Analog watches will always succeed as time pieces because the picture conveys the "meaning" of time(keeping).
Analog watches convey information more efficiently than digital watches, just as a picture of, say, the bison in Yellowstone, conveys more meaning than a descriptive paragraph of the scene.
Summary left out a number of Smart-Grid related efforts NIST is heading up, all of which involve large numbers of private sector corporations and engineers.
Because the Smart Grid will touch so many aspects of life in the 21st century, the development of standards involves a wide range of stakeholders—national and international, private and public, large and small. This simplified illustration (see below) shows the many complex relationships and interactions that will take place within the Smart Grid, as electricity and/or information flows back and forth.
As part of the overall Smart Grid coordination effort, NIST is also pushing security issues for the Smart Grid, which is somewhat reassuring.
But now researchers have uncovered a bacterium that has five of those essential elements but has, in effect, replaced phosphorus with its look-alike but toxic cousin, arsenic.
News of the discovery caused a scientific commotion, including calls to NASA from the White House and Congress asking if a second line of Earthly life has been found.
A NASA press conference Thursday and an accompanying article in the journal Science, gave the answer: No, the discovery does not prove the existence of a so-called "second genesis" on Earth. But the discovery very much opens the door to that possibility, and to the related existence of a theorized "shadow biosphere" on Earth--life evolved from a different common ancestor than all that we've known so far.
Being "creative" is not the sole criterion for being a member of the Creative Class.
Several key factors that differentiate members of the Creative Class and "people in any field that happen to be creative" include the generation of new knowledge, of one sort or another, or the generation of innovative solutions to difficult problems.
This does not take away any sliver of the importance of the creativity demonstrated by the classes of work you noted, but the scope of their impact is completely different.
No offense is intended here, but there are - in general - significant differences between "blue collar" and "white collar" software and systems people.
With respect to pay, the short answer and significant oversimplification: BA/BS | Master's | Doctorate means the holder can command a higher salary than those with a lesser degree in the job market in general.
In debates such as this, when they've arisen on/., respondents often say "proof of persistence", "better grammar", any number of other reasons to reward more highly educated software people with higher salaries. Some simple rules of economics hold; there are fewer people with BA/BS degrees than there are without; there are fewer people with Master's in any field of employ than there are people with BA/BS degrees; etc.
Positions that call for additional responsibility/skill may often allow an applicant to substitute "years of experience" for an advanced degree - for the same reason - there are fewer people in the potential pool with XX years of experience than there are people in the pool with 2 years of experience.
Beyond this most basic reason (supply and demand), over 20 years in software and systems design, I have seen significant differences in abstract thinking, strategic design, forecasting & preparation, etc. between more highly educated people and those who liked school "not so much". Like anything else worth anything, you get out of your career what you put in. Education is a significant input that differentiates some candidates from the great hordes.
Siebel's comments were apparently uttered without any supporting homework. A glance at a graph does not a studied analysis make.
From TFA:
But the recent drop is not as steep as it seems at first. I asked Shane Greenstein, an economist at Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management who has written extensively about the computer industry, to take a look at the raw data upon which those numbers were supposedly based: the annual I.T. spending estimates published by IDC.
Mr. Greenstein's calculations produced a more moderate compounded annual growth rate of 11.6 percent for 1980 to 2000, instead of 17 percent. (Mr. Siebel's personal assistant said last week that the 17 percent in the Stanford talk came from a staff member who calculated from a reading of a chart, not from precise figures.)
When Mr. Greenstein looked at the full IDC data set, which goes back to 1961, and used other breakpoints to compare growth in earlier and later periods, he found that the most golden years of I.T. were in the 1960s, when use of mainframe computers spread widely. From 1961 to 1971, the compounded annual growth rate was 35.7 percent, more than three times the rate in the 1980-2000 period celebrated by Mr. Siebel.
The article goes on to point out the obvious, that the percentage growth of an industry will decline as the installed base rises over time. Absolute growth in IT will continue - though it may not be gangbusters of old, IT will never be stagnant.
As other posters here have pointed out, many, (many) industries depend on the support infrastructure that IT provides to work effectively and efficiently. This will not change overnight. While some of this infrastructure has been substantially commoditized over the last 10 years or so, there will always be challenges that non-technical team-members cannot solve themselves. These challenges will require the participation of and collaboration with technologists in organizations that want to function at the high-performance end of the bell curve.
Methinks you extrapolate without enough sampling enough data.
For it's intended task, it's fantastic. That task being reading fiction. NOTHING ELSE
The Kindle's intended task is displaying the written word for reading. I happen to find it fantastic for reading. Reading fiction, non-fiction, periodicals, and work-related documents. Others apparently find the DX appropriate for non-fiction, as several universities are working with Amazon to put textbooks (....non-fiction?) on the device.
I have exactly zero (0) works of fiction on my DX. I have six or seven books (purchased), all non-fiction; a Project Gutenberg text (free), non-fiction; a $1.99 trial issue of a magazine, mostly non-fiction, some short works of fiction (The New Yorker); and several work-related documents in PDF format.
The New Yorker indeed has a navigable table of contents, as do other periodicals, based on several reviews I've read. PDFs do not behave the same way on the DX as on a computer, but as others have pointed out, this may be remediated with a software upgrade.
1) Amazon indicates that the Whispernet service is free. You make a good point that Amazon or Sprint may at some time in the future choose to charge for web browsing, but using the service to buy/sync/transfer documents will remain free. Nothing I've seen from Amazon indicates that they *will* charge for browsing, though.
2) In reading other posters' comments, it appears that PDFs - even those of the technical genus - render quite nicely. There are PDF capabilities missing from the DX that are standard on a computer - as you and others have pointed out, a software update may enhance these.
3) The DX is comfortable for *me* to read with. The screen "wipes" are no more disorienting than turning a page in a dead-tree book or changing pages in a web-based document, and in my experience take less than half a second. Reading e-ink is far more pleasant an experience than reading text on an LCD screen, and the bulk of one's time is spent reading, not refreshing, the screen.
If you know anyone with a Kindle (2 or DX), ask them if you can play with it for a short while. You may be surprised at how thoroughly you enjoy the reading experience.
I own a DX - my mom and wife went in together on a Kindle 2 for my birthday, several days later Amazon announced the DX. Returned the K2 and got the DX a couple of weeks back. I have used it every day since receiving it, and have thoroughly enjoyed using it. Excellent reading device and experience. The DX simply allows me to read, without getting in the way.
Loading PDFs using USB is trivially easy; once, too rushed to plug the DX into my work laptop, I emailed a work-related PDF document to my kindle email address; $0.15 saved me a few minutes. Amazon will convert some documents to Kindle format via email if you cannot convert to PDF on your own. One downside on PDFs: have not figured out how to magnify other than rotating the DX. I cannot testify to complicated graphics, as I have not loaded any technical PDFs on my DX.
A few technical reviews I've found that you may find helpful:
The troll made a number of assumptions, and failed to see that I was simply pointing out the pathetically poor reasoning in the report. I was not advancing any particular theory about the effects of rising atmospheric concentrations of GHGs.
Bad assumption number one: the people with whom I work seek government grants. Contravening truth: for-profit organization, does not seek grants.
Bad assumption number two: researchers always tailor their views to match the perceived desires of their customers. Contravening truth: conclusions that are developed from work my organization performs do not always provide customers the results they desire.
Thank you for commenting. I agree, "utterly silly" is how I would characterize the report in question.
Hate to be a party pooper but this
That lifespan increase had everything to do with development in medicine and a better healthcare network.
is not accurate.
Most of the improvements in mean lifespan are due to the development or improvement of public sanitation. Better healthcare and nutrition are both important contributors to improvements in lifespan, but don't reach the level of significance of public sanitation.
Disclaimer: I am software person who happens to work with a group of people who deal with, among other issues, climate change. I am somewhat informed on the subject. One of my colleagues was a member of the IPCC. His Nobel certificate is hanging on his wall, even though all he did was contribute a couple of equations.
Unbelievably, despite the fact that I am working on a deliverable for this coming week, I took the time to a) RTFM on CNET, and b) download the PDF of the author's report.
I read through the table of contents, and thought it was worth scanning through portions of the document.
Ironic Item One
In the executive summary, the author chides the EPA as an organization for relying on decades of work by the IPCC, and thousands of person-hours involved in climate science that were brought to bear on the IPCC reports over the last several years. The author points out that the IPCC reports did not include the most recent findings regarding, among several phenomena, solar sunspot cycles, cosmic rays, and the melting of Greenland's ice sheet. The author supports his contention that sunspot cycles and cosmic rays affect Earth's climate by citing one or two, non-peer-reviewed postings to web sites.
Interestingly the most recent peer-reviewed findings regarding all of these items indicate that a) sunspot cycles have nothing to do with global mean temperatures; b) cosmic rays have nothing to do with global mean temperatures; c) Greenland's ice sheet continues to melt at a fairly good clip.
Ironic, and damaging, Item Two
Scanning through the report, the reader comes to page 64 of the report, 79 of the PDF, and finds this heading:
Contrast between Continuing Improvements in US Health and Welfare and their Alleged Endangerment Described in the draft TSD
The author then goes on to point out how the following aspects of life in the US have improved over the last century or so, despite rising atmospheric CO2 concentrations:
Crop yields, including Corn and Wheat
Average Annual Heat-Related Mortality
Ozone Air Quality
Then, the kicker comes on page 66; I quote:
Perhaps, most significant of all, the average lifespan of Americans has increased (Figure 2-5) [ Graph of Mean lifespan in US, 1890-2010, omitted ].
In fact, there is no better way to obtain a good picture of how human health and welfare may trend in the future under increases in greenhouse gas emissions than to assess how we have fared in the past during a period of increasing greenhouse gas emissions.
While the author does cite a number of actual scientific reports, the text quoted here and the failure to consider the entire constellation of improvements wrought by technology over the last century render his entire report ridiculous.
Far down in the depths of the article, the author points out that JPMorgan open-sourced their risk modeling methodology, which popularized the VaR (Value at Risk) approach used by most of the big financial firms:
What caused VaR to catapult above the risk systems being developed by JPMorgan competitors was what the firm did next: it gave VaR away. In 1993, Guldimann made risk the theme of the firm's annual client conference. Many of the clients were so impressed with the JPMorgan approach that they asked if they could purchase the underlying system. JPMorgan decided it didn't want to get into that business, but proceeded instead to form a small group, RiskMetrics, that would teach the concept to anyone who wanted to learn it, while also posting it on the Internet so that other risk experts could make suggestions to improve it. As Guldimann wrote years later, "Many wondered what the bank was trying to accomplish by giving away 'proprietary' methodologies and lots of data, but not selling any products or services." He continued, "It popularized a methodology and made it a market standard, and it enhanced the image of JPMorgan."
One of the best, and most consistently relied upon, physics texts is Fundamentals of Physics, by Halliday and Resnick. The link leads to the 2007 edition - prior editions are still available for lower cost.
I used this book in high school, and then had the opportunity to use it again during several courses in college. The text is now in its 8th edition, and has been regularly updated and improved. Depending on where most of your colleagues went to school, its likely some or many have been exposed to H&R.
H&R does not spoon-feed; some of the exercises are difficult. Working through the text is assuredly not going to be a random walk in the park.
A number of the other comment threads discuss Feynman's lectures, which are also excellent.
How many people are going to get the Sprockets reference? I can't tell if I'm laughing at the reference, or laughing at myself for finding it strangely amusing.
It's frightening that a reference, on Slashdot, to a 20-year-old SNL skit makes me chuckle. Zoiks.
There are a number of XML databases, several free and open source, that will rely only on "flat-files". You could probably get by with Microsoft's xml libraries, though there are a number of ways to manipulate and query a set of xml documents. Several of these XML databases implement XQuery which may help if your dataset grows beyond effective queries by visual inspection in Notepad.
eXist is one alternative; while I haven't personally used it the home page indicates it's a fairly capable project.
Meet with neighbors; develop a cooperative approach w/ a major provider; get a higher speed line run to a central location further inland; use a wi-fi relay to distribute bandwidth.
You should be commended for your efforts to introduce additional science and math, and though you may not reach all of your students, if you set off a spark in even one student's mind you'll have done a good thing. Curiosity about the natural wold is critical for your plan to work, and though I admit the possibility that your efforts will make a difference, I am pessimistic. But I suppose one must be an optimist to be an educator, so take my pessimism with a grain of salt.
Fill a shelf or two with science and math related books and magazines, and require periodic "book reports". Or show an episode of a TV show, pose several questions, and request a one-page essay on the questions. You might also stimulate general interest in the natural world, as opposed to science and math in particular.
I wish you good fortune, and hope your students are starting with a solid foundation of reading and writing (often no longer the case).
Books
Books
Cosmos, Carl Sagan - book or TV show episodes
The Fractal Geometry of Nature, Mandelbrot
Chaos, Gleick
Any collection of Ansel Adams photographs
Video
Nature - PBS TV series
NOVA - PBS TV series
Connections - BBC?
Discovery Channel / BBC - Blue Planet series
Discovery Channel / BBC - Planet Earth series
Film footage of the moon landing
Mythbusters
Magazines
Scientific American
Discover
National Geographic
It's been ages since I posted anything on/., but I simply couldn't let this go.
Religion is properly in the business of describing the natural world...
Religion proffers numerous unprovable, often flatly wrong, assertions about the natural world, and relates these unprovables to a supernatural world. References abound - here's one winner: "It still moves".
Your soda can analogy is faulty, as both participants in the discussion are describing testable observations of said soda can. Religion, on the other hand, offers no testable observations (not unlike certain modern cosmological theories, by the way).
You assert that religion "informs our relationship to the universe"; in fact, religion obscures our relationship with the natural world, by positing thunderbolt-wielding gods, fairies in the forest, and numerous ridiculous stories about reward or punishment in the "next world", or reincarnation as a cat. And noodly appendages, but that's another story.
Unfortunately, where your discussion finally fails is here:
...because the religious explanation cannot be refuted by empirical facts or scientific theories.
Consistently and steadily, the diligent and careful application of reason and the scientific method have pulled away the veil religion and other superstitions have placed before humanity's sight. In the long run, religious explanations have repeatedly yielded to the supremacy of tolerance, reason and science, and they ever will.
Slashdot Mirror
Analog watches will always succeed as time pieces because the picture conveys the "meaning" of time(keeping).
Analog watches convey information more efficiently than digital watches, just as a picture of, say, the bison in Yellowstone, conveys more meaning than a descriptive paragraph of the scene.
See the following:
NIST Smart Grid overview
as well as this page
As part of the overall Smart Grid coordination effort, NIST is also pushing security issues for the Smart Grid, which is somewhat reassuring.
quoting:
Being "creative" is not the sole criterion for being a member of the Creative Class.
Several key factors that differentiate members of the Creative Class and "people in any field that happen to be creative" include the generation of new knowledge, of one sort or another, or the generation of innovative solutions to difficult problems.
This does not take away any sliver of the importance of the creativity demonstrated by the classes of work you noted, but the scope of their impact is completely different.
No offense is intended here, but there are - in general - significant differences between "blue collar" and "white collar" software and systems people.
/., respondents often say "proof of persistence", "better grammar", any number of other reasons to reward more highly educated software people with higher salaries. Some simple rules of economics hold; there are fewer people with BA/BS degrees than there are without; there are fewer people with Master's in any field of employ than there are people with BA/BS degrees; etc.
With respect to pay, the short answer and significant oversimplification: BA/BS | Master's | Doctorate means the holder can command a higher salary than those with a lesser degree in the job market in general.
In debates such as this, when they've arisen on
Positions that call for additional responsibility/skill may often allow an applicant to substitute "years of experience" for an advanced degree - for the same reason - there are fewer people in the potential pool with XX years of experience than there are people in the pool with 2 years of experience.
Beyond this most basic reason (supply and demand), over 20 years in software and systems design, I have seen significant differences in abstract thinking, strategic design, forecasting & preparation, etc. between more highly educated people and those who liked school "not so much". Like anything else worth anything, you get out of your career what you put in. Education is a significant input that differentiates some candidates from the great hordes.
From TFA:
The article goes on to point out the obvious, that the percentage growth of an industry will decline as the installed base rises over time. Absolute growth in IT will continue - though it may not be gangbusters of old, IT will never be stagnant.
As other posters here have pointed out, many, (many) industries depend on the support infrastructure that IT provides to work effectively and efficiently. This will not change overnight. While some of this infrastructure has been substantially commoditized over the last 10 years or so, there will always be challenges that non-technical team-members cannot solve themselves. These challenges will require the participation of and collaboration with technologists in organizations that want to function at the high-performance end of the bell curve.
The Kindle's intended task is displaying the written word for reading. I happen to find it fantastic for reading. Reading fiction, non-fiction, periodicals, and work-related documents. Others apparently find the DX appropriate for non-fiction, as several universities are working with Amazon to put textbooks (....non-fiction?) on the device.
I have exactly zero (0) works of fiction on my DX. I have six or seven books (purchased), all non-fiction; a Project Gutenberg text (free), non-fiction; a $1.99 trial issue of a magazine, mostly non-fiction, some short works of fiction (The New Yorker); and several work-related documents in PDF format.
The New Yorker indeed has a navigable table of contents, as do other periodicals, based on several reviews I've read. PDFs do not behave the same way on the DX as on a computer, but as others have pointed out, this may be remediated with a software upgrade.
A couple of comments, from a "pleased DX owner" -
1) Amazon indicates that the Whispernet service is free. You make a good point that Amazon or Sprint may at some time in the future choose to charge for web browsing, but using the service to buy/sync/transfer documents will remain free. Nothing I've seen from Amazon indicates that they *will* charge for browsing, though.
2) In reading other posters' comments, it appears that PDFs - even those of the technical genus - render quite nicely. There are PDF capabilities missing from the DX that are standard on a computer - as you and others have pointed out, a software update may enhance these.
3) The DX is comfortable for *me* to read with. The screen "wipes" are no more disorienting than turning a page in a dead-tree book or changing pages in a web-based document, and in my experience take less than half a second. Reading e-ink is far more pleasant an experience than reading text on an LCD screen, and the bulk of one's time is spent reading, not refreshing, the screen.
If you know anyone with a Kindle (2 or DX), ask them if you can play with it for a short while. You may be surprised at how thoroughly you enjoy the reading experience.
I own a DX - my mom and wife went in together on a Kindle 2 for my birthday, several days later Amazon announced the DX. Returned the K2 and got the DX a couple of weeks back. I have used it every day since receiving it, and have thoroughly enjoyed using it. Excellent reading device and experience. The DX simply allows me to read, without getting in the way.
Loading PDFs using USB is trivially easy; once, too rushed to plug the DX into my work laptop, I emailed a work-related PDF document to my kindle email address; $0.15 saved me a few minutes. Amazon will convert some documents to Kindle format via email if you cannot convert to PDF on your own. One downside on PDFs: have not figured out how to magnify other than rotating the DX. I cannot testify to complicated graphics, as I have not loaded any technical PDFs on my DX.
A few technical reviews I've found that you may find helpful:
http://www.matthewdavidwilliams.com/2009/06/12/technical-document-pdfs-on-the-kindle-dx/
CNET Review
Gizmodo Review
Hope this helps. There are other reviews out there.
Thank you for your comment.
The troll made a number of assumptions, and failed to see that I was simply pointing out the pathetically poor reasoning in the report. I was not advancing any particular theory about the effects of rising atmospheric concentrations of GHGs.
Bad assumption number one: the people with whom I work seek government grants. Contravening truth: for-profit organization, does not seek grants.
Bad assumption number two: researchers always tailor their views to match the perceived desires of their customers. Contravening truth: conclusions that are developed from work my organization performs do not always provide customers the results they desire.
Hate to be a party pooper but this
is not accurate.
Most of the improvements in mean lifespan are due to the development or improvement of public sanitation. Better healthcare and nutrition are both important contributors to improvements in lifespan, but don't reach the level of significance of public sanitation.
Unbelievably, despite the fact that I am working on a deliverable for this coming week, I took the time to a) RTFM on CNET, and b) download the PDF of the author's report.
I read through the table of contents, and thought it was worth scanning through portions of the document.
Ironic Item One
In the executive summary, the author chides the EPA as an organization for relying on decades of work by the IPCC, and thousands of person-hours involved in climate science that were brought to bear on the IPCC reports over the last several years. The author points out that the IPCC reports did not include the most recent findings regarding, among several phenomena, solar sunspot cycles, cosmic rays, and the melting of Greenland's ice sheet. The author supports his contention that sunspot cycles and cosmic rays affect Earth's climate by citing one or two, non-peer-reviewed postings to web sites.
Interestingly the most recent peer-reviewed findings regarding all of these items indicate that a) sunspot cycles have nothing to do with global mean temperatures; b) cosmic rays have nothing to do with global mean temperatures; c) Greenland's ice sheet continues to melt at a fairly good clip.
Ironic, and damaging, Item Two
Scanning through the report, the reader comes to page 64 of the report, 79 of the PDF, and finds this heading:
The author then goes on to point out how the following aspects of life in the US have improved over the last century or so, despite rising atmospheric CO2 concentrations:
Then, the kicker comes on page 66; I quote:
While the author does cite a number of actual scientific reports, the text quoted here and the failure to consider the entire constellation of improvements wrought by technology over the last century render his entire report ridiculous.
One of the best, and most consistently relied upon, physics texts is Fundamentals of Physics, by Halliday and Resnick. The link leads to the 2007 edition - prior editions are still available for lower cost.
I used this book in high school, and then had the opportunity to use it again during several courses in college. The text is now in its 8th edition, and has been regularly updated and improved. Depending on where most of your colleagues went to school, its likely some or many have been exposed to H&R.
H&R does not spoon-feed; some of the exercises are difficult. Working through the text is assuredly not going to be a random walk in the park.
A number of the other comment threads discuss Feynman's lectures, which are also excellent.
$Candidate: So what kind of people do we need on the technology side?
$SeniorTechAdvisor: Open source, Windows, Mac OS/X, Linux, etc. We're platform neutral.
$Candidate: As long as we have someone on the team with DIEBOLD experience, I'm satisfied.
http://phoenix.lpl.arizona.edu/images.php?gID=313&cID=7
http://phoenix.lpl.arizona.edu/images.php?gID=313&cID=7
How many people are going to get the Sprockets reference? I can't tell if I'm laughing at the reference, or laughing at myself for finding it strangely amusing. It's frightening that a reference, on Slashdot, to a 20-year-old SNL skit makes me chuckle. Zoiks.
There are a number of XML databases, several free and open source, that will rely only on "flat-files". You could probably get by with Microsoft's xml libraries, though there are a number of ways to manipulate and query a set of xml documents. Several of these XML databases implement XQuery which may help if your dataset grows beyond effective queries by visual inspection in Notepad.
eXist is one alternative; while I haven't personally used it the home page indicates it's a fairly capable project.
Sedna also appears to be feature-rich.
There was a similar discussion on Slashdot specifically with reference to XML databases, here.
Happy hunting -
Meet with neighbors; develop a cooperative approach w/ a major provider; get a higher speed line run to a central location further inland; use a wi-fi relay to distribute bandwidth.
This article repeats the 6000K figure for the Luxim device's operating temperature, which seems a bit toasty for widespread consumer adoption.
Most incandescents and CFLs operate at half this temperature.
LED-based lighting is safer and far more efficient than the Luxim device.
A much more complete obituary of ACC is now posted on the Washington Post, here.
AP/Washington Post
BBC
LA Times
Bloomberg
National Post
You should be commended for your efforts to introduce additional science and math, and though you may not reach all of your students, if you set off a spark in even one student's mind you'll have done a good thing. Curiosity about the natural wold is critical for your plan to work, and though I admit the possibility that your efforts will make a difference, I am pessimistic. But I suppose one must be an optimist to be an educator, so take my pessimism with a grain of salt.
Fill a shelf or two with science and math related books and magazines, and require periodic "book reports". Or show an episode of a TV show, pose several questions, and request a one-page essay on the questions. You might also stimulate general interest in the natural world, as opposed to science and math in particular.
I wish you good fortune, and hope your students are starting with a solid foundation of reading and writing (often no longer the case).
Books
Books
Cosmos, Carl Sagan - book or TV show episodes
The Fractal Geometry of Nature, Mandelbrot
Chaos, Gleick
Any collection of Ansel Adams photographs
Video
Nature - PBS TV series
NOVA - PBS TV series
Connections - BBC?
Discovery Channel / BBC - Blue Planet series
Discovery Channel / BBC - Planet Earth series
Film footage of the moon landing
Mythbusters
Magazines
Scientific American
Discover
National Geographic
Religion proffers numerous unprovable, often flatly wrong, assertions about the natural world, and relates these unprovables to a supernatural world. References abound - here's one winner: "It still moves".
Your soda can analogy is faulty, as both participants in the discussion are describing testable observations of said soda can. Religion, on the other hand, offers no testable observations (not unlike certain modern cosmological theories, by the way).
You assert that religion "informs our relationship to the universe"; in fact, religion obscures our relationship with the natural world, by positing thunderbolt-wielding gods, fairies in the forest, and numerous ridiculous stories about reward or punishment in the "next world", or reincarnation as a cat. And noodly appendages, but that's another story.
Unfortunately, where your discussion finally fails is here:
Consistently and steadily, the diligent and careful application of reason and the scientific method have pulled away the veil religion and other superstitions have placed before humanity's sight. In the long run, religious explanations have repeatedly yielded to the supremacy of tolerance, reason and science, and they ever will.
Again, see: "It still moves".