Blog Heap of Links for the day 29 May 2014

Military collaboration — check… Financial collaboration — check… Collaborative aggression and war pacts — check and double-check. It would appear these two Communist regimes are just not ‘into’ the US any more. I can’t help but think under any half decent Presidency, the US would now be on a war footing.

Cass Sunstein, Obama’s former regulatory “czar” and one of the smartest and most devious thinkers on the left… reports that recent curricular reforms in China, explicitly designed to transform students’ political views, have mostly worked. … The crucial finding from the study is that the new curriculum greatly affected students’ thinking. They became more likely to count the Chinese political system as democratic. They displayed a higher level of trust in public officials. They were more skeptical of free markets, and more likely to reject the view that a market economy is preferable to any other economic system….

Stacey Dash’s arrival as a Fox News personality was predictably met with hate and vitriol… Dash is handling it with good humor and class though. "I think I have 'token' and 'clueless' trending today! Yea @twitter! Seriously, thank you all for well wishes."

An Oklahoma man has died after acquiring the Heartland virus, making him the second person in the U.S. to die after coming down with the illness… found in the lone star tick and is likely spread through tick bites… Symptoms include fever, fatigue, headaches, muscle aches, loss of appetite, nausea, bruising easily and diarrhea. There is no vaccine or drug to prevent or treat the illness.

Hackers apparently based in Iran have mounted a three-year campaign of cyber-espionage against high-ranking U.S. and international officials, including a four-star admiral, to gather intelligence on economic sanctions, antinuclear proliferation efforts and other issues. … "What they lack in technical sophistication, they make up in creativity and persistence."

Experts in the world's only settled science were shocked as dramatic new evidence has emerged that climate change is much worse than even the most dire forecasts had predicted.As President Obama visited the US Military Academy at West Point to give a commencement address that could only be described as "awesome," his speech received what a state-approved and licensed CNN journalist termed an "icy reception." …

A 2010 Pentagon directive on military support to civilian authorities details what critics say is a troubling policy that envisions the Obama administration’s potential use of military force against Americans. … outlines presidential authority for the use of military arms and forces, including unarmed drones, in operations against domestic unrest. …

…19-year-old who held his breath while driving [through a tunnel] and fainted, causing a three-vehicle crash on U.S. 26 that injured four people….

how computer geeks can enable the electric car, save the planet and millions of lives using near-term A.I. to make taxis and trucks deliver, park, recharge and drive themselves.

[Some good, and maybe not so good, discussion of pros and cons of Driverless Cars in Ace of Spades morning comment thread 2014 May 29. Some selections follow.]

No steering wheel or brake? What could possibly go wrong?
—Zombie John Gotti

It can only go 25 mph. They haven't made a driverless car, they made a driverless golf cart.
— nnptcgrad

Very cool news overall. I can wait to put the taxi cartels out of business.
—HoboJerky

It's basically the same as turning every car into public transportation… no government would allow the software of a driverless car to not have a 'back door' to allow them to control it.
— chemjeff

Why not? We have a driverless country!
—Cicero Kaboom! Kid

…researchers hooked study participants to a cap containing dozens of electroencephalography (EEG) electrodes, sat them down in a flight simulator, and told them to steer the plane through the sim using their thoughts alone. … Seven people underwent the experiment… all were able to pilot the plane using their thoughts to such a degree that their performance could have satisfied some of the criteria for getting a pilot's license.

Google Inc. has designed its own self-driving vehicles… The vehicles will initially have a top speed of 25 miles per hour and won’t have a steering wheel, accelerator pedal or brake pedal

Pope Francis and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu traded words on Monday over the language spoken by Jesus two millennia ago.

"Jesus was here, in this land. He spoke Hebrew," Netanyahu told Francis, at a public meeting in Jerusalem in which the Israeli leader cited a strong connection between Judaism and Christianity.

"Aramaic," the pope interjected.

"He spoke Aramaic, but he knew Hebrew," Netanyahu shot back.

The Military Is Building Brain Chips to Treat PTSD… DARPA wants to reach deep into your brain’s soft tissue to record, predict and possibly treat anxiety, depression and other maladies of mood and mind…

Mr. G the Goat and his female friend Jellybean the Burro are truly inseparable. … They were rescued from a life of neglect in Southern California, but they were split up and sent to different sanctuaries. “What we didn’t realize, is the depth of their bond….” [Video]

Even the pundits at CNN had to agree – President Obama’s reception at West Point was nothing short of “icy.” … Compare that to the speech President George W. Bush gave to the corps of cadets in 2008 in his last military academy speech as President… [Videos at link]

The family of a 65 year-old veteran claims that VA police stomped on the veterans head and neck, causing him to suffer a stroke and die several weeks later, a new lawsuit alleges. [First they killed him, then they lied about it.]

Spend a few hours in San Francisco or Austin and you will meet a host of caricatures who appear to have had all everyday words surgically removed from their brains, a greasy marketing dictionary being installed in their place. These are the annoyingly earnest types who have taken the language of the operating system and applied it to their daily lives — the people who work not in industries but in “spaces.” You don’t chat with them, you “interface.” You don’t go out for lunch, you “aggregate,” and, if the lunch plans go “viral,” you hope that the restaurant is “scalable.”