"Darwin was the first to use data from nature to convince people that evolution is true, and his idea of natural selection was truly novel. It testifies to his genius that the concept of natural theology, accepted by most educated Westerners before 1859, was vanquished within only a few years by a single five-hundred-page book. On the Origin of Species turned the mysteries of life's diversity from mythology into genuine science." -- Jerry Coyne
This article says nothing about Usman Khan's religion. Was he a Jew, a Christian, an atheist, or what?
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Jim Deiner
I had posted a response which was not posted by the PC surveillance squad.
The London Telegraph reported that Khan was a Pakistani Brit who was a "student and persona friend of Anjem Choudary, the notorious Islamist hate preacher"
Draw your own conclusions.
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Ted Childers
We can not talk about this subject in public, ask one of your neighbors.
Edward Elgar composed his Variations, Op. 36, popularly known as the Enigma Variations, between October 1898 and February 1899. It is an orchestral work comprising fourteen variations on an original theme.
Elgar dedicated the work 'to my friends pictured within', each variation being a musical sketch of one of his circle of close acquaintances (see musical cryptogram). Those portrayed include Elgar's wife Alice, his friend and publisher Augustus J. Jaeger and Elgar himself.
In naming his theme ‘Enigma’ Elgar posed a challenge which has generated much speculation but has never been conclusively answered. The Enigma is widely believed to involve a hidden melody.
After its 1899 London premiere the Variations achieved immediate popularity and established Elgar's international reputation. The work has been recorded over 60 times.
I buy all my stuff from Amazon because they do everything possible to make their customers happy. Any politician who attacks Amazon will never get my vote.
KABUL • Afghan officials said yesterday that two separate explosions in the country's north killed at least 16 people, almost all of them women and young girls. In the north-eastern Kunduz province, a roadside bomb struck a civilian vehicle going to a wedding on Wednesday evening, killing at least 15 people - six women, six girls and two infants, as well as the male driver.
Hours later, a gunfight and explosion at a security checkpoint killed at least one policeman. The interior ministry blamed the Taleban for the two attacks.
Somebody at the Wall Street Journal wrote this comment:
Any bets this is either an Islamic radical trying to bring Allah's "peace" to London, or a Labour party fanatic upset that Boris Johnson is about to win approval from voters to make a complete break-away from the oppressive influence of the European Union?
U.K. police shot dead a suspected terrorist wearing a hoax explosive vest.
In a separate incident, three people were wounded in a stabbing in The Hague, Netherlands.
By Anna Isaac, Jon Sindreu and Sarah McFarlane
Updated November 29, 2019, 3:49 pm ET
BREAKING NEWS:
Three people were wounded in a stabbing on a busy shopping street in The Hague, Netherlands
Terror Attack in London Leaves 2 Dead
LONDON—A terrorist killed two people in a stabbing attack before being shot dead by police, U.K. officials said, unleashing a scene of panic and forcing authorities to lock down an area on the edge of London’s central financial district.
In a separate incident Friday evening, three people were wounded in a stabbing on a busy shopping street in the center of The Hague, Netherlands. Dutch police said the motive wasn’t immediately clear and that the suspect got away.
A call for witnesses described the suspect as a man in his late 40s, with light complexion and wearing a dark coat and a gray tracksuit.
The London attack hit in a busy area near London Bridge, close to the site of a June 2017 rampage in which three knife-wielding men plowed a van into pedestrians and stabbed people in nearby bars and restaurants.
Witnesses described a man with a knife appearing to come out of Fishmongers Hall, a historic building on the north side of London Bridge. According to a video taken by a witness, several bystanders tackled a man to the ground. A police officer ran to the scene and appeared to order the pedestrians away from the man.
Police said the assailant, who was believed to be wearing a hoax explosive device, was shot and died at the scene. They confirmed that the incident was being treated as terrorism.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson cut short campaign appearances ahead of the country’s Dec. 12 election. Mayor of London Sadiq Khan said counterterrorism police weren’t looking for anyone else in connection with the attack.
Security was tightened in nearby buildings and there was a heavy police presence in the area around London Bridge. According to a security official, police were sweeping the area for explosives.
The bridge, a busy urban artery that connects the U.K. capital’s central business district to south London, crosses the River Thames just west of the landmark Tower Bridge. Authorities closed London Bridge station for several hours, causing disruption to transport in the capital.
Witnesses described a scene of panic as pedestrians streamed off the bridge, many evacuating from double-decker buses. Enrique Murio, an 18-year-old student, was working on his laptop at the Roasting Plant cafe on the south side of the bridge when a woman ran inside. “She was hysterical, there was a rush of people and I heard tons of screaming. We all ran to the back of the coffee shop and the owner unlocked…the back door to go down to the basement.”
“I heard five or six shots,” said Dimitri Donsimoni, a French tourist who was sitting in a cafe, the Boro Bistro, at the base of the bridge when the incident occurred. “People started running. We ran inside the cafe because we couldn’t tell what was happening…Everyone was running from the bridge.”
Police ordered pedestrians, including a group of children, off the bridge. Police at first were evacuating restaurants and telling people to get away from the bridge area but then later told people to stay inside.
“Get inside the building,” a heavily armed police officer yelled as people barricaded themselves inside Boro Bistro. Police ushered patrons to the back of the restaurant while they locked the doors.
Boro Bistro was one of the locations attacked in 2017.
“It’s the second time so it’s hard to believe that it’s happening again,” said Kouame Abozan, who works as security for Boro Bistro. “I immediately thought it was the same routine as 2017.”
One American tourist, Barry K. Herman, said people in nearby Borough Market were screaming and running as dozens of police cars, sirens wailing, raced toward the bridge.
In a statement, White House spokesman Judd Deere said: “President Trump has been briefed on this morning’s attack at the London Bridge and is monitoring the situation. The United States strongly condemns all horrific acts of violence on innocent people, and we pledge our full support to our Ally, the United Kingdom.”
Mr. Khan paid tribute to the “breathtaking heroism” of members of the public who intervened to restrain the suspect.
“They are the best of us,” he said, adding they couldn’t have known the explosive device the suspect was wearing was a hoax.
The U.K. has suffered a wave of terrorism-related attacks in recent years. In the 2017 London Bridge attack, all three assailants were shot dead by police. Eight people were killed and dozens hospitalized in an assault that interrupted campaigning for a national election.
Also in June 2017, a van struck pedestrians outside a London mosque. Earlier that year, another car attack on London’s Westminster Bridge left five dead. In May 2017, a suicide bomber killed 22 concertgoers in Manchester.
British security services in November lowered their assessment of the risk of a major terrorist attack to “substantial,” the third rung on a five-point scale.
—Sarah McFarlane, Scott Patterson and Alex Frangos contributed to this article.
Science deniers like you are very obvious because only an idiot would write this moronic bullshit: "give birth to another kind".
Species, not kind.
Natural selection requires millions of years of small changes before a new species is developed. For example, an ancient ape did not have a human baby. It took at least 6 million or more years.
If you're going to deny a basic scientific fact like evolution, you should at least try to understand how it works instead of making yourself a laughing stock.
Pilgrims and Puritans who emigrated from England in the 1620s and 1630s carried the tradition of Days of Fasting and Days of Thanksgiving with them to New England. The modern Thanksgiving holiday tradition is traced to a well-recorded 1619 event in Virginia and a sparsely documented 1621 celebration at Plymouth in present-day Massachusetts. The 1619 arrival of 38 English settlers at Berkeley Hundred in Charles City County, Virginia, concluded with a religious celebration as dictated by the group's charter from the London Company, which specifically required "that the day of our ships arrival at the place assigned ... in the land of Virginia shall be yearly and perpetually kept holy as a day of thanksgiving to Almighty God." The 1621 Plymouth feast and thanksgiving was prompted by a good harvest, which the Pilgrims celebrated with Native Americans, who helped them get through the previous winter by giving them food in that time of scarcity.[7][8][9]
Several days of Thanksgiving were held in early New England history that have been identified as the "First Thanksgiving", including Pilgrim holidays in Plymouth in 1621 and 1623, and a Puritan holiday in Boston in 1631.[10][11] According to historian Jeremy Bangs, director of the Leiden American Pilgrim Museum, the Pilgrims may have been influenced by watching the annual services of Thanksgiving for the relief of the siege of Leiden in 1574, while they were staying in Leiden.[12] Now called Oktober Feest, Leiden's autumn thanksgiving celebration in 1617 was the occasion for sectarian disturbance that appears to have accelerated the pilgrims' plans to emigrate to America.[13] Later in Massachusetts, religious thanksgiving services were declared by civil leaders such as Governor Bradford, who planned the colony's thanksgiving celebration and fast in 1623.[14][15][16] The practice of holding an annual harvest festival did not become a regular affair in New England until the late 1660s.[17]
Thanksgiving proclamations were made mostly by church leaders in New England up until 1682, and then by both state and church leaders until after the American Revolution. During the revolutionary period, political influences affected the issuance of Thanksgiving proclamations. Various proclamations were made by royal governors, John Hancock, General George Washington, and the Continental Congress,[18] each giving thanks to God for events favorable to their causes.[19] As President of the United States, George Washington proclaimed the first nationwide thanksgiving celebration in America marking November 26, 1789, "as a day of public thanksgiving and prayer, to be observed by acknowledging with grateful hearts the many and signal favours of Almighty God".[20]
Warning of ‘existential threat to civilisation’ as impacts lead to cascade of unstoppable events.
The world may already have crossed a series of climate tipping points, according to a stark warning from scientists. This risk is “an existential threat to civilisation”, they say, meaning “we are in a state of planetary emergency”.
Tipping points are reached when particular impacts of global heating become unstoppable, such as the runaway loss of ice sheets or forests. In the past, extreme heating of 5C was thought necessary to pass tipping points, but the latest evidence suggests this could happen between 1C and 2C.
The planet has already heated by 1C and the temperature is certain to rise further, due to past emissions and because greenhouse gas levels are still rising. The scientists further warn that one tipping point, such as the release of methane from thawing permafrost, may fuel others, leading to a cascade.
The researchers, writing in a commentary article in the journal Nature, acknowledge that the complex science of tipping points means great uncertainty remains. But they say the potential damage from the tipping points is so big and the time to act so short, that “to err on the side of danger is not a responsible option”. They call for urgent international action.
“A saving grace is that the rate at which damage accumulates from tipping could still be under our control to some extent,” they write. “The stability and resilience of our planet is in peril. International action – not just words – must reflect this.”
Prof Tim Lenton at the University of Exeter, the lead author of the article, said: “We might already have crossed the threshold for a cascade of interrelated tipping points. The simple version is the schoolkids [striking for climate action] are right: we are seeing potentially irreversible changes in the climate system under way, or very close.”
“As a scientist, I just want to tell it how it is,” he said. “It is not trying to be alarmist, but trying to treat the whole climate change problem as a risk management problem. It is what I consider the common sense way.”
Phil Williamson at the University of East Anglia, who did not contribute to the article, said: “The prognosis by Tim Lenton and colleagues is, unfortunately, fully plausible: that we might have already lost control of the Earth’s climate.”
The Gulf Stream current in the Atlantic, which warms Europe, has also slowed by 15% since the mid-20th century. “That is just about in the range of natural variability, but it is also hard to rule out that it is part of a longer downturn,” Lenton said.
The scientists report that 17% of the Amazon rainforest has been lost since 1970. The tipping point, where loss of forest leads to it drying out, could lie in the range 20%-40%, they said. In temperate forests, especially in North America, heating has triggered more fires and pest outbreaks, potentially turning some regions from a sink for carbon to a source. In the tropics, corals are predicted to be wiped out by 2C of heating.
A cascade of tipping points could occur because, for example, the melting of Arctic sea ice amplifies heating by exposing dark ocean that absorbs more sunlight. That may increase the melting of Greenland ice and permafrost areas. “Multiple risks can interact, with one change reinforcing another, and with warming of just a degree or two sufficient to result in dramatic cascading effects,” said Williamson.
Prof Martin Siegert, at Imperial College London, said: “The new work is valuable. They are being a little speculative, but maybe you need to be.” He pointed out that the extremely rapid rate at which CO2 was being pumped into the atmosphere was unlikely to have ever occurred on Earth before. “It may mean that tipping points can occur in unexpected ways as there is no geological precedent for this rate of CO2 change.”
The article reports that preliminary results from the latest climate models suggest global heating will be greater than expected, increasing the risk of tipping points. Prof Piers Forster, at the University of Leeds, disagreed on that point. However, he added: “I completely endorse their call for action. Although possibly low probability, the risks they identify are real.”
Lenton said action would still have real benefits, by slowing the impacts and giving more time for people to adapt. He said: “This article is not meant to be a counsel of despair. If we want to avoid the worst of these bad climate tipping points, we need to activate some positive social and economic tipping points [such as renewable energy] towards what should ultimately be a happier, flourishing, sustainable future for the generations to come.”
I clicked your link. These people are science deniers, also known as crackpots.
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These crackpots belong to the Christian Creationist Discovery Institute, also known as "Crackpot Central". Their stupidity is breathtaking and this is where Christian retards get all their information about science. This is Idiot America.
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At the New York Times, there are zero science deniers.
At the Wall Street Journal, there are zero people who have a brain.
Mike Bloomberg’s candidacy isn’t as hopeless as some have suggested, writes former Boston Globe columnist John Ellis.
It’s a long shot, for sure. But most presidential candidacies are long shots, until they’re not.
Newly announced Democratic presidential candidate, former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg speaks during a press conference to discuss his presidential run on November 25, 2019 in Norfolk, Virginia.
And so America turns its lonely eyes to a 77-year-old Jewish billionaire from New York. Low energy Mike! Eight months ago he passed on joining the Democratic field, perhaps because it seemed hopeless and perhaps because it seemed an unwelcome addition to his too-fast-approaching obituary. No one, least of all Mr. Bloomberg, wants to go out a loser.
But here he is, in it to win it, and unlike anyone who has sought the presidency before him (even Nelson Rockefeller), Bloomberg has the ability to spend $2 billion in pursuit of the prize and plenty more after that if need be. So let’s not waste another minute on the “resources” question, which is usually the first question asked of a candidate in American presidential politics.
He’ll be fine.
The second question is: does he have a base within the Democratic Party’s primary and caucus-attending electorate? The answer to that question is “no, he does not.” The third question is: does that spell doom for his candidacy? The answer to that question is “no, it does not.”
Why not?
Back in June, I wrote a column (which seemed fresh at the time) about how the Democratic presidential primary campaign would quickly boil down to two finalists: the candidate of the party’s “progressive” core and the candidate of “electability.” At the time, it seemed like Elizabeth Warren would emerge as the former and that Joe Biden or Pete Buttigieg would stand as the latter. Also at the time, those two macro constituencies (let’s-do- something-“big” vs. let’s-beat-Trump-and-worry-about-the-rest-later) seemed more-or-less evenly matched.
No longer.
In mid-July, Nate Cohn wrote an analysis piece for The New York Times that got everyone’s attention. The sub-headline was: ”(Trump’s) reelection looks plausible even with a bigger loss in the national popular vote.” The thrust of the piece was (for Democrats) chilling: Trump could lose the popular vote by as much as 7% and still win a second term.
Mr. Cohn was not finished. A couple of weeks ago, he wrote another piece about the president’s reelection prospects, this time through the lens of six “battleground state” polls conducted by The New York Times and Siena College. Democratic victories in the battlegrounds, he wrote, were far from assured. A key sub-group was missing:
The party’s leading candidates have not yet reached the real missing piece of the Democratic coalition: less educated and often younger voters who are not conservative but who disagree with the party’s cultural left and do not share that group’s unrelenting outrage at the president’s conduct.
Bummer!
Democrats had hoped that the intervening four months would render Cohn’s July article moot, or at least less persuasive. They had been cheered by summer polls showing Biden beating Trump in states like Wisconsin and Ohio and Michigan. Trump was even polling poorly in Texas! Democratic hopes rose accordingly, only to be doused with icy water by Mr. Cohn from the pages of The New York Times, no less.
Adding insult to injury, Dan Balz of The Washington Post (political journalism’s modern-day equivalent to David Broder), reported on Sunday that a new Marquette University Law School poll showed Trump in reasonably good shape in Wisconsin (for him) and that his standing had improved (albeit incrementally) since the start of the House impeachment hearings. Wisconsin, Mr. Balz noted, may well be the state that proves decisive in the electoral college tally.
Double bummer.
All the while Democratic voters nationally have been moving inexorably toward the view that the party should drop its ideological prerequisites and nominate the most electable candidate, period. A recent Gallup survey confirmed the decisive shift in preference:
Six in 10 Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents would prefer to see the party nominate the candidate with the best chance of beating President Donald Trump, even if that person does not share their views on key issues. By contrast, 36% say they would rather have the reverse: a candidate aligned with them on almost all the issues they care about, even if that person is not the most electable.
There are two ways things can go in the “electability” half of the bracket. Biden can win by default. (“There is no one else more likely to beat Trump, so we might as well throw in with Joe.”) Or he can get crushed in Iowa and New Hampshire by a 37-year-old gay mayor from South Bend, Indiana, and as a result, watch his candidacy collapse. The latter outcome would leave Buttigieg as the commander of the “electability” army, which (assuming the polling is accurate) enjoys an overwhelming numerical advantage over the “progressive” battalions.
It’s on the latter scenario that Mr. Bloomberg’s candidacy hinges. His handlers are presuming that having seen Mr. Biden dispatched and Mr. Buttigieg all-but-anointed, the Democratic primary electorate in the Super Tuesday states (and beyond) would recoil with buyer’s remorse and scramble to find a more “suitable” (meaning “not gay,” although no one will ever admit it) replacement.
And there waiting for them, with literally billions of dollars ready to spend and open arms, would be Michael Bloomberg: Calm, competent, uncharismatic, efficient, former Republican, ruthless billionaire Michael Bloomberg, with an unholy host of political consultants and pollsters ready, willing and able to fan out across every last cable news show to explain why, beyond a shadow of a doubt, Mike Bloomberg was the most electable Democrat in November. (Maybe the most electable candidate in the history of mankind, if it was late enough at night.)
At that point, having failed to impeach President Trump and having seen his poll numbers improve ever so slightly through the process, Democratic primary voters would cry out: “Enough is enough, bring us the billionaire.”
That’s the idea, anyway.
It’s plausible, or at least plausible enough. The instant analysis of the last few days from the cable news talking heads has been: “This will show us if money can buy an election.” Wrong. He’s not spending any money in any of the “key” early states. He’s not even campaigning there. His entire campaign depends upon a pandemic onset of buyer’s remorse. What Super Tuesday (March 3) will show us is whether he correctly anticipated the electorate’s disposition or got run over by its predispositions.
Assume that he wins the nomination. Can he win the general election? We’ll get to the question in a subsequent “column.” But the short answer is: Donald Trump won in 2016. Anything is possible.
John Ellis is the Editor of News Items and a former columnist for The Boston Globe. You can reach him at jellis41@protonmail.com. You can sign up for the News Items newsletter here.
Everytown for Gun Safety is an American nonprofit organization which advocates for gun control and against gun violence.[7] Everytown was created in 2013 when Mayors Against Illegal Guns and Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America joined forces.[8] Everytown for Gun Safety is largely financed by Michael Bloomberg,[9] who also founded the group.[10]
The organization works to "support efforts to educate policy makers, as well the press and the public, about the consequences of gun violence and promote efforts to keep guns out of the hands of criminals."[1] The group has focused on efforts to require universal background checks on firearms purchases.[11][12] The organization also produces research and studies on gun violence.
Mayors Against Illegal Guns (MAIG) was formed in April 2006 during a summit co-hosted by mayors Michael Bloomberg of New York City and Thomas Menino of Boston at New York's mayoral residence, Gracie Mansion.[13][14] Bloomberg and Menino co-chaired the coalition.[15] The initial group consisted of 15 mayors who signed a statement of principles.[16] By the end of 2014, there were 855 mayors in the coalition.[12][15][17]
In April 2014, MAIG merged with Moms Demand Action to form Everytown for Gun Safety.[18] The launch of Everytown occurred nearly one year after the U.S. Senate debated a series of changes to federal gun laws in the wake of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, including a failed amendment, sponsored by West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin (D) and Pennsylvania Sen. Pat Toomey (R), that would have required background checks for all gun sales taking place at gun shows or over the internet.[19][20] According to Bloomberg, Everytown was founded to match the National Rifle Association in political influence.[18]
The organization advocates for expanding the background check system for gun buyers through changes in state and federal laws, and supports legislation that would require background checks for all gun sales.[7] The organization also supports state laws requiring the reporting of mental health records to the national background check system.[21]
Everytown has supported laws that prohibit domestic abusers from obtaining firearms.[22] Internal research produced by Everytown concludes that states that require background checks for private handgun sales have lower rates of intimate partner gun violence than states that do not require background checks.[23] According to the group, Everytown supported the passage of laws intended to block convicted domestic abusers and people subject to domestic violence restraining orders in six states in 2014: Louisiana, Minnesota, New Hampshire, Vermont, Washington, and Wisconsin.[24]
The organization supports gun safety technology and laws requiring safe storage of firearms to prevent accidental child gun deaths, citing the high rate of firearm injuries among American children compared to other countries.[25]
