Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Michael Gregor, MD: How Healthy is the Mediterranean Diet? (nutritionfacts.org)
"The richness of the plant-based MedDiet [Mediterranean diet] in potentially beneficial foods, such as fruit, vegetables, legumes, nuts, cereals, and olive oil, is believed to explain its cardioprotective effects." However, these results suggest nuts are a preferable source of fat compared to olive oil and may "delay the progression of atherosclerosis, the harbinger of future cardiovascular events" such as stroke. Adding nuts appeared to cut the risk of stroke in half.
Alex Hern: Reddit bans 'deepfakes' face-swap porn community (The Guardian)
Social news site blocks subreddit where fake AI-created clips were first created, which had almost 100,000 users.
David Adam: Adventures in brain-hacking: how an electrical stimulator boosted my IQ (The Guardian)
People have always sought advantages over their rivals. But trying to improve intelligence as a way to do it has been off-limits. An education can be bought, but ability? You either had it or you didn't. Now a new science called cognitive enhancement promises that someone who doesn't have intelligence today could have it tomorrow.
Hadley Freeman: Justin Timberlake is taking a Super Bowl kicking - cry me a river! (The Guardian)
Being upstaged by a sheet with a picture of Prince on it is poetic justice for ripping off Janet Jackson's bra at the 2004 halftime show.
Laura Snapes: "Quincy Jones: 'The Beatles were the worst musicians in the world'" (The Guardian)
Record producer takes swipes at the Beatles, the 'machiavellian' Michael Jackson, U2 and more.
Michael Hann: "It felt so right: I Kissed a Girl and the problematic lyrics artists attempted to disavow" (The Guardian)
Katy Perry has expressed regret at the stereotypes peddled on her debut single. She's not the only artist who has attempted to distance herself from badly aged material.
Rich Klein: The Legend Of The Real Sword In The Stone And The Person It Actually Belonged To (All That is Interesting)
Along with the sword, you'll also find the mummified hands of a thief who once tried to steal the blade.
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David Bruce has over 80 Kindle books on Amazon.com.
Presenting
Michael Egan
said:
has returned to semi-retired status.
In memory.
Reader Suggestion
Michelle in AZ
Team Coco
Van Jones on CONAN
Bonus Links
Jeannie the Teed-Off Temp
Reader Comment
Current Events
Yet another Predator lie
No lie, no lie, you're the lie! The "man" is incapable of ever saying anything truthful:
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
REPUBLICANS LOVE TO BUILD WALLS.
A SUDDEN BONE SPUR EPIDEMIC!
OKLAHOMA! WHERE AN EARTHQUAKE HAPPENS EVERYDAY.
SUPER PRUNE WHIP TO THE RESCUE.
MEOW!
THAT'S MY STORY AND I'M STICKING TO IT!
LITTLE D.J. TRUMP.
"THE BEATLES WERE THE WORST MUSICIANS IN THE WORLD."
THE GASBAG.
Visit JD's site - Kitty Litter Music
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Only 20° warmer than seasonal.
'DON'T PANIC!'
Falcon Heavy
SpaceX on Tuesday launched its Falcon Heavy rocket - the company's biggest - into space, carrying Elon Musk's midnight-cherry-red Tesla Roadster.
Soon after the launch, Musk tweeted a live feed of the car and its driver, a dummy named Starman (after the David Bowie song), with Earth in the background.
But that's not the only pop-culture reference in the car.
On the car's center screen are the words "DON'T PANIC!" It's a reference to the words on the cover of the guide in "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy," the 1979 book that was first in a series by Douglas Adams about an accidental space traveler named Arthur Dent.
Musk, who first read "The Hitchhiker's Guide" as a teenager, has said he loves the book. When asked in a 2015 interview about his favorite spaceship from science fiction, he said, "I'd have to say that would be the one in 'The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy' that's powered by the improbability drive."
Falcon Heavy
Universities Purging Dusty Volumes
Library Without Books?
A library without books? Not quite, but as students abandon the stacks in favor of online reference material, university libraries are unloading millions of unread volumes in a nationwide purge that has some print-loving scholars deeply unsettled.
Libraries are putting books in storage, contracting with resellers or simply recycling them. An increasing number of books exist in the cloud, and libraries are banding together to ensure print copies are retained by someone, somewhere. Still, that doesn't always sit well with academics who practically live in the library and argue that large, readily available print collections are vital to research.
"It's not entirely comfortable for anyone," said Rick Lugg, executive director of OCLC Sustainable Collection Services, which helps libraries analyze their holdings. "But absent endless resources to handle this stuff, it's a situation that has to be faced."
At Indiana University of Pennsylvania, the library shelves overflow with books that get little attention. A dusty monograph on "Economic Development in Victorian Scotland." International Television Almanacs from 1978, 1985 and 1986. A book whose title, "Personal Finance," sounds relevant until you see the publication date: 1961.
With nearly half of IUP's collection going uncirculated for 20 years or more, university administrators decided a major housecleaning was in order. Using software from Lugg's group, they came up with an initial list of 170,000 books to be considered for removal.
Library Without Books?
102 Carats
White Diamond
A flawless diamond, the size of a large strawberry, is expected to fetch a world record price when it comes to market at Sotheby's in London this month.
Weighing just over 102 carats, the round, brilliant white stone is smaller than a 118-carat oval diamond sold in Hong Kong in 2013, which currently holds the record price per carat.
But Sotheby's, which also handled that Hong Kong sale, expects the smaller stone's rarity and high quality will see it attract an even higher price.
"That (stone sold in Hong Kong) fetched $260,000 a carat, currently the world record for any colourless diamond. This one being a round brilliant cut - the asking price will be north of that," Patti Wong, chairman of Sotheby's Diamonds told Reuters.
The diamond is the only stone over 100 carats to have been given the highest grades in every criteria by the Gemological Institute of America, which judges a precious stone's quality, Sotheby's said.
White Diamond
$1 Million Discount
Engagement Ring
Years before he became president, Donald Trump claimed he got a $1 million discount on Melania Knauss' engagement ring, which weighs more than 10 carats-but that is not the truth, according to the diamond seller.
Trump was given "no favours," on the ring featuring an emerald cut D-flawless diamond, Graff Diamonds' billionaire chairman Laurence Graff told Forbes in an email late last month. Graff in the report published on Thursday added that Trump was "a pleasure to do business with."
Graff's account invalidates the claim in a New York Times story from 2005, the year the couple wed, that the diamond seller made national news by offering a $1.5 million engagement ring for half the price.
"Only a fool would say, 'No thank you, I want to pay a million dollars more for a diamond,"' Trump said "proudly" at the time.
Trump paid in full for another Graff diamond ring for his 10th anniversary. Melania Trump was criticized for donning the reportedly 25-carat, $3 million diamond ring in her official White House portrait.
Engagement Ring
Study Shows
Fake News
Trump supporters share more fake news on social media than any other political group, according to a new study from Oxford University.
Researchers studied more than 13,000 Twitter users and 47,000 Facebook pages in the days leading up to President Donald Trump's State of the Union Address to determine which social media users spread the most "junk" news.
They discovered that Trump supporters on Twitter shared more unreliable news than all other groups combined. On Facebook, extreme conservatives share more junk news than all other audiences put together.
The researchers defined "junk news" as "misleading, deceptive or incorrect information purporting to be real news about politics, economics or culture". A team of 12 researchers coded news stories to determine which sites were likely to broadcast this kind of news. The final list included sites like Breitbart News and InfoWars.
The researchers then recorded the activity of 13,477 Twitter users and 47,719 public Facebook pages in the three months leading up to the State of the Union, in order to see which users shared the most articles from these sites.
Fake News
Two Accuse
Former Child Actors
Scott Baio, who played Chachi in Happy Days, has been accused of abusing two of his Charles In Charge co-stars while they were minors.
Baio came to fame as Bugsy Malone at the age of 16 before joining Happy Days. His character Chachi had his own spin-off, Joannie Loves Chachi, and Baoi then starred in Charles In Charge, where he played a college student who lived with a family and babysat their children.
The children were played by Nicole Eggert, who joined the show when she was 14, and Alexander Polinsky, who was 11. Both have come forward to accuse Baoi of sexual and violent abuse.
It was public knowledge that Baio had dated Eggert, who was 11 years his junior, during the 1980s, but their relationship has been cast in a darker light after she filed a police report against him alleging that he sexually abused her from the age of 14, and had sex with her when she was too young to consent.
Polinsky was with her when she spoke to officers on Tuesday, confirming her story and adding that he had been bullied by Baio, who was in his late 20s during Charles In Charge.
Former Child Actors
Not A 'Bad Thing'
Pruitt
Scott Pruitt (R-Exxon), the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, alluded earlier this week that global warming may be beneficial to humans, once again questioning the world's leading scientists who have declared the phenomenon one of the greatest known threats to humanity.
In an interview that aired Tuesday on KSNV, a Nevada television station, Pruitt questioned how accurately scientists could predict the planet's ideal temperature in 2100, or even this year, and said humans had "flourished" in times of past warmth.
"We know humans have most flourished during times of what, warming trends," Pruitt said during the interview. "I think there's assumptions made that because the climate is warming, that that necessarily is a bad thing. Do we really know what the ideal surface temperature should be in the year 2100, in the year 2018?"
He continued: "That's fairly arrogant for us to think that we know exactly what it should be in 2100."
The view is a new iteration of Pruitt's antagonism toward established climate science, but it flies in the face of such research all the same. Scientists have long held a near-unanimous consensus that the climate is changing and that humans are the primary cause. World leaders and global organizations have declared the phenomenon one of the most pressing threats to humanity and have warned that unless the world works to halt greenhouse gas emissions from the burning of fossil fuels, a host of climate-related effects could devastate the world.
Pruitt
Latest Attack
Fox "News"
Here's an extraordinary claim that Fox News viewers have been hearing in recent days: The second-in-command at the Justice Department, the Republican law enforcement veteran whom President Donald Trump tapped to become deputy attorney general, threatened the Republican members of Congress investigating his department. He might be guilty of a crime. Big, if true.
Gregg Jarrett - a Fox News legal analyst who has recently taken to calling the FBI "America's secret police" and the "shadow government" while calling Robert Mueller's special counsel investigation "illegitimate and corrupt" - has recently begun telling Fox News viewers that Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein threatened members of Congress.
Jarrett has claimed that a "highly reliable congressional source" told him that Rosenstein "used the power of his office to threaten members of Congress" by threatening to subpoena their texts and emails during a Jan. 10 meeting with House Intelligence Committee Chairman Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) and others.
A dubious claim from a cable news analyst isn't normally worth dwelling on. But with the Fox News-addicted president indicating he wants Rosenstein gone and Mueller's special counsel investigation, which Rosenstein oversees, ended, Jarrett's claim could wind up in the presidential Twitter feed at any moment. It might even give Trump the excuse he wants to fire Rosenstein, the Republican the president has previously suggested he believes is a Democrat.
In an environment where most of Trump's supporters already buy into the notion that the FBI is biased against Trump, Jarrett's allegations against Rosenstein - along with attacks from Fox host Sean Hannity and members of Congress - could continue to sour public opinion of Rosenstein, who was well respected on both sides of the aisle before Trump made him deputy attorney general on April 26. He is in control of the Russia investigation, from which Attorney General Jeff Sessions had recused himself.
Fox "News"
Church's Lawsuit
Airport Screeners
A wooden box carried an eagle feather and bone whistle, a gourd rattle and a feather fan - items that carry spiritual energy and are used in Native American religious ceremonies.
The man holding the box asked security agents at the San Antonio International Airport to allow him to display the items so their energy wouldn't be polluted. The agents declined, roughly handling the items and shoving them back in the box, according to Sandor Iron Rope, former president of the Native American Church of North America.
His lawsuit against the Transportation Security Administration was settled last month, with neither side acknowledging fault and the agency agreeing to better educate its employees about Native American religious items at more than a dozen airports nationwide.
"There was a policy in place designed to provide some protection for us, but they don't have training," Iron Rope said Wednesday. "Not everybody is familiar with the policies."
As part of the settlement with the Native American Church of North America, the TSA and the plaintiffs will collaborate on a webinar that will be available to agents who work with passengers well ahead of their flights to move items through security.
Airport Screeners
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