Weekend Reads 3/26/16

Can Computer Programs Be Racist And Sexist?

Google's software is able to group together pictures of a particular friend, or pictures of dogs, cats, etc. But when it labeled a picture of one of Alciné's friends, who is also African-American, it left him speechless.

"It labeled it as something else. It labeled her as a different species or creature," says a horrified Alciné.

Congress Is Infected With Climate Change Deniers, But Their Constituents Understand The Dangers

Here’s an inconvenient truth for the fossil fuel industry: The majority of Americans accept the scientific consensus that climate change is real and that it is a threat that must be addressed. This includes a majority of Democrats, a majority of Republicans, and a majority of citizens who do not identify with a specific political party.

But here’s a sad truth for Americans who believe in science: The majority of members of the ruling GOP party in Washington, D.C. refuse to accept the science that climate change is happening and that human beings are to blame.

Obama Didn’t Create Trump

If Obama had been a leftist, the GOP’s policy of negating him on every issue might have positioned Republicans in the mainstream. Instead, because Obama was a moderate, the GOP’s negation strategy pushed it toward the fringe. Obama was for fiscal responsibility and compromise, so Republicans were for absolutism and drama…

In Trump, Republican voters have found their anti-Obama. Trump spurns not just political correctness, but correctness of any kind.

The Planet Just Obliterated Another Heat Record

The unprecedented leap led scientists, usually wary of highlighting a single month's temperature, to label the new record a "shocker" and warn of a "climate emergency."