Monthly Archives: February 2012

Our Baby Universe Likely Expanded Rapidly, Study Suggests

Once again, I find it almost necessary to apologize to religious idiots when I post a story on science, especially those of you residing in the United States (you know who you are) who still believe in Creationism.

Yes, I know, I know, you’re going to say that it was the hand of God which set-off the chain of events that led to the creation of the universe, because you can’t get something from nothing. And if I were to use that same argument against you, and stated that if you can’t get something from nothing, where did God come from, you’re going to say that God was ALWAYS there; that God transcends time.

You religious folks seem to have all the answers. And where do you get your answers from, why from that book of fairy tales known as the Bible if you’re Christian or Jewish, the Koran if you’re a Muslim, or dare I say, the Book of Mormon if you’re a Mormon. Brilliant! Then there are the pastors and priests, the imams and rabbis; all of which are in the business of religion – which is quite different from being a scientist; as the former seek dogmatic faith while the latter seeks answers.

Anyway, keep praying to that invisible man in the sky folks, and continue believing that with all of the trillions of galaxies in space, each of which contain trillions of stars, planets and other celestial bodies, that God made YOU special and that God has a plan for YOU. It all makes perfect sense, doesn’t it? TGO

Refer to story below. Source: Space.com

SPACE.comBy SPACE.com Staff, Space.com | SPACE.com

The distribution of matter across the cosmos is most easily explained by inflation, a theory that suggests our universe inflated rapidly — just like a balloon — shortly after its birth, according to new research.

A new study found that cosmic inflation, which was first proposed in 1980, is the simplest explanation that fits the measurements of the distribution of matter throughout the universe made by NASA’s Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP), a spacecraft that scans radiation left over from the Big Bang.

According to inflation, the universe expanded by a factor of at least 1078 (that’s 10 with 78 zeroes after it), all in less than a second. This stage could have formed the basis for the large-scale structure we can detect in the distribution of galaxies around us now.

This theory can explain why the universe appears to be about 13.7 billion years old, and why it seems to be nearly flat, say University at Buffalo physicists Ghazal Geshnizjani, Will Kinney and Azadeh Moradinezhad Dizgah. The researchers recently analyzed the latest measurements offering a hint at what went on in the early universe, and found that only three kinds of theories can account for WMAP’s observations.

Aside from inflation, the other two possible theory categories require more significant leaps of logic and physics, they said.

“The takeaway result here is that this idea of inflation turns out to be the only way to do it within the context of standard physics,” Kinney said in a statement. “I think in many ways it puts the idea of inflation on a much stronger footing, because the available alternatives have problems, or weirdnesses, with them.”

For example, alternative explanations must invoke either a speed of sound faster than the speed of light, or energies so high that exotic quantum gravity theories such as string theory would be needed to describe them.

“It may well be that you can come up with a speed of sound faster than the speed of light, but I think people, as a general rule, would be more comfortable with something that doesn’t involve super-luminal propagation,” Kinney said. “Inflation doesn’t require any exotic physics. It’s just standard particle physics.”

Inflation theory still involves a few mind-bending ideas of its own, though. For instance, inflation suggests that during the first 10 to the minus 34 seconds (that’s 0.0000000000000000000000000000000001 seconds), the universe doubled its size at least 90 times.

This would have allowed pairs of matter and antimatter particles to appear out of nothingness, but then move apart from each other so quickly that they wouldn’t have had time to meet and annihilate, as matter and antimatter usually do.

Tiny irregularities in the spread of energy throughout the early universe would have magnified to eventually produce the denser pockets of mass in some areas that allowed gas to condense into stars, forming the galaxies and galaxy clusters that we see today.

The research was first detailed in the November 2011 edition of the Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics in November 2011 and announced in a public release today (Feb. 27).

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What Ireland can teach the U.S. about separating church and state

Religion and government is a bad mix. In fact, it is by far a a worse mix than religion and science because scientific knowledge and the scientific method crush religion’s faith-based assertions. Religion starts out with the “answers” and works back to the question whereas science starts with the question and seeks the answers. In other words, religion is to science nothing more than a mere nuisance as there is no way it can ever threaten science.

On the other hand, religion and government is completely different. This is especially true in this land of idiots, and I’m referring to the ignorant evangelical herds that seem to dominate the landscape here in the United States. Religion can impose its views on government and in doing so cripple society. One example of this is can be seen in the current presidential race. Just consider this, with all that’s wrong in the world today, not the least of which is the plight of U.S. citizens losing their jobs, homes, hopes and dreams, presidential hopefuls are talking about issues such as abortion and gay marriage. This is religion talking. Religion dictates speech, policies and astonishingly even sets social standards of morality (astonishingly because religion and morality are as compatible as oil and water; they don’t mix).

Anyway, the bottom line is that religion has no place in government. This is why it is vital that we fight to maintain the separation of Church and State. TGO

Refer to story below. Source: The Week

By Tish Durkin | The Week

Religious conservatives in the U.S. are desperate to introduce faith into the public sphere. Judging from the Irish model, that’s not such a hot idea

I never thought I’d find myself living Rick Santorum’s dream, but here I am. After all, I live in Ireland, where there has never been any of the “absolute separation of church and state” that Santorum and a politically significant, passionately committed bloc of like-minded religious conservatives abhor. Far from limiting state involvement in religion, the Irish constitution enshrines it. There isn’t just prayer in most public schools; there is full-on Christian — almost always Catholic — education. (Just last week, on Ash Wednesday, the beginning of Lent, my 6-year-old skipped in from her government-funded school with a cross of soot on her forehead.) Government agencies sometimes give cash to poor families to help cover the costs of First Holy Communion and Confirmation finery; recently, when the continuation of this practice in fiscally strangled times caused a public outcry, the objection was that such grants were unaffordable, not that they were religious.

Even if the U.S. were to embrace official piety, it would not remotely guarantee any of the wider moral or social benisons that the religious right dreams of.

Statues of and shrines to the virgin Mary dot the public landscape and no one makes a peep. Nor does anyone try to soft-pedal the “Christ” in “Christmas”: In December, everyone just naturally says “Happy Christmas” and not the all-purpose “Happy Holidays” that gets so many faithful American knickers in a twist every year. The school concert always features lots of sacred carols and no one tries to sue. Abortion is illegal. Divorce has been permitted since 1995, but remains a very difficult and drawn-out business that no one undertakes lightly. Granted, birth control, legalized in 1978 and broadly available since 1985, has definitely caught on, as one might guess from the fact that the average number of births per woman has fallen to two. But otherwise, to the degree that religious conservatives believe that America can scale the heights of greatness if and only if it will let God loose in the public square, Ireland would have to look an awful lot like the promised land.

Unless, of course, America’s religious conservatives actually came here. If they did, they would come face-to-face with an uncomfortable, but uncontestable, reality: Even if the U.S. were to embrace official piety to a degree that not even the furthest reaches of the religious right could imagine, it would not remotely guarantee any of the wider moral or social benisons that the religious right dreams of.

Make no mistake, Ireland is a wonderful place full of wonderful people. It’s just not a place, or a people, that make much of an advertisement for official religion as the key to social rectitude. Having been born, baptized, schooled and often employed in institutions closely tied to a Church that forbids sex outside marriage, do Irish people eschew sex outside marriage? Apparently not: Approximately one-third of all births here occur out of wedlock. As of 2008, Ireland was tied with Latvia for having the highest rate in the European Union of children living with a single parent, likely because Ireland’s social benefits to such parents are among the most generous in Europe. It turns out that when faced with a choice between sanctity and solvency, very few people pick sanctity, no matter how many years of taxpayer-funded catechism they have been obliged to take.

How about other dangerous indulgences? With teachers who are paid, in part, to talk about the lives of the saints and the states of children’s souls — and certainly not fired for doing so — do Irish children find it easier to resist drugs and alcohol? Again, no. According to most studies,  rates of alcohol and cannabis use are about the same among youth in Ireland as in the rest of Europe, while the rate of heroin addiction is somewhat higher. What about the sins of greed and material excess, on either the personal or national level? Here again, people seem to have been consuming something more than loaves and fishes. As of 2010, Irish households owed twice as much as they earned. And with a national debt that breaks down to more than half a million dollars per capita, or slightly more than 1000 percent of GDP, Ireland is the number one debtor nation in the world.

In fact, the state’s promotion of faith has failed even to generate a positive effect on the practice of faith. Here, as elsewhere in the West, vocations to religious life are in the basement and falling. Not too long ago, I had the incongruous pleasure of hosting a dinner party for some young priests who had come from South America to serve in Holy Mother Ireland — as missionaries.

Again, the point is not that Ireland is a bad place — or even that, given its history and demography, Ireland’s official relationship with religion is an entirely bad thing. But viewing the Republican primary race from here, I can’t help but look at the right-wing urge to mingle church and state and ask: If all-pervasive, entirely-constitutional, and widely-accepted state promotion of religion can have such a limited impact upon a society as small and as homogeneous as Ireland, how on Earth does anyone believe that America can be transformed by such far-punier efforts as its Constitution might be construed to allow?

For all the differences between the sole superpower and the emerald isle, the most salient point on this whole issue rests upon something the two countries share. Like America, Ireland has seen unquestionably positive developments — the empowerment of women, the elevation of living and education standards, the advent of the internet, the democratization of travel — which carry some very troubling practical and moral implications. Like Americans, the Irish are wrestling with the problem of how to maximize the good in all this, while minimizing the bad. But as they do, at least the Irish will be able to skip over the step of kidding themselves that there is a simple fix to be found in setting the government up with God. They already know that it’s a lot more complicated than that.

Americans need to know that, too.

Could take 5 years to get 6 percent unemployment: Fed’s Pinalto

Personally, I don’t believe the unemployment rate is at 8%, I believe it is much higher. Also, there are millions of people on reduced hours and/or reduced salaries, and these people’s situation isn’t accounted for in the 8% figure the government throws at us.

Either way, a five-year “rebound” isn’t good news for those individuals reaching retirement age, especially those hit hard by the recession who lost their homes, savings, good credit standing, etc.

In terms of the Federal Reserve Bank, this is the biggest crook of all. Between it, Uncle Sam and credit card companies, the people of the United States are reduced to working class peasants, constantly scrambling to “make it” yet never quite getting over the top.  At the end of the day, this system is a scam.TGO

Refer to story below. Source: Reuters

ReutersBy Jonathan Spicer | Reuters

(Reuters) – The U.S. economic recovery is “frustratingly slow” and it could take four to five years to ratchet the unemployment rate down to about 6 percent, from more than 8 percent now, a top Federal Reserve official said on Tuesday.

The recovery is held back by the housing market and Europe’s debt crisis among other headwinds, but monetary policy is now appropriately positioned to eventually achieve this “maximum employment” level, said Cleveland Fed President Sandra Pianalto.

“We do not have a good deal of concrete history for monetary policy to fit our current circumstances, but I am confident the Federal Reserve is making the most of its tools to move the economy in the right direction,” the Fed official said at an economic development meeting in Westfield Center, Ohio.

Pianalto, a voter this year on the Fed’s policy-setting panel, is a moderate dove in line with Chairman Ben Bernanke’s core of policymakers who have taken aggressive action to bring down unemployment, which stands at 8.3 percent after rising above 9 percent last year.

The U.S. central bank in late 2008 slashed interest rates to near zero and has since bought $2.3 trillion in long-term securities in an unprecedented drive to spur growth and revive the economy after the worst recession in decades.

NO HINTS ON NEED FOR MORE BOND BUYS

Despite recent signs the recovery is gaining traction, including a pick-up in jobs, the overall recovery has been slow, leading to debate both within and outside the Fed over the need for additional purchases of assets such as mortgage-based bonds.

Pianalto did not tip her hand on that particular debate.

Yet when asked whether she fears the growth in money supply, brought on by the Fed’s aggressive actions, will translate into future inflation, Pianalto said she was not concerned.

“Inflation is a monetary phenomenon. The Federal Reserve can control the inflation rate,” she said, pointing to its newly-set explicit inflation target, of 2 percent, as proof of the Fed’s commitment and as a reason prices will be contained.

Looking ahead, Pianalto said inflation should remain close to 2 percent for the next few years, and repeated her expectation for a “moderate economic recovery” with growth of about 2.5 percent this year and about 3 percent next year.

U.S. gross domestic product grew just 1.7 percent in 2011 and the Fed, after a policy-setting meeting last month, said it expects GDP growth of 2.2 percent to 2.7 percent this year.

“Housing markets continue to be depressed. The government sector has been reducing spending and employment,” Pianalto said in describing the economy’s headwinds. “Add to the mix the situation in Europe, which could negatively impact our exports.

“We are … in a challenging environment for monetary policymakers.”

(Editing by Diane Craft and Richard Borsuk)

Hong Kong’s amorous pandas get a little privacy

These pandas are ten times for finicky than cats. They only eat certain things; only get horny at certain times; only procreate “on occasion,” etc. It’s almost as if all panda bears were women.

So… all you prudish women out there, do you want to be associated with pandas? In case you didn’t know, as the article states, female pandas are only interested in mating three days out of the year! As always, the males end up sexually frustrated. And women wonder why men cheat! TGO

Refer to story below. Source: Associated Press

AFPAFP

Hong Kong’s pandas Le Le and Ying Ying have been given some privacy away from the prying eyes of tourists this week in a bid to encourage them to mate, their handlers said Tuesday.

Ocean Park aquarium and animal theme park closed its panda exhibit for three days from Monday after Ying Ying started showing signs that she was ready for love, spokeswoman Una Lau said.

“They live separately but during this mating season we put them together and hopefully they will mate,” she said.

Female pandas are only interested in mating for three days a year, so park managers were quick to react when Ying Ying started displaying tell-tale signs such as increased water play, bleating and restlessness.

Lau said the six-year-old pandas from China’s Sichuan province were “very interested” in each other. They became sexually mature only last year.

There are fewer than 1,600 pandas left in the wild, according to WWF conservation group.

Females can only become pregnant during a 12 to 24 hour period once a year, and the males’ proportionally short penises mean a high degree of precision is necessary for the sperm to be successfully delivered.

Conservationists have tried a range of methods, from artificial insemination to pornography and viagra, in a bid to encourage breeding among captive pandas.

The Hong Kong park also hosts 34-year-old Jia Jia, the world’s second oldest panda in captivity. Its four pandas receive around five million visitors a year, according to Ocean Park.

Fossils show huge penguin once roamed New Zealand

My “apologies” to evangelical Christians who may stumble upon this article. I realize it goes against their beliefs that the world is only several thousand years old. TGO

Refer to story below. Source: Associated Press

AFPAFP

Fossilised remains of one of the largest penguins ever, an “elegant” giant standing 1.3 metres (52 inches) tall, have been found in New Zealand, scientists said Tuesday.

The penguin lived 27-24 million years ago, when New Zealand was mostly underwater and consisted of isolated, rocky outcrops that offered protection from predators and plentiful food supplies, researchers said.

The first traces of the penguin, dubbed Kairuku — Maori for diver who returns with food — was found embedded in a cliff at Waimate in the South Island by University of Otago paleontologist professor Ewen Fordyce in 1977.

Over the years, Fordyce discovered more complete remains and invited University of North Carolina specialist Dan Ksepka to help reconstruct the lost giant in 2009.

They determined the bird was much larger than the biggest modern penguin, the Emperor, which grows up to 1.0-metres, and weighed in at 60 kilograms (132 pounds), twice as much as the Emperor.

“Kairuku was an elegant bird by penguin standards, with a slender body and long flippers, but short, thick legs and feet,” Ksepka said.

Fordyce said the bird’s large size was an adaption that allowed it to swim further and dive deeper than its modern-day counterparts.

He was unsure why it became extinct, suggesting climate change or increased predation from dolphins and seals as possible reasons for its demise.

The findings were published in the latest edition of the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology.

In 2010 scientists reported finding a fossilised specimen from 36 million years ago estimated to have been 1.5 metres tall.

Malaysia scraps US singer show over Allah body art

These Muslim God-freaks are really something. Just when one thinks they’ve heard all of the ridiculous rhetoric that these ignorant, indoctrinated people can come up with, there is still more… As stated in the article: “Islamic groups frequently oppose concerts by Western artists, alleging they promote promiscuous lifestyles and corrupt young minds…”

I wonder if strapping suicide vests to teenagers or even small children corrupts their minds? I also wonder if marrying one’s 14 or 15 year-old daughter to a 40 year-old man corrupts her mind? Just a couple of thoughts I had, that’s all. TGO

Refer to story below. Source: Associated Press

AFPAFP

Malaysia on Tuesday cancelled a concert by American singer Erykah Badu after a local newspaper sparked outrage by running a photo of her with body art that included the Arabic word for “Allah.”

Information Minister Rais Yatim said in a message on Twitter that the concert was cancelled because it breached government guidelines on “religious sensitivities and cultural values” in Muslim-majority Malaysia.

A ministry official confirmed to AFP that the show was scrapped but declined further comment. Concert organisers could not immediately be reached.

The acclaimed soul artist had been scheduled to perform in the capital Kuala Lumpur on Wednesday.

Islamic groups frequently oppose concerts by Western artists, alleging they promote promiscuous lifestyles and corrupt young minds, but rarely are high-profile acts cancelled once initial approval was granted.

Badu is no stranger to controversy.

She raised eyebrows in 2010 with a video for the song “Window Seat” in which she strips naked while walking the street in Dallas, Texas where President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in 1963, falling “dead” at the fateful spot.

Malaysia’s biggest English-language daily, The Star, came under fire for running a preview story on Monday including the photo, which showed various symbols on her upper body including in Arabic and Hebrew.

It was not immediately clear whether the symbols were permanent tattoos. Tattoos are forbidden in Islam and many Muslims also frown upon depictions of the word “Allah” that are deemed frivolous or disrespectful.

The Star ran an apology on Tuesday, saying the photo was published “inadvertently.”

“We deeply regret any offence caused to Muslims and sincerely apologise for the oversight,” it said.

Badu, who had mentioned her impending Malaysia gig in a tweet on Monday, did not immediately comment by Twitter following the cancellation.

The Home Ministry has said it would issue a warning letter to The Star asking it to explain within one week how the photo came to be published. Three top editors were summoned to the ministry on Monday.

Mashitah Ibrahim, a deputy minister in the prime minister’s department, called the photo an insult.

“Our religion does not even permit the name of Allah to be brought into the bathroom, let alone be used as a tattoo,” she was quoted by the New Straits Times as saying.

The opposition Pan-Malaysian Islamic Party (PAS) also voiced outrage, calling for the paper to be punished.

Top Sunni Muslim body slams burning of Koran

Suicide bombings are barbaric, treating women like insects is barbaric, flying planes into buildings is barbaric, beheadings are barbaric; these despicable acts are all barbaric. Burning the book that endorses these kinds of atrocities is NOT barbaric.

Having said that, I do wholeheartedly agree with one thing this idiot, Al-Azhar, stated; and that is that we should leave Afghanistan immediately. We should bring our soldiers back to defend our borders and in so doing protecting American citizens’ lives and leaving these Muslim beasts to themselves so they can continue slaughtering one another just as they’ve been doing for 1500 years. TGO

Refer to story below. Source: Associated Press

AFP

Al-Azhar, the top Sunni Muslim authority, on Monday denounced as “barbaric” the burning of the Koran on a US base in Afghanistan and called for US troops to leave the country immediately.

“Al-Azhar does not accept any tampering with the Koran… or that it be attacked in a barbaric way,” the grand imam of the Cairo-based Al-Azhar, Sheikh Ahmed al-Tayyeb, said in a statement.

“It is a violation of the red lines which no Muslim can accept,” he added.

Tayyeb described the burning of the Koran at the US airbase at Bagram near Kabul as “aggression against the sacred values of human heritage.”

“The military force (behind the) aggression should immediately leave Afghanistan,” he said.

“The immediate departure from Afghanistan of these forces is the only solution to this crisis, in order for the Afghan people to decide by themselves their destiny,” he added.

Deadly protests have erupted in Afghanistan following the burning of Korans by US soldiers.

US President Barack Obama has apologised for the Koran burning while his Afghan counterpart Hamid Karzai has appealed for calm.

Gunmen shoot dead 18 Shiites from bus in Pakistan

This is not news, but living in these Muslim countries is almost as bad as being dropped off in the middle of the African or Amazon jungle with no food, water or weapons; where the chance for survival is slim to none and purely arbitrary.

When it comes right down to it, there is little difference in facing a lion in the safari or a suicide bomber or assassin pointing a loaded gun at your head with his finger on the trigger. Either way you’re dead.

For the life of me I cannot fathom a human being shooting perfect strangers in cold blood simply because they belong to the “wrong” denomination of the same faith. If this is not the act of a beast I don’t know what is. And naturally, it is religion that is at the root cause of the problem. So what else is new? TGO

Refer to story below. Source: Associated Press

Associated PressBy AQEEL AHMED | Associated Press

MANSEHRA, Pakistan (AP) — Gunmen wearing military uniforms stopped a bus in northern Pakistan on Tuesday, ordered selected passengers to get off and then killed 18 of them in an apparent sectarian attack, the police and a lawmaker said.

The victims were all Shiite Muslims, a minority in Pakistan that is frequently targeted by extremists from the majority Sunni community, said lawmaker Abdul Sattar.

A spokesman for a faction of the Pakistani Taliban, a Sunni militant group, claimed responsibility for the killings.

Around 27 other people on the bus were spared.

The incident in the remote Kohistan region was the latest in a spasm of violence in the country in recent weeks that has demonstrated the resilience of militant networks, including al-Qaida allied groups. The U.S. has tried to support Pakistani security forces in the fight against the extremists, but relations between the two nations are strained, hampering cooperation.

The attack took place in the mountainous village of Harban Nala, which is some 211 miles (340 kilometers) north of the capital Islamabad. The area, part of the famed Silk Road linking northern Pakistan to China, is populated by Sunni tribes.

Police officer Mohammad Azhar said the bus was traveling from Rawalpindi city to Gilgit when the gunmen attacked.

Sattar, the lawmaker, said eight gunmen were involved in the ambush, and all were wearing military uniforms, presumably to make it easier to stop the bus.

He said the attackers ordered the passengers to produce their identity cards before ordering the 18 off the bus and shooting them.

Haji Abdul Ghafoor, owner of restaurant in Mansehra where the bus stopped for dinner on Monday night, said there were around 45 people on board.

Sunni extremists allied to or inspired by al-Qaida and the Taliban routinely attack government and security force targets, as well as religious minorities and other Muslim sects they consider infidels. Most of the violence has been in the northwest, close to Afghanistan, though sectarian attacks happen across the country with some regularity.

Many thousands have been killed in the last five years, and attacks on Shiites — targeted purely because of their sect — have been some of the bloodiest.

The Jandullah faction of the Pakistani Taliban — one of the country’s deadliest and best organized militant groups — claimed responsibility.

“They were Shiite infidels and our mujahedeen shot them dead one by one after bringing them down from a bus,” said Ahmed Marwat, a purported commander, who called an Associated Press reporter from an undisclosed location.

____

Associated Press reporter Ishtiaq Mahsud in Dera Ismail Khan contributed to this report.