That thar is a link, you should click on it.

Toodles.

I think there is a bizarre parallel between religions and music genres. Let me explain. There are quite a lot of people (you may be one of them) who enjoy music but aren’t passionate about it and have no extreme preference in what they listen to. One of these people would probably claim they listen to everything, even though it’s not like they sincerely enjoy every piece of music that goes through their ears. There are similar types of people when it comes to religion. The equivalent would be those who may know vaguely what they think but consider many matters unimportant, and then give themselves a  label like agnostic (or not at all) and then attatch, “but I respect all beliefs”. But can they honestly say that they respect all beliefs? If they thought about it, probably not. On the extreme end there are also music fanatics who will just be plain OCD about their music generes. Have you ever been listening to a friend’s song on their iPod, and you ask what it is, and they’ll reply, “oh, that’s post-industrial tranceacid rapcore,” or, “that would be popharmonics jazz fusion.” Unfortunately, I think the same thing is happening to religion, and so many labels are popping up these days that I can understand how it would be hard to distinguish them without some good research. Lately I’ve heard people describe themselves as “christian wicca”, “naturalized deist”, and “environment-oriented theist” (I think they might have been trying to say pantheist) among some others. 

All of this is to prove a point about people these days. An overwhelming amount of them just lose track of what they think. This is often either because they just don’t know what to call themselves, or because they get confused by the myriad of (now becoming) interchangable beliefs that eventually become meaningless if they’re mixed up too much. 

To a point, I have a solution for these people.

The Belief-O-Matic.

I’m actually not kidding about this. It’s an astonishingly accurate quiz made up of about 20 really precise questions. I really think that many people are intimidated by, or just don’t feel like doing, the research it takes to be knowledgable about their faith. I think that this simple online quiz is surprisingly effective and non-hoaxy, as opposed to basically every other “what are you” quiz on the internet these days. 

Even if you are quite clear on what you are, you should go on over to beliefnet and take a look, because you’re probably skeptical (and I know you want to). The quiz takes about 5-10 minutes and is so right it will surprise you.

Cheers

Terese Hart maintains a blog www.bonoboincongo.com where she posts updates of their project and other interesting happenings (and there are many!). A lot has happened since she went back, and though there is no way I can surmise it here, I have put up some of what I think are the most striking pictures from the past 2-3 weeks. If you enjoy conservation, jungle life, or even simply adventure, check out her blog for sure. And if nothing else, please have a look at the last picture here.

Traveling through the jungles is done mostly on motorbikes along known trails (of which there are no guarantees). But sometimes you have to get creative.

Bust meat hunting is a hot button issue. While the village locals do not do this in epidemics, the demand for bush meat from bigger cities is causing a major problem.

Improvised weapons such as this are now widespread, and allow people to carelessly overhunt.

Some police officers who were questioning the team (who were later arrested and released) being given a tour of a Dell laptop, GPS and other such devices.

The village ‘nurse’ giving kids a quick lesson in math.

A forest elephant – a target for poachers – in a dreamy scene

CITES is holding the massively controversial one-off ivory stock pile sale these few months. Here is a picture from the sale in Namibia (Oct 2008)

Perhaps the most striking of all these images – an ANR agent taking a bribe of in the form of a Duiker

(ANR = Alliance pour une nouvelle République. Apparently a force equivalent to the FBI in the US)

To appeal to young people who are increasingly falling away from hardcore religion, Stephen has created the “Livin’ It” Skate “Ministry” to tie something cool in with something… not so much. Not surprisingly, he’s also a complete idiot, which makes me wonder if his character in Biodome wasn’t just an act. To promote “Livin’ It”, two irreverent local radio hosts who most surely are going to hell decided to provide the Ministry with a theme song -

[youtube]fxoVYFOfM2g[/youtube]

fyi, the person who posted this video is Dr. Tae Kim of Northwestern University, who apparently is also really good at skateboarding. Where were physics professors like that in my school?

People come before Ideas.  Share this with everyone.

One in search of answers through eyes of fear, conspiracy, and negativity:

This video is one from a series called The Periodic Table of Videos by the University of Nottingham. Candles are impressive.