UNSETTLED SCIENCE: Maybe Dark Matter Is All Just a Big Mistake.
Archive for 2017
March 6, 2017
HEALTH: Why this Brazilian city uses tilapia fish skin to treat burn victims.
The three functional skin banks in Brazil can meet only 1 percent of the national demand, said Dr. Edmar Maciel, a plastic surgeon and burn specialist leading the clinical trials with tilapia skin.
As a result, public health patients in Brazil are normally bandaged with gauze and silver sulfadiazine cream.
“It’s a burn cream because there’s silver in it, so it prevents the burns from being infected,” said Dr. Jeanne Lee, interim burn director at the the regional burn center at the University of California at San Diego. “But it doesn’t help in terms of debriding a burn or necessarily helping it heal.”
The gauze-and-cream dressing must be changed every day, a painful process. In the burn unit at Fortaleza’s José Frota Institute, patients contort as their wounds are unwrapped and washed.
Enter the humble tilapia, a fish that’s widely farmed in Brazil and whose skin, until now, was considered trash. Unlike the gauze bandages, the sterilized tilapia skin goes on and stays on.
Finally, a reason not to hate tilapia.
RIGHT-LEANING LEGISLATURE SEES LEGAL CLINIC AS PLATFORM FOR LEFTY LAWFARE: State May Ban UNC Center For Civil Rights From Engaging In Litigation. Higher education’s relationship with the North Carolina legislature has become toxic, and is an example for other states on what not to do. From the comments: “When state universities become obvious tools of one party, it isn’t surprising when the other party refuses to keep funding them.”
THE REVOLUTION EATS ITS OWN: Feminist Emma Watson Gets Blasted by Feminists.
I’M NOT SAYING THAT IT’S ALIENS. BUT IT’S ALIENS. Bizarre ‘megaship’ captured by International Space Station camera before Nasa ‘dims the feed.’
Related: “Black Cube” hovering over El Paso terrifies town.
None of this is a surprise to InstaPundit readers, of course.
JUST LIKE CLOCKWORK:
● George W. Bush, Liberals’ New Hero.
● Patti Davis: Is Ronald Reagan’s Vision For America Dead?
● Bill Maher ‘begging’ for Mitt Romney to ‘take over the country’ as Trump alternative.
But the implied message that all of these articles transmit is simple: If lefties have suddenly realized they were wrong to freak out over former GOP leaders during their presidencies (or in the case of Romney, his presidential bid), why should we believe – or even pay attention to — their current meltdowns over President Trump?
THIS RUNS COUNTER TO THE NARRATIVE: FBI probing 300 refugees for potential terror ties.
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Scott Adams: Free College (Online). “If the country wants free college for everyone, this is the disruptive path it will probably have to take. In ten years, I can’t imagine a scenario in which physical colleges are still competitive with online options, on price or performance.”
STOCKHOLM SYNDROME: Reporters weirdly silent on Pelosi’s attack on the press. “Rep. Nancy Pelosi’s, D-Calif., attack on the press this weekend has provoked little outrage from reporters, which is curious considering the industry’s near-obsession with anti-media messages coming from the White House. . . . There have been a handful of reports noting the seriousness of the congresswoman’s charge, but there has been no great outcry from national media in response to being accused of acting as Russia’s accomplice. There have been no reporter hashtag campaigns, no brave editorials denouncing Pelosi’s attacks on the press and there have been no demands for an apology. At best, the congresswoman’s charge has been brushed aside as an unpleasant criticism. That’s about it. For an industry that has spent the last few months loudly proclaiming that it will not be cowed by Trump’s threats and insults, the mild-mannered media response to Pelosi’s not-so-insignificant charge is perplexing.”
Well, criticism or not, at bottom everybody’s on the same team and they know it.
YES, BUT… The National Endowment for the Arts Is Bad for Art and Should be Defunded.
NEA’s actual mission (aside from bureaucratic self-preservation) is to provide an income to politically favored artists who otherwise couldn’t make a living due to lack of talent and/or salability.
MARK MECKLER: Senator Chuck Schumer says Jewish cemetery vandalized by anti-Semites, but the NYPD discovered who was really responsible.
Turns out, the Brooklyn cemetery that serves a large Jewish community wasn’t vandalized at all. After the NYPD hate crimes unit went out there to investigate — no doubt spurred on by the above social media posts — they discovered that these gravestones had not been turned over by hateful bigots. Instead, they were simply ignored for years… perhaps even decades.
That is actually really, really horrible. If loved ones place their family members in a cemetery, they do so with the expectation that the owners of the plots will not let that happen.
Neglect does seem somehow worse than vandalism.
WILL NO ONE RID ME OF THIS MENACING PRIEST?
I’m surprised Takei hasn’t taken this one down, but it isn’t shocking at all that Twitter hasn’t shadow-banned it.
The science is settled.
OH, I WAS LOOKING: Andrew McCarthy: While You Weren’t Looking, the Democrat–Media Election-Hacking Narrative Just Collapsed.
But still, the media and Democrats have always had a serious vulnerability here — one they’ve never acknowledged because they’ve been too swept away by the political success of the fantasy narrative. It is this: At a certain point, if compelling evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia to steal the election did not materialize, the much more interesting question becomes “How did the government obtain all this information that has been leaked to the media to prop up the story?”
The most plausible answer to that question: The Obama administration, through the Justice Department and the FBI, was investigating the associates of the opposition party’s presidential nominee, and perhaps even the nominee himself, during the campaign. Otherwise, what explanation can there be for all of the investigative information — much of it classified, and thus illegal to disclose — that has been funneled to the press?
In short, the media and Democrats have been playing with fire for months. The use of law-enforcement and national-security assets to investigate one’s political opponents during a heated election campaign has always been a potentially explosive story. Let’s not kid ourselves: If the roles were reversed, and a Republican administration had investigated officials tied to the campaign of the Democrats’ nominee, we would be drowning in a sea of Watergate 2.0 coverage.
Well, this weekend, the potentially explosive story detonated. It happened in the now familiar way: jaw-dropping tweets by President Trump.
Every time this happens, the reaction is “Trump’s crazy tweets will sink him this time!” And yet, somehow. . . .
Plus:
Here’s the most interesting part: Now that they’ve been called on it, the media and Democrats are gradually retreating from the investigation they’ve been touting for months as the glue for their conspiracy theory. It’s actually quite amusing to watch: How dare you suggest President Obama would ever order surveillance! Who said anything about FISA orders? What evidence do you lunatic conservatives have — uh, other than what we media professionals been reporting — that there was any investigation of the Trump campaign? . . .
But have you noticed? While all this head-spinning legal jibber-jabber goes back and forth, the foundation of the false narrative we’ve been hearing since November 8 has vanished. Now that we’re supposed to believe there was no real investigation of Trump and his campaign, what else can we conclude but that there was no real evidence of collusion between the campaign and Russia . . . which makes sense, since Russia did not actually hack the election, so the purported objective of the collusion never existed. Trick or tweet?
Alternatively, the spying on Trump was real and wholly political, and the Russians-under-my-bed thing was a cover story hatched after Hillary unexpectedly lost, when it became apparent that Trump, and America, would find out sooner or later what had been done.
ISN’T THIS HOW BOLOS GOT STARTED? Cobalt Robotics Introduces a (Mostly) Autonomous Mobile Security Robot. “The key realization here is that security guards spend the vast majority of their time doing almost nothing, and even in a worst-case scenario (like someone trying to break in, or a fire or other serious problem), their primary responsibility is making the right phone call as quickly as possible as opposed to dealing with the situation directly. In general, a security guard needs to be able to walk around a building checking on things, occasionally interact with humans in a limited capacity, and (this is the most important thing) notice if anything unusual is going on and tell someone about it. Cobalt’s robot is able to do all of these things.”
Of course, to be fair, the fact that Glenn Greenwald and The Nation are taking Trump’s side is probably the strongest evidence that he’s a stooge for Russia. . . .
THE REVOLUTION EATS… WHAT? New ISIS Command To EAT Infidels Has Islamic Roots.
SPYING: To keep Tor hack source code secret, DOJ dismisses child porn case.
Rather than share the now-classified technological means that investigators used to locate a child porn suspect, federal prosecutors in Washington state have dropped all charges against a man accused of accessing Playpen, a notorious and now-shuttered website.
The case, United States v. Jay Michaud, is one of nearly 200 cases nationwide that have raised new questions about the appropriate limitations on the government’s ability to hack criminal suspects. Michaud marks just the second time that prosecutors have asked that case be dismissed.
“The government must now choose between disclosure of classified information and dismissal of its indictment,” Annette Hayes, a federal prosecutor, wrote in a court filing on Friday. “Disclosure is not currently an option. Dismissal without prejudice leaves open the possibility that the government could bring new charges should there come a time within the statute of limitations when and the government be in a position to provide the requested discovery.”
The Department of Justice is currently prosecuting over 135 people nationwide whom they believe accessed the illegal website. However, in order to find those people, federal authorities seized and operated the site for 13 days before closing it down. During that period, the FBI deployed a Tor exploit that allowed them to find out those users’ real IP addresses. The use of Tor, which obscures and anonymizes IP addresses and browser user agents, makes it significantly more difficult for individuals to be tracked online. With the exploit, it became extremely easy for suspects to be identified and located.
The DOJ has called this exploit a “network investigative technique,” (NIT) while many security experts have dubbed it as “malware.”
Defense attorneys have attempted to gain access to some, if not all, of the NIT’s source code as part of the criminal discovery process. In a related case prosecuted in New York, an FBI search warrant affidavit described both the types of child pornography available to Playpen’s 150,000 members and the NIT’s capabilities.
If you’re going to rely on software to identify people, at some point you have to show how it works. That’s not an issue in intelligence, but it is an issue in law enforcement.
NEWS YOU CAN USE: How to Survive In the Age of Rage.
Trump Derangement Syndrome is quickly driving formerly smug leftwing elitists such as David Letterman and Mika Brzezinski to the appearance of seeming near-insane. As Ace explains why, “11/8 stole from them the two things most sacred: their sense of superiority and infallibility, and their precious political power over the people they hate…The daily hysteria, paranoia, conspiricizing, meltdowns, tantrums, out of left field accusations — these are not signs of healthy minds. We are used to saying X Derangement Syndrome but I really think there is some actual derangement going on. And I would like to tell everyone reading: Please do not give in to it. Do let their sickness become your sickness. When they panic, do not let their panic cause you agitation… They’re on the crazy train, and they’re trying to sell more tickets. Decline to ride.”
Read the whole thing.
NO LASER BEAMS? Marine Corps to Arm Osprey With New Weapons and build a new variant for the 2030s.
“Currently, NSWC (Naval Surface Warfare Center) Dahlgren explored the use of forward firing rockets, missiles, fixed guns, a chin mounted gun, and also looked at the use of a 30MM gun along with gravity drop rockets and guided bombs deployed from the back of the V-22. The study that is being conducted will help define the requirements and ultimately inform a Marine Corps decision with regards to armament of the MV-22B Osprey,” Marine Corps spokeswoman Capt. Sarah Burns told Scout Warrior in a written statement.
Adding weapons to the Opsrey would naturally allow the aircraft to better defend itself should it come under attack from small arms fire, missiles or surface rockets while conducting transport missions; in addition, precision fire will enable the Osprey to support amphibious operations with suppressive or offensive fire as Marines approach enemy territory.
Maybe the 2030s variant will finally get laser beams.
MARC THIESSEN: The attack on Jeff Sessions is part of the new McCarthyism. “Here is what Attorney General Jeff Sessions should have said when he stepped up to the podium and addressed reporters last week at the Justice Department: ‘At long last, have you left no sense of decency?’ Sessions is the victim of the type of McCarthyite character assassination that the left used to condemn. Remember when accusing people without evidence of coordinating with the Kremlin was frowned upon? No longer, apparently.”
To be fair, it was only accusing Democrats that was frowned upon.
BUT ENOUGH ABOUT THE DOWAGER EMPRESS OF CHAPPAQUA: Stubborn wasp queens pass their personality on to their colony.