Category Archives: technology

The design philosophy behind this site is… Simple. Simple is the word that best describes it. I want to return to the idea that a proper web site should feature information – unobscured. It should have clean, non-serif text that is easy to read and fast to load. The elements within each page should only exist to enrich the content. Once a navigation metaphor is established, it should remain constant throughout the site and never deviated from. Efficiency and consistency so simplistic it is elegant.

Anyone who knows me knows that I have a great interest in the intersection of science and spirituality.

I was listening to a podcast of the CBC program Quirks and Quarks. There was an interesting story on about a genetic scientist, Dr. Edward Rubin, who is removing the “junk” DNA from mice in order to find out if it has any effect. As you may already be aware, the vast majority of our genome is made up of DNA that, from all apparent evidence, has no purpose that we know of. Well, the only way to really test this is to remove this “junk” DNA and see if we can tell any differences between those that have had the junk removed and those that have not. His findings: There is not decernable difference in the mice.

Now, he did clearly state that this is in no way a good test as mice are not nearly as complex as humans so therefore the tests we have to measure possible differences are limited. He just wanted to get his preliminary findings “out there”.

This got me to thinking, what if we go further into this and start testing on humans only to find out, when it is way to late, that this “junk” is actually our souls. That because we do not have any way to identify and measure the soul we therefore have no way to classify this portion of our DNA. Being that this “junk DNA” is a much larger quantity than the “usable DNA” we could find that all living creatures are defined mostly by our souls. By removing it, we are creating creatures that, by all physical accounts seem normal but, in fact, are now differentiated by the fact that they have no souls.

(Funny aside, maybe we will be able to tell the difference because all of these soulless folks will become politicians and lawyers)

Include in this idea the recent findings, as reported in a recent Time Magazine cover story, that our need as humans to seek out some form of spirituality may be inherent in our genes, and you have the makings of a some intriguing ideas and even more intriguing outcomes.

I know I am a bit late with this. Therefore, you may already be quite aware that Apple has released iTunes 4.9 that has built in support for Podcasts. Those who know me know that I am a fairly recent convert to the whole Podcast phenomenon but I have become a big fan. I think it is the only viable independent alternative to todays corporate dominated radio.

With iTunes 4.9, Apple has not only thrown it’s support behind this medium but also made it ridiculously simple to subscribe to, mange and sync those Podcasts to your iPod. The implementation is amazingly elegant and practical. Not only that but they also make it easy to search for new Podcasts that you may not be already aware of, thus opening up a whole new stream of audiences to those that produce these shows.

Now my only problem is finding the time to listen to all of the ones I have subscribed to. A 45 min. commute certainly helps but that is still not nearly enough time to listen to all that I would like. That is one of the problems with too much choice, if one is not careful it will become a curse rather than a blessing.