Cassini Spacecraft Gets Extension to Explore Saturn and Its Moons Until 2017
One of the mysteries Cassini could help solve is the source of the jets emanating from Enceladus. Scientists suspect they are fed by a subsurface ocean that could possibly be a haven for life. (Betsy Mason, Wired Science, Wired.com)

Oregon Parents Found Guilty of Criminally Negligent Homicide in “Faith-Healing” Case
Jeff and Marci Beagley testified they did everything they could for their 16-year-old son before he died, but a jury decided that anointing oils and prayer were not enough. (Edecio Martinez, CBS/Associated Press)

Wired Out
Picture the typical day of kids: Outside of school and sleeping, there is for some of them not a minute during which they are not umbilicaled to an electronic device or two. Unaware of the weather outside, increasingly obese and diabetic, they must come to live in a Silent Spring of electronic origin, bereft of any awareness of anything but what has lurking beneath it not the voice of the wind or the great moanings of the sea, but some manufactured hum of circuitry. (Richard Hague, Religion & Ethics Newsweekly)

The “Numinous” Christopher Hitchens
Eric Reitan: Christopher Hitchens seems to take “the numinous” to refer to nothing more than a feeling of awe or wonder, which according to Hitchens can (and should) be inspired by purely natural phenomena without any invocation of the supernatural. But in his interview with retired Unitarian minister Marilyn Sewell, Hitchens goes further. When asked to talk about it he replies that “everybody has had the experience at some point when they feel that there’s more to life than just matter.” (Religion Dispatches)

S&R in the Early Years of Britain’s Royal Society
Peter Harrison, Andreas Idreos professor of science and religion at the University of Oxford, said, “almost without exception, early modern natural philosophers cherished religious convictions, although these were not invariably orthodox. Some—but by no means all—made the point that they were motivated to pursue scientific inquiry on account of these religious commitments.” (Matthew Reisz, Times Higher Education)

Q&A
Matthieu Ricard
Matthieu Ricard is a French Buddhist monk with a doctorate in molecular biology. He has participated in numerous experiments into the effects of meditation on the human brain. (Curtis Abraham, New Scientist)

TELEVISION
Supernatural
I’ve come here to praise Supernatural. Once dismissed as a macho Buffy ripoff—or perhaps a scarier Dukes of Hazzard, given its good-lookin’ good ol’ boys—it’s been getting righteously biblical as the Winchester brothers battle angels and demons alike in their attempt to stop Lucifer’s apocalypse. (Joshua Ostroff, Eye Weekly)