The Left Is Now a Joke

And it’s a new-to-science species, too.

The latest outlook from the agency is an update on its modeling from August 2024.

A chocolate scandal might hold the answer.

Astronaut safety and keeping up with repairs are major concerns for the rest of the decade and beyond.

The sincerest expression of love is the desire to know everything about the subject of that love. I love nature. This is why, as a scientist, I wish to obtain as much experimental data as possible about nature. There are an infinite number of virtual realities, some of which are flattering to our ego. But merely expressing them without knowing whether they apply to reality, is like imagining a possible love story with an idealized fictional character, akin to “Prince Charming” or “Princess Charming.” This was my message to an audience of fifty spiritual leaders who were hosted by the “Harvard Law School Program on Biblical Law and Christian Legal Studies”. My Fireside Chat was moderated by Tim Dalrymple, President and CEO of “Christianity Today”. After Tim introduced me as a farm boy born in the Holy Land and turned into an astrophysicist, I added the disclaimer that my knowledge is limited to the observable Universe. “What lies beyond that is Tim’s expertise,” I reciprocated. During the next hour of conversation, I explained that science and spirituality both seek to understand the unknown. Our knowledge is an island in an ocean of ignorance. After a century of observational studies, cosmologists do not even know the nature of 85% of the matter and 95% of the energy in the Universe. Not to speak of what happened before the Big Bang. A century ago, Albert Einstein thought that a static Universe is more philosophically appealing than a universe with a beginning in time. Between 1935–1939, Einstein also argued that gravitational waves do not exist, quantum mechanics should not have spooky action at a distance, and black holes do not exist. The experimental teams that proved Einstein wrong by discovering the cosmic microwave background, black holes, gravitational waves and quantum entanglement, received the Physics Nobel Prize. These are all good reasons to stay humble and treat science as a learning experience. Nature is under no obligation to make us happy. We tend to position ourselves at the center of the Universe, but our default assumption should be that we are not important in the cosmic scheme of things. Nevertheless, our ability to learn about the richness of nature is what makes life worth living. The more we learn, the more difficult it is to avoid being at awe with what nature had before we came to exist. It is humbling to recognize how difficult it is for our modern technologies to imitate nature. The natural neural network of our brain consumes 12 watts, whereas neural networks of artificial intelligence have fewer connections but consume gigawatts of power. In 2024, physicists demonstrated fusion at the National Ignition Facility in Livermore by producing a megajoule of energy, which the Sun produces in a few thousandths of an attosecond (namely, a few times 10 to the power of -21 of a second). Our current technologies are unable to produce a self-healing car or a self-reproducing gadget, whereas the human body heals after minor accidents and can produce new bodies just like it. Nevertheless, science holds the potential for fulfilling our greatest spiritual aspirations. If physicists develop a predictive theory that unifies quantum mechanics with gravity, they might be able to figure out the conditions that led to the Big Bang. Having that recipe would allow science to artificially create these conditions in the laboratory and give birth to a baby universe. This would fulfil the job requirement for the biblical God who according to the opening of Genesis created our Universe. This feat might take a very long time to accomplish, perhaps billions of years of science and technology instead of the one century we had since quantum mechanics was discovered. But there is a shortcut. Most stars formed billions of years before the Sun, and another civilization may have figured out quantum gravity by now. Knowing what aliens already know would save us time. Forget about disclosure of what our government knows about aliens. What really matters is disclosure of what aliens know about the Universe. Having a smarter student in our class offers a future opportunity for bringing science and spirituality together. The Messianic age might be ushered in by a visitor from another star. This will deliver the much-needed shock therapy to humanity, which is currently wasting resources in pointless conflicts on Earth, a tiny residue from the formation of the Sun. Tim noted that religious Americans are less likely to believe that intelligent life exists on other planets, although in his view God has the attention span to care for beings on multiple planets. I confirmed that I have two daughters and the love I extend to one does not take away from the love to the other. We often think in terms of zero-sum games, but the most fulfilling aspects of our life involve infinite-sum games. A recent poll showed that more Americans believe in extraterrestrial intelligence than in the biblical God. “You have an opportunity to get them into your congregation,” I suggested to Tim. My hope is that humanity will encounter an interstellar messenger with an uplifting message during my lifetime. Just as in our private life, finding a cosmic partner will give a new meaning to our existence. After that, the night sky will not appear as dark and lonely anymore. The standard cosmological lore will not regard the Universe as a pointless mix of particles and radiation. If we find other actors on the cosmic stage, we can ask them what the play is about. We can visit their homes and witness their technological infrastructure, just like kids visiting neighbors who marvel at their toys. To pursue this search scientifically, I am leading the Galileo Project which is seeking objects near Earth that may have been manufactured by extraterrestrial technological civilizations. Following the discovery of the first interstellar object, `Oumuamua, on October 19, 2017, I became interested in the scientific study of anomalous objects that visit us from outside the Solar System. The brightness of sunlight reflected off `Oumuamua changed by a factor of ten as this football-field-size object tumbled every eight hours. These extreme brightness variations implied that `Oumuamua was shaped like a pancake. This mysterious object accelerated away from the Sun without signs of cometary evaporation, and receded from Earth faster than any human-made rocket. A similar push by reflection of sunlight was detected for another object, 2020 SO, which was verified to be a rocket booster from a 1966 launch by NASA. To separate technological artifacts from rocks, astronomers can now collect better data on interstellar objects using the Webb telescope and the upcoming Rubin Observatory in Chile. My conversation with Tim and the spiritual leaders ended after an hour, because I had to teach a class of students at the Harvard Astronomy department. Training young students is key to assuring that we will continue to learn more about our cosmic neighborhood. Hopefully, the Messianic message of peace and prosperity will arrive before humanity will trigger an existential catastrophe with its emerging technologies. The post Love, Science, and the Cosmic Quest for Truth appeared first on Anomalien.com.

Beloved author J.K. Rowling criticized transgender athletes who compete in women's sports by saying they are stealing medals from women.Rowling was responding to a report from the United Nations that detailed the shocking amount of medals women had lost in sporting events across the globe up to March 2024.The eye-opening study revealed that more than 600 female athletes had lost medals in 29 sporting categories, totaling almost 900 medals going to men who identify as women in over 400 competitions."Over 890 medals, across 29 sports, stolen from women by men," Rowling wrote on X. — (@) 'We're not supposed to feel empathy for those women and girls.'Readers soon chimed in on Rowling's thread, with one pointing to the amount of effort and training female athletes are putting in only for them to lose out to a biological male.Rowling responded directly to the remark with the ironic statement, "We're not supposed to feel empathy for those women and girls.""The only people we should coddle are the mediocre men who decided they'd enjoy medals without the hassle of competing in the correct category." — (@) Sadly, Rowling's statement has rung true in recent instances of men playing against women.NCAA volleyball player Sia Liilii said that her Nevada team was told by school officials they "weren't educated enough" and "didn't understand the science" when they refused to play against a team with a male athlete.Similarly, San Jose State University's Brooke Slusser said that when her school had meetings about a male athlete on her team, administrators predominantly focused on the well-being of the transgender individual and not the girls."We've had meetings, and it's a lot of just checking in on [the male athlete]. ... We were like 'what about us?'" Slusser recalled. "Everyone above you is telling you you shouldn't be talking for [the male], you need to make sure the other person is okay," she explained.During the 2024 Olympics, Rowling was highly critical of controversial boxer Imane Khelif, who won a gold medal in women's boxing. Although the Olympics do not conduct gender tests, both the International Boxing Association and the World Boxing Organization claimed Khelif is a man.Rowling shared an image of Khelif and opponent Angela Carini at the time, saying Khelif had "the smirk of a male [who] knows he's protected by a misogynist sporting establishment enjoying the distress of a woman he's just punched in the head."Khelif ended up naming Rowling in a criminal hate speech complaint in France. The complaint was made to Paris' online hate speech office and claimed Khelif was a victim of cyber harassment.Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

Jeff Bezos, the owner of the Washington Post, staunchly defended the newspaper’s leadership decision to cease political endorsements, citing the public’s pervasive distrust of corporate media outlets.On Monday evening, Bezos released an opinion piece responding to reports that the Post would not back a presidential candidate in the upcoming election, as it did during previous election cycles. 'I sighed when I found out.'According to NPR, the paper faced significant criticism for the decision and reportedly lost more than 200,000 subscribers and counting — roughly 8% of its base. Other media outlets, including The Hill, the New Republic, and the Atlantic, torched Bezos for refusing to endorse Vice President Kamala Harris.Bezos’ op-ed explained the reason behind the decision, stating that the news media “is now the least trusted of all,” according to an annual public survey about trust and reputation.“We must be accurate, and we must be believed to be accurate. It’s a bitter pill to swallow, but we are failing on the second requirement. Most people believe the media is biased,” Bezos stated. “It would be easy to blame others for our long and continuing fall in credibility (and, therefore, decline in impact), but a victim mentality will not help. Complaining is not a strategy. We must work harder to control what we can control to increase our credibility.”Bezos argued that political endorsements from newspapers do not have a measurable impact on election results.“No undecided voters in Pennsylvania are going to say, ‘I’m going with Newspaper A’s endorsement.’ None. What presidential endorsements actually do is create a perception of bias. A perception of non-independence,” Bezos continued.He called ending the paper’s endorsements “a principled decision,” adding that it is “a meaningful step in the right direction.”The Post was accused of making the decision not to endorse a candidate after an executive with one of Bezos’ companies met with former President Donald Trump. Bezos insisted that he was unaware of the meeting and that there was “no quid pro quo of any kind.” He noted that the decision was made internally and that neither presidential candidate was consulted.“Dave Limp, the chief executive of one of my companies, Blue Origin, met with former president Donald Trump on the day of our announcement. I sighed when I found out, because I knew it would provide ammunition to those who would like to frame this as anything other than a principled decision,” Bezos explained. He remarked, “But the fact is, I didn’t know about the meeting beforehand. Even Limp didn’t know about it in advance; the meeting was scheduled quickly that morning. There is no connection between it and our decision on presidential endorsements, and any suggestion otherwise is false.”Bezo stated that he is “not an ideal owner” of the newspaper “when it comes to the appearance of conflict.”“Every day, somewhere, some Amazon executive or Blue Origin executive or someone from the other philanthropies and companies I own or invest in is meeting with government officials. I once wrote that The Post is a ‘complexifier’ for me. It is, but it turns out I’m also a complexifier for The Post,” Bezos declared.“You can see my wealth and business interests as a bulwark against intimidation, or you can see them as a web of conflicting interests. Only my own principles can tip the balance from one to the other,” he added.Because of general distrust of the corporate media, the public has turned to “off-the-cuff podcasts, inaccurate social media posts and other unverified news sources, which can quickly spread misinformation and deepen division,” Bezos noted.The business magnate pledged not to use the Post to push his own interests and stated that he would do everything in his ability to revive the newspaper’s credibility. “To win this fight, we will have to exercise new muscles. Some changes will be a return to the past, and some will be new inventions. Criticism will be part and parcel of anything new, of course,” Bezos said.Last week, a New York Times source revealed that Bezos has requested that the paper hire more conservative op-ed writers to expand its audience, Blaze News previously reported. Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

The Commonwealth of Virginia has played what might be its last card against the Biden-Harris Department of Justice, betting the U.S. Supreme Court might allow election officials to resume taking noncitizens off the state's voter rolls. Like other red states, Virginia has worked diligently to remove foreign nationals from its voter rolls in an effort to ensure that only American citizens are casting ballots in this election. These efforts, ramped up by Gov. Glenn Youngkin via executive order on Aug. 7, drew the ire of the DOJ, which sued earlier this month to foil the election integrity initiative — just as it had sued Alabama weeks earlier. A Biden-nominated district judge obliged the DOJ Friday, ruling that Virginia — where the latest Quantus Insights poll shows Kamala Harris leading President Donald Trump by only one percentage point — must restore the voter registrations of thousands of individuals who allegedly identified as foreign nationals. Virginia asked the 4th Circuit to put a hold on Judge Patricia Tolliver Giles' order, but a pair of Obama-appointed judges and another Biden appointee denied the request Sunday. 'About 1,000 presented noncitizen residency documents to DMV and were then positively identified as noncitizens.' Left with one more option, Republican state officials turned to the U.S. Supreme Court, filing late Sunday night for an emergency stay of Giles' injunction, which is scheduled to go into effect on Wednesday. Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares stated upon filing, "Americans citizens — and no one else — should determine American elections." Youngkin responded, "It's commonsense: noncitizens shouldn't be on our voter rolls." According to the commonwealth's emergency application, the injunction sought by the Biden-Harris DOJ will "irreparably injure Virginia's sovereignty, confuse her voters, overload her election machinery and administrators, and likely lead noncitizens to think they are permitted to vote, a criminal offense that will cancel the franchise of eligible voters." Blaze News previously reported that Giles claimed the removals were a "clear violation" of the National Voter Registration Act's quiet period provision, which requires states to complete programs intended to systematically remove the names of ineligible voters from registration lists by no later than 90 days prior to a primary election or general election for federal office. Virginia's emergency application stressed that contrary to Giles' understanding and the DOJ's claim, the commonwealth's process is not systematic — which would run afoul of the NVRA — but is instead individualized. Moreover, the state indicated the lesser court's injunction was based on a provision of the NVRA that "does not even apply to the removal of noncitizens and other voter registrations that are void ab initio." The state told the high court that of the over 1,600 suspected noncitizens whom the Biden judge ordered back onto the voter rolls, "About 600 of these individuals personally informed Virginia's Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) that they are not citizens, and about 1,000 presented noncitizen residency documents to DMV and were then positively identified as noncitizens through the United States' own Systematic Alerian Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) database." Chief Justice John Roberts requested that the opponents of Virginia's election integrity initiative respond to the state's emergency appeal by Tuesday afternoon, CNN indicated, a signal that the high court will act swiftly. Hans von Spakovsky, a senior legal fellow at the Heritage Foundation, recently told the Daily Caller that the Biden-Harris DOJ's lawsuits against Virginia and Alabama are the "exact opposite of what DOJ should be doing, it is a criminal violation ... — in fact, it's a felony for an alien to register to vote." "And so what the DOJ ought to be doing is going to Virginia and saying, 'Can you please give me the files of each of these voters so we can investigate and potentially prosecute them?' And no, instead, they're saying, 'No, you have to keep on the voter rolls aliens who are breaking federal law,'" continued von Spakovsky. Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

With Election Day just eight days away, Americans are holding their breath anxiously awaiting the verdict of what has been an incredibly contentious election season. But it’s almost over. Soon, we will know who our next commander in chief will be. And according to Tucker Carlson, it’s going to be Donald Trump. “Blaze News’ Tonight’s” Jill Savage, Blaze News editor in chief Matthew Peterson, and Blaze News senior editor for politics Christopher Bedford discuss whether or not Carlson’s optimism is misguided. “This is the end of a redemption arc,” said Carlson, speaking at a Turning Point Action rally in Duluth, Georgia, on Oct. 23. “I've really never seen anybody treated like Donald Trump was treated – ever,” he said, pointing to the way the left attacked, defamed, indicted, and arrested him and even “let him get shot in the face.” “And he’s gonna win anyway!” he declared to a roaring crowd. “Do you think that the Republicans can actually be this optimistic right now?” Jill asks Bedford. Even though Bedford has been searching for anything that would suggest Carlson’s optimism is misplaced, he’s come up empty-handed. “There's no positive echo chamber for the Democratic Party right now,” he says. “Democrats have tried to make Republicans, populists, conservatives, MAGA people feel like they are an awful minority, feel like they are alone out there, that they are radicals, and it's not true. People who listen to Donald Trump and say, ‘This has got a point, something's got to change, the Democrats and the Mitch McConnells are rotten’ – you're the majority of people right now,” says Bedford. “Don't let yourself be told by these folks that you're the weirdo. Democrats have abandoned the working class. … They basically abandoned American voters,” specifically “men,” he explains. “They are actually kind of the party of weirdos.” More people than we know have realized that “maybe MAGA is normal. Maybe it’s a populist rebellion that is grounded in American principles, and maybe it's actually a testament to just how generous and kind and gentle the American people are that we've put up with this sick expert rule for as long as we have,” he adds. “Tucker's point is there’s a very, very powerful story here that is unfolding and that everyone can be part of if he gets back in after everything that has been done to him,” says Matthew. “They’ve thrown everything at the guy, and they’re failing.” “You can feel the tottering in the sort of the spirit or the soul of the regime right now because after all that, if he wins, it's sort of the emperor wears no clothes at that point,” he says. To hear more of the conversation, watch the clip above. Want more from 'Blaze News Tonight'?To enjoy more provocative opinions, expert analysis, and breaking stories you won’t see anywhere else, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.