Via Business Insider:

How can we stop such trends toward dishonesty (in this case, broader acceptance of illegal downloading)? The problem is that if someone has acquired 97% of their music illegally, why would they legally buy the next 1%?  Would they do it in order to be 4% legal?  It turns out that we view ourselves categorically as either good or bad, and moving from being 3% legal to being 4% legal is not a very compelling motivation.

This is where confession and amnesty can come into play. What we find in our experiments is that once we start thinking of ourselves as polluted, there is not much incentive to behave well, and the trip down the slippery slope is likely. This is the bad news. The good news is that in such cases, confession, where we articulate what we have done wrong, is an incredibly effective mechanism for resetting our moral compass.

Religious folks call that atonement.

Not only that, but it makes me want to roast marshmellows around a fire and sing Cumbauya with believers and non-believers alike. Either way, I like watching Neil Tyson on PBS Nova. But I really like him after hearing this wonderful answer put to music and film.

That said, I still think modern NASA is a dinosaur. It’s the equivalent of thinking the Internet still needs a government agency like ARPANET to perpetuate great things.

It doesn’t, although I believe in NASA, ARPANET and similar “start up” public technologies to get the ball rolling, since the private sector would likely never incur the initial hard costs to get these kinds of things going.

So thanks government. But please step aside once you’ve paved the way — we’ll take it from here. (That last line basically sums up most of my political thinking).

Like many things in life, the island of Madagascar is a mystery. A mini continent off the southeast coast of Africa, it features all kinds of crazy animals that shouldn’t be there.

How did they get there?

Since there’s no evidence of a land bridge, scientific consensus says that animals from Africa suddenly got the urge to hit the open seas on self-made rafts and hope for the best, even though currents and prevailing winds blow away from the island.

I imagine the sporadic migration of seafaring land animals went something like this:

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I’d be a Mormon even if one of the most poetic, influential, and “let’s bring keyboards and saxophones back” rockstars of the last decade wasn’t.

Plus, if I wanted to align myself closer with celebrity thinking, there are a lot more popular, less demanding belief systems in existence to boost my status.

Still, it doesn’t hurt to have Brandon Flowers of The Killers publicly casting his lot with mine. If anything, he rocks a religious promotional video better than other celebrities.

Of course, religion, following Christ, or believing in God will never be cool. Nor should it be. Depending on the community, persecution rightfully comes with the territory. (How else would deity test the faith of its followers?)

Nevertheless, it’s nice to have backup. Superstar DJs very much included.

See also:

• “You rock too hard”—the greatest compliment I’ve ever been paid
• “Hey, I’m in the band!”
• I’m pretty sure this is the best Promise cover you’ll ever hear

A three year examination of what happens when we die, conducted by a doctor who wrote a book on the subject.

The thesis found that phenomena occur after we die, such as the mind retaining verified memories for prolonged periods of time, even after the brain stopped receiving blood.

Findings should be fun.

Hallelujah, fatty! Your religious beliefs may give you greater peace of mind and self-worth. But it might also be blinding your ability to detect love-handles.

Says a new study by Northwestern University, “Young adults who frequently attend religious activities are 50 percent more likely to become obese by middle age as young adults with no religious involvement.” A thirteen year-old study by Purdue said the same thing: “Religious people are more likely to be overweight than are nonreligious people.”

Not only that, but Mormons tend to be five pounds pudgier than other believers. The reason? Religious folk are more accepting of their bodies and tend to be more content with their lives. Therefore, they’re more likely to overlook gluttony, summarizes the Mormon Times. As for Mormons being more obese than other devotees, Mormons are asked to abstain from even more stuff than most. With food being one of the exceptions, they engorde on it, said a BYU professor in 2006.

Ironically, the Northwestern study also supported the long-held belief that religious folks tend to live longer, largely because they don’t indulge as often in alcohol, drugs, and smoking. Go figure!

Your blind if you don’t see the Egyptian revolution (and its peaceful and unified protests) as a beacon to the world.

“During the fiercest clashes on January 28, I found a guy about my age guarding my back, who I later found out was a Christian,” Yahia Roumi, a 24- year-old protester from Cairo, told IPS. “Now we’re best friends; we never go to the demonstrations without one another.”

Unity.

Happy Sabbath, all you crazy believers!

From the Associated Press:

A new survey of Americans’ knowledge of religion found that atheists, agnostics, Jews and Mormons outperformed Protestants and Roman Catholics in answering questions about major religions, while many respondents could not correctly give the most basic tenets of their own faiths. Read more…

A self-fulling prophecy, at least in Christianity.

2 Muslims travel 13,000 miles across America, find an embracing nation

An excerpt: “After 13,000 miles, I think that America still exists, and I’m happy to know that it does,” said Tariq, a 23-year-old American of Pakistani descent. “It’s really made America feel like home to me in a way that I’ve never felt before. The America that we think about [as immigrants] is still actually there. I’ve seen it! And I’m seeing it still.”