To the Rev. Scotty McLennan, Jesus was a man who told stories and spoke in metaphors, who respected the science of his day, and who emerged from his mystical sojourn in the desert with a radical message about the power of love.

The Rev. Scotty McLennan is the dean for religious life at Stanford University. He was the university Chaplain at Tufts University from 1984 to 2000, and senior lecturer at the Harvard Business School for ten of those years. McLennan received his B.A. from Yale University in 1970 as a Scholar of the House working in the area of computers and the mind. He received his M.Div. and J.D. degrees from Harvard Divinity and Law Schools in 1975. In 1975, he was also ordained to the ministry (Unitarian Universalist) and admitted to the Massachusetts bar as an attorney. He is the author of Finding Your Religion and was the inspiration for Doonesbury's Rev. Scott Sloan.

Some of the most heated issues in contemporary American society revolve around questions of science, from evolution to stem cell research. The Rev. Scotty McLennan says he sees no conflict between science and faith, and just as he doesn't believe Jesus did.

Jesus taught tolerance, McLennan believes, but following that teaching in the face of the adamantly pejorative beliefs of others is a challenge.

The Messenger is a film about war that doesn’t take sides, according to director Oren Moverman, but seeks instead to personalize the losses experienced by the families of the servicemen and women who don’t return.

Oren Moverman (right), writer-director of The Messenger, says there is no political agenda behind it, other than a desire to raise awareness about the human costs and consequences of modern warfare.

The Messenger has drawn generally good reviews, but Moverman is even more pleased that coverage of it has also included his central themes about the people it portrays.

In his private life, actor Woody Harrelson (below right)  is well know for his progressive politics. But in the film, Moverman says Harrelson was entirely in sync with the director’s apolitical stance.

View the trailer for The Messenger below, or go here for a sampling of reviews of the film.

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The most powerful earthquakes in American history didn’t happen in California or Alaska, but almost 200 years ago in Missouri.

As Santa Rosa novelist Sally Watson set out to research the details and circumstances surrounding the New Madrid Earthquakes, she found an important source and ally at the town museum there.

Reports vary on the number of houses destroyed in the initial quakes, Watson says, as do the accounts of the number of people who fled afterward.

  A more contemporary view of the New Madrid Fault

The 2010 edition of Project Censored’s annual list of important but undercovered news stories is out as usual, while behind the scenes, there’s been a changing of the guard.

One measure of the growth that Project Censored has experienced over the past 33 years, Frymer offers, is the huge increase in the number of stories that are now being nominated for their consideration each year. So even the list of finalists is longer now.

It’s always hard to pick a favorite, but new Project Censored Director Ben Frymer (left) admits to a particular fondness for one of the current top 25 stories, in part because it came from an atypical source.

 In fact, he couldn’t pick just one. Frymer has some other favorites from the list, too.

You can see all 25 of this year's top stories on the Project Censored website, as well as review the lists from past years.

The book release party for the 2010 Project Censored publication will be held at the Santa Rosa Oddfellows Hall on Saturday, Dec. 5, beginning at 6 pm. see full details here.

Meditation comes in many different flavors, and a full menu is offered in a new book by a couple of local writers, called Matrix Meditations.

Matrix Meditations is in some ways inspired by the I Ching, the ancient Chinese “Book of Changes,” which uses 64 figures to offer wisdom. Co-author Victor Daniels explains the book also offers 64 topical cells, with an extra one as a starting point.

And as with the I Ching, Daniels adds, this book can be used to randomly suggest insights or new ways of looking at questions or problems.

  Kooch N. Daniels is the other co-author of Matrix Meditations.

Find out more about Matrix Meditations and upcoming events and book signings.