Month: July 2017

India-China border standoff

Published by skeptic

It was the tiny Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan that sounded the alarm — Chinese soldiers had arrived with bulldozers and excavators, and were building a high-mountain road near India’s border in an area the two nuclear-armed giants have disputed over for decades. India responded to the call by sending troops last month to evict the Chinese army construction party from the Doklam Plateau. Within a few days, Indian media were running leaked video footage of soldiers from both sides shoving one another atop a grassy flatland. Two weeks ago the Chinese sent an unusual number of military patrols into the mountains of Ladakh, a remote high-altitude desert at the northern tip of India. Two Chinese patrols came on foot, two more arrived in military vehicles and a Chinese helicopter flew overhead. With all the activity, the Indian authorities failed to notice until the next morning that about 30 Chinese soldiers had pitched three tents in an area both countries claim. The tense standoff has only escalated, raising concerns in both capitals of an all-out military …

The conflict between religion and science 3

Published by skeptic

Santa Claus and the Origin of Belief  Religious persons will also engage in unscientific thinking in defense of their belief. Consider a child confronting the evidence presented by their older sibling about the non-existence of Santa Claus: the fact that Santa can’t do it all in one night, the fact that there is no workshop at the North Pole, etc. The child is not convinced; why would his parents’ tell an untrue story? The older sibling explains exactly why by retelling the story of how the myth of Santa Claus originated from a pagan god and a (supposedly) historical Christian bishop named Nicholas, and then morphed into a story that became popular for parents to trick their children into believing in the early 1800’s. By showing that the origin of the story, and the reason his parents tell it, does not trace back to an actual being named Santa Claus, the older sibling would seemed to have put the final nail in the coffin. But the younger child has taken a logic class, and argues …

Church of England’s ban on sex reassignment therapy

Published by Daniella

The Church of England has called on the government to ban conversion therapy and has condemned the practice, which aims to change sexual orientation, as unethical and potentially harmful. At the end of an emotional debate in which two members of the C of E synod described their experiences as spiritual abuse, the church’s governing body overwhelmingly backed a motion saying the practice had “no place in the modern world”. Conversion therapy is usually described as an attempt to change a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity. Some churches in the C of E and other denominations have encouraged LGBT members to take part in prayer sessions and other activities to rid them of their “sin”. Proposing the motion, Jayne Ozanne – who underwent conversion therapy resulting in two breakdowns and two spells in hospital – said conversion therapy was “abuse from which vulnerable adults need protecting”. It was “discredited by the government, the NHS, the Royal College of Psychiatrists, the Royal College of General Practitioners and many other senior health care bodies,” she said. …

Dark Energy, What it could be?

Published by Sam

One of the shocking revelations of the late 20th Century was that the universe was expanding at an accelerating rate. Before that mysterious “speed-up” was discovered, people thought that the rate must be slowing down as the universe expanded. What’s worse, at the time of discovery, there was no known mechanism to explain how the expansion of the universe could be accelerating. Guess what! There still isn’t a well-explained one. But, at least whatever it is has a name. This mysterious driving force is known as Dark Energy. There are a few possibilities of what it could be. IS DARK ENERGY A PROPERTY OF SPACE-TIME? General relativity is often thought of as a theory of gravity, mostly because this is its greatest application as it explains the dynamics of objects in accelerating reference frames (like a gravitational field). However, general relativity is more than that, and it has far reaching implications into the vary nature of the universe. One of the most amazing consequences of Einstein’s theory is that empty space isn’t really empty. In fact, empty …

The conflict between religion and science 2

Published by skeptic

Many scientists used to think that heat was the product of a material called phlogiston. It flowed into objects to make them hot and out to make them cold. But when they tested for this material, they could find nothing — objects weighed the same both hot and cold. Defenders of the theory insisted that phlogiston must be made of a material that, unlike all others, had no mass. Finding that heat is actually a result of the movement of molecules, phlogiston defenders suggested that making molecules move is just how phlogiston makes objects hotter. But they were only making ad hoc excuses to save their theory; there was no need to introduce phlogiston — it didn’t explain anything. Heat could be accounted for solely by the movement of molecules and atoms; no extra substance was needed. All the work that phlogiston was supposed to have done was now accounted for by other means. Of course, one can never disprove the existence of phlogiston — one can always make excuses. But, as we know, that …

Types of Radiations, a brief introduction

Published by Sam

In order to completely understand the universe around us, we must look across the entire electromagnetic spectrum, and even at the high-energy particles that are being created by energetic objects. Some objects and processes are actually completely invisible in certain wavelengths (even optical), so it becomes necessary to observe them in many wavelengths. Often, it’s not until we look at an object at many different wavelengths that we can even identify what it is or is doing. Importance to Astronomy Astronomy is the study of objects in the universe that radiate (or reflect) energy from across the electromagnetic spectrum. If you are an astronomer, chances are good you will be studying radiation in some form. Let’s take an in-depth look at the forms of radiation out there. TYPES OF RADIATION Radiation describes elementary particles, nuclei and electromagnetic waves as they propagate through space. Scientists typically reference radiation in two ways: ionizing and non-ionizing. IONIZING RADIATION Ionization is the process by which electrons are removed from an atom. This happens all the time in nature, and it …

Al Jazeera, Qatar’s source of soft power?

Published by Daniella

A Saudi-led bloc has demanded Qatar shutter Al Jazeera, the global news broadcaster it sponsors, as one of its conditions for restoring diplomatic relations and lifting an embargo after breaking ties in early June 2017. Qatar rejects the demand along with the bloc’s other conditions. The broadcasting giant, which has given Qatar outsize influence in the Middle East and beyond, helps the small Gulf emirate buck the foreign policies of its larger partners in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) and beat an independent path. Thus, Qatar has refused to shut down what it sees as an extraordinary source of soft power. Financing from Qatar’s royal family has freed Al Jazeera from the usual market pressures facing cable news. As an alternative to the censored state media typical of the region, Al Jazeera’s reporting on popular grievances and protest movements has angered powerful regimes. Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, and Bahrain accuse Al Jazeera of inciting terrorism. The network, in turn, accuses them of attempting “to silence the freedom of expression in the region.” …

Myth of Britain’s gifts to India

Published by skeptic

Many modern apologists for British colonial rule in India no longer contest the basic facts of imperial exploitation and plunder, rapacity and loot, which are too deeply documented to be challengeable. Instead they offer a counter-argument: granted, the British took what they could for 200 years, but didn’t they also leave behind a great deal of lasting benefit? In particular, political unity and democracy, the rule of law, railways, English education, even tea and cricket? Indeed, the British like to point out that the very idea of “India” as one entity (now three, but one during the British Raj), instead of multiple warring principalities and statelets, is the incontestable contribution of British imperial rule. Unfortunately for this argument, throughout the history of the subcontinent, there has existed an impulsion for unity. The idea of India is as old as the Vedas, the earliest Hindu scriptures, which describe “Bharatvarsha” as the land between the Himalayas and the seas. If this “sacred geography” is essentially a Hindu idea, Maulana Azad has written of how Indian Muslims, whether …

Khot’s insight

Published by Jenni

One summer afternoon in 2001, while visiting relatives in India, Subhash Khot drifted into his default mode — quietly contemplating the limits of computation. For hours, no one could tell whether the third-year Princeton University graduate student was working or merely sinking deeper into the living-room couch. That night, he woke up, scribbled something down and returned to bed. Over breakfast the next morning, he told his mother that he had come up with an interesting idea. She didn’t know what it was, but her reserved older son seemed unusually happy. Khot’s insight — now called the Unique Games Conjecture — helped him make progress on a problem he was working on at the time, but even Khot and his colleagues did not realize its potential. “It just sounded like an idea that would be nice if it was true,” recalled Khot, now a 36-year-old computer science professor at New York University’s Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences. When Khot returned to Princeton, he mentioned the idea to Sanjeev Arora, his doctoral adviser, who advised him …

Brazilian Government Corruption Probe Fallout

Published by Daniella

Corruption probes that began in 2014 have reached the highest levels of the Brazilian government and corporate elite, implicating President Michel Temer, former presidents, and dozens of cabinet officials and senators. Operacao Lava Jato (Operation Car Wash) and overlapping investigations have led to prison sentences for top executives and politicians, mass layoffs, and billions of dollars paid in fines. The scandals have complicated efforts to revive the economy amid its largest downturn in more than a century. The country’s biggest corporations have faced numerous setbacks, and the fallout from the scandals is expected to reverberate through Brazil’s 2018 general election. Millions of Brazilians have demonstrated in favor of the investigations, and many hope that shedding light on the scandals will end the widespread corruption that has plagued their country. Launched Lava Jato in 2014 Federal prosecutors led by Judge Sergio Moro launched Lava Jato in March 2014, after the Finance Ministry’s intelligence unit discovered unusual bank transactions involving the state-owned oil company Petrobras. They suspected that Petrobras was accepting bribes from firms, including the construction giant …