HAPPY LANDINGS: New Carrier Landing Tech Wows Pilots on First Deployment.

On the Bush, a Nimitz-class carrier, pilots have 786 feet of flight deck to work with, less than a tenth of a traditional runway length. But the requirements of landing are far more precise; pilots told Military.com they needed to fly the nose of the aircraft through a an imaginary box about one foot across in order to properly align their descent and snag a landing cable. On a dark night, Hornet pilots have described the experience of executing such a landing on a carrier as “emotional.”

One pilot assigned to the wing’s Strike Fighter Squadron 87, the Golden Warriors, which flies the F/A-18E Super Hornet, said the use of the new technology had caused accuracy rates to skyrocket — so much so that the target arresting cable, usually the second of three on the Bush, was wearing out faster than the others and had to be rotated.

“We were statistically too accurate,” said “JoJo,” the training officer for VFA-87, who asked to be identified by his callsign.

Vice Adm. Mike Shoemaker, head of Naval Air Forces, said something similar last August about the carrier-variant F-35C, which was designed with native PLM technology, known in that platform as Delta Flight Path.

“They were landing in the same spot on the runway every time, tearing up where the hook touches down,” he told a Washington, D.C. audience about field testing of the capability. “So we quickly realized, we needed to either fix the runway or adjust, put some variants in the system. So that’s how precise this new system is.”

That’s not a bad problem to have.

GOOD MORNING: Liz Sheld has your Morning Brief prepared.

THEY’D BE BENDING OVER BACKWARDS TO GREASE THE SKIDS FOR AN ISLAMIC LAW SCHOOL: The Accreditation Battle Over Canada’s First Christian Law School: Does Religious Freedom To Ban Student Sex Outside Of Heterosexual Marriage Trump LGBTQ Rights?

RELIGION OF PEACE UPDATE: Islamic State video shows beheading of Russian intelligence agent.

The video, which was released on media accounts associated with the Islamic State on Monday, showed the gruesome murder of Cpt. Yevgeny Petrenko, 36, whom the Islamic State said had infiltrated Islamist groups in Kazakhstan and the North Caucasus region of Russia before he was caught last year by the Islamic State in Syria.

The video was accessed through a copy provided on the site of the SITE Intelligence Group, which monitors extremist publications and media. It confirmed the video on Tuesday.

In an interview apparently given under duress, Petrenko, an agent for the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) said he had been abandoned by the Russian government and called on it to end its military campaign in Syria.

“I was supposed to infiltrate the special services of the caliphate and the leadership of the caliphate,” the man identifying himself as Petrenko, dressed in a black button-down shirt and a black hat, told an interviewer whose face was obscured. “One of my orders was to gain access to Omar al-Shishani or to his circle. But during this I was discovered and arrested by the security services of the caliphate.”

The Russians have a brutal reputation when it comes to payback for things like this.

IT’S NOT RACISM OR SEXISM WHEN THEY DO IT: What happens when the white guys are back in charge.

If Jill Filipovic had written this column about women or black men… well, you know the rest.

AND YOU THOUGHT THE SCIENCE WAS SETTLED: Why Everything We Know About Salt May Be Wrong. And yet Nannies like Mike Bloomberg and Michelle Obama wanted to socially engineer America’s diet based on science that turned out to be wrong.

BECAUSE SHUT UP: If progressives believe gender is fluid, then why not race?

NEW LE PEN SLOGAN: “I AM THE FUTURE.” Nearly half of young French voters back Marine Le Pen, projections suggest; Far-right candidate receives support from just 20 per cent of over-65s.

THEY TOLD ME IF TRUMP WERE ELECTED WE’D SEE OPEN RACISM, SEXISM, AND AGEISM. AND THEY WERE RIGHT! Emma Watson takes first major gender-neutral movie award: ‘Antidote to all the vile old white men.’

TIFFANY TRUMP WILL ATTEND GEORGETOWN LAW SCHOOL AND ANN ALTHOUSE HAS QUESTIONS: “If you’re a Georgetown student with answers to these questions, feel free to email me. I won’t reveal names unless you ask to be identified.”

Plus, from the comments:

Brenna Gautam, a first-year law student, said that security was among the primary concerns raised by her fellow classmates on Monday on a private Facebook group for Georgetown law students: “How will this impact our peers who may be personally threatened by her father’s policies?” Ms. Gautam asked, referring to gay and transgender students, and students who are minorities.

When I saw “security,” I thought — “Oh, that’s reasonable — secret service will be irritating to deal with for other students.” But it turned out to be the usual “safe space” rubbish.

I wish I were surprised.

DUKE DIVINITY SCHOOL DIVERSITY CRISIS: The Documents Are Out. And Duke’s faculty — and especially Duke’s administration — look terrible.

TO BE FAIR, HAVEN’T WE ALL WONDERED THAT? When You’re Not Quite Sure If Your Teacher Is Human.

EUROPE’S PROBLEM — CHILDLESS LEADERS? “[Now that] he is elected, the leaders of France, Germany, and the U.K. will have zero biological children among them. . . . President Trump, by contrast, has 5 children.”

From the comments: “Seems very appropriate for Europe which has chosen demographic suicide.”

I WONDER IF, BACK IN THE DESEGREGATION ERA, THERE WERE PROFESSORS WHO RESIGNED RATHER THAN TEACH BLACK STUDENTS? Leaving Over Campus Carry: Professor’s public resignation letter points to tensions in Kansas as new law takes effect this summer.

ASKING THE IMPORTANT HEALTH CARE QUESTIONS: Should Doctors Be Certified To Treat Trans Patients?

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MY USA TODAY COLUMN: Duck And Cover, All Over Again? Our failed Iran and North Korea policies mean it’s probably time.

21ST CENTURY CRIME: Two Arrested In Attempted Prison Drone Delivery.

Authorities told the Associated Press that Charles Everett Adams and Justin Marvin Canady have been arrested and face multiple charges. The men were found at about 0300 Wednesday on prison-owned property in Lancaster County, SC., and fled the scene when approached by police.

When they were apprehended, they were in possession of a drone, marijuana, knives and cellphones.

It’s not quite “lawyers, guns, and money,” but it’s close.

JON GABRIEL: So, the Obama Presidential Library Is Really Ugly. “A discarded Chinese take-out box. The backside of a Star Wars sand crawler. The Washington Monument with the interesting bits lopped off.”

Heh. He’s too kind.

I’M AMAZED THAT THEY WERE ALLOWED TO PUBLISH THIS: Women perform worse in CPR. “Does it matter whether a man or a woman carries out CPR? Researchers at the University of Basel and University Hospital Basel have shown that female resuscitation teams performed cardiopulmonary resuscitation less efficiently than their male counterparts. The study suggests that there is a need for action in the training of young female physicians. The scientific journal Critical Care Medicine has published the results. . . . ‘In comparison with male-only teams, the female groups showed less hands-on time and took longer overall to start the CPR,’ says Professor Sabina Hunziker, the study leader. The female-only teams also showed less leadership communication compared with the male-only teams.”

This totally violates Althouse’s rule on gender studies.

TUNE IN: NatGeo’s First Scripted Series Is ‘Genius’

Einstein’s romanticism doesn’t begin and end in the bedroom. Unlike most men of his generation, he is depicted as a soft-hearted Renaissance man who pursues his intellectual interests like lovers. Tight scriptwriting contrasts scenes of him professing his love for his secretary with impassioned lectures about the science of light waves delivered to eager students. Contrary to the portrayals of nerdy, emotionally-stunted scientists in popular shows like Big Bang and Scorpion, Genius’s Einstein exudes the kind of emotion normally reserved in our culture for figures like Shakespeare or Braveheart.

This twist should inspire some serious discussion about how men, specifically intelligent men, are portrayed in the media. Much has been made of the pressures put on boys to stuff their emotions in order to appear more masculine. Still more has been made of pushing girls into scientific professions, often at the expense of boys’ academic growth in the classroom. In the midst of this milieu arrives Einstein as a historical example of a man who can be both incredibly intellectual and deeply in touch with his emotional side. It’s a refreshing change of which parents should take note.

Read the whole thing, which makes the show seem like a refreshing change from National Geographic’s usual leftwing pablum.

I’m adding this one to the lineup for my sons.

FASTER THAN A SPEEDING PHOTON: The World’s Fastest Camera Shoots Five Trillion Photos Every Second.

At those speeds, events that take place in as little as 0.2 trillionths of a second can be documented and studied at a speed that humans can comprehend. To help demonstrate just how fast that really is, the researchers used the new camera to film a group of photons traveling about as far as a piece of paper is thick, making it seem as if the light particles were barely moving, instead of racing past at 671 million miles per hour.

As you might imagine, the technology that allows cameras like this to capture so many frames every second is radically different to how film cameras, or even modern digital cameras, work. The camera doesn’t actually snap away for a full second—capturing five trillion frames that quickly would require a roll of film that was miles long. Besides, the events it’s designed to capture are over in less than a picosecond; about one trillionth the time it takes you to say “one Mississippi.”

Instead, the record-breaking high-speed camera uses another innovative trick to achieve its astounding speeds. Every frame of film that’s recorded actually contains four separate images, captured one after the other, created by flashing a laser at the subject with each light pulse featuring a unique ‘code’ that allows the combined images to be later decoded and separated using an encryption key.

I still haven’t caught up editing the photos from my son’s football games last fall, shot at a somewhat slower 6.5 frames per second.

LESS RESPECT FOR THE FAT BOY IN PYONGYANG: If the UPI report is accurate, this is a most welcome trend!

Ordinary North Koreans are less careful about addressing Kim Jong Un in respectful terms, and in some cases, showing esteem for the leader invites public ridicule, sources in the country say.

A source in North Hamgyong Province told Radio Free Asia the trend dates back to the era of Kim Jong Il, who ruled the country between 1994 and 2011.

“Even when Kim Jong Il was alive, there was a gradual shift to no longer addressing the leader in honorifics,” the source said. “It was only until we entered the Kim Jong Un era the trend has come out in the open.”

Less respect, however, has strict limits:

But after the execution of Kim’s uncle-in-law Jang Song Thaek, illusions of a better future crumbled.

“There are always state agents among the closest of friends and neighbors,” the source said. “But no one has yet to be punished for not addressing Kim Jong Un in honorifics, so the system of idolization seems to be collapsing.”

AN F-35 REFUELS ENROUTE TO ESTONIA: Why the show of force? Well, Ukraine continues to simmer. In April Estonians said NATO’s buildup reassured them. Here are the latest ceasefire violations in Ukraine as reported by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe’s Special Monitoring Mission to Ukraine (SMM). As for DPR and LPR in the linked report, they are the Russian-backed rebel statelets in Ukraine, the Donetsk Peoples Republic and the Luhansk Peoples Republic.

PLANE CORRECTED: The caption says “F-35 Lightning II.” Everyone should read the caption.

NEVER BRING A KNIFE TO A CHAIR AND VODKA BOTTLE FIGHT: Shopkeeper and his teenage son ‘fight off armed man with vodka bottle and chair’