Day's Headlines: Modern's Normalcy; Abolitionist Long Shot; Protesting to Kill; Climate Threshold Met; Burrito Air; Brain Complex; and 12k Suspended Officers

Tuesday, October 4, 2016

Modern's Normalcy; Abolitionist Long Shot; Protesting to Kill; Climate Threshold Met; Burrito Air; Brain Complex; and 12k Suspended Officers

Society

'Modern Family' to feature transgender child actor usatoday

Wednesday's episode will feature transgender actor Jackson Millarker. The 8-year-old Atlanta native will play Tom, a friend of Lily (Aubrey Anderson-Emmons) who comes over for a playdate.

Abortion

Florida Group Intends to Outlaw Abortion and Birth Control as First-Degree Murder slate w!

There’s no way this proposed amendment would ever make it onto the ballot—the organization would need to get a massive number of signatures, equal to 15 percent of the last presidential election turnout. This year, that would be more than 683,000 signatures, though that will change after this November’s election. After turning in the signatures by February 2018, the initiative would need 60 percent of the vote that November to become a constitutional amendment.

As a consistent liberal source, there's no surprise about the position taken by this author, but it's interesting for its use of the word 'extremist' to apply to those who would propose abolishing abortion. Having said that, be wary about the other side (the 'Christian' organization). While abolitionists (like this group) have the laudable goal of abolishing abortion entirely, they generally replace and/or equate the gospel with ending abortion. They take it so far as to attack other Christians pulpitandpen.org who regularly evangelize (such as James White and Tony Miano aomin.org) because of their 'incrementalism' position, as they call it (taking joy in even small, incremental changes to abortion laws and limited 'saving' of babies). The AHA folks may be genuine Christians (and there's little reason to doubt some certainly are), but seem to have fallen off page (or are near it) in their zeal for eliminating abortion. I sympathize with their desire to put a complete end to all abortion but, because we live in a fallen world, it's the gospel, and not the abolition of abortion, that is needed. To attack other Christians because they don't focus on ending abortion as primacy is eye-brow raising...but I'm all for the long-shot attempt at a law like this :)

Women in Poland strike to protest proposal for abortion ban sfgate

Many men — including public figures — joined the thousands of women on the streets of Warsaw, Gdansk, Wroclaw and elsewhere across the largely Catholic nation on what was dubbed "Black Monday." The country already has one of Europe's most restrictive abortion laws and opinion surveys show very little support for an even stricter law, despite the nation's deep Catholicism and conservative political direction.

Climate Change

Paris Climate Change Pact to Take Effect After EU Signs Up time

The deal cannot take effect until 55 countries, accounting for at least 55% of global emissions, have adopted it. Sixty-two have done so but they only accounted for about 52% of emissions.

The EU’s fast-track ratification takes the Paris Agreement past the 55% threshold. The handover to the U.N. of a legal document formally doing that is expected to happen by Friday.

Drones

Now Delivering: Google Brings Us Burritos by Drone bloomberg

In a closely guarded experiment involving the future of transportation, Project Wing -- a division of X, founded by Google and now a child of Alphabet Inc. -- is air-dropping fast-food onto the campus of Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University.

Brain

The Human Remembering Machine theatlantic

Simulating an entire, biologically realistic human brain remains an elusive goal with today’s hardware. The processing power that would be needed to pull off such a feat is mind-boggling. “It would be a nuclear power plant,” Horst Simon, a mathematician and the deputy director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory lbl.gov, told Popular Mechanics in 2009. “The electricity alone would cost $1 billion per year.” Since then, scientists have said they expect to be able to simulate a human-scale brain by 2019, but they still haven’t solved the problem of how to power such a simulation. (That said, Simon and others have successfully created computer simulations inspired by the number of synapses in the human brain—which is different than a biologically realistic model, but still one step toward that ultimate goal.)

Turkey

Turkey suspends 12,000 police officers independent.co.uk

The move came after the Interior Ministry launched an investigation into the police force, broadcaster CNN Turk reported, and a day after the Turkish government extended a state of emergency for another three months.

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