Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Paul Krugman: How to Rig an Election (NY Times)
Heroic voters are facing down badly broken institutions.
Tommy Craggs: This Election Was About the Issues (Slate)
Not the familiar stuff of Washington gridlock, but the most important issues of our time: misogyny, racism, and xenophobia.
Andrew Tobias: Electric Buses! Flying Cars!
Imagine a US government without gridlock 74 days from now - a government that boosts the economy by putting people to work at good jobs revitalizing our infrastructure; that boosts consumer demand and decreases inequality by hiking the minimum wage and refinancing student loans at today's low rates; that enacts the bipartisan comprehensive immigration reform the Senate passed 68-32 that economists agree would also boost the economy; that imposes the universal background checks even 74% of NRA members want to see.
Barbara Kingsolver: End this misogynistic horror show. Put Hillary Clinton in the White House (The Guardian)
While Clinton holds her head high, why are we not exploding with anger at Donald Trump's bullying?
Eve Ensler: Rise, sisters, rise. Defeat Donald Trump (The Guardian)
If you only vote for one reason, vote for women, for your daughters and sons and for all people. Vote in solidarity with women across the planet. Rise, sisters. Rise.
Richard Wolffe: Who pretends to support kids with HIV but gives nothing? Donald Trump (The Guardian)
If you want the measure of the man who would be president, take another look at his 'charitable giving'. This is someone devoid of shame, in it for himself alone
Franziska Spritzler, RD, CDE: 11 Reasons Why Berries Are Among the Healthiest Foods on Earth (Authority Nutrition)
They are delicious, nutritious and provide a number of impressive health benefits.
First Dog on the Moon: The secrets of The Simpsons ... as sort of revealed by Matt Groening! (The Guardian Cartoon)
Welcome to the highly indulgent but also very exciting adventures of First Dog on the Moon having a nice time and meeting famous people.
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wrote:
took the day off.
has returned to semi-retired status.
Reader Suggestion
Michelle in AZ
Bonus Links
Jeannie the Temp
from Marc Perkel
Patriot Act
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
WHAT TIME IS IT?
THE EVOLUTION OF THE ORANGE MAN.
BUG ME!
COCO COMES HOME!
"GO FUCK YOURSELF YOU REPUBLICAN ASSHOLE!"
"THE BIG CON!"
STOP THE EVIL BASTARDS!
FIGHT FASCISM!
'YOU'RE FIRED!'
"I WANT TO BRING EVERYTHING CRASHING DOWN."
Visit JD's site - Kitty Litter Music
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
No caterpillar pictures - was really dark when I got home from work. Probably won't be any tomorrow, either.
Architecture Prize
Aga Khan
A dome-less mosque designed by a Bangladeshi woman architect and a Beirut institute by the late Zaha Hadid were among six projects awarded the Aga Khan Award for Architecture Sunday.
The prestigious prize was awarded at a ceremony in Al-Ain oasis city, in the United Arab Emirates, to the projects chosen from a list of 348 works.
As well as Hadid's Issam Fares Institute at the American University of Beirut, the winning projects included Tehran's Tabiat Pedestrian Bridge and Copenhagen's Superkilen kilometre-long urban park.
They also included the Friendship Centre in Gaibandha, a training facility for the NGO Friendship that works with communities living in rural flatlands of northern Bangladesh.
Beijing's Hutong Children's Library and Art Centre was also among the winners.
Aga Khan
Moon Adventure
Tintin
A page of original comic strip drawings from one of the best Tintin adventures, "Explorers on the Moon", is expected to sell for up to $1 million when it goes under the hammer later this month.
The page, entitled "We walk on the moon", has the boy reporter, his dog Snowy and blundering sidekick Captain Haddock making their first moon walk from their red and white rocket.
With the 1954 book regarded as one of the artist Herge's very best, the Paris auction house Artcurial said it could make up to 900,000 euros.
The late Belgium artist already holds the world record price for a comic strip.
A double-page ink drawing that served as the inside cover of all the Tintin adventures published between 1937 and 1958, sold for $3.7 million to an American fan two years ago.
Tintin
Another Earthquake
Oklahoma
A sharp earthquake centered near one of the world's key oil hubs Sunday night triggered fears that the magnitude 5.0 temblor might have damaged key infrastructure in addition to causing what police described as "quite a bit of damage" in the Oklahoma prairie town of Cushing.
City Manager Steve Spears said a few minor injuries were reported and questioned whether some of the community's century-old buildings might be unsafe. Police cordoned off older parts of the town to keep away gawkers.
The Oklahoma Corporation Commission said it and the Oklahoma Geological Survey were investigating after the quake, which struck at 7:44 p.m. and was felt as far away as Iowa, Illinois and Texas.
The oil storage terminal is one of the world's largest. As of Oct. 28, tank farms in the countryside around Cushing held 58.5 million barrels of crude oil, according to data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration. The community bills itself as the "Pipeline Crossroads of the World."
Oklahoma has had thousands of earthquakes in recent years, with nearly all traced to the underground injection of wastewater left over from oil and gas production. Sunday's quake was centered one mile west of Cushing - and about 25 miles south of where a magnitude 4.3 quake forced a shutdown of several wells last week.
Oklahoma
Stone Tablet Up for Auction
Ten Commandments
Thou shalt not covet
unless you are coveting the world's oldest known example of a stone tablet inscribed with the Ten Commandments.
The world's oldest slab with the Decalogue will be up for auction until Nov. 16 in Beverly Hills, California. The 2-foot-long (60 centimeters), 200-lb. (90 kilograms) marble slab, dubbed the "Living Torah," is likely 1,500 to 1,700 years old, according to Heritage Autions, which is running the auction.
People hankering for a piece of biblical history must have an opening bid of at least $250,000, and purchasers won't be able to hang the tablet over their fireplace next to pictures of their Aunt Maud. The tablet must be displayed publicly, according to the terms of the sale dictated by the Israel Antiquities Authority, which considers the slab a national treasure.
The marble slab, which contains 20 carved lines of biblical injunctions, was discovered in 1913 in Israel, after construction workers began excavating for a railroad. An Arab man set the marble in his courtyard, where decades of foot traffic wore down the inscriptions, Michaels said.
In 1943, the slab was purchased by a man named Y. Kaplan, who then brought it to noted biblical scholars, according to Michaels. Based on the shape and content of the text, scholars concluded that it was an ancient form of Samaritan, an archaic mixture of Aramaic and Hebrew, that dated to between A.D. 300 and 500. The tablets then changed hands a few more times, and were last purchased in 2005 by Rabbi Saul Deutsch for the Living Torah Museum in Brooklyn, New York, according to the auction house.
Ten Commandments
Unhappy With ESPN
Mark Cuban
Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban has gained a bit of a reputation as the "cool billionaire" by repeatedly attacking Republican candidate Donald Trump (R-Grifter) and calling out his inconsistencies. But in his capacity as Mavs owner, he just recently displayed some uncomfortably Trump-like tendencies in denying press credentials to two longtime Dallas-based reporters for ESPN.
Marc Stein is possibly ESPN's most well-connected basketball reporter, and he's covered the NBA nationally for years. Tim McMahon was, for a while, the network's Mavericks beat reporter, but his duties have expanded beyond one team. The Mavericks, reportedly dissatisfied with the lack of a dedicated beat reporter, decided they would no longer tolerate ESPN's national journalists in their arenas for this past weekend's games.
Additionally, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram is reporting that the ban extends to all ESPN journalists. However, Cuban told USA Today's Sam Amick that only Stein and McMahon have been banned.
To deny credentials to a blog or regional outlet is one (still not good) thing, but this is ESPN we're talking about, a broadcast partner for the NBA. Cuban has fired an opening salvo in what could turn out to be a war over access and coverage, and it's anyone's guess how this will play out.
Mark Cuban
Turns Down National Vote
Australia
Australia's bid to hold a national vote on whether to legalize same-sex marriage was defeated on Monday in the upper house of parliament, or Senate, potentially delaying legal unions for years.
The proposal to hold the vote, or plebiscite, in February next year was voted down in the Senate by 33 votes to 29.
Australia's center-right coalition government, led by Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, in August voted to take the issue of legalizing same-sex marriage to a national poll.
The bill required the support of some opposition lawmakers because Turnbull's Liberal-National coalition has only a one-vote majority in the lower house of parliament and does not have a majority in the upper house.
The rejection is a blow to Turnbull, who has seen his popularity wane amid frustration that he has failed to live up to his progressive reputation.
Australia
Box-Office Fraud
China
China is attempting to crack down on box office fraud in the world's second-biggest movie market by setting out punishments for companies that fabricate ticket sales and other data under the country's first film law.
Under the legislation adopted by the Chinese parliament on Monday, film distributors and cinemas that falsify ticket sales data will have their illegal earnings confiscated and be fined up to 500,000 yuan ($74,000). If they illegally earn more than 500,000 yuan, they will be fined up to five times the amount they illegally made.
They also face being ordered to suspend operations and having their business licenses revoked.
China's film industry is already heavily regulated with censors having broad powers over what can and can't be shown on screen. The law is an attempt to address fraud and other problems that have emerged as China's film market continues to grow quickly. According to official data based on cinema filings, films screened in China earned more than 44 billion yuan ($6.5 billion) in 2015, an increase of almost 50 percent over the year before. But authorities say they believe box office fraud is common.
Such fraud typically involves cinemas and distributors buying up tickets or counting some of the earnings of one film as those of another. Such actions might boost a movie's profile enough to attract a bigger audience, constituting unfair competition. Cinemas might also conceal their true ticket sales to avoid sharing all the takings with the film makers.
China
Secret German Base Rediscovered
World War II
The remains of a secret World War II German base have been rediscovered on an island near the North Pole by a team of Russian researchers.
The wartime "Schatzgrabber" ("Treasure Hunter" in German) weather station was built by the German military in 1943 on Alexandra Land, one of the isolated Franz Josef Land islands in the Barents Sea, located more than 680 miles (1,100 kilometers) north of the Russian city of Arkhangelsk.
The islands are snowy and ice-bound for much of the year and the site was last visited in the 1980s, the researchers said. But earlier this year, in August, a Russian archaeological team was able to explore and catalog the remains of the wartime weather station for the first time.
Among the finds are the remains of several German army and naval uniforms, and fragments of weapons and ammunition - including rifle and machine-gun rounds, land mines and hand grenades - that were abandoned when the last of the base's occupants were evacuated by a German U-boat in 1944.
About 10 German meteorologists and laborers were stationed on the island from 1943, as part of a secret network of Arctic stations to give advanced warnings of weather conditions over the northern oceans and northern Europe, which the German military considered essential to their strategic operations.
World War II
Researchers Seek Underground Plumbing
Old Faithful
Scientists from the U.S. and Denmark are seeking to map out the plumbing system hidden inside the earth's crust that's responsible for the famous Old Faithful geyser and other hydrothermal features at Yellowstone National Park.
Throughout November the research team will conduct flights over the park using a giant, hoop-shaped electromagnetic system suspended from a helicopter. The device acts like an X-ray to determine where and how hot water flows beneath the surface.
The team also hopes to gain insights into the infrequent but sometimes massive hydrothermal explosions that occur in the park, said lead scientist Carol Finn with the U.S. Geological Survey.
One such explosion, or possibly multiple explosions, that occurred roughly 13,800 years ago left a crater that measures 1-1/2 miles (2.6 km) across beneath at the bottom of Yellowstone Lake. It's believed to be the largest such crater in the world.
The study is a collaboration between the U.S.G.S., Yellowstone National Park, the University of Wyoming and Denmark's Aarhus University.
Old Faithful
In Memory
Janet Reno
Janet Reno, the first woman to serve as U.S. attorney general and the epicenter of several political storms during the Clinton administration, has died. She was 78.
Reno's goddaughter, Gabrielle D'Alemberte, says Reno died early Monday from complications of Parkinson's disease.
Reno was one of the Clinton administration's most recognizable and polarizing figures. She faced criticism early in her tenure for the deadly raid on the Branch Davidian compound at Waco, Texas. In the spring of 2000, the Miami native enraged her hometown's Cuban-American community by authorizing the armed seizure of 5-year-old Elian Gonzalez from the home of his relatives so he could be returned to Cuba with his father.
She unsuccessfully ran for Florida governor in 2002.
Janet Reno
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