Transmillennial

For a libertarian, this seems like a no-brainer. But it isn't, so read on. There have been several recent cases where genenalogical and DNA information, uploaded by its owners to gedmatch.com, a public database, has been downloaded by law-enforcement and used to solve murders and rapes. So far it's all good. Of course, we could solve far more murders and rapes by simply forcing everyone to provide a sample of their DNA to the police. As a society, we've chosen not to do that (rightfully, I believe) reasoning the vast invasion of privacy outweighs the social good. And police in the US can't go on a fishing expedition for DNA. To force you to provide it, they have to have probable cause to believe you committed that specific crime, and they can't use your refusal to provide DNA voluntarily as evidence. Fourth Amendment. Large databases have changed all that. If I compare a DNA sample with such a database, for any given DNA sample, I can almost certainly identif...

This is rich. Far-too-famous historian, columnist and professional douchebag Niall Ferguson conspired with conservative Stanford students , including College Republicans and a Turning Point USA organizer, to 'grind down' students they disliked on the 'Cardinal Conversations' steering committee, and even suggested to one of his student research assistants that he do 'opposition research' on one of the offending students. Because liberal faculty make conservative students feel unwelcome on campus. Oh, wait... Ferguson became infamous for suggesting John Maynard Keynes was not concerned about the long-term effects of his policies, because he was gay and therefore would have no offspring.