremely worrying that the number of Critically Endangered birds on the IUCN Red List continues to increase, despite successful conservation initiatives around the world,” said Simon Stuart, chairman of the IUCN’s Species Survival Commission.

The latest assessment, carried out by BirdLife International, uplisted nine species to Critically Endangered. One species to be listed as Critically Endangered in the global survey, which began in 1988, was the gorgeted puffleg (Eriocnemis isabellae), a colourful hummingbird that was only recently described for the first time. Conservationists say that the species only has about 1,200 hectares of habitat remaining in the cloud forests of south-west Colombia. Yet, they add, about 8% of this area is being lost every year as a result of commercial coca plantations.

The palila (Loxioides baiilleui) is another species that has been uplisted. This large finch has become the latest species to be categorised as Critically Endangered on Hawaii, which has become an “extinction hotspot for birds.” “It is yet another in a long line of Hawaiian species that have suffered as a result of the introduction of invasive species,” BirdLife International’s global species programme officer Jez Bird told BBC News. Some of the threats included grazing animals, which destroyed the birds’ habitat, and mosquitoes that carried avian malaria.

“There are now 14 species that are considered to be Critically Endangered on the islands, a number of which could possibly be extinct, so it is depressing to see another one apparently go the same way.”

The islands are isolated volcanic outcrops in the eastern Pacific Ocean, where the introduction of novel species quickly de-stabilises the archipelago’s ecosystems. Globally, the main threats facing bird populations continued to be agriculture, deforestation and invasive species, Mr Bird explained, adding that there was no sign of the threats disappearing in the near future. (05/14/09)
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BBC Science & Technology — Two shuttle astronauts have completed the first of five spacewalks to repair and upgrade the Hubble Space Telescope. John Grunsfeld and Drew Feustel spent almost seven hours working on the observatory, and achieved all of their primary objectives.

Chief among these was the installation of a new instrument, the Wide Field Camera 3, which will allow Hubble to see deeper into space than ever before. They also exchanged a data processing computer that failed last year.

The break-down had left Hubble with no back-up for the unit it currently uses to route all its wonderful images to Earth. The replacement passed its initial connection tests with flying colours, ensuring Hubble now has full redundancy for its data processing tasks. Other work included fixing a mechanism that will enable a robotic spacecraft to capture Hubble at some future date. This should ensure there is a safe means to de-orbit the observatory at the end of its life.

Thursday’s spacewalk was not without incident. Before the astronauts could install the Wide Field Camera 3, they had to remove the existing Wide Field Planetary Camera 2. This took some time when a bolt refused to come loose as expected. The spacewalkers tried a number of different tools; but when they failed to move the bolt also, mission control authorised the astronauts to use as much force as possible. It was an anxious moment, because had the bolt broken the old camera would have been stuck in place and the new instrument would have had to return to Earth.

“OK, here we go,” Feustel said as he forced the bolt. “I think I’ve got it. It turned. It definitely turned.” And then he said: “Woo-hoo, it’s moving out!” (05/14/09)
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BBC Environmental Science – The collapse of a major polar ice sheet will not raise global sea levels as much as previous projections suggest, a team of scientists has calculated. Writing in Science, the researchers said that the demise of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS) would result in a sea level rise of 3.3m (10 ft). Previous estimates had forecast a rise in the region of five to six metres.

However, they added, the rise would still pose a serious threat to major coastal cities, such as New York. “Sea level rise is considered to be the one of the most serious consequence of climate change,” lead author Jonathan Bamber told the Science podcast. “A sea level rise of just 1.5m would displace 17 million people in Bangladesh alone,” he added. “So it is of the utmost importance to understand the potential threats to coastlines and people living in coastal areas.”

Professor Bamber, from the University of Bristol’s Glaciology Centre, said that the WAIS posed “potentially one of the most serious threats”.

The world has three ice sheets, Greenland, East Antarctica and West Antarctica, but it is the latter that is considered most vulnerable to climatic shifts.

“It has been hypothesised for more than 30 years now that the WAIS is inherently unstable,” he explained. “This instability means that the ice sheet could potentially rapidly collapse or rapidly put a lot of ice into the oceans.”

When the idea first emerged in the late 1970s, it was estimated that global sea level would rise by five metres if the WAIS collapsed.

Current projections suggest that a complete collapse of WAIS would result in an increase of up to six metres. But Professor Bamber said that no-one had revisited the calculation, despite new data sets becoming available, and scientists developing a better understanding of the dynamics in the vast ice sheets. The original estimates were based on “very basic ice thickness data”, he explained.

“Ice thickness data gives you information about the depth of the bedrock underneath the ice sheet. Over the past 30 years, we have acquired much more ice thickness data over the whole of Antarctica, particularly over West Antarctica. We also have much better surface topography. Those two data sets are critical in determining two things.” (05/14/09)
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