It’s one of the biggest mysteries in this global experiment we’re conducting by pouring 10 billion tons of carbon into the atmosphere each year: What’ll happen to the plants? Will the relentless burning of fossil fuels prompt our leafy green friends to suck down more CO2, tapping the brakes on climate change? Or are…
The United States Customs and Border Protection (CPB) has now withdrawn its outrageous and unconstitutional order demanding Twitter give up user data on an account frequently critical of the Trump administration.
Remember last summer when some robot builders from America challenged robot builders from Japan? Well the Japanese accepted that challenge, and the robot battle is now scheduled for sometime this August.
I’ll be watching this robot beat down for sure, as the two giant mechs go head to head for a battle to the death.
I have to say the Japanese robot looks more stable than the US bot. Japan’s Kuratas has four legs, each with a rotating wheel at its end, which should give it stable footing and agility. The US bot is on what appear to be rubber tank treads from a small front end loader, and looks a bit top-heavy to me.
I’m pretty pumped about this, though I assume it will happen outside the US since the bots are controlled by human pilots. I doubt US safety standards would ever allow one dude to pummel another dude inside a metal robot with blades and other nasty weapons in its hands. Then again, maybe there are no safety standards for mechs at this point.
[via Nerd Approved]
We’re now more than a month out from the launch of the Nintendo Switch and many folks are still having trouble finding one. It would seem that Nintendo didn’t realize how popular the Switch would be, which is causing stock problems around the country. Those of you still looking will want to check out Toys R Us this weekend, as … Continue reading
Leave it to Katy Perry to rock a sports bra at a fashion party.
The singer accessorized her edgy new pixie cut with a sheer lace top and black sports bra at a dinner on Thursday to celebrate Chanel’s Gabrielle bag. She completed the look with a black bomber jacket and what appear to be silky sweatpants.
Perry went with a sportier look than her peers at the dinner, including Rachel Zoe and Poppy Delevigne.
Of course, if you’ve survived getting photographed with quinoa in your teeth, you’ve got a license to wear pretty much whatever you want.
Go Katy.
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BEIRUT, April 7 (Reuters) – Polarized by years of civil war, Syrians were split on Friday over a U.S. strike on a government airbase, with those in rebel-held areas cautiously welcoming it but Damascus residents decrying it as Western aggression.
The cruise missile strike near the city of Homs early in the day came in response to what Washington and its allies said was a chemical weapons attack this week by Syrian forces. Damascus has strongly denied using chemical weapons.
Some residents of Idlib province, where the chemical attack took place killing scores of people, said they hoped the U.S. strike would weaken Assad’s government. “The American strike was good, it’s positive – we support any strike against the Syrian regime,” 29-year-old
Alaa al-Zir said.
“We hope there will be more strikes – and other action – to follow … so the revolutionaries can advance further and these massacres against civilians can stop,” he said.
Another man, Qadi Hajj Qadur, said the strike was likely too little, too late from the United States under new President Donald Trump, but that it was still a positive development and signaled hope for an end to the conflict.
“It’s been seven years and we’ve experienced killing and they (the international community) didn’t impose a no-fly zone, they didn’t do anything.
“Now America has come and wants to defend us. Is Trump a friend? I don’t know. But hopefully something good will come from him, and there will be a (peace) agreement, and this corrupt regime which slaughtered people can be gone.”
Syria’s opposition has long urged the creation of a no-fly zone or provision of anti-aircraft weapons to rebel groups, and criticized what it saw as U.S. inaction under Barack Obama.
Trump’s decision to launch missiles at a Syrian government target marks a dramatic departure and was welcomed by the opposition, who called for further strikes.
Syria’s government controls most of the west of the country including its largest population centers, but rebels still hold Idlib province as a stronghold, with pockets of control in other areas including outside Damascus.
The Damascus government said the U.S. strike was “rash” and an act of “flagrant aggression,” but did not expect a bigger escalation.
In an interview with the Lebanese TV station al-Mayadeen, Assad aide Bouthaina Shaaban said any Syrian who welcomed the strike was a traitor.
Damascus residents struck a defiant tone, echoing the government’s vow to escalate the pace of its attacks on insurgents and to win back the whole country. Others said the U.S. attack was no surprise and vowed to stand up to Washington.
“Talk in the U.N. Security Council about (Syria using) chemical weapons is lies, and Syria knows this. They just wanted to have an excuse to strike,” said a Damascus fireman, who did not give his name.
“It doesn’t make a great difference anyway. What the militants (rebels) have done to our country has more of an effect than Tomahawk missiles.”
“The blood of martyrs is what waters the earth of the country. Either we die, or we win,” he said.
Abu Haidara, a media student, said Syria should strike back.
“The Syrian government should … wage a war with them – with any dog who thinks he can attackSyria or the army or anyone and violate its sovereignty,” he said.
(Reporting by Reuters visuals journalists; Writing by John Davison; Editing by Tom Heneghan)
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Over the years, the “Seinfeld” writers have opened up about behind-the-scenes stories from the show, and every time it gives us “serenity now.” This new tidbit is a little different, though.
Talking to Entertainment Weekly, “Seinfeld” writer and producer David Mandel revealed the Soup Nazi episode almost included a dark twist: The Soup Nazi character might’ve been an actual Nazi. As Mandel explained:
We joked a whole bunch about an end scene that would take place in the jungles of Brazil, à la “The Boys From Brazil,” where the Soup Nazi [Larry Thomas] would return to the other Nazis — the actual former Nazi war criminals — with his soup recipes.
It was sort of half-serious, half “Should we do this?,” half “We’re never going to do it.” But it was much discussed. Going down a river and seeing lots of young boys with blue eyes from experimentation with the soups — it was a full coming together of soup and Nazi. Probably just as well that we didn’t do that one.
Considering the Soup Nazi was based on an actual person, Ali “Al” Yeganeh, the decision to drop the Nazi storyline was definitely for the best.
In a previous conversation with The Huffington Post, “Seinfeld” writer Spike Feresten recalled how Jerry Seinfeld was berated and denied service when he actually tried to order soup from the real-life, so-called “Soup Nazi.”
If an actual Nazi scene had been included, who knows how bad that visit could’ve gone? We’re guessing it would’ve been far less pleasant than a few swear words and a quick “no soup for you.”
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Four Christian church leaders in Montana are urging their state’s Republican senator to quit rejecting the widely accepted science behind man-made global warming.
The one Catholic priest and three Protestant clergy criticized Sen. Steve Daines (R-Mont.) in an op-ed published by the Missoulian Thursday for failing to understand climate change’s role in a widespread fish kill in Yellowstone National Park last summer.
“We cannot remain silent while a U.S. senator from Montana chooses willful ignorance of the greatest threat this state has ever faced and which is already causing extreme damage to our cherished Montana environment,” said the church leaders ― the Reverends Amy Carter and Laura Folkwein of the United Church of Christ in Missoula; the Reverend Susan Barnes of the St. Andrew Presbyterian Church in Billings; and Father Robert Grosch of the nearby St. Patrick Co-Cathedral.
“The simple moral truth is that United States is by far the world’s largest historic contributor to the climate crisis and therefore bears the greatest responsibility for addressing it,” they added.
The church leaders slammed Daines for having the “audacity” to challenge the overwhelming scientific consensus that emissions from farms and burning fossil fuels are trapping heat in the atmosphere and causing the planet to warm. Not unlike the years of public skepticism over smoking’s role in lung cancer, many people still doubt the science behind global warming thanks to a decades-long campaign to seed doubt funded by companies with money at stake.
Daines, who earned a bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering before entering politics, received a paltry 3 percent lifetime score from the League of Conservation Voters, which ranks lawmakers by how they vote on environmental legislation. He did, however, earn a 16 percent score for last year. In 2012, he told Montana Public Radio he believes the climate is changing, but doubts how much humans are effecting it.
“Daines has said that he cares about Montana’s environment. He has also stressed how important his Christian faith is to him,” the church leaders wrote. “Daines can prove both of his convictions by immediately and publicly declaring that he accepts the scientific fact that currently unfolding climate change is caused by human activity, primarily the burning of fossil fuels.”
We view science as a way to deepen our appreciation and wonder at the majesty of God’s creation, including the complex, beautiful and life-sustaining planet earth.
Revs. Amy Carter, Laura Folkwein, Susan Barnes and Father Robert Grosch
Christian leaders have become increasingly vocal about advocating against climate science denial. In recent years, some Evangelical pastors have preached “creation care,” presenting scriptural evidence that God compels Christians to maintain the environment. Nonprofit groups such as the Evangelical Environmental Network, Restoring Eden and Care of Creation have sprung up. Pope Francis has repeatedly called for action to halt climate change, and urged President Donald Trump ― who rejects global warming as “a hoax” and moved to increase greenhouse gas emissions ― to reverse course on his climate policies.
Latino Catholics remain among the most likely to believe the Earth is warming due to human activity, according to a 2015 Pew poll. About 64 percent of religiously unaffiliated people and 56 percent of black Protestants also say climate change is man-made.
White Evangelical protestants, in contrast, remain the biggest skeptics of major religious groups. Just 28 percent said they believe the planet is warming because of human activity, while 33 percent said the Earth’s warming is mostly due to natural patterns. Another 37 percent said there is no solid evidence that climate change is even happening. The numbers aren’t much higher for white mainstream Protestants, of whom 41 percent said humans are causing climate change.
For the Montana church leaders, there is no doubt.
“We view science as a way to deepen our appreciation and wonder at the majesty of God’s creation, including the complex, beautiful and life-sustaining planet earth,” they wrote. “We see no conflict between our religious faith and the findings of science.”
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For decades, Dr. Willie Parker has been a devout Christian, while also serving as one of the United States’ most respected reproductive rights advocates, traveling between Mississippi and Alabama to provide abortion care to women there ― one of just a few doctors who do so.
To Parker, there is no contradiction between his faith and his ability to provide compassionate abortion care, and in his new memoir out this week ― Life’s Work: A Moral Argument for Choice ― he defends his work and the rights of women to control their own bodies. “Abortion is the only personal decision that is subjected to this level of government oversight,” he writes. “The law requires [women], like bad little girls, to ‘prove’ to authorities that they have thought carefully about what they’re about to do. In health care, no other medical condition is treated this way.”
We spoke to Parker about his work as an abortion provider in the deep South and about the current climate we live in.
We’ve all been told that abortion is too polarizing an issue, that there’s no way of convincing, say, someone who is anti-choice because of religious beliefs to support abortion care. Do you really think you can change people’s minds?
That’s not really my goal. You have to change your own mind; I’m trying to encourage people to think and to visit the facts. We’re now in an era where we have said that facts don’t matter ― we can create alternative facts ― but facts do matter. If they didn’t, [anti-choice legislators] wouldn’t try and mimic them. People know you can’t walk into a political assembly and say, ‘I prayed and God told me that abortion was immoral.’ But people can try and fabricate and create harm with junk science, saying abortion increases the risk of breast cancer, or that women have psychological issues following abortion. The data and the science refutes all of that. They create a false equivalency by saying, well, you have your facts and I have mine.
The goal for me is to explore the interface between science and religion and spirituality. This book comes at reproduction from a scientific standpoint, as I am a scientist. But I am also a person of faith, in particular, Christian faith.
Since Roe passed there has never been a day when the right of a woman to have an abortion hasn’t been contested.
You spend a good deal of time walking readers through the nitty-gritty of an abortion is like, and at one point you write that it is uncomfortable, if not painful. Aren’t you worried “antis” will seize on that?
There has been this sense that you can’t tell people what an abortion is like, but I think that in the absence of truth antis have been able to spread misinformation. When I was an OB-GYN resident, someone gave me a pin that said ‘no pain.’ I had a professor who very graciously pulled me aside and said, ‘We have to talk about your button.’ The point she stressed is that it creates the expectation that a woman can go through labor and child birth and not have any pain or discomfort, which is a misrepresentation.
I think we do the same thing with abortion. It’s not a cake walk. And it’s also not an excruciating, horrible experience. Most women feel relieved. Most women tolerate a little bit of cramping, which certainly dulls in comparison to labor. I just think the truth will do, and we have to trust people enough to deal with the truth.
You also explicitly single out liberal women ― who are pro abortion rights― and live in parts of the country that aren’t affected by the harshest anti-choice laws, and remind them that they’re partially responsible for the “raft of new laws” restricting abortion because they find it too easy to “look away from the plight of their sisters.” Can you talk about what that means?
If you’re not mindful of your position, if you assume that the resources you have are available to everyone, you have blind spots to the ways your privilege is achieved at the expense of other folks. If you live in New York City, you can walk in and find out you are pregnant, make your decision, and have the abortion on the same day. So when you hear about a mandatory waiting period somewhere else in the country, you might say, “What’s wrong with having a waiting period so people can be sure?” What’s wrong with that for some women it can mean losing the opportunity to have an abortion in their area, or a wait means that on the day you have your procedure you have to find childcare, coordinate with your job ― all of that.
Privileged women have to understand that the context of their life is not generic and universal.
Privileged women have to understand that the context of their life is not generic and universal.
And what can they do to help?
If you understand that women in the South have limited access to abortion and that for many women there are financial barriers, you should be arguing for policies that reduce those barriers and, within your means, should support local abortion funds. If you understand that a waiting period is going to unnecessarily delay a woman, you should be making sure your congressperson understands how you feel. In your personal relationships, rather than judging a woman for ending her pregnancy, understand that she has reasons that only need be known to her.
It feels, to an awful lot of people, like we’re in a crisis point in terms of abortion access. Are we?
I think we are where we have always been. What do I mean by that? Since Roe passed there has never been a day when the right of a woman to have an abortion hasn’t been contested. I don’t think we’ve ever been this close to abortion becoming illegal. I don’t think we’ve ever been this insular and this nationalistic. But it’s also where we’ve always been. We’re just seeing it now more explicitly.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
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The Texas House just agreed to take $20 million from clean air initiatives and put that funding into the state’s Alternatives to Abortion plan: an initiative that funds faith-based, non-medical crisis pregnancy centers.
The vote took place late on Thursday night and passed at 131-16.
NARAL Pro-Choice Texas executive director Heather Busby released a statement condemning the vote on Thursday morning.
“It is shameful that the state continues to give millions of health care dollars to non-medical entities that lie to, shame and manipulate Texans considering an abortion,” she said. “Especially at a time when vulnerable children are dying in foster care, public education remains chronically underfunded and cuts to Medicaid for disabled kids remain in place.”
The vote will head to the state Senate next, and comes less than a month after an Associated Press report found that the Heidi Group, which is part of the Alternatives to Abortion initiative, isn’t meeting the requirements agreed upon after it received a $1.6 million taxpayer-funded government grant in August of last year.
The Heidi Group was supposed to put the funding toward support for women with unplanned pregnancies on Facebook, providing a 1-800 number for women who need help or guidance, or airing public service announcements.
The AP found that the organization “has done little of the outreach it promised.”
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