Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Helaine Olen: The high cost of lotteries (Washington Post)
According to Mega Millions officials, one winning ticket to the eye-popping $1.5 billion lottery was purchased in South Carolina. Congratulations to the still anonymous winner or winners! As for the rest of you … we need to talk.
Andrew Tobias: Trump is Right
He goes from state to state saying, "A vote for Sally is a vote for me." "A vote for Ted is a vote for me." And he's right: a Republican vote this year is a vote for him.
Andrew Tobias: The More You Know
Denying native Americans their right to vote is so Republican. As you've probably heard, Republicans have devised a way to block long-time voters from voting this time, by adding a new requirement: their ID must include a street address. But Indian reservations don't have streets. Republicans couldn't come up with a proposal for the "replace" part of repealing Obamacare, but boy can they make things happen when it comes to suppressing the vote. I mean, in fairness, what right do Native Americans have to vote? Why are they here, anyway? They don't look like us. As the old saying goes, "go back to …." Oh, wait.
Camila Domonoske: Many Native IDs Won't Be Accepted At North Dakota Polling Places (NPR)
… the Supreme Court declined to overturn North Dakota's controversial voter ID law, which requires residents to show identification with a current street address. A P.O. box does not qualify. Many Native American reservations, however, do not use physical street addresses. Native Americans are also overrepresented in the homeless population, according to the Urban Institute. As a result, Native residents often use P.O. boxes for their mailing addresses and may rely on tribal identification that doesn't list an address.
Greg Sargent: If Republicans lose, Trump is going to lie about why. Don't let him. (Washington Post)
The New York Times reports that Trump and his advisers are already laying the groundwork to creatively spin a loss in a way that minimizes his culpability for it. As the Times puts it, White House political director Bill Stepien is preparing to "claim credit" for whatever House seats Republicans do not lose. To do so, they are sending Trump to heavily Republican areas where he can juice GOP turnout, after which they will credit Trump with "saving" seats in those areas. But the rub here is that, even as Trump's advisers are doing this, they are also keeping Trump out of swing territory. As the Times puts it, for some Republican incumbents, "Trump rallies are simply hazards to be avoided."
Paul Waldman: Republicans are growing increasingly terrified of socialism (Washington Post)
For the record, Bishop's opponent, Elissa Slotkin, favors an option to buy in to Medicare but hasn't come out for Medicare-for-all. But truthful or not, you can see the strategic logic of the attack. Seniors love Medicare and can be scared into fearing they'll lose it, even if all the Democrats want to do is expand its benefits to everyone. And they vote.
Zack Beauchamp: A leading Holocaust historian just seriously compared the US to Nazi Germany (Vox)
"If the US has someone whom historians will look back on as the gravedigger of American democracy, it is Mitch McConnell."
Jonathan Chait: "White House Sources: Chinese Surveil Trump, But He's Too Dumb to Know Secrets" (NY Mag)
Given that he is being secretly surveilled by China, it's probably good that Trump is too ignorant and lazy to have anything of value to disclose.
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Presenting
Michael Egan
answered:
has returned to semi-retired status.
In memory.
Reader Suggestion
Michelle in AZ
Bonus Links
Jeannie the Teed-Off Temp
from Bruce
Anecdotes
• Bruce took the day off.
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Current Events
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We are all only temporarily able bodied.
Thanks, Linda!
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
THE NEW TRUMP PLOY: MURDER FOR MONEY!
THE MURDERERS!
PRESIDENT LIAR AND PRESIDENT MURDERER!
BEARING WITNESS AT A TRUMP RALLY.
THE REPUBLICAN LIARS ARE WORKING OVERTIME.
TOXIC CHRISTIANITY.
FRIENDS OF TRUMP! ENEMIES OF HUMANITY!!!
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In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Sunny and seasonal.
Highest-Paid 2018
TV Actresses
Sofia Vergara is once again the belle of the TV-actress-salary ball, having been named No. 1 on Forbes' list of the World's Highest-Paid Actresses for the seventh year in a row.
The "Modern Family" star's winning paycheck of $42.5 million beats out "Big Bang Theory" lead Kaley Cuoco's - her nearest competition - $24.5 million in earnings by 73 percent, according to Forbes' 2018 rankings.
But Vergara's salary isn't just made up of her haul from the ABC sitcom. Almost half of that figure reflects cash from endorsements and licensing deals.
In third place again is "Grey's Anatomy" star Ellen Pompeo, whose new number this year is $23.5 million, a giant raise she negotiated after 15 seasons leading the Shonda Rhimes-created series. That bump made her TV's highest-paid dramatic actress - ever.
New to the list this year are Cuoco's co-stars Mayim Bialik and Melissa Rauch, with "Homeland" star Claire Danes returning to the ranks. Robin Wright, Mindy Kaling and Priyanka Chopra were among the top earners from 2017 who didn't make the cut this year.
TV Actresses
Magic Mushrooms
"Microdosing"
The use of minute doses of magic mushrooms and truffles containing psychedelic substances could induce a state of unconstrained thought that may produce more new, creative ideas. "Microdosing" in this way may allow people to experience the creative benefits of psychedelic drugs without the risk of the so-called "bad trips" that often come with high doses of such substances. This is according to a new study in the Springer-branded journal Psychopharmacology which is the official journal of the European Behavioural Pharmacology Society (EBPS). The research was led by Luisa Prochazkova of Leiden University in The Netherlands and is the first study of its kind to experimentally investigate the cognitive-enhancing effects of microdosing on a person's brain function within a natural setting.
Taking a tiny fraction of a normal dose of psychedelic substances is becoming a trend in some professional circles because this is thought to stimulate brain function and enhance mental flexibility and creativity. However, experimental research that moves away from anecdotal evidence is still rare.
In this study, Prochazkova and her colleagues investigated how a microdose of a psychedelic substance affected the cognitive brain function of 36 people who were present at an event organized by the Psychedelic Society of The Netherlands. During the experimental phase, participants were set three tasks before and after they consumed on average 0.37 grams of dried truffles. The tests assessed their convergent thinking (the identification of a single solution to a problem), their fluid intelligence (the capacity to reason and solve new problems) and their divergent thinking (the ability to recognize many possible solutions). Afterwards, the researchers analyzed the active substances present in the truffles consumed by participants.
After taking the microdose of truffles, the researchers found that participants' convergent thinking abilities were improved. Participants also had more ideas about how to solve a presented task, and were more fluent, flexible and original in the possibilities they came up with. Microdosing with psychedelic substances therefore improved both the divergent and convergent thinking of participants.
These findings are in line with earlier studies that found high doses of psychedelics can enhance creative performance. The fact that participants' intelligence scores and general analytical abilities did not change suggests that the effect of the truffles is rather selective, and more to the benefit of a person's creative domain.
"Microdosing"
Build Compound Tools
Crows
Well, we didn't think it was possible, but we should have had more faith in our feathered corvid friends: crows just got even cooler. Researchers have discovered that crows don't just use single objects as tools; they can also make them out of multiple parts that are individually useless.
We already knew that corvids - crows and ravens - are capable of reasoning cause and effect, solving multi-step puzzles, planning for the future and even fashioning simple tools out of sticksand paper.
But making compound tools is something that has only ever been observed before in primates - specifically, humans and and great apes.
Even young humans take several years to be able to learn this skill, because cognitively speaking, it's actually quite complex. It requires the ability to anticipate the properties of objects, and to be able to mentally map the consequences of putting them together prior to doing so.
As such, it's considered a pretty important milestone when it comes to brain evolution. So observing it in birds is pretty spectacular.
Crows
'Painted' by AI
Portrait
An unsettling portrait created by artificial intelligence (AI) is making a historic appearance on the auction block at Christie's in New York City this week. It will be the first artwork created by an algorithm to be offered for auction in the world of fine art.
The portrait - designed in the "Old Master" style reminiscent of European fine artists from centuries ago - only partially fills the canvas, leaving empty space around the central figure. It appears to represent a man with a blurred face, dressed in clothing similar to that worn by subjects painted by the Dutch artist Rembrandt van Rijn in the 17th century.
Of course, a computer didn't spontaneously pick up a brush and become an artist. The AI that generated the image had human programmers - a Parisian art collective called Obvious, Christie's reported. Their collaboration, titled "Portrait of Edmond De Belamy," is part of a series of paintings of the fictional Belamy family and is expected to fetch $7,000 to $10,000, according to Christie's.
To generate the portrait, the Obvious team first fed the neural network a diet of 15,000 images painted between the 14th and 20th centuries, to train it to recognize visual elements in fine art, Obvious artist Hugo Caselles-Dupré told Christie's. The algorithm that eventually created an original image had two parts that worked against each other, called the Generator and the Discriminator; they dubbed this combative AI "generative adversarial network" (GAN), Caselles-Dupré explained.
GAN's final image was then inkjet-printed on canvas and framed, according to Obvious. At the bottom of the portrait is a mathematical formula representing the algorithm that created it, a nod to the relationship between the Generator and the Discriminator, Obvious artists wrote on the collective's website.
Portrait
'Very High Threat'
18 US Volcanoes
Government scientists have classified 18 U.S. volcanoes as "very high threat" because of what's been happening inside them and how close they are to people.
The U.S. Geological Survey has updated its volcano threat assessments for the first time since 2005. The danger list is topped by Hawaii's Kilauea , which has been erupting this year. The others in the top five are Mount St. Helens and Mount Rainier in Washington, Alaska's Redoubt Volcano and California's Mount Shasta .
"This report may come as a surprise to many, but not to volcanologists," said Concord University volcano expert Janine Krippner. "The USA is one of the most active countries in the world when it comes to volcanic activity," she said, noting there have been 120 eruptions in U.S. volcanoes since 1980.
Eleven of the 18 very high threat volcanoes are in Oregon, Washington and California.
Government scientists use various factors to compute an overall threat score for each of the 161 young active volcanoes in the nation. The score is based on the type of volcano, how explosive it can be, how recently it has been active, how frequently it erupts, if there has been seismic activity, how many people live nearby, if evacuations have happened in the past and if eruptions disrupt air traffic.
18 US Volcanoes
Just Six Sub-Species Remain
Tigers
Six different sub-species of tigers exist today, scientists confirmed Thursday, amid hopes the findings will boost efforts to save the fewer than 4,000 free-range big cats that remain in the world.
The six include the Bengal tiger, Amur tiger, South China tiger, Sumatran tiger, Indochinese tiger and Malayan tiger, said the report in the journal Current Biology.
Three other tiger subspecies have already gone extinct: the Caspian, Javan and Bali tigers.
Key threats to tigers' survival include habitat loss and poaching.
How to best conserve the species and encourage both captive and wild breeding has been a matter of debate among scientists, in part because of divisions over how many tiger sub-species exist. Some say there are two types, and others believe there are five or six.
Tigers
Geologists Find Part Of The Grand Canyon
Tasmania
The Grand Canyon has a twin, only it lives on the other side of the world. That is according to a paper recently published in the journal Geology.
Geologists at Monash University in Melbourne were curious about a series of rock formations in Tasmania, Australia, that looked suspiciously similar to those in the Grand Canyon, Arizona in the US - according to study author, Jack Mulder, the rocks have always looked a little out of place.
Now, chemical testing has confirmed it is a match. The pair each contain minerals with identical geochemical fingerprints.
The team based their conclusion on the rocks' similar stratigraphy, depositional age, and detrital zircon U-Pb age distribution and Hf isotope composition. The results suggest these ancient rock formations were once one and the same - and that could have major geological implications.
"We concluded that although it's now on the opposite side of the planet, Tasmania must have been attached to the western United States," Mulder told New Scientist.
Tasmania
In Memory
Tony Joe White
A record label representative says Tony Joe White, the country bluesman and hit songwriter behind such successes as "Polk Salad Annie" and "Rainy Night in Georgia," has died. He was 75.
A statement released Thursday from the record label Yep Roc Music Group said White's family confirmed the rocker died Wednesday in Nashville, Tennessee. The label did not have any details on his cause of death. Yep Roc released his last album in September called "Bad Mouthin,'" a collection of blues classics.
White, originally from Louisiana, had a hit in 1969 with "Polk Salad Annie" and his songs were covered by Elvis Presley, Hank Williams Jr., Tina Turner, Ray Charles, Waylon Jennings and many more.
In his five decades as a singer-songwriter, White was best known for his swamp rock style mixing blues, country and rock 'n' roll, which earned him the nickname the Swamp Fox especially with his fans overseas. With his deep growling voice, his song about the Southern greens wasn't an immediate hit, but months after its release it eventually became a pop hit.
"Back then, people thought polk salad was grass," White said. "They'd bring me bags of grass backstage and say, 'Hey, we brought you a little polk.'"
Presley often covered the song in the 1970s and performed it with relish, waving his arms over his head and dancing throughout the song. He would later record more of White's songs, including "I've Got a Thing About You Baby."
Raised on a cotton farm in Goodwill, Louisiana, about 20 miles west of the Mississippi River, he became infatuated with the hypnotic sound of Lightnin' Hopkins and has often cited hearing the song "Ode to Billie Joe" by Bobbie Gentry as his inspiration for songwriting.
After the success of "Polk Salad Annie," R&B artist Brook Benton had a hit in 1970 with White's song "Rainy Night in Georgia," which also became a song often covered by other artists.
Jennings and White also wrote "Trouble Man," which Jennings recorded in 1989. White worked with Turner on her critically acclaimed and popular "Foreign Affair" album in 1989, contributing four songs and playing guitar and harmonica.
White said also in 2006 that Turner was taken aback when they first met.
"She turned around and looked at me and started hysterically laughing and couldn't get her breath," he recalled. "She was doubling over and I thought, 'Are my pants unzipped or something?' Finally she got her breath and came over to me and gave me a big hug and said, 'I'm sorry, man. Ever since 'Polk Salad Annie' I always thought you were a black man.'"
Tony Joe White
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