Another Pale Blue Dot: 11/11/07

The Great Disappointment

The Great Disappointment was a major event in the history of the Millerite movement, a 19th century American Christian sect. William Miller, the preacher from whom the movement took its name, prophesied that Jesus, the savior of the Christian religion, would return to Earth on October 22, 1844. When Jesus did not appear on the appointed day, great numbers of Millerites abandoned the sect, clearing the path for its eventual dissolution. However other Christian groups would spawn from it, and still others were influenced.

Overview Between 1831 and 1844, William Miller, a Baptist preacher, played a notable role in what historians have called the Second Great Awakening. The Millerite movement, named for William Miller, had significant influence on popular views of biblical prophecy, including upon the movement that later consolidated as the Seventh-day Adventist Church. Miller preached a set of fourteen rules for the interpretation of the Bible.^[1] Based on his study of the prophecy of Daniel 8:14, Miller calculated that Jesus would return to Earth sometime between 21 March 1843 and 21 March 1844.^[2] Around 50,000 to 100,000 Christians waited in hope. After the latter date came and went, the date was revised and set as October 22, 1844 based on the yearly Day of Atonement in Karaite Judaism

When Jesus did not appear, Miller's followers experienced what came to be called "the Great Disappointment". Most of the thousands of followers left the movement. A group of the remaining followers concluded after biblical study that the prophecy predicted not that Jesus would return in 1844, but that the investigative judgment in heaven would begin in that year.

Miller recorded his personal disappointment in his memoirs: "Were I to live my life over again, with the same evidence that I then had, to be honest with God and man, I should have to do as I have done. I confess my error, and acknowledge my disappointment."^[3] Miller continued to wait for the second coming until his death in 1849.

Repercussions

Seventh-day Adventists

Seventh-day Adventist Church historians writing about the morning of 23 October refer to a vision said to have been received by Hiram Edson, an early Adventist.^[4] Edson claimed he had a vision that indicated the date predicted by Miller was in fact correct. Later Bible study and visions led to the belief by the early Seventh-day Adventists that Christ went into the second compartment of the heavenly sanctuary in 1844 to begin the investigative judgment of both righteous and wicked to see who is worthy of going to heaven.^[5] This investigative judgment is said to take place prior to his second coming, which they believed to be very soon. Numerous issues related to the doctrine of this investigative judgement were raised by Adventist theologian Desmond Ford in the 1970s.

Jehovah's Witnesses

Jonas Wendell, an Adventist preacher, experienced periods of weak faith after 1844. After studying Bible chronology, he came to the conclusion that the Second Coming would be in 1868, and in 1870 he published a booklet concluding it was to be in 1873.

Charles Taze Russell was in turn influenced by Jonas Wendell (as well as by the Millerites in general). One-time Millerite ministers George Storrs, George Stetson, and Nelson H. Barbour were also influential in Russell's doctrinal development. Like Wendell, Barbour had also predicted Christ's return in 1873, and when that failed, he revised the prediction for 1874. Soon after that disappointment, Barbour's group came to believe that Christ had returned in 1874 but invisibly. Russell met Barbour in 1876 and accepted the teaching of an invisible presence of Christ from Barbour. Russell developed an elaborate chronology with 1914 being viewed as the end of a forty year "harvest period." A schism in the movement occurred after Russell's death. In the early 1930s, the leadership changed the date of the Second Coming to 1914. The main branch of that movement came to be known as the Jehovah's Witnesses, while many members refused the change; Bible Students today still hold that the Second Coming was in 1874.

Psychological Perspective

The Great Disappointment is viewedas an example of how the psychological phenomenon of cognitive dissonance manifests itself through failed prophecies which often arise in a religious context.^[6] The theory was proposed by Leon Festinger to describe the formation of new beliefs and increased proselytizing in order to reduce the tension, or dissonance, that results from failed prophecies. According to the theory, believers experienced tension following the failure of Jesus' reappearance in 1844 which led to a variety of new explanations. The various solutions form a part of the teachings of the different groups that outlived the disappointment.

Great Disappointment -

1883 -Inquiry into Human Faculty and its Development - Sir Francis Galron -

Sir Francis Galron - 1883 - Human Faculty

Authors@Google: John Searle " Freedom and Neurobiology: Reflections on Free Will, Language, and Political Power."

John Searle visits Google's Mountain View, CA headquarters to discuss his book " Freedom and Neurobiology: Reflections on Free Will, Language, and Political Power." This event took place on October 30, 2007 as part of the Authors@Google series.

YouTube - Authors@Google: John Searle

Authors@Google: Will Self, "Psychogeography."

Will Self visits Google's Mountain View, CA headquarters to discuss his book, "Psychogeography." This event took place on October 29, 2007 as part of the Authors@Google program.

YouTube - Authors@Google: Will Self

Authors@Google: Daniel Goleman "Social Intelligence: The New Science of Human Relationships"

Daniel Goleman discusses his book "Social Intelligence: The New Science of Human Relationships" as a part of the Authors@Google series. For more from Daniel Goleman, visit http://www.morethansound.net. This event took place on August 3, 2007 at Google headquarters in Mountain View, CA.

YouTube - Authors@Google: Daniel Goleman

Innovators@Google: Peter Diamadis X PRIZE Foundation

Chairman and CEO of the X PRIZE Foundation, Peter
Diamandis, speaks about our newly announced Google Lunar X
PRIZE, the international competition in which privately funded teams will
build robotic explorers and race them to the Moon for a $20M Grand Prize.
This revolutionary challenge will incentivize innovation in space
exploration, and has the potential to inspire parallel discovery across many
areas of technology for the benefit of all mankind.
The X PRIZE Foundation is an educational nonprofit whose mission is to
create radical scientific breakthroughs for the good of humanity. The Google
Lunar X PRIZE is the third prize the Foundation has announced since its
inception in 1995.
This event took place September 19, 2007 at Google Headquarters in Mountain View, CA

YouTube - Innovators@Google: Peter Diamadis

Authors@Google: Joseph Stiglitz, "Making Globalization Work."

Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz speaks about his book, "Making Globalization Work." This event took place on October 13, 2006, at Google's Mountain View, CA, headquarters as part of the Authors@Google series.

YouTube - Authors@Google: Joseph Stiglitz

Christopher Hitchens - "God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything"

Author Christopher Hitchens discusses his book "God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything" as a part of the Authors@Google series. The author of Why Orwell Matters and Letters to a Young Contrarian, Christopher Hitchens is a Vanity Fair contributing editor, a Slate columnist, and a regular contributor to The Atlantic Monthly. He has also written for The Nation, Granta, Harper's, The Washington Post, and is a frequent television and radio guest. Born in England, Hitchens was educated at Balliol College, Oxford, where he received a degree in philosophy, politics, and economics. He now lives in Washington, D.C., and he became a U.S. citizen in 2007. This event took place on August 16, 2007 at Google headquarters in Mountain View, CA.

YouTube - Authors@Google: Christopher Hitchens

Playlist: Sea Monsters - Nat Geo

YouTube - Broadcast Yourself.

Conversations with History: Scientific and the Information Age, Zhores Alferov

Conversations with History: Scientific and the Information Age, Zhores Alferov
UCTV: UC Berkeley
58 min 58 sec - Oct 5, 2007

Conversations host Harry Kreisler welcomes Russian Nobel Prize Laureate Zhores Alferov for a discussion of the influences that shaped his scientific career, the interplay between theory and experimentation in his own scientific discovery, and the impact of the global science community on discovery and policy. He offers insights on the education of the next generation of scientists and describes the complicated relationship between scientists and the state. Series: Conversations with History

Conversations with History: Scientific and the Information Age, Zhores Alferov

Jonas Salk and the Polio Vaccine (Britannica.com)

YouTube - Jonas Salk and the Polio Vaccine (Britannica.com)

Beyond Belief 2006 Session 1

Beyond Belief 2006
1 hr 48 min 5 sec - Nov 26, 2006
www.rationalresponders.com

This is a critical moment in the human situation, and The Science Network in association with the Crick-Jacobs Center brought together an ... all » extraordinary group of scientists and philosophers to explore answers to these questions. The conversation took place at the Salk Institute, La Jolla, CA from November 5-7, 2006. This session features: Steven Weinberg, Lawrence Krauss, Sam Harris, Michael Shermer

Beyond Belief 2006 #1

Beyond Belief 2006 Session 2

The Science Network
1 hr 15 min 46 sec - Nov 5, 2006
beyondbelief2006.org

Session 2 - Beyond Belief 2006

Beyond Belief 2006 Session 3

The Science Network
1 hr 53 min 29 sec - Nov 5, 2006
beyondbelief2006.org

Session 3 - Beyond Belief 2006

Beyond Belief 2006 Session 4

The Science Network
1 hr 48 min 38 sec - Nov 5, 2006
beyondbelief2006.org

Session 4 - Beyond Belief 2006

Beyond Belief 2006 Session 5

The Science Network
1 hr 54 min 5 sec - Nov 6, 2006
beyondbelief2006.org

Session 5 - Beyond Belief 2006

Beyond Belief 2006 Session 6

The Science Network
1 hr 58 min 38 sec - Nov 6, 2006
beyondbelief2006.org

Session 6 - Beyond Belief 2006

Beyond Belief 2006 Session 7

The Science Network
1 hr 53 min 45 sec - Nov 6, 2006
beyondbelief2006.org

Session 7 - Beyond Belief 2006

Beyond Belief 2006 Session 8

The Science Network
2 hr 12 min 2 sec - Nov 6, 2006

Session 8 - Beyond Belief 2006

Beyond Belief 2006 Session 9

The Science Network
2 hr 44 min 6 sec - Nov 7, 2006

Session 9 - Beyond Belief 2006

Beyond Belief 2006 - Session 10

The Science Network
1 hr 36 min 16 sec - Nov 7, 2006

Session 10 - Beyond Belief 2006

Gabriel Garcia Marquez - Cien años de soledad

Millionaire Households by Countries - Swivel

BBC - Dangerous Knowledge - Mathematics

Dangerous Knowledge
1 hr 29 min 1 sec - Sep 3, 2007

In this one-off documentary, David Malone looks at four brilliant mathematicians - Georg Cantor, Ludwig Boltzmann, ... all » Kurt Gödel and Alan Turing - whose genius has profoundly affected us, but which tragically drove them insane and eventually led to them all committing suicide.
The film begins with Georg Cantor, the great mathematician whose work proved to be the foundation for much of the 20th-century mathematics. He believed he was God's messenger and was eventually driven insane trying to prove his theories of infinity. Ludwig Boltzmann's struggle to prove the existence of atoms and probability eventually drove him to suicide. Kurt Gödel, the introverted confidant of Einstein, proved that there would always be problems which were outside human logic. His life ended in a sanatorium where he starved himself to death.
Finally, Alan Turing, the great Bletchley Park code breaker, father of computer science and homosexual, died trying to prove that some things are fundamentally unprovable.
The film also talks to the latest in the line of thinkers who have continued to pursue the question of whether there are things that mathematics and the human mind cannot know. They include Greg Chaitin, mathematician at the IBM TJ Watson Research Center, New York, and Roger Penrose.
Dangerous Knowledge tackles some of the profound questions about the true nature of reality that mathematical thinkers are still trying to answer today.

Dangerous Knowledge

Playlist: Things Mt. Everest

YouTube - Broadcast Yourself.

Everest Emergency

Clips from BBC/Indus Films production Everest ER (Sept 2006) about the nonprofit medical clinic at Mt Everest Base Camp, Nepal. For more info and to purchase this 52 min documentary, visit www.BaseCampMD.com.

YouTube - Everest ER

Playlist: The E - F5 - 'the Finger of God'

YouTube - Broadcast Yourself.

Hypothetical F5 tornado hitting Ameriquest Field

Google Talks - The Paradox of Choice - Why More Is Less. Barry Schwartz

The Paradox of Choice - Why More Is Less
1 hr 4 min 7 sec - Apr 27, 2006

Google TechTalks April 27, 2006 Barry Schwartz

The Paradox of Choice - Why More Is Less

Making Great Decisions - Google Talks

Making Great Decisions
59 min 19 sec - Sep 24, 2007

Google Tech Talks September, 24 2007

ABSTRACT

The phrase "work smarter, not harder" has been repeatedly ridiculed in Dilbert and ... all » elsewhere, not because it is a poor idea, but because it is thrown like a brick lifesaver to drowning employees. It's like telling someone to be happier, healthier, and richer. What people need is a plan for doing so.
In "Making Great Decisions" the authors show readers how to achieve their objectives. They offer a better way to look at problems so that solutions are easier to find.
Speaker: David R. Henderson, Ph.D. David R. Henderson is an economics professor at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey and a research fellow with the Hoover Institution at Stanford. He was a senior economist with President Reagan's Council of Economic Advisers.
Speaker: Charles L. Hooper Charles L. Hooper is President and co-founder of Objective Insights, Inc., a consulting firm dedicated to providing health care companies with marketing and financial analysis to help them make informed decisions about their business opportunities.

Making Great Decisions

Thinking Beyond Borders - Google Talks

Thinking Beyond Borders
32 min 44 sec - Sep 27, 2007

Google Tech Talks September 27, 2007

ABSTRACT
Our global society faces great challenges such as Global Warming, HIV/AIDS in ... all » sub-Saharan Africa, wide-spread hunger, and poverty. To effectively address these issues in years to come, we must re-envision how we prepare our next great leaders to be conscious agents of change. Thinking Beyond Borders is a 35-week program to educate Gap Year students about the economic, political, and cultural realities of our world while empowering them with the tools to create proactive social change. Through varied service learning opportunities, the itinerary immerses students in cultures and communities around the world to provide experiences with various issues of International Development. The curriculum challenges students to synthesize academic research and their collected observations into powerful conclusions about the nature of globalization, world hunger, human rights, cultural change, and political systems. The most unique aspect of this program is that students return to the US to meet with international policy makers and share their conclusions with student and philanthropy groups to raise awareness and funds for the NGOs they worked with abroad. In these ways, Thinking Beyond Borders seeks to create a community of conscious agents of proactive change, equipped to tackle our world's greatest challenges.

Thinking Beyond Borders

Six Months in the Space Station - Google Talks

Six Months in the Space Station
1 hr 6 min 15 sec - Aug 30, 2007

Google Tech Talks August 30, 2007

ABSTRACT
A special space station tour for Googlers by NASA astronaut Daniel W. Bursch detailing his ... all » more than six months long stay on the International Space Station. In addition of Illustrating the stay with many unpublished pictures of both the station and Earth, Dan will take us through the nooks and crannies of living and working in weightlessness. He will also talk about the psychological challenges of living with two other people in the same "can", a theme that will no doubt affect profoundly any human mission to Mars. Carl Walz and Dan Bursch set the US record for the longest single spaceflight in 2002, when they flew for 196 days, this record was just broken this year by US astronaut Michael Lopez-Alegria.

Speaker: DANIEL W. BURSCH (CAPTAIN, USN, Ret.)\NASA ASTRONAUT (FORMER) NASA EXPERIENCE: Selected by NASA in January 1990, Bursch became an astronaut in July 1991. His technical assignments to date include: Astronaut Office Operations Development Branch, working on controls and displays for the Space Shuttle and Space Station; Chief of Astronaut Appearances; spacecraft communicator (CAPCOM) in mission control. A veteran of four space flights, Bursch has logged over 227 days in space. He was a mission specialist on STS-51 (1993), STS-68 (1994) and STS-77 (1996),

Six Months in the Space Station

Computers versus Common Sense - Google Talks - Dr. Douglas Lenat

Computers versus Common Sense
1 hr 15 min 17 sec - May 30, 2006
Google TechTalks May 30, 2006
Douglas Lenat Dr. Douglas Lenat is the President and CEO of Cycorp. Since 1984, he and his team have been constructing, experimenting with, and applying a broad real world knowledge base and reasoning engine, collectively "Cyc".
Dr. Lenat was a professor of computer science at Carnegie-Mellon University and at Stanford University. His interest and experience in national security has led him to regularly consult for several U.S. agencies and the White House.

ABSTRACT It's way past 2001 now, where the heck is HAL? For several decades now we've had high hopes for computers amplifying our mental abilities not just giving us access to relevant stored information, but answering our complex, contextual questions.
Even applications like human-level unrestricted speech understanding continue to dangle close but just out of reach. What's been holding AI up? The short answer is that while computers make fine idiot savants, they lack common sense: the millions of pieces of general knowledge we all share, and fall back on as needed, to cope with the rough edges of the real world. I will talk about how that situation is changing, finally, and what the timetable -- and the path -- realistically are on achieving Artificial Intelligence

Computers versus Common Sense

Constantine ''Invented'' Christianity !

CONSTANTINE INVENTED CHRISTIANITY

Slow Motion Vídeo - A Bullet

Stop the bullet kill the gun
Uploaded by noriko75

BBC Horizon - The Death Star - Hypernova

BBC Horizon The Death Star
44 min 23 sec - Jun 17, 2007
Out in deepest space lurks a force of almost unimaginable power. Explosions of extraordinary violence, are blasting through the Universe every day. If one ever struck our Solar System it would destroy our Sun and all the planets.
For years no one could work out what was causing these awesome explosions. Now scientists think they have identified the culprit. It's the most extreme object ever found in the Universe; they have christened it a 'hypernova'.

BBC Horizon The Death Star

Pretty women scramble men's ability to assess the future - 10 December 2003 - Print Article - New Scientist

NewScientist.com
Danny Penman
Psychologists in Canada have finally proved what women have long suspected - men really are irrational enough to risk entire kingdoms to catch sight of a beautiful face.
Biologists have long known that animals prefer immediate rewards to greater ones in the future. This process, known as "discounting the future", is found in humans too and is fundamental to many economic models.
Resources have a value to individuals that changes through time. For example, immediately available cash is generally worth more than the same amount would be in the future. But greater amounts of money in the future would be worth waiting for under so-called 'rational' discounting.
But some people, such as drug addicts, show 'irrational' discounting. For example, preferring a small amount of heroin today rather than a greater amount in the future.
Margo Wilson and Martin Daly of McMaster University in Hamilton, Canada decided to investigate discounting behaviour and see if it varied with sexual mood.
Male students, when shown pictures of pretty women, were more likely to opt for short-term economic gain than wait for a better reward in the future.

Sexual opportunity
Both male and female students at McMaster University were shown pictures of the opposite sex of varying attractiveness taken from the website 'Hot or Not'. The 209 students were then offered the chance to win a reward. They could either accept a cheque for between $15 and $35 tomorrow or one for $50-$75 at a variable point in the future.
Wilson and Daly found that male students shown the pictures of averagely attractive women showed exponential discounting of the future value of the reward. This indicated that they had made a rational decision. When male students were shown pictures of pretty women, they discounted the future value of the reward in an "irrational" way - they would opt for the smaller amount of money available the next day rather than wait for a much bigger reward.
Women, by contrast, made equally rational decisions whether they had been shown pictures of handsome men or those of average attractiveness.
"We have not elucidated the psychological mechanisms mediating our results," says Margo Wilson. "But we hypothesise that viewing pictures of pretty women was mildly arousing, activating neural mechanisms associated with cues of sexual opportunity."
Tommaso Pizzari, an evolutionary biologist at Leeds University, offers another possible explanation: "If there's the prospect of getting a very attractive partner it may pay a man to take more risks than if an average partner was available."
He told New Scientist: "If this is a response to sexual selection then you would expect men who are less attractive to take more risks. If you have many attractive potential partners then it does not pay to take risks. If you are less attractive, with few potential partners, then it pays to take risks."

Pretty women scramble men's ability to assess the future - 10 December 2003 - Print Article - New Scientist

Disasters: Man versus Nature - Swivel

Sources: Swiss Re (http://www.swissre.com/)
According to Swiss Re, natural and man-made catastrophes in 2005 caused $230 billion dollars in damage to buildings, infrastructure, vehicles, or losses to directly affected businesses. Hurricane Katrina entailed the highest total damage by far, at 135 billion. The total damage of the Kashmir earthquake is estimated to be 5 billion. Man-made disasters triggered damage totaling 10 billion, the most costly being the terrorist attack in London in July, explosions in oil processing plants in Canada in January and in the US in March, and the riots in France in October and November. This graph shows the number of man-made vs natural disasters since 1970. Data by Emil Valdez.

Man versus Nature - Swivel

How Americans use their water supply - Swivel

Sources: AWWA (http://www.drinktap.org/con...)
Much of the United States is suffering from drought this season. This graph shows the percentage of daily water usage spent on different appliances. The American Water Works Association found that when using conservation methods much water is saved, although the ratio of what the water was used on remained relatively similar.

How Americans use their water supply - Swivel

Sexual Abuse in the Catholic Church - Swivel

Sources: United States Conference on Catholic Bishops (http://www.usccb.org/nrb/jo...)
While for many Americans, the cliché of a pedophilic priest is a worn, old joke, for a number of the real-life victims of this particular sexual abuse, the most prevalent anecdotes exist because they contain the largest kernel of truth. Los Angeles archdiocese Cardinal Roger Mahoney recently apologized after the announcement of a record-breaking $660million settlement to compensate victims of sexual abuse by priests under his jurisdiction.
While for each of the plaintiffs, the settlement will mean an average sum of $1.3 million, money is not always equivalent to justice, nor is a settlement equivalent to vindication. Where innocence is lost, so is trust, and while Catholicism is still a staple of religion worldwide, those who hold power within these organizations are under close scrutiny, even at a cultural level, wherein such loss of trust creates the bedrock of jokes that have become so prevalent, they've become cliché.
Here, in lieu of a new hem on your robe is a comparison of Diocesan and Religious Priests involved in single and multiple allegations (2-3, 4-9, and 10 or more) reported until 2002.

Sexual Abuse in the Catholic Church - Swivel

Falling out of the sky - Air Accidents - Swivel

Sources: National Transportation Safety Board (http://www.ntsb.gov/aviatio...)
After TAM Airlines flight 3054 crashed in Sao Paulo, Brazil, killing all 186 of its passengers, the question of transportation safety is once again being brought into question. This graph shows the number of major, serious, nonfatal w/ injury, and nonfatal non-injury w/ damage accidents since 1987. While the number of aircraft hours flown has steadily increased, it seems that U.S. aircraft safety has not permantly improved. The graph is ridden with inconsistent trend: the rate of accidents decreases throughout the late 80's and early 90's only to shoot back up in the late 90's and back down in the 2000's. Customer service has not improved much either, as is shown by the steady rate of late arrivals and lost luggage. The outlook for ground transportation does not look hopeful either, as public transporation fees rise due to increasing gas prices.

Falling out of the sky - Swivel

Repercussions

Seventh-day Adventists

Jehovah's Witnesses

Psychological Perspective

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