Two Distinct Ways of Knowing the World
Peter Lindsay: To sully religious faith with concerns that have no bearing on it shows a profound lack of understanding and respect for the integrity of the religious experience. Now if that all sounds good, then let’s pause and think about science. To know something in a scientific sense is not to have faith in it. It’s to look at what we think we know and do our level best to disprove it. In a sense, the security of scientific knowledge rests, somewhat paradoxically, on the ultimate insecurity of its claims. (The Atlanta Journal-Constitution)

Loved Ones Can Change Our Perception of Pain
When two people are in love, the world whittles away to them alone, and as new research findings suggest, a mere reminder of that other person can make everything seem a little more manageable—even, as it turns out, physical pain. (Jesse Bering, Scientific American)

How Do Genes Shape Behavior?
Bad genes can create dysfunction in unfavorable contexts—but they can also enhance function in favorable contexts. The genetic sensitivities to negative experience that the vulnerability hypothesis has identified, it follows, are just the downside of a bigger phenomenon: a heightened genetic sensitivity to all experience. (David Dobbs, The Atlantic)

British Judge Rules Belief in Psychics Amounts to Religious View and Is Covered by Employment Equality Laws
Outside the tribunal, Alan Power, who claimed he was forced out of his job with Greater Manchester Police because of his spiritualist views, spoke of his delight at the judge’s decision. “It’s fantastic,” he said. “It proves that spiritualism is a religion worthy of respect. (BBC News)

MOVIES
2012
The problem is not the film’s preposterous premise—that a fictional alignment of the planets three years hence will somehow trigger all manner of natural disasters on Earth. One might choose to accept that for the sake of entertainment. The rapidly mounting improbabilities that follow are what make it impossible to suspend disbelief. (David Shiga, CultureLab, New Scientist)

THEATER
The Afterlife of the Mind
The Afterlife of the Mind tells the story of Lydia, a scholar’s wife who goes on a Frankenstein-style quest to preserve dying husband Harry’s brain by having it transplanted to another man’s body. (Maureen Bogues, San Francisco Chronicle)