Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Jamelle Bouie: The Doug Jones Coalition (Slate)
The law provided for free state photo IDs to satisfy the requirements for voting, but in 2015-citing a budget crisis-Alabama Republicans shuttered dozens of driver's license offices, many of them in counties with high numbers of black registered voters. "Every single county in which blacks make up more than 75 percent of registered voters will see their driver license office closed. Every one," noted John Archibald of the Birmingham News at the time.
Alison Benedikt: The Upside of Office Flirtation? (Slate)
I'm living it.
Masha Gessan: "Sex, Consent, and the Dangers of 'Misplaced Scale'" (New Yorker)
In the current American conversation, women are increasingly treated as children: defenseless, incapable of consent, always on the verge of being victimized. This should give us pause. Being infantilized has never worked out well for women.
Jordan Weissmann: Law Professors Just Published a Delightful, 34-Page List of Ways People Will Game the GOP Tax Plan (Slate)
Because they were rushed through Congress at lightning speed and with barely more editing than your average blog post, the Republican tax bills are turning out to be full of kinks. Some of these mistakes-like the $289 billion tax hikeon corporations senators accidentally wrote into their law at the last minute-have been widely covered. But many others are just being discovered. "The more you read, the more you go, 'Holy crap, what's this?'" Greg Jenner, a former top tax official in George W. Bush's Treasury Department, told Politico this week.
Michael Gregor: The Health Effects of Heavy Metal Music
So, you get a spike in amylase when you go skydiving, if you're dunked into cold water, or … if you make a guy listen to heavy metal for ten minutes. With all that extra enzyme, if he's eating bread while banging his head, he can end up digesting it better!
Andrew Tobias: This Is An Emergency: We Should Break The Glass
But first, to get you in the mood . . . Conservative columnist and Republican David Brooks: "The GOP sold its soul a long time ago. Trump only revealed the black, evil monster that hid behind the doors. …."
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Presenting
Michael Egan
took the day off.
has returned to semi-retired status.
In memory.
Reader Suggestion
Michelle in AZ
David E Suggests
Largest Companies
David
Thanks, Dave!
Bonus Links
Jeannie the Teed-Off Temp
Team Coco
CONAN
Reader Comment
Current Events
Holiday ideas
Janet shared the link below. I definitely vote for Alcatraz and would gladly buy one-way tickets for every single, stinking member of the Predator family and administration!
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
"I THINK THAT I SHALL NEVER SEE, A POEM AS LOVELY AS A TREE."
MITCH PULLS HIS THUMB OUT OF HIS ASS.
"CONNECT ME WITH JESUS PLEASE…"
"MAKE THE PLANET GREAT AGAIN"
"KIDS SAY THE DARNEST THINGS."
"NAZIS HAVE FEELINGS, TOO."
Visit JD's site - Kitty Litter Music
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Unseasonally warm and very dry.
Nominations
2018 Golden Globes
Awards season has officially begun. The 2018 Golden Globe nominations were announced this morning at the Beverly Hilton hotel in Los Angeles, presented by Kristen Bell, Garrett Hedlund, Alfre Woodard, and Sharon Stone.
The Golden Globes will take place on January 7, 2018, and will be hosted by Seth Meyers.
The complete list: 2018 Golden Globes
Tops The Good Country Index
Netherlands
The United States has slipped down the rankings of an index designed to rate countries on the effect they have on humanity and on the planet. It fell from 20th place in 2016 to the 25th position this year, out of 163 countries total.
The Netherlands topped the annual Good Country Index, which ranks countries across 35 indicators grouped under seven main headings, including science and technology, planet and climate, and prosperity and equality. The results are then divided by gross domestic product to create a more level playing field.
Data comes from international organizations such as the United Nations, the World Bank and the World Health Organization.
The Netherlands took over the top spot from Sweden, which was first in 2016. The U.S., in 25th place, falls behind much of Western Europe, as well as Canada, Singapore and Japan.
The U.S. did particularly badly in peace and security, something Anholt said is common among rich Western democracies, usually due to military involvement overseas and weapons exports. Its steepest drop in score compared to last year was in contributions to international prosperity and equality - how much a country contributes in terms of free and open trade and spreading wealth.
Netherlands
Ice Age Fossils
Los Angeles
As part of the crew digging a subway extension under the streets of Los Angeles, Ashley Leger always keeps her safety gear close by.
When her phone buzzes, she quickly dons a neon vest, hard hat and goggles before climbing deep down into a massive construction site beneath a boulevard east of downtown.
Leger is a paleontologist who digs for fossils in the middle of a city rather than an open plain or desert. She works for a company contracted by Los Angeles transportation officials to keep paleontologists on hand as workers extend a subway line to the city's west side.
But the discovery that still makes Leger shake her head in disbelief came about a year ago, shortly after construction began on the project's second phase. She was at home getting ready for bed when a call came in from one of her monitors.
After 15 hours of painstaking excavation, the team uncovered an intact skull of a juvenile mammoth.
Los Angeles
Recorded Underwater for 1st Time
Earth's Hum
Far from the blaring cacophony of cities, towns and suburbs, there are far quieter soundtracks to be found - the murmurs of wind rustling grasses, rushing waves tumbling onto beaches, the creaking of tree branches and trunks.
But underneath all that is yet another soundscape, a permanent, low-frequency drone produced by Earth itself, from the vibrations of ongoing, subtle seismic movements that are not earthquakes and are too small to be detected without special equipment.
Earth is "humming." You can't hear it, but it's ongoing. And now scientists have measured that persistent hum from the ocean floor, for the first time.
Most of the movements in the ground under our feet aren't dramatic enough for people to feel them. Earthquakes, of course, are the big exception, but Earth undergoes far more earthquakes globally than you might suspect - an estimated 500,000 per year, according to the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS). Of those, 100,000 are strong enough to be felt, and about 100 of those are powerful enough to cause damage.
Since the 1990s, researchers have known that Earth is constantly vibrating with microseismic activity, known as "free oscillation," scientists reported in a new study describing new recordings of the phenomenon. Free oscillation creates a hum that can be detected anywhere on land by seismometers - equipment used to detect and record vibrations.
Earth's Hum
No Loan Relief
Defrauded Students
The U.S. Education Department under President Donald Trump and Secretary Betsy DeVos has stopped cancelling the student-loan debt of people defrauded by failed for-profit schools and those borrowers face mounting interest and other burdens, its inspector general said on Monday.
DeVos is seeking to redo the process for cancelling the debts of people who attended Corinthian Colleges, which collapsed in 2015 amid government investigations into its post-graduation rates, and other failed schools.
In the final days of his administration, President Barack Obama approved rules speeding up the debt cancellations. DeVos has delayed implementing those rules, saying they would create significant costs for taxpayers.
According to a report by the inspector general, DeVos also brought the existing cancellation process to a crawl.
Since Trump's inauguration on Jan. 20, the department has received 25,991 claims for discharging loans. It has denied two requests and approved none, the inspector general, an independent auditor within the agency, found.
Defrauded Students
Offers Cash To U.S. Farmers
Monsanto
Monsanto Co will give cash back to U.S. farmers who buy a weed killer that has been linked to widespread crop damage, offering an incentive to apply its product even as regulators in several U.S. states weigh restrictions on its use.
The incentive to use XtendiMax with VaporGrip, a herbicide based on a chemical known as dicamba, could refund farmers over half the sticker price of the product in 2018 if they spray it on soybeans Monsanto engineered to resist the weed killer, according to company data.
The United States faced an agricultural crisis this year caused by new formulations of dicamba-based herbicides, which farmers and weed experts say harmed crops because they evaporated and drifted away from where they were sprayed.
Monsanto says XtendiMax is safe when properly applied. The company is banking on the chemical and soybean seeds engineered to resist it, called Xtend, to dominate soybean production in the United States, the world's second-largest exporter.
Monsanto's cash-back offer comes as federal and state regulators are requiring training for farmers who plan to spray dicamba in 2018 and limiting when it can be used. Weed specialists say the restrictions make the chemical more costly and inconvenient to apply, but Monsanto's incentive could help convince farmers to use it anyway.
Monsanto
Your Tax Dollars At Work
Voucher Schools
It was a weekday afternoon here in early December, and a gaggle of kids outside of Clearwater Academy International were playing with a ball, their laughter and shouts filling the air. The school is just a few blocks away from the spiritual headquarters for the Church of Scientology, and church volunteers appeared to be preparing for an event.
Garrett Cantrell, who is not a Scientologist, recalled his time at the school as he sat near Clearwater's harbor, surrounded by Scientologist retreat centers. The school was small and private, exactly what Cantrell was seeking in a high school after moving to Florida from New York in 2008.
He and his family, as they toured the school, had asked about its religious affiliations before he enrolled, specifically wanting to make sure it wasn't associated with Scientology. An employee told them, no. But a few months into the school year, Cantrell decided the answer was not so clear cut.
Clearwater Academy International is one of dozens of schools and tutoring centers in the U.S. that use learning materials based on the ideas of L. Ron Hubbard, the founder of the church of Scientology. Five of these schools and tutoring centers, including Clearwater Academy, receive public funding through voucher or tax credit scholarship programs, HuffPost has found.
Clearwater Academy is a private institution, which means that in general, the school can teach what it likes with little oversight. But the learning materials it uses raise questions about its links to the Church of Scientology, in light of the school receiving more than $500,000 in taxpayer money for student scholarships between 2012-2016.
Voucher Schools
'Goofy' Gerrymandering
Pennsylvania
In Pennsylvania state Senator Daylin Leach's bid to win a seat vital to the Democratic Party's chances in 2018 elections of taking control of the U.S. Congress, his opponents may not be his biggest obstacle.
Leach is running in one of the country's most gerrymandered congressional districts, one with such a twisting, winding shape that it has earned the derisive nickname "Goofy Kicking Donald Duck."
The 7th congressional district has become a national poster child for critics of gerrymandering, the process by which one party draws district boundaries to ensure an advantage among voters. Democrats say the lines have helped Republicans like U.S. Representative Patrick Meehan, the four-term incumbent Leach seeks to unseat, to stay in office.
That could soon change, however. On Monday in state court in Harrisburg, one of three lawsuits challenging those boundaries heads to trial. The outcome could shift several battleground districts in Pennsylvania and in turn boost the Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives, where they last held the majority from January 2007 to January 2011.
The 7th district is so precisely engineered that at one point it narrows to the width of a single seafood restaurant, snaking past two other congressional districts so it can link two far flung Republican-leaning areas.
Pennsylvania
Scientists Obtain Genome
Tasmanian Tiger
Earth lost a truly unique species when Benjamin, the last known thylacine - commonly called the Tasmanian tiger - died in captivity in early September of 1936. Despite an impressive number of alleged sightings of the animal in the years since, no actual documented examples of the species have been found in the wild for nearly a century. Now, thanks to some incredible advancements in DNA research, some scientists believe we could actually bring the species back from the dead.
A new study published in Nature Ecology and Evolution announces that scientists have finally been able to obtain the complete nuclear genome of the thylacine species, revealing an impressive amount about the creature's ancestry. According to the study, the dog-like marsupial was only very loosely related to modern day canines, having shared a common ancestor some 160 million years ago. It was an incredibly special animal, and a branch of the evolutionary tree that stood out on its own.
"They were this bizarre and singular species. There was nothing else like them in the world at the time," one of the researchers, Charles Feigin of the University of Melbourne, Australia, explains. "They look just like a dog or wolf, but they're a marsupial."
Andrew Pask, an Associate Professor at the University of Melbourne, believes that sequencing the thylacine's genome is indeed a huge first step towards helping it turn the tables on extinction. "It is technically the first step to bringing the thylacine back, but we are still a long way off that possibility," Pask explains. "We would still need to develop a marsupial animal model to host the thylacine genome, like work conducted to include mammoth genes in the modern elephant."
At present, the technology that would allow such a thing to be done doesn't exist, yet, but that doesn't mean it won't be possible in the very near future. As Pask notes, the idea of sequencing a genome was also unfathomable a couple of decades ago, and researchers are working towards a future where extinct animals could be brought back under certain circumstances.
Tasmanian Tiger
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