when i think about atheist friends, including my father, they seem to me like people who have no ear for music, or who have never been in love. it is not that (as they believe) they have rumbled the tremendous fraud of religion—prophets do that in every generation. rather, these unbelievers are simply missing out on something that is not difficult to grasp. perhaps it is too obvious to understand; obvious, as lovers feel it was obvious that they should have come together, or obvious as the final resolution of a fugue.
—A N Wilson, “Why I Believe Again”
Mind Reading: Technology Turns Thought into Action
so neuropsychology is not really to the point of mind reading, but brains are SO awesome.
Posted May 12, 2011 at 4:36pm
![thedailywhat:
Long Form Birth Certificate of the Day: In an effort to put an end to the birther debate once and for all, the President reached out to the Hawaii State Department of Health to request an exception to allow the release of his long form birth certificate in the name of putting the “fake issue” of his citizenship to rest.
The White House has now made that birth certificate available to the public via the White House website. In addition, the President is expected to make an official statement on the matter shortly.
White House Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer: “The President’s hope is that with this step, we can move on to debating the bigger issues that matter to the American people and the future of the country.”
[@whitehouse.]](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lkbbq96dsT1qzpwi0o1_1280.jpg)
View high resolution
Long Form Birth Certificate of the Day: In an effort to put an end to the birther debate once and for all, the President reached out to the Hawaii State Department of Health to request an exception to allow the release of his long form birth certificate in the name of putting the “fake issue” of his citizenship to rest.
The White House has now made that birth certificate available to the public via the White House website. In addition, the President is expected to make an official statement on the matter shortly.
White House Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer: “The President’s hope is that with this step, we can move on to debating the bigger issues that matter to the American people and the future of the country.”
[@whitehouse.]
![thedailywhat:
Lost In No Translation of the Day: Ayapaneco, or Nuumte Oote (the True Voice) as it’s known among its speakers, is an extremely endangered language. How extreme? There are only two known speakers — and they refuse to speak to each other.
One of the 68 indigenous languages that survived Mexico’s conquest by Spain, Ayapaneco is currently spoken by only two men: 75-year-old Manuel Segovia and 69-year-old Isidro Velazquez. Though they live a mere 500 meters apart in the village of Ayapa, Segovia and Velazquez broke off communication a long time ago, and no one knows why.
“They don’t have a lot in common,” linguistic anthropologist Daniel Suslak of Indiana University told The Guardian. Segovia himself denied “any active animosity” between himself an Velazquez, but did not elaborate on why the two don’t talk.
While Velazquez has reportedly stopped using the language all together, Segovia occasionally speaks with his wife and son, but, though they understand him, they are far from fluent. Suslak and the National Indigenous Language Institute are both involved in last-ditch efforts to preserve the language, but previous attempts to pass it on to locals have failed.
“I bought pencils and notebooks myself,” Segovia says. “The classes would start off full and then the pupils would stop coming.”
[guardian.]](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_ljnes8CNqS1qzpwi0o1_1280.jpg)
View high resolution
Lost In No Translation of the Day: Ayapaneco, or Nuumte Oote (the True Voice) as it’s known among its speakers, is an extremely endangered language. How extreme? There are only two known speakers — and they refuse to speak to each other.
One of the 68 indigenous languages that survived Mexico’s conquest by Spain, Ayapaneco is currently spoken by only two men: 75-year-old Manuel Segovia and 69-year-old Isidro Velazquez. Though they live a mere 500 meters apart in the village of Ayapa, Segovia and Velazquez broke off communication a long time ago, and no one knows why.
“They don’t have a lot in common,” linguistic anthropologist Daniel Suslak of Indiana University told The Guardian. Segovia himself denied “any active animosity” between himself an Velazquez, but did not elaborate on why the two don’t talk.
While Velazquez has reportedly stopped using the language all together, Segovia occasionally speaks with his wife and son, but, though they understand him, they are far from fluent. Suslak and the National Indigenous Language Institute are both involved in last-ditch efforts to preserve the language, but previous attempts to pass it on to locals have failed.
“I bought pencils and notebooks myself,” Segovia says. “The classes would start off full and then the pupils would stop coming.”
[guardian.]
(Source: thedailywhat)
The chief difference between Christianity and the other theistic religions lies just here: according to the Christian gospel, God is willing to enter into and share the sufferings of his creatures, in order to redeem them and his world. Of course this doesn’t answer the question, why does God permit evil? But it helps the Christian trust God as a loving father, no matter what ills befall him. Otherwise it would be easy to see God as remote and detached, permitting all these evils, himself untouched, in order to achieve ends that are no doubt exalted but have little to do with us, and little power to assuage our griefs. It would be easy to see him as cold and unfeeling—or if loving, then such that his love for us has little to do with our perception of our own welfare. But God, as Christians see him, is neither remote nor detached. His aims and goals may be beyond our ken and may require our suffering; but he is himself prepared to accept much greater suffering in the pursuit of those ends.
— Alvin Plantinga (via firstbreath90)
(Source: acceptandembrace, via loveispatient)
i don’t think that it’s the end… but i know we can’t keep going
