Despite the sometimes exaggerated and often inaccurate claims of some people teaching the connection between intention and manifestation, there is a Universal Law at work in such processes. One of the writers best known for documenting and supporting this type of research is Britain's Lynn McTaggart, whose major work, The Field, has been a major international best-seller.

McTaggart has been conducting some large-scale intention experiments over the Internet with mixed but interesting results. I've participated in some of them.

On Sept. 14, she is calling togeether a world peace intention experiment that I intend to join. I'd like it if you would both join it and let me know that you are doing so. If you're a registered user here, you can add a note to this post in the form of a comment and let me know of your intent. If you're not a member, consider becoming one so we can engage in dialog about this and other issues of mutual interest.

Famed activist and spiritual leader Van Jones inspires higher thinking and clearer action in this one-minute must-see video:

My good friend Laurence Rozier is holding forth in Meshverse these days on the deep intertwingling among science, religion, belief and simulation. In the first two published parts of what is projected to become a five-part series entitled "Mesh Belief," Rozier discusses the connection between Scientism and other theologies.

A long-time advocate of the interconnectedness and fundamental unity of all things, Laurence weaves a wonderful tale of the connections between two seemingly opposed world views and concludes that they really aren't so different as they appear.

In my comment to his second essay today, I take issue with one of his points but overall this is deeply thought out and well articulated analysis of an important topic to those of us who care about the deeper issues affecting the world and our view of it.

Highly recommended reading.

Salon.com has a well-thought-out piece today on cosmology and the existence of humanity that I found quite fascinating. Steve Paulson interviews British cosmologist Paul Davies, now of Arizona State University, about Davies' new book, The Cosmic Jackpot.

If you put all the physicists who think and talk about the issue of why this particular universe has carbon-based life forms. There are, he points out, anywhere from six to 12 fundamental design parameters in the universe that have to be present with specific values within very narrow tolerances, any one of which being out of range would result in life not being viable. (By "life," of course, he means life as we know and understand it.)

There's a lot of depth to the interview. If I were to comment on it, my post would be longer than the interview, so for now I'll just point you at it as a great source of a summary of the current range of views of cosmologists on a crucial question.

My good friend Steve Maynard shared this Google video with me. It takes a radical but at least seemingly rational and creative approach to explaining the universe as an electrical rather than a gravitational pheenomenon.

WARNING. The movie is just over an hour long, so don't go there unless you're really interested.

One advantage of getting my news online at breakfast is that I run across things to blog about and I can just do it at the moment rather than making a note to do so later.

This morning's story about a tiny asteroid dubbed Apophis, which could come relatively close to earth and has a 1:45,000 chance of colliding with us in 2036 is fascinating. There are several ideas for how to prevent the collision. The most intriguing one is that of flying a large space drone just ahead of the asteroid, using that drone's gravitational field to lure the asteroid into a new, non-threatening orbit.

Cool stuff.

But what if there's another intelligent race out there smack in the path of the diverted asteroid? Are we then guilty of murder? Genocide? Stupidity? Thoughtlessness?

The stuff of hard s-f.

Salon.com today has a good piece on former Buddhist monk B. Allan Wallace. A former disciple and still colleague of the Dalai Lama, Wallace has a new book called Contemplative Science: Where Buddhism and Neuroscience Converge. The Salon.com interview centers on Wallace's beliefs about why science shouldl study reincarnation and Buddhism, his criticisms of Christianity, and other related topics.

Good read.

I found this article summarizing Dr. Marvin Minsky's talk at a conference darned interesting, particularly the ending. As the population of the earth ages -- and assuming we don't globally warm ourselves into small piles of cooked fat -- who will do the work? Robots. The paucity of new developments in AI in the past 15 or 20 years is attributable, Minsky says, to the disappearance of large private labs and to higher education's shifting emphasis to "practical" classes like entrepreneurship rather than basic science.

Wired News analyzes the potential impact of Tuesday's mid-term elections on the world of science and technology. It's a fairly comprehensive, not entirely balanced piece which is nonetheless fact-based and worth reading.