Recommended Reading
from Bruce
David Smith: Trump's wiretap outburst dismissed as 'simply false' by Obama spokesman (The Guardian)
Without citing evidence, Donald Trump on Saturday accused Barack Obama of a Watergate-style "wire tapping" of his offices in New York before the US presidential election, a move critics dismissed as an attempt to deflect attention from investigations of his ties to Russia.
Jonathan Jones: The American art scene is dying of philistinism (The Guardian)
In the UK, the art scene's ability to reconcile high culture and pop sensibilities is in stark contrast to the US, where a crisis in art galleries is growing.
Henry Rollins: If You're Just Looking to Get Rich From Legal Weed, You're Part of the Problem (SF Gate)
During the Q&A, someone literally took the words out of my mouth and suggested that vendors should be like microbreweries, where quality is the priority. I remarked that many of them were likely going to become quite wealthy but that wealth was worthless if it just made you mean.
Marnie Sehayek: The First U.S. Artist to Ever Be Convicted of Obscenity Brings His Twisted Vision to L.A. (LA Weekly)
In today's world, where the overwhelming rule is if you can think it, it exists (and if you wouldn't dare, it's on 4chan), Diana's cartoons are proxies for the very real grotesqueness of humanity. Today, the proof is in the dark corners of the unbridled web frontier, where the ante has been upped in every regard, subversively and otherwise. Every time you ask yourself, "Who are these people?" in disbelief at a headline or watching Law & Order SVU re-runs: it's us.
Marnie Sehayek: 88-Year-Old Sexpert Dr. Ruth Reveals the Sex Myth She Wants to Bust Once and for All (SF Weekly)
I would like to see universal sex education. Boys have to know about girls' menstruation cycles. Girls have to know about nocturnal emission. Boys have to know about it, too, so they don't get scared. Girls have to know about menstruation because they start menstruating earlier and earlier these days. However, there is no question that we have made tremendous progress in education. There are fewer unintended pregnancies in this country because we talk about contraception, but we still have to educate more.
Lucy Mangan: Struggling with your child's sex education? Let me help you (Telegraph)
Twenty-five years ago, my school sex education lesson went roughly thus. Puce-faced teacher to thirty inwardly hysterical girls: Pregnancy. And now HIV. Terrible. Here's a film of a couple putting a condom on a banana. Good luck in your lives. Alas the complexities of young people's sex lives have proliferated wildly since then.
Lucy Mangan: Good Housekeeping Institute's chores list is absurd - try this instead (The Guardian)
The housecleaning experts have compiled a list of cleaning jobs everybody should do (and nobody does). So here are a few alternative suggestions.
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took the day off.
took the day off.
has returned to semi-retired status.
Reader Suggestion
Michelle in AZ
BadToTheBoneBob
Balkan Front.
Meanwhile, on the Balkan Front...
PODGORICA, Montenegro - Pro-Russian opposition leaders in Montenegro have asked the White House chief strategist to help block the Balkan country's NATO bid... The Montenegrin opposition has boycotted parliament since the October election, when the country's pro-Western government accused it of attempting a pro-Russian coup that allegedly included plans to take over power and kill the then-prime minister, Milo Djukanovic, because of his NATO bid...
Montenegro Pro-Russian Leaders Seek Bannon Help Against NATO | Military.com
BadToTheBoneBob
Thanks, B2tBBob!
Bonus Links
Jeannie the Teed-Off Temp
Reader Suggestion
Schadenfreude
I admit to a certain amount of Schadenfreude. Watching this administration implode is amusing and frightening.
from Marc Perkel
Patriot Act
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
RESIGN NOW.
THE HALLUCINATIONS OF DONALD TRUMP!
"FACT-FREE ERA."
TRUMP'S NOT 'IMPRECISE', HE'S LYING.
CLEAR OUT YOUR DESK!
TRUMP IS OUT OF CONTROL!
Meanwhile, at Trump Towers.
Visit JD's site - Kitty Litter Music
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Rainy morning.
Toilet Show
Paris
Paris fashion week shows tend to be held at the city's most opulent addresses, grand chandeliered salons dripping with marble and gilt.
But new brand Sirloin gave tradition the bum's rush by presenting its debut collection this weekend in one of the French capital's most well-appointed public toilets.
Designers Mao Usami and Alve Lagercrantz said their odd choice of venue was meant to play tribute to "a place that allows the trivial, silly yet brilliant questions and ideas in life to flow free".
They said it was time to bring the smallest room out of the closet, as models revealed the designers' autumn-winter collection by opening the mahogany cubicle doors of the historic Madeleine public toilets in central Paris.
Paris
Found In China
New Human Species?
The evolutionary history of modern humans (Homo sapiens) is a messy one. After they first ventured out of Africa roughly 60,000 years ago, our ancestors not only displaced the indigenous populations of Neanderthals in Europe in West Asia, they also mated extensively with them - an activity that has left behind its footprints in our genome.
The hominid fossil record from East Asia, however, is patchier, making the reconstruction of our evolutionary history and population patterns in the region an extremely daunting task.
It is in this backdrop that the discovery of two partial skulls in the China, described in a new study published in the journal Science, assumes special importance. What makes the skulls - discovered between 2007 and 2014 in Lingjing, Xuchang County in Henan Province - even more intriguing is the curious "mosaic" of features they exhibit.
The skulls, estimated to be about 100,000 years old, display traits that have never before been seen in our fossil record - features that are neither pure Neanderthal nor pure human (or any other known hominid species, for that matter).
Some features are ancestral and similar to those of earlier eastern Eurasian humans, some are derived and shared with contemporaneous or later humans elsewhere, and some are closer to those of Neandertals," the researchers wrote in the study.
New Human Species?
Giant Telescope
Hawaii
Long-running hearings for whether a giant telescope can be built atop a Hawaii mountain have wrapped up. But it will be a while before a decision is made on a project that has prompted intense protests by those who believe it will desecrate sacred land.
Oftentimes emotional testimony concluded Thursday evening after 71 people testified over 44 days on the Big Island. Testifiers included Native Hawaiians who believe the project will harm cultural and religious practices on Mauna Kea and Native Hawaiians who believe it will provide jobs and educational opportunities.
The hearings officer will recommend whether the state land board should grant a construction permit for the Thirty Meter Telescope. If there are exceptions filed to the hearings officer's recommendations, the land board will hear arguments before issuing a written decision.
This second round of contested-case hearings was necessary after the state Supreme Court invalidated an earlier permit issued by the board.
The state has spent nearly $225,000 on the hearings, according to figures provided by state Department of Land and Natural Resources spokesman Dan Dennison.
Hawaii
'Do You Beat Your Wife?'
Oklahoma
Muslim students visiting an Oklahoma lawmaker's office in the state capitol were required to fill out a form that asked if they beat their wives and other questions that offended them, an Islamic advocacy group said.
The two-page form from Republican state Representative John Bennett's office, which was shared by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), also asked whether they believed an adherent to Islam should be punished for leaving the faith and if Muslims should rule over non-Muslims.
A staff member at Bennett's handed the form to Muslim students who visited his office on Thursday seeking to meet with him, said Adam Soltani, the executive director of the Oklahoma chapter of CAIR. It was presented as a requirement before they could meet Bennett, Soltani said.
The students were at the capitol in Oklahoma City for an annual Muslim Day event organized by CAIR to introduce members of the community to their state lawmakers and encourage democratic engagement, Soltani said by phone on Saturday.
Bennett confirmed to the Tulsa World newspaper in an email that three Muslim students visiting his office on Thursday as part of Muslim Day activities at the state capitol were handed tracts that, among other things, asked "Do you beat your wife?"
Oklahoma
Oil Companies Victory
Coastal Lawsuit
A federal appeals court Friday refused to revive a Louisiana levee board's lawsuit blaming dozens of oil and gas companies for damage to the state's fragile coast, a major victory for energy companies and their political supporters who cast the suit as an attack on a vital state industry.
The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruling upheld a federal judge's 2015 decision in favor of energy companies that argued the Southeast Louisiana Flood Protection Authority-East lacked legal standing to bring its damage claims, which could have cost the oil companies billions of dollars.
The board had argued that damage to the coast done by decades of drilling and canal dredging by energy companies contributed to the loss of coastal wetlands. The wetlands form a hurricane buffer for New Orleans and the authority argued their loss meant more work and expense in protecting and maintaining levees.
When the lawsuit was filed in 2013, environmentalists hailed it as an effort to hold the industry accountable.
It was not immediately known whether the flood authority would continue to pursue the federal suit by asking for a 5th Circuit rehearing or going to the Supreme Court.
Coastal Lawsuit
Gridiron Dinner
Pence
President Donald Trump (R-Crooked) has declared that the media are the "enemy of the people," but his administration is willing to joke around with reporters - and poke fun at itself - in a venerable Washington tradition.
Vice President Mike Pence (R-Religiously Insane) was the featured speaker Saturday night at the 132nd annual Gridiron Dinner, a comedic white-tie affair featuring skits, songs and speeches. He called the dinner "a light-hearted respite" from bruising beltway politics and dished out a number of jokes, including a dig at the Best Picture snafu at least week's Academy Awards.
Trump did not attend the dinner, instead spending the weekend at his coastal Florida estate. For more than a century, every president has spoken at the dinner at least once.
But while most of Pence's remarks were self-deprecating, he also chastised reporters over what he considered unfair news coverage, seeming to channel his boss, the media critic in chief, by saying "we all just have to do better."
Pence
Israeli Experts Find
Bronze Age Dolmen
Israeli archeologists have unearthed a "rare and mysterious" Bronze Age dolmen in the Galilee hills, the Israel Antiquities Authority said on Sunday.
An IAA statement said that the capstone of the basalt chamber weighed a whopping 50 tonnes and its underside bore about 15 intricate carved designs.
"This is the first art ever documented in a dolmen in the Middle East," the authority quoted Uri Berger, one of its archaeologists, as saying.
The statement did not say when the table-like structure was discovered adjacent to a kibbutz in the upper Galilee region of northern Israel, but dated it to the Middle Bronze Age, about 4,000 years ago.
It said the object was flanked by four other smaller dolmens and the whole was covered by an enormous mound of rocks weighing a total of about 400 tonnes.
Bronze Age Dolmen
Ancient Human Tree Cultivation
Amazon Landscape
Ancient indigenous peoples had a far more profound impact on the composition of the vast Amazon rainforest than previously known, according to a study showing how tree species domesticated by humans long ago still dominate big swathes of the wilderness.
Researchers said on Thursday many tree species populating the Amazon region appear to be abundant because they were cultivated by people who populated the area before Europeans arrived more than five centuries ago. These include the Brazil nut, cacao, acai palm, rubber, caimito, cashew and tucuma palm.
The researchers used data on the tree composition of forests at 1,170 sites throughout the Amazon and compared it to a map of more than 3,000 known archaeological sites representing past human settlements.
The study found that 85 tree species known to have been used by Amazonian peoples for fruit, nuts, building materials and other purposes over the past roughly 8,000 years were five times more likely to be dominant in mature Amazon forests than species that had not been domesticated.
It also found that forests closer to the pre-Columbian settlements were much more likely to boast tree species domesticated by ancient peoples.
Amazon Landscape
Weekend Box Office
'Logan'
The R-rated "X-Men" spinoff "Logan" slashed into the weekend box office, opening with a massive $85.3 million in North American theaters, according to studio estimates Sunday, while best-picture winner "Moonlight" got a significant, if far from superhero-sized, Oscar bump.
The debut of 20th Century Fox's "Logan," starring Hugh Jackman as Wolverine, ranks among the biggest March openings ever and top R-rated debuts. Like last year's R-rated "Deadpool" (also a Fox release), the better-than-expected opening for "Logan" - a darkly violent, grittily dramatic movie applauded by critics - further proves moviegoers' hunger for less conventional comic book films.
Last week's No. 1 film, Jordan Peele's horror sensation "Get Out" slid just 22 percent - a small drop for any movie but particularly in the horror genre. The acclaimed Universal Pictures release, made for $5 million by Blumhouse Productions, dropped to second place but still grossed $26.1 million. Its 10-day total is $75 million.
The Oscar best-picture winner "Moonlight" had its widest release yet, appearing on 1,564 screens. It turned in its biggest weekend, too, with an estimated $2.5 million. That accounts for roughly 10 percent of the movie's total domestic haul of $25.3 million.
Estimated ticket sales for Friday through Sunday at U.S. and Canadian theaters, according to comScore. Where available, the latest international numbers also are included. Final domestic figures will be released Monday.
1. "Logan," $85.3 million ($152.5 million international).
2. "Get Out," $26.1 million.
3. "The Shack," $16.1 million.
4. "The Lego Batman Movie," $11.7 million ($10.4 million international).
5. "Before I Fall," $4.9 million.
6. "John Wick: Chapter Two," $4.7 million ($5.6 million international).
7. "Hidden Figures," $3.8 million.
8. "The Great Wall," $3.5 million ($6.5 million international).
9. "Fifty Shades Darker," $3.5 million ($10.7 million international).
10. "La La Land," $3 million ($11.1 million international).
'Logan'
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