Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Marc Dion: Good Habits (Creators Syndicate)
Somebody once told me olive oil was a good thing to put in your body, so for six months, I got up in the morning, poured myself a shot glass full of olive oil, and banged it back like a shot of whiskey. Then, I made coffee. I proudly told the woman who gave me the olive oil tip what I was doing. "My God!" she said. "You're drinking it?"
Lenore Skenazy: America Won't Win the World Cup Until We Ditch the Shoes (Creators Syndicate)
Why didn't the American men's soccer team qualify for the 2018 FIFA World Cup?
Simple: Kids in America grow up playing soccer in shoes. Oh, that's not the whole answer, of course. But after decades of coaching youth soccer, Carlo Celli and Nathan Richardson (language professors by day) had a revelation. It came on a morning when they were about to put some talented 9-year-old boys through the usual drills.
Lenore Skenazy: How Helicopter Parents Get That Way (Creators Syndicate)
When you pick up a copy of Parents magazine, you expect to read information that is useful, not just crazy-making. But recently, a piece appeared on the magazine's website promising to tell readers how to lower their children's risk of getting sick at the pool.
Susan Estrich: This Is What Happens When You Lose an Election (Creators Syndicate)
Since Bork was, as his supporters decry, "borked" by ideological opposition (and by his own insistence on actually answering the questions), nominees have learned the BS - hold on now! - of balls and strikes. That's what we do, one nominee after another will say, we call the balls and strikes. We don't make the law; we don't throw the pitch; we don't play on one team or another. We're the umps.
Connie Schultz: Mr. Rogers and Parents at the Border (Creators Syndicate)
The New York Times reported this week that some of the young children, traumatized by months of separation from their parents, do not recognize them. As every parent knows, three months in a young child's life can seem like a year. The Times' description of two of these reunions: "'He didn't recognize me,' said Mirce Alba Lopez, 31, of her 3-year-old son, Ederson, her eyes welling up with tears. 'My joy turned temporarily to sadness.' …
Froma Harrop: How Many Times Must We Save People Who Overdose? (Creators Syndicate)
A deeply humane friend recently suggested that medics stop saving people on their third opioid overdose. The subject was naloxone, a medication that can yank users from the jaws of death. It can be given via Narcan nasal spray or injection.
Froma Harrop: Roe v. Wade Is Yesterday's Fight (Creators Syndicate)
If the Supreme Court were to overturn Roe v. Wade, the right to an abortion might no longer be law of the land. But the ability to obtain one would remain a fact of the land. It might be harder to end a pregnancy in some states, but there would be no returning to the pre-Roe world. That's because a lot has changed since the 1973 decision.
Mark Shields: Chico Marx for President (Creators Syndicate)
In a scene in the 1933 film "Duck Soup," the character played by Chico, the most underrated of the funny Marx Brothers, is dressed like another character, and when the other man leaves the room, the woman who remains is surprised to see Chico. She tells him she saw him leave. Chico's response remains a classic in the annals of truth evasion: "Who ya gonna believe, me or your own eyes?"
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Presenting
Michael Egan
replied:
has returned to semi-retired status.
In memory.
Reader Suggestion
Michelle in AZ
Reader Comment
Current Events
I KNEW that vampire dress reminded me of something! (Does Melanoma ever actually use her arms to do anything? Every picture I see of her, her arms are hanging like dead fish at her sides.)
Linda >^..^<
We are all only temporarily able bodied.
Thanks, Linda!
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
"READING AGAINST FASCISM"
WELCOME TO GREAT BRITAIN, PUSSY GRABBER!
PRESIDENT 'MINI PUD'.
THE FAKE PRESIDENTS' "FAKE NEWS" WAR.
RED, WHITE AND BARB WIRE!
HANNAH ARENDT ON THE RIGHTS OF REFUGEES.
"THE RUSSIANS ARE COMING!"
PRESIDENT 'POOTY POOT'.
Visit JD's site - Kitty Litter Music
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Lost the last rhubarb plant. Argh.
Only 1 Remains
Blockbuster
The last two remaining Blockbuster stores in Alaska are slated to close next week, leaving just one location of the once-iconic video rental store left in the U.S.
The stores, in College and Debarr, Alaska, will officially close on Monday, July 16, Blockbuster Alaska said on its Facebook page on Thursday. They will reopen the next day, July 17, for inventory sales that will run through July and August.
The closings come after a number of other Blockbuster stores have shutteredin recent months. The company's North Pole location closed in March, leaving only five locations left at that time. Now, the lone remaining Blockbuster store is in Oregon, according to the Anchorage Daily News.
While most states lost their Blockbuster locations years ago, Alaska had held onto the brand. And the Anchorage location had recently gotten national attention when Last Week Tonight host John Oliver sent the store a collection of Russell Crowe memorabilia, including the actor's jockstrap from his 2005 film "Cinderella Man."
Now, the managers told the Anchorage Daily News the memorabilia will likely go back to its owner, and residents will have to find their movies another way.
Blockbuster
Quits Transgender Role
Scarlett Johansson
Scarlett Johansson on Friday pulled out of a movie in which she was cast to play a transgender character following a backlash from some members of the LGBT community who believed the part should have gone to a transgender actor.
Johansson, one of Hollywood's biggest stars, had agreed to take a role in "Rub & Tug" as Dante "Tex" Gill, a real-life American crime kingpin who used his massage parlour as a front for prostitution in the 1970s and 1980s. Gill was born a woman but identified as a man.
It was the second time Johansson, an American of European descent, found herself in the middle of a casting controversy after appearing in 2017's "Ghost in the Shell" in a role originally conceived as a Japanese character.
Johansson, 33, said she had decided to withdraw from "Rub & Tug" for ethical reasons.
Scarlett Johansson
The First
3D, Full-Color X-Rays
Classic black and white x-rays, move down the bench.
New Zealand company MARS Bioimaging has developed the world's first full-color, 3D X-rays, and they're so real it's rather disturbing.
Developed over a decade by father and son scientists Phil and Anthony Butler in collaboration with the Universities of Canterbury and Otago, the MARS system is a new medical scanner using technology developed at CERN. And it could be more accurate than the typical scans you get a doctor's office these days.
The MARS scanner uses a family of chips called Medipix, originally developed to track particles at the Large Hadron Collider. Medipix works like your camera - when the electronic shutter is open, each individual particle is detected and counted, creating high-res, accurate, noise-free images.
When used with the Butlers' MARS scanner and its software, the chips help to produce highly accurate, striking, three-dimensional color renderings of the human body that distinguish materials like metal, bone, soft tissue, and fat with different tones.
3D, Full-Color X-Rays
Well-Balanced Last Meal
Ancient 'Iceman'
Talk about a paleo diet. Scientists have uncovered the last meal of a frozen hunter who died 5,300 years ago in the Alps.
The stomach contents of the corpse, widely known as Oetzi the Iceman, offer a snapshot of what ancient Europeans ate more than five millennia ago, researchers said.
On the menu, described Thursday in the journal Current Biology, were the fat and meat of a wild goat, meat of a red deer and whole wheat seeds, which Oetzi ate shortly before his death.
Traces of fern leaves and spores were also discovered in Oetzi's stomach. Scientists think he may have swallowed the plant unintentionally or as a medicine for parasites previously found in his gut.
"It was very impressive," said lead author Frank Maixner, a microbiologist at the Institute for Mummy Studies in Bolzano, Italy. "We could see chunks and pieces of food with (the) naked eye."
Ancient 'Iceman'
US Army Picks For New Command
Austin
The US Army has turned to a tech-savvy city in Texas to host a new command aimed at innovating and preparing to fight future wars, officials said Friday.
The Army Futures Command will be established in Austin, the booming capital of Texas that in recent years has transformed into one of America's hottest cities for the tech and startup industries.
Officials said the new command -- to be headed by a four-star general, with a staff of about 500 civilian and military personnel -- will ready the US military for future warfare that could include laser weapons for missile defense, hypersonic missiles, robotics and artificial intelligence.
"We are in the midst of a change in the very character of war and we don't and didn't have an organization solely dedicated to that," Army Chief of Staff General Mark Milley told reporters.
The new command is set to be up and running by summer 2019.
Austin
Indictments Undercut Denials
Russia
President-for-now Trump (R-Corrupt) has often scoffed at the notion that Russia was behind the hacking of a Democratic National Committee server. On Friday afternoon, his ridicule was again called into question.
Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein announced the indictment of 12 Russian intelligence officials in connection with the hack of the Democratic National Committee's computer server and subsequent leaking of emails of Hillary Clinton's campaign manager, the latest charges in special counsel Robert Mueller's ongoing probe into Moscow's meddling in the 2016 election.
All 12 of the defendants worked for the GRU, the main military foreign-intelligence service of the Russian Federation.
According to the charges released Friday, the defendants accessed the email accounts of volunteers and employees of the Clinton campaign, including Chairman John Podesta, beginning in March 2016. "They also hacked into the computer networks of a congressional campaign committee and a national political committee," Rosenstein said. "The defendants covertly monitored the computers, implanted hundreds of files containing malicious computer code, and stole emails and other documents."
The Russian operatives "created fictitious online personas," including "DCLeaks" and "Guccifer 2.0," Rosenstein said, adding that the group falsely claimed DCLeaks was started by a group of American hackers and that Guccifer 2.0 was "a lone Romanian hacker."
Russia
Fishermen Kill Rare Whale
Iceland
Is it a blue whale or not? The slaughter in Iceland of what is claimed was a member of the endangered species has triggered outrage and left experts puzzled about its true identity.
"There has not been a blue whale harpooned by anyone for the last 50 years until this one," Sea Shepherd, an international non-profit marine conservation movement, said in a statement on Wednesday.
The group, which published photos of the mammal being butchered for export at an Icelandic whaling station on the night of July 7, said the fishermen "posed for photos next to and even on top of the whale in a sign they knew very well this was a rare blue whale".
But Icelandic experts are not completely certain whether it is indeed the world's largest leviathan, which the International Whaling Commission has been protecting since 1966.
They're also not sure if it could be the endangered fin whale, the second largest animal on the planet, which can only be legally hunted in Iceland despite an international moratorium on whaling.
Iceland
How Fast Universe Is Expanding
NASA
Scientists have made the most precise measurement of the universe's expansion ever - and found a very strange result indeed.
The Nasa research used two space telescopes to work out exactly how quickly the universe was growing. Discovering that important number could help understand where the cosmos came from and where it is going.
But the new precise measurement actually leads to more confusion than it dispels. There seems to be a strange mismatch in the way the universe is expanding - a discovery that could suggest there is an entirely new physics underpinning the universe, waiting to be found.
The mysterious results could be caused by dark matter, dark energy being even more exotic than previously thought, or an unknown new particle in the tapestry of space, Nasa said.
Scientists have long been attempting to work out the rate the universe is expanding - known as the Hubble constant - as precisely as they possibly can. Discovering how quickly it has been growing since the big bang 13.8 billion years ago could answer the most fundamental questions about where the universe came from and where it is going.
NASA
Uncovers Mummy Burial Site
Egypt
Egyptian archaeologists revealed on Saturday the details of an ancient burial shaft and a mummification workshop that were discovered 30 meters underground, near the Saqqara necropolis south of Cairo.
Archaeologists are hoping the mummification workshop will provide fresh insight into the chemical make-up of the oils used by ancient Egyptians to mummify their dead.
The burial shaft, which is over 2,000 years old, is believed to date back to the Saite-Persian period, approximately 664-404 BC. The shaft was originally discovered in April of this year containing 35 mummies in addition to stone sarcophagi.
Hundreds of small stone statues, jars, and vessels used in the mummification process were all found inside the burial chambers and excavated.
The most significant artifact was a gilded silver mask, the second only such discovery ever made, Minister of Antiquities Khaled al-Anany said.
Egypt
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