Archive for 2016
April 8, 2016
TEACH WOMEN NOT TO RAPE! (CONT’D): Former New Berlin school teacher charged with sex with student. “Domres is the second teacher facing charges of sex with a student in Waukesha County in recent months. In December, April M. Novak, 30, of Sussex, a former Menomonee Falls School District teacher, was charged with sexually assaulting a 16-year-old student.”
IMPOSSIBLE. IT’S A GUN-FREE ZONE. Newtown, CT Middle School Teacher Arrested for Carrying Gun in School.
NEWS YOU CAN USE: It’s Unhealthy To Be A Widower.
Related: Men Living Longer: Women And Minorities Hardest Hit?
QUOTE OF THE DAY: “We tend to think of heretics as contrarians, individuals with a compulsion to flout conventional wisdom. But sometimes a heretic is simply a mainstream thinker who stays facing the same way while everyone around him turns 180 degrees.”
SOMEBODY WAS POSTING THIS ON FACEBOOK, AND TO BE HONEST IT SEEMS INCREASINGLY PLAUSIBLE: Human intelligence is declining according to Stanford geneticist.
Shut up and pour me another Brawndo. It’s got electrolytes!
“SHRIMP SIMULACRUM.” SOUNDS DELICIOUS! A New Shrimp Simulacrum Hopes To Take Plates By Storm. “Barnes told the Atlantic that the process of making the faux crustacean, out of red algae and protein powder, is like ‘baking a loaf of bread.’ New Wave won’t be the first faux shrimp on the market, but because they are made of the same algae that shrimp regularly eat, these shrimp knock-offs claim to have a much closer nutritional profile that any previously produced.”
Yum. Not just shrimp simulacrum. Algae-based shrimp simulacrum. Who could say no to that?
THE WILD, THE INNOCENT, AND THE LEFT’S WAR ON BATHROOMS: ‘Raising my voice in opposition’: Bruce Springsteen cancels N.C. concert over HB2 law.
Alternate headline: Semi-Retired Former Rock Star Turned Tool of the One Percent Ruling Elite Screws Working Class Fans to Send PC Virtue Signal to His Political Masters.
SHARING ECONOMY, DNA-EDITION: Forget the presidential race, the biggest story right now is the rapid spread of gene-editing technology. Tech Review reports on the entrepreneurial nonprofit driving its rapid spread:
AddGene is a nonprofit that exists to help scientists share their DNA inventions. Think of it as an Amazon.com for biological parts. Anyone can submit one—or order someone else’s part for $65.
Easy access to gene-editing technology is what has allowed labs everywhere to get into the game. Last year, there were more than 1,300 scientific papers on CRISPR, and it’s been used to do everything from curing muscular dystrophy in mice to making super-muscled beagles.
Read the rest here. (It’s short.)
WELL, THIS WON’T WIN HIM MANY NEW FRIENDS ON THE LEFT: Pope Francis Encourages Marital Sex, Condemns Gay Marriage.
CUTENESS IS JUST A MANIPULATIVE STRATEGY FOR KILLERS: Biologists Have Learned Something Horrifying About Prairie Dogs: Prairie dogs are cold-blooded killers.
SPACEX SUCCESSFULLY LANDS REUSABLE FIRST STAGE ON DRONE SHIP.
UPDATE: Video.
HOW NOT TO BE SEEN: Will This Weapon Change Infantry Warfare Forever?
For now, not much will change on the battlefield for dismounted soldiers in combat. However, once the weapon is distributed more widely at the squad level throughout the U.S. military, the impact of the XM25 could be revolutionary and fundamentally change small infantry tactics. The XM25 will essentially destroy the value of cover and with it the necessity of long-drawn out firefights. It will also make the old infantry tactic of firing and maneuvering to eliminate an enemy hiding behind cover obsolete.
“The XM25 is a next-generation, semi-automatic weapon designed for effectiveness against enemies protected by walls, dug into foxholes or hidden in hard-to-reach places,” according to the website of Orbital ATK, the producer of the XM25.
If there’s ever a civilian model, the range where I shoot is going to have to start hiding the targets just to keep things interesting.
THE SCIENCE IS CISGENDERED: GENDER-NEUTRAL CATS ARE THE CIVIL RIGHTS STRUGGLE OF OUR AGE.
SPRING CLEANING AT AMAZON: Organize Your Office!
EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW – PROFESSOR LAURA KIPNIS ON HER ‘TITLE IX INQUISITION’: Check out FIRE’s latest interview with Northwestern University professor Laura Kipnis. Last year, Professor Kipnis published an article called “Sexual Paranoia Strikes Academe” in The Chronicle of Higher Education. Little did she know, she would become the target of a Title IX investigation herself as a result. As FIRE’s Aaron Reese and Chris Maltby write:
Kipnis’ article described problems with a “post-Title IX landscape” where “sexual panic rules” on America’s campuses and Title IX investigations can be the result of just talking about sex. Following the article’s publication, Kipnis was subjected to a 72-day investigation that proved her point all too well. That’s right: A professor was subjected to a lengthy Title IX investigation for her article about how there are too many Title IX investigations.
You can watch the video below, and learn more about Kipnis’s “Inquisition” over at The Torch.
NEWS YOU CAN USE: Why You Should Keep Backyard Chickens. My sister did that for a while, until she discovered that “fox in the henhouse” was not just an expression.
THIS WASN’T TRUE IN THE CLINTON ADMINISTRATION: Doctors: Oral Sex Is Still Sex.
YOU MEAN, IT TEXTS AND EATS A BURGER WHILE DRIVING? DARPA’s Self-Driving Submarine Hunter Steers Like a Human.
WELL, YES, THAT’S ABSOLUTELY THE GOAL: How a Cashless Society Could Embolden Big Brother: When money becomes information, it can inform on you.
I wrote on this a while back.
THIS WILL NOT END WELL: Here Come the Marketing Bots.
Actually, I think it was in Accelerando where the solar system eventually became a robot wasteland run by spambots and malware.