God.com: Web Analytics Series no.2

What is Web Analytics? Don't know, read Tamar's Analytics on the Cheap
What? Can God be with a dot? You don't think so, I suppose.
Visit domainsearch.com and see how many people have opted for similar dots. I reproduce below the results of a search at domainsearch site:
god.biz is registered
god.com is registered
god.net is registered
god.org is registered
god.us is registered
WHOIS database of Nameview, Inc. tells you who owns each of these sites.
In Archive.org (A.K.A. way back machine) you can see the history of a Web site, such as www.god.com

The bottom line: Who first published and publicized this name, i.e., god.com?
Don't know?
The answer is Time Magazine. Time, synchornized (with the help of multimedia, graphics and text) to visualize the emergence of a Multifaith Cyberspace. It aimed at exploration of religion on the Web, featuring reporting, interviews, and sound (pleaase note: this site requires Shockwave)
The description about the Time's god.com site is at another site-- Blackboard Scholar:

Spirit is indivisible from matter, Aristotle observed, and the advent of the Internet has only intensified the connection. This portal site, organized by Time magazine, presents itself as a successor to cuneiform, the printing press and radio as a method of observing and conveying spiritual interests "in a temple without bounds." For instance, there is a link to electronic prayer, through which you can e-mail a message to be posted at the Western Wall. This is a broad-brush interfaith sampler of information for whatever path you may be interested in, from the Church of Cyberspace to Allah Online. The site also provides a small, related-resources directory that includes Catholic- and Jewish-oriented popup information windows (avoid the dead sites).

We now come back to the discussion about the domain, viz., www.god.com
An attempt is made here to highlight the Web analytics (i.e., analysis of a Web site).

Visual images of the Web site, www.god.com, at Google

Most recent activity of the Web site, www.god.com, analyzed by Netcraft.com

Google Showing web page information for http://www.god.com

I will be adding some more content on this Web site analytics, asap.

My purpose, here is, also, to share a story, which I found on another blog, with a title, God.com. Incidentally, the title of the blog's article is god.com, but in the text and context there is NONE of the Above that relates to the domain name god.com. A catchy title, and that's it.
Nevertheless, I quote:

...The website located at http://www.fvcommunity.org/gather aims to be a "nationwide online community of preachers committed to speaking prophetically on social justice issues." There are approximately 100 current members paying $100 membership a year.
This is a great example of technology transforming work that is normally thought of as solitary into a collaborative, group effort, enabling not only clergy to form a community and benefit from each other's ideas and expertise but, through the communication among spriritual leaders to, hopefully, build bonds among religious communities and spur people to action.

Note:
In case you have not heard about cyber worship, online relgion, and religion online --that contextualizes all the above themes-- read from my other blog article: Cyber Worship - Look & Feel
Also Read Beliefnet.com: Web Analytics Series no.1

P.S. Thank you Beth Simone Noveck for inspiring me to write this article; But Beth is not alone, there is another blog, that dwells on god.com and is worth citing here.

DISCLAIMER: All of the above is the effort of an individual. No institution or agency supports this project. The information is collected, it is hoped, to build bridges in the society.

South African Hindu woman claims she is Jesus

Strange, shocking, and in the news headlines now:
This is all about Katherine Jhawarelall in Durban, South Africa.
South African Hindu woman claims she is Jesus Thursday May 25 2006, IANS

DURBAN: A Hindu woman here has said she is Jesus Christ and claims to have the "stigmata of Jesus" on her palms, feet and stomach, as well as the power to heal the sick.
Katherine Jhawarelall, 35, who has a degree in criminology, said on Tuesday that she was born with the stigmata and also claimed that Hebrew scriptures and religious symbols from the Bible appear on the walls of her home, the Post newspaper reported.
"I carry the legacy that Jesus Christ is the Archangel Michael and He is universal. In Judaism he is Mikael, in Hinduism he is Shiva, Saraswathie, Luxmi, Lord Krishna and Shirdi Baba, in Christianity he was Jesus Christ and in Islam he is Hasrat Mikael," she was quoted as saying. Read full story

Another source: NRI woman claims she is Lord Jesus, Indo-Asian News Service, Durban, May 24, 2006
For more See Google News

Knowledge Management Applications in Multifaith & / or Multicultural Transactions

Since a couple of years I have been building a webliography on Knowledge Management: Society / Community Wise.

This is a handy list of KM resources on social and humanities connection; it looks beyond corporate intellectual capital management space…; and tries to search for total-solutions that can be applied as best practices in everyday life.

Today, I received a message in my other blog, by Joel C. Yuvienco, who brought attention to his excellent research article, viz., "Knowledge Management of Folk Knowledge: Harnessing the Power of Social Software Applications." Who Cites Joel

I googled, to find if there are any Knowledge Management (KM) applications in the Web for Multifaith & / or Multicultural Transactions. I did not find any!!! May be I did not reach the deep Web.

Whereas, I did find in Joel's article, some useful applications, with both generic and specific approaches. I am sure this article will be a harbinger and hopefully lead to focused KM applications for cultural, religious, and spiritual areas of human concern.

However, googling for KM resources in Multifaith & / or Multicultural areas brought out some interesting citations (relatively speaking), including the following:

User profiling on the Web based on deep knowledge and sequential questioning, by Silvano Mussi, Expert Systems, Volume 23 Page 21 - February 2006 [fulltext, free content, courtesy: Blackwell Synergy]

Capturing Interest Through Inference and Visualization: Ontological User Profiling in Recommender Systems, by Middleton, S. E., et al., In Proceedings of K-CAP2003, Sundial Beach Resort, Sanibel Island, Florida, USA. (2003) [fulltext, free content, courtesy Eprints]


Tools for filtering the World Wide Web exist, but they are hampered by the difficulty of capturing user preferences in such a diverse and dynamic environment. Recommender systems help where explicit search queries are not available or are difficult to formulate, learning the type of thing users like over a period of time.
We explore an ontological approach to user profiling in the context of a recommender system. Building on previous work involving ontological profile inference and the use of external ontologies to overcome the cold-start problem, we explore the idea of profile visualization to capture further knowledge about user interests. Our system, called Foxtrot, examines the problem of recommending on-line research papers to academic researchers. Both our ontological approach to user profiling and our visualization of user profiles are novel ideas to recommender systems. A year long experiment is conducted with over 200 staff and students at the University of Southampton. The effectiveness of visualizing profiles and eliciting profile feedback is measured, as is the overall effectiveness of the recommender system.

Indigenous Knowledge: Making it personal, by Racelle Kooy
Extract: In my experience, Indigenous Knowledge and spirituality are one and the same, or at the very least enmeshed. I consider spirituality as the most sensitive area of IK. This is where the sacred and secret meet. The spiritual aspect of Indigenous Knowledge is literally about the beginning (cosmology) and the end (life after death)

tacit vs. explicit theories: the impact on our thinking and 'theorizing', Mentor's infosophy: socio-technological rendering of information details

BRICKS - Building resources for Integrated Cultural Knowledge Services
The BRICKS Community is the aggregation of a large community of users, composed of content providers, art professionals, and art researchers, as well as students, citizens, tourists, etc. in order to build a consensus, sharing knowledge and service on Digital Content.

Come Xplore - Complore is a Social Research Collaboration Tool to connect the researchers in diverse fields around the world

Reporting Private and Public Religion, Joyce Smith, 2000

Multicultural Knowledge Management

Google: "Managing "indigenous Knowledge"

Looking in Google, for the above resources, was with the intention of getting the whole picture. KM Best practices on the whole, include, software, middleware and mindmaps, as well as, ontologies, taxonomies, etc. These perspectives will facilitate in bringing a holistic approaches in building both the necessary infrastructure and infostructure. My work, herein, is simply based on the professions' call to look, find and capture so that knowledge may be shared among all the concerned. Hopefully, we can attempt to reduce the digital divide in today's information society.

What sort of taxonomy will help this type of KM?
Consider the options:
a) A few bloggers are busy around the globe with Intercultural Knowledge Management
b) Tags that help in Jots - km

A course for the information professionals at DRTC Banglore, in collaboration with Indo-German eGurukul on Digital Libraries

KNOWLEDGE ORGANISATION AND RETRIEVAL
1. Ontologies, Classification
2. Controlled Vocabulary
3. Indexing and Searching
4. Semantic web technology

A journal from a related field viz., Information for Social Change

A new book has a chapter, Globalization, internationalization, and indigenization of pastoral care and counseling by Emmanuel Y. Lartey. See all the contents:
A time of ferment and redefinition / Nancy J. Ramsay -- Pastoral theology as public theology : revolutions in the "fourth area" / Bonnie J. Miller-McLemore -- Power and difference in pastoral theology / Christie Cozad Neuger -- Globalization, internationalization, and indigenization of pastoral care and counseling / Emmanuel Y. Lartey -- Ferment and imagination in training in clinical ministry / Loren L. Townsend -- Methods in pastoral theology, care, and counseling / Joretta L. Marshall -- Contemporary pastoral theology : a wider vision for the practice of love / Nancy J. Ramsay. See the book details at Amazon

Another book, published in 2005, is also relevant. Reclaiming Culture: Indigenous People and Self Representation, by Joy Hendry (Palgrave Macmillan). The contents of the book are: 1 Museums are transformed; Aboriginal tourism and that elusive authenticity; Indigenous or alter-native forms of cultural display; Language and formal cultural education; Arts, architecture, and native creativity; Land claims, archaeology, and new communities; International links, cultural exchange, and personal identity; Conclusions : what we can learn [Details: www.bn.com]

P.S.Dear ALL: This is a friendly call to the KM gurus, guys and knowledge workers, and the Digital Natives: Just-in-case you know or have come across some reference, institution or research project in the above discussed area, please email it to me. I will cite you as the source of that information. I am sure that bloggers / blog-graphers at the KnowledgeBoard will get this message. Trusting to hear from you immediately. THANKS.

Multifaith Issues From Other Blogs - Update No. 4

Golden Rule Meditation Exercises
Scarboro Missions is proud to announce the publication of the Golden Rule Meditation Exercises. These 21 meditation exercises are the fruit of a three-year project involving 25 writers, editors and consultants. The exercises foster reflection on the Golden Rule in 13 religions. Themes include compassion, healing, art, global citizenship, social justice, journaling, the circle and unity amidst diversity. The do-it-yourself meditations are designed for both individual and group reflection; some of the meditations focus on the visual qualities of the Scarboro Missions' Golden Rule Poster [source: INTERFAITH DESK NEWS: NEWS HEADLINES – May 2006].

Small Jewish Group Joins Boycott Call for 'Da Vinci Code' May 22, 2006

WASHINGTON (RNS) A small Jewish group has joined several vocal Christian organizations in denouncing “The Da Vinci Code,” pressing for a boycott of the new film based on Dan Brown's controversial novel. -- Piet Levy

SourceForge.net: Religious (Religious lapel pin), May 22, 2006,
The world's largest development and download repository of Open Source code and applications ... News. CVS. Files. Religious: Build your Monastery in Internet ... User Interface : Web-based. Project UNIX name : religious. Registered : 2005-02-04 04:41 ... Source: sourceforge.net

Prayer service to be at Multicultural Festival, Wichita Eagle May 20, 2006,
A MultiFaith/MultiCultural Prayer Service will be held during the Multicultural Festival next weekend at Old Cowtown Museum.

Wearing A Kipa In Qatar, Rabbi Daniel S. Brenner - Special To The Jewish Week,
Just after Qatar and Iran pledged $100 million to aid the struggling Hamas-led Palestinian Authority, I was on a Qatar Airways flight, staring out into the Saudi Arabian sky. A Western rabbi traveling to Qatar is hardly news. What was making headline news in the Arab world this year was the fact that — due to the groundbreaking work of Congregation B’nai Jeshurun’s Rabbi Rolando Matalon, Rabbi Nancy Fuchs-Kreimer, the Jewish Theological Seminary’s Rabbi Burton Vizotsky and Mark Cohen from Princeton University — rabbis from Israel were asked to speak at the Conference on Religious Dialogue in Doha.
While I was flying over Mecca, Rabbi Yehuda Mirsky (Orthodox-Jerusalem) and Rabbi David Lazar (Conservative-Tel Aviv) were driving to Amman to catch a plane to Doha. Israeli rabbis headed for an inter-religious conference in a Wahabi Muslim land. That’s a first.

Muslim civil rights; the Arlington Group; Commonalities among religions, May 15, 2006
In Monday's RNS report Omar Sacirbey writes about Muslims looking to blacks for guidance on civil rights: African-American Muslims trace their Islamic heritage to slaves brought to North America in the 17th century, some 10 percent to 30 percent of whom were estimated to be Muslim. Many call themselves indigenous Muslims.

Welcome your adopted child with multifaith rituals. Join Beliefnet's ...
by Child waiting for adoption (child-waiting-for-adoption) @ Mon, 08 May 2006 23:58:34 -0400
Belief.Net - When Cindy Champnella brought her adopted daughter home from China, she soon discovered how upset Jaclyn was about someone she'd left behind at the orphanage. Jaclyn had treated two-year-old Xiao Xiao as her "baby," and once she was no longer there ...

May you be happy, may your dreams come true, Stanford Report, June 15, 2005
Sylvia Boorstein's keynote speech: 'May you be happy, may your dreams come true.' This speech was delivered without a text or notes and is a transcription of Dr. Boorstein's spoken words at the Multifaith Baccalaureate Celebration on June 11, 2005.
"It's so great. I got so excited while that was happening. One of my meditation teachers used to end each of our interviews actually, I'd have my hand on the door ready to leave, and she'd say to me, "Remember, Sylvia, be happy," and I'd go out and I actually for a long time thought it was a salutation, like "have a good day" or something that you say just in a routine kind of a way, and it took me a long time to realize that it was an instruction, "Be happy," and not only that it was
an instruction but that it was a wisdom transmission, that happiness was a possibility.

Survey of News and Current Information Sources - Blogs + Websites:
While news reports and views are plenty, once in a way I must also list all the good resources that tend to carry Multifaith information.
Here is a list of interesting sites that add value to the Multifaith domain:

• Get Religion - (Review of media's religion coverage)
  
• The Revealer - (Daily review of religion news)
  
• SoMA Review - (Humorous look at faith in the news)
  
• Religion News Blog
  
• Holy Weblog (Reviewing the good, the bad and the quirky in the religious world)
  
• Blog Heaven (intends to cover a complete spectrum of religion news, commentary, trends, and personal reflection)
  
• Because religion can be interesting
  
• Blog Heaven (intends to cover a complete spectrum of religion news, commentary, trends, and personal reflection)
  
• Religion News Service (A weblog from Religion News Service (RNS), the only secular newswire focused exclusively on religion and ethics. RNS is a unit of Newhouse News Service and Advance Publications)
  
• Religion Press Release Services
  
• Religion Link (Linking journalists to ideas and sources For reporting today's hottest news)
  
• Religion & Ethics Newsweekly Program Listings
  
• More blogs with religious news
  
• More Multifaith news sources at Google
  
• Religion Web Logs at Eatonweb Blog Directory Portal
  

P.S. Bookmark this forthcoming event: World Religions After 911 Congress, [aka. World’s Religions After September 11, A Global Congress], 11-15 Sep 2006.
Contact: Prof Arvind Sharma for details: arvind.sharma@mcgill.ca

Death and Dying - Multifaith Resource Series no.1

End-of-life, or dying moments are difficult to document, and impossible to be totally visualized by all. Nevertheless, there are notes in archives and libraries about experiences of the great beings, and in this access to what is in libraries we are quite lucky.
Some attempts are made in the following book to capture such experiences. These are worth reading by anyone who is waiting to experience such a transit.
Graceful Exits: How Great Beings Die, By Sushila Blackman, Shambhala Publications, 2006.

About the book: This collection of 108 stories recounts the ways in which Hindu, Tibetan and Zen Buddhist masters, both ancient and modern, have confronted their own deaths. It is intended to show people how to leave the world gracefully and place death in its proper perspective.

While the author has left the book behind for us, her spouse has the following comment:

As Blackman notes, the Judaeo-Christian perspective of death is not represented here, but this fills a demand for inspirational books about death and Eastern spirituality. Amazon.com

Some Reviews of this book:

Publishers Weekly
Often, the stories of great people's deaths focus on the bizarre details. Blackman's book does not focus on such details, but it focuses on death as a great teaching. Death in the Buddhist and Hindu spiritual traditions, according to the author, is not confined to a particular moment but is a process that may take days even after the usual medical indications of death have appeared. The experience of death is part of the discipline that these "great beings," or spiritual teachers, have practiced, and death is an opportunity for the greatest meditation and fulfillment.

Library Journal
Blackman narrates the death stories of over 100 Tibetan, Hindu, and Zen masters, ancient and modern. The striking element in these accounts is a sense of being fully prepared to meet death. Blackman grappled with lung cancer and came to peace with her own fears about death as she compiled this book, completed only a few months before she died.

More reviews, excerpts at the publishers' Web site and the Barnesandnoble bookstore

An interesting Web resources: Growth House: Guide To Death, Dying, Grief, Bereavement, and End Of Life Resources

Santa Cruz County End-of-Life Coalition

More on Death & Dying, and the related area in multifaith perspectives is available with this blogger.
Contact me at mt2222 at yahoo dot com.

Multifaith Issues From Other Blogs - Update No. 3

Christian funds for Puri shrine, Soumyajit Pattnaik, Bhubaneswar, Hindustan Times May 17, 2006

Christians are barred from entering the Jagannath temple at Puri but a Geneva-based Christian lawyer has donated nearly $400,000 (Rs 1.78 crore) to the shrine — the amount is more than the total donation received last year.

"Traditional British Values," by Ethnocentrist, May 15, 2006
the Education Minister, Bill Rammell, wants to start teaching British youth "traditional British values".

The UK is a strong multicultural and multifaith society, but to prosper it must focus on shared "core values". These include the tradition of free speech; the contested view that Britain was founded on freedom, democracy and liberty; and the contribution of different communities to building a modern, successful country.

Muslims rage against The Da Vinci Code REUTERS May 15, 2006

A powerful organisation of Indian Islamic clerics promised on Monday to help Christian groups launch protests if the authorities did not ban the screening of the controversial film, The Da Vinci Code.
Protest in India against the film have so far been low key, but several Catholic groups have threatened to stage street demonstrations and even to shut down cinema halls screening it. Continue reading Muslim / Islamic perspectives, from a new article at IslamiCity: Da Vinci Code and Muslims

Bible banned in Australian hospitals, by JR, 14 May 2006

Queensland Multi Faith Health Care Council deputy chairman John Chalmers, who is also in charge of hospital chaplaincies for the Catholic Church in Brisbane, said he was saddened by the ban. "This is still a predominantly Christian country but unfortunately some people think the multifaith dialogue means that we don't mention Jesus," he said. "Putting a Bible in a drawer is not a matter of imposing it on other faiths. The patient doesn't have to take it out if they don't want to. "I think it is more offensive to present a bland environment with no Bibles."
Islamic Council of Queensland president Abdul Jalal said the ban was unnecessary. "It is ridiculous to think that we might be offended by seeing a Bible in a drawer - it is an example of multiculturalism gone mad," he said. "Part of being a Muslim is that you have to be accepting of all religious texts."

From the Archives of this Blogsphere:
Blogs on Multifaith Issues & Concerns - Update No. 1; Update No. 2

Multifaith Issues From Other Blogs - Update No. 2

Note: While it is an old fashion to manually search and compile updates, I feel the spidering technology is not yet so sophisticated to look in all directions (viz., horrizontal, vertical, spiral, etc.), for multifaith literature which encompasses faiths, spiritualities, cults, cultures, races, regions, signs, symbols, actions, activities, as well as, transendental meditation. Hence, this indexer will continue to search and update this Multifaith blogsphere. I will be happy if any one can find a tool that automatically searches and compiles updates. And until such time keep reading manually compiled Updates.

Multi-faith Education: Is education the same thing as schooling? No it obviously isn't. Schooling is the responsibility of national and local government and therefore freely available to every family in the country. Schools have offered religious Education as part of the curriculum since 1944. In a multicultural world Religious Education takes on a different meaning. More...

Multifaith Schools: was reading the Daily Express earlier, there's a new government plan to force all faith schools to teach the basics of other religious paths. It's backed by all the major faiths in the UK.
I think it's a great idea. It's a great idea for people of one faith to be able to see the point of view of another faith, this should breed tolerance and understanding which is sorely needed these days. Only understanding one faith is a surefire way to breed closed minds, which can only further split our society along ethnic and faith based divides. More...

Religious Leaders Sign National Declaration to Address Violence Against Women:The FaithTrust Institute, an international, multifaith organization working to end sexual and domestic violence, has announced that forty-two national religious leaders have signed their National Declaration by Religious Leaders to Address Violence Against Women. United Church of Christ General Minister and President the Rev. John Thomas is among the signers. The Institute invites others to sign the Declaration at their web site. More...

Single Faith Prison Initiatives: The Fed plans to seperate cell blocks and allocate lots of money for single-faith prison initiatives. Source. This is truly bizarre to me for a number of reasons. First, evidence is lacking on whether faith-based prison programs are effective. See Kleiman’s bit for details. Second, evidence is lacking on whether secular programs are comparatively more effective. To be sure, there are secular prison programs, usually dealing with finding a house or job, securing mental help, and fighting drug addiction. At one point, I was part of a secular group that worked with prisoners on self-esteem and non-violent communication. These secular groups just don’t receive funds allocated for faith based prison programs, which brings me to my third point. Given the Constitution’s Establishment Clause, it’s rather suspect for government to fund religious programs of any kind, more suspect when it prohibits those funds from going toward similar secular programs, and even more suspect when they go toward only a few (or one) religion, either intentionally or merely effectually. And that’s exactly what this new fed plan calls for. It’s not clear to me from the article why it’d be desirable to limit each cell block to a single program. Again, where’s the evidence that a single-faith program would be preferable to a multifaith program or to several programs of different faiths? More...

Blogs on Multifaith Issues & Concerns - Update No. 1