Covidiot News - The Sad Self-inflicted Genocide of Anti-Vaxx Covidiots Continues

Anti-vaxx couple dies of virus after claiming they survived pandemic despite being unvaccinated - Alternet.org

If there is one thing that should feature 'bigly' in history's assessment of Donald Trump's legacy, it is the huge number of covidiot deaths of those who listened to him and his allies in the Talibangelical Christian cults, the QAnon conspiracists and the Repugnican politicians who prefer to allow this self-inflicted genocide to proceed rather than lose face and admit they were wrong about the pandemic, the measures to control it and then the efficacy and safety of the vaccines.

Here for example, is yet another case of two people who believed the anti-vaxxer fools and not the experts. They are, or rather were, Dusty and Tristan Graham, who styled themselves the "Alabama Pickers", popular YouTube/eBay resellers. According to their daughter, Windsor Graham, Dusty died of COVID-19 last Thursday after a three-week battle against the virus while Tristan died suddenly on August 20th from COVID-19-related complications.

Unintelligent Designer News - Muddling Through Without a Plan and No Idea About Good Design

Some caterpillars have a surprising ally for when attacked by an endoparasitic wasp.

Horizontally transmitted parasitoid killing factor shapes insect defense to parasitoids

You know, for a supposedly intelligent designer, Creationism's putative designer god, who designed everything in full and perfect knowledge of what it would do, comes up with some monumentally stupid designs. At times, it's almost exactly like it doesn't have a plan at all and has no idea what it is trying to achieve - other than a creation with as much suffering in it as possible, with no opportunity to make something sick ever ignored.

Here, for instance, is yet another example of how it designed something, then treated that design as a problem to be solved with another design, only to then design a way around that solution to the problem it designed earlier. It is, of course, another example of that major embarrassment to intelligent [sic] design creationists, parasitism and the inevitable evolutionary arms race.

The arms race in this case it that between moths and parasitoid wasps that lays their eggs in the living body of the moth larvae, or caterpillars. Creationists would, of course, assert that their divine malevolence designed the wasps to parasitise the caterpillars because it is the only intelligence capable of designing such a thing as a parasitoid wasp and its method of reproduction (although they never explain the exact method by which intelligence makes chemistry and physics do something they couldn't do without it, nor do they ever provided evidence that this has ever been observed to happen, seemingly preferring conjectures and mysteries to answers, whilst still pretending to be scientists).

Now, a group of researchers from the Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology, Fuchu, Japan and the University of Saskatchewan Department of Biology, Saskatoon, Canada, have discovered that a virus carried by some caterpillars is lethal to the grubs of these parasitic wasps. Not only that, but some caterpillars are capable of manufacturing the toxic protein, or 'parasitoid killing factor' (PKF) themselves, without the virus. These moths have incorporated the genome of the virus into their own genome and now just use the portion of it that codes for the parasitoid-killing toxin.

They also found:

Covidiot News - Loony Talibangelical Nut Job "Destroys" COVID-19 - Again!

Kenneth Copeland, destroyed COVID, again!

Kenneth Copeland, Who Said COVID Was “Destroyed” a Year Ago, Is Saying It Again | Hemant Mehta | Friendly Atheist | Patheos

The ridiculous grifter, Kenneth Copeland, darling of the Talibangelical extreme right, has demonstrated the credulity of his followers yet again, by claiming to have totally destroyed the coronavirus for at least the third time. The virus doesn't seem to have noticed this time either.

Readers may remember how, to the whoops and cheers of the fools in his audience, he 'destroyed' it in March 2020, in the early days of the pandemic, just by blowing 'the wind of God' on it, spitting at it and pronouncing it gone for ever.

Christian False Prophet, Kat Kerr, Makes a Fool of Herself (and Her Followers) Again

Kat Kerr
Talibangelical Christian False Prophetess

Christian “Prophetess” Tries (and Fails) to Take “Authority” Over Hurricane Ida | Hemant Mehta | Friendly Atheist | Patheos

As frauds go, they don't get more fraudulent than Christian Talibangelist, false prophetess, Kat Kerr.

Kerr earns her living telling her credulous followers implausible tales about her supposed multiple visits to Heaven to chat with her personal friends Jesus and his dad. She also claims to have the power to command vast armies of angels to guarantee the security of, for example, her beloved former president, Donald Trump's rallies, and to ensure he wins the presidential election in which he was booted out of office by the American electorate.

She also claims to be able to control the weather and take control of hurricanes and tropical storms; claims which her simpleton followers appear to believe despite her appalling record in that respect. Mind you, those who can believe a hurricane is sentient and has the ability to obey the words and magic spells of Kerr and her ilk can probably be persuaded to believe that which is manifestly untrue.

A Lying Loony Speaks - "Nonsense, twisted, and false view of God and Intelligent Design".

Click for preview

Nonsense, twisted, and false view of God and Intelligent Design.

Someone calling himself (I assume it's a 'he' but I could be wrong) 'Ether Technology'[sic], who hasn't read my illustrated book, The Malevolent Designer: Why Nature's God is not Good, and who doesn't want you to either, has decided to pretend he has and to be able to refute its contents without addressing anything in it. Instead, he has claimed to be posting what God said about the book, and simply posted a list of irrelevant Bible verses followed by the traditional threat, betraying his own psychotic state of mind.

Had he read the book, he would have found it contains description of some of the very many examples to be found in nature where, if they were designed, the designer could only be described as a malevolent, sadistic monster who hates its creation and designs ever-more nasty ways to make it suffer.

Bizarrely, the understandably anonymous 'Ether Technology' thinks this can all be explained by 'sin' but neglects to explain how, for example, an isopod amputating and replacing the tongue of a fish with its own body, a nematode turning a cricket into a zombie and making it commit suicide, a fungus that indiscriminately kills frogs or a bacterium that selectively kills the males of a species of butterfly on a Pacific island, could possibly be directed at mankind as a punishment for some mythical misdeed of a founding couple that science shows could not possibly have existed.

Evolution News - Another Ancient Hominin Species Identified by DNA.

The Leang Panninge (‘Bat Cave’) on the southern peninsula of Sulawesi, Indonesia.

© Leang Panninge Research Project

Oldest genome from Wallacea shows previously unknown ancient human relations | Max-Planck-Gesellschaft

More evidence is emerging that suggests for much of our recent history, Homo sapiens existed alongside and interbred with several related species or subspecies or humans, behaving very much like a 'ring species' where a geographically widespread species is speciating into several related species and barriers to hybridization have not been fully established, allowing genes to flow between the species - something entirely predictable from the Theory of Evolution.

The fact that H. sapiens interbreed with H. neanderthalensis, the Denisovans (who have yet to be given a formal scientific name) and a third species known only from DNA fragments in our genome, is now very well established, as it the fact that H. neanderthalensis and the Denisovans also interbred. We also know of several other contemporaneous species with H. sapiens in the vicinity of this find, although there is no evidence of interbreeding with them - H. floresensis (the 'Hobbit') on the nearby Flores Island and H. luzonensis on the Island of Luzon in the Philippines. Palaeontologists have also discovered a so-far unnamed probable new species in Israel, the Ramala Homo, and from China, Homo longi sp. nov. ('Dragon Man'), both of which were contemporaneous with early H. sapiens, Neanderthals and Denisovans.

This confirmation of the TOE as it applies to H. sapiens is a constant irritant to Creationists, not simply because it confirms their most hated scientific theory, but also because it destroys their most cherished creation myth - the childish Bronze Age tale of a founding couple and 'original sin' and so the need for Jesus to 'save' us from the consequences of it. Not only does this interbreeding wreck the notion of a founding couple, but it wrecks the notion of even a founding species and of course totally destroys any notion of original sin and the need for salvation and a saviour! And without that superstitious fear with which to threaten their victims, where would the Abrahamic religions and their priests be?

Evolution News - Rapid Evolution of Early Tetrapods. Crisis? What Crisis?

Late Devonia early tetrapods

Artwork: Davide Bonadonna

Sustained fast rates of evolution explain how tetrapods evolved from fish | Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology

Creationist frauds flatter their willing marks by telling them the scientific Theory of Evolution is a theory in crisis, so scientists are coming to see their superstition as correct after all. This makes them feel they know more than the millions of biomedical scientists who spend their working lives applying the TOE to interpret and explain the biological data, all without having to bother with learning very much. It also enables the frauds to get away with a false dichotomy fallacy rather than show evidence for their god claim.

The extent to which this falsehood has penetrated public opinion in the USA can be gauged by two polls. One of members of the American Academy of Science on the statement, "Humans and other living things have evolved over time" (95% agreed, rising to 99% of biomedical members) and a 2015 Pew Research Poll on the question, "Do scientists generally agree about evolution?" where only 66% thought they did (29% thought they disagreed!). Public perception of the degree of scientific support for evolution is thus very different in the USA to the actual support.

In this paper we can see how biologists take the TOE as fundamental to any explanation of the data and how the data only makes sense from an evolutionary perspective. Never, at any point, is a mystery settled for as unknowable or is data taken as evidence of an unproven, supernatural entity, plucked from one or other of Earth's many cultural origin myths.

Malevolent Designer News - How SARS-CoV-2 Sneaks Past The Defences The Idiot Designer Designed to Protect You

The glycan gate opens: Supercomputing-driven simulations depict the glycan N343 (magenta) acting as a molecular crowbar to pry open the SARS-CoV-2 spike’s receptor binding domain, or RBD (cyan), from a “down” to an "up" position.

Credit: Terra Sztain, Surl-Hee Ahn, Lorenzo Casalino (Amaro Lab, UC San Diego).

Researchers Discover Hidden SARS-CoV-2 ‘Gate’ That Opens to Allow COVID Infection

Creationist mode:

Scientist from UC San Diego, University of Pittsburgh, University of Texas at Austin, Columbia University and University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee have discovered how Creationism's beloved malevolence designed the nasty little SARS-CoV-2 virus to sneak past our defences, enter the cells lining our respiratory tract and either kill us, or make us very sick while producing lots of new virus particles with which to infect others.

In this way, it brilliantly produced the coronavirus pandemic currently wrecking economies and killing people by the tens of thousands a day and leaving very many more with long-term health problems. This same malevolence also allegedly designed our inadequate defences to protect us from the parasites, such as this virus, it creates to harm us! <sarcasm>Obviously, such a designer is worthy of our admiration and adoration and provides the role model for our social ethics.</sarcasm>.

Covidiot News - Another Antivax Lie Busted By Science

Comparison of 1st day post-vaccination symptoms between groups

Study: Pregnant women do well with COVID vaccine | Newsroom

According to a large study of over 17,000 women, conducted by University of Washington medical School (UV Medicine), pregnant and lactating women who received the COVID-19 vaccinations, did not experience symptoms any more severe than their non-pregnant counterparts. And what symptoms they had were minor and predictable, such as slight pain at the injection site.

The study was limited largely to healthcare workers because at the time the study was conducted, they were the only women of the right age to have been vaccinated, as healthcare workers were vaccinated early as a high-risk group. The study now needs to be conducted on a more generalised sample to ensure there is not something in this group that is skewing the result. However, this is the second such study to produce these reassuring figures and it's difficult to imagine what about being a healthcare worker could be skewing the results. Nevertheless, that small possibility needs to be eliminated.

The finding was published open access in JAMA Network Open. In their conclusions the team report:

Covidiot News - No Time to Gloat, But We DID Say This Would Happen

Two Covidiots
Left: Jimmy DeYoung Sr. Antivaxxer. Died last Sunday
Right: Cardinal Burke. Antivaxxer. On a ventilator

Christian Radio Host Who Discouraged Getting the Vaccine Dies of COVID | Hemant Mehta | Friendly Atheist | Patheos

It's difficult to feel sorry for people like antivaxxer, evangelical Christian radio host and covidiot, Dr Jimmy DeYoung Sr, who devoted his last year of life to spreading disinformation to discourage his followers from getting the anti-COVID vaccine and who has now died of COVID-19, and Catholic Cardinal Raymond L. Burke, the homophobic right-winger who downplayed the coronavirus and similarly rubbished and lied about the vaccine, who is now fighting for his life on a ventilator, suffering from... you've guessed it!.. COVID-19.

Christian Loopy Liar News - Spreading False Information for Jesus

Mat Staver, Liberty Counsel
Lies include claim that the vaccine is designed to prevent people from procreating!

Mat Staver Claims COVID-19 Vaccines Are Designed to 'Prevent People From Procreating' | Right Wing Watch

Two well-known Talibangelist Christian nut-jobs who have been doing their best to encourage the self-genocide of Trumpanzee evangelical Christians and GOP voters, through false witnessing about COVID-19, were in the news last week.

First off is the habitual liar, Mat Staver, of Liberty Counsel, an extremist conservative Christian, homophobic hate group, who, despite having no medical or other science qualifications and who manifestly knows nothing about how vaccines work, has been feeding his equally ignorant supporters with blatantly made-up disinformation about them. Back in 2019, Staver's Liberty Counsel was campaigning against lynching being made a federal offence because it extended that protection to LGBTQ people. Apparently, this would contravene the civil liberty of extremist Christians to lynch LGBTQ people whenever they felt like doing so.

Now, sounding more like a sex-obsessed paranoid psychotic, he told viewers of his "World Prayer Network" on Facebook, that the vaccines are part of Bill Gates' plan to reduce the world population by up to a billion people. He claimed, without offering the slightest evidence or saying where he got the information from, that this is being achieved by making people sterile and/or sexually dysfunctional. He said:

Unintelligent Designer News - How Darwin's Finches Are (Still) Making a Fool of Creationists.

Small tree finch Camarhynchus parvulus with naris damage caused by larvae of the avian vampire fly, Philornis downsi.

Photo: Dr Katharina Peters, Flinders University.

How Galápagos finches evade a parasitic fly – News

It's always fun when Creationist frauds are exposed and their credulous dupes shown to be... well... credulous dupes (to be kind). It's even more delicious when the scientists unwittingly doing it are using those iconic birds, Darwin's finches, or more correctly, Galápagos finches of the genus Camarhynchus.

The story begins back in the 1960s when the parasitic avian vampire fly (Philornis downsi) was accidentally introduced onto one island in the Galápagos group. Females of this species lay their eggs in the nests of certain species of bird and the larvae feed on the blood and tissues of the young. They are especially attracted to the ears and nostrils of the chicks and cause distortions and deformities in those which survive to adulthood. 50-100% of a brood can be lost to an attack. After spending 10 days eating the chicks, the fly larvae then pupate in the base of the nest and emerge as adult 16 days later to begin the cycle again.

As a result of this newly-introduced predation, 10 species of Darwin's finches are now under sever threat of extinction so there is intense selection pressure on the birds to evolve strategies for resisting or avoiding this predation. There is similar selection pressure on the flies to continue their predation by selecting hosts with the lowest ability to avoid predation.

In other words, the introduction of these parasites has created a new host-parasite dynamic and the conditions for evolution to operate under selection pressure, so creating a 'natural' laboratory for studying how evolution works in practice. It also makes it possible to test out predictions made by the TOE. This has been closely monitored and investigated by teams of scientists from Flinders University.

From a Flinders University news release:

Catholic Corruption News - More Malodorous Bubbles Burst on the Surface of the Stinking Cesspit

Monsignor Alberto Perlasca
"Gave incomplete or partial information"

Pope Francis receives death threat as he grapples with Vatican financial scandals

Just when you thought the Vatican financial scandals couldn't get any murkier, we have news that someone is sending Pope Francis death threats, presumably to try to intimidate him into dropping the charges against former cardinal, Angelo Becciu and his shady cronies in the dodgy London property deal and money-laundering operation. Meanwhile the Vatican is degenerating into mutual back-stabbing and finger-pointing.

Readers may recall how Becciu was summarily sacked and stripped of his rank as cardinal last September. He had been replaced by Archbishop Edgar Pena Parra, as sostituto (effectively, Pope Francis' Chief of Staff), in 2018.

The Mafioso-style death threat, in the form of an envelope containing three 9mm bullets and a letter referring to Vatican financial mismanagement, addressed to "Pope Francis — Vatican City — St. Peter’s Square in Rome", was sent from France. According to this report, Vatican police believe they know the person who sent it.

Covidiot News - A Loopy Fundamentalist Christian Keeps up the Self-Genocide Campaign

Mat Staver, Liberty Counsel
"'They' are using the pandemic to take our freedom away!"

Liberty Counsel Official Calls COVID-19 Vaccines a ‘Crime Against Humanity’ | Right Wing Watch

So overwhelmingly are the new cases and deaths from COVID-19 coming from the unvaccinated/GOP-supporting segment of the American people that a self-inflicted genocide is the only realistic way to describe the current situation. The δ variant rages through the red states, infecting young and old alike, if they have been fooled by the right-wing, Talibangelical Trumpanzee and QAnon conspiracy nut jobs into remaining unvaccinated.

And prominent amongst the cheer-leaders in this genocide campaign is fruitloop Christian fundamentalist, Mat Staver of Liberty Counsel, who is using the American paranoia that there is always someone conspiring to 'come and take our freedoms away'. Recently, he told his credulous dupes that the vaccines are "maiming, paralyzing and killing people". In July he compared the vaccination campaign to the inhumane medical experiments carried out in Nazi Germany.

Creationist Fraud News - Mr. Kent Hovind Arrested on Domestic Violence Charge

Convicted tax fraud and Young Earth Creationist, Mr. Kent Hovind. Arrested on domestic violence charges.

Alabama evangelist Kent Hovind arrested on domestic violence charge - al.com

The Young Earth Creationist fraud and Christian televangelist, Kent Hovind, or to give him his correct academic title, Mr. Kent Hovind, has been arrested on domestic violence charges, brought by his wife, Cindi Lincoln, who alleges that he 'body-slammed her' causing injuries for which she needed to go to an emergency room. The alleged assault took place in late 2020. She is now seeking a protection order against him to prevent him repeating the attacks.

She also alleges that he sent his 'right hand man' to her apartment to threaten her and had her apartment trashed the next day. She now says she fears he may try to kill her to shut her up because his following depends on his public persona, not on his private behaviour.

Hovind, who styles himself 'Dr Dino', is the owner of a Creationist scam park, Dinosaur Adventure Land, in Conecuh, Alabama, which he opened soon after being released from an nine-year jail term for tax fraud. He makes a living by fooling scientifically illiterate simpletons by pretending to have a legitimate academic doctorate and to have been a high-school science teacher. This works on his target marks who believe anyone called 'doctor' must be an expert scientist.

False Witnessing News - Another Christian Lying to Us.

Pastor Nik Walker, Nik Walker Ministries
Liar for Jesus, Plagiarist.

This Preacher Claims to Have Proof That Miracles Are Real. We Know He’s Lying. | Hemant Mehta | Friendly Atheist | Patheos

Fake miracles are the common currency of several Christian sects; used to fool the gullible into thinking there is a magic man in the sky who can suspend the natural laws at will and who sometimes grants this power to his preachers.

Here, for example is one such fraud, Pastor Nik Walker of Nik Walker Ministries, claiming to have healed a man's 'withered and useless' hand by simply baptising him. He even produces the 'evidence' in the form of x-rays, with a convincing (to anyone who doesn't know how hospitals work) backstory about how the x-rays were obtained.

Get a load of this. The ending is wild.

On his show yesterday, Pastor Perry Stone invited a guest who could PROVE miracles were real (with documentation!)...

Watch the clip. Pay attention to the last 30 seconds.

1/5 pic.twitter.com/z9fcCKDIJ1

— Hemant Mehta (@hemantmehta) July 27, 2021

What we aren't shown however, is the before x-rays, so we have nothing to compare them to. We also don't have the name of the hospital, nor the doctor, so there is no danger of the story being checked out. We just have Pastor Stone's word for it. A word which, as we shall see, is not worth the paper it's written on. In fact, it's a blatant lie.

Also, what we aren't told is that these x-rays are not of the hand of an adult man (as any decent radiographer would have noticed) taken in an American hospital, they are in fact of the hands of four different (Chinese) children, ranging from that of a 7-year-old boy to that of an 11-year-old girl, all suffering from a condition known as Kashin-Beck Disease (KBD). They were collected from various centres in China where the disease is endemic, as part of an effort by Chinese scientists working at the Institute for Kaschin-Beck Disease Control and Prevention, Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, Harbin Medical University, Harbin, Heilongjiang, China, in order to get a better understanding of the disease. They have been plagiarised from a 2018, open access paper in the Nature journal, Scientific Reports in which these scientists published their findings.

In other words, the whole story is a blatant lie, concocted to deceive. There never was a man whose 'withered and useless' hand was miraculously cured by God when he was baptised. Nor was there a doctor in a hospital who was amazed at the change when he x-rayed the man's hand.

(A) Is a radiological image of the right hand with KBD-positive X-ray signs in an 8-year-old boy: some metaphyseal hardening signs, waviness or serration changes and small depressions (red arrows) are found in the zones of provisional metaphyseal calcification in the fingers (including index finger, middle finger and ring finger). (B) Is a radiological image of the right hand of a 7-year-old healthy boy: all metaphyses, epiphyses and diaphyses were glabrate, uniform, sinuous and non-destructive. The carpals were not completely formed. (C) Is a radiological image of the right hand of an 11-year-old girl with CRME in the equal-diameter period: the diameter of metaphysis and epiphysis are almost equal. Although it belongs to the normal development periods before complete closure of metaphysis-epiphysis (CCME), its imaging signs are similar to KBD-positive X-ray signs. Index finger, middle finger, ring finger and little finger show metaphyses serrated, wavy (green arrows). (D) Is a radiological image of the right hand of a 10-year-old girl with CRME in the ultra-diameter period: The diameter of epiphysis is longer than that of metaphysis. It occurs after the equal-diameter period normally and the features are similar to KBD-positive X-ray signs. Some metaphyseal waviness, serration and irregularly depressions are found in many fingers (white arrows).

Reference:
Song, Quan-Quan; Liu, Hui; Lian, Wei; Wang, Yue; Sun, Li-Yan; Gao, Mei; Liu, Yun-Qi; Deng, Hong-Xia; Deng, Qing; Liu, Ning; Yu, Jun
The characteristics of positive and confusing hand X-ray signs in diagnosing Kashin–Beck Disease in children in China
Scientific Reports 8, 3277 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-018-21675-5

Walker has chosen to be interviewed by a credulous dupe known for the readiness with which he accepts any old tosh told to him so long as it confirms his bias, or better still, confirms the bias of the credulous audience who donate money to have their biases confirmed in this way. Because he holds the same contempt for his target marks as a con-artist has for his, this is exactly the way Pastor Perry Stone of Perry Stone Ministries expects his target dupes to behave. You can almost hear him laughing all the way to the bank.

In 2020 it was announced that Stone had agreed to 'step aside' from his 'ministry' for an indefinite period because of his 'inappropriate actions' with female employees, although he wasn't required to 'step away' from his lucrative social media activities, such as interviewing blatant frauds like Nik Walker and helping him fleece his target marks.

Last April Stone, apparently unaware, in common with other parochial American fundamentalists, that there is a world outside the USA that is also suffering from the same pandemic (the clue in in the word 'pandemic'), revealed his theocratic ambitions and contempt for the US Constitution, when he announced that the God had told him the coronavirus was sent as 'a moment of reckoning' [for America]:

Because we have by law forced God out of our country and basically told him, ‘In public places, you’re not welcome.’ You’re not welcomed in our schools, so our schools are now shut down. No prayer in public school, no Bible reading in public school. Now, are you with me? They’re telling kids to stay home for who knows how long, so our schools are shut down.

He also told his dupes, gullible audience:

I know what I heard, I did not make that up. I audibly heard the phrase, a male voice speaking, and I believe it was the Holy Spirit.

And his guest, Nick Walker, did not make that up just like he didn't make up the miraculously cured 'withered and useless' hand, no doubt. Between 1999 and 2012 (the last time accounts were filed) Perry Stone Ministries had an income of $17 million.

Yet another sanctimonious evangelical con-artist who feels his piety allows him to self-license a few exemptions from the morals he expects others to live by.

When you show the world you know you need to lie for your faith, you show the world you know your faith is a lie that needs people to believe falsehoods.

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Malevolent Designer News - Going for Quantity Because Quality Isn't Enough Any More

A queue at a hospital in Surabaya, Indonesia, that treats people with COVID-19. Indonesia has been hard hit by the δ-variant.

Credit: Juni Kriswanto/AFP/Getty

How the Delta variant achieves its ultrafast spread

Creationist mode:

It's looking as though, annoyed by the success of medical science's vaccines in combatting its latest attempt to kill as many people as possible with its SARS-CoV-2 virus, Creationism's favourite divine malevolence has opted for quantity, now quality has fallen, with its latest modification to its design - the δ-variant.

Scientists led by epidemiologist Jing Lu at the Guangdong Provincial Center for Disease Control and Prevention in Guangzhou, China, have shown why the δ-variant has spread so far so fast. The have shown that it has a shorter incubation period so people begin shedding viruses and infecting others more quickly, often before contacts can be traced. Infected people also have a 'viral load' up to 1260 times higher than with the original strain.

They reached these conclusions after tracking 62 people who were quarantined after exposure to COVID-19 and who were some of the first people in mainland China to become infected with the δ strain. They measured the viral load every day through the course of the infection and compared their data to that of 63 patients who were infected with the original strain in 2020.

Refuting Creationism - New Genetic Information by Gene Duplication

Cycads, such as this sago palm, have bulbous, egglike roots that harbor nitrogen-fixing bacteria. Since nitrogen can be a limited nutrient in many terrestrial ecosystems, this gives cycads a competitive advantage over the plants that grow around them.

Photo: Forest and Kim Starr, CC BY 2.0

DNA duplication linked to the origin and evolution of pine trees and their relatives – Florida Museum Science

Somehow, creationist frauds have managed to convince their dupes that new genetic information can only arise if created by a magic man in the sky who can suspend the laws of physics and make the impossible happen, because it is impossible for new information to arise. This is supposedly due to some law of physics which is always poorly defined, but somehow has something to do with thermodynamics and a thing called 'information theory'. 'Thermodynamics' and 'Information theory' are nice, sciencey-sounding words that give Creationist dupes a cosy warm feeling when they use them, because they imagine it makes them sound as though they understand science, just like real scientists.

And there are few things a science-denying Creationist likes more than thinking his/her superstitions have a sound scientific basis.

The facts however, refute this notion, as can be seen with this new study, which shows how new genetic information can arise perfectly naturally, without magic. So using 'thermodynamics' and 'information theory' to argue that science can't explain how new genetic information arises, makes Creationist dupes sound exactly like scientifically illiterate, science-denying idiots and the willing dupes of frauds.

This new study shows how frequent gene duplication and the subsequent evolution of these 'spare' genes was responsible for the evolution of the large and diverse group of plants known as gymnosperms that includes pines, cypresses, sequoias, ginkgos and cycads.

As the Florida Museum news release explains:

Another Stink Rising from the Vatican Cesspit

Former Cardinal Giovanni Angelo Becciu, now under indictment in the Vatican for bribery, abuse of office and embezzlement.

Vatican indicts cardinal and nine others connected to financial scandal.

The murky world of Vatican finances is to be brought under the spotlight again towards the end of July when a Vatican tribunal begins hearing charges brought against former cardinal and powerful chief of staff of the Vatican secretariat of state, Giovanni Angelo Becciu and nine other business associates and Vatican officials are facing corruption charges in connection with a $225 million property deal in London in 2014.

The corruption charges relate to the use of the Vatican slush fund known as "Peter's Pence", which is the recipient of charitable donations throughout the Catholic world and which is supposed to be used by the Pope for charitable works. As former effective number 2 in the Vatican, Becciu had access to this largely unregulated account. I appears that he, like so many Vatican officials before him with access to large, unregulated slush funds, couldn't resist the temptation to plunge his grubby hands deep into the coffer.

Talibangelical Nutter News - Robin Bullock Goes Even Further Round the Bend

Pastor Robin Bullock, Youth Force Ministries Church International

Evangelist: The 2008 Democratic Convention Stage Was Modeled on Satan’s Throne | Beth Stoneburner | Friendly Atheist | Patheos

If you want to see the harm that fundamentalist religion can do to a person's mental state, you need look no further than Talibangelist Trumpanzee, Robin Bullock, of Youth Force Ministries Church International, who is now seeing things that aren't there and finding Satan lurking in everything.

Of course, as usual with Talibangelists who earn their living exploiting the fears and prejudices of vulnerable people who have been raised with a morbid theophobic psychosis as part of their fundamentalist conditioning, and since the line between insanity and religiosity is often blurred or non-existent, it is difficult to tell whether these are simply fantasies designed to appeal to his credulous audience or the genuine signs of clinical psychosis and evidence of the harm that religious fanaticism can do, so I'll leave readers to decide that for themselves.