Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Alexandra Petri: Why I, a young person, probably won't vote (Washington Post)
With apologies to New York magazine's Intelligencer, which interviewed a gaggle of millennials who plan not to vote, here are some even better excuses.
Miranda, 22: I was going to vote, but then I thought I saw a moth.
Please, folks! Voter suppression is underway across the country - in North Dakota, restrictions requiring a street address instead of a P.O. box threaten the franchise of Native American voters; in Georgia, thousands of names have been purged from the rolls. Please don't suppress yourself because you thought you saw a moth!
Andrew Tobias: "I'm Not Anti-Trump, I'm Just Pro-Jesus"
Vote even in deep-blue places where "it doesn't matter" because actually it does: As much as Republicans should keep in mind that Hillary won by a nearly 3 million votes - despite Putin's thumb on our scale - what I hope we might show the world this time is an even wider rejection of Trump's "vision."
Paul Krugman: The Great Center-Right Delusion (NY Times Blog)
Politicians and pundits get America wrong.
Judges Allow Purged Ohio Voters To Vote In Midterms (AP)
CINCINNATI (AP) - Federal judges on Wednesday ordered Ohio to allow voters who had been purged for not voting over a six-year period to participate in this year's election. A divided 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals panel granted an emergency motion sought by voting-rights groups. The ruling overturned in part an Oct. 10 ruling by a federal judge that said voters haven't been illegally purged from Ohio's rolls.
Josh Marshall: "Never Go Full Trump: The Lena Epstein Story" (TPM)
I've been digging into this minor mystery. And boy, it's a really weird story. And by that I mean not just the 'rabbi' but the whole campaign of Lena Epstein which appears to be an unfolding train wreck that I didn't know about but really needed to.
Greg Sargent: Trump's hate and lies are failing. Two new studies show why. (Washington Post)
Trump and Republicans are closing by lying about health care and taxes to limit losses among suburban and well-educated white voters, and lying about immigration while race-baiting against individual Democratic candidates to keep the downscale white GOP base energized. This probably won't be enough for Republicans to keep the House. But whatever is to be on this front, the need to lie so relentlessly about all these matters itself constitutes an admission of failure. The public has seen Trump's fusion of ethno-nationalism and orthodox GOP plutocracy put into governing practice, and is rejecting it.
Paul Waldman: After the midterms, it'll be Mueller Time (Washington Post)
But the thing about a perjury trap is that you can't fall into it unless you're willing to commit perjury. A perjury trap usually occurs when the witness doesn't realize everything the prosecutor knows, so he thinks he can lie and get away with it. Then when the prosecutor asks the right questions, the witness lies and he's caught in the trap. But that's not what Trump's lawyers are afraid of. They worry that Trump will commit perjury almost no matter what he gets asked about, because that's just what Trump does. Or at the very least, he'll be confronted about previous lies, get evasive and disingenuous, and wind up looking guilty as sin.
Paul Waldman: Trump's preelection ugliness is a preview of 2020 (Washington Post)
With the midterm elections just six days away, President Trump is quite reasonably focused on bringing victory to his party. After all, if Democrats manage to take the House or the Senate, it would have a transformative effect on his presidency, not just stopping whatever conservative legislation he might undertake but also opening him up to a kind of accountability and oversight he would find extremely unpleasant.
Michael Burnam-Fink: Happy 20th Birthday to Distraction (Slate)
Twenty years ago, Bruce Sterling wrote a story about the coming Loud Ages, an age of howling noise and endless diversions and interruptions.
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Presenting
Michael Egan
answered:
has returned to semi-retired status.
In memory.
Reader Suggestion
Michelle in AZ
David E Suggests
Fallout
David
Thanks, Dave!
from Bruce
Anecdotes
• B movie actor Bruce Campbell, star of the Evil Dead movies, once worked with craft service worker Ron Webber. A craft service worker fixes the coffee, makes sure food is available for actors and crew - and cleans up horse droppings! Mr. Campbell discovered that long ago Mr. Webber had a bit part on TV's Lost in Space in which he had lifted a man over his head. As a surprise, Mr. Campbell located a videotape of the episode and showed it to everyone on the set, then he gave the videotape to a very happy Mr. Webber, who said, "Gonna show this to the grandkids."
• When figure skater Dorothy Hamill was 11 years old - in the days before teenagers got their noses pierced as a fashion statement - her friends gave her 13 pairs of earrings. A competition was coming up, and her parents told her that if she won the competition, she could get both ears pierced. However, if she finished second, she could get only one ear pierced, and if she finished third, she could get only her nose pierced.
• Alicia Alonso was born in Cuba, but her grandfather was from Spain. When she was seven years old, Alicia and her family visited Spain. Her grandfather asked them for a present - to bring him back a piece of Spain. Therefore, Alicia and her sister learned some Spanish folk dances which they performed for him when they returned to Cuba.
• Early in the careers of country comedy duo Homer and Jethro, work (and pay) was hard to get, and consequently, food was hard to get. During this period of poverty, Jethro had a birthday, and Homer bought him a present with the little bit of money he had - a hot dog and a Coke. The birthday present was much appreciated.
• The best friend of R.L. Stine, author of the Fear Street and Goosebumps books, is Joe Arthur, who is known for his absolutely inappropriate but always funny gifts. When Mr. Stein's son Matt was born, Mr. Arthur sent him a baby present - a very heavy shot put that cost almost $100 to mail.
• Jazz great Duke Ellington loved his mother and bought her expensive gifts - a fur coat, strings of pearls, a fancy limousine complete with chauffeur. Whenever she protested his extravagance, he would tell her, "If you don't take these things, I won't work."
• When Jennifer Capriati was a young tennis player, her father, Stefano, often gave her gifts. For example, he would give her a gift if she losta tennis tournament - after all, he thought, winning is its own reward.
• After Anna Pavlova had danced her last performance in Sydney, Australia, a young girl presented her with a boomerang, then said, "The boomerang comes back, and we hope you'll come back, too."
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Current Events
you have to be careful of those terrorists coming from South America "and farther south"--Antarctic terrorists!
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Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
ON THE ROAD AGAIN.
THE 'JESUS FREAK!'
SEIG HEIL!
FUCK THIS ASSHOLE!
THE ZOMBIES HAVE EATEN THE REPUBLICAN BRAINS.
Visit JD's site - Kitty Litter Music
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Sunny and seasonal.
Visited Colbert
Mike Myers
Mike Myers discussed the cyclical nature of his relationship with the Queen hit "Bohemian Rhapsody": how he went from head-banging to the song in Wayne's World to playing a cantankerous record exec in the new Queen biopic on The Late Show Wednesday.
Myers said the iconic Wayne's World scene, in which the characters lip-sync "Bohemian Rhapsody," was inspired by his older brother, who once pulled over the car while the song was playing on the radio and assigned everybody a "Gallileo." "If you took somebody's 'Gallileo,' you got beat up, basically," Myers cracked.
While making Wayne's World, Myers said he had to fight to use "Bohemian Rhapsody" over the objections of the studio, which was insisting on a Guns 'N Roses song. Myers even threatened to quit the movie, but he eventually convinced producer Lorne Michaels and Paramount to let him use the Queen song.
Several decades later, Myers said he got a call asking him if he not only wanted to be in a movie called Bohemian Rhapsody, but play the EMI executive that told Queen they couldn't put "Bohemian Rhapsody" on their record. "And I was like, 'Yeah,'" Myers said. "And they were like, 'Do you want to read the script?' And I was like, 'No, not really, I'm in! Just tell me when and what to wear!'"
Mike Myers
Kids Reunite
Brady Bunch
Here's the story of a TV renovation we can't wait to see: Six original stars of The Brady Bunch came together to help HGTV launch a new series that aims to fix up the real-life Brady Bunch house.
The series, A Very Brady Renovation, will see HGTV stars like Jonathan and Drew Scott (Property Brothers) and Lara Spencer (Flea Market Flip) fix up the Los Angeles house that served as the exterior of the Bradys' TV home during the beloved show's 1969-74 run on ABC. The renovators will give the property "a '70s-inspired rehab" that adds 2,000 square feet to the original footprint while maintaining the iconic street view and recreating the show's kitschy interior design.
All six Brady kids - Barry Williams (Greg), Maureen McCormick (Marcia), Christopher Knight (Peter), Eve Plumb (Jan), Mike Lookinland (Bobby) and Susan Olsen (Cindy) - joined the renovators on Thursday for a walk-through of the property, marking the first time all six actors had been together in nearly 15 years. (Their TV parents Robert Reed and Florence Henderson have both passed away, as has Ann B. Davis, who played housemaid Alice.)
HGTV promises "additional surprise celebrity guests" when A Very Brady Renovation makes its debut in September 2019. (Davy Jones is no longer with us, unfortunately… but maybe Joe Namath is available?)
Brady Bunch
Prank Fans
Phish
If you've never heard of the band Kasvot Växt, don't feel too bad - they're pretty obscure. One Allmusic review points out their sole album, dubbed í rokk, was released on a tiny label so small it was essentially a private press." The band members themselves were pretty enigmatic - each of the four members having met during a scientific research project and falling out pretty soon after í rokk was released. Their label also tanked, and most copies of í rokk were incinerated in a warehouse fire.
It's rather lucky, then, that Vermont-based jam band and drug culture impresarios Phish deigned to bring the music of Kasvot Växt back into the public consciousness, opting to continue their intermittent Halloween tradition of covering a classic album in its entirety at one of their shows. Last night, on stage at a Las Vegas show, Phish chose to cover Kasvot Växt's í rokk in full, to the delight of an audience who had never heard of the band before.
There's just one problem: Kasvot Växt doesn't exist.
That's right; according to Spin, Phish pulled off an elaborate prank to conjure an obscure Scandinavian rock band out of thin air, with the aid of a number of co-conspirators, including the aforementioned Allmusic, as well as WFMU and Perfect Sound Forever, who wrote blog posts and interviews with fake band members, and made up playlists featuring the band's music. Everything from the band's songs, to the elaborate mythology behind its over the top characters, was all part of a charming effort to bamboozle music fans into thinking they'd unearthed a whole new sound they'd never discovered before.
As a reviewer for JamBase implied of last night's show, perhaps Kasvot Växt was an inventive way to break out of Phish's phunk, calling the album "an ambitious suite of original Phish music played in the style of an '80s prog-rock band yet still had elements of the Vermont-birthed quartet's distinctive sound."
Phish
Actor Admits
Todd LaTourrette
An actor with multiple TV credits has admitted to mutilating himself to gain roles in Hollywood.
Todd LaTourrette - who recently appeared in the Breaking Bad spin-off Better Call Saul - revealed that he cut off his own right arm during a "psychotic episode" 17 years ago.
The actor, from Albuquerque, New Mexico, claims to be bipolar and says that he was not taking his medication at the time.
"I severed my hand with a Skil saw," he told KOB4. "The film industry obviously took a different angle. That I was different. And so they liked that,"
LaTourrette told casting agents that he was a war veteran and had injured himself while serving overseas. The lie helped him land various roles, including parts in Longmire (2014), A Bird of the Air (2011) and The Men Who Stare at Goats (2009).
Todd LaTourrette
Absorbed More Heat
Oceans
The Earth's oceans have absorbed more heat than previously believed, according to a study published this week in Nature, a scientific journal. Researchers found that the oceans absorbed 60 percent more each year between 1991 and 2016 than was thought.
"Imagine if the ocean was only 30 feet deep. Our data show that it would have warmed by 6.5 degrees Celsius [11.7 degrees Fahrenheit] every decade since 1991. In comparison, the estimate of the last [U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] report would correspond to a warming of only 4 degrees Celsius [7.2 degrees Fahrenheit] every decade," the study's lead author, Laure Resplandy, said in an article about the findings that was published by Princeton University.
Jeff Berardelli, a contributing meteorologist for CBS News, says 60 percent is "a huge amount."
"Missing 60 percent of heat for the last 25 years -- that's a big deal," he said. "But scientists are now going to have to do their due diligence and check the math on this and check the methods and make sure it stands up. I mean, it's a peer-reviewed study. It's done by some of the best institutions in the world. However, with all that said, I think we need some more time to absorb this. If that is true, it has major implications for the world."
"As this heat is absorbed, it raises ocean temperatures and accelerates the retreat of glaciers and ice sheets, both of which cause sea level rise," says a reportpublished in August by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. "The heat also melts sea ice, fuels evaporation, and affects the intensity of tropical cyclones and coral bleaching."
Oceans
Astronaut Still Baffled
NASA
A NASA astronaut removed early this year from a mission to the International Space Station said Oct. 29 that she still doesn't understand the reasons for her reassignment.
Jeanette Epps was assigned by NASA in January 2017 to the crew of Expeditions 56 and 57, scheduled to launch to the station on a Soyuz spacecraft in mid-2018. It was to be the first spaceflight for Epps, a member of the 2009 astronaut class, and the first long-duration mission to the ISS by an African-American astronaut.
However, NASA announced last January that Epps would be replaced by Serena Auñón-Chancellor, who had been training for a later mission to the station. Epps "will return to NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston to assume duties in the Astronaut Office and be considered for assignment to future missions," the agency said in a statement at the time, but offered no other explanation for her removal from the mission. That mission launched in June with Auñón-Chancellor along with Alexander Gerst of ESA and Sergey Prokopyev of Roscosmos, and the three are currently the sole crew on the ISS.
Epps, appearing in an on-stage interview at a Center for Strategic and International Studies event here, said that more than nine months after the reassignment, she still doesn't know why she was taken off the crew, noting that it was not a medical-related decision.
The original announcement of Epps' removal from the flight in January generated speculation that the Russians had opposed her inclusion on the flight, as well as allegations of racism. Epps, who was completing training in Russia at the time of her reassignment, said she had seen no signs of problems with the Russians she worked with on a daily basis.
NASA
Good News
Your Appendix
The human body may be a wonder of nature, but it's kind of a slapdash one. We're imperfectly designed, prone to glitches, and we come with a whole bunch of unnecessary parts.
And while streamlining yourself of, say, your tonsils may be a bad idea, there's one organ we may actually be better off without: the appendix.
A new study, published yesterday in Science Translational Medicine, has found that having your appendix removed is associated with a reduced risk of Parkinson's disease. It's not a small difference either - people who had their appendix removed started showing symptoms of Parkinson's more than 3.5 years later than those who hadn't. And that's if they noticed any at all, as the study also found that the appendix-free had their overall risk of developing the disease cut by nearly a fifth.
This new research is the largest and longest study into the condition so far, involving 1.6 million people over 52 years - 91 million years of human life in total. Using data from over 50 years of detailed patient records from the Swedish National Patient Registry, the researchers were able to investigate disease diagnosis, treatments, and even match individuals by age, sex, and location in order to better compare the progression - or not - of their Parkinson's.
This isn't the first time we've seen research linking Parkinson's disease to our guts. Quite a few studies have found remarkably different microbiomes in the guts of those suffering from the disease compared to non-sufferers, and there's evidence that stomach complaints such as constipation might be one of the very earliest symptoms. There have even been promising signs that Parkinson's may be on the ever-growing list of conditions treatable by that most disgusting of miracle remedies, fecal transplants.
Your Appendix
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