World to see biggest full moon in two decades

Wednesday, March 9 04:39 pm

Yahoo!UK News

The world is set to experience the biggest full moon for almost two decades when the satellite reaches its closest point to Earth next weekend. On 19 March, the full moon will appear unusually large in the night sky as it reaches a point in its cycle known as 'lunar perigee'.

Stargazers will be treated to a spectacular view when the moon approaches Earth at a distance of 221,567 miles in its elliptical orbit - the closest it will have passed to our planet since 1992. The full moon could appear up to 14% bigger and 30% brighter in the sky, especially when it rises on the eastern horizon at sunset or is provided with the right atmospheric conditions.

This phenomenon has reportedly heightened concerns about 'supermoons' being linked to extreme weather events - such as earthquakes, volcanoes and tsunamis. The last time the moon passed close to the Earth was on 10 January 2005, around the time of the Indonesian earthquake that measured 9.0 on the Richter scale.

Hurricane Katrina in 2005 was also associated with an unusually large full moon. Previous supermoons occurred in 1955, 1974 and 1992 - each of these years experienced extreme weather events, killing thousands of people.

However, an expert speaking to Yahoo! News today believes that a larger moon causing weather chaos is a popular misconception. Dr Tim O'Brien, a researcher at the Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics at the University of Manchester, said: "The dangers are really overplayed. You do get a bit higher than average tides than usual along coastlines as a result of the moon's gravitational pull, but nothing so significant that will cause a serious climatic disaster or anything for people to worry about."

But according to Dr Victor Gostin, a Planetary and Environmental Geoscientist at Adelaide University, there may be a link between large-scale earthquakes in places around the equator and new and full moon situations. He said: "This is because the Earth-tides (analogous to ocean tides) may be the final trigger that sets off the earthquake."

Written by Gaby Leslie

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/38/20110309/tsc-world-to-see-biggest-full-moon-in-tw-98fda55.html

Mainstream media halts accurate reporting on Japan's worsening nuclear catastrophe; disinfo campaign now underway

 

Friday, March 18, 2011, by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, Editor of NaturalNews.com

Almost as if on cue, the mainstream media today halted nearly all accurate reporting of the worsening situation in Japan, writing off the whole thing as a "non issue." This all happened in a seeming coordinate effort following President Obama's speech on Wednesday that urged Americans to NOT prepare for anything. The American people, Obama insisted, should simply watch television to "stay informed." (http://www.naturalnews.com/031735_O...) Shortly after, mainstream television news returned to its regularly-scheduled sports and entertainment programming, barely touching on the reality of the worsening situation at the Fukushima nuclear power plant in Japan.

Nuclear experts that were on mainstream news channels two days are now nowhere to be found today. Scary (but accurate) news stories about Fukushima have now been all but completely banned from the MSM. The word from the top is clearly that media outlets should start downplaying this nuclear accident, which even now ranks as the second worst nuclear accident in the history of human civilization (right after Chernobyl).

Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/031748_mainstream_media_nuclear_catastrophe.html#ixzz1H2XxqrIk

Census: How religious is the UK?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-12507319

A publicity drive has started for the census, now just five weeks away, but the survey is being criticised for its question on religion. So is it even possible to accurately measure how religious the UK is?

According to the Gospel of Luke, it was a Roman census that sent Mary and Joseph to Bethlehem, where she gave birth to Jesus Christ And more than 2,000 years later, the same kind of counting exercise is being used to gauge the religious make-up of the UK.

According to the last census 10 years ago, more than two-thirds of people in Britain regarded themselves as Christian - 72% in England and Wales, and 65% in Scotland. More than 1.5 million in England and Wales, more than 3% of the population, said they were Muslim and nearly eight million ticked "no religion". There were also 390,000 self-proclaimed Jedi.

Is it a leading question?

"It fairly allows you to answer it because you can say 'no religion' but if you wanted to make it as neutral as possible, you might ask 'Which of these would you describe yourself as?' says Stephan Shakespeare of YouGov. "It does have a slight assumption, although not a strong one, but these wordings do make a difference."

But five weeks before the next census day, Sunday 27 March, some groups are questioning whether the religious numbers are at all accurate, and could ever be. They prefer to use the British Social Attitudes survey, carried out annually by the National Centre for Social Research, which paints a picture of a less-religious country, with 51% describing themselves as non-religious and 43% as Christian.

The religious question in the census was first introduced in 2001, as a voluntary option. In some other countries such as France, state questions about race, ethnicity or religion are not permitted. But in the UK, the vast majority of people answered it despite not having to, although the reappearance of the same question in the forthcoming census has prompted complaints. Question 20 in England and Wales will say: "What is your religion?" In Scotland, question 13 will ask: "What religion, religious denomination or body do you belong to?"

The British Humanist Association (BHA) believes they are leading questions that actively encourage people to tick a religious answer, thereby inflating the numbers, especially among Christians because many people hold a weak affiliation. The BHA begins a poster campaign next week on buses and at railway stations that urges people who are non-religious to "for God's sake, say so".

If you were baptised but had not been to church since then, you might be inclined to say you were still Christian, says Naomi Phillips, the head of public affairs at the BHA. She says the actual number of secular people is probably double the number the census recorded. "Many people tick Christian but wouldn't consider themselves to be religious if you asked them otherwise. And this is used to justify maintaining faith schools and used by local authorities to make their planning decisions to allocate resources to public services. "It means more budgets go to Christian groups and the needs of non-religious groups are not taken into account."

Ms Phillips says it would be preferable not to have the question, because it's hard to get an accurate picture. "It's very difficult to measure. There are so many different things to measure - by belief, practice, whether you believe in God, whether you attend places of worship, whether you pray." The census question pre-supposes you have a religion, she says, and a two-part question like they have in Northern Ireland would be fairer, which differentiates between your faith at birth and your faith now.

The humanists are not alone in wanting the question changed. The Foundation for Holistic Spirituality (F4HS) wants it easier for those people who have a spiritual but non-religious tendency to answer the question.


Census director Glen Watson explains changes

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Holier than thou

• Outside London, the counties with the highest proportion of Christians were Durham, Merseyside and Cumbria, all with 82% or more
• The districts with the highest proportions of Christians were all in the North West: St Helens, Wigan and Copeland (Cumbria) each with 86% or more
• The number of people who stated Jedi was 390,000

Source: 2001 census