ريتشارد دوكنز's Blog, page 138

Rapper T.I. Is Creepily Obsessed With His 18-Year-Old Daughter’s Hymen

By Sarahbeth Caplin Rapper T.I. said in a podcast interview Tuesday that he accompanies his 18-year-old daughter Deyjah Harris to the gynecologist — he’s done it since she was 16 — in order to confirm that her hymen is still intact. That, he suggested, was a way to confirm her virginity. “Not only have we had the [sex] conversation. We have …

Curiosity Has Just Sent Back a Bleak Image of Its Lonely View on Mars

By Michelle Starr Curiosity is climbing. In the Gale Crater it calls home, the Mars rover has been making its way up an eroded pediment called the Central Butte. It’s studying the weather-worn layers of rock around the base of Mount Sharp, which towers from the centre of the crater. But it’s not just close-ups of rock that …

Atheist Wins Re-Election to New Jersey General Assembly (Again)

By Hemant Mehta Andrew Zwicker is exactly the kind of person you wish were in elected office but almost never is. He’s not only a physicist, he’s the Head of Science Education at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory. Unlike the Republicans who treat science as a four-letter word, Zwicker, a Democrat, is a proud advocate of the STEM fields. In …

The Supreme Court’s Facilitation of White Christian Nationalism

By Caroline Mala Corbin Doug Jager, a band student of Native American ancestry, complained about the Christian prayers at his Georgia public school’s football games. Rather than address his concerns, the school lectured him on Christianity and proposed an alternative that appeared neutral yet would have still resulted in Christian prayers. In striking down the …

Kentucky GOP Governor Matt Bevin, a Christian Nationalist, Loses Re-election Bid

By Hemant Mehta After four years in power, Matt Bevin, the governor of Kentucky who never missed an opportunity to promote conservative Christianity while on the clock, has been defeated. A Republican with Donald Trump‘s full endorsement just lost the state of Kentucky. Over the years, Bevin has been one disaster after another on matters of church/state separation …

New genetically modified corn produces up to 10% more than similar types

By Erik Stokstad Supporters of genetic engineering have long promised it will help meet the world’s growing demand for food. But despite the creation of many genetically modified (GM) pest- and herbicide-resistant crops, scientists haven’t had much success with boosting crop growth. Now, researchers have for the first time shown they can reliably increase corn …

GOP Candidate for Virginia Senate: The Ten Commandments Will Stop Gun Violence

By Hemant Mehta One of the many races in Virginia’s elections today is a State Senate race between Democrat Janet Howell, a longtime incumbent who’s held the seat since 1991, and Republican challenger Arthur Purves. Local news site Arlington Now recently asked both candidates to submit a 750-word explanation of why Virginians should vote for them. Howell didn’t respond. …

Trump White House Cranks Religion to 11 As Impeachment Looms

By Andrew L. Seidel As Trump’s impeachment fears intensify and the House formalizes its impeachment process, the White House has cranked the religion up to eleven. On Tuesday, twenty-five evangelical megachurch leaders prayed for and with Trump in the Roosevelt Room of the White House, in a grand spectacle. So much for Jesus’s condemnation of public …

How One Employer Stuck a New Mom With a $898,984 Bill for Her Premature Baby

By Marshall Allen Lauren Bard opened the hospital bill this month and her body went numb. In bold block letters it said, “AMOUNT DUE: $898,984.57.” Last fall, Bard’s daughter, Sadie, had arrived about three months prematurely; and as a nurse herself, Bard knew the costs for Sadie’s care would be high. But she’d assumed the …

Detection of a strange particle

By Taku Yamanaka In the late 1940s, the physicists George Rochester and Clifford Butler1 observed something unusual in their charged-particle detector. They were studying the interactions between high-energy cosmic rays and a lead plate in the detector when they spotted V-shaped particle tracks (Fig. 1a). The small gap between the lead plate and the vertex of the …