Recently I undertook to explain on the First Things website what the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is all about. This rap song made by some particle physicists at CERN (the European science center where the LHC is) says the same things in a slightly different way.

There was an excellent discussion on Delaware public television on the subject of Joe Biden, Catholic teaching on abortion, and Catholic voters. The three panelists were Prof. Robert T. Miller of Villanova University School of Law, Fr. Leonard Klein of the Catholic diocese of Wilmington, and Prof. Katherin A. Rogers of the University of Delaware Philosophy Department.

View the video here. Click the link on the left side of the screen for the Friday, October 10 show. The discussion begins about ten minutes into the show. As might be expected, Miller, Klein, and Rogers all did a terrific job.

The relationship between technology and intelligence has been getting a lot of press lately. Back in August, Nathaniel Peters wrote about an article in The Atlantic which asked if Google is making us stupid. In the latest issue of First Things, Sally Thomas explains how, due to the way in which the Internet influences our culture, there will be “successive generations who know less and less about the ideas that gave us Western civilization, and who therefore have less and less investment in its continuation.”

Here’s a glimmer of hope, however, for those of us resigned to the fact that the Internet is indeed doing a great deal of harm to our society:

UCLA scientists have found that for computer-savvy middle-aged and older adults, searching the Internet triggers key centers in the brain that control decision-making and complex reasoning. The findings demonstrate that Web search activity may help stimulate and possibly improve brain function.

The study, the first of its kind to assess the impact of Internet searching on brain performance, is currently in press at the American Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry and will appear in an upcoming issue.

“The study results are encouraging, that emerging computerized technologies may have physiological effects and potential benefits for middle-aged and older adults,” said principal investigator Dr. Gary Small, a professor at the Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior at UCLA who holds UCLA’s Parlow-Solomon Chair on Aging. “Internet searching engages complicated brain activity, which may help exercise and improve brain function.”

One reason I’m hesitant to praise studies like this, however, is the way in which the baseline for “stimulating and improving brain function” seems remarkably low. While it may be true that searching the Internet is more challenging for the brain than watching television, can poking around a social-networking website such as Facebook possibly be better for our brains than a good game of bridge or a classic novel? I doubt it.

Well, here we go again. The markets stumble after fifty years of astonishing prosperity and the wild-eyed Marxist prophets immediately emerge from hiding.

Now I’m not going to indulge in vulgar polemics against Marx, whom I consider an epochal genius, but I think The Guardian ends on just the right note:

But for those not quite ready to immerse themselves in Marxist theory, Marx’s correspondence to Friedrich Engels at the time of an earlier U.S. economic crisis makes more entertaining reading. “The American Crash is a delight to behold and it’s far from over,” he wrote in 1857, confidently predicting the imminent and complete collapse of Wall Street.

A district court judge in Nebraska has thrown out a suit by state senator Ernie Chambers against God. According to the Omaha World-Herald (via the New York Times), “Chambers had sued God in September 2007, seeking a permanent injunction to prevent God from committing acts of violence such as earthquakes and tornadoes.”

Sen. Chambers argued that if God was omnipresent, he was also present in the courtroom when the suit was brought. Judge Marlon Polk didn’t buy it. He “threw out Nebraska Sen. Ernie Chambers’ lawsuit against the Almighty, saying there was no evidence that the defendant had been served. What’s more, Polk found ‘there can never be service effectuated on the named defendant.’”

I guess the only way God could be served would be if he were to return to Earth and appear in court. Wait a minute. . . .

University of British Columbia archeologists have discovered an ancient tomb inside a Sicilian house dating from the sixth century. The find is unusual not only because the burial took place inside of a house instead of a public space, but also because the burial ceremony appears to have had an interesting mix of pagan and Christian elements:

Combing through the sand-buried site, the fifteen-member team made a series of startling discoveries. Central to the mystery was finding a tomb inside a room in a house dating from the sixth century a.d.

Wilson explains that tombs during this period are normally found only in cemeteries outside the built-up area of a town, or around the apse of a church. And since the building was substantial with mortared walls and internal plaster, this would have been likely a tomb for the wealthy.

Once the cover was lifted off the tomb, one team member spent ten days sieving the contents with great care. Two skeletons were found. One was of a woman between the ages of twenty-five and thirty, with teeth in excellent condition and no signs of arthritis. . . .

The other skeleton was a child of indeterminate sex between the ages of five and seven. The position of their bones showed that the woman had been laid to rest first. The tomb was then re-opened to bury the child and the woman’s spinal column was pushed to one side. A hole in the stone slab covering the tomb allowed visitors to pour libations for the dead.

“This shows that the long-established, originally pagan, rite of offering libations to the dead clearly continued into early Byzantine times,” observes Wilson.

Yet, the presence of a Christian cross on a lamp found in the room and on the underside of a grave slab suggests that the deceased were Christian. As well, the skeletons were wrapped in plaster, a practice believed to be Christian for preserving the body for resurrection.

“It is the first plaster burial recorded in Sicily, although the practice is known from Christian communities in North Africa,” says Wilson.