Apostasy
German Protestants officially renounce converting Jews to Christianity religionnews
“All efforts to convert Jews contradict our commitment to the faithfulness of God and the election of Israel,” the resolution read. That Christians see Jesus as their savior and Jews don’t is “a fact we leave up to God,” it said.
Actually, Paul was quite clear in Romans that there is one salvation for both Jews and Gentiles (ex: Romans 10:12), that none are saved outside of Christ, and he specifically discussed this issue of "what about the Jews" in multiple locations (including looking forward to a time when, through Christ, the future Jewish nation will be saved - ex: Romans 11:11-32). Additionally, in letters like Galatians, he went to great pains to warn believers from being deceived by "Judaizers" who were trying to add obeying the law as part of salvation and that attempts at obeying the law was actually a false gospel and really no gospel at all (ex: Galatians 1:6). He even recounts a rebuke he had for Peter for seperating from the Gentiles as if there was a special status for Jews in Christ (Galatians 2:11-21). There's far too much to cover in a quick mention like this, but suffice it to say that Jesus (a Jew speaking to Jews) said that He is the Way and no one gets to the Father but through Him (John 14:6). To say that Jews aren't to be evangelized is to not understand the Gospel.
Abortion
Woman Not Charged With Murder After She Tried to Kill Her Unborn Baby With a Coat Hanger lifenews
Anna Yocca, 32, of Murfreesboro, Tennessee, previously faced charges of attempted murder and aggravated assault against her baby son, who survives; but earlier this year, prosecutors agreed to drop the murder and assault charges and bring new charges against her.
Also see Woman Who Used Coat Hanger in Effort to Kill Unborn Son Charged With ‘Attempted Criminal Abortion’ christiannews
Conservative Indiana lawmaker proposes state abortion ban chicagotribune
Abortion-rights groups are certain to oppose the measure, and it is doubtful that it will advance in the Statehouse. But anti-abortion groups are emboldened by Donald Trump's election and hope the Republican president-elect will appoint Supreme Court justices who will overturn Roe v. Wade.
Death
Experiment to Raise the Dead Blocked in India sciencemag.org
In May, Himanshu Bansal, an orthopedic surgeon at Anupam Hospital in the north Indian state of Uttarakhand, announced plans to give around 20 brain-dead people a mix of interventions including injections of mesenchymal stem cells and peptides, and transcranial laser stimulation and median nerve stimulation. Transcranial laser stimulation involves shining pulses of near-infrared light into the brain; median nerve stimulation is the electrical stimulation of a major nerve that runs from the neck to the arm. Both techniques have been shown to improve cognition in patients with traumatic brain injury. Bioquark bioquark, a biotech firm based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, had agreed to supply the trial with peptides that are said to help regenerate brain cells.
AI
Woah, Google’s AI Is Really Good at Pictionary wired v
... the game gives you 20 seconds to draw an object on screen, and Google shouts out guesses as the time ticks down. And Google is good. It asked me to draw camouflage, a microwave, a hexagon, an umbrella, a baseball, and a crocodile, and the neural net guessed correctly every time
Herer's the game quickdraw.withgoogle (it got about 50% of mine right...not sure if the AI needs to be better, or I'm just REALLY HORRIBLE at drawing!)
Artificial intelligence used to predict whether your next selfie could be your last digitaltrends
In 2014, 15 people died while snapping a selfie, followed by 39 people in 2015, and 73 in the first eight months of 2016. So what, if anything, can be done about this escalating trend? That’s what a new research project carried out by researchers in India wants to find out.
Robots
Meet BALLU, UCLA's Humanoid Blimp Robot spectrum.ieee.org v
Strictly speaking, BALLU is more like a hybrid airship than a blimp: It’s not lighter than air, so it doesn’t float by itself, and requires some assistance (legs, in this case) for support and to control its motion. Since the robot’s legs don’t have to handle a bunch of weight, they can be skinny little twiggy things, and in fact there’s just one single degree of freedom per leg, in the knee. The knees are cable driven, with the actuators in BALLU’s feet, along with communications and power components. This results in a robot that has the majority of its mass at ground level, making it intrinsically stable, even as it walks forward, walks backward, steps sideways, turns, hops, and more. When we say “mass” we’re not talking about much: As you can see in the video, BALLU can walk on water.
Security
New York DA vs Apple encryption: 'We need new federal law to unlock 400 seized iPhones' zdnet
The DA argues that law-enforcement agencies do not want a backdoor to Apple and Google products, but rather a return to pre-September 2014, when Apple's encryption didn't prevent them from carrying out a search warrant on an iPhone.
Censorship
Professor Makes List Of Fake, Misleading News Sites You May Want To Avoid boston.cbslocal
Melissa Zimdars is an associate professor of communication and media at Merrimack College merrimack.edu in Massachusetts. She created a public Google document of “false, misleading, clickbait-y, and/or satirical “news” sources” that started as a resource for her students, but now has been shared by national media outlets like The Los Angeles Times.
Telling is her list of 'trusted' sites:
What sites does Zimdars trust? She says she gets her information from mainstream media sources like The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, The Atlantic and National Public Radio.
Also see After Trump, Americans want Facebook and Google to vet news. China likes that. chicagotribune
Industry
Trump: Ford Won’t Close Plant; Ford: That Was Never the Plan voanews
U.S. President-elect Donald Trump said Ford Motor Co Executive Chairman Bill Ford Jr. told him the automaker would not move a Kentucky plant to Mexico, but the firm said it informed him the decision was to keep one vehicle in U.S. production.
Military
US Army Ranked 'Weak' In New Think Tank Report zerohedge
The group's Army assessment is the same from last year (the index began in 2015) and stems from the service's decision to decrease the size of the force and delay equipment upgrades to improve readiness -- yet only a third of its units are prepared for war, according to the document.
Russia
Russia moves to block professional networking site LinkedIn washingtonpost
Roskomnadzor rkn.gov.ru, Russia's communications authority, told Interfax news agency on Thursday that the website would be blocked within 24 hours, and a number of Internet service providers appeared to have immediately begun blocking the website, according to media reports.
Also see U.S. says concerned over Russia blocking access to LinkedIn reuters
Research
Laser used to control mouse's brain — and speed up milkshake consumption nature
Neuroscientists at Stanford University in California conducted their experiments on mice that were genetically engineered to have light-sensitive neurons in a brain region called the orbitofrontal cortex. That area is involved in perceiving, and reacting to, rewards. By shining a laser at specific neurons, the researchers increased the pace at which the mice consumed a high-calorie milkshake. The results, reported on 12 November at the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience in San Diego, California, illustrate for the first time that the technique, known as optogenetics, can control behaviour by activating a sequence of individual cells.
Ice Repellent Coating Ready for Winter rdmag
Researchers from Colorado State University colostate.edu have developed an ice-repellent coating that outperforms the best de-icing products on the market.
Arun Kota, an assistant professor of mechanical engineering and biomedical engineering, led a research group to create a gel-based, soft coating made of polydimethylsiloxane—a silicone polymer gel with widespread industrial use.
Rodent trials suggest screen-addiction hurts child development engadget
The test exposed young mice to flashing lights and TV audio for six hours a day for half a dozen weeks. Mice that grew up in this environment were found to have fewer nerve cells in the hippocampus -- the part of the brain responsible for learning and memory. The test subjects also had memory problems and were less cautious than unstimulated adult counterparts.
I've included because the mental image of mice using an iPhone is amusing...but I'm not really confident that flashing lights at them is quite the same thing as people using smart phones :)
Liquid silicon chips could integrate hardware, software for performance boost digitaltrends
The term liquid silicon is being applied to new chip designs that merge hardware and software in single units capable of performing complex calculations and storing large amounts of data. These liquid silicon chips then communicate with the rest of the system in an efficient fashion.
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