SOMETHING FROM NOTHING ? [OFFICIAL] Richard Dawkins & Lawrence Krauss [H...

Uploaded on Feb 12, 2012

Join critically-acclaimed author and evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins and world-renowned theoretical physicist and author Lawrence Krauss as they discuss biology, cosmology, religion, and a host of other topics.

The authors will also discuss their new books. Dawkins recently published The Magic of Reality: How We Know What's Really True, an exploration of the magic of discovery embodied in the practice of science. Written for all age groups, the book moves forward from historical examples of supernatural explanations of natural phenomena to focus on the actual science behind how the world works.

Krauss's latest book, A Universe from Nothing: Why There is Something Rather than Nothing, explains the scientific advances that provide insight into how the universe formed. Krauss tackles the age-old assumption that something cannot arise from nothing by arguing that not only can something arise from nothing, but something will always arise from nothing.

Founded in 2008, the ASU Origins Project is a university-wide transdisciplinary initiative aimed at facilitating cutting edge research and inquiry about origins questions, enhancing public science literacy, and improving science education. Since its inception, the Origins Project has brought the world's leading scientists, including Nobel Prize winners, to Tempe to explore origins questions. The Origins Project has hosted workshops and public events that have focused on questions as fundamental as the origin of the universe, how life began, the origins of human uniqueness, and the origins of morality.

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'Distasteful and offensive': Twin Towers costumes spark outrage

SWNS.com

Amber Langford, left, and Annie Collinge, right, reportedly said their 9/11-themed costumes were "not intended as a joke."

By Alexander Smith, NBC News contributor

LONDON -- Two British teens have sparked outrage after dressing up for Halloween as the Twin Towers during the 9/11 attacks.

The costumes were labeled "South Tower" and "North Tower" and included explosions, planes, and people jumping out of the buildings, The Sun newspaper reported. The tabloid's front-page headline on Wednesday read "Towering Stupidity."
The 19-year-old students also wore American flags planted among more wreckage on their heads.

They reportedly received £150 ($240) for winning the "best dressed" competition at a Halloween party at Rosies nightclub in Chester, England.

The newspaper named the pair as Amber Langford, a biology student whose father is reportedly a retired pilot, and criminology student Annie Collinge.

John Feal, president of New York-based 9/11 victims’ organization The FealGood Foundation, described the incident aas "shameful."

Slideshow: Sept. 11: Attack on America

Str / REUTERS

See images from the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.

Launch slideshow

"The insensitivity level for this act of ignorance is topped by none. As for the nightclub who allowed it, sponsored it and endorsed it, shame on you," Feal told The Sun.

Almost 3,000 people died in the al-Qaeda attacks on September 11, 2001, including 67 U.K. citizens.
The teens apologized "if any offence was caused."

In a statement to the Sun, they added: "The idea was to depict a serious, modern-day horror that happened in our lifetime and was not intended as a joke."

A spokeswoman for the Stonegate Pub Company, which runs Rosies nightclub, added: "We are extremely concerned that an award was made to two women dressed in a distasteful and offensive manner."

Did The Obama Administration Give $900 million to Hamas?

The Obama administration offered "$900 million to Hamas, a recognized terrorist organization, to rebuild Gaza."

 

Republican National Committee claims Obama administration offered $900 million to Hamas to rebuild Gaza

 

The Republican National Committee recently put out a questionnaire called the "2009 Obama Agenda Survey" in which it asks Republicans to rate their agreement or disagreement with a number of so-called Obama administration positions.

But it looks to us more like a push poll, a political technique in which the questions are written in a way that aims to convince the respondent of a particular political position. In other words, they are political statements masquerading as questions.

We decided to fact-check two "questions" from the survey, and you'll see what we mean. 

One is an allegation that the Obama administration has ordered a new initiative that requires FBI agents to read Miranda Rights to high-value terrorist detainees captured on the battlefield. We deal with that one in another Truth-O-Meter ruling . 

Here, we address the GOP question, "Do you support the Obama administration’s decision to offer $900 million to Hamas, a recognized terrorist organization, to rebuild Gaza?"

As you can see, built into the "question" is a statement of fact, that the Obama administration offered $900 million to Hamas to rebuild Gaza.

During a trip to Egypt in early March 2009, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced that the United States intends to provide $900 million for humanitarian, economic and security assistance for the Palestinian Authority and the Palestinian people.

Here's how that money would be split: $200 million to the Palestinian Authority to address part of its 2009 budget shortfall; $400 million "to help the Palestinian Authority solidify economic and institutional reforms in the West Bank"; and $300 million in humanitarian aid for Gaza following January's 22-day violent conflict between Israel and the Islamic militant group Hamas. The humanitarian aid to Gaza would be distributed primarily through U.N. agencies and nongovernmental organizations. The strategy, according to State Department officials, was to specifically make sure the money did not go to Hamas.

In testimony before the Senate Appropriations Committee on April 30, Clinton assured that disbursement of the money "will be implemented with stringent requirements to prevent aid from being diverted into the wrong hands."

Translation: Hamas.
Some have argued, however, that the aid, while not going directly to Hamas, would still benefit them.
"Whatever officials in Washington might intend, the Obama administration's new Gaza aid package is likely to turn out to be a financial boon for Hamas, which wields actual physical control over the places the aid is destined to go," wrote Ilan Berman, vice president for foreign policy at the American Foreign Policy Council, in an April commentary distributed by Tribune Media Services.

Steven A. Cook, a senior fellow at the nonpartisan Council on Foreign Relations and an expert in U.S.-Middle East policy, said there are legitimate concerns about aid ending up in the hands of Hamas. The problem, he said, is that supposed nongovernmental groups that purport not to have ties with Hamas sometimes do.

"We have yet to devise a foolproof system to ensure that money doesn't bleed out," Cook said.
Still, he said, it's a wild distortion to claim that the United States has offered Hamas $900 million. First of all, most of the $900 million is going to the West Bank, not Gaza. And while some of the humanitarian aid disbursed through U.N. and other nongovernmental agencies could "bleed out" to Hamas unintentionally, that's far different from giving money directly to Hamas.

Not only that, but the claim that the money would be used to "rebuild" Gaza after January's 22-day violent conflict between Israel and the Islamic militant group Hamas is also misleading. The money to Gaza is for humanitarian aid — food, medicine, repairing damaged infrastructure, removing rubble, etc. It is specifically not for reconstruction, he said, as Israel was concerned that reconstruction money might be used to build tunnels, weapons factories or the like.

"I'd give this one a D-minus," Cook said of the GOP claim. 

We agree that it's possible that even with safeguards, some of the humanitarian money could wind up in the hands of Hamas.

But when you read the GOP survey, you are left with the impression that the U.S. government intends to write a big, fat $900 million check that says "Pay to the order of Hamas." To the contrary, Washington is taking steps to try to specifically make sure none of that money winds up in the hands of Hamas. We also note that only $300 million of the $900 million is even going to Gaza, for humanitarian aid. And the money is specifically not to be used for reconstruction. It is limited to humanitarian aid — food, medicine, that kind of thing. So the GOP is wrong on that point too.

We rule the RNC's Hamas claim to be False.

The Hill: ObamaCare problems mount

ObamaCare problems mounting

By Elise Viebeck - 10/18/13 01:20 PM ET

The problems for the main ObamaCare enrollment portal are going from bad to worse.

ObamaCare's online marketplace is reportedly creating a mess for insurance companies by approving error-ridden applications, the latest in a series of problems that threaten to dampen enrollment under the healthcare law.

Among the small number of people who have successfully purchased coverage, many have filed out duplicate enrollments, misreported family members or left data fields empty, insurers told The Wall Street Journal.

These errors were attributed to flaws in the design of the online enrollment system, which does not easily allow users to fix their mistakes.

The defective sign-ups are the latest breakdown for healthcare.gov, the online portal that uninsured people in 36 states can use to purchase insurance coverage.
           

Ever since its Oct. 1 rollout, the federal site has been dogged by software problems that have prevented nearly all users from shopping for health insurance.

While bottleneck issues had begun to ease, users are still struggling to navigate the system.

The flawed data received by insurance companies underscores the daunting challenge facing federal health officials as they seek to repair a site that even supporters of the healthcare law have declared a “disaster.”

"So far, the Affordable Care Act's launch has been a failure. Not 'troubled.' Not 'glitchy.' A failure," Washington Post columnist Ezra Klein wrote this week.

White House press secretary Jay Carney on Thursday said President Obama is “not happy” with the site’s debut even as he rejected calls for the resignation of Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Kathleen Sebelius.

"The accountability the president seeks today is the accountability that comes from those who are working on implementation," Carney told reporters.

Republicans are working to shine a spotlight on the troubled ObamaCare system now that the fight over government funding and the debt ceiling is over.

"The American people deserve to know what caused this mess," Rep. Fred Upton (R-Mich.), the chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, told CNN. "Delays and technical failures have reached epidemic proportions."

Upton's panel will hold a hearing on the rollout for Oct. 28 as Republicans continue to push the HHS to release more information about the enrollment numbers in the marketplaces.

The department has said it will report the figures monthly, but critics suspect the administration is refusing to release the numbers because they will reveal just how disastrous the launch has been.

The consulting firm Kantar US Insights said that only about 36,000 people — or less than 1 percent of initial visitors to healthcare.gov — successfully enrolled in the first week.

And an analysis conducted for The Wall Street Journal found that just over one-quarter of the 209,000 people who registered on healthcare.gov on Monday and Tuesday bought health insurance.

The HHS has been hoping that at least 500,000 people would sign up for coverage by the end of October, according to memos obtained by The Associated Press.

While Democrats have yet to join Republicans in calling for Sebelius to step aside, some former administration officials say heads should roll at the department.

“When they get it fixed, I hope they fire some people who were in charge of making sure this thing was supposed to work,” former White House press secretary Robert Gibbs told MSNBC.

“We knew there were going to be some glitches. But these are glitches that go, quite frankly, way beyond the pale of what should be expected.”

Some of the criticism is being directed at the chief contractor for healthcare.gov, CGI Federal.

As of May, according to NBC News, the company had spent $196 million on the website and increased the ceiling price tag to $292 million. The cost could continue to rise as programmers work around the clock to repair the system’s problems.

Read more: http://thehill.com/blogs/healthwatch/health-reform-implementation/329313-obamacare-problems-mount

Sen. Feinstein FISA Hearing and 9/11 Revisionism

By Daniel Schuman October 03, 2013

 

At yesterday’s Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on FISA, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) made a curious claim. She argued that 9/11 could have been prevented by the government’s new surveillance programs, but could not have been prevented in their absence. That is a dangerous narrative.

 Here is what the 9/11 Commission found:

 "Earlier in this report we detailed various missed opportunities to thwart the 9/11 plot. Information was not shared, sometimes inadvertently or because of legal misunderstandings. Analysis was not pooled. Effective operations were not launched. Often the handoffs of information were lost across the divide separating the foreign and domestic agencies of government." (p. 353)

Prior to 9/11, the government actively looked at Osama bin Laden out of concern his organization would launch a terrorist attack. The CIA Director at the time, George Tenet, described the threat this way: “the system was blinking red.”

Even with all its resources, the government did not put the pieces together. Why not? According to the report, “We believe the 9/11 attacks revealed four kinds of failures: in imagination, policy, capabilities, and management.”

Reasonable people may disagree regarding domestic surveillance.  But there is no reason to believe our current domestic surveillance system would have prevented 9/11. Just as significantly, other approaches may be more effective at addressing future threats while addressing constitutional and prudential concerns.
The Commission got it right when it declared:

"The burden of proof for retaining a particular government power should be on the executive, to explain (a) that the power actually materially enhances security and (B) that there is adequate supervision of the executive’s use of the powers to ensure protection of civil liberties.  If power is granted, there must be adequate guidelines and oversight to properly confine its use."

If the disclosures over the last months have taught us anything, it is that the government has failed to meet its burden of proof.  At today’s hearing, Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) advocated for a new approach that goes beyond current reform efforts.“In my view, it is time for a change. Additional transparency and oversight are important parts of that change, but I believe we must do more.” We agree.