Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Froma Harrop: Experience Sanders Couldn't Buy, Even With Bloomberg's Money (Creators Syndicate)
Mike Bloomberg was elected New York mayor two months after the outrage of Sept. 11, 2001. He took over a city reeling with grief and suffering economic losses tied to the terrorist attacks. Rather than lay off public workers who had performed gallantly in the crisis, he raised taxes on the well-to-do. The conservative media beat him up with their usual argument that tax hikes kill off business. The opposite happened. The city grew new veins. Bloomberg led this revival with grit and smarts, not his personal wealth. That's what Bloomberg should be talking about and everyone else should be hearing. Bloomberg must explain that he brings to the table an experience and success in public service unmatched by any other candidate.
Marc Dion: Early in the Fight (Creators Syndicate)
Get up on your toes and say to Donald Trump that he doesn't know anything about diplomacy, that he can't understand anything more complex than a bomb. Set yourself to punch and call him "stupid." Say that very word. Stupid. Move. Ask him if the Mexicans are paying for the wall. Ask him if North Korea still has nukes. Ask him if the coal jobs are back. Ask him, and keep asking over and over and over. If your own record is clean, throw the "draft-dodger" punch over and over. Call him a coward. Use that word. Coward. Throw the "paying off hookers" punch whenever he seems a little confused. You can't beat Trump from a distance, throwing pretty punches in the air. You have to get inside on him and break his ribs. Most of all, make fun of him. Bullies take a punch better than they take a joke.
Mark Shields: Do Democrats Not Understand the 2020 Voters? (Creators Syndicate)
On being "steady and reliable," voters answered no by 2-1, and on "dealing with an international crisis," Trump received a 2-1 negative response from the voters. American voters are exhausted from the controversies, the outbursts, the haranguing and the intemperance which have characterized this presidency. So, what do the Democratic candidates in their last debate before Super Tuesday do? They bicker; they shout; they talk over one another; they yell -- exactly what the voters do not want in 2020.
Susan Estrich: Playing Politics With a Pandemic (Creators Syndicate)
Said the First Son, Donald Trump Jr., the Prince of Trump: "Anything they can use to try to hurt Trump, they will. ... But for them to try to take a pandemic and seemingly hope that it comes here and kills millions of people so that they can end Donald Trump's streak of winning is a new level of sickness. … You know, I don't know if this is coronavirus or Trump derangement syndrome, but these people are infected badly." Stop. The Democrats have criticized the president for understating the severity of the threat to American citizens and for being unprepared for the increase in its spread, which the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has said is not a matter of if but when.
How does that mean they "seemingly hope that it comes here and kills millions of people" so they could defeat Trump? It doesn't.
Froma Harrop: How Trumpcare Could Lower Medical Costs (Creators Syndicate)
In 2016, candidate Donald Trump promised to repeal Obamacare and replace it with "something terrific." The replacement never materialized. The repeal, however, had been making progress in a piece-by-piece fashion. President Trump has made a frontal assault on the Affordable Care Act by asking the U.S. Supreme Court to strike it down altogether. As it happens, Obamacare has become popular, and so, with the next election approaching, Trump badly needs a replacement. Let me offer ideas. Some elements of my Trumpcare 2020 plan may sound heartless and extreme. But several fit policy changes the administration has already put in motion.
Susan Estrich: Real Rape (Creators Syndicate)
"Did you know him?" "No." "Oh, then you were really raped." The first time I had this conversation was in the back seat of a Boston police car in 1974. I've been having it ever since. What could it possibly mean to be raped but not really raped? I answered that question myself. As a young professor at Harvard, I read every single rape case that had ever been reported up to that time. The answer was very simple: When you are forced by someone you know to have sex without your consent, much less someone appropriate, it's not really rape because the police won't treat it that way; prosecutors won't treat it that way; and juries won't treat it that way.
David Bruce's Amazon Author Page
David Bruce's Smashwords Page
David Bruce's Blog #1
David Bruce's Blog #2
David Bruce's Blog #3
David Bruce's Lulu Storefront
David Bruce's Apple iBookstore
David Bruce has over 140 Kindle books on Amazon.com.
Presenting
Michael Egan
replied:
has returned to semi-retired status.
In memory.
BRUCE'S RECOMMENDATION
BANDCAMP MUSIC
BRUCE'S RECOMMENDATION OF BANDCAMP MUSIC
Music: "Power" from the album POWER
Artist: Seratones
Artist Location: Shreveport, Louisiana
Info: Colin M., a fan, wrote, "Power is an aptly titled album. They've distilled soul, funk, rock, folk, and more into a pure blend that hits you right in the gut. Magnificent. Favorite track: 'Power.'"
AJ Haynes - Vocals, Guitar
Adam Davis - Bass, Backup Vocals
Jesse Gabriel - Drums, Percussion, Vibraphone, Backup Vocals
Tyran Coker - Keyboard, Piano, Synth, Guitar, Backup Vocals
Travis Stewart - Guitar, Backup Vocals
Matt Combs - Strings
Price: $1 (USD) for song; $10 (USD) for 10-track album
Genre: Rock, Funk. Southern.
Links:
Seratones on Bandcamp
POWER
Other Links:
FREE BRUCE'S RECOMMENDATIONS PDF
FREE YOU'VE GOT TO BE KIND PDFS
FREE davidbrucehaiku PDFs #1-#10
FREE davidbrucehaiku PDFs #11-?
David Bruce has over 140 Kindle books on Amazon.com.
Reader Suggestion
Michelle in AZ
New Venture
Michael Egan
from Bruce
Anecdotes
Bonus Links
Jeannie the Teed-Off Temp
Reader Comment
Current Events
Getting curbside assistance to in=person absentee vote at the place where my book club usually meets was a piece of cake yesterday, but it occurs to me that the man who helped me didn't ask which primary I wanted to vote in--there ARE two Republicans on their ballot. He brought me a Democratic ballot. I marked it & put it back in the folder. He asked me to wait while he put it through the machine (just in case there was a problem). Then, he confirmed that all went well as he brought my "I voted" sticker out to me.
I decided to vote in advance of Tuesday's voting day because I had a plumber come do a repair earlier this week. Hearing him cough & sniff as he worked, I've been afraid I'll come down with his cold. (Great business model--send an obviously ill workman to the home of a vulnerable, elderly handicapped person!) Anyway, figured I better vote while symptom-free. After the workman left, I washed my hands and credit card. I keep washing my hands, wearing gloves, and trying not to touch anything. So far so good, but it has only been 3 days so far.
Linda >^..^<
We are all only temporarily able bodied.
Thanks, Linda!
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
Visit JD's site - Kitty Litter Music
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Next week's sumo basho will proceed, but there will be no audience.
Lawyer Letter From Flavor Flav
Bernie
As Bernie Sanders gears up for rallies in California ahead of Super Tuesday voting, the Vermont senator's campaign has touted a downtown Los Angeles event on March 1 headlined by hip hop group Public Enemy. But the group's co-creator, Flavor Flav, isn't pleased.
The artist, real name William Drayton, has enlisted a law firm to try and get the presidential campaign to drop its use of the name Public Enemy in association with the rally because it promotes a "false narrative to the American people" that the group has endorsed Sanders.
"To be clear Flav and, by extension, the Hall of Fame hop hop act Public Enemy with which his likeness and name have become synonymous has not endorsed any political candidate in this election cycle and any suggestion to the contrary is plainly untrue," reads a letter dated Feb. 28 from Matthew H. Friedman, of Nevada-based law firm Ford & Friedman. The Sanders campaign did not immediately respond for comment.
The letter, obtained by The Hollywood Reporter, says that while the group's other founder, Chuck D, will be performing at the Sanders event, that doesn't constitute an endorsement of the band for the Democratic presidential hopeful.
The Sanders campaign has been promoting the March 1 event at the L.A. Convention Center on social media and in text messages since Wednesday. Its event page entreats, "Join Bernie Sanders, Sarah Silverman, and Dick Van Dyke, with a special performance by Public Enemy Radio."
Bernie
Hit With Copyright Suit
Lizzo
Three songwriters filed a countersuit against Lizzo in federal court on Friday, alleging that they have been denied proper credit for writing her breakout hit, "Truth Hurts."
Lizzo sued the songwriters - brothers Justin and Jeremiah Raisen, as well as Justin "Yves" Rothman - last October, seeking a determination that they did not deserve credit for the song.
On Friday, the trio fired back, alleging that "Truth Hurts" is substantially similar to "Healthy," a song they composed with Lizzo a few months earlier.
According to the countersuit, a musicologist found "strikingly similar lyric and musical elements" in the two songs. Both songs open with the now-famous line: "I just did a DNA test / turns out I'm a 100% that bitch." "Healthy" continues, "even when I'm holistic," while in "Truth Hurts," the next line is "even when I'm crying crazy." The countersuit contends there are other musical similarities as well, in the use of piano, Lizzo's "vamping," and in the overall structure of the chorus and verses.
Lizzo
Color Changes
Butterflies
Like many poisonous animals, the African monarch butterfly's orange, white and black pattern warns predators that it is toxic. Warning patterns like this are usually consistent across individuals to help predators learn to avoid them. However, a recent study, published February 27 in the open-access journal PLOS Biology, shows how a population of African monarch butterflies (Danaus chrysippus) breaks this rule and has highly variable warning patterns. The study, by Simon Martin of the University of Edinburgh, UK and colleagues shows that the unlikely answer lies in the interaction with a bacterium that specifically kills male butterflies.
Previous research had shown that all female butterflies in this East African population have two unusual features: Firstly, they have a new arrangement of their chromosomes where the chromosome containing genes that control color patterns is fused to their one of their sex chromosomes (called the W chromosome). This new chromosome is called the neo-W. Secondly, they are all infected with a bacterium called Spiroplasma that kills all of their sons. What was not clear, however, was whether these two features were linked, and whether they could explain the highly variable color patterns that changed from season to season.
To answer this, the researchers analyzed the entire DNA sequence of the bacteria and the female butterflies' chromosomes. This showed that the neo-W chromosome alters color patterns and has spread rapidly through the population, aided by the male-killing bacteria. However, because the bacterium only allows female offspring, it promotes the survival of one particular color pattern gene that is always passed from mother to daughter. This left one puzzle for the scientists still to solve - if the females all carried the same color gene, then why was the East African population so variable?
The study found that this female color gene has only a weak effect that is overridden by color genes from the father. Therefore, fathers with different patterns will produce daughters with different patterns. Seasonal fluctuations in wind patterns are thought to affect which subspecies of male immigrants end up in this region, leading to seasonal changes in female color patterns. Even though they always resemble their father, the infected hybrid daughters, unable to produce sons, represent a genetic dead-end for fathers, whose color pattern genes only survive for one generation before being wiped out.
Butterflies
New Mini-Moon
Earth
Our planet recently adopted a mini-moon that's roughly the size of a car, though astronomers aren't sure yet if it's an asteroid or an artificial object. An observatory in Hawaii is now providing us with a clearer view of Earth's intriguing new-yet temporary-celestial companion.
The new color image was captured on February 24, 2020, by the Gemini Observatory, which is located atop Hawaii's Mauna Kea volcano, according to a press release issued by the NSF's National Optical-Infrared Astronomy Research Laboratory. The mini-moon, if that's what it is, measures between 1.9 and 5 meters (6.2 to 16 feet) in diameter, and as the new photo suggests, it's actually quite spherical.
The object, a likely Temporarily Captured Orbiter (TCO), was assigned the provisional designation 2020 CD3 by the International Astronomical Union's Minor Planet Center earlier this week. The alleged mini-moon was detected on February 15, 2020 by astronomers Kacper Wierzchos and Teddy Pruyne from the Catalina Sky Survey at the University of Arizona's Lunar and Planetary Laboratory. The object is believed to have entered into Earth's orbit back in 2018, but it won't stick around for long.
The object is very small and faint, so astronomers can't tell if it's a natural object, like an asteroid, or an artificial object, such as a discarded rocket booster or some other form of human-made debris. If it's proven to be a TCO, however, it would only be the second known mini-moon to be documented by astronomers, the other being 2006 RH120, which temporarily orbited Earth from September 2006 to June 2007.
Earth
Public-Health Hero
Anthony Fauci
Anthony Fauci has guided the US through the AIDS, Zika, and Ebola epidemics.
He's been the director of the US' National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) since 1984, advising six presidents. George W. Bush awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2008. Fauci is now helping to lead the response to the new coronavirus outbreak.
But the Trump administration has reportedly told Fauci and other top health officials "not to say anything else without clearance" from the White House, according to The New York Times. A NIAID spokesperson told Business Insider that "this is not true," however.
Fauci's comments about the coronavirus have contradicted Trump's several times. Whereas Trump said the US "will essentially have a flu shot for this in a fairly quick manner," Fauci has estimated that we're between a year and a year-and-a-half away from a coronavirus vaccine. Trump also expressed optimism that COVID-19 - the disease the virus causes - will disappear, but Fauci has suggested the world is on the brink of a pandemic.
US health experts were angry about the White House's restrictions on Fauci's speech, the Times reported, given that the world is in the midst of one of the worst public-health crises in years.
Anthony Fauci
Fires 54 Grad Students
UC Santa Cruz
The University of California, Santa Cruz, issued termination letters on Friday to 54 graduate students who have been waging a months-long strike for a cost-of-living-adjustment amid soaring rents.
The firings came as graduate students at the University of California, Davis, and University of California, Santa Barbara, began their own cost-of-living strikes in solidarity. One of their demands is that all UC Santa Cruz graduate workers who participated in strike activities be restored to full employment status.
The 54 UC Santa Cruz graduate students who received termination letters on Friday are just a fraction of the 233 graduate student instructors and teaching assistants who have refused to submit nearly 12,000 grades from the fall quarter since December.
This month, the students' grading strike expanded, as teaching assistants refused all teaching duties and research assistants refused additional work. Some classes and office hours have been canceled because of the strike.
The students are striking for a $1,412-a-month cost-of-living adjustment, which they say they desperately need amid a growing housing crisis in California. Most students are spending between 50% and 70% of their $2,434-a-month salary on rent, some forced to live in substandard apartments with many roommates in order to stretch their dollars.
UC Santa Cruz
'Off-the-Shelf' Drugs
Coronavirus
The Trump administration is testing existing "off-the-shelf" drugs to combat the coronavirus, a cabinet official said Saturday.
A national lab in Tennessee recently made "an important discovery" involving existing drugs, Energy Secretary Dan Brouillette said at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Maryland.
"The scientists at our Oak Ridge National Laboratory were able to look at the protein strains and determine -- perhaps, it's still early -- that we can find some off-the-shelf drugs that can help us not only cure the disease but stop the spread of the infection," Brouillette said.
Brouillette was responding to a question about what his agency is doing to help combat the virus, which has caused markets to plunge and killed nearly 3,000 people across the globe. In the U.S., where 22 cases have been reported, the virus has killed one person -- a woman from Washington state -- and more cases are likely, President Donald Trump said Saturday.
In addition to the laboratory tests, Brouillette said he's harnessing the power of his agency's "super computers" as well as artificial intelligence capabilities to assist organizations like the Centers for Disease Control and the World Heath Organization to conduct modeling on the virus.
Coronavirus
Scientists Accidentally Discover
Matter
The group of newly discovered, electric forms of matter has a new addition. In this case, researchers at Northeastern University have accidentally identified a new configuration where layers of electrons form a uniform lattice.
"I'm tempted to say it's almost like a new phase of matter," says physics professor Swastik Kar in a statement. "Because it's just purely electronic."
Kar says he thought these results were a measurement error at first. His research team layered two "sheets" of particles: one of bismuth selenide and one of transition metal dichalcogenide. Both are called 2D materials because they're so nano-flat to almost be nonexistent-the closest real thing to a pure geometric plane.
The researchers layered these two sheets together and observed what they thought was a third layer between them. But like the famous grid illusion, Kar and his team thought they were seeing a visual artifact of some kind-an imprecise instrument at the nano scale. They reran the experiment to make sure their synthesis or measurement wasn't introducing an error.
Matter
Each Has Its Own Genetic Pattern
Mediterranean Islands
The Mediterranean Sea has been a major route for maritime migrations as well as frequent trade and invasions during prehistory, yet the genetic history of the Mediterranean islands is not well documented despite recent developments in the study of ancient DNA. An international team led by researchers from the University of Vienna, Harvard University and University of Florence, Italy, is filling in the gaps with the largest study to date of the genetic history of ancient populations of Sicily, Sardinia and the Balearic Islands, increasing the number of individuals with reported data from 5 to 66.
The results reveal a complex pattern of immigration from Africa, Asia and Europe which varied in direction and its timing for each of these islands. For Sicily, the article reports on a new ancestry during the Middle Bronze Age that chronologically overlaps with the Greek Mycenaean trade network expansion.
A very different story is unraveled in the case of Sardinia. Despite contacts and trade with other Mediterranean populations, ancient Sardinians retained a mostly local Neolithic ancestry profile until the end of the Bronze Age. However, during the second half of the 3rd millennium BC, one of the studied individuals from Sardinia has a large proportion of North African ancestry. Taken together with previous results of a contemporary central Iberian individual and a later 2nd mill. BC Bronze Age individual from Iberia, it clearly shows prehistoric maritime migrations across the Mediterranean Sea from North Africa to locations in southern Europe, affecting more than 1 percent of individuals reported in the ancient DNA literature from this region and time to date.
"Our results show that maritime migrations from North Africa started long before the era of the eastern Mediterranean seafaring civilizations and moreover were occurring in multiple parts of the Mediterranean," says Ron Pinhasi, a co-senior author of the Department of Evolutionary Anthropology, University of Vienna.
Mediterranean Islands
| CURRENT MOON lunar phases |
