ريتشارد دوكنز's Blog, page 171

Ancestor’s Trail Hiking Event in the UK pays homage to The Ancestor’s Tale

The Ancestor’s Trail is an annual event, based on Richard Dawkins’ book ‘The Ancestor’s Tale’. This year’s Ancestor’s Trail will take place on Saturday, July 27th in Epping Forest and the Lee Valley Country Park.  The five trails that make up the main Trail – human, gazelle, amphibian, plant and bacteria – will follow the paths of previous …

Greenland’s Superfast ‘Ice Slides’ Could Be Bad News for Climate Change

By Yasemin Saplakoglu Greenland’s ice sheet is sliding way more than previously thought, according to a new study. This means that the ice sheet can change faster in a warming climate, a group of researchers reported July 10 in the journal Science Advances. “Understanding ice flow is quite important to predicting future melt from Greenland,” said …

Pastor’s Exit Exposes Cultural Rifts at a Leading Liberal Church

By Rick Rojas When the Rev. Dr. Amy K. Butler was hired to lead Riverside Church in Manhattan in 2014, she was hailed as a rising star, the first woman to join a distinguished line of pastors at one of the pre-eminent progressive Protestant congregations in the United States. This month, Riverside’s governing council refused …

St. Louis couple says wedding dress designer refused their business because of their sexual orientation

By Molly Rose A St. Louis couple said a wedding dress designer refused to make a garment for them, saying it goes against her faith. Tiffany Allen and Angel Lane said they reached out to the New York-based company, D. AUXILLY, through e-mail to get some information. They said the designer, Dominique Galbraith, responded with …

10 Findings That Contradict Medical Wisdom. Doctors, Take Note.

By Gina Kolata You might assume that standard medical advice was supported by mounds of scientific research. But researchers recently discovered that nearly 400 routine practices were flatly contradicted by studies published in leading journals. Of more than 3,000 studies published from 2003 through 2017 in JAMA and the Lancet, and from 2011 through 2017 in the New …

India’s Moon mission signals country’s growing space ambitions

By Niha Masih When a rocket blasts off from an island in the Bay of Bengal in the coming days, it will carry not only a moon rover but a nation’s growing ambitions in space. On Monday, India will embark on its most complex space odyssey to date with the launch of its second lunar …

‘Chameleon Theory’ Could Explain Why the Universe Is Blowing Up

By Adam Mann Can a chameleon build a galaxy? According to new computer models, yes. This isn’t a surrealist joke but rather the implication of recent simulations that aim to explain the inner workings of dark energy, a mysterious force that is driving apart everything in the universe. The findings, published July 8 in the journal Nature …

An Anti-Choice Group Misspent $50,000 on Religious Material. North Carolina Wants to Give It $400,000 More.

By Amy Littlefield Last year, Rewire.News revealed that anti-choice pregnancy centers in North Carolina illegally bought religious propaganda with federal funds. State regulators vowed in response to strengthen oversight and moved to recoup the misused money. But even as the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) confirmed the anti-choice Carolina Pregnancy Care Fellowship (CPCF) …

Anti-Vaxxer Sues NY to Give Religious Groups the Right to Spread Measles Again

By Hemant Mehta Weeks after New York passed a law ending religious exemptions for required vaccinations, a conspiracy theorist is suing to protect his side’s right to spread diseases in the name of God. Keep in mind that the bill passed following a public health crisis in the state, largely hurting Orthodox Jewish communities. The only people who …

Would Humans Evolve Again If We Rewound Time?

By James Horton and Tiffany Taylor What would happen if the hands of time were turned back to an arbitrary point in our evolutionary history and we restarted the clock? American palaeontologist Stephen Jay Gould proposed this famous thought experiment in the late 1980s – and it still grips the imagination of evolutionary biologists today. …