May 20, 2016

EL DESAPARECIDOS

Everyone who knows me well is aware that I have a love/hate relationship with the squirrels that live under my shed.

My birds love to watch them while they’re outside.

And the squirrels love to pee on my patio furniture and kill wild birds.

So… one-by-one they’re moving away to a nice place in the country.

El desaparecidos is Spanish for “the disappeared.” I became aware of the term while reading about the military junta in Argentina on March 24, 1976 that attempted to eradicate left-wing terrorism… with terrorism that was much worse.

Thousands of innocent people disappeared.

A translation of the lyrics may be found here.

THIS DAY IN HISTORY: MAY 20TH- A WONDERFUL LIFE

This Day In History: May 20, 1908

James Maitland Stewart, one of the most likable and versatile actors in motion picture history, was born on May 20, 1908 in Indiana, Pennsylvania. He appeared in over 80 films during his long career. Stewart is most loved and fondly remembered for his various portrayals of Mr. Every Man, a simple, hard-working American guy slightly befuddled by the ever-changing world around him.

Jimmy Stewart’s early years were akin to a Norman Rockwell painting. Dad Alex owned the local hardware store, a family-run business and neighborhood institution since 1848. His mother Bessie was described by the local newspaper as “a lady of regal bearing, dignified, and quite proper.” The couple raised Jim and his sisters in a close-knit, seemingly happy home. …

Texas Republicans’ new platform says that most Texans are gay

A Texas-based LGBT advocacy helped spark a grammar debate this week over whether an errant comma in the stridently anti-homosexual Republican Party of Texas platform can be read as saying the majority of Texans are gay.

The plank that was approved by delegates at the party’s convention this month reads: “Homosexuality is a chosen behavior that is contrary to the fundamental unchanging truths that has been ordained by God in the Bible, recognized by our nations founders, and shared by the majority of Texans.”

Lone Star Q, which describes itself as the state’s No. 1 source for LGBT news, asked on Twitter on Wednesday to have a “grammar debate” over the wording.

In response, grammarians pointed out that placement of the final comma in the plank could lead to understanding it to mean that homosexuality is a chosen behavior shared by the majority of Texans. They also noted that “nations” should have an apostrophe and that by using “has been,” the plank gives the impression that homosexuality has been ordained by God. …

Oops…….

Ted Cruz’s triumphant return to the Senate: Fighting to require the Library of Congress use the offensive term “illegal aliens”

^{Cruz made his short-lived return to the halls of Congress last week only to scurry off to vacation this week}

Ted Cruz is back terrorizing his colleagues in Congress after being rejected by Republican voters nationwide.

Well, not quite. Cruz, of course, lost the presidential primary to Donald Trump but he isn’t back walking the halls of the Senate again — at least not right now.

After a few days out of the spotlight following the suspension of his presidential campaign, Cruz returned to the Senate last week (where he is the most reviled man) only to be ignored while the D.C. press swarmed his former rival’s meeting with another ambitious and smug conservative lawmaker, Paul Ryan:

Ted Cruz just walked past a group of reporters in the Capitol and not one asked him a question

— Matt Laslo (@MattLaslo) May 12, 2016

…

10 Ancient Sites That Might Be Stargates, Portals And Wormholes

Many ancient cultures speak of portals to other worlds and gateways to star systems where their “creators” reside. Conventional wisdom tells us these tales are merely myths and legends. However, recent declassified FBI files have stated that our Earth has been visited by beings from other dimensions and planets. NASA has announced that “portals” do indeed appear to be hidden within the Earth’s magnetic field, making some wonder if the legends of stargates, portals and wormholes may have some degree of truth to them.

10. Gate Of The Gods, Hayu Marca, Peru

In 1996, it was discovered by Jose Luis Delgado Mamani while he was trying to learn the layout of the area for a job he had recently taken as a tour guide. The “Gate of the Gods” at Hayu Marca in Peru is said by native tribes to have once acted as a “gateway to the land of the Gods.” Mamani even claims that he had dreams of the doorway for years before he had accidentally found it. In his dream, Mamani stated that the pathway leading to the doorway was made of pink marble, and had also witnessed a smaller door that was open with a “brilliant blue light coming from what looked like a shimmering tunnel.”

The “doorway” is actually two doorways, almost in a “T” shape. The larger doorway measures seven meters wide and seven meters high (22 ft by 22 ft) while the smaller one stands two meters high (6.5 ft) in the middle of the base. Legends state that the larger door is for the gods, themselves. The smaller door is for mortals to pass through, and some heroic mortals did, becoming immortal themselves to live among the gods. …

RoboCop is real – and could be patrolling a mall near you

^{There’s a new sheriff in town at the Stanford shopping center, and he has high-definition infra-red cameras and can process 300 license plates a minute}

At the Stanford shopping center in Palo Alto, California, there is a new sheriff in town – and it’s an egg-shaped robot.

Outside Tiffany & Co, an unfortunate man holding a baby finds himself in the robot’s path. It bears down on him, a little jerkily, like a giant Roomba.

The man dodges but the robot’s software is already trying to avoid him, so they end up on a collision course.

“I’ve seen Terminator,” the man says, half to himself and half to the amused crowd, “and that is some Skynet-ass shit.” …

How Your Gut Affects Your Mood

At any given moment, you have somewhere between 10 trillion and 100 trillion microorganisms inhabiting your gut — that’s more microbes in your bowels than there are cells in your body. If that isn’t impressive enough, consider that collectively these microbes have about 150 times as many genes as your own genome. Scientists are still trying to figure out exactly which microbes make up the human microbiome, but it’s estimated to contain more than 1,000 species and 7,000 distinct strains of bacteria. Your gut is never alone.

It’s also not working in isolation. What’s becoming more and more clear is that the microbes in the gut are crucial for the brain and mental health. Ted Dinan is an expert in this field, and he became so almost by accident. It was the early 2000s, and he’d recently taken a position at University College Cork, a place that he said was “known for its heavy-hitting microbiologists.” Some of these microbiologists were talking about a type of bacteria they described as “probiotic” — conferring some kind of health benefit. As a psychiatrist, Dinan thought it would be interesting to see what happened when he fed these probiotics to some rats he was studying in an experimental model of mental health. Lo and behold, rats given the probiotics expressed fewer signs of anxiety and depression. Dinan and his colleagues would go on to coin the term “psychobiotics” for microbes that can benefit the brain or behavior. …

10 Fascinating Fossilized Discoveries

When people hear the word “fossils,” they usually think of dinosaur skeletons and large bones. However, this is not entirely accurate. Fossils are the preserved remains of any living animals or plants that once thrived on our planet.

For thousands of years, people have been discovering fossils in rocks. But it was only recently that we understood their scientific value and studied them to better understand the world we live in and how it evolved. As more fossilized discoveries are made, our understanding of our planet, our environment, and even our humanity will be further enriched.

10. Turtles Having Sex

While excavating an area in Germany called the Messel Pit, scientists made an odd but exceptional discovery—ancient turtles having sex. The Messel Pit was once a deep volcanic crater that was originally mined for its oil.

Today, this area is considered by the scientific community as the richest site in the world “for understanding the living environment of the Eocene,” the period when mammals started to dominate our planet. Fossils of several animal species—such as honeybees, birds, bats, reptiles, horses, ants, and primates—have been found in the Messel Pit.

While examining the turtle fossil, scientists discovered that the ancient copulating turtles were only 20 centimeters (8 in) long. They were much smaller than their closest modern relatives, the pig-nosed turtles, which are found in Australia and New Guinea. …

No, Bill Clinton Does Not ‘Know How’ To Fix The Economy

When Hillary Clinton laid out her economic vision for her prospective presidency in a speech last July, she made sure to work in a shoutout to her husband’s economic record as president. “The results speak for themselves,” Clinton said. “Under President Clinton — I like the sound of that — America saw the longest peacetime expansion in our history.”

Now Clinton is doubling down on that message. On Sunday, she told voters in Kentucky that she would put her husband “in charge of revitalizing the economy” because “he knows how to do it.” Aides subsequently told The New York Times’ Amy Chozick that the former president would more specifically focus on parts of the country that are struggling.

Whatever Bill Clinton’s exact role in a Hillary Clinton administration would be, it’s no surprise that she is looking to tie herself to his economic legacy. Bill Clinton’s second term was the last time the U.S. economy was unequivocally strong; for most voters this November, it was the best economy they’ve ever known. But while Hillary Clinton wants voters to look back fondly on the first Clinton presidency, she should hope they don’t remember too much about what happened next. …

Univision draws 100,000 to voter registration drives in move to increase its political clout

Univision, the nation’s largest Spanish-language broadcaster, has drawn more than 100,000 people to hundreds of voter registration and citizenship drives aimed at urging Latinos to vote.

The effort is part of the media company’s push to expand its political reach in a year where the Latino vote could sway the outcome of the presidential race.

Univision announced in February it would seek to register three million new Latino voters — the estimated number of young Latinos who have turned 18 and become eligible to vote since 2012 — ahead of the November election.

The network has since rolled out an aggressive public service and advertising campaign, in English and Spanish, on its 126 television and radio stations across the United States and social media platforms. And it is partnering with several Latino civil rights, political and advocacy groups to host town halls, staff community call centers, and launch a new texting tool that about 130,000 people from all 50 states have subscribed to. …

THIS DAY IN HISTORY: MAY 20TH- LONGEST RUNNING TELEVISION SERIES

This Day In History: May 20, 2005

On May 20, 2005, The Simpsons aired its 400th episode, earning the distinction of being the longest running series in television history. Not bad for a show that started as a cartoon used between sketches for a comedy series.

Simpson’s creator Matt Groening got the gig on “The Tracey Ullman Show” in 1987 after producer James L. Brooks came across his twisted comic strip “Life in Hell.” Brooks convinced the executives at Fox that The Simpsons would be a hit as a half-hour animated sitcom (something that hadn’t been done since The Flintstones) and the series made its debut in December of 1989 with a special Christmas episode called “Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire.” …

A New Growth Industry for Native Americans: Weed

^{Can cannabis revive Oregon’s long-struggling reservation economies?}

The tribes on this reservation, located in the high desert on the eastern side of Mt. Hood, are accustomed to bad deals. Until the 19th century, the Wasco, the Walla Walla, and the Pauite survived off of the Columbia River, catching salmon and, eventually, trading for it. Then in 1855 they were forced onto the Warm Springs Reservation. It was 80 miles from the river, but they could still go there to fish—that is, until the U.S. Government started to build the Bonneville dam on the river in the 1930s and flooded their fishing spots.

By the time the Dalles Dam was finished in the 1950s—ending all hopes of fishing the river and the economic independence it brought—the tribe had been decimated by other factors too, including the removal of children to boarding schools, and the drafting of men to the Army.

Now, the reservation, which spreads over 1,000 square miles in Oregon, is one of the most economically depressed places in the state. The unemployment rate is around 20 percent, and about one-third of its residents live below the poverty line. Sadly, the circumstances of Warm Springs are familiar for many Indian reservations. Nearly 30 percent of American Indians and Alaskan Natives lived in poverty in 2014, according to Census data, which is the highest rate of any race group. …

The Future of Getting High

^{Scientists are working on nonaddictive opiates, pills that sober you up, and pot designed to produce certain moods.}

In 2014, I walked into a dispensary in Boulder and emerged with something truly surreal: a receipt. For weed. Two years earlier, Colorado had voted to legalize recreational marijuana—reflecting a seismic shift in American attitudes toward the drug. In just two generations, the portion of the population that supports legalization went from 12 percent to 58 percent. Along the way, we’ve seen emerging marijuana markets, new technologies, and the normalization of experiences that were once taboo.

At the same time, though, Americans are succumbing to the dangers of other drugs in ever greater numbers. Substance-use disorders now affect more than 21 million Americans. Drug overdose—especially from heroin and other opiates—is the leading cause of accidental death in the U.S. And nearly a third of all vehicle fatalities are alcohol-related.

On the one hand, we want to feel good. On the other, we need to do more to protect ourselves and our loved ones. Scientists and entrepreneurs are working on new products and technologies that promise to make drugs and alcohol both safer and more satisfying. Here’s what the future of getting high might look like. …

Famous Sci-Fi Movies With Insane Flaws You Never Noticed

Writing sci-fi technology isn’t easy: Science advances so fast that real technology can end up blowing past your “futuristic” crap in a heartbeat. Remember when electronic billboards were something you saw only in movies featuring androids and hovercars? Now there’s one trying to sell you dick pills every time you look at your phone.

Even so, this doesn’t excuse writers from applying common sense, deductive reasoning, and even basic OSHA practices to their worlds of tomorrow. Here are seven sci-fi technologies that were already dumb and outdated when the movies came out:

(SPOILER FOR THIS ARTICLE: It’s full of spoilers.)

#7. Jurassic World: The Security Sucks Compared To The First Jurassic Park

In Jurassic World, profits are floundering at the park, so the corporate fat cats decide to give visitors a new dinosaur to look at by genetically engineering one. The new dino, indominus rex, has super intelligence, which she uses to fool Chris Pratt (no small feat) into releasing her into the park:

But wait a second: Why the hell would they put a door big enough for their extremely dangerous dinosaur to fit through? Why didn’t they put the I. rex into its pen when it was small (like John Hammond does in the original Jurassic Park) and let it grow there, thus avoiding the logistical nightmare of trying to transport a 10-ton super predator? That way, the only way she could ever escape would be to bust through the wall, Kool-Aid Man style. …

What the US Could Learn From Justin Trudeau About Saying ‘Sorry’

^{Rather than engaging in rhetoric targeting immigrants and Muslims, we should make substantive amends for past xenophobia.}

On Wednesday, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau made an apology that has been a long time coming for many Canadian Sikhs. “Today I rise in this House to offer an apology on behalf of the government of Canada, for our role in the Komagata Maru incident,” Trudeau said in his remarks. The “incident” refers to the experiences of 376 Sikh, Muslim, and Hindu passengers traveling from India on the Komagata Maru steamship in 1914, with the hopes of settling in Canada. When they arrived, the passengers were barred from entry because of a racist and exclusionary immigration policy that prevented migrants who had not made a “continuous journey” to land in Canada. While the law seems innocuous on its face, it was intended to prevent “undesirable,” non-white immigrants from Asia to enter Canadian borders, as it was impossible to make an uninterrupted trip to Canada from places like India. The 376 passengers spent two months on the ship at the Vancouver harbor and were denied food and water until the Canadian military turned them back. When they returned to India, British soldiers killed at least 19 of the passengers, and imprisoned many others.

Of course, racist immigration policies were not limited to Canadian shores at the turn of the 20th century. In America, immigrants from Asia faced restrictions to migration because of national origin quotas, as well as barriers to owning land and becoming naturalized citizens after they arrived. Valarie Kaur, a Sikh-American filmmaker and civil-rights lawyer, recalls her own family’s experiences in California: “My grandfather, Kehar Singh, arrived lawfully by steamship in September 1913, but was incarcerated for three months until he was released on a writ of habeas corpus.” Such government actions and policies fostered xenophobic views among the American public as well. Anti-Asian exclusion leagues were formed to threaten Chinese, Filipino, Japanese, Korean, and Indian laborers who worked in lumber mills and on the railroads, leading to events like the shameful riots in Bellingham, Washington, in 1907, when white residents rounded up two hundred South Asian migrant workers and locked them in the basement of the city hall in an effort to drive them out of town. …

Inside Detroit’s Failing Public Schools

Detroit Public Schools are in crisis. Dropout rates are twice the national average, schools are routinely failing health inspections, and the district is more than three and a half billion dollars in debt. In this short video, Atlantic associate editor Alia Wong traces the history of Detroit Public Schools—from a model for urban education at the turn of the century to a failing, debt-ridden system today. How did the school district decline so dramatically? …

10 Dangerous Beauty Trends From The Victorian Era

In Victorian era England, a woman who wore makeup was considered to be a “painted lady” or prostitute. Although painted white faces and bright red lips had been popular before she came to power, Queen Victoria called makeup “vulgar,” which led many people in England to abandon it altogether or try for a more natural makeup look.

As a result, the 1800s were filled with inventions to enhance women’s natural features, but many of these ideas deformed their bodies or slowly killed them with toxic chemicals.

10. Face Bleaching

Having an extremely pale, fair complexion was important to women in the 1800s. Upper-class women wanted to show that they were wealthy enough to not have to work in the hot sun. They wanted their skin to be so pale that it was “translucent,” as in you could see the veins in their faces. Victorians had an obsession with death and actually thought that it was attractive for women to look sickly or dead.

The Ugly-Girl Papers by S.D. Powers recommended that women coat their faces in trace amounts of opium from lettuce leaves overnight and wash their faces with ammonia in the morning to ensure that they would always look as fresh and pale as possible. …

Sex, ghosts, money and sainthood – now playing at Cannes 2016

^{The films previewed at Cannes span revolutionary politics, explicit nudity and paranormal activity. Here are the five top themes}

Withheld gratification

^{Booed … Personal Shopper kept viewers waiting – and waiting.}

While the odd horror film crops up on the festival’s fringes (in previous years, It Follows and Green Room both premiered far from the red carpet), the competition choices tend not to include straight-up genre fare. This year has seen a few of the main films come close to conventional thrills, but ultimately they have chosen restraint. The Dardenne brothers married their plainly told social drama shtick with a muted murder mystery in The Unknown Girl, which sailed through thriller checkpoints but refused to provide us with the expected suspense. Similarly, Olivier Assayas’ divisive Personal Shopper provided us with not one but two lurid plots (a CGI ghost story and a stalker horror) yet the scares weren’t there. The seat-edge money shot failed to arrive, and it is no coincidence that both films were booed.

…

Why the scientific finding that trees “sleep” at night is beautiful

From the tiniest bacteria to the largest redwood tree, almost all life on planet Earth is ruled by the 24-hour clock.

Genes that code for a 24-hour circadian rhythm exist “in most every cell, in most every organism on Earth,” Michael Twery, who leads sleep research at the National Institutes of Health, told me last year. The activity-rest cycle is fundamental to life, he said.

It shouldn’t be surprising: Life evolved against the backdrop of sunrises and sunsets.

But there’s an awesome beauty in it — it’s like the whole natural world is humming along to the same beat. It means our experience of day and night, sleep and wakefulness, is not just a human quirk but a sign we’re part of the natural world too.

Scientists are finding evidence of biological clocks in all sorts of creatures. In fruit flies, in mice, and in single-cell organisms (which can, like us, get jet lag). And here’s one more, from the journal Frontiers in Plant Science: Birch trees “sleep” at night. …

THE FIRST SPEEDING INFRACTION IN THE U.S. WAS COMMITTED BY A NEW YORK CITY TAXI DRIVER IN AN ELECTRIC CAR ON MAY 20, 1899

Today I found out the first speeding infraction in the U.S. was committed by a New York City taxi driver in an electric car on May 20, 1899. The driver was Jacob German who drove for the Electric Vehicle Company, which leased its electric taxicabs to be used around New York.

German was driving his taxi at a blistering 12 miles per hour down Lexington Street in Manhattan. At that time, the speed limit was 8 miles per hour on straight-a-ways and 4 miles per hour when turning. A police officer on a bicycle observed the 26 year old Mr. German speeding and promptly arrested him and imprisoned him in the East 22nd Street station house.

There is some contention on whether he actually received a paper ticket or not, which would have also made him the first person in the U.S. to receive an actual physical ticket, as opposed to just being the first to be cited for committing a speeding infraction. …