Day's Headlines: Intolerant Religious Code Words; Unprotecting >24 Week Babies; The No Homework Experiment; Hiroshima-Sized Test; Russia Shows Off in Crimea; Volvo Miner; and Riding a 3 Wheelie

Friday, September 9, 2016

Intolerant Religious Code Words; Unprotecting >24 Week Babies; The No Homework Experiment; Hiroshima-Sized Test; Russia Shows Off in Crimea; Volvo Miner; and Riding a 3 Wheelie

Society

‘Religious freedom,’ ‘liberty’ just ‘code words’ for intolerance, U.S. Civil Rights chairman says washingtontimes

The remarks, released Thursday in a report on “Peaceful Coexistence: Reconciling Nondiscrimination Principles with Civil Liberties,” is the latest example of an increasingly hostile reception in liberal circles to one of the six specified rights at the core of the First Amendment — the “free exercise” of religion.

New York Can’t Block Late-Term Abortion in Certain Cases, Schneiderman Says nytimes

In a new legal opinion, Mr. Schneiderman said the 1970 state law, which criminalizes abortion past 24 weeks of pregnancy unless the mother’s life is endangered, did not square with the later Supreme Court decisions in Roe v. Wade and other cases.

An experiment in second grade: No homework. Then, see if test scores drop. washingtonpost

“The philosophy in second grade is that there is a lot of academic work going on during schools hours,” he said. “Typically, we were giving homework on top of it. We decided we wanted them only to worry about answering these questions: ‘Who am I going to play with today?’ ‘What activities am I involved in?’ ‘What is my family doing tonight?’ We didn’t want them worrying, ‘Am I going to have time to finish my homework tonight?’ ”

North Korea

North Korea Explodes Nuclear Warhead 'Bigger Than Hiroshima' news.sky

The country's fifth and seemingly largest nuclear test caused a 5.3-magnitude seismic event and was described by South Korea as "maniacal recklessness".

Also see Obama under fire after North Korean nuke test politico

...for years, U.S. intelligence officials and nuclear proliferation specialists have mostly rolled their eyes [at NK]. Not so anymore. The Friday test, which registered 5.3 in seismic magnitude and was immediately picked up by the international network established to monitor nuclear tests under the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, was believed to be about 10 kilotons, or equal to the bombs dropped by the United States on Hiroshima and Nagasaki to end World War II in 1945.

Russia

Russia holds large-scale military drills in Crimea therepublic

The drills, which began across southern Russia and Crimea earlier this week and have involved a total of over 120,000 troops, are some of the largest exercises Russia has held for years.

AI

Google’s DeepMind Achieves Speech-Generation Breakthrough bloomberg

U.K.-based DeepMind, which Google acquired for about 400 million pounds ($533 million) in 2014, developed an artificial intelligence called WaveNet that can mimic human speech by learning how to form the individual sound waves a human voice creates, it said in a blog post Friday. In blind tests for U.S. English and Mandarin Chinese, human listeners found WaveNet-generated speech sounded more natural than that created with any of Google’s existing text-to-speech programs, which are based on different technologies. WaveNet still underperformed recordings of actual human speech.

Auto Tech

Volvo is testing its self-driving tech nearly a mile under ground mashable v

Volvo volvo isn't going subterranean with its trucks simply for sport. Rather, it's keen to figure out how its autonomous technology can be applied to limited and geographically extreme areas. And I'd say it doesn't get a lot more limited or extreme than an underground mine.

3-wheeled electric vehicle set to go on sale this year sfgate

Two hundred people have already put down a refundable deposit of 250 Canadian dollars ($193) to get the Solo electrameccanica, Electra Meccanica spokesman Jeff Holland said. Those who put down deposits now can expect delivery after the first quarter of 2017. The company eventually hopes to sell the Solo globally.

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