ريتشارد دوكنز's Blog, page 159

A Glowing Clue in the Search for Alien Life

By Marina Koren It takes more than four years for its light to reach us, but Proxima Centauri is one of our closest neighbors. The star orbits in the constellation Centaurus, visible in the Southern Hemisphere, but is itself too faint to see with the naked eye. Proxima isn’t like our sun; it is smaller, …

Exclusive: Falwell steered Liberty University land deal benefiting his personal trainer

By Aram Roston and Joshua Schneyer Evangelical leader and prominent Donald Trump backer Jerry Falwell Jr personally approved real estate transactions by his nonprofit Christian university that helped his personal fitness trainer obtain valuable university property, according to real estate records, internal university emails and interviews. Around 2011, Falwell, president of Liberty University in Virginia, …

Amazon Wildfires Are Horrifying, But They’re Not Destroying Earth’s Oxygen Supply

By Scott Denning Fires in the Amazon rainforest have captured attention worldwide in recent days. Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, who took office in 2019, pledged in his campaign to reduce environmental protection and increase agricultural development in the Amazon, and he appears to have followed through on that promise. The resurgence of forest clearing in the Amazon, which …

A Successful Artificial Memory Has Been Created

By Robert Martone We learn from our personal interaction with the world, and our memories of those experiences help guide our behaviors. Experience and memory are inexorably linked, or at least they seemed to be before a recent report on the formation of completely artificial memories. Using laboratory animals, investigators reverse engineered a specific natural memory …

Transcendental Meditation in public schools: still a violation of the first amendment

By the RNS Press Release Distribution Service A recent article in the New York Post mentions that the Transcendental Meditation (TM) Quiet Time Program will soon be taught in New York schools. A highly critical article on TM’s Quiet Time program in the Chicago Public Schools (CPS) recently appeared in the Chicago Tribune. The story reports …

Democrats Pass Resolution Acknowledging “Importance” of Non-Religious Americans

By Hemant Mehta The Democratic National Committee passed a resolution over the weekend acknowledging the “value, ethical soundness, and importance” of non-religious Americans. (This occurred at the same meeting where the DNC rejected a resolution supporting single-issue debates, like one about climate change.) According to the Secular Coalition for America, after the DNC’s Resolutions Committee first approved …

There’s no doubt that Brazil’s fires are caused by deforestation, scientists say

By Herton Escobar “Dry weather, wind, and heat”—those were the factors that Brazilian Minister of the Environment Ricardo Salles blamed for the rising number of forest fires in the Amazon in a recent tweet. But scientists in Brazil and elsewhere say there is clear evidence that the spike, which has triggered concerns and anger around the …

After Losing Ten Commandments Battle, NM City Tries Crowdfunding Legal Bills

By Hemant Mehta For more than six years, the city of Bloomfield, New Mexico tried defending an illegal stand-alone Ten Commandments monument outside a local municipal building. The monument was put up for overtly religious reasons in 2011, which is why it was ruled unconstitutional by multiple courts. Instead of accepting that result, however, city …

Clergy Shouldn’t Be Able to Steal Funds for Grindr or Dolls

By Andrew L. Seidel Father Joseph McLoone, a Catholic priest from Pennsylvania—a realm of the Church that’s already plagued by horrible scandal—allegedly stole $100,000 to spend on “Grindr men,” globetrotting, and a beach house. McLoone’s crime appears to be an isolated incident, but it’s indicative of a larger problem, one that could be easily fixed. Churches …

Scientists Saw an ‘Energetic Eruption’ Under Jupiter’s Clouds for the First Time

By Becky Ferreira In a first, scientists watched an energetic eruption on Jupiter by peering some 30 miles under the clouds that enshroud the planet. The observations “provide a crucial, hitherto missing, link” in theories about the hidden dynamics that shape Jupiter, according to a new study. Jupiter’s mesmerizing storms and colorful ribbons of gas make …