Read it. And watch the video.

Read it.

Da’von Shaw, a Bedford, Ohio high school student, brought apples and craisins to school for a “healthy eating” presentation he was giving to his speech class. He took out a knife to slice an apple, and I’m sure you can all guess what happened next….

Send your kid to a government school,
And he will turn out a fool;
That’s the way
Things are today—
Your tax bucks at work and play!

Read it.

In other words, sequencing the human genome merely showed us that we had an overwhelming number of mysteries yet to decode. We were like toddlers handed a giant encyclopedia as a means of learning the facts of life – not only could we not read the book, we didn’t even know how many entries it contained.

Read it.

The recently delivered bulk carrier, MV Harvest Frost, is the first vessel of its size to use MHI’s proprietary Mitsubishi Air Lubrication System (MALS), which reduces the drag between the vessel hull and seawater by blowing air bubbles produced at the vessel bottom. MHI says that use of the system has been proven to help Harvest Frost achieve a 27% reduction in CO2 emissions compared to conventional bulk carriers, exceeding the target figure of 25%.

Read it.

Assuming, of course, that that’s what you want to do.

Edward Mendelson speaks for all right-thinking people.

Read it.

The Obama Doctrine: “Do as little as necessary to appear to be doing something without actually committing to a cause or course of action.”

Read it.

If that’s the sort of thing that bothers you, feel free to run around screaming and pulling your hair. We promise not to laugh.

I should like to propose that anyone who uses the word ‘under-represented’ except in speaking of a political system be thrown in the lake until they quit.

That’s my idea; what’s your idea?

Dan Fromer does this stuff so you don’t have to.

While Apple Pay is designed to make payments as easy as possible—by riding on existing payments infrastructure, with security and privacy in mind—using CurrentC actually looks harder than typical payment techniques. Because it’s designed to skirt the existing credit-card infrastructure, CurrentC’s current version only supports payments via checking accounts and certain store cards. And it comes with a questionable privacy requirement: To “confirm your identity,” CurrentC demands both your driver’s license number and social security number.

No CVS for me, thanks.

It is, of course, possible that CurrentC’s management will learn from its mistakes and improve its experience. Especially, if, say, Apple opens up the iPhone’s NFC chip—which it uses for contactless payments—to other app makers in the future. But the brick-and-mortar retail industry has few tech or user-experience successes to offer as proof that it’s going to get it right this time. (Witness its dispiriting collection of implementation failures in e-commerce, store design, previous mobile payment apps, or keeping our credit card numbers secure. Or just take yourself through the current checkout process in any large chain store.) Everything about MCX and CurrentC looks like it’s being instituted to make things better for retailers first and customers later.

My, what a surprise! Aren’t you surprised? I’m sure surprised.

Read it.

Evolution has been caught in the act, according to scientists who are decoding how a species of Australian lizard is abandoning egg-laying in favor of live birth.

Read it.

Onboard the Galatea, a ship that is 80m (260ft) long, the GLA have been finding out what happens if the satellite system goes wrong.

Martin Bransby demonstrates a GPS failure by pulling the plug on the ship’s receiver.

Within a few seconds, alarms start to sound on the bridge as one by one the instruments stop working.

“This is the gyrocompass – it steers the ship – you can see it starting to fail,” says Mr Bransby.

“If we walk over here, this is the radar, and that’s not working either. This is the dynamic positioning: it holds the ship’s position, that’s not working.

“The electronic chart display becomes unusable. Even the ship’s clock stops working.”

In a series of tests, the GLA have found that almost every bit of kit on the boat uses GPS – even the onboard satellite entertainment system.

Mr Bransby says: “You can imagine standing watch on this ship, it’s the middle of the night, it’s dark, it’s foggy, you are in the English Channel, and then this happens.

“What do you do? You’re in a right mess, basically.”

Read it.

It’s all about the DRM, baby.

We’ve been meaning to weigh in some more on the whole Amazon/Hachette battle, because lot of misinformation has been spewed around (including by Paul Krugman). Unfortunately there have just been too many other things to cover and we haven’t had the time to do a more thorough piece. However, Tim Lee, over at Vox, has a good short piece detailing how many of the publishers’ problems are really because of copyright law and the stupid DRM that the publishers themselves demanded — and which now gives Amazon its power over them in the market. The issue? The DMCA and the fact that Section 1201 makes it illegal to circumvent any DRM (even if for non-infringing purposes). End result, all those books on Amazon are stuck on Amazon.

Read it.

Hint: Yes.

On January 27, 2011, from a stage in the middle of the San Antonio Convention Center, Jonathan Haidt addressed the participants of the annual meeting of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology. The topic was an ambitious one: a vision for social psychology in the year 2020. Haidt began by reviewing the field that he is best known for, moral psychology. Then he threw a curveball. He would, he told the gathering of about a thousand social-psychology professors, students, and post-docs, like some audience participation. By a show of hands, how would those present describe their political orientation? First came the liberals: a “sea of hands,” comprising about eighty per cent of the room, Haidt later recalled. Next, the centrists or moderates. Twenty hands. Next, the libertarians. Twelve hands. And last, the conservatives. Three hands.

Read it.

Like the fact that you can unlock your iPhone with your fingerprint? Well, maybe not:

A Circuit Court judge has ruled that a criminal defendant can be compelled to give up his fingerprint, but not his pass code, to allow police to open and search his cellphone.

The question of whether a phone’s pass code is constitutionally protected surfaced in the case of David Baust, an Emergency Medical Services captain charged in February with trying to strangle his girlfriend.

Judge Steven C. Frucci ruled this week that giving police a fingerprint is akin to providing a DNA or handwriting sample or an actual key, which the law permits. A pass code, though, requires the defendant to divulge knowledge, which the law protects against, according to Frucci’s written opinion.

Read it.

There have been at least three news stories over the past few days about the compulsory teaching of Islam in public schools. The most egregious one was from the UK, where a school sent out a letter to parents threatening to put a permanent “racist” notation on their children’s record unless the students were allowed to participate in a workshop on Islam — at parents’ own expense.

Then there were the parents in California who pulled their son from a school that was teaching him about Islam — not just the history of Islam, and not even just its practices, but the normative doctrines of Islam.

The third story concerns a father who was banned from the grounds of his daughter’s high school in Maryland after he vehemently protested the content on Islam contained in the curriculum for a course she was required to take.

Read it.

When there aren’t any Jews or Americans handy, Muslims are quite happy to murder other Muslims.

Steve Sailer is on the case.

Having watched the evolution of environmentalism among liberal Democrats in the Los Angeles area over the last 45 years, it’s really hard to take seriously the notion that modern liberalism is about Hope and Change and Opportunity and Equality and the Masses. It’s a lot more about: We’ve got a good thing here and we’re going to keep it.

…

Lots of people in Los Angeles own a vacation home in the desert near Palm Springs, because that is a big expanse of what was Republican terrain (although Sonny Bono’s widow lost the Palm Springs seat in the House to a Latino Democrat in the last election). But Los Angeles is already a desert so the appeal of getting away to an even hotter desert has always eluded me. Getting away to the beach, however, is a great idea, which is why people like Rob Reiner do it, and don’t want you to do it.

Read it.

Geert Wilders, the leader of the Party for Freedom (Partij voor de Vrijheid, PVV) in the Netherlands, is facing yet another “hate speech” prosecution for his public remarks about Islam and Moroccans.

Read it.

Claudia Bandion-Ortner is a prominent Austrian politician and judicial official who also happens to be the Deputy Secretary General of the King Abdullah Bin Abdulaziz International Center for Interreligious and Intercultural Dialogue, a Vienna think tank funded in large part by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

Thanks to the recent rise of the Islamic State, Austrians, like most Westerners, have become more aware of the “fundamentalist” brand of Islam as practiced by the mujahideen of ISIS. The more astute members of the Austrian public have noticed the essential similarity between the doctrines, habits, and customs of Saudi Arabia and those of the Islamic State.

Judge Bandion-Ortner’s role has come under public scrutiny as a result of this heightened awareness. She got herself into a bit of trouble last week after giving an interview to a major news outlet. Public outrage was aroused by her ill-considered remarks about public beheadings in Saudi Arabia, but that’s not really the most appalling thing about this interview; it’s simply the most sensational. Her more humdrum responses are even worse: they reveal someone who has moved far beyond the status of “useful idiot” and become an active collaborator with Islam.

Read it.

Well: Obama. This Voice of the Crust can’t say that, of course, so they round up the usual suspects.

USB Travel Shaver.

Telescoping Snow Broom.

Gorilla Grip Gloves.