3-22-14 Hodgepodge

Coming Soon: DNA-Based Wanted Posters?

Researchers are making good progress towards producing realistic reconstructions of faces from DNA samples:

Even if it becomes possible to produce accurately reconstructed faces, the photofits wouldn't be used as evidence in a criminal trial. Instead, any person identified via the images would have their DNA compared to the crime scene sample in the usual way. In that sense, the technique is more like psychological profiling, used to narrow the search for a suspect, than conventional forensic DNA testing.

The technique could also lead to better guesses about what members of extinct branches of the human evolutionary tree might have looked like.

Weekend Reading

"If you're not happy in general, don't focus so much on your mood." -- Michael Hurd, in "In the Mood for Happiness?" at The Delaware Coast Press

"Challenging your denial or evasion is harder than just blaming the 'black magic' of therapy." -- Michael Hurd, in "You Don't Have to 'Believe' in Therapy" at The Delaware Wave

"In practice, the Wagner Act allows unions to make unreasonable demands, and forces business leaders to choose between caving in to some of these demands and facing costly and time-consuming litigation." -- Doug Altner, in "It's Not the Unions -- It's the Labor Laws" at The American Thinker

My Two Cents

The Altner piece has lessons for the left and the right alike, detailing as it does the abuses of wrongly-empowered labor unions, while revealing the government's hand in causing this problem.

Former House Stenographer: "The Deity Made Me Do It"

The bad news is that anyone would attempt to use possession as an excuse for foolish behavior.

The former House stenographer who interrupted the floor proceedings during the government shutdown last year said in a video posted Saturday she only vaguely remembers her words that night and similar things had happened three times in the past.

Dianne Reidy, who no longer works in the House, and her husband appeared to post a 38-minute video on YouTube explaining the incident, which she described as "basically the fourth time I've had an experience like this, where the lord [sic] has put on my heart to speak."

The good news is that practically nobody is buying it.

--CAV