Society's ChildS

Book 2

John Grisham is giving his newest book away for free to promote new cancer treatment

john grisham novel
© fusfoundation.orgAuthor John Grisham has written โ€œThe Tumor,โ€ a fictional account of how a real medical technology could affect the future of medicine and is giving it away to spread the word
There are no lawyers or courtrooms in John Grisham's new thriller. There is not even a single bad guy.

The protagonist is Paul, a 35-year-old suburbanite with a pretty wife, three beautiful children, and a tumor quietly swelling in his brain. One day his wife hears a loud thump in the bathroom.

"She finds him on the floor," Grisham writes, "shaking in a full-blown grand mal seizure."

And so begins "The Tumor," one of the stranger literary digressions in recent memory. Against the wishes of his agent, editor and publisher, the author famous for (and rich from) legal thrillers, from "The Firm" to "The Rogue Lawyer," just published a free book whose hero is a medical device called focused ultrasound.

Grisham says it's the most important book of his career.

"I write escapist popular fiction that entertains," Grisham said in an interview. "It's entertainment. It doesn't pretend to be literature or anything else. But 'The Tumor' has the potential to one day save or prolong millions of lives."

Focused ultrasound is a non-invasive treatment in development for cancer and other diseases that uses energy beams to destroy diseased tissues. How it became Grisham's 38th book is a question many of his devoted readers have been wondering since it came out late last month.


2 + 2 = 4

Professor Patrick Deneen explains how kids have become a generation of know-nothings

know-nothings
© theswcsun.com
My students are know-nothings. They are exceedingly nice, pleasant, trustworthy, mostly honest, well-intentioned, and utterly decent. But their brains are largely empty, devoid of any substantial knowledge that might be the fruits of an education in an inheritance and a gift of a previous generation. They are the culmination of western civilization, a civilization that has forgotten nearly everything about itself, and as a result, has achieved near-perfect indifference to its own culture.

It's difficult to gain admissions to the schools where I've taught - Princeton, Georgetown, and now Notre Dame. Students at these institutions have done what has been demanded of them: they are superb test-takers, they know exactly what is needed to get an A in every class (meaning that they rarely allow themselves to become passionate and invested in any one subject); they build superb resumes. They are respectful and cordial to their elders, though easy-going if crude with their peers. They respect diversity (without having the slightest clue what diversity is) and they are experts in the arts of non-judgmentalism (at least publically). They are the cream of their generation, the masters of the universe, a generation-in-waiting to run America and the world.

Comment: The Untold History of Modern U.S. Education
Education must also train one for quick, resolute and effective thinking. To think incisively and to think for one's self is very difficult. We are prone to let our mental life become invaded by legions of half-truths, prejudices, and propaganda. At this point, I often wonder whether education is fulfilling its purpose.

A great majority of the so called educated people do not think logically or scientifically. Even the press, the classroom, the platform, and the pulpit in many instances do not give us the objective and unbiased truths. To save man from the morass of propaganda, in my opinion, is one of the chief aims of education.

Education must enable one to sift and weigh evidence, to discern the true from the false, the real from the unreal, and the facts from the fiction. The function of education, therefore, is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically. But education which stops with efficiency may prove the greatest menace to society.

The most dangerous criminal may be the man gifted with reason, but with no morals." - Martin Luther King Jr.



Magic Hat

Planet of the Apes? UK zoo performs c-section on gorilla

baby gorila
© Bristol Zoo / YouTube
Led by a gynecologist for humans, a team of veterinarians successfully carried out a rare caesarian section in the UK and delivered a baby gorilla, Bristol Zoo announced Tuesday.

When the expectant mother's life was found to be at risk with symptoms of pre-eclampsia, doctors started a three-hour operation which has been performed in "only a handful of instances" worldwide.

In a scene reminiscent of the Ridley Scott classic Alien, the yet-to-be-named baby Western Lowland gorilla, which is classed as "critically endangered", is shown being delicately removed from her mother's womb.

"The birth of any gorilla is a rare and exciting event, but the birth of a baby gorilla by caesarean section is even more unusual," said the zoo's senior curator of animals, John Partridge. "It wasn't a decision that we took lightly. Kera [the mother] was becoming quite poorly and we needed to act fast in order to give the best possible treatment to mother and baby, and to avoid the possibility of losing the baby."


Dollars

Court orders Johnson & Johnson to pay $72 million to family in ovarian cancer case

baby powder
© Lucas Jackson / Reuters
A Missouri court has ordered pharmaceutical giant Johnson & Johnson to pay $72 million in damages to the family of a woman who claimed that the company's talcum powder caused the ovarian cancer that killed her within three years.

Alabama resident Jacqueline Salter Fox filed a lawsuit prior to her death in October 2015. Her complaint was part of a broader claim in Missouri, which involved nearly 60 people.

Following Fox's death at the age of 62, her son took over as a plaintiff in the case. Fox's family will now receive $10 million in actual damages and $62 million in punitive damages, a circuit court in St. Louis ruled on Monday.

In her suit, Fox said she had used Baby Powder and Shower to Shower for feminine hygiene for more than 35 years before being diagnosed with ovarian cancer three years ago. Her attorneys argued that Fox's terminal ovarian cancer was directly caused by the talc inside the personal hygiene products.

Apple Red

Hell freezing over? Top police website stands with Apple against the FBI

FBI and Apple graphic
PoliceOne.com, which describes itself as "the #1 resource for law enforcement online," has sided with Apple โ€” instead of the FBI โ€” in the ongoing encryption debate over the iPhone used by one of the San Bernardino shooters.

PoliceOne Editor-in-Chief Paul Wyllie penned an op-ed on Thursday, titled, "Rapid Response: Why Apple shouldn't give in to the FBI.," The article explains "the FBI wants Apple to disable the auto-erase function in the operating system (which erases the device completely if too many incorrect passwords are attempted) and remove the time delay between the input of password attempts (which would ostensibly speed up the brute-force method of attempting to unlock the phone)."

Info

YouGov survey reveals more Britons support socialism than capitalism

Britain's opposition Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn
© Neil Hall / Reuters
Capitalism is falling out favor with Britons, while the popularity of socialism is on the rise, a new YouGov survey has revealed.

The survey found that a small majority of British people preferred socialism, with 36 percent responding that they held a favorable view of the ideology, compared with 32 percent who said that they viewed it negatively.

Cell Phone

Microsoft founder Bill Gates supports FBI access to San Bernardino iPhone for 'this specific case'

Bill Gates
© Saul Loeb / AFPBill Gates, co-chair of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and founder of Microsoft.
Microsoft founder Bill Gates supports both sides of the debate between the FBI and Apple over unlocking the iPhone at the heart of the San Bernardino shooting case โ€’ but only in this "specific case," he says. And that puts him at odds with Silicon Valley.

At issue is the work cellphone of Syed Rizwan Farook โ€’ who, along with his wife, carried out the December terrorist attack in California. The FBI โ€’ supported by a judge's ruling โ€’ and the Department of Justice want Apple to help it hack into the phone. The tech company insists that this will "unprecedented step which threatens the security of our customers," as CEO Tim Cook wrote in an open letter.

Comment: See also: Tampering with evidence? Apple execs say San Bernardino iPhone password changed while in government custody


Bad Guys

NATO destroyed Libyan medical system, now 1 million near death due to lack of life-saving medicines

Libya
© AP Photo/ Mohamed Salama
UN humanitarian officials warned that a million people in Libya may soon require emergency assistance due to shortages of life-saving medicines.

An absence of any central authority in post-Gaddafi Libya, and the endless fighting between a large number of militias, is cultivating chaos in the country. Hospitals in Libya are either not functioning or in very poor condition due to anarchy following the 2011 insurrection that toppled Gaddafi.

"Our estimation is that by the end of March, Libya may run out of life saving medications which will impact about one million people," UN humanitarian coordinator for Libya Ali Al-Za'tari told Reuters on Monday. "If there is no medication and medical supplies coming in, that will be a real issue for Libya."

Comment: Compare the results of NATO's 'humanitarian intervention' slaughter with what Libya had under the alleged 'tyranny' of Gaddafi:
Libya shared ยฝ of all the its oil revenue with its 5.5 million population. All medical care was free, if you could not get the care you needed in Libya then you could travel wherever you needed with a family member and all costs and expenses were fully paid. Education was free and if you wanted to go outside to another University that was paid in full with a stipend. When a Libyan couple got married they received a $46,000 gift from the government to start their lives. Their first home, a 2,500 sq foot condominium cost 10% of their salary for 20 years and then it was theirs. Gasoline was 44 cents a gallon, all utilities were free. If you were hungry and had no money they hadhuge stores of food where you could get rice, milk, cheese, flour and money to buy meat. The average salary in Libya was the highest in Africa, higher than China or India at $15,800 a year. If you had a college education and could not find a job you received that money until you found a job.

The truth about Gaddafi's Libya, NATO's bombing, and the Benghazi 'consulate' attack



Pi

How do you fix schools? Maybe just give them more money

School lockers
Modern education reformers often repeat the idea that simply throwing more money at public schools isn't enough to improve them. As the Eric Hanushek, an economist at Stanford's conservative Hoover Institution who's done a great deal of academic writing on the subject, puts it, "We know that there's not much relationship between spending and performance." Rather than funnel more dollars to public education, the thinking goes, we need to change how funding gets used (which, in the minds of many, means strict standards enforced by a boatload of testing, plus weaker teachers' unions).

Palette

Heil Trump: British street artist gives 'The Donald' the Hitler treatment to "give voters the wake up call they need"

Trump Hitler artwork
© pegasusart / InstagramThe artwork was painted on the side of the Hen and Chicken pub in Bristol.
London street artist Pegasus has sent a clear message that he believes Donald Trump is a tyrant in the making. The artwork depicting the Republican presidential hopeful in the guise of Adolf Hitler was painted on the side of a pub in Bristol.

Pegasus told Mashable that the piece took five days from design to implementation and hopes that it will "give voters the wake up call they need."

Comment: Not a bad interpretation at all! It's nice to see artists helping people understand what it is they're really seeing!

See also: Obama (correctly) depicted as a murderous devil in downtown Moscow public video installation