Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Paul Krugman: On Feeling Thankful But Fearful (NY Times Column)
America gave me so much, but are we still that country?
Emily Yoshida: The Florida Project Is a Near-Perfect Follow-up From the Director of Tangerine (Vulture)
And by all rights, it should be a terrifying battle cry: If the children of The Florida Project are our future, then something has gone seriously wrong in America. But in the moment, it's a dizzying breath of fresh air, and sets the mood for Sean Baker's brilliant, buoyant, and ultimately heart-wrenching film.
Josh Marshall: What I'm Thankful For (TPM)
Because this site's readers gave me a chance and an opening to do what I wanted to do, gave me an opening to try out something I thought would have value or get an audience if I just got the chance to do it. For that I'm deeply thankful, to the readers of this site who gave me the chance and the splendid freedom to write without compromises and the way I thought I should.
Andrew Tobias: Can You Recycle Bubble Wrap?
I'm not an idiot, and my neighbors are not idiots - and many of them have housekeepers who are not idiots - but do many of us really have any idea what happens to the stuff we "recycle?" And what goes where? Now I do!
Lucy Mangan: The first hijabi Barbie is here - but who are the other 'Sheroes'? (The Guardian)
Mattel has added a 10th doll to its line inspired by real-life women who have broken boundaries, inspired girls and played with Barbies as children.
Deborah Orr: By knowing how abusers like Kevin Spacey work, we can root them out (The Guardian)
Predators hunt out their victims, like pigs sniffing out truffles. Knowing what narcissistic behaviour to look out for can preempt danger.
'A good column is sometimes like an antenna that has just picked up the background noise' (The Guardian)
Columnist Suzanne Moore considers the art of opinion writing in an occasional series in which Guardian journalists discuss their work and its impact.
Alison Flood: Neil Gaiman leads authors demanding action to halt decline of school libraries (The Guardian)
Open letter, also signed by Philip Pullman and Malorie Blackman, says falling provision risks consigning children to 'a lifetime of low achievement.'
David Bruce's Amazon Author Page
David Bruce's Smashwords Page
David Bruce's Blog
David Bruce's Lulu Storefront
David Bruce's Apple iBookstore
David Bruce has over 80 Kindle books on Amazon.com.
Presenting
Michael Egan
took the day off.
wrote:
In memory.
Reader Suggestion
Michelle in AZ
Bonus Links
Jeannie the Teed-Off Temp
from Marc Perkel
Marc's Guide to Curing Cancer
So far so good on beating cancer for now. I'm doing fine. At the end of the month I'll be 16 months into an 8 month mean lifespan. And yesterday I went on a 7 mile hike and managed to keep up with the hiking group I was with. So, doing something right.
Still waiting for future test results and should see things headed in the right direction. I can say that it's not likely that anything dire happens in the short term so that means that I should have time to make several more attempts at this. So even if it doesn't work the first time there are a lot of variations to try. So if there's bad news it will help me pick the next radiation target.
I have written a "how to" guide for oncologists to perform the treatment that I got. I'm convinced that I'm definitely onto something and whether it works for me or not isn't the definitive test. I know if other people tried this that it would work for some of them, and if they improve it that it will work for a lot of them.
The guide is quite detailed and any doctor reading this can understand the procedure at every level. I also go into detail as to how it works, how I figured it out, and variations and improvements that could be tried to enhance it. I also introduce new ways to look at the problem. There is a lot of room for improvement and I think that doctors reading it will see what I'm talking about and want to build on it. And it's written so that if you're not a doctor you can still follow it. It also has a personal story revealing that I'm the class clown of cancer support group. I give great interviews and I look pretty hot in a lab coat.
So, feel free to read this and see what I'm talking about. But if any of you want to help then pass this around to both doctors and cancer patients. I need some media coverage. I'm looking for as many eyeballs as possible to read these ideas. Even if this isn't the solution, it's definitely on the right track. After all, I did hike 7 miles yesterday. And this hiking group wasn't moving slow. So if this isn't working then, why am I still here?
I also see curing cancer as more of an engineering problem that a medical problem. So if you are good at solving problems and most of what you know about medicine was watching the Dr. House MD TV show, then you're at the level I was at when I started. So anyone can jump in and be part of the solution.
Here is a link to my guide: Oncologists Guide to Curing Cancer using Abscopal Effect
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
THE CATS FINGER THE BITCH.
PRESIDENT DOPE!
GET READY TO RUMBLE!
THE NOOSE TIGHTENS.
THE MISOGYNISTIC PIG.
"THE REPUBLICAN PARTY NEEDS TO DIE".
Visit JD's site - Kitty Litter Music
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Still warmer than seasonal.
Childhood Home For Sale
Bruce Springsteen
Much of Bruce Springsteen's recent works, including his autobiography, Born to Run and Springsteen on Broadway, are based on his childhood experiences in his hometown of Freehold.
Now, one of his childhood homes is for sale.
The two-family home at 39 Institute St. in Freehold where the Springsteens lived from 1955 to 1962 is for sale for $269,900.
The house has been on the market for two weeks, said agent Barbara Conti of Gloria Nilson and Company Real Estate.
The Springsteen family lived on the left side of house, where an impressionable 7-year-old Bruce Springsteen saw Elvis Presley on The Ed Sullivan Show in 1956, a moment that is highlighted in the book Born to Run and the Broadway show. The Boss posed next to a tree at 39 Institute for a photo that appeared in the Born in the U.S.A.tour book.
Bruce Springsteen
Journalism Awards Rescinded
Charlie Rose
The Walter Cronkite School of Journalism at Arizona State University has decided to rescind its award for excellence in journalism given to Charlie Rose in 2015. The University of Kansas also announced it would revoke its National Citation Award that was given to the journalist earlier this year.
These announcements come days after Rose was fired from CBS and his show dropped from PBS and Bloomberg following multiple reports of sexual harassment.
The Cronkite School released a statement on Friday, in which the dean stated that "this action is largely symbolic," but "we think the message is important - to our current students, past students, future students, and all of journalism. And that is why we are taking this unprecedented action today."
A statement from the University of Kansas' William Allen White Foundation Board of Trustees read in part: "After recent reports detailed sexual harassment and a pattern of unprofessional behavior by Rose during his career, the William Allen White Foundation decided that Rose does not exemplify the ideals of this award."
"This unprecedented action is taken with the utmost seriousness and deliberation," read the statement on Friday from Christopher Callahan, founding dean and professor of the Walter Cronkite School at Arizona State University. "We give the award each year based on the knowledge we have of a recipient at that time. When new information about a recipient surfaces, the question we ask is not whether the award would be given again with a new set of facts, but whether the transgressions are so egregious that they demand nothing less than a reversal of history."
Charlie Rose
Revives Lost Language
Mashpee Wampanoag
A native American tribe whose ancestors famously ate a Thanksgiving meal with the US's first European colonisers, are working to revive a forgotten language after one of their members had a series of prophetic dreams.
The Mashpee Wampanoag tribe, which is based in and around Cape Cod in Massachusetts, have started immersion classes for youngsters to teach them the language that was lost for decades.
"From having had no speakers for six generations to having 500 students attend some sort of class in the last 25 years? It's more than I could have ever expected in my lifetime," Jessie "Little Doe" Baird, the tribe's vice chairwoman, told the Associated Press.
Ms Baird has been at the forefront of the fight to revive Wopanaotooaok, which has contributed a number of words that have become a fixture in the English language, among them pumpkin (spelled pohpukun in Wopanaotooaok), moccasin (mahkus), skunk (sukok) and powwow (pawaw).
These days, a total of 19 children from Wampanoag households are taught exclusively in Wopanaotooaok, a language that had not been spoken for at least a century.
Mashpee Wampanoag
Gender-Neutral Words
Swedish Lutherans
The Church of Sweden is urging its clergy to use gender-neutral language when referring to the supreme deity, refraining from using terms like "Lord" and "He" in favor of the less specific "God."
The move is one of several taken by the national Evangelical Lutheran church in updating a 31-year-old handbook setting out how services should be conducted in terms of language, liturgy, hymns and other aspects.
The decision was taken Thursday at the end of an eight-day meeting of the church's 251-member decision-making body, and takes effect May 20 on the Christian holiday of Pentecost.
A former state church, headquartered in Uppsala, some 60 kilometers (37 miles) north of the capital, the church has 6.1 million baptized members in a country of 10 million. It is headed by a woman, Archbishop Antje Jackelen.
"Theologically, for instance, we know that God is beyond our gender determinations, God is not human," Jackelen was quoted as saying by TT.
Swedish Lutherans
Protests San Francisco's "Sex Slave" Statues
Japan
Japan has expressed strong regret over San Francisco's decision to give formal city property status to a statue commemorating women who worked in military-backed brothels for Japanese troops during World War II, with Osaka declaring it will terminate its 60-year sister-city ties.
Osaka Mayor Hirofumi Yoshimura said the signing of legislation making the memorial public property "destroyed trust."
The statue was erected by California's Korean, Chinese and Filipino communities.
Japan's government denies that the women were forced into sexual slavery and says the statue wrongly blames Japan.
Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said San Francisco's decision challenges Japan's position and is "extremely regrettable." He said similar statues that have been built in various countries interfere with a 2015 agreement with South Korea to resolve the historical dispute.
Japan
Officials Warn Ex-Seminarians
Vatican't
Catholic officials in Italy have threatened former altar boys of the pope with criminal defamation charges for having publicly accused an older seminarian of sexual misconduct when they lived together at the youth seminary inside the Vatican gardens.
Church lawyers in the diocese of Como have also warned an Italian investigative news program against broadcasting the boys' claims and have purportedly pressed a church official to recant his suggestion of a cover-up.
The response is indicative of how the allegations of gay sex among altar boys inside the Vatican walls have touched a raw nerve in the Vatican and the Italian church. The reaction has been particularly acute within a small Catholic association, the Opera Don Folci, which runs the St. Pius X preseminary in a palazzo just steps away from where Pope Francis lives.
The accusations concern a former seminarian who is now a young priest for the Como dioceses and member of the Don Folci association. Reporter Gaetano Pecoraro interviewed an ex-student who said the seminarian would come into his dorm at night demanding oral sex, starting when he was 13 and continuing until he was 18.
The student's roommate, Kamil Jarzembowski, said he witnessed dozens of incidents, first denouncing them to seminary officials, and then in writing to cardinals and finally the pope in 2014. Church officials say internal church investigations were conducted, though initially not interviewing the boys in question, and the claims were determined to be false.
Vatican't
Court Suspends Two Dow Pesticides
France
A French court suspended on Friday the licence for two pesticides made by Dow Chemical, citing uncertainty over environmental risks including their effects on bees.
The preliminary ruling by an administrative court in the city of Nice overturned a decision by France's health and environment agency ANSES in September to grant a permit for the Closer and Transform crop chemicals, which contain the insecticide sulfoxaflor.
ANSES's authorisation of the products angered environmental protection groups, which say they are part of the neonicotinoid family of substances that are being phased out in France because of concern they could be a factor in declining bee populations.
ANSES argued that while sulfoxaflor functioned in a similar way to neonicotinoids, it remains present in soils and plants for a much shorter time.
Friday's ruling suspends the use of the products in France pending a court hearing to consider detailed arguments from the parties.
France
Polar Bear Precautions
Wrangel Island
Russian villagers living in the far north-east have had to stop their children from walking to school as a precaution against polar bear attacks, as melting Arctic ice forces more of the giant predators into conflict with humans on land.
Alarming pictures showing 200 polar bears converging to feed on a whale carcass, which washed ashore on Wrangel Island, have added to concerns that climate change is forcing the carnivores to change their behaviour.
Polar bears live on land but hunt on ice, which is the only way they can catch the seals they prefer to eat. But as sea temperatures have risen the ice has retreated toward the north, away from the islands where polar bears live and breed.
As a result, polar bears have had to look for other sources of food, experts said. The bears photographed on Wrangel Island had come to feast on the carcass of a bowhead whale, later resting around the food source.
Experts say locals are also increasingly at risk from hungry animals venturing into villages.
Wrangel Island
Forms New Species
Galapagos Finch
Darwin's finches are icons of evolution. Now, researchers have discovered how quickly they can evolve into a new species: with the help of an outside bird, a new species can develop in as little as two generations.
Finches on the Galapagos Islands represent many species, but are collectively known as "Darwin's finches." Their isolation makes them ideal to study, and researchers at Princeton University and Uppsala University have been focusing on the birds in the small Galapagos island of Daphne Major.
They noted that a bird from another island had flown to Daphne Major 36 years ago. Students at the island took a blood sample of the new bird, who was larger and had a different song than the native birds, and identified him as a large cactus finch.
He then mated with other birds on the island, fathering hybrid fledglings. Those hybrids were able to mate with each other, and in spite of the severe inbreeding, the resulting offspring thrived. Scientists have sequenced their blood and found that they are a genetically distinct species from the medium ground finches that are native to Daphne Major. The study was published in the journal Science.
This is especially surprising because evolution is known as extremely gradual change over time. As environmental pressures select for an animal with certain traits, such as an ideal beak shape, more and more of the population will have that trait. But in this case, all it took was a stranger bird and a lot of incestuous mating.
Galapagos Finch
| CURRENT MOON lunar phases |
