Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Paul Krugman: Trump Declares War on California (NY Times)
It's a liberal state, so it must be punished.
Mary Beard: Bronze medallist (TLS)
It is an iron rule that one should never try to joke with immigration officers at airports. It is even not worth telling them something entirely straight and true, but which might come across as a joke. So, when the immigration officers at LAX (Los Angeles) asked me a few days ago why I was visiting, I decided not to say that I had come to get a medal, but to say (equally truly - second iron rule, never lie to them) that I had come to give a lecture.
Mary Beard: "Hidden treasures: the Science Gallery" (TLS)
And where is this gem? Well - about five minutes' walk from the TLS offices, near London Bridge station, in the shadow of the Shard. Just on my London doorstep. You see why I think I need to get out more.
Greg Sargent: Our deepening economic divide is fertile ground for Trump's demagoguery (Washington Post)
The story this dual demagoguery tells is basically this: Those cosmopolitan, globalist elites have contempt for your way of life, even though it is far more virtuous than the cesspool of moral squalor that surrounds them (even as they titter away in their enclaves); at the same time, they are enriching themselves by exploiting immigrant labor and rigging trade deals in their favor, destroying your jobs and way of life.
Fiona Sturges: Year of the Monkey by Patti Smith review - a maudlin and magical memoir (The Guardian)
From looming political crisis to a leaky flat - a troubled year in the life of a great American punk poet.
Elena Gorfinkel: "Polyester: The Perils of Francine" (Criterion)
The film's box-office success testified to the capacity of Waters' underground sensibility to reach wider audiences. Polyester's "accessibility" set the stage for the filmmaker's ascension to the position of America's degenerate sweetheart with Hairspray (1988), Cry-Baby (1990), and Serial Mom (1994), films that also plumbed the aberrant enchantments and hidden impulses of a normie Americana but embraced a populist humor that worked less blue. Some fans may have thought Polyester a sellout of a sort; Waters waggishly retorted in an interview, "I've been trying to sell out for years. It's just that no one would buy me before."
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Presenting
Michael Egan
replied:
jasa returned to semi-retired status.
In memory.
Reader Suggestion
Michelle in AZ
from Bruce
Anecdotes
• Gerald Moore, world-famous accompanist, used to wonder why some Patronesses of Music knew so little about music. Emerald, Lady Cunard once grabbed Ida Haendel's very valuable Stradivarius by its strings and held it up in the air - Mr. Moore compared it to grabbing a parcel by the strings. Emerald, Lady Cunard then demanded to know why it was so valuable. Mr. Moore also stated that in the same drawing room, the hostess asked Sir Thomas Beecham, who with his orchestra were performing at a large party, "Sir Thomas, when are you going to play that lovely piece of Delius that you were rehearsing this afternoon?" Sir Thomas replied, "We have just this very moment played it, my dear." Speaking of Sir Thomas, one of his friends visited him in his dressing room after a Covent Garden concert and complimented him on the playing of his orchestra but also said that the orchestra had drowned out the singing of the vocalists. Sir Thomas replied, "I know. I drowned them intentionally - in the public's interest."
• Cerys Matthews was the lead singer of Catatonia and now records solo albums. One of her best friends is fellow Welsh singer Tom Jones, who gave her the best advice she has ever received - and followed: "Tom Jones told me not to drink before going on stage. You grow up with all these myths about rock 'n' roll behavior, even if the stars are on a rollercoaster to hell. His advice was so simple, but it really does work." She had her most embarrassing moment on stage in the days before Mr. Jones gave her this advice, when she fell over a monitor during a concert in Germany. She remembers, "I might have got away with it if I hadn't been mid-note." Ms. Matthews has thought about death, as all of us have, and she would like to be remembered "with a good sentence on a gravestone. I'm still working out what it would say. Gravestones are like Twitter - you need something short that will amuse people."
• Rumors spring up in odd ways. Opera singer Nellie Melba had a friend named Mrs. Hwfa Williams, who had a magpie that she named Melba. Ms. Melba sometimes stayed at the house of her friend. At a party, Mrs. Williams said to her guests, "Poor Melba has been terribly sick. I think it is because she had been eating so many mice." Ms. Melba wrote in her autobiography, Melodies and Memories, "Quite seriously the tale was spread around London that owing to my ravenous appetite for mice, my health had been impaired and I had been forced to stop singing."
• Country musician Kinky Friedman once saw Kris Kristofferson talking to a young groupie. Mr. Kristofferson looked up and asked, "Kinky?" Mr. Friedman and the young groupie replied at the same time, "Yes."
• While singing in Aida, Robert Merrill felt the strap of his sandal break, so he kicked the sandal into the orchestra pit. Unfortunately, a too-helpful musician picked it up and threw it back to him.
Bonus Links
Jeannie the Teed-Off Temp
Reader Comment
Current Events
Since laws no longer seem to matter...
Wondering why Predator doesn't have Treasury print up a few billion dollars for him and transfer them (and all the money currently in existence in the US) into his bank accounts. It appears he can do anything with impunity. So, in the immortal words of Ghouliani, why not?
And forget that election in 2020. Why should we have one when we've crowned a king who can do anything and break all laws with zero objection? He can just rule until his death. The only question is--will we crown Vanky or Doofus Junior as our next sovereign?
WHERE are our lawmakers? Why are they all standing around with thumbs up their posteriors as our government and country are handed over to a corrupt grifter (on a gold serving platter)? I don't want to live under the rule of an authoritarian dictator. Why are THEY willing to live that way? Is the power (and the Benjamins) really worth that?
Linda >^..^<
We are all only temporarily able bodied.
Thanks, Linda!
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
JD is on vacation.
Visit JD's site - Kitty Litter Music
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Grand sumo live tonight on NHK.
2019 National Book Awards
Nominees
Ah, fall. That homey season of football, falling leaves - and of course, feting the best books of the year. The National Book Foundation did its part this week, rolling out the 50 nominees - 10 each across five categories - for its annual slate of literary awards.
Among the notable names on this year's National Book Award longlists are previous winners (Colson Whitehead and Cynthia Kadohata) and plenty of newcomers to the prize, especially among the poets and nonfiction writers.
They were winnowed from more than 1,700 submissions in 2019, and they're set for another winnowing in less than a month. Judges will halve the books still in contention when they announce the shortlists of finalists on Oct. 8, and just one book in each category will claim the prize at a ceremony in New York City on Nov. 20.
So, without further ado ...
Nominees
Reads Seth Meyers' Palm
Margaret Atwood
"You up for this?," asked author Margaret Atwood mischievously on Thursday's Late Night With Seth Meyers when the host asked her to read his palm. Meyers was game, even though asking The author of The Handmaid's Tale to predict the future seems like a recipe for unsettlingly prescient bad news. There to promote The Testaments, the new, long-awaited sequel to her legendary 1985 dystopian novel of right-wing misogynist oppression, the twinkly 79-year-old author indulged Meyers with what she termed "straight Renaissance palmistry"-and mostly good news. (Long life, not going to be president, "less stubborn" and "more stable" than people think-definitely could have been worse.)
Still, as Atwood told Meyers, the worst future one can possible imagine has a way of coming true. The author spoke about the enduring "second life" of The Handmaid's Tale, which has been a movie, opera, graphic novel, ballet, global (if sometimes sputtering) TV phenomenon, and, as Atwood noted with some appreciation, a protest meme and costume for women's rights all over the world. (She's not so sure about the "sexy Handmaid" Halloween getup someone who missed the point has brought to market.) Claiming that she'd started writing The Testaments (about two young women and the terrifying Aunt Lydia giving their very different accounts of life in- and outside human rights graveyard Gilead) before the election of 2016 seemed to be setting America up as a Handmaid's Tale prequel, Atwood did say that the rise of widely alleged sexual predator Donald Trump and a Vice President who won't allow a woman to speak to him in private "put wind in [her] sails" as far as reentering the world of her most famous work.
"It encouraged me," said the Canadian Atwood of the rise of evangelical assholery currently holding sway in America, and noting that, as (yet) farfetched as her post-sanity United States may seem, her rule in writing The Handmaid's Tale and The Testaments was to never make up any form of subjugation, oppression, or evil that hasn't actually occurred somewhere in the history of humans being really, really terrible to women. So that's sobering. (She also noted impishly that, like one of the characters in The Testaments has done, Americans historically have fled to her native Toronto when things "go pear-shaped" down here.)
Margaret Atwood
'Will & Grace'
Billie Lourd
Somewhere in heaven, Debbie Reynolds must be smiling down. Her granddaughter, actress Billie Lourd, will guest star on the final season of NBC's Will & Grace, playing Fiona Adler.
Fiona is Grace Adler's (Debra Messing) niece, the daughter of Grace's older sister (portrayed on the show by Mary McCormack), and granddaughter of Bobbi Adler, the role played by Reynolds on the original series.
In the episode, taping on Sept. 25, Fiona is reconnecting with her "cool aunt," Grace (Messing).
Reynolds played Bobbie Adler in 12 episodes from 1999-2006, earning an Emmy nomination in 2000. The Will & Grace revival did a tribute episode following Reynolds' Dec. 28, 2016 death, which featured Grace taking Will back to her family home for her late mother Bobbi's birthday.
Lourd has returned to the American Horror Franchise. She is starring on AHS: 1984, which premiered last night on FX.
Billie Lourd
Banned in Malaysia
'Hustlers'
"Hustlers," the Jennifer Lopez crime film about New York strippers who swindle Wall Street, has been banned in Malaysia for its "excessive obscene content."
The country's film censorship board said the film was "not suitable for public viewing," citing its scenes featuring nude breasts, erotic dancing and drug use, according to the BBC. "Hustlers" was meant to open in the country on Thursday.
"We regret to inform you that 'Hustlers' movie release has been canceled as it has been banned in Malaysia. We deeply apologize for the inconveniences caused to our beloved followers, fans of the movie, medias and partners," the film's Malaysian distributor Square Box Pictures said on Instagram. "We certainly appreciate all the love and support from our fans and movie lovers for this title; yet it's our loss that we are unable to carry on. Our sincere apologies that we have let you down."
STXfilms, which produced the film and released it domestically, did not immediately respond for a request for comment.
Earlier this year, Malaysia censored the Elton John biopic "Rocketman" over scenes of gay sex seen in the film. In the past the country shelved Disney's "Beauty and the Beast" remake for a "gay moment," which Disney ultimately refused to cut and was finally screened with the scene intact.
'Hustlers'
Complaints More Than Doubled
Watchdog Hotline
The number of complaints made to a confidential hotline designed to allow the reporting of waste, fraud and abuse in the intelligence community has skyrocketed since Donald Trump took office, government records show.
According to the latest public report by the Inspector General of the Intelligence Community, the hotline received 563 contacts last year, up from 251 in 2016 and 369 in 2017.
The numbers for the latest fiscal year are on pace to be even higher: There were 297 complaints in just the first six months - from October 2018 through last March, according to the report.
The report doesn't describe the complaints or tally how many of those rose to the level of an "urgent concern"-a category of serious complaints that must be turned over to Congress. Officials involved in the process say that designation is rare.
Intelligence agencies whose employees might use the hotline include the CIA, the National Security Agency, and the Defense Intelligence Agency, among others.
Watchdog Hotline
Scientists Can't Agree
Genetically Modified-Mosquito Experiment
From 2013 to 2015, an English biotech company released millions of genetically modified mosquitoes into neighborhoods in Jacobina, Brazil, in an effort to reduce the number of native disease-carrying mosquitoes. But unexpectedly, some of the gene-edited mosquitoes passed on their genes to the native insects, fueling concerns that they created a more robust hybrid species, according to new findings.
Considered the world's deadliest animal, mosquitoes spread a plethora of diseases, including Zika virus, dengue fever, yellow fever and West Nile virus.
To try to rid the world of some of these disease transmitters, a biotech company called Oxitec released around 450,000 genetically modified male Aedes aegypti mosquitoes into Jacobina each week for 27 months. These mosquitoes were altered such that they carried a "lethal gene."
Once released, these ticking bombs were supposed to flit along and mate with females (the sex that bites humans) and then die, but not before they passed their lethal genes to similarly doomed offspring. In the lab, scientists had found that about 3% of the females that mated with the genetically modified males would produce offspring. But even the small number of offspring that survived were weak and unable to produce offspring of their own.
But now, a group of researchers not involved with Oxitec is raising questions as to whether this method went as planned. This method has successfully reduced native mosquito populations in Brazil by up to 85%, the researchers wrote. They found that some of the genes from the genetically modified mosquitoes had transferred to the native population. In other words, some of the offspring had survived and were strong enough to reproduce. This new population is a hybrid of Brazilian mosquitoes and the genetically modified mosquitoes that were created from strains in Cuba and Mexico, according to the study, which was published Sept. 10 in the journal Scientific Reports.
Genetically Modified-Mosquito Experiment
Became Blazing Quasars
6 Quiet Galaxies
Compared to our brief human lives, we tend to think of events on galactic scales as ones that happen extremely slowly. But that's not always the case.
In a spectacular fashion, six galaxies have just undergone a huge transformation in a matter of mere months. They've gone from relatively peaceful galaxies to active quasars - the brightest of all galaxies, blasting vast amounts of radiation out into the Universe.
This isn't just amazingly cool - these events could help to resolve a long-standing debate about what produces the light in a particular type of galaxy. In fact, they may indicate a previously unknown type of galactic nucleus activity.
The six galaxies started out as low-ionisation nuclear emission-line region (LINER) galaxies; in terms of brightness, that's sort-of like being a galactic middle child.
Making up a third of all known galaxies, they're brighter than ones with dormant supermassive black holes at the centre, but not as bright as active galaxies (known as Seyfert galaxies), whose supermassive black holes are chowing down on cosmic snacks.
6 Quiet Galaxies
As Old As Earth
Underground Continents
Underground continents deep in Earth's belly may have formed when an ancient ocean of magma solidified on the surface of the baby planet 4.5 billion years ago, according to a new study.
The finding was detailed in a fascinating story on the American Geophysical Union blog GeoSpace.
As reporter Abigail Eisenstadt explains, scientists have known about these buried blobs of hot, compressed rock since the 1970s. Earthquakes reverberate through the rest of the mantle at a steady pace, but hit serious speed bumps when they rumble through these massive hunks of stone. These peculiar patterns of seismic activity helped scientists spot the continents on the border of Earth's mantle and molten outer core, but they still don't know when or how the structures emerged. Some scientists theorize that bits of the planet's crust dipped down into the mantle, broke off and clumped together over time, Geospace reported.
Now, new analyses of volcanic rock paint a different picture: The underground continents may be as old as Earth itself, and likely survived the planet-rocking impact that first formed the Moon, the study authors reported July 31 in the journal Geochemistry, Geophysics, Geosystems.
In the past, many geological models assumed columns of rock from the mantle - called deep mantle plumes - rose to the surface in orderly straight lines, GeoSpace reported. But these plumes have been known to ricochet and change course on their journey to the crust. The researchers developed a model that noted the zig-zagging nature of deep mantle plumes and thus were able to trace certain samples back to the underground continents.
Underground Continents
Studying Patients
Walking
The way someone walks could be used to identify the specific type of dementia a patient has, researchers have revealed.
Newcastle University scientists have shown that people with Alzheimer's disease or Lewy body dementia have unique walking patterns that signal subtle differences between the two conditions.
They have found that people with Lewy body dementia vary their step time and length and their left foot and right foot movements are asymmetric, when compared to people who have Alzheimer's disease.
The research, published in Alzheimer's & Dementia: The Journal of the Alzheimer's Association, was seen as a first step towards establishing gait as a marker for the various sub-types of disease and could lead to improved treatment plans in the future.
For the research, scientists analysed the way 110 people walked, with 36 of them having Alzheimer's and 45 with Lewy body dementia.
Walking
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