The little big bang and the 'God particle"

Yesterday, physicists at the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN) achieved high-power collisions of sub-atomic particles. This is the first part of a two year experiment that aims to recreate and study the conditions present when the Big Bang occurred. And the great news is that we are all still here!

Long touted as the experiment that would end the world by creating a black hole somewhere near Geneva, the experiment has succeeded in its initial aim and (bonus!) it has added to the sum of human knowledge without the total obliteration of life on earth.

“It’s a great day to be a particle physicist,” said CERN Director General Rolf Heuer. “A lot of people have waited a long time for this moment, but their patience and dedication is starting to pay dividends.”

“With these record-shattering collision energies, the [Large Hadren Collider] LHC experiments are propelled into a vast region to explore, and the hunt begins for dark matter, new forces, new dimensions and the Higgs boson,” said ATLAS collaboration spokesperson, Fabiola Gianotti.

Ah yes, the infamous Higgs Boson, or as it is commonly known, the God Particle... I am sure that you will not be surprised to know that my little blogging brain has been enchanted by the notion of a God particle and indeed, by the thought that there is a place for a God anything within the scientific world.

This particle has never been observed experimentally and its existence is purely hypothetical at this point. The theory is that the interaction of the Higgs Boson with other particles ensures that the universe contains matter, rather than just energy alone. It is for this reason that the Higgs Boson is known as the God particle. Essentially, if this experiment detects the elusive (and currently only imagined) Higgs Boson, it will help to explain the origin of mass in the universe.

The popular interest in the God particle is one of the reasons why CERN now has over 120,000 followers on Twitter. Another big draw is the fear factor that surrounds the experiment. There has been (and probably still is) a small risk that this experiment will lead to the creation of a black hole that will end life on earth. Not doing much to allay fears that physicists consider the total annihilation of the human race to be collateral damage, last month, CERN issued a paper including the following statement: there is little doubt that black hole production at the [Large Hadron Collider] would be an unacceptable and irresponsible risk."

While this statement does appear to indicate that CERN is NOT in favour of the end of the world, the language is not quite strong enough to help me sleep easy. 'Black hole production' - as if this is an every day occurrence? 'an unacceptable and irresponsible risk' - yeheh and then some.

However, there is a serious side to this experiment (which is far too complicated for my feeble grey matter to understand). As Heuer explains: The LHC has a real chance over the next two years of discovering supersymmetric particles and possibly giving insights into the composition of about a quarter of the universe."

Although yesterday's success is certainly cause for celebration, it marks the very beginning of this experiment. Up to two years of experiments will happen in the LHC at current levels and computer calculations will continue for even longer, despite the fact that these calculations will be undertaken using 'the Grid', a vast network of computers that will process 15m gigabytes of data a year.

Follow developments directly with CERN or on Twitter.

Life on television

I never thought of myself as much of an animal person but I’m starting to rethink this. In fact, I have been on safari three times, whale watching, diving and to see orangutans in Borneo (all of which required much saving and penny pinching to achieve). I must, on reflection, have quite an interest in our furry, feathered and gilled friends.

Lately, I asked myself – who would I choose to interview, if I had my pick? One of the people who sprung to mind was Sir David Attenborough, who is famous for his natural history programmes and work within the administration of the BBC.

His programmes, including the 'Life' series and 'Planet Earth' feature some of the most spectacular wildlife and landscape photography that I have ever seen and often, the moments that his work captures are so very beautiful as to cause pin prick tears to leap to my eyes.

But it is not just the flickering images of animals, plants, underwater creatures and birds that have me glued to the television set any time that one of Attenborough’s programmes come on. It constantly amazes me how his observations about the lives of other species are applicable to human life, whether these observations are about the role of the family, the drive to survive, or the search for food in landscapes that are altered by environmental damage.

What these series proved to me was that life exists wherever it can. In freezing climes, deep underwater and in the hottest, driest deserts, life goes on. Life finds a way, even in circumstances when the entirety of that life must be invested in staying alive.

Attenborough would surely be an interesting subject, even if we never mentioned the flora and fauna. After all, he has been involved in television for over fifty years, first having been recruited into television when he had seen just one television programme. He has been Controller of BBC Two and also, Director of Programmes across both channels, although he gave up this role to return to making programmes.

His 9-part ‘Life’ series, which began in 1979 with 'Life on Earth' and concluded in 2008 with ‘Life in Cold Blood’ succeeded in completing the mammoth task of documenting all the major terrestrial animals and plants on the planet.

His later work has taken on an overtly environmentalist stance and he is committed to promoting environmental issues.

I would like to ask Attenborough about his views on ecology and how these views changed over time. I would like to ask him where in the world he would most like to return to. What were the moments that took his breath away? How do he and other people who watch individual animals for months at a time remain emotionally detached when that animal gets injured or eaten? What have other living creatures taught him about the human race? And I would like to ask him about patience, which he must have in infinite quantities.

He has been awarded Baftas, an honourary degree from the Open University, a knighthood, the Order of Merit and he’s even had a Mezozoic reptile named after him.

The man who has documented almost the entirety of life on earth has done much with his go on the roundabout. If anyone would be in a position to discuss the meaning of life, with some authority, I suggest that it might just be this man…

Let's celebrate the weekend!

The weekend is almost upon us and I am delighted. There's nothing like enduring the working week to make Friday seem like a cause for celebration. These days, we believe that a weekend of rest and play is our God given right, but this was not always the case.

The idea of leisure time (yes, that's right, leisure time is an 'idea'. As a member of the generation who believe in career breaks and yearlong round-the-world-trips, I can barely get my head around this) seems to have originated in Victorian England, near the end of the Industrial Revolution. In the early days, weekends were a brief one-day affair and given that factory workers often worked up to 18 hours a day, 6 days a week, my suspicion is that rather than 'going on a mad one' on Saturday and spending Sunday nursing hangovers, playing football and having brunch with friends, this one-day was probably given over to household chores and sleep.

As the working class gained more power and organised themselves they successfully fought to have the weekend extended to Saturday and Sunday. With the development of railways, workers began to travel during their time off work and to enjoy the sights and sounds of new areas and even (imagine the excitement when it initially became possible) the seaside.

With the development of leisure time, public parks were created for recreation and relaxation. In fact, the growth of leisure time has been one of the most important factors in the development of the society that we experience today and of the most common lifestyle aspirations. Without leisure time there would be no professional sports, the word hobby might only apply to the pursuits of the wealthiest people in society, the time that we would spend with loved ones would be severely limited, spas would be empty, hotels would be few in number and the word brunch would be banished from common usage. And who would we be without time off work? After all, all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy and Jill a very dreary little lady.

So, as I set into the first true weekend that I've been in a position to enjoy for quite some time, I will try to remember that far from being short, my weekend will be twice as long as the weekend enjoyed by workers during the Industrial Revolution. However, I'm sure that, on Sunday evening, when I am cursing what Monday brings, I won't care how long (or little) my ancestors partied for, or how much workers rights have improved since then.

The generation game

I spent last Sunday with my extended family. This consisted of my parents, brothers and sister, grandfather, one uncle, his wife and their three children. Several hours, one turkey, many potatoes and a lot of excitement over a toy zoo got me thinking about family.

These days it's become difficult to define family because it means so many different things to different people. These are the elements that make up most of the definitions that I read online: a social unit living together; a primary social group - parents and children; class/ collection of things sharing a common attribute; people descended from a common ancestor; kin; a taxonomic group containing one of more genera; syndicate; an association of people who share common beliefs or activities.

Strictly speaking, the primary functions of the family are reproduction, orientation and socialization and the formation of an economically productive household. I had considered family life to be a biological fact but this is not necessarily the case. Ethnography, history, law and social statistics suggest that the human family is an institution rather than a biological fact. Family life is a product of evolution, rather than being in existence since time immemorial. Some researchers, including Friedrich Engels contended that economical factors led to the formation of family groups.

The term family, when applied to humans is often used to mean people related by blood lines without specifying that these people actually live together or share their lives in any way. In other cases we describe a group as a family because they are close, rather than because they share the same gene pool.

But what does it mean to be a family? I think that that's one of the questions that each of us will provide different answers to, depending on our experiences of family life. In my case, I grew up in a very traditional family - mother, father, four kids, grandparents, aunts, uncles and multitudes of cousins. We're a motley rabble, but there are few rifts amongst the lot (which, come to think of it, is probably quite unusual) and we are generally very close.

To me family means the people who will love you even when they don't like you and who will support you through whatever life throws at you. The word 'unconditional' floats in the background of any of my thoughts about family. My family members don't necessarily know me inside and out, but they're the people with whom I can act deplorably and come back the next day with my tail between my legs, safe in the knowledge that (eventually) they will forgive me. My family have taught me most of what I know about how to survive in this world, both physically and emotionally.

I've always thought as a family as being a hierarchically structured school system, by which elder generations pass on their skills and knowledge to the younger members. On Sunday as I interacted with my young cousins I couldn't help but think that the channel is open at both ends and that although my uncle and aunt are passing on invaluable life skills, from good hygiene to how to care for another person, they are also learning from their children. Our education never truly ends and certainly, it would appear that rearing children and interacting with grandchildren is a living grind school in self knowledge and self discovery.

Back to work

Yesterday, I started a new job. First days are always daunting. You don’t know where they keep the coffee cups (next to the water cooler), or if anyone will ask you to go to lunch with them (they didn’t). However, I am more daunted by the thought that work will become the meaning of my life.

It is very easy to define ourselves by what we do from nine to five, or more usually, nine til whatever time in the evening one can pry oneself from the desk without risking long stares and reprimand. There are people who truly do give the best days of their best years to their careers and whose entire focus is upon bounding up the career ladder, or increasing their market share. That is a personal choice like any other however, while as a friend or parent you may be irreplaceable, when you leave a position of employment it will be just a matter of days before another young upstart gets a feel for your role, sits at your desk and reads all your old emails. This arrogant creature may even do a better job than you did. And you will have to live with this. In fact, it’s probably a good idea that you make peace with this idea now.

Work might feel like your second home, but it’s always an occupation with an end limit, even when the business is your own. Call me unfocused, but I've always believed in preparing for the time when there is no work to do and nowhere to go from Monday to Friday. I think that the best way to do this is to share my energies across the span of my life, rather than focusing all my attention upon my career.

I’m trying to keep this in mind as I travel south from the city to my place of employment (which, in ironic fashion, is located in the leafy suburbs). I’m also trying to keep in mind that during these tough economic times, a job is a job and it’s best to smile and keep the head up than drown in the mundanities of working life. And this is the other thing that I have been contemplating since I left the office yesterday afternoon: work is work.

While we often become very close to the people we meet there and enjoy all of the office banter that floats above the heads of the assembled worker bees throughout the day, there are many things about working that are unpleasant (getting up early in the morning for one), but they still have to be done. Other aspects of employment fascinate us and require us to invest ourselves both intellectually and emotionally in projects that we work on. There is a danger in becoming too preoccupied by the fascinating aspects of our jobs, or indeed by the fact that our job fails to stimulate us.

When you return to work after a long absence you imagine that working will give you a useful purpose in life and that between open and close of business you will be called upon to give the best of your intellect and to share the greatest depths of your creativity. This is rarely the case and little gets done without some hard slog.

So, to any of you who are out there searching for work (as I have been in recent weeks) or bemoaning the fact that you no longer have a job to go to, for whatever reason, remember this: most of what the average worker does in any day is utterly mind numbing.

And to those of you who might be considered work-aholics: Get a life, because if you don't, one day you'll be unemployed/ retired/ on extended leave and if you've no extra curricular activities on the go now, then it will be overwhelming to involve yourself in sufficient activities to keep yourself occupied and, crucially, fullfilled.

We are who we are, not what our job title describes us as. Wish me luck in keeping sight of this fact.

Logotherapy and the search for meaning

Viktor E. Frankl’s book, Man’s Search for Meaning is a slim volume, but within its 154 pages it contains concisely presented insights into our human psychology that go a long way to explaining the role of meaning in our lives and the problems that we encounter when we believe that our lives have become meaningless.

The book is divided into two parts. The first section offers an account of the psychological impact of living within concentration camps during World War II. The second section offers a brief introduction to logotherapy, which is considered to be the third school of psychology, after Freud’s psychoanalysis and Adler’s individual psychology.

Having survived three concentration camps, Frankl is in an unusual position to discuss the psychological impact of cruelty, suffering and the role of hope during times of intense challenge. His account of his time in the camps is not a description of the atrocities that occurred there, but rather a description of the effects upon the mind, of life in a concentration camp. Some of the insights that I found to be the most interesting included his description of the deadening of emotions that occurred to prisoners within the camp and how hardened most became to the suffering and death all around them. He is clearly a deep feeling man however, he notes that he himself did not always behave with compassion and that in those circumstances, personal survival and the survival of one’s family took precedence over almost all else, even if that meant that others died.

The role of hope, as a belief in a possible positive future, appears to have been paramount to ensuring the survival of any prisoner and Frankl notes that when a prisoner gave up hope and ate the last bit of bread that he had been saving, or smoked the cigarette that he had buried deep in a pocket for safe-keeping, it was a virtual certainty that that prisoner would be dead within a few days, or even hours. It seems that when man lives on the very knife edge of starvation and exhaustion, hope can sustain him from meal to meal, but without that hope, he will perish before help can come.

The book was first published in 1946 and my edition is an imprint of 1992. On the front cover of the copy that I bought the following line is printed: 9 million copies sold. I wonder how many people have read the book now and I suggest that if you have not read it, you do. I found it to be well worth the few hours that it takes to flick from cover to cover. In his own introduction to this edition, Frankl describes his thoughts when interviewers or TV presenters ask him how he feels about the success of his book. He writes: I react by reporting that in the first place I do not at all see in the bestseller status of my book an achievement and accomplishment on my part, but rather an expression of the misery of our time: if hundreds of thousands of people reach out for a book whose very title promises to deal with the question of a meaning of life, it must be a question that burns under their fingernails.”

In my very humble opinion, the fact that many of us are searching for meaning need not necessarily be read as a negative aspect of our times. In the section on logotherapy Frankl notes that depression in often caused by a lack of meaning and that when people have a purpose, any purpose to their lives, they become more positive about the nature of their existence. He writes that far from meaning being a god-given right with which we are born and that we must only seek in order to discover, we must see our lives as an opportunity to create meaning and to find a purpose for our existence.

Frankl thought that it was unfortunate that many of those who read his book had not yet found meaning in their lives. I think that it is positive that so many people are out there seeking that meaning, searching for a way to infuse their lives with purpose and reading the wise words of Viktor E. Frankl in order to help them along their way.

When the streets were paved with gold

Over the past few days I've been thinking about the meaning of life as sought by people living in western societies over the past few years. I can't seem to get away from one word: consumerism.

It is the obvious conclusion to make, but over the past few years, many of us who live in open, western societies went mad for... well, just about anything that had a label on it. In Ireland, this period of collective mental illness will always be referred to as the Celtic Tiger era. It's left 35,000 people in arrears on their mortgages and even more people living with negative equity on their homes.

During the boom times, the Irish yen for a bit of land went nuts and as a result, we moved in our droves into tiny battery-hen style apartments, complete with designer bathroom fittings. But it didn't stop there, we wanted the whole celluloid package and with it we hoped to prove that we were just as cosmopolitan and fashionable and successful as anyone in any city anywhere in the world. Paddy was all growed up and ready to party, with champagne and a gambling problem. While the economic festivities lasted, the restaurants were packed out, the bars spilled over and large numbers of previously sane individuals redecorated their chicken coops with the turning of the season.

This malady appears to have affected people, to a certain extent, throughout the developed world. We all went 'stuff' mad. Or did we? Was it all about the haul, or was it about the status and the power?

Much of what people bought during the good times they bought with cheap cash lent to them by the same banks who now wouldn't lend you a halfpenny if you promised them a penny next week for it. Few of the blingest people actually owned much of the wealth that they surrounded themselves with. Many of the less bling but certainly shiny people didn't even own their own living room sofa. It was all a great and glistening make-believe.

Now, from the vantage point of a post-credit crunch world, one has to ask, why did we think that we could fill the deep void inside us with trinkets from IKEA, designer shoes and second homes? Did we honestly believe that our American dreams had come home to roost and that, with our pockets clinking with the keys to over-inflated property, we could then sit back and live happily ever after? And come to think of it, what is happily ever after anyway? Did we expect to achieve a sustainable contentment by sitting back and admiring our shopping? Something tells me that that's one brand of happiness that goes stale very quickly.

My suspicion is that rather than believing that a new Bugatti coffee machine would set us free, we were all engaged in an ill-fated arms race of the keeping up with the Joneses variety. Mr or Ms Jones had the latest 'it' laptop, lipstick, mobile phone, car or job and so we wanted it too, not because we felt that it would change our lives, but to prove that we were doing just as well as they were and that we too were au fait with the latest in Italian marble kitchen tiling.

What happened to us? When did we begin to believe that the only means available to us to demonstrate our worth was through the display of our collective possessions (which very quickly became junk - does anything define the past ten years like the growth of the rented storage space market)? We were peacocks who bought their feathers on credit.

Why did we crave the power and the status of having it all? Why did the good times turn us into despicable people who couldn't recognise our own true value? And why, during a period when we had more than ever, did we settle for so little in terms of the homes that we were willing to purchase? It's beyond me. The only explanation is that the property developers, in collusion with the government, put something in the water.

Thankfully, those crazy days are over. I must admit that a bit of indulgence was great craic while the good times rolled, but I for one have felt an enormous pressure lift since the Joneses stopped eating out three times a week and have decided to content themselves with just the one foreign holiday this year. Everyone is making do with what they have and although this has led to much stress for the many who have less than they require, for some of us, it's a relief to get serious again and not to feel the need to find every 'it' club, or cafe, or lamp before everyone else has chewed it up and spit it out again.

There will always be people who lust for power and who will want to demonstrate to others that they are the main man or woman on the island/continent/planet. However, now that the money's all gone and the rivers of credit have run dry, they'll have to demonstrate their power in more creative ways than overpriced furnishings - perhaps even by being shrewd operators who amass a following due to their business acumen, or wise ways. Either that or the economy will pick up and we'll all be back hating ourselves as we queue for the designer handbags that we believe will change our lives (if only for the flicker of an instant that we show it off to friends and colleagues, while basking in the glow of its astounding price tag).

Let's hope that before the good times roll once more we gain a little more confidence and a new perspective on our value within society - it seems to me that when it comes to the worth of a human individual nothing is relative and we'd do well to remember that whenever the Joneses get a fresh sniff of cash.

It's good to have a giggle

Monty Python's Meaning of Life is a string of ridiculous sketches that might be said to illustrate, in a surreal fashion, typical moments that occur between birth and death (if having your leg bitter off by a tiger - in Africa - can be described as typical). In other words, it's a comedy movie about birth, sex, love, war, death and anything and everything in between.

The Pythons claim that when they set out to make the movie they wanted to offend just about everyone and with musical numbers such as 'Every sperm is sacred', which makes a laughing stock of the Catholic church's ban on contraception and negative predisposition towards masturbation, they certainly offended many.

In fact, upon its release, Ireland banned the movie, although they later allowed it to be released for home viewing. There's something quite wonderful about a movie the subject matter of which is the meaning of life, that firstly, makes us laugh (often at ourselves) and secondly, that laughs at just about everyone's way of life or assumptions. After all, life is a bit of a muddle and sometimes the only way to make sense of it all is to read it as a comedy (even when it's starting to look more like a tragedy). As long as you're laughing at yourself, it's not so very offensive to laugh at everyone else too.

I am thoroughly amused by the fact that the movie was banned in my home country; it seems so petty and finger-wagging in a fusty old spinster aunt sort of a way (although more rightly the image should be one of a far too powerful priest in full garb). Now I am amused by this censorship, at the time I would have been (I was too young to have much of an opinion when the film was originally released) appalled that my government had put in place laws to prevent me from seeing what is, in essence, a feature length comedy sketch show. I think it is appalling that any government should censor any form of culture that people can choose for themselves not to experience or to enjoy in their own time.

These days we like to think of ourselves as being very PC but the reality is that we're far more willing to accept cultural media that may offend some, than people were willing to accept in the past. If we held the same views that the Irish establishment took when they banned Monty Python, we'd probably never see an episode of The Simpsons.

This is a good thing. It does mean that comedy can sometimes step over the line and say and do things that the general public does not approve of, but as long as that public has a right to voice their opinions, it's surely better to have a media that might sometimes push the boundaries than one that is forced permanently to sit on the proverbial fence.

Monty Python's Meaning of Life has been criticised for being disjointed and for failing to provide a single narrative throughout the movie. However, it is a movie that is adored by legions of fans, including many who were not even born when it was originally released and it has a following too large and diverse to be described as cult-like. This just goes to show that although the archaic attitudes that led to it being banned may have died out, an appreciation for a good old laugh lives on. We change our attitudes and our tastes but the fundamentals remain - one of the most important of these is that it has always been and always will be good to have a giggle.

To give you a laugh this afternoon, here are a few snippets of the movie:

Every sperm is sacred

Intro

Sex ed class

The miracle of birth

A tiger in Africa

Death

What makes someone jewish and j-dating online

Lately, my blog has focused on religion. Rather than trying to make an in-depth survey of world religions, I've jumped from topic to topic and tasted a little of this and a finger-full of that. I've learnt a lot but I probably don't understand much more about what it means to follow any single world religion than I did when I started out. I'm now itching to move on to other subjects, but before I do I feel that I should dip that toe once more and write something (does it seem to you that that word could be replaced by 'anything'?) about Judaism.

Enter the word Judaism into your Google search bar and you'll most likely come up with a surprising entry at the top of the organic results - Judaism 101 at www.jewfaq.com. Yes folks, the Jewish community knew that I was coming, complete with an empty mind and a willingness to focus upon tiny details of their faith. Fantastic stuff - in my opinion, when communicating any basic information it's always best to begin with an assumption that although other people may not know anything about what you know, this does not make them stupid.

I start with a simple question - what do Jews believe? As seems to be the case with most religions, the answer to this question is not at all simplistic. According to jewfaq.com, there is no definitive and formal set of beliefs and generally, actions are considered to be more important than beliefs. The basic principles of the religion are contained in Rambam's thirteen principles, which include the following items: God exists; God is eternal; The Messiah will come; God will reward the good and punish the bad.

Pretty standard stuff, aside from the mention of the coming of the Messiah, which some might dispute.

It constantly amazes me how similar world religions are when we compare their basic principles. It's when you get into the nitty-gritty of interpretation, expression and law that the contrasts between them become obvious.

However, Judaism does have one feature that differentiates it from other major world religions and this is its relationship with Israel. Other religions have their holy places or seats of power but, to my knowledge, no other religion has the same connection with a geographical location that Judaism has with the land of Israel.

Israel is often referred to by members of the Jewish community as the 'promised land'. This is a delicate subject so, rather than making any comment of my own, I'll quote directly from Judaism 101: The land of Israel is central to Judaism. A substantial portion of Jewish law is tied to the land of Israel, and can only be performed there. Some rabbis have declared that it is a mitzvah (commandment) to take possession of Israel and to live in it (relying on Num. 33:53). The Talmud indicates that the land itself is so holy that merely walking in it can gain you a place in the World to Come. Prayers for a return to Israel and Jerusalem are included in daily prayers as well as many holiday observances and special events.

Living outside of Israel is viewed as an unnatural state for a Jew. The world outside of Israel is often referred to as "galut," which is usually translated as "diaspora" (dispersion), but a more literal translation would be "exile" or "captivity." When we live outside of Israel, we are living in exile from our land."

So, aside from a belief in the coming of the Messiah and a close tie to a specific area of the Middle East, what makes a Jew a Jew? Jews often describe themselves as the children of Israel, which refers to the fact that they are the descendants of Jacob, who was also known as Israel. Although being a descendant of Jacob is an important part of being Jewish, belonging or 'Jewishness' is passed by matrilineal descent. This means that if you're mother is a Jew you are necessarily born a Jew too, but that if your mother is not Jewish, even if your father is, you will not necessarily be Jewish.

Conversion is an option for enthusiasts who were not born to Jewish parents. However, converts are not sought and conversion is not encouraged.

But what does it really mean to be Jewish and what does a person gain from being part of this community? Obviously, it is something extremely important to those who adhere to this faith, even if they rarely practice.

I became particularly aware of just how important membership of this faith is to some Jewish people when a friend of mine was dating an American Jew. He was an intelligent, articulate, seemingly emotionally mature and not obviously religious individual. However, during the time that they were involved (and it was quite serious) he often expressed concern that she was Catholic. My friend was upset by the fact that her religion might be considered a deal-breaker and began to research the subject of mixed-religion relationships. One day, while reading an article about this subject, she discovered JDate. JDate is an online dating service with one significant prerequisite to sign-up: to find a date you've got to be Jewish.

This is how JDate describes it's mission: JDate's mission is to strengthen the Jewish community and ensure that Jewish traditions are sustained for generations to come. To accomplish this mission, we provide a global network where Jewish singles can meet to find friendship, romance and life-long partners within the Jewish faith.

Here at JDate we are proud of our Jewish traditions and values and are therefore not only deeply committed to our support for Israel and Jewish cultural programs throughout the world, but also supportive of charitable non-profit organizations of all faiths.

Since 1997, JDate has been growing the Jewish community one success story at a time, forming countless relationships and ultimately, creating Jewish families.

After reading about the website, my friend asked her man if he'd ever heard of the service. He expressed great enthusiasm when informing her that several of his male friends had met girlfriends through the website. Her suspicions thus set to high alert, my friend decided to check whether he'd signed up for the online dating service. Masquerading as a young and single Jewish woman, my friend went online and to her horror she discovered that not only had her boyfriend signed up to the service, but that he'd been communicating with other women through it!

Her man was a cheat and he justified it by saying that he felt he had to at least try to meet a Jewish girl. He's now married and guess what... she's Jewish. I might be biased, but I don't think that his wife is as good looking as my friend, she's certainly not as successful and my friend is one of the funniest, kindest and most intelligent people I know. So why couldn't they make it work? My friend is not a child of Israel.

Clearly, being Jewish is extremely important to many of those who are born into this faith. I must admit that I don't understand it, but there is much about religious belief that baffles me. In the past, many of those people who grew up Catholic in Ireland would have been horrified had one of their offspring hooked up with a Protestant, but thankfully, those views have now largely died out. Blame this on the empty churches, the Celtic tiger or general cynicism, but I must admit that I think that it's a good thing that we are rarely asked, by in-laws or anyone else, what religion we belong to.

One thing is certain, you'll never find me on any religious specific dating service - for a start, I'm very happy with my atheist boyfriend, but I wouldn't care if he were Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist or Catholic - the important thing is that he makes me smile. Within some cultures, that's not the primary characteristic that one looks for in a partner... but more about the rules of attraction in a later posting.

I'm sure that I'll return to discussing aspects of religious belief in future postings, but with these first few snippets written, I feel that it's high time that we get sacrilegious. In my next posting I'll be discussing the 'meaning of life' in popular culture - I feel a re-run of a certain Monty Python movie coming on... someone put the popcorn on.

Let's get physical

Over the weekend two of the girls who I went to school with and who I am still close friends with, turned thirty. They held a birthday extravaganza in London, complete with numerous cocktails and dancing until the night turned into morning. Sadly, due to my current state of poverty, I spent the weekend in Dublin. I did receive a number of texts from them, telling me that they were having a great time but that I was missed. It might seem ridiculous, but these few lines of text-speak made all the difference to my mood.

These days we're constantly connected and it means that we never have to miss a thing, in terms of world news or updates from our friends or connections. It's a world in which you can tell someone half way around the globe that you were thinking of them - milliseconds ago - and in which you can send pictures, music and multi-layered experiences in invisible, instant messages.

Recently, I watched a television documentary about Internet addiction. Although I'm quite the fan of the world wide web, I think that I've got my usage under control, however, I am very worried that I will soon have to take my boyfriend to see a psychologist to treat his addiction to all things digital. I'm sure that there are millions out there like him!

Modern communications (is texting still considered modern? We've been texting for a decade, surely by now it's practically old hat!) link us to one and other in networks that previously we were too busy and too lazy to maintain. With the click of a mouse or tap of a dexterous thumb we can send words and love to the next continent, or to the boy next door. This is wonderful and even now, when a lesser invention might have turned stale, the potential of the connected world has the power to take my breath away.

However, we shouldn't exist on a diet of digital alone. Physical contact is the first language that we learn and throughout our lives our senses remain the primary means by which we absorb information about the world around us. I recently read an article in The New York Times, which quoted Matthew Herstein, a psychologist, who had undertaken a study to research our ability to communicate through touch. His study found that through touch alone participants could communicate 8 distinct emotions, with about 70% accuracy. The same article quoted James A Coan, also a psychologist, who suggested that we build relationships to distribute problem solving across our brains and that we communicate signals of support through touch.

However, an article at CNN.com warns of the perils of inappropriate touching. The article is focused on the work environment, but could be applied to other situations. The author notes that people have differing tolerance levels for physical contact and that we should be careful when touching others, even when we believe our touching to be appropriate - put simply, one man's supportive pat on the back, is another man's bullying smack between the shoulder blades.

It's a minefield out there until you establish what's what with the next person's personal space. One thing is for certain, wherever we get it from, to remain sane we need the odd slight of hand, pressure of arm and warm embrace. In The Age I read an article about two people who craved the tiniest physical contacts. One woman who lived alone shopped daily in order to experience the slight physical contact that this entailed. A man who had lost his wife started to attend mass, not for the spiritual relief but for the tactile element of the experience.

Life online is a fantastic supplement to life off line, but when the online world becomes the real world, the line can sometimes go cold. Much can be communicated through text, type, image and video, but so much more is communicated from one person to the next when they are in close proximity. Sometimes what is communicated when two people meet is that one person is uncomfortable or that the other is nervous, but whether the experience is good or terrible, if we could see the streams of communication emanating across the divide, I am sure that what we would be looking at would be an incredibly complex web of information.

This weekend I was very happy to receive texts from my friends and I am always delighted to read emails from those who are far flung and others who I might see weekly, but who I catch up with in byte size portions throughout each day. Some people are worried that we'll one day get lost in the digital world. I'm not worried. We'll always crave something that the coded environment can't give us and that something is human contact; what goes on in the space between two pairs of eyes and the kind of communication that happens when one person shakes hands with another, or when two people sit with their bodies touching.

Give me Facebook, Flickr, Twitter and Blogger every day, but there's nothing quite like being there. You can't taste the cocktails in a photograph.