Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Jonathan Jones: The Bayeux Tapestry - historic, yes, but is it any good? (The Guardian)
This majestic tapestry depicting the Norman invasion of 1066 is more than a fascinating record of British history - it's one of the most powerful depictions of war ever created
Alex Rayner: "Man Ray in LA: what happened when the pioneering artist hit Hollywood" (The Guardian)
A new exhibition sheds light on the visual artist's time in Los Angeles and the many famous actors he captured on film.
Paul Krugman: Communicating economics (VOX)
How important are titles when it comes to communicating economics? In this video, Paul Krugman underlines the importance of arguing in a way that the largest audience possible can understand. This video was recorded in December 2017 for Communicating Economics.
Andrew Tobias: How Tall; The Wall
Bob Sanderson: "There's a narrative on the wall that almost everyone in Washington is missing. WE ALREADY BUILT THE WALL! The Secure Fence Act of 2006 launched the construction of hundreds of miles of walls, fencing, and vehicle barriers at the cost of many billions of dollars. They referred to this as "barriers" or "fences", but when I drive from Phoenix to San Diego, it sure looks like a wall.
Elise Foley: Senate Democrats Failed Dreamers In December. They Might Do It Again. (Huffington Post)
Many Democrats want protections for undocumented immigrants to be part of a must-pass government funding bill. But will enough of them hold firm?
Lucy Mangan: "Why we must strive to be more 'difficult'" (Stylist)
Thus, I have always been awed by activists. They're so… active. To become one myself always seemed like too much of a leap. But, recently, I feel like there's a bridge forming between us, made up of the increasing number of moments in which 'normal' women (in the sense of those not involved with activism per se, and often not readily identified with support for women's issues at all) are speaking out.
Lucy Mangan: Millionaires' Ex-Wives Club review - It's all about the money or is it? (The Guardian)
I've yet to sit down with a male client who isn't astonished that he has to part with half of his wealth. It goes down like a bowl of cat sick, to be honest." Thus spake Davina Katz, partner and head of family law at Schillings and my new favourite person.
Benjamin Lee: "Alec Baldwin criticizes stars denouncing Woody Allen: 'Unfair and sad'" (The Guardian)
The actor has launched a defense of the film-maker on Twitter, calling it one of the 'privileges of his career' to work with him
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Presenting
Michael Egan
wrote:
has returned to semi-retired status.
In memory.
Reader Suggestion
Michelle in AZ
Reader Comment
Current Events
Adultery being the thing forbidden in the Ten Commandments--no hypocrisy in the evangelical stance!
Linda >^..^<
We are all only temporarily able bodied.
Thanks, Linda!
Bonus Links
Jeannie the Teed-Off Temp
Reader Suggestion
TV habits
How Trump's TV habits raised the risk of a shutdown
Never a dull moment in the White House...just a Dullard-in-Chief.
from Marc Perkel
Marc's Guide to Curing Cancer
So far so good on beating cancer for now. I'm doing fine. At the end of the month I'll be 16 months into an 8 month mean lifespan. And yesterday I went on a 7 mile hike and managed to keep up with the hiking group I was with. So, doing something right.
Still waiting for future test results and should see things headed in the right direction. I can say that it's not likely that anything dire happens in the short term so that means that I should have time to make several more attempts at this. So even if it doesn't work the first time there are a lot of variations to try. So if there's bad news it will help me pick the next radiation target.
I have written a "how to" guide for oncologists to perform the treatment that I got. I'm convinced that I'm definitely onto something and whether it works for me or not isn't the definitive test. I know if other people tried this that it would work for some of them, and if they improve it that it will work for a lot of them.
The guide is quite detailed and any doctor reading this can understand the procedure at every level. I also go into detail as to how it works, how I figured it out, and variations and improvements that could be tried to enhance it. I also introduce new ways to look at the problem. There is a lot of room for improvement and I think that doctors reading it will see what I'm talking about and want to build on it. And it's written so that if you're not a doctor you can still follow it. It also has a personal story revealing that I'm the class clown of cancer support group. I give great interviews and I look pretty hot in a lab coat.
So, feel free to read this and see what I'm talking about. But if any of you want to help then pass this around to both doctors and cancer patients. I need some media coverage. I'm looking for as many eyeballs as possible to read these ideas. Even if this isn't the solution, it's definitely on the right track. After all, I did hike 7 miles yesterday. And this hiking group wasn't moving slow. So if this isn't working then, why am I still here?
I also see curing cancer as more of an engineering problem that a medical problem. So if you are good at solving problems and most of what you know about medicine was watching the Dr. House MD TV show, then you're at the level I was at when I started. So anyone can jump in and be part of the solution.
Here is a link to my guide: Oncologists Guide to Curing Cancer using Abscopal Effect
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
A SHIT HOLE FOR JESUS.
THE MICROWAVE CONFIRMS IT!
"HOW DO YOU SCREW UP THE NATIONAL PARKS?"
"THEN JESUS SAID"
Visit JD's site - Kitty Litter Music
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Mostly sunny, still warmer than seasonal.
20 Years Ago
Fox "News"
Twenty years ago today, a news site run by Matt Drudge published a story about a salacious scoop that a mainstream news outlet had killed.
"BLOCKBUSTER REPORT," the Drudge Report bellowed. "23-YEAR OLD, FORMER WHITE HOUSE INTERN, SEX RELATIONSHIP WITH PRESIDENT."
The intern, we'd find out later, was of course Monica Lewinsky, and the scandal that unfolded was weaponized against Bill Clinton's presidency.
For Fox News - something of an upstart cable news operation at the time - the story would prove to be a godsend. The network covered the Lewinsky affair relentlessly, setting itself on the path to becoming the most dominant and powerful cable news network in the country.
Two decades later, another presidential sex scandal is unfolding, this one involving Donald Trump and a porn star working under the name Stormy Daniels. On Friday, The Wall Street Journal reported that a Trump lawyer had helped arrange a $130,000 hush payment to her in October 2016. Other salacious revelations followed.
Fox "News"
'Fake News' Award
Paul Krugman
A Nobel Prize-Winning economist given the number one spot in President-for-now Donald Trump's (R-Crooked) "fake news" awards has shot back at Trump, noting that the claim the president took issue with has long since been withdrawn.
Trump handed out the controversial awards hosted on the Republican Party's website Wednesday, after Republican Senators Jeff Flake and John McCain of Arizona condemned the move for chipping away at freedom of speech and likened it to actions under an authoritarian regime.
Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman, who is also a columnist for The New York Times, pushed back against his naming in the top spot early Thursday.
"I get a 'fake news award' for a bad market call, retracted 3 days later, from 2000-lie man, who still won't admit he lost the popular vote. Sad!" Krugman, who won the Nobel Prize in 2008 his work on international trade economic models, wrote on Twitter Thursday.
By "2000-lie man" Krugman appeared to refer to the more than 1,000 verifiably false claims Trump has made since his inauguration being tracked by The Toronto Star .
Paul Krugman
Price Hike
National Parks
The looming federal government shutdown could ruin some vacation plans for Americans hoping to enjoy national parks and monuments this weekend. If Congress fails to pass a spending bill that hits President Trump's desk by midnight Friday, all the national parks would be shuttered.
Republicans carried a fair share of the blame for ruining family trips to the Grand Canyon or Yosemite during the last two government shutdowns. Both times, in 1995 and 2013, the GOP controlled Congress. But there are reports that the Trump administration is working on plans to keep hundreds of national parks open even in the face of a government shutdown.
Regardless of the parks' short-term availability, 17 of the most popular national parks could soon become an unaffordable luxury to lower-income Americans if the National Park Service (NPS) implements a pricing system that would raise admission from around $30 per vehicle to $70 per vehicle during peak season. Other proposed fees include $50 per motorcycle, $30 for a person on bike or foot and $75 for an annual pass to a specific park.
NPS spokesperson Kathy Kupper explained that each of the 17 parks currently has its own entry fee but that they would all have a uniform price if the proposal is implemented.
Other, less-visited parks would have varying fees, as they do now. Many are free.
National Parks
World's Longest Underwater Cave
Mexico
Archaeologists and divers on Mexico's Yucatan peninsula announced Wednesday that they found a passage connecting two underwater caves, creating what they say is the world's longest continuous flooded cave.
Divers from the Great Maya Aquifer Project said the discovery has revealed a combined cave about 216 miles (347 kilometers) long.
Mammoth Cave in Kentucky remains the world's longest cave of any kind, with more than 400 miles (650 kilometers) of passages explored.
The Sac Actun and Dos Ojos caves were both previously known and are near the Caribbean coast town of Tulum. The combined cave will be known as the Sac Actun system, taking on the name of the longer section.
Divers have long known that Yucatan's underground caves and rivers are frequently connected, but finding this connection was a task that involved years of searching through labyrinthian passageways.
Mexico
Hottest On Record
Last Three Years
The last three years were the hottest on record, the United Nations weather agency said Thursday, citing fresh global data underscoring the dramatic warming of the planet.
Consolidated data from five leading international weather agencies shows that "2015, 2016 and 2017 have been confirmed as the three warmest years on record", the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said.
It added that 2016 remains the hottest year ever measured, due to the warming effect of El Nino, while 2017 was the warmest non-El Nino year beating out 2015 by less than one hundredth of a degree.
"The long-term temperature trend is far more important than the ranking of individual years, and that trend is an upward one," WMO secretary-general Petteri Taalas said in a statement.
The 21st century has so far been a period of the hottest weather, accounting for 17 of the 18 warmest years on record.
Last Three Years
Earth's Ideal Temperature
Pruitt
In an interview with Reuters last week, Trump's EPA administrator Scott Pruitt said, "The climate is changing. That's not the debate. The debate is how do we know what the ideal surface temperature is in 2100?"
Pruitt's goal is to sow doubt on behalf of his oil industry allies in order to weaken and delay climate policies. Shifting the 'debate' toward 'the ideal surface temperature' achieves that goal by creating the perception that we don't know what temperature we should aim for. It's in line with his boss' recent ignorant tweetsuggesting that "Perhaps we could use a little bit of that good old Global Warming."
I spoke with a number of climate scientists who agreed that to minimize the risks associated with rapid human-caused climate change, from a practical standpoint the 'ideal temperature' is as close to the current one as possible.
Stefan Rahmstorf, Head of Earth System Analysis at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research pointed out that we're not concerned about specific temperatures; it's rapid temperature changes that cause problems:
Pruitt of course is trying to have a strawman debate, distracting from the fact that not a certain temperature as such is better or worse, but that a change from what we are adapted to is a problem, especially a very rapid change - in either direction, cooling or warming, this causes big disruption.
Pruitt
Murders By White Supremacists
2017
White supremacists in the United States killed more than twice as many people in 2017 as they did the year before, and were responsible for far more murders than domestic Islamic extremists, helping make 2017 the fifth deadliest year on record for extremist violence in America, a new report states.
The report, "Murder and Extremism in the United States in 2017," published Tuesday by the Anti-Defamation League's Center on Extremism, said extremists killed 34 people last year. Twenty of those victims - or 59 percent - were killed by right-wing extremists, a designation that includes white supremacists, members of the so-called "alt-right" and "alt-lite," and members of the anti-government militia movement.
Of the 34 people killed, 18 were murdered by white supremacists, marking a 157 percent increase over the 7 people killed by white supremacists in 2016.
That's also double the number of people killed by domestic Islamic extremists in 2017. Nine people were killed by domestic Islamic extremists last year, according to the report, eight of whom died in a single attack in New York.
2017 marked a reversion back to the long-term trend in America, in which right-wing violence accounts for the majority of murders by domestic extremists.
2017
Offices Raided
Newsweek
Newsweek's offices were raided on Thursday by the office of the Manhattan district attorney.
The Outline first reported that a dozen agents raided the Financial District offices of Newsweek and its sister company International Business Times. Though it remained unclear why agents came to the office - and multiple reporters who were not in the company's New York offices told Business Insider they were kept in the dark - a source familiar with the situation confirmed that some staff were told that law enforcement were taking pictures of the company's servers.
Though a Newsweek representative did not respond to Business Insider's request for comment, multiple staffers said a Newsweek reporter was working on a story in lieu of a statement.
Over the past decade, the iconic legacy brand has struggled to retain its identity throughout a series of mergers and acquisitions that some critics and even staff say have watered down the quality of the brand.
Newsweek
Sends Leaflets
Sweden
Sweden is preparing to issue a public information manual on what to do in the event of war, as debate in the country grows over how to deal with the threat from Russia.
The brochure, due to be sent to 4.7m households, will inform the public how they can take part in "total defence" during a war and secure water, food and heating.
The booklet with the working title If Crisis or War Comes will also give guidance on dealing with threats from cyber attacks, terrorism and climate change, the FT reported.
Russia's annexation of Crimea and military support for Ukrainian separatists, along with increased activity and exercises near the Baltics and Scandinavia have caused deep unease in Sweden.
The neutral country has begun to reverse deep post war defence cuts and incursions by Russian planes and submarines have sparked intense public debate over whether to join Nato.
Sweden
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