Denial in Graffiti; Boy Dolls; Garfield's Male???; Eno the Binary Chatbot; Religious Liberty in South Dakota; Calls for Even More Abortion; Muddied god; and 3D Printed Grenade Launcher

I know it has been a couple weeks since my last post! I had the opportunity to attend Shepherds Conference a couple weeks ago, which took all my time (and energy!). Last week I played catch up to make up for being off the previous week, and decided to give myself an extra week off from this blog for some breathing room.

But don't worry: In my absence it appears the world has continued to spin...along with the media, politicians, and even tech gurus :) I'm glad to be back, and look forward to getting back in the swings of things.

BTW: There were several great speakers at Shepherds! I hope to post links to a few of them here once they make the media available.

Antisemitism

Seattle synagogue vandalized with Holocaust denial graffiti cnn

Temple De Hirsch Sinai was spray-painted with graffiti calling the Holocaust "fake history," Rabbi Daniel Weiner said.

Oldest Alphabet; Metal Attack; The Law of Heatbeats; Unborn Test Extension; Robotic Galago; Light Energy; Predicting Materials; Robot Glove; Shortening Giraffe; Saturn Dive Images; Robo Cop; Hype Over Mind; Unstaffed Bank; Sappy AI Music; and Forcing the Peace Issue

Archeaology

Expert claims inscriptions from Egyptian exodus proves Hebrew is world’s oldest alphabet jpost

While critics argue that the original alphabet likely derived from a grouping of Afro-Asiatic languages – including Akkadian, Aramaic, Phoenician, Ethiopic and Hebrew – [professor] Petrovich claims that an inscription discovered on an ancient Egyptian stone slab in 2012 proves his case.

Petrovich said he subsequently translated 16 more Hebrew inscriptions from four other ancient slabs discovered in Egypt and Sinai, including one from 1446 BCE, which describes Moses as a figure heralded by the ancient Jews shortly before he led the exodus from Egypt.

Point, Click, Hover; Printed Car Closer; Electronic Synapses; Modern Jewish Kingdom in Ancient Babylon; UN Gasps!; Not Pharaoh; Mr. Mandela Goes to Palestine; NK Readying Next Missile; Abu Who?; Fruit Ninja Weather; 12 Black Holes, Sitting in a Row; Ken Ham Caricature; Methodists Pressure North Carolina; Church of Norway Exodus; Digital Money Tracks Well; and If End Time Theology was a Popularity Contest

Got a crazy mashup of worldviews today! From bashing Ken Ham because public school students go to his museum, to denying that the Biblical Pharaoh was Egyptian, to Methodists lobbying for whatever-you-say-you-are bathrooms in North Carolina. Also Nelson Mandela has been "raised" in the West Bank with a cry of peace and death to Israel.

Drones

The Hover Camera will follow you around and record your entire life mashable v

The Hover Camera is also unlike drones in that it truly hovers after powering it on. You simply let go of it and it'll hover in the air at the altitude (up to 164 feet high) which you let it go at

Personal, small flying drones that can pick indivduals out of a crowd, follow them, and record what they are doing. What could go wrong? For a fuller story on the company, itself, see Zero Zero's Camera Drone Could Be a Robot Command Center in the Future v

Pentagon's 582 Billion; NK Gets Another Finger Wagging; Jordan Warns Israel over Temple Mount Visits; Israel Not Green Enough to Exist; Senate to Obama - Fund Israel; Exodus Reminder; Law of United Methodists Broken; Bakery Turned Away; Peace Everywhere...But Don't Look Hard; EU Bitcoin Exchange; Earth x 3 Sunspot; Skull Password; Google and Gov - BFF?; and Fire by Meteor

Miltary Budget

Pentagon wants $582bn in 2017 budget, quadrupling of spending in Europe rt

Carter said the budget was guided by five factors: the rise of power from Russia and China; the threat of North Korea to the US and its Pacific allies; Iran's “malign influence” against allies in the Gulf; and the ongoing fight against Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL).

SecurAIty; Future Tech Dream'n; When Reality is Fantasy; Pepper Goes for a Sail; Bentley Been There; Egyptian Amulet Found at Temple Mount; Israel Makes U.S. So...GRRR!; Merkel and Abbas Joining Hands; Ecuador's Shaken and out of Cash; Partial for Turkey (Mosques); Ancient Lizards Sure Look Modern; Old Rocket Scuffle; Circuit Court Trans-Sends Virginia Out; and the Joys of Global Rule Making

Things are heating up between the US and Israel, Bentley talks about what it's going to do now that peasants will be driven around also, and a long, fascinating look at how a "mixed-reality" company intends to shape our future-reality.

AI

MIT develops system that can detect 85% of cyberattacks using artificial intelligence ibtimes.co.uk

Rather than requiring cybersecurity analysts to spend all day analysing huge amounts of data that may or may not be a sign that cybercriminals are attacking a network, AI2 is instead trained to pick out the 200 most abnormal events it has detected during that day.

The human expert looks at the events and picks out which events relate to a cyberattack, and as days pass by, the computer learns how to identify more and more of the events as attacks, accurately, by itself – meaning that, eventually, the cybersecurity analyst might only need to look at 30-40 flagged events per day.

Pipe Flares; Google and BOFA Jump On-board; Military Suicide; NK in Semi-War Mode; Obama and Xi Shake Their Fist Some More; Resurrecting the Book of the Dead; Theology without Christ; Programming Cells; Smoking DNA; AI vs AI; Automated Lawyer; NASA Too Eager?; Amazon and Microsoft Joining the Street Fight; and Blockchain

Caution: Today is April 1st - I've done my best to watch out for prank articles, but if you find one that I fell for on this list, let me know!

Terrorism

Incendiary devices found hanging on Tyngsborough power lines   bostonglobe

Federal, state, and local authorities Thursday said they could find nothing to suggest the devices were installed as part of a terror plot. But they said the incident, which involved objects resembling pipe bombs, had targeted a key electrical link between Canada and the Northeastern United States.

Also Incendiary Devices Found On Power Lines In Tyngsboro

Society

Google Ventures Bans Investments in North Carolina   recode.net

Google Ventures, now known as GV, has joined a growing list of tech and corporate heavyweights speaking out against North Carolina’s HB 2, a law that the companies say discriminates against transgender people in the state.

They continue to line up. See also Bank of America Joins Backlash Against North Carolina LGBT Law

U.S. military suicides remain high for 7th year   usatoday

The Pentagon reported Friday that 265 active-duty service members killed themselves last year, continuing a trend of unusually high suicide rates that have plagued the U.S. military for at least seven years.

Heartbreaking.

North Korea

North Korea to pursue nuclear and missile programmes   uk.reuters

North Korea will pursue its nuclear and ballistic missile programme in defiance of the United States and its allies, a top Pyongyang envoy said on Friday, adding that a state of "semi-war" now existed on the divided Korean peninsula.

Obama and Xi agree to fully crack down on North Korea   businessinsider

"Both leaders committed... to strengthen coordination in addressing the shared threat presented by North Korea's pursuit of nuclear weapons and ballistic missile systems," the White House said.

Also see North Korea fires another missile into sea

Paganism

Spanish Archaeologists Try to Reconstruct Fragments of the Ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead   ancient-origins

For the last 14 years, twenty archaeologists, Egyptologists, and Spanish specialists have been working on the southern foot of the hill of Dra Abu el-Naga with a team of over a hundred Egyptian workers. During this time, they have united their efforts and been studying every part of the area, and scrutinizing every centimeter of a vast necropolis which is overflowing with burials from different eras.

There seems to be a certain obsession with translating this book lately...

Apostasy

Christianity is no longer compulsory for Oxford Theology students   christiantoday

The reduction in compulsory modules for second and third year students will enable other papers to be taken, including "feminist approaches to religion and theology" and "Buddhism in space and time".

Biology

A programming language for living cells   mit.edu

MIT biological engineers have created a programming language that allows them to rapidly design complex, DNA-encoded circuits that give new functions to living cells.

Smoking During Pregnancy Seems to Alter Fetal DNA   webmd

For the study, researchers collected blood samples from newborns, mainly from the umbilical cord. Compared to babies of nonsmokers, those born to regular smokers had over 6,000 spots where DNA was chemically modified.

AI

China To Face Off Against AlphaGo With Own AI Team   androidheadlines

An A.I. development team out of China, called China Computer Go Team, has announced that they have their own Go-playing A.I. in development. While an A.I. capable of playing Go at all is an accomplishment, this team has decided that’s not quite enough. Instead, they intend to develop their A.I. with the goal of challenging AlphaGO at its own native game.

Appeal Parking Tickets Via Bot in New York City   fortune

A parking-lawyer web robot that has saved British drivers nearly $4 million in fines over the past several months is now ready to help Americans, starting with New Yorkers, by appealing their tickets for free.

Complete with creepy eye icon for the bot

Space

ASAP concerned NASA is taking risks to meet Orion schedule   nasaspaceflight

NASA’s key advisory body has warned the agency that schedule pressure, in combination with cost pressure, is causing compromises that carry additional risk. Focusing on the Orion spacecraft, NASA’s Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel (ASAP) claimed NASA is “taking risk after risk” to meet the schedule for Orion’s opening missions.

Automation

Amazon, Microsoft look for big data role in self-driving cars   reuters

Amazon, Microsoft look for big data role in self-driving cars

Banking

Blockchain--What You Need to Know   prnewswire

Spearheaded by Bitcoin, blockchains achieve consensus among distributed nodes, allowing the transfer of digital goods without the need for centralized authorisation of transactions.

Other...

Scientists may have just uncovered an ancient Viking site in North America   businessinsider

HOW DID THE APOLLO COMMAND AND SERVICE MODULES SEPARATE?   popsci

Interesting videos about something you never even once wondered about