Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Andrew Smith: The pedlars of fake news are corroding democracy (The Guardian)
If most adults get their news from Facebook we need laws to make the social networks accountable
Henry Rollins: Now That the Election Is Over, Let's Get Back to Talking About Music (LA Weekly)
November is one of the greatest of the 12 months for listening to intense music. Where in other times of the year, some records could be considered overly serious and dreary, in November, they make perfect sense.
What I'm really thinking: the NHS speech therapist (The Guardian)
Sometimes the parent's concerns are so out of range that it becomes a safeguarding issue.
Pail Hoad: The Wailing review - Korean horror flick takes fear to the brink of an abyss (The Guardian)
Korean director Na Hong-jin delivers a supreme evocation of evil in this intense rural-horror.
The non-western books that every student should read (The Guardian)
Leading authors pick international classics that should be on student's bookshelves, but are often neglected by universities.
Scott Burns: The Importance of Investment Returns (The Guardian)
Is it possible to get ready? Yes, we can save more. Owning a house is more important than ever. And spending less money, carefully, will be a highly prized skill.
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wrote:
took the day off.
has returned to semi-retired status.
Reader Suggestion
Michelle in AZ
Reader Comment
Yesterday's Link
Hi, Marty ~
I need to vent to appease my conscience a little...
I want to send a bit of a "heads up" so I can sleep tonight...I'm feeling a little guilty or possibly just gullible, a bit like someone unknowingly spreading Isis propaganda or something.
That link I sent yesterday, "Donald Trump's "The Wall", I thought was very clever and funnier than shit, for the most part. I was literally LOL at the sarcastic, ironic humor, so I paused it about 1/2 way through and sent recommendations to my friends, family and of course you & your fellow readers. I thought everyone might enjoy it as much as I had been, up to that point. My mistake was assuming that the entire video was meant to be funny.
However, about 3/4 of the way through it goes dead serious and for 4-5 min. shows nothing BUT the plight of the Muslims in the middle east, all the violence and rejection, being forced out of places like Iraq, etc. It didn't show any footage from Syria, where the death and destruction there is being caused mostly by fellow Muslims, i.e. members of Al Qaeda & Isis. I know there's a Trump connection there, considering how often Trump has insulted members of that faith, but the video stopped showing anything about Trump at all. I do feel for those people, but at that point I had to stop and wonder...who actually put this video together? Someone, somewhere, put a lot of time and effort into making this video but spent an inordinately large amount of time showing how horrible Muslims lives are, but skips or barely touches on problems we have closer to home, like the Natives up in ND, at the Standing Rock Reservation, while Trump apparently owns stock in companies that have interest in the Dakota Access Pipeline, such as Phillips 66 and Energy Transfer Partners.
When I recommended it hadn't occurred to me, yet, it that it might not be meant to be strictly funny but might actually be created by someone possibly trying to recruit new members. Now, I have to wonder and that feeling is made a little worse by the fact that I had just seen a report on the evening news this past week about how Isis is converting people in countries like America. So, if any of your readers like Pink Floyd well enough to make it through the whole video, remember it pretty much stops being ironic humor at that point. Perhaps I'm simply being paranoid...Pink Floyd is pretty intense, that's for sure! Sorry about that...if I ever recommend anything again I'll make sure to make it through the whole thing before I do. Thanks!
Your faithful reader,
Tiera H.
Thanks, Tiera!
FWIW, I killed the link when I archived yesterday's page - thanks for the head's up.
Bonus Links
Jeannie the Teed-Off Temp
from Marc Perkel
Patriot Act
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
BAH HUMBUG!
CUBA LIBRE!
BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED.
"YELLOW JOURNALISM, ORANGE PRESIDENT"
THERE'S STILL NOTHING BEING DONE.
"GRAB HER BY HER PUSSY!"
HE'S STILL A FRAUD!
Visit JD's site - Kitty Litter Music
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Bit more rain and a little on the brisk side (for these parts).
40th Anniversary Statement
Punk Memorabilia
The son of Sex Pistols manager Malcolm McLaren and fashion designer Vivienne Westwood torched a wealth of punk memorabilia on Saturday in protest at official plans to celebrate the movement's 40th anniversary.
Joe Corre burnt the items, said to be worth £5 million ($6.2 million, 5.9 million euros), on a boat on the River Thames in London.
"Punk has become another marketing tool to sell you something you don't need. The illusion of an alternative choice. Conformity in another uniform."
Corre previously said he was angered by Punk London's plans to mark 40 years of the sub-culture.
Corre said he wanted to highlight "the hypocrisy at the core of this hijacking of 40 years of 'Anarchy in the UK'", the Sex Pistols' iconic single which was released on November 26, 1976.
Punk Memorabilia
New News Anchor
Canada
A Toronto television journalist is believed to be Canada's first anchor to don a Muslim head scarf at one of the city's major news broadcasters.
Ginella Massa was asked to fill in on the anchor desk for CityNews' 11 p.m. broadcast last week and created a buzz after the broadcast ended and she Tweeted, "That's a wrap! Tonight wasn't just important for me. I don't think a woman in hijab has ever anchored a newscast in Canada."
Massa, 29, said Friday that she became Canada's first hijab-wearing television news reporter in 2015 while reporting for CTV News in Kitchener, Ontario, a city west of Toronto. She moved back to Toronto, where she grew up, earlier this year to take a reporting job at CityNews.
Massa recognized the personal career strides she had made after stepping out of the anchor desk, but she said it took her editor to point out the larger significance.
Massa's achievement comes amid heightened concerns about anti-Muslim sentiment in the U.S. and Europe. During the U.S. presidential election campaign, Donald Trump called for a "total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country's representatives can figure out" what is going on.
Canada
Group Warns Of Possible Extinction
Saltmarsh Sparrow
Many birds in Connecticut are suffering slow, steady population declines because of a loss of nesting areas, and scientists say the saltmarsh sparrow could be extinct in 50 years, becoming the first avian extinction in the continental U.S. since 1931, the Connecticut Audubon Society reports.
The group released a sharply worded report recently, warning of the threat of the loss of coastal habitat from rising sea levels and urging state officials to take action to protect endangered bird species, including setting aside funds needed to address the rising waters.
The organization reported that many birds are suffering population declines with the loss of large grasslands, shrubby areas, beaches, and tidal wetlands. The saltmarsh sparrow, which weighs about a half-ounce, is particularly at risk.
"It would be the first avian extinction in the continental U.S. since the Heath Hen in 1931," Milan Bull, the Connecticut Audubon Society's senior director of science and conservation, wrote in the annual Connecticut State of Birds Report. "There's no way to characterize that as anything but a disaster."
Saltmarsh sparrows, which live in coastal areas from Maine to Virginia during the breeding season and migrate farther south in the winter, are disappearing on the East Coast. University of Maine professor Brian Olsen, one of the researchers studying the bird, said the population has dropped about 9 percent annually since 1998. Besides sea-level rise, he blames structures such as roads and railways, which restrict the flow of tides to salt marshes and interfere with the sparrows' habitat.
Saltmarsh Sparrow
Thunderstorm Asthma
Australia
Six people have died and five remained on life support after a rare condition known as thunderstorm asthma struck Australia's second-largest city, officials said on Sunday.
The sixth victim died in a hospital on Saturday night from medical complications stemming from a wild thunderstorm that struck Melbourne on Monday night, a Health Department statement said.
Five patients remained in intensive care units and three of those were in critical condition, the statement said. Another 12 patients were in hospitals with less serious respiratory and related conditions.
Monday's storm caused rain-sodden ryegrass pollen grains to explode and disperse over the city, with tiny pollen particles penetrating deep into lungs. Around a third of patients who suffered asthma attacks on Monday reported never having asthma before.
The world's first recorded thunderstorm asthma event occurred in Melbourne in 1987, when hospitals reported a five-fold increase in asthma cases. Similar events have happened in the United States, Canada, Britain and Italy. The last major event in Melbourne was in November 2010.
Australia
Presidential Profits
T-rump
"I could become the first presidential candidate to run and make money on it," Donald Trump (R-Grifter) predicted in 2000. During the 2016 campaign, he made good on that promise. Now, it looks like the financial benefits could carry over as President-elect Trump takes over the Oval Office in January.
The US Secret Service, tasked with protecting the First Family, is reportedly in talks to rent out two floors of Trump Tower. Mr Trump's wife, Melania, and son, Barron, are staying in New York until the spring, and Trump has stated that he will travel there regularly during that time. For the Secret Service, protecting the family requires setting up a command center nearby - and Trump Tower has available space.
That space could come with a $3 million annual price tag, reports the New York Post. And those taxpayer dollars will be paid into the coffers of a Trump business. These business-public linkages, which existed throughout the campaign, are unprecedented for a president. However, there are several ways in which Trump could simplify the situation.
This would not be the first time that Trump's businesses have received money from his position as presidential candidate and now president-elect. A Politico analysis concluded that the Trump campaign paid 7 percent of its total spending, or $8.2 million, to Trump-owned businesses, describing it as "an integrated business and political operation without a precedent in national politics."
The Secret Service has also paid Trump in the past. The Federal Election Commission "specifically requires security personnel such as the Secret Service to reimburse campaigns for seats" on charter aircraft, Secret Service spokeswoman Nicole Mainor told Politico. The rule allows agents to accompany candidates as they travel around the country, without the campaign being saddled with the cost. But because Trump was flying on a jet owned by one of his companies, TAG Air, Inc., the government was reimbursing Trump personally.
T-rump
Denmark Urged To Clean Up US Military Waste
Greenland
Greenland is calling on Denmark to clean up an abandoned under-ice missile project and other U.S. military installations left to rust in the pristine landscape after the Cold War.
The 1951 deal under which NATO member Denmark allowed the U.S. to build 33 bases and radar stations in the former Danish province doesn't specify who's responsible for any cleanup.
Tired of waiting, Greenland's local leaders are now urging Denmark to remove the junk that the Americans left behind, including Camp Century, a never-completed launch site for nuclear missiles under the surface of the massive ice cap.
Camp Century was built in 1959-60 in northwestern Greenland, officially to test sub-ice construction techniques. The real plan was top secret: creating a hidden launch site for ballistic missiles that could reach the Soviet Union.
The project was abandoned in 1966 because the ice cap began to crush the camp. The U.S. removed a portable nuclear reactor that had supplied heat and electricity, but left an estimated 200,000 liters of diesel oil and sewage, according to an international study published in August.
Greenland
Not Just California
Water Woes
Beaver dams have been demolished, burbling fountains silenced, and the drinking water in one southern town has taken on the light brownish color of sweet tea.
Though water shortages have yet to drastically change most people's lifestyles, southerners are beginning to realize that they'll need to save their drinking supplies with no end in sight to an eight-month drought.
Already, watering lawns and washing cars is restricted in some parts of the South, and more severe water limits loom if long-range forecasts of below-normal rain hold true through the rest of 2016.
It's no better in Tennessee, where about 300 of the state's 480 water systems serve areas suffering moderate to exceptional drought, the Tennessee Emergency Management Agency said.
Across the South, communities relying on depleted watersheds can't afford to waste what they've got left, said Denise Gutzmer at the National Drought Mitigation Center in Lincoln, Nebraska.
Water Woes
Fight Over Wind Turbines
Upstate NY
Clean energy and environmental interests usually go hand in hand. But in western New York, they are battling over plans to build dozens of wind turbines that could be among the nation's tallest, rising 600 feet above the scenic shores of Lake Ontario.
Apex's proposal to plant 70 propeller turbines amid the farms and towns east of Niagara Falls is still in its early stages, but it has already generated thousands of pages of comments, studies and legal documents considered by state regulators.
Wildlife groups are concerned the turbines could disrupt a major flyway for migrating birds. Local lawmakers worry about flight operations being compromised at a nearby military base. Residents fret about potential health threats from noise, which are still being studied, and say views could be dominated by structures taller than any skyscraper in upstate New York.
It's a debate playing out as rapidly improving technology for towers and turbines allow the wind industry to move on to increasingly taller structures.
Federal Aviation Administration records show that the vast majority of the hundreds of proposed turbines the agency is reviewing for air safety would stand at or just below 500 feet. But two other projects in New York - one in central New York, one in the northeast corner - have submitted plans for a combined 70 turbines from 640 to 656 feet tall, and there are several projects with towers topping 600 feet in the works in Texas and Kansas. The tallest towers in the world now top 700 feet and operate offshore in Europe.
Upstate NY
Weekend Box Office
'Moana'
Disney's South Pacific animated tale "Moana" fell short of a "Frozen"-sized debut but nevertheless dominated the Thanksgiving box office with an estimated $81.1 million over the five-day weekend.
Falling to second was J.K. Rowling's "Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them," which earned $65.8 million over the five-day weekend and $45.1 million over the three-day weekend. The Harry Potter spinoff, from Warner Bros., has brought in $156.2 million in two weeks. Overseas, "Fantastic Beasts," debuted in China, where its $41.1 million fueled a weekend haul of $132 million internationally.
The Brad Pitt-Marion Cotillard World War II romance "Allied" opened with a mediocre $18 million over five days. The Paramount Pictures release, directed by Robert Zemeckis, cost a hefty $85 million to make. But for a proudly old-fashioned film built around the appeal of its stars, "Allied" had to largely do without Pitt's promotional presence. The actor's divorce proceedings from Angelina Jolie largely eclipsed the film, which drew an audience 85 percent over the age of 25.
But Warren Beatty's first film in 15 years, the 1950s Hollywood comedy "Rules Don't Apply," resolutely bombed with $2.2 million over the five-day weekend. Written and directed by Beatty, who also co-stars as Howard Hughes, "Rules Don't Apply" is the 79-year-old star's first directed feature since 1998's "Bulworth." Though Beatty has worked hard to push the movie (made for about $25 million), its slim total despite playing on 2,382 screens is one of the worst debuts of a wide release in recent years.
"Bad Santa 2," from Broad Green and Miramax, didn't flop as badly as "Rules Don't Apply," but it pulled in a scant $9 million over five days. The sequel, again starring Billy Bob Thornton, comes 13 years after the 2003 original.
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. "Moana," $55.5 million ($16.3 million international).
2. "Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them," $45.1 million ($132 million international).
3. "Doctor Strange," $13.4 million ($9.8 million international).
4. "Allied," $13 million ($9.4 million international).
5. "Arrival," $11.3 million ($6.7 million international).
6. "Trolls," $10.4 million ($7.2 million international).
7. "Bad Santa 2," $6.1 million ($1.4 million international).
8. "Almost Christmas," $5.7 million.
9. "Hacksaw Ridge," $5.5 million ($2.1 million international).
10. "The Edge of Seventeen," $3 million.
'Moana'
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