RUTHFULLY YOURS

From the Portland Tribune:

In a move spearheaded by environmentalists, the Portland Public Schools board unanimously approved a resolution aimed at eliminating doubt of climate change and its causes in schools.

“Eliminating doubt”. Unanimously, naturally.

To teach the science of climate change is, of course, fine. To teach the cult of climate change is not.

To quote Richard Feynman, a man who knew a bit about what being a scientist involved: “Religion is a culture of faith; science is a culture of doubt”.

Back to the Portland Tribune:

The resolution passed Tuesday evening calls for the school district to get rid of textbooks or other materials that cast doubt on whether climate change is occurring and that the activity of human beings is responsible. The resolution also directs the superintendent and staff to develop an implementation plan for “curriculum and educational opportunities that address climate change and climate justice in all Portland Public Schools.

Get rid of the wrong books. Teach “climate justice”.

Sounds like the spirit of free inquiry and open debate is alive and well in Portland.

Bill Bigelow, a former PPS teacher and current curriculum editor of Rethinking Schools, a magazine devoted to education issues, worked with 350PDX and other environmental groups to present the resolution.

Rethinking Schools looks to me like a magazine of the hard left (but perhaps that’s just me, check out its website and judge for yourself). Its curriculum editor is not, I would think, the most convincing advocate of objectivity in the classroom…

A group of law professors are accusing the civil rights office of the U.S. Education Department of taking “unlawful actions” that have led to “pervasive and severe infringements” of speech rights and due-process protections on college campuses.

An open letter signed by Harvard University professor Alan Dershowitz and 20 other legal scholars blasts a series of directives issued by the federal office to schools on dealing with sexual misconduct and harassment complaints from students.

The policies and procedures circulated in recent years are part of an Obama administration campaign to curb harassment at universities and combat a campus climate that it said too often treated victims unfairly. The professors say the government overreached. Their letter states:

We recognize that sexual harassment represents unacceptable conduct, and those found responsible should be appropriately sanctioned. Some of us have witnessed the injustices resulting from institutions that downplay or ignore sexual harassment on their campuses, and we commend [the Office of Civil Rights] for taking a proactive approach to this problem.

In pursuing its objectives, however, OCR has…ignored constitutional law, judicial precedent and Administrative Procedure Act requirements by issuing numerous directives, and then enforcing these directives by means of onerous investigations and accompanying threats to withhold federal funding. OCR has brazenly nullified the Supreme Court definition of campus sexual harassment. These unlawful actions have led to pervasive and severe infringements of free speech rights and due process protections at colleges and universities across the country.

The professors ask the civil rights office to “clarify which directives it considers to be guidance documents vs. regulations,” and call on lawmakers in Washington to enact a narrower definition of harassment. CONTINUE AT SITE

ISRAEL’S MEDICAL ACHIEVEMENTS

Success for diabetes treatment trial. Israeli biotech Oramed has reported success in the Phase IIb study of its insulin capsule. Oramed highlighted that it was the first time an oral solution showed a significant drop in blood sugar at night. Oral insulin will replace injected delayed-release insulin. (See also May 2015 newsletter)
http://www.globes.co.il/en/article-oramed-announces-success-of-phase-iib-oral-insulin-trial-1001125569

Breakthrough scanning technology. GE Healthcare’s Israeli R&D center has developed the Discovery NM/CT 670 CZT system to perform faster, more accurate, safer and less intrusive SPECT/CT scans of the body. It uses 50% less radioactive tracers and captures all the required data on multiple organs in a single pass.
www.timesofisrael.com/israeli-developed-imaging-system-lowers-radioactive-dose-for-patients/

Living on the edge. The borderline between genius and madness is well known. Now Ben Gurion University and Weizmann researchers have shown that learning processes can make the brain operate at peak performance in processing incoming sensory information. However, it may also risk causing hallucinations.
http://in.bgu.ac.il/en/Pages/news/brain_hallucinations.aspx

Exoskeletons – the next generation. (TY Hazel) Israel’s ReWalk has teamed with Harvard University’s Wyss Institute to develop ‘soft suit’ exoskeleton systems enabling people to walk following stroke, lower limb disabilities, MS etc. Millions need some structural support but not a rigid exoskeleton such as ReWalk.
http://www.israel21c.org/rewalk-announces-collaboration-with-harvard/

Jay Leno raises $50k for United Hatzalah. (TY Janglo) US personality Jay Leno donated a $36,000 fully equipped “ambucycle” to Israeli Emergency Medical Service United Hatzalah at a concert to support the EMS. Leno also made a separate appeal to the 1300 members of the audience, which raised another $50,000.
http://www.jewishpress.com/news/breaking-news/jay-leno-raises-50k-in-one-minute-for-united-hatzalah-in-israel-donates-ambucycle/2016/04/12/

Help create new dream doctors. I have reported about Dream Doctors (Israeli medical clowns) previously. Now you have the opportunity to donate in a matching scheme to sponsor five new clowns to heal and decrease the suffering of sick children in Israeli hospitals. https://www.causematch.com/en/projects/dream-doctors/

Imaging tech to save women’s lives. (TY Hazel) Israeli startup Illumigyn, is using IDF technology to develop the Gynescope – an advanced machine-vision image-recognition device for gynecologists to identify cervical cancer and other diseases in routine inspections. http://illumigyn.com/
http://www.timesofisrael.com/israeli-medical-company-hopes-to-save-thousands-of-womens-lives-per-year/

Israeli men have world’s 5th longest life expectancy. Israel is ranked fifth in terms of men’s average life expectancy, at 80.6 years – after Switzerland, Iceland, Australia, and Sweden. Israeli women’s life expectancy is ranked ninth globally, at 84.3 years.
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/212563#.Vz619r4bN30

A medical device powerhouse. (TY Dan) This is a very informative look at Israel’s medical device sector with 725 medical device companies. http://investingnews.com/daily/life-science-investing/medical-device-investing/isreal-a-medical-device-powerhouse/

The existential “Who Am I?” question is taking on a radical new meaning in light of the gender bathroom subject. Yet this issue is a lineal descendant of certain quarters of radical feminism which has always wanted to eliminate male/female characteristics. As quoted in Richard Bernstein’s Dictatorship of Virtue, Alison Jaggar, a leading feminist philosopher of the 1990s, asserted that “the family structure [is] a cornerstone of women’s oppression: it enforces women’s dependence on men, it enforces heterosexuality and it imposes the prevailing masculine and feminine character structures on the next generation.” Thus, “the sexual division of labor must be eliminated in every area of life… so men must participate fully in childrearing and, so far as possible, in childbearing” [emphasis mine].

On the other hand, according to Nandhini Narayanan, radical feminists also believe that “transgender women were perceived to be men encroaching upon women’s safe spaces and claiming to understand the feminine experience. It began to be perceived as a form of male entitlement.”

In 2014 “Wellesley was one of the only colleges in the country that would allow transmen to continue their education despite being an all-girls’ school. Consequently, “terms like ‘sisterhood’ need to be readjusted to ‘sibling-hood.’ Administrators need to account for growing resentment among the student body when leadership roles meant for women are held by men. Infrastructure needs to accommodate gender neutral restrooms. There is also a need to reevaluate the school’s identity — is it a women’s school but with gender non-conforming students?” Critics argue that the transgender movement reinforces conventional and traditional gender roles; if trans women were initially ‘men’ who ‘felt female’ irrespective of social conditioning and growth environment, then it implies that the differences between the male and the female are biological alone. They argued that transgenderism perpetuates the notion that ‘female brains need to stay female, and will not be happy in conventionally male pursuits.’”

N.Y.C. Admin. Code 8-102(23) maintains that “gender is defined as one’s ‘actual or perceived sex and shall also include a person’s gender identity, self-image, appearance, behavior or expression, whether or not that gender identity, self-image, appearance, behavior or expression is different from that traditionally associated with the legal sex assigned to that person at birth.'”

Thus, the Administrative Code explains that “Cisgender is an adjective denoting or relating to a person whose self-identity conforms with the gender that corresponds to their biological sex.” On the other hand, “Gender Identity”… may be male, female, neither or both while “Gender Expression” is “expressed through one’s name, choice of pronouns, clothing, haircut, behavior, voice or body characteristics.”