Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Tom Danehy: It's not 1968, but Tom isn't a big fan of 2016 which probably isn't going to end with a needed uptick (Tucson Weekly)
However, even as awful as most of 1968 was, it ended on a high note as the Apollo 8 crew orbited the Moon on Christmas Eve and Tucson High graduate (and mission commander) Frank Borman wished everyone back on Earth a Merry Christmas. Unless something truly wonderful happens in the next 10 days, 2016 isn't going to end with a hopeful uptick.
Tierney Sneed: Is This Court Filing The First Shot In Four Years Of Legal Battles Against Trump? (TPM)
What will the left's legal resistance to a President Trump's administration look like? A move Tuesday by two Obamacare enrollees seeking to intervene in an ongoing lawsuit targeting Affordable Care Act offers a preview.
Jude Rogers: How The Snowman melted David Bowie's heart (The Guardian)
The late, great singer's filmed introduction to the animated Christmas movie might be one of the least well-known parts of his career. But Bowie was a huge fan of Raymond Briggs, as those involved in the film recall.
10 year old autistic girl Kaylee Rodgers singing 'Hallelujah' will give you goosebumps (YouTube)
A 10-year-old girl from Northern Ireland has wowed people around the world after a video of her singing in her school choir went viral.
Girl With Autism Sings A Stunning Rendition Of 'Hallelujah' (Huffington Post)
"It's not just good because she's dealing with autism ... It's good because it's good - really good."
Adam Wears, Marina Reimann: 6 Badass Unsung Heroes From History's Darkest Hours (Cracked)
Sometimes, history can look like an endless parade of blood, terror, and unacceptably ridiculous hats. We seem to jump from atrocity to atrocity, only stopping to write books about how terrible our ancestors were before making the same dumb mistakes all over again. But […] even humanity's biggest shitshows have life-affirming moments hidden within, courtesy of regular people stepping the hell up to help others.
Ian Penman: Wham Bang, Teatime (London Review of Books)
It's impossible to imagine someone like Bowie giving the media anything like this kind of insane access today - but then, of course, there is no one like Bowie today.
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said:
took the day off.
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Reader Suggestion
Michelle in AZ
David E Suggests
Food Wastage
David
Thanks, Dave!
Bonus Links
Jeannie the Teed-Off Temp
from Marc Perkel
Patriot Act
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
IN THIRTY YEARS FROM NOW WILL THERE BE A BAND CALLED "THE TRUMP YEAR"?
KING DONALD THE FIRST?
WHY DO REPUBLICANS ALL HAVE "POGY" LIPS?
A DISASTER WAITING TO HAPPEN!
"LOONEY TUNES! THAT'S ALL FOLKS!"
NO STAMINA.
GIULIANI HITS THE WALL.
RELEASE THE TAPES!
Visit JD's site - Kitty Litter Music
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Overcast and cool - more rain on the way.
Calls Planned Parenthood a 'Beacon of Hope'
Dr. Luz Towns-Miranda
Dr. Luz Towns-Miranda, mother of Hamilton creator and star Lin-Manuel Miranda, stressed the importance of Planned Parenthood in a recent essay penned for Vogue.
"I grew up at a time when a young, single woman had no access to oral contraceptives, and our worst fear was an unexpected pregnancy," Dr. Towns-Miranda wrote. "Planned Parenthood was then, and is now, a beacon of hope, and a safe place for those women."
A psychologist and Planned Parenthood board member, Dr. Towns-Miranda is a staunch supporter of women's rights. "When I was approached to join the Planned Parenthood National Board, I immediately accepted the invitation," she wrote. "No other grassroots organization has this kind of connection with women, men, and teens. It has been the go-to place for many in this country."
She continued, "It is my heartfelt belief that deciding what to do during an unplanned pregnancy is one of the most difficult choices a woman must make in her life... I have seen firsthand the adverse impact of the panic, fear, depression, and potential rejection that evolves from an unwanted pregnancy as a source of distress. The severe mental illness associated with maternal rejection is among the most disturbed of mental disorders."
Her son, as part of the initiative to raise funds for Planned Parenthood, has partnered with fundraising platform Prizeo to run a sweepstakes which will award the winner with tickets to attend Hamilton in each of its touring locations -- NYC, Chicago, and San Francisco -- in 2017.
Dr. Luz Towns-Miranda
Astronomers Release Largest Digital Survey
Visible Universe
Over the past four years, astronomers associated with the Panoramic Survey Telescope and Rapid Response System (Pan-STARRS) project at the University of Hawaii at M?noa have repeatedly scanned three-quarters of the sky in visible and infrared light. Now, these images, which show up to 3 billion stars, galaxies and other celestial objects, are freely available for download - if you have 2 petabytes of spare space, that is.
"The Pan-STARRS1 Surveys allow anyone to access millions of images and use the database and catalogs containing precision measurements of billions of stars and galaxies," Ken Chambers, director of the Pan-STARRS Observatories, said in a statement released Monday. "Pan-STARRS has made discoveries from Near Earth Objects and Kuiper Belt Objects in the Solar System to lonely planets between the stars; it has mapped the dust in three dimensions in our galaxy and found new streams of stars; and it has found new kinds of exploding stars and distant quasars in the early universe."
The images were captured using the 1.8-meter telescope on the summit of Haleakala, on Maui, Hawaii. In addition to expanding the census of almost all objects in our neighborhood to distances of roughly 300 light-years, the images would also help scientists understand the formation of low-mass stars in stellar clusters.
The data from the survey, which is available for download here, is being released in two separate tranches. The first portion, released Monday, provides the average value for the position, brightness and color for the objects imaged, while the second dataset, to be released next year, will include catalogs and images from each of the snapshots that Pan-STARRS took of a given region of sky.
Visible Universe
Legalizing Marijuana
Maine
Maine voters have made the state the eighth in the United States to legalize the recreational use of marijuana, state officials said on Wednesday, following a recount of votes on a ballot initiative.
The measure passed by 3,995 votes with the support of 381,768 people, Maine Secretary of State Matthew Dunlap said in a statement. That was a slightly narrower margin of victory than the 4,073 vote gap reported following the Nov. 8 election.
The measure now goes to Governor Paul LePage, who has 10 days under Maine law to issue a proclamation of the vote results. It would take effect 30 days later, setting the stage for the drug to become legal for adults over 21 beginning late next month.
The result makes Maine the second state in the northeast to legalize recreational use of the drug, as voters in nearby Massachusetts approved a similar measure last month. Marijuana became legal to use and posses in limited quantities, but not yet to buy, in that state last week.
Maine
The Big Act
Rockettes
The Radio City Rockettes will perform at President-elect Donald Trump's inauguration next month in Washington, D.C., officials confirmed Thursday.
The iconic group of female precision dancers has performed at presidential inaugurations in 2001 and 2005, both for George W. Bush, and will "participate in inauguration festivities" for Trump, according to James Dolan, the executive chairman of The Madison Square Garden Company.
"The Radio City Rockettes, an original American brand, have performed at Radio City Music Hall since 1932 and, as treasured American icons, have taken part in some of the nation's most illustrious events such as Super Bowl halftime shows, Macy's Thanksgiving Day parades and presidential inaugurations, including in 2001 and 2005," Dolan said in a statement. "We are honored that the Rockettes have again been asked to perform in the upcoming inauguration festivities."
The Rockettes will join Jackie Evancho and the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, the only two other confirmed performers as of Thursday.
Rockettes
Has-Been Hatemonger
Bill O'Really
Bill O'Reilly (R-Propagandist) used the "Talking Points" segment on his Fox News show Tuesday night to weigh in on the ongoing debate over the Electoral College, claiming those who'd like to see the system abolished are motivated by race.
"This is all about race," O'Reilly said. "The left sees white privilege in America as an oppressive force that must be done away with. Therefore white working-class voters must be marginalized, and what better way to do that than center the voting power in the cities."
The "Factor" host told his viewers that he's one of the rare pundits exposing the truth about progressives.
"Very few commentators will tell you that the heart of liberalism in America is based on race," O'Reilly said. "It permeates almost every issue - that white men have set up a system of oppression and that system must be destroyed."
If the Electoral College were abolished, O'Reilly said, presidential candidates "could simply campaign in the nation's largest states and cities - New York, L.A., Chicago, Houston - and rack up enough votes to pretty much win any election. That's what the left wants, because in the large urban areas and blue states like New York and California, minorities are substantial."
Bill O'Really
Record-Setting Warmth
North Pole
Christmastime conjures up beautiful images of the frozen North Pole, but if warming trends continue unabated, Santa's home will look very different in years to come.
The Global Forecast System , a weather prediction system run by the U.S. National Weather Service, forecasts that the temperature at the North Pole could inch close to the melting point of 32 degrees Fahrenheit on Thursday - nearly 50 degrees warmer than normal.
It's a fitting end to 2016, which is expected to be the third year in a row to set new highs for hottest year on record.
Zack Labe, a doctoral student who focuses on the global climate system at the University of California, Irvine, said Wednesday that a series of storm systems - which are moving up through the North Atlantic Ocean and off the east coast of Greenland - are drawing warm and moist air into the Arctic - especially near the North Pole.
"In response, temperatures will briefly rise to values nearly 30 to 45 degrees Fahrenheit or more above normal (mainly on Thursday). Some weather models show temperatures hovering just below the freezing point," Labe told Yahoo News.
North Pole
Culture War Rages
North Carolina
Repealing North Carolina's law limiting LGBT protections at the close of a bitter election year was supposed to heal blows to the economy and perhaps open a truce in the culture wars in at least one corner of the divided United States.
The failure of state lawmakers to follow through instead shows how much faith each side has lost in the other, as Americans segregate themselves into communities of us and them, defined by legislative districts that make compromise unlikely.
The deal was supposedly reached with input from top politicians and industry leaders: Charlotte agreed to eliminate its anti-discrimination ordinance on the condition that state lawmakers then repeal the legislation known as House Bill 2, which had been a response to Charlotte's action.
But bipartisan efforts to return both the city and state to a more harmonious past fell apart amid mutual distrust, and neither side seemed to worry about retribution in the next election.
With GOP map-drawers drawing most legislative districts to be uncompetitively red or blue, politicians see little downside to avoiding a negotiated middle-ground. And since the day Republicans passed and signed it into law last March, HB2 has reflected these broad divisions in society.
North Carolina
White Supremacist 'Troll Army'
Whitefish, Montana
The email to a group that promotes diversity in northwestern Montana warned that white supremacists would encircle the advocacy organization's office and end with someone "swinging by a rope from the nearest lamp post."
"Those days are not far off Jew," wrote the author, identified only as Rudolf, to the group Love Lives Here in the Flathead Valley. "It's best you leave now while you can."
The ski resort town of Whitefish, 6,600 people strong in a valley just west of Glacier National Park about 60 miles from the Canadian border, is an unlikely flashpoint between white supremacist groups and residents trying to preserve the town's reputation as a welcoming vacation destination.
But white supremacists have also been drawn or actively recruited over the years to the libertarian-leaning Flathead Valley in their search of a haven where they can preach and practice their views unmolested. Richard Spencer, one of the leaders of the so-called "alt-right" movement, an offshoot of conservatism mixing racism, white nationalism and populism, is a part-time resident and his National Policy Institute is headquartered there.
Spencer, who moved to Montana in 2011, claims to have coined the term "alt-right." Both the term and Spencer gained fame during the recently ended election season with the ascendance of the far-right Breitbart News and its leader, Steve Bannon, who is set to play a prominent role in President-elect Donald Trump's administration. The presidential election, and the anti-immigration stance taken by Trump, has only heightened the divisiveness in western Montana, leading Whitefish city leaders and groups like Love Lives Here to renew their past condemnations of Spencer.
Whitefish, Montana
Emits Same Light As Regular Matter
Antimatter
For the first time, physicists have shown that atoms of antimatter appear to give off the same kind of light that atoms of regular matter do when illuminated with lasers, a new study finds.
More precise measurements of this emitted light could unearth clues that might finally help solve the mystery of why there is so much less antimatter than normal matter in the universe, researchers say.
For every particle of normal matter, there is an antimatter counterpart with the same mass but the opposite electrical charge. The antiparticles of the electron and proton, for instance, are the positron and antiproton, respectively.
When a particle meets its antiparticle, they annihilate each other, giving off a burst of energy. A gram of antimatter annihilating a gram of matter would release about twice the energy as the nuclear bomb dropped on Hiroshima, Japan. (You don't have to worry about antimatter bombs popping up anytime soon; researchers are very far from creating anywhere near a gram of antimatter.)
It remains a mystery why there is so much more matter than antimatter in the universe. The Standard Model of particle physics - the best description yet of how the basic building blocks of the universe behave - suggests that the Big Bang should have created equal amounts of matter and antimatter.
Antimatter
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