From Barrons [it may also be found here]:

When [President Barack] Obama proclaimed his red line on Syria and chemical weapons, he assumed the issue would not come up. He made a gesture to those in his administration who believe that the United States has a moral obligation to put an end to brutality. He also made a gesture to those who don’t want to go to war again. It was one of those smart moves that can blow up in a president’s face when it turns out his assumption was wrong. Whether al Assad did launch the attacks, whether the insurgents did, or whether someone faked them doesn’t matter. Unless Obama can get overwhelming, indisputable proof that al Assad did not — and that isn’t going to happen — Obama will either have to act on the red line principle or be shown to be one who bluffs. The incredible complexity of intervening in a civil war without becoming bogged down makes the process even more baffling.

Obama now faces the second time in his presidency when war was an option. The first was Libya. The tyrant is now dead, and what followed is not pretty. And Libya was easy compared to Syria. Now, the president must intervene to maintain his credibility. But there is no political support in the United States for intervention. He must take military action, but not one that would cause the United States to appear brutish. He must depose al Assad, but not replace him with his opponents. He never thought al Assad would be so reckless. Despite whether al Assad actually was, the consensus is that he was. That’s the hand the president has to play, so it’s hard to see how he avoids military action and retains credibility. It is also hard to see how he takes military action without a political revolt against him if it goes wrong, which it usually does.

There is something indulgent about boredom. It makes me think of posh people in Russian plays complaining they have nothing to do while other people work their arses off in the field. As Schopenhauer insisted, life for the person of means becomes a question of how to dispose of surplus time. Maybe that’s why boredom feels like a problem especially associated with August and not least with children on long car journeys.

But according to the Norwegian philosopher Lars Svendsen, author of A Philosophy of Boredom, boredom comes to take on a particular and possibly darker inflection with modernity. Having been bored witless writing his PhD about Kant, Svendsen came to see a connection between his subject and his state of mind. With Kant, God is replaced by the self as the ultimate source of meaning. As traditional structures of meaning are wiped away, boredom comes to be regarded as a very personal sort of failing. And in order to avoid it, various distractions are entertained: travel, drink, drugs, the Xbox, sex, transgressive behaviour ”“ all strategies of avoidance, all hinting at a desperate desire to hold off the acknowledgment of meaninglessness. It is, says Svendsen, a problem characteristic of modernity. Whereas boredom has once bragged about as a mark of nobility, now it is the ultimate in personal failing. Those who are bored are losers.

Perhaps this is why the entertainment industry is more important to us that we are often prepared to admit.

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The Most Rev Justin Welby insisted that MPs must ask themselves whether they are “sure” about the facts on the ground before acting amid a “really delicate and dangerous situation”.

Archbishop Welby, who spent several years promoting reconciliation in war zones in Africa and the Middle East, insisted that there were “numerous intermediate steps” between doing nothing and full regime change in Syria which could be considered.

But speaking to The Daily Telegraph, he acknowledged that there was no “good answer” to the crisis in Syria and that a simple solution “just doesn’t exist”.

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An imminent U.S. strike on Syrian government targets in response to the alleged gassing of civilians last week has the potential to draw the United States into the country’s civil war, former U.S. officials said Tuesday, warning that history doesn’t bode well for such limited retaliatory interventions.

The best historical parallels ”” the 1998 cruise missile strikes on targets in Iraq, Afghanistan and Sudan ”” are rife with unintended consequences and feature little success.

“The one thing we should learn is you can’t get a little bit pregnant,” said retired Marine Gen. Anthony Zinni, who was at the helm of U.S. Central Command when the Pentagon launched cruise missiles at suspected terrorist sites in Afghanistan and weapons facilities in Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. “If you do a one-and-done and say you’re going to repeat it if unacceptable things happen, you might find these people keep doing unacceptable things. It will suck you in.”

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A U.S. attack on Syria would likely dash expectations of progress in nuclear negotiations with Iran and undermine new Iranian President Hasan Rouhani’s call for improving relations with the West, diplomats said.

An attack on Damascus would likely give Iranian hard-liners, who oppose a nuclear compromise, the upper hand over moderate President Hasan Rouhani, who has made foreign policy and nuclear talks a priority.

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As I wonder how it feels to be that mouse, I’m reminded of Thomas Nagel’s famous 1974 essay, “What is it like to be a bat?”””a landmark in the philosophy of mind. Nagel’s thesis was that there is “something that it is like” to undergo particular states of consciousness or being; there is a first-person perspective (for which the technical word is qualia) that will forever elude reductionist explanation. But the inscrutable depths of a laboratory mouse or of his flying cousin are beside the point; what we really want to know is what it is like to be a human being.

Some neuroscientists will tell you that it’s just a matter of time before we possess a complete physicalist map of mental states. I’m certain they are wrong and Nagel is right.

But what is it like to be a human being? The difficulty is that we don’t know which particular experiences specify our humanity; we don’t whether there is some flavor or feel or “pinch of existence” (as William James liked to call it) that goes with being human. Introspection alone can’t answer this question, for our sense of being human is a social acquisition assimilated from our parents, friends and teachers. Faith forms identity: if I accept the religious teaching that I am a creature made by God rather than a man (or laboratory mouse) produced by impersonal mechanisms, it changes everything.

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President Obama is weighing a military strike against Syria that would be of limited scope and duration, designed to serve as punishment for Syria’s use of chemical weapons and as a deterrent, while keeping the United States out of deeper involvement in that country’s civil war, according to senior administration officials.

The timing of such an attack, which would probably last no more than two days and involve sea-launched cruise missiles ”” or, possibly, long-range bombers ”” striking military targets not directly related to Syria’s chemical weapons arsenal, would be dependent on three factors: completion of an intelligence report assessing Syrian government culpability in last week’s alleged chemical attack; ongoing consultation with allies and Congress; and determination of a justification under international law.

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The bottom line: Have products inspired by the “Jesus Phone” turned into rosaries for narcissists?

The omnipresent “iPhone provides some of the comforts and a sense of security that religious faith provides,” said [University of Notre Dame business professor Brett] Robinson. “It promises to connect you to the world and to the transcendent. … Yet most people spend most of their time looking at the same five or six sites online ”” like Facebook ”” that primarily are about themselves.

“They spend hours and hours in this intimate ritual of touching those phones, clicking and clicking their way through their own interests, their own desires, their own lives. …”

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Secretary of State John F. Kerry on Monday condemned Syria’s reported chemical weapons attacks as a “moral obscenity” and declared that the Obama administration intends to move quickly to hold the Syrian government accountable.

Citing “undeniable” evidence that the government of President Bashar Assad used nerve gas against its population last week, Kerry said that the world must respond to the use of weapons that have long been outlawed by international agreement.

President Obama “believes there must be accountability for those who would use the world’s most heinous weapons against the world’s most vulnerable people,” Kerry said in a brief appearance at the State Department.

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The UN’s disarmament chief negotiated with the Syrian government, as the BBC’s Yolande Knell in Beirut explains

The Syrian government has agreed to allow UN inspectors to investigate allegations of a suspected chemical weapon attack near Damascus.

The team is to begin work on Monday. Activists say Syrian forces killed more than 300 people in several suburbs east and west of the capital on Wednesday.

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Two days after the alleged chemical attack on the Damascus suburbs of Eastern Ghouta, chemical-weapons experts are dissecting amateur footage to determine exactly what might have caused the deaths of so many hundreds of Syrians. All agree this time, unlike in past alleged attacks, that the number of victims and the lack of marks from physical wounds on their bodies point to some form of chemical poisoning. But they are puzzled that the symptoms””insofar as they are visible from the videos””do not exactly correspond to any particular known substance, including the large quantities of mustard gas, sarin and VX which President Bashar Assad is thought to have at his disposal. “It is beyond doubt that something has made a lot of people ill and killed them,” says Dan Kaszeta, a chemical and biological expert who now runs Strongpoint Security, a defence consultancy. “But there is no obvious agent.”

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Almost a tenth of children are given a mobile phone before age five, new research shows.

A uSwitch.com report found the average child gets their first mobile aged 11 years and eight months ”“ soon after starting secondary school. But more than a million received a phone before they started primary school.

Parents claim they need to give their child a phone as security in case of emergencies and to give themselves peace of mind. However a children’s organisation warned giving a child their own phone could encourage them to become sedentary, wasting time in front of screens browsing social networks, rather than being active at play.

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UN officials say alleged chemical weapons attacks which Syria’s opposition says killed hundreds near Damascus were a “serious escalation”.

Deputy Secretary-General Jan Eliasson made the comments after briefing an emergency UN Security Council meeting about Wednesday’s incident.

The Security Council also said that clarity was needed over the attacks.

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Even if we get to see more, why is the post to be regretted if it is only a record of fun at a party or a cuddle in a bedroom or an enticement? It could be healthy fun.

Society cannot tolerate youth having fun on their own terms and with their own ways of broadcasting their adventures. The purpose of the didactic videos is to kill junior sexual feelings with shame. How deplorable that sexually adventurous young women are being punished by society, and constantly being told that they are ”degrading themselves” and have no ”self-respect” by seeking out various sexual expressions.

At a point when girls need autonomy and self-respect, the Commonwealth government promotes shame. Instead of immunising girls against the consequences of viral posts, our educators promulgate fear, disgust and disgrace. We need a program to inoculate us against shame, not cripple us with fear.

Read it all from the SMH.

First it was payday lending; now fracking.

Last month, the Church of England acknowledged and regretted investing millions of pounds in a company that financially backs England’s leading payday lending company, Wonga. The company charges exorbitantly high percentage rates for loans that usually target the poor.

Now the church is under fire for taking an interest in fracking.

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Tyler Woolstenhulme might be loath to admit it but sometimes he’s not paying attention in church. He will happily confess that he’s not the only one.

The 31-year-old Mormon has more than once sat in the pew of his Sandy ward and let his mind wander. When that happens, he pulls out his iPhone 4 and sometimes plays his puzzle game, “1to50.” Or maybe he texts his friends across the aisle.

“I take the time in church to catch up with people I haven’t contacted in a while,” he said. “I text friends or family.”

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“Dude, I preached from an iPad the week the first iPad came out,” [Quigg] Lawrence said. “I wasn’t trying to be showy with it, but a lot of times my printer is down or I don’t have ink. So it’s just easier to put it on the iPad.”

Church of the Holy Spirit, the Anglican ministry in southwest Roanoke County where Lawrence preaches, is one of the only churches in the area with its own smartphone app designed to serve its members.

The app has been downloaded 880 times in the year it has been available ”” not bad considering the congregation consists of less than 1,500 members.

Read it all and the church website is there.

Mr. [Elmer] Griffin is among the roughly 20 percent of American adults who do not use the Internet at home, work and school, or by mobile device, a figure essentially unchanged since Barack Obama took office as president in 2009 and initiated a $7 billion effort to expand access, chiefly through grants to build wired and wireless systems in neglected areas of the country.

Administration officials and policy experts say they are increasingly concerned that a significant portion of the population, around 60 million people, is shut off from jobs, government services, health care and education, and that the social and economic effects of that gap are looming larger. Persistent digital inequality ”” caused by the inability to afford Internet service, disinterest or a lack of computer literacy ”” is also deepening racial and economic disparities in the United States, experts say.

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Google has taken the next step in its transformation from a web-search engine to the Star Trek computer. The company announced last week that it is rolling out new features that will allow you to use Google.com as, essentially, a search engine for your own information.

Until now, if you typed the words “what am I doing tomorrow” into the Google search bar, you’d get a series of web results for pages whose titles include that phrase or similar keywords. With the new features, provided you’re logged into Google and maintain a Google Calendar, you’ll see something more particular to you.

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Check it out.

In rejecting the bill Aug. 13, Brown, a Democrat, expressed concerns about the potential risks to women who undergo invasive techniques for their eggs to be harvested.

“Not everything in life is for sale nor should it be,” Brown said in his veto message.

“In medical procedures of this kind, genuinely informed consent is difficult because the long-term risks are not adequately known,” he wrote. “Putting thousands of dollars on the table only compounds the problem.”

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For reasons unknown, the government finally has admitted that Area 51 ”” the Shangri-La of alien hunters and a sturdy trope of ­science-fiction movies ”” is a real place in the Mojave Desert about 100 miles north of Las Vegas.

It presumably does not house hideous squidlike ETs, but at least you can see the place on a map. Area 51 is confirmed in declassified CIA documents posted online Thursday by the National Security Archive at George Washington University. A dogged researcher pried from the CIA a report on the history of the U-2 spy plane, which was tested and operated at Area 51.

The military, which runs the base, always denied that Area 51 was called by its famous moniker, preferring a designation connected to the Groom Lake salt flat, a landing strip for the U-2 and other stealth aircraft.

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Where there is competent and willing local law enforcement, the U.S. is not launching drones. Where such law enforcement is impossible, what then?

Religious critics of drones rarely offer specific alternatives. Instead, they morally fault drones for imprecision, susceptible to harming innocents, and impersonally guided by desk-bound pilots who, with their bureaucratic overlords, may be cavalier because they are themselves not at risk. The anti-drone letter from Mainline Protestants cited “remote, technical warfare,” which has the “potential to encourage overuse and extension of the policy to more countries and more perceived threats.” But almost all forms of modern warfare are “remote” and “technical.” Combatants no longer typically battle each other with swords and lances.

Absent the option of effective law enforcement against terrorists, the range of options include conventional aerial bombing or cruise missiles, both of which are pretty “remote,” or a military personnel excursion similar to the U.S. Navy SEAL mission that dispatched Osama bin Laden.

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The Anglican Diocese of Blackburn has released a pamphlet warning their Lancaster flock of the potential dangers of hydraulic fracturing, more commonly known as fracking.

“The time we spend thinking, praying and acting now to protect our drinking water and the rest of God’s glorious Creation cannot compare with the time succeeding generations could potentially spend trying to make good what will likely happen if we in the church remain uninformed and silent,” reads the pamphlet.

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Andrea Vicini, S.J., of the Boston College School of Theology and Ministry discusses the ethics of the National Insitute of Health’s BRAIN Initiative. The initiative promises the possibility for medical breakthroughs in the field of neuroscience, but who will benefit from these technologies? And could they be put to questionable purposes?

Listen to it all (a little over 18 minutes).

The title of this article may seem both presumptuous and audacious. Do I really believe every pastor should have a blog? Yes I do. I speak to pastors in numerous settings, and I am able to share with them the benefits of such a discipline in writing.

Understand that writing a blog can begin simple with little time pressure. The pastor can commit to write 400 words a week in one post. I do recommend that the number of posts increase to at least twice a week later, but you need to start somewhere.

I think you will be amazed how much the blog benefits the church and your ministry. Here are seven reasons why it is so important….

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High-profile pastors have long complained (along with other celebrities) of impersonators on social media. But Rick Warren recently revealed just how widespread the problem is.

Warren announced Tuesday that in the months since his son Matthew’s suicide, more than 200 fake Facebook pages have popped up, soliciting funds in Matthew’s memory. So far, he has succeeded in shutting down 179 of them, which he said were “making money on my son’s death.”

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The work of Richard Rothman, a professor at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, is more fundamental: to save lives. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta predicts flu outbreaks, once it examines reports from hospitals. That takes weeks. In 2009, a study seemed to suggest researchers could predict outbreaks much faster by analyzing millions of Google searches.

Spikes in queries like “My kid is sick” signaled a flu outbreak before the CDC knew there would be one. That posed a new question for Dr. Rothman and his colleague Andrea Dugas:

Could Google help predict influenza outbreaks in time to allow hospitals like the one at Johns Hopkins to get ready?

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You can thank brainy billionaire Elon Musk’s for bringing electro-magnetic-powered transportation and the linear induction motor back into the public consciousness.

The Hyperloop is a system for really-really rapid transit. If built, Musk claims it can carry people about 800 miles per hour, which could get you from Los Angeles to San Francisco in about 30 minutes.

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SEVERSON: For 12 agonizing years Kathleen was looking for an answer and recently got one from Dr. Ian Krantz at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, who had sequenced [her son] Liam’s genome.

post01-genome-sequencing

DR. IAN KRANTZ (Medical Geneticist, Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia) And we not only found an answer in him, but we found the same answer in a number of other children, and we have a new diagnosis. We are understanding it, how to treat it better.

SEVERSON: The discovery of Liam’s genetic defect underscores how rapidly and how important the science of sequencing the human genome has become in modern medicine, especially when it comes to children. When researchers first mapped the human genome, it took almost 10 years and cost $3 billion. That was less than 10 years ago. Today the process takes three weeks, and the price tag is rapidly approaching $1,000.

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