Tuesday, October 11, 2011
Monday, October 10, 2011
Friday, October 7, 2011
Thursday, October 6, 2011
Humanists speak out against anti-gay legislation in Nigeria
From The Pink Triangle Blog
Leo Igwe
The UK gay Humanist charity the Pink Triangle Trust has warmly welcomed the reaction of the Nigerian Humanist Movement to that country’s move to criminalise same-sex marriage.
The Bill for an Act to Prohibit Marriage Between Persons of Same Sex, Solemnization of Same and for Other Matters Related Therewith, sponsored by Senator Domingo Obende, has gone through the second reading and has been referred to the Senate Committee on Judiciary and Human Rights for further legislative work.
The NHM’s executive director, Leo Igwe, said: “We in the Nigerian Humanist Movement are deeply concerned by yet another move by the Nigerian Parliament to criminalise same-sex marriage in the country. This bill is a big distraction and a waste of Nigeria's limited legislative resources.
“It will worsen Nigeria's human rights records and undermine the efforts by Nigerians to foster true democracy, national dialogue and tolerant pluralism. Similar bills considered by the Parliament in 2006 and 2008, were never passed into law. Nigerian Humanists are wondering why the current members of the parliament deemed it necessary to bring up this bill again at a time the nation is facing clear and urgent threats and challenges of insecurity, crime and conflict, religious fundamentalism and terrorism, poverty and social unrest.
“It is difficult to comprehend why the Nigerian Parliament wants to set the country on a path against the global trend of abolishing homophobia and ending all forms of discrimination against persons on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity. Nigerian Humanists hereby urge the lawmakers to shelve this bill and instead to consider decriminalising homosexuality and taking other legislative measures to promote, protect, uphold and enforce the full human rights of all persons whatever their race, ethnicity, sex, sexual orientation, religion or belief.”
Commenting on this, the PTT’s secretary, George Broadhead, said: “We warmly welcome this reaction and the support the NHM has given to LGBT rights over many years. Since its founding in 1996, the NHM has taken part in campaigns against antipersonnel landmines, child labour, female genital mutilation, ritual killing, witchcraft, caste discrimination, sharia law and homophobia.
“Whilst the various religious institutions are in the main overtly hostile to LGBT relationships and their rights, the Humanist movement worldwide can be relied upon to champion them.”
Leo Igwe
The UK gay Humanist charity the Pink Triangle Trust has warmly welcomed the reaction of the Nigerian Humanist Movement to that country’s move to criminalise same-sex marriage.
The Bill for an Act to Prohibit Marriage Between Persons of Same Sex, Solemnization of Same and for Other Matters Related Therewith, sponsored by Senator Domingo Obende, has gone through the second reading and has been referred to the Senate Committee on Judiciary and Human Rights for further legislative work.
The NHM’s executive director, Leo Igwe, said: “We in the Nigerian Humanist Movement are deeply concerned by yet another move by the Nigerian Parliament to criminalise same-sex marriage in the country. This bill is a big distraction and a waste of Nigeria's limited legislative resources.
“It will worsen Nigeria's human rights records and undermine the efforts by Nigerians to foster true democracy, national dialogue and tolerant pluralism. Similar bills considered by the Parliament in 2006 and 2008, were never passed into law. Nigerian Humanists are wondering why the current members of the parliament deemed it necessary to bring up this bill again at a time the nation is facing clear and urgent threats and challenges of insecurity, crime and conflict, religious fundamentalism and terrorism, poverty and social unrest.
“It is difficult to comprehend why the Nigerian Parliament wants to set the country on a path against the global trend of abolishing homophobia and ending all forms of discrimination against persons on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity. Nigerian Humanists hereby urge the lawmakers to shelve this bill and instead to consider decriminalising homosexuality and taking other legislative measures to promote, protect, uphold and enforce the full human rights of all persons whatever their race, ethnicity, sex, sexual orientation, religion or belief.”
Commenting on this, the PTT’s secretary, George Broadhead, said: “We warmly welcome this reaction and the support the NHM has given to LGBT rights over many years. Since its founding in 1996, the NHM has taken part in campaigns against antipersonnel landmines, child labour, female genital mutilation, ritual killing, witchcraft, caste discrimination, sharia law and homophobia.
“Whilst the various religious institutions are in the main overtly hostile to LGBT relationships and their rights, the Humanist movement worldwide can be relied upon to champion them.”
Tuesday, October 4, 2011
Dwarf Planet Haumea & Its Dark Red Spot
from Dayly Galaxy Blog
The fifth dwarf planet of the Solar System, Haumea, and at least one of its two satellites, are covered in crystalline water-ice due to the tidal forces between them and the heat of radiogenic elements. This wase finding of an international research study using observations from the VLT telescope at the European Southern Observatory in Chile.
The tiny and strange planet Haumea moves beyond the orbit of Neptune. It has the shape of a flattened rugby ball and is around 2,000 km long. It spins completely in less than four hours, at one of the fastest rotation speeds in the Solar System. The crystallised water that covers this planet and its two satellites (Hi'iaka and Namaka) makes them shine in the darkness of space.
Now an international research team has confirmed that 75% of Haumea and 100% of Hi'iaka (which is around 400 km in diameter) are covered with crystallised water-ice (with an ordered structure) and not, as would have been expected, with amorphous ice disorganised due to solar radiation. The study suggests that the planet is made up of a frozen outer layer and an internal section made up of between 88% and 97% rock (with a density of 3.5 g/cm3).
"Since solar radiation constantly destroys the crystalline structure of ice on the surface, energy sources are required to keep it organised. The two that we have taken into consideration are able to generate radiogenic elements (potassium-40, thorium-232 and uranium-238) from the inside, and the tidal forces between Haumea and its satellites (as seen between the Earth and the Moon)", says Benoit Carry, co-author of the study and a researcher at the ESAC Centre of the European Space Agency (ESA).
The researcher also highlights other peculiarities of Haumea: "Its orbital plane is inclined at 28º with respect to the usual plane of planets in the Solar System, the orbits of its satellites are not on the same plane either –- which is very unusual –- and the entire system belongs to a single family within the frozen objects in the Kuiper Belt (at a distance of between 4.5 billion and more than 15 billion kilometres from the Sun)".
According to the scientists, the two satellites could have been created by another object smashing into Haumea, which could also have originated the rapid rotation of the dwarf planet (3.9 hours) and have molded it into its rugby ball shape. Some numerical models have demonstrated that this could be caused by a fairly tangential impact.
Observations from the SINFONI instrument of the Very Large Telescope (VLT), the enormous telescope of the European Southern Observatory (ESO) in Chile, were used in order to carry out the study, which has been published in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics. ESO astronomer Christophe Dumas led this study from the observatory.
"SINFONI is an integral field spectrometer that provides 'data cubes' in which two of the dimensions are spatial (like those of any flat image), while the third is spectral, meaning that each layer of the cube is an image taken with a different wave size", explains Carry.
The scientist acknowledges that the precise orbits and sizes of the dwarf planet are still not known (they are operating with approximate scales of around 2,000 x 1,500 x 1,000 km) nor are those of its satellites. In reality, these are two very distant bright points of light, the data for which are obtained indirectly.
In the case of the tiny Namaka (around 200 km in diameter), the signal at the time it was observed was so weak that it was impossible to obtain information about its surface, although new data on its orbit were gathered. Meanwhile, the models for the tidal forces of this strange system are also improving.
Another of the mysteries of Haumea is the presence of a dark, reddish spot, which contrasts with the whitish color of the planet. "My interpretation of the infrared photometry is that this area could be a richer source of crystalline water-ice than the rest of the surface", Pedro Lacerda, co-discoverer of the spot and an astronomer at Queen's University in Belfast (United Kingdom), tells SINC. The researcher does not rule out the possibility of some kind of irradiated mineral or organic matter having caused this coloration.
Haumea is the fifth dwarf planet in the Solar System along with Pluto, Ceres, Eris and Makemake. Its existence was confirmed in 2005, when it was called 2003 EL61 (from the international nomenclature code: year of first observation, half and order number).
Two teams of astronomers contested the discovery. The first group was led by the Spanish researcher José Luis Ortiz Moreno from the Institute of Astrophysics of Andalusia (CSIC), while the other was led by the astrophysicist Michael E. Brown from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech, USA).
In the end, the International Astronomical Union decided to accept the discovery by the Spanish team, but named the strange dwarf planet and its satellites according to names suggested by the American team. In Hawaiian mythology, Haumea is the goddess of fertility and birth, and Hi'iaka and Namaka are two of her daughters.
Via: Christophe Dumas, Benoit Carry, Daniel Hestroffer, Frederic Merlin. "High-contrast observations of (136108) Haumea. A crystalline water-ice multiple system". Astronomy & Astrophysics 528: A105, abril de 2011. DOI: 10.1051/0004-6361/201015011.
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