Author: nick

[ad_1] In 1986, I joined colleagues in a long two-part look in Skeptical Inquirer about an early concern of the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (CSICOP): the serious astrology of consulting rooms. We asked an unusual question: Does serious astrology need to be true? The answer seemed to be no. Astrologers laughed at us. Our clients are always satisfied, they said, so nuts to you! But clients had always been satisfied—even when the wrong birth data had been used by mistake. Clients could not tell the difference. Astrology was just patterned wallpaper for the mind.…

[ad_1] President Donald Trump’s son, Donald Trump Jr., taught Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) a lesson after Cruz used fake news to lie about the Iran Deal. [ad_2] Source link

[ad_1] By taking equity stakes in more than a dozen private businesses, the Trump administration has stretched executive power to new heights—and now Congress is working to ensure that future presidents get the same opportunity. The Senate’s version of the 2027 National Defense Authorization Act includes a provision to create a new slush fund within the U.S. Treasury for the purpose of buying stakes in more private businesses. The Pentagon would be able to tap the proposed Defense Equity Investment Account to make investments of up to $500 million in private companies involved in the production of “critical minerals, materials,…

[ad_1] The Office of Legal Counsel concluded that disparate-impact guidelines encourage employers to engage in racial discrimination, violating the U.S. Constitution. [ad_2] Source link

[ad_1] After reports that the Trump administration and state of Florida are considering abandoning the “Alligator Alcatraz” detention center in the Florida Everglades, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) says it has transferred detainees out of the tent camp in preparation for hurricane season. Florida news outlet WINK News first reported Tuesday that all detainees had been moved out of the Everglades detention camp. “As we enter into hurricane season, ICE and the state of Florida have moved illegal aliens from the soft sided facility. For the safety of the illegal alien detainees, we transferred them to other facilities,” an…

[ad_1] The primary claim of the cryptoterrestrial hypothesis is that all the unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP) sightings that were immensely popular in the media during the summer of 2023 do not come from above, they come from below—or to the side. The nonhuman intelligences are from Earth and represent a wide variety of different possible sources. This is according to an article published in the Journal of Philosophy and Cosmology (Lomas et al. 2024). I want, right away, to establish the difference between what is possible and what is probable. I’m not going to give the deepest philosophical definition, but…

[ad_1] Andrew Gault, the venture capitalist who funded the quantum hardware labs now threatening bitcoin, says the industry is looking in the wrong place. Google’s own security team moved in the same direction in March. Aventure capitalist who has spent a decade backing deep-tech and quantum hardware startups says the bitcoin industry is fixated on the wrong half of the quantum problem, the wallet keys instead of the encrypted messages already moving between exchanges, bridges and custodians today. “The financial system’s most dangerous vulnerability isn’t stored data, it’s the data moving between institutions right now,” Andrew Gault, CEO of networking…

[ad_1] We live in a fabulous world: amazing hidden civilizations, exotic unknown animals, and even bizarre human giants abound—at least, on our televisions. TV program schedules continually promote the ubiquitous daily presentation of such exotica on series after series, always with disparagement of the foolish mainstream scientists who fail to become True Believers in the paranormal exotica du jour. And yet, let’s face it: none of the giants or fabulous beasts even exist, and the amazing hidden civilizations never turn out to be as advertised. So why have so many modern people turned from relatively rational scientific perspectives on the…

[ad_1] Trump seems dead-set on installing Bill Pulte as director of national intelligence. [ad_2] Source link

[ad_1] Kevin Warsh’s maiden voyage press conference as the new Fed chairman was a masterful performance. He was knowledgeable, succinct, collegial, humble. By the way, so was the Fed’s press release. Short and sweet. My two biggest takeaways were first: the central bank’s emphasis right now is on price stability. Their statement emphasized strong productivity and business capital investment, along with job gains and low unemployment.  By the way, productivity and business investment on the supply-side will be a hallmark of Mr. Warsh’s thinking. Yet inflation is the key target right now. As Mr. Warsh put it: “We recognize that…