Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Lee McIntyre: 3 philosophers set up a booth on a street corner - here's what people asked (The Conversation)
She was about 6 years old and clutched her mother's hand as she craned her neck to stare at us. Her mother stopped, but the girl hesitated. "It's OK," I offered. "Do you have a philosophical question?" The girl smiled at her mother, then let go of her hand to walk over to the booth. She looked me dead in the eye and said: "How do I know I'm real?"
I remembered that the most important part of philosophy was feeding our sense of wonder. "Close your eyes," I said. She did. "Well, did you disappear?" She smiled and shook her head, then opened her eyes. "Congratulations, you're real." She grinned broadly and walked over to her mother, who looked back at us and smiled.
Did Russian State TV Thank GOP Lawmakers for Lifting Sanctions? (Snopes)
"TRUE.
"Julia Davis, an investigative journalist and Russian media analyst, was one of the first to notice Maddow's graphic being featured on Russian State TV. Davis shared this screenshot on Twitter along with a brief message explaining its context. Davis wrote: '#Russia's state TV reports that for the first time since 2014, the US is lifting sanctions from Russian companies [#Deripaska's Rusal et al.] The host laughs out loud about the Democrats not getting enough votes to block the effort, expresses hope that this is just the beginning.'"
New Rule: The Republicans Are the Problem | Real Time with Bill Maher (HBO; YouTube)
In his editorial New Rule, Bill disputes the notion that both political parties are to blame for the mess we're in.
Paul Waldman: Whitaker hearing confirms it: On Mueller probe, Democrats have already won (Washington Post)
Democrats are trying to do two things simultaneously with this hearing in particular and their broader efforts with regard to the Mueller investigation. The first is to discover whether there has been any improper interference from the White House to limit the probe. The second is to apply enough pressure that even if Whitaker - or the White House, or William Barr - wanted to hinder Mueller, they'd decide that doing so would be too much of a risk.
Paul Waldman: John Roberts is trying to save the Republican Party from itself (Washington Post)
In short, you could argue that John Roberts is actually the most loyal Republican on the Supreme Court; it's just that unlike, say, Alito, he knows when the GOP has gone too far out on a limb and needs to be carefully reined back in for its own good. And that's what he'll keep doing.
Steve Rose: Is Liam Neeson cancelled? Of course not - he's played this character for years (The Guardian)
The actor has clearly examined his conscience since he went looking for revenge after a friend of his was raped years ago.
Joe Bob Briggs: Julie Adams Made the World Safe for Teenage Monsters (Taki Magazine)
Not long ago, at a little horror convention in New Jersey, I hosted interviews with some of the most famous stunners in B-movie history-all of the beauties from the Hammer films of the '50s, '60s, and '70s-but the woman everyone wanted to see that day was a veteran character actor named Julie Adams, well preserved into her 80s and still inspiring shock and awe in the teenage faithful.
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Presenting
Michael Egan
said:
has returned to semi-retired status.
In memory.
Reader Suggestion
Michelle in AZ
from Bruce
Anecdotes - Food
As a small boy, Louis Nye was very thin, and his Jewish mother took him to an Irish physician who said that to fatten up her son she needed to serve him bacon. This was very shocking, because kosher bacon was unknown. However, his mother asked advice from his grandmother, who unhesitatingly recommended that for the boy's health she should follow the doctor's advice. His mother therefore purchased new kitchenware so that she wouldn't cook and serve bacon on her kosher kitchenware. Whenever she fried bacon for her son, all three of them - grandmother, mother, and young son - used newspapers to waft the smell of frying bacon out of the kitchen window. (By the way, the bacon worked - Louis was a healthy-looking boy at his bar mitzvah.)
A pastor friend of Wesleyan preacher William Woughter once forgot that he had two dinner invitations the same day. The early dinner went fine - the kind couple who had invited him to dinner took him to a special restaurant where they insisted that he eat a special dessert. After dinner, however, he went back home and immediately there arrived at his door a second couple to take him out to eat. This kind couple took him to the same special restaurant where they insisted that he eat the same special dessert. The server looked at him strangely, but fortunately she didn't say anything to give him away. However, the pastor did pay for not writing his dinner invitations down - after the second dinner, he never before in his life felt so bloated.
As a child, Abbe Lane often visited her paternal grandmother for the weekend. Her grandmother was thrifty, and she found a subtle way of making young Abbe clean her plate - anything that Abbe didn't eat at breakfast appeared on her plate for lunch, anything that Abbe didn't eat at lunch appeared on her plate for dinner, and anything that Abbe didn't eat at dinner appeared on her plate for breakfast. Years after growing up, Ms. Lane says she orders small servings at restaurants out of a fear that if she doesn't clean her plate she will have to eat the leftovers at her next meal.
While on tour, Merce Cunningham and his dance troupe stopped at the Brownsville Eat-All-You-Want Restaurant, where they wolfed down food in huge quantities. (Dancer Steve Paxton ate five pieces of pie for dessert!) Mr. Cunningham asked the cashier how the restaurant managed to stay open, and she replied, "Most people don't eat as much as you people." On another tour, they stopped at a place that advertised homemade pies. Before the dance troupe left the restaurant, they heard the servers telling the regular pie-eating customers, "I'm sorry - we don't have any more."
Alka-Seltzer once had a very funny TV commercial in which a man making a commercial for spaghetti and meatballs keeps blowing his line - "Mamma mia! That's some spicy meatball!" - take after take, forcing him to consume more and more meatballs and causing indigestion that is of course cured by Alka-Seltzer. In real life, the man making the commercial, Jack Somach, suffered through 175 takes, requiring him to bite into 175 meatballs. He skipped lunch and dinner that day.
For many years, Arturo Toscanini and Geraldine Farrar had an affair. After the affair ended, Ms. Farrar had a party at which Toscanini was invited. At the party, she served caviar, which pleased everyone except Toscanini, who complained, "I slept with that woman for seven years. Wouldn't you think she'd remember that I hate fish?"
At one time real food was considered to be unlucky on stage, and so actors ate some very unappetizing "food" items. For example, "bacon" consisted of strips of bread coated with gravy, "tomatoes" consisted of circles of bread colored red, and "fried eggs" consisted of circles of bread with a little mustard in the middle.
Tommy Morgan was a Scottish comedian. While staying in a Belfast hotel and treating some friends in the hotel restaurant, Mr. Morgan was treated like the celebrity he was, and a waiter asked, "Will you be having a bit of partridge, Mr. Morgan?" Mr. Morgan replied, "A bit! What do you mean - a bit! Bring us a whole one each."
Russian baritone Feodor Chaliapin sometimes grew weary of hostesses who invited him to dinner, then pressured him to sing for the other guests. He told one such hostess, "If you ask me to dinner, you feed me. If you ask me to sing, you pay me."
***
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This is ME every single stinking day of the asshole Predator's pretense of being president.
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Awards In Commercial Breaks
Oscars
The Academy has revealed to its members that the Best Cinematography, Best Film Editing, Best Live-Action Short Film and Best Makeup and Hairstyling categories at this year's Academy Awards will be presented during commercial breaks.
The categories will be handed out during breaks in the show, and then "slightly edited" and inserted into the broadcast. The original presentations will be streamed live on Oscar.com and on Academy social channels.
The change was announced to Academy members in an email from AMPAS president John Bailey.
The move was approved by the Board of Governors in August last year, with the understanding that the affected categories would be rotated each year. (Another move approved by the board at that meeting, the introduction of a "Popular Oscar," was later tabled for more study.) According to one person with knowledge of the discussions about this year's categories, Bailey offered up his own category, cinematography, as one that would be taken off the telecast this year, although that move would have needed approval from his branch's executive committee.
Bailey's email states that the executive committees from six of the Academy's 17 branches agreed to have their categories affected, with four of the six chosen for the this year's Oscars. Those four branches, said Bailey, will be exempt from having their categories moved off the air next year, when an additional four to six categories may undergo the same fate.
Oscars
Hidden Political Message
Non Sequitur
Pennsylvania newspaper said it would stop publishing a popular cartoon after the f-word directed at President Donald Trump (R-Pendejo) appeared in its latest issue.
"Non Sequitur" is a syndicated cartoon by Wiley Miller and is a regular feature of the Pennsylvania publication The Butler Eagle.
Readers were are encouraged to color in the three-panel, black-and-white cartoon, which this week featured a "Bearaissance" character named "Leonardo Bear Vinci."
But on Sunday, readers spotted a small scribbled message appeared in one of the panels, which said: "We fondly say go f*** yourself...Trump."
Ron Vodenichar, Eagle publisher and general manager, was unhappy with the message, which was brought to his attention after a reader spotted it.
Non Sequitur
Internet Reacts
Aladdin
A new "Aladdin" trailer debuted during the Grammy's Sunday night and if reaction on the internet is any indication, Disney might want to rework the animation for Will Smith's "Genie" character before it hits theaters on May.
On Twitter, one man wrote, "I'm sorry but Will Smith as the Genie in #Aladdin is nightmare fuel. Also, he's just gonna use his regular Will Smith voice?
Peter Taggart wrote on Twitter, "This looks like an SNL host had to change into a genie costume 4 minutes after their monologue."
A woman named Samantha wrote "Just saw the #Aladdin preview. Totally sold up until I saw the genie."
Fans were much kinder on Smith's Instagram post. By early Monday, it had more than two million likes and more than 74,000 comments - many of which were positive.
Aladdin
Put On Hold
Red Sonja
When word first arrived last year that Bryan Singer would be signing for a rumored $10 million to direct an adaptation of the Marvel-originated comic Red Sonja, it was generally met with a resounding "oh god, why?" For one, a byproduct of Bohemian Rhapsody's smash success has been the return of the many controversies around Singer to the public conversation. The director has been followed by allegations of sexual harassment and assault throughout much of his career, and a recent article in The Atlantic included several new allegations of the same nature. For another, the comic itself is a story of a woman victimized by sexual assault, who develops supernatural gifts in order to avenge herself.
Nothing about the project would seem like a fit for Singer, and yet initially, Millennium Films (the planned distributor for the film) appeared to take a strong stance in defense of the director. CEO Avi Lerner initially declared that the latest allegations were "agenda driven fake news", and that Singer would remain on board. (Lerner would later walk the remarks back, while emphasizing that he wasn't recanting them entirely.)
Now, it seems like the public pressure against the project has finally become too much for the production to handle, as The Hollywood Reporter has now confirmed that Red Sonja "
is no longer on the company's slate and it is not being shopped at this year's European Film Market in Berlin". The Reporter article specifies that Singer has (as of this writing) not been fired from the project, but if this latest news is any indication, Millennium may now be taking the diplomatic way out of what most of us can agree would have been a cursed movie from the start.
Red Sonja
Sheriffs Refusing To Enforce New Rules
Washington
Sheriffs in a dozen Washington counties are refusing to enforce the state's new restrictions on the sale of semi-automatic rifles.
A state-wide initiative approved by voters in November raised the minimum age at which a person could purchase such weapons from 18 to 21, while adding expanded background checks and gun storage requirements.
The measures were seen as one of the more comprehensive of a series of gun-control reforms enacted in the US in the wake of the school shooting in Parkland, Florida, last year.
However, the new rules have been challenged in a lawsuit filed in federal court by the National Rifle Association (NRA) and the Second Amendment Foundation.
Sheriffs in 12 mostly rural Washington counties, along with the police chief of the small town of Republic, have said they will not enforce the new laws until the issue is settled by the courts.
Washington
'Invade' a Russian Town
52 Polar Bears
Fifty-two hungry polar bears have occupied Guba, a work settlement in a remote Russian Arctic archipelago. The animals reportedly attacked locals, ransacked garbage dumps and barged into residential buildings, according to a government statement translated from Russian and released this weekend.
The massive invasion of polar bears prompted regional officials to declare a state of emergency on Saturday (Feb. 9).
"People are scared, afraid to leave the house
afraid to let their children go to school," Zhigansha Musin, a local school administrator, said in the statement. "Constantly in the village are from six to 10 polar bears."
Belushya Guba is a settlement of about 2,000 people in Russia's remote Novaya Zemlya archipelago, which is best known for its spooky plankton blooms and apocalyptic nuclear bomb tests. It's not uncommon to see polar bears near the area's southern coasts, where they regularly converge in winter for seasonal seal hunts, according to Russia's state-run news site TASS.
However, thinning sea ice caused by global warming likely drove the bears inland in search of more readily available meals, researchers from Moscow's A.N. Severtsov Institute of Ecology and Evolution, a branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, told TASS. The allure of edible waste in Belushya Guba's garbage bins and dump sites likely stopped the bears from migrating farther north, the researchers said.
52 Polar Bears
Users More Empathetic
MDMA
Long-term users of MDMA are more empathetic than people who take other recreational drugs, according to a study.
Compared to users of cannabis, cocaine and ketamine, people who take ecstasy report feeling "significantly greater emotional empathy" and are better at identifying others' emotions, researchers at the University of Exeter found.
MDMA is known to increase empathy for a short period, but the researchers said their findings could point to longer-term effects with implications for possible medical uses.
The study recruited long-term but mild users who have taken the drug a minimum of 10 times to reflect does that may be used for medical treatment.
Participants included 25 people who used multiple drugs including MDMA, 19 people who took multiple drugs not including MDMA, and 23 people who used only alcohol.
MDMA
'Ray Gun' Blasts Pottery
Ancient Shipwreck
Scientists just blasted pottery from an ancient shipwreck with a "ray gun." Besides being totally sci-fi, the X-ray blaster revealed where the pottery came from.
The wreck was a trade ship dating to the 12th or 13th century that was thought to have departed from Quanzhou in southeastern China, with the Indonesian island of Java as its destination. However, it sank in the Java Sea near Java and Sumatra, taking its cargo to a watery grave. Discovered by local fishermen in the 1980s, the ship and its contents were recovered a decade later, and about 7,500 pieces of its cargo are currently in the collection of The Field Museum in Chicago.
In a new study, researchers addressed a long-standing mystery: where the pottery came from. The artifacts' shape and design suggested they originated in southeastern China - in fact, two boxes described in 2018 even included an identifying stamp. But pinpointing the precise locations where they were made was trickier, as kilns that produce this type of pottery are extremely common in the region, scientists wrote in the study.
To find out, scientists looked at 60 pieces of the wreck's pottery that were glazed with a blue-white coating called qingbai; that kind of porcelain is fired at such high temperatures that it is rendered almost glass-like, enabling it to spend centuries underwater without much degradation or damage, study co-author Lisa Niziolek, a research scientist in Asian anthropology at the Field Museum, told Live Science.
Lead study author Wenpeng Xu, a doctoral candidate in anthropology at the University of Illinois at Chicago, proposed noninvasive, nondestructive X-ray fluorescence to analyze the composition of the blue-white glaze and uncover the pottery's chemical secrets. Using a hand-held device, similar to a sci-fi ray gun, the researchers collected data from the Java Sea shipwreck pottery, and compared it with pottery debris gathered from four kiln complexes in China, with samples representing several kilns within each complex.
Ancient Shipwreck
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