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UH OH!!!
UH OH!!!
THIS DAY IN HISTORY: JULY 17TH- A YELLOW SUBMARINE
This Day In History: July 17, 1968
On July 17, 1968, the world premiere of the Beatles third feature film, the animated “Yellow Submarine”, took place at the London Pavilion on Piccadilly Circus. The Beatles hadn’t been seen in public much recently at this point. They spent most of the year in India with the Marhareshi and recording the White Album. (See: The Beatles Song Named for a Woman that was About a Man)
When the Beatles showed up for the film premiere, throngs of fans turned out to catch a glimpse of their heroes, blocking the streets and bringing London traffic to a standstill in the process. It was one of the last huge public displays of Beatlemania in England. …
The Republicans Who Are Staying Home From Trump’s Convention
Excuses include “I’ve got to mow my lawn” and “I’ve got to really do my hair that week.”
There’s nothing quite like a presidential-nominating convention to turn the political establishment into a gaggle of navel-gazing, status-conscious high schoolers. Invariably, as the quadrennial, four-day schmoozefests approach, tongues cluck and wag in judgment and anticipation: Which political up-and-comers will score prime speaking slots? Are big-name celebs scheduled to appear? Will one of the losing candidates make a stink? Which state’s delegates will have the wackiest hats? Which lobbying shops are hosting the hot after-parties? To whom must one suck up for an invite? And can someone on the Republican planning team please line up a better musical headliner than Kid Rock?
n this cycle, the GOP convention is generating a whole different level of buzz. With Donald Trump scaring the knickers off the party establishment, many players are debating whether to show up in Cleveland at all. Those politicians, strategists, and fund-raisers who do skip the festivities will then have to figure out how best to spend what is typically one of the hottest weeks on the political calendar.
Put another way: What happens when an elaborate, expensive, nationally televised coronation spectacle is taken over by a nominee who gleefully trashes the establishment that created it? …
Trump has a problem with female voters. Pence could make it even worse.
Donald Trump has already had problems making inroads with female, gay and minority voters. His vice-presidential pick, Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, could make things even worse.
Pence, the Republican governor of Indiana, has endorsed conservative legislation on abortion, gay rights and immigration both in his home state and while in Congress, where he was consistently ranked as one of the most right-leaning members of the House. He attempted to shut down the government over Planned Parenthood funding, supported a measure that made English the nation’s official language and signed one of the nation’s strictest abortion laws earlier this year.
Pence is almost certain to appeal to socially conservative and evangelical voters who have been skeptical of Trump, a brash, thrice-married New Yorker with little appetite for fighting the culture wars. By picking Pence, Trump added his inverse to the ticket: a social-issues warrior with a long, very conservative track record. …
10 Scientific Hints Of Possible Higher Beings
Is another being responsible for our lives or even the entire universe? If you believe in God, you have your answer. However, some mind-boggling studies suggest other possibilities for higher beings who are responsible for our existence.
10. The Universe Shouldn’t Exist
According to certain studies, the universe should not have survived more than one second. For example, the big bang should have produced equal amounts of matter and antimatter, canceling each other out. Instead, slightly more matter was produced, creating the entire observable universe. We can’t definitively explain this.
In another theory, the universe is in the Higgs field, which gives particles their mass. A large energy field stops our universe from falling into the valley, a deeper field, where the universe couldn’t exist.
However, if the standard model of physics is correct, a rapid expansion of the universe immediately after the big bang should have moved the universe into the valley. This would have destroyed the universe before it was one second old. …
‘White elevators’ sign spotted at Republican National Convention
This year’s RNC may be a grand old segregated party.
Republican National Convention organizers are scrambling to replace signs labeling a bank of elevators the “white elevators.”
The Jim Crow-esque signs were seen in Cleveland’s Quicken Loans Arena, where thousands of Republican delegates, politicians and supporters are expected to formally nominate bombastic businessman Donald Trump as their party’s presidential pick this week.
Republican National Convention organizersput up signs labeling a bank of elevators as “white,” unintentionally evoking memories of segregation.
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‘Donald Trump was part of the problem’: Cleveland’s subprime lesson for Republicans
Down the road from the Republican National Convention, the decaying evidence of the carnage wreaked by property speculators and subprime loans abounds
The House of Wills Funeral Home is slowly being reclaimed by undergrowth. Weeds climb up the walls, fanning out like veins, unkempt hedges soar skywards and tufts of grass sprout through cracks in the tarmac parking lot.
“No one from the RNC bothered coming here before they chose Cleveland, I’ll bet” says Xavier Allen 44, pointing to three bullet holes in the front window and a collapsed ceiling in the porch, where two red armchairs sit covered in rubble. “Donald Trump doesn’t care. He was part of the problem.”
The building, in the Mount Pleasant neighborhood on the city’s eastside, was abandoned in 2014 after the owners fled without announcement or explanation, amid allegations of fraud. They left behind urns of cremated remains, empty coffins and hundreds of personal client documents. The building was looted shortly after and has remained a hotspot of criminal activity.
But The House of Wills is just one of hundreds of blighted and abandoned properties in this neighbourhood, one of the hardest hit throughout the city’s foreclosure crisis that intensified during the 2008 housing market crash and savaged Cleveland’s poorest neighbourhoods as the city lost 17% of its population within a decade. …
10 Megalomaniacs Who Destroyed The Roman Republic
Today, we think of Rome as an empire. But in reality, Rome came to dominate the ancient world as a republic then slowly went into decline after its transition to an imperial dictatorship. The Roman Republic was an extraordinary state: bustling, powerful, and seemingly capable of anything. Here are the men who killed it.
10. Marius
Gaius Marius is almost forgotten today, but he arguably did more than anyone to ensure the overthrow of the Republic. He was one of ancient Rome’s greatest generals, famous for his victory over nomadic German tribes that threatened Italy.
But to defeat the Germans, Marius had to change Roman society forever. Rome’s legionaries were traditionally small landowners, who served for a short term before returning to their farms. However, Rome’s overseas conquests required legionaries to be away from their farms for long periods, plunging many into poverty. Wealthy aristocrats bought up small estates and merged them into huge plantations. …
PHOTOS: Handing Over The Camera To People With HIV
Photographer Gideon Mendel had won several prestigious awards for his pictures of the HIV/AIDS epidemic. But in 2007, he decided to hand over the camera to his subjects.
He co-founded an organization called Through Positive Eyes and began teaching basic digital camera skills to people who were HIV positive, then encouraged them to capture images of their own lives. Since 2008, they have hosted workshops in 10 cities around the world: Mexico City, Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, Rio de Janeiro, Johannesburg, Mumbai, Bangkok, Port-au-Prince, London and, most recently, Durban, South Africa.
This week, Through Positive Eyes will debut an exhibition at the Durban Art Gallery, featuring 145 photographs. It’s the first exhibit to draw from all the workshops. The opening on July 17 coincides with the 21st International AIDS Conference in Durban, which begins the next day.
South Africans who participated in the Durban workshop will guide visitors through the exhibit. …
The Two Biases That Keep People From Saving Money
Thinking about the future is hard.
That Americans don’t save enough money is a truism. But why don’t they? The answer is a complex mix of macroeconomics (incomes have stagnated for many workers over the last few decades), culture (Americans are notoriously conspicuous spenders), and policies (two-thirds of workers are at companies without retirement plans).
But another variable is the challenge of giving up the gratification of immediate spending for the security of future savings.
A new paper finds that two biases prop up many people’s disinclination to save: “present bias” and “exponential-growth bias.”
Present bias is a straightforward idea. People claim they’re willing to embrace all manners of self-control—saving money, working out, cleaning their room—provided that they don’t have to do so immediately. It is like the regularly scheduled conversation I have with my dentist.
• “Do you want to floss more in the coming months?” Yes.
• “Do you want to floss next week?” Yes.
• “So I assume you flossed yesterday.” Um.
The commonplace name for this behavior is procrastinating. But academics, ostensibly paid by the syllable, favor the terms “hyperbolic discounting” or “time-inconsistency.” The only distinction between flossing next week and flossing right now is the passage of time, and yet it makes all the difference in my attitude. Researchers in this study found the same attitudinal difference among their participants. When they asked people if they preferred $100 today, $120 in 12 months, or $144 in 24 months, they found that about half of respondents took less money if they could have it immediately. …
THIS DAY IN HISTORY: JULY 17TH- A ROYAL DILEMMA
This Day In History: July 17, 1917
By the summer of 1917, the British Royal family was in quite a pickle. Although King George V was the reigning monarch of the Great Britain, his ancestry was almost entirely German, and during World War I anti-German sentiment among the British people was verging on hysteria. German-owned stores were destroyed, and the famously canine-loving Brits even killed German breeds of dogs.
The King’s ties to Germany were not shrouded in generations past either – several of his sisters were married to German princes and the much despised Kaiser – Willy to King George and his family – was his first cousin. In 1914, King George had made the mistake of not stripping the Kaiser of all his British honors of chivalry or honorary commands of British regiments. It was the last time the King would bend to family loyalty. …
Dissonant tones sound fine to people not raised on Western music
Musical perception is, surprisingly, not shared by all humans.
Bobby McFerrin demonstrates how Western music lives in our brains.
The notes used in Western music—or, more accurately, the relationships between the notes used in Western music—have a strange power. Bobby McFerrin demonstrated this dramatically by showing that an audience somehow knows what notes to sing when he jumps around the stage. He remarked that “what’s interesting to me about that is, regardless of where I am, anywhere, every audience gets that.”
He’s suggesting that something about the relationships between pitches is culturally universal. All people seem to experience them the same way, regardless of where they’re from or whether they have musical training. The question of universals in music perception is important because it can help us determine how much of our perception is shaped by culture and how much by biology. A paper in this week’s Nature reports on the surprising finding that a form of musical perception long thought to be common across all humans might not be so universal after all. …
Discovery by Denver Museum of Nature & Science uncovers the real reason turtles have shells
Mummies, tastebuds, crazy cave worms and more surprising, Denver-based research
Turtles developed shells to help them burrow underground — not for protection, as many scientists previously thought.
This “novel hypothesis” is confirmed in a new study by an international group of paleontologists and spearheaded by Tyler Lyson, the curator of vertebrate paleontology at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science.
“It’s a big deal,” Lyson said over the phone this week from a dig site near the Montana/North Dakota border. “In time, people will realize that the notion of the shell evolving for protection is a bit of a silly idea. It’s like saying bird feathers evolved for flight.”
Wait: didn’t they?
“Natural selection is not forwarding thinking,” Lyson, 33, said. “I can’t think of an example where the current function of a complex structure matches its original function — like lungs, which were initially air bladders for fish. Or feathers, which are the best example. It’s thought that they were developed for thermal regulation and sexual selection, not flight.” …
Drug Users Are Being Slaughtered Right Now (& No One Cares)
Look, I get it. There are a lot of crazy things happening in the world right now. It’s hard to keep tabs on everything. That said, I’m consistently baffled at the kinds of things that fail to make headlines in this country. Case in point: Are you familiar with what’s happening in the Philippines right now?
Sure, you know a crazy person was running for president or something. His name is Rodrigo Duterte.
And he’s a total piece of human trash.
I wrote about him here before. John Oliver dedicated a segment to him on an episode of Last Week Tonight. He didn’t get a ton of media coverage here, but enough to get himself labeled “the Trump of the East.” Which is actually kind of unfair to Trump, if I’m being totally honest.
But you’re still gross, and I hate you.
Donald Trump has said some crazy shit, but give me any example, and I promise you’ll find a Rodrigo Duterte quote along the same lines that’s infinitely more heinous. Trump is a misogynist, but he’s never publicly expressed his regret over not having been able to participate in a gang rape. Trump says he’ll deport immigrants, but he’s never promised to execute 100,000 people and dump them in the nearest body of water within six months of taking office. …
What Makes A Comedy Funnier? Music With A Straight Face
When you’re making a movie that straddles the line between horror and comedy, and you need a musical score that makes it somehow both scarier and funnier, who you gonna call? In the case of this year’s Ghostbusters reboot, that would be composer Theodore Shapiro.
Shapiro has scored nearly 50 comedy films over the past 20 years, and most of them with a straight face. “My instincts as a composer are towards doing things that are serious,” he says. “So I’m always wanting to write something that’s satisfying on an emotional level.”
Whether he’s working with the war-ravaged jungles of Tropic Thunder, the athletic glory of Dodgeball or the sultry espionage in Spy, Shapiro says that when he scores a comedy, he wants to make viewers care the way they would with a drama. …
American Elections Through the Eyes of Foreign Correspondents
“I’m completely mystified,” says one Indian reporter.
They’ve chronicled the U.S. presidential election for months (years? eons?), criss-crossing the country and filing dispatches with headlines like “Why it takes only a broken taillight for America to erupt,” “Giant meteor or Trump vs Clinton? It’s a hard call for some US voters,” and “Donald Trump’s exploitation of Orlando benefits ISIS.” Now they’re preparing to cover one of America’s signature political spectacles: the nominating convention. And they’re uniquely positioned to provide some of the sharpest and most original analysis of the race.
Ahead of the Republican and Democratic conventions, I spoke with four foreign correspondents about how they’re making sense of the 2016 election and explaining the campaign to their audience. The Lebanese journalist Joyce Karam, who has covered U.S. politics since 2004 and serves as the Washington bureau chief for the pan-Arab newspaper Al-Hayat, expressed concern about her safety—even about openly speaking Arabic—at the GOP convention in Cleveland, given Trump’s rhetoric about Muslims. The German journalist Matthias Kolb, who’s covering his second U.S. presidential contest for the newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung, argued that America isn’t as divided as it seems. Like most of the reporters I spoke with, the Australian journalist Zoe Daniel, who’s covering her first U.S. election for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, said she has struggled to understand America’s inaction on gun violence. I asked the Indian journalist Chidanand Rajghatta, a Times of India correspondent who’s been attending conventions since 1996, about his strangest experience so far on the campaign trail. He said simply: “Every time Mr. Trump opens his mouth.”
I posed the same series of questions to each correspondent. An edited and condensed transcript of their answers follows. …
10 Amazing Ways Dogs Have Been Venerated
Dogs have served as man’s faithful companions and underpaid workers for thousands of years. Though not all have appreciated the effort, some cultures duly paid their respects in odd or heartwarming fashions.
10. Territorio de Zaguates
Costa Rica’s Territorio de Zaguates, the land of the strays, is a dog lover’s dream come true. In Alajuela, dogs of all ages and appearances are welcome to live out their lives frolicking in tropical bliss.
The ranch-turned-dog-sanctuary is one of the world’s most lavish no-kill shelters. Each dog is allowed to roam in the sunny, stress-free environment, safe from motorists, dogcatchers, and other municipal dangers. The liberty to commingle has also produced some of the world’s most unlikely breeds, including a chubby-tailed German dobernauzer. …
Welfare cards carry number for sex line instead of help line
Holders of electronic benefits cards in Maine get a surprise when calling in to check their balances
Some holders of electronic benefits transfer cards in the US state of Maine have found that dialling the phone number on the back of the cards gets them a sex line instead of their balance.
A Maine government spokesman told the Sun Journal that officials were aware that the phone number on some welfare cards was off by one digit.
Lj Langelier, of Lewiston, discovered the error when he went to check his EBT balance before going to the grocery store. What he got instead was a message welcoming him to “America’s hottest talk line”. …
What I learned playing prey to Windows scammers
Three months of phone calls prove Windows scammers are more skilled at social engineering than you think.
“I am calling you from Windows.”
So goes the opening line of the well-known phone scam, where a person calls purporting to be a help desk technician reaching out to resolve your computer problems. These Windows scammers feed off people’s concerns about data breaches and identity theft to trick them into installing malware onto their machines. The scam has been netting victims for years, despite the fact that none of what the callers say makes sense.
I recently received such a call and decided to play along, to see how the scam evolves and who the players might be. Over a period of three months, I received calls on average of four times a week, from various people, all intent on proving that my computer had been hacked and that they were calling to save the day. I had multiple opportunities to try a variety of conversational gambits and to ask questions of my own. Here is what I found out about the Windows scammer underworld via conversations with “Jake,” “Mary,” “Nancy,” “Greg,” “William,” and others.
The scam’s success hinges on being helpful
The callers are polite, and they sound very earnest, explaining in great detail how hackers can loot your bank accounts, steal your identity, and compromise passwords. They are intent on convincing you the threat is not only real but hackers are already in your system performing all manner of nefarious activities. Your computer has been slow, they say. Or they explain that they have detected suspicious activity emanating from your PC. …
JANE ELLIOT AND THE BLUE-EYED CHILDREN EXPERIMENT
On April 4, 1968, Jane Elliot, a third grade teacher in Riceville, Iowa, turned on her television set to learn more about Martin Luther King’s assassination and was appalled at what she heard from a white reporter. With microphone pointed toward a black leader, the white reporter asked, “When our leader (John F. Kennedy) was killed several years ago, his widow held us together. Who’s going to control your people?”
According to Jane Elliot herself, in an interview for a Frontline documentary called “A Class Divided“, her lesson plan for April 5, 1968 changed the night of April 4, 1968 after she heard that reporter talking. She stated,
On the day after Martin Luther King was killed, I–one of my students came into the room and said, ‘They shot a king last night, Mrs. Elliott, why’d they shoot that king?’ I knew the night before that it was time to deal with this in a concrete way, not just talking about it, because we had talked about racism since the first day of school. But the shooting of Martin Luther King, who had been one of our heroes of the month in February, could not just be talked about and explained away. There was no way to explain this to little third graders in Riceville, Iowa.
As I listened to the white male commentators on TV the night before I was hearing things like ‘Who’s going to hold your people together’, as they interviewed black leaders. ‘What are they going to do? Who’s going to control your people?’ As though this was–these people were subhuman and someone was going to have to step in there and control them. They said things like when we lost our leader, his widow helped to hold us together. Who’s going to hold them together? And the attitude was so arrogant and so condescending and so ungodly that I thought if white male adults react this way, what are my third graders going to do? How are they going to react to this thing? I was ironing the teepee–we studied an Indian unit, we made a teepee every year. The first year the students would make the teepee out of pieces of sheet, we’d sew it together. And the next year we’d decorate it with Indian symbols.
I was ironing the previous year’s teepee, getting it ready to be decorated the next day. And I thought of what we had done with the Indians. We haven’t had much progress in these 200, 300 years. And I thought this is the time now to teach them really what the Sioux Indian prayer that says, ‘Oh great spirit, keep me from ever judging a man until I have walked in his moccasins’, really means. And for the next day, I knew that my children were going to walk in someone else’s moccasins for a day. Like it or lump it, they were going to have to walk in someone else’s moccasins.
I decided at that point that it was time to try the eye color thing, which I had thought about many, many times but had never used. So the next day I introduced an eye color exercise in my classroom and split the class according to eye color. And immediately created a microcosm of society in a third-grade classroom.”
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