July 5, 2012 | 6:56 pm

Presbyterians debate divestment measure

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

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Still no word from the General Assembly of the largest Presbyterian denomination in the United States, the PC(USA), as to whether the church will adopt a resolution to divest from Israel. Now that bellies are full, debate is under way.

Check out the livestream of the debate here.

And is what the AP’s Rachel Zoll wrote about the resolution earlier today:

The exact amount of money involved in the Presbyterian divestment is unclear. The funds are divided between the church Board of Pensions and the Presbyterian Foundation. The board investments are estimated to be around $16 million. However negligible the economic impact, pro-Palestinian activists consider the withdrawal of funds an act of social witness.

The Rev. Walt Davis, of the Israel Palestine Mission Network, a pro-Palestinian Presbyterian group, argued that the denomination would have divested years ago from the companies under church’s own socially responsible investment guidelines “were it not for the Israel lobby.”

“They said first that it’s anti-Semitic, then that it’s anti-Israel, then that it delegitimizes Israel. It’s none of those,” Davis said. “It’s us being true to our values.”

But the liberal-leaning Americans for Peace Now, which calls for the evacuation of Jewish settlements in the territories and supports a Palestinian state, said the Presbyterian effort was “misguided and counterproductive.”

The way Presbyterian resolutions get debated, a vote might not come in tonight. It’s already 9 pm in Pittsburgh (hometown of the VideoJew himself). But whenever votes are cast, this is far from the last time the issue will come up at GAs.

July 4, 2012 | 10:36 pm

European scientists say they discovered Higgs’ boson

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

So about that Higgs boson, European scientists announced today that they have discovered a new subatomic particle—the boson that could explain how matter came from matterlessness.

Reuters reports on the findings from CERN:

“We have reached a milestone in our understanding of nature,” CERN director general Rolf Heuer told a gathering of scientists and the world’s media near Geneva on Wednesday.

“The discovery of a particle consistent with the Higgs boson opens the way to more detailed studies, requiring larger statistics, which will pin down the new particle’s properties, and is likely to shed light on other mysteries of our universe.”

Two independent studies of data produced by smashing proton particles together at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider produced a convergent near-certainty on the existence of the new particle.

It is unclear that it is exactly the boson Higgs foresaw, which by bestowing mass on other matter helps explain the way the universe was ordered after the chaos of Big Bang.

But addressing scientists assembled in the CERN auditorium, Heuer posed them a question: “As a layman, I would say I think we have it. Would you agree?” A roar of applause said they did.

Read the rest here.

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July 3, 2012 | 5:27 pm

How worried should Israel be about the new Egyptian president?

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Mohamed Morsi, who was elected last month in Egypt’s first democratic presidential election, had already voiced doubts about al Qaeda’s role in 9/11, calling for a “scientific conference” to identify the real perpetrators of the attacks that killed 3,000 Americans.

No word on whether Morsi wants Cartman to run that conference or whether he thinks the attacks were carried about by, you know, the Jews. But, according to the Washington Times, he’s certainly no friend of the United States or Israel, “calling the Bush administration ‘the world’s terrorism leader’ and accusing it of getting ‘in line with Israeli occupation forces in aggression, injustice, encroaching lands and raping women.’”

This weekend, Morsi vowed to support Palestinians but said that Egypt will honor its peace treaty with Israel:

Egypt’s newly elected president has sent an implicit message of reassurance to Israel in his first major address after taking office, but he also pledged support for the “legitimate rights” of the Palestinians.

Islamist Mohammed Morsi said Saturday that his administration will continue to honor its international treaties - a thinly veiled reference to the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty.

Is there a “for now ...” in that message? How concerned should Israel be? Slate has some thoughts.

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July 3, 2012 | 10:58 am

Evidence—er, hints—of the ‘God particle’ found

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Image by Wikipedia/TriTertButoxy

Scientists have been searching for the Higgs boson for some time now. The so-called “God particle” is a hypothetical particle that scientists say would help explain how something came from perceptibly nothing—how massless particles created matter. And yesterday scientists at the Fermi National Accelerator Lab near Chicago said they found the best evidence yet of the God particle.

Reuters reports:

The Fermilab scientists found hints of the Higgs in the debris from trillions of collisions between beams of protons and anti-protons over 10 years at the lab’s now-shuttered Tevatron accelerator.

But the evidence still fell short of the scientific threshold for proof of the discovery of the particle, they said, in that the same collision debris hinting at the existence of the Higgs could also come from other subatomic particles.

“This is the best answer that is out there at the moment,” said physicist Rob Roser of Fermilab, which is run by the U.S. Department of Energy. “The Tevatron data strongly point toward the existence of the Higgs boson, but it will take results from the experiments at the Large Hadron Collider in Europe to establish a firm discovery.”

The “best answer” as of yet is a long, long ways from proven. Tomorrow, though, may bring more definite evidence, as the physicists at the European particle accelerator, CERN, are set to announce their own findings in the Higgs quest.

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