NORK’S NEW NUKES, ANOTHER ATTACK IN PARIS, AND AN IMPORTANT REMINDER FROM PRESIDENT BILL CLINTON: That and more in Liz Sheld’s morning brief.

LAURENCE JARVIK: One, Two, Three Galileos: The Google Inquisition purges a free-thinking employee.

LATE-STAGE SOCIALISM: As Maduro’s Venezuela Rips Apart, So Does His Military.

As Venezuela reels from a crippling economic crisis and deadly street protests, the military has often served as the guarantor of President Nicolás Maduro’s continued power over the country.

But daring challenges to his rule in recent weeks have laid bare a split within the military that could ultimately determine the nation’s fate: a growing number of officers are openly breaking ranks with the president and taking up weapons.

“They speak of resistance, now they think that the model is to use arms,” Cliver Alcalá, a retired Venezuelan general and government critic, says of those who have rebelled.

Venezuela has a history of coups and attempted overthrows at times of crisis, and many in the country now wonder if this is one of those times.

There aren’t any good outcomes left for Venezuela, just an array of options ranging from bad to worse.

PHILIP WEGMANN: Google Is More Afraid Of Liberal Outrage Than Federal Law.

Google purports to value “honest discussion.” And reasonable people should be able to disagree about these things. Google just didn’t want the bad publicity of having someone with such ideas on their payroll. But never mind the incongruity or hypocrisy. The more important problem is that litigation is around the corner.

“I have a legal right to express my concerns about the terms and conditions of my working environment and to bring up potentially illegal behavior, which is what my document does,” Damore told the New York Times.

According to Dan Eaton, an attorney and ethics professor at San Diego University, the engineer certainly has grounds for a case on two fronts. “First, federal labor law bars even non-union employers like Google from punishing an employee for communicating with fellow employees about improving working conditions,” Eaton writes.

And second, because the memo was a statement of political views, Eaton says Google may have violated California law which “prohibits employers from threatening to fire employees to get them to adopt or refrain from adopting a particular political course of action.”

An international corporation with armies of both lawyers, Google knew all this. They decided to take their chances with state and federal law anyway rather than stick up for one of their employees and risk public backlash. That’s an incredibly telling decision from a company that has mastered everything from artificial intelligence to self-driving cars.

In short, the tech titan is scared. Not of losing talent. Not of legal fees from the pending litigation. And not of a potential settlement. No, Google just doesn’t want to stir up outrage from the left and so they squashed speech.

Google is Mizzou.

ROGER KIMBALL: America: Four Possible Futures.

SHOCKED, SHOCKED: CNN Reporter Lies About and Smears Now-Fired Google Engineer’s ‘Echo Chamber’ Critique.

There is nothing in the manifesto which supports CNN’s claim that Damore believes that “(all) women aren’t suited for tech jobs.”

Damore’s claim is about how “the distribution of preferences and abilities of men and women … may explain” why women and men aren’t represented equally “in tech and leadership,” and that “biological causes” play a role. Damore specifically refuted CNN’s after-the-fact characterization when he wrote that “Many of these differences are small and there’s significant overlap between men and women, so you can’t say anything about an individual given these population level distributions.” Heaven forbid that we start treating people as individuals instead of as member of supposedly aggrieved groups.

Damore could hardly have stated matters more plainly (or correctly, as will be seen later in this post).

When confronted on Twitter to back up her contention that Damore wrote that “women aren’t suited for tech jobs for ‘biological’ reasons,” [Jackie] Wattles had no credible response.

When called out for her lack of evidence, Wattles couldn’t find any. Instead of admitting to that failure and apologizing, she took the despicable, cowardly route and claimed to be able to read Damore’s supposedly evil mind.

The scorpion stings the frog, every time.

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT: USA TODAY: We need answers in Democrats’ congressional IT drama: Something shady is going on and former Democratic National Committee chief Rep. Debbie Wasserman-Shultz doesn’t want to talk about it.

CATHY YOUNG: Googler fired for diversity memo had legit points on gender.

The most incendiary part of the 10-page document was the assertion that gender disparities at technology companies including Google (where women currently hold about 20% of tech jobs and 25% of leadership positions) are due at least in part to biological differences. Damore has been assailed for supposedly saying that “women are unsuited to tech jobs,” dismissing his female co-workers as “unqualified tokens,” or “demanding (an) end to inclusion of women” and minorities. But the memo says nothing of the kind. At most, Damore argues that because of innate cognitive and personality differences, a 50/50 gender balance in the tech sector may be unrealistic.

The memo also argues that expanding diversity is good but Google is going about it all wrong — for instance, by offering gender- and race-exclusionary support programs, favoring “diversity” hires, and promoting hypersensitivity to “unconscious bias” and unintentional offenses. And it suggests alternative strategies, such as drawing more women to software engineering by making some of those jobs more people-oriented, more collaborative and less stressful (though Damore notes there are limits to such change).

Is Damore right about sex differences? It’s complicated. Of the four scientists who commented at Quillette, a libertarian-leaning online magazine critical of “political correctness,” three, including neuroscientist and science writer Deborah Soh, thought the memo was almost entirely correct. University of Michigan psychologist David Schmitt, whose research was cited in the document, thought it overstated some fairly modest sex differences (in ambition and vulnerability to stress, for example) and was too negative about efforts to remedy societal disadvantage. Yet Schmitt also emphasized that biological difference as a contributor to occupational gender gaps should not be off-limits to discussion. . . . Could the memo contribute to negative stereotypes of women in tech workplaces? Perhaps. But the overreaction, including Damore’s firing, is likely to do far more harm. It will make anyone who questions the “diversity” party line — who believes, for instance, that unequal numbers may not automatically prove discrimination — feel that he or she is a hostile environment. And it will lend credence to complaints in the modern workplace, men are the beleaguered sex.

We must not allow even the faintest trace of badthink, comrade! And the reaction to the memo certainly contributes to stereotypes that women are hysterical and unable to engage in rational discussion.

Related: “My favorite thing is that a group of women took yesterday off because they didn’t feel safe at Google. Talk about proving his point!”

ZOOM: Mazda’s engine breakthrough promises big fuel efficiency gains.

Dubbed SkyActiv-X, the engine will be available in 2019 and promises up to 20-30% more engine efficiency than the current SkyActiv-G, and up to 45% more than Mazda’s 2008 petrol engine.

Current gasoline engines rely on a spark plug to ignite their air-fuel mix. The SkyActiv-X will ignite the air-fuel mix spark-free through compression, like a diesel engine. This, according to the Japanese manufacturer, combines the advantages of petrol and diesel engines to achieve “outstanding” environmental and power performance.

Sounds more fun to drive than most hybrids.

TOM KNIGHTON: Man Cleared of Rape Due to Video Evidence Exposes Title IX Abuse.

EVEN CANADIANS THINK GOOGLE IS TOO PC: Debrah Soh, National Post: No, the Google manifesto isn’t sexist or anti-diversity. It’s science.

Despite how it’s been portrayed, the memo was fair and factually accurate. Scientific studies have confirmed sex differences in the brain that lead to differences in our interests and behaviour.

As mentioned in the memo, gendered interests are predicted by exposure to prenatal testosterone – higher levels are associated with a preference for mechanically interesting things and occupations in adulthood. Lower levels are associated with a preference for people-oriented activities and occupations. This is why STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) fields tend to be dominated by men.

We see evidence for this in girls with a genetic condition called congenital adrenal hyperplasia, who are exposed to unusually high levels of testosterone in the womb. When they are born, these girls prefer male-typical, wheeled toys, such as trucks, even if their parents offer more positive feedback when they play with female-typical toys, such as dolls. Similarly, men who are interested in female-typical activities were likely exposed to lower levels of testosterone.

As well, new research from the field of genetics shows that testosterone alters the programming of neural stem cells, leading to sex differences in the brain even before it’s finished developing in utero. This further suggests that our interests are influenced strongly by biology, as opposed to being learned or socially constructed.

Many people, including a former Google employee, have attempted to refute the memo’s points, alleging that they contradict the latest research.

I’d love to know what “research done […] for decades” he’s referring to, because thousands of studies would suggest otherwise. A single study, published in 2015, did claim that male and female brains existed along a “mosaic” and that it isn’t possible to differentiate them by sex, but this has been refuted by four – yes, four – academic studies since.

This includes a study that analyzed the exact same brain data from the original study and found that the sex of a given brain could be correctly identified with 69-per-cent to 77-per-cent accuracy.

Of course, differences exist at the individual level, and this doesn’t mean environment plays no role in shaping us. But to claim that there are no differences between the sexes when looking at group averages, or that culture has greater influence than biology, simply isn’t true.

In fact, research has shown that cultures with greater gender equity have larger sex differences when it comes to job preferences, because in these societies, people are free to choose their occupations based on what they enjoy.

I wish the left would end its War On Science.

DON SURBER: Maybe Republicans Want To Lose The House.

AND HIS NAME IS LENA DUNHAM: Big Brother Is Listening to You. Even your thoughts aren’t safe.

HOW WE TREAT THOSE WHO’VE SERVED: The Wonderful World of the VA.

ALL IN ALL IT’S JUST ANOTHER, ANOTHER BRICK IN THE WALL: Department of Education? Why?

FETAL STEM CELL INDUSTRY WORST HURT: ‘Origami organs’ could be the future of regenerative medicine.

UH OH, GOOGLE WON’T LIKE THAT: Here’s why women overthink everything.

OR PERHAPS THEY’RE WORKING AS THEY’RE MEANT TO: Blame your faulty taste buds for your sugar addiction.

YEAH: There’s something unusual about the job growth numbers.  And there’s been for years.

BEYOND THE REACH OF REGULATION: What A Backyard Submachine Gun Can Teach Us About Gun Laws.

#FAKENEWS: Here Are All The Media Outlets Blatantly Lying About The Google Memo.

And then there’s Barstool Sports.

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Plus, save in Sports Nutrition.

CLEARLY, THESE RESEARCHERS SHOULD BE FIRED FOR SUGGESTING THAT THERE ARE BIOLOGICAL DIFFERENCES BETWEEN THE SEXES: Women Have More Active Brains Than Men.

Well, no, because they’ve followed the Althouse Rule of Gender Research: “Scientists: remember to portray whatever you find to be true of women as superior.” “The rule is: If you do scientific research into the differences between men and women, you must portray whatever you find to be true of women as superior. And when you read reports about scientific research into the differences between men and women, use the hypothesis that the scientists are following that rule. It makes reading the reports quite humorous.”

IT’S INSTAPUNDIT’S 16TH BLOGGIVERSARY! I had actually forgotten until Bryan Preston reminded me. Go here and scroll up to see what the blog looked like in that more innocent time.