A galactic rose

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NASA Press release …

April 20, 2011: To celebrate the 21st anniversary of the Hubble Space Telescope’s deployment into space, astronomers at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Md., pointed Hubble’s eye at an especially photogenic pair of interacting galaxies called Arp 273. The larger of the spiral galaxies, known as UGC 1810, has a disk that is distorted into a rose-like shape by the gravitational tidal pull of the companion galaxy below it, known as UGC 1813. This image is a composite of Hubble Wide Field Camera 3 data taken on December 17, 2010, with three separate filters that allow a broad range of wavelengths covering the ultraviolet, blue, and red portions of the spectrum.

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Singularity 101

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The Singularity, also known as the nerd rapture, can be a bit of a mystery to some, well no longer because the Singularity Institure, has published a Singularity FAQ (think of it as Singularity 101).

Is there anything skeptical here? Well yes, but I’ll come to that in a minute.

First, some basics (from the FAQ of course) …

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Debating believers … oh so frustrating

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Now this little post is to simply amuse you, and is not designed to actually inform, except to perhaps enable you to laugh and my foolish attempts to engage with an utterly irrational believer on a rational basis.

The context here is that I’ve been attempting to explain to him the historical facts regarding the four gospels and that the only actual claim that jesus = god emerges in the Gospel of John (written about 95 CE). I’ve also explained that the phrase “son-of-God” does not in any way imply that Jesus = God, but rather that it is a Jewish belief that an individual is simply claiming to have been adopted by God as a son (like King David was).

However, what truly astonished me is that the sticking point was his claim that Jesus was Worshiped, hence he was God.

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Anti-vaccine kooks still at it

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All parents will strive to do what is best for their kids, so when faced with a photograph of a mother cradling her naked baby accompanied by the words: “Vaccines: Know the risks.” it gains some attention. The image is faded out, and then replaced by the Statue of Liberty and “Vaccination. Your Health. Your Family. Your Choice.”, how would any parent react?

The ad links to Mercola and NVIC  websites full of articles blaming common ingredients in vaccines for a number of health problems from breast cancer to infertility. The very seed of doubt is enough to cause any concerned parent to pause and opt not to vaccinate.

The only problem is that it is all an outright lie.

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Jordan to try Danish artist over Mohammed cartoon

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The news is that a Jordanian court will begin this month the trial of Danish cartoonist Kurt Westergaard over a controversial caricature of the Muslim Prophet Mohammed. The press reports …

Zakarya Sheikh, spokesman for a group of local media outlets that sued Westergaard in 2008 for depicting Mohammed with a bomb in his turban, said on Thursday the artist and others have been summoned by a magistrates’ court in Amman to stand trial on April 25.”

A copy of the subpoena obtained by AFP says Westergaard “is accused of the crime of blasphemy.”

You can read more here .

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