July 25, 2016 in 3,751 words

Doggie Bag

THIS DAY IN HISTORY: JULY 25TH- THE FIRST “TEST TUBE” BABY IS BORN

This Day In History: July 25, 1978

On this day in history, 1978, the first “test tube” baby, Louise Brown, was born weighing 5 lb. 12 oz. (2.6 kg) to Leslie and John Brown who had up to this point been unable to have a child due to Leslie’s lack of proper fallopian tubes. The couple eventually learned of and agreed to try In vitro fertilization (IVF), though the doctors did not tell them that no baby had ever successfully been born via this experimental method. None-the-less Louise was born healthy, albeit prematurely due to some complications during pregnancy. This success paved the way for about 4 million other IVF babies being born to date.

Ultimately, rather than a natural birth, the doctors decided for Louise to be born via a Caesarian section. According to Dr. John Webster who helped deliver Louise, “It was the only way to show the world that this woman had no fallopian tubes. Otherwise, there would have been skeptics who might claim that she could have become pregnant naturally, no matter what we said… A lot of people felt we were meddling in nature, and shouldn’t be doing things like this, but the majority of the people coming to us had damaged tubes, and had no chance of conceiving naturally.” …

John Oliver: GOP’s ‘mismanaged sh*tshow’ substituted feelings for facts to create terrifying reality

Comedian John Oliver returned to “Last Week Tonight” after a two-week vacation, just in time to digest the Republican National Convention, which he said was the most apocalyptic thing to happen to Cleveland — “and bear in mind, their river has repeatedly caught fire.”

After an epic takedown of Donald Drumpf, earlier this year, he took his attacks to a whole new level, calling the convention “a four-day exercise in emphasizing feelings over facts.”

Many Trump supporters joined together in promoting Trump’s business practices, claiming he’s a visionary who gets things done like some version of Bob the Builder on steroids. There’s only one problem with that narrative: His convention was a “mismanaged sh*tshow.” Whether it’s Melania Trump lifting Michelle Obama’s speech, to Ted Cruz being booed off the stage, to the fact that Trump even knew Cruz wasn’t endorsing him and didn’t care. …

John Oliver and some of America’s favorite recording artists remind politicians not to use their songs without permission on the campaign trail.

Did Donald Trump really say those things?

Donald Trump’s long history of making controversial statements is catnip for opposition researchers, because an attack ad can simply use the GOP presidential nominee’s voice.

In an ad released by a super PAC affiliated with Emily’s List, ordinary Americans are asked to read Trump’s statements. Many refuse, although they later show the cards with the quotes to the camera. This is an effective way of demonstrating how objectionable Trump’s statements may be to certain voters, but it also allows the ad makers to show one provocative quote — “laziness is a trait in blacks” — for which there is no actual recording; it is a secondhand quote attributed to Trump by a former employee.

As a reader service, we will explain where these quotes come from. Only one quote was actually made during the current campaign season; the rest come from Trump’s past, from as long as 27 years ago. Obviously, it is up to readers to decide whether these remarks are appropriate — or relevant to the pursuit of the presidency. …

10 Crazy Little-Known Rules Of Mormon Life

Nearly 15 million Mormons are spread across the world, yet the rest of the population seems to know little about them or their beliefs. They seem like wholesome people, but what are their lives actually like? What rules are the Mormons supposed to follow?

It’s a question worth asking because it turns out that there are quite a few rules—and some of them are a lot weirder than you might expect.

10. No Drinking Hot Drinks

While Christians are happy to go around turning water into wine and drinking until they pass out naked in tents like Noah, Mormon scriptures specifically forbid all the most dangerous substances: alcohol, tobacco, and drinks slightly warmer than room temperature.

Most of the time, this “no hot drinks” rule is interpreted as meaning “no coffee or tea.” That might make sense if it’s a rule against caffeine because caffeine is addictive.

But strangely, it’s not a rule against caffeine. …

Hillary & Donald: Separated at Birth?

^{The two candidates who love to hate each other are surprisingly alike.}

SHE’S A DIPLOMATIC WONK IN A PANTSUIT; HE’S A foul-mouthed billionaire. Could two candidates be more different? Actually, they could. From their age to their millions, their hair color to their home address, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump have a startling amount in common. And if you think about it, it’s even sorta kinda funny. To guide us through the highly intersecting Hillary-Donald Venn diagram, we invited two of the funniest writers out there: Chelsea Handler, the comedian and host of the Netflix talk show “Chelsea,” and Susanna Wolff, the CollegeHumor editor turned TV writer. Of all the absurdities of this election, what if the real absurdity is that our choice this fall isn’t much of a choice at all?

1. They both have magnificent “blond” hair.

Trump’s specially crafted bouffant is more famous, but don’t discount Clinton’s similarly dyed coif. When Matt Drudge asked last year whether Clinton was wearing a wig, the very jealous Trump immediately responded: “It must be—it was massive.” Clinton’s Chappaqua hairdresser shot back rather Trumpishly that her client “has the most amazing hair in the world.” And all along, Trump had thought his hair was the most amazing hair in the world. —C.H. …

Trump’s tax plan would do little for the average American but a lot for the 1%

^{Donald Trump’s three-bracket tax system looks appealingly simple, but it would end up making the rich richer – and leave the rest of America anything but great}

If you were watching or listening to Donald Trump’s epic speech accepting the Republican party’s nomination for president, you couldn’t have missed the cheers that followed his statement that “America is one of the most highly taxed nations in the world.” The problem? It just isn’t true. And if Trump gets his way, it’ll be even less true for his 1% friends.

Trump may have been directing his words at some of those he needs to woo as donors, reassuring the country’s most affluent citizens that his proposal last year to levy higher taxes on the wealthy and to pursue fat-cat hedge fund managers was just so much hot air – that he really didn’t mean any of it.

He also was oversimplifying the whole debate about corporate taxation, which is a tangled mess. While tax rates are high, the amounts that are collected are low; deductions and exclusions shrink the rate that’s payable; and companies end up holding large pools of cash offshore so that they don’t have to pay those high US tax rates. At last count, that cash mountain topped $2tn.

But that’s not what Trump said. He simply claimed that we are overtaxed. …

10 Fascinating Facts About Egyptian Hieroglyphs

The elegant and mysterious design of hieroglyphics have captured our imagination for thousands of years. They remained undeciphered and silent for centuries until the Rosetta Stone was discovered in the 18th century, and we could finally hear the voices of the ancient Egyptians. This list includes interesting facts about Egyptian hieroglyphs covering everything from their early origin to the present day.

10. Rock Art And Hieroglyphs

Many scholars have argued that hieroglyphs they are linked to pictures found in the Western Desert produced by early hunter-gatherer and cattle herder communities around 5000 BC. For these communities, the ability to remember information about their land—such as the location of water holes, grazing areas and routes across the dry land—was key for their subsistence.

We know that the function of rock art in general is complex and diverse, and this rock art in particular is not all about passing information. However, it seems that these communities were familiar with the idea of conveying information through visual imagery. …

Was Russia Behind the DNC Hack?

^{A brief guide to the evidence.}

Close your eyes and imagine that a hacking group backed by Russian President Vladimir Putin broke into the email system of a major U.S. political party. The group stole thousands of sensitive messages and then published them through an obliging third party in a way that was strategically timed to influence the United States presidential election. Now open your eyes, because it looks like that’s what just happened.

On Friday, Wikileaks published 20,000 emails stolen from the Democratic National Committee. They reveal, among other things, thuggish infighting, a push by a top DNC official to use Bernie Sanders’s religious convictions against him in the South, and attempts to strong-arm media outlets. In other words, they reveal the Washington campaign monster for what it is.

But leave aside the purported content of the Wikileaks data dump (to which numerous other outlets have devoted considerable attention) and consider the source. Considerable evidence shows that the Wikileaks dump was an orchestrated act by the Russian government, working through proxies, to undermine Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign. …

The Muscovite Candidate?

^{Democrats allege that Russian hackers stole and leaked their emails in order to aid Donald Trump. Just because they’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re wrong.}

Sometimes a conspiracy theory can be true. Or, to put it another way, just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t out to get you.

Take the burgeoning email leaks scandal that hit the Democratic National Committee on Friday. A searchable cache of 20,000 emails showed up on WikiLeaks. The dump arrived about five weeks after the DNC announced it had been hacked. (Disclosure: I make a cameo in the cache when a staffer suggests my inventory of which Republicans are and aren’t backing Donald Trump “should be helpful.” And frankly, I agree it is. Please read it!) The dump has already claimed a major victim, Democratic National Committee Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who announced on Sunday that she would step down after the party convention this week. Her already-minor role in the convention seems likely to shrink still further.

What’s in the emails? Aaron Blake has a good roundup at The Washington Post, but don’t expect much in the way of surprises. It doesn’t take private emails to know that the DNC wasn’t fond of Senator Bernie Sanders. (Nor is it all that shocking that party insiders favored the candidate who had longer-standing connections with them, and a powerful campaign apparatus, over an outside who only joined the Democratic Party on the eve of the campaign.) …

ENGLAND’S ROSWELL

Most Americans are familiar with the legend of the UFO landing near Roswell, New Mexico in 1947. But what about the “Incident at Rendlesham” that took place near Ipswich, England, the day after Christmas in 1980? It’s been cited by UFO buffs as one of the most credible sightings of the 20th century.

NOT-SO-SILENT NIGHT

Just before 3:00 a.m. on the morning of December 26, 1980, a bright light was seen racing across the night sky over Rendlesham Forest, which separates two Royal Air Force bases: RAF Bentwaters to the north, and RAF Woodbridge, which juts out of the forest’s western edge. The strange light made no noise, but the sight was so startling that the airmen who saw the light thought that an aircraft might have crashed in the forest. They asked for permission to investigate.

Three U.S. Air Force airmen who were patrolling Woodbridge —Staff-Sergeant Jim Penniston, Airman Edward Cabansag, and Airman First Class John Burroughs—were dispatched into the forest to take a look. Nearly 30 years later, they still can’t agree on what they saw among the trees—except for one thing: They all saw a lot of lights. Big lights. Little lights. Colored lights. “Blue, red, white, and yellow,” Cabansag wrote in a report several days later. …

The Hillary Haters

^{Few figures in American political life have inspired such deep and decades-long contempt. But why?}

In 1996, the New Yorker published “Hating Hillary,” Henry Louis Gates’ reported piece on the widespread animosity for the then–First Lady. “Like horse-racing, Hillary-hating has become one of those national pastimes which unite the élite and the lumpen,” Gates wrote. “[T]here’s just something about her that pisses people off,” the renowned Washington hostess Sally Quinn told Gates. “This is the reaction that she elicits from people.”

It might seem as though nothing much has changed in 20 years. Many people disliked Hillary Clinton when she first emerged onto the political scene, and many people dislike her now. She is on track to become the least popular Democratic nominee in modern history, although voters like Donald Trump even less.

But over the last two decades, the something that pisses people off has changed. Speaking to Gates, former Republican speechwriter Peggy Noonan described “an air of apple-cheeked certitude” in Clinton that is “political in its nature and grating in its effects.” Noonan saw in Clinton “an implicit insistence throughout her career that hers were the politics of moral decency and therefore those who opposed her politics were obviously of a lower moral order.” …

SEEMINGLY DECENT HUMAN BEING’S INVOLVEMENT IN 2016 ELECTION CONFUSES VOTERS

The involvement of a seemingly decent human being in the 2016 election campaign left American voters stunned and deeply bewildered on Saturday.

In interviews across the country, voters expressed reactions ranging from shock to total incomprehension at the campaign début of a man who, at first blush, exhibits none of the outward characteristics of a sociopath or clinical narcissist.

Furthermore, the man’s evident failure to be the target of fraud lawsuits, sexual-harassment claims, or federal criminal investigations was, in the parlance of many voters, “weird.” …

Why You’re Probably Touch Starved And Don’t Know It

The prominent philosophers The Righteous Brothers once warned about “los[ing] that loving feeling,” and the sentiment was famously echoed in the 1986 fighter pilot documentary ‘Top Gun’. After having lost said loving feeling, the brothers (not actually brothers) felt as if they couldn’t go on. The sensation they felt wasn’t poetic exaggeration. The Righteous Brothers, along with brothers Maverick and Goose were experiencing a very real and potentially dangerous biological response known as skin hunger.

Skin hunger is your body’s reaction to lack of physical touch and it affects an increasing number of Americans while being a non existent phenomenon in more touch-happy countries like France. The problem that we’re learning is that without skin-to-skin touch (might we add that it doesn’t have to be sexual), your body doesn’t produce the hormone oxytocin. Without that natural chemical, adults are more susceptible to depression and infants can have developmental problems or even die.

On this week’s podcast, Jack O’Brien and Cracked editor Robert Evans are first joined by Dr. Kory Floyd, a professor at the University of Arizona, to talk about the physiological and sociological repercussions of skin hunger and why it’s so prominent in today’s culture. Later Jack and Robert are joined by Jean Franzblau of the Cuddle Sanctuary in Los Angeles and Travis Ashkenasy, an independent contractor, to talk about the services they provide as professional cuddlers and why you shouldn’t be embarrassed to seek out a cuddle party. …

Funeral Plot

^{Ted Cruz was photographed leaving Air Force One with Democratic plotters who supposedly convinced him not to endorse Donald Trump at the RNC.}

CLAIM: Ted Cruz met with President Obama, Hillary Clinton, and Valerie Jarrett on Air Force One a few days before the RNC, and they convinced him not to endorse Donald Trump.

MIXTURE:

WHAT’S TRUE: Ted Cruz flew to Dallas on Air Force One with President Obama to attend a funeral service for the police officers who were killed there on 7 July 2016.

WHAT’S FALSE: Hillary Clinton and Valerie Jarrett did not fly on Air Force One along with Ted Cruz, who was already planning not to endorse Trump.

…

Conspiracy theorists finally convinced no secret society could possibly be running this mess

CONSPIRACY theorists have finally been convinced there is no secret society running the country because no-one could possibly believe any of this was orchestrated.

Since the dawn of the internet, bedroom-based conspiracy theorists have thought society was controlled by a shadowy ‘Illuminati’ who somehow have the manpower to run everything.

Tom Logan, from Stevenage, said: “If they are running it then someone needs to be sacked.

“Or sacrificed, if that’s what they do.”

Racist, Norman Steele added, “I used to think the Jews were running everything. But they seem pretty organised, so I can’t imagine they’d be behind this mess.”

Professor Henry Brubaker, from the Institute for Studies, added: “When you look at the current state of affairs, it’s pretty clear who is running it.

“Over-privileged, incompetent white motherfuckers.”

10 Marvelous Cabinets Of Curiosities

Hundreds of years ago, miniature museums known as cabinets of curiosities were popular collections among royals, nobles, and educated members of the middle class who were wealthy enough to maintain them. Since travel was uncommon and restricted, many plants, animals, and natural objects seemed exotic.

Cabinets of curiosities displayed these natural marvels—with strange specimens and amazing artifacts from distant lands. More than mere amusements for the idle rich, these displays helped people to better know and understand the mysterious world around them.

10. Kunshtkameroy

In 1714, Russia’s Tsar Peter the Great (1672–1725) established the Kunshtkameroy (“cabinet of rarities”) in Moscow. It has since been moved to St. Petersburg’s Summer Palace. By Peter’s order, travelers returned home with anything “exceedingly old and unusual” they’d found in their journeys.

Items such as “bones, stones, antique utensils, and weapons” might end up in his personal collection, which also contained “drugs from the collection of the Dutch anatomist Ruysch, various small animals and birds, [an] herbarium, butterflies, shells, and more.”

His cabinet also displayed more bizarre specimens: “heads of children, preserved in alcohol, embalmed body parts,” and human “monsters”—people who had “odd anatomical features.” Like many cabinets of curiosities, Peter’s expanded over the years as he added such artifacts as “ancient pagan items, household utensils and clothes, idols, rare coins and old manuscripts, mineral specimens, and much more.” …

The Debate Over Time’s Place in the Universe

^{Physicists can’t agree on whether the flow of future to past is the flow of time or a mental construct.}

Einstein once described his friend Michele Besso as “the best sounding board in Europe” for scientific ideas. They attended university together in Zurich; later they were colleagues at the patent office in Bern. When Besso died in the spring of 1955, Einstein—knowing that his own time was also running out—wrote a now-famous letter to Besso’s family. “Now he has departed this strange world a little ahead of me,” Einstein wrote of his friend’s passing. “That signifies nothing. For us believing physicists, the distinction between past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.”

Einstein’s statement was not merely an attempt at consolation. Many physicists argue that Einstein’s position is implied by the two pillars of modern physics: Einstein’s masterpiece, the general theory of relativity, and the Standard Model of particle physics. The laws that underlie these theories are time-symmetric—that is, the physics they describe is the same, regardless of whether the variable called “time” increases or decreases. Moreover, they say nothing at all about the point we call “now”—a special moment (or so it appears) for us, but seemingly undefined when we talk about the universe at large. The resulting timeless cosmos is sometimes called a “block universe”—a static block of space-time in which any flow of time, or passage through it, must presumably be a mental construct or other illusion.

Many physicists have made peace with the idea of a block universe, arguing that the task of the physicist is to describe how the universe appears from the point of view of individual observers. To understand the distinction between past, present and future, you have to “plunge into this block universe and ask: ‘How is an observer perceiving time?’” said Andreas Albrecht, a physicist at the University of California, Davis, and one of the founders of the theory of cosmic inflation.

Others vehemently disagree, arguing that the task of physics is to explain not just how time appears to pass, but why. For them, the universe is not static. The passage of time is physical. “I’m sick and tired of this block universe,” said Avshalom Elitzur, a physicist and philosopher formerly of Bar-Ilan University. “I don’t think that next Thursday has the same footing as this Thursday. The future does not exist. It does not! Ontologically, it’s not there.” …

You Can Watch A Rare, Stinky ‘Corpse Flower’ Bloom On Live Video

This corpse flower could be just seconds away from blooming. And you can watch it live, thanks to the New York Botanical Garden. This way, you don’t have to smell its famous, disgusting odor.

Unfamiliar with this so-called “botanical phenomenon”? The giant flower, which can grow to be 8 feet high, is better known for its smell than its beauty.

There’s a reason it’s called a corpse flower. Here are a few descriptions of that smell:

• “Rotting flesh.”

• “[R]otten meat, or bad fish, or dirty socks.”

• “[S]ort of the odor you get from a decaying carcass, roadkill if you will, or that odor you see on the bottom of a dumpster after a hot summer day.”

…

THE HUSBAND AND WIFE TEAM THAT GAVE THE WORLD THE FIRST CAR, AND THE FIRST ROAD TRIP THAT SAVED IT FROM OBSCURITY

We may not have flying cars quite yet, but the ground-bound automobile is the world’s second most popular mode of transportation (behind the bicycle). Many think Henry Ford invented the car, but that isn’t correct. While Ford certainly made the automobile affordable for the middle-class, it was actually a German engineer with a familiar name that invented the first commercially available petrol-powered motor vehicle. In 1885, Karl Benz created what he later would call the “Motorwagen.” However, this wasn’t an invention of a single man. He had help from someone else – his wife, Bertha Benz. Credited as the first person ever to take a so-called automobile “road trip,” she also discovered various issues with her husband’s invention during the drive, coming up with some very innovative ideas in the process, such as inventing the brake pad mid-trip. Here’s the story behind the husband and wife team that gave the world the first commercially available petrol automobile. …

Video Goodnesses
(and not-so-goodnesses)

Om Nom Nom Nom Nom
^{(universal sound of eating)}