ريتشارد دوكنز's Blog, page 278
July 3, 2018
America after Anthony Kennedy
By Dylan Matthews
Anthony Kennedy, the longest-serving member of the Supreme Court, is retiring.
Kennedy has, since at least 2005, been the swing vote on many of the Court’s most ideologically charged decisions, responsible for 5-4 rulings that legalized same-sex marriage, preserved Roe v. Wade, upheld warrantless wiretapping, blew up campaign finance restrictions, overturned DC’s handgun ban, and weakened the Voting Rights Act. That position has made him one of the most powerful people in America for well over a decade now, not even counting the 18 years he shared his position as the Court’s swing voter with Sandra Day O’Connor.
But Kennedy, who turns 82 this July, is already the 14th longest-serving justice (out of 113) in the Court’s history. President Donald Trump reportedly nominated Neil Gorsuch, a former Kennedy clerk, to the Court in part to reassure Kennedy that he could trust Trump with picking his replacement. It’s not surprising he decided it was ultimately time to go.
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Talk Nerdy Episode 214 – Bertha Vazquez
In this episode of Talk Nerdy, Cara speaks with Bertha Vazquez, the Director of the Teacher Institute for Evolutionary Science (TIES) of the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science, a division of the Center for Inquiry. They discuss her incredible work providing the tools and training necessary to effectively teach the science of evolution throughout middle schools in the United States. Follow TIES: @rdfrsTIES.
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Remembering ‘The Great Agnostic’
By Mike Hibbard
He has been called the most remarkable American most people have never heard of.
His name is Robert Green Ingersoll, and his birthplace in this tiny Yates County village has reached a milestone anniversary.
Over the Memorial Day weekend, the Robert Green Ingersoll Birthplace Museum opened for its 25th consecutive season. Officials said for a quarter century, the museum has restored the incomparable orator and champion of reason to his rightful place in American history and serves as the anchor of the historic Freethought Trail.
“There has never been a better time for Americans to rediscover the words and ideas of Robert Ingersoll,” said Tom Flynn, museum director and editor of Free Inquiry magazine. “As science and reason are under assault, and as the country is awakening to entrenched inequality, Ingersoll’s wit, eloquence and sense of justice are more relevant than ever.”
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July 2, 2018
No Aliens, But Scientists Find More Evidence for Life on a Saturn Moon
By Kimberly Hickok
Large, carbon-rich organic molecules seem to be spewing from cracks on the surface of Saturn’s icy moon, Enceladus, according to a new study of data collected by NASA’s Cassini spacecraft. The discovery means that Enceladus is the only place besides Earth known to satisfy all the requirements for life as we know it, space scientist and study co-author Christopher Glein said in a statement from the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) in San Antonio.
So do aliens live there? It’s definitely possible, but probably not what you’re imagining.
“We cannot decide whether the origin of this complex material is biotic or not, but there is astrobiological potential,” Nozair Khawaja, a planetary scientist at the University of Heidelberg in Germany and lead author on the study, told Gizmodo. What he means is that scientists are unsure of the source of these heavy molecules, but it could be from a living organism.
Beneath its icy crust, Enceladus holds a warm, mysterious ocean that sits above a rocky core. Enormous plumes of icy vapor hundreds of miles high escape from the subsurface ocean into space through cracks in the crust. Instruments aboard NASA’s Cassini spacecraft grabbed samples from those plumes during the craft’s close flyby of Enceladus on Oct. 28, 2015. Cassini analyzed the samples using the Cosmic Dust Analyzer and a mass spectrometer. Researchers then reviewed the data and found the telltale signs of large, complex, carbon-rich molecules.
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Prepare for the longest lunar eclipse of the century, coming up this month
By Caitlin O’Kane
A total lunar eclipse will rise over the night sky this summer, and it will be the longest eclipse of this century, according to NASA. On July 27, a lunar eclipse will be fully visible for 1 hour and 43 minutes. But you may have to travel to see it since the eclipse will only be visible in parts of South America, much of Africa, the Middle East and Central Asia.
A lunar eclipse occurs when the sun, Earth and moon line up perfectly, casting Earth’s shadow on the moon. The eclipse will be partially visible for 3 hours and 55 minutes. This also makes it the longest time an eclipse will be partially visible between the years 2011 and 2020.
A lunar eclipse always happens within two weeks of a solar eclipse. This summer, two partial solar eclipses will take place on July 12 and August 11. These can be seen from Australia, and parts of Europe and Asia, respectively.
Earlier this year, the world got a glimpse of a total lunar eclipse on January 31. Not only was it an eclipse, but it became a Super Blue Blood Moon because it synced up with a supermoon, which is a moon that appears extra big and bright, and a blue moon, which is the second full moon during a calendar month.
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LGBTQ activists fear for their freedoms with Kennedy’s retirement
By Meena Venkatararamenan
How are LGBTQ activists reacting to Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy’s retirement given the role he’s played in their lives?
Some fear it will mean the rollback of protections he helped bring about while others are more optimistic about expanding those new freedoms.
Kennedy, an ideological conservative who was often the swing vote in cases affecting the LGBTQ community, announced his upcoming retirement from the nation’s highest court Wednesday, raising their concerns about the likely nomination of a more conservative justice.
“While often conservative-leaning in his three decades on the court, Justice Anthony Kennedy was also a key vote in several landmark cases that greatly impacted the rights of LGBTQ people in the nation,” said Sarah Kate Ellis, president and CEO of GLAAD, an organization dedicated to promoting acceptance of LGBTQ individuals in the media.
Log Cabin Republicans, a conservative LGBTQ advocacy organization, agreed.
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Atheist Offers Stinging Rebuke to Wentzville (MO) Officials Over Religious Sign
By Hemant Mehta
Wentzville, Missouri is a city where the Board of Aldermen hold meetings in a room with the words “In God We Trust” looming in front of everybody.
When activist Sally Hunt explained to the Board earlier this year why the phrase was exclusionary, Mayor Nick Guccione told her, falsely, that she had used up her time, before telling cops to take her out of the room. (She has since filed a lawsuit against the city.)
On Wednesday night, another local atheist, Brian Farmer, did two things that were remarkable.
During the public comments section of a Board meeting that night, he condemned the officials for stoking the fire of anti-atheist bigotry. When other citizens said atheists should “leave the country,” for example, the Board never had any criticism for them. It was unacceptable behavior.
Before that, however, Farmer delivered a secular invocation that was inclusive and beautiful — showing the Board that there was no reason to be afraid of people who didn’t believe in God.
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July 1, 2018
OPEN DISCUSSION – JULY 2018
This thread has been created for open discussion on themes relevant to Reason and Science for which there are not currently any dedicated threads.
Please note it is NOT for general chat, and that all Terms of Use apply as usual.
If you would like to refer back to previous open discussion threads, the three most recent ones can be accessed via the links below (but please continue any discussions from them here rather than on the original threads):
June 29, 2018
Australia moves a step closer to ‘three-person IVF’
By Bianca Nogrady
A group of Australian politicians has released a road map for the country to move towards legalizing mitochondrial donation. The group’s recommendations, published on 27 June, include that the government consult the public and scientific experts about permitting clinical use of the reproductive technology, which could help women avoid passing genetic defects to their children through mutations in their mitochondria, the structures in cells that generate energy.
The technique uses a healthy donor egg to create an embryo with the nuclear DNA of two people and the mitochondrial DNA of a third. The embryo can then be implanted using in vitro fertilization (IVF). The United Kingdom is currently the only country to allow mitochondrial donation, although no babies have been born using it. Singapore is also considering legalizing the technique.
The Australian committee, composed of members of parliament from the governing party, the opposition and smaller parties, conducted a three-month inquiry before releasing recommendations to the government. These include that the government prepare options for changes to laws that would permit the use of the reproductive technology, and that it help Australians with mitochondrial disease to be treated in the United Kingdom in the meantime. Scientists and patient groups have welcomed the recommendations. The government has yet to respond.
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Christian radio host: ‘Brown invasion’ of immigrants is God’s punishment for abortion
By Sky Palma
During a segment on his TruNews program this Monday, Rick Wiles managed to blend the Christian anti-abortion stance with a touch of white nationalism.
While characterizing immigration from Latin America as a “brown invasion,” Wiles claimed that it’s actually God’s method of punishing the white man for the sin of abortion.
“Our soil is soaked in baby blood,” Wiles said, referring to abortion.
“Four thousand babies killed every day, their guts, their intestines, their brains, their blood flushed down the toilet in the baby butcher shops,” he continued, describing how it “goes into the sewer system, carried in the sewer pipes under the city streets, into the sewage system. Our country is soaked in blood and the soil is crying out for justice.”
Wiles added that for 20 years, he’s been warning that “if we don’t repent, there will be another people brought in that will push us off the land.”
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