I ALWAYS SUSPECTED THIS: BREAKING: CIA Confirms Russian Government Killed Harambe.

WELL, THEY’RE SLEEP-DEPRIVED AND CONSTANTLY AROUND SICK PEOPLE: More Than 1 In 4 Medical Students Are Depressed, Analysis Finds.

JAPAN’S MILITARY MODERNIZES: Jim Dunnigan analyzes the long process. North Korean nukes and China’s expanding power have added impetus to Japanese military modernization. Yet Japan clung to canned rations until this year.

The reforms extended to many rather mundane aspects of military life. For example in early 2016 Japan finally agreed to replace its canned combat rations with the plastic pouch (MRE, Meal Ready to Eat) system pioneered by the United States. Japan was the last holdout for canned combat rations in East Asia…For decades Japan got the new weapons but stubbornly clung to the use of canned combat rations. Partly this was due to love of tradition, partly because the Japanese, like most East Asians, are very serious about food and partly because of their post-World War II constitution Japanese troops were forbidden to get involved in wars or peacekeeping operations overseas. Without real combat zone experience there was no realistic examples of how superior MREs were to their older canned counterparts.

NEWS YOU CAN USE: How the 404 Error Created the World Wide Web.

HISTORY: Nissan’s 1987 Dakar Rally Racer Drives Again. When he was living in Kano, Nigeria in the early 90s, my brother found a mothballed Sunbeam Rapier rally car from the London-to-Capetown rally. He contacted the owner, who didn’t want it back and sent him the keys, and he restored it and drove it all over West Africa.

MY USA TODAY COLUMN: When Campus Microaggressions Are Real: Conservative and libertarian students have long been ‘othered’ on college campuses.

AKIN TO FAKE NEWS?: Plagiarized science.

Dr. Michael Dansinger, of Tufts Medical Center, has taken to print to excoriate a group of researchers in Italy who stole his data and published it as their own.

The thieves lied, big time.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE, LEGAL EDUCATION EDITION: July 2016 California Bar Exam Results: Nine Law Schools (Including UC-Hastings) Are At Risk of Failing ABA’s Proposed New Bar Passage Accreditation Standard.

VOTE FRAUD: Detroit News: Too many votes in 37% of Detroit’s precincts. I think we need to audit this election, and put in place anti-fraud provisions before 2020. I’m sure that all the Democrats who’ve been screaming about fraud will support that, so it should be a bipartisan project.

TRUE: One Weight-Loss Approach Fits All? No, Not Even Close.

Dr. Frank Sacks, a professor of nutrition at Harvard, likes to challenge his audience when he gives lectures on obesity.

“If you want to make a great discovery,” he tells them, figure out this: Why do some people lose 50 pounds on a diet while others on the same diet gain a few pounds?

Then he shows them data from a study he did that found exactly that effect.

Dr. Sacks’s challenge is a question at the center of obesity research today. Two people can have the same amount of excess weight, they can be the same age, the same socioeconomic class, the same race, the same gender. And yet a treatment that works for one will do nothing for the other.

The problem, researchers say, is that obesity and its precursor — being overweight — are not one disease but instead, like cancer, they are many. “You can look at two people with the same amount of excess body weight and they put on the weight for very different reasons,” said Dr. Arya Sharma, medical director of the obesity program at the University of Alberta.

The more we know about nutrition, weight, and exercise, the less we know in some ways. Though you won’t go far wrong following Gary Taubes and Mark Rippetoe.

NATURALLY: After their big election victory there is nothing to stop Republicans from dismantling Obamacare. So naturally they’re figuring out how to blow it.

WITH A NAME LIKE “ASTRO,” THIS CAREER WAS PRETTY MUCH INEVITABLE: Astro Teller, Captain of Moonshots at X, on the Future of AI, Robots, and Coffeemakers.

FAKE NEWS:

ANALYSIS: TRUE. It is completely normal for heterosexual men to see women they are sexually attracted to as sex objects.

More from Dennis Prager:

My last column was titled “Is Donald Trump a Misogynist?” After reading reactions throughout the internet, I realize how important it is to elaborate on the subject of how men view women.

One of the proofs that higher education makes those who attend college more foolish, more naive and often even more ignorant about life than those who never attended college is the widespread belief among the well-educated that when men sexually objectify women it means that they are misogynists, haters of women.

So, here is a list of eight truths about males and sexual objectification for those who have a degree in any of the “social sciences.”

Read the whole thing.

I’d just add that it feels nice to be thought of as a sex object.

IT’S BEEN A DEBACLE: Donald Trump Wants to Slash the F-35 Program, But It Won’t Be Easy. “Full-scale production of Lockheed Martin’s F-35 was originally scheduled to begin eight years ago, but this proved to be an overly-optimistic estimate by 11 years—and that’s assuming full-scale production does, in fact, begin in 2019 as projected now. The F-35 will be the most expensive weapons system in history by a significant margin, exceeding $1 trillion in projected lifetime costs. Trump has targeted the program as an area to save money.”

AMITY SHLAES: The Greatness Of The Puzder Choice: “A thumb in the eye to the minimum-wage lobby is how most of the press depict the nomination by President-elect Donald Trump of Andrew Puzder to the post of Labor Secretary. But offering up a fast-food entrepreneur for the Labor post does more than offend a particular interest group. The Puzder nomination represents a structural blow to the whole edifice that we have called ‘Labor Relations’ since the Department of Labor was created more than 100 years ago. . . . The fact is that Democrats have long counted on Republican presidential winners being too timid to appoint a Labor Secretary who might challenge Big Labor. The prospect of the victory of the non-timid Trump is the only way to explain why Puzder’s otherwise genteel predecessor, Thomas Perez, a former assistant attorney general for civil rights, actually descended dangerously close to scatology when asked to comment on the merits of the then-Republican candidate. . . . If confirmed, Puzder is likely to do something that demonstrates the economy expands better without government, powered by those shadowy figures who don’t usually win places at the top table. He’s likely, too, to remind us that a union-tilted Labor Department doesn’t necessarily serve the country best. After such an appointment—and the change of a few laws—our business culture will change. And labor—the lower-case kind—which includes both workers and employers, may finally show Big Labor and the rest of us what it can do.”

CLAUDIA ROSETT: If Russian claws dug into US politics — Obama, not Trump, let it happen.

THE RETURN OF KING DOLLAR: U.S. import prices post largest drop in nine months.

It’s like getting a raise every time you fill up the tank or buy something stamped “Made in China.”

LAWYER UP AND PUNCH BACK TWICE AS HARD: Attorney Shawn Steel: Professor wanted to identify, humiliate & shame students who voted for Trump…she’s a bully.

GOOD LORD: Nearly half of all websites pose security risks.

According to a new study of the top one million domains, 46 percent are running vulnerable software, are known phishing sites, or have had a security breach in the past twelve months.

The big problem is that even when a website is managed by a careful company, it will often load content from other sites, said Kowsik Guruswamy, CTO at Menlo Park, Calif.-based Menlo Security, which sponsored the report, which was released this morning.

For example, news sites — 50 percent of which were risky — typically run ads from third-party advertising networks.

I’ve stopped relying on ad-blocker plugins and use a Java Script blocker instead, which allows you much more discrete control over what, exactly, is allowed to run in your browser.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: University Of Wisconsin Gives Administrators Final Say Over Five-Year Post-Tenure Reviews; Underperforming Faculty Will Be Placed In Remediation Program, Leading To Termination If Performance Does Not Improve.

The problem with this is that administrators are in general more politicized, and less trustworthy, than faculty.

VIRGINIA POSTREL: Progressives Must Confront Their Racist Roots.

FORTUNATELY FOR THE GOP, DEMOCRATS WON’T LISTEN BECAUSE THEY’RE TOO INVESTED IN THE SMUGNESS: Bernie Sanders On Why Trump Won: “Sen. Bernie Sanders understands something that mainstream liberals do not: Donald Trump won the presidency in part because he channeled populist resentment toward political correctness into a winning issue. During a fascinating and free-wheeling town hall-style event on Chris Hayes’ show on MSNBC Monday night, Sanders was explicit: Trump’s criticisms of political correctness spoke to the American people’s legitimate fury toward a political class and media regime that is overly-scripted and beholden to the powerful.”

Yes. And in fact, most Americans understand that PC is mostly just a tool for privileged whites to perpetuate their privilege in the guise of tolerance.

THE POWER OF POSITIVE THINKING: Gun Control Crew Remains ‘Optimistic’ after Trump Victory.

At the six month anniversary of the Pulse night club massacre, gun control advocates were optimistic about the future of their gun control agenda.

John Feinblatt, the president of Everytown for Gun Safety, noted that voters in three states approved ballot initiatives strengthening gun control. The initiatives in Nevada, Washington and California — which were strongly opposed by the NRA — prevailed on the same day that Americans elected Trump, who has vowed to pass gun-friendly laws at the federal level.

“State by state is the way we’re going to win it,” Feinblatt said.

Stay on guard, of course, but changing opinions against gun control has been perhaps the biggest grassroots success story of the last 30 years.

LEGALIZATION: Marijuana Is Harder Than Ever for Younger Teens to Find.

American voters and legislatures increasingly are allowing medical and adult recreational use of marijuana, but as home-growing spreads and retail stores open, younger teens are reporting the scarcest availability in at least 24 years.

Explanations remain theoretical for the surprising trend in the face of widespread liberalization of cannabis laws. But it appears clear that fears about children finding the drug easier to acquire have not become a national reality, at least not yet.

In 2016, 8th-grade and 10th-grade respondents to the large Monitoring the Future survey gave the lowest-ever indication that marijuana was easy to get if they wanted it, a question posed to the groups every year since 1992.

Only 34.6 percent of 8th-grade students said it would be easy to get marijuana, down 2.4 percentage points. Of 10th graders, 64 percent said it would be easy to get, also the lowest rate ever, though not a statistically significant annual drop.

High school seniors, asked the question every year since 1975, reported greater accessibility with 81 percent saying it would be easy to acquire, a non-significant increase from 2015, which saw that age group’s lowest-ever rate.

Black market dealers have no reason to respect age restrictions; legal retailers do.