Writer Thinks Religious Believers Belong in Straitjackets; Five Points on the Planned Parenthood Video...more

Atlantic Writer Thinks Religious Believers Belong in Straitjackets  ...If you want to read the rest, by all means click over, but these excerpts are more than sufficient to capture the depth of Tayler’s analysis. I note his article not because I think it’s particularly consequential by itself, but rather because it is indicative of a mindset that distressingly common amongst the leftist elite. From my own life in places like Harvard, Cornell, Manhattan, and Center City Philadelphia, I’ve been struck by the extent to which otherwise reasonable-sounding secularists are consumed by rage and hate at the very thought of orthodox religious belief. You can have a perfectly civil conversation about, say, Putin’s Russia, but bring up Jesus and all bets are off. And professors can be among the worst. In fact, their outright bigotry against Evangelicals is  well-documented...

Why Planned Parenthood Can’t Donate Tissue Harvested From Babies ...Federal law prohibits partial-birth abortion, a gruesome procedure in which an unborn baby is intentionally turned to the breech position to ensure that delivery of the body happens before delivery of the head. Once the baby’s head is stuck in the birth canal, the abortionist punctures the skull, evacuates the contents, and the baby is dead.

There’s a good reason this practice is banned—it’s barbaric. Many Americans may not know that the term “partial-birth abortion” is not a medical one but a legal one. And, according to Planned Parenthood doctor Deborah Nucatola, some abortion providers don’t consider it with any seriousness. In her own words, “It’s not a medical term, it doesn’t exist in reality.” What?...

Matt O’Reilly: 5 Points on the Planned Parenthood Video You’ve probably seen the widely shared video of a Dr. Deborah Nucatola, Senior Medical Director at Planned Parenthood, nonchalantly discussing the way Planned Parenthood traffics the body parts of aborted preborn babies. If you haven’t seen it, stop reading, scroll to the bottom of this post, and watch it. Then come back and finish reading. I’ve included both edited and full versions. In response, Planned Parenthood has defended themselves saying that (1) they are only being “reimbursed” for specimens donated for scientific research, and (2) the group that recorded Dr. Nucatola is really a dastardly and dishonest and you shouldn’t believe them. Most people who see the video are horrified, as well they should be, as was I. So, here are five points characteristic of what’s been rolling around my head since first seeing the video...

Police Complicit in Attack on Christians in West Delhi, India ..."Hurling verbal abused against us, about 15 extremists rushed towards me and started to push, kick and slap me, and they tore my shirt and beat me up,” he said. “When one church member, Ranjinder Masih, came to defend me, he was mercilessly beaten up.”

They beat Masih, 36, for about 15 minutes before police intervened, he said.

“The police simply told the crowd that they have beaten us enough, and that they will take us inside the police station now,” Pastor Gill said. “I asked one police officer why they did not intervene when the mob beat us up right in front of the police station. He replied that it was not his duty to intervene outside the police station.”...

Isis-inspired Florida man planned to detonate nail bomb on beach, FBI says ...A man described by the FBI as an Islamic State sympathizer who hoped to mount attacks on US soil was charged on Tuesday with plotting to detonate a nail-filled backpack bomb on a Florida beach.

A criminal complaint unsealed on Tuesday charges 23-year-old Harlem Suarez of Key West with attempting to use a weapon of mass destruction in the US. Authorities say Suarez came to the FBI’s attention through his Facebook posts praising Isis and containing extremist rhetoric...

U.S. Health-Spending Growth Jumped to 5.5% in 2014 ...American spending on all health care grew 5.5% in 2014 from the previous year and will grow 5.3% this year, according to a report from actuaries at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services published in the journal Health Affairs. In the years through 2024, spending growth is expected to average 5.8%, peaking at 6.3% in 2020...

The Tragedy of iTunes and Classical Music
When the developer Erik Kemp designed the first metadata system for MP3s in 1996, he provided only three options for attaching text to the music. Every audio file could be labeled with only an artist, song name, and album title.

Kemp’s system has since been augmented and improved upon, but never replaced. Which makes sense: Like the web itself, his schema was shipped, good enough, and an improvement on the vacuum which preceded it. Those three big tags, as they’re called, work well with pop and rock written between 1960 and 1995. This didn’t prevent rampant mislabeling in the early days of the web, though, as anyone who remembers Napster can tell you. His system stumbles even more, though, when it needs to capture hip hop’s tradition of guest MCs or jazz’s vibrant culture of studio musicianship.

And they really, really fall apart when they need to classify classical music...

How Driscoll’s Is Hacking the Strawberry of the Future ...At Driscoll’s headquarters, a welcome cart sits by the front door: strawberries, blueberries, and raspberries, along with tongs and cocktail napkins. There’s another platter in the conference room and yet another in the recently renovated company kitchen, where exposed beams and pipes float above wooden tables. Employees serve as the first taste testers for new varieties that Stewart and his team create. “I don’t think there are too many days I don’t have berries,” says Soren Bjorn, who manages Driscoll’s business in the Americas, helping himself to some in the conference room. “We have well over 100,000 internal taste tests a year.”...