Pot Churches; JW's Rushed Out; allah Baby; Bench Press; GM's Lost Plant; Aborting in Missouri; Abortion in Every Campuses; Nanocar Race; Red-eyed Mutants; 3D Fabric; and Brain Drug

Society

Colorado rejects attempt to ban pot churches coloradoan

The International Church of Cannabis is set to open in Denver on April 20th and has been billed as "the first large venue in the world where adults can legally consume cannabis in a social environment.” According to Steve Berke, the 113 year old church's new landlord, “Elevationists believe that one can find the path to spiritual fulfillment through the ritual use of cannabis.” The church doesn't plan on selling marijuana or accessories, but plans to host guest speakers, artists, comedians, musicians, and documentary film screenings. Despite the affiliation with marijuana, Berke insists: “this is not just a bunch of lazy stoners getting together to get high. We really want to impact [the] neighborhood. We want to do great things for the community.”

Human AI; Apple's Bubble; Christian Hate Speech; Employing Stay-at-Home Moms; Virtual Ads; Projected Reality; Japan Wants the Bomb; and Russia's Marching

Brain

Elon Musk launches Neuralink, a venture to merge the human brain with AI theverge

The company, which is still in the earliest stages of existence and has no public presence whatsoever, is centered on creating devices that can be implanted in the human brain, with the eventual purpose of helping human beings merge with software and keep pace with advancements in artificial intelligence. These enhancements could improve memory or allow for more direct interfacing with computing devices.

The Border Evacuation Plan; Sanhedrin Solicits Iran; NK's Preemptive Strike; Google's Widening Heel; Faster Security; Print Bacteria, Make Graphene; and Synthetic Embryos

Israel

Israel has mass evacuation plan in works should war erupt nydailynews

Israel is drawing up contingency plans to evacuate up to a quarter-million civilians from border communities to protect them from attacks from Hamas, Hezbollah or other Islamic militant groups.

'Beware of Jews' Retraction; Growing China; Stretching Philippines; AI Audit; Finding Recalled Cars; Brain 10x Faster Than Before; Google Filtering Hate; Sunscope; Third Arm Support; Defending Against the Hurtful; and Texan Bathrooms

Antisemitism

Artist behind 'beware of Jews' sign apologises for causing offence theguardian

Franck Allais, a freelance photographer, said the contentious sign was part of an artistic project, which includes depictions of a woman pulling a shopping trolley, a man pushing his wheelchair and a cat.

Allais said he intended the project to be a comment on identity and that the sign in Stamford Hill, one of the largest Hasidic communities in Europe, was not an antisemitic statement. He said he was left shaken by the offence he had caused.

I posted the original story of this 'antisemetic' act yesterday on the previous blog, but appears that I (as well as several others) jumped to conclusions about the intent. I appologize for my part in passing the original story around.

'Beware of Jews'; I Spied on Your Face; Criminal Intent; Unensuring Abortion; Spider Pigs; and Jacketing in

Antisemitism

'Beware of Jews' sign appears in Stamford Hill bbc

The sign depicts the silhouette of an orthodox Jewish man wearing a traditional Fedora hat and was spotted on a lamppost in Stamford Hill on Tuesday.

Valentine Cards for Your Same Half; Violent Christianity; Pope's Hebrew; ID Chips; The AI Bowl; Red Light in the Morning; Rattling China; Romania Backs Down; Mini-Brain Bleeds; and 12th Cave

Society

Same-sex Valentine's Day cards are on the shelves at Sainsbury's for the first time home.bt w!

The 'cute' cards have a simple design featuring illustrations of a man and a man, and a woman and a woman, along with the words ‘You + Me’.

Canada's Wedding Photographer; A Peace of Bowl; Sanctioning that Old Enemy; Vespa's Bot; and Mindreading Regulations

Society

Montreal photographer allegedly refuses to shoot gay wedding ctvnews.ca

“I mentioned that there’s only going to be one house, since we already live with each other, and I said there is no bride: we’re two guys.”

I haven't yet seen a less biased story, but I believe that this is the company's site: Premiere Production premiereproduction.net

Bio-Hacking Regulators; Communicating Thoughts; Computing Cataracts; I Spy with My Little AI; Free Russian Land; and Detailed Rings

Genetics

The FDA Is Cracking Down On Rogue Genetic Engineers gizmodo

Since the DIY bio community first developed in the early aughts, it has largely avoided government regulation. But in 2017, cheaper equipment and simpler genetic engineering technologies mean that garage scientists can dream much bigger than simply turning yellow yeast red. We now live in a world where anyone can order custom DNA sequences on the internet to tinker with in their home. And the rules that govern genetic engineering today were not written with the foresight that it would one day be possible for 30-year-old hobbyists in Mississippi to try their hand at genetically engineering dogs.

Boy Guides; Polygamy Unheard; TPP Down; The Gospel Preserved; Missile Accident; F25 AI; Hard Mining; Bendable Screens; and Memory Block

Society

Boys who think they are girls allowed to join [UK] Guides for first time telegraph.co.uk

Adult men who also identify their gender as female could become leaders too under radical new proposals to the traditional single-sex policy of girlguiding girlguiding.org.uk.

U.S. Supreme Court won’t hear ‘Sister Wives’ polygamy case fox13now

Utah Attorney General Sean Reyes' office had no comment Monday. Polygamists that FOX 13 spoke with were disappointed with the Supreme Court's decision, but vowed to push the Utah State Legislature for decriminalization.

Kentucky Pushes Back; The Very Bad, no Good, Terrible Church; Maximum Wage; Medical Toy; Think it, Shake It, Move it; Carefully Flooding California; and Northern Ireland Earthquake

Abortion

Kentucky abortion bills signed, effective immediately cnn

The first, House Bill 2, now requires a physician or technician to perform an ultrasound, describe and display the ultrasound images to the mother, and provide audio of the fetal heartbeat to the mother before she may have an abortion.

The second measure, Senate Bill 5, prohibits abortions in the state at or after 20 weeks of pregnancy. The bill would not apply in cases where an abortion is required to save the life of the mother or prevent serious risk of bodily harm to the mother, but it does not contain exceptions for cases of rape or incest.

20 Too Many, Yet Better; Licensed Priest in Horns; Jews, Forever; Short-Term Government; 8 Secret Data Requests; Wet-Dry Military; Forget Your Troubles; Robotic Touch; The Uber Blow Off; Google Spin Out; and No...It's Amazon Air

Abortion

Ohio Gov. Kasich Signs 20-Week Abortion Limit, Rejects 'Heartbeat Bill' npr.org

The so-called heartbeat bill, which Kasich rejected, was considered more vulnerable to legal challenge. Provisions of the measure would have essentially limited the period during which women could get an abortion to about six weeks, when many women don't even realize they're pregnant, reports the Associated Press.

Thought Monitor; Gilead Balm; Cleansing in South Sudan; Gambia's Defeat; Fly Me to Moon; and the Gig Economy

Brain

Fast fMRI tracks brain activity during human thought for first time medicalxpress t

By significantly increasing the speed of functional MRI (fMRI), researchers funded by the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (NIBIB) nibib.nih.gov have been able to image rapidly fluctuating brain activity during human thought. fMRI measures changes in blood oxygenation, which were previously thought to be too slow to detect the subtle neuronal activity associated with higher order brain functions. The new discovery that fast fMRI can detect rapid brain oscillations is a significant step towards realizing a central goal of neuroscience research: mapping the brain networks responsible for human cognitive functions such as perception, attention, and awareness.

...standard fMRI can only detect the blood flow coming to replenish an area of the brain several seconds after it has performed a function. It was generally accepted that this was the limit of what could be detected by fMRI—identification of a region in the brain that had responded to a large stimulus, such as a continuous 30 second "blast" of bright light.

Things Change Periodically; Building a Memory Catcher; Parental Group; Fat Bankers; UK Tries to Tango with Three; LGBT Goes to the UN; Working the Gender; Colombia's Peace; Globalist Fear: Italy's Nationalist Turn; More Power for Erdogan; And No Hollande in France

Science

It's official: Your Periodic Table is now obsolete sciencealert

Get ready to ring in 2017 with a brand new Periodic Table iupac.org, because four more elements have officially been added to the seventh row: nihonium (Nh), moscovium (Mc), tennessine (Ts), and oganesson (Og).

Also see Periodic table expands with elements named after Japan, Moscow, Tennessee phys.org

Edited Human; Finger Eye; AI Plays with Toys; Cyborg Society; Brain History; eKrona; Skylivery; Turkey's Descent; Russia's Navy in Action; High Bar; and Post-Truth

CRISPR

Chinese scientists use gene-editing techniques in humans for first time cnn

On October 28, genetically modified cells were injected into a patient at the West China Hospital in Chengdu with aggressive lung cancer, according to the scientific journal Nature.

Liao Zhilin, who handles communications for the team, told CNN "everything is going as planned," but would not go into details.

Lies Begetting Lies; The Racist Noose; Invoking God and Immigration Control; Russia's Texas-Sized Talk; Shrinking When Hot; and 3D Manufacturing Gallary

Depravity

Slippery slope: Study finds little lies lead to bigger ones sfgate

Neuroscientists at the University College London's Affective Brain Lab affectivebrain put 80 people in scenarios where they could repeatedly lie and get paid more based on the magnitude of their lies. They said they were the first to demonstrate empirically that people's lies grow bolder the more they fib.

The researchers then used brain scans to show that our mind's emotional hot spot — the amygdala — becomes desensitized or used to the growing dishonesty, according to a study published online Monday in the journal Nature Neuroscience .

While we take the (early, unverified) conclusions of physical changes in the brain with a grain of salt, the fact that ones conscience becomes desensitized (or hardened/seared) the more we intentionally sin is well attested to in the Bible. We sin naturally but the longer we do it, the "better" we get at suppressing the conscience's warning of our guilt. Just a couple examples include Ephesians 4:17-19 and 1 Timothy 4:1-3. Also consider the source of, and desire to, sin comes from the very core of who we are: Jeremiah 17:9. Finally, take to heart the dire warning of Christ of those who are known for lying (indeed, all who remain unrepentant until the end, with one possible fruit of an unrepentant heart being lying): Revelation 21:7-8

Isle of Civil Rebellion; Waves of Disruption; Breathtaking Theft; The British are Going; Separation Backpedal; South Africa Breaks Out; Colorado's Higher than Most; Brain Boost; Tiny, Slow Computer; Cute Robot Slaves; Juno Fail; Cubes in the Sky; Accident Fare; Connected Cars; and Weed Killing AI

Society

London couple go to Isle of Man for UK's first civil partnership bbc

The couple, who have two children, added: "We want a less encumbered, light-touch civil union that recognises our relationship on our terms, free from the trappings and social pre-conditions of marriage, while protecting our family financially and in law.

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.

LAPD Etector; NLP, huh?; Doing the Robot; Need Brains; Bouncing Mars Rover; Old Bones; Whales Go Pro; Quartet Sings Same Tune; Syria Across the Border; and Biggest Eye Going Live

Crime

Experts to create predictive tool to tackle hate crime in Los Angeles phys.org

Over the next three years, the team will be closely scrutinising data taken from Twitter and cross-referencing this with reported hate crimes in Los Angeles to develop markers, or signatures, which could indicate if, and where, a hate crime is likely to take place at a certain point in time, and then enable police officers to intervene.

Israel the Enemy's Ally; Syria, Israel, and the Golan Heights; Iranian Threats; Enough in Wukan; Philippines Boot; Fly By Reply; Dry and Stressed; 5 Pounds of Plastic; Keeping Out Bible Believers; Pixelated, Uncensored Photos; Japan and the Droids; Shakespeare Monkey; and Ripping Apart Superbugs

Israel

[OPIONION] A historic moment may be looming on the horizon for Israel. jpost

Now...we hear a different tone in the Arab world. Egyptian leader Abdel Fattah Sisi has revealed that he talks with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “a lot.” Israel is evidently cooperating with Egypt in the battle against Islamic fundamentalists in the Sinai. In July Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry visited Israel and declared that Israelis are not guilty of terrorism in the region. In August Sisi said that relations with Israel were “important” to Egypt and declared Egypt wanted close security ties with Israel.

Cleaning Out the Jews; The Atheist Woman Minister; Celebratory Prayer, Hurt Feelings; Heroin of the Book; Getting to Know You...; $4.4B Stealth Destroyer; App for the Blind; Water Spray Away; Video Pictures; and Balanced Roboting

Israel

PM: World silent as Palestinians seek ‘ethnic cleansing’ of Jews in West Bank timesofisrael v

Speaking in English in a video message posted on his Facebook page, Netanyahu asked whether people in other parts of the world would accept such demands in their own countries.

See also Netanyahu 'ethnic cleansing' comment against Palestinians draws U.S. rebuke reuters