ريتشارد دوكنز's Blog, page 343

Armageddon Predicted by Christian Numerologist Delayed (For Second Time)

By David G. McAfee

The end of the world has been postponed, yet again, according to the Christian numerologist who first insisted the date was September 23 and then postponed it to October 15.

David Meade, a conspiracy theorist who claims to have studied astronomy at a Kentucky university but refused to disclose which school due to “safety reasons,” first predicted the world would end Sept. 23, which he said was a “very biblically significant, numerologically significant number.” He claimed a planet unknown to science, called Nibiru, would appear and bring apocalyptic earthquakes.

After his original prophecy failed (to the surprise of nobody), Meade changed the date of the alleged apocalypse to Oct. 15.

Either I missed the end of the world while I was watching TV or it never happened.

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Five things to know about the Manafort indictment

BY JONATHAN EASLEY AND MORGAN CHALFANT

President Trump’s former campaign chairman Paul Manafort surrendered to the FBI on Monday morning.

Manafort and his business associate Rick Gates are accused of money laundering and tax evasion on tens of millions of dollars they made while secretly lobbying for a political party in Ukraine.

Although the sprawling 31-page indictment is a major milestone in special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation, it doesn’t actually mention President Trump.

Here are five things to know about the indictment:

Manafort was secretly lobbying for a pro-Russia political party in Ukraine.

Manafort and Gates are alleged to have conducted a multimillion-dollar lobbying campaign on behalf of a pro-Russia political party in Ukraine and its now-exiled leader, Viktor Yanukovych.

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Hundreds of humpback whales are massing in a tiny spot of ocean. Here’s why

By Elizabeth Pennisi

HALIFAX, CANADA—In the fall of 1990, a few humpback whales showed up off the coast of western South Africa where they had rarely been seen before. Over the next couple years, a few more showed up, then a few more. Today, nearly 200 of the giant ocean mammals mill around a piece of ocean smaller than a U.S. football field for several months out of the year. Now, scientists think they know what’s luring what may be the largest global gathering of these cetaceans: masses of free food. Hungry humpbacks travel thousands of kilometers to feast on a rich buffet of tiny crustaceans called krill, researchers reported here this week at the biennial meeting of the Society for Marine Mammalogy.

Many animals are loath to change their behavior, particularly when it comes to food. But this—and several other studies reported here—reveals how readily humpbacks around the world come up with new hunting strategies, says Alexander Werth, a marine biologist at Hampden-Sydney College in Virginia who was not involved with the work. It also speaks to the ability of these animals to learn from each other and to develop efficient ways to eat.

Marine biologists Mduduzi Seakamela of the National Department of Environmental Affairs in Cape Town, South Africa, and Kenneth Findlay at the Cape Peninsula University of Technology, also in Cape Town, didn’t know all this for sure when they recruited graduate student David Cade to help them pin down what the whales were doing off their coastline. With the proper permits in hand, Cade—a Stanford University student who works at the Hopkins Marine Station in Pacific Grove, California—helped them outfit a dozen whales in the area with the research equivalent of a Go-Pro, a video camera that came with a motion detector and a depth finder. Together, these instruments revealed what the whales were doing underwater. What’s more, the ship where the researchers were working could monitor the density of prey in the water underneath it, so Cade could figure out what the whales were eating. 

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EPA chief: ‘True environmentalism is using natural resources that God has blessed us with’

By Joe Romm

Another day, another attempt by Trump officials to silence scientists.

The latest egregious example of censorship is the Environmental Protection Agency’s last-minute move to forbid three of their scientists from speaking on climate change at a long-planned conference focusing on the health of Rhode Island’s Narragansett Bay and Watershed, the New York Times reported Sunday. Of course, the health of a major coastal watershed can’t be preserved without understanding and planning for climate change.

“These efforts by the Trump administration to stifle scientific research inconvenient to its corporate masters threatens all of us,”  climatologist Michael Mann told Think Progress. “It must not be tolerated.”

EPA spokesperson John Konkus — an anti-science hatchetman — confirmed in an email to multiple outlet that “EPA scientists are attending, they simply are not presenting.” Konkus is a Trump political operative with little environmental expertise, who was given unprecedented oversight to vet hundreds of millions of dollars in annual EPA grants, as we reported in September. His primary focus is cutting grants that include the words “climate change,” and he has already axed such life-saving grants as a clean cookstove program.

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New Zealand Prime Minister Takes Non-Religious Oath of Office Without Bible

By Hemant Mehta

New Zealand just swore in its 40th Prime Minister, 37-year-old ex-Mormon-turned-Agnostic Jacinda Ardern.

Hours ago, she took her Oath of Allegiance (her oath of office) and Executive Council Oath.

And to the delight of non-religious people around the world, Ardern didn’t include the phrase “so help me God” at the end of either one. Nor did she place her hand on the Bible when she said them.

She also replaced the word “swear,” which could have religious overtones, with “solemnly, sincerely, and truly declare and affirm.”

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Betsy DeVos’s Schedule Shows Focus on Religious and Nontraditional Schools

By Eric Lipton

WASHINGTON — For years, Betsy DeVos traveled the country — and opened her checkbook — as she worked as a conservative advocate to promote the expansion of voucher programs that allow parents to use taxpayer funds to send their children to private and religious schools.

A detailed look at the first six months of Ms. DeVos’s tenure as the secretary of education — based on a 326-page calendar tracking her daily meetings — demonstrates that she continues to focus on those programs as well as on charter schools.

Her calendar is sprinkled with meetings with religious leaders, leading national advocates of vouchers and charter schools, and players involved in challenging state laws that limit the distribution of government funds to support religious or alternative schools.

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What the controversial ‘human’ teeth fossils really tell us

By Jeff Hecht

Hold that rewrite of the textbook view of human evolution. Two 9.7-million-year-old fossil teeth from Germany probably did not come from a previously unknown European root of the human lineage, as heralded in headlines over the last few days. There remains no hard evidence that our hominin ancestors originated anywhere but Africa.

Reports went viral over the weekend that Herbert Lutz at the Museum of Natural History in Mainz, Germany, had discovered a previously unknown European species of ape that had human-like teeth millions of years before African species did.

The story came to light in an unusual way. So far, Lutz’s paper has not been published in a scientific journal, but only on the website ResearchGate that some scientists use to share their papers. On Friday, ResearchGate distributed a press release that included an interview with Lutz and a link to a paper that has not yet been published in a journalbut was “being published in advance due to the importance of the fossils described”.

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Bitter CRISPR patent war intensifies

By Heidi Ledford

The long-running battle over US patents for CRISPR–Cas9 gene editing continues. On 25 October, the Broad Institute of Cambridge, Massachusetts, filed a fresh set of arguments with the US government to defend a key patent.

That action helps to set the stage for a second round of oral arguments in the unusually vitriolic case, which observers expect to take place in early 2018. A decision is anticipated to follow shortly thereafter.

In the filing, lawyers for the Broad and its collaborators argued that its opponent, a team that includes the University of California, Berkeley, has failed to provide new evidence that would undermine the legitimacy of the Broad’s patent. The lawyers also used the University of California’s own press releases as a sign that the case should be thrown out.

At stake are intellectual-property rights to the use of CRISPR–Cas9 gene-editing tools in eukaryotes, organisms such as plants and animals. This would include applications of the technique to treat human genetic diseases — an approach that has recently entered cancer clinical trials in China, and is potentially the most lucrative application of gene editing.

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Video Shows School Resource Officer Proselytizing to Elementary Students in TN

By Hemant Mehta

About a month ago, at DeKalb West Elementary School in Tennessee, students gathered around the flagpole to pray to their God, as many young Christians across the country did.

But this wasn’t a legal, student-initiated demonstration. This gathering involved staff members, including School Resource Officer Lewis Carrick, who took the microphone and urged the kids to be “an army of God that will stick together and relinquish themselves unto His service.”

It’s not the first time he’s done that, either, says the Freedom From Religion Foundation, but they’re determined to make sure it’s the last. In a letter sent to District Superintendent Patrick Cripps, attorney Rebecca Markert fired a warning shot reminding the District that employee participation in religious events is illegal.

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Pence says US to stop funding ‘ineffective’ UN relief efforts

By Max Greenwood

Vice President Pence on Wednesday said that President Trump has instructed the State Department to stop funding certain “ineffective” United Nations relief efforts and to instead provide humanitarian assistance directly through USAID and “faith-based groups.”

In a speech at the In Defense of Christians annual Solidarity Dinner for Christians in the Middle East, Pence excoriated the U.N., saying the international body has “often failed to help the most vulnerable communities especially religious minorities.”

“We will no longer rely on the United Nations alone to assist persecuted Christians and minorities in the wake of genocide and the atrocities of terrorist groups,” Pence said to applause.

“The United States will work hand in hand from this day forward with faith-based groups and private orgs to help those who are persecuted for their faith. This is the moment, now is the time, and America will support these people in their hour of need.”

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