Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Garrison Keillor: A remaindered sermon from Easter Sunday
At the end, the disciples ran away from the Crucifixion. It was just too much. I run away too. Someday I hope to understand. I don't yet. The loaves and fishes is easier. So I'm not a real Christian. So shoot me. You do and I expect to rise again. The saints and martyrs will be there and also Mabel and Gertrude and Fern, our grade school cooks who fed the poor, and also the monks who were boiled alive by the cannibals but they didn't taste good because they were friars, and of course Jesus, who hung on the cross and cried out to Peter who said, "Yes, Lord?" And Jesus said, "Peter, I can see my house from here." As indeed He could. And so can we. And if you get there before I do, tell all my friends that I'm coming, too.
Katie French: "Laurie Penny: 'From credible bomb threats to warnings you'll be raped' (Daily Mail)
Feminist writer Laurie Penny reveals the torrents of online abuse she has faced as figures show one-in-five women are sexually harassed online.
Laurie Penny: Who Does She Think She Is? (longreads.com)
The internet does not hate women. People hate women, and the internet allows them to do it faster, harder, and with impunity.
Laurie Penny: A generation of shrinking girls: the politics of eating disorders (New Statesman)
Why don't we care more about the eating disorders epidemic?
Ryan Gilbey: "Death Wish and beyond: the bloody history of vigilante movies" (New Statesman)
The typical movie vigilante shares traits with the Trump voter: a white, middle-aged, middle-class male who regards himself as endangered.
Andrew Tobias: Everybody Lies
We are not all pathological liars.* But Everybody Lies: Big Data, New Data, and What the Internet Can Tell Us About Who We Really Are by Seth Stephens-Davidowitz is an awesome read or listen (five hours at 1.5X speed). We lie to pollsters, we lie to our spouses, to our teachers and friends and neighbors - to ourselves - but not so much to Google. And page after page, this produces insights. About sex. (Warning: it gets kinky and graphic.) About prejudice. (It's deeper than we like to think.)
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Presenting
Michael Egan
said:
has returned to semi-retired status.
In memory.
Reader Suggestion
Michelle in AZ
Reader Comment
Current Events
Linda >^..^<
We are all only temporarily able bodied.
Thanks, Linda!
Bonus Links
Jeannie the Teed-Off Temp
from Marc Perkel
Marc's Guide to Curing Cancer
So far so good on beating cancer for now. I'm doing fine. At the end of the month I'll be 16 months into an 8 month mean lifespan. And yesterday I went on a 7 mile hike and managed to keep up with the hiking group I was with. So, doing something right.
Still waiting for future test results and should see things headed in the right direction. I can say that it's not likely that anything dire happens in the short term so that means that I should have time to make several more attempts at this. So even if it doesn't work the first time there are a lot of variations to try. So if there's bad news it will help me pick the next radiation target.
I have written a "how to" guide for oncologists to perform the treatment that I got. I'm convinced that I'm definitely onto something and whether it works for me or not isn't the definitive test. I know if other people tried this that it would work for some of them, and if they improve it that it will work for a lot of them.
The guide is quite detailed and any doctor reading this can understand the procedure at every level. I also go into detail as to how it works, how I figured it out, and variations and improvements that could be tried to enhance it. I also introduce new ways to look at the problem. There is a lot of room for improvement and I think that doctors reading it will see what I'm talking about and want to build on it. And it's written so that if you're not a doctor you can still follow it. It also has a personal story revealing that I'm the class clown of cancer support group. I give great interviews and I look pretty hot in a lab coat.
So, feel free to read this and see what I'm talking about. But if any of you want to help then pass this around to both doctors and cancer patients. I need some media coverage. I'm looking for as many eyeballs as possible to read these ideas. Even if this isn't the solution, it's definitely on the right track. After all, I did hike 7 miles yesterday. And this hiking group wasn't moving slow. So if this isn't working then, why am I still here?
I also see curing cancer as more of an engineering problem that a medical problem. So if you are good at solving problems and most of what you know about medicine was watching the Dr. House MD TV show, then you're at the level I was at when I started. So anyone can jump in and be part of the solution.
Here is a link to my guide: Oncologists Guide to Curing Cancer using Abscopal Effect
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
WHAT A JERK!
REPUBLICANS SUCK!
REPUBLICANS REALLY, REALLY SUCK!
"JUDGE NOT THAT YOU BE JUDGED…" HEE HAW!
OKLAHOMA REPUBLICANS ARE FROM THE DEPTH OF HELL!
Visit JD's site - Kitty Litter Music
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Another marine layer rolled in.
Scathing Words
Dan Rather
Renowned former CBS news anchor Dan Rather chimed in on the disturbing story that Sinclair Broadcast Group, owner of more than 170 U.S. TV stations, had forced its local news outlets to read the same script decrying "false news."
"News anchors looking into camera and reading a script handed down by a corporate overlord, words meant to obscure the truth not elucidate it, isn't journalism," Rather tweeted on Monday. He went on to call the practice "Orwellian" and "propaganda."
Sinclair came under fire over the weekend after Deadspin released this video, which splices together dozens of the company's local affiliates reading from the same anti-"false news" script.
Sinclair, in turn, released a lengthy memo to its newsrooms across the country saying, "There is a lot of noise out there about our company right now, and what is lacking in that analysis is something we constantly preach: context and perspective."
The memo, written by Sinclair Senior Vice President Scott Livingston, then lists a number of accomplishments by the group's various newsrooms.
Dan Rather
Man Sues Comedian
Dave Chappelle
A man who threw a banana peel at Dave Chappelle during a 2015 performance in Santa Fe, New Mexico, is suing the comedian and a man presumed to be his bodyguard.
Christian Englander's lawsuit filed Friday contends the presumed bodyguard struck Englander twice as he was being restrained.
Englander, who is white, has said he had no racial motivation when he threw the banana peel at Chappelle, who is black, but was angered by something Chappelle said during the show.
Englander faced charges of battery and disturbing the peace, but they were dropped because Chappelle was unwilling to participate in the prosecution.
Englander's claim he was assaulted wasn't mentioned in the police report, but his lawyer said it would have been raised if Englander went on trial.
Dave Chappelle
Woman Sues Former Employer
Motorcade
Juli Briskman made headlines last fall after a photo of her flipping off President-for-now Donald Trump's (R-Pendejo) motorcade while riding her bicycle went viral ? and got her fired.
Now Briskman is suing her former employer, government contractor Akima LLC, for potentially breaking state law.
In a lawsuit filed Wednesday in Virginia's Fairfax County Circuit Court, Briskman's lawyers argue that Akima violated state employment law in firing her because it is illegal for a government contractor to terminate an employee out of fear of unlawful government retaliation.
According to the suit, Akima told Briskman she had to go because the photo, which she posted on her Facebook page, violated the company's social media policy. But Briskman claims she was treated differently than another Akima employee who, earlier in 2017, wrote "You're a fucking Libtard asshole" in a Facebook discussion about Black Lives Matter. That person was allowed to keep his job as long as he deleted his post.
Briskman's Facebook page also did not identify her as an Akima employee, while the other worker's Facebook page did name his employer.
Motorcade
'None Of That Was True'
Shep Smith
Fox News' Shep Smith was quick to pounce on President-for-now Donald Trump (R-Crooked) Tuesday, who followed up his series of tweets criticizing Amazon with a rant about how the online retailer costs the United States Postal Service and American taxpayers "billions of dollars a year."
The president, speaking at the White House Tuesday, seemed to be referring to "last-mile deliveries," in which Amazon, along with other delivery giants like Fed Ex and UPS, drop packages off at post offices and use local USPS drivers to deliver parcels to the door.
But, as Smith pointed out, the postal service, which has faced revenue declines for years with the rise of email and fewer individuals sending first-class mail, says it actually makes moneyby delivering packages for Amazon and other delivery services.
"As for taxpayers," Smith continued, "the post office's own website points out, and I quote, 'The postal service receives no tax dollars for operating expenses.'" Instead, the service "relies on the sale of postage, products and services to fund its operations."
Turning to Fox News reporter John Roberts, Smith continued, "There is a great deal of confusion or something here regarding Amazon and the post office because none of that was true."
Shep Smith
Interior Backing Away From Steep Fee Hikes
National Parks
The Interior Department is backing down from a plan to impose steep fee increases at popular national parks in the face of widespread opposition from elected officials and the public.
The plan would nearly triple entrance fees at 17 of the nation's most popular parks, including the Grand Canyon, Yosemite, Yellowstone and Zion, forcing visitors to pay $70 per vehicle during the peak summer season.
While plans are still being finalized, a spokeswoman for Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke said officials have "taken the public's suggestions seriously and have amended the plan to reflect those" comments.
The park service received more than 109,000 comments on the proposal, most of them opposed, during a two-month comment period that ended in late December.
National Parks
International Hitmen
Former Soldiers
A former U.S. Army sniper and two other ex-American soldiers agreed to become contract killers for an international crime boss who wanted to settle a score with a real estate agent in the Philippines he thought had cheated him on a land deal, a prosecutor said Tuesday in opening statements at the trial of the three men.
Joseph Hunter, a onetime sergeant with a Special Forces background, Adam Samia and Carl David Stillwell have denied they planned the 2012 execution-style hit - a case that's provided an inside glimpse into the secret fraternity of private mercenaries willing to kill in cold blood for cash.
Prosecutors said the 52-year-old Hunter was working as a security chief for weapons and drug trafficker Paul Le Roux when he recruited Samia and Stillwell to travel from their homes in Roxboro, North Carolina, to the Philippines for what was called "ninja work." Hunter provided firearms and silencers and told them Le Roux would pay them $35,000 a piece to get the job done, Assistant U.S. Attorney Patrick Egan said in federal court in Manhattan.
The broker, Catherine Lee, was on a "kill list" that self-styled assassins with military backgrounds saw as a golden opportunity, Egan said.
Samia, 43, and Stillwell, 50, did surveillance on Lee before contacting her pretending to be potential clients, the prosecutor said. While returning from a trip to the countryside outside of Manila, Samia pulled out a .22-caliber gun and killed Lee by shooting her twice in the face as she sat in the back seat of a van, he said.
Former Soldiers
Murder Rate Rises
London
London police investigated more murders than their New York counterparts did over the last two months, statistics show, as the British capital's mayor vowed to fight a "violent scourge" on the streets.
There were 15 murders in London in February against 14 in New York, according to London's Metropolitan Police Service and the New York Police Department. For March, 22 murders were investigated in London, with 21 reports in New York.
Including January's figures, New York had still experienced more murders so far this year than London. The cities have a similar-sized population.
Gun violence is much less of a problem in Britain, which has strict gun control laws, than in the United States, and most British police are not equipped with firearms.
But British politicians and police are increasingly expressing concern about London's rising murder rate, which is driven by a surge in knife crime. Of the 47 murders in London so far this year, 31 have been committed with knives.
London
Anti-Immigration Fantasy Novel
'Camp of the Saints'
After days of pushing a hardline stance on immigration, President-for-now Donald Trump (R-Corrupt) has vowed to send the U.S. military to guard the country's border with Mexico until his long-promised wall can be built.
While Trump's plan to militarize the U.S.-Mexico border is not unprecedented, it has sparked comparisons to Jean Raspail's anti-immigration dystopian fiction novel Camp of the Saints, which has widely been denounced as a "racist fantasy."
A synopsis of the book, which was published in 1973, describes it as depicting the "destruction of Western civilization" through a mass immigration to France and the West.
The novel, which has been condemned by the Southern Poverty Law Center as a "favorite racist fantasy of the anti-immigrant movement," saw a return to the best-seller list in 2011 and has come into public awareness once again after it was cited during a Fox News interview on Monday.
It had also been cited numerous times by Trump's former chief strategist Steve Bannon in the months before he joined Trump's election campaign team in August 2016 as metaphor to describe the refugee crisis.
'Camp of the Saints'
4,000-Year-Old Mummy
DNA
A team of forensic scientists has managed to extract DNA from a 4,000-year-old mummy, and their finding has solved a century-old mystery of its ransacked tomb.
The Egyptian mummy wasn't a fully preserved corpse, but rather a decapitated, mutilated, bandage-wrapped head that archaeologists found on top of a coffin when they excavated a tomb back in 1915. And that was the source of the mystery.
As the researchers explained in a paper published March 1 in the journal Genes, the tomb belonged to an Egyptian Middle Kingdom governor named Djehutynakht. But by the time modern scientists found the tomb, it had been ransacked; it was robbed in ancient times. In an article describing the discovery, The New York Times reported that the robbers had set the place on fire "to cover their tracks."
All that remained of the tomb's occupants was a dismembered torso in one corner of the tomb and a head placed on top of Djehutynakht's coffin. For more than a hundred years, researchers have wondered and disagreed about whether these mummified remains belonged to Djehutynakht himself or to his wife.
Still, FBI forensic researchers gave it a shot. They had access because the head, along with many artifacts from the tomb, had long since made its way to the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. (Shipping artifacts out of Egypt would be illegal today under Egyptian law.) They drilled into a molar extracted from the head "in pristine condition" back in 2009, producing 105 milligrams (0.004 ounces) of tooth dust. After exposing the dust to a liquid mixture designed to copy and amplify existing DNA, they found that it came from a biological male. The head, in other words, most likely belonged to Djehutynakht and not his wife. A team at the Department of Homeland Security, working with a smaller tooth-dust sample, later confirmed the results. In both cases, the DNA was damaged, demonstrating that it came from the ancient mummy and not modern contamination.
DNA
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