Fear of a Nation

My best friend and colleague Dennis Plies shared with me his thoughts about Faith and Fear. He said that the opposite of faith is not doubt, but fear! After a few minutes reflecting on this idea I came to the conclusion that he had again nailed straight on the head. Then I started thinking about the United States of America as being the nation of fearful citizens, where the expenditure in arms and military demonstrate how fearful we are. It is not a coincidence that we spend more than everybody else combined in our military industry. We have made believe that everybody is against us and the we have to aggressively pursue the strength of our war machine. From this one follows that the least faithful nation in the world is the USA. So we have to pretend that we are by making lots of noise when we pray and to shovel down others throats our "religious" believes.
But as Janet L. Parker wrote in Sojourners (vol 38, 11) Dec. 2009; p 20 "Fear rarely leads to enlightened collective action for the common good." What we in the USA have to do is look for enlightened collective action regarding our roll as a world member of the society. If we believe that we are a religious nation as many polls suggest we thing we are, then we must look at the true mining of our religious believes and act accordingly! As Bill McKibben in the same issue of Sojourners (p15) talking about the political discourse at summit in Copenhagen "This negotiation is unavoidable between human beings on the one hand, and physics and chemistry on the other." When we as a nation recognize the need for full scientific literacy as necessary for civil life we will be in the right path to liberation and thus of true religious faith!
For more on the December issue of Sojourners go to: http://www.sojo.net/index.cfm?action=magazine.contents&issue=soj0912

Interactive Scientific America

This is an interesting article in Scientific American http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=powering-a-green-planet hope you enjoy the interactive presentation.
Merry Christmas!
Dr. T.

Environmental Remediation

Zidell, the longtime Portland barge builder, is pursuing one of the biggest Willamette River cleanup plans to date, a $20 million project ....to read more go to: http://www.oregonlive.com/environment/index.ssf/2009/12/zidell_unveils_big_willamette.html
This is a good example of how business and environmental issues are related.
Hope you all are doing great.
Merry Christmas!
Dr. T.

BBB - Amatoxin Structure

BBB - Amatoxin Structure
This is the structure of the poisonous molecule in one of the deadliest mushrooms

Stewardship for Dummies

I have been using Stewardship for Dummies at http://stewardshipfordummies.blogspot.com to write and post some of my students papers. Please check it out!