Gender has increasingly informed research into the British and other European empires in recent historical scholarship. This conference will address various aspects of the gendered experience of empire and imperialism within the British empire and other European empires, including the experience of women, the impact of empire on gender relations and changing constructions of gender roles, including conceptions of masculinity.

Keynote speakers: Dr Andrea Major, Professor John MacKenzie, Professor Clare Midgley, Professor Adele Perry.

Conference programme and registration forms are available at: www.shc.ed.ac.uk/conferences/gendering_imperialism08/

Dr Esther Breitenbach
University of Edinburgh
School of History, Classics and Archaeology
William Robertson Building
50 George Square
Edinburgh
Scotland
Email: esther.breitenbach@ed.ac.uk
Visit the website at http://www.shc.ed.ac.uk/conferences/gendering_imperialism08/

Location: Scotland.  Bob was a regular competitor and adjudicator on the global debating circuit in the mid-to-late 1990s.  He’ll thank you not to note just how long ago that was.

Bob won the John Smith Memorial Mace in 1996, competing for the University of Edinburgh.  He was a finalist in the World Universities Debating Championships in 1996 and 1997, double winner of The Scotsman Scottish championships, and a regular winner or finalist in intervarsity competitions in the UK and Ireland.

He also won the stand-up comedy competition at Worlds in Princeton in 1995 against, he admits, a weak field. 

Bob has adjudicated the finals and breaks of many national and international tournaments, and represented Scotland twice on Worlds Council.

Bob now works in the whisky industry and plans to enter politics.

The Hoosier Folklore Society will hold its Annual Meeting on Friday, November 21, 2008, in the Hulman Memorial Student Union, Dede III, on the campus of Indiana State University in Terre Haute, Indiana.

The theme of this year’s conference is Scotland, Burns, and the Scottish-American Experience. The conference committee invites proposals that consider Scottish folklore, Robert Burns, folksong scholarship, and Scottish settlement in North America, as well as related topics of immigration, border crossings, and cross-cultural connections in contexts outside of the Scottish-American experience . As always, topics outside of this theme are also welcome.

Each proposal should include the title and a 100-word abstract of the paper, as well as the full name and hometown or institutional affiliation of the presenter.

Most papers presented at Hoosier Folklore Society meetings are 30–45 minutes in length, but shorter presentations are also accommodated. Presenters at the meeting must be members in good standing of the Hoosier Folklore Society.

Submit your proposal via e-mail by October 15, 2008, to The Conference Committee: Jodine Perkins and Suzanne Ingalsbe E-mail address: HoosierFolklore@gmail.com

More on the conference:
Next year the world will honor the 250th anniversary of the birth of the great Scottish poet Robert Burns (1759-1796). His humble origins, his deep knowledge of and affection for the rural, agrarian way of life, and his remarkable use of Scottish dialect and folkways in his poetry have made him popular throughout the world. Burns was a great songwriter as well as poet, and songs like “Auld Lang Syne” and “O my Luve’s like a red, red rose” are widely sung today, often without the singers’ knowledge of the composer’s identity. One of his best-known poems describes the humble mouse—that “wee, sleekit, cowrin, tim’rous beastie”—whose nest is disturbed during the mowing of hay. The same poem contains one of Burns’s most famous expressions: “The best laid schemes o' mice an' men / Gang aft agley” (Go often askew).

The Hoosier Folklore Society welcomes three experts on Scottish folklore to the conference:
Emily Lyle of the University of Edinburgh, Scotland; Ian Russell of the University of Aberdeen, Scotland; and Mary Ellen Brown of Indiana University, Bloomington. Lectures from international scholars, delicious food, music sessions, a performance of Wilderness Plots*, and workshops will enliven this year’s gathering.

Jodine Perkins
Department of Folklore and Ethnomusicology
Indiana University
Email: hoosierfolklore@gmail.com

Yann is an entrepreneur in EPIS the University of Edinburgh's Pre Incubator Scheme headed up by the entrepreneurial team of Adrian Smith and Linda Brooks - check out some of the innovation at The University of Edinburgh.

Some people see colour when listening to mus

US scientists have discovered people who can "hear" what they see.

The rare form of synaesthesia - a condition where senses intermingle - came to light after a student reported "hearing sounds" from a screensaver.

Researchers at the California Institute of Technology then found three more people with the same condition, New Scientist magazine reported.

Those affected performed better in tests of recognising visual patterns than those without the condition.

A more common form of the condition is being able to perceive numbers or letters as colours.

It's common to find people who have it the other way round - so they see colour when they hear music Dr Julia Simner, Edinburgh University

Several artists have been linked with the condition, including David Hockney who is able to see colour when listening to music.

Dr Melissa Saenz discovered the phenomenon when a group of students were being shown around her lab and one asked if anyone else could hear a pattern of moving dots on a computer screen.

When she questioned him further she realised he matched the criteria for synaesthesia - he had experienced it all his life and it happened with lots of different moving images.

By sending the moving dots image to hundreds of other volunteers, she found three others who could also hear sounds, such as tapping, whirring or whooshing, when watching it.

Tests

To double check they did have synaesthesia she tested their ability to recognise a series of visual patterns.

They either heard a pair of series of beeps or watched a pair of a series of flashes and had to say whether they matched.

Both groups were accurate 85% of the time when they heard the pattern, the results published in Current Biology show.

Dr Saenz said: "I was surprised to realise this particular form had not been reported before and I wanted to see how common it was.

"The goal of the study was to objectively determine if the sound perception was real."

Dr Julia Simner, who researches synaesthesia at the University of Edinburgh said some forms of the condition were more common than others.

"It's common to find people who have it the other way round - so they see colour when they hear music.

"The very nice thing about this paper is they have been able to document a kind which we knew was out there but for which we only had hazy knowledge."

ninjagarden

Image via Wikipedia

This post is to help a fellow musician out. After reading WIRED's Listening Post helping a PhD candidate, I couldn't help but oblige. After reaching out to Melissa Avdeeff, the Musicology PhD candidate at the University of Edinburgh who is studying how MP3 players and the digital music culture are changing our listening habits, she asked that I also share the survey.

It is really fascinating to witness firsthand how our listening habits are changing since the release of the iPod. I often wonder where the music  industry would be if the iPod hadn't been so successful. I'm looking forward to seeing the results of the survey.

In the meantime, help out a fellow music fan, and take - The Survey.

"Top entrepreneur and Dragons' Den judge Peter Jones today announced he will be donating £100,000 of his own money to 'Make Your Mark With a Tenner', a government-backed campaign which aims to give young people the opportunity to become entrepreneurs. " (Source BERR)

Well done Mr Jones - money well spent.

Apparently Peter Jones has been working with the Government on a National Enterprise Academy in the South East of England.

If the reaction is as strong down south as it was in Edinburgh the project will go well. And maye there is scope for the same in Scotland?

When it comes to winning mates, larger horns are an asset for male Soay sheep. But those that grow them may be putting their young lives on the line, according to a study published online on May 15th in Current Biology.

The new findings show that allocation of resources to horn growth can spell the sheep's premature demise if the environment takes a turn for the worse.

"We find that large horns decrease males' first-year survival when environmental conditions are poor," said lead author Matthew Robinson of the University of Edinburgh. "Therefore, in an unpredictable environment, high allocation to early horn growth is a gamble, the pay-offs of which depend on the environmental conditions an individual encounters during its first year of life."

Click here for the full article.

The Audience was an interesting collection of those involved in mobile and new media in Scotland. Particularly interesting (given my declared interest in UoE) was the turn out from both the Edinburgh academics as well as the clutch of young Edinburgh businesses that are incubated under EPIS or ETTC (thats Edinburgh Pre Incubator Scheme and Edinburgh Technology Transfer Centre both at Kings Buildings). Good to see business and academia swapping notes on the rapidly changing world of media.  

Over the years I've got to know a good many of the EPIS companies offerring free mentoring support under my software developer Objective Associates hat and the event today was a good fit with those businesses - maybe it was just a coincidence but there does seem to be a gravitational pull in Scotland to things digital and new media.  

Organised by the Department of Film Studies at Edinburgh University, over fifty short, medium and feature length experimental films and videos will be screened in the Diversions film season, running from Thursday 8 to Sunday 11 May at the Filmhouse in Edinburgh.

Experimental film began in the 1920s and has developed over the years into an art form. It's a term I wasn’t familiar with before writing this and one that I’m now intrigued by.

This genre of film is more to do with techniques used in making the film rather than the content itself. It's a range of styles which are different from, and normally opposed to, mainstream cinema. The techniques used include the camera being out of focus, a lack of soundtrack, rapid editing and scratching.

The aim of these distinctive works is to place the viewer in a closer and more personal relationship to the film, and there's more information over at Flicker, home page of the alternative cinematic experience.

One of the range of short films showing is Scenes From New York (6pm on Sunday 11 May), a series of films charting the evolution of the experimental film scene in New York and including titles such as Darling International and Loretta.

There will also be appearances by special guests during the season from experimental film historians Al Rees and David Curtis and filmmakers Frederique Devaux, Pip Chodorov, Sami van Ingen and Peter Rose.

Here's a scene from what is widely regarded as the world’s most famous experimental film, Un chien andalou:

The Filmhouse hopes to make this an annual event, so look out for more.

For more information visit the Diversions website and to book tickets head to the Filmhouse site.

Preview by Faith Orr

A fish species, which is all female, has survived for 70,000 years without reproducing sexually, experts believe.

Scientists from the University of Edinburgh think the Amazon Molly may be employing special genetic survival "tricks" to avoid becoming extinct.

The species, found in Texas and Mexico, interacts with males of other species to trigger its reproduction process.

The offspring are clones of their mother and do not inherit any of the male's DNA.

Click here for the full article.

 This is the version I sent to the editor, which differs slightly from what was published, but not much.... click More for the whole article and tell me what you think!

The Image of Christianity 

The image of Christianity could use an overhaul. Anti-intellectual, anti-democracy, violent and homophobic and are all characterizations of it presented in media sources. 

Bestselling books by Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens give those who do not believe in God, or perhaps more accurately, the God presented by “organized religion,” new inspiration (pardon the pun). After the wildly successful Da Vinci Code book, popular texts which challenge traditional tenets of Christianity are now embraced.

But it is not just atheists who critique religious leaders. The Archbishop of Canterbury recently made headlines for remarks about Sharia law.  This idea that religious law overstep its “bounds” to be respected alongside the laws of the State led to an immediate call for the Archbishop’s resignation. Of course, since the Enlightenment many major Christian denominations throughout the West have engaged in a complicated struggle for the influence, power and the right to practice their faith legally.  In the U.S., an alliance of power between some American denominations and the Republican Party was forged by groups like the Moral Majority in the late 1970s. This marriage of religion and politics helped to get Ronald Reagan elected as president in 1980 and ever since, conservative Christians in the U.S. have been major power holders in the Republican Party.  Religious rhetoric became infused in State foreign policy in the U.S., specifically in the current administration.  The followers of a man who said “blessed are the peacemakers” became seen as warriors and speeches from President George W. Bush using religious language to defend the “war on terror” have only cemented this image.

But perhaps the most prominent current problem for the image of Christianity in the media is anti-gay sentiment.  For example, this Student newspaper followed the controversy over the Christian Union’s sponsorship of the PURE curriculum and its views on sexuality.  The defence of CU was that its rights were being violated. This presented the image of the followers of the prince of peace as those who, ironically, fight to have their beliefs accepted in order to criticize a vilified minority group.  The perceived traditional majority has come to be seen as antagonistic to those on the periphery of the power structures of culture.  And the media images of Christian leaders have led to all “true” believers being depicted as sharing one kind of Biblical interpretation, one kind of religious dogma. Members of “liberal” or “progressive” congregations who may embrace LGBTQI people, for example, are depicted as anti-Biblical. The idea of a Christian as someone who does not accept homosexuality, evolution or any kind of uncertainty in the authority of the Bible is an appropriate stereotype, if media is to be believed.

Of course these are just a few concerns of the Christian image. But what is a Christian to do to improve the image of the faith?

Perhaps most importantly, the church should begin to understand the true differences between operating as an institution founded on the grace of Jesus Christ rather than on corporate paradigms.  This may lead to the embrace of a positive Christian stereotype: minister as community leader in the search for social justice, talking about injustices to the poor rather than prosperity as proof of God’s favour.  The church needs visibility for ministers who tell the truth in interviews rather than craft media appearances to protect beneficial alliances with political forces or even to appease rich members of their own congregations. The prayer of St. Francis of Assisi reads, “where there is doubt, faith” not certainty.  So fighting for justice is more important than fighting against a few popular cultural texts which contain critical ideas that are often not new and at worst cause the church to re-examine what it believes (the way the church calls others to re-examine what they believe). Faithfulness, not certainty, is the goal of Christian practice.  As such, the church needs to understand the varied voices among believers and challenge the arrogance of authority as Jesus once challenged Pharisees, to be faithful to the witness of Christ.  And it needs to understand that just because Paul got it wrong in Romans 1 when he wrote that same sex desire is unnatural (it is in all of nature), it does not negate the authority of all Scripture or even the rest of Paul’s own writings, anymore than heliocentric theory negates the authority of the book of Joshua.

            Finally, Christians needs to understand that the goal of the church is to witness to what Christ has done.  The church is best built up first and foremost through patient, difficult and messy face-to-face community building, not through coercion and hegemony.  It offers the place where personal relationships grow and lives are transformed, where people can find a vision of deliverance from their pain and suffering.  This is the best publicity, and it is what the church can offer that the individualism of unrestricted capitalism and neo-liberal economic policy cannot.  Ironically, the best PR for Christianity will be the rejection of the need for self-promotion in the media. The church does not have time for it; there is too much spiritual battle to fight. Ironically, the quest of the church to protect its good image in the world will continue to cause that image to erode. 

Ronan Bennett, Zugzwang. Bloomsbury, 2007

Zugzwang is a term used in chess commentary where a player remains obliged to move although all possible options weaken the current position. Bennett, chess commentator to The Guardian, writes a taut political thriller set during a 1914 chess tournament in St. Petersburg. Despite some onerous love scenes between the middle-aged protagonist and his lithe, young Baltic-beauty love interest, Bennett’s prose is energetic and lean while he builds and sustains suspense throughout the narrative. One of the most skilled writers of my stable, Bennett was a pleasure to read, and almost made my short list. Unfortunately, he falls short of the medal round because while Zugzwang excels in the thriller genre, it fails to transcend it. Tight, fun and exciting, but not really prize material.

Tom Harper, Lost Temple. Century, 2007.

What could the publisher have possibly been thinking when they submitted this book for a literary award? Harper’s novel, the first book I read in my set, was awful. Awful. The words “high-octane!” and “non-stop action!” come to mind, along with any hackneyed chestnuts you might see flashed wildly across the trailer of the latest Vin Diesel offering. Sam Grant kills Nazis, Soviets and Palestinian terrorists in a plot so confused, it’s not sure if it’s stealing from The Da Vinci Code, Indiana Jones or The Illiad. About halfway through, I decided to start looking for a sentence that exemplified the horribly trite prose, when eventually realized that every page offered a new and wonderful candidate. How bad is Lost Temple? I think that Tom Harper answers it best on the website, replete with YouTube teaser, that he concocted to promote this book. YouTube? Cripes.

Mohsin Hamid, The Reluctant Fundamentalist. Hamish Hamilton, 2007.

A wonderful addition to my pile, this late entry redeemed a particularly poor stack of books. Hamid concocts an allegory of America’s relationship to its historical legacy, its national myths, global capitalism and the distasteful conflicts the intersection of those social forces have wrought. A suspenseful itch begins harmlessly and almost unnoticeably with the title and the unnamed Pakistani narrator that has sat down beside an American tourist to cheerfully tell him about his life in the United States. The itch spreads with ghostly insistence, as the narrative subtly unwinds the social netting that form the Western conception of the East-West divide. The beast of fundamentalist terrorism that frenzies Western thinking bursts into an expertly derived conclusion even as it lingers on a hopeful reconciliation. My only criticism of the book touches the difficult form of the oral allegory employed by the novel. The narrator’s love interest, remains bizarre, one-dimensional and unconvincing—and her allegorical name, (Am)Erica, is perhaps a bit too precious. Overall, an excellent book, and deserving of progression to the next round.

Edward Docx, Self Help. Picador, 2007.

Edward Docx is a witty, inventive writer and Self Help provides an energetic stage for him to flex his artistic muscles. The book examines the lives of an estranged bicultural family, Russian and English, fast upon the death of their loving though brooding (Marxist!) matriarch. Various narrative strands following twin brother and sister, separated bisexual dandy father, and unknown orphan from a previous affair intertwine along the lines of Zadie Smith’s White Teeth or Jonathan Franzen’s The Corrections. Unfortunately, Docx staggers under the weight of his ambition, and 500-page text never really gets off the ground. Moreover, while Smith’s effort revels in its breadth of vision and diversity, Self Help remains firmly planted in white, middle-class navel gazing. Docx’s strong writing and occasional wit rescues the novel somewhat, but his stretch for clever metaphor sometimes shows the strain. Ambitious, but ultimately uninteresting.

Mary Gaitskill, Veronica. Pantheon, 2005.

Gaitskill’s evident talent distinguished her and her novel from the also-rans in my list. Veronica investigates the complex, lurid friendship of the dead title-character and our narrator, Alison, an ex-glamour model now full of self-loathing, regret, and Hepatitis B. Gaitskill beautifully illustrates the weaknesses and hopes that invite debasement, pettiness and failure. As we follow Alison as she revisits her past in an assortment of vignettes about her teenage flight from home, humiliation and success in the modeling industry, and a homecoming to a life of unrewarding temp work—a world where she meets the theatrical Veronica, full of affectation and chutzpah, who both confronts and reassures the illusions around which Alison has structured her life. Veronica’s death by AIDS equally offers hope and hopelessness, meaning and rage to Alison’s own terminal illness. Gaitskill allegedly dreamed up Alison and Veronica over a decade ago; and therein dwells my only criticism of this otherwise provocative and insightful novel. The novel’s preoccupation with the emotional vacuity of the 1980s and generation-specific attention to AIDS and STDs are notably behind the times. Veronica’s datedness—and the fact that the book was originally published in 2005—could disqualify it from the Tait Black 2007 prize, but these issues do not eclipse its force and pleasure.

Susanna Jones, The Missing Person’s Guide to Love. Picador, 2007.

I don’t really have much to say about this novel, even though it was less disagreeable than Harper’s Lost Temple. It was rather like an American soap opera, especially if the soap opera likes to draw on colonialist, orientalist assumptions of exotic Turkey. The writing is strong and fluid, if forgettable, the characterization plastic, and the plot was derivative, although a bit punchier than most homecoming thrillers that seek to uncover a horrible, far-reaching secret. But, like the soap, you find yourself on the couch at three o’clock in the afternoon and the remote is just sitting there, almost within reach. Why not read another page? Pap.

Stephen Thompson, Meet Me Under the Westway. CHROMA, 2007.

Thompson’s cleverness sometimes gives the impression of someone who laughs too hard at jokes about David Mamet. Westway is funny, surely, and a confident, satirical romp through the British theatre scene and Notting Hill, but his eye is too focused on the approving nod after a successful name drop or literary allusion than the actual comedy of his quips. Indeed, this strategy proceeds apace in the trendy, West London setting, where every Portobello restaurant, bar, pottery and piggery is referenced with barely concealed self-satisfaction, even as he smugly eschews their falsity and superficiality. Thompson operates too much in lockstep with Nick Hornby’s less-talented cousin, and occasionally confuses pomp and profundity like a drunk swaggering on moonshine he mistook for Macallan. A decent effort, but certainly not prize-worthy.

Amanda Eyre Ward, Forgive Me. Harper, 2007.

Forgive Me depicts a young hardnosed, no-nonsense journalist struggling with an unfulfilling home life in Nantucket and her desire to uncover truth and meaning that apparently manifests itself through African apartheid. It’s exactly the kind of reductionist move you would expect from such a simplistic, moralizing fable that represents Western women as universally cowed and ignorant and black South African women as determined warriors. Apartheid South Africa essentially stands in for white existential angst. Nevertheless, Ward’s prose is excellent, and is appropriately economical considering the protagonist’s vocation. There is real emotional conflict in the book, even if it sometimes belittles the real trauma of apartheid. Most disappointingly, Ward chooses to wrap up the conflict and the novel by becoming a mother and moving home to Massachusetts. In the world of Forgive Me, having a baby can erase the pain of racism, poverty, war and heartbreak. Unfortunate.

Gee Williams, Salvage. Alcemi, 2007.

The jewel. A masterful stylist, Williams is constantly inventive and inspiring in her craft, and boasts a knack for stunning images and observations. Where has Wales been hiding this woman? Well, in Wales, presumably, but that is besides the point. Salvage masquerades as a murder mystery while exploring the murky, aphotic character of the Welsh seaside and of the human soul. Dominant and daring in her prose, Williams relishes the act of writing and constructs five distinct characters with genres particular to each, including a wonderful Cosmo send-up for the gorgeous gold-digging nurse as well as a provocative intervention of the author herself. Clichés and generic conventions only provide more writerly ammunition, as Williams constantly shifts her literary goalposts from crime to romance to a metafictional crisis while never losing the immediacy of the characters or the suspense of the crime. If Gee Williams was a more celebrated author she could win this competition. Brilliant.

In the late 1960’s, James worked for the British Aircraft Corporation and was part of the Concorde development team. He developed a strain gauge bridge for measuring the strain/stress on the Concorde’s wings during high turbulence. He also helped computerize the Instrument Landing System for the Anglo/French Jaguar aircraft. Then James worked with Elliott Space and Weapons, developing the Nimrod Simulator. He moved on to Burroughs Corporation, where he developed and patented the reel–to-reel tape cassette recorder.

James was part of the team that developed the first ATM machines.

He immigrated to the US in 1981, where he helped Memorex develop thin film heads for their 3380 disk drive. Next, he worked as a computer engineer with Seagate Technology. His first project with Seagate was developing and patenting a high density, thin film disk platter. Seagate used this disk in more then 5 products. He then was promoted to Thailand and became Vice President of Engineering, helping to build 2 high volume disk drive plants in Bangkok, producing 15,000 disk drives per day!

James became an American citizen in 1989. He completed his PhD in Artificial Intelligence in 1995 at Washington National University. James retired in 1991. He now resides in Deer Harbor, Washington, USA.

Pale-faced Nicole Kidman says she stays out of the sun and wears tons of sunscreen because the sun is her enemy. "I wear a lot of sunscreen. I never go in the sun. I've had one skin cancer on my leg, and I rarely get in the sun."

Sources say that along with avoiding sunlight, Cruise and Kidman reduced their exposure from blacks for fears of being targeted in melanoma campaigns by the Black Hebrew Pagans and radical black sun worshipers.

New American Standard Bible His winnowing fork is in His hand to thoroughly clear His threshing floor,
and to gather the wheat into His barn; but He will burn up the chaff
with unquenchable fire.”

People with Natural Blonde Hair are Disappearing and new research suggests that people with blonde hair will be completely extinct in 200 years, notes Professor Jonathan Rees from Edinburgh University. Rees is leading a two-year study into the genetics of blondes.

The Black Hebrew Pagans mark 2012 the year of the prophesied Blond Hair, Blue Eye Holocaust will take place. Ironically, 2012 is also the date the Ancient Mayans predict the world to end.

"2012 is the year when the Rapture of God will be complete and Caucasian race will be consumed by the Ultraviolet Fires of the 2nd Rapture of the Sun of God," says Black Hebrew Pagan minister Yeshua Baal.

“The earth will know peace when the white man is completely uprooted from within it,” Black Hebrew Pagan minister Elija Baal says. “Once the seperation of the Wheat and the Chaff is finished, we will indeed return to Paradise.
“The paradox about the Paradise we are returning to is that we are going forward to get there. The first Paradise was not perfect, because imperfection was not known to all. Imperfecton has to be known to all before we can reach perfection. Through the white man, imperfection is demonstrated to all the universe and to all that exists. Spirituality will chose and has chosen perfection and paradise to imperfection and chaos.”

“Mel Gibson got it wrong, in our recorded history, the white man, not the Jews, are responsible for all the wars that have taken place on the planet. There is no such thing as a white Jew. They are all ”- Underground Railroad artist Criminally Insane

In prophet Yahweh Ben Yahweh’s Another Beast Out of the Earth, Part One Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice is identified as one of the Dragon prophesied to deceive the world and, too, signaling the end of times in the Bible’s book of Revelations. EXCEPT: Thus, Dr. Condoleeza Rice’s mental competency, practical qualifications, and innate ability will cause her to be so exact, specific, and careful about details that she will operate in a not easily apparent manner, as the same manner in which she does today.’ Most people have no idea that Dr. Condoleeza Rice is the intelligence behind President George W. Bush, and that she exchanges pertinent information, gives relevant signals, and sends important messages to him, which dictates all of his actions.’ Thus, because Dr. Condoleeza Rice has a non apparent influence over President George W. Bush she is more dangerous than evident, thus, authenticating her role as a dragon.

"But that God is the God of the underdog. Then, too, when that underdog is elevated, the Divine stays with that once destitute and impoverished schlemiel when he becomes the favorite," Baal says.

It is the the first in our God history when the supreme allows His judgement, condemnation, forgiveness and sentencing of others to be qualified by the whims of the formerly unqualified. In our contemporary society, this is the belief system and practice of such non conventional and new phyletic sects as the New Day Nigrescent Hebrew Pagans who say God has given His judgement to them to dispense - even at their premature whims.

Isn’t this is when God is his greatest and most terrible. For, dispensation is not based on fairness or righteousness; but, it is based on feelings.

“Mankind needs a leash and God wants our judgement in retraining him,” Hebrew Pagan cleric Yeshua Baal asserts. “Vengeance is mine, thus saith the Lord; and the Lord has handed that vengeance to us.

“Know the biblical references to man refer to the black man. The creation of mankind refers to whites.”

The Yacub 13 X Sun Worship movement, who claim responsibility for the 2006 and 2007 spike in skin cancer and melanoma rates afflicting the fairskinned, assert the Ultraviolet Holocaust is already started.

“Due to their poor ability to (re)adapt to the current minor shifts in the environment without high susceptibilities to skin cancers like squamous and basal cell carcinomas, melanomas and cataracts the long term affects of global warming and ozone depletion negatively impact the fair skinned moreso than those with darker pigments.“Who is evolving, we are evolving” - Jacobi Ali

The main belief of The Nation of Islam and its followers is that there is no God but Allah. However, they redefine “Allah” by saying “who came in the person of W. D. Fard.” Fard founded the Nation of Islam that was then adopted by Elijah Muhammad. Their teachings are heretical by traditional Islamic standards which abhor the deification of any person, or the anthropomorphization of God.

With the coming of Wallace Fard Muhammad, who taught us the knowledge of ourselves, God and the devil, the measurement of the earth, of other planets and the knowledge of ultraviolet light and white people’s skin, the celestrial trial against the Sun of God’s reproach began.
The official beliefs of the Nation of Islam have been outlined in books, documents, and articles published by the organization as well as speeches by Elijah Muhammad, Malcolm X, Louis Farrakhan, and other ministers. These include inflammatory statements as well as the pejorative use of the term “white devils” to refer to white people. Many of Elijah Muhammad’s teachings may be found in Message to the Blackman in America and The True History of Jesus as Taught by the Honorable Elijah Muhammad [2]. Many of Malcolm X’s teachings of NOI theology are in his The End of White World Supremacy, while a later more critical discussion of those beliefs can be found in The Autobiography of Malcolm X, co-written with Alex Haley.

Passed down via written lessons from 1930-1934 from W. Fard Muhammad to his student, Elijah Muhammad, referred to and titled, The Supreme Wisdom the Nation of Islam continues to teach its followers that the present world society is segmented into three distinct categories. They teach that from a general perspective, 85% of the world’s people of all races and faiths are the deaf, dumb and blind masses of the people who are easily led in the wrong direction and hard to lead in the right direction. These 85% of the masses are said to be manipulated by 10% of the people who are referred to as the rich slave-makers of the masses of the people. Those 10% rich slave-makers are said to manipulate the 85% masses of the people through ignorance, the skillful use of religious doctrine and the mass media.

The third group referred to as the 5% poor righteous teachers of the people of the world who know the truth of the manipulation of the 85% masses of the people by the 10% and that 5% righteous teachers are at constant struggle and war with 10% to reach and free the minds of the masses of the people.

The Nation asserts the ending of the West began in the 1930s with Muhammad’s coming. Whites were granted an extension, however, and have thus maintained their rule.

Ultimately all the times, dates and prophesies of these movements demonstrate the coming of the same thing, respectfully, the same time.

“It is the blessing and gift of God to live in the era when imperfection is being rooted from the earth,” Baal said.

LONDON (Reuters) - A supercomputer that could help answer some of science's biggest questions will be unveiled on Monday.

With the power of 12,000 desktop PCs, the mammoth machine called HECToR is the country's fastest computer and one of the most powerful in Europe.

It can make 63 million million calculations each second, allowing scientists to conduct research into everything from climate change to new medicines.

The purpose-built machine is housed in 60 wardrobe-sized cabinets in the University of Edinburgh's advanced computing centre near the Scottish capital.

After years of development, Chancellor Alistair Darling is due to attend the official launch ceremony for the 113 million pound machine.

"HECToR will enable us to do research that we simply could not do in any other way," said Jane Nicholson, of the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, the public body which acts as the project's managing agent.

"We want to push forward the boundaries of knowledge."

Researchers will tap into its power to study ocean currents, build tiny parts for advanced computers and make warplanes less visible to radar.

Other projects include research into superconductors, combustion engines and new materials.

Scientists working in fields ranging from cosmology and atomic physics to disaster simulation and healthcare will also use the computer.

HECToR, which stands for High-End Computing Terascale Resource, was made the U.S. manufacturer Cray Inc.

Despite its vast power, it falls some way short of the world's biggest computer: Blue Gene/L.

Housed at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, it is used to study nuclear weapons without the need for underground testing.

(Editing by Steve Addison)

Britain's fastest supercomputer unveiled
	The supercomputer HECToR, short for High-End Computing Terascale Resources, is seen in a facility near Edinburgh. REUTERS/EPSRC/Handout