Since about October 2019, Betelgeuse (the bright reddish star at Orion’s shoulder in the brightest constellation in the sky that is about 600 – 700 ly distant from us) has begun a sharp dimming that has now gone beyond what has been seen in modern observations. As of the end of January, it was down about 2.5 1.4 in apparent magnitude (corrected from the added graph). Here is its “portrait” — it is one of the few stars we have seen as a disk: ADDED: a plot of apparent magnitude: Discussion at WUWT suggests that by about Feb 21 we should see an uptick if this is something that is near-normal. Odds are, we don’t have a long enough instrumented Read More ›

Some of our frequent commenters have recently made fairly explicit claims against/challenges to the Christian Faith, especially as it intersects community. For one, in responding to my earlier headlining of a response to his claims, Sev has now gone on record: Sev, 2: >> where some Christians imply that the faith as a whole has suffered the same level of religious prejudice as, say, the Jews I’m bound to say that’s an exaggeration to put it mildly. [–> in fact, Pew has noted in recent years, evidence that consistently indicates that the most persecuted religious group in the world is Christians, of course, such is tellingly severely under-reported in the major global media.] How many members of the US Congress Read More ›