by Richard Dawkins Donald Trump was surely right when he said, in 2012, “The electoral college is a disaster for a democracy . . . A total sham and a travesty”. And he confirmed his sensible view on November 13th, 2016 (after winning the election by the Electoral College system, but losing the popular vote) …

Richard Dawkins 24 Oct 2017   I had tweeted an invitation to attend lectures in various parts of Britain by Saba Douglas-Hamilton, who grew up among wild African elephants while her father, Iain Douglas-Hamilton was conducting his pioneering studies of their ecology and behaviour, and he and his wife Oria were fighting the poachers. Saba’s …

By Shannon Hall On August 25, 1989, in Pasadena, Calif., NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory was bustling with activity. Scientists, reporters and even a bona fide rock star, Chuck Berry, had flocked to the facility’s mission control to commemorate the moment the Voyager 2 spacecraft flew shy of 5,000 kilometers above Neptune’s north pole the previous …

By Aysha Khan The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has removed a Utah church official after he was charged with taking photos of a woman undressing in a Tennessee clothing store. “This type of behavior is unacceptable and cannot be tolerated from any Church member,” Eric Hawkins, a spokesman for The Church of …

By Katherine Kornei Earth is continuously plowing through extraterrestrial dust. Tens of thousands of tons of the stuff, mostly from asteroids and comets, settles all over the planet every year. We are the shoulder to a universe of dandruff. But even the faintest detritus has a story to tell. Recently, scientists analyzed dust collected from …

By E.J. Dionne Jr. Are the dominant voices of white evangelical Christianity in the United States destined to be angry and defensive? Is President Trump making sure they stay that way? I found myself asking these questions after I read my Post colleague Elizabeth Bruenig’s revealing and deeply reported essay about her journey to Texas to probe …

By Jillian Kramer Just weeks after NASA’s Europa Clipper mission quietly received a formal commitment to a final cost and timeline from the agency, it looks increasingly like the spacecraft will not fly on its legally mandated megarocket, the Space Launch System (SLS)—at least, not in the timeline outlined by Congress—documents and experts confirm. Because of the …

By Richard Wade For the last 11 years, the Santa Clarita Atheists and Freethinkers (SCAF) has gradually grown in size and vitality, and I have had the great privilege to be the group’s leader for the last three of those years. Even in “liberal” southern California, not believing in the local god can have serious social and …