USA, the sneaky big brother?

I read this article in www.wired.com. Apparently, the US government is aiming to eavesdrop into any communication lines (anybody's phones, emails, etc) and search any house within the USA without any court approval.

Its not like they haven't been doing it already. Wired.com says

Bush has acknowledged the NSA program monitors Americans' international phone calls and e-mails without court authorization, but says the program only targets communications where one side or the other has suspected terrorist connections

Now which acts of an individual would qualify him/her to be a suspect of terrorism is of course decided by the US government. So, if they have the technology and the resources, they would probably be monitoring everybody (or maybe they already are).

I don't quite care much about it except that if I write an email and send it using GoogleMail, I would like to know if US the Government would have the rights to read it without my permission (because Google is based in USA).

That said, I don't quite know what Scotland Yard and MI5 are doing. Hopefully they will continue to be more sensible and respect our civil rights unlike their American counterparts.

Cartoons on current issue

Time has great cartoons on current issues. You can find them here

Using Science to justify the presence of God

I typed exist into google search (looking for exist xml database) when I happened to notice the third hit: Does God Exist. I thought, umm...interesting. What is this site about? The summary on the google results page said Bimonthly online journal that provides scientific evidence for God's existence. I definitely had to take a look.

Well, the first line claims that the lecturer will try to prove existance of God by using logical, practical and pragmatic proof purely from a scientific point of view. Ok, sounds good, go on then.

The first question that the lecturer tries to answer: What is God? He creates an anology of a human being in 'flatland' where the flatland is a 2 dimensional space. A human being is part of this 2-dimensional space (red flag 1). He then introduces a 3 dimensional sphere into this flatland. Since the human being is in 2d space, he claims that the sphere can only be seen by the human being as a 2d object. If the sphere claims that it is 3d (red flag 2), the human being won't believe it because he/she is not in 3d and he/she does not see things in 3d (red flag 3) and does not understand what 3d is (red flag 4).

There is science here, yes. The science is about all objects having 3 dimentions and we being able to percieve it in 2 or 3 dimensions based on our line of sight. That is pretty much where science ends and personal belief begins.

Red flag 1 - Why would you compare humans and life to 2d? What justifications do you have for that? I don't see any science here.

Red flag 2 - Sphere (aka God) claims that God is 3d. umm.. I haven't heard any such claims :)

Red flag 3 and 4 - Why would humans not be able to see 3d even if they are 2d? Any real scientific justification for that?

In my opinion, whatever the lecturer is talking about is utter bullshit (no offence meant to anybody who agrees with him or believes in what he says. This is just my opinion). He takes the questions that we have, comes up with non-scientific answers and builds an anology in the scientific world to conclude that science can be used to prove God.

I tried to read his "pragmatic, scientific and logical" answers to 'Who created God?' I gave up.

Oh well, another preacher who hasn't quite understood by himself what he wants to preach to others.

If you are interested, you can find these pages here.