Andrew Tobias: The Roots Of All Evil - And One Good Solution
Any of our candidates can win if we all work toward that goal. (One crucial piece: funding the early organizing - now - that will snowball into a massive blue turn-out next fall.) I know several of them personally and believe that - in different ways and for different reasons - they'd all be pretty great. I'm 110% for whichever one wins the nomination. But because Joe is the current the front-runner, I was heartened to see him do so well in his three segments Wednesday night on Colbert - here, here, and here. He is the exact opposite of Roy Cohn and Trump, decent and honorable to the core; and he is willing to compromise in pursuit of progress, where Nader, tragically, was not.
Mary Beard: Some dark tourism in Turkey (TLS)
One of the places we visited on our Turkish trip was the ruined village of Kayaköy (in Greek Livissi) just outside Fethiye on the south coast. Ruined is perhaps a euphemism, as the place was home to a Greek community that finally left Turkey under the "population exchange" between Greece and Turkey in 1923. Population exchange is a euphemism too. For a large proportion of the Greek population in Turkey had been put to death or had fled in what was effectively a genocide during and immediately after the First World War. The exchange of populations (Greeks in Turkey "returning" to Greece, and Turks in Greece "returning" to Turkey) was not the kind of consensual process that the word "exchange" implies.
Alexandra Petri: On Giving Up (Washington Post)
Well, it has been decided - after Odessa, if not after Sandy Hook, or Las Vegas, or Parkland. Things cannot continue like this. To keep going, we will have to give up certain things. We will have to give up, first of all, the feeling that we are safe anywhere. At prayer. At work. At school. On the way home. We are lucky if we ever had this feeling to give up. We will have to give up the notion that there is anywhere this could not happen, that there is a single place - a concert, a highway, a shopping center - where we should not be afraid. We must give up the old meanings of the names of places; towns and cities across the country must wait to become synonymous with the worst thing that anyone has ever done there. These are just a few of the things we must give up.
Alexandra Petri: Jim Mattis's book is NOT about the president (Washington Post)
This is a general book about leadership. Unrelatedly, Marines are disgusted and embarrassed by amateurs who have made no effort to master their professions. Marines spit on such people. "Pah!" say the Marines to such individuals. "You are a garbage of a failure, and I despise you! I weep for any country where you are in charge. You are not up to Marine standards, you pustule." I am not saying in this book what the Marines would say to the sitting president, because this book is not about him.
A sett or set is a badger's den. It usually consists of a network of tunnels and numerous entrances. The largest setts are spacious enough to accommodate 15 or more animals with up to 300 metres (980 ft) of tunnels and as many as 40 openings. Such elaborate setts with extensive tunneling take many years for badgers to complete. Setts are typically excavated in soil that is well drained and easy to dig, such as sand, and situated on sloping ground where there is some cover.
Sett tunnels are usually between 0.5 to 2 metres (1.6 to 6.6 ft) beneath the ground, and they incorporate larger chambers used for sleeping or rearing young. These chambers are lined with dry bedding material such as grass, straw, dead leaves or bracken. Tunnels are wider than they are high, typically around 30 centimetres (12 in) wide by 25 centimetres (9.8 in) high, which matches a badger's wide and stocky build.
Source
Mark. was first, and correct, with:
Badger.
Randall wrote:
badger
Alan J answered:
A Badger.
Dave said:
Badger. Badgers dig a network of tunnels, with multiple entrances for their dens. Other animals, like rabbits or foxes may take up residence in these tunnels after the badgers move on. Badgers are short legged, stout and strong and are related to weasels and ferrets. Badgers of different varieties live throughout most of the world. North American badgers are primarily carnivorous (ground dwelling rodents and worms) but will eat fruit if available. I could use a good badger to eliminate the ground squirrels and moles in my yard, but I fear the badger would make a bigger piles of dirt than those pests do.
Photos: Mole, Mouse and Badger having tea from the book "The Wind in the Willows." | For some reason our garden box tomato crop has been an unprecedented success this year, so Judy started canning them so they won't go to waste. We can't eat them fast enough.
zorch responded:
A sett is a badger's den.
Deborah replied:
A sett is a badger's den. And now I have a new Scrabble word. Thanks, Marty!
Cal in Vermont responded:
Setts are where badgers live. They set up housekeeping with nice comfy furniture and a warm bathroom and a little hearth that burns twigs. Then they are all sett.
David of Moon Valley wrote:
survey says......Badger....
Mac Mac said:
Badger
BttbBob answered:
Badgers... and I knew that answer from reading the Aubrey - Maturin series of books (20 of 'em) by the noted English historical novelist Patrick O'Brian. That series is from where this Russell Crowe film came from...
Where's the connection, you ask? Well, Jack Aubrey was a Royal Navy Captain during the Napoleonic Wars and his "particular friend", Stephan Maturin, was Aubrey's Ship's Surgeon and a very learned physician. Maturin was also a 'Natural Philosopher' with a keen interest in flora and fauna (seen at upper right in the movie graphic on a Galapagos Islands excursion collecting specimens). Many of the books are partially set in Britain and Maturin had a keen interest in the badgers that live there so badgers pop up occasionally and 'sett' was often used to name their lodgings...
Stephen F took the day off.
mj took the day off.
Your Libtard, Snowflake, Socialist friend, Roy in Tyler, TX took the day off.
Kevin K. in Washington, DC, took the day off.
Kenn B took the day off.
John I from Hawai`i took the day off.
Dave in Tucson took the day off.
Joe S took the day off.
Micki took the day off.
DJ Useo took the day off.
Barbara, of Peppy Tech fame took the day off.
Ed K took the day off.
Harry M. took the day off.
Marilyn of TC took the day off.
Billy in Cypress U$A took the day off.
Michelle in AZ took the day off.
Leo in Boise took the day off.
George M. took the day off.
Brian S. took the day off.
Doug from Albuquerque, New Mexico took the day off.
Saskplanner took the day off.
Steve in Wonderful Sacramento, CA, took the day off.
Gateway Mike took the day off.
Gene took the day off.
Jon L took the day off.
G E Kelly took the day off.
Tony K. took the day off.
Paul of Seattle took the day off.
Noel S. took the day off.
James of Alhambra took the day off.
WTF?!?! Why would science squelch itself for this-this-this-Person occupying the White House whose name I cannot utter?
Parenthetically, what do I call the utterance of a goose? I don't want to say #45's name, so I suppose some work will ensue to find a better word. Just the other day I found out that a group or flock of hummingbirds is called a charm. As opposed to a murder of crows. Thesaurus, let's get reacquainted. I have cocktails.
• Movie critic Roger Ebert's life may have been saved because he liked a long song by Leonard Cohen. He underwent surgery for cancer, the operation was a success, and he was scheduled to leave the hospital. Lots of hospital staff were present to wish him well, and for them he played on his iPod the song "I'm Your Man" by Leonard Cohen. While the song was playing, Roger's carotid artery ruptured. Of course, if your carotid artery must rupture, the very best place for it to rupture is in a hospital room where people who have the skills to save your life are surrounding you. Roger says, "If I'd forgotten the Leonard Cohen song, Chaz [Mrs. Ebert] sometimes reflects, we would have already been on Lake Shore Drive, and I would surely have bled to death."
• Death is not optional: 1) Frederic Chopin was born at Zelazowa, Poland, on 22 February 1810, and he died in Paris, France, on 17 October 1849. At his funeral, earth from Poland was sprinkled over his grave. He had brought that earth with him from Poland 19 years previously. 2) Robert Schumann once visited the graves of Ludwig van Beethoven and Franz Peter Schubert, which are side by side in Vienna, Austria. He found a rusty steel pen on the top of Beethoven's grave and decided that Schubert must have dropped it there - Schubert died one year after Beethoven. Schumann used that pen to write his B Flat Symphony.
• Organizers for the London 2012 Olympics contacted Bill Curbishley, manager of the Who, hoping to get Keith Moon and other members of the Who back together to perform at the opening ceremony. Unfortunately, Mr. Moon had died in 1978 from a drug overdose. Mr. Curbishley said, "I emailed back saying Keith now resides in Golders Green crematorium, having lived up to the Who's anthemic line 'I hope I die before I get old.' If they have a round table, some glasses and candles, we might contact him." In a blog post, Guardian journalist Brian Braiker joked, "For its part, the staff of the Guardian is just really looking forward to seeing Jesse Owens compete."
Eccentrics
• Hasil "Haze" Adkins was a wild man of rockabilly and friends with Billy Miller and Miriam Linna of Norton Records. One thing they noted about him was he was a meat eater. Miriam says, "Hasil Adkins eats more meat than any other human being we've ever met; he carries Vienna sausages in his pocket." She once asked him, "What would you like for lunch?" He replied, "Meat." "Any special kind?" "Meat." One of Miriam's celebrity encounters was with artist Andy Warhol. She ordered him, "Stay right there!" Then she bought a can of Campbell's soup and made him autograph it. It was a prize possession for years, but she had to leave the house one day when Hasil was staying at her house, and she told him, "Haze, I'm going out for a while; there's plenty of food in the fridge." When she got back, he told her that he had eaten a can of soup. Billy says, "You guessed it -." Billy remembers that once a noisy ceiling fan bothered Haze in a club while he was playing, so he pulled out a gun and shot the ceiling fan so it did not interfere with his songs. By the way, in addition to marketing records by Haze, Norton Records also marketed records by Jack Starr, who did such things as making monster movies at home in addition to recording music. He also made his own Jack Starr Cologne - he once sent Norton Records a demo tape doused with the cologne, and Billy said, "I had to put it out on the window sill for about four days." As you expect, Miriam and Billy collect records. Miriam once was talking about her record collection with her eye doctor, whom she had known for 10 years. He told her, "I used to play in a band on Long Island called the Bell Notes; we recorded this 45 called 'I've Had It!'" Miriam says, "They were a band we had been looking for high and low […] I was astounded. So now, whenever I see people who are like 40-plus, I feel like asking, 'Hey, did you ever make a record?'"
CBS begins the night with a RERUN'Bull', followed by '48 Hours'.
NBC opens the night with a RERUN'America's Got Talent', followed by 'Dateline'.
Of course, 'SNL' is a RERUN with Halsey.
ABC fills the night with LIVE'College Football', then pads the left coast with local crap, and maybe an old '20/20'.
The CW here fills the night with LIVE'Dogger Baseball', with the Giants visiting Chavez Ravine.
Faux fills the night with LIVE'College Football', then pads the left coast with local crap.
MY recycles an old 'Major Crimes', followed by an old 'Rizzoli & Isles'.
A&E has 'Live PD', followed by a FRESH'Live PD: Rewind', and 'Live PD'.
AMC offers the movie 'Stephen King's Thinner', followed by the movie 'Pet Sematary', then the movie 'Christine'.
BBC -
[6:00AM] SHERLOCK - SEASON 1 - EPISODE 1-A Study in Pink
[8:00AM] SHERLOCK - SEASON 1 - EPISODE 2-The Blind Banker
[10:00AM] SHERLOCK - SEASON 1 - EPISODE 3-The Great Game
[12:00PM] SHERLOCK - SEASON 2 - EPISODE 1-A Scandal in Belgravia
[2:00PM] SHERLOCK - SEASON 2 - EPISODE 2-The Hounds of Baskerville
[4:00PM] SHERLOCK - SEASON 2 - EPISODE 3-The Reichenbach Fall
[6:00PM] CAST AWAY (2000) -
[9:00PM] NATURE'S GREAT EVENTS - SEASON 1 - EPISODE 3-The Great Migration
[10:10PM] PLANET EARTH II - SEASON 2 - EPISODE 5-Grasslands
[11:20PM] PLANET EARTH II - SEASON 2 - EPISODE 1-Islands
[12:30AM] PLANET EARTH II - SEASON 2 - EPISODE 2-Mountains
[1:40AM] PLANET EARTH II - SEASON 2 - EPISODE 5-Grasslands
[2:50AM] NATURE'S GREAT EVENTS - SEASON 1 - EPISODE 3-The Great Migration
[4:00AM] PLANET EARTH II - SEASON 2 - EPISODE 1-Islands
[5:00AM] PLANET EARTH II - SEASON 2 - EPISODE 2-Mountains (ALL TIMES EDT)
Bravo has the movie 'Tyler Perry's Madea's Witness Protection', followed by the movie 'Fifty Shades Darker'.
Comedy Central has the movie 'Men In Black II', followed by the movie '21 Jump Street', then the movie '21 Jump Street', again.
FX has the movie 'Transformers: Dark Of The Moon', followed by the movie 'Transformers: Age Of Extinction'.
History has 'Ancient Aliens', followed by a FRESH'Ancient Aliens: Declassified'.
IFC -
[6:00A] The Three Stooges - Back to the Woods
[6:30A] Batman - Deep Freeze
[7:03A] Batman - The Impractical Joker
[7:36A] Batman - The Joker's Provokers
[8:09A] Batman - Marsha, Queen of Diamonds
[8:42A] Batman - Marsha's Scheme With Diamonds
[9:15A] King Kong
[12:15P] Planet of the Apes
[2:45P] The Patriot
[6:30P] Zero Dark Thirty -
[10:00P] The Green Mile
[2:00A] Planet of the Apes
[4:30A] Battle for the Planet of the Apes (ALL TIMES EDT)
Sundance -
[6:10am] The Andy Griffith Show
[6:45am] The Andy Griffith Show
[7:20am] The Andy Griffith Show
[7:55am] The Andy Griffith Show
[8:30am] The Andy Griffith Show
[9:00am] The Andy Griffith Show
[9:30am] The Andy Griffith Show
[10:00am] The Andy Griffith Show
[10:30am] The Andy Griffith Show
[11:00am] M*A*S*H
[11:30am] M*A*S*H
[12:00pm] M*A*S*H
[12:30pm] M*A*S*H
[1:00pm] M*A*S*H
[1:30pm] M*A*S*H
[2:00pm] M*A*S*H
[2:30pm] M*A*S*H
[3:00pm] M*A*S*H
[3:30pm] M*A*S*H
[4:00pm] M*A*S*H
[4:30pm] M*A*S*H
[5:00pm] M*A*S*H
[5:30pm] M*A*S*H
[6:00pm] M*A*S*H
[6:30pm] M*A*S*H
[7:00pm] M*A*S*H
[7:30pm] M*A*S*H
[8:00pm] M*A*S*H
[8:30pm] M*A*S*H
[9:00pm] Trading Places
[11:30pm] Beverly Hills Cop II
[1:30am] Beverly Hills Cop III
[3:30am] Staying Alive
[5:30am] M*A*S*H (ALL TIMES EDT)
SyFy has the movie 'Beetlejuice', followed by the movie 'Beetlejuice'.
Pink Floyd legend Roger Waters branded British prime minister Boris Johnson a dangerous "sociopath" Friday.
The singer said Johnson and other populist leaders like Donald Trump are hell-bent on destroying the planet as a movie of his latest world tour, "Us + Them" -- which highlighted the plight of migrants -- was premiered at the Venice film festival.
He said that like Brazil's far-right President Jair Bolsonaro, Johnson and Trump had embarked on "a wilful quest to destroy this beautiful planet on which we live.
British-born Waters, a long-time supporter of left-wing causes, told AFP that Johnson "fits all the fascist paradigms. He is a larger-than-life buffoon totally uninterested in anything beyond how can he can get power.
"Fascism is always an unholy alliance between the ruling and the corporate class with the popular support of the uneducated mass. That is what is happening in the UK at the moment," he insisted.
The heart of every major galaxy is thought to contain a supermassive black hole - a place where gravity is so strong that anything, including light, gets devoured.
For years, scientists have struggled to capture a black hole on camera, since the absence of light renders them nearly impossible to see.
But on April 10, a group of scientists from the international Event Horizon Telescope Collaboration released the first-ever photograph of a supermassive black hole to the public. Though the image was fuzzy, it signified a major milestone for space research.
The accomplishment has now earned the team a 2020 Breakthrough Prize, which was awarded on September 5. The prize was started eight years ago by a team of investors including Sergey Brin and Mark Zuckerberg, and is often referred to as the "Oscars of Science".
The Event Horizon Telescope Collaboration (EHT) team will collectively receive US$3 million, but the money will be divided equally among the group's 347 scientists, giving each person around US$8,600.
Sean Connery calls himself "lucky" to have survived Hurricane Dorian as it raged through the Bahamas, where the 89-year-old James Bond actor lives.
In an interview from his home there, he told the Scottish Daily Mail that he and his wife, artist Micheline Roquebrune Connery, were "both fine" and thanked people "for their concern."
"We were lucky compared to many others," said Connery, whose home is in the gated community of Lyford Cay on New Providence Island, which is about 95 miles from Great Abaco, which saw the greatest destruction. "The damage here was not great."
He continued, "We had been prepared for the storm, everything was ready in advance - we weren't taking any chances and knew what to do. It comes with living here, I suppose."
Connery - who celebrated his birthday on Aug. 25, just before the storm hit - moved to the Bahamas in the 1990s. In a 2003 interview, the Scottish born star said the island had "home" to him. He said he enjoyed the anonymity of his life there, saying, "I don't have a problem when I go out now. I walk everywhere, I don't have a bodyguard, don't have a minder." He said it was perfect for his personality. "I'm very much a loner" and "not a group guy."
Japan will start using the traditional order for Japanese names in English in official documents, with family names first, a switch from the Westernized custom the country adopted more than a century ago, government officials said Friday.
The idea has been floated for years and but some ministers in Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's ultra-conservative Cabinet recently started pushing for it again. The Cabinet agreed Friday to begin making the change with government documents, though no timeline was given for its start.
Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said usage guidelines and other details still need to be discussed further. Suga said he looked forward to going by Suga Yoshihide, as he is known in Japan.
China and South Korea traditionally stick with the surname first order both at home and internationally. But Japan has chosen to be seen more as part of the West rather than Asia.
Japan adopted the first name before surname order for use in English about 150 years ago as a way to modernize and internationalize itself by imitating the Western style, according to the Agency for Cultural Affairs.
Apple has instructed those working on its Siri digital assistant to design it to "deflect" questions about hot-button issues such as feminism and the #MeToo movement, according to The Guardian. The revelation comes after the iPhone maker and other tech firms had been criticized for how their virtual helpers respond to queries about sexual harassment in the past.
The internal project reported by The Guardian tells Siri's development team to design the virtual assistant's responses to such questions in the following ways: "don't engage," "deflect," and "inform." Siri's responses should be written to suggest that it is in favor of equality while avoiding the word "feminism," says The Guardian, which obtained leaked documents that had been last updated in June 2018.
That's because Apple wants Siri to remain "guarded" and "neutral" when dealing with sensitive topics, according to the report. When asking Siri if it's a feminist or what it thinks of feminism, the digital assistant will offer a response like: "I am a believer in equality, and treating people with respect."
Apple scrapped its grading program for Siri after a previous report from The Guardian revealed that human workers regularly overheard private conversations. The company will reinstate the program in the fall after making several changes and issuing software updates. Apple will stop recording Siri conversations by default and instead allow users to opt in to share recordings to improve Siri.
The internal project leaked to The Guardian comes after Apple and other tech firms like Amazon, Microsoft, and Google came under fire for the way their respective voice-enabled assistants respond to requests involving insults and sexual comments.
A Homeland Security and counterterrorism advisor appeared to take some of the blame for the confusion wrought by President Donald Trump's presentation of a chart of Hurricane Dorian's path.
In a statement presented by the White House, US Coast Guard Rear Admiral Peter Brown said Trump's comments regarding Hurricane Dorian's chance to hit Alabama were based on a briefing.
"I showed the President the official National Hurricane Center forecast, which included the 'cone' that projects the potential path of the eye of the storm," Brown said. "The President and I also reviewed other products, including multiple meteorological models ... and graphics that displayed the time of onset and geographical range of tropical storm force winds, storm surge, and rainfall. These products showed possible storm plots well outside the official forecast cone."
"The President's comments were based on that morning's Hurricane Dorian briefing, which included the possibility of tropical storm force winds in southeastern Alabama," Brown said.
A White House source familiar with the matter said that Trump personally directed Brown to give the statement, according to CNN.
Federal scientists said Thursday they are monitoring a new ocean heat wave off the U.S. West Coast, a development that could badly disrupt marine life including salmon, whales and sea lions.
The expanse of unusually warm water stretches from Alaska to California, researchers with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said Thursday . It resembles a similar heat wave about five years ago that was blamed for poorer survival rates for young salmon, more humpback whales becoming entangled in fishing gear as they hunted closer to shore, and an algae bloom that shut down crabbing and clamming.
NOAA Fisheries said the water has reached temperatures more than 5 degrees Fahrenheit above average. It remains to be seen whether this heat wave dissipates more quickly than the last one, the agency said.
If it lingers, it could be disastrous for the Pacific Northwest's endangered orcas, which largely depend on chinook salmon. The warmer waters can weaken the food web that sustain the salmon and bring predators of young salmon, including seabirds, closer to shore, further reducing their abundance. Chinook returns have been extremely low in recent years following the last heat wave, which scientists dubbed "the blob."
The new heat wave has emerged over the last few months, growing in a similar pattern in the same area. After "the blob," it's the second-most widespread heat wave in the northern Pacific Ocean in the last 40 years - as far back as the relevant data goes.
A tiny marsupial found only in northwest Australia mates so intensely that an entire generation of males can die off during a single breeding season, researchers reported on Friday.
Biologists studying kalutas -- a mouse-sized marsupial found in the arid Pilbara region -- believe they die en masse because of sex-driven immune system collapse.
Female kalutas mate frequently and with different males during each breeding season.
"That means that males also have to mate a lot, and have good quality sperm (and lots of it), to outcompete rival males," said Genevieve Hayes, who led the University of Western Australia research team.
"This intense investment in reproduction, evidenced by their large testes, appears to be fatal for males."
The Dead Sea Scrolls are a marvel. Buried for roughly 2,000 years under piles of debris and bat guano in a chain of caves in the Judean desert, the collection of nearly 1,000 fragmented manuscripts includes biblical texts, ancient calendars and early astronomical observations.
Among these mysterious artifacts (many of which are now just ragged scraps of parchment) one impeccably preserved document stands out. The Temple Scroll, named for its description of a Jewish temple that was never built, is one of the longest (it stretches 25 feet, or 8 meters, long), thinnest and easiest scrolls to read.
Why, out of thousands of faded fragments found in the Judean caves, has the Temple Scroll fared so well after two millennia? In a new study published today (Sept. 5) in the journal Science Advances, researchers attempted to find out by scrutinizing a piece of the parchment using every X-ray and spectroscopic tool at their disposal. They found that the scroll did indeed have something its ancient siblings did not - traces of a salty mineral solution not present in any other previously studied scroll, nor in any of the caves or in the Dead Sea itself.
According to the researchers, the presence of these minerals shows that the Dead Sea Scrolls were produced using an impressive variety of techniques - and, more importantly, the find could also inform the way these scrolls are preserved in the future.
Prior studies revealed that the Temple Scroll was unlike most other Dead Sea fragments, in that it was composed of several distinct layers: an organic layer, made of the animal skin that served as the parchment's base; and an inorganic layer of minerals that may have been rubbed on during a parchment "finishing" process. While all of the Dead Sea Scrolls boil down to animal skins - usually taken from cows, goats or sheep before being scraped clean and stretched on a rack - few showed evidence of finishing, the researchers wrote.
You have reached the Home page of BartCop Entertainment.
Do you have something to say?
Anything that increased your blood pressure, or, even better, amused or entertained?
Do you have a great album no one's heard?
How about a favorite TV show, movie, book, play, cartoon, or legal amusement?
A popular artist that just plain pisses you off?
A box set the whole world should own?
Vile, filthy rumors about Republican hypocrites?
answered:
took the day off.
In memory.
