Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Josh Marshall: Trump's Dangerous Allegiance Threatens Every One of Us (TPM)
I'm talking about the fact that Russia and Vladimir Putin clearly exercise some control over Donald Trump. Now. I know that is a dramatic accusation. Perhaps to some, it will appear hyperbolic. But after a year I think there's no longer any way to doubt that this is true. On every front, he resists taking punitive measures against Russia, even when mandated to do so by US laws. …
David Wong: Why We Can't Stop Hating The Poor (Cracked)
A T-shirt that says "I HATE POOR PEOPLE" is considered unsuitable attire for most occasions. That's because it's a sentiment most non-shitheads won't express out loud. What we will do instead is make snide comments about the girl with fucked-up teeth, or bad hygiene, or poor grammar, or "trashy" clothes. And we'll positively seethe when we see somebody on the internet doing a GoFundMe to pay off medical bills, only to notice in the next video that they seem to have gotten their hair done.
Joe Bob Briggs: Have Your Cake But Eat It (Taki's Magazine)
If you're having a gay wedding, and your cake has been baked by a man who thinks gay marriage is an abomination against God, do not eat the cake.
Joe Bob Briggs: The Trump Era (Taki's Magazine)
Why is it The Trump Era? Who invented this? Why do I read this forty times a week? I'm not sure I'm ready to give this guy his own era.
Zoe Williams: A young Stephen Hawking would never have made it in today's age of austerity (The Guardian)
The late physicist was a genius and a visionary but it is hard to imagine those qualities thriving with cuts to disability support and the NHS under attack
Robert Pinsky: A Perfect Discomfit (Slate)
William Blake's two poems called "The Chimney Sweeper" create art by keeping us uncomfortable.
Eddie Deezen: "Can't Buy Me Love" by the Beatles (Neatorama)
But the new song the two composers came up with was not to be the usual Lennon-McCartney collaboration. This was no joint effort, this song was Paul's baby. It would also become one of the first McCartney "classics." It was to be very rare in the early canon of Beatle records, in that it is completely sung by just one person- none of the legendary "Beatle harmonies" or any background vocals whatsoever. No, this one was Paul's and Paul's alone.
Wendy Ide: Could you watch every film released at the cinema? (The Guardian)
A £10 pass to watch any movie at any cinema - similar to America's popular Moviepass - is looking to launch in the UK. Does this mean you should watch anything and everything? 'Yes!' says a film critic.
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Presenting
Michael Egan
answered:
has returned to semi-retired status.
In memory.
Reader Suggestion
Michelle in AZ
Reader Suggestion
Re: Stephen Hawking
Hey, Marty: I found this page at Bored Panda, with very nice tributes to Stephen
Hawking by such folks as Neil DeGrasse Tyson, NASA, the cast of "The Big Bang
Theory", etc. - I thought you and your readers might enjoy:
Bonus Links
Jeannie the Teed-Off Temp
Reader Suggestion
Beware the VP
Beware the VP
He's got quite an aid there.
Reader Comment
Current Events
Mueller and the ides of March
Enjoyed this Wonkette:
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
WHITE TRAILER TRASH!
WTF?
COME FLY FOR FREE!
'FRESH FISH'.
Visit JD's site - Kitty Litter Music
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Started jury duty on 2/21, and it (finally) ended today.
It was civil case involving a car and truck accident, and the truck company had already acknowledged liability.
There were injuries, resulting in a crapper load of medical bills, so we were charged with determining past & future medical expenses, future loss of earnings, as well as past and future non-economic damages.
There were at least 11 doctors, 5 mechanical engineers, a life care planner, a forensic billing specialist, and a whole lotta forensic animation reconstructions and crash simulations, photographs, and MRI's.
Both sides made a point out of how much the other side was paying their specialists - for example, one doctor charged $7500 per ½ day to testify, or $15,000 for a day. And $60,000 just to read the records.
Another of the doctors just bought Steve Wynn's old place in Bel Air.
It was pretty intense, and I'm beat. More tomorrow.
UNIVERSAL HEALTH CARE NOW!
Vows Not To Stop
Robert De Niro
Robert de Niro has launched another blistering verbal attack on President-for-now Donald Trump (R-Pendejo).
On Tuesday night, the Hollywood actor used his speech at the Fulfillment Fund charity dinner in Los Angeles to claim that Trump was "still an idiot" despite receiving a quality education from the University of Pennsylvania.
"Now I'm not trying to turn this non-political event into a political one," said De Niro, 74, who reportedly used the first part of his address to praise the fund, which works to empower young people through education.
"But as long as our country's leadership is so appalling and so corrupt, I'll be speaking out at every venue," said de Niro. "To be silent in the face of such villainy is to be complicit, and it's especially appropriate tonight because Trump treats education as a con, a way to make a profit at the expense of the suckers."
De Niro called Trump a "fucking idiot" and a "fucking fool" at the National Board of Review Annual Awards Gala in January. In August 2017, the two-time Oscar winner told Deadline that Trump was "a flat-out blatant racist" who would be "even more dangerous" if he was smart.
Robert De Niro
Contestant Hides His Famous Past
'Jeopardy!'
When "Jeopardy!" host Alex Trebek introduced Paris Themmen as an "entrepreneur" and "avid backpacker" on Tuesday night's show, he failed to note that his guest had a famous past.
And Themmen didn't mention it either.
But you can't fool viewers, who quickly identified the 58-year-old contestant as the TV-obsessed little cowboy Mike Teevee from the 1971 film, "Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory."
Twitter lit up.
And Themmen, whose character dreamed of getting on television, performed well on the tube, finishing second.
'Jeopardy!'
Funky Protein
Platypus Milk
The milk of the platypus may contain a protein that can fight drug-resistant bacteria.
Now, a new analysis of that protein reveals that its shape is as bizarre as the shape of the animal that excreted it. The protein has a never-before-seen protein fold, now dubbed the "Shirley Temple" thanks to its ringlet-like structure, according to researchers from the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO) and Deakin University in Australia.
"Platypuses are such weird animals that it would make sense for them to have weird biochemistry," study researcher Janet Newman of CSIRO said in a statement.
Many types of mammal milk have antibacterial properties, according to a 2014 paper in the journal Genome Biology and Evolution. Platypus milk may be particularly protective, though, because baby platypuses are exposed to many pathogens throughout their infancy. Their milk sits on their mothers' exposed skin, and they live in microbe-rich burrows as soon as they hatch. [Mammal Milk: How the Fat Measures Up (Infographic)]
Newman and her colleagues replicated an unknown protein from platypus milk in a laboratory and then studied its structure, discovering the unique ringlet shape. They reported their findings March 14 in the journal Structural Biology Communications.
Platypus Milk
Kicks Off
Grunion Season
They flop and slip and make sweet love on the sand under the full moon's light.
Grunion - unique little fish found only in Southern California and down south in Baja - are little marine critters that mate on the sand when the waves wash them to shore. When the grunion are running, people in the know show up in the dark of night to wait and watch, some ready with buckets to collect the critters to eat, when catching them is allowed.
"It's a cool California thing," said Jim Serpa, who for 20 years ran a grunion night at Doheny State Beach while he was supervising rangers, before retiring a few years ago.
The grunion season officially kicked off early March, and the next run is expected Saturday, March 17 through Tuesday, March 20.
So grab your flashlights, beach chairs and, if you don't mind staying up late, get ready to watch them run.
For a full schedule of grunion runs, go to: wildlife.ca.gov/fishing/ocean/grunion
Grunion Season
Tools Push Back
Africa
Just 20 years ago, many archaeologists believed there was a "human revolution" 40,000-50,000 years ago during which modern behaviours such as symbolism, innovation and art suddenly arose. This was thought to have enabled a major shift in cognitive organisation and probably the advent of complex language. At the time, the earliest modern human fossils had been found in Africa and dated to some 100,000 years ago, leaving a gap between the emergence of anatomically modern humans and behaviourally modern humans.
This gap in the development suggested that we only achieved "modernity" as our species migrated out of Africa and into the rest of the Old World. But this view is increasingly being challenged. Just weeks ago, we learned that Neanderthals could paint images. Now, three new papers, published in Science, show that technologically advanced behaviours occurred much earlier than we thought in the African stone age.
Not all researchers supported the view that modernity arose outside of Africa. Writing at the turn of the millennium, archaeologists Sally McBrearty and Allison Brooks complained that this view was Eurocentric and brought about by a profound under-appreciation of the depth and complexity of the African archaeological record. They argued that components of the "human revolution" were to be found in the African Middle Stone Age some 280,000-50,000 years ago.
Now, two decades later, Brooks and her colleagues have presented well-dated evidence from the Olorgesailie Basin in Kenya that places the evolution of some of these behaviours much further back in time. They highlight technological change at around 300,000 years ago that likely occurred in response to the effects of long-term, global environmental and climatic change.
Based on excavations at five sites dating from 320,000 years ago, the team found distinct differences in the forms of stone tools compared to older deposits in the area - suggesting technological innovation had taken place. Older sites yielded large, bulky stone tools such as hand axes and cleavers. This technology is generally referred to as Acheulean (Early Stone Age).
Africa
Birds Of Prey
California
A Northern California man shot more than 130 hawks and other legally protected birds of prey on his land, leaving the carcasses to pile up at the foot of trees and telephone poles, wildlife officials said Wednesday.
California Department of Fish and Wildlife managers believe the discovery near the rural town of Standish in Lassen County, on the border with Nevada, marks the largest poaching case involving raptors on record for the state, spokesman Capt. Patrick Foy said.
Wildlife officers alerted by an anonymous tip from someone who reported watching a man shooting down a hawk "just started finding one bird after the next," Foy said.
Authorities booked property owner Richard Parker, 67, into the Lassen County jail on charges including take of birds of prey and take of migratory non-game birds protected by the federal Migratory Bird Treaty Act. The website of the county jail did not show whether Parker had a lawyer to comment on the charges.
All of the birds appear to have been shot, Foy said. Most were red-tailed hawks, but they also included an owl, at least one magpie songbird, and North America's largest hawk, the migratory ferruginous hawk.
California
Top 20
Global Concert Tours
The Top 20 Global Concert Tours ranks artists by average box office gross per city and includes the average ticket price for shows Worldwide. The list is based on data provided to the trade publication Pollstar by concert promoters and venue managers.
1. Bruno Mars; $4,077,191; $103.67.
2. Springsteen On Broadway; $2,370,882; $508.09.
3. Guns N' Roses; $1,756,609; $137.37.
4. Lady Gaga; $1,630,947; $105.96.
5. Dead & Company; $1,586,940; $107.75.
6. Kendrick Lamar; $1,516,324; $90.49.
7. Jay-Z; $1,477,035; $102.13.
8. Queen + Adam Lambert; $1,430,667; $107.96.
9. Little Mix; $1,228,604; $55.58.
10. Blake Shelton; $961,110; $78.36.
11. Timbiriche; $923,021; $67.73.
12. The Killers; $893,072; $70.70.
13. Scorpions; $840,062; $105.52.
14. André Rieu; $810,401; $97.73.
15. Imagine Dragons; $800,071; $64.24.
16. Trans-Siberian Orchestra; $759,351; $56.74.
17. Ozuna; $654,009; $73.33.
18. Janet Jackson; $631,303; $75.07.
19. Queens Of The Stone Age; $536,672; $53.29.
20. Fall Out Boy; $511,749; $60.84.
Global Concert Tours
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