Society's ChildS


Robot

Rise of the machines: Company owned by Google shares video of robot Atlas performing human functions


RT
Wed, 24 Feb 2016 18:34 UTC
atlas robot
© Boston Dynamics / YouTube
Google-owned Boston Dynamics scared the bejeezus out of the world this week by releasing video of its humanoid robot Atlas, a possible breakthrough for the cyborg takeover of Earth.

In a video that is simultaneously mesmerizing and creepy, the newest version of the 5ft 9in (175cm), two-legged cyborg is shown navigating snow-covered terrain, lifting 10lb (4.5kg) boxes with ease, and resisting a human's attempt to knock it over.

Engineers are also seen taunting and teasing Atlas by repeatedly knocking one of the boxes out of its hands with a hockey stick, which could backfire later if the robot develops revenge programming.

"It uses sensors in its body and legs to balance and LIDAR and stereo sensors in its head to avoid obstacles, assess the terrain, help with navigation and manipulate objects," Boston Dynamics said about the 180lb (82 kg) machine.

The video ends with the robot opening a door and exiting the building, presumably to go plot the fall of mankind.

Earlier this month, the company showed off their four-legged robot, Spot, and, again, staff were shown repeatedly kicking their creation as it slowly built up a resentment for humans.

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Heart - Black

Cecil effect: Zimbabwe wildlife preserve considering culling 200 lions due to overpopulation


RT
Wed, 24 Feb 2016 18:00 UTC
lion eating prey
© Noor Khamis / Reuters
The largest wildlife reserve in Zimbabwe said it may be forced to cull 200 of its lions after the predator's population "exploded" due to hunters being scared off by international outrage over the killing of Cecil the lion last year.

Bubye Valley Conservancy, which is home to more lions than anywhere else in the south African country, said that the population of over 500 was too much for the reserve, the National Post reports.

The big cats have been decimating the population of antelopes and giraffes, and even wild dogs, cheetahs, and leopards, which have become easy prey after a dry summer left the grass short.

Bubye Valley now fears that it will have to kill more than a third of its lions to ensure the survival of other species. The conservancy has appealed to other reserves across Africa, asking them to take the predators in to avoid a worst case scenario.
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Cheese

What's with all the Chuck E. Cheese melees?

Piper McGowin
The Daily Sheeple
Tue, 23 Feb 2016 17:23 UTC
Chuck E. Cheese band
How many times are we going to see a scene like this coming out of a Chuck E. Cheese? Is it the bright lights? The abundance of electromagnetic frequencies? The creepy animatronic puppet band?

Here's a recent scene fresh out of a Chuck E. Cheese in Manchester, Connecticut:

Comment: Society has disintegrated so much that concepts such courtesy, politeness and basic manners have taken a back seat gladiator-like brawls over minor infractions. Treating others with civility is Basic Humanity 101 and remedial lessons are long overdue in these cases.

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Eye 2

Refugee teen who took course on how to behave towards women charged with raping female social worker


RT
Wed, 24 Feb 2016 16:52 UTC
refugees on cellphones
A 16-year-old Afghan refugee, who had recently taken a course on how to behave towards women, has been charged with raping a female employee at a refugee shelter in Belgium. The center's spokeswoman told RT he had had "an eye on her for quite some time."

The incident took place in the Belgian town of Menan near the French border. The minor, who "has been staying in the center in Menan already for five months," followed the "young cook into the basement," where he allegedly raped her, An Luyten, a spokeswoman for the Red Cross Flanders, told RT.

She added that the teenager "apparently already had an eye on her for quite some time."

Belgian prosecutors confirmed that the Afghan minor had attacked the young woman, who works for a catering firm providing services to the Menan refugee center, adding that a judge had ordered that the suspect be detained in youth custody until his next hearing.

Comment: Are Muslim men unable to control themselves because they are raised in a society where women are veiled? What ARE the justifications for the Hijab? It seems to make Muslim men weak and unable to control themselves. God certainly doesn't care...

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Red Flag

Hystericization: Parents upset when school assigns homework asking children to write Muslim conversion letter


RT
Wed, 24 Feb 2016 16:47 UTC
classroom
© Jean-Paul Pelissier / Reuters
Parents in Guernsey were shocked to hear about a creative writing homework which asked their children to write a letter saying they had converted to Islam.

The exercise in creative writing was part of a Religious Education lesson, where students were instructed to write the letter while thinking about how it might affect their feelings and the feelings of those around them.

But parents of the 12-and 13-year-old children complained that the exercise was insensitive, given that many British young people had converted to Islam and traveled to Syria to fight with extremist group Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL).

Currently less than 1 percent of Guernsey's population is Muslim, and the island's local authorities recently refused to accept any Syrian refugees, the MailOnline reported.
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Book 2

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

Michael S. Rosenwald
Washington Post
Mon, 22 Feb 2016 16:37 UTC
john grisham novel
© fusfoundation.orgAuthor John Grisham has written “The Tumor,” 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.

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2 + 2 = 4

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

Patrick Deneen
mindingthecampus.org
Tue, 02 Feb 2016 16:09 UTC
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.


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Magic Hat

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


RT
Wed, 24 Feb 2016 16:32 UTC
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."

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Dollars

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


RT
Wed, 24 Feb 2016 16:06 UTC
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.
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Apple Red

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

Claire Bernish
The Free Thought Project
Tue, 23 Feb 2016 15:55 UTC
FBI and Apple graphic
PoliceOne.com, which describes itself as "the #1 resource for law enforcement online," has sided with Apple — instead of the FBI — 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)."
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