Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Joe Bob Briggs: You People Need to Get Nekkid (Taki's Mag)
Somebody finally found a decent explanation for why people under 30 are so goldurn grumpy. They're not having sex. Kate Julian, a senior editor at The Atlantic, laid it all out in a December article called "The Sex Recession" that goes into great detail about the question: Why are young people having sex at a lower rate than…well…at any time since we started keeping track of young people having sex?
Alexandra Petri: CPAC sets the agenda with dudgeon and dragons (Washington Post)
Mainly, CPAC is a jostling set of imaginary problems demanding the next real solution. Of course, things are somehow simultaneously worse and better than they have ever been. President Trump has kept his every promise, and the economy is booming like an enormous truck barreling over our crumbling infrastructure. AND YET he has been betrayed, and these "rat fink" types are threatening to stymie him. It is a great time! The courts are more full of justice(s) than ever. It is a terrible time! Ocasio-Cortez exists. Everyone here is very aware that Ocasio-Cortez exists.
Aaron Rupar: CPAC speakers keep saying Democrats want to ban cows and legalize infanticide. They don't. (Vox)
If it sounds beyond parody, that's because it is.
Period poverty: Socks 'being used as sanitary towels' (BBC)
Socks and kitchen paper are some of the items being used by women in Wales as sanitary products, the National Union of Students (NUS) has said. The union said current measures to tackle so-called period poverty were "insufficient" and sanitary pads or tampons are too expensive. The NUS Cyrmu said period poverty "should bring shame on us all". Welsh Government deputy chief whip Jane Hutt said it was "unacceptable" for people to lack access to products.
Fiona Macdonald: The surprisingly radical politics of Dr Seuss (BBC)
The [wartime propaganda] cartoons offer us a richer understanding of one of the best-selling children's authors of all time. He revealed, when discussing The Butter Battle Book in a 1984 interview for USA Today: "I don't think my book is going to change society. But I'm naïve enough to think that society will be changed by examination of ideas through books and the press, and that information can prove to be greater than the dissemination of stupidity."
Cameron Laux: "Good Grief!: The beguiling philosophy of Peanuts" (BBC)
Peanuts creator Charles M Schulz claimed his comic strips were "about nothing" - but according to a new exhibition, they had a seismic influence on society, writes Cameron Laux.
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Presenting
Michael Egan
took the day off.
has returned to semi-retired status.
In memory.
Reader Suggestion
Michelle in AZ
Reader Comment
5 Years
I'd like to stop a minute to remember our friend.
I first found RL-LNW on a search to counter that fat bastard's hate and lies.
If I remember, Vic may have been a racist, but he was a good cook.
I loved the travel trip reports, too, a lot!
Bart had LOTS of really positive stuff to help us through some dark times.
Big favor to me was adding the link to BartCop E!
A lot has happened in five years.
I miss him.
(takes a shot)
Gateway Mike
Thanks, Mike!
Hasn't been a day where I haven't wondered wtf Bart woulda said.
from Bruce
Anecdotes
• In the old days, people believed in the healing powers of kemeiyot - religious texts written on parchment. One person who felt that this practice was a superstition was Rabbi Yechezkel Landau, who only once gave a kemeiyahto an ill woman. Convinced that she was dying, the woman was wasting away for no apparent reason. Because the ill woman believed that only a kemeiyah from the rabbi could save her, Rabbi Landau obtained a piece of blank parchment, then rolled it up in a cloth. He then gave it to the woman's husband, telling him to tell his wife to wear the cloth around her neck for 30 days, then unwrap it and look at the parchment. If there was no writing on the parchment, that meant that she would be cured. The woman followed the Rabbi's orders; after 30 days, she looked at the parchment, saw no writing on it, and immediately began to get better. Soon she was healthy again.
• Harry Crane was a radio comedy writer who suffered from diabetes. Once, he was at Nate 'n' Al's delicatessen when he felt an attack coming on and knew that he immediately needed some fruit to get sugar in his system, so he went to the counter and asked for an orange. However, the counterman refused to give him an orange because it wasn't Mr. Crane's turn to be served - with the result that Mr. Crane collapsed, became unconscious, and had to be taken to a hospital. One of his friends heard what had happened, and called him at the hospital, saying he wanted to visit and asking how to get there. "It's easy," said Mr. Crane. "You go to Nate 'n' Al's and ask for an orange."
• Carl Jung was once asked by a patient to set up a session at a certain time. However, Dr. Jung replied that he did not have time to see him. Later, at the time the patient had asked for an appointment, he saw Dr. Jung relaxing at Lake Zurich. When he accused Dr. Jung of insincerity, Dr. Jung replied, "I really don't have time to see you because I am keeping an appointment I have set up with myself. It is one of the most important appointments of my day."
• When Anna Russell was attending the Royal College of Music in London, she was required to give singing concerts, at which all of the other students laughed at her. The director of the college, Sir Hugh Allan, stiffly informed her that the students were supposed to be serious about their studies. However, Ms. Russell really was serious and she sang the best she was able. Unfortunately, despite her love of opera, her voice was poor - the result of a field hockey injury to her nose, which she says ruined her "acoustics."
• Art Linkletter occasionally entertained in military hospitals where his audience consisted of soldiers with multiple amputations. Because he knew that the soldiers didn't want sympathy, he would sometimes joke to people who had no arms, "Well, you guys aren't going to be much of a help with the applause."
• During the World War II, when the Germans were constantly bombing England, James Thurber underwent a series of eye operations. Harold Ross, editor of The New Yorker, visited him at the hospital and told him, "Damn it, Thurber, I worry about you and England."
• One story about Al Jolson's hypochondria concerns a doctor who told the famous singer about a disease that had no outward manifestations - even though a patient had the disease, he or she felt perfectly healthy. "My God," shouted Mr. Jolson. "Those are my symptoms exactly!"
• While Jackie Gleason was in the hospital in an attempt to lose weight, the writers of The Honeymooners decided to see him to get his input on a script. However, when they arrived at the hospital, a nurse told them, "Mr. Gleason has gone home. He said he wasn't feeling well."
• A lazy, rich man asked Dr. John Abernethy what was the best treatment for gout - a disease that afflicted the leisure class. Dr. Abernethy replied that the best treatment for gout was to live on a working wage - and to work for it.
• Jimmy Durante once sat in his dressing room, looking at a handful of pills he was about to take - one for his heart, one for his liver, one for his kidneys, etc. He asked, "How do dem pills know where to go?"
• Bud Abbott of Abbott and Costello fame was an epileptic. Whenever Lou Costello noticed that Mr. Abbott was about to have a seizure, he stopped it from occurring by punching him hard in the stomach.
• According to Sydney Smith, gout is "the only enemy I do not wish to have at my feet."
***
© Copyright Bruce D. Bruce; All Rights Reserved
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Bonus Links
Jeannie the Teed-Off Temp
Reader Comment
Current Events
I seriously do not understand flag rape. Be as patriotic as you want, but do NOT walk over, grope a flag, and rape it in public!
Linda >^..^<
We are all only temporarily able bodied.
Thanks, Linda!
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
JD is on vacation.
Visit JD's site - Kitty Litter Music
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Sunny but chilly.
Box Office
'Green Book'
Director Peter Farrelly's Green Book scored the biggest post-Oscar bump of any best picture winner in eight years at the U.S. box office.
The Amblin and Participant Media dramedy grossed $4.7 million from 2,641 cinemas over the March 1-3 frame - its 16th weekend in release - days after its much-debated victory at the 91st Academy Awards.
No movie taking home the statuette for best picture has earned that much post-Oscars since The King's Speech posted a weekend gross of $6.2 million from 2,386 cinemas following the Academy Awards in 2011. That compares to $2.3 million for The Shape of Water, last year's winner, and roughly the same amount for Moonlight two years ago.
Prior to that, Spotlight, Birdman, 12 Years a Slave and Argo likewise earned around $2 million on the first post-Oscar weekend. The winner in 2012, The Artist, fared better with $3.6 million (both The Artist and The King's Speech were from Harvey Weinstein, an expert at turning awards attention into box office glory).
'Green Book'
Fights European Copyright Overhaul
Google
Internet giant Google on Monday urged the European Parliament to resist approving a planned overhaul of the bloc's online copyright law that the company said would hurt Europe for "decades to come".
European lawmakers could vote as soon as next week on the landmark legislation that is intended to modernise copyright for the digital age but has set off a furious lobbying war in Brussels.
Tech giants, artistic creators and EU member states have battled for three years over the reform, with Google making a last-minute effort to dissuade MEPs from passing the law this month.
The biggest stumbling block has been a provision that calls for Google-owned YouTube and other platforms to remove illegal content using automatic filters, or face massive liability.
Despite certain benefits, this aspect of the reform "creates vague, untested requirements" that would lead to the websites "over-blocking content", said Kent Walker, Google's senior vice president of global affairs in a blog post.
Google
Training
Astronomers
On October 12, 2017, a 20-meter asteroid passed just 50,000 kilometers (31,000 miles) from Earth. For weeks, dozens of astronomers from labs around the world mobilized, measuring everything they could about the asteroid in preparation for an impact.
This asteroid had been discovered five years before, and the astronomers knew that it wasn't actually a threat to Earth. But they used the flyby as an important exercise to test astronomers' ability to quickly coordinate a worldwide observation campaign. Scientists and legislators have grown increasingly concerned about the threat of near-Earth objects, thanks to high-profile meteorite impacts and the realization that we're unprepared for a sudden asteroid threat.
"In the Department of Defense, they do so-called 'war games,'" Vishnu Reddy, associate professor at the University of Arizona's Lunar and Planetary Laboratory who devised the test, told Gizmodo. "So why don't we play pretend to test out the entire system, too?"
The Pan-STARRS1 survey-a series of telescopes and instruments that automatically survey the sky for moving objects-discovered the small asteroid, called 2012 TC4, on October 4, 2012 at a distance 15 times Earth's radius. Earth's gravity changed its trajectory such that it could have passed by us in 2017 at anywhere between two Earth radii and 45 Earth radii. Modeling demonstrated that it wouldn't hit Earth, and its small size-less than 20 meters in diameter-made it not much of a threat (it's smaller than the meteorite that caused a fireball over the Russian city of Chelyabinsk in 2013). Still, the asteroid's close distance made it the perfect subject of Reddy's "war-game," in which astronomers pretended that it really would hit Earth.
The exercise was largely a success, with a few exceptions. "There were definite successes but there were some things that went spectacularly wrong," Alessondra "Sondy" Springmann, researcher in the doctoral program at the Lunar & Planetary Laboratory at the University of Arizona, told Gizmodo.
Astronomers
Retracts Story
Corsi
Right-wing author Jerome Corsi issued an apology on Monday and retracted an InfoWars story he wrote spreading a conspiracy theory about murdered Democratic National Committee staffer Seth Rich.
In the retraction, which was featured on the front page of InfoWars, a fringe website with a long history of spreading conspiracy theories, Corsi conceded that "his allegations were not based upon any independent factual knowledge."
"It was not Dr. Corsi's intent to rely upon inaccurate information, or to cause any suffering to Mr. Rich's family," reads the retraction. "To that end, Dr. Corsi retracts the article and apologizes to the Rich family."
The retraction was requested by the legal team for Aaron Rich, the brother of Seth Rich, a spokesperson for Aaron Rich's legal team told CNN.
Corsi's retracted story cited a Washington Moonie Times article that said, without evidence, that Seth Rich leaked a trove of DNC emails to WikiLeaks.
Corsi
Depression and Anxiety
'Microdoses'
Lava lamps, tambourines and, of course, psychedelic drugs were hallmarks of the 1960s. Psychedelic drugs can make people euphoric, though users can also become extremely anxious and agitated. But that's at a high dose. Now, in ACS Chemical Neuroscience, researchers report one of the first peer-reviewed studies on a new "microdose" psychedelic treatment regimen. In rats, the treatment appears to relieve anxiety and depression without the typical negative effects of the drugs.
According to the National Institute of Mental Health, about 6.7 percent of U.S. adults have had at least one major depressive episode, and about 19 percent have had an anxiety disorder in the past year. Medications for these conditions can be slow to work, and many people don't get better after taking them. Anecdotal reports have recently surfaced suggesting that low doses of psychedelic drugs given on a chronic, intermittent schedule could relieve depression and anxiety in humans without the hallucinogenic high. But although this regimen is becoming popular, it hasn't been rigorously studied or proven to work. So, David E. Olson and colleagues wanted to test the method scientifically in the laboratory.
The researchers treated male and female rats with low doses of N,N-dimethyltryptamine (DMT), a psychedelic drug that gained fame decades ago for its use in certain South American religious rituals. Rats received DMT every third day for about two months and were put through various tests. The regimen had anti-depressant and anti-anxiety effects on treated rats without negatively affecting their memories or social behaviors. There were a few sex-specific differences, with male DMT-treated rats gaining a lot of weight, and female DMT-treated rats having changes in their neurons compared to controls. More work needs to be done, but the researchers say that the results give them "cautious optimism" about microdosing as a method for alleviating symptoms of depression and anxiety.
'Microdoses'
Devastate Wildlife
Ocean Heatwaves
Invisible to people but deadly to marine life, ocean heatwaves have damaged ecosystems across the globe and are poised to become even more destructive, according to the first study to measure worldwide impacts with a single yardstick.
The number of marine heatwave days has increased by more than 50 percent since the mid-20th century, researchers reported in the journal Nature Climate Change.
"Globally, marine heatwaves are becoming more frequent and prolonged, and record-breaking events have been observed in most ocean basins in the past decade," said lead author Dan Smale, a researcher at the Marine Biological Association in Plymouth, Britain.
Above the ocean watermark, on Earth's surface, 18 of the last 19 years have been the warmest on record, leading to more severe storms, droughts, heatwaves and flooding.
Compared to hot spells over land, which have claimed tens of thousands of lives since the start of the century, ocean heatwaves have received scant scientific attention.
Ocean Heatwaves
Junk Food
Bears
Mama bears may need to raise their snouts and join the chorus protesting junk food.
The more sugary, highly processed foods that 30 female black bears scrounged from humans, the less time the bears were likely to spend hibernating, researchers found. In turn, bears that hibernated less tended to score worse on a test for aging at the cellular level, wildlife ecologist Rebecca Kirby and her colleagues conclude February 21 in Scientific Reports.
The new research grew out of an earlier project to see what wild black bears across Colorado were eating, says study coauthor Jonathan Pauli, a community ecologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Kirby, his Ph.D. student at the time, checked diets from hundreds of bears across the state. Hunters there are not allowed to set out bear bait, such as heaps of doughnuts or candy, so the animals' exposure to human food comes mostly from scavenging.
When bears eat more processed foods, their tissue picks up higher concentrations of a stable form of carbon called carbon-13. That extra carbon comes from plants such as corn and cane sugar. (These crop plants concentrate the atmosphere's normally sparse amounts of carbon-13 as they build sugar molecules in steps somewhat different from those in most of North America's wild plants.)
In the new study, Kirby looked at the impact of diet on hibernation. Bears typically slumber four to six months, during which female bears give birth. Kirby and her colleagues focused on 30 free-roaming females around Durango that were monitored by Colorado's Parks and Wildlife department. The team first tested bears for carbon-13, and determined that the ones that ate more human-related foods tended to hibernate for shorter periods of time.
Bears
In Memory
Luke Perry
"Actor Luke Perry, 52, passed away today after suffering a massive stroke," publicist Arnold Robinson said in a statement. "The family appreciates the outpouring of support and prayers that have been extended to Luke from around the world, and respectfully request privacy in this time of great mourning. No further details will be released at this time."
Perry is best remembered for playing the handsome, troubled loner Dylan McKay on Beverly Hills 90210 in the show's first six seasons; he reprised the role for seasons nine and 10. More recently, he played Archie's father Fred Andrews on Riverdale. When news broke of an upcoming 90210 reboot, he was not named as one of the returning cast members.
Coy Luther Perry III was born in Mansfield, Ohio to a steelworker and a homemaker and grew up in that state's Fredericktown. In a 1993 interview, Perry said that he had been auditioning for many roles before landing 90210 but to little success. His day job was laying asphalt as a construction worker. His credits during that time included a recurring role on the soap opera Another World and a couple of bit parts on TV shows.
At the height of Beverly Hills 90210's popularity, the main cast appeared on the cover of Rolling Stone. "I know that a lot of people are casting a very cynical eye my way, in terms of what happens in the future," Perry said in the cover story, which detailed his meteoric rise from struggling actor to teen idol. "I'm not worried about being a big star. But it makes me nervous when people talk about it like it's already happened."
While doing 90210, Perry also appeared in the original film version of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the rodeo drama 8 Seconds, the sci-fi epic The Fifth Element and he voiced himself on an episode of The Simpsons. Perry also worked as a voice actor on the series Biker Mice From Mars, Mortal Kombat: Defenders of the Realm, and The Incredible Hulk, among others. In the early 2000s, he played the Reverend Jeremiah Cloutier on Oz and the titular character on Jeremiah, a show about a surviving a postapocalyptic future.
He continued to make appearances on shows like Hot in Cleveland and Will & Grace in subsequent years and had recurring roles on Windfall, John From Cincinnati, FCU: Fact Checkers Unit, Body of Proof and Ties That Bind. Prior to his death, Perry reportedly portrayed actor Wayne Maunder in the 2019 film Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, Quentin Tarantino's upcoming film about an actor (played by Leonardo DiCaprio) and his stunt double trying to make it in the motion picture business in 1969.
Perry married Rachel Minnie Sharp in 1993, and the couple had a boy, Jack, and a girl, Sophie, before their divorce in 2003.
Luke Perry
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