Welcome...

These are some fascinating three dimensional images of Japan before world war II. One popular thing at the dawn of photography was a little viewer called a stereoscope. People would take two photographs at the same time, and then you would be able to see the scene in 3d.

Somebody had the bright idea of just creating animated gif images with these old photos - where the picture switches back and forth between the two. This effectively gives you a conception of 3 dimensions, although it is a bit dizzying at first.

• See old Japan in three dimensions

Well... my affections are turning to yet a different country. Now it is Australia. Australia and New Zealand are two countries which really need to be understood in context with eachother.

I live right now in a tourist/college town in the Rocky Mountains, and I recognise how much my community benefits from the overarching culture of the plains states. The values that are imparted to my town - things like neighborliness, where people smile at their neighbors, including the children they pass on the street - are really nourishing for my community... even though my community is much more cosmopolitan than most of its neighbors. We have lots of ethnic restaurants, and art galleries, and festivals going on all summer.

Looking at Australia, I see that same wonderful culture I see on the plains around me. I see a friendliness, and a sensibility, which is really refreshing.

For any of you who have ever followed CSPAN in the Usa for any length of time, you might be interested in seeing the contrast with how parliament works in New Zealand. Here's a place you can watch it live over the internet.

Or you can cut and paste this url, into your windows media player's "Open url..." box:

http://webcast.aph.gov.au/livebroadcasting/asx1/hms1v_100K.asx

The only real quibble I have is that they need to change the decor in their House of Representatives. I realise that green is a color which is used in the lower house of many parliaments in countries which still adhere in ceremony to the British monarchy tradition. But green really does terrible things to a person's skin tone.

One thing you will need to know when watching this... is that the "Liberal party" in Australia is the main right wing party. The "Labour party" is the left wing party. Another party you'll hear referred to is the "National party" - that's a smaller right wing group.

All of you out there who are engrossed in this debate between science and religion ought to recognise that one of the things that religion uses to its benefit is the power of song. When science starts using song to promote its own visions and ideals, it will be a wonderful day.

This is an "auto-tuned" mash up of words from Richard Feynman, Carl Sagan, Bill Nye, Neil de Grasse Tyson... four people who were/are passionate about science.

For those of you with slightly different tastes in music, here's a more grayscale melody by the same youtuber.

There is a saint who is the President of East Timor. This country seems to have enjoyed peace and good relations with Indonesia in the past ten years since it won its independence from Indonesia. The man is very wise and caring, and is very pragmatic at maintaining this neighborly relationship with Indonesia. And central to this, is the forgiveness of people who oppressed East Timor between 1975 and 1999.

The interviewer here, is cute... but is rather malicious and headstrong in how she wishes to press the president for vindictive policies to "punish" those who hurt the country. She somehow doesn't see that these kinds of policies could easily return the region to a violent struggle struggle between the two nations.

The first segment of this broadcast, can be found here.

This might bore some people out of their skull. But, for those of you who work with children, or in management in any way, I think you'll get a lot out of it. This is a person talking about different styles of directing orchestras. He has some important insights. Neither a laissez faire, nor an authoritarian approach works when you are in a management position. One prominent metaphor that Itay Talgam uses is the people themselves build a roller coaster, and ride on it. And their actions are guided by the physics of their environment. It's important to relish what your people are doing, and be nurturing them, and be bringing them into fruition.

For anyone who is honestly interested in politics... here is a great resource. It's the Canadian equivalent of the CSPAN channel we have in the Usa.

This is called CPAC - and you can watch the proceedings of the federal government in Ottawa 24 hours a day.

It's incredibly refreshing to see how learned, and conscientious the government in Canada is when you compare them to the fools in Washington DC.

Remember, that Canada is a bilingual country from its core - with a big portion of the country - Quebec - speaking french as their main language. So all proceedings in parliament need to be translated in real time between the two languages. Usually parliamentarians will talk in the language they are most comfortable with. I think this kind of bilingualism is really good for the social dynamic in a government. Always to have multiculturalism front and center before your eyes is a really good thing for folks in government to think about.

• Watch CPAC here

You can also pull the broadcast at any time, directly into windows media player, by cutting and pasting this into the "Open url" box: http://www.cpac.ca/asx/cpac1eh.asx

This is a very amazing film which shows how the different parts of the human cell work.

The other day, I was talking with a college student, and she mentioned her desire to join the peace corps. She also brought up the fact that you can't choose the country where you are placed, when you join up.

I realise that young nurturer/thinkers often feel the need to have an adventure. It's important for them to see the other half of the world in a very intimate way. I certainly had this need myself, as a young man.

I would suggest that young people consider the idea of going to India. This is a popular attraction for young folks in Australia and New Zealand, because they hear a lot more about India through their mass media. India has squalor, and poverty, it has oppression, and it has a whole lot of history. They invented mathematics and the "arabic" numerals for example. And they're a very philosophical society. Furthermore, they're also going to be a very important economic force in the next few decades. India and China are going to eclipse the Usa at some point in global influence. If you have spent time in India, you will be in high demand by many Usa companies who are doing trade with that country.

China would also be an interesting adventure. However, the poverty is less pronounced there, it seems to me - and it might be hard for a young thinker to stomach the idea of trying to live for awhile under the auspices of a government like that one - because of all those heretical thoughts that are flooding a person's mind when she or he is a young thinker ;-)

Here's a link to a BBC article published today, of a 16 year old in Bengal who started a school for kids in his backyard. The school has grown to 800 students.

Here is an interview with an author of european ethnicity who spent a lot of time in India.

There's an interesting movement which has been afoot since the 1930s or so, called "Humanism" - and it's an affiliation of different community groups who are made up of very deep thinking people. The vision of the founders seems to have been to try to supplant the christian churches of the West through providing the same kind of social services and celebrations which churches provide. Today, it dawned on me that this might not work... and that in fact, both buddhism and christianity might have evolved, centuries ago, out of the failure of this very kind of group to ever really accomplish what it set out to do.

Religious people always try to trace their own history in a way that I believe is somewhat disingenuous. Religion serves a purpose in a community and that purpose and that niche has changed and evolved over time. Some people would say that Christianity started with the life of Christ, or that Buddhism started with the life of the Buddha. But honestly, I think it might be more accurate to say that there are people who wanted to form a tradition and a social group at certain junctures in history, and they drew on old stories and folklore which seemed to work for them as they pursued their goals of creating a civic group of a certain nature.

Somewhere back in 2000 or 2001, there was a fascinating article in National Geographic Magazine about Tibet. My impression from that article was that in that year, Tibet was one of the last very quaint and ancient civilisations still around. I think it has changed over the course of this first decade. China has made a lot of effort to integrate Tibet into the greater Chinese society. But one thing that struck me was that their religion would have been similar to what Christianity was a thousand years ago. Religion institutions were both the schools and the charity organisations of every town.

So this shows how religion's niche has evolved and changed over time in societies.

Anyway, my realisation this morning, to put it bluntly, was that perhaps the nurturing thinkers could not get the posturers interested in being part of a do gooder community where the nice successful man or woman was up there teaching about life's lessons. My thought is that perhaps these thinker/nurturers would have been encouraged by their experiences with children; they found a very excellent social dynamic that could be established as an adult leader of a group of kids. And then they tried to impose on adults this same formula of working with kids. And it didn't work. And so someone had the wild idea of taking a different tack: "Let's tell a story about a good smart caring person who suffered rather than succeeded." And that story piqued the interest of the townspeople.

It's an interesting commonality that both Buddhism and Christianity have as their central figure a very smart and charismatic figure who suffers. In the one case, the guy is put to death wrongfully - and in the other he voluntarily gives up all of the pleasures of this world, in a gesture of altruism.

So, all this leads me to a certain conclusion. I think that humanism is good as a group where people can gather who have common interests and passions, and a love for reasoning and acting in caring ways towards others. And it's also good to have groups like the TED conference where these kinds of thinkers show off their ideas to eachother. But in all of these things, I think it's best that we support eachother, rather than try to press our ideas into the minds and hearts of others.

Those people who themselves so value the power of independent and critical thought, should not be trying to think on behalf of other people, or they might end up with bad results.