Daily Archives: March 18, 2022

Archbishop of York praises Cumbrian community spirit

Archbishop Stephen Cottrell joined the Bishop of Carlisle, the Rt Rev James Newcome, who is currently completing a Lent walk across the Diocese of Carlisle, with the two meeting a local marathon man fundraiser and spending time with members of West Cumbria Ukrainian Appeal.

The Rev Nicky Pennington hosted the pair as they also met parishioners and school children in the Crosslacon Team (Cleator Moor, Cleator, Arlecdon and Frizington) before later heading to Ennerdale.

Archbishop Stephen and Bishop James were able to bless two vans laden with goods and medical supplies just before local people waved the drivers off on their journey to a refugee camp in Poland.

Archbishop Stephen said: “There’s nothing good about this war in Ukraine: it’s barbaric, it’s evil and I pray that it will soon stop. But what I see time and again is that where there is horror and evil, good can come from it. That’s been shown by this community who have come together and said ‘The people in Ukraine are our sisters and brothers’. Those vans will be a lifeline to some refugee families.”

Read it all.

Posted in Archbishop of York Stephen Cottrell

Bishop Helen-Ann Hartley, Bishop of Ripon shares a lovely story about an event that brought her (and others) joy

Listen to it all (just under 2 minutes).

Posted in Anthropology, Children, Church of England (CoE), CoE Bishops, Marriage & Family, Theology

(RNS) In LA, ‘Atheist Pirates’ remove religious signs from public streets and overpasses

Standing atop an approximately 8-foot-high ladder, Evan Clark tugged at a sign tightly nailed to a utility pole on the intersection of Echo Park and Bellevue avenues, just beyond the 101 freeway ramps.

The sign quoted John 14:6, and as Clark spun and pulled it to loosen it from the pole, a man in a car shouted, “The way. The truth. The life!,” quoting the words from the Bible verse emblazoned on the placard Clark was trying to take down. The man, Clark said, likely assumed he was placing the sign, not removing it.

“People put a lot of passion behind these signs and their messages and ideas about Jesus and God,” Clark said. “I don’t like to be confrontational about any of that. I just wanted to do this as a casual thing to keep our streets secular.”

Read it all.

Posted in America/U.S.A., Atheism, Other Faiths, Religion & Culture, Secularism

(Economist) How to tweak drug-design software to create chemical weapons

The story began in 2021, when Collaborations Pharmaceuticals, which uses computers to help its customers identify molecules that look like potential drugs, was invited to present a paper on how such drug-discovery technologies might be misused. The venue was a conference organised by the Spiez Laboratory, in Switzerland. This is a government-funded outfit that studies risks posed by nuclear, biological and chemical weapons. To prepare for the presentation some of Collaborations’ researchers carried out what they describe as a “thought exercise” that turned into a computational proof of concept for making biochemical weapons.

Their method was disturbingly simple. They took a piece of drug-discovery software, called MegaSyn (a piece of artificial intelligence, ai, which the company has developed for the purpose of putting virtual molecules together and then assessing their potential as medicines), and turned one of its functions upside down. Instead of penalising probable toxicity, as makes sense if a molecule is to be used medically, the modified version of MegaSyn prized it.

The result was terrifying. Trained on the chemical structures of a set of drug-like molecules (defined as substances easily synthesised and likely to be absorbed by the body) taken from a publicly available database, together with those molecules’ known toxicities, the modified software required a mere six hours to generate 40,000 virtual molecules that fell within the researchers’ predefined parameters for possible use as chemical weapons.

The list included many known nerve agents, notably vx, one of the most toxic. But the software also came up with not-yet-synthesised substances predicted to be deadlier still.

Read it all.

Posted in Drugs/Drug Addiction, Military / Armed Forces, Science & Technology

A Prayer for the Feast Day of Cyril of Jerusalem

Strengthen, O Lord, we beseech thee, the bishops of thy Church in their special calling to be teachers and ministers of the Sacraments, that they, like thy servant Cyril of Jerusalem, may effectively instruct thy people in Christian faith and practice; and that we, taught by them, may enter more fully into celebration of the Paschal mystery; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.

Posted in Church History, Spirituality/Prayer

A Prayer to begin the day from Gordon Hewitt

O God, who through thy Son Jesus Christ hast promised help to man according to his faith: Grant us the freedom of the children to taste the food of eternal life, and to share with others what we ourselves receive; through the merits of the same thy Son, our Lord.

Posted in Lent, Spirituality/Prayer

From the Morning Bible Readings

On that day, when evening had come, he said to them, “Let us go across to the other side.” And leaving the crowd, they took him with them in the boat, just as he was. And other boats were with him. And a great storm of wind arose, and the waves beat into the boat, so that the boat was already filling. But he was in the stern, asleep on the cushion; and they woke him and said to him, “Teacher, do you not care if we perish?” And he awoke and rebuked the wind, and said to the sea, “Peace! Be still!” And the wind ceased, and there was a great calm. He said to them, “Why are you afraid? Have you no faith?” And they were filled with awe, and said to one another, “Who then is this, that even wind and sea obey him?”

–Mark 4:35-41

Posted in Theology: Scripture