KREBS ON SECURITY: The Democratization Of Censorship.

REVIEW: Walther PPS M2 Pistol.

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FASTER, PLEASE: Killing Resistant Bacteria With Polymers Instead Of Antibiotics.

Before we get too carried away, it’s still very early days. So far, Lam has only tested her star-shaped polymers on six strains of drug-resistant bacteria in the lab, and on one superbug in live mice.

But in all experiments, they’ve been able to kill their targeted bacteria – and generation after generation don’t seem to develop resistance to the polymers.

The polymers – which they call SNAPPs, or structurally nanoengineered antimicrobial peptide polymers – work by directly attacking, penetrating, and then destabilising the cell membrane of bacteria.

Like I said, faster please.

LET THEM DRINK WHINE: Social Justice Warriors Whine Over ‘Cultural Appropriation’ at Fiction Festival.

THIS JUST IN: Heidegger Was Really a Real Nazi, Adam Kirsch writes at Tablet:

Yet the attempt to construct firewalls around Heidegger’s Nazism, to save areas of his reputation from its taint, has suffered one failure after another, and this one too must fall. It used to be argued that Heidegger was an unworldly man who briefly blundered into Nazism; this was the exculpatory argument made by Arendt in a radio address broadcast in Germany on his 8oth birthday. This account became unsustainable after the research of Farias and Ott demonstrated the depths of Heidegger’s involvement with Nazism, including his carrying out of the law that purged Jews from university teaching. Then Heidegger’s defenders tried to distinguish between his political activity, which may have been culpable, and his thought, which remained untainted. But Faye proved beyond a doubt that, in the first years of Hitler’s rule, Heidegger taught seminars in which he gave his most famous philosophical concepts and terms an explicitly Nazi resonance.

And note this earlier paragraph:

This hope is expressed again and again in the “Black Notebooks” for 1933, the year Hitler took power and Heidegger became rector of his university. “A marvelously awakening communal will is penetrating the great darkness of the world,” Heidegger writes. Nazism, with its rhetoric of destiny and rebirth, was going to define new coordinates for human life, simply by the authenticity and confidence of its self-assertion. These coordinates might be upside-down, from the perspective of conventional morality; Nazism might call murder, conquest, racism and dictatorship good, where the old Judeo-Christian morality thought them bad. But because values are determined by conviction, not vice versa, the Nazis could succeed in bringing into being a new world in which evil actually was good. “The mission—if precisely this were the mission: the full imposing and first proposing of the new essence of truth?” Heidegger asks, thrilled at the prospect that truth itself can be transformed.

And an inadvertent preview of gay postmodern philosopher Michel Foucault’s lunatic embrace of the new “political spirituality” of the 1979 Iranian revolution.

FLASHBACK: Isaac Asimov Asks, “How Do People Get New Ideas?”

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L.A. WEEKLY: 35 Years of Elvira, Mistress of the Dark, in Pictures. From camp to cultural icon. My favorite quote is this one: “And if they ever ask about me, tell them I was more than just a great set of boobs. I was also an incredible pair of legs.”

WHEN A SPOUSE DIES, resilience can be uneven. “Someone who ranks high in life satisfaction may nonetheless be having considerable difficulty in other domains that can diminish quality of life, like maintaining a satisfying social life, performing well at work or knowing who can help when needed.”

If you know somebody like this, reach out to them.

SPECIAL OPERATIONS COMMAND’S SPECIAL PROBLEM: SOCOM limits public discussion of special operations — or tries to. SOCOM has punished several elite commandos for discussing their experiences and in the process revealing operational procedures. Jim Dunnigan analyzes the issue.

Brief excerpt:

Surprise has always been a major weapon for SOCOM, and the more potential foes know the less effective special SOCOM equipment and techniques are.

THESE SEEM REASONABLE. Fairer Questions for the Next Debate.

CUE WORLD’S SMALLEST VIOLIN: Saudi chops wage, benefit bill in delicate pursuit of austerity.

Along with reductions unveiled on Monday that will affect all public sector workers, the cuts also flag to financial markets before a debut sovereign bond issue that the oil exporter is committed to budget discipline.

The measures appear largely to formalize savings introduced ad hoc in parts of the state apparatus since last year, but their announcement on state media, which gave an official start date of Oct 1., is not without political risk.

In a country that has no elections and where political legitimacy rests partly on distribution of oil revenue, the ability of citizens to adapt to reforms aimed at reducing oil dependence and improving self-reliance is crucial for stability.

Some Saudis appeared prepared to accept austerity following the signal that ministers would share the pain.

They aren’t thanking any frackers in Saudi Arabia.

RELATED: OPEC set for no deal on oil output as Saudis, Iran at loggerheads.

AN INTERVIW WITH MY COLLEAGUE MAURICE STUCKE AND OXFORD’S ARIEL EZRACHI: How Can Antitrust Be Used to Protect Competition in the Digital Marketplace?

UM: Human intestines found by Austrian customs in luggage.

The Austrian Press Agency reports that the organ parts were found packed tightly in plastic containers and formaldehyde in a Moroccan woman’s baggage during a recent check at the airport of the southern city of Graz.

It said Monday that the woman told police that she had brought the intestines of her dead husband to Austria to have them examined because she thought he had been poisoned.

That’s actually a relief.

WHO ARE THESE…CONSERVATIVE…PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATES YOU SPEAK OF? Answers a Conservative Might Have Given in the Presidential Debate.

A TERRIBLE IDEA: The Internet Is No Place For Elections: It’s not safe to connect our voting infrastructure to the Internet, but some election boards are doing it anyway. “Nevertheless, 32 states and the District of Columbia allow at least some absentee voters (in most cases just voters who live overseas or serve in the military) to return their completed ballots using poorly secured e-mail, Internet-connected fax machines, or websites. In the most extreme example, all voters in Alaska are allowed to return their completed ballots over a supposedly secure website. And there is a danger that Internet voting could expand.”

Paper ballots all the way, baby.

TRUMP WINS MOST IMMEDIATE POLLS: “The newspaper collected screen shots of 19 ‘snap’ polls conducted immediately after the debate, and in 17 of them, most respondents said Trump won the debate, often by a wide margin. It isn’t just Drudge and Breitbart; Trump also got more votes than Clinton in instant polls at Time, Slate, Variety and other liberal outlets. I can’t explain it, other than to say that perhaps it tells us more about how people view Hillary Clinton than about how Donald Trump actually performed.”

Well, certainly one explanation is a repeat of the “Ron Paul Revolution” days of early 2008 – but as with Paul’s quixotic presidential bid, having a large enough group of dedicated zealots to tilt Internet polls does not necessarily translate into sufficient votes at the ballot box where it counts.

It seems safe to say that Trump’s core followers are much more passionate than Hillary’s. We’ll know soon enough if there are a majority of them.

THE TRAGICAL APPROPRIATION TOUR IS COMING TO TAKE YOU AWAY!

“I can’t believe I have to write about ‘cultural appropriation’ again/now/anymore,” Kathy Shaidle writes. “But as another Clinton veers toward the White House, and a new Blair Witch movie debuts, why shouldn’t the Permanent Floating Nineties Revival embrace the other accoutrements of that decade, especially the asphyxiating political correctness that never did go out of style?”

Read the whole thing.