Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Jonathan Chait: Mitch McConnell Committed a Judicial Heist and Blames Obama for His Crime (NY Mag)
Of course, the broader point of Will's column is true. By gleefully smashing governing norms, McConnell cleared dozens of vacancies in the courts which he has helped Trump to fill. Lying about how he did it is simply the crowning touch. The Republican Party has a president who is willing to ignore governing norms, and justify it with fantastical lies that his allies in the right-wing news media repeat uncritically. McConnell and Will make it clear that Trump has taken this to new depths, but that it is a practice he hardly invented.
Jonathan Chait: Why Congress Wouldn't Impeach Trump for Shooting James Comey (NY Mag)
Removing Trump from office would require not only a House majority, but also two-thirds of the Senate. Trump figured out very early on that Republican voters could be made to believe anything. If Trump shot Comey, his political base would decide that he didn't really shoot him, or that Comey deserved it, or possibly both.
Garrison Keillor: Old man at the prom
And then the band struck up "So Fine" (My baby's so doggone fine, she sends those chills up and down my spine), and young hips started shaking. … the kids were flying high and improvising, and then we were on to "Brown-Eyed Girl" and I saw a friend of my daughter out on the floor, a young woman who was terribly injured as an infant and now, at sixteen, is blind in one eye and walks with a lurch, one arm semi-paralyzed, and there she was on the dance floor, in transcendent ecstasy, dancing to Van Morrison played by old men.
Jonathan Jones: Meet Jacob Burckhardt, the thinker who invented 'culture' (The Guardian)
The visionary Swiss historian helps us understand our world just as much as his contemporary Karl Marx.
When Celebrities Write Novels (Book Marks)
FROM BOB DYLAN TO MORRISSEY, CARRIE FISHER TO DAVID DUCHOVNY, WE'VE GOT THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE UGLY OF CELEBRITY FICTION.
Michael Gregor, MD: Flax Seeds (NutritionFacts.org)
"Miraculous"? Well, certainly super healthy, which is why a tablespoon of ground flaxseeds every day gets its own spot on the Daily Dozen checklist I created to help inspire you to incorporate some of the healthiest foods into your daily routine.
25 HILARIOUS Clothing Tags [Pics] (Geeks are Sexy)
These T-shirts were tested on animals. They didn't fit.
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David Bruce has over 80 Kindle books on Amazon.com.
Presenting
Michael Egan
took the day off.
has returned to semi-retired status.
In memory.
Reader Suggestion
Michelle in AZ
David E Suggests
Regulations
David
Thanks, Dave!
Bonus Links
Jeannie the Teed-Off Temp
Team Coco
CONAN
Reader Comment
Current Events
Linda >^..^<
We are all only temporarily able bodied.
Thanks, Linda!
Reader Comment
Anacreontic Society
Marty
While many have struggled to ht all the notes in the US National Anthem,
including Roseanne Barr, few are aware of the tune's origin in a shady
fraternal drinking song...
Anacreontic Society
*And when the US was starting to shape its overseas influence via
shortwave radio broadcasting, in the years following WW II, bureaucrats
chose the more rousing, "Columbia, Gem of the Ocean" to play on its
shortwave broadcasts, in lieu. (Many other countries chose "The
Internationale")
Rosanne Singing National Anthem - YouTube
James
of Alhambra*
Thanks, James!
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
BIG TOUGH REPUG!
CONSERVATIVES ARE SO STUPID!
GROOVY!
ROLL A FAT ONE.
TRUMP GETS STONED!
CONSERVATIVES SUCK!
Visit JD's site - Kitty Litter Music
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Running late.
Dissent In 'Cakeshop' Case
RBG
On Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in the much-followed "cakeshop" case, siding with the bakery that refused to make a wedding cake for a same-sex couple in 2012.
In Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission, the Supreme Court justices split 7-2. And in her dissent, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, joined by Justice Sonia Sotomayor, made a notably different argument from Justice Anthony Kennedy's majority opinion.
Specifically, she pushed back against a key part of the majority's argument by saying there was an important difference between a bakery that refused to make a cake for anyonewith anti-LGBTQ language on it and a bakery that refused to make a cake for someone in particular ? which they would have made for others ? because that someone was a member of the LGBTQ community. While the former was not discrimination, the latter was.
"When a couple contacts a bakery for a wedding cake, the product they are seeking is a cake celebrating their wedding - not a cake celebrating heterosexual weddings or same-sex weddings - and that is the service [the couple] were denied," Ginsburg wrote in her dissent.
It's worth noting that while the court's decision was certainly a disappointment to LGBTQ rights advocates, the ruling in this case was "narrow," according to the American Civil Liberties Union's Louise Melling - meaning it doesn't set a broader precedent for future cases on religious freedom and LGBTQ rights. Also importantly, in its majority opinion, the court reaffirmed the basic principle that businesses should not discriminate, including against LGBTQ people.
RBG
No Women In Top 100
Forbes Money List
Boxer Floyd Mayweather reclaimed his place at the top of Forbes' annual ranking of the 100 highest-paid athletes on Tuesday but no woman featured on the list for the first time.
Forbes reported that Mayweather, 41, topped sports highest-earners after banking $275 million dollars from his cross-combat superfight against mixed martial arts star Conor McGregor in August 2017.
With an additional $10 million in endorsements, Mayweather earned a total of $285 million between June 1 2017 and June 1 2018, comfortably eclipsing the second-placed figure on the list, football star Lionel Messi, who made $111 million.
However, female athletes notably failed to break into the top 100 for the first time since Forbes began publishing its ranking.
Tennis star Serena Williams, who last year was the only woman to feature on the list at 51st place with earnings of $27 million, dropped out of the rankings after taking a break from the sport due to the birth of her daughter.
Forbes Money List
Sinks Data Centre
Microsoft
US tech giant Microsoft has submerged a data centre off the Orkney archipelago in northern Scotland in a project to save on the energy used to cool the servers on land, the firm said Wednesday.
The Northern Isles data centre consists of a 40-foot (12.2 metre) long white cylinder containing 864 servers -- enough to store five million movies -- and can lie on the seabed for up to five years.
An undersea cable brings electricity from Orkney's renewable energy network of wind turbines and tidal power to the centre and carries data from the servers to the shore and the internet.
The sea offers ready and free access to cooling -- which is one of the biggest costs for land-based data centres. It is also far quicker to deploy a data centre offshore than build on land.
The downside is that if the computers on board break, they cannot be repaired. The data centre is also very small compared to the giant warehouses used to store the world's information.
Microsoft
Test Flights
Flying Car
A flying car project backed by Google co-founder Larry Page was closer to take-off on Wednesday, with a model for test flights by aspiring buyers.
Kitty Hawk, funded by Page, unveiled a "Flyer" model it described as "an exciting first step to sharing the freedom of flight."
The company was created last year in Google's home town of Mountain View, California, and has been testing a prototype in New Zealand.
Images and details were available at a freshly launched website at flyer.aero, and CNN posted coverage of a reporter taking to the air in a Flyer over a lake at a test site near Las Vegas.
Kitty Hawk chief executive Sebastian Thrun, who founded the Google X lab devoted to "moonshots" such as self-driving cars and internet-synched eyewear, was quoted by CNN as saying piloting Flyer was as easy playing the video game "Minecraft."
Flying Car
Bend Over Consumers
Mulvaney
Mick Mulvaney, the interim head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, has disbanded three boards whose members include consumer advocacy groups and which advise on policy at the financial watchdog, board members said on Wednesday.
The decision to dismantle the boards was communicated to members via an email and conference call on Wednesday, the members said. It drew sharp criticism from board members, who said the change would shut out those who are familiar with the problems faced by ordinary Americans.
The decision forms part of a broader overhaul of the agency by Mulvaney, who says the CFPB, which was conceived to stamp out abusive lending after the 2007-2009 financial crisis, is too powerful and has overstepped its statutory mandate.
The bureau told members it was disbanding the Consumer Advisory Board (CAB), which is required by law to meet twice a year, as well as the Community Bank Advisory Council and the Credit Union Advisory Council, in order to save costs.
The CFPB plans to reconvene the boards with fewer members in the fall, and instead increase outreach to the public via events in Washington and elsewhere, former board members said.
Mulvaney
Regular Earthquakes
East Antarctica
For all the ways Antarctica is unique, scientists have finally realized one way in which it's the same as every other continent on the planet: It experiences routine earthquakes.
In a paper published today (June 4) in Nature Geosciences, a research team explains that over the course of 2009, there were no less than 27 earthquakes on the eastern part of the continent. Previously, only eight earthquakes had been recorded in East Antarctica since 1982-odd, considering that every land mass on Earth is actually a tectonic plate floating on molten mantel. All land experiences routine wiggling, although most of it is undetectable without precise instruments. Geologists didn't have a clear explanation why East Antarctica would be so still, although they theorized that perhaps it was because the weight of the ice sheet above subdued all seismic activity.
"It's no longer an anomaly," says Amanda Lough, a seismologist at Drexel University and lead author of the study. Lough was a graduate student at Drexel while she and her team were conducting this research across the frozen landscape. At first, she says, she and her team were surprised to see so many earthquakes. There was "quite a bit of checking to make sure that they were real events and that we had located them accurately," she says.
The reason for the sudden spike? Seismic activity didn't actually go up; it's just that no one was looking for it before.
Lough and her team received funding to carry out a broad mission of collecting any seismic activity on East Antarctica starting in January 2009, thanks to money from International Polar Year-a perennial event in which governments around the world agree to supersize funding to scientists studying the Arctic and Antarctic. There have only been four International Polar Years in history. This one ran for more than a year, from March 2007 through March 2009, giving scientists two summers to collect data (winter in the poles is completely inhospitable). Before that, the last one had been in 1957.
East Antarctica
World's Oldest Discovered
Footprints
Neil Armstrong left the first footprint on the moon, on July 20, 1969. But what about Earth - when did animals first leave footprints here?
While we don't know exactly when animals first left tracks on our planet, the oldest footprints ever found were left between 551 million and 541 million years ago during the Ediacaran period, a new study finds. That's hundreds of millions of years before dinosaurs started roaming Earth, about 245 million years ago. The new findings suggest animals evolved primitive "arms" and "legs" earlier than previously thought.
The odd-looking prehistoric trackways show two rows of imprints that resemble a series of repeated footprints, the researchers said. The scientists found the trackways in the Dengying Formation, a site in the Yangtze Gorges area of southern China.
The trackways' characteristics indicate that a bilaterian animal - that is, a creature with bilateral symmetry that has a head at one end, a back end at the other, and a symmetrical right and left side - made the tracks. This sea-dwelling animal had paired appendages that raised its body above the ocean floor, the footprints left behind by its multiple feet suggest.
These footprints are located next to fossilized burrows. This means that the mystery animal might have periodically dug into the ocean floor's sediments and microbial matts, possibly to mine for oxygen and food, the researchers said.
Footprints
In Memory
Jerry Maren
Jerry Maren, who called himself the last living actor to have played a Munchkin in The Wizard of Oz, died last week in San Diego at age 98.
Maren, a Boston native, was best known for playing a member of the Lollipop Guild, the group of little people who welcome Dorothy to Munchkin Land in Oz. He's the one in green, tap dancing as they sing.
"We represent the Lollipop Guild, the Lollipop Guild, the Lollipop Guild and in the name of the Lollipop Guild we welcome you to Munchkin Land," they chorused.
In November 1938, when he was still a teen, he met up with an Oz-bound group of diminutive actors in New York and went by bus to California, where he was chosen to be the Munchkin who hands Dorothy the welcoming lollipop in the 1939 film, according to his IMDb page.
Later, he described the eye-opening experience of meeting so many other little people through the film.
"Not only the United States but from all over," he recalled. "A few of them came from Texas. You'd never believe that. I always thought only big, tall men came from Texas and there they had about 10 little guys from Texas - I couldn't believe it. I met other little people from Germany, France, Italy - they were from all over. There were over 120!"
His other movie and TV credits made up a lengthy list extending back to 1938 and continuing up until 2010, when he appeared in a horror film called Dahmer vs. Gacy. He was also part of the classic 1997 "Yada Yada Yada" episode of Seinfeld, in which he played the father of Kramer's girlfriend.
In 2016, when he was falsely reported to have died, he took to Instagram to deny it. In April 2017, he posted a picture saying, "I'm still not dead kiddos!"
Jerry Maren
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