ABOUT TIME: Political Correctness Is Devouring Itself.

FLASHBACK: When Analog Computers Walked The Earth.

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APPARENTLY, I’VE BEEN USING THE WORD “IMMINENT” INCORRECTLY: Researchers Predict ‘Imminent Collapse’ Of Universe After Period Of Rapid Expansion. “Physicists Nemanja Kaloper at the University of California Davis and Antonio Padilla at the University of Nottingham proposed the ‘imminent’ collapse – which on the cosmological scale is a few tens of billions of years from today.”

WELL, THAT WOULD CERTAINLY BE NICE: Single-Dose Cures for Malaria, Other Diseases.

YOU WILL SELDOM SEE A MORE WRETCHED HIVE OF SCUM AND VILLAINY: The Real Life Tatooine is Under Siege by ISIS: The Tunisian filming location of “Star Wars” has become a major arms depot for the Islamic State.

READER BOOK PLUG: From Rod Magner: Where You Been, Boy? A Love Story. It’s about flying, and Magner is a Vietnam Navy pilot vet.

NANOTECHNOLOGY UPDATE: Automated synthesis expands nanotechnology building block repertoire. “The main limitation right now is that only 200 building blocks are available that carry both the halogen and the boronate groups, so only these can be used anywhere other than the first or last building block in the chain. If several thousand new building blocks become commercially available, it may not be too much of an exaggeration to talk about 3D printing of small molecules. . . . t will no doubt take several years to see just how big, how diverse, and how complex the products of this molecule synthesizer can be. It seems reasonable to expect a huge effect on drug discovery and other practical areas. Will it contribute to the development of APM? For example, could it synthesize small diamondoid parts? Could it produce useful catalysts or other functional components to attach to a large structural DNA framework? Or perhaps components for smaller, stiffer structural frameworks?” Faster, please.

IT’S MORE OF A GIFT, REALLY: Stephen Green: Obama Sells Out Israel To Iran.

UPDATE: Pentagon declassifies report, exposes details of Israel nuke program. “The Pentagon has just revealed a stunning amount of information on some of Israel’s the most closely guarded secrets, including details of its nuclear program. I haven’t the vocabulary strong enough to express what I think of the people who ordered and executed this.”

Two thoughts: (1) If the Obama Administration wants to ensure that no ally will trust the United States again, they’re doing what it takes; and (2) If I had as much to hide as the Obama Administration does, I’m not sure I’d start a leak-war.

DIESEL REVIEW: 2015 Volkswagen Golf SportWagen. “With the seats up the SportWagen holds 30.4 cubic feet, almost 8 more than the Golf. The gap widens to nearly 14 cu ft with the seats folded; a max capacity of 66.5 cu ft puts the SportWagen into compact crossover territory. That added functionality leads VW to think it can sway buyers shopping the likes of the Honda CR-V and Toyota RAV4. And with the high-mpg diesel variant – 31 mpg city, up to 43 highway – VW hopes to lure those considering fuel-sipping MPVs like the Toyota Prius V and Ford C-MAX. What separates this Golf from those other two segments is the driving prowess we’ve come to expect from Wolfsburg’s best-selling nameplate.”

ASHE SCHOW: The Survivor Class: Coming To A Job Near You. “With all the attention being paid to college-aged social justice warriors and microagressions, one has to ask: What happens when all these delicate snowflakes enter the workforce?”

Related: Is the ‘Female Way of Learning’ Destroying Boyhood?

TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 686.

TALK OF CAMPUS “RAPE CULTURE” IS, BASICALLY, UNSCIENTIFIC HATE SPEECH, AS REUTERS POINTS OUT:

Campus rape is a serious problem. But while public attention is focused on students carrying mattresses and the discredited Rolling Stone report about rape at the University of Virginia, the fact is that sexual assault is more common off campus than on.

Consider this: If you lived in Gallup, New Mexico in 2013, you were 47 times more likely to be raped than if you attended Harvard, according to the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) statistics. Yet chances are you won’t see any protesters in New Mexico. Coverage of campus rape has likely increased for a variety of reasons – the social media influence of the at-risk demographic, the ability of victims and supporters to articulate the problem and because it — like any other type of violent crime in poor communities — is more of a surprise. That’s not to lessen one or the other; just a diagnosis of the arc of public attention.

A 2014 report from the Department of Justice called Rape and Sexual Assault Victimization Among College-Age Females, 1995–2013 found that non-students aged 18-24 were 20% more likely to be sexually assaulted than students. Also, as these Reuters graphics show, the severity of the assault was worse for non-students, the rate of completed rape as opposed to other kinds of assault being 50% higher.

Follow the link for the graphics. Also, note that 6.1 out of 100,000 isn’t the same as 1 in 5.

UPDATE: Eugene Volokh emails: “I think 6.1/100,000 is the yearly attempted/completed/threatened sexual assault rate as reported by the Bureau of Justice Statistics, and so isn’t directly comparable to the 1 in 5 assertion, which purports to measure the rate for the entire span of time in college; to make it comparable, I think you’d need to multiply it by 4 or 5 years. The difference remains vast, but not quite as vast.” A fair point. 24.4 out of 100,000 is still well below the 20,000 out of 100,000 we’d need for the 1 in 5 figure.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Apparently, Reuters is wrong. Eugene sends a further email:

Glenn: It looks like the Reuters story on which we were both relying got things badly wrong, and I’m sorry I didn’t catch it when I first corresponded with you. 6.1 per 100,000 would indeed be a very low attempted/completed/threatened sexual assault rate, amounting to only an equivalent of 9,000 per year for all women in the U.S. – even though women of college age are much more likely to be targeted for sexual assault than women who are materially younger or materially older. As the correspondent below notes, the original Bureau of Justice Statistics number (http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/rsavcaf9513.pdf) is that the yearly victimization rate for college-age women is 6.1 per 1000, not 6.1 per 100,000. Again, even multiplied by 4 or 5 it’s well below 20%; but it’s about a factor of 7 or so below, not a factor of 700.

Wow. That’s quite an error.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Manual Labor, All Night Long: The Reality of Paying for College.

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HMM: Germanwings Co-pilot Likely Crashed Jet Deliberately. Bring back Flight Engineers on all flights?

BYRON YORK: Did you know Obama just took new executive action on immigration? “This week President Obama took unilateral executive action — again — to change the nation’s immigration laws. Almost no one noticed. Obama intends to make it easier to bring more foreign guest workers to the United States — likely at significant cost to workers already here — by loosening the rules governing something known as the L-1B visa program. Under the program, a multinational company with offices in the United States can move workers from abroad to live and work in the U.S. for as long as five years in what is known as an intra-company transfer. There are almost no rules concerning what those workers can be paid, so there is no barrier to a company firing American employees and bringing in workers from foreign facilities to replace them at much lower pay. . . . Also, under Obama’s new rules, Customs and Immigration Services adjudicators will not be able to consider whether or not there are American workers available to do the job when determining whether to grant an L-1B visa.”

As I’ve suggested, this kind of thing is a ripe target for the GOP.

ASHE SCHOW: No, there is no ‘rape lobby’ trying to keep sexual assaults from being investigated.

Salon (because of course) has published an article titled “Fraternities plan to lobby Congress to prevent campus rape investigations.” The website’s Twitter account called the fraternities a “rape lobby.”

The article claims that the lobbying group, FratPAC, is trying to “make it more difficult for colleges and universities to investigate sexual assault allegations.”

The inference, of course, is that fraternities are trying to make it easier to rape.

What the Fraternity and Sorority Political Action Committee (note that it represents sororities as well) actually wants is for the American justice system, which has the training and expertise to investigate felonies like rape, to do its job before colleges and universities become caught up in political witch hunts.

FratPAC also wants universities to stop overreacting to accusations of sexual assault by suspending all Greek activity when an accusation comes from a single fraternity — like what happened at the University of Virginia following a now discredited gang-rape allegation.

These are both commonsense requests that, outside of the activist cult and supporting media, are not seen as extreme or crazy positions.

But to Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., who actively refers to one of her constituents as a “rapist” even though he was exonerated by a campus investigation, these requests are “completely backwards.”

Kirsten Gillibrand is the Ben Tillman of the feminist lynching culture. She happily victimizes innocents for political gain, and she does it without shame. Of course, Tillman was a Democratic Senator too.

INTERESTING THAT DEMOCRAT MENENDEZ HAS BEEN NEUTRALIZED: New Jersey Republicans Set Stage for Fight on U.S.-Cuba Relations.

Lawmakers are always eager to use appropriations bills to make political statements; this year, House Republicans are using the power of the purse to weigh in on President Barack Obama’s move to normalize U.S. and Cuba relations.

GOP lawmakers began to set the stage Wednesday, when New Jersey Republican Reps. Scott Garrett, Leonard Lance and Tom MacArthur officially asked senior appropriators to withhold necessary funding to fulfill the diplomatic process unless the Cuban government agrees to extradite copkiller Joanne Chesimard, an enemy of the Garden State and a longtime fixture on the FBI’s “most wanted” list.

Chesimard was sentenced to life in prison after being convicted in 1977 of killing a New Jersey state trooper. Two years later, she escaped from her correctional facility and ultimately received political asylum in Cuba.

“It is unacceptable to me that President Obama would even consider normalizing relations with a regime that harbors someone convicted of murdering one of New Jersey’s finest, not to mention oppresses its own people and violates basic human rights and freedoms,” MacArthur said in a statement.

“The fact that Cuba flat-out refuses to extradite Chesimard and questions the judgment of our legal system proves they are not ready to continue discussions to normalize relations with the United States,” Garrett added in a separate quote accompanying the release of a letter the three lawmakers sent to the chairwoman and ranking member of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on State and Foreign operations, Kay Granger, R-Texas, and Nita M. Lowey, D-N.Y., respectively.

Full text at the link.

THE HILL: Black business owners backing GOP estate tax repeal bid.

Republicans seeking to repeal the estate tax have rolled out the endorsements of black business advocates who argue the levy is especially painful for minority entrepreneurs.

Harry Alford of the National Black Chamber of Commerce and Robert Johnson, the founder of Black Entertainment Television (BET), separately argued in recent days that the estate tax is an especially bitter pill for minority business owners, many of whom only started getting successful in the last half-century or so.

“Full repeal of the estate tax would allow African Americans to pass the full fruits of their business success to the next generation and thereby laying the foundation for a permanent minority ownership class that can contribute to the economic growth and development of the United States economy,” Johnson, whose worth has been estimated at more than half a billion dollars, wrote to the House Ways and Means Committee last week.

Alford added in an op-ed for The Hill that black business owners are far more wary of the estate tax than entrepreneurs in general, making the case that what opponents dub the “death tax” puts pressure on minority-owned companies to sell at a discount price.

“It’s a legacy-killer,” Alford added in an interview with The Hill.

Well, pretty much literally.

IT’S COME TO THIS: Left-wing state legislator: Police are worse than ISIS.

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT: Report: Homeland Security official used improper influence in visa cases involving prominent Democrats. “The No. 2 official at the Homeland Security Department improperly intervened on behalf of foreign investors seeking U.S. visas in three cases involving prominent Democrats, including a company run by the youngest brother of likely Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, the agency’s inspector general said Tuesday.”

RERUNS: The Woody & Bill Show.

DISCONNECTED FROM REALITY: White House: U.S. has ‘succeeded’ in Yemen, as President Hadi flees country.