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Paul Krugman: Twitter
Today in punditry. Averages show Clinton well ahead in CA, leading in GE even before Dem consolidation; so…
Caroline Sullivan: Cult heroes: Danny Fields - the 60s and 70s scenester who made punk happen (The Guardian)
The former Doors publicist and Warhol Factory member who got the Stooges a record deal and managed the Ramones was there during the most epochal moments of rock history. You can blame him for the Bay City Rollers, too.
Interview by Michael Hann: "The Ramones' manager: 'They were outcasts, outsiders. The smartest people I ever knew'" (The Guardian)
From 1975 to 1980, Danny Fields managed the Ramones, and photographed them constantly. He shares those photos - from his new book My Ramones - and remembers his time with the New York punks.
Joanna Walters: Dr Henry Heimlich uses Heimlich manoeuvre for first time at 96 (The Guardian)
Surgeon employs anti-choking technique that bears his name to dislodge hamburger from woman's airway in retirement home.
Jalal Baig: "Facing my fear: telling a cancer patient he was going to die" (The Guardian)
I was reluctant to let a young patient know he had aggressive cancer. If there was no rhyme or reason to who got fatally ill, nobody was safe.
Marc Dion: Trump Exactly Backwards (Creators Syndicate)
When I'm not writing these columns, I'm a newspaper reporter. Today, I went out on what newspaper people call a "feature." The pastor of a Catholic church not too far from my office is going to celebrate a Latin Mass at his church this week.
Lenore Skenazy: The Swami Next Door (Creators Syndicate)
When he was 19, Richard Slavin, a nice Jewish boy from the suburbs of Chicago, went backpacking in Europe for two months. "Hey," I told him. "I have a son about to do the same thing." "But," Slavin added with a twinkle, "I never came back!"
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Michelle in AZ
from Marc Perkel
Patriot Act
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
BLESSED ARE THE LIARS, THE CHEATS AND THE THIEVES, FOR THEY SHALL INHERIT THE EARTH.
JESUS LOVES REPUBLICAN LIARS, CHEATS AND THIEVES!
"HE'S NOT HITLER"?
BOOM!
FROM WHITE SHEETS TO SPREAD SHEETS.
MONTY PYTHON!
"MAKE AMERICA CLUCK AGAIN!"
THE SOLUTION. HEE HAW!
Visit JD's site - Kitty Litter Music
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
More May gray.
Props Up For Auction
'Mad Men'
Feel like slipping between the floral bedsheets on which Don Draper had a threesome? Fancy taking a spin in his convertible or popping the question with Betty's "silver-colored" engagement ring?
From next week, fans can buy more than 1,500 authenticated props from the hit television show "Mad Men" from June 1 to June 15, via an online auction that is drawing interest in the United States, Europe, Australia and South America.
The hugely popular US television program ended for good last year with Draper in the lotus position on a cliff dreaming up one of America's most celebrated Coca Cola ads, but the online auction offers the avid a little slice of history.
The lots -- with items used by beloved Mad Men characters known for their advertising prowess, serial infidelities and drunken excesses -- go on sale in an online auction curated by the show's property manager, Ellen Freund.
There was a previous "Mad Men" auction last August but this is the first curated by someone from the show. "This one is going to be actually more exciting. I got to pull things that I knew were special," said Freund.
'Mad Men'
Capacity Crowds
National Parks
In March of 1872, the United States Congress established Yellowstone National Park in what was then the territories of Montana and Wyoming under the Department of the Interior, as a "public pleasuring-ground for the benefit and enjoyment of the people"; it was the first of its kind. By August 1916, when President Woodrow Wilson signed the act which created the National Park Service as a new federal bureau, there were 35 parks and monuments managed by the national government.
In 2015, more than 300 million people visited all U.S. national park sites - which include lakeshores, seashores, monuments, etc. as well as the national parks themselves - an incredible 14-million-person increase from 2014. In just the 58 national parks that reported visitation numbers from 2015, there was a record-breaking 75.3 million recreational visits.
As the National Park Service prepares to celebrate 100 years in existence, the parks are looking at another record year of visitors and are finding new ways to cope with - or limit - the flow.
Some parks are now using the "surge pricing" familiar to Uber users: charging higher entrance fees during peak days.
Even beyond traffic and congestion issues, the substantial increase in visitors creates other safety and logistical concerns. With 4.1 million people visiting Yellowstone in 2015 alone, up 580,000 people from the year before, "there weren't enough bathrooms or parking spaces. Trash cans overflowed," reported Amy Beth Hanson for the Associated Press.
National Parks
Neanderthals Likely Built Structures
Bruniquel Cave
About 40,000 years before the appearance of modern man in Europe, Neanderthals in southwestern France were venturing deep into the earth, building some of the earliest complex structures and using fire.
That's according to new research that more precisely dated bizarre cave structures built from stalagmites, or mineral formations that grow upward from the floor of a cave. Scientists discovered about 400 stalagmites and stalagmite sections that were collected and stacked into nearly circular formations about 1,100 feet (336 meters) from the entrance of Bruniquel Cave, which was discovered in 1990.
Soot stains, heat fractures and burnt material, including bone, point to the likelihood that these circles were used to contain fires back in the day.
In 1995, some of the burnt bone was dated using carbon-14 dating, a technique that measures the ratio of carbon-14 to carbon-12; that ratio indicates about how long an organism has been dead. It was found to be 47,600 years old - the maximum age carbon-14 dating can attain.
More recently, lead author Jacques Jaubert, of the University of Bordeaux in France, and his colleagues revisited this site, with more advanced surveying and dating technology. Through a technique called uranium-series dating, which relies on the breakdown of uranium to thorium, they were able to estimate when the stalagmites were broken and moved into the circular formations. They found the installations are approximately 176,500 years old (give or take 2,000 years).
Bruniquel Cave
Cave Art Trove
Atxurra Cave
Spanish archaeologists say they have discovered an exceptional set of Paleolithic-era cave drawings that could rank among the best in a country that already boasts some of the world's most important cave art.
Chief site archaeologist Diego Garate said Friday that an estimated 70 drawings were found on ledges 300 meters (1,000 feet) underground in the Atxurra cave in the northern Basque region. He described the site as being in "the Champions' League" of cave art, among the top 10 sites in Europe. The engravings and paintings feature horses, buffalo, goats and deer, dating back 12,500-14,500 years ago.
But Garate said access to the area is so difficult and dangerous it's not likely to be open to the public.
The cave was discovered in 1929 and first explored in 1934-35, but it was not until 2014 that Garate and his team resumed their investigations that the drawings were discovered. Experts say while it's too early to say if the discovery ranks alongside Spain's most prize prehistoric cave art site, the Altamira Caves - known as the Sistine Chapel of Paleolithic Art - Atxurra looks promising.
Atxurra Cave
'There Is No Drought' In California
T-rump
Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump (R-Grifter) told California voters Friday that he can solve their water crisis, declaring, "There is no drought."
California is, in fact, in midst of a drought. Last year capped the state's driest four-year period in its history, with record low rainfall and snow.
Speaking at a rally in Fresno, Calif., Trump accused state officials of denying water to Central Valley farmers so they can send it out to sea "to protect a certain kind of three-inch fish."
"We're going to solve your water problem. You have a water problem that is so insane. It is so ridiculous where they're taking the water and shoving it out to sea," Trump said at a rally that drew thousands.
The comments came a day after Trump outlined an energy policy plan that relies heavily on expanding U.S. fossil fuel exploration and reducing environmental regulations.
T-rump
Antibiotics
G7
Britain told the G7 industrial powers on Friday to do more to fight killer superbugs as the United States reported the first case in the country of a patient with bacteria resistant to a last-resort antibiotic.
U.S. scientists said the infection in a 49-year-old Pennsylvania woman "heralds the emergence of truly pan-drug resistant bacteria" because it could not be controlled even by colistin, an antibiotic reserved for "nightmare" bugs.
In Japan, British Prime Minister David Cameron said leading countries needed to tackle resistance by reducing the use of antibiotics and rewarding drug companies for developing new medicines.
"In too many cases antibiotics have stopped working. That means people are dying of simple infections or conditions like TB (tuberculosis), tetanus, sepsis, infections that should not mean a death sentence," he told a news conference at a summit in Japan.
The development of colistin resistance is linked to the drug's widespread use in livestock and the European Medicines Agency on Thursday called for a 65 percent cut in the amount of the medicine used in farming.
G7
Racist Donnie Rails Against Judge
T-rump
Donald Trump (R-Pinche Pendejo) went after the federal judge presiding over a civil case against the now-defunct Trump University Friday, calling out the judge's ethnicity in an attack spanning several minutes at a San Diego campaign rally while protests against Trump's anti-immigrant policies raged outside.
"I have a judge who is a hater of Donald Trump -- a hater. He's a hater. His name is Gonzalo Curiel. And he is not doing the right thing," Trump told supporters, kicking off a 12-minute rant in California, where he was campaigning ahead of the state's June 7 primary.
"We're in front of a very hostile judge," Trump went on. "The judge was appointed by Barack Obama, federal judge. Frankly, he should recuse himself because he's given us ruling after ruling after ruling, negative, negative, negative."
"What happens is the judge, who happens to be -- we believe -- Mexican. Which is great. I think that's fine," he said. "You know what? I think the Mexicans are going to end up loving Donald Trump when I give all these jobs, OK?"
"I'm telling you, this court system, judges in this court system, federal court, they ought to look into Judge Curiel," Trump said. "Because what Judge Curiel is doing is a total disgrace, OK?"
T-rump
Men Can 'Lightly Beat' Wives
Pakistan
Pakistani media and activists poured scorn Friday on a suggestion from an Islamic religious body that men should be allowed to "lightly beat" their wives, made in their draft of a women's protection bill.
The Council of Islamic Ideology (CII) released a draft of the bill on Thursday, their response to progressive legislation giving women greater rights and protection in the province of Punjab.
Local media quoted the draft as saying: "A husband should be allowed to lightly beat his wife if she defies his commands and refuses to dress up as per his desires; turns down demand of intercourse without any religious excuse or does not take bath after intercourse or menstrual periods."
The country's biggest and most influential newspaper, the English-language daily Dawn, published a satirical article with a list of things people could beat other than their wives -- including eggs, the bottom of ketchup bottles, and the Michael Jackson hit Beat It.
The article was a rare example of the media mocking those claiming to speak in the name of religion in conservative Muslim Pakistan.
Pakistan
Looters Hit Civil War Site
Petersburg National Battlefield
Looters ripped up parts of Virginia's Petersburg National Battlefield in an apparent search for relics from a siege that led to the end of the American Civil War in 1865, the National Park Service said ahead of the Memorial Day weekend.
Thieves dug a series of small pits looking for artifacts from the Union Army's nine-month blockade of Richmond and the neighboring city of Petersburg, targeting a field where more than 1,000 Union and Confederate soldiers died, the agency said.
The looters were likely to have found uniform buttons, buckles, bullets and other small metal objects that are difficult to trace, Chris Bryce, chief of interpretation and visitor services at the battlefield, told Reuters on Saturday.
The blockade, led by General Ulysses S. Grant, cut off supply lines to Richmond after the Union commander failed to capture the capital city of the breakaway Confederate states in 1864. The siege led to the surrender of General Robert E. Lee at Appomattox Court House, Virginia, ending the bloodiest conflict in U.S. history.
Numerous excavations in parts of the 2,700-acre park were discovered by staff this week, and the area remained an active crime scene. Unaffected sections of the sprawling park remained open to visitors, it said.
Petersburg National Battlefield
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