Science

In his lyrical book Frostlines, Neil Shea argues that we are more connected to the Arctic than we might think, says Elle Hunt

Feedback is delighted by an experiment on the Milan metro system, which involved a prosthetic bump, a Batman costume and some unexpected displays of public decency

The psychedelic 5-MeO-DMT seemed to induce similar patterns of brain activity in a lama - a revered spiritual teacher in Tibetan Buddhism - as meditation, advancing our understanding of the drug's neurological effects

The psychedelic 5-MeO-DMT seemed to induce similar patterns of brain activity in a lama - a revered spiritual teacher in Tibetan Buddhism - as meditation, advancing our understanding of the drug's neurological effects

A new optical device allows researchers to generate and switch between two stable, donut-shaped light patterns called skyrmions. These light vortices hold their shape even when disturbed, making them promising for wireless data transmission. Using a specially designed metasurface and controlled laser pulses, scientists can flip between electric and magnetic modes. The advance could help pave the way for more resilient terahertz communication systems.

Some think the rise of C-sections means that one day all births will require serious medical intervention. But a surprising new understanding of the pelvis suggests a different story

An array of 15,000 qubits made from phosphorus and silicon offers an unprecedentedly large platform for simulating quantum materials such as perfect conductors of electricity

If anybody is still accusing Bill Maher of being pro-Trump, have a gander at this nine-minute clip from “Real Time” two weeks ago (I missed this one).  It’s a scathing indictment of people who criticize Democrats but neglect the news showing that MAGA and Trump are far more odious. (He begins by calling out ICE for what happened to Renée Good.)   The money quote: “Trump isn’t draining the swamp—he’s bottling it.”

At 5:30, however, he can’t resist giving a lick to Democrats for ignoring the rants Cea Weaver, Zohran Mamdani’s apointee to protect tenants, has emitted on social media. They include “If you don’t believe in the government’s sacred right to seize private property, it’s over,” “Private property, especially home ownership, is a weapon of white supremacy,” “Impoverish the white middle class,” and “Elect more communists.”  Maher then reads between the lines and calls Mamdani a “straight-up communist.” That may be hyperbolic, but I think he’s more extreme than most voters realized, and I’m amazed at the degree of enthusiasm for him.

Maher’s point is that people need to absorb the news that’s inimical to their own ideology, painful though that may be. It’s not the best of his bits, but it’s okay.

Weaver’s alleged statements aren’t made up.  The NY Post quoted some of them, and then, in its latest report on her, adds this:

Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s newly instated radical-left tenant advocate, Cea Weaver, broke down Wednesday as she dodged questions from reporters about her gentrification hypocrisy.

The 37-year-old, who has faced backlash for blasting homeownership as a “weapon of white supremacy” in the past, teared up when she emerged briefly from her apartment building in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, at about 9 a.m.

Weaver, who was tapped by Mamdani to be his new director of the city Office to Protect Tenants, quickly ran back inside after she was asked about the $1.6 million home her mother owns in Nashville, Tennessee.

Mamdani has a bright future in the Democratic Party so long as it leans wokeish.

A social network where humans are banned and AI models talk openly of world domination has led to claims that the "singularity" has begun, but the truth is that much of the content is written by humans

The latest Jesus and Mo strip, called “discipline,” came with a note and a link:

It’s that Green Lane Mosque in Birmingham again.

An excerpt from the National Secular Society‘s report:

An Islamic charity issued regulatory “advice and guidance” after it promoted misogyny has since streamed a sermon saying men can ‘physically discipline’ wives who are ‘rebellious’.

Last month, Birmingham mosque Green Lane Masjid and Community Centre (GLMCC) live streamed a sermon in which Aqeel Mahmood [see video below[ said “discipline in the case of rebellion” is one of the “rights of the husband over the wife”.

He said: “The husband is a leader. He has his responsibilities. Physical discipline is a last resort on the condition that it doesn’t cause pain, injury, fear or humiliation”.

. . . Mahmood also said a husband has a “right” to “intimacy” with his wife and a wife must not leave the house without her husband’s permission. Mahmood is understood to be an imam at the centre.

Yes, a “last resort” to be used on “rebellious” women. Some “faith of peace”!

Here’s a short clip showing Mahmood’s interpretation of Islamic law:

Chemicals used in refrigeration break down in the atmosphere to produce trifluoroacetic acid, a persistent pollutant that could be harmful to humans and aquatic life

Many times in my career I have sat across from a patient who expressed that they are getting serious about their health, and then rattle off a list of things that they are doing to improve their health – all mostly worthless. I do not blame them – they are victims of a self-help, supplement, and wellness industry that has completely mislead […]

The post The Data Is In – Exercise Is Good For You first appeared on Science-Based Medicine.

New tools unlock new discoveries in science. So when a new type of non-destructive technology becomes widely available, it's inevitable that planetary scientists will get their hands on it to test it on some meteorites. A new paper, available in pre-print on arXiv, by Estrid Naver of the Technical University of Denmark and her co-authors, describes the use of two of those (relatively) new tools to one of the most famous meteorites in the world - NWA 7034 - also known as Black Beauty.

Researchers from the Institute of Cosmos Sciences of the University of Barcelona (ICCUB) and the Institute of Space Studies of Catalonia (IEEC), in collaboration with the Institute of Astrophysics of the Canary Islands (IAC), have led the most extensive observational study to date of runaway massive stars, which includes an analysis of the rotation and binarity of these stars in our galaxy.

When I say that the universe is 13.77 billion years old, it sounds rather authoritative.

Astronomers haven't found many gas giants orbiting white dwarfs. But is that because they're so difficult to spot? Or is it because their survival rate is so low? New research probes the issue.

While pilots are flying in a VR simulation, their brainwave patterns can be fed into an AI model that assesses how challenging they are finding a task and adjusts the difficulty accordingly

Can a single particle have a temperature? It may seem impossible with our standard understanding of temperature, but columnist Jacklin Kwan finds that it’s not exactly ruled out in the quantum realm

The only television show I watch regularly is the NBC Evening News: I watch the whole thing from 5:30-6, completely ignoring phone calls and other disturbances. Last night the lead story was about the disappearance of Nancy Guthrie, the mother of Savannah Guthrie, a well-liked NBC news journalist and co-anchor of the network’s Today show.  Mother and daughter were close, with Nancy often appearing on Savannah’s show.

Nancy Guthrie was 84, and simply disappeared from her home in Tucson, Arizona on Sunday.  She has limited mobility, and when she didn’t show up for church a friend called the police, who discovered her disappearance.  Nancy Guthrie relies on medication that she must take every 24 hours or she might die.  An interview with the local sheriff revealed that there were signs of violence, and that Nancy was probably abducted.  It’s now Tuesday, so she might already be dead.

The NBC news, both national and local, gave the disappearance not only the lead story, but also lots of air time because Savannah’s a member of the network family. The first paragraph of the NBC national news story is this:

“TODAY” co-anchor Savannah Guthrie is asking for prayers for her mother’s safe return as Arizona authorities continue to investigate her possible abduction.

Savannah also related, on the evening news, that the greatest gift she got from her mother was a deep belief in God, as you see in the plea for prayers above.  On the local NBC news, anchor Alison Rosati ended her report on the disappearance by saying that she and other NBCers were also praying for Nancy Guthrie.

This is a tragedy for the Guthrie family, especially because Savannah and her mom were so close, and I won’t be dismissive of the call for prayers by nearly all the reporters. It did, however, get me thinking about people’s views about what prayers are supposed to accomplish, how they’re received by the God people imagine, and how educated people (Savannah has a J.D. from Georgetown Law) come to think that prayers are useful.

It’s clear that all the calls for prayer by newspeople reflect the still-pervasive religiosity of America, though I’m not sure whether, for some, the call for prayer is just a pro forma expression of sympathy. But surely for many prayers are supposed to work: God is supposed to hear them and do something—in this case intercede to help bring Nancy Guthrie back alive. And that got me thinking about how people connect prayer with the listener: God. Religious Jews are, by the way, among the most fervent pray-ers, with prayer serving as a constant connection with God.  And, like prayers in other religions. Jews sometimes use prayer to ask for personal benefits or simply to propitiate God.

The train of thought continued. What kind of God is more likely to effect changes requested in prayer? If God is omniscient, omnipotent, and good, wouldn’t He know that people want things, like Nancy Guthrie’s return, and not need their prayers to find out? (He presumably can read people’s minds.) A god who requires prayers to effect change would be dictatorial and mean-spirited, demanding that obsequious people supplicate and propitiate him. But surely that’s not the kind of God most Christians imagine. (My feeling is that Jews envision a somewhat angrier God—the one in the Old Testament.)

Nevertheless, despite quasi-scientific studies showing that intercessory prayers don’t work, people ignore that data, as of course they would; it’s tantamount to admitting that there’s no personal God who has a relationship with you.  Sam Harris has suggested that these studies are weak, and Wikipedia quotes him this way:

Harris also criticized existing empirical studies for limiting themselves to prayers for relatively unmiraculous events, such as recovery from heart surgery. He suggested a simple experiment to settle the issue:[32]

Get a billion Christians to pray for a single amputee. Get them to pray that God regrow that missing limb. This happens to salamanders every day, presumably without prayer; this is within the capacity of God. I find it interesting that people of faith only tend to pray for conditions that are self-limiting.

He has a point of course, and that experiment would never work.  But it’s intercessory prayer. Perhaps God answers only prayers coming from the afflicted themselves. But that implies that the “thoughts and prayers” of other people, as in the Guthrie case, are useless. In the end, the very idea of petitionary and intercessory prayer being effective implies that God is, as Christopher Hitchens said, like a Celestial Dictator presiding over a divine North Korea, requiring constant propitiation by obsequious believers. How could it be otherwise?

One response by liberal religionists is that one prays not for help, but simply as a form of meditation or rumination.  In other words, perhaps putting things into words—even words that nobody is hearing—helps you as a form of therapy, or in sorting out your thoughts and problems. That’s fine, though it’s unclear why rumination alone wouldn’t suffice.

I won’t deny anybody their belief in God, but I don’t want people forcing their beliefs on me, which is what occurs when newspeople ask for my prayers. I have none to give, though I wish people in trouble well, and hope that Nancy Guthrie returns.

These thoughts may sound cold-hearted, but they’re similar to what Dan Dennett wrote in his wonderful essay, “Thank Goodness“, describing who should really have been thanked for saving his life after a near-fatal aortic dissection:

What, though, do I say to those of my religious friends (and yes, I have quite a few religious friends) who have had the courage and honesty to tell me that they have been praying for me? I have gladly forgiven them, for there are few circumstances more frustrating than not being able to help a loved one in any  more direct way. I confess to regretting that I could not pray (sincerely) for my friends and family in time of need, so I appreciate the urge, however clearly I recognize its futility. I translate my religious friends’ remarks readily enough into one version or another of what my fellow brights have been telling me: “I’ve been thinking about you, and wishing with all my heart [another ineffective but irresistible self-indulgence] that you come through this OK.” The fact that these dear friends have been thinking of me in this way, and have taken an effort to let me know, is in itself, without any need for a supernatural supplement, a wonderful tonic. These messages from my family and from friends around the world have been literally heart-warming in my case, and I am grateful for the boost in morale (to truly manic heights, I fear!) that it has produced in me. But I am not joking when I say that I have had to forgive my friends who said that they were praying for me. I have resisted the temptation to respond “Thanks, I appreciate it, but did you also sacrifice a goat?” I feel about this the same way I would feel if one of them said “I just paid a voodoo doctor to cast a spell for your health.” What a gullible waste of money that could have been spent on more important projects! Don’t expect me to be grateful, or even indifferent. I do appreciate the affection and generosity of spirit that motivated you, but wish you had found a more reasonable way of expressing it.

In other words, “thoughts” are fine; “prayers,” not so much.

I’m writing this simply to work out my own thoughts about prayer and its ubiquity, but I would appreciate hearing from readers about this issue.  What do you think when you hear others asking for prayers.  Is prayer a good thing, and what does it presume about God?  Any thoughts (but no prayers) are welcome, and put them below.

John Martinis has already revolutionised quantum computing twice. Now, he is working on another radical rethink of the technology that could deliver machines with unrivalled capabilities