ريتشارد دوكنز's Blog, page 344

How we could make oxygen on Mars, plus fuel to get home

By Andy Coghlan

Future colonists on Mars could use plasma technology to make their own oxygen.

The atmosphere on Mars is 96 per cent carbon dioxide, says Vasco Guerra at the University of Lisbon in Portugal. This can be split to extract breathable oxygen and carbon monoxide, a fuel that could give us

a “gas station on the Red Planet”, he says. He and his team calculate that creating a carbon dioxide plasma — a mush of ions made by passing an electric current through a gas — could split carbon dioxide from oxygen more easily on Mars than on Earth.

The lower atmospheric pressure on Mars would allow us to create plasmas without the vacuum pumps or compressors necessary on Earth. Also, the temperature of around -60°C is just right to let the plasma more easily break one of the chemical bonds that keeps carbon and oxygen tightly bound, while preventing the carbon dioxide from re-forming.

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Outrage after Portugal court quotes Bible on woman’s assault

By Barry Hatton

Women’s rights groups in Portugal have reacted angrily to a court decision that quoted the Bible and a 19th-century law in justifying a suspended sentence for a man convicted of assaulting his ex-wife with a bat because she allegedly committed adultery.

The man was given a 15-month suspended sentence and a fine of 1,750 euros ($2,000) for using a bat spiked with nails to assault the woman in the street in 2015, leaving her covered in cuts and bruises.

The prosecutor had argued the sentence was too lenient and asked an appeals court for prison time of 3 years and 6 months. But the appeal judges on Oct. 11 rejected his request.

In their written ruling, the judges expressed “some understanding” for the attacker, saying a woman’s adultery is “a very serious offense against a man’s honor and dignity.”

They noted the Bible says an adulterous woman should be punished by death and also cited a 1886 Portuguese law that gave only symbolic sentences to men who killed their wives for suspected adultery.

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Wait for Trump’s science adviser breaks modern-era record

By Lauren Morello

Donald Trump has now gone longer without a science adviser in place than any recent first-term US president — by any measure.

On 23 October, Trump broke the record set by former President George W. Bush. Bush’s science adviser, physicist John Marburger, was confirmed by the Senate on 23 October 2001. That was 276 days after Bush took office, and 120 days after he announced that Marburger was his pick for the job.

Trump has also waited longer than any president since at least 1976, when the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy was created, to name his choice for the science-adviser job (see ‘Help wanted’). Although rumours have surfaced periodically about scientists who may be in the president’s sights, the White House has not made any official announcement.

By contrast, Trump’s predecessor Barack Obama took the least time of any first-term president in naming his science adviser. Obama revealed his choice of physicist John Holdren on 20 December 2008 — just 47 days after he won the presidency, and exactly one month before he was sworn in. (Holdren was confirmed by the US Senate three months later, on 19 March 2009.)

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Kim Davis Loses Appeal, So KY Taxpayers Still Owe $224,703 in Legal Fees

By Hemant Mehta

Kentucky taxpayers will still have to pay nearly $225,000 because Rowan County clerk Kim Davis couldn’t keep her religion to herself.

We learn in July that taxpayers would be on the hook for the bill because Davis illegally denied gay couples their marriage licenses in 2015, even though marriage equality was the law of the land. Two of those couples sued her, and U.S. District Judge David Bunning made very clear in July why the government owed the couples’ attorneys $222,695 in legal fees (plus a bit more for other costs).

“Davis represented the Commonwealth of Kentucky when she refused to issue marriage licenses to legally eligible couples. The buck stops there,” Bunning wrote.

…

“It is unfortunate that Kentucky taxpayers will likely bear the financial burden of the unlawful actions and litigation strategies of an elected official, but those same voters are free to take that information into account at the ballot box,” [legal director for the ACLU of Kentucky William] Sharp said.

Davis and her lawyer Mat Staver appealed the decision, saying it wasn’t her fault, but that was always a weak argument since this was totally her fault.

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11-year-old girl inspired by Flint water crisis creates cheap kit to test lead

By Katie Kindelan

An 11-year-old girl inspired by the Flint, Mich., water crisis has been named “America’s Top Young Scientist” after she developed a device that can quickly detect lead levels in water.

“I had been following the Flint, Michigan, issue for about two years,” Gitanjali Rao told ABC News. “I was appalled by the number of people affected by lead contamination in water and I wanted to do something to change this.”

In Flint, elevated levels of lead were found in the city’s water supply after the city disconnected from Detroit’s water line as a cost-cutting measure and began drawing water from the Flint River in April 2014.

Gitanjali, a seventh grader, also saw firsthand how complicated it can be to test water for lead by watching her parents, Bharathi Rao and Ram Rao, try to test the water in their Lone Tree, Colo., home.

She said she found a way to help solve the problem while browsing the MIT Department of Materials Science and Engineering’s website, a site she said she checks weekly to see “if there’s anything new.”

The website featured an article on new technologies used to detect hazardous substances, which Gitanjali figured she could adapt to detect lead.

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Could this rabbi be a first in Congress?

By Mark Oppenheimer

Since the founding of the republic, there have been dozens of Protestant ministers in Congress, and a handful serve right now. Two Catholic priests, too, have served in the House of Representatives. But despite the large number of Jews elected to Congress, not once has a rabbi been elected. In fact, only two have ever run, and neither had much of a chance: In 2012, pop-advice author, television rabbi and Michael Jackson confidant Shmuley Boteach lost badly in his New Jersey district, and in 2008 Dennis Shulman — who got a great deal of attention for being blind and thus a rare disabled candidate — lost to a popular incumbent, also in New Jersey.

Which means that Robert B. Barr, who plans to file papers today to be a Democratic candidate for the House of Representatives in Ohio’s 1st District, is notable not only for being that rarest of birds, a running rabbi, but also for being the first who seems to have a good shot at winning. If he is the eventual nominee, his opponent would be Republican incumbent Steve Chabot, who lost once already, in the Obama landslide of 2008, before reclaiming his seat in 2010.

Barr, 62, is at once the most traditional rabbi (of the three) ever to run for Congress, and the least. He’s the most traditional because he has been a pulpit rabbi, at Congregation Beth Adam, outside Cincinnati, since 1980 — doing weddings, burials, bar mitzvahs, the whole megillah. By contrast, Boteach, a rabbi of the Lubavitcher Hasidic sect, was primarily a celebrity  who hosted the reality TV show “Shalom in the Home,” on which he used Jewish wisdom to help dysfunctional families get along better. In Shulman’s case, although the media focused on his rabbinic calling, he was a long-term psychotherapist who got ordination later in life  and never led a congregation.

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The Politicization of Scientific Issues

By Jeanne Goldberg

“My dear Kepler, what would you say of the learned here, who, replete with the pertinacity of the asp, have steadfastly refused to cast a glance through the telescope? What shall we make of this? Shall we laugh, or shall we cry?”

These words of Galileo, written in a letter to his friend Johannes Kepler, expressed his frustration related to the fact that evidence clearly supportive of heliocentrism was not respected and was in fact rejected as being heretical, in direct opposition to biblical scripture. Galileo was hopeful that if people who believed in the ancient theory of geocentrism would, to paraphrase him, “just look through the lens” of his telescope, they would see evidence to support the theory of heliocentrism (in which the Earth and its planets revolve around the Sun), first contemplated in Hellenistic times and then later supported by Polish astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus’s work On the Revolutions of the Celestial Orbs, published in 1543.

Aristotle’s work in physics and astronomy was largely respected among astronomers at the time Copernicus’s book was published, and they had difficulty accepting Copernicus’s work. In addition, biblical views were prevalent among the population. Galileo was well aware of this fact but stated that “the Bible is written in the language of the common person who is not an expert in astronomy.” He argued that “Scripture teaches us how to go to heaven, not how the heavens go” (Van Helden 1995). His discoveries, published in 1632 in Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems, and those of Kepler further supported the scientific foundation of Copernicus’s work, ensuring that most serious astronomers subsequently were Copernicans.

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Boy Scouts’ latest move leaves atheists scratching their heads

By Rob Tornoe

In 2012, I mailed my Eagle Scout badge back to Boy Scout headquarters.

Despite the fact I consider the time I spent as a Boy Scout among the most influential and positive experiences of my life, I couldn’t stand behind an organization that banned gay Scouts and scoutmasters from serving. Since I severed my ties with the Scouts, the organization has come around to public sentiment regarding gay and transgender kids and adults, and on Wednesday announced another step forward: Girls will be allowed to join.

The organization itself admits that the move to allow girls isn’t because of some progressive awakening; it’s due to the fact that it’s easier for busy parents to have all their kids in one group rather than dividing them (and their time) along gender lines. It’s no secret the Boy Scouts have seen membership numbers decline as society changed around them, so allowing girls in is a transparent attempt to bolster their sagging numbers.

But if the Boy Scouts want to increase membership and/or be truly inclusive, there is another change to be made. One group still remains ostracized from benefiting from all the leadership skills the Boy Scouts have to offer: atheists and agnostics.

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A growing share of Americans say it’s not necessary to believe in God to be moral

By Gregory A. Smith

Most U.S. adults now say it is not necessary to believe in God to be moral and have good values (56%), up from about half (49%) who expressed this view in 2011. This increase reflects the continued growth in the share of the population that has no religious affiliation, but it also is the result of changing attitudes among those who doidentify with a religion, including white evangelical Protestants.

Surveys have long shown that religious “nones” – those who describe themselves religiously as atheist, agnostic or “nothing in particular” – are more likely than those who identify with a religion to say that belief in God is not a prerequisite for good values and morality. So the public’s increased rejection of the idea that belief in God is necessary for morality is due, in large part, to the spike in the share of Americans who are religious “nones.”

Indeed, the growth in the share of Americans who say belief in God is unnecessary for morality tracks closely with the growth in the share of the population that is religiously unaffiliated. In the 2011 Pew Research Center survey that included the question about God and morality, religious “nones” constituted 18% of the sample. By 2017, the share of “nones” stood at 25%.

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Coming Out Athiest, pgs 237-8

” And there are parts of the world where simply being an atheist and defying religion can result in your family beating you, personally imprisoning you, or worse – as atheist activist Amina discovered, when she posted a topless photo of herself with the slogan “”my body belongs to me, and is not the source of anyone’s honour”” and “”fuck your morals,”” and was kidnapped by her family, denied contact with friends and supportive organizations, beaten, taken to a psychiatrist, drugged, forced to read the Koran and take to imams, and given an invasive “”virginity test.””

Elsewhere in this book, I’ve advised atheists to build a safety net before they come out, as much as they can: to find an atheist community in case they lose their religious one and to build some savings and get their resumes in order if coming out could mean losing their job.

For you, that safety net should probably include a plan to get out of the country. Make sure your passport is in order. Make contact with people in other countries. If you possibly can, acquire job skills that you can take with you anywhere. And of course, for you, the whole “be careful who you tell, as soon as you start telling people the dam could burst, don’t tell anyone you don’t profoundly trust unless you’re willing for everyone to know”thing is a whole lot more important. It could be a matter of life or death. ”

–Greta Christina, Coming Out Atheist, pgs 237-8

Discuss!