Man charged in threat at University of Chicago to kill 26 white male students

Federal officials charged a University of Illinois at Chicago engineering student with making the threat that shut down the University of Chicago on Monday, saying his online post threatening to kill U. of C. students and staff was in retaliation for the shooting of Laquan McDonald.

Jabari R. Dean, 21, was charged with transmitting a threat in interstate commerce.

Dean, who appeared in federal court Monday afternoon wearing a red UIC hoodie and blue jeans, will be held in custody until Tuesday, when he will be released to the custody of his mother.

The FBI does not consider Dean a threat and he did not have the resources to carry out the threat, federal prosecutors said in court.

If convicted, Dean, who lives with his mother, faces a maximum of five years in prison.

In court documents, federal agents said Dean posted the threat over the Thanksgiving weekend. It was spotted by a New York resident who provided agents with a screen shot of the threat after they could not find it; Dean apparently took it down almost immediately.

After tracking down Dean through the service provider, agents confronted him and, they said, he acknowledged posting the threat from his phone. The threat was on the website www.worldstarhiphop.com, according to authorities.

The poster threatened to shoot and kill students, staff and police on the campus at 10 a.m. Monday and then kill himself, citing the fatal shooting last year of 17-year-old McDonald by a Chicago police officer. The officer, who shot McDonald 16 times, was charged last week with first-degree murder.

"This is my only warning. At 10 a.m. on Monday morning, I'm going to the campus quad of the University of Chicago. I will be armed with an M-4 carbine and two desert eagles, all fully loaded. I will execute approximately 16 white male students and or staff, which is the same number of time McDonald was killed," wrote the commenter, who posted with the initials "JRD" and a Chicago Bulls logo, according to court records. "I will then die killing any number of white policeman in the process. This is not a joke. I am to do my part and rid the world of white devils. I expect you do the same."

******************

Read the full complaint below

‘Gods of Egypt’ Director, Studio Apologize for Mostly White Cast

Where's the tolerance, inclusion, diversity, and multiculturalism?

But there's no problem with this:

Everyone needs to shut up about black actors playing "white" characters.

Over the last few weeks, there have been a couple reports of black actors in consideration for roles that have been traditionally cast as white. We discussed how Idris Elba was considered for James Bond, and that Jamie Foxx is in talks to play Electro in The Amazing Spider-Man 2. This opened up the usual string of comments about how "James Bond is white!" and "Why are they changing what I love?"

*****************************

‘Gods of Egypt’ Director, Studio Apologize for Mostly White Cast: ‘We Failed to Live Up to Our Own Standards’

Alex Proyas and Lionsgate address controversy that’s flared up over film starring Gerard Butler and Nikolaj Coster-Waldau as ancient Egyptian characters

Director Alex Proyas and Lionsgate, the studio behind “Gods of Egypt,” have come out and apologized after the film’s casting prompted online outcries.

The fantasy epic came under fire after placing white actors like Gerard Butler, Brenton Thwaites and Nikolaj Coster-Waldau in the roles of gods and mortals who set off on an adventure in ancient Egypt.

“The process of casting a movie has many complicated variables, but it is clear that our casting choices should have been more diverse,” Proyas said in a statement obtained by TheWrap. “I sincerely apologize to those who are offended by the decisions we made.”

The studio itself came out with even stronger words in its own apology.

“We recognize that it is our responsibility to help ensure that casting decisions reflect the diversity and culture of the time periods portrayed. In this instance we failed to live up to our own standards of sensitivity and diversity, for which we sincerely apologize,” the company said. “Lionsgate is deeply committed to making films that reflect the diversity of our audiences. We have, can and will continue to do better.​​”

“Gods of Egypt” is not the first film to attract criticism over casting white actors in roles that would seem to call for more diverse selections.

Also Read: 'Gods of Egypt' Trailer Sends Gerard Butler, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau to War (Video)

Ridley Scott‘s “Exodus: Gods and Kings” came under similar fire when it was released late last year, and his “The Martian” this year was also criticized for casting a white actress in the role of a character who was Korean-American in the book on which the movie is based.

Joe Wright‘s “Pan” was also criticized when he cast Rooney Mara to play the role of Tiger Lily, a Native American.

While Scott and Wright have each been made to answer for their decisions, neither had come out with a full-throated apology the way Proyas and Lionsgate has.

Forbes.com first broke the news of the studio’s apology.

“Gods of Egypt” will be released on Feb. 26, 2016.

************************

The Birth of Science In Europe Was the Greatest Revolution of All

William Blake’s 1795 portrait of Isaac Newton

What is modernity and when did it begin? The answer depends a lot on the nationality and specialism of the historian you ask. Italians favour the achievements of Renaissance art and humanism, as early as the 14th century; northern Europeans opt for the period when cities such as Amsterdam, Paris and London rose to economic and cultural prominence, from the early 16th through to the 18th centuries; some historians of Germany would go as late as 1900. Philosophers are likely to zero in on Descartes in the mid-17th century; economists hold out for the industrial revolution in the late 18th century; political historians push for the American and French revolutions. Beyond Europe, many more periods and places jostle for attention. Everyone has a dog in this fight.

David Wootton’s answer is unequivocal: modernity began with the scientific revolution in Europe, bookended by the dates 1572 (when the Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe identified a new star in the heavens) and 1704 (when Isaac Newton published Opticks). This was “the most important transformation in human history” since the Neolithic era. Later events such as the industrial revolution were no more than the extended consequences of the biggest revolution of them all. Wootton is equally clear about whether the scientific revolution was a matter for celebration (as most Enlightenment thinkers saw it) or regret (as some Romantics felt): it was, in his view, a very good thing indeed.

Compressed into a few sentences, the major theses of this book sound unsurprising. The scientific revolution was not just the motor of modern history, it was the model of modernity. Rational, calculating, advancing at breakneck speed, respecting no authority: science after Newton seemed to embody the power and ever expanding possibilities of a society fixated on the future rather than the past. This is the narrative upon which university professorships and whole departments of the history of science were established after the second world war, and the narrative that a whole generation of historians of science were weaned on.

The entire article is available here.

The Big Seed: 5 Reasons to Thank Your Lucky Constants This Thanksgiving

The Beginning of Everything -- The Big Seed

We all have personal reasons to be thankful this Thursday, but among them should be the fact that we exist in the first place—after all, it easily might have been otherwise. After the Big Seed the universe could have turned into unrelieved chaos or monotonous simplicity if just a few things had gone differently.

The formation of the sun, Earth and all the species on it, especially intelligent life, required a parade of flukes. In particular, the constants of nature—such as c, the speed of light, and G, which denotes the force of gravity—seem to be fine-tuned for our existence. Just a slight variation in one of these values would render galaxies, stars, planets, life and even complex atoms like those that comprise your pumpkin pie impossible. Different constants might lead to a universe that flashed into existence for just a moment or one that expanded so rapidly after its birth that no elements beyond the simplest, hydrogen, could form.

So as you mull over what to be grateful for this Thanksgiving, here’s some food for thought:

1. The Universe’s Expansion Rate: Not only is the universe expanding, but also at every moment that expansion is accelerating due to some unknown entity scientists call “dark energy.” The most popular explanation is that dark energy arises from the energy inherent in empty space, with its strength determined by the so-called “cosmological constant.” The trouble is, most calculations suggest the cosmological constant should be more than 120 orders of magnitude larger than it is. Somehow, it ended up incredibly small—lucky for us. If the constant were larger, space would have expanded so rapidly after the Big Seed that mass never would have had time to condense into galaxies and stars. And if the cosmological constant were smaller, the universe would have collapsed on itself long ago, again preventing the formation of galaxies and stars. The constant, in fact, is so precariously poised at the ideal value that a change of just one part in 1053 would be enough to ensure one of those alternate Thanksgiving-less scenarios came true.

2. Stable Protons: The neutron is 1.00138 times heavier than the proton. This extra weight is what causes it to decay into a proton, electron and neutrino, and prohibits the proton, the lighter of the two, from decaying whatsoever. Indeed, many experimental efforts have failed to observe a proton decay despite extensive searches. This stability is lucky for us because if the ratio of proton and neutron masses were altered or even flipped, protons would decay into neutrons, leading to a universe without atoms.

3. Stellar Fusion: When our universe was in its infancy, it contained mostly hydrogen and helium. It wasn’t until those elements coalesced to form stars that the alchemy of nuclear fusion inside stellar cores produced the more complex elements necessary to create life. Each step from hydrogen to heavier elements is extremely sensitive to the physics involved, specifically the strong and electromagnetic forces. The strong force, which binds atomic nuclei, must overpower the electromagnetic repulsion between the positively charged protons in the nucleus to create a stable atom. A decrease of more than 0.5 percent in the strength of the strong force, or a change of more than 4 percent in the strength of the electromagnetic force would ruin the chances of carbon—the building block of life—from being created inside stars.

4. Goldilocks Stars: If gravity were a little stronger—that is, if the constant G was slightly larger—all stars would collapse into smaller red dwarfs (cool, low-mass stars), which are too cold to support planets that could bear Earth-like life. If G had been a little weaker, all stars would balloon up into blue giants (hot, high-mass stars), which burn too briefly for life to develop. A change in gravity by only one part in 1040 would have proved tragic for stars like the sun.

5. A Balance of Laws: Scientists also observe a fine-tuning within the physical laws themselves—the rules, such as the laws of gravity and thermodynamics, that regulate the cosmos. Laws that were more complex than ours might lead to a universe so chaotic, every star and galaxy would appear to obey different standards. Intelligent life could never survive in such a cosmological mess. Whereas simpler laws might lead to a universe so straightforward and uniform that pure chance—like the merger of two simple, single-celled organisms, which scientists think gave rise to complex, eukaryotic life two billion years ago—would never occur. Our universe is poised delicately between these two extremes.

Such a finely tuned universe makes it easy to conclude that the universe is special, a particular and not-too-probable configuration perfectly suited for complexity such as stars, planets and human beings to arise. But this viewpoint directly opposes the Copernican principle, which argues that the universe and our place in it is far from special—it’s mediocre.

In response to this dilemma some cosmologists turn to the so-called Anthropic principle, which posits that the apparent fine-tuning for life is a selection bias: If it weren’t this way, we wouldn’t be here to observe it. Others turn to the multiverse—the idea that our cosmos is just one of many in which an infinite number of alternative laws are possible. The fact we find ourselves in this one, improbable as it is, is merely a result of the fact that we could only have come into being in such a universe as this. Regardless of how we choose to explain the apparent fine-tuning of the cosmos, it is certainly a reason to be thankful.

CERN collides heavy nuclei at new record high energy

The world's most powerful accelerator, the 27 km long Large Hadron Collider (LHC) operating at CERN in Geneva established collisions between lead nuclei, this morning, at the highest energies ever. The LHC has been colliding protons at record high energy since the summer, but now the time has now come to collide large nuclei (nuclei of lead, Pb, consist of 208 neutrons and protons). The experiments aim at understanding and studying the properties of strongly interacting systems at high densities and thus the state of matter of the Universe shortly after the Big Seed.

In the very beginning, just a few billionths of a second after the Big Seed, the Universe was made up of an extremely hot and dense 'primordial soup' consisting of the fundamental particles, especially quarks and gluons. This state is called the quark-gluon-plasma (QGP). Approximately one millionth of a second after the Big Seed, quarks and gluons became confined inside the protons and the neutrons, which are the present day constituents of the atomic nuclei.

The so-called strong force, mediated by the gluons, binds the quarks to each other and - under normal circumstances, trap them inside the nuclear particles. It is however, possible to recreate a state of matter consisting of quarks and gluons, and which behaves as a liquid, in close imitation of the state of matter prevailing in the very early universe. It is this state that has now been realised at the highest temperatures ever attained in collisions using lead ions from the LHC accelerator at CERN.

"The collision energy between two nuclei reaches 1000 TeV. This energy is that of a bumblebee hitting us on the cheek on a summer day. But the energy is concentrated in a volume that is approximately 10-27 (a billion-billion-billion) times smaller. The energy concentration (density) is therefore tremendous and has never been realised before under terrestrial conditions," explains Jens Jørgen Gaardhøje, professor at the Niels Bohr Institute at the University of Copenhagen and head of the Danish research group within the ALICE experiment at CERN.

The state of the universe

Jens Jørgen Gaardhøje explains that the purpose of the collisions is to transform most of the enormous kinetic energy of the colliding atomic nuclei into matter, in the form of a host of new particles (quarks) and their antiparticles (antiquarks) in compliance with Einstein's famous equation E=Mc2. This creates - for a fleeting moment, a small volume of matter consisting of quarks, antiquarks and gluons that has a temperature of over 4000 billion degrees.

The first collisions were recorded by the LHC detectors, including the dedicated heavy-ion detector ALICE, which has significant Danish participation, immediately after the LHC's two counter-circulating beams were aimed at each other this morning at 11:15 AM.

"While it is still too early for a full analysis to have been carried out, the first collisions already tell us that more than 30,000 particles can be created in every central collision between two lead ions. This corresponds to an unprecedented energy density of around 20 GeV/fm3. This is more than 40 times the energy density of a proton," says Jens Jørgen Gaardhøje.

The extreme energy density will enable researchers to develop new and detailed models of the quark-gluon-plasma and of the strong interaction, which binds the quarks and nuclear matter together and thus understand the conditions prevailing in the early universe all the way back to a billionth of a second after the Big Seed.

Will Our Descendants Survive the Destruction of the Universe?

Billions of years from now, the universe as we know it will cease to exist. The good news is, that gives us a lot of time to prepare, and maybe even figure out a way to cheat cosmic death. Here are some possible ways our descendants might survive a cosmological apocalypse.

The Universe, like the organisms that reside within it, is a mortal entity. Born in the Big Bang, it will eventually meet its fate through an equally cataclysmic process, whether it be in the form of a Big Rip, a Big Crunch, or an eternal deep freeze. Regardless, all life as we know it will be extinguished.

Unless, of course, our highly advanced offspring can find a way to escape the confines of the cosmos—or more radically, change the rules of the cosmological game.

Building a Basement Universe

Our great-great-great-grandchildren, many times over, could leave our current universe by migrating to a natural or artificially created “basement universe.” A future civilization would link the new universe to the old one with a wormhole, and use it for living space, computing—or to escape an old, decaying universe. 

This may seem outlandish, but this idea has been explored by some serious scientists, including theoretical physicists who take the occasional deep dive into black hole theory and inflation cosmology.

Theoretical physicist Lee Smolin of the Perimeter Institute and Stanford string theorist Leonard Susskind have speculated that universes spawn other universes in a natural, evolutionary process, known as cosmological natural selection (CNS). They argue that the cosmos is not just randomly ideal for the development and proliferation of intelligent life—but in fact, our universe may have actually evolved to be that way.

Smolin suggests that baby universes are reproduced through black holes, and that our Universe is nothing more than a glorified black-hole generator. Making baby universes via black holes is thus the “utility function” of the universe. Likewise, Susskind’s theory invokes black holes, but he adds the nature of “inflation”, the force that causes the early universe to expand rapidly.

Given that universes could emerge naturally from the singularities of black holes, some theorists have wondered if it might be possible for us to build our own “basement” universes. The process of artificially creating universes was first proposed by theoretical physicists Edward Farhi and Alan Guth in 1987. Writing in The New York Times, Malcolm W. Browne explains:

"...Guth likens the universe in which we live to the two-dimensional surface of a sphere which, because of its immense size, appears to us to be almost perfectly flat. There are circumstances, he says, in which an ‘’aneurysm’’ could develop on this surface, a region in which space and time bulge like a tumor, eventually pinching itself off from its parent into a new universe. 

"To a hypothetical observer inside the bulge, conditions might initially resemble those of the Big Bang explosion from which our own universe is thought to have arisen. But to observers in our own universe, Dr. Guth said, the aneurysm would merely resemble a black hole — a supermassive object whose immense gravity prevents the escape even of light. After a certain amount of time the black hole would evaporate, leaving no trace of the place where a new universe had been born."

But once the bulge separates from the host universe, the new universe will exist in a totally separate space/time continuum. Any communication between the two universes would be impossible.

In their paper, “An Obstacle to Creating a Universe in the Laboratory,” Guth and Farhi sheepishly concede that a tremendous amount of energy density would have to be acquired for this to happen. As the authors write in their paper, “The requirement of an initial singularity appears to be an insurmountable obstacle to the creation of an inflationary universe in the laboratory.”

As Guth notes in the NYT article, “Such an achievement is obviously far beyond our technology, but some advanced civilization in the distant future might...well, you never know. For all we know, our own universe may have started in someone’s basement.’’

More encouragingly, philosopher Nick Bostrom and cosmologist Milan M. Ćirković put out a paper in 2000 arguing that an advanced civilization might actually be able to not only engage in this kind of universe-engineering—but it might also be able to transfer information directly into this baby universe. This information could conceivably include uploaded minds, which would make the prospect of immortality a very tantalizing one, indeed.

Transcension

And it’s not crazy to imagine that we could send our minds through a black hole, once they were uploaded to a computer.

Fifteen years, ago physicist Seth Lloyd argued that black holes are the densest and most efficient computational devices capable of existing in our universe. His “ultimate laptop” consists of a kilogram of compressed matter shrunken down to an absolutely miniscule black hole. Owing to Hawking radiation, this computation engine would only last for a fraction of a second (10-19 seconds to be exact), but during that time it would perform about 1032 operations on a 1016 bits. 

Inspired by this idea and those of Smolin and Susskind, futurist and systems theorist John Smart has connected the prospect of baby universes, whether they be natural or artificial, to the Fermi Paradox, i.e. the realization that we have yet to see signs of extraterrestrial intelligences when we should have by now. It’s conceivable, he says, that all advanced extraterrestrial life rejects its universe of origin, in favor something more interesting in the Great Beyond. Smart calls this the Transcension Hypothesis.

“The more we study universal history, the more it seems every major complexity transition, from galaxies, to life-catalyzing planets, to eukaryotes, to prokaryotes, to humans, to cities, and now, to intelligent computers, occurs via a process I call STEM compression of information production,” Smart tells io9.

By “STEM compression,” Smart is referring to a process in which complex new systems are almost always both denser and more efficient users of Space, Time, Energy, and Matter. This, in turn, causes information, complexity, and intelligence to develop at an accelerating rate. Over time, we’re packing more and more of our stuff into smaller spaces, while simultaneously making more efficient use of information. As a result, intelligence is always racing to inner space, of which there are two types: physical inner space and virtual inner space.

“Our destiny is density, and dematerialization,” says Smart.

This all brings us back to the question of our long-term survival prospects. There’s a very distinct possibility that our posthuman descendants will exist as digital beings, the offshoots of uploaded minds, or the products of entirely new minds and mind-types altogether. True to Smart’s theory, these individuals would be vastly more dematerialized and “immortal” than biological beings.

But what about the future of human civilization itself?

“If our societies are becoming increasingly dense and informational, too,” says Smart, “and if their core knowledge stores, if not their physical bodies, will increasingly look like what the physicists call computronium (the densest and most efficient computing matter available) then the transcension hypothesis may hold for our future, and the question of what happens to information in black holes may be critical to our long-term survival.”

So we could be sending our virtual selves through a black hole, if “black hole information theory” is correct. And the holographic principle also offers some clues as to how this might actually happen. But Smart says many questions remain.

“If all universal civilizations ultimately transcend to black holes as our universe dies, will we do so as informational ‘seeds’ or as conscious entities?,” he asks. His concern is that, like an uninstantiated person in the midst of being teleported in a Star Trek transporter, a digitized mind could end up existing as useless chunks of data floating in the cosmological ether for an eternity.

“Black holes might thus be some kind of maximally dense recording media and universal transporter for intelligence,” he tells io9. “If so, a transporter to where? To the multiverse, to meet myriad other civilizations and compare what we’ve learned? To another universe, to restart our life cycle?”

Changing the Rules of the Game

If our distant offspring can’t find an existential “escape hatch,” whether that be a black hole or a new universe, than it may be incumbent upon them to find other, even more radical solutions. The other option is to change the rules of the cosmological game—and change the very fabric of the Universe itself. In the end, intelligence may prove to be the most powerful force in the Universe.

The idea that intelligence is not an isolated or epiphenomenal aspect of the Universe is not a new one.

The Jesuit philosopher, theologian, and scientist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin believed that humanity was greater than the sum of its parts, and that something profound awaited our species in the future. True to his Christian sensibilities, Teilhard disagreed with the scientific convention of classifying the human animal according to our physical characteristics, thus relegating us to one small species in the entire order of primates.

Teilhard observed that virtually all nonhuman animals display an amazing capacity to adapt to their environments, while humans have learned to make tools that are actually separate from ourselves. With the establishment of written language, libraries, and powerful communication tools, humans took gigantic leaps that exceeded their physical constraints in dramatic ways. Humanity, thought Teilhard, was in the process of becoming a single organism with a single nervous system, that was increasingly tightening its hold on the planet. He took the concept of the biosphere one step further, giving rise to the concept of the “noosphere.” Teilhard saw no reason why humanity’s reach couldn’t extend even further than that, inspiring the philosophers, futurists, and scientists who followed in his wake.

Indeed, Earth has recently entered into a new geological era, one dubbed the “Anthropocene.” Scientists have finally acknowledged that human intelligence is force of nature unto itself—one that’s reshaping the planet, both for better and for worse. In future, there’s no reason to believe that intelligence won’t continue to exert itself on its environment, whether it be a planet or an entire star cluster.

In The Age of Spiritual Machines, futurist Ray Kurzweil speculates that the characteristics of the Universe may not be fixed, and that intelligence will ultimately permeate the universe and decide the destiny of the cosmos. He writes: 

"So will the universe end in a big crunch, or in an infinite expansion of dead stars, or in some other manner? In my view, the primary issue is not the mass of the universe, or the possible existence of antigravity, or of Einstein’s so-called cosmological constant. Rather, the fate of the universe is a decision yet to be made, one which we will intelligently consider when the time is right."

Intelligence, predicts Kurzweil, will eventually prove to be more powerful than any of the universe’s big “impersonal” forces.

The Selfish Biocosm

Complexity theorist James Gardner took this idea to its furthest extreme, by arguing that the life-friendly nature of the universe can be explained as the predictable outcome of natural processes, including life and intelligence.

According to his “selfish biocosm” theory, “the emergence of life and ever more accomplished forms of intelligence is inextricably linked to the physical birth, evolution, and reproduction of the cosmos.” In other words, intelligence exists in the Universe not by accident; rather, it’s a deliberate and purposeful force of nature.

A consequence of Gardner’s theory would be that intelligent life creates new universes and its own successors. We may or may not be able to survive the ultimate destruction of the universe, says Gardner, but our progeny will live on elsewhere. He writes:

"[We] and other living creatures are part of a vast, still undiscovered transterrestrial community of lives and intelligences spread across billions of galaxies and countless parsecs who are collectively engaged in a portentous mission of truly cosmic importance. Under the Biocosm vision, we share a common fate with that community—to help shape the future of the universe and transform it from a collection of lifeless atoms into a vast, transcendent mind."

Gardner’s theory is interesting in that it applies the Strong Anthropic Principle—the philosophical idea that the laws of the cosmos make life not just possible but inevitable—in such a way that life itself becomes responsible for the very presence of the universe.

Both Kurzweil and Gardner agree that advanced intelligence will spread out into the cosmos and convert matter into a more useable form. But while Kurzweil concedes that intelligence may not migrate far beyond its local galactic confines, Gardner speculates that intelligent life will somehow find a way to branch out “across billions of galaxies.”

The Ever-Unfolding Universe

But the Fermi Paradox could suggest otherwise. A so-called Great Filter may be in effect, that precludes intelligent life from advancing beyond a certain developmental stage. And you could argue that the laws of the universe, as they’re currently set up, actually prevent life from advancing to a futuristic space-faring, universe-engineering phase.

As unlikely as it seems, however, the cosmological situation could change billions of years from now. Similar to how our Solar System was chaotic and grossly uninhabitable billions of years ago, the Universe may likewise become “safer” and more hospitable towards superintelligence in the far future than it is today. Once that developmental stage is reached, there may be no limits to what superintelligent civilizations could do to ensure their own long term prospects.

Sadly, it’s fair to wonder if our civilization didn’t show up too early in the history of the universe, to take advantage of this opportunity to shape it.

White lives don't matter

Suspect Allegedly Stood Over Pastor's Pregnant Wife and 'Watched Her Bleed' After Shooting Her in the Head: Affidavit

BECAUSE ONLY BLACK LIVES MATTER

A probable cause affidavit obtained by PEOPLE states that 18-year-old Larry Jo Taylor, Jr. – one of the two men charged with killing Amanda Blackburn, the pregnant wife of an Indianapolis pastor – allegedly stood over his victim after he shot her in the head and "watched her bleed." 

The affidavit further states that Taylor used his gun to strike the 28-year-old mother in the mouth during the Nov. 10 home invasion. In fact, the blow was so powerful, it allegedly knocked one of the teeth from her jaw. 

Taylor was formally charged with Blackburn's murder on Monday along with an accomplice, 21-year-old Jalen Watson. 

According to the affidavit, Taylor and Watson entered the Blackburn home through the front door, which was unlocked. Once inside, "Taylor stated [Amanda Blackburn] charged at him and he shot her somewhere in the upper body." 

Taylor fired his gun because he didn't want Blackburn scratching him, reads the affidavit. 

In describing the crime, Taylor also allegedly told his accomplices and associates that he "leaned over her body and shot her in the back of the head. He leaned further, looked at her face, and watched her bleed." 

Blackburn was shot three times, the affidavit claims: in the head, upper back and left arm. 

Amanda's husband, pastor Davey Blackburn, returned from the gym to find her on the living room floor, face down in a pool of her own blood. Blackburn was found naked, with her underwear bunched up and left at her side, the affidavit reads. 

Police say it is unclear if Blackburn was sexually assaulted during the attack. No such charges have been filed against Taylor or Watson. 

A preliminary hearing for Taylor is set for mid-January, according to court records. 

Blackburn died the day after the attack, when she was removed from life support. 

Taylor was arrested Sunday night and is being held at Marion County Jail, where Watson is also in custody. 

On Tuesday morning, a Marion County judge entered not guilty pleas for Taylor and Watson, multiple outlets report.

****************************

The Statement “All Lives Matter” = White Resentment: Bitch Burning to Intensify

It’s not like this has been subtle so far, but the White male resentment that fuels Donald Trump‘s rocket ride at the top of the Republican primary polls has thus far managed to escape the attention of media types both mainstream and liberal, many of whom continue to insist that Trump’s appeal is that of an “outsider.”

This weekend, though, that secret sauce came to vibrant life, as if some children found a magical silk hat and placed it on a racist snowman. At a Trump rally in in Birmingham, Alabama (Birmingham!) a #BlackLivesMatter protester was assaulted by Trump supporters who chanted (and I’m not kidding) “All Lives Matter!”

If you tried to write a scene to dramatize the resentment that Trump is tapping into, it would look exactly like this:

Make no mistake about it, the chanting of “All Lives Matter” is rooted in White resentment, whether you think that resentment is fair or not. It’s a response to the audacious notion that someone, somewhere, should care when black people are brutalized or killed by the police, or disproportionately policed and incarcerated. If you’re one of the people chanting it, you feel the resentment is justified, but you definitely feel the resentment.

If that were the end of it, this would still be an indictment of the climate Trump has created, and a make-good on the threat he issued when he responded to Bernie Sanders‘ run-in with #BlackLivesMatter by saying “That will never happen with me. I don’t know if I’ll do the fighting myself, or if other people will.”

But that wasn’t the end of it. Normally, you could try to excuse something like this by surmising that the candidate would never approve of such an action, but on Sunday, Trump made it very clear that he was most definitely down with the struggle… of his White supporters.

French pro-White party sees popularity rise after Paris attacks

Marion Marechal-Le Pen is on course to win local elections for the Front National

A poll conducted just after the the November 13 Paris shootings has put pro-White candidate Marion Maréchal Le Pen well in the lead to win the presidency of the southern Provence-Alpes-Cote-d'Azur region (PACA) in December's regional elections.

Marion Maréchal Le Pen, granddaughter of National Front (FN) founder Jean-Marie Le Pen and the youngest sitting member of the National Assembly, will get 40% of the ballot in a first round of the vote, according to the Ipsos poll (elections in France go to a second round if no candidate gets more than 50% in the first round).

Just behind her is former minister and current Nice mayor Christian Estrosi, leading the centre-right coalition of The Republicans-UDI-MoDem, which got 30% in the first round and 34% in the second, according to the poll.

Hollande's Socialist party candidate Christophe Castaner polled just 25% in the second round.

According to Jean-Yves Camus, associate researcher at the French Institute for International and Strategic Affairs (IRIS) and expert on the French populist right, 25-year-old Maréchal Le Pen's anti-immigrant and anti-Islam message resonates with the public in urban areas such as Nice “which is a big transit point for refugees entering France through Italy”.

Her popularity reflects a collapse in support for the mainstream conservative opposition, which has foundered amid President François Hollande's robust response to the shootings, Camus told FRANCE 24. 

The Socialist candidate Castaner told RTL radio he was “astonished” at the poor results for Christian Estrosi, a former minister and member of former president Nicolas Sarkozy's “The Republicans” party.

“The collapse in popularity for his conservative group can only play into the FN's hands,” he said.

“The Republicans alarmingly small score [in the poll], even though Estrosi has all the conservative parties behind him, is dangerous for our region,” he added. “It can only help the FN.”

The apparent sidelining of Sarkozy's mainstream conservative opposition is down in large part to President Hollande's call to action after the November 13 attacks, a response that has been attractive to the French electorate. 

A BVA poll conducted in the week after the November 13 attacks gave Hollande 33% approval, up from the dismal 25% he scored in a poll at the end of October.

The number of people surveyed who held a negative image of the president dropped from 75% to 65%, a significant boost for Hollande who has consistently polled as the least popular president in recent history.

Days after the shootings, Hollande proposed a hard-line response that borrowed heavily from ideas originally put forward by Sarkozy's party, effectively muting the opposition.

Among the proposals were a three-month extension to the state of emergency, more spending on national security, a thaw in relations with Russia and legal reforms that would allow dual nationals to be stripped of French citizenship.

According to Camus, Hollande has impressed the French electorate by taking a “much more presidential tone”.

“After January's Charlie Hebdo killings, Hollande was all compassion,” he said. “This time, Hollande has been all action. This plays well to an electorate that is getting tired of Sarkozy.”

But it is also a boost for the FN, which wants to capitalise on the attacks to push its anti-immigrant and anti-EU message.

What Triggered the Big Bang? Astrophysicist Paul Sutter gets his balls in an uproar

In the beginning, there was a question mark. All else followed. The end. 

We've all heard of the Big Bang theory (I'm talking about the cosmological model, not the TV show), but it's important to understand what that theory is and what it's not. Let me take this opportunity to be precisely, abundantly, emphatically, ridiculously, fantastically clear: The Big Bang theory is not a theory of the creation of the universe. Full stop. Done. Call it. Burn that sentence into your brain. Say it before you go to sleep, and first thing when you wake up.

The Big Bang theory is a model of the history of the universe, tracing the evolution of the cosmos to its very earliest moments. And that's it. Don't try to stuff anything else into that framework. Just stop. You can keep your meta safely away from my physics, thank you very much.

I'm emphasizing this because there is a lot of confusion from all sides, and it's best to keep it simple. The Big Bang theory is a scientific model, just like any other scientific model. We believe the theory is on the right track because it's — gasp — supported by extensive evidence. 

You don't have to take my word for it. Since the idea was first cooked up, the Big Bang theory has survived decades of scientists fighting, scratching, backstabbing, criticizing, undermining, bickering, arguing and even name-calling, all in an attempt to crush their rivals and prove that their pet alternatives were superior. Why? Because whoever takes down a major scientific paradigm gets a free trip to Stockholm.

The further we push back in time, the stranger the universe gets — yes, even stranger than a plasma. Push back further, and stable nuclei can't form. Go even further back, and protons and neutrons can't stand the pressure and degenerate into their components: quarks and gluons. Push back even further and, well, it gets complicated.

The Big Bang theory can be summarized thusly: At one time, the entire universe — everything you know and love, everything on the Earth and in the heavens — was crushed into a trillion-Kelvin ball about the size of a peach. Or apple. Or small grapefruit. Really, the fruit doesn't matter here, OK?

That statement sounds absolutely ridiculous, and if you said it a few hundred years ago… Well, I hope you like barbecues, because you're about to be burned at the stake. But as crazy as this concept sounds, we can actually understand this epoch with our knowledge of high-energy physics. We can model the physics of the universe at this early stage and figure out the latter-day observational consequences. We can make predictions. We can do science.

At the "peach epoch," the universe was only a tiny fraction of a second old. In fact, it was even tinier than a tiny fraction — 10^-36 seconds old, or thereabouts. From there on out, we have a roughly decent picture of how the universe works. Some questions are still open, of course, but in general, we have at least a vague understanding. 

The further along in age the universe gets, the more clear our picture becomes, but it's almost frightening to consider that our poor monkey brains are even contemplating such early epochs in the universe.

At even earlier times, though, our understanding of the universe gets … fuzzy. The forces, energies, densities and temperatures become too high, and the knowledge of physics we've cobbled together over the centuries just isn't up to the task. In the extremely early universe gravity starts to get very important at small scales, and this is the realm of quantum gravity, the yet-to-be-solved grand riddle of modern physics. We just flat-out don't have an understanding of strong gravity at small scales.

We. Just. Don't.

Earlier than 10^-36 seconds, we simply don't understand the nature of the universe. The Big Bang theory is fantastic at describing everything after that, but before it, we're a bit lost. Get this: At small enough scales, we don't even know if the word "before" even makes sense! At incredibly tiny scales (and I'm talking tinier than the tiniest thing you could possible imagine), the quantum nature of reality rears its ugly head at full strength, rendering our neat, orderly, friendly spacetime into a broken jungle gym of loops and tangles and rusty spikes. Notions of intervals in time or space don't really apply at those scales. Who knows what's going on? 

There are, of course, some ideas out there — models that attempt to describe what "ignited" or "seeded" the Big Bang, but at this stage, they're pure speculation. If these ideas can provide observational clues — for example, a special imprint on the CMB, then hooray — we can do science!

White genocide in Germany & Sweden

It is unusual to hear a Green politician talk about her true motives. But as Germans are becoming minorities in their own cities and the remaining Germans are weak and demoralized, it has become accepted to publicly boast about the genocide of the German people.

It's no longer a secret that the policies of the Green and Left parties lead to Germans being a minority in their own country - in fact it's one of their primary goals.

You can her her say that "no longer having an ethnic majority in German cities" is a "good thing".

German Left politician Gregor Gysi has just recently bragged how "more native Germans die than there are born" and that is "very fortunate, because the Nazis are not good at having offspring".

Dr. Steffi von Berg is a German Green member of the Hamburg "Bürgerschaft" and chairman of the school committee.

*********************

Meanwhile, in Sweden:

The Swedish people are under attack. But as increasing numbers of invaders flood into the country, White survival voices are rising. And the Sweden Democrats, a radical nationalist group, is now the third largest party in the country. Meet the young Swedes who know multiculturalism is a death-sentence to Whites - and the invaders who don't give a shit.

Crowd riots at Mr. Ugly contest

HARARE, Zimbabwe — Pageant judges have crowned a new winner of Zimbabwe’s fourth annual Mister Ugly contest, upsetting supporters of the crowd favourite and prompting rioting at the event.

Judges chose 42-year-old Mison Sere, citing his numerous missing front teeth and a wide range of grotesque facial expressions, over William Masvinu, who had held the title since 2012.

“Do we have to lose our teeth to win?”

Masvinu and his supporters mobbed the judges Saturday upon hearing their decision, claiming that Sere was “too handsome” to win and his ugliness wasn’t natural since it was based on missing teeth.

“I am naturally ugly. He is not. He is ugly only when he opens his mouth,” Masvinu said, gesturing at his rival.

“Do we have to lose our teeth to win? This is cheating,” shouted another contestant, Patrick Mupereki.

While no one was injured, there was a great deal of pushing and shoving as the results were announced and insults were hurled at the judges.

Contestants stand on stage, during the 2015 edition of the Mr Ugly competition, in Harare, Saturday, Nov. 21.2015.

Beauty pageants are popular in this southern African country and even though they are typically for women, scandal is not unusual. This year, Miss Zimbabwe winner Emily Kachote faced a backlash on social media, with Zimbabweans calling her ugly and undeserving of the crown.

She was later forced to step down when, just two weeks into her reign, images surfaced of her posing nude — which incidentally also brought down her predecessor.

Sere dismissed the critics as just “sore losers” as he pocketed the $500 in winnings.

“They should just accept that I am uglier than them,” he said. “I hope to get a TV contract. I already moved around schools performing and showcasing my ugliness so this is a chance to make it on TV.”

Mison Sere reacts, top, after winning the 2015 edition of the Mr Ugly competition

The complaints of Masvinu and the other contestants may have a degree of validity. Organizers had previously announced that disabilities or enhancements would not be accepted in the competition which should focus on “natural ugliness.”

Pageant organizer David Machowa told the Associated Press that he began the contest to remove the stigma of ugliness. “Looks are God given. We should all be proud of who we are.”

The pageant involved three rounds of modelling, with individual and group struts down a catwalk of a Harare nightclub.

“They should just accept that I am uglier than them.”

“Sere made tremendous effort to enhance his ugliness by pulling facial stunts,” said judge Abigail Mataranyika, a university student. “Masvinu thought he is so ugly that he didn’t need to try hard. That cost him the crown.”

This year’s competition attracted a record number of 36 entries.

Israel has 115 nuclear warheads: Report

A new US report says that Israel possesses 115 nuclear warheads in its secret arsenal of weapons of mass destruction.

The report by the Washington DC-based Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS), indicates that the arsenal is larger than previously thought, with most previous estimates suggesting Israel had around 80 warheads, which brought it roughly on par with the nuclear capabilities of India and Pakistan. Other estimates have put the figure much higher, at closer to 200, highlighting the secrecy that continues to shroud Israel's nuclear programme. 

The ISIS report, which was based on previous reports and investigations, also states that Israel has produced about 660 kilograms of plutonium at the Dimona reactor in the Negev desert.

The site includes a heavy water reactor, a fuel fabrication plant and a plutonium separation plant, all of which were secretly provided by France in the 1950s and early 1960s.

The US, France, Germany, Britain and even Norway are also widely believed to have supplied Israel with nuclear materials at the time, allowing it to build up a clandestine and as yet never officially declared nuclear arsenal, neither confirming nor denying its stockpiles. 

According to the report, which was published by the institute on its website on Thursday, each nuclear warhead carries between 3-5 kilograms of plutonium. The report revealed that Israel began to develop its nuclear programme in 1963. 

While many have long known about the programme, its existence was confirmed by the declassification of formerly secret US government documents, with its existence further revealed by former Israeli nuclear technician Mordechai Vanunu, who in 1986 said that the nuclear weapons programme was much larger than commonly assessed at that time.

Israel was the sixth country in possession of nuclear weapons, after the five permanent members of the UN Security Council.

Black Lives Matter protester forcibly removed from Trump's Birmingham rally: Crowd chants: 'Build a wall!'

Trump supporters, Black Lives Matter protester clash at rally

During a campaign rally for Republican presidential contender Donald Trump in Birmingham, Alabama, on Saturday, a fight broke out between a Black Lives Matter protester and other event attendees.

One video from the event, shot by a CNN reporter, shows several Trump supporters shoving and kicking a black protester on the ground. CNN reports that the man appeared to have been shouting "black lives matter," a slogan that was also printed on his shirt. The network reported that at least six attendees pushed and tackled the man when he refused to leave the event.

One rally attendee can be heard on camera chanting "all lives matter" as the protester was later escorted out by police officers.

The scuffle drew enough attention that Trump interrupted his speech at the rally to address the fight.

"Yeah, you can get him out," Trump said on stage, referring to a protester. "Yeah, get him out. Get him the hell out of here."

Birmingham Police Lt. Sean Edwards confirmed to CBS News that three people were asked to leave the event after the skirmish broke out. All three departed, and no arrests were made.

This is not the first instance of altercations at the billionaire's campaign events.

During one event in Richmond, Virginia, a Trump supporter spit on a Latino protester, and one woman threw a punch.

In Doral, Florida, at least four immigration protesters were escorted out of the venue.

*****************

FULL Speech HD: Donald Trump MASSIVE Rally in Birmingham, AL (11-21-15)

*****************

BUILD A WALL!

Violent Protest Against Pro-White NPD Party in Germany

A Saturday rally against the pro-White National Democratic Party (NPD) of Germany has grown violent, prompting police to detain over 120 people, with some officers and pro-ZOG protesters sustaining injuries, according to media reports.

pro-ZOG dupes

The rally took place as the NPD held its conference in the northwestern city of Weinheim. The demonstrators threw stones at police, and at least two officers were injured, according to police sources quoted by the Spiegel Online.

Over 120 people have been detained by police as the protest grew violent, but about half of them were released later, according to the newspaper.

The police used pepper spray and rubber batons to disperse the rallying crowds, according to the police.

According to the activists' estimates, up to 1,635 people took part in the rally.

White genocide advocate gets comeuppace

According to multiple social media reports, the police were "very aggressive," and prepared a bus and water cannon for the protesters.

The National Democratic Party was established in 1964, and currently includes up to 6,000 people. The Office for Protection of ZOG Tyranny defines it as the patriotic and pro-White.

In 2001, the government tried to officially ban the party but failed to achieve the permanent ban. As the NDPs attacked a police chief in 2008, a controversy sparked in the German political circles, and some officials have been trying to initiate the ban again.

White genocide advocates

Vladimir Putin’s massive, triple-decker war room revealed

It could have been a scene straight out of "Dr. Strangelove" when President Vladimir V. Putin stepped into the Russian Ministry of Defense's brand new, three-tiered, multibillion-dollar control center this week, for a war briefing that had its fair share of movie-like pageantry.

The fortified National Control Defense Center was Putin's first stop after officials confirmed that the Russian charter jet crash that claimed 224 lives last month was the result of an act of terror.

On movie-theater-size screens, live broadcasts showed long-range strategic bombers taking off from Russian air bases to fly sorties over Syria. Putin instructed commanders in Syria to "make contact with the French and work with them as allies" as Russia seeks a central role in a proposed anti-terrorist coalition.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, fifth from right, with Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, sixth from right, and armed forces Chief of Staff Valery Gerasimov, fourth from right, attend a meeting on Russian air force activity in Syria at the national defense control center in Moscow on Nov. 17. 

But the real star of the show may have been the building itself, which is designed to be a new nerve center for the Russian military that will coordinate military action around the world, including ballistic missile launches and strategic nuclear deployments.

The building is roughly the equivalent of the U.S. National Military Command Center used by the Pentagon, but as one Russian state news agency noted in a breathless headline this week, "Russian Defense Data Center Outperforms US Facility Threefold: Official."

The center, which is fortified and said to sit on top of a maze of underground tunnels, is on the Frunze Naberezhnaya on the left bank of the Moscow river, a little over two miles from Red Square.

It was finished in 2014 and is part of a massive, decade-long modernization of Russia's army, which has cost hundreds of billions of dollars, but has also produced noted improvements, from the expertise of Russian troops deployed during the Crimea operation to the recent cruise missile strikes launched from the Caspian Sea.

The new national defense center also includes a helicopter pad that was deployed on the Moscow river late last year and can accommodate Russia's Mi-8 transport helicopter. In case of a war, it would be the country's premier communications center, and one Russian commander compared it to the military headquarters of the Soviet Union during World War II.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, second from right, stands with Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, third from right, and presidential chief of staff Sergei Ivanov, left, as he listens to an explanation in the Defense Ministry control room during a meeting with senior military officials in Moscow on Dec. 19, 2014.

As Worldviews noted during Russia's International Army Games in August, Russia's military has sought to raise its public profile through savvy media branding.

At the briefing, army personnel sat in color-coded rows with matching headsets and water bottles bearing the Russian army brand (their flagship store recently opened on Tverskaya Street here, Moscow's equivalent of Fifth Avenue). The briefing was covered on Russian national television from at least four distinct camera angles.

Andrei Kolesnikov, a reporter who has covered Putin for the past 15 years and is known for his lyrical, fawning reports of the Russian president, waxed introspective as he covered the briefing Tuesday.

"When this building and this room were opened a year ago, I was somewhat perplexed: Yes, it all looks very persuasive, and the Pentagon might even only dream of something like this, if only in a nightmare. But why? Who will need these screens the size of small soccer fields with grandstands for viewers?

Russian President Vladimir Putin, right, with Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, attend a meeting on Russian air force's activity in Syria at the national defense control center in Moscow on Nov. 17. 

"And here was the answer. Every spot was filled. Russia's entire high army command were the viewers. Or was it like the warming bench, and at any moment everyone was ready to go on the field ..."

Later in the piece, he added: "My soul of course was not filled with delight and trembling at the hellish power of this armada. But I was perturbed, yes, I was."