REMINDER: IF YOU CAN HEAR THE DOG WHISTLE, YOU’RE THE DOG: CNN’s Toobin Calls Cruz’s ‘New York Values’ Comment ‘Anti-Semitic.’

(Classical reference in headline.)

IF THIS IS SERIOUSLY ATTEMPTED, THE ATTEMPTERS SHOULD BE HANGED FROM LAMPPOSTS: They Want Your IRA: The White House pushes investors toward government accounts. “The initial investment allocation, even for young workers, is likely to be heavy on government bonds. Naturally.”

RISE OF THE MACHINES: MIT Prints A Walking Robot With No Assembly Needed. “MIT researchers have created a working hydraulic robot from a single 3D print. Meaning the robot can move right off the printer after its done. No assembly required.”

WAIT, I THOUGHT THE DIETARY SCIENCE WAS SETTLED THAT SKIM MILK IS BEST? Full-fat milk ‘may drastically reduce risk of diabetes’ – study.

ON THE ONE HAND, A DISASTER. ON THE OTHER HAND, A TRIUMPH OVER THE PROBLEMS OF PRETTY MUCH ALL OF HUMAN HISTORY: Diabetes was once a problem of the rich. Now it belongs to the poor.

Want to be healthy? Try following Taubes and Rippetoe.

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THE GOVERNMENT WAS CONTROLLED BY SPECIAL INTERESTS, AND PUSHED “SETTLED SCIENCE” THAT WAS FAKE AND DAMAGING: In 1972, a British scientist sounded the alarm that sugar – and not fat – was the greatest danger to our health. But his findings were ridiculed and his reputation ruined. How did the world’s top nutrition scientists get it so wrong for so long?

In 1980, after long consultation with some of America’s most senior nutrition scientists, the US government issued its first Dietary Guidelines. The guidelines shaped the diets of hundreds of millions of people. Doctors base their advice on them, food companies develop products to comply with them. Their influence extends beyond the US. In 1983, the UK government issued advice that closely followed the American example.

The most prominent recommendation of both governments was to cut back on saturated fats and cholesterol (this was the first time that the public had been advised to eat less of something, rather than enough of everything). Consumers dutifully obeyed. We replaced steak and sausages with pasta and rice, butter with margarine and vegetable oils, eggs with muesli, and milk with low-fat milk or orange juice. But instead of becoming healthier, we grew fatter and sicker.

Look at a graph of postwar obesity rates and it becomes clear that something changed after 1980. In the US, the line rises very gradually until, in the early 1980s, it takes off like an aeroplane. Just 12% of Americans were obese in 1950, 15% in 1980, 35% by 2000. In the UK, the line is flat for decades until the mid-1980s, at which point it also turns towards the sky. Only 6% of Britons were obese in 1980. In the next 20 years that figure more than trebled. Today, two thirds of Britons are either obese or overweight, making this the fattest country in the EU. Type 2 diabetes, closely related to obesity, has risen in tandem in both countries.

At best, we can conclude that the official guidelines did not achieve their objective; at worst, they led to a decades-long health catastrophe.

But despite all the talk about going after tobacco companies and “climate deniers,” the culprits here will face no consequences at all. Meanwhile, note the record of dermatologists in actively persecuting colleagues who suggested that sunlight might have benefits. How many people have sickened or died because of their lousy, but unbending, advice?

Then there’s the whole salt thing. . .

How much healthier would Americans be, if we’d followed the principles espoused by Gary Taubes and Mark Rippetoe — principles that were well-known 50 years ago, but discarded because they didn’t serve the interests of scientists and activists?

DON’T DO THIS! People will pick up and use almost 50% of random, discarded USB drives, study finds.

A team from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign dropped 297 USB drives around the uni grounds, leaving them in places like parking lots, hallways, classrooms, libraries, and cafeterias. They found that almost half of the data sticks (and possibly a lot more) ended up being used in a computer, and almost all of them (98 percent) were picked up and removed from where they were originally dropped.

To track what people did with the USB sticks when they found them, the researchers put HTML documents on the drives, masquerading as files called “documents”, “math notes”, and “winter break pictures”. When somebody discovered these files on the drive and tried to open them with an internet-connected computer, the researchers were notified.

Amazingly, despite the potential risks of executing these random files, people did so with 45 percent of the discarded USB drives – representing 135 instances of users opening the files. It’s entirely possible that many more of the USB drives were inserted into computers too – the researchers were only notified if the HTML files were opened (and even then, only if the computer was online at the time).

So are people just nosey snoops who can’t resist rifling through others’ personal data? Not necessarily.

When people opened the HTML files on the drive, they were informed about the experiment (in which they had so far been an unwitting participant) and invited to complete an anonymous survey. This gave them a chance to provide some information about themselves and explain what had motivated them to pick up and use the drive in the first place.

Less than half of the 135 users at this point opted to continue the experiment, but 43 percent did provide feedback. Most of the respondents (68 percent) said they wanted to return the drive to its owner, while 18 percent acknowledged they were merely curious about the contents. Two people admitted they just personally needed a USB drive!

Some of the USB drives had been put on key rings with dummy house keys, and many of the participants indicated that this encouraged their altruistic intentions, as it added an extra sense of urgency to returning the keys (ie. the owner might be locked out of their house).

This is why many places that care about security superglue USB drives shut.

THIS IS COOL: Metal foam obliterates bullets – and that’s just the beginning.

Composite metal foams (CMFs) are tough enough to turn an armor-piercing bullet into dust on impact. Given that these foams are also lighter than metal plating, the material has obvious implications for creating new types of body and vehicle armor – and that’s just the beginning of its potential uses.

Afsaneh Rabiei, a professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at NC State, has spent years developing CMFs and investigating their unusual properties. The video seen here shows a composite armor made out of her composite metal foams. The bullet in the video is a 7.62 x 63 millimeter M2 armor piercing projectile, which was fired according to the standard testing procedures established by the National Institute of Justice (NIJ). And the results were dramatic.

“We could stop the bullet at a total thickness of less than an inch, while the indentation on the back was less than 8 millimeters,” Rabiei says. “To put that in context, the NIJ standard allows up to 44 millimeters indentation in the back of an armor.” The results of that study were published in 2015.

But there are many applications that require a material to be more than just incredibly light and strong. For example, applications from space exploration to shipping nuclear waste require a material to be not only light and strong, but also capable of withstanding extremely high temperatures and blocking radiation.

Last year, with support from the Department of Energy’s Office of Nuclear Energy, Rabiei showed that CMFs are very effective at shielding X-rays, gamma rays and neutron radiation. And earlier this year, Rabiei published work demonstrating that these metal foams handle fire and heat twice as well as the plain metals they are made of.

People don’t think of materials science as sexy, but if he’d had the right materials Leonardo Da Vinci could have been flying.

THIS IS INCONSISTENT WITH THE NARRATIVE AND MUST BE CENSORED: For New Parents, Dad May Be The One Missing The Most Sleep. “The allure of the studies that include fathers is that much of the earlier research focused only on mothers and their level of fatigue. But a family with a newborn typically involves a parental partnership of some sort, and the role of the nonbirthing partner can be critical. And the sleep deprivation and fatigue of the nonbirthing partner go unrecognized by their birthing partner. . . . In other words, the women didn’t think the men were as sleep deprived as the men felt, and the men thought the women were moodier than the women felt.” Hmm.

Plus:

In addition to these short-term effects on function and mood and potentially long-term effects on partnership, sleep deprivation can have more acute consequences. Again, fathers bear the brunt.

A 2012 study of 241 new fathers found that even though they got less than six hours of sleep a night — interrupted sleep, at that — they still worked “long hours.” The fathers, completing a questionnaire when their infants were 6 and 12 weeks of age, were tired, and that fatigue seemed to feed into reduced vigilance about safe behaviors in the workplace. Without the ability to compensate for lost sleep during the day, these fathers simply rode out their fatigue while working.

Add to this that men tend to work more dangerous jobs and you’ve got something significant, though this story quickly pivots to . . . how women should be sure to take care of themselves.

WHAT DO YOU PEOPLE THINK THIS IS, 1998? Law Enforcement Raids Another Tor Exit Node Because It Still Believes An IP Address Is A Person.

BREAKING: GIULIANI WILL BE VOTING FOR DONALD TRUMP.

WOW, NO WONDER OBAMA CALLED HIM A RACIST IN 2008: Bill Clinton: ‘Black Lives Matter’ Protesters Are Defending Murders And Drug Dealers.

Also: Bill Clinton: “Things are coming apart around the world” under Obama.

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CRUMBLING INFRASTRUCTURE NOT A BIG DEAL WHEN IT’S DEMOCRATS WHO ARE IGNORING THE PROBLEM: Infrastructure Hypocrisy in NYC.

Americans are not wrong to worry about their nation’s aging infrastructure. Those crumbling “roads and bridges” that President Barack Obama has been going on about for precisely as long as Republicans have been in control of the appropriations process is, however, only half the story – and the most visible half, at that. Underground, another tale of decrepit infrastructure has been circulating, particularly among New York City residents, for decades. It is the story of near apocalyptic disaster; one which has been in the making for nearly a century. There’s a reason why you do not hear nearly as many national Democrats pointing politically charged fingers in the direction of their fellow party members in the highest echelons of city government. Theirs is a mess the national party would much rather ignore.

I think the goal is to let things get so bad they can demand a federal bailout.

HELPFUL HINTS: “Expansive postures” may make you more attractive to potential mates.

VIDEO: YOU WANT THE NEW STAR WARS “ROGUE ONE” TRAILER SO HERE’S THE NEW STAR WARS “ROGUE ONE” TRAILER.

“‘Rogue One’ is catchy,” Allahpundit writes, “but Sonny Bunch’s title is better: ‘Mary Sue Steals the Death Star Plans.’”

Perhaps the best title though is “Rouge One,” a malapropism that was trending on Twitter this morning.

NEWS YOU CAN USE: Understanding Your Handgun Trigger.

THIS COULD REALLY ESCALATE THE LEFT’S BATHROOM WARS: Transgender Woman Now Transitioning into a Dragon.

POINT/COUNTERPOINT, NEW MEDIA STYLE:

● Shot: Actor Danny Glover: ‘Societies Must Apologize’ for Slavery with Reparations.

● Chaser: Videomaker Alfonzo Rachel: Stop Blaming America for Slavery!

If 21st century America is defined by grievances all the way down, personally, I’d like to see Glover apologize for Lethal Weapon IV by reparation of my ticket price.

A SCHOOL BOARD PRESIDENT WHO HOMESCHOOLS? HOW DARE YOU!

ANALYSIS: TRUE. Gay Talese has nothing to apologize for:

So Gay Talese wasn’t inspired by any women writers. So what?

Feminists organized a mass online fainting session when Talese, one of the most admired magazine writers of his generation and the author of such best-selling books as “Thy Neighbor’s Wife,” recently answered “None” when asked which female journalists inspired him as a young man.

Read the whole thing.

JOHN SCHINDLER: Panama Papers Reveal Clinton’s Kremlin Connection: John and Tony Podesta aren’t fooling anyone.

Almost lost among the many revelations is the fact that Russia’s biggest bank uses The Podesta Group as its lobbyist in Washington, DC. Though hardly a household name, this firm is well known inside the Beltway, not least because its CEO is John Podesta, one of the best-connected Democratic machers in the country. Formerly chief of staff to President Bill Clinton, then counselor to President Barack Obama, Mr. Podesta is the very definition of a Democratic insider. Outsiders engage him and his well-connected lobbying firm to improve their image and get access to Democratic bigwigs.

Which is exactly what Sberbank, Russia’s biggest financial institution, did this spring. As reported at the end of March, Mr. Podesta registered with the U.S. Government as a lobbyist for Sberbank, as required by law, as did three other Podesta Group staffers: his brother Tony plus Stephen Rademaker and David Adams, the last two former assistant secretaries of state. It should be noted that Tony Podesta is a big-money bundler for the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign while his brother John is the chairman of that campaign, the chief architect of her plans to take the White House this November.

Sberbank (Savings Bank in Russian) engaged the Podesta Group to help its public image—leading Moscow financial institutions not exactly being known for their propriety and wholesomeness—and specifically to help lift some of the pain of sanctions placed on Russia in the aftermath of the Kremlin’s aggression against Ukraine, which has caused real pain to the country’s hard-hit financial sector.

It’s hardly surprising that Sberbank sought the help of Democratic insiders like the Podesta brothers to aid them in this difficult hour, they understand how American politics work—the question is why the Podestas took Sberbank’s money. That financial institution isn’t exactly hiding in the shadows—it’s the biggest bank in Russia, and its reputation leaves a lot to be desired.

Well, to be fair, it’s not like the Podesta brothers have ever been squeaky-clean. And as for Hillary, well . . . .

MISSED IT BY THAT MUCH: “Starbucks CEO says he’s gravely concerned about American politics,” the left-leaning Business Insider.com noted in February:

Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz says the US presidential election has turned into a “circus” and he has “grave concern” about the country’s future.

“I think it’s turned into something none of us has ever seen before, which I would label as almost a circus of yelling bombastic attacks, of a lack of respect, of a lack of dignity,” Schultz told employees at a forum last week in Nevada, Fortune’s Phil Wahba reports.

* * * * * * * * * *

“I worry if we just continue on this track and don’t speak up,” he said. “I’m asking myself what can we do, given our scale… to effect change, to elevate the discourse, and to demonstrate that this is not the way the country should be run.”

Perhaps the first step would be insisting that your own customers and fellow leftists switch to decaf and dial it back a notch or ten: “Gov. Rick Scott heckled at Starbucks: ‘You’re an a**hole!’”

“Ah, the beauty of progressive call-out culture. It gives anyone on the left a license to be rude and intentionally unpleasant and still feel good about themselves afterwards. According to the Palm Beach Post, this is the same Cara Jennings who during the 2012 election heckled Marco Rubio during a speech to Florida delegates.” Why does she hate Starbucks’ CEO so?

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE, LEGAL EDUCATION EDITION: As LSAT & MBE Scores Fall, 1L Enrollment Needs To Fall To 25,000 (From 35,500 in 2015).