Buddhism is inferior to Christianity when it comes to forgiveness of sins, according to Fox News pundit Brit Hume. Tiger Woods should turn his back on Buddhism and become a Christian to be forgiven for cheating on his wife, Hume told Fox News' Chris Wallace Sunday.
"The extent to which he can recover seems to me depends on his faith," said Hume. "He is said to be a Buddhist. I don't think that faith offers the kind of redemption and forgiveness offered by the Christian faith. My message to Tiger is, 'Tiger turn to the Christian faith and you can make a total recovery and be a great example to the world."
Woods is the most famous among several American celebrity Buddhists. Richard Gere, Herbie Hancock, Steven Seagal, Leonard Cohen, Tina Turner and Orlando Bloom were recently called the most famous Buddhists in the world. The list goes so far as to argue Tiger Woods is more famous than the Dalai Lama himself.
Hume's statements are particularly ironic given the recent sex scandals encountered by an assortment of Christian politicians.
Two noted journalists criticized Hume's remarks.
At his Daily Dish blog, The Atlantic's Andrew Sullivan wrote, "The pure sectarianism of this comment - its adoption of the once-secular stage of political journalism to insert a call for apostasy - is striking. It even seemed to catch Bill Kristol off-guard a little."
I respect everybody's faith, different from mine or not. But don't use a sunday news show to preach your faith. Analyze the news.
In the interest of fairness, that sunday show should make time for a member of Bhuddism given Brit's criticism of that religion.
Think Progress also notes, "Hume’s colleagues on the Fox Business network decided to do a little digging into his claims. The Don Imus show crew reported that Hume doesn’t quite have his facts straight on Buddhism."
According to Imus, "Well, we checked this morning and unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately if you are a Buddhist, there is a path to recovery and redemption. Right? Well yes there is. The idea of redemption — nirvana under Buddhism — is achieving the state of being freed from greed, hate, and delusion."
Think Progress adds,
Imus’ co-host Charles McCord tried to defend Hume by arguing that he was merely stating that Buddhism didn’t offer “the kind of path to redemption”; rather, it’s a different path. Imus responded, “But wouldn’t one infer from what he said…is that there was no path to redemption?” “You could,” agreed McCord.
This video is from Fox's Fox News Sunday, broadcast Jan. 3, 2010.
In part to move beyond the stigma often attached to UFOs, where military pilots fear ridicule or job sanctions if they report them, UFOs are now characterized by the U.S. government as UAPs, or unidentified anomalous phenomena.
Bottom line: The study team found no evidence that reported UAP observations are extraterrestrial.
During a press briefing, NASA Administrator Bill Nelson noted that NASA has scientific programs to search for traces of life on Mars and the imprints of biology in the atmospheres of exoplanets. He said he wanted to shift the UAP conversation from sensationalism to one of science.
With this statement, Nelson was alluding to some of the more outlandish claims about UAPs and UFOs. At a congressional hearing in July, former Pentagon intelligence officer David Grusch testified that the American government has been hiding evidence of crashed UAPs and alien biological specimens. Sean Kirkpatrick, head of the Pentagon office charged with investigating UAPs, has denied these claims.
And the same week NASA’s report came out, Mexican lawmakers were shown by journalist Jaime Maussan two tiny, 1,000-year-old bodies that he claimed were the remains of “non-human” beings. Scientists have called this claim fraudulent and say the mummies may have been looted from gravesites in Peru.
A controversial journalist presented the Mexican government with 1,000-year-old bodies that he claimed were aliens.
Conclusions from the report
The NASA study team report sheds little light on whether some UAPs are extraterrestrial. In his comments, the chair of the study team, astronomer David Spergel stated that the team had seen “no evidence to suggest that UAPs are extraterrestrial in origin.”
Of the more than 800 unclassified sightings collected by the Department of Defense’s All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office and reported at the NASA panel’s first public meeting back in May 2023, only “a small handful cannot be immediately identified as known human-made or natural phenomena,” according to the report.
The report does offer recommendations to NASA on how to move these investigations forward.
Most of the UAP data considered by the study team comes from U.S. military aircraft. Analysis of this data is “hampered by poor sensor calibration, the lack of multiple measurements, the lack of sensor metadata, and the lack of baseline data.” The ideal set of measurements would include optical imaging, infrared imaging, and radar data, but very few reports have all these.
The NASA study team described in the report the types of data that can shed more light on UAPs. The authors note the importance of reducing the stigma that can cause both military and commercial pilots to feel that they cannot freely report sightings. The stigma stems from decades of conspiracy theories tied to UFOs.
The NASA study team suggests gathering sightings by commercial pilots using the Federal Aviation Administration and combining these with classified sightings not included in the report. Team members did not have security clearance, so they could look only at the subset of military sightings that were unclassified. At the moment, there is no anonymous nationwide UAP reporting mechanism for commercial pilots.
With access to these classified sightings and a structured mechanism for commercial pilots to report sightings, the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office – the military office charged with leading the analysis effort – could have the most data.
NASA also announced the appointment of a new director of research on UAPs. This position will oversee the creation of a database with resources to evaluate UAP sightings.
Looking for a needle in a haystack
Parts of the briefing resembled a primer on the scientific method. Using analogies, officials described the analysis process as looking for a needle in a haystack, or separating the wheat from the chaff. The officials said they needed a consistent and rigorous methodology for characterizing sightings, as a way of homing in on something truly anomalous.
Spergel said the study team’s goal was to characterize the hay – or the mundane phenomena – and subtract it to find the needle, or the potentially exciting discovery. He noted that artificial intelligence can help researchers comb through massive datasets to find rare, anomalous phenomena. AI is already being used this way in many areas of astronomy research.
The speakers noted the importance of transparency. Transparency is important because UFOs have long been associated with conspiracy theories and government cover-ups. Similarly, much of the discussion during the congressional UAP hearing in July focused on a need for transparency. All scientific data that NASA gathers is made public on various websites, and officials said they intend to do the same with the nonclassified UAP data.
At the beginning of the briefing, Nelson gave his opinion that there were perhaps a trillion instances of life beyond Earth. So, it’s plausible that there is intelligent life out there. But the report says that when it comes to UAPs, extraterrestrial life must be the hypothesis of last resort. It quotes Thomas Jefferson: “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.” That evidence does not yet exist.
When 17 people were in orbit around the Earth all at the same time on May 30, 2023, it set a record. With NASA and other federal space agencies planning more manned missions and commercial companies bringing people to space, opportunities for human space travel are rapidly expanding.
However, traveling to space poses risks to the human body. Since NASA wants to send a manned mission to Mars in the 2030s, scientists need to find solutions for these hazards sooner rather than later.
As a kinesiologist who works with astronauts, I’ve spent years studying the effects space can have on the body and brain. I’m also involved in a NASA project that aims to mitigate the health hazards that participants of a future mission to Mars might face.
Space radiation
The Earth has a protective shield called a magnetosphere, which is the area of space around a planet that is controlled by its magnetic field. This shield filters out cosmic radiation. However, astronauts traveling farther than the International Space Station will face continuous exposure to this radiation – equivalent to between 150 and 6,000 chest X-rays.
The blood-brain barrier keeps compounds flowing through your circulatory system out of your brain.
NASA is developing technology that can shield travelers on a Mars mission from radiation by building deflecting materials such as Kevlar and polyethylene into space vehicles and spacesuits. Certain diets and supplements such as enterade may also minimize the effects of radiation. Supplements like this, also used in cancer patients on Earth during radiation therapy, can alleviate gastrointestinal side effects of radiation exposure.
Gravitational changes
Astronauts have to exercise in space to minimize the muscle loss they’ll face after a long mission. Missions that go as far as Mars will have to make sure astronauts have supplements such as bisphosphonate, which is used to prevent bone breakdown in osteoporosis. These supplements should keep their muscles and bones in good condition over long periods of time spent without the effects of Earth’s gravity.
Microgravity also affects the nervous and circulatory systems. On Earth, your heart pumps blood upward, and specialized valves in your circulatory system keep bodily fluids from pooling at your feet. In the absence of gravity, fluids shift toward the head.
My work and that of others has shown that this results in an expansion of fluid-filled spaces in the middle of the brain. Having extra fluid in the skull and no gravity to “hold the brain down” causes the brain to sit higher in the skull, compressing the top of the brain against the inside of the skull.
NASA astronaut Scott Kelly, pictured here, is wearing the Chibis lower body negative pressure suit, which may help counteract the negative effects of gravity-caused fluid shifts in the body. NASA
These fluid shifts may contribute to spaceflight associated neuro-ocular syndrome, a condition experienced by many astronauts that affects the structure and function of the eyes. The back of the eye can become flattened, and the nerves that carry visual information from the eye to the brain swell and bend. Astronauts can still see, though visual function may worsen for some. Though it hasn’t been well studied yet, case studies suggest this condition may persist even a few years after returning to Earth.
Scientists may be able to shift the fluids back toward the lower body using specialized “pants” that pull fluids back down toward the lower body like a vacuum. These pants could be used to redistribute the body’s fluids in a way that is more similar to what occurs on Earth.
Mental health and isolation
While space travel can damage the body, the isolating nature of space travel can also have profound effects on the mind.
Imagine having to live and work with the same small group of people, without being able to see your family or friends for months on end. To learn to manage extreme environments and maintain communication and leadership dynamics, astronauts first undergo team training on Earth.
Researchers are studying how to best monitor and support behavioral mental health under these extreme and isolating conditions.
While space travel comes with stressors and the potential for loneliness, astronauts describe experiencing an overview effect: a sense of awe and connectedness with all humankind. This often happens when viewing Earth from the International Space Station.
Earthrise, a famous image taken during an Apollo mission, shows the Earth from space. While seeing the Earth from afar, many astronauts report feeling an awed ‘overview effect.’ NASA
Learning how to support human health and physiology in space also has numerous benefits for life on Earth. For example, products that shield astronauts from space radiation and counter its harmful effects on our body can also treat cancer patients receiving radiation treatments.
Understanding how to protect our bones and muscles in microgravity could improve how doctors treat the frailty that often accompanies aging. And space exploration has led to many technological achievements advancing water purification and satellite systems.
Researchers like me who study ways to preserve astronaut health expect our work will benefit people both in space and here at home.
Dopamine seems to be having a moment in the zeitgeist. You may have read about it in the news, seen viral social media posts about “dopamine hacking” or listened to podcasts about how to harness what this molecule is doing in your brain to improve your mood and productivity. But recent neuroscience research suggests that popular strategies to control dopamine are based on an overly narrow view of how it functions.
Dopamine is one of the brain’s neurotransmitters – tiny molecules that act as messengers between neurons. It is known for its role in tracking your reaction to rewards such as food, sex, money or answering a question correctly. There are many kinds ofdopamine neurons located in the uppermost region of the brainstem that manufacture and release dopamine throughout the brain. Whether neuron type affects the function of the dopamine it produces has been an open question.
Recently published research reports a relationship between neuron type and dopamine function, and one type of dopamine neuron has an unexpected function that will likely reshape how scientists, clinicians and the public understand this neurotransmitter.
Dopamine is involved with more than just pleasure.
Dopamine neuron firing
Dopamine is famous for the role it plays in reward processing, an idea that dates back at least 50 years. Dopamine neurons monitor the difference between the rewards you thought you would get from a behavior and what you actually got. Neuroscientists call this difference a reward prediction error.
Eating dinner at a restaurant that just opened and looks likely to be nothing special shows reward prediction errors in action. If your meal is very good, that results in a positive reward prediction error, and you are likely to return and order the same meal in the future. Each time you return, the reward prediction error shrinks until it eventually reaches zero when you fully expect a delicious dinner. But if your first meal was terrible, that results in a negative reward prediction error, and you probably won’t go back to the restaurant.
Dopamine neurons communicate reward prediction errors to the brain through their firing rates and patterns of dopamine release, which the brain uses for learning. They fire in two ways.
Phasic firing refers to rapid bursts that cause a short-term peak in dopamine. This happens when you receive an unexpected reward or more rewards than anticipated, like if your server offers you a free dessert or includes a nice note and smiley face on your check. Phasic firing encodes reward prediction errors.
By contrast, tonic firing describes the slow and steady activity of these neurons when there are no surprises; it is background activity interspersed with phasic bursts. Phasic firing is like mountain peaks, and tonic firing is the valley floors between peaks.
Tracking information used in generating reward prediction errors is not all dopamine does. I have been following all the other jobs of dopamine with interestthroughmy ownresearch measuring brain areas where dopamine neurons are located in people.
About 15 years ago, reports started coming out that dopamine neurons respond toaversive events – think brief discomforts like a puff of air against your eye, a mild electric shock or losing money – something scientists thought dopamine did not do. These studies showed that some dopamine neurons respond only to rewards while others respond to both rewards and negative experiences, leading to the hypothesis that there might be more than one dopamine system in the brain.
These studies were soon followed by experiments showing that there is more than one type of dopamine neuron. So far, researchers have identified seven distinct types of dopamine neurons by looking at their genetic profiles.
A study published in August 2023 was the first to parse dopamine function based on neuron subtype. The researchers at the Dombeck Lab at Northwestern University examined three types of dopamine neurons and found that two tracked rewards and aversive events while the third monitored movement, such as when the mice they studied started running faster.
Dopamine release
Recent media coverage on how to control dopamine’s effects is based only on the type of release that looks like peaks and valleys. When dopamine neurons fire in phasic bursts, as they do to signal reward prediction errors, dopamine is released throughout the brain. These dopamine peaks happen very fast because dopamine neurons can fire many times in less than a second.
There is another way that dopamine release happens: Sometimes it increases slowly until a desired reward is obtained. Researchers discovered this ramp pattern 10 years ago in a part of the brain called the striatum. The steepness of the dopamine ramp tracks how valuable a reward is and how much effort it takes to get it. In other words, it encodes motivation.
The restaurant example can also illustrate what happens when dopamine release occurs in a ramping pattern. When you have ordered a meal you know is going to be amazing and are waiting for it to arrive, your dopamine levels are steadily increasing. They reach a crescendo when the server places the dish on your table and you sink your teeth into the first bite.
How dopamine ramps happen is still unsettled, but this type of release is thought to underlie goal pursuit and learning. Future research on dopamine ramping will affect how scientists understand motivation and will ultimately improve advice on how to optimally hack dopamine.
Dopamine(s) in disease and neurodiversity
Though dopamine is known for its involvement in drug addiction, neurodegenerative disease and neurodevelopmental conditions like attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, recent research suggests how scientists understand its involvement may soon need updating. Of the seven subtypes of dopamine neurons that are known so far, researchers have characterized the function of only three.
There is already some evidence that the discovery of dopamine diversity is updating scientific knowledge of disease. The researchers of the recent paper identifying the relationship between dopamine neuron type and function point out that movement-focused dopamine neurons are known to be among the hardest hit in Parkinson’s disease, while two other types are not as affected. This difference might lead to more targeted treatment options.
Ongoing research untangling the diversity of dopamine will likely continue to change, and improve, our understanding of disease and neurodiversity.
Buddhism is inferior to Christianity when it comes to forgiveness of sins, according to Fox News pundit Brit Hume. Tiger Woods should turn his back on Buddhism and become a Christian to be forgiven for cheating on his wife, Hume told Fox News' Chris Wallace Sunday.
