Daily Archives: June 6, 2017

Trump assails ‘political correctness’ in tweet on terror attacks – Fox News

Posted: June 6, 2017 at 6:21 am

President Trump on Sunday responded to the London terror attack, suggesting political correctness and the London mayors softresponse are contributing to strikes by radical Islamic terrorists.

Seven people were killed and dozens of others were injured in the two Saturday night attacks on and near the London Bridge. Police are investigating the incidents as terror attacks, but no terror group has yet to claim responsibility.

"We must stop being politically correct and get down to the business of security for our people. If we don't get smart it will only get worse, Trump tweeted first.

The president has from the start of his successful 2016 presidential campaign argued that the key to stopping global terror strikes is to address radical Islamic teachings and being more vigilant about allowing people into the United States from mostly-Muslim countries that are hotbeds for terror training.

"At least 7 dead and 48 wounded in terror attack and Mayor of London says there is "no reason to be alarmed! Trump also tweeted.

Trump also posted on Twitter about the attacks: Do you notice we are not having a gun debate right now? That's because they used knives and a truck!

A spokesperson for Mayor Sadiq Khan said the mayor is busy working with the police, emergency services and the government" and"has more important things to do than respond to Donald Trump's ill-informed tweet."

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Theocrat Blames Evolution for Racist Murder – Patheos (blog)

Posted: at 6:18 am

A couple weeks ago a University of Maryland student who was a hardcore racist murdered a black student from another school. David Whitney from the Christian Reconstructionist group Institute on the Constitution naturally blames it all on the teaching of evolution.

As in all public schools, evolution is inculcated and it teaches that there is no Creator God and that everything in the universe came into existence by chance and mistake, accident and is wholly without purpose and without meaning of any kind, Whitney preached. He was taught that mankind, including himself, was nothing more than a long compilation of mistakes and mutations and chance occurrences.

We should not be surprised then if Sean, with that background and education, concluded that life is meaningless, without any purpose at all, he continued. Or, if there is a purpose in life, it would be to advance and further the process of evolution; a process in which the strong destroy the weak and indeed, ultimately, that is the purpose for existence. Survival of the fittest therefore has some rather dastardly consequences which we see in the murder committed by a secular humanist of a Christian young man.

Evolution is also the basis of racism, [and] many assert that racism played a role in the motivation for this murder, Whitney said. You see, evolution is essentially racist. So where did Sean Urbanski learn racism? He learned it in his classes on evolution at the local public high school that his parents sent him to and his parents funded that school by the payment of their property taxes.

Riiiiight. Thats why every other modern nation in the world, where the teaching of evolution is not the least bit controversial like it is here, has far lower rates of violent crime, particularly murder. And obviously all of those religious wars that killed millions of people before Darwin wrote On the Origin of Species were still the fault of evolution somehow. Cause and effect seems to be a very elusive concept to the wingnut mind. I mean, the murder rate among evolutionary biologists must be huge, amirite?

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CRE Opinion: Revolution, Evolution, Or A Slow Death! – D Magazine – D Magazine

Posted: at 6:18 am

Bruce Carlson of CM Architecture.

We have all heard or seen the daily (hourly) refrain from the media about how retail is dead and how we will all live only through the Internet.

By now, you have been back from ICSC RECon (a global real estate convention) for almost two weeks, and your feet have stopped hurting, and your eyes are less red!

In addition to RECon, I have been to two seminars recently on the East and West Coasts listening to senior leaders of retailers, developers, shopping mall owners, and mall management companies. What have we been learning?

There is a lot of agreement about the shopping business in America. They are saying things like:

Some retailers are just bad operators. They should fail.

One billion square feet of retail needs to go away.

We may not be overbuilt, we are just under demolished.

You get the idea.

But there is also this:

Business is really pretty good, if only the media would stop dwelling on the negative.

All of our centers are more than 95 percent occupied.

We have set aside hundreds of millions of dollars to renovate and improve our malls.

We need to add more mixed uses.

We need to think about what we are going to do with those huge parking lots in this era of Uber and Lyft, with self-driving cars right around the corner.

So, there is also a flip side to the doom and gloom. We are in a time of change and retail is evolving. I heard an interesting comment that the media made about itself. It said, The media bias is neither liberal or conservative, it is negative about all things! It apparently is no fun to write anything positive about shopping malls or retail stores. Lets put a negative spin on the news about retail.

There is clearly an intent by most people in the retail and restaurant business to figure it out. There is consensus that we are in a reset period. We are seeing Internet retailers beginning to build brick and mortar. Some existing retailers are dying. Its an industry in flux.

So, if you are a mall owner, have money to spend, good occupancy, and are well located, what are you interested in doing to your facility to keep the shoppers coming in and your center vibrant? You are going to try to create a place that is unique, speaks to the shoppers heart, is innovative, creates an experience, is local, artisanal, is a touchpoint, mixes in new uses, adds in more food and beverage, and looks clean, sparkly, and brand new! Recognize that restaurants with famous named chefs can bring steady foot traffic to your center. Discount retailers also drive shopper traffic because their inventory changes frequently and they can take up a lot of square footage. There is a demand for grocers in centers. Add some entertainment! Make the mall a fun, inviting venue that people want to visit.

For retailers, staff members need to have access to technology and be trained on how to use it to meet customer needs and requests. That means continuous training on a variety of electronic devices that can check inventory, interact with other store representatives to further answer questions, or check product availability at other locations. The staff need to be very attentive to the customers requests. Store and company leaders need to talk to their customers, understand that not one fashion or product answer will work for every region, recognize that there are variables (weather, custom, culture, etc.) that will significantly influence what customers want, what they will buy, and stay ahead of the trends.

So, the question then becomes, who is doing that? Where can I go, and see where this has been successfully done? Certainly, there are some malls doing this, but there are some other venues relying on captive audiences on a repeat basis that have made or are making many of the creative improvements. Visit the recently opened Legacy West in Plano. Take a trip to Houston and see what changes and betterments Simon Properties has made to the Galleria. Later this year, fly to Los Angeles to see the renovated Century City Mall that Westfield is due to complete. When the renovations, additions of other uses, and changes are complete at The Shoppes at Willow Bend, stop by.

The mall, in its many forms, is still the biggest gorilla in the retail cage. All the store closings, recapturing of the excess space, dying malls, and rethinking of retail, while painful, is probably the healthiest thing for the industry. Lets get it right! Lets do it better!

Please remember E. G. Hamilton, FAIA, who passed in early May. He and his firm were the architects for North Park Center. He was a visionary pioneer in the design of shopping malls.

Wish I. M. Pei, FAIA, (famous architect of many wonderful buildings in Dallas) a happy 100th birthday.

Wish Frank Lloyd Wright a happy 150th birthday in July.

Bruce Carlson is CEO and president of CM Architecture.

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‘ECOWAS in Full Evolution,’ Says New Chair – Liberian Daily Observer

Posted: at 6:18 am


Liberian Daily Observer
'ECOWAS in Full Evolution,' Says New Chair
Liberian Daily Observer
He emphasized that the sub-regional organization, ECOWAS, is in full evolution and its achievements recognized by the whole world, which is a thing of pride and satisfaction. We are pleased. We commend ourselves but we are by no means satisfied ...
'ECOWAS is in full Evolution,' says new Chair of ECOWAS AuthorityJournalducameroun.com - English - (press release) (registration)

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Social Darwinism – RationalWiki

Posted: at 6:17 am

They had better do it and decrease the surplus population.

Social Darwinism is a philosophy based on flawed readings of Charles Darwin's biology text On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection (1859). The philosophy came into existence towards the end of the 19th century, though its origins can be traced all the way back to the ideas of Thomas Malthus (1766-1834).

Social Darwinists took the biological ideas of Charles Darwin (and often mixed them with Jean-Baptiste Lamarck and Malthus) and attempted to apply them to the social sciences. They were especially interested in applying the idea of "the survival of the fittest" (their words, not Darwin's) in a social context, as this would excuse their existing ideas of racism, colonialism, and unfettered capitalism (for them, at least). It was also used as a tool to argue that governments should not interfere in human competition (as it existed at the time) in any way; and that the government should take no interest in, for example, regulating the economy, reducing poverty or introducing socialized medicine. In other words, have a laissez-faire policy.

The term "Social Darwinism" originated in Great Britain with the works of Herbert Spencer who coined the phrase "survival of the fittest" in the mid-19th century. However his work found more fertile ground in the US where it was taken up by William Graham Sumner who was accused of advocating a "dog-eat-dog" philosophy. This set of ideas was also influenced by the writings of Thomas Malthus, who argued that war was a check on population growth and that welfare promoted population growth among the poor and thus drove down wages. Indeed, what is often called "Social Darwinism" might be more accurately called "Social Malthusianism" since Malthus explicitly promoted policies generally construed as Social Darwinism.[1] The results of Malthus could be seen in the institution of the workhouses; reforming (in actuality virtually eliminating) the Poor Laws; and a general attitude of the upper classes of contempt for the lower classes for their demands of charity. This campaign was aided by the ideas of Jeremy Bentham's utilitarianism, one of the strongest ideologies of the British middle class, which stated that workers chose the poor life and that workhouses would encourage those who wanted to succeed to do so.

At the same time, the "struggle school" of Social Darwinism was being developed. In this view, nations grew and expanded as a result of conflicts with their neighbors. For many, this justified the overseas expansion of powerful nations at the expense of the weak and necessitated the creation of strong military forces.

At more or less the same time, the movement of "Reform Darwinism" was born. This variant emphasized the need for change and adaption in human society to meet new conditions. For example, they argued that the Constitution of the United States should be reinterpreted to meet changing conditions in the US. However some reformers felt that they could use the principles of (Social) Darwinism to justify imperialist, classist, racist, and sexist opinions. And at the extreme of these views was eugenics, originally developed by Darwin's cousin Francis Galton, certain strains of which advocated for state policy such as forced sterilization of the "unfit" (by their standards, of course)[2]

Fortunately, most of Social Darwinisms appeal left it in the early-to-middle part of the 20th century. There were a number of reasons for this including:

Finally an improved understanding of genetics and ideas about the evolutionary basis of philanthropy and compassion removed the basis of this "dog-eat-dog" philosophy.

The term "Social Darwinism" itself has been largely used as an epithet, especially after World War II, and was popularized greatly by the historian Richard Hofstadter, namely by his Social Darwinism in American Thought.[3]Revisionists have argued that Hofstadter's work has caused the term "Social Darwinism" to become wrongly associated with only laissez-faire ideology and wrongly invoked as a synonym for eugenics.[4][5][6] Hofstadter himself delineated two forms of "Social Darwinism" "laissez-faire Darwinism" and "collectivist Darwinism." The former might be represented by the likes of Spencer and Galton while the latter by Nazi biologists influenced by figures such as Ernst Haeckel. However, even this delineation still lumps opposing strains of thought together in some ways. For example, Spencer was also heavily influenced by Lamarckian conceptions of evolution while Galton was staunchly opposed to Lamarck.

The left has also embraced views that may be called forms of "Social Darwinism". Eugenics, for example, found wide support among Progressive Era figures and presidents such as Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson. Pyotr Kropotkin, a founding thinker of anarcho-communism, was heavily influenced by Darwinian evolution but argued it supported altruism and cooperation rather than competition in his Mutual Aid: A Factor in Evolution.[7]Peter Singer has argued for what he calls a "Darwinian left."[8]

Indeed, evolutionary ideas have been used to support just about every ideology since (and even before) the publication of Darwin's work.[9][10] However, "Social Darwin-Lamarck-Malthus-Spencer-Galton-Haeckel-Kropotkin-ism" doesn't roll off the tongue as easily as "Social Darwinism."

Social Darwinism rests on two premises: there exists a constant struggle for survival in nature, and nature is a proper guide for the structuring of society. This is not a scientific idea at all, as it is not a statement about what is but rather a statement about what some people think "should" be.

Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection describes the propagation of hereditary traits due to the varying "success" of organisms in reproducing. Basing a moral philosophy on natural selection makes about as much sense as basing morality on the theory of gravitational success: rocks rolling down the furthest are the best rocks.

Social Darwinism is basically a circular argument. A group that gains power can claim to be the "best fit" because it is in power, but then the group claims to be in power because it is the "best fit". Any group in power can use Social Darwinist arguments to justify itself, not just right-wing groups such as fascists. Communists can claim that Communists are the best fit wherever Communists are in power. Ironically, many eugenicists and other racists will insist that DA JEWWS! are secretly in power, yet will never use this logic to insist that Jews are the "best fit".

Given some of the goals of Social Darwinism no universal health care, unfettered capitalism, laissez-faire government policies, strong military forces, and racial separation it is perhaps strange that the Religious Right use the philosophy as a snarl word. It would seem to fit their ideals nicely. Then again, it may be an example of psychological projection, or just because they see the name "Darwin" and get so angry that they ignore the rest. The big irony here is that the Religious Right rejects biological Darwinism while supporting Social Darwinism by another name.

De facto Social Darwinian arguments, such as those made by the authors of The Bell Curve, can also be used as a sort of pseudoscientific socio-economic justification for why rich people are rich ('cause they're, like, smarter) and poor people are poor (too dumb to earn more money). Such notions effectively become a sort of "biological karma" argument in favor of the status quo when used as a hand wave "explanation" for growing economic inequality, typically based on the claim that this rise in inequality reflects dumb poor people outbreeding smart rich people.

Neoreactionaries and "alt-right" types, particularly atheist ones, often openly identify as social Darwinists or as "evolutionary conservatives" (Steve Sailer being one example). These people argue that evolution implies "race realism", since different races evolved under different conditions, and therefore that racial egalitarianism is anti-scientific. On average, they tend to be much younger and more tech-savvy than Religious Right supporters, so it's possible the Republican Party and/or the conservative movement will eventually shift in their direction. These ideas are not new (Thomas Carlyle and Ragnar Redbeard had a lot of the same views), but seem to be undergoing a resurgence.

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Lee’s Summit robotics team heads to China – KSHB

Posted: at 6:16 am

LEE'S SUMMIT, Mo. - A group of local high school students has an exciting trip planned this summer.

Team Titanium, a FIRST Robotics team with Lee's Summit West High School, was chosen as one of only 15 international teams to travel to China for a robotics competition. The China Urban Youth Robotics Alliance, or CUYRA, invited the team to this year's 4th China Robotics Challenge held in Zhengzhou.

The competition will be held July 26 through 29. CUYRA is contributing $15,000 towards Team Titanium's trip, but they still need to raise $10,000 more.

Team Titanium FRC 1989 took 2nd place in this year's FIRST Robotics World Championship Competition.

"They were just three points shy of being that World Champion," said coach Aaron Bailey. "We started the team back in 2007 and it has been getting better every year."

The competition looks like a life-sized board game with robots as the pawns.

"We have six weeks to build the robots to solve a problem that we are presented with at the beginning of January," said teammate Daniel Schnelle, a recent graduate looking to study mechanical engineering. "At the end of the six weeks we have to put the robot into a sealed bag and we cannot touch or work on our robot until we get to our competition."

Robots for this year's competition had to collect gears and move them to a central location, shoot balls into a tube and climb a rope before the round ended. Each of these tasks gains the team points.

"There's 3,000 teams," said Schnelle. "I don't know of any time where there's been two identical robots. We build with sheet metal, so ours is never like anybody else's."

"We love watching these kids work hand to hand with professionals to build, to fold metal, to wire robots, to learn these deep technical skills, but also know what it means to work really, really hard," said Bailey. "We want our kids to know there are great job opportunities right here, you don't have to leave our community. We want to make Lee's Summit a great place to live."

According to its mission statement, FIRST Robotics works to "inspire young people to be science and technology leaders, by engaging them in exciting Mentor-based programs that build science, engineering and technology skills, that inspire innovation."

Many students who participate end up following the career path to technology and/or science jobs.

"A lot of our team is planning on going into multiple varieties of engineering. We have electrical, mechanical, civil, engineering management," said Schnelle.

To learn more about FIRST click here:https://www.firstinspires.org/

If you would like to help Team Titanium on their voyage to China there are two ways to do so:

GoFundMe:www.gofundme.com/titaniumtochina

Mail: Payable to "LSWHSRobotics", and sent toLSWHSRobotics, c/o NancySpatz,2600 SW Ward Rd., Lee's Summit, MO 64081

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The Boson kit is a modular robotics set that will teach kids STEM topics and coding – The Verge

Posted: at 6:16 am

It feels like robotics kits are everywhere these days, as companies compete to figure out the best way to turn basic robotics, electronics, and coding concepts into a toy or game to get kids to learn STEM skills under the guise of having fun.

Boson, from DRFRobot, is the latest of these, and it has all the trappings of a STEM learning toy: colorful plastic, simple design, and powerful possibilities for those willing to learn the system. At its core, Boson is a block coding tool similar to Tynker or Blockly, but built in the real world with various physically connected blocks instead of virtual representations.

The Boson modules are divided into four kinds, easily identifiable by color: blue ones are for inputs, green for outputs, yellow for functions, and pink for power. Theres no coding or soldering necessary to use Boson just connect the blocks together, and youre good to go.

Boson also offers an impressive variety of over 50 modules across the four categories. There are sensors for heat, humidity, flame, conductivity, soil, IR, light, motion, touch, sound, steam, and more along with a variety of buttons and joysticks for inputs. Outputs offer things like motors, servos, fans, buzzers, LEDs, and an OLED monitor. Function modules allow for building out basic logic functions, like AND, OR, and NOT. And if the module blocks arent enough, Boson is also compatible with Arduino, making it possible to write more advanced programs with languages like Python and JavaScript.

The other selling point of Boson is the compatibility of the modules with other things. You can connect Boson modules to Lego bricks, screw them onto things, place them on a fridge with magnets, or velcro them to a wall.

DFRobot is selling four different kits of Boson modules, each focused on different projects a basic Starter kit for $45, a Science kit for $109, a Coding kit for $109, and an Inventor kit for $139. There are also bundles of the Science and Inventor sets for $219, and the Science, Coding, and Inventor sets for $309. DFRobot has been around for a while selling various microcontrollers and electronic components, and has successfully ran a previous Kickstarter, so backing Boson is probably safer than most crowdfunded campaigns. That said, as always, you should use your best judgement when backing.

DFRobot hopes to ship the Boson kits in September and October.

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Utah’s new lab to use robotics to speed up rape kit testing – KUTV 2News

Posted: at 6:16 am

Utah's new lab to use robotics to speed up rape kit testing (File photo: KUTV)

TAYLORSVILLE, Utah (AP) Officials are hopeful Utah's major rape kit backlog will be reduced now that a new state crime laboratory has opened where robotic machines can extract DNA samples and deliver them to forensic technicians much faster than humans.

The Salt Lake Tribune reports (http://bit.ly/2s1wiRt ) a new Unified State Laboratory was opened Thursday in Taylorsville, where Lab Director Jay Henry says the robotics station does the repetitive work of extracting DNA, then delivers the data to forensic scientists. In addition to freeing up a technician to do more analytical work, the station is capable of extracting DNA faster.

The station is capable of processing 96 samples in less than eight hours, a task that took Henry three or four days when he worked as a lab technician.

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Stormgears team competes in international robotics competition – Westford Eagle

Posted: at 6:16 am

The Stormgears FIRST robotics team had a solid performance in the World Championships, ranking 31 out of 68 teams in their division, during competition April 26-29 in St. Louis.

The team, whose members include students from Westford Academy, Blanchard Middle School, Acton-Boxborough High School, Chelmsford High School, RJ Grey High, Lawrence Academy and Minuteman Tech, won half of the games they participated in.

Earlier in April, the team won the New England Engineering Inspiration Award at the New England District Championship at the University of New Hampshire, qualifying them for the championship. At the championship, there were a total of six divisions with about 400 teams competing.

The team has competed in the World Championships every years since they started as a rookie team three years ago, and, although the Stormgears didnt advance to the final rounds, the team is already preparing for next year and actively recruiting new team members.

FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) is a nonprofit organization with a mission to show students of every age that science, technology and problem-solving are not only fun and rewarding, but are proven paths to successful careers and a bright future. In this years competition, FIRST Steamworks students built a robot that could collect balls and shoot them into a boiler steam, pick up and deliver gears to turn a rotor, and prepare for flight by latching onto a rope and climbing. Two opposing alliances of three teams competed in a 27-by-56-foot area in a series of three-minute matches that combined both autonomous and computer controlled robot action.

The team meets at SMC, LTD in Devens.

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University of Alabama robotics team claims third straight victory at NASA competition – Alabama Today

Posted: at 6:16 am

For the third consecutive year, a student team at the University of Alabama placed first at a NASA robotics contest.

Alabama Astrobotics took the top prize at the NASA Robotic Mining Competition, besting student teams from 45 other institutions in the challenge to build a robot capable of navigating and excavating simulated Martian soil, or regolith.

Winning the NASA Robotic Mining Competition for a third straight year is amazing and humbling, said team lead Joseph Kabalin, a recent mechanical engineering graduate from Loveland, Ohio. Our team knows how hard it is to get here and how much work it takes. It was truly a team effort.

The team has more than 60 students from across eight disciplines, including engineering and computer science, and it is the only team to win more than once in the contests eight years, placing first four times in 2012, 2015, 2016 and this year.

I am very proud of the team members, said Dr. Kenneth Ricks, team adviser and associate professor of electrical and computer engineering. They bought into our process, put their individual needs aside for the good of the team, and dedicated themselves to excellence in every category, which was recognized by the competition judges.

Robots are judged on how much regolith they can dig and deposit into bins as well as their ability to operate on their own, or autonomously. This year, Alabama Astrobotics collected a record amount of regolith, and the robot was the first ever to complete its tasks fully autonomously.

The team placed first in five of nine categories that included mining, autonomy, technical presentation, effective use of communication with the robot and outreach project. Alabama Astrobotics placed in the top three of every category, racking up the most points in the contests history. In all, the students won $10,000 for use on next years robot.

The team designed and built a new robot, but stuck with the approach that netted the top prize the past two years. The students improved some of the robots mining capabilities, making it lighter and upgrading its ability to operate autonomously, Kabalin said.

The robot is called MARTE 2017, which stands for the Modular Autonomous Robotic Terrestrial Excavator 2017, and kept the bucket ladder excavator and an offloading conveyor belt. It also continued to use lidar sensors to scan in 3-D using 16 lasers to measure distance and determine an objects position. The sensors are a sort of radar that uses light instead of sound.

This year the team installed an electronic device called an inertial measurement unit to help make the autonomy more reliable.

The technology concepts developed by the collegiate teams for this competition could be used to mine resources on other planets, according to NASA.

The team received funding from the Alabama Space Grant Consortium, NASA, Dynetics, Fitz-Thors Engineering, Crank N Chrome, Ion Motion Control, Trailer Store Plus, SolidWorks and the University of Alabama.

Republished with permission of Alabama NewsCenter.

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