Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Jordan Weissman: [Recent] Huge Jobs Report Number Shows that Donald Trump Has Been Right About the Fed (Slate)
Notably, nobody has been a louder critic of the Fed's excessive hawkishness than our president, Donald Trump. He might not understand the nuances, and is likely concerned mostly with keeping the economy hot so his poll ratings stay out of the thirties, but he's been uncharacteristically lucid about the Fed's unnecessary tightening. (His inability to pick Fed officials who's [sic] views he actually agrees with notwithstanding). [The recent] giant jobs report doesn't tell us for sure that the labor market will have more slack going forward. But it does confirm, yet again, that Fed officials have been too pessimistic in the past about how much room the job market has had to grow.
Lucy Mangan: "Women aren't attending regular smear tests - and I'm one of them" (Stylist)
A speculum has been inserted into the data pile and parted to reveal that the rate of cervical screening is at the lowest it's been for two decades. Five million women are currently overdue a smear test. And I'm one of them. Why? Short answer: I'm an idiot who can't find time to schedule an appointment for a simple, free test that might literally save my life. That might literally save me from dying of cancer.
Suzanne Moore: If young women are dying of shame about their bodies, we need a rethink (The Guardian)
… if fear of what we look like "down there" means cancer rates are rising then it really is time to start examining ourselves, examining our bodies, and examining what our contemporary culture demands of young women. Far from being liberated, women's relationship to their bodies, in terms of both pleasure and pain, appears to be even more troubled than it used to be.
Matthew Dessem: "Parkland Dad Manuel Oliver Responds to Louis C.K. With a Brutal 'Standup Set' About His Murdered Son" (Slate)
There's dark humor, there's black humor, there's gallows humor, and then there's this "standup set," miles past the event horizon of some distant black hole, from Manuel Oliver, whose son Joaquin died in the Parkland mass shooting almost a year ago. Oliver didn't appreciate his son's death being comedic fodder for disgraced workplace masturbator Louis C.K., who has been trying out Parkland-related standup material lately …
Oliver Burkeman: The truth about anxiety - without it we wouldn't have hope (The Guardian)
Anxiety is the experience of knowing that life might bring success, fulfilment and joy, combined with the fear that you don't know how to ensure that's what will happen. And while severe anxiety can certainly be a debilitating problem, demanding treatment, some sense of uncertainty about the future is surely part of what makes life worth living. If you ever actually managed to rule out the potential for any nasty surprises, you'd find that you'd ruled out the possibility of any good ones, too.
Sam Adams: The New Doc About the Michael Jackson Sexual Abuse Allegations Is Devastating (Slate)
And the allegations aren't the most revealing part.
Fantastic Portraits of Pop Stars Posing With Their Younger Selves (Flashbak)
"You will always be fond of me. I represent to you all the sins you never had the courage to commit" - Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray
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Presenting
Michael Egan
took the day off.
has returned to semi-retired status.
In memory.
Reader Suggestion
Michelle in AZ
from Bruce
Anecdotes - Etiquette
• Mulla Nasrudin was very hungry and dipped all five fingers of his hand into a bowl of rice, although the etiquette of his time stated that one should get rice with only the thumb and the first two fingers. A bystander asked him, "Why are you eating with five fingers?" Nasrudin replied, "Because I don't have six fingers."
• Christoph Willibald Gluck revolutionized opera. His controversial style caused much excitement in his opera Armide, whose premiere was packed. An usher requested one man in the audience to take off his hat, but the man replied, "You take it off; it's so crowded here that I can't move my arms."
• Gioacchino Rossini was once a guest of King George IV. Being polite, Rossini invited the King to sing while Rossini played. Although the King sang badly, Rossini tactfully continued to play. Afterward, when the King complimented Rossini on his tact, he answered, "Sire, it is my duty to accompany you - even to hell."
• In the days of American slavery, General George Washington was walking down the street when an aged African-American saw him and took off his hat and bowed out of respect. General Washington promptly took off his hat and returned the bow. Later, he explained to a shocked white politician: "I cannot be less civil than a poor Negro."
• Once a society lady sent her card to George Bernard Shaw. The card said that she would be "at home from 4:30 p.m. to 6:30 p.m. on Thursday next." Mr. Shaw sent the card back with this message written on it: "So will Mr. Shaw."
• Many snobs criticized Lord Byron for being friends with a prizefighter, John Jackson, but this did not bother Lord Bryon, who said that the prizefighter's manners were "infinitely superior to those of the fellows of the college whom I met at high table."
• Author Donald Richie once attended a Japanese dinner. As the guest of honor, he was given the head of a fish to eat, and he was expected to eat all of it - including the eyes. Mr. Richie managed to exhibit good manners only after closing his own eyes.
• Sol Hurok, a concert manager, could be a good host. At one of his parties, his personal assistant Walter Prude knocked over a small table and spilled red wine and coffee on a new white rug. Mr. Prude apologized and offered to pay for the rug, but Mr. Hurok said, "I am only proud, my boy, that you have honored me by coming here."
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Pre-Breakup Letters For Sale
Beatles
A pair of legal letters that foretold the eventual dissolution of the Beatles are now for sale.
Both letters, from January 1969 and April 1969, were sent to John Eastman and Lee Eastman, the father and brother of Linda Eastman, who would marry Paul McCartney in March 1969.
Moments in Time is selling both letters: The January 1969 letter is available for $225,000, while the April 1969 letter has an asking price of $325,000.
The January 1969 letter, signed by all four Beatles as well as Apple Corps head Neil Aspinall, is addressed to John Eastman informing him that "we retain you and authorise you to act on our behalf in negotiations in respect of all contracts proposed."
The April 1969 letter previously hit the Christie's auction block in 2005, where it was dubbed the "split letter" due to its proximity to the demise of the Beatles. At that 2005 auction, the April 1969 letter sold to a private collector for £48,000, or roughly $63,000.
Beatles
Alfonso Cuaron Wins
Directors Guild
Alfonso Cuaron was named best director by his peers on Saturday for his semi-autobiographical film "Roma," cementing his front-runner status ahead of the Oscars in three weeks time.
In one of the last major Hollywood ceremonies before the Feb. 24 Oscars, the Directors Guild of America (DGA) awarded its top prize to the Mexican director for his critically-acclaimed black and white movie about a domestic worker in 1970s Mexico.
"Roma" has 10 Oscar nominations, including best director and best picture.
The Directors Guild of America (DGA) award is one of the top indicators of Oscar glory. All but seven of the DGA winners since 1948 have gone on to win the best director Oscar, and often the top prize of best picture.
The Directors Guild also handed out prizes for television directing, with Adam McKay chosen for corporate family drama series "Succession," Bill Hader for comedy series "Barry," and Ben Stiller for limited TV series for "Escape at Dannemora."
Directors Guild
'Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse' Sweeps With Seven
Annie Awards
"Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse" has been named the best animated feature of 2018 at the 46th Annual Annie Awards, sweeping all seven categories in which it was nominated and giving the film a prize that has predicted the Oscar animated-feature winner more than 70 percent of the time.
The awards were handed out at Royce Hall on the UCLA campus on Saturday night by the Los Angeles branch of the International Animated Film Association, ASIFA-Hollywood.
In addition to winning Best Animated Feature, "Spider-Man" picked up awards for its directing, writing, character animation, character design, production design and editorial. "Incredibles 2" came into the show with the most nominations, 11, but only won two, while "Ralph Breaks the Internet" had 10 nominations and received one award.
The seven wins for "Spider-Man" fell short of the record 11 Annie wins for Pixar's "Coco" last year, but they were a strong indication of the momentum that the film has acquired since its release in December. It is the first film from Sony Pictures Animation to win the top award at the Annies, which over the years has been dominated by Disney/Pixar (eight wins for Disney, nine for Pixar) and DreamWorks Animation (four wins).
"Mary Poppins Returns," a live-action film with an extended animated sequence, won two Annie Awards. Wes Anderson's "Isle of Dogs" received one award, for Bryan Cranston's voice work.
Annie Awards
Shows His Nipples
Adam Levine
Maroon 5's awkward Super Bowl halftime show included singer Adam Levine progressively stripping throughout the performance ? prompting many Twitter users to remember Janet Jackson's famed performance in 2004 and point out that there's apparently a bit of a double standard.
Justin Timberlake performed with Jackson during the halftime show 15 years ago, and inadvertently exposed one of her breasts ? which had a pasty over the nipple ? on live television. The so-called "wardrobe malfunction" has haunted her career since.
Timberlake and Jackson have maintained the incident was unintended, but Jackson has carried most of the blame for what happened. Les Moonves, who was the CEO of CBS at the time, has been accused of working to blacklist Jackson since the performance, HuffPost first reported last year.
Nothing comparable happened to Levine after he removed his shirt during this year's halftime show. And people have noticed.
Adam Levine
MAGA!
Public Insults
President-for-now Donald Trump's (R-OfVlad) public insults against his top intelligence chiefs and apparent unwillingness to accept assessments that contradict his own beliefs pose a dire threat to US national security and create a goldmine for foreign intelligence services to exploit, current and former intelligence officials told INSIDER.
Trump's latest attacks came after US intelligence leaders, including FBI director Chris Wray, CIA director Gina Haspel, and Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats, testified to the Senate Intelligence Committee at an annual hearing on Tuesday regarding the top global security threats facing the country.
Trump grew enraged when, among other things, the officials testified that while Iran is still a global threat, it is complying with the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), an international deal the Obama administration spearheaded that's designed to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.
The assertion directly contradicted the president's claims that Iran is violating the deal and poses an imminent nuclear threat to the US. The officials also offered intelligence assessments on other hot-button issues, like the Islamic State and North Korea, that went against Trump's foreign policy claims.
In a typical reaction, Trump took to Twitter to lash out after the hearing.
Public Insults
Scientists Are Warning
Parkinson's
By most accounts, we've achieved a relative utopia of health. Revolutions in pharmacology and medical technology, better nutrition, and improvements in public healthcare promise a longer, healthier future for our global population.
For all there is to celebrate, this prosperity comes at a cost. We live in the shadow of a looming pandemic, as age-related neurological conditions such as Parkinson's disease threaten to affect more of us than ever before, setting the stage for an unprecedented medical challenge.
"By 2040, we can truly talk about a pandemic that will result in increased human suffering, as well as rocketing societal and medical costs," warns Patrik Brundin, editor-in-chief of the Journal of Parkinson's Disease.
A call-to-arms in Brundin's journal highlights just what we're in for in coming decades, with current Parkinson's figures set to double, if not nearly triple, over the next 20 years.
Curiously, there's another paradoxical factor at work that might even drive the number up as high as 17 million.
Parkinson's
Denver Voters To Weigh Decriminalization
Magic Mushrooms
Denver's mile-high reputation could get another boost after psychedelic drug advocates received the green light Friday to put an initiative before city voters to decriminalize magic mushrooms.
The Denver Psilocybin Mushroom Decriminalization Initiative will ask voters in May to approve an ordinance that would make possession of the drug, no matter the weight, legal for those 21 and older. They could also grow it. The proposed law, however, would not legalize retail sales, which have made the city an international darling of the cannabis world.
The city's Elections Division said organizers turned in enough valid signatures to qualify for the May 7 municipal ballot. Kevin Matthews, director of the initiative campaign, said it will be the first time psilocybin decriminalization has come before U.S. voters.
He said the campaign's long-term goals are to educate the public on the drug and stop putting users behind bars.
The measure seeks to put the brakes on criminal penalties for use and possession of psilocybin mushrooms. Its no-limit component results from mushrooms' nature as a heavy, wet fungus that is then dried out, Matthews said. Proponents say prosecutors don't always recognize the difference, but law enforcement is evolving.
Magic Mushrooms
Can Be Learned While Sleeping
Vocabulary
In new research published last week in the journal Current Biology, researchers from the University of Bern, Switzerland show how we can understand and retain foreign language vocabulary during specific periods of sleep, as well as unconsciously recall the relationships between the foreign word and the translation presented to us while we are sleeping.
At some point in their life, everybody has had the idea that everything would be so much easier if we could just learn new information while we slept, probably when they've been up late into the night studying for final exams.
For a very long time now, scientists have thought of this period of inactive sleep as an encapsulated state of mind that was largely shut off from the outside world around us.
Most sleep-learning research has been focused on studying the mechanisms at play during sleep that reinforce and cement new information learned in wakefulness, but little research has been done to date on the potential to learn new information while asleep.
The experiment the researchers conducted tested whether or not a person is capable of forming new semantic connections between unknown foreign words and an accompanying translation, which were played to the subject while they were asleep.
Vocabulary
Weekend Box Office
'Glass'
With the distraction of the Super Bowl, freezing temperatures affecting large portions of North America and only one big new release in theaters in "Miss Bala," movie going audiences largely took the weekend off from the theaters in what is estimated to be the lowest-earning Super Bowl weekend in nearly two decades.
M. Night Shyamalan's "Glass" kept a fragile hold on the No. 1 spot for the third time while "The Upside" stayed in a close second on this sleepy box office weekend. Studios on Sunday estimate that "Glass" has earned an additional $9.5 million in ticket sales, bringing its total earnings to $88.7 million.
Peter Jackson's World War I documentary "They Shall Not Grow Old" opened on 735 screens after a few single day showings to a robust $2.4 million, which was enough for it to crack the top 10. The Mads Mikkelsen survival thriller "Arctic" also opened in limited release to $56,463 from four locations.
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 domestic figures will be released Monday.
1."Glass," $9.5 million ($12.2 million international).
2."The Upside," $8.9 million ($873,000 international).
3."Miss Bala," $6.7 million.
4."Aquaman," $4.8 million ($4.6 million international).
5."Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse," $4.4 million ($1.6 million international).
6."Green Book," $4.3 million ($11.9 million international).
7."The Kid Who Would Be King," $4.2 million ($1.2 million international).
8."A Dog's Way Home," $3.5 million ($3.1 million international).
9."Escape Room," $2.9 million ($8.8 million international).
10."They Shall Not Grow Old," $2.4 million.
'Glass'
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