U.S. Supreme Court: Human Genes Can't Be Patented

This was one of the big blockbuster cases that Court-watchers were expected.

Seems like a whimper more than a bang.

At the New York Times, "Supreme Court Rules Human Genes May Not Be Patented."

Justice Clarence Thomas wrote the opinion for a unanimous Court. Interesting.

See also SCOTUS Blog, "Details on Association for Molecular Pathology v. Myriad Genetics, Inc.," and "Opinion recap: No patent on natural gene work":

In a way, the ruling was a silent tribute to screen actress Angelina Jolie, who recently gained huge notoriety not for her acting but for voluntarily having her breasts surgically removed after discovering that she had the threatening genes in her body. She, of course, was able to pay the high cost of that test; now, women of less means will be able to afford it, and that was a key motivation for challenging Myriad’s patent rights.

More at Memeorandum.

Kenneth Turan Reviews 'Man of Steel'

At the Los Angeles Times, "Review: In 'Man of Steel,' Henry Cavill soars over an erratic plot":

"I can do things other people can't," the man says with becoming modesty, and can he ever. Cauterize deep wounds with a single glance, leap tall buildings in a single bound, things like that. Those rumors you've been hearing are true: Superman is back in town.

But "Man of Steel" is not your father's Superman (there's no kryptonite in sight), or your grandfather's for that matter. It features brooding, buff British actor Henry Cavill as a muscular yet sensitive type (think Jack Kerouac spending way too much time in the gym) trying to find himself, torn between his Krypton roots and his Kansas upbringing. Who said being a superhero was easy?

"Man of Steel" is similarly torn. Directed by Zack Snyder and written by David S. Goyer from a story by Goyer and Christopher Nolan (who also produced), this film is pulled in different directions, delivering satisfactions without managing to be completely satisfying.

Continue reading.

I need to head out to see some movies.

Tracy Britt, 28, Has Become One of the Most Influential Women at Berkshire Hathaway

What would it be like to make it in the corporate world?

This lady's story give us a little glimpse, at WSJ, "A Rising Star Emerges at Berkshire":

When Tracy Britt arrived in Omaha, Neb., in 2009 to meet with Warren Buffett, she brought a Harvard M.B.A., a glittering resume and a boatload of ambition. But she also brought the famed investor a gift to highlight their shared Midwestern roots: a bushel of corn and a batch of tomatoes.

he seed Ms. Britt planted that day yielded quick results: a job for Ms. Britt as Mr. Buffett's financial assistant at Berkshire Hathaway Inc. Almost four years later, it has blossomed further, with Ms. Britt emerging as one of Mr. Buffett's top lieutenants and even serving as chairman of four companies within his $284 billion conglomerate.

Ms. Britt, now 28 years old and more than five decades younger than her boss, occupies a role unlike any other within Berkshire. With an office next to Mr. Buffett's at Berkshire's headquarters, Ms. Britt helps with financial research, accompanies Mr. Buffett to meetings and occasionally drives him around town. The billionaire gradually tacked on additional responsibilities.

The firms in which she serves as chairman, including building-products company Johns Manville Corp. and paint manufacturer Benjamin Moore & Co., total more than $4 billion in annual sales. In March, a few weeks after Berkshire and Brazilian investment firm 3G Capital said they would buy ketchup maker H.J. Heinz & Co. for $23 billion, Mr. Buffett sent Ms. Britt to Brazil, according to people familiar with the matter.

The deal was Berkshire's largest acquisition since 2010, and Mr. Buffett wanted her to know more about 3G's operations, including how the Brazilian firm had turned around Burger King Worldwide Inc., the people said.

Ms. Britt is one of the executives the 82-year-old Mr. Buffett is grooming for senior positions after he steps down, say people familiar with the matter and Berkshire analysts. And she isn't the first person that he picked out of relative obscurity: His investment managers, Todd Combs and Ted Weschler, were little-known hedge-fund managers before Mr. Buffett tapped them to handle big slices of Berkshire money.

Ms. Britt is also one of the most influential women within Berkshire, which has three women directors on a 13-member board and five women CEOs out of 81 operating companies.

Ms. Britt "takes care of all kinds of things that come up," Mr. Buffett told college students in Omaha last month...

Continue reading.

Christina Hoff Sommers: It's Time to Take Back Feminism

Via AIE:

How Unions Are Strangling Achievement

From Andrew Stiles, at NRO, "New Study Blames Collective Bargaining for Education Stagnation":

Over the past several decades, American teachers’ salaries and benefits have increased steadily, while the academic performance of the nation’s students has stagnated. In a new paper released on Wednesday, Sally Lovejoy and Chad Miller of the American Action Forum argue that teachers unions’ and their collective-bargaining policies are at least partly to blame for both issues.

The authors cite an array of studies examining the impact of teachers’ unions and their negotiating strategies. The majority of these studies have found that collective-bargaining agreements typically focus on higher teacher pay and benefits and greater job security, with little consideration given to student performance. In fact, teachers’ unions have historically resisted most efforts to hold teachers accountable for the academic performance of their students, and have succeeded consistently. Tenure policies, for instance, make it virtually impossible to fire unqualified or ineffective teachers. Most states award tenure automatically after about three years, and do not test a new teacher’s mastery of even the most basic reading and math skills. Perhaps not surprisingly, this has had a largely negative impact on the students themselves, especially those in large urban school districts with a high percentage of black and Hispanic students.

Continue reading.

Lindsey Anne Strutt Rule 5

At the Camp of the Saints, "Rule 5 Saturday: Lindsey Anne Strutt."

BONUS: Evil Blogger Lady has a photo roundup, "Edward Snowden Rule 5: Acutally Snowden's Alleged Girlfriend Lindsay Mills."

PREVIOUSLY: "Edward Snowden's Girlfriend Feels 'Lost and Alone'."

Alicia Keys Urged to Cancel 4th of July Concert in Israel

She seems like a beautiful woman, and she's extremely talented, but if she pulls out of her gig in Tel Aviv, she's dead to me.

At USA Today, "Alicia Keys urged to cancel concert in Israel":

A coalition of groups have petitioned Alicia Keys to cancel her July 4 concert in Tel Aviv to protest Israel's mistreatment of Palestinians.

Alicia Keys is being urged to cancel a July 4 concert in Tel Aviv in a petition by Palestinian-American groups signed by more than 12,000 people.

A delegation representing coalitions of more than 500 U.S. organizations, delivered the document to the New York City office of Alicia Keys' non-profit aimed at fighting HIV/AIDS, Keep a Child Alive. The petition asked Keys "to stand on the side of justice and cancel her gig in Tel Aviv, Israel," and to "join us now in the cultural boycott of Israel, and help stop entertaining apartheid."

The delegation met with staff at the organization, who explained that they were aware of the ongoing efforts to encourage Keys' cancellation. Delegates passed along materials that included details of the global boycott campaign and reports from rights organizations documenting Israel's violation of Palestinian children rights, which they confirmed was received by Peter Twyman, executive officer of Keep a Child Alive.

Keys recently told The New York Times that she planned to go ahead with the show, despite letters calling on her to cancel from the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic Cultural Boycott of Israel, novelist Alice Walker, Roger Waters of Pink Floyd and the Israeli group Boycott! Supporting the Palestinian BDS call from Within.

More at the link, including some anti-Israel propaganda quotes from the boycott sponsors.

And see the Hollywood Reporter, "'The Color Purple' Author Urges Alicia Keys to Cancel Concert in Israel."

Alice Walker has written an open letter to the singer, who is scheduled to perform in Tel Aviv on the Fourth of July.

More at the link.

The letter is here, at the Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel, "Open letter from Alice Walker to Alicia Keys."

Added: From Richard Friedman, at the WSJ (and posted at Rightfully Yours), "Alicia Keys, Israel and Civil Rights":

Alice Walker, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author, has lately garnered more attention for her unhinged political views than for her writing. She has compared Fidel Castro to the Dalai Lama. She refused to allow her book "The Color Purple" to be translated into Hebrew. But perhaps nothing was more off-base—at least morally speaking—than the open letter Ms. Walker wrote in late May to singer-songwriter Alicia Keys. Ms. Walker, writing at the website of the U.S. Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel, urged Ms. Keys to cancel a July 4 performance in Israel.

Ms. Walker wrote: "you are putting yourself in danger (soul danger) by performing in an apartheid country." The writer then compared the plight of the Palestinians to that of blacks in the American South prior to the civil-rights movement. "You were not born when we, your elders who love you, boycotted institutions in the U.S. South to end an American apartheid less lethal than Israel's against the Palestinian people."

The analogy is false: "Apartheid" is a more apt description for the systemic discrimination against women across the Arab world than the only democracy in the Middle East. But this comparison is also an insult to the courageous civil-rights activists who risked their lives in Birmingham, Montgomery and elsewhere in the South to attain full rights for black Americans.

What characterized the civil-rights movement was its strict adherence to the philosophy of nonviolence. Even when attacked with fire hoses and police dogs, civil-rights demonstrators courageously refused to retaliate.

The Palestinian leadership, by contrast, for decades has used violence whenever missile attacks or suicide bombers suit its aims. It is Israel that has shown an inclination to absorb punishment, though the country's tolerance stretches only so far before it responds militarily to attacks.

The comparison that Ms. Walker and her comrades in the boycott-Israel movement make to the civil-rights movement is false in other ways...

The whole thing's an epic lie. But readers around here are well aware of that.

RTWT, in any case.

Kanye West Cheating on Kim Kardashian?

The guy's already a scumbag, and if true it just cements the reputation. Remember, Ms. Kardashian is pregnant.

At London's Daily Mail, "Model claims Kanye West 'cheated' on pregnant Kim Kardashian... after telling her 'relationship was for publicity'."

And if you're up for it, here's interview with the hip-hop idiot at NYT, "Kanye West Talks About His Career and Album 'Yeezus'."

And Michelle tweeted earlier:

Behold spectacular self-delusion. RT @mashable .@kanyewest: I Am the Steve Jobs of Internet, Fashion and Culture bit.ly/12G9Uvm
— Michelle Malkin (@michellemalkin) June 12, 2013

#Dodgers Brawl Shows Lack of Team Leadership

From Bill Plaschke, at the Los Angeles Times "In Dodgers-Diamondbacks brawl, Dodgers swung and missed":

The Dodgers have finally found something they are willing to fight for.

But on Tuesday night, it was the wrong thing.

In a brawl that will undoubtedly cost them suspensions that could even include their best player -- what was Swingin' Clayton Kershaw thinking? -- the Dodgers precipitated a fight with the Arizona Diamondbacks that wasn't worth the effort.

The Dodgers say that the prolonged headhunting from the mound in the middle of their 5-3 win over the Diamondbacks at Dodger Stadium -- a sequence which ended in the thunderous melee -- was started when Arizona's Ian Kennedy hit the Dodger' Yasiel Puig in the face with a pitch in the bottom of the sixth inning. It was inarguably the worst pitch at the worst time. In just one week here, Puig has already become the Dodgers most exciting player, their most powerful hitter, their best new hope. Wearing number 66, he is Manny Ramirez turned upside down. His teammates desperately need him, and thus feel a desperate need to protect him.

But, c'mon fellas, look at the scoreboard. Why on earth would Kennedy be throwing at Puig with two strikes, nobody on base, and his team leading 2-0? What pitcher would willingly bring the tying run to the plate in that situation? The intention of a pitch can often be revealed by the immediate reaction of the pitcher throwing it. Kennedy spun and looked in frustration at the sky. He was throwing inside as anyone should throw inside to a hot young hitter. But he was clearly not trying to hit him.

How quickly the Dodgers forgot the idiocy of San Diego's Carlos Quentin exactly two months ago, when he charged the mound and broke Zack Greinke's collarbone even though Greinke was also not trying to hit him.

Puig didn't charge the mound this time, but the Dodgers nonethless retaliated one-half inning later when Greinke hit Miguel Montero, which led Kennedy to eventually hitting Greinke, and before you knew it, a 2 a.m. fast-food-restaurant brawl had broken out. You know a fight is bad when even old men are hobbling into the fray. The Legends of the Brawl featured Don Mattingly body-slamming Alan Trammell and Mark McGwire clutching Kirk Gibson.

The Dodgers looked tough then, but won't look so tough when they are hit with suspensions...

Still more at the link.

PREVIOUSLY: "#DBacks and #Dodgers Brawl: Six Ejected After Yasiel Puig and Zack Greinke Beaned by Pitches."

NSA Director Says Dozens of Attacks Thwarted

Hey, it works!

At WSJ, "NSA Director Says Data Programs Foiled Plots."

Here's Some Afternoon Jodie Gasson For You

Via Twitter.

Rep. Peter King Calls for Gleen Greenwald's Arrest

I was just watching this a little while ago, and now TPM's got it up, via Memeorandum.

PERVIOUSLY: "Lt. Col. Ralph Peters: 'Bring Back the Death Penalty' for Traitors Like Edward Snowden."

Artist Raymond Pettibon 'The Art of Punk' Documentary

I picked up this flyer below at Zed's Records in Long Beach, about 1980.

The LAPD broke up the gig. All the streets were blocked off and I ran with buddy Skatemaster Tate like my life depended on it. It was a total riot. Skate legend Steve Alba talks about it here, "Baces Hall Riot ... Film at 11!"

Well, it turns out there's a new documentary on the work of Raymond Pettibon, the artist of the iconic Black Flag flyers. At LAT, "MOCAtv releases new Black Flag/Raymond Pettibon doc on punk art." Also, "WATCH ‘THE ART OF PUNK’ DOCUMENTARY ON BLACK FLAG’S ICONIC LOGO AND ARTWORK."

And see Bryan Ray Turcotte, "PRETTY MUCH EVERY SINGLE BLACK FLAG FLYER DESIGNED BY RAYMOND PETTIBON."

Facebook Introduces Hashtags

If you can't 'em join 'em.

At WSJ, "Facebook Unveils Hashtags for Real-Time Public Conversations."

Also at the Verge, "Facebook adds hashtag support starting today," and "Who owns the hashtag? (It isn’t Twitter)."

And here's the announcement at Facebook, "Public Conversations on Facebook":

Every day, hundreds of millions of people use Facebook to share their thoughts on big moments happening all around them. Whether it’s talking about a favorite television show, cheering on a hometown sports team or engaging with friends during a breaking news event—people on Facebook connect with their friends about what’s taking place all over the world.

During primetime television alone, there are between 88 and 100 million Americans engaged on Facebook - roughly a Super Bowl-sized audience every single night. The recent "Red Wedding" episode of Game of Thrones, received over 1.5 million mentions on Facebook, representing a significant portion of the 5.2 million people who watched the show. And this year's Oscars buzz reached an all-time high on Facebook with over 66.5 million interactions, including likes, comments, and posts.

To date, there has not been a simple way to see the larger view of what's happening or what people are talking about.

To bring these conversations more to the forefront, we will be rolling out a series of features that surface some of the interesting discussions people are having about public events, people, and topics. As a first step, we are beginning to roll out hashtags on Facebook.

RTWT.

Facebook's getting its clock cleaned. All the fancy PR can't mask this social media cluster-k.

Here's That Viral Taylor Chapman Dunkin' Donuts YouTube Rant

Watch it at the link.

And see the Hollywood Gossip, "Taylor Chapman Dunkin' Donuts Rant Goes Viral, is Really Disturbing."

And at the Smoking Gun, "Meet the Horrible Florida Woman Who Filmed Herself Berating Dunkin' Donuts Workers."

Colorado Wildfires

At Twitchy, "#BlackForestFire consumes 400 acres, up to 60 homes in Colorado [pics, video]; Update: 2,500 homes evacuated; Update: 8,000 acres, 0 containment."

And at Michelle's, "Colorado is on fire again; scrambling for tankers."

Jan Cooper, 72, Holds Off Would-Be Robber With .357 Magnum

She's an Orange County local!

At Pat Dollard's, "‘Back Up, You Son of a Bitch!’: 72-Year-Old Anaheim Woman Scares Off Burglar By Shooting at Him."

From the Protests at Taksim Square

Here's the Guardian's live blog, "Turkey: Erdoğan clears Taksim Square – live reaction."

And video of the tear gas attacks on protesters, at Blazing Cat Fur, "Now that's a lot of tear gas!"

Background at the New York Times, "Turkish Police and Protesters Clash in Square":

For Mr. Erdogan, the smoldering violence represents his worst political crisis since coming to power a decade ago. It also highlights the kind of class politics that have divided society, with his conservative religious followers strongly supporting his position. But his political base — a majority — has not protected the economy, which is suffering as the currency loses value and the cost of borrowing rises.

Analysts now worry that Mr. Erdogan, instead of finding a way out of the crisis, has only made it worse by hardening divisions among his constituents, and by digging in. Three people have been killed and at least 4,947 injured in the violence.

“The leaders may be searching for a way out of the deadlock,” wrote Melih Asik, a columnist in Milliyet, a centrist newspaper. “However, has inciting one half of the people against the other half ever been a remedy for overcoming such a crisis? If limitless anger does not give way to common sense, Turkey will have a very difficult job ahead.”

Mr. Erdogan, in rally after rally over the weekend, sought to energize the conservative masses who propelled him to power by invoking his personal history as an Islamist leader opposed to the old secular state and its undemocratic nature. His supporters represent a social class that was previously marginalized, and Mr. Erdogan has used his speeches to play on those class resentments.

More at Telegraph UK, "Clashes in Turkey."

Chloe McCardel to Attempt Cuba to Florida Swim Without Shark Cage

She's generating a lot of attention.

See, "Australian Chloe McCardel begins Cuba-Florida swim."

Cries of Racism Following Interracial Cheerios Advertisement

Interracial families are just no big deal. I have one. And incidents of racism are pretty much non-existent in my experience.

But we're talking about the Cheerios ad on YouTube, and, well, you know how that'll work out online. You've got all of the Nazi keyboard commandoes on the attack. And that's not new.

In any case, at AdWeek, "It's 2013, and People Are Still Getting Worked Up About Interracial Couples in Ads Cheerios spot gets cheers and jeers."

Also at London's Daily Mail, "'We are part of the face of America': bi-racial parents of girl in Cheerios ad that sparked torrid racist abuse stand up to tide of hate."