#IOWAHAWK2016: Why Are There Never Any Car Guy Presidents?

THIS IS THE 21ST CENTURY, YOU KNOW: British hospital livestreams surgery in virtual reality.

I TOURED THIS PLACE YEARS AGO. IT WAS COOL. Space Treasures in the Rockies: Inside Lockheed Martin Spaceship Factory.

AT AMAZON, fresh Lightning Deals, with new ones every hour.

Plus, deals in TV, Audio & Video.

CONSCIOUSNESS IS QUANTIZED: Consciousness occurs in ‘time slices’ lasting only milliseconds, study suggests.

According to Herzog and fellow researcher Frank Scharnowski from the University of Zurich, neither the ‘continuous’ nor ‘discrete’ hypotheses can by themselves aptly describe how we process the world around us, as numerous studies testing people’s visual awareness seem to disprove both notions.

But what if elements of both hypotheses were taking place at the same time in a continuous interplay between conscious and unconscious thought?

“According to our model, the elements of a visual scene are first unconsciously analysed. This period can last up to 400 ms and involves, amongst other processes, the analysis of stimulus features such as the orientation or colour of elements and temporal features such as object duration and object simultaneity,” the authors write in PLOS Biology.

After this analysis is complete, the researchers say the features we’ve detected are integrated into our conscious perception, compressing all the unconscious recording into something we’re actually aware of.

In other words, while we’re taking the world in, we’re not actually consciously perceiving it. Instead, we’re just mutely using our senses to record data for up to 400 ms at a time. Then, in what could be called a moment of clarity, we consciously perceive the stimuli that our senses have detected.

The team thinks this presentation of information to our consciousness lasts for about 50 milliseconds, during which we also stop taking new sensory information in. And then repeat.

Hmm. Or maybe this is evidence that we’re living in a computer simulation.

ALL COMEDY IS CONSERVATIVE: ABC’s ‘The Middle’ Brilliantly Mocks College PC Outrage Culture.

(Headline via Orrin Judd’s long-running leitmotif.)

BRING BACK DDT: Zika May Be Scary, But a Yellow Fever Outbreak Is Underway and It’s Far More Deadly.

QUESTION ASKED:

Here’s my conundrum: if it is immoral, even criminal or civilly liable for these mom-and-pop Christian businesses to deny services based on their fundamental beliefs, why is it not also immoral or legally actionable for large corporations to refuse their services to the citizens of those states where those who govern choose to pass legislation to protect the religious freedoms of their citizenry?

If I’m a huge professional football fan living in Atlanta and the NFL people remove my city from contention for a near-future Super Bowl because they feel my state is discriminating against the transgendered, am I not the victim of discriminatory business practices on the part of the NFL? What about those organizations and corporations that cancel annual conferences and business meetings because of the actions of my state legislature? Aren’t these big corporations refusing to do business with my state simply because they consider our practices immoral, just as those bakeries, florists, and photographers see gays as immoral? Other than scale, I see little difference.

Okay all you smart readers: Tell me where I’m wrong.

Feel free to answer here and/or in the comments at This Ain’t Hell.

I PREFER BOLOS TO TERMINATORS: Autonomous Weapons “Could Be Developed for Use Within Years,” Says Arms-Control Group.

NUKE THE SITE FROM ORBIT: AMC Plans to Allow Texting in Theaters; I Have a Better Plan.

Personally, I think this Austin theater has the best approach to those who demand texting in their theaters (massive amounts of NSFW language to follow; you’ve been warned):

NEWS YOU CAN USE: How to Make a DIY Water Balloon Cannon.

SCIENCE, THE NORTH KOREAN WAY: Bill Nye, “Science Guy,” Open to Jail Time for Climate Change Skeptics.

Plus, this:

Heh.

NEO-NEOCON MAKES A SHOCKING CONFESSION: “It turns out that I’m a hoarder of post drafts. I didn’t see this coming—it developed slowly, over many years.”

Like fine wine, some blog posts just take time to reach fruition.

ABC’S ‘BLACKISH’: THERE WOULD BE NO FEMALE DOCTORS IF NOT FOR GLORIA STEINEM.

Edith Farnsworth, call your office.

LI’L KIM GETS SPANKED: North Korea’s failed missile launch prompts ‘saber-rattling’ jibe from China media.

“The firing of a mid-range ballistic missile on Friday by the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), though failed, marks the latest in a string of saber-rattling that, if unchecked, will lead the country to nowhere,” China’s official Xinhua news agency said in an English language commentary.

“…Nuclear weapons will not make Pyongyang safer. On the contrary, its costly military endeavors will keep on suffocating its economy.”

Beijing has been beginning to enforce economic sanctions on Pyongyang, which as StrategyPage noted, “is very unusual.” And now comes this public rebuke from China’s state news agency.

Predicting the imminent demise of the Kim Regime has long been a fool’s errand, but maybe this is a good time to be a fool.

SHOCKER: Japan’s Negative-Rate Experiment Is Floundering.

Trading has withered in Japan’s money markets, where big banks and others usually park their excess cash hoping to receive some interest—despite predictions from the Bank of Japan that its latest easing of monetary policy would spark more activity. And there has been a rush in demand for Japanese government bonds even as many yields went below zero.

The unusual source: foreign investors, who in the past have largely stayed out of the low-yield market but have recently jumped in because of rising returns on Japanese-bond trades using cheaply-funded yen.

Such side effects have come as Japan’s currency, the yen, has also been on an unexpected tear, trading at around 18-month highs against the U.S. dollar in recent weeks. Lower interest rates normally lead a country’s currency to depreciate, helping its exporters—a key aim of so-called ‘Abenomics,’ the package of stimulus measures brought in by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.

It’s almost as though central governments and central bankers can’t conjure up prosperity at will.

Or as though the Law of Unintended Consequences never gets the last laugh.

I HAVE ALWAYS THOUGHT IN THE BACK OF MY MIND, CHEESE AND ONIONS: Airport sniffer dogs ‘failing to spot Class A drugs… but finding plenty of cheese and sausages.’

(Classical Rutland reference in headline.)

AUSTIN BAY: Hacking Hillary: Panama Papers Show Danger of Clinton’s Secret Server. “Hillary’s private email was illegal and ill-defended.”

TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 1072.

PRAISE WHERE IT’S DUE: Obama to Help Push for Open Market for Cable Set-Top Boxes.

In an unusual step, Mr. Obama will weigh in personally on a pending proposal at the Federal Communications Commission, filing comments that encourage it to loosen cable companies’ grip on the boxes. And he will sign an executive order calling on every federal agency to send him proposals within 60 days for steps they can take to promote competition in a range of industries and better protect consumers.

The F.C.C. proposal would allow subscribers to choose and purchase the devices they use to view television programming, instead of leasing the boxes from their cable companies at an average annual cost of $231. The F.C.C. approved the proposal in February, starting a 60-day comment period that will soon close.

Good.

The chairman of Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers said that “this just seemed like a clear-cut case where you could get a win for consumers and a win for innovation,” and he’s right.

NOT BERNIE OR HILLARY OR PINCH SULZBERGER, ALAS: A Hippie Discovers Economics, And You’ll Never Guess What Happens Next!

EPIC FAIL: Dozens show up around the country for ‘Million Student March.’

THE MINIMUM WAGE CON: UNIONS SEEK RULES FOR YOU, EXEMPTIONS FOR THEMSELVES.

As it turns out, this practice is not uncommon. The WSJ reported last year that at least six municipalities have created special minimum wage carveouts for unions. The logic is straightforward: Kill non-unionized jobs, add more workers to the union rolls, and extract higher fees for union bosses. It’s not a minimum wage hike the labor movement is after, exactly: It’s a penalty on non-union employers, and a payout for modern-day Jimmy Hoffas. Expect unions in California and New York, which recently enacted statewide $15 minimums, to start lobbying legislators for their own sweetheart deals in the near future.

Of course, one can be charitable and note that these measures are backed, in many cases, by well-meaning people trying desperately to keep private sector unions viable in an age of globalization and rapid technological change. But that is no excuse for the kind of craven crony capitalism that’s now underway. If union leaders are going to ask for exemptions to their own laws, the least they can do is drop the pretense that a $15 minimum is a human right, and instead admit that they are in it—at least in part—to increase their own wealth and political power. But then, that would pour cold water on what they have managed to pitch to voters as a righteous moral crusade.

All their “righteous moral crusades” are self-serving con jobs.

ZIKA FALLOUT: Hard Times Coming in the Caribbean.

Zika continues to evolve into an ever-scarier health threat—and that’s not just bad news for locals in the Caribbean and Central America who might be exposed to the disease. It’s bad for all the countries that depend on winter tourism. We’ve said it before, but it’s worth saying again: the Caribbean is not in good shape. Venezuela continues to move toward chaos and civil conflict; drug smuggling remains so dominant that many economies are being bought up by drug lords; the opening of Cuba, while good for that island, will provide competition to many other tourist islands with few other revenue options; and now this.

For Americans this means more migration, including illegals and unescorted children, and possibly a less safe neighborhood. And American citizens in Southern states are also at risk directly from infection. Fighting Zika therefore should be a priority.

While we’re not doctors or scientists, as a political, public health, and foreign policy matter, the broad priorities would seem to be, firstly, to find a way to kill the mosquitoes that carry the disease, even if that means taking another look at banned pesticides. At the same time, we need to be developing tests and treatments for the disease on a crash basis. Then, there’s hunt for the long term solution—a vaccine.

Indeed.