Here’s another site you absolutely have to visit. Watch and play with the Flash animations that illustrate aspects of computation, physics and numbers.

Ooh, it’s such fun!

Technorati Tags: animation, numbers, physics, science

Have a look at this quite extraordinary visual illusion. I’m sure there must be an explanation, but I have no idea what it is.

Technorati Tags: illusion

My main business for the morning was the first meeting of the Single Equality Scheme Project Board at the offices of the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS). The Board, which will drive the development of the CPS’s Single Equality Scheme, comprises CPS staff and ‘externals’ (as we were charmingly labelled at the meeting): representatives of each of the six equality ’strands’ that now have a place in English law and for which the Commission for Equality and Human Rights (CEHR)will have responsibility, once it comes into being later this year. These strands are the three statutory strands of race, disability, gender; and the three ‘new’ strands (new, that is to the government and legal system) of sexual orientation, religion and belief, and age.

I find myself being appointed to bodies of this kind (including the Attorney General’s Equality and Diversity Advisory Group) because I chair the Religion and Belief Consultative Group on Equality, Diversity and Human Rights (RBCG), which provides a contact point for the new Department of Communities and Local Government and the CEHR transition team with faith communities, faith-based organizations, and non-religious belief communities (I’m the Baha’i representative on the RBCG, but represent the RBCG on these other equality bodies).

I’m used to dealing with human rights matters, but I find myself having to learn a great deal very quickly to function in the world of equality and diversity bodies - there’s legislation and there’s the language of equality and diversity, and now I have to learn enough about the criminal justice system in England and Wales to be able to make sensible comments on the CPS’s Single Equality Scheme.

The CPS prosecutes criminal cases investigated by the police in England and Wales (but not in Scotland or Northern Ireland - they have their own arrangements).

Technorati Tags: Baha’i, Bahai, law, politics, justice, religion, UK

Commuting into and around London can be challenging at the best of times, but yesterday had that little extra element of a fire at a building site near King’s Cross station. The Fire Service had decreed that King’s Cross should be closed (a couple of gas cylinders on the site might explode and send shrapnel flying across the station - not to mention the tower cranes that might collapse on the King’s Cross signalling centre) First Capital Connect, our commuter train operator was running an emergency timetable and trains were only going as far as Finsbury Park. The train I was on was in a queue of trains waiting to get into Finsbury Park, which was stretched to capacity with the unusual crowds of commuters.

It usually takes me around 45 or 50 minutes to get from home to work. Yesterday it took about 105 minutes.

Yesterday’s highlight (apart from a meeting with Gary Streeter MP) was an interfaith reception in the Durbar Court of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. FCO Minister Lord Triesman of Tottenham hosted a large reception with Ambassadors and senior representatives of Britain’s major faith communities, including the Baha’i community. The Durbar Court is a glorious courtyard at the heart of the FCO building in King Charles Street. It goes the full height of the building and is topped with a modern glass roof. It is full of reminders of Britain’s imperial past, with names of famous cities of the Empire at the level of the frieze. It is also a very noisy space, with a lot of echo. I’ve a problem with my left ear at the moment, which makes it difficult to hear clearly on that side - a problem greatly exacerbated by the echo in the Durbar Court.

Lord Triesman spoke of the important role of faith in society and of the work the UK government is doing with faith communities here and overseas. I met a number of my friends from the Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, Jain, and Zoroastrian communities. I didn’t see any Buddhist or Sikh friends (although there were Buddhists and Sikhs there). None of us was sure what the occasion of the reception was, but it’s always good fun to drink tax-payers’ orange juice and eat tax-payers’ canapes. Of course, the real point is to ‘network’ (as the usage is) - in other words, to shake hands, talk to people, reinforce friendships, discuss things.

Father Fergus Capie of the London Interfaith Centre and I spoke about the importance of dialogue between people of faith and people with non-religious beliefs, such as the Humanists. Fergus wants to include such dialogue in the LIFC programme and I agree with him that this is a potentially important area of dialogue. While Humanists and Baha’is, for example, have different metaphysical beliefs, they may have things in common concerning justice, human oneness and other principles and values. I’ve certainly found shared values in the conversations I have had with my Humanist friends.

I left the reception early and caught a train from Finsbury Parkn to Hatfield, where I had supper with my daughter, Hari and her husband, Doug (not to forget young Jake).

Technorati Tags: Baha’i, Bahai, government, inter-faith, interfaith, humanism, religion, trains