The Redding Shahada saga

You may recall my commenting on the case of Ann Holmes Redding, and Episcopalian priest who has professed Islam alongside her Christian faith. Having dialogued with Doug over it a bit, I suspect that this is the best outcome after meeting with her own bishop: "After meeting with her I issued a Pastoral Direction giving her the opportunity to reflect on the doctrines of the Christian faith, her vocation as a priest, and what I see as the conflicts inherent in professing both Christianity and Islam. During the next year she is not to exercise any of the responsibilities and privileges of an Episcopal priest or deacon. Other aspects of the Pastoral Direction will remain private."
The Lead:

The Newest Artificial Intelligence Computing Tool: People

It was only a matter of time before the wisdom of crowds was made a practical strategy. "A USC Information Sciences Institute researcher thinks she has found a new source of artificial intelligence computing power to solve difficult IT problems of information classification, reliability, and meaning. That tool, according to ISI computer scientist Kristina Lerman, is people, human intelligence at work on the social web, the network of blogs, bookmark, photo and video- sharing sites, and other meeting places now involving hundreds of thousands of individuals daily, recording observations and sharing opinions and information."
The trick is, of course, as the book points out, to make sure the conditions are met. Otherwise you merely get the stupidity of the influential.
ScienceDaily: The Newest Artificial Intelligence Computing Tool: People:

You Can't Make Up For Lost Sleep

For those who have ministered among students, and even ministered overlong weekly schedules, this research calls us to honour sabbath in the daily as well as the weekly routine. "Chronic partial sleep loss of even two to three hours per night was found to have detrimental effects on the body, leading to impairments in cognitive performance, as well as cardiovascular, immune and endocrine functions. Sleep-restricted people also reported not feeling sleepy even though their performance on tasks declined."
It's that latter that is concerning: those who have charge of organisations that could affect the welfare of many or even the country definitely should not be working under sleep deprivation conditions. Yet the machismo of our working culture seems to encourage it to happen... Even worse, it infects some church leadership circles.
ScienceDaily: Chronically Sleep Deprived? You Can't Make Up For Lost Sleep

UK could be 100% green leccy by 2027...

... but is there the will to take on powerful lobbies to make it possible? George Monbiot comments; "a new study by the Centre for Alternative Technology takes this even further. It is due to be published next week, but I have been allowed a preview. It is remarkable in two respects: it suggests that by 2027 we could produce 100% of our electricity without the use of fossil fuels or nuclear power, and that we could do so while almost tripling its supply: our heating systems (using electricity to drive heat pumps) and our transport systems could be mostly powered by it. It relies on a great expansion of electricity storage: building new hydroelectric reservoirs into which water can be pumped when electricity is abundant, constructing giant vanadium flow batteries and linking electric cars up to the grid when they are parked, using their batteries to meet fluctuations in demand. It contains some optimistic technical assumptions, but also a very pessimistic one: that the UK relies entirely on its own energy supplies. If the German proposal were to be combined with these ideas, we could begin to see how we might reliably move towards a world without fossil fuels."
The German proposal is for a European+Iceland+North America electricity grid ...
Guardian Unlimited | Comment is free | Stop doing the CBI's bidding, and we could be fossil fuel free in 20 years:

Temperature rises 'not caused by sun'

The rearguard action of denialists still has to be dealt with, particularly as a recent UK poll had just over 50% denying that global warming was anthropogenic (though the good news seems to be that it is recognised to be a fact; it's the cause that is disputed). "Mike Lockwood, a physicist at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in the UK, said: 'It is absolutely clear that the sun is nothing to do with the recent warming. This doesn't rely on models, it uses real data and it shows that all the solar trends have been going in the opposite direction for the last 20 years.'"Temperature rises 'not caused by sun' | Climate change | Guardian Unlimited Environment:

Linguistics' new buzz...

I've been following this story for a few weeks now, and this article, though long, seems to be the best at explaining what the big buzz is in linguistics with the Piraha language. The interesting thing for me, not a convinced Chomskyan, is this. "In a comment on Everett’s paper published in Cultural Anthropology, Michael Tomasello, the director of the Department of Developmental and Comparative Psychology at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, in Leipzig, endorsed Everett’s conclusions that culture can shape core grammar. "
In part it interests me because it seems to put Sapir-Whorfe hypothesis into reverse, despite the Whorfian perspective of the linguist at the centre of the debate. And that is important because a lot of academic post modernism seems to be linguistic-determinist in approach, whereas this seems to actually turn that on its head.
A Reporter at Large: The Interpreter: Reporting & Essays: The New Yorker:

Co-spousal presbyterisation complete!

Well, now I am married to an Anglican priest. And so is my wife. On Saturday afternoon she was ordered to presbyteral ministry, and I got to have a hand in it too: lovely. I wrote a proper preface for her first presidency yesterday. A long preface to go with Prayer E. It goes like this:

It is good to praise you our God,
you made humankind to be priests of your creation.
And when we refused our role,
in your love you sent Jesus to offer the sacrifice of himself
and reveal the new creation by rising from death.
So he redeemed our priesthood
and renewed your calling in us.
We give thanks that we have the hope of the Day
when all priesthood will be fulfilled.
In your intimate closeness to all you have made.
and so we gladly thank you,
with saints and angels praising you, and saying:
All Holy, holy, holy Lord,

My best beloved is fourth from the left just in front of Bishop Tom's rights shoulder.
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