Leadership and Technology

While the media focus may be on Obama, the PopePage gave cautions on "obsessive" Facebook use, a sin, and offered a glimpse of the Vatican's technology history.



Pope Benedict XVI says that social networking sites can “foster friendships and understanding, but warns they also can isolate people and marginalize others.” Sort of like all religions under the sun.

Church and State, Bush Style

Never pass by a Harper's Index might be a motto. It led to A retrospective of the Bush Era and these little nuggets:

Rank of Nevaeh, “heaven” spelled backward, among the fastest growing names given to American newborns since 2000: 1

Months, beginning in 2001, that the federal government’s online condom fact sheet disappeared from its website : 17

Minimum amount that religious groups received in congressional earmarks from 2003 to 2006: $209,000,000

Amount such groups received during the previous fourteen years: $107,000,000

Percentage change from 2003 to 2007 in the amount of money invested in U.S. faith-based mutual funds: +88

Average annualized percentage return during that time in the Christian and Muslim funds, respectively: +11, +15

Religion Helps Human Evolution

See the article for the bigger picture and more details like this:

"Some of the more intriguing conclusions that McCullough drew were:

• Religious rituals such as prayer and meditation affect the parts of the human brain that are most important for self-regulation and self-control.
• When people view their goals as "sacred," they put more energy and effort into pursuing those goals, and therefore, are probably more effective at attaining them.
• Religious lifestyles may contribute to self-control by providing people with clear standards for their behavior, by causing people to monitor their own behavior more closely, and by giving people the sense that God is watching their behavior.
• The fact that religious people tend to be higher in self-control helps explain why religious people are less likely to misuse drugs and alcohol and experience problems with crime and delinquency.

"By thinking of religion as a social force that provides people with resources for controlling their impulses [including the impulse for self-preservation, in the case of suicide bombers] in the service of higher goals, religion can motivate people to do just about anything," he concluded."

Finding the Edge

Edges are always richer places - the interactions at borders are powered by meeting of diversity. A simple link to a "year-end" review led me to the Edge.org and all the reading material needed if banished to a desert island for a year.

The Edge Annual Question - 2009, "What Would Change Everything?" - was more than I could finish in one sitting with attention stealing sidebar links.

http://www.edge.org/

There is a Dean Ornish interview video with the text version.