You Are Winning! First time ever, polls show key non-religious group a plurality in US

GSS_2012_religion
Call me a hopeless dreamer, but this almost brought tears to my eyes. For decades there has been a shift away from with organized religion. You would never know watching the dominionist loudmouths and media stenographers who enabled them, but that’s a fact. Now, for the first time ever, a new milestone has been reached: More Americans between the ages of 18-30 now identify with no religion than identify with any other single faith. They are the plurality! Researchers Michael Hunt, Claude Fischer, and Mark Chaves have more below: [Read more…]

Reports of military coup underway in Egypt; unconfirmed

 Update: CNN live reporting a coup is underway

Via NYT — CAIRO — With a potentially violent showdown looming between Egypt’s military and the Islamist backers of President Mohamed Morsi, the country’s top generals summoned civilian political leaders to an emergency meeting on Wednesday to discuss a new interim government while moving tanks toward the presidential palace and restricting Mr. Morsi’s travel — new signals of an impending military takeover. A top presidential adviser said a coup already was under way.

Hashtag #Egypt; #Cairo; Twitter feeds RichardEngel: Reports military deploying at key sites and intersections, not only in #cairo . Also highway to Alexandria

Bear in mind the military in Egypt is by some accounts I;m seeing, the less extreme, more secular interest. How it would play out if they take over though is anyone’s guess.

WI court upholds conviction for religious parents who refused to treat child

Prayer does not work any more than any other magic incantation works. Most people know this, including the religious, which is why prayer is only seriously relied upon exclusively when there is no practical solution available. But some fundamentalists have been so thoroughly taken in by the anti-science faction that they opt for prayer alone and refuse medical treatment even when circumstances become dire. If they do that for themselves, well, they’re just fatally ignorant. When that willful ignorance causes the needless suffering and death of someone under their care, it’s homicide. At least that’s how the Wisconsin Supreme Court decided in one tragic case: [Read more…]

Texas Republican admitted goal is to outlaw birth control

Just in case there was any doubt, eliminating birth control and women’s health services has always been the goal of conservative fundamentalists. As Texas Republicans have fought to limit women’s access to abortion, they’ve offered staggering ignorance, in the form of state Sen. Bob Deuell’s contention that only “accurate intercourse” causes pregnancy and state Rep. Jodie Laubenberg’s belief that rape kits are “where a woman can get cleaned out.” This is happening in Texas and all over the nation, where ever conservatives have gained power. These clowns are pure, unashamed, evil dominionist creeps.

New consideration doubles the theoretical number of habitable worlds in Milky Way

A hypothetical water world with the red dwarf Gleise581 glowering on the horizon.

A hypothetical water world with the red dwarf Gleise 581 glowering on the horizon.

Look at a big spiral galaxy like the Milky Way and its blazing with the blue-white light of hot, young stars. But the vast majority of stars in our galaxy are the smaller, redder types. Of the estimated 400 billion suns in our galaxy, astronomers believe at least half of them are red dwarfs. One problem with red dwarfs is they tend to be active, they can flare and dim dramatically over short periods of time compared to our reliable, stable yellow sun. Because they are so much dimmer, planets in the Goldilocks zone where water might exist as a liquid on the surface would need to huddle much closer to the red stars. Not only would those planets would be pummeled by stellar outburst, they’d become tidally locked, always the same side facing the sun, similar to the way our moon always presents the same face to earth. All things being equal, a planet that takes a few weeks to rotate instead of a day would have a less powerful magnetic field to ward off the solar wind. Both Mars and Venus have mostly lost whatever primeval magnetic field they once had and that probably played a role in vaporizing whatever oceans they may have started out with.

But there’s a newer consideration, one which could help protect the planets of red dwarfs, now being modeled and tested. This increases the number of potentially habitable exo-planets to 60 billion! How? Think of a cold Venus: [Read more…]

New GOP strategy: Hillary Clinton is TOO old

Wile-E-Coyote

Imagine you are a national republican strategist. In the light of the 2012 ass whuppin, you have many challenges. Thanks to the jihad against women’s rights, chief among them is the female vote comprising more than half the electorate in many key states. It’s bleak there. You’re handily losing the majority of young and minority women, struggling for suburban and white-collar ladies, and you’re even bleeding voters from the usually more reliable mature women. You have to turn this around and quick.

Eureka! A brainstorm strikes faster than lightning: piss off as many of the undecided female voters of all ages as possible and really undermine your chances with retired men and women! [Read more…]