Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Marc Dion: A Beautiful Death (Creators Syndicate)
Men who believe in some version of Islam cut the throat of Fr. Jacques Hamel the way you'd cut the throat of a hog. He was 85, a priest celebrating Mass in a small French town called Saint Etienne-du-Rouvray. "Etienne" is the French version of the English name Stephen. St. Stephen, stoned to death A.D. 36, is the first Christian martyr.
Froma Harrop: There's No Bernie Revolution Without Bernie (Creators Syndicate)
One hesitates to discuss the small group of Bernie Sanders followers throwing tantrums at the Democratic convention. Some 90 percent of Sanders backers say they've already moved their support to Hillary Clinton.
Lenore Skenazy: Fed-Ex Fiances (Creators Syndicate)
"I'm not suggesting that this is the marital path for everybody," Zug said in a phone call. But in her new book, "Buying a Bride: An Engaging History of Mail-Order Matches," she argues that mail-order matrimony "can actually be a very good choice for certain people in certain situations." Yes, even for the women.
LENORE SKENAZY: Gotta Scare 'Em All! (Creators Syndicate)
"Pokemon Go" is so fun, so simple, so sharable, it is as if the company invented the 21st-century equivalent of the ball - a toy kids can play with on their own, or in a group, or when they're walking down the street.
Susan Estrich: The Donald Uncensored (Creators Syndicate)
Like her or not, Hillary Clinton is the most qualified person to run for president in my lifetime. And that is what matters in a dangerous world.
What I'm really thinking: the benefits adviser (The Guardian)
Confidentiality is crucial, but sometimes I can't help telling people, in general terms, what my clients have gone through.
Clive James: 'It's Boris Johnson's personality that makes him look as if he's been rolled on by a horse' (The Guardian)
The new foreign secretary gave an immediate impression of total dishevelment. But this is as well-groomed as he is ever going to get.
Daniel Dockery: How Suicide Squad Made Hot Topic Cool Again (Cracked)
I can't say how the cosplay community would feel about the Harley Quinn be-all and end-all solution that Hot Topic is offering, but I feel like, from what I've seen of the community and the general atmosphere of it, that it'll probably be pretty welcoming. One of the coolest things about cosplay is that everyone that I've met who does it enjoys it so unabashedly. Whether it took them five minutes or five months to assemble their costume, they take so much pride in it, and I don't think it gets the recognition that it deserves.
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David Bruce has over 80 Kindle books on Amazon.com.
wrote:
took the day off.
has returned to semi-retired status.
Reader Suggestion
Michelle in AZ
DJ Useo Suggests
Useo Newseo
Here're some interesting news bits.
I always like to read news, as I was involved in journalism
back when it was an acceptable profession. Lmao.
Name Change
Lumpy
Remember Clarence 'Lumpy' Rutherford on Leave It To Beaver?
Lumpy was the rich kid - lazy, petulant, not too bright, packing a few extra pounds, and quite full of himself.
A coddled daddy's boy - arrogant, sullen, mean, and a bully.
I've come to the conclusion that Donnie Trump is the 21st century version of Lumpy Rutherford.
And, 'Lumpy Trump' has a nice ring to it.
So, from now on, it's no longer T-rump, but Lumpy.
~ marty
from Marc Perkel
Patriot Act
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
WHAT AN 'IDIOT'.
AARP? WTF???
IT'S TIME FOR THE WORLD TO GO ON A DAMN DIET!
R.I.P. FUNNY GUY!
"THEY ARE LIKE US."
LOSER!
"WHEN FEAR AND BIGOTRY ARE ON THE RISE…"
Visit JD's site - Kitty Litter Music
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Neighbors had quite a party.
Takes Lumpy To Task, In Spanish
George Takei
George Takei is speaking out against GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump (Pinche Pendejo), and he's doing it in Spanish.
In an English-subtitled video that's drawn more than 12 million views in less than two weeks online, the "Star Trek" actor compares Trump's proposed deportation of undocumented Latino immigrants to the World War II internment of more than 100,000 Japanese-Americans, including Takei and his family.
"I'm addressing this to my Spanish-speaking fans and their friends," he says in the four-minute video. "I want to give some personal, historical context on how Donald Trump's words and plans can have very real and terrible consequences."
It's painful history for Takei, who was 5 years old when he and his family were removed from their Los Angeles home and eventually sent to a camp in Arkansas. The West Coast relocation was part of the federal government's response after Japan's 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor in Hawaii.
"It was my parents who heard the sounds we are hearing today from Donald Trump, the sweeping statements he makes characterizing and stereotyping a whole group of people," Takei said in an interview. "My father lost his business and we lost our home and our freedom. With no charges, to be locked up, imprisoned."
George Takei
Honoring American Workers
3-D Mural
A Connecticut artist's dream to honor American workers with a 5-stories-high mural that ties in contributions from thousands of children across the country is moving closer to reality.
Ellen Griesedieck and her American Mural Project were awarded a $1 million matching state grant to help transform two old mill buildings in Winsted, one of Connecticut's first mill towns, into a visitors center and gallery space to house a 3-D mural 120-feet-long and 10-feet-wide. Bids are due in August and construction could take about a year.
Once completed, it's expected to be the largest indoor collaborative artwork in the world.
Since Griesedieck envisioned the project 15 years ago, she has held workshops with 10,000 students across the country and gotten support from both little- and well-known names, including personal friend and actor Paul Newman, Mohammad Ali and tennis pro Andre Agassi.
Multiple images and symbols of the American workforce - from auto plant workers to NASA scientists - will cover the mural. Artwork from the student workshops will be incorporated into the giant painting.
3-D Mural
World's Deepest Blue Hole
South China Sea
Chinese researchers claim to have found the world's deepest underwater sinkhole, known locally as Dragon Hole in the South China Sea.
After a year of exploring the blue hole, researchers at the Sansha Ship Course Research Institute for Coral Protection concluded that the "eye" of the sea measures a staggering 300 meters in depth or (984 feet), reports state-owned news agency Xinhua.
For context, the Eiffel Tower is 324 meters (1,063 feet) tall.
The hole is located in the Paracel Islands near coral reefs and is home to more than 20 species of marine life along the upper levels of the sinkhole.
Blue holes are large marine caverns characterized by dark blue waters in the center of the circle, ringed by light blue waters.
South China Sea
U.S. To Crack Down
Ocean Noise
The ocean has gotten noisier for decades, with man-made racket from oil drilling, shipping and construction linked to signs of stress in marine life that include beached whales and baby crabs with scrambled navigational signals.
The United States aims to change that as a federal agency prepares a plan that could force reductions in noise-making activities, including oil exploration, dredging and shipping off the nation's coast.
"We've been worried about ocean noise for decades, since the 1970s," said Richard Merrick, chief science adviser to the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) fisheries agency and a key author of the agency's more detailed 10-year plan to be released publicly later this year. "The question is, what should we do now?"
The draft plan calls for developing noise limits and setting up a standardized listening system. It would also call for the creation of an online archive of noise data that could hold thousands of hours of recordings, which scientists could then cross-reference against data on where marine life congregates.
The plan urges more research on the effects of noise on sea creatures and more coordination with environmental and industry groups, the military and government.
Ocean Noise
Trade Groups Whine
'Net Nutrality'
Several wireless, cable and broadband trade associations on Friday urged the full U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia to reverse a ruling upholding the Obama administration's landmark rules barring internet service providers from obstructing or slowing consumer access to web content.
A three-judge panel in June, in a 2-1 decision, backed the Federal Communications Commission's so-called net neutrality rules put in place last year to make internet service providers treat all internet traffic equally.
The wireless trade association CTIA said in a court filing on Friday seeking a rehearing that "few final rules of any federal administrative agency have ever had so much potential to affect the lives of so many Americans."
In a separate petition, US Telecom and CenturyLink Inc asked the court to reconsider the ruling, as did the National Cable & Telecommunications Association and American Cable Association.
The cable groups said the court should correct "serious errors" in an FCC decision "that radically reshapes federal law governing a massive sector of the economy, which flourished due to hundreds of billions of dollars of investment made in reliance on the policy the order throws overboard."
'Net Ntrality'
Urged To Back Lumpy
Kochs
A group of at least six wealthy Republican donors is urging the billionaire Koch brothers to step off the sidelines of the U.S. presidential election to back Donald Trump (R-Flimflam), arguing they will want influence with the New York businessman they have harshly criticized if he wins the White House in November.
The financiers, prominent members of the sprawling 700-member Koch donor network, have been making their case in emails and phone calls to Charles and David Koch ahead of their bi-annual donor seminar, which begins Saturday in Colorado, according to four donors involved in the loosely-coordinated effort and advisers representing two others.
An endorsement from the Kochs would be a radical departure: The industrialist brothers have railed against Trump's "monstrous" rhetoric and protectionist policies on immigration and trade. They have said they will not get involved in the presidential election and will instead focus on Senate races.
All the while, Trump has blasted the donor class and vowed not to become a "puppet" of outside interests as he campaigns to win the Nov. 8 election.
Kochs
Warming 15 Times Faster
Lake Tahoe
The average surface temperature of Lake Tahoe has risen faster over the last four years than any time on record - 15 times faster than the long-term warming rate over the past half century, scientists say.
Continued warm and dry conditions contributed to several record-breaking measurements at Lake Tahoe in 2015, raising concerns about the ecological impacts of climate change on the second deepest lake in the United States, according to an annual report issued Thursday by the UC Davis Tahoe Environmental Research Center.
"Lake Tahoe experienced a year like no other," according to the research center, which started keeping water temperature records in 1970 when it averaged 50.3 degrees.
The temperature in 2015 warmed nearly one-half of a degree from the previous year to a record 53.3 degrees Fahrenheit, the new study says.
Tahoe's surface temperature slowly was increasing until it declined between 1997 and 2011, but since then it "has warmed at an alarming rate of over 0.3 F per year" - 15 times faster than the long-term average rate of .018 per year, the researchers said.
Lake Tahoe
Mass Die-Off At Marine Sanctuary
NOAA
Federal scientists say a massive die-off is taking place on a coral reef of a national marine sanctuary in the Gulf of Mexico.
Steve Gittings, chief scientist with the Office of National Marine Sanctuaries, reported this week that federal scientists are studying a large-scale mortality event of unknown cause taking place at the East Flower Garden Bank in Gulf of Mexico.
The reef is part of the Flower Garden Banks National Marine Sanctuary, about 100 miles off the coasts of Louisiana and Texas.
Researchers with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management are reporting unprecedented numbers of dying corals, sponges, sea urchins, brittle stars, clams and other invertebrates, Gittings said.
He said sport divers discovered dead animals Monday, along with hazy water and patches of white mats coating corals and sponges. The divers alerted nearby federal scientists who were doing annual monitoring work on the same reef.
NOAA
Debate Schedule 'Unacceptable'
Lumpy
Donald Trump (R-Grifter) says the fall debate schedule is "unacceptable," raising the specter that he may try to skip them.
In a tweet on Friday night, Trump incorrectly said that Hillary Clinton and the Democrats are "trying to rig the debates."
In fact, the fall debate schedule was determined almost a year ago by the nonpartisan Commission on Presidential Debates, a private group made up of both Republicans and Democrats.
The Commission on Presidential Debates has many critics too, but it was specifically formed to provide a nonpartisan structure for debates that doesn't favor one candidate over another.
Lumpy
In Memory
James Alan McPherson
James Alan McPherson, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning story collection "Elbow Room" and a longtime faculty member at the University of Iowa's prestigious Writers' Workshop, has died.
McPherson died Wednesday at Mercy Hospital in Iowa City from complications of pneumonia, according to Iowa program secretary Deborah L. West. He was 72 and retired from Iowa in 2014.
A native of Savannah, Georgia and graduate of Harvard Law School who chose instead to become a writer, McPherson was best known for "Elbow Room," candid and compassionate takes on race and the misunderstandings between black and white. Published in 1977, "Elbow Room" was praised by The New York Times for the "fine control of language and story," ''depth in his characters" and "humane values" and made McPherson the first African-American to win the fiction Pulitzer.
His other works included the story collection "Hue and Cry" and the memoir "Crabcakes." In 1981, McPherson was named a MacArthur fellow.
He taught at several schools, notably at Iowa, home to one of the country's oldest and most elite creative writing programs. One of his former students, fiction writer Nathan Englander, tweeted Thursday that McPherson was a "great writer, a great thinker, & a generous teacher.
James Alan McPherson
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