FASTER, PLEASE: New treatment approved for deadly blood cancer.

WHAT’S FUNNY IS, I EXPECT THE CBS FOLKS THOUGHT THIS WAS A FEELGOOD STORY AND WERE SURPRISED AT THE RESPONSE: Story About Iceland Sets Off Angry Debate Over Abortion.

SMASH ALL THE THINGS! New Orleans’ Joan of Arc Statue Vandalized With ‘Take It Down.’

Wait, which side did she fight for in the Civil War?

WILL ROBOTS STEAL HUMAN JOBS?

In recent years, there has been increasing concern about the effects of artificial intelligence and robots on humans. Some people have worried that humans will be marginalized to the point of being put out of work. Why hire a human when a much cheaper robot can do the job without being distracted? Of course, we can never be sure about the future. But a look at technological revolutions in the past should make us more optimistic than pessimistic about the fate of human labor in the age of AI.

In the past, the introduction of more and more machinery made people more and more productive. And since real incomes—wages and salaries—are closely tied to productivity, machinery caused people’s real incomes to increase. The same will be true of robots, whether we define robots narrowly as human-looking machines that move purposely on a factory floor or more broadly as machines that involve artificial intelligence. The fear of robots is similar to the fear of automation that was common only a few decades ago—and just as bogus.

In 1930, British economist John Maynard Keynes, reflecting on the progress of technology, predicted that his generation’s grandchildren would have a 15-hour workweek. Assuming that a generation is 30 years, we should have had that 15-hour workweek in 1990. Did we? Not even close. Twenty-seven years after 1990, we still don’t. But why don’t we? Where did Keynes go wrong?

It wasn’t in his assumption about increasing productivity. Rather, Keynes was probably assuming that people would work enough to get the same standard of living they had in 1930. If that was his assumption, then he was quite accurate in predicting our productivity per hour. In the four score and seven years since Keynes made his prediction, our productivity has doubled and doubled again. We could easily have what we had then if we worked 15-hour weeks now.

Read the whole thing. But how far forward can we project the trends of the past?

RACISTS SHOULDN’T DO DNA: I Celebrated Black History Month… By Finding Out I Was White. “I found out I was White. Not just 13% White, my husband’s percentage when he too completed the ancestry composition report. Not just 25% White, since the average amount of DNA in an African American’s genome traced back to West Africa is about 75%. I was damn near 1/3 White. That’s significant. . . . It can remain a theory for the rest of my family, but as someone who has become a Black millennial marketing expert… this s*** matters. It’s as if I’ve obscured the one thing which has guided me since I was nine years old… my heritage. Even back then I believed in Black power, creating drawings in art class titled “A Strong Black Nation”, featuring black construction paper hands reaching for the sky. Along with being a millennial and being a woman, being Black enlivens me. I’m personally and professionally compelled to clarify misconceptions and elevate all three of my squads. As inappropriate (but honest) as it sounds, I’d discovered I had the so-called ‘superior’ race running through my veins, and never before had I felt so inferior. Then, in a startling and unexpected twist, shame surfaced.”

Related: White nationalists are flocking to genetic ancestry tests. Some don’t like what they find.

TYLER O’NEIL: If the Monuments Must Go, Don’t Forget These.

THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS WHITE CULTURAL HERITAGE. THE WEST’S LEGACY IS OPEN TO ALL.

Well, at least until the left airbrushes it all down the memory hole.

BUT OF COURSE: Worse than Nazis? Gun Owners. “Don’t look [to] the ACLU for help if you plan to exercise both your First and Second Amendment rights.”

Never mind the fact that the Nazis were notorious gun-grabbers.

“YOU KNOW YOU’VE RAISED EYEBROWS WHEN KEITH OLBERMANN SUGGESTS YOU’VE COME A LITTLE UNGLUED:” HuffPost Homepage Shoos Bannon With ‘GOY, BYE!’ Headline:

The reporter of the piece was Sam Levine. His funniest paragraphs was this: “Bannon also gave a bizarre interview this week to The American Prospect, a progressive publication, calling white supremacists a “collection of clowns” and contradicted Trump’s military threats to North Korea.” The HuffPost thinks it’s bizarre to mock white supremacists?

Linguistically, the HuffPost was in sync with white-supremacist anti-Semite David Duke, who tweeted in the same time frame, implying Jared & Ivanka were the end of Bannon: “(((They))) are no longer behind the curtain – in your face, Goy!”

As Harry Khachatrian of the Daily Wire tweets, “When you try going on HuffPost-dot-com and it redirects you to DailyStormer.” Seth Mandel of the New York Post and Commentary adds, “HuffPo decides to reinforce the conspiracy theory that the Joos are running things and are picking off their enemies one by one.”

Why are Democrat-monopoly institutions such cesspits of racism and conspiracy theories?

LIFE IN THE 21ST CENTURY: Machining of silk fibers using femtosecond lasers.

AT AMAZON, save in Health and Personal Care.

Plus, deals in Kitchen and Housewares.

MICHAEL LEDEEN CONNECTS THE DOTS: North Korea Is No Rogue Nation.

PROGRESS: Ann Althouse: “Now, the NYT admits the left has a violence problem. Good!”

21ST CENTURY RELATIONSHIPS: Dating Is Dead.

JUST-IN-TIME DELIVERY: Finally! The ISS Crew Just Received Real Ice Cream Thanks to SpaceX. “According to Kloeris, astronauts will get to snack on 30 individual cups of Blue Bell ice cream and some Snickers ice cream bars.”

FASTER? PLEASE! Propelled by an electrical current and traveling at speeds up to Mach 7.5, the US Navy’s Hyper Velocity Projectile can shoot out of a rail gun to destroy enemy ships, vehicles.

The Office of Naval Research is now bringing the electromagnetic rail gun out of the laboratory and into field demonstrations at the Naval Surface Warfare Center Dahlgren Division’s new rail gun Rep-Rate Test Site at Terminal Range.

“Initial rep-rate fires (repetition rate of fires) of multi-shot salvos already have been successfully conducted at low muzzle energy. The next test sequence calls for safely increasing launch energy, firing rates and salvo size,” a statement from ONR says.

Railgun rep-rate testing will be at 20 megajoules by the end of the summer and at 32 megajoules by next year. To put this in perspective; one megajoule is the equivalent of a one-ton vehicle moving at 160 miles per hour, ONR information states.

That’s enough energy to give even a small projectile enough kinetic energy to ruin anyone’s whole day.

TOP SHELF: Want A $400K Grant To Watch Gay People Drink?

21ST CENTURY HEADLINES: Self-Driving Wheelchairs Debut in Hospitals and Airports.

PAULA BOLYARD: Tech Companies Begin Blacklisting Alt-Right Sites, Purging Them from the Internet.

If this is the new norm, what’s the excuse for permitting continued access for hate and/or racist groups like La Raza, Black Lives Matter, or Antifa?

COMMON SENSE, MID-WESTERN STYLE, FROM THE ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH: “Daryle Lamont Jenkins, a member of the anti-fascist movement, told National Public Radio on Thursday that violent confrontation is justifiable when police won’t stop white supremacists from marching. In other words, he believes in illegal vigilante action when police refuse to violate marchers’ constitutional rights.” That’s the bases loaded-triple. Here’s the home run:

Imagine how quickly our country would descend into anarchy if vigilante action ever did become justifiable. The minute it becomes acceptable to break the law to silence one group, all others become vulnerable to attack by anyone who disagrees with them […]Ahead of Trump’s inauguration, extreme left-wing groups began using the slogan “Punch a Nazi” as they advocated violent intervention to halt demonstrations by far-right groups. One self-declared anti-fascist punched white supremacist Richard Spencer, a Trump supporter, in the face on Inauguration Day while he was being interviewed on a Washington, D.C., street. It was not OK then, nor will it ever be.

“A law that can be directed against speech found offensive to some portion of the public can be turned against minority and dissenting views to the detriment of all. The First Amendment does not entrust that power to the government’s benevolence. Instead, our reliance must be on the substantial safeguards of free and open discussion in a democratic society.” — Justice Anthony Kennedy, in Matal v. Tam, 582 U.S. ___ (2017).

DEEP SPACE: From the edge of the solar system, Voyager probes are still talking to Australia after 40 years.

WHY IS SILICON VALLEY SO RACIST? AI Programs Are Learning to Exclude Some African-American Voices.

Related: Why Microsoft Accidentally Unleashed a Neo-Nazi Sexbot.

REPORT: Steve Bannon Out At White House.

UPDATE: Report: Bannon resigned two weeks ago.

ROD DREHER: Trump Is More In Touch Than You Think.

• A strong majority (62 percent) of Americans favor leaving the Confederate statues standing as historical markers

• Overwhelming numbers of Republicans (86 percent) favor this, as do 61 percent of Independents

• The only group with a majority favoring removal (57 percent) are “Strong Democrats” — as opposed to “Soft Democrats,” who slightly favor keeping them (52 percent)

• When defined by political ideology, only Liberal/Very Liberal people muster a majority for taking statues down (57 percent). Among self-described Moderates, 67 percent favor leaving the statues standing. A whopping 81 percent of Conservative/Very Conservative people favor the statues staying in place

• Unsurprisingly, the Northeast is the region of the country most in favor of removing the statues — but even there, a majority (53 percent) backs leaving the statues standing

• Here’s a stunner: 44 percent of African-Americans polled believe in keeping the statues standing. Of Latinos, 65 percent believe the statues should remain

• Comfortable majorities — no less than 60 percent — in each age cohort support the statues
This is barely an issue with white Evangelicals, 85 percent of whom back the statues. Only nine percent favor removal, with the rest unsure

• On Trump’s response to Charlottesville, 52 percent believe it hasn’t been strong enough
Of that number, 52 percent of Independents believe Trump has fallen short; only 30 percent are satisfied

In recent years the American left has been at its most intolerant and its most shrill on losing issues. (Here’s a great example of that from this very morning.) And in recent months, even after what should have been a powerful learning moment last November, they have doubled down on self-defeat.