A BBC reporter has been killed in the east Afghan province of Khost, on a day of attacks which left nearly 40 people dead, other journalists among them.
Ahmad Shah, 29, had worked for the BBC Afghan service for more than a year.
In a statement, BBC World Service Director Jamie Angus said Shah had been a "respected and popular" journalist.
"This is a devastating loss and I send my sincere condolences to Ahmad Shah's friends and family and the whole BBC News Afghan team," he said.
"We are doing all we can to support his family at this very difficult time."
Khost police chief Abdul Hanan told BBC Afghan that Shah had been shot by unidentified armed men. He said police were investigating the motive.
Locals told the BBC that Shah had been on his bicycle when the attack happened. He was then taken to hospital, where he died of his injuries.
The hell of losing loved ones in Afghanistan
Remembering photographer Shah Marai
He was in a normally safe area he was familiar with when the attack happened, the BBC's News and Current Affairs Director Fran Unsworth said.
Last year, Afghanistan was ranked the third most dangerous country in the world for journalists by Reporters without Borders. It said nine journalists had been killed in three separate attacks.
Shah is the fifth BBC staff member to have been killed in Afghanistan since the country's devastating civil war in the 1990s. The others are:
Mirwais Jalil, 25, who was attacked by four gunmen in 1994
Abdul Samad Rohani who was shot dead in Helmand Province in 2008
Ahmed Omed Khpulwak, 25, who was mistakenly killed by Nato-led forces in 2011
Mohammed Nazir, a BBC driver who was killed in a bomb attack in 2017
Khost, where the attack happened, borders Pakistan and was an important theatre in the conflict with militants after US-led forces invaded Afghanistan in 2001.
The Taliban still has a presence in parts of the province but attacks are rare now.
Elsewhere in Afghanistan, 26 people were killed in two bombings in the capital, Kabul.
Nine journalists and photographers, and four police officers, were among those killed, officials say. Some 45 people were reported injured in the attacks.
Monday, April 30, 2018
Somebody wrote this. I'm not sure who it is but it's fantastic.
It is good for us humans to realize that we are nothing more than a species among other species, living on an average planet in an insignificant solar system somewhere in the outskirts of a random galaxy in an immense universe that harbors at least some 200 billion other galaxies and quintillions of stars with quintillions of planets. While in our sheer arrogance we self-acclaim to be the most important thing on earth - and even of the whole universe, thinking that the earth is the centre of the cosmos, everything else orbiting it, like some fools even today think, being the 'crown of the creation' due to some self-appointed god who created us 'in his own image'.
It is modern science that teaches us humbleness and humility, not the Bronze Age mythologies and religions that put us on a throne where we don't belong.
The Earth is not our own, it is not our back-yard where we can do everything on our whim. The Earth can do without humans. But we humans cannot do without the Earth.
It is modern science that teaches us humbleness and humility, not the Bronze Age mythologies and religions that put us on a throne where we don't belong.
The Earth is not our own, it is not our back-yard where we can do everything on our whim. The Earth can do without humans. But we humans cannot do without the Earth.
Today's religious news: Muslim scum blow themselves up. Two suicide bombings. 36 killed in Afghanistan attacks including ten journalists. Muslim scum blow themselves up every day. It's never going to end. Islam is the world's largest terrorist organization. Correction: Three Muslim assholes blew themselves up.
The Guardian - Ten journalists among 36 killed in Afghanistan attacks
Ten journalists have died in Afghanistan in a coordinated double suicide bombing in Kabul and a shooting in the eastern Khost province, on the deadliest day for media workers in the country since the fall of the Taliban.
Nine journalists died in the Afghan capital when they gathered at the scene of the first of two blasts. Ahmad Shah, a BBC reporter, was shot dead in a separate incident in Khost province, near the border with Pakistan.
In Kabul, a suicide attacker riding a motorbike blew himself up in the Shash Darak neighbourhood, near the Nato headquarters and the US embassy, at about 8am on Monday. A second bomber, holding a camera and posing as a journalist, struck 20 minutes later, killing rescue workers and journalists, including an Agence France-Presse photographer, who had rushed to the scene. Islamic State claimed responsibility for the Kabul attacks, which left at least 25 people dead and 45 injured in total.
Hours later, a suicide bomber targeting a Nato convoy in southern Kandahar province killed 11 children at a religious school located near where the explosion occurred. At least 16 people, including five Romanian Nato soldiers, nine civilians and two police officers, were also wounded.
AFP paid tribute to its chief photographer in Kabul, Shah Marai, who was among those killed in the capital. “This is a devastating blow, for the brave staff of our close-knit Kabul bureau and the entire agency,” AFP’s global news director, Michèle Léridon, said. “We can only honour the strength, courage, and generosity of a photographer who covered often traumatic, horrific events with sensitivity and consummate professionalism.”
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty said three of its journalists were also killed. They were named as Abadullah Hananzai, Maharram Durrani and Sabawoon Kakar, a photojournalist and camera operator, who was wounded at the scene but died in hospital. A camera operator from the local network Tolo TV was also killed.
“This terrorist attack is a war crime and an organised attack on the Afghan media,” read a statement by the Afghanistan Federation of Journalists, demanding an investigation by the UN. “The attack in the heart of Kabul and in the Green Zone indicates a serious lack of security by the government.”
Saifulrahman Ayar, a journalist who was at the scene, told the Guardian the second attacker was disguised as a journalist and held a camera. “I was near the blast site when the office called me and [asked me] to cover the incident. It was minutes after the first explosion, I was metres away when the second explosion occurred among the journalists,” he said.
“The second attacker was acting like a journalist and had a camera. I am injured in my leg, I was confused, then I saw that I’m in hospital. I told them to let me go because I want to cover the attack on my colleagues.”
Elyas Mousavi, a journalist, was crossing the checkpoint to report on the attack when the second attacker blew himself up. “After the second explosion no one could go near the site, because they were afraid of another explosion. And then ambulances arrived. I saw also some security personal dead,” he said.
Shahhussain Murtazawi, spokesperson for the Afghan presidency, condemned the twin attacks, saying that “the criminal terrorists once again hit Kabul and Nangarhar and committed crimes against humanity, during which a number of civilians have been martyred and injured”.
The US embassy in Kabul also condemned the double suicide bombing. “Where media are in danger, all other human rights are under greater threat,” it said.
The Paris-based Reporters Without Borders said Monday was the deadliest for journalists in the country since the fall of the Taliban in 2001. At least 34 journalists and media workers have been killed by Isis or the Taliban in Afghanistan since 2016, according to RSF.
A string of deadly large-scale bombings and assaults have struck the capital and other Afghan cities this year. Isis claimed responsibility for Monday’s attack on its Amaq propaganda news agency.
The Afghan affiliate of the Isis militant group calls itself Khorasan Province, an archaic name for a central Asian region that includes modern-day Afghanistan. It posted an urgent statement on an Isis-affiliate website saying two of its martyrdom seekers carried out the double bombing targeting the headquarters of the “renegade” Afghan intelligence services in Kabul.
Security officials have warned of the risk of increased attacks in the run-up to parliamentary elections planned for October. The attacks underscore the struggles Afghan security forces have faced to rein in the militant groups since the US and Nato concluded their combat mission at the end of 2014.
Like the more well-established Taliban, the Isis affiliate is committed to overthrowing the US-backed government and imposing a harsh form of Islamic rule. But while the Taliban mainly target government officials and security forces, the Isis affiliate tends to favour large-scale attacks on civilians from Afghanistan’s Shia Hazara minority, who it views as apostates.
Last week, an Isis suicide bomber attacked a voter registration centre in Kabul, killing 60 people and wounding at least 130. There were 22 women and eight children among the fatalities.
In March, an Isis suicide bomber targeted a Shia shrine in Kabul where people had gathered to celebrate the Persian new year. That attack killed 31 and wounded 65.
Associated Press in Kabul contributed to this report.
Ten journalists have died in Afghanistan in a coordinated double suicide bombing in Kabul and a shooting in the eastern Khost province, on the deadliest day for media workers in the country since the fall of the Taliban.
Nine journalists died in the Afghan capital when they gathered at the scene of the first of two blasts. Ahmad Shah, a BBC reporter, was shot dead in a separate incident in Khost province, near the border with Pakistan.
In Kabul, a suicide attacker riding a motorbike blew himself up in the Shash Darak neighbourhood, near the Nato headquarters and the US embassy, at about 8am on Monday. A second bomber, holding a camera and posing as a journalist, struck 20 minutes later, killing rescue workers and journalists, including an Agence France-Presse photographer, who had rushed to the scene. Islamic State claimed responsibility for the Kabul attacks, which left at least 25 people dead and 45 injured in total.
Hours later, a suicide bomber targeting a Nato convoy in southern Kandahar province killed 11 children at a religious school located near where the explosion occurred. At least 16 people, including five Romanian Nato soldiers, nine civilians and two police officers, were also wounded.
AFP paid tribute to its chief photographer in Kabul, Shah Marai, who was among those killed in the capital. “This is a devastating blow, for the brave staff of our close-knit Kabul bureau and the entire agency,” AFP’s global news director, Michèle Léridon, said. “We can only honour the strength, courage, and generosity of a photographer who covered often traumatic, horrific events with sensitivity and consummate professionalism.”
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty said three of its journalists were also killed. They were named as Abadullah Hananzai, Maharram Durrani and Sabawoon Kakar, a photojournalist and camera operator, who was wounded at the scene but died in hospital. A camera operator from the local network Tolo TV was also killed.
“This terrorist attack is a war crime and an organised attack on the Afghan media,” read a statement by the Afghanistan Federation of Journalists, demanding an investigation by the UN. “The attack in the heart of Kabul and in the Green Zone indicates a serious lack of security by the government.”
Saifulrahman Ayar, a journalist who was at the scene, told the Guardian the second attacker was disguised as a journalist and held a camera. “I was near the blast site when the office called me and [asked me] to cover the incident. It was minutes after the first explosion, I was metres away when the second explosion occurred among the journalists,” he said.
“The second attacker was acting like a journalist and had a camera. I am injured in my leg, I was confused, then I saw that I’m in hospital. I told them to let me go because I want to cover the attack on my colleagues.”
Elyas Mousavi, a journalist, was crossing the checkpoint to report on the attack when the second attacker blew himself up. “After the second explosion no one could go near the site, because they were afraid of another explosion. And then ambulances arrived. I saw also some security personal dead,” he said.
Shahhussain Murtazawi, spokesperson for the Afghan presidency, condemned the twin attacks, saying that “the criminal terrorists once again hit Kabul and Nangarhar and committed crimes against humanity, during which a number of civilians have been martyred and injured”.
The US embassy in Kabul also condemned the double suicide bombing. “Where media are in danger, all other human rights are under greater threat,” it said.
The Paris-based Reporters Without Borders said Monday was the deadliest for journalists in the country since the fall of the Taliban in 2001. At least 34 journalists and media workers have been killed by Isis or the Taliban in Afghanistan since 2016, according to RSF.
A string of deadly large-scale bombings and assaults have struck the capital and other Afghan cities this year. Isis claimed responsibility for Monday’s attack on its Amaq propaganda news agency.
The Afghan affiliate of the Isis militant group calls itself Khorasan Province, an archaic name for a central Asian region that includes modern-day Afghanistan. It posted an urgent statement on an Isis-affiliate website saying two of its martyrdom seekers carried out the double bombing targeting the headquarters of the “renegade” Afghan intelligence services in Kabul.
Security officials have warned of the risk of increased attacks in the run-up to parliamentary elections planned for October. The attacks underscore the struggles Afghan security forces have faced to rein in the militant groups since the US and Nato concluded their combat mission at the end of 2014.
Like the more well-established Taliban, the Isis affiliate is committed to overthrowing the US-backed government and imposing a harsh form of Islamic rule. But while the Taliban mainly target government officials and security forces, the Isis affiliate tends to favour large-scale attacks on civilians from Afghanistan’s Shia Hazara minority, who it views as apostates.
Last week, an Isis suicide bomber attacked a voter registration centre in Kabul, killing 60 people and wounding at least 130. There were 22 women and eight children among the fatalities.
In March, an Isis suicide bomber targeted a Shia shrine in Kabul where people had gathered to celebrate the Persian new year. That attack killed 31 and wounded 65.
Associated Press in Kabul contributed to this report.
Loreena McKennitt - Penelope's Song
Wikipedia - Loreena McKennitt
"Penelope's Song"
Now that the time has come
Soon gone is the day
There upon some distant shore
You'll hear me say
Long as the day in the summer time
Deep as the wine dark sea
I'll keep your heart with mine.
Till you come to me.
There like a bird I'd fly
High through the air
Reaching for the sun's full rays
Only to find you there
And in the night when our dreams are still
Or when the wind calls free
I'll keep your heart with mine
Till you come to me
Now that the time has come
Soon gone is the day
There upon some distant shore
You'll hear me say
Long as the day in the summer time
Deep as the wine dark sea
I'll keep your heart with mine.
Till you come to me
The religious imagination is paltry and petty compared to the awesome reality. -- PZ Myers
 |
| An artist's impression of 14 galaxies that are in the process of merging. Eventually, they will form the core of a massive galaxy cluster. |
 |
| An ALMA image of 14 galaxies forming a protocluster known as SPT2349-56. These galaxies are in the process of merging and will eventually form the core of a truly massive galaxy cluster. |
By DEBORAH NETBURN APRIL 25, 2018
It's a cosmic pileup in the far reaches of the universe and nothing like it has ever been seen before.
Using the most powerful telescopes on Earth, astronomers have spotted 14 burning-hot galaxies hurtling toward each other on an inevitable galactic collision course at the edge of the observable universe.
Computer models show that when these galaxies do collide they will form the core of a colossal galaxy cluster so large it will be the most massive structure known in the cosmos.
This chaotic, energy-filled region, described Wednesday in Nature, is called a protocluster, and researchers say it is more active than any other section of the universe they have ever observed.
"There are huge energetics involved, like 10,000 supernova going off at a time, quite literally," said Scott Chapman, a physicist at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Canada, who worked on the study.
As if all that wasn't crazy enough, the authors said that the 14 galaxies are known as "starburst galaxies," which means they are forming stars at a furious rate.
The research team estimates that they could be making stars as much as 1,000 times faster than the Milky Way.
And they are all crammed into a space just three times the size of our own galaxy.
In addition, the whole system is located 90% of the way to the edge of the observable universe.
It is so far away that it takes light 12.4 billion years to travel across space from the protocluster to telescopes on Earth.
That means that this glowing star-generator formed just 1.4 billion years after the universe itself came into being.
And it's that fact in particular that has astrophysicists scratching their heads.
"We don't know how it is possible," Chapman said. "We don't know how you get those 14 galaxies right down the center of the protocluster at such an early time."
Nothing that big and active should have been able to form so long ago, he said.
"We see the structure of the universe building up slowly from little bits, and then merging together to make bigger bits. We don't expect bigger galaxies to form until much later," he said.
The earliest hint that something strange was going on in this part of the sky came in 2010 from data collected by the South Pole Telescope in Antarctica.
Although this instrument was designed to find relatively nearby galaxy clusters, astronomers realized it could also be used to spot extremely bright structures from a great distance away in both space and time.
The protocluster described in the new work showed up as a small but unusual smudge of light.
Still, astronomers found it compelling enough to request time on the ALMA telescope in the Chilean desert to take a closer look at its structure.
Observations made with ALMA revealed that the center of the smudge was actually 14 distinct galaxies and that the protocluster was a whopping 12.4 billion light-years from Earth.
Chapman said that was one of the big "wow" moments.
"If it had been much closer it would still be the busiest place in the universe that we know of, but it would be less shocking," he said.
ALMA is great at zooming in and seeing details of objects, but it has a very narrow field of view, Chapman said. It could only see the center of the smudge that the South Pole Telescope detected.
The authors estimate that there could be 1,000 more galaxies in the surrounding region of space.
"Most of them will be too faint to see, even with ALMA, but we can probably find another 50 galaxies," Chapman said.
The team has already started looking. Chapman said new observations are coming in even now.
"This really launched a massive study," he said.
In the meantime, astronomers will be busy puzzling over how such a large structure could form so early in the universe.
Expect new hypotheses to come soon.
"People are very resourceful at coming up with answers, after the fact," Chapman said.
deborah.netburn@latimes.com
From the New York Times - Everything you always wanted to know about the evolution of human eyebrows.
An interesting fact: My eyebrows are mostly gray these days.
New York Times - The Evolution of the Eyebrow
Eyebrows have become an obsession of late, tattooed or microbladed, shaped and drawn in bold dark lines, making a statement far beyond braiding or waxing.
Lifting one and not the other often signals disbelief, amusement, curiosity. Raising both can suggest surprise or dismay. But it wasn’t always that way.
Early humans had thick, bony brow ridges that were far less nimble than ours, incapable of expressing much of anything beyond, “Don’t mess with me, Thag.”
Scientists have long thought those brows served some structural purpose, like support for chewing prehistoric food. That they could also be used to signal aggression or intimidate competitors was largely dismissed as an evolutionary perk, as were the more flamboyant brows of modern humans.
But when Ricardo Miguel Godinho, an evolutionary anthropologist at the University of York, made digital recreations of a skull believed to be 300,000 to 125,000 years old, he found no evidence that its brow ridges provided any of the practical benefits suggested by earlier studies. “He tested out the different possible explanations, and, effectively, there’s no reason for it,” said Penny Spikins, an anthropologist who conducted the study with Dr. Godinho.
The findings, published April 9 in Nature Ecology & Evolution, suggest that the human brow has always been a primarily social tool, and that the smoother foreheads and expressive brows of modern humans may have evolved to accommodate our increasingly complex relationships.
“With a flatter, more vertical forehead, that whole area above the eyes becomes much more mobile, and the muscles can make some really subtle communicative gestures,” Dr. Spikins said. And those gestures, like lifting your eyebrows to show you recognize someone, she said, “tend to be more about expressing friendliness than intimidation.”
Though such a hypothesis is difficult to test without a time machine, Dr. Spikins said it emerged from the real-life observations of Paul O’Higgins, a co-author of the study. “Paul was frustrated that his daughters spent so much time in the bathroom mirror perfecting their eyebrows, and was saying, ‘What are eyebrows for?’” she recalled. “That’s when we thought maybe this is actually quite important.”
New York Times - The Evolution of the Eyebrow
Eyebrows have become an obsession of late, tattooed or microbladed, shaped and drawn in bold dark lines, making a statement far beyond braiding or waxing.
Lifting one and not the other often signals disbelief, amusement, curiosity. Raising both can suggest surprise or dismay. But it wasn’t always that way.
Early humans had thick, bony brow ridges that were far less nimble than ours, incapable of expressing much of anything beyond, “Don’t mess with me, Thag.”
Scientists have long thought those brows served some structural purpose, like support for chewing prehistoric food. That they could also be used to signal aggression or intimidate competitors was largely dismissed as an evolutionary perk, as were the more flamboyant brows of modern humans.
But when Ricardo Miguel Godinho, an evolutionary anthropologist at the University of York, made digital recreations of a skull believed to be 300,000 to 125,000 years old, he found no evidence that its brow ridges provided any of the practical benefits suggested by earlier studies. “He tested out the different possible explanations, and, effectively, there’s no reason for it,” said Penny Spikins, an anthropologist who conducted the study with Dr. Godinho.
The findings, published April 9 in Nature Ecology & Evolution, suggest that the human brow has always been a primarily social tool, and that the smoother foreheads and expressive brows of modern humans may have evolved to accommodate our increasingly complex relationships.
“With a flatter, more vertical forehead, that whole area above the eyes becomes much more mobile, and the muscles can make some really subtle communicative gestures,” Dr. Spikins said. And those gestures, like lifting your eyebrows to show you recognize someone, she said, “tend to be more about expressing friendliness than intimidation.”
Though such a hypothesis is difficult to test without a time machine, Dr. Spikins said it emerged from the real-life observations of Paul O’Higgins, a co-author of the study. “Paul was frustrated that his daughters spent so much time in the bathroom mirror perfecting their eyebrows, and was saying, ‘What are eyebrows for?’” she recalled. “That’s when we thought maybe this is actually quite important.”
 |
| A new study suggests humans evolved more mobile, expressive eyebrows to accommodate our increasingly complex relationships. |
 |
| University of York researchers used 3-D engineering software to look at the brow ridge of a fossilized skull of an archaic hominin, Homo heidelbergensis, who lived between 600,000 and 200,000 years ago. |
This New York Times article is about human evolution which is always very interesting.
New York Times - Hints of Human Evolution in Chimpanzees That Endure a Savanna’s Heat
The apes of Senegal’s Fongoli savanna may offer hints to how our own ancestors moved out of the woodlands, shed their fur and started walking upright.
By Carl Zimmer April 27, 2018
Nine years later, Erin Wessling can still remember the first time she visited Fongoli, a savanna in southeast Senegal.
“You feel like you walk into an oven,” she said.
Temperatures at Fongoli can reach 110 degrees Fahrenheit or more. During every dry season, brush fires sweep across the parched landscape, leaving behind leafless trees and baked, orange soil.
“It’s really nuts,” said Ms. Wessling, now a graduate student at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.
Yet Ms. Wessling and her colleagues keep coming back to Fongoli, despite the harsh conditions. That’s because it’s home to some remarkable residents: chimpanzees.
To study them, scientists have mostly traveled to African rain forests and woodlands, where the apes live in dense groups. The sparse populations of chimpanzees that live on savannas in western and central Africa are far less understood.
Ms. Wessling and her colleagues think there are important lessons to be learned from chimps like the ones at Fongoli.
Because they are our closest living relatives, they may even tell us something about our own deep history. Millions of years ago, our apelike ancestors gradually moved from woodlands to savannas and began walking upright at some point. The Fongoli chimpanzees demonstrate just how difficult that transition would have been — and how that challenge may have driven some major changes in our evolution, from evolving sweat glands to losing fur and walking upright.
The savanna became the subject of long-term research in 2000, when Ms. Wessling’s undergraduate adviser at Iowa State University, Jill D. Pruetz, first paid a visit.
Surveying Fongoli, Dr. Pruetz decided it would be a good place to observe the differences between chimpanzee life on a savanna compared to forests. In forests, for example, chimpanzees typically thrive on a diet of ripe fruit. That’s a rare treat on a savanna.
But Dr. Pruetz could not simply settle down right away and watch the chimpanzees. At first, the sight of her frightened them off. So Dr. Pruetz and her colleagues let the apes grow accustomed to their company. That alone took four years.
At last, in 2004, Dr. Pruetz and her colleagues could follow the chimpanzees from dawn to dusk. “You just have to drink water all day,” said Dr. Pruetz, now a professor at Texas State University.
The team gradually built up a catalog of strange behaviors — ones rarely if ever seen in others. Forest chimpanzees get enough water from the fruit in their diet so they need less drinking water and can wander in search of food. The Fongoli chimps, by contrast, required daily drinking water and anchored themselves to reliable water sources in the arid landscape.
And while forest chimpanzees are active throughout the day, Dr. Pruetz found that the savanna chimpanzees rest for five to seven hours. Dr. Pruetz could often find them lurking in small caves in the dry season, and when the rainy season arrived, the chimpanzees would slip into newly formed ponds and bob there for hours.
Forest chimpanzees typically spend all night in nests they build in trees. But at Fongoli, the research team noticed that the chimpanzees often made a late-night racket.
Staying up all night to watch them, Dr. Pruetz discovered that they spent hours after sundown searching for food. “It might as well have been a daytime scene,” she said.
All these odd behaviors suggested that the chimps were struggling to cope with Fongoli’s harsh conditions. But all Dr. Pruetz’s observations couldn’t reveal what was happening inside their bodies. “I didn’t know how stressed they were,” she said.
In 2014, Ms. Wessling set out to get an answer — by collecting chimpanzee urine.
Like humans, chimpanzees have molecules in their urine that reflect their physical condition. When they feel stress, for example, they make the hormone cortisol. The pancreas produces a substance called c-peptide in response to food. Its levels can reflect whether chimpanzees are getting enough energy. If a chimpanzee gets dehydrated, the protein creatinine builds up in its urine.
Scientists regularly gather urine from forest chimpanzees, but there, they need only go under a tall tree and hold out a leaf. On the savanna, Ms. Wessling would have to wait until a chimpanzee ambled away from where it had urinated. By the time she reached the spot, the urine might have already seeped into the ground or evaporated. “You basically watch your sample disappear,” Ms. Wessling said.
From 20 chimps, Ms. Wessling gathered 368 urine samples that were taken back to Germany for analysis.
The chimps’ c-peptide levels showed they ate a decent amount of food, and possibly termites to get additional calories.
While that was an indicator of a healthy diet, analyses of the two other compounds told another story. Many of the chimps had produced high levels of cortisol, indicating that life on the savanna could be very stressful. And their creatinine levels were also high, evidence that the heat of the savanna caused them to become dehydrated.
For all the ways that the Fongoli chimps tried to protect themselves from the heat, it still punished them.
“These chimps are sort of right at the edge of what they can do,” Dr. Pruetz said. “This really gives you the biological basis of it.”
The research was published earlier this month in the Journal of Human Evolution.
To scientists who study human evolution, the Fongoli chimpanzees offer some intriguing parallels to our ancestors millions of years ago. Studies of DNA indicate that our two evolutionary branches split roughly seven million years ago.
The earliest members of our branch (known as hominins) may have been chimp-like in some respects, growing fur and walking through forests on their knuckles.
Over millions of years, Africa’s rain forests retreated into patchworks, as savannas expanded. In eastern and southern Arica, hominins moved into open habitats, eventually reaching arid grasslands — places as daunting for survival as Fongoli.
“How and when hominins got better at coping with heat is a fascinating, unsolved problem,” said Daniel E. Lieberman, a paleoanthropologist at Harvard.
The results from Fongoli suggest that a chimpanzee-like ancestor might have eked out an existence on an east African savanna. Food might not pose the biggest challenge. Instead, they would be hard-pressed by the heat.
Early hominins might have used some of the strategies documented in Fongoli, like staying near water and shifting a lot of activity from day to night. But even so, early hominins would have still suffered stress.
That stress might have only been overcome when hominins evolved new physical adaptations. Humans have skin glands that let us sweat much more than chimpanzees, for example. The origin of our upright posture might also be intertwined with our struggle with heat.
Some researchers have proposed that early hominins began standing to aid in reaching fruit hanging from trees. Peter Wheeler, of Liverpool John Moores University, has suggested that an upright posture would have helped hominins stay cool in an arid environment. On the savanna, walking tall might mean walking cool.
Dr. Pruetz suspects Dr. Wheeler may be right, and she hopes to study the Fongoli chimpanzees more to test his idea. The chimpanzees may shift their posture — as far as they can with an ape anatomy — in order to cope with the high temperatures. It’s now possible to get close enough to measure the heat flowing from the chimpanzees with a thermal imaging camera.
“We really haven’t had that opportunity before,” she said. “There’s a lot of fun stuff we can do.”
Follow Carl Zimmer on Twitter @carlzimmer
Like the Science Times page on Facebook. | Sign up for the Science Times newsletter.
The apes of Senegal’s Fongoli savanna may offer hints to how our own ancestors moved out of the woodlands, shed their fur and started walking upright.
By Carl Zimmer April 27, 2018
Nine years later, Erin Wessling can still remember the first time she visited Fongoli, a savanna in southeast Senegal.
“You feel like you walk into an oven,” she said.
Temperatures at Fongoli can reach 110 degrees Fahrenheit or more. During every dry season, brush fires sweep across the parched landscape, leaving behind leafless trees and baked, orange soil.
“It’s really nuts,” said Ms. Wessling, now a graduate student at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.
Yet Ms. Wessling and her colleagues keep coming back to Fongoli, despite the harsh conditions. That’s because it’s home to some remarkable residents: chimpanzees.
To study them, scientists have mostly traveled to African rain forests and woodlands, where the apes live in dense groups. The sparse populations of chimpanzees that live on savannas in western and central Africa are far less understood.
Ms. Wessling and her colleagues think there are important lessons to be learned from chimps like the ones at Fongoli.
Because they are our closest living relatives, they may even tell us something about our own deep history. Millions of years ago, our apelike ancestors gradually moved from woodlands to savannas and began walking upright at some point. The Fongoli chimpanzees demonstrate just how difficult that transition would have been — and how that challenge may have driven some major changes in our evolution, from evolving sweat glands to losing fur and walking upright.
The savanna became the subject of long-term research in 2000, when Ms. Wessling’s undergraduate adviser at Iowa State University, Jill D. Pruetz, first paid a visit.
Surveying Fongoli, Dr. Pruetz decided it would be a good place to observe the differences between chimpanzee life on a savanna compared to forests. In forests, for example, chimpanzees typically thrive on a diet of ripe fruit. That’s a rare treat on a savanna.
But Dr. Pruetz could not simply settle down right away and watch the chimpanzees. At first, the sight of her frightened them off. So Dr. Pruetz and her colleagues let the apes grow accustomed to their company. That alone took four years.
At last, in 2004, Dr. Pruetz and her colleagues could follow the chimpanzees from dawn to dusk. “You just have to drink water all day,” said Dr. Pruetz, now a professor at Texas State University.
The team gradually built up a catalog of strange behaviors — ones rarely if ever seen in others. Forest chimpanzees get enough water from the fruit in their diet so they need less drinking water and can wander in search of food. The Fongoli chimps, by contrast, required daily drinking water and anchored themselves to reliable water sources in the arid landscape.
And while forest chimpanzees are active throughout the day, Dr. Pruetz found that the savanna chimpanzees rest for five to seven hours. Dr. Pruetz could often find them lurking in small caves in the dry season, and when the rainy season arrived, the chimpanzees would slip into newly formed ponds and bob there for hours.
Forest chimpanzees typically spend all night in nests they build in trees. But at Fongoli, the research team noticed that the chimpanzees often made a late-night racket.
Staying up all night to watch them, Dr. Pruetz discovered that they spent hours after sundown searching for food. “It might as well have been a daytime scene,” she said.
All these odd behaviors suggested that the chimps were struggling to cope with Fongoli’s harsh conditions. But all Dr. Pruetz’s observations couldn’t reveal what was happening inside their bodies. “I didn’t know how stressed they were,” she said.
In 2014, Ms. Wessling set out to get an answer — by collecting chimpanzee urine.
Like humans, chimpanzees have molecules in their urine that reflect their physical condition. When they feel stress, for example, they make the hormone cortisol. The pancreas produces a substance called c-peptide in response to food. Its levels can reflect whether chimpanzees are getting enough energy. If a chimpanzee gets dehydrated, the protein creatinine builds up in its urine.
Scientists regularly gather urine from forest chimpanzees, but there, they need only go under a tall tree and hold out a leaf. On the savanna, Ms. Wessling would have to wait until a chimpanzee ambled away from where it had urinated. By the time she reached the spot, the urine might have already seeped into the ground or evaporated. “You basically watch your sample disappear,” Ms. Wessling said.
From 20 chimps, Ms. Wessling gathered 368 urine samples that were taken back to Germany for analysis.
The chimps’ c-peptide levels showed they ate a decent amount of food, and possibly termites to get additional calories.
While that was an indicator of a healthy diet, analyses of the two other compounds told another story. Many of the chimps had produced high levels of cortisol, indicating that life on the savanna could be very stressful. And their creatinine levels were also high, evidence that the heat of the savanna caused them to become dehydrated.
For all the ways that the Fongoli chimps tried to protect themselves from the heat, it still punished them.
“These chimps are sort of right at the edge of what they can do,” Dr. Pruetz said. “This really gives you the biological basis of it.”
The research was published earlier this month in the Journal of Human Evolution.
To scientists who study human evolution, the Fongoli chimpanzees offer some intriguing parallels to our ancestors millions of years ago. Studies of DNA indicate that our two evolutionary branches split roughly seven million years ago.
The earliest members of our branch (known as hominins) may have been chimp-like in some respects, growing fur and walking through forests on their knuckles.
Over millions of years, Africa’s rain forests retreated into patchworks, as savannas expanded. In eastern and southern Arica, hominins moved into open habitats, eventually reaching arid grasslands — places as daunting for survival as Fongoli.
“How and when hominins got better at coping with heat is a fascinating, unsolved problem,” said Daniel E. Lieberman, a paleoanthropologist at Harvard.
The results from Fongoli suggest that a chimpanzee-like ancestor might have eked out an existence on an east African savanna. Food might not pose the biggest challenge. Instead, they would be hard-pressed by the heat.
Early hominins might have used some of the strategies documented in Fongoli, like staying near water and shifting a lot of activity from day to night. But even so, early hominins would have still suffered stress.
That stress might have only been overcome when hominins evolved new physical adaptations. Humans have skin glands that let us sweat much more than chimpanzees, for example. The origin of our upright posture might also be intertwined with our struggle with heat.
Some researchers have proposed that early hominins began standing to aid in reaching fruit hanging from trees. Peter Wheeler, of Liverpool John Moores University, has suggested that an upright posture would have helped hominins stay cool in an arid environment. On the savanna, walking tall might mean walking cool.
Dr. Pruetz suspects Dr. Wheeler may be right, and she hopes to study the Fongoli chimpanzees more to test his idea. The chimpanzees may shift their posture — as far as they can with an ape anatomy — in order to cope with the high temperatures. It’s now possible to get close enough to measure the heat flowing from the chimpanzees with a thermal imaging camera.
“We really haven’t had that opportunity before,” she said. “There’s a lot of fun stuff we can do.”
Follow Carl Zimmer on Twitter @carlzimmer
Like the Science Times page on Facebook. | Sign up for the Science Times newsletter.
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| A male chimpanzee drinking at a waterhole in Fongoli, a Senegalese savanna. Temperatures at Fongoli can reach 110 degrees Fahrenheit or more. |
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| The Fongoli chimpanzees offer evidence of how stressful it can be to cope with the intense heat of a savanna, rather than the forest. They don’t roam far from water sources and shift some of their hunts for food to nighttime. |
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| Erin Wessling with a Fongoli chimp. By gathering chimpanzee urine, she and her colleagues were able to determine how difficult the chimpanzees’ lives were by measuring the levels of cortisol, a stress hormone, and other compounds. |
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| Early hominins might have used some of the strategies documented in Fongoli chipmanzees, like staying near water. Humans have skin glands that let us sweat much more than chimpanzees, and the origin of our upright posture might have been an adaptation to stay cooler. |
War movies
People who don't play chess might still be interested in watching a chess game. It's like watching a war movie or a knife fight.
TV - Blitz Chess
TV - Rapid chess
https://lichess.org is the best chess website in the universe and it's free. There are zero ads.
TV - Blitz Chess
TV - Rapid chess
https://lichess.org is the best chess website in the universe and it's free. There are zero ads.
Last night I saw the full moon. In the night sky Jupiter was very close to the moon.
How did I know the planet I saw was Jupiter? I looked it up.
Earthsky.org - astronomy essentials - visible planets Mars Jupiter Venus Saturn Mercury
Earthsky.org - astronomy essentials - visible planets Mars Jupiter Venus Saturn Mercury
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| The waxing gibbous moon travels away from the star Spica and toward the dazzling planet Jupiter on the nights of April 28, 29 and 30, 2018. |
Many years ago I created the best organic vegetable garden in Chicago in my very small backyard.
For my Chicago organic vegetable garden I rented a rototiller. "Rototiller: a motor-driven machine with rotating blades for breaking up or tilling the soil."
Then I bought some composted cow manure. "An organic soil amendment for vegetable gardens, flower beds, lawns and landscapes. Add it to the soil to promote healthy plant growth."
Then I dug canals for between rows of plants. "Canal: to convey water for irrigation." Every morning I would let my hose water the canals. Every night I would use my hose to water the top of the plants.
Then I bought some large earthworms but instead of using them as fishing bait I put them in the center of my garden then covered them with a little bit of soil so the birds would not eat them. For my worms this was heaven. I was their savior.
Thanks to those worms my tomato plants grew to be higher than me and I'm almost 6 feet tall (1.8 meters). I bought stakes for my tomato plants but later I realized they were not tall enough so I had to buy larger stakes.
At the end of the season I had enough organically grown tomatoes for the entire neighborhood. My garden had numerous other vegetables but mostly it was tomatoes.
To speed things up instead of buying seeds I bought transplants. "Transplants are essentially baby vegetable plants, usually sold in pots or 'packs' of 4 or 6."
One nice thing about organic vegetable gardens is the plants are very healthy. Insects are not interested in healthy plants and they were never a problem.
One night I was in my garden and I saw two earthworms making love. How many people have seen that?
This BBC YouTube video has everything you always wanted to know about earthworms.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/springwatch Emma Sherlock, the curator of free-living worms at the Natural History Museum London, introduces us to the recyclers of the planet, the earthworms, and explains why they're important.
Then I bought some composted cow manure. "An organic soil amendment for vegetable gardens, flower beds, lawns and landscapes. Add it to the soil to promote healthy plant growth."
Then I dug canals for between rows of plants. "Canal: to convey water for irrigation." Every morning I would let my hose water the canals. Every night I would use my hose to water the top of the plants.
Then I bought some large earthworms but instead of using them as fishing bait I put them in the center of my garden then covered them with a little bit of soil so the birds would not eat them. For my worms this was heaven. I was their savior.
Thanks to those worms my tomato plants grew to be higher than me and I'm almost 6 feet tall (1.8 meters). I bought stakes for my tomato plants but later I realized they were not tall enough so I had to buy larger stakes.
At the end of the season I had enough organically grown tomatoes for the entire neighborhood. My garden had numerous other vegetables but mostly it was tomatoes.
To speed things up instead of buying seeds I bought transplants. "Transplants are essentially baby vegetable plants, usually sold in pots or 'packs' of 4 or 6."
One nice thing about organic vegetable gardens is the plants are very healthy. Insects are not interested in healthy plants and they were never a problem.
One night I was in my garden and I saw two earthworms making love. How many people have seen that?
This BBC YouTube video has everything you always wanted to know about earthworms.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/springwatch Emma Sherlock, the curator of free-living worms at the Natural History Museum London, introduces us to the recyclers of the planet, the earthworms, and explains why they're important.
Sunday, April 29, 2018
Idiot America: “With 15 to 20 percent of biology teachers teaching creationism this is the biggest failure in science education. There’s no other field where teachers reject the foundations of their science like they do in biology.”
When I was a student at an Illinois high school my biology teacher never once mentioned the word "evolution" and she said nothing about it. I graduated from that high school without ever knowing anything about evolution. I didn't even know there was something called evolution. I did not know "evolution" was a word.
Most biology teachers in Idiot America need to be fired for incompetence and stupidity but their jobs are safe.
From the New York Times: On Evolution, Biology Teachers Stray From Lesson Plan
Teaching creationism in public schools has consistently been ruled unconstitutional in federal courts, but according to a national survey of more than 900 public high school biology teachers, it continues to flourish in the nation’s classrooms.
Researchers found that only 28 percent of biology teachers consistently follow the recommendations of the National Research Council to describe straightforwardly the evidence for evolution and explain the ways in which it is a unifying theme in all of biology. At the other extreme, 13 percent explicitly advocate creationism, and spend at least an hour of class time presenting it in a positive light.
That leaves what the authors call “the cautious 60 percent,” who avoid controversy by endorsing neither evolution nor its unscientific alternatives. In various ways, they compromise.
The survey, published in the January 28 (2013?) issue of Science, found that some avoid intellectual commitment by explaining that they teach evolution only because state examinations require it, and that students do not need to “believe” in it. Others treat evolution as if it applied only on a molecular level, avoiding any discussion of the evolution of species. And a large number claim that students are free to choose evolution or creationism based on their own beliefs.
Eric Plutzer, a co-author of the paper, said that the most enthusiastic proponents of creationism were geographically widely spread across the country.
More high school students take biology than any other science course, the researchers write, and for about a quarter of them it will be the only science course they take. So the influence of these teachers looms large.
Randy Moore, a professor of biology at the University of Minnesota, was unsurprised by the study’s conclusions. “These kinds of data have been reported regionally, and in some cases nationally, for decades. Creationists are in the classroom, and it’s not just the South,” he said. “At least 25 percent of high school teachers in Minnesota explicitly teach creationism.”
“Students are being cheated out of a rich science education,” said Dr. Plutzer, a professor of political science at Penn State University. “We think the ‘cautious 60 percent’ represent a group of educators who, if they were better trained in science in general and in evolution in particular, would be more confident in their ability to explain controversial topics to their students, to parents, and to school board members.”
But Dr. Moore is doubtful that more education is the answer. “These courses aren’t reaching the creationists,” he said. “They already know what evolution is. They were biology majors, or former biology students. They just reject what we told them.
“With 15 to 20 percent of biology teachers teaching creationism,” he continued, “this is the biggest failure in science education. There’s no other field where teachers reject the foundations of their science like they do in biology.”
What I wrote for a gullible bible thumping retard.
Did you know that Christian salvation is largely contingent on the Resurrection of Christ (1 Corinthians 15:16)?
1 Corinthians 15:16 - For if the dead do not rise, then Christ is not risen
Conversely, you could also say that "If Christ is not risen, then the dead do not rise, either.
For one implies the other, vice versa.
Thus, the Salvation of All Christians must be seen as contingent on his Resurrection. John 11:25-26, Romans 10:9
So, if Christ does not "resurrect", then it means that the entire Christian world, and the rest of the world would perish along with their Saviour.
Discuss.
Note: Besides the Resurrection of Christ, Christians must also be willing to "SERVE the LORD Jesus Christ" (Romans 10:9) and they should also "Love their enemy/neighbour", which is according to Luke 10:27-28.
•••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••
The magical resurrection of the Magic Jeebus Man never happened because it's impossible.
Since your moronic cult requires this ridiculous fantasy you have to throw Christianity in the garbage where it belongs.
Of course cowards won't do this. Reality makes them cry so they throw reality out. The problem is reality doesn't care and reality is not going anywhere.
1 Corinthians 15:16 - For if the dead do not rise, then Christ is not risen
Conversely, you could also say that "If Christ is not risen, then the dead do not rise, either.
For one implies the other, vice versa.
Thus, the Salvation of All Christians must be seen as contingent on his Resurrection. John 11:25-26, Romans 10:9
So, if Christ does not "resurrect", then it means that the entire Christian world, and the rest of the world would perish along with their Saviour.
Discuss.
Note: Besides the Resurrection of Christ, Christians must also be willing to "SERVE the LORD Jesus Christ" (Romans 10:9) and they should also "Love their enemy/neighbour", which is according to Luke 10:27-28.
•••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••
The magical resurrection of the Magic Jeebus Man never happened because it's impossible.
Since your moronic cult requires this ridiculous fantasy you have to throw Christianity in the garbage where it belongs.
Of course cowards won't do this. Reality makes them cry so they throw reality out. The problem is reality doesn't care and reality is not going anywhere.
What I wrote for a theocratic asshole.
Civilized people do not call America a "Christian nation" for the same reason they don't call America a White nation.
You Christians are obviously not civilized. You people have zero moral values.
"They are not just atheists but refuse the rights of others to follow religion."
That's dishonest. This is typical. I never met a Christian who wasn't a liar.
We have something called the Establishment Clause in our Bill of Rights. Atheists respect it. You Christians want to throw it out. You know-nothing uncivilized people disgrace my country. You people have my contempt.
You Christians are obviously not civilized. You people have zero moral values.
"They are not just atheists but refuse the rights of others to follow religion."
That's dishonest. This is typical. I never met a Christian who wasn't a liar.
We have something called the Establishment Clause in our Bill of Rights. Atheists respect it. You Christians want to throw it out. You know-nothing uncivilized people disgrace my country. You people have my contempt.
Saturday, April 28, 2018
What I wrote for a bible thumping retard.
"I am pretty certain that you believe that God does not exist."
Sir, it would be more accurate to say I'm 100% certain your magic god fairy is not real. There is no magic in the universe therefore the existence of your fairy is impossible. This is a basic fact of reality.
People who believe in the god thing like to make stuff up about it. For example everything you wrote. Zero evidence. Your disgusting bible is not evidence for anything. The problem is wishful thinking which is not evidence for anything.
Thank goodness I'm not infected with your disease because that would be a terrible waste of a life.
Sir, it would be more accurate to say I'm 100% certain your magic god fairy is not real. There is no magic in the universe therefore the existence of your fairy is impossible. This is a basic fact of reality.
People who believe in the god thing like to make stuff up about it. For example everything you wrote. Zero evidence. Your disgusting bible is not evidence for anything. The problem is wishful thinking which is not evidence for anything.
Thank goodness I'm not infected with your disease because that would be a terrible waste of a life.
What is the average lifespan of a mayfly? The primary function of the adult is reproduction; adults do not feed, and have only vestigial (unusable) mouthparts, while their digestive systems are filled with air. Dolania americana has the shortest lifespan of any mayfly: the adult females of the species live for less than five minutes.
I learned something today.
I learned something today. I found out Jerry Coyne's website has 55,000 readers.
How many readers do I have? I don't know but I'm guessing it's somewhere between zero and five.
It would be so nice if people wrote comments here so I know they exist. I made it as easy as possible to do that.
The reason Jerry Coyne's website has 55,000 readers is because it's many times better than this place. I go there every day.
Today he has an article about a science museum in Israel that covers an exhibit about evolution with a sheet to not offend Jews who are know-nothing creationists. This is of course ridiculous. Even Idiot America would not do that.
Here it is: Jerry Coyne's website - Natural history museum in Jerusalem covers exhibit on evolution to avoid offending ultra-Orthodox Jews
I also recommend this Jerry Coyne article about North Korea at The U.S. and South Korea get conned again. He doubts the North Korea dictator can be trusted.
One more thing: This blog has 182 posts with the label "Jerry Coyne" at Jerry Coyne.
How many readers do I have? I don't know but I'm guessing it's somewhere between zero and five.
It would be so nice if people wrote comments here so I know they exist. I made it as easy as possible to do that.
The reason Jerry Coyne's website has 55,000 readers is because it's many times better than this place. I go there every day.
Today he has an article about a science museum in Israel that covers an exhibit about evolution with a sheet to not offend Jews who are know-nothing creationists. This is of course ridiculous. Even Idiot America would not do that.
Here it is: Jerry Coyne's website - Natural history museum in Jerusalem covers exhibit on evolution to avoid offending ultra-Orthodox Jews
I also recommend this Jerry Coyne article about North Korea at The U.S. and South Korea get conned again. He doubts the North Korea dictator can be trusted.
One more thing: This blog has 182 posts with the label "Jerry Coyne" at Jerry Coyne.
A Universe Not Made For Us (Carl Sagan on religion)
This is part 1 of Callum C. J. Sutherland's tribute series to Carl Sagan. One of several excellent playlists dedicated to Carl Sagan.
You can check out them out here:
The Sagan Series 10 videos
I found this comment at YouTube. It's a good thing. Science is killing religion.
"I was a devout Muslim before I discovered Carl Sagan thanks to YouTube. I'm ever so grateful to Carl Sagan for liberating me."
Friday, April 27, 2018
About 7 years ago somebody wrote the best comment ever written. It's about the Bible God's love for genocide.
Somebody wrote the best comment I have ever seen on November 19, 2011 at PZ's website:
Anubis Bloodsin the third says:
"Not everybody is as certain about the barbarity of the Ancient Hebrews as you guys are."
No indeed committed clowns stick fingers in ears chant ‘all things bright and beautiful’ over and over and totally ignore the scripture in their own badly translated instruction manual.
It is called ‘cherry picking what suits’, xians do it like breathing, only are very inept at thinking while they do so!
They accept all the other codswollop, but when uncomfortable they deny it or, actually try and excuse the inexcusable even though genocide is genocide and it matters not a jot how they go running to hide behind the voluminous skirts of ‘fistikated feelology’…they are condoning literary genocide…they are applauding the death of men, women and children….and actually get righteous about the cheap thrill that the described genocide delivers.
And it does not matter a further twitch of Beelzebub’s whiskers that the biblical stories are for the most part bronze age goat-herder imagination anyway, even though they also borrowed very heavily from earlier fairy tales from earlier versions of brain dead fairy stories to titillate the poor of knowledge, or the more numerous, hard of thinking.
Anubis Bloodsin the third says:
"Not everybody is as certain about the barbarity of the Ancient Hebrews as you guys are."
No indeed committed clowns stick fingers in ears chant ‘all things bright and beautiful’ over and over and totally ignore the scripture in their own badly translated instruction manual.
It is called ‘cherry picking what suits’, xians do it like breathing, only are very inept at thinking while they do so!
They accept all the other codswollop, but when uncomfortable they deny it or, actually try and excuse the inexcusable even though genocide is genocide and it matters not a jot how they go running to hide behind the voluminous skirts of ‘fistikated feelology’…they are condoning literary genocide…they are applauding the death of men, women and children….and actually get righteous about the cheap thrill that the described genocide delivers.
And it does not matter a further twitch of Beelzebub’s whiskers that the biblical stories are for the most part bronze age goat-herder imagination anyway, even though they also borrowed very heavily from earlier fairy tales from earlier versions of brain dead fairy stories to titillate the poor of knowledge, or the more numerous, hard of thinking.
One of the Christian fucktards who infest the Wall Street Journal wrote "We are a Christian nation." This is what I wrote for the theocratic asshole.
I never met a Christian who wasn't a stupid fucking asshole.
••••••••••••••••••
"We are a Christian nation."
Sir, we are not a Christian nation. We are a nation of numerous religions and people who are not religious. What you wrote insults millions of Americans.
••••••••••••••••••
UPDATE: Another Christian fucktard tried to tell me America is a Christian nation.
What I wrote:
I repeat: America is not a Christian nation. It insults not just me. Millions of Americans want nothing to do with your disgusting cult.
I served this nation in the United States Army. I did not do that to have some theocrats insult me with their "Christian nation" nonsense. You people should apologize.
You should also grow up and face facts. Your Magic Jeebus Man is dead. Your idiot preacher did not magically become a zombie. You people live in a "everything is magic fantasy world". You disgrace America. We are an international laughing stock thanks to you superstitious people. It's pathetic.
••••••••••••••••••
"We are a Christian nation."
Sir, we are not a Christian nation. We are a nation of numerous religions and people who are not religious. What you wrote insults millions of Americans.
••••••••••••••••••
UPDATE: Another Christian fucktard tried to tell me America is a Christian nation.
What I wrote:
I repeat: America is not a Christian nation. It insults not just me. Millions of Americans want nothing to do with your disgusting cult.
I served this nation in the United States Army. I did not do that to have some theocrats insult me with their "Christian nation" nonsense. You people should apologize.
You should also grow up and face facts. Your Magic Jeebus Man is dead. Your idiot preacher did not magically become a zombie. You people live in a "everything is magic fantasy world". You disgrace America. We are an international laughing stock thanks to you superstitious people. It's pathetic.
A Muslim coward told Muslim morons they should welcome getting killed. Being dead is a good thing because you get to see Allah. Muslims are stupid fucking assholes.
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I found something to calculate weight category (underweight or normal weight or overweight or obese). According to this thing my weight is normal. I eat only healthy stuff and I eat only once a day.
YOU NEED TO CLICK THIS - Calculate Your Body Mass Index
Body mass index (BMI) is a measure of body fat based on height and weight that applies to adult men and women.
- Enter your weight and height using standard or metric measures.
- Select "Compute BMI" and your BMI will appear below.
Assholes for the Magic Jeebus Man used the moronic Bible to justify slavery.
This is what I wrote for the Christian assholes who infest the Wall Street Journal.
During the period of American slavery, how did slaveholders manage to balance their religious beliefs with the cruel facts of the “peculiar institution“? As shown by the following passages — adapted from Noel Rae’s new book The Great Stain, which uses firsthand accounts to tell the story of slavery in America — for some of them that rationalization was right there in the Bible.
Out of the more than three quarters of a million words in the Bible, Christian slaveholders—and, if asked, most slaveholders would have defined themselves as Christian—had two favorites texts, one from the beginning of the Old Testament and the other from the end of the New Testament. In the words of the King James Bible, which was the version then current, these were, first, Genesis IX, 18–27:
Please click this to see the rest of it: How Christian Slaveholders Used the Bible to Justify Slavery
Anyone can become a Christian. No moral values required. People only have be gullible enough to believe the decomposing corpse of the Magic Jeebus Man magically became a zombie.
To be a Christian it also helps to be coward who is willing to throw out all of reality to believe in a magical 2nd life.
Christianity is the most ridiculous and most disgusting cult ever invented.
During the period of American slavery, how did slaveholders manage to balance their religious beliefs with the cruel facts of the “peculiar institution“? As shown by the following passages — adapted from Noel Rae’s new book The Great Stain, which uses firsthand accounts to tell the story of slavery in America — for some of them that rationalization was right there in the Bible.
Out of the more than three quarters of a million words in the Bible, Christian slaveholders—and, if asked, most slaveholders would have defined themselves as Christian—had two favorites texts, one from the beginning of the Old Testament and the other from the end of the New Testament. In the words of the King James Bible, which was the version then current, these were, first, Genesis IX, 18–27:
Please click this to see the rest of it: How Christian Slaveholders Used the Bible to Justify Slavery
Anyone can become a Christian. No moral values required. People only have be gullible enough to believe the decomposing corpse of the Magic Jeebus Man magically became a zombie.
To be a Christian it also helps to be coward who is willing to throw out all of reality to believe in a magical 2nd life.
Christianity is the most ridiculous and most disgusting cult ever invented.
Thursday, April 26, 2018
Can the fat dictator be trusted? We will see what happens.
Breaking News Alert
April 26, 2018
NYTimes.com »
BREAKING NEWS
Kim Jong-un has stepped into South Korean territory, a first for a North Korean leader, to begin a summit meeting with the South’s president
Thursday, April 26, 2018 8:33 PM EST
Kim Jong-un on Friday became the first North Korean leader to set foot in South Korean-controlled territory, starting a historic summit meeting with the South’s president that will test Mr. Kim’s willingness to bargain away his nuclear weapons.
Mr. Kim’s decision to cross into the world’s most heavily armed border zones, a prospect that seemed unthinkable just a few months ago, was broadcast live in South Korea, where all eyes and ears are focused on the intentions of the North’s 34-year-old leader.
Abraham Lincoln and Charles Darwin
An interesting fact: Abraham Lincoln and Charles Darwin were both born on the same day, February 12, 1809.
Another interesting fact: Both Lincoln and Darwin were against slavery. Charles Darwin spoke out strongly against slavery while American Christians used their Bible to justify slavery.
After Lincoln freed the slaves the same Christians used their Bible to justify segregation.
Another interesting fact: Both Lincoln and Darwin were against slavery. Charles Darwin spoke out strongly against slavery while American Christians used their Bible to justify slavery.
After Lincoln freed the slaves the same Christians used their Bible to justify segregation.
This is Islam.
On This Day...
April 26, 2016: Mosul, Iraq
A Sharia court orders civilians drowned in a metal cage: 5 Killed
April 26, 2016: Mosul, Iraq
A Sharia court orders civilians drowned in a metal cage: 5 Killed
Everything you always wanted to know about Bighorn sheep.
The bighorn sheep (Ovis canadensis)[5] is a species of sheep native to North America[6] named for its large horns. These horns can weigh up to 14 kg (30 lb), while the sheep themselves weigh up to 140 kg (300 lb).[7] Recent genetic testing indicates three distinct subspecies of Ovis canadensis, one of which is endangered: O. c. sierrae. Sheep originally crossed to North America over the Bering land bridge from Siberia; the population in North America peaked in the millions, and the bighorn sheep entered into the mythology of Native Americans. By 1900, the population had crashed to several thousand, due to diseases introduced through European livestock and overhunting.[8]
I asked normal people and Christians why do they call the magic god fairy "HIM" instead of "IT".
I noticed both atheists & theists call the god fairy "HIM". Shouldn't the thing be called "IT" or does the thing require male sex organs?
Best answer so far because I agree with it:
"It" is certainly applicable there. Formless, sexless nonexistent pretend being. Nothing but "it" works here.
UPDATE: My question was vaporized. Christian assholes love censorship.
Best answer so far because I agree with it:
"It" is certainly applicable there. Formless, sexless nonexistent pretend being. Nothing but "it" works here.
UPDATE: My question was vaporized. Christian assholes love censorship.
Fantastic buying opportunity. AT&T dividend yield is now at 6.06%. I'm convinced the dividend is extremely safe. This is what I've been buying every month. I hold for life. I'm only interested in the dividend income.
NYSE:T
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33.04 USD −2.16 (6.14%)
1 day
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1 month
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Max
33.52 USD 10:00 AM
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| Low | 32.85 |
| Mkt cap | 201.58B |
| P/E ratio | 22.21 |
| Div yield | 6.06% |
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| 52-wk high | 40.56 |
| 52-wk low | 32.55 |
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