Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Helaine Olen: Trump's proposed SNAP cuts could damage the economy. Here's how. (Washington Post)
There is a better way to save money on SNAP if one really believes the program needs to be cut: raise the minimum wage. According to a CAP analysis, an increase to $12 an hour would save $53 billion in SNAP spending over the next decade. But don't expect the Trump administration to embrace that solution. Larry Kudlow, Trump's chief economic adviser, calls even the existence of a federal minimum wage "a terrible idea." Actually, that's a kind description of Trump's plans for SNAP. Here's hoping they never come to pass.
Paul Krugman: Don't Blame Robots for Low Wages (NY Times Column)
Progressives shouldn't fall for facile technology fatalism.
Paul Waldman: GOP unity behind Trump is cracking. Here's how it could get worse. (Washington Post)
Support for President Trump among congressional Republicans has been all but absolute over the past two years. But there's a drama playing out right now over his declaration of a national emergency in order to divert funds to border wall construction that portends a more complicated 2020 for both the president and his allies. If rifts are developing in that relationship, it could lead to a spiral in which members of Congress see it as in their interests to separate themselves from the president, and in response he lashes out at them, which only encourages them to distance themselves from him even more. What has been a tight alliance could break down quickly.
Mary Beard: Home thoughts from abroad (TLS)
For the first time in my life, I have found it impossible to explain UK politics reasonably positively to curious, intelligent outsiders. I have always before managed to give a fair-enough justification (even if I didn't quite believe it) of the House of Lords or the Queen's Speech. But this debacle has defeated me. I have to say that almost everyone here (US, Italian, Irish, you name it) think that the UK has simply lost the plot.
Mary Beard: How artists get their ideas (TLS)
I have written before about how there are several famous art works which look for all the world like they have been influenced by some equally famous ancient works of art - but they can't possibly have been, because said ancient works hadn't actually been rediscovered in time!
Jonathan Jones: "A lusciously perverse view of a backward land - Sorolla: Spanish Master of Light review" (Guardian)
He was the global face of Spanish art, a quirky and flamboyant painter of a sun-kissed country. But this sensual Spaniard could never paint more than he could see.
J. D. Hutchison: Singer-Songwriter of Roots Music
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Presenting
Michael Egan
wrote:
has returned to semi-retired status.
In memory.
Reader Suggestion
Michelle in AZ
from Bruce
Anecdotes
• In February 2009, the Tucson Weekly celebrated 25 years of existence. Since most alternative newspapers don't last that long, it was and is something to celebrate. Douglas Biggers and a friend named Mark Goehring started the newspaper. Mr. Biggers wrote in the newspaper's 25th-anniversary edition, "It should have died a quick and easy death, since it was started by two 24-year-olds with no money, limited experience and virtually no qualifications to assume the monikers of editor and publisher. The city had a nasty reputation for chewing up and spitting out all attempts to start publications that were alternatives to the daily papers. That the Tucson Weekly continues to thrive and can celebrate 25 years of publication is nothing short of a miracle." One of the miracles that kept the newspaper alive was that they never received a bill for printing it for the newspaper's entire first year of existence. They had asked for two weeks' credit, and they marveled as the two weeks' credit turned into 50 weeks' credit, during all of which time they were making the newspaper grow. At the end of the year, they contacted their printer and set up a meeting to discuss their credit situation. It was about time, because they now owed over $100,000 in printing costs. They soon discovered why they had received a year's credit: An accounting clerk at the printer's offices did not want to confront them about their bill, so the clerk had let the credit continue. Mr. Biggers remembers, "The suits from Texas came to town soon thereafter, and the story ends with a lawsuit that was settled out of court after a series of misadventures with attorneys and a judge pro tem who I am convinced (and whose name I cannot recall) was a fan of the paper and somehow enabled us to prevail against formidable odds." In the end, the Tucson Weeklysurvived, which is something worth celebrating.
• Chicago reporter Harry Romanoff was a good man on the telephone, and he impersonated many notabilities in order to get information. After a Chicago police officer was killed, newspapers wanted a photograph of the police officer, but his family was secluded and would not admit into the house any of the Chicago reporters, including Jack McPhaul, who worked at the Examiner with Mr. Romanoff. However, the door of the house opened, and the widow asked, "Where's the Examiner man?" Mr. McPhaul came forward, and the widow let him inside, led him to the telephone, and said, "The captain wants to talk to you." Not surprisingly to Mr. McPhaul, Mr. Romanoff was on the telephone. Mr. Romanoff said, "Don't let on. She thinks I'm the district captain. I've told her the Examiner is the police department's best friend. She'll give you his picture. Hustle it down here." Mr. McPhaul left the house with a photograph of the slain police officer, much to the disgust and envy of the other rival reporters.
• National Public Radio commentator Daniel Schorr had an extraordinarily long career, and he was still working hard in his 90s. Of course, in that time, he had experienced and been a part of much history, including being on President Richard M. Nixon's "enemies list." He said about his younger colleagues at NPR, "They frequently come to me and ask about Watergate. I've become 'Mr. History.'" Unfortunately, some of his younger colleagues have little sense of history. For example, Mr. Schorr told a story about a person who said to him, "Daniel, I had a question. You covered the Spanish-American War and ..."-of course, the Spanish-American War occurred in 1898, while Mr. Schorr was born in 1916. Mr. Schorr does, of course, use his knowledge of history in his work; he says that "one thing I consciously try to do in the commentaries is take today's development and stack it up against a history of what might have happened before."
• In 1987, the Los Angeles Lakers won the first two games of the NBA Championships, beating the Boston Celtics. Laker Magic Johnson worried after the second game that his teammates, including Michael Cooper, were spending too much time talking to reporters-something that can lead to cockiness and overconfidence, which are not what you want to have when facing a tough opponent. Magic whispered to Michael to end the interview. Michael kept talking, so Magic tapped Michael on the shoulder and told him it was time to end the interview-now. This could have led to a disagreement between teammates, but Michael respected Magic, so he smiled and ended the interview, telling the reporters, "Well, you heard him." The Lakers became NBA Champions, defeating the Celtics four games to two.
• As an employee at the Chicago Sun-Times, Roger Ebert was one of the reporters who spent a lot of time at Billy Goat's and at Riccardo's. Reporters from the Chicago Daily News spent much time at both places, too. Billy Goat's was a bar, and Riccardo's was an Italian restaurant. When Riccardo's was sold, a Chicago Sun-Times reporter interviewed the seller, who said that he had enjoyed being the owner of the restaurant, with one exception: "On Friday nights, they let the animals out of the zoo." John McHugh, a Daily News reporter, read the article, and then told Roger, "Ebert, he means us."
• At one time, sportswriters were a wild and crazy bunch who used to have fun. For example, Texas sportwriters Gary Cartwright, Blackie Sherrod, and Bud Shrake used to wear capes and leotards and pretend to be Les Flying Punzars, acrobatic Italians who came from a mysterious somewhere. Their specialty was the triple somersault, which unfortunately they were always unable to perform because they lacked a trapeze. By the way, Mr. Sherrod used to refer to sports as the "perspiring arts."
• Not every reporter knows much about music, even when assigned to write an article about musicians. When the Beatles first came to the United States, an American reporter asked what they most wanted to see. The Beatles replied, "Muddy Waters and Bo Diddley." Surprised by the answer, the reporter asked, "Where's that?"
• When Oscar Wilde visited Denver, he was warned against going to see the mines in Leadville, since the rough miners of that town would end up harming either himself or his manager. Mr. Wilde wrote the miners of Leadville and "told them that nothing that they could do to my travelling manager would intimidate me."
• New York Mayor Fiorella La Guardia had an interesting way of answering letters. He would read letters, then hand them one at a time to his secretary while saying the appropriate reply: "Say yes, say no, throw it away, tell him to go to Hell."
• J. P. Morgan's librarian, Belle da-Costa Greene, was alleged to have burned some of George Washington's letters that were in his collection. When asked why she had done that, she supposedly replied, "Why not? Mr. Morgan can afford it."
• President Lyndon Johnson once put his face close to the face of White House reporter Hugh Sidey and said, "Every reporter I ever met has a character flaw. What's yours?"
***
© Copyright Bruce D. Bruce; All Rights Reserved
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Bonus Links
Jeannie the Teed-Off Temp
Bruce Reviews
J.D. Hutchison
J.D. Hutchison is better than just better. In Athens County, Ohio, he is sometimes called "Lost John," which is an odd name for such an obviously all-together guy. Maybe he got that nickname because of his self-derogatory humor ("I counted all the way up to ten once and learned all my ABCs up to M and N"). A better nickname for him would be "The Real Deal."
This album opens strongly with his blues song "Little Legs Moan": "'Don't want to hurt you' / That's what she said / She did not hurt me, boys / She killed me stone dead / With the little legs moan."
These lines from "Another Fool's Café" shows his way of poetry-izing lyrics: "There's always an empty table or two / It's a hill jack twilight zone / The door is always open / And the lights are always on / Ain't no bottom to the bottle, boys / No difference in the night and day / There ain't no hands on the clock / In another fool's café."
Another standout song is his "Since My Bird has Flied Away," which has been covered by Ingrid Lucia & The Flying Neutrinos, John Kirkpatrick and Chris Parkinson, and The Local Girls. Any singer-songwriter will probably tell you that the ultimate compliment is other people covering your songs. A few lyrics: "I need to change my head around / Maybe trip out to the zoo / Take a walk downtown / Hell, I don't know what to do / But nothing seems to matter / Since my bird has flied away." The bird, of course, is a woman.
Readers of this review should make heavy use of Amazon's preview snippets of J.D. Hutchison's songs on this page. Fans of roots music (defined as various combinations of blues, folk, country, bluegrass, and whatever else the singer-songwriter knows will make the song better) will find much to like. J.D. Hutchison is a regionally famous singer-songwriter who in my humble opinion ought to be at least nationally famous - and a whole lot richer. Better late than later.
I love this album, all songs are by J.D. Hutchison.
By the way, all the lyrics of this album can be seen at
www.jdhutchison.com/lyrics.html
.
Support local music, and be aware that in the age of the Internet and the WWW, Athens County is local worldwide.
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Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
JD is on vacation.
Visit JD's site - Kitty Litter Music
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Finally, sunny and seasonal.
1.5M Bats in Austin
Batman
Batman's 80th anniversary is being celebrated in Austin, Texas at--where else?--the Congress Avenue bridge Friday evening.
DC Comics selected South by Southwest to celebrate the cape crusader's eight decades, the centerpiece being what the company calls "an incredible moment when more than 1.5 million bats fly into the night over Austin's famous Congress Bridge."
What that means in relation to the bridge's well-known bat population is unclear.
The celebration of all things Batman at SXSW will also include "multiple fan experiences, photo opportunities, limited-edition merchandise and Instagrammable mural by a local artist."
Batman
Return To TV
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson will return to the air on two TV shows that had been put on hold for a sexual misconduct investigation.
The National Geographic Channel said in a statement Friday that Tyson's "StarTalk" will return to the air in April with the 13 episodes that remain in the season.
The statement says Tyson's other show, "Cosmos," will return on National Geographic TV and Fox at a date to be determined.
Late last November, National Geographic Networks and Fox said they would examine reports that Tyson behaved in a sexually inappropriate manner toward two women. Friday's statement did not address the complaints or investigation.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Bird Box
Netflix
In an about face, Netflix has decided to pull footage of the tragic Lac-Mégantic rail accident from its original film Bird Box-almost two months after a spokesperson said the clip will stay in the movie.
In an emailed statement to Gizmodo, a Netflix spokesperson said, "Netflix and the filmmakers of Bird Box have decided to replace the clip. We're sorry for any pain caused to the Lac-Mégantic community." The company declined to publicly comment further on the reason behind its sudden reversal.
Quebec's culture and communications minister Nathalie Roy praised Netflix's decision in a tweet. Translated, the tweet reads: "This gesture was expected out of respect for the victims of this horrible tragedy, their loved ones and the entire Lac-Mégantic community. This result shows that by being united and pooling our efforts, everything is possible."
Lac-Mégantic Mayor Julie Morin is also satisfied with the outcome. "Yes, there was a delay," Morin told The Canadian Press, "but in the end, the most important thing is that people came to the conclusion that the situation was significant enough to settle."
Earlier this year, Netflix issued an apology for including footage of the fatal 2013 accident that claimed 47 lives. In the apology, Netflix noted that the imagery had been unwittingly sourced from stock footage, and because it was so widespread, the company could not make changes to finished content. In January, a spokesperson told the Associated Press that it "will keep the clip in the movie." The clip in question was featured early on in the movie, during a breaking news montage detailing fictional mass suicides.
Netflix
Rehired
James Gunn
Months after being fired over old tweets, James Gunn has been rehired as director of "Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3." Representatives for the Walt Disney Co. and for Gunn on Friday confirmed that Gunn has been reinstated as writer-director of the franchise he has guided from the start.
Gunn was fired last July after tweets from 2008 and 2011 resurfaced on the conservative website Daily Caller, and included offensive jokes like, "I like when little boys touch me in my silly place" and "The best thing about being raped is when you're done being raped and it's like 'whew this feels great, not being raped!'"
Gunn's old tweets also joked about the Holocaust, the 9/11 attacks and AIDS. Gunn apologized for the tweets, which he called "unfortunate efforts to be provocative."
Gunn has been writer and director of the "Guardians of the Galaxy" franchise from the start, taking an obscure Marvel Comics title about a group of multicolored misfits and turning it into a space opera decked with comedy and retro music that made Pratt a major movie star.
Through two installments, the franchise has brought in more than $1.5 billion in global box office, and much has been staked on the third film that would launch another decade, or more, of Marvel films.
James Gunn
Protected By The Constitution
Middle Finger
When it comes to the middle finger, police might need a thicker skin.
A federal appeals court says a Michigan woman's constitutional rights were violated when she was handed a speeding ticket after giving the finger to a suburban Detroit officer in 2017. The decision means a lawsuit by Debra Cruise-Gulyas can proceed.
In a 3-0 decision Wednesday, the court said Taylor Officer Matthew Minard "should have known better," even if the driver was rude.
Minard stopped Cruise-Gulyas and wrote her a ticket for a lesser violation. But when that stop was over, Cruise-Gulyas raised her middle finger.
Minard pulled her over again and changed the ticket to a more serious speeding offense.
Middle Finger
Habitat Opened To Drilling
Sage Grouse
The Interior Department finalized changes Friday to protections for the sage grouse bird, which could open lands in seven Western states to oil and gas drilling.
The Interior Department has been working on changing sage grouse protections since June 2017, when former Secretary Ryan Zinke signed an order asking federal and state governments to strengthen "communication and collaboration... with the shared goal of conserving" sage grouse while also not impeding "local economic opportunities," according to the Bureau of Land Management.
The effort looked at changing land use guidelines across the West that had been put in place under the Obama administration in 2015 to protect the bird's habitat.
House Committee on Natural Resources Chairman Rep. Raul Grijalva, an Arizona Democrat, called the changes a "smash-and-grab job on our environment," in a statement.
"As part of its ongoing campaign to hand over public lands to fossil fuel companies, this administration is rolling back sage grouse protections that many stakeholders created together through a long and deliberative process," Grijalva said. "It seems clear that Acting Secretary David Bernhardt's clients stand to gain more than anyone else from this revision."
Sage Grouse
New Genetic Analysis
Jack the Ripper
Forensic scientists say they have finally fingered the identity of Jack the Ripper, the notorious serial killer who terrorized the streets of London more than a century ago. Genetic tests published this week point to Aaron Kosminski, a 23-year-old Polish barber and a prime police suspect at the time. But critics say the evidence isn't strong enough to declare this case closed.
The results come from a forensic examination of a stained silk shawl that investigators said was found next to the mutilated body of Catherine Eddowes, the killer's fourth victim, in 1888. The shawl is speckled with what is claimed to be blood and semen, the latter believed to be from the killer. Four other women in London were also murdered in a 3-month spree and the culprit has never been confirmed.
This isn't the first time Kosminski has been linked to the crimes. But it is the first time the supporting DNA evidence has been published in a peer-reviewed journal. The first genetic tests on shawl samples were conducted several years ago by Jari Louhelainen, a biochemist at Liverpool John Moores University in the United Kingdom, but he said he wanted to wait for the fuss to die down before he submitted the results. Author Russell Edwards, who bought the shawl in 2007 and gave it to Louhelainen, used the unpublished results of the tests to identify Kosminski as the murderer in a 2014 book called Naming Jack the Ripper. But geneticists complained at the time that it was impossible to assess the claims because few technical details about the analysis of genetic samples from the shawl were available.
The new paper lays those out, up to a point. In what Louhelainen and his colleague David Miller, a reproduction and sperm expert at the University of Leeds in the United Kingdom, claim is "the most systematic and most advanced genetic analysis to date regarding the Jack the Ripper murders," they describe extracting and amplifying the DNA from the shawl. The tests compared fragments of mitochondrial DNA-the portion of DNA inherited only from one's mother-retrieved from the shawl with samples taken from living descendants of Eddowes and Kosminski. The DNA matches that of a living relative of Kosminki, they conclude in the Journal of Forensic Sciences.
The analysis also suggests the killer had brown hair and brown eyes, which agrees with the evidence from an eyewitness. "These characteristics are surely not unique," the authors admit in their paper. But blue eyes are now more common than brown in England, the researchers note.
Jack the Ripper
Changed How People Talk
Rise of Farming
Humankind's gift of gab is not set in stone, and farming could help to explain why.
Over the last 6,000 years or so, farming societies increasingly have substituted processed dairy and grain products for tougher-to-chew game meat and wild plants common in hunter-gatherer diets. Switching to those diets of softer, processed foods altered people's jaw structure over time, rendering certain sounds like "f" and "v" easier to utter, and changing languages worldwide, scientists contend.
People who regularly chew tough foods such as game meat experience a jaw shift that removes a slight overbite from childhood. But individuals who grow up eating softer foods retain that overbite into adulthood, say comparative linguist Damián Blasi of the University of Zurich and his colleagues. Computer simulations suggest that adults with an overbite are better able to produce certain sounds that require touching the lower lip to the upper teeth, the researchers report in the March 15 Science.
Linguists classify those speech sounds, found in about half of the world's languages, as labiodentals. And when Blasi and his team reconstructed language change over time among Indo-European tongues (SN: 11/25/17, p. 16), currently spoken from Iceland to India, the researchers found that the likelihood of using labiodentals in those languages rose substantially over the past 6,000 to 7,000 years. That was especially true when foods such as milled grains and dairy products started appearing (SN: 2/1/03, p. 67).
Although the new findings are "fundamentally correct," human overbite increased much more after the industrial revolution, which began in England in the late 1700s, than after the introduction of agricultural foods 6,000 years ago or more, says biological anthropologist Robert Corruccini of Southern Illinois University in Carbondale.
Rise of Farming
Better Orgasms?
Marijuana
Slightly stoned sex is not a traditional field of study for scientists. But a new piece of research has sought to unravel the theory that marijuana can help enhance sexual experiences and orgasms, especially for women.
The new study found that women who used marijuana before sexual activity were 2.1 times more likely to report satisfactory orgasms.
Writing in the Journal of Sexual Medicine, a team of gynecologists and behavior scientists led by Saint Louis University School of Medicine asked 373 women, 176 of whom were regular cannabis users, about their use of marijuana and sexual experiences.
The researchers' questions quizzed the respondents about their relationship with marijuana, as well as many different "sexual domains", including sexual drive, the intensity of orgasm, lubrication, pain during intercourse, and overall experience. After accounting for certain variables, they then compared the experience of sex following marijuana use with sex not under the influence of the drug.
"Among those who reported using marijuana before sex, 68.5 percent stated that the overall sexual experience was more pleasurable, 60.6 percent noted an increase in sex drive, and 52.8 percent reported an increase in satisfying orgasms," the study's authors wrote.
Marijuana
In Memory
W.S. Merwin
W.S. Merwin, a prolific and versatile poetry master who evolved through a wide range of styles as he celebrated nature, condemned war and industrialism and reached for the elusive past, died Friday. He was 91.
A Pulitzer Prize winner and former U.S. poet laureate, Merwin completed more than 20 books, from early works inspired by myths and legends to fiery protests against environmental destruction and the conflict in Vietnam to late meditations on age and time.
He wrote rhymes and blank verse, a brief report on the month of January and a book-length story in verse about colonialism and the birth of modern Hawaii. Like his hero, Henry David Thoreau, he was inspired equally by reverence for the planet and anger against injustice.
He died in his sleep at his home on the Hawaiian island of Maui, according to publisher Copper Canyon Press and the Merwin Conservancy, which the poet founded.
Merwin received virtually every honor a poet could ask for - more, it turned out, than he desired.
Citing the Vietnam War, he declined a Pulitzer in 1971 for "The Carrier of Ladders," saying that he was "too conscious of being an American to accept public congratulation with good grace, or to welcome it except as an occasion for expressing openly a shame which many Americans feel."
Among other awards he accepted: a National Book Award for "Migration" in 2005, a Pulitzer in 2009 for "The Shadow of Sirius," and such lifetime achievement honors as the Tanning Prize, the Bollingen Prize and a gold medal from the arts academy. He was chosen the country's poet laureate in 2010 and served a single one-year term.
William Stanley Merwin was born in New York City in 1927. He soon moved to Union City, New Jersey, living for years on a street now called "W.S. Merwin Way," then to Scranton, Pennsylvania.
He received a scholarship from Princeton University, becoming the first family member to attend college, and began meeting some of the great poets of the present and future. Galway Kinnell was a classmate at Princeton, and John Berryman a teacher.
After graduating, he lived in Spain and tutored the son of Robert Graves. In London, he became close with Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes and was torn by the collapse of their marriage. Merwin's then-wife, Dido Merwin, would allege that Plath had a crush on him.
By the early 1960s, he was marching against nuclear weapons and throwing off the rules of grammar as if they were a suit and tie, inspired by his "growing sense that punctuation alluded to an assumed allegiance to the rational protocol of written language."
In the 1970s, he settled permanently in Hawaii and studied under the Zen Buddhist master Robert Aitken. Divorced years earlier from Dorothy Jeanne Ferry and from Dido Milroy, he married his third wife, Paula Schwartz, in a Buddhist ceremony in 1983. Paula died in 2017.
W.S. Merwin
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