Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Marc Dion: "I'll Have the Steak and Eggs: A Political Parable" (Creators Syndicate)
I've often wondered how the people who ran the hotel could have known us so little that they thought we'd choose the oatmeal over the much more expensive steak and eggs. They saw us every day, didn't they? They knew the job paid $3.35 an hour. Did they know that the job of cleaning out the ashtrays in the hotel lobby was coveted because of the longer, still smokeable cigarette butts you could salvage? Did they know we took home half-empty bottles of wine we found on the room service trays left out in the hallways?
Froma Harrop: Time for Democratic Pushback on Radicals (Creators Syndicate)
Radical Democrats have a right to believe as they do. But if they persist in threatening mainstream Democrats who thrive outside cozy left-wing bubbles, they will learn that patience within the party is finite. Never mind Fox News. The time for Democrats to do their own pushback has come.
Ted Rall: It Never Works, Yet Trump Is Once Again Trying to Bomb Toward Peace (Creators Syndicate)
We see now that the senseless slaughter of the 1972 Christmas bombings delayed the true peace of rapprochement between unified Vietnam the United States by years. If the U.S. is ever fortunate enough to reach a similar accommodation with Taliban-run Afghanistan, it will have been pointlessly delayed by America's latest attempt to bomb toward peace.
Mark Shields: Congress Loses a Man of Courage and Decency (Creators Syndicate)
As on so many matters, former Republican Senate leader Bob Dole put it best when he said that almost all members of Congress love to make tough speeches; they just don't like to make tough votes. Rep. Walter B. Jones Jr., the North Carolina Republican who died on his 76th birthday, was an admirable exception. Elected to his 12th term in November, he was nobody's idea of a velvet-voiced orator. However, Walter Jones spoke volumes through the eloquence of his political courage.
Lenore Skenazy: Free-Range Parenting Under Attack (Creators Syndicate)
On the one hand - wow. Two professors are eagerly warning about the dangers of the movement I founded, free-range parenting. That's almost flattering! … The authors say, "Specific activities correlated with child success are reading books with children, telling them stories, and discussing politics with them, although most likely it is less the details but the overall close interaction between parents and children that counts." … since when does being free-range mean not reading books with kids, telling them stories or discussing things with them? I endorse all those activities! Sounds as if what's correlated with success is being engaged.
Susan Estrich: And the Winner Is … (Creators Syndicate)
It used to be that people complained that the process for selecting the nominee was starting earlier and earlier - straw polls over a year before the inauguration!
Connie Schultz: 'Nobody Likes to See Us as Kids' (Creators Syndicate)
At the end of the interview, [David] Hogg [a survivor of last year's Valentine's Day massacre in Parkland, Florida] made a request, because of that one thing that has changed who he will be for the rest of his life. "And please," he told Greene, "don't say the shooter's name or show their face in y'all's articles." There are heroes, and there is unspeakable evil. David Hogg wants us to remember that, too.
Oliver Burkeman: Want to live longer? Now ask yourself why … (The Guardian)
For most of us the main effect of boosting energy or focus is to become a better cog in the corporate machine.
Oliver Burkeman: Think a tidy house will lead to a tidy life? Think again (The Guardian)
Lifestyle gurus like Marie Kondo promise a sense of control - but there's a hidden hazard.
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Michael Egan
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has returned to semi-retired status.
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from Bruce
Anecdotes
• Working together, friends Steven Jobs and Stephen Wozniak created Apple Computer. It was Mr. Jobs who came up with the name. He remembered a very happy time he had spent in Oregon picking apples. Mr. Jobs also created the company logo: an apple with a bite taken out of it. Mr. Wozniak was also pretty good at coming up with names. When he went back (after having dropped out earlier, and after having left Apple) to the University of California at Berkeley, the world-famous computer genius was seldom recognized because he used a pseudonym at school: Rocky Raccoon Clark. ("Clark" was the last name of his then-wife: Candy Clark.) "Rocky Raccoon" is the title of a song by the Beatles. The two friends also had other talents. After retiring from Apple Computer, Mr. Wozniak expanded his Los Gatos, California, home. Among other attractions, it has a limestone cave with such attractions as replicas of dinosaur tracks, fossils, cave paintings, rock carvings, and crystal formations. According to Mr. Woziak, "The whole house has to be for kids as well as adults. Kids just love secret places."
• Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield became friends in the seventh grade while attending Merrick Avenue Junior High School in Merrick, New York. They were slow and chubby and not at all good at sports. Their gym teacher wanted his class to run a mile around a track. All the other boys finished quickly, leaving Ben and Jerry far behind. The gym teacher tried to motivate them by yelling, "Gentlemen, if you don't run the mile in under seven minutes, you're going to have to do it again." Ben was a rebel, and he told the gym teacher, "If I don't do it under seven minutes the first time, I'm certainly not going to do it under seven minutes the second time." Jerry thought that Ben made sense, and he decided that he wanted Ben to be his friend. "This was a guy I wanted to know," Jerry says. "This was a real thinker." Later, the two friends became famous for their philanthropy and for their Ben and Jerry's ice cream.
• At the 1936 Olympics in Berlin, Germany, three men competed for medals in the pole-vault competition. American Earl Meadows won the gold, while two Japanese men, Shuhei Nishida and Sueo Oe, who were close friends, came in second after vaulting the same height. The two friends thought that they had both won silver medals, but late that night Olympic officials for some reason decided to award the silver medal to Mr. Nishida and the bronze medal to Mr. Oe, something the two men learned the following day. Mr. Nishida was not happy with this decision, and back home in Japan the two men had their medals cut in half, then had halves from each medal connected so that each man had a new medal, half of which was silver and half of which was bronze. When this action became known, the new medals received a new name: The Medals of Eternal Friendship.
• Ramones lead singer Joey Ramone was a good guy, but he once got into a fight with his friend the journalist Joan Tarshis that led to both of them throwing things and her calling the police. The police arrived and looked at Joey's apartment, which was in its usual untidy state. Fifty albums were lying on a floor, and the police noticed a novelty souvenir towel from the Bates Motel (of Psycho fame) that looked as if it had blood-dried-on it. The police said, "Wow! You must have had a very big fight. Where does it hurt?" Later, Joan wanted to make up with Joey, so she sent him a hammer and a note that said, "If I ever get out of line again, hit me with this." Joey immediately called her to joke, "I'm keeping that hammer in a holster for when I'm with you."
• When he was growing up, John Waters, later known as the Prince of Puke as a result of directing such cult gross-outs as Pink Flamingos, sometimes had scary friends. Two friends were David Lochary (who constantly changed the color of his long hair) and his girlfriend, Roxanne. Roxanne's extreme fashions terrified Mr. Waters' mother, but she said about David, "I like David. He's the only lady you've ever brought home."
• Elise Reiman was always very friendly with George Balanchine, and when he was married to her friend Maria Tallchief, she saw a lot of him. Later, as a teacher at the School of American Ballet, she saw much less of him, but at least once she was able to let him know how much he meant to her. They had been to a dinner at the home of a friend of hers, and afterward when he was taking her home in a taxi, she kissed him and said, "It's so wonderful to see you, because I miss you." She says, "I think it pleased him. I just wanted to let him know that I still adore him."
• Swedish filmmaker Ingmar Bergman tended to work with the same 18 people over and over, and he always hired a hostess, who brewed coffee and baked pastries and made the set homey. At Cannes, film director David Lean once compared notes with Mr. Bergman, asking him, "How large a crew do you use?" Mr. Bergman answered, "I always work with 18 friends." Mr. Lean marveled, "That's funny. I work with 150 enemies."
• When a few friends of British classical scholar Arthur Verrall moved to a new address - 58 Oakley Street - he had no trouble remembering the number because of a mnemonic device: "The Septuagint minus the Apostles."
• One of the black characters in Morrie Turner's Wee Pals comic strip is Randy, who strongly believes in NAACP - Never Abandon an Adolescent Caucasian Pal.
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Copyright Complaint
R.E.M.
Apparently even Donald Trump (R-Grifter) is not immune to copyright takedowns. On Friday, the president tweeted a mocking video playing R.E.M.'s "Everybody Hurts" over Democrats' reaction to the State of the Union-originally created by some dude using the pseudonym "Carpe Donktum" and best known for winning an Infowars meme contest. By early Saturday ET, CNBC reported, the video was taken down after R.E.M. publisher Universal Music Publishing Group, as well as bassist Mike Mills, complained.
Yes, that's right. Trump and R.E.M. got in a fight and R.E.M. won.
By late Friday, CNBC wrote, Twitter users attempting to play the clip saw a message stating, "This video has been removed in response to a report from the copyright holder." The tweet itself (which the president had pinned to the top of his feed) appears to have been deleted at some point thereafter.
As CNBC wrote, this is not the first time the president has had a dispute with a copyright holder-he's previously had The Rolling Stones complain about his use of their music at campaign rallies, as well as ripped off Game of Thrones's signature catchphrase (and font):
Nor is this the first time the president has tweeted a video that the platform decided to take down. After Trump retweeted several anti-Muslim tweets from the fringe, far-right UK political organization Britain First, Twitter suspended the group's Twitter account, automatically removing the videos from the president's feed. Facebook also took down a racist Trump campaign ad in late 2018.
R.E.M.
Slow-Moving Right-Wing Coup
Bill Maher
Bill Maher began Friday's broadcast of "Real Time" with a blistering dissection of President Donald Trump's (R-OfVlad) Rose Garden declaration of a national emergency to pay for a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border.
"He did it, fucko did it today," said Maher, who described Trump's address as "just completely crackers."
"I know I've said that before, but this was just one long, baseless, incoherent, stream of consciousness, call-the-nursing-home rant," he added.
Maher later repeated his theory, which he previously made in the days before the 2016 election, about how a slow-moving right-wing coup is taking over the country. This is "democracy-hanging-by-a-thread kind of stuff," he added.
Bill Maher
CBS Calls An Audible
'The Price Is Right'
National emergency on the border? In one network's news judgment, it was more important to say, "Come on, down!"
CBS coverage of President Donald Trump's televised address on his national emergency declaration ended 21 minutes before its conclusion, as the eye network opted to return viewers to game show The Price Is Right. All of the other broadcast and cable news networks carried the declaration and press conference on Friday afternoon to its conclusion.
The Trump announcement from the Rose Garden of the White House was delayed from its original 10:30 AM eastern time start. Trump said he was declaring the emergency "because we have an invasion of drugs, invasion of gangs, invasion of people."
CBS News reported that the White House assured the network Trump's speech would be no longer than eight minutes. But Trump started at 1:10 PM and finished at 2 PM.
'The Price Is Right'
Filming In D.C.
"The Handmaid's Tale"
Dystopian Hulu series "The Handmaid's Tale" was filming on the National Mall Friday - delighting fans and potentially confusing onlookers. Stars Elisabeth Moss, Yvonne Strahovski and Joseph Fiennes were spotted on the set, according to social media posts.
Fans of the show were thrilled to get a glimpse into the newest season as a fleet of handmaids lined up on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.
Some onlookers initially thought the actors in red cloaks and white bonnets may have been protesters, a nod to the parallels between the show and real life. Demonstrators dressed as handmaids during the confirmation hearings for Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh last fall. In 2017, a similar protest occurred during Vice President Mike Pence's visit to Colorado.
"Says something about 2019 that we had to see this up close to figure out if it was a protest or filming for the 'Handmaid's Tale' season 3. (It's the latter)," reporter Rachel Bluth tweeted.
"The Handmaid's Tale"
No One Applauded
Pence
Vice President Mike Pence (R-Mother) appeared to have overestimated his audience's opinion of the American president on Friday when he spoke during an event at the Munich Security Conference.
The vice president was in Germany as part of a delegation of U.S. lawmakers to the annual conference that dates back to the height of the Cold War.
"I especially want to invite all of you to thank Senator Lindsey Graham for leading this delegation," Pence said. A strong round of applause followed.
"And to [...] all of you I bring greetings from a great champion of freedom and of strong national defense, who must work with these members of Congress to strengthen America's military might and strengthen the leadership of the free world," he continued. "I bring greetings from the 45th president of the United States of America, President Donald Trump." The crowd did not react.
When German Chancellor Angela Merkel finished an extended critique of Trump's "America First" policies, she received an enthusiastic standing ovation. (Ivanka Trump, an adviser to the president and his eldest daughter, did not join in.)
Pence
Year In Space
Scott Kelly
Nearly a year in space put astronaut Scott Kelly's immune system on high alert and changed the activity of some of his genes compared to his Earth-bound identical twin, researchers said Friday.
Scientists don't know if the changes were good or bad but results from a unique NASA twins study are raising new questions for doctors as the space agency aims to send people to Mars.
Tests of the genetic doubles gave scientists a never-before opportunity to track details of human biology, such as how an astronaut's genes turn on and off in space differently than at home. One puzzling change announced Friday at a science conference: Kelly's immune system was hyperactivated.
"It's as if the body is reacting to this alien environment sort of like you would a mysterious organism being inside you," said geneticist Christopher Mason of New York's Weill Cornell Medicine, who helped lead the study. He said doctors are now looking for that in other astronauts.
Since the beginning of space exploration, NASA has studied the toll on astronauts' bodies, such as bone loss that requires exercise to counter. Typically they're in space about six months at a time. Kelly, who lived on the International Space Station, spent 340 days in space and set a U.S. record.
Scott Kelly
Returning Stolen Coffin
Met Museum
New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art says it's returning a prized artifact to Egypt after learning it was stolen from the country in 2011.
The Met said Friday that the Manhattan District Attorney's office found evidence that the museum was given a false ownership history for the gilded Coffin of Nedjemankh.
The Met bought the piece from a Paris art dealer in 2017 and displayed it until this week. Nedjemankh was a high-ranking first century BC priest.
Investigators say the Met was given fraudulent documents, including a forged 1971 Egyptian export license.
Met president Daniel Weiss apologized to Egypt. He said the museum was a fraud victim and unwitting participant in the illegal trade of antiquities.
Met Museum
Life Really Is Harder
Night Owls
"Night owls" - people who naturally stay up late and wake up well past sunrise - have different patterns of brain activity compared with "morning larks," a new study finds. And these differences can make life more difficult for night owls, if they're forced to stick to a typical 9-to-5 schedule.
When the researchers scanned the brains of people who were classified as either night owls or morning larks, they found that night owls had lower "brain connectivity" - a measure of how "in sync" different brain regions are with each other - compared with morning larks.
What's more, this lower brain connectivity in night owls was linked with poorer attention, slower reaction times and increased sleepiness throughout the hours of a typical workday, the researchers said.
The findings suggest a possible reason why night owls may have problems with attention and sleepiness when they try to conform to a typical 9-to-5 schedule - something that doesn't match their internal clock, the researchers said.
A growing body of research suggests that being a night owl could have negative effects on health, including the possibility of increasing a person's risk of early death. Many of these effects may be attributed to a misalignment between a person's internal clock, or circadian rhythm, and the socially imposed timing of work and other activities. But few studies have examined whether there is a link between circadian rhythm and people's brain connectivity.
Night Owls
Grown In Fermenting Tanks
New Fabrics
New fabrics being grown in laboratories may provide a viable alternative to the materials currently shedding vast quantities of plastic into the world's oceans.
Synthetic textiles like polyester are durable replacements for natural fabrics like wool and cotton, but they also contribute to the trillions of microplastics filling the world's oceans.
These tiny shards of plastic come from many sources, but by far the most abundant variety is thought to be microfibres.
These fibres are produced in their thousands every time a piece of clothing is machine washed, and most are not trapped in filters as they flow through sewage systems.
To tackle this problem, Dr Melik Demirel has been leading a project at Pennsylvania State University growing new fibres in large fermentation tanks using the same substances that make up natural materials.
New Fabrics
In Memory
Lee Radziwill
Lee Radziwill, the younger sister of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis who was witness to history in the "Camelot" White House, married a prince and counted Andy Warhol, Truman Capote and Rudolf Nureyev as friends in a star-studded life, has died at the age of 85, according to U.S. media reports.
Caroline Lee Bouvier was born March 3, 1933, in Southampton, New York, four years after her sister, the future first lady Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis. She was called Lee to appease a "rather unpleasant grandfather," Radziwill told the New York Times.
The Bouvier sisters were close but there was an undercurrent of competition between them. One biographer said the girls' father, the dashing John "Black Jack" Bouvier, favoured Jackie and Lee felt she could not live up to his expectations. Both girls idolized their father but Lee said she had a difficult relationship with their mother, Janet, who called her fat.
The sisters visited often - Lee and her family had been regulars at the White House during Christmas season - until Jacqueline's death in 1994. They collaborated on "One Special Summer," a book about a European trip they took in the 1950s, and Jacqueline named her first child Caroline in honour of Lee.
In 1953 she married Michael Canfield, son of the president of the Harper & Brothers publishing house, and the couple moved to England. They split in 1958 and a year later she married Prince Stanislas Radziwill, an exiled Polish nobleman who invested in London real estate.
Radziwill and the prince had two children, Anthony and Christina, and lived on a street behind Buckingham Palace during what she told the New York Times was the happiest period of her life.
She was married to Herbert Ross, director of the movies "Footloose" and "Steel Magnolias," from 1988 to 2001.
She also had a relationship with Greek shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis before he married Jacqueline. Radziwill described Onassis to the Times as "dynamic, irrational, cruel, I suppose, but fascinating."
In New York, Radziwill became one of Truman Capote's "swans" - the name the writer gave to the gossipy circle of his New York socialite women friends. Capote fell out of favour with them in 1975 when Esquire magazine published "La Cote Basque 1965" - his thinly veiled tale of sex and dirty secrets based on the "swans."
Radziwill's relationship with Capote became more bitter in the late 1970s when she sided with author Gore Vidal in a feud with Capote. Vidal had sued Capote for telling an interviewer that Vidal had been tossed out of a 1961 White House party for drunken behaviour. In his suit, which was eventually settled out of court, Capote claimed he heard the story from Radziwill but she responded that she had never said such a thing.
Radziwill's son, Tony, died of stomach cancer in 1999, less than a month after her nephew, John Kennedy Jr., was killed in a plane crash.
Lee Radziwill
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