"The Pope’s words echoed a recent statement from the American College of Pediatricians, which warned against the physical and psychological dangers to children posed by advocates of transgenderism. Failing to identify with one’s biological sex signals a psychological disorder that must be dealt with, not pandered to, the physicians proposed.
The doctors declared that human sexuality is “an objective biological binary trait” rather than an infinite series of self-determined “genders.” The norm for human design, the doctors said, “is to be conceived either male or female. Human sexuality is binary by design with the obvious purpose being the reproduction and flourishing of our species,” and therefore, “XY” and “XX” are “genetic markers of health – not genetic markers of a disorder.”"
Feds Give University of Michigan $500,000 to Watch for Male Students Committing Microaggressions - Hit & Run : Reason.com:
"The University of Michigan is conducting a study on male engineering students to determine whether their unconscious biases—microaggressions—are driving women out of the field. The study is funded via the National Science Foundation, which means taxpayers coughed up more than $500,000 for it.
Men are more likely than women to go into engineering, and researchers want to know if sexism plays a role in that.
This study involves male engineering students being recorded while they interact with their female counterparts. Researchers will then watch the tapes and make a note of any microaggressions..."
7 Facts You Need To Know To Debunk The #EqualPayDay Lie | Daily Wire
"The left has declared today #EqualPayDay.
Why?
Because this is supposedly the day that women must work until this year to earn what a man earned the previous year. Women supposedly earn $0.79 cents for every dollar earned by a man – but, of course, this neglects the fact that women choose different jobs, take time off from work for different reasons, work fewer hours, and make different life decisions on average.
When all the confounds are removed, women earn just as much as men, and in major cities, actually earn more than men.
But never mind: women must be treated as victims.
That’s because victimhood equals virtue, and women must be granted cherished minority victimhood status.
So, here are seven facts you should know about the mythical wage gap commemorated by the nonsensical #EqualPayDay: Read 'em and stop the haters.
ESPN’s Bomani Jones ‘Caucasian’ Stunt Falls Flat:
"ESPN’s Bomani Jones really wants you to know that his T-shirt is clean, and powerful.
Bomani Jones wore a ‘Caucasians’ t-shirt after his appearance on Mike & Mike last week.
A shirt basically identical to a Cleveland Indians shirt, complete with Chief Wahoo, except it says, ‘Caucasians’ and has a dollar sign in place of a feather.
USA Today found it awesome, and even included it in a video of the post-show interview:
“ESPN’s Bomani Jones appeared in an extra segment following his time on Mike and Mike on Thursday morning to explain his t-shirt that read ‘Caucasian’. ...If you are offended by the shirt, you must be offended by the Indians’ Chief Wahoo logo. If not, you’re hypocritical.
...Of course, Jones didn’t really have to “defend himself.”
It’s not like it was an adversarial interview.
Not only that, it’s not like anyone is really offended by the Caucasians t-shirt.
According to Brian Kirby of Shelf Life clothing, who produces the shirt, “the ‘Caucasians’ shirt has been his most popular seller since he began making them in 2007…”
With plenty of palefaces among those who are buying up the shirts.
So, in other words, Bomani Jones’ stunt backfired.
He wore the shirt to provoke anger on the part of white people by flipping the tables and exposing them as hypocrites for being offended by ‘Caucasians,’ while they cheer for the Redskins, Chief Wahoo, the Braves, and so on. Except very few, if any, white people are offended by the shirt. Proving the opposite of Jones’ point.
And that maybe, just maybe, it’s time for race hucksters like Bomani Jones to get a life."
Taxes Part I: How Income Tax Began | Glenn Beck:
"Taxes Part I: How Income Tax Began
When the Constitution was written and ratified, the only taxes allowed by America’s founding document were to pay the debt and provide for the common defense and general welfare. “Welfare” meant the general well-being of the people, not government handouts to people who didn’t work for a living."
Desk-Size Turbine Could Power a Town:
"GE Global Research is testing a desk-size turbine that could power a small town of about 10,000 homes.
The unit is driven by “supercritical carbon dioxide,” which is in a state that at very high pressure and up to 700 °C exists as neither a liquid nor a gas.
After the carbon dioxide passes through the turbine, it's cooled and then repressurized before returning for another pass.
The unit’s compact size and ability to turn on and off rapidly could make it useful in grid storage. It’s about one-tenth the size of a steam turbine of comparable output, and has the potential to be 50 percent efficient at turning heat into electricity.
Steam-based systems are typically in the mid-40 percent range; the improvement is achieved because of the better heat-transfer properties and reduced need for compression in a system that uses supercritical carbon dioxide compared to one that uses steam. The GE prototype is 10 megawatts, but the company hopes to scale it to 33 megawatts.
Doug Hofer, a GE engineer in charge of the project, shows off a model of the turbine. In addition to being more efficient, the technology could be more nimble—in a grid-storage scenario, heat from solar energy, nuclear power, or combustion could first be stored as molten salt and the heat later used to drive the process.
While such a heat reservoir could also be used to boil water to power a steam turbine, a steam system could take 30 minutes to get cranked up, while a carbon dioxide turbine might take only a minute or two—making it well-suited for on-the-spot power generation needed during peak demand periods.
GE's system might also be better than huge arrays of batteries.
Adding more hours of operation just means having a larger or hotter reservoir of the molten salt, rather than adding additional arrays of giant batteries.
“The key thing will come down to economics,” says Doug Hofer, the GE engineer in charge of the project.
While there’s work ahead, he says, “at this point we think our economic story is favorable compared to batteries.”"
History for April 13 - On-This-Day.com: Thomas Jefferson 1743 - 3rd U.S. President - More information here - Today in U.S. President History, Alfred Butts 1899 - Architect, game inventor (Scrabble), Dan Gurney 1931 - Auto racer Paul Sorvino 1939 - Actor ("Law and Order", "Dick Tracy"), Tony Dow 1945 - Actor ("Leave it to Beaver"), Rick Schroder 1970 - Actor ("Silver Spoons", "NYPD Blue") 1808 - William "Juda" Henry Lane perfected the tap dance. 1860 - The first mail was delivered via Pony Express when a westbound rider arrived in Sacremento, CA from St. Joseph, MO. 1959 - A Vatican edict prohibited Roman Catholics from voting for Communists.
1964 - Sidney Poitier became the first black to win an Oscar for best actor. It was for his role in the movie "Lilies of the Field." 1981 - Washington Post reporter Janet Cooke received a Pulitzer Prize for her feature about an 8-year-old heroin addict named "Jimmy." Cooke relinquished the prize two days later after admitting she had fabricated the story. 1997 - Tiger Woods became the youngest person to win the Masters Tournament at the age of 21. He also set a record when he finished at 18 under par. 1999 - Jack Kervorkian was sentenced in Pontiac, MI, to 10 to 25 years in prison for the second-degree murder of Thomas Youk. Youk's assisted suicide was videotaped and shown on "60 Minutes" in 1998.
"The report by the Center for Union Facts, a watchdog group, says that the new figure is in addition to the $50 million already spent since 2012. The numbers come from the 2015 financial disclosures released by the SEIU that were was analyzed by the CUF.
What the CUF discovered was that a majority of the $20 million spent for the “Fight for 15” campaign last year went to various organizing committees and that the powerhouse union was likely spending even more, due to staff salaries, legal services and money paid to minimum wage advocacy groups such as the National Employment Law Project (NELP) and the Economic Policy Institute (EcPI).
“While the SEIU has made some headway in its push for a job-killing $15 minimum wage, working Americans appear to be sending a clear message to SEIU big spenders:"
Olivier Blanchard eyes ugly 'end game' for Japan on debt spiral: Japan is heading for a full-blown solvency crisis as the country runs out of local investors and may ultimately be forced to inflate away its debt in a desperate end-game, one of the world’s most influential economists has warned. Olivier Blanchard, former chief economist at the International Monetary Fund, said zero interest rates have disguised the underlying danger posed by Japan’s public debt, likely to reach 250pc of GDP this year and spiralling upwards on an unsustainable trajectory. “To our surprise, Japanese retirees have been willing to hold government debt at zero rates, but the marginal investor will soon not be a Japanese retiree,” he said. Prof Blanchard said the Japanese treasury will have to tap foreign funds to plug the gap and this will prove far more costly, threatening to bring the long-feared funding crisis to a head. “If and when US hedge funds become the marginal Japanese debt, they are going to ask for a substantial spread,” he told the Telegraph, speaking at the Ambrosetti forum of world policy-makers on Lake Como. Analysts say this would transform the country’s debt dynamics and kill the illusion of solvency, possibly in a sudden, non-linear fashion.
Since National Public Radio is a taxpayer-funded liberal sandbox, you can find examples nearly every day of NPR conducting a conversation with its liberal audience on all the liberal obsessions of the moment, like the new political-correctness theme of “cultural appropriation,” like being mad at Justin Bieber for wearing dreadlocks, because that’s a black thing.
This week, NPR asked “When Is It OK To Profit From Cooking Other Cultures' Food?” In other words, is it okay for an Indian-American to run a pizza joint, or an Italian to run an Indian restaurant? If you're a white guy cooking Mexican food, it is racist or "neocolonialist"? Apparently, to the Left, you should “stick to your own kind” when selling food.
NPR’s Maria Kodoy and Kat Chow (seriously, a food expert named “Kat Chow”?) went to Twitter to ask fellow liberals what they thought:
Recently, we started a conversation about food and race. Specifically, we wondered out loud, who gets to cook — and become the face of — a culture's cuisine?
Our question was prompted by a recent Sporkful interview with Rick Bayless, who has faced criticism over his long career. Although he is an Oklahoman with no Mexican ancestry, he has become one of the most prominent ambassadors for Mexican cuisine in America....
As with many things involving race and class in America, there are no easy answers — and we're not expecting to find any clear-cut ones. We're more interested in starting a conversation..."
"In the latest “act of love” from a pack of violent illegal aliens, a 12-year-old girl was raped in Montgomery County, Maryland by two individuals likely eligible for Obama’s executive amnesty. One of them reportedly referred to the girl as “fresh meat” as he encouraged his friend to partake in the act of savagery. The incident occurred on March 26, but the two perpetrators weren’t arrested until Friday, as reported by the Washington Post. The two suspects are Enrique Carbajal, 24, and Victor Tome, 19, who would likely be eligible for the Dream Act supported by both John Kasich and Donald Trump.
Montgomery County is a sanctuary jurisdiction in Maryland that does not cooperate with federal immigration officials."
FBI Warns of Cyber Threat to Electric Grid: Three months after a Department of Homeland Security intelligence report downplayed the threat of a cyber attack against the U.S. electrical grid, DHS and the FBI began a nationwide program warning of the dangers faced by U.S. utilities from damaging cyber attacks like the recent hacking against Ukraine’s power grid. The nationwide campaign by DHS and the FBI began March 31 and includes 12 briefings and online webinars for electrical power infrastructure companies and others involved in security, with sessions in eight U.S. cities, including a session next week in Washington.
The unclassified briefings are titled “Ukraine Cyber Attack: Implications for U.S. Stakeholders,” and are based on work with the Ukrainian government in the aftermath of the Dec. 23 cyber attack against the Ukrainian power infrastructure.
“These events represent one of the first known physical impacts to critical infrastructure which resulted from cyber-attack,” the announcement by the DHS Industrial Control Systems Cyber Emergency Response Team read.
“The attacks leveraged commonly available tools and tactics against the control systems which could be used against infrastructure in every sector...”
Millionaires Fearing Civil Unrest Are Fleeing Chicago by the Thousands | The Daily Sheeple:
"As time goes on the city of Chicago is rapidly turning into a crime infested hell hole, rife with poverty, debt, and racial tensions. The city is well on its way to joining the likes of Detroit, and there may be no escaping that eventuality.
That’s why many of the city’s wealthy elites are getting the hell out of there.
The Chicago Tribune reports that roughly 3,000 millionaires have left the city over the past year alone, which amounts to about 2 percent of their wealthy population.
This is the largest exodus of wealthy people in the United States, and one of the largest in the world. Paris and Rome are the only cities that lost more millionaires than Chicago in the same time period.
According to research, many of these elites are relocating to other cities in the United States such as Seattle and San Francisco, which saw a net inflow of millionaires over the past year.
When asked about why they were leaving Chicago, most of these millionaires cited racial tensions and rising crime rates.
If you happen to live in Chicago, take a hint from the people with insider knowledge and connections, and get out while you still can."
"DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — A 25-year old American woman appeared in court Monday on misdemeanor charges for allegedly insulting the United Arab Emirates in public while waiting for a taxi at the Abu Dhabi International Airport.
The National, a government-owned newspaper in the emirate of Abu Dhabi, reported that the woman, who was not named, has been under arrest since Feb. 23. The newspaper says she told the Federal Supreme Court that she was waiting for a taxi at the airport when two men approached and spoke to her in a manner she did not like."
Green Madness: EU Climate Finance Subsidises Chinese Steel Industry | The Global Warming Policy Forum (GWPF): British taxpayers have been forced to subsidise the very Chinese steel companies that are threatening 40,000 UK jobs, critics say It comes after revelations that the European Investment Bank has given so-called “soft loans” to China of £80million as part of a climate policy intended to lower emissions. The astonishing figures include a loan of £40million to one of the world’s worst “steel dumping” culprits, the Wuhan Iron & Steel Corporation. To add insult to injury Wuhun, the world’s eighth largest steel producer, boasts the Chinese state as its main shareholder. Wuhun is such a prolific steel dumper that it has now been especially targeted by the European Commission, which wants to slap it with 36.6 per cent tariffs....“The EU is supposed to be careful who it lends money to, and lending to a foreign government in order to create competition to British industry is not what we had in mind.” ...“This is insane. Already, thanks to our EU membership, we’ve lost control of our trade policy and lack any ability to support the competitiveness of our steel industry. ...“Now we learn that the EU has been making loans to state-owned Chinese steel makers, who are then able to sell below cost back into the EU and our UK government has been powerless to intervene as it should have done due to the EU state-aid rules. ...Former Trade and Industry Secretary Peter Lilley added: “I never cease to be amazed by the capacity of self-harm by European institutions, particularly when they become embroiled in climate policy..." Full story - See more at: http://www.thegwpf.com/green-madness-eu-climate-finance-to-subsidise-chinese-steel-industry/#sthash.fZEHIlef.dpuf
What is debated, however, is the best way to treat ADHD.
Until recently, it seemed that thrusting a pill at children was the standard treatment. But more experts are beginning to wonder if some ADHD cases can be reduced through efforts like behavioral modification therapy. Others are wondering if children just need time to grow and mature. A new study in The Journal of Pediatrics seems to lend support to this idea. For over 14 years, researchers in Taiwan examined whether or not a child’s age at school entry influenced ADHD diagnosis. After studying nearly 400,000 schoolchildren, the researchers found that the oldest children in the class (those born in September) had a much smaller chance of being diagnosed with ADHD than the youngest children (those born in August). As the Telegraph explains, such a rise in diagnoses “may be caused by teachers comparing the behaviour of more mature children to those of youngsters who are up to a year younger.”
Such research should give us pause, particularly since many of today’s ADHD cases are first observed in the classroom. Would we keep many children off of medication if we simply gave them time—and encouragement—to grow and mature?
Ayatollah: U.S. Military Weaker Than Iran's for Lack of 'Spiritual Motivation' | PJ Media:
"Iran's supreme leader argued Sunday that America's armed forces will never be powerful like those of the Islamic Republic because religion isn't a component of U.S. warfighting.
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was meeting with high-ranking commanders in Tehran to urge not only an increase in military might but a greater focus on the Islamic Revolution in military matters. “In the Islamic Republic establishment, the main task (assigned) to the Armed Forces is to defend national security boundaries, therefore the operational capability and spiritual motivations of these forces must be upgraded on a daily basis," Khamenei said, according to the semi-official Fars News Agency.
He argued that militaries designed to just protect the state are limited in scope and can act -- as he said the U.S. does -- with “militarism, irrationality, and ruthlessness.” The ayatollah insisted that Iran is the most "effective" fighting force because of the Islamic motivations woven into military strategy..."
Puerto Rico’s rolling bankruptcy crisis is just a taste of the fiscal storm that lies ahead if American state and local governments can’t find a way to bring their own gaping pension shortfalls under control. For decades, rapacious public sector unions and craven politicians on the mainland have also been also been propping unsustainable state employee retirement systems, and—crucially—using accounting tricks to dupe the public and conceal the magnitude of their unfunded obligations. Congress’s proposed relief package for Puerto Rico would require the island to be more forthright about its pension costs going forward, but it would allow state and local governments to continue downplaying the size of their debts. . . .
The resistance to honest accounting is apparently coming not from Congressional Democrats, but from Republican state legislators eager to keep their pension Ponzi schemes in place—a reminder that corrupt blue model practices are thoroughly bipartisan. Hopefully Congressional Republicans will have the good sense to reverse course and require state and local governments to come clean as well.
Meanwhile, state Attorneys General who want to punish “climate deniers” may want to ponder the personal consequences of criminalizing political lies. Because who lies more about politics: Corporations? Or politicians?
History for April 12 - On-This-Day.com: Henry Clay 1777 - "The Great Pacificator", U.S. Secretary of State under John Quincy Adams, three time unsuccessful candidate for president of United States. Quote: "I would rather be right than president.", Tiny Tim (Herbert Khaury) 1930 - Ukulele playing, falsetto singer ("Tiptoe Through the Tulips"), Charles Napier 1936 - Actor Ed O'Neill 1946 - Actor ("Married....with Children", "Wayne’s World"), Tom Clancy 1947 - Author, David Letterman 1947 - TV host, comedian ("Late Night With David Letterman") 1606 - England adopted the original Union Jack as its flag. 1861 - Fort Sumter was shelled by Confederacy, starting America's Civil War. 1877 - A catcher's mask was used in a baseball game for the first time by James Alexander Tyng. 1945 - In New York, the organization of the first eye bank, the Eye Bank for Sight Restoration, was announced. 1945 - U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt died in Warm Spring, GA. He died of a cerebral hemorrhage at the age of 63. Harry S Truman became president. 1961 - Soviet Yuri Alexeyevich Gagarin became first man to orbit the Earth. 1981 - The space shuttle Columbia blasted off from Cape Canaveral, FL, on its first test flight. 1985 - Federal inspectors declared that four animals of the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus were not unicorns. They were goats with horns that had been surgically implanted.
Climate-Change Prosecution: Liberals Should Be Liable: "Some people are worried about little things like the “First Amendment,” “academic freedom,” and “scientific integrity.” Not me. I hate unscientific nonsense. So if Harris and Schneiderman are up for suing people who’ve made piles of cash peddling exaggerations and distortions, let’s roll out some test cases. I’ve got three ideas:
The study is funded via the National Science Foundation, which means taxpayers coughed up more than $500,000 for it. 
Women supposedly earn $0.79 cents for every dollar earned by a man – but, of course, this neglects the fact that women choose different jobs, take time off from work for different reasons, work fewer hours, and make different life decisions on average. 
Women supposedly earn $0.79 cents for every dollar earned by a man – but, of course, this neglects the fact that women choose different jobs, take time off from work for different reasons, work fewer hours, and make different life decisions on average. 
It’s about one-tenth the size of a steam turbine of comparable output, and has the potential to be 50 percent efficient at turning heat into electricity.
"The report by the Center for Union Facts, a watchdog group, says that the new figure is in addition to the $50 million already spent since 2012. The numbers come from the 2015 financial disclosures released by the SEIU that were was analyzed by the CUF.
This week, NPR asked “When Is It OK To Profit From Cooking Other Cultures' Food?” In other words, is it okay for an Indian-American to run a pizza joint, or an Italian to run an Indian restaurant? If you're a white guy cooking Mexican food, it is racist or "neocolonialist"? Apparently, to the Left, you should “stick to your own kind” when selling food.
The incident occurred on March 26, but the two perpetrators weren’t arrested until Friday, as reported by the Washington Post. The two suspects are Enrique Carbajal, 24, and Victor Tome, 19, who would likely be eligible for the Dream Act supported by both John Kasich and Donald Trump.
The nationwide campaign by DHS and the FBI began March 31 and includes 12 briefings and online webinars for electrical power infrastructure companies and others involved in security, with sessions in eight U.S. cities, including a session next week in Washington.
The city is well on its way to joining the likes of Detroit, and there may be no escaping that eventuality.
"DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — A 25-year old American woman appeared in court Monday on misdemeanor charges for allegedly insulting the United Arab Emirates in public while waiting for a taxi at the Abu Dhabi International Airport.
Wuhun is such a prolific steel dumper that it has now been especially targeted by the European Commission, which wants to slap it with 36.6 per cent tariffs....“The EU is supposed to be careful who it lends money to, and lending to a foreign government in order to create competition to British industry is not what we had in mind.”
“In the Islamic Republic establishment, the main task (assigned) to the Armed Forces is to defend national security boundaries, therefore the operational capability and spiritual motivations of these forces must be upgraded on a daily basis," Khamenei said, according to the semi-official Fars News Agency.
“In the Islamic Republic establishment, the main task (assigned) to the Armed Forces is to defend national security boundaries, therefore the operational capability and spiritual motivations of these forces must be upgraded on a daily basis," Khamenei said, according to the semi-official Fars News Agency.
"National Security Advisor Susan Rice therefore placed a gag order on military officials to that effect, according to Navy Times.Puerto Rico’s rolling bankruptcy crisis is just a taste of the fiscal storm that lies ahead if American state and local governments can’t find a way to bring their own gaping pension shortfalls under control. For decades, rapacious public sector unions and craven politicians on the mainland have also been also been propping unsustainable state employee retirement systems, and—crucially—using accounting tricks
