Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Garrison Keillor: One more beautiful wasted day
Last Wednesday I was walking briskly toward Penn Station in New York and I tripped and took a nosedive, made a three-point landing, rolled onto my side, and within three seconds, three passersby stopped and asked, "Are you okay?" I said, "Just embarrassed," and when I started to get up and fell again, a fourth joined them. An old lady my age, a young black guy, a construction worker in an orange helmet, and a teenage girl. I limped east on 34th Street, and turned, and the guy in the helmet was watching me. I waved. He waved back. That's my story: there's a lot of goodness out there.
Paul Krugman: Arms and the Very Bad Men (NY Times Column)
Trump's rationale for going easy on the Saudi Arabia is a shameful lie.
Paul Waldman: With two weeks to go, the GOP campaign gets even uglier (Washington Post)
… as the midterm elections approach and Republicans face the possibility of a stinging defeat, they are wading deep into the sewer with remarkable enthusiasm. Lies, demagoguery, fear-mongering, race-baiting, voter suppression - their effort to avert disaster has it all.
Paul Waldman: Trump's impotent rage over the border could lead to something drastic (Washington Post)
… Republicans control every center of power in Washington. They have the White House. They control the House. They control the Senate. They have the courts, to boot. So how is it that despite their complete lack of power, Democrats are managing to stop Trump from implementing his terrific immigration plan? The answer is that they aren't. The reason Trump hasn't signed immigration legislation is that he can't get Republicans themselves to agree on a set of reforms.
Jonathan Chait: Do Liberals Hate Trump Because He's a Typical American? (NY Mag)
Gelertner's op-ed is in keeping with a conservative tradition of conflating the traits of their party's leader with that of the public as a whole. The problem they face is that the leader at the moment is not merely a dope, like Bush or Palin, but also ostentatiously immoral. Trump's defenders would now having us believe that the average American is a bigoted, dishonest, bullying crook. Who hates America now?
Paul Waldman: Obamacare has finally won (Washington Post)
Then, of course, there's the fact that the ACA's guarantee of coverage for people with preexisting conditions has suddenly become the hottest issue in the midterm elections, so much so that one Republican candidate after another is airing ads proclaiming his fervent commitment to maintaining those protections - the very protections Republicans have been trying to destroy with repeal efforts and lawsuits aimed at getting the law struck down. You can find few better signs of the political success of a law than when the people who fought against it and are still trying to destroy it rush to assure voters that in fact they dearly love what it does.
Joe Bob Briggs: The Apathy Party (Taki's Magazine)
We knew what needed to be done, but we also knew that nobody was ever gonna let us do it. And that's why most political polls in the United States of 2018 don't mean much. So many people have joined the Apathy Party, turned off the television news, purchased apps promising "you will never again see a Donald Trump pop-up on your phone," and plunged instead into the worlds of erotic macramé, Japanese baseball-card collecting, lesbian fetish cruises to the Dominican Republic, and every form of escapist fiction from gothic horror to Bigfoot porn, that a large chunk of the population never gets polled at all. They don't take polls.
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Presenting
Michael Egan
"Doug's Most Shared Facebook Post" Today
answered:
has returned to semi-retired status.
In memory.
Reader Suggestion
Michelle in AZ
Reader Suggestion
Save Old Rocky!
How I Realized I'm a Community Organizer and Activist
This is an undeveloped ridge and historic promontory that is under siege…the city's planning commission was sold a bill of goods, and the city council approved the project, despite being in violations of several of their own municipal codes. The police and fire departments are leaning heavily into the public safety aspect, and that's not the issue. The consultants were told to look at this site, not other, equally-qualified sites that wouldn't have the same impact.
The city claims they're too far into the project to stop now, but they're breaking the law. Additionally, the scope of the project has changed, and another CEQA and possible EIR need to be done. The city isn't having it. Over 100 concerned citizens have raised nearly $10K that the lawyer we consulted needs to file an injunction to stop work, until these concerns have been addressed. The 4 main players (the founder, myself and two others) are doing the brung of the research and fundraising. I'm in charge of the social media and fundraising.
We welcome everyone's involvement, interest and donations. Thanks for sharing!
Bonus Links
Jeannie the Teed-Off Temp
from Bruce
Anecdotes
• Bruce took the day off.
***
© Copyright Bruce D. Bruce; All Rights Reserved
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Reader Comment
Current Events
If I were the SC lottery winner
If I had been the one to buy the winning lottery ticket, I would offer every single dollar to Trump IF he would STFU (never speak publicly) and go away for the rest of his life. Absolutely the best and most humane thing I could possibly do with the money.
Linda >^..^<
We are all only temporarily able bodied.
Thanks, Linda!
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
REPUBLICAN LIARS, CHEATERS AND THIEVES!
TEENY, TINY LIBRARYS.
CHEATING IS THE ONLY WAY THAT REPUBLICANS CAN WIN.
DONALD HITS THE WALL!
"THE GREATEST NATION SECURITY THREAT WE FACE…"
Visit JD's site - Kitty Litter Music
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Running late.
10 Highest-Paid
TV Actors
Forbes' annual list of the highest-paid television actors in the world is here, and it includes actors from just four shows: "The Big Bang Theory" as it enters its 12th and final season, "Modern Family," "NCIS," and "The Walking Dead," as lead actor Andrew Lincoln prepares to leave the series in its current ninth season.
Forbes says that the list is based on figures from IMDb, Box Office Mojo, Nielsen, and interviews with industry insiders from June 2017 to June 2018.
Lincoln, who came in tenth, earned an estimated $11 million for AMC's "The Walking Dead," which he is set to depart this year. Ty Burrell ($12 million), Jesse Tyler Ferguson ($13 million), Eric Stonestreet ($13.5 million), and Ed O'Neill ($14 million) - all from ABC's "Modern Family" - rounded out the bottom of the top 10.
The top five includes four actors from CBS' "The Big Bang Theory." According to Entertainment Weekly, the show is ending after Jim Parsons turned down $50 million over another two years because he wanted to depart the show.
TV Actors
Stop Singing When Ships Are Near
Humpback Whales
Humpback whales are famous for their eerie, underwater songs. But researchers in Japan said Wednesday these massive marine creatures stop singing, at least temporarily, when human-driven ships are nearby.
Researchers focused on the remote Ogasawara Islands in Japan, some 620 miles (1,000 kilometers) south of Tokyo, where a single passenger-cargo liner passed through the area once per day.
Male humpback whales sing as a way to communicate and attract mates.
But by plunging a pair of hydrophones into the water to listen to the whales' reaction -- about 26 of whom were detected in the study area -- researchers found that the approach of a ship silenced them.
"The main reaction of humpback whales was to stop singing either when the ship approached or after it passed by," said the study in the journal PLOS ONE, led by Koki Tsujii from Ogasawara Whale Watching Association and Hokkaido University.
Humpback Whales
Thief 'Looks Like Ross From Friends'
Blackpool Police
A Facebook post asking for information on a suspected thief went viral on social media after people noticed he bore an uncanny resemblance to Friends star David Schwimmer.
After police in Blackpool posted a CCTV image of the "Ross from Friends lookalike", people quickly replied with jokes and references from the popular 90s sitcom.
Officers were trying to identify a suspect, shown buying a crate of beer, in relation to an alleged theft of of a jacket, wallet and mobile phone at a Mr Basrai's restaurant on 20 September.
Facebook users soon pointed out the suspect's likeness to Ross Geller, Schwimmer's character in the US TV show.
After responses began to pile in, Blackpool Police replied: "Thank you to everyone for your speedy responses. We have investigated this matter thoroughly and have confirmed that David Schwimmer was in America on this date. We're so sorry it has to be this way."
Blackpool Police
Weapons Pre-Date Clovis
North America
Texas A&M University researchers have discovered what are believed to be the oldest weapons ever found in North America: ancient spear points that are 15,500 years old. The findings raise new questions about the settlement of early peoples on the continent.
Michael Waters, distinguished professor of anthropology and director of the Center for the Study of the First Americans at Texas A&M, and colleagues from Baylor University and the University of Texas have had their work published in the current issue of Science Advances.
The team found the numerous weapons -- about 3-4 inches long -- while digging at what has been termed the Debra L. Friedkin site, named for the family who owns the land about 40 miles northwest of Austin in Central Texas. The site has undergone extensive archaeological work for the past 12 years.
Spear points made of chert and other tools were discovered under several feet of sediment that dating revealed to be 15,500 years old, and pre-date Clovis, who for decades were believed to be the first people to enter the Americas.
"There is no doubt these weapons were used for hunting game in the area at that time," Waters said. "The discovery is significant because almost all pre-Clovis sites have stone tools, but spear points have yet to be found. These points were found under a layer with Clovis and Folsom projectile points. Clovis is dated to 13,000 to 12,700 years ago and Folsom after that. The dream has always been to find diagnostic artifacts -- such as projectile points -- that can be recognized as older than Clovis and this is what we have at the Friedkin site."
North America
Ashiest Place On Earth
Disney Theme Parks
Some people enjoy Disney World and Disneyland so much that they never leave.
Despite years of denials from the House of Mouse, an urban legend has been confirmed: Human ashes are regularly scattered at the theme parks.
Loved ones of the recently deceased are known to place the remains on the Pirates of the Caribbean ride, the Dumbo ride, near Cinderella's castle - pretty much everywhere, according to a new report in the Wall Street Journal. It happens about once a month, often enough that custodians know to call for a "HEPA cleanup" with a special vacuum cleaner when it does.
The most popular place for people to spread ashes? "The Haunted Mansion probably has so much human ashes in it that it's not even funny," an unnamed custodian told the newspaper.
One employee said she and her co-workers got in trouble for referring to such incidents as "Code Grandma."
Disney Theme Parks
Different All Over The World
Birth Canals
The shape of a mother's birth canal is a tug-of-war between two opposing evolutionary forces: It needs to be wide enough to allow our big-brained babies to pass through, yet narrow enough to allow women to walk efficiently. At least that's been the common thinking. But a new study reveals birth canals come in a variety of shapes in women around the world.
The idea that women's pelvises have been shaped by an evolutionary compromise-also known as the "obstetrical dilemma"-has been influential in anthropology, says Jonathan Wells, an expert in human evolution at University College London who was not involved with the work. But recent studies have challenged it, and the new findings add to that research, he says. If the obstetric dilemma held true, one would expect birth canals around the world to be relatively standardized, Wells says. But that's not what researchers found.
Lia Betti, a biological anthropologist at the University of Roehampton in London and evolutionary ecologist Andrea Manica of the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom, measured the pelvises of 348 female human skeletons from 24 different parts of the world. The birth canals were far from carbon copies of each other. Those of women from sub-Saharan Africa and some Asian populations were overall narrow from side to side and deep from front to back, whereas Native American women had wider canals. Native Americans and Europeans also had the most oval-shaped upper canals, the team reports today in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B.
Betti and Manica also found that there was less variability in birth canal shape in populations farther from Africa, such as Native Americans. That pattern has been seen in other traits, and is thought to simply reflect lower variability in genes and traits among the relatively small bands of people who moved out of Africa to populate the world. Overall, the analysis suggests a population may have ended up with a particular birth canal shape simply by chance, not because of any sort of selective pressure.
Temperature could also be a factor. Colder climates favor wider bodies, which are better at holding in heat, and this could have an impact on birth canal shape. But the pelvic data only weakly followed that trend. Wells argues that other environmental factors may play a role and should still be explored.
Birth Canals
More Medically Effective Than Cannabis?
Liverwort
Currently, the medicinal use of cannabinoids, extracted from cannabis, is a subject of debate around the world. In Switzerland, more and more people are advocating for increased research into cannabis. Today, tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) is used in the medical field to deal with certain types of pain, muscle cramps, dizziness and loss of appetite.
However, it is an illegal narcotic and, accordingly, can trigger side effects. THC in its pure form was first isolated from cannabis in 1964 by Raphael Mechoulam at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel. Until now, it was thought that cannabis was the only plant that produces THC. However, as early as 1994, Japanese phytochemist Yoshinori Asakawa had discovered a substance in the liverwort plant Radula perrottetii which was related to THC and had named this natural substance "perrottetinene." In this natural product, the individual atoms are linked together in a manner similar to that of THC, however they differ in their three-dimensional structure and further exhibit an additional benzyl group.
A few year ago, Jürg Gertsch from the Institute of Biochemistry and Molecular Medicine at the University of Bern discovered that liverworts were being advertised as so-called "legal highs" on the internet. At the time, nothing was known about the pharmacological effects of this substance. Together with chemists from Erick Carreira's team from the Department of Chemistry at the ETH Zürich, Gertsch's research team in Bern biochemically and pharmacologically compared THC and perrottetinene.
Using animal models, they were able to demonstrate that perrottetinene reaches the brain very easily and that, once there, it specifically activates cannabinoid receptors. It even demonstrates a stronger anti-inflammatory effect in the brain than THC, something which makes perrottetinene particularly interesting when you consider its potential medical application "It's astonishing that only two species of plants, separated by 300 million years of evolution, produce psychoactive cannabinoids," says Gertsch. The study was published in the journal Science Advances.
Perrottetinene is less psychoactive than THC
Liverwort
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