Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Paul Krugman: 101 Boosterism (NY Times Blog)
The point is that just because Econ 101 makes a smart, counterintuitive point doesn't make that point of central importance, here or elsewhere. People should know what's in the textbook; above all, they should buy my book! But never imagine that it's the be-all and end-all of what matters.
As told to Archie Bland: "Game of Thrones: how to win - by the British army and other experts"(The Guardian)
As the warring factions in Westeros return, we ask a medieval historian, the British army's head of strategy and a War of the Roses battle re-enactor how they'd capture the Iron Throne.
Suzanne Moore: A generation of artists were wiped out by Aids and we barely talk about it(The Guardian)
A new film about the photographer Robert Mapplethorpe is a shocking and brilliant reminder of the devastation HIV and Aids wreaked - and still does.
Rebecca Nicholson: "Paul O'Grady: 'I've lost just about everybody I know'" (The Guardian)
The TV host has had a rotten year, with friends such as Cilla Black and Jackie Collins 'going down like ninepins'. He talks about swapping Soho nightclubs for making jam - and why Jeremy Corbyn, at least, gives him hope.
How Vote Leave got rickrolled (The Guardian)
Despite its name, there is one thing the Vote Leave campaign should not have left for so long: registering a domain name. The delay by the anti-EU organisation meant that up to 100,000 people who tried to access voteleave.com, co.uk or .net were rickrolled - redirected to a YouTube clip of Rick Astley's 1987 hit Never Gonna Give You Up. So far, so internet.
11 Cool Celebrities Caught Doing Hilariously Uncool Things (Cracked)
In case you weren't aware, there's certain levels of celebrity that famous people occupy, kind of like the Circles of Hell. Or, maybe exactly like the Circles of Hell? Anyway. There's that top level, we'll call it Bill Murray Status, where only the most awesome and revered celebrities are allowed to be placed. But having Bill Murray Status doesn't absolve you for being called out for the tragically unhip things you do. That's why we feel the need to call attention to …
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"Doug's Most Shared Facebook Post" Today
wrote:
answered:
has returned to semi-retired status.
Reader Suggestion
Michelle in AZ
David E Suggests
Removals
David
Thanks, Dave!
from Marc Perkel
Patriot Act
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
THE REPUBLICAN PARTY OF HATE!
RED ALERT!
MAMA, DON'T LET YOUR BABIES GROW UP TO BE COWBOYS!
THE BABES STEP UP!
SHUT THE FUCK UP!
THIS DOESN'T MATTER. HE'S STILL A HUMAN FREAK SHOW!
"THE OTHER GANDHI."
FUCK THE HEAD CHOPPERS!
MORMONS SUCK!
"AND THEN WE WEPT"
THE CAPITALIST DEMONS ARE LOOSE!
WHAT A SLOB!
Visit JD's site - Kitty Litter Music
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Back to singing bass and barking like a seal.
Dropped Out Of Concert
Joe Walsh
Eagles keyboardist and guitarist Joe Walsh says he's pulling out of a Cleveland summer concert he thought would be a nonpartisan event for veterans' families because it's actually a launch for the Republican National Convention.
Walsh says in an emailed statement he's "very concerned about the rampant vitriol, fear-mongering and bullying coming from the current Republican campaigns." He says he "cannot in good conscience endorse the Republican party in any way."
The concert is scheduled for July 18. The Republican National Convention is scheduled for July 18-21 at Cleveland's Quicken Loans Arena.
Walsh said Wednesday he's sorry for any fans or veterans and their families he might disappoint. He promises to look at doing a veterans-related benefit concert later this year.
Joe Walsh
$100 Million to Museum of Modern Art
David Geffen
New York's Museum of Modern Art says it has received a $100 million gift from entertainment executive and philanthropist David Geffen.
MoMA said Thursday that the money will be used for its renovation and expansion.
Three floors of new galleries will be named The David Geffen Wing.
In addition, a suite of galleries in the current museum building will be named The David Geffen Galleries this spring.
Geffen said his passion for art began while visiting The Museum of Modern Art as a young man.
David Geffen
Flown From Seattle To San Diego
Sea Turtles
Two sea turtles that landed cold, sickly and malnourished on shores far beyond their normal living range have been flown aboard a U.S. Coast Guard plane from Seattle to San Diego to finish rehabilitation.
The olive ridley and the Pacific green turtles that left Seattle on Thursday were part of a record-setting spike of sea turtle strandings on Pacific Northwest beaches this past winter. Ten turtles were found on shores in Oregon, Washington and northern California. Only three survived, according to U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
Among the survivors hitching a ride was Tucker, a male olive ridley turtle between 15 to 20 years of age, found on the Oregon coast.
The Pacific green turtle came ashore even further north, landing on Canada's Vancouver Island. Nicknamed Comber, this sea turtle is believed to be the first turtle to be successfully rehabilitated in Canada. Comber spent three months at the Vancouver Aquarium. Tucker spent a similar amount of time in Seattle.
The turtles will finish their rehabilitation at SeaWorld San Diego. The plan is to release them in the summer. Their normal living range usually tops out around mid-California.
Sea Turtles
3 Sites Possibly Found
Vikings
Three archaeological sites that may have been used by Vikings around 1,000 years ago were excavated recently in Canada.
If confirmed, the discoveries would add to the single known Viking settlement in the New World, located at L'Anse aux Meadows on the northern tip of Newfoundland. Excavated in the 1960s, that Viking outpost was used for a short period of time around 1,000 years ago as well.
Sagas from the time of the Vikings tell tales of their journeys into the New World, mentioning places named "Helluland" (widely believed to be modern-day Baffin Island), "Markland" (widely believed to be Labrador) and "Vinland," which is a more mysterious location that some archaeologists have argued could be Newfoundland.
Even so, pinpointing actual Viking remains or other clues of Viking settlements has been difficult, making the three sites - two in Newfoundland and the other in the Arctic - intriguing to archaeologists.
Sarah Parcak, a professor at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, and her colleagues spotted the so-called Point Rosee site in southern Newfoundland while scanning satellite imagery, and announced their discovery a few weeks ago.
Vikings
Reaches Settlement
New York-Presbyterian Hospital
Federal authorities have reached a $2.2 million settlement with a New York City hospital over filming by a television documentary crew that disclosed two patients' health information without their authorization.
The Department of Health and Human Services said New York-Presbyterian Hospital let the ABC crew for "NY Med" film one patient who was dying and another in significant distress. Under the settlement agreement, the department's Office of Civil Rights will monitor the hospital for two years.
"This case sends an important message that OCR will not permit covered entities to compromise their patients' privacy by allowing news or television crews to film the patients without their authorization," office Director Jocelyn Samuels said. "We take seriously all complaints filed by individuals and will seek necessary remedies to ensure that patients' privacy is fully protected."
The hospital said its goal was to educate the public about important health issues and the filming didn't violate the federal patient privacy rule.
In March, New York's Court of Appeals reinstated Anita Chanko's lawsuit against the hospital over the filming of her husband's death after he was brought into the emergency room. Mark Chanko was hit by a truck while crossing a street in April 2011. The episode aired in 2012. His image was blurred and he wasn't identified, but he was heard talking.
New York-Presbyterian Hospital
Commemorative Quarters To The Rescue
U.S. Capitol
House Republicans sidestepped the divisive fight over displays of the Confederate battle flag at the U.S. Capitol with plans to put up state coins instead.
Rep. Candice Miller, R-Mich., who heads the House Administration Committee, announced Thursday that reproductions of commemorative quarters depicting the 50 states, District of Columbia and the territories will line the wall between the Capitol and the Rayburn House Office Building.
"A print of each state's commemorative coin will be tastefully displayed for this highly trafficked area, as each quarter serves as a reminder of the ideals, landmarks and people from each state, as well as this nation's great motto, 'out of many, one,'" Miller said in a statement.
The walls previously displayed state flags, and Mississippi's includes an image of the Confederate battle flag. Democrats complained last year that the flag celebrates a murderous, racist past in the nation's history. The Republican-controlled House was forced to scrap a vote on permitting the Confederate flag at Park Service-run cemeteries in a fierce fight over the issue.
The Confederate battle emblem has been on the Mississippi flag since 1894, and voters chose to keep the design in 2001. Since the Charleston slayings, several Mississippi cities, counties and colleges have stopped flying the banner.
U.S. Capitol
Rationing Power
Venezuela
Recession-hit Venezuela will turn off the electricity supply in its 10 most populous states for four hours a day for 40 days to deal with a severe power shortage, the government said Thursday.
It is the latest drastic measure to alleviate a severe electricity crisis which President Nicolas Maduro and his government blame on a drought caused by the El Nino weather phenomenon.
Critics say it is the result of years of economic mismanagement.
"Each user will have a temporary suspension of four hours a day. The plan will last approximately 40 days" to ease pressure on the country's largest hydroelectric dam, said Electricity Minister Luis Motta.
Venezuela's economy has plunged along with the price of the oil which it relies on for foreign revenues. Shortages of medicines and goods such as toilet paper and cooking oil are widespread.
Venezuela
Family Makes Claims
Birds' Head Haggadah
The grandchildren of one of the earliest Jewish victims of the Nazis are laying claim to a jewel of Israel's top museum: the world's oldest illustrated Passover manuscript.
The descendants of a German Jewish lawmaker say the famed Birds' Head Haggadah, a medieval copy of the text read around Jewish dinner tables on Passover, was stolen from their family during the Nazi era and sold without the family's consent 70 years ago to the predecessor of the Israel Museum in Jerusalem - an act the family calls a "long-standing illegal and moral injustice."
The medieval manuscript, which tells the biblical tale of the Israelite exodus from Egypt, has long vexed scholars with its peculiar drawings of Jewish figures with bird-like heads. Now, a new page in the manuscript's history is being written, as a high-profile American attorney who restored looted masterpieces by artist Gustav Klimt to their Jewish heir - a courtroom drama made famous in the recent Hollywood film "Woman in Gold" - is taking on the case.
The manuscript is currently displayed behind glass in a darkened room at the Israel Museum in a special exhibit ahead of the weeklong Passover holiday, which begins Friday. The family wants the manuscript to remain at the museum, but it demands the museum pay compensation and rename the manuscript after the family, or face a lawsuit.
"We want a compromise," said Eli Barzilai, 75, who lives in Jerusalem.
Birds' Head Haggadah
Monumental Migration
Monkey Mariners
Monkeys resembling today's capuchins accomplished the astonishing feat of crossing at least 100 miles (160 km) of open ocean 21 million years ago to get from South America to North America eons before the two continents joined together.
Scientists said on Wednesday they reached that conclusion based on the discovery of seven little teeth during excavations involving the Panama Canal's expansion, showing monkeys had reached the North American continent far earlier than previously known.
The teeth belonged to Panamacebus transitus, a previously unknown medium-sized monkey species. South America at the time was secluded from other continents, with a strange array of mammals evolving in what 20th century American paleontologist George Gaylord Simpson called "splendid isolation."
"Panama represents the southernmost extreme of the North American continent at that time," said Jonathan Bloch, a vertebrate paleontology curator at the Florida Museum of Natural History on the University of Florida campus.
"It may have swum across, but this would have required covering a distance of more than 100 miles, a difficult feat for sure. It's more likely that it unintentionally rafted across on mats of vegetation," Bloch added.
Monkey Mariners
In Memory
Joan Marie Laurer (Chyna)
Chyna, the WWE star who in the 1990s became one of the best-known and most-popular female professional wrestlers in history, has died, authorities said.
Police in Southern California said they were responding to a 911 call from a friend of former WWE wrestler Chyna when they found her dead in her Redondo Beach apartment.
A friend had gone Wednesday to check on Chyna, whose real name is Joan Marie Laurer, after she had failed to answer her phone for a few days, Redondo Beach police said in a statement. The friend told the 911 operator that Laurer wasn't breathing.
The 46-year-old Laurer was dead when officers arrived, police said. Several media outlets report that she was 45.
The tall, muscle-bound, raven-haired Laurer billed herself as the ''9th Wonder of the World'' because her wrestling predecessor Andre the Giant had already called himself the eighth.
She was a member of the wrestling squad that dubbed itself ''D-Generation X,'' often wrestled against men and at one point was the WWE women's champion.
Laurer was a native of Rochester, New York and graduated from the University of Tampa in Florida before taking up wrestling.
She joins a long list of WWE professional wrestlers who have died relatively young, including Rick Rude, Curt ''Mr. Perfect'' Hennig, the Ultimate Warrior and Owen Hart.
After leaving the WWE in 2001, Laurer posed for Playboy and appeared in adult films and on reality TV, including the shows ''The Surreal Life'' and ''Celebrity Rehab with Dr. Drew.''
Joan Marie Laurer (Chyna)
In Memory
Guy Hamilton
Movie director Guy Hamilton, who directed four hugely popular James Bond films and raised the profile of the Bond movie brand through his work with actors Sean Connery and Roger Moore, has died in a hospital on the Spanish island of Mallorca. He was 93.
Hamilton, who was British, directed Bond blockbusters "Goldfinger," ''Diamonds Are Forever," ''Live And Let Die" and "The Man With The Golden Gun."
Hamilton was born in Paris on Sept. 16, 1922, to British parents. He worked for the Paramount News newsreel company in England during World War II before serving in the Navy.
He got his big break in 1948 when legendary British director Carol Reed hired him as first assistant director for "The Fallen Idol," a thriller told from the perspective of a 9-year-old boy. Hamilton also worked with Reed on the "The Third Man" starring Orson Welles and with John Huston on "The African Queen" featuring Humphrey Bogart and Katharine Hepburn.
Hamilton went on to direct several movies in the 1950s. He turned down an opportunity to direct the James Bond movie "Dr. No" but accepted the job for "Goldfinger."
In a 2003 interview with the Film Talk website, Hamilton said the "Goldfinger" script was good but too "Americanized" and that he had to work on making the villains more believable.
"So I had to make sure all the English scenes became more English," Hamilton said. "I liked the idea of an intellectual villain. A Bond villain has to be (the) intellectual equal and a worthy opponent of Bond."
Hamilton directed 22 films in total and was married twice, to actresses Naomi Chance and Kerima, the stage name of Miriam Charriere.
Guy Hamilton
In Memory
Prince
Pop icon Prince -- one of the most influential but elusive figures in music -- died suddenly at his compound in Minnesota on Thursday, a representative said.
He was 57.
The pop legend last week was taken to a hospital after his private jet made an unscheduled landing.
But Prince was said to be suffering the flu and made light of the situation, later posting on Twitter about a local shop in Minneapolis for Record Store Day.
Prince became an international sensation in the 1980s, when he popularized the Minneapolis sound of danceable funk. His 1984 album "Purple Rain" is often described as one of the greatest of all time.
The artist lives in the outskirts of Minneapolis, where he throws parties and preserves master vaults at his Paisley Park studio.
Prince in the 1990s changed his name to an unpronounceable "love symbol" and wrote "slave" on his cheek to protest contractual conditions by his label Warner.
Among his best-known songs are "Purple Rain," "1999," "When Doves Cry," "Cream" and "Kiss."
He was recently prolific in his output, releasing albums through streaming site Tidal, and has taken to scheduling shows at the last minute to avoid scalpers.
Prince
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