Brights News Feed

What colour is the world? It is one of those great scientific or philosophical questions.

Well, no, it isn’t really. But in 80 million tiny images from MIT, you can get a pretty good idea of the answer anyway.

The mosaic is comprised of smaller images each of which is an average of several other images each representing the same noun. The images are organised by semantic meaning, hence the areas of similar colour, such as the large green area which is related to vegetation etc.

(Via)

Dr Evan Harris MP (Lib Dem), Frank Dobson MP (Lab) and David Wilshire MP (Con) have tabled an amendment that would effectively abolish Britain’s archaic blasphemy law. The vote is tomorrow.

From New Humanist:

A letter published in today’s Daily Telegraph makes the case for repealing the law: “As the Law Commission acknowledged in 1985, when it recommended repeal, it is uncertain in scope, but lack of intention is no defence, and the law is unlimited in penalty.

This, together with its chilling effect on free expression and its discriminatory impact, leaves it in clear breach of human rights law. In the end, no one is likely to be convicted under it.”

The letter is signed by a host of honorary associates and distinguished supporters of the Rationalist Association, the BHA and the NSS, including Richard Dawkins, RA President Jonathan Miller, philosopher and regular New Humanist contributor AC Grayling, historian David Starkey and author Philip Pullman. It’s even been signed by former Archbishop of Canterbury Lord Carey, with the letter pointing out that “the Church of England no longer opposes its abolition on principle”.

The NSS point their members and subscribers to www.theyworkforyou.com where you can write to your MP in support of the amendment. The BHA have a specific “Write to your MP” page with a pre-set message about the law. Don’t delay! MPs will vote on the amendment as early as tomorrow.

As a special Christmas treat the Brights News Feed has, with ironically Easter-like symbolism, spontaneously risen from the dead.

Despite for a while receiving a growing amount of traffic, the editor withdrew from regular posting almost by accident, and other contributors with similarly busy lives have also failed to satiate your news hunger.

BrightsOnline.net will be undergoing an overhaul in the next few months aimed at making regular management easier for editors, as well as providing more routes for collaboration and contribution from all visitors.

In the meantime, in lieu of a season greet from BrightsOnline.net, here are two thoughtful mid-winter messages, both aimed at the widespread “demonology” which regards secularists as rabidly anti-Christmas, a major theme in the British press this year.

• The President’s Mid-Winter Message — Terry Sanderson, President of the National Secular Society (UK)
• Sorry to disappoint, but it’s nonsense to suggest we want to ban Christmas — Polly Toynbee, President of the British Humanist Association

Links to “mid-winter” messages from other secularist figures from anywhere in the world would be welcome (use the comments below).

The British government today released a “joint statement” (PDF) with a number of religious groups, essentially touting the view that “faith schools” are a social good and heralding yet further expansion of their presence in state-funded schooling.

This is despite a two-thirds public majority who think that no religiously-affiliated schools should receive any state funding (BBC), and despite last year’s DfES-commissioned report — “Faith Primary Schools: Better Schools or Better Pupils?” (LSE) — which concluded that there was “clear positive selection of pupils into faith schools on the basis of observable characteristics that are favourable to education”. These “observable characteristics” account for the results disparity which the government still continues to use as an excuse for furthering the faith school agenda, even though their own DfES-commissioned report shows that these successes are down to nothing but social selection, so effectively the better results of faith schools are just a measure of how much the local population is skewed in its favour by covert selection and so-called “pushy” parents.

The British Humanist Association condemned today’s report as a “disgrace” (press release).

Read the rest of this entry »

A Belgian prosecutor has secured a hearing to bring charges against the Church of Scientology — in particular 12 as yet unnamed individuals — under laws against the unlawful practice of medicine, and fraud. The church has responded that they are being “hounded”. The hearing will take place in the next two to three months and the Church had indicated that it will, of course, contest.

Read the rest of this entry »

As announced in the most recent Brights Bulletin, next year’s Brights calendar is now available through Lulu. Profits from each calendar go to the Brights Net at www.the-brights.net.

This calendar is the result of a collaborative effort. Its producers are Brights who meet in the Action Forums of The Brights’ Network. As Brights, they have in common a naturalistic worldview, free of supernaturalism. The photos and quotes included are meant to show just how awesome our universe is. The various events marked in this calendar have been chosen by individual Brights. They represent a spectrum of achievements selected to remember that humanity has always been striving forward, trying to improve both ourselves and our environment. Check out The Brights’ Net site at www.the-brights.net.

Abdullah Gul has been elected to the Turkish presidency by parliament today.

His candidacy provoked military threats and mass secular protest back in April. He has said that he will not contravene the country’s secular constitution, and he has won kudos in Europe during negotiations for Turkey’s EU membership, but secular opposition and many secularist campaigners remain unconvinced that the new President Gul will not use his powers of veto in the direction of an Islamist agenda.

Only time will tell…

(See Guardian, Al Jazeera.)

From the Guardian:

The discovery of a new species of great ape that roamed Africa 10m years ago has forced scientists to rethink the earliest steps of human evolution.

Fossil hunters working along the Afar rift in central Ethiopia unearthed remnants of teeth they claim belonged to the primitive ape, a previously unknown species of gorilla they named Chororapithecus abyssinicus.

The finding, if confirmed, will redraw the evolutionary tree of primates, suggesting that humans and chimpanzees must have split from their gorilla-like ancestors 3m years earlier than thought. Geneticists have previously put the date at which the human and chimpanzee lineage split from gorillas at around 7m years ago, with humans and chimps diverging more recently, at 5m years ago.

Two amazing stories today testify both to the grandeur of nature, and to the power of humanity in understanding its intricacy and appreciating its power.

New Scientist reports on the discovery that particles of dust immersed in ionized gas can behave as information-transmitting replicators, essentially meaning that they could support “genetic” inheritance, and perhaps even support a full, living, evolutionary process.

Also, widely linked across the internet an on television news, the world has watched amateur nature video. A pride of lions attack a herd of water buffalo, but events take two unexpected twists leaving the spectators aghast and amazed. The video is on YouTube here.

In a possible indication that this PledgeBank pledge (reported previously) has proved highly successful, it is reported today that The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins is the most popular holiday read for the UK’s Labour party MPs this summer. The popular tract is also in second place for the Liberal Democrats (ahead even of Harry Potter!) and second place overall.