Helaine Olen: A judge calls Betsy DeVos to account (Washington Post)
DeVos, who attended private school and chose the same path for her own children, backed tax credits for those who enroll their children in independent schools, while trying to cut back programs that pay for after-school programs and books for low-income kids. She even supported an attempt by the Trump administration to ax federal money for the Special Olympics. All of this is of a piece with the Trump administration, which is seeking to punish anyone who needs a helping hand, is attempting to destroy the Affordable Care Act, and is making it harder for people to access programs ranging from Medicaid to Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) credits for food.
Greg Sargent: Are Democrats missing an opportunity against Trump? One is sounding the alarm. (Washington Post)
It may be that the current imbalance is the result of a confluence of unusual factors: Trump's massive fundraising (his campaign has already hauled in $100 million); the large Democratic field and the success of its leading candidates in raising money, inhaling a lot of resources; and Trump's willingness to flood the media zone with a level of disinformation propaganda that will dwarf what we saw in 2016. Martin put it bluntly: "Right now he has unfettered ability to get his message out."
Garrison Keillor: The days pass, and now and then one stands out
My father, John, would've been 106 years old on Columbus Day and though Columbus has been taken down a few notches, my dad is still on a pedestal. He left us at the age of 88. He'd been through some miserable medical procedures and said, "No more," and went home to his eternal destination.
Big Bambú is the second album by Cheech & Chong, released in 1972. The name Big Bambu is a reference to the actual Bambu brand of rolling paper. The original LP concept and album package was approved by the producer Lou Adler and designed by Craig Braun and manufactured by his company, Sound Packaging Corp. to look like a giant rolling paper package, and contained a giant rolling paper with the record. Vinyl copies with the rolling paper have become collectible and hard to find. The original CD packaging has been slightly reformatted, and does not contain rolling papers.
The album was nominated for Best Comedy Recording at the 15th Grammy Awards, but lost to George Carlin's FM & AM.
Source
Dave responded:
Big Bambù. "Big Bambù" was the follow up to the duo's 1971 self titled hit comedy album. I remember the skit "Sister Mary Elephant" because I had a high school teacher who also screamed, "class.. class… SHUT UP!" At first I suspected she was putting us on by reciting a line from a Cheech and Chong album, but she was just a completely square moron. And of course our kid hating principal let her get tenure after running off several decent young teachers.
Cal in Vermont replied:
Big Bambu. I wonder if Dave is home yet.
zorch said:
Big Bambu. Paper was big enough for a spliff.
Jim from CA, retired to ID, wrote:
off to my 50 year high school reunion in California.....be back Tuesday...Big Bambu
Deborah responded:
That album was "Big Bambu" and was made to look like Big Bambu rolling papers. I used to sit in a quiet place at parties and roll joints and pass them around. Big Bambu papers were great for rolling, but I found them harsh to smoke. And that's all I have to say about that.
Daniel in The City replied:
Big Bambu
Dave in Tucson wrote:
Believe that album was titled "Big Bamboo". I would imagine a copy of
that album, in good condition, with the original rolling paper is pretty
collectable.
DJ Useo said:
Big Bambu. Funny stuff, I think. My much older brother had this, & he took the paper to a party, where I was told they rolled up a giant spliff.
I was still into peanut butter, & left the smoking alone.
I remember getting their Wedding Album for my birthday a few years later, & my parents made me return it. Sigh.
Mac Mac answered:
Big Bambu
mj took the day off.
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BttbBob has returned to semi-retired status.
~~~~~
• Creative people are often creative in more than one way. For example, Frank Gehry is especially well known for his architecture - he designed the Walt Disney Concert Hall. In addition, he has designed jewelry (for Tiffany's), a vodka bottle, lamps, and furniture. He has even made furniture out of corrugated cardboard. In fact, when he was invited to dinner, he often gave his host a cardboard chair instead of a bottle of wine. When he first thought of a piece of jewelry he might design, he mentioned it to people he was with - they all were rich people. Two of the women said that they would like to have a piece of jewelry like that, and when he told them that it would cost $1 million, one woman said, "I'd love to have one." And the other woman said, "I'd like to have one, too. And I know five other people who would also love it."
• When creating "reverse graffiti," the artist does not add paint to a surface, but instead uses cleaning materials to remove dirt from a surface. Scott Wade has created portraits of Albert Einstein and the Mona Lisa on dirt-covered rear windows of automobiles. In Brazil, Alexandre Orion visited a transport tunnel in San Paolo and used water and a cloth to wash dirt from the walls and create a series of skulls, which he hoped would remind drivers of the impact that their vehicles have on the environment. Paul Curtis, aka Moose, often uses only detergent and a wire brush to create reverse graffiti.
Crime
• Jim Marshall was a great rock and roll photographer, but he could be a little crazy - sometimes from the cocaine he ingested into his body. In March 1983, a woman tripped his apartment's burglar alarm, and Mr. Marshall yelled at the woman and waved a gun in her face. Because of that, he was sentenced to work furlough, where he worked as an assistant to commercial photographer Dennis Gray, who admired his work and who picked him up and dropped him off at his barracks. Mr. Marshall had to follow the rules set by Mr. Gray, who said, "We struck a deal. He couldn't talk to my clients [because Mr. Marshall could be abrasive]. He couldn't show them his work. And once in a while I made him call me 'bwana.'"
• George Catlin sought to paint Native Americans and Native American culture before the West was tamed and their way of life was lost. In this pursuit, he learned much about Native Americans and about the people who encroached on their lands. One night, while in St. Louis, he left the steamboat he had been traveling on and slept in a hotel, leaving on board the steamboat a canoe, several paintings, and some Indian artifacts he had collected. The next morning, he discovered that they had all been stolen. He commented, "This explained the losses I had met with before, losing boxes and parcels I sent back to St. Louis by steamer. What a comment this is upon the glorious advantages of civilization."
• Artist James Abbott McNeill Whistler once told this story about a lawyer: In a trial, a witness was asked how far he had been away from the scene when the deed was committed. The witness unhesitatingly answered, "Sixty-three feet, seven inches." The lawyer examining him asked, "How, sir, how you can possibly pretend to such accuracy?" The witness replied, "I thought some damned fool would be sure to ask me, and so I measured."
• Early in his career, landscape artist Thomas Cole sailed to the West Indies. During the trip, pirates boarded his ship and looked around to see if anything was worth stealing. Nothing was, so the pirates shook hands with the crew and passengers of the waylaid ship, then left.
Nothing like a celebrity tragedy or death to show that there are no old farts left in broadcasting - there's no one around to tell the young & pretty how to properly pronounce names, like Ric Ocasek or Ron Ely.
Tonight, Thursday:
CBS opens the night with a FRESH'Young Sheldon', followed by a FRESH'The Unicorn', then a FRESH'Mom', followed by a FRESH'Carol's Second Act', then a FRESH'Evil'.
On a RERUNStephen Colbert (from 9/4/19) are Joe Biden and Pixies.
On a RERUNJames Corden, OBE, (from 9/3/19) are Dominic Cooper, Jonathan Groff, and Red Hearse.
NBC begins the night with a FRESH'Superstore', followed by a FRESH'Perfect Harmony', then a FRESH'The Good Place', followed by a FRESH'Sunnyside', then a FRESH'L&O: SVU'.
On a RERUNJimmy Fallon (from 9/11/19) are Kim Kardashian West, Winnie Harlow, and Iggy Pop.
On a RERUNSeth Meyers (from 9/24/19) are Gwen Stefani, Bradley Whitford, and Emily Spivey.
On a RERUNLilly Singh (from 10/8/19) is Natalie Portman.
ABC starts the night with a FRESH'Grey's Anatomy', followed by a FRESH'A Million Little Things', then a FRESH'How To Get Away With Murder'.
Scheduled on a FRESHJimmy Kimmel are Paul Rudd, Lizzy Caplan, and Tyler Childers.
The CW offers a FRESH'Supernatural', followed by a FRESH'Legacies'.
Faux fills the night with LIVE'Thursday Night Football'.
MY recycles an old 'L&O: CI', followed by another old 'L&O: CI'.
A&E has a FRESH'Live PD: Rewind', followed by a FRESH'Live PD'.
AMC offers the movie 'The Crazies', followed by the movie 'Thir13en Ghosts', then the movie 'Ghost Ship'.
BBC -
[6:00AM] STAR TREK: VOYAGER - SEASON 3 - EPISODE 2-Flashback
[7:00AM] STAR TREK: VOYAGER - SEASON 3 - EPISODE 3-The Chute
[8:00AM] STAR TREK: VOYAGER - SEASON 3 - EPISODE 4-The Swarm
[9:00AM] STAR TREK: VOYAGER - SEASON 3 - EPISODE 5-False Profits
[10:00AM] STAR TREK: VOYAGER - SEASON 3 - EPISODE 6-Remember
[11:00AM] STAR TREK: VOYAGER - SEASON 3 - EPISODE 7-Sacred Ground
[12:00PM] STAR TREK: VOYAGER - SEASON 3 - EPISODE 8-Future's End, Pt.1
[1:00PM] STAR TREK: VOYAGER - SEASON 3 - EPISODE 9-Future's End, Pt. 2
[2:00PM] STAR TREK: VOYAGER - SEASON 3 - EPISODE 10-Warlord
[3:00PM] STAR TREK: VOYAGER - SEASON 3 - EPISODE 11-The Q and the Grey
[4:00PM] STAR TREK: VOYAGER - SEASON 3 - EPISODE 12-Macrocosm
[5:00PM] STAR TREK: VOYAGER - SEASON 3 - EPISODE 13-Fair Trade
[6:00PM] THE OUTSIDERS (1983)
[8:00PM] ROAD HOUSE (1989)
[10:30PM] ROAD HOUSE (1989)
[1:00AM] STAR TREK: VOYAGER - SEASON 3 - EPISODE 8-Future's End, Pt.1
[2:00AM] STAR TREK: VOYAGER - SEASON 3 - EPISODE 9-Future's End, Pt. 2
[3:00AM] STAR TREK: VOYAGER - SEASON 3 - EPISODE 10-Warlord
[4:00AM] STAR TREK: VOYAGER - SEASON 3 - EPISODE 11-The Q and the Grey
[5:00AM] STAR TREK: VOYAGER - SEASON 3 - EPISODE 12-Macrocosm (ALL TIMES EDT)
Bravo has 'Below Deck', another 'Below Deck', followed by a FRESH'Million Dollar Listing: NY', then a FRESH'Watch What Happens Live'.
FX has the movie 'Kingsman: The Secret Service', followed by a FRESH'Mr. Inbetween', and another 'Mr. Inbetween'.
History has 'American Pickers', another 'American Pickers', followed by a FRESH'American Pickers: Bonus Buys', and 'American Pickers'.
IFC -
[7:00A] Battle for the Planet of the Apes
[9:00A] King Kong
[12:00P] We Were Soldiers
[3:00P] Gladiator
[6:30P] The Bourne Identity
[9:00P] The Bourne Supremacy
[11:30P] The Bourne Ultimatum
[2:00A] King Kong
[5:00A] Planet of the Apes (ALL TIMES EDT)
Sundance -
[6:05am] The Andy Griffith Show
[6:40am] The Andy Griffith Show
[7:15am] The Andy Griffith Show
[7:50am] The Andy Griffith Show
[8:25am] The Andy Griffith Show
[9:00am] The Andy Griffith Show
[9:30am] The Andy Griffith Show
[10:00am] The Andy Griffith Show
[10:30am] The Andy Griffith Show
[11:00am] Sleepy Hollow
[1:30pm] Double Jeopardy
[4:00pm] Law & Order
[5:00pm] Law & Order
[6:00pm] Law & Order
[7:00pm] Law & Order
[8:00pm] Law & Order
[9:00pm] Law & Order
[10:00pm] Law & Order
[11:00pm] Law & Order
[12:00am] Law & Order
[1:00am] Jonestown: Terror in the Jungle
[3:00am] Double Jeopardy
[5:30am] The Andy Griffith Show (ALL TIMES EDT)
SyFy has the movie 'I Know What You Did Last Summer', followed by the movie 'Boo! A Madea Halloween', then the movie 'Joy Ride'.
TBS:
On a RERUNConan (from 9/19/19) is D'Arcy Carden.
A jury in Wisconsin has awarded $450,000 to the father of a boy killed in the 2012 Sandy Hook school shooting after he filed a defamation lawsuit against conspiracy theorist writers who claimed the massacre never happened.
A Dane County jury on Tuesday decided the amount James Fetzer must pay Leonard Pozner, whose 6-year-old son Noah was among the 26 victims at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, on Dec. 14, 2012.
Fetzer, a retired University of Minnesota Duluth professor now living in Wisconsin, and Mike Palacek co-wrote a book, "Nobody Died at Sandy Hook," in which they claimed the Sandy Hook shooting never took place but was instead an event staged by the federal government as part of an Obama administration effort to enact tighter gun restrictions. A judge earlier ruled Pozner was defamed by statements in the book that claimed he fabricated copies of his son's death certificate.
Palacek reached a settlement with Pozner last month, terms of which were not disclosed.
Pozner has been pushing back for years against hoaxers who have harassed him, subjected him to death threats and claimed that he was an actor and his son never existed. He has spent years getting Facebook and others to remove conspiracy videos and set up a website to debunk conspiracy theories.
The two partners behind now-dissolved Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca & Co have filed a libel and trademark infringement lawsuit against Netflix over The Laundromat, the streamer's Panama Papers movie directed by Steven Soderbergh. They also filed a temporary restraining order to halt the release of the movie.
The complaint, made in the U.S. District Court for the District of Connecticut, seeks damages and injunctive relief. According to the suit (read it here), the firm is claiming Netflix's film "defames and portrays the Plaintiffs as ruthless uncaring lawyers who are involved in money laundering, tax evasion, bribery and/or other criminal conduct."
"The implications and innuendo converge to cast Plaintiffs in the light of mastermind criminals whose crimes include, but are not limited to, murder, bribery, money laundering and/or corruption. Defendant's trailer and movie have clearly defamed the Plaintiffs and cast them in the false light of criminality," read the suit, which was filed earlier this week.
The plaintiffs also are seeking a temporary restraining order to stop Netflix from showing or streaming The Laundromat without disclaimers. The film, which premiered at Venice and also played Toronto, is set to launch around the world on the platform October 18 and already had an awards-qualifying theatrical run last month.
Mossack Fonseca & Co, which specialized in offshore financial services, closed down last March due to the economic and reputational damage caused by the disclosure of its role in widespread global tax evasion.
Scientists report that they may have found the earliest written record of a solar storm in ancient Assyrian tablets.
Recent analyses have found evidence of an extreme solar storm that left energetic particles in tree rings and ice cores across the world sometime around 660 BCE. With this in mind, a research team in Japan and the United Kingdom wondered if they'd be able to find evidence of this storm in ancient astrological records-and they may have found something in Assyrian tablets.
Back in the 19th century, archaeologists uncovered thousands of tablets dating back to the Assyrian empire in Mesopotamia, which documented treaties, stories, including the now-famous epic of Gilgamesh, and astrological reports. These reports included observations of the planets, phenomena like comets and meteorites, and of course, predictions of omens. The researchers (today's researchers) scanned through a collection of these astrological reports in search of auroral-type events, which they define as "reddish luminous phenomena in the sky" and are caused by the Sun's particles interacting with the atmosphere. Many of the reports weren't dated, but the researchers could at least produce date ranges based on the astrologer who wrote the report.
They found three reports that seemed to mention auroral phenomena: one reporting a "red glow," another a "red cloud," and a third reporting that "red cover[ed] the sky," according to the paper published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters. The records correlate with date ranges of 679 BCE to 655 BCE, 677 BCE to 666 BCE, and 679 BCE to 670 BCE, respectively. Assyria might seem too far south to view the aurora, being at approximately the same latitude as North Carolina, but past research shows that the North magnetic pole was much closer to the Middle East in the 7th century BCE (and especially strong solar storms can cause the aurora to move south).
These records seem to correspond to tree ring data and ice core data showing quick increases in radioactive elements associated with solar activity during this time. Obviously they're just correlations-but perhaps these tablets are the earliest-yet records of intense auroral activity.
Egypt's Antiquities Ministry says archaeologists have uncovered at least 20 ancient wooden coffins in the southern city of Luxor.
A brief statement from the ministry says Tuesday says archaeologists found the coffins in the Asasif Necropolis. The necropolis, located in the ancient town of West Thebes, includes tombs dating back to the Middle, New Kingdom and the Late Periods (1994 B.C. to 332 B.C.).
Photos from the ministry show colored coffins with inscriptions and paintings. The ministry described it as one of the "biggest and most important" discoveries in recent years.
The ministry says it will release further details at a news conference on Saturday.
When Jeroen Reneerkens stepped off the plane in Greenland, all he saw was white.
The avian ecologist at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands was expecting to find snowless tundra teeming with life, as he had each summer for nearly a decade. Reneerkens travels to Zackenberg Research Station in northeast Greenland to study sanderlings - slight, mottled-brown arctic shorebirds - as they and other migratory shorebirds noisily descend on the open tundra to breed each summer.
But when Reneerkens arrived in 2018, he found only snow and silence. "There were no birds singing, even the river was still frozen," Reneerkens says. "I was shocked."
A study published October 15 in PLOS Biology documents an ecosystem-wide reproductive collapse around Zackenberg in 2018. Most plants and animals, including everything from arctic foxes to tiny Dryas flowers, failed to reproduce that year, because an extremely snowy winter left much of the ground covered with snow well into summer, Reneerkens and colleagues found.
For more than two decades, researchers at Zackenberg have carefully tracked the rhythms of arctic life. "There's no such thing as a normal arctic summer," says study coauthor Niels Martin Schmidt, an ecologist at Aarhus University in Roskilde, Denmark. But the snow usually melts in early June. "It's like the lid gets pulled off the ecosystem, and everything starts," he says.
Forbes magazine's latest list of the 400 wealthiest Americans ranks President Don-Old Trump (R-Grifter) at No. 275 with a $3.1 billion fortune. Forbes Associate Editor Chase Peterson-Withorn said Trump's net worth is down $400 million since he took office.
"He had said a few weeks ago that he was losing $3 billion to $5 billion," Withorn told Yahoo Finance's On the Move. "$5 billion is more money than he's ever been worth. He's not losing that much money."
Trump's son Eric is running the Trump Organization while his dad is in office. The younger Trump, appeared at the Yahoo Finance All Markets Summit and said, "The second my father looked like he was going to win, we went and we turned off every single deal that we were doing overseas that wasn't already, like, inked."
"Not exactly," said Withorn. "Like a lot of things with the Trumps, it's you know there's some truth to it but generally no."
But Withorn said, "The Trump brand, from a business standpoint, has become toxic to a level that people just generally just want to stay away right now."
Americans can apparently agree on at least one thing: Kids in school deserve good sex education.
According to a study published in the journal Sex Education in September, the researchers looked at the online responses of nearly 1,000 people from across the U.S. who said they regularly voted in elections. The respondents-recruited by the polling company KnowledgePanel-identified themselves as either Democrats or Republicans. They were asked a series of 21 questions related to sex education, including whether they wanted these programs taught in middle and high school as well as which topics should be included.
Overall, the study found, most everyone was on board with sex ed in school. Nearly 90 percent said it was either very or somewhat important for sex ed to exist in middle school, while close to 100 percent said the same for sex ed in high school.
The study is far from the first to suggest that people generally support sex ed in schools, but the authors say theirs is the first to explicitly look at likely voters. "The current study adds to a growing body of literature which shows that there is a high level of support in the USA for providing sex education in middle and high school," they wrote.
The authors also found agreement on a wide range of topics related to sex ed between people in both parties. Majorities of Democrats or Republicans said that issues like puberty, healthy relationships, abstinence, birth control, STDs including HIV, and consent should be included in these programs. A majority of both groups supported the continued funding of two government-run programs: the Teen Pregnancy Prevention Program (TPPP) and the Personal Responsibility Education Program (PREP).
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