Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Lee Moran: "Bill Maher: 'I'm Down With #MeToo, I'm Not Down With #MeCarthyism'" (Huffington Post)
"Giving up on the idea that even bad things have degrees, that is as dumb as embracing the idea of alternative facts."
Jordan Weissman: After All the Talk About a Skills Shortage in the U.S. Job Market, the Real Problem May Be an Employer Shortage (Slate)
Let's say you manage a small construction company, and you've been getting away with paying your crew relatively little because there aren't that many other contractors posting help-wanted ads in your town. You need a new carpenter. But you don't want to tick off the rest of your men by offering this new potential employee a more generous wage. So you post the job with the same mediocre hourly rate you've offered for the past three years. Nobody good responds, and to you, this looks like there aren't enough talented carpenters out there. But in reality, there's only a shortage of people willing to work at the artificially low wage you've set your heart on paying.
Daniel Politi: The Funniest, Most Poignant Signs From the 2018 Women's March (Slate)
The overarching message of the marches was clear: harness female activism into electoral gains during the midterms.
But, as usual with these types of demonstrations, there was plenty of room for creativity, too. Many marchers channeled their anger and frustration toward Trump-and the patriarchy in general-through some clever, insightful, and funny signs.
Sam Adams: A Documentary in Which Everything Is a Lie (Slate)
Our New President retells the 2016 campaign through Russian propaganda.
'She is the Queen, whereas you are Joe Shmuck': Clive James on The Crown (The Guardian)
How to recover from my latest hospital stay? Watch The Crown - twice, and remember a royal meeting of my own.
Gwilym Mumford: Paddington 2 becomes best reviewed film ever (The Guardian)
Bear gets his sticky paws on Rotten Tomatoes record for longest run of positive reviews
Laura Snapes: From Blurred Lines to New Rules: how sex in pop has changed for ever (The Guardian)
The charts were once dominated by pornified raunch, but in an era of identity politics and empowered women, a new kind of sexuality is emerging in pop - and warming cyberspace.
Laura Snapes: Five classic songs that got sex right (The Guardian)
Sex has always been a staple in pop - but what artists can get away with in their songs has changed out of all recognition. Here is the evolution of getting it on over five decades of music.
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David Bruce has over 80 Kindle books on Amazon.com.
Presenting
Michael Egan
wrote:
has returned to semi-retired status.
In memory.
Reader Suggestion
Michelle in AZ
Reader Comment
Current Events
Predator hard at work during his shutdown
Fun read at the link below which Janet shared. I can only think that he's having a very bad hair day--can't get it to cover all the bald spots so he slammed on the stoopid golf hat...as if THAT's a good look!
Bonus Links
Jeannie the Teed-Off Temp
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
WHACK A MOLE.
"TRUMP IS A PATHOLOGICAL LIAR."
"THERE'S A LOT THAT WE DON'T KNOW…"
LET'S PARTY!
THE LIAR.
'HUCK-A-BOO-BOO' WILL LIE FOR FREE. WHAT A PATRIOT!
WHAT A SCHMUCK!
HE'S NOT CRAZY. HE'S JUST A RAGING ASSHOLE!
RAISING FASCISTS IN THE USA.
'THE SECRET OF THE RUSSIAN STORY.'
Visit JD's site - Kitty Litter Music
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Mostly sunny and on the cool side.
Show Wraps
First Season
At least from a ratings standpoint, America's 45th presidency without a doubt has had a successful first season, tremendous even.
Donald Trump (R-Crooked) made himself the center of attention like no previous chief executive, turning his every public appearance into must-watch television. He picked fights with fellow world leaders in phone calls, in speeches and on Twitter. He hinted about the size of his genitalia in a threat about nuclear weapons. He made falsehoods a defining feature of his White House, averaging nearly a half-dozen each day and racking up more than 2,000 as president. He has, repeatedly, made his own ignorance, his mental fitness and his bigot-friendly racial views a focus of national conversation.
The former reality TV host who improbably became the leader of the free world has unquestionably earned superlatives, although likely not the ones he and his fans had hoped: On the anniversary of his inauguration, Trump is the least-liked president in modern history, at this point in his term. Strong majorities of Americans find him dishonest, uninformed and temperamentally unfit for the job. Abroad, the United States' standing has plummeted in the past year, to the point where China is seen as a better world leader.
A closer look at Trump's list of claimed "historic" accomplishments, though, shows that virtually all of the major ones are generic Republican Party objectives that any GOP president would have approved. What's more, they were almost entirely the work of a Republican Congress led by House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), and which had been waiting years for a Republican president to come along.
First Season
Apostrophes Trip Up Move Away From Russian Alphabet
Kazakhstan
Kazakhstan's quarter-century struggle to assert its autonomy from former overlord Russia has hit an unlikely snag: the lowly apostrophe.
A vast but sparsely populated country wedged between Russia and China, Kazakhstan came under the rule of its northern neighbour as Russia and Britain jostled for control of Central Asia in the Great Game. It also came under its linguistic influence, and to this day, many Kazakhs speak more Russian than their Turkic native tongue.
In April, Kazakhstan's president of 27 years, Nursultan Nazarbayev, ordered the government to prepare a new Kazakh alphabet based on Latin characters and ditch the one based on Russia's Cyrillic script, which the Soviets implemented in 1940. He has said this will give Kazakhstan "real independence" and help it join the "information world".
But a cumbersome version of the new alphabet chosen by Mr Nazarbayev last autumn has sparked rare dissent in this authoritarian country due to its ample apostrophes. Of 32 letters in the alphabet, nine are written with an apostrophe.
For instance, the word for "bottle," pronounced "shisha," is written "s'i's'a", while "east," pronounced "shyghys," becomes "s'yg'ys". Those are hardly the worst: The word for "skier" will be "s'an'g'ys'y" and that for "crucial" will be "s'es'u's'i".
Kazakhstan
God Told Him
Texas
A judge told a jury that God had asked him to push them for a not-guilty verdict in the case of a woman accused of trafficking her teenage niece, it has been claimed.
District judge Jack Robison interrupted jurors' deliberations to say they should not convict 32-year-old Gloria Elizabeth Romero Perez.
According to The New Braunfels Herald-Zeitung he then apologised and said: "When God tells me to do something, I gotta do it."
Perez, of Buda, Texas, was convicted anyway on one count of continuous traffic of a person and jailed for 25 years, the site said.
Texas
Half Brothers
4,000-Year-Old Mummies
Two Egyptian mummies that rested next to each other for nearly 4,000 years are not full brothers, but rather half brothers, finds a new study that used advanced DNA sequencing.
The finding settles a 111-year-old mystery that began when excavators exhumed the two mummies in Deir Rifeh, a village 250 miles (400 kilometers) south of Cairo, in 1907. Both mummies - thought to be of noble lineage, based on their luxurious grave goods and the elite placement of their tomb - had the female name "Khnum-Aa" written on their coffins.
Khnum-Aa was referred to as the mother of both men, but studies in subsequent years couldn't confirm it. Now, by analyzing DNA extracted from the mummies' teeth, researchers have verified that these two ancient Egyptians had the same mother but different fathers.
The two mummies - named Nakht-Ankh and Khnum-Nakht - lived during the 12th dynasty, which lasted from 1985 B.C. to 1773 B.C. Although Nakht-Ankh was older by at least 20 years, Khnum-Nakht died first, when he was roughly 40 years old, about six months before his brother, according to dates written on their bandages.
Further analyses revealed that the fathers of the men weren't named in the inscriptions but rather were referred to as a local ruler. With little else to go on, researchers tried a variety of techniques to determine whether the mummies were, in fact, brothers.
4,000-Year-Old Mummies
Drops Republican
House Ethics Committee
A Republican tasked with fighting against sexual harassment in Congress secretly settled a misconduct complaint filed against him by a former aide, The New York Times first reported Saturday.
According to the report, Rep. Patrick Meehan (R-Pa.), a member of the House Ethics Committee and married father of three, expressed interest in the personal life of a female aide who was decades younger than him. Meehan eventually attempted to pursue a romantic relationship with the aide and became hostile when she rejected his advances, the Times said.
The advances reportedly made the aide, who remains anonymous, so uncomfortable that she filed a complaint against Meehan, began working from home and, eventually, quit.
Meehan was booted from the House Ethics Committee on Saturday, hours after the Times story was published. A spokeswoman for House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) announced Meehan's ouster in a statement to HuffPost.
After the aide left her post in Meehan's office, Meehan reportedly paid her an undisclosed amount from his congressional office fund, which includes taxpayer money, as part of a confidential agreement.
House Ethics Committee
Concedes Russian Influence
Twitter
At least 677,774 people in the United States followed, retweeted or liked content distributed by Russian government-linked Twitter accounts in a 10-week span prior to the 2016 U.S. election, Twitter announced Friday.
The social networking site also increased its tally of profiles linked to the Internet Research Agency, the organization behind the Russian propaganda effort, to a total of 3,814 accounts, responsible for 175,993 tweets over that same time period.
Those tweets were amplified by an additional 50,258 "automated accounts," Twitter added, noting the propaganda they spread "represents a challenge to democratic societies everywhere."
The company added, "We have since made significant improvements, while recognizing that we have more to do as these patterns of activity develop and shift over time."
Given Twitter's relatively short 10-week timeframe for this analysis, it's likely Russia's reach was far greater. An investigation by Facebook spanning a two-year period before the election found similar content from Russia was seen by more than 126 million Americans.
Twitter
Chile
Pope Frankie
When Joelle Casteix heard Pope Francis accuse sex abuse victims in Chile of slander, the pontiff's words hit close to home.
Francis told reporters Thursday that he hasn't seen any convincing evidence against Chile's Bishop Juan Barros Madrid, whom victims claim protected a pedophile priest.
"The day someone brings me proof against Bishop Barros, then I will talk," Francis said during a papal trip to Chile, according to The New York Times. "But there is not one single piece of evidence. It is all slander. Is that clear?"
Casteix, a California native and advocate for abuse victims, knows what it's like to share a vulnerable story of sexual abuse and to have that story questioned. She is herself a survivor of abuse within the Roman Catholic Church. From 1986 to 1988, she was abused by a choir director at Santa Ana's Mater Dei High School, in the Roman Catholic Diocese of Orange. By the time the abuse ended, she said, the teacher had left her pregnant and with a sexually transmitted disease. She was only 17.
It wasn't until 2005 that Casteix and other survivors in her area finally had access to documents the diocese had kept about sexual abusers in its midst. The documents, obtained as part of a $100 million settlement between the diocese and 90 alleged abuse victims, showed how officials had protected priests and teachers who molested children.
Pope Frankie
Returns To Gabon
Spotted Hyena
A spotted hyena has been sighted in a Gabon national park for the first time in 20 years, conservationists said Friday, the latest large predator to have returned to a region where many had gone locally extinct.
The Bateke Plateau National Park lies close to Gabon's border with the Republic of Congo.
Its forests and grasslands once teemed with wildlife, including many large mammal predators, but the ecosystem was decimated by decades of poaching.
Officials said a spotted hyena had been caught on camera traps in the park for the first time in two decades giving hope that more large mammals might return after years of conservation efforts.
The sighting comes two years after a lone male lion was photographed by camera traps after returning.
Spotted Hyena
Weekend Box Office
"Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle"
"Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle" outdid another weekend's worth of newcomers to top the North American box office for the third straight weekend, making the surprise hit the fifth-highest grossing film of all time for Sony Pictures.
The war drama "12 Strong," starring Chris Hemsworth, debuted in second with $16.5 million in ticket sales. The Warner Bros. release, produced by Jerry Bruckheimer, is a fact-based tale, adapted from Doug Stanton's best-seller "Horse Soldiers," about a group of Special Forces soldiers sent into northern Afghanistan just weeks after Sept. 11.
The heist thriller "Den of Thieves" slotted in at third place with an opening weekend of $15.3 million. The STXfilms release stars Gerard Butler and Curtis "50 Cent" Jackson.
Though "Paddington 2" disappointed last weekend in its debut, the acclaimed sequel slid just 25 percent in its second week. "Paddington 2," which has set a new record for the most widely reviewed 100-percent fresh movie on Rotten Tomatoes, grossed $8.2 million in its second week of domestic release thanks in part to good word of mouth. Warner Bros. acquired the film's North American distribution from The Weinstein Co. in November.
Estimated ticket sales for Friday through Sunday at U.S. and Canadian theaters, according to comScore. Where available, the latest international numbers for Friday through Sunday are also included. Final four-day domestic figures will be released Monday.
1. "Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle," $20 million ($32.6 million international).
2. "12 Strong," $16.5 million ($2.5 million international).
3. "Den of Thieves," $15.3 million ($1.3 million international).
4. "The Post," $12.2 million ($6.6 million international).
5. "The Greatest Showman," $11 million ($11 million international).
6. "Paddington 2," $8.2 million ($2.4 million international).
7. "The Commuter," $6.7 million ($10.2 million international).
8. "Star Wars: The Last Jedi," $6.6 million ($9.9 million international).
9. "Insidious: The Last Key," $5.9 million ($18.4 million international).
10. "Forever My Girl," $4.7 million.
"Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle"
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