Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Paul Krugman: It's a Conspiracy! (NY Times Blog)
Greg Sargent has lately been driving home the point that Donald Trump just isn't vulnerable to typical establishment attacks - at least in the Republican primary. (The general election might be different.) Catch him making an utterly false assertion, and his supporters just see it as the liberal media conspiring against him. It's driving the establishment Republicans wild. But really, why should they be shocked?
JASON HOROWITZ: At Donald Trump Rally, Ohio Students Become Part of a Lesson (NY Times)
Seven students from Columbus Alternative High School filled a pocket of space in a cavernous hall of the city's Convention Center on Monday night. They had come for a Donald J. Trump rally, but they looked as if they would be more at home at a casting call for the television show "Fame."
Tom Danehy: We're thankful that Tom is letting us know what he's grateful for (Tucson Weekly)
Donald Trump and Ben Carson, who have proven, once and for all, that absolutely anyone can run for president of the United States. Didn't you just love it when, during the last "debate," Carson said that China is also involved in the mess in Syria. Somehow, that whopper slipped past moderator Maria Bartiromo, but when asked about it later, Carson doubled down on the assertion.
Stephen Smith: The £30m bookshelf: Pierre Bergé and the greatest stories ever sold (The Guardian)
With Impressionists on their walls and priceless books on their shelves, Pierre Bergé and his former partner Yves Saint Laurent were the ultimate collectors. But now the art and YSL have gone, Bergé says it's time 'to attend the funeral' of his library.
Michael Dirda: "'Self and Soul': Mark Edmundson's biting critique of modern complacency" (Washington Post)
The only thing in Mark Edmundson's new book that isn't provocative is its title. "Self and Soul: A Defense of Ideals" sounds earnest, high-minded and dull, probably a worthy academic study revisiting territory mapped out long ago by Matthew Arnold and Lionel Trilling. Wrong. What you will find instead is an impassioned critique of Western society, a relentless assault on contemporary complacency, shallowness, competitiveness and self-regard.
Suzanne Moore: Anxiety is pervading our society and bleeding into our politics (The Guardian)
George Osborne will find it easy to shred the state when society is fearful and the world is full of people we don't trust.
David Bruce's Amazon Author Page
David Bruce's Smashwords Page
David Bruce's Blog
David Bruce's Lulu Storefront
David Bruce's Apple iBookstore
David Bruce has over 80 Kindle books on Amazon.com.
wrote:
took the day off.
has returned to semi-retired status.
Reader Suggestion
Michelle in AZ
The Flooded Apartment
DJ Useo
Hi Marty,
We are still homeless in the motel.
We now have another ap'pt with a lawyer to discuss our flooding situation.
It's next Tuesday. More costly waiting in the Motel. Prayers welcome.
Thank you
The Useo's
Holy crap!
All to happy to post your gofundme request.
Hope some good things come your way!
Please keep us updated.
from Marc Perkel
Patriot Act
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
TURKEY DAY!
THE MOST THANKFUL FOR!
"IT IS JUST AND IT'S 'ENEMIES' EVIL"
"TOO MUCH JUSTICE"
BROWNBACKASTAN!
WHAT A FUCKING LITTLE CREEP!
"LAND OF THE BRAVE"
THE TRIUMPH OF JOE McCARTHY.
Visit JD's site - Kitty Litter Music
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Ain't real classy, but using paper plates for Thanksgiving dinner sure made clean up a lot easier.
VIP Records in Long Beach
Snoop Dogg
Hip hop icon Snoop Dogg returned to his hometown of Long Beach Wednesday to pass out Thanksgiving turkeys to a long line of people who gathered outside the famed VIP Records.
"We just want to give back and make sure that everybody has something to eat for Thanksgiving, so we're passing out turkeys. We're showing love, giving away CDs and DVDs and just, you know, representing what we come from," Snoop Dogg said to reporters inside the record store. "We're from Long Beach, and we just want to make sure the people in Long Beach know that we love and appreciate them for standing by me and this movement that we're on right now. The movement is about peace, love and making great music," he said.
Specifically, Snoop's LBC Movement describes its mission as uniting Long Beach artists and the city as a whole. In October, the gossip site TMZ posted video of Snoop Dogg promoting LBC Movement's "Beach City" mixtape in the city. The video caught attention after the artist, who cultivated a hardcore persona while rising to fame in the early 1990s, passed out CDs to Long Beach police officers and Los Angeles County Sheriff's deputies who were on scene at the time.
Unlike his early days when he was one of the pioneering gangster rappers, Snoop Dogg now presents himself in a more philanthropic light. At various times Wednesday, he embraced, chatted up and took selfies with visitors as they picked up turkeys outside the record store.
Snoop Dogg
Trump Campaign
Rosie O'Donnell
Rosie O'Donnell isn't mincing words when it comes to Donald Trump's presidential campaign.
Said O'Donnell: "It's a nightmare." She didn't elaborate, adding only, "That's my quote."
The actress-comedian and billionaire GOP contender have long exchanged barbs. But his conduct became an issue at the GOP debate in August, when Trump was asked to account for crude remarks he has made about women.
When Trump suggested he had insulted only O'Donnell, Fox News Channel moderator Megyn Kelly corrected him.
The animosity between Trump and O'Donnell dates back years. In 2006, O'Donnell criticized him for remarks he made about a winner of his Miss USA beauty pageant, saying he had no right to be a "moral compass" for the beauty queen.
Rosie O'Donnell
Examined For Climate Clues
Old Logbooks
A researcher is taking a trip into the past in the hope that centuries of old sailing records will shed light on today's changing climate.
The meticulous records kept by old whaling captains and resolute fur traders are a trove of three centuries worth of information on everything from weather and wind to sea ice and animals, said Maribeth Murray.
"All of the ships that travelled had to keep log books and there were certain things that had to be recorded in log books, weather conditions being one of them," said Murray, director of the Arctic Institute of North America at the University of Calgary.
Three centuries of whaling, sealing and fur traders has left a prodigious trail of records in at least five countries. Murray plans to visit archives in Canada, the United States, England, Norway and Denmark, so she can troll through hundreds of linear feet of documents.
Old Logbooks
Egypt Begins Exploration
King Tut
Egypt's Antiquities Ministry said Thursday that exploration has begun inside King Tutankhamun's 3,300 year-old tomb in the search for hidden chambers that an Egyptologist believes could include Queen Nefertiti.
The ministry said the search would last three days. Results are to be announced Saturday in Luxor, the southern Egyptian city that served as the pharaonic capital in ancient times.
Egypt's Antiquities Minister Mamdouh el-Damaty said in September he was convinced a hidden chamber may lie hidden behind King Tut's final resting place.
British Egyptologist Nicholas Reeves, who toured the tomb with el-Damaty in September, theorized that Tutankhamun, who died at the age of 19, may have been rushed into an outer chamber of what was originally Nefertiti's tomb.
Reeves reached his theory after high-resolution images discovered what he said were straight lines in King Tut's tomb. These lines, which were previously hidden by color and the stones' texture, indicate the presence of a sealed chamber, he said.
King Tut
Global Warming
Marshall Islands
Consisting of 29 atolls and five free-standing islands spread over vast distances in the Pacific Ocean, the Marshall Islands is home to 70,000 residents living on a total land area similar to that of Washington D.C. The highest point anywhere in the chain is 33 feet (10 meters) above sea level, but most places rise only about 6 feet (2 meters) above sea level. Even small increases in ocean levels can have a big impact.
Scientists who contributed to the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change estimate global sea levels have risen by about 7.5 inches (19 centimeters) since 1900. However, they say sea levels are rising much faster than average in the western Pacific, where the Marshall Islands is located. The common assumption that melting glaciers and ice sheets would cause a uniform rise worldwide - much like filling a bathtub with more water - is incorrect, according to the panel. They say ocean currents, winds and the Earth's gravity all contribute to an uneven rise. The panel says sea levels are likely to rise on average by about another 1 to 3 feet (30 to 90 centimeters) by the end of this century.
Marshallese people say "king tides," which cause flooding, are getting worse. The term is often used to describe the highest tides of the year, when the alignment of the Earth, moon and sun combine to produce the most extreme tidal effects. Waves and storms can also increase the effects of king tides. As well as causing huge inconvenience to islanders, the flooding from king tides can accelerate erosion and contaminate ground water with salt, killing trees and crops. Scientists say it is these flooding events rather than an overall rise in the sea level that may eventually force people from their homes.
Marshall Islands
Climate Change
Canada's Arctic
The polar bear has become somewhat of an international symbol for the consequences of climate change but some researchers say more work needs to be done on how the disappearing sea ice affects people who call the Arctic home.
Climate change is changing the Arctic landscape faster than other regions - in fact the change is happening "almost 40 times faster than the models had predicted," said Eric Solomon, director of Arctic Programs at the Vancouver Aquarium.
Solomon said Canadians need to remember that their country is, ultimately, an Arctic country.
"The north is about 40 per cent of Canada's landmass, the arctic is 67 per cent of Canada's coastline. We're an Arctic country by just about any measure."
With the sea ice melting, people living in the Arctic can find themselves cut off from communities.
Canada's Arctic
Chinese Company Postpones Canal Project
Nicaragua
A Chinese company said Wednesday it is delaying the start of construction on a $50 billion inter-ocean canal across Nicaragua until late 2016.
China's HKND Co. got approval for environmental studies of the canal earlier this month. But on Wednesday, a company statement said that "the construction of locks and the big excavations will start toward the end of 2016."
The company gave no reason for the delay, but said that "the canal's design is currently being fine-tuned."
Nicaraguan authorities have already approved the proposed 172-mile (278-kilometer) route for the canal.
Crews broke ground on access roads for the project last December, but have yet to start digging the waterway itself.
Nicaragua
Banishes Centurions
Rome
After two millennia, the last centurions have finally been banished from Rome.
As of Thursday men who dress up as soldiers of the ancient empire and offer to pose for tourist snaps in return for cash were banned from the streets around the Colosseum and the rest of the Eternal City.
Drivers of bicycle-drawn rickshaws and touts selling bus tours or tickets to historic monuments were also outlawed under a decree issued by city commissioner Francesco Paolo Tronca.
The commissioner is running the city pending the election of a new mayor and his decree declared the measures necessary on security grounds and to defend the reputation of Rome by protecting tourists from scamsters.
While many visitors enjoyed their exchanges with the would-be centurions and were happy to cough up five euros ($6) or so for a souvenir photo, recent months had seen some acting in what the decree termed an "inappropriate, insistent and sometimes aggressive," manner to obtain larger sums from tourists.
Rome
World's Most Profitable Prey
Pangolins
They are the most heavily poached and trafficked species in the world-and until a few years ago, most people on the planet didn't even know they existed.
They're called pangolins - eight species of Asian and African scaly anteaters that look like cute little dinosaurs. These harmless creatures live in some pretty remote regions, but that doesn't stop hunters from tracking them down. Conservationists estimate that more than a million pangolins have been taken from the wild in the past decade. Last year the International Union for Conservation of Nature announced that all eight species were threatened with extinction. Two species have been declared critically endangered.
Two major factors drive all this trade. Pangolin scales-which, like rhino horns and our own fingernails, are made of keratin-are used to supposedly cure or prevent a variety of illness in traditional Asian medicine. Pangolin meat, meanwhile, is considered both a delicacy and a sign of wealth and prosperity. A single bowl of pangolin soup can sell for several hundred dollars.
Rampant trade has had a devastating effect on pangolin populations through much of their range. "Pangolins' behavior isn't suited for large-scale collection," said Vincent Nijman, a professor at Oxford Brookes University who has studied wildlife trafficking for pangolins and many other species. "They're not just slow-moving, they are also slow in reproduction. They clearly can't cope with it."
Pangolins
| CURRENT MOON lunar phases |
