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D’oh!
D’oh!
THIS DAY IN HISTORY: MAY 23RD- THE END OF BONNIE AND CLYDE
This Day In History: May 23, 1934
On May 23, 1934, the crime spree of Bonnie and Clyde, who spent over a year playing a game of cat-and-mouse with law enforcement, ended in a barrage of bullets during a police ambush. In spite of the horrific nature of their crimes, including murder, Bonnie and Clyde have become romanticized folk heroes to many.
Bonnie and Clyde were both born in Texas to poor families barely making a living as farmers. When they met in 1930, 21-year-old Clyde Barrow had already been arrested multiple times for theft. Bonnie Parker, who at age 19 had already been married for four years, immediately fell for Clyde and left her husband. She remained devoted to Barrow for the rest of her short life. …
Primaries and caucuses are a surprisingly undemocratic part of the democratic process. John Oliver discusses our convoluted system for choosing presidential nominees. …
CAUTION: Some language may not be appropriate for work or children.
THANKS to HBO and Last Week Tonight for making this program available on YouTube.
Is Lindsey Graham Backing a ‘Race-Baiting, Xenophobic Religious Bigot’?
If Trump’s most voluble critic in the Senate may be coming around, will any Republican politicians hold the line against endorsing their nominee?
The Republican Party’s slow rally around Donald Trump is no surprise. Parties almost always unify—at least to some degree—around their nominees. Movements like conservatism are built on ideologies, but political parties are above all built to win. Trump is already seeing the fruits of consolidation. Democrats remain divided, but with the GOP field cleared, Trump has opened up a lead in the RealClearPolitics polling average against Hillary Clinton. The margin is tiny—just 0.2 percent—and it’s early yet, so the lead says more about Trump’s success in unifying his party than his likelihood of prevailing in November.
The way unification is happening, however, and the people involved, do offer some surprises. Most prominently, Senator Lindsey Graham reportedly urged Florida Republicans at a fundraiser on Saturday to back Trump. The South Carolinian’s spokesman wouldn’t confirm the specific remarks, but he also didn’t deny them, noting that Graham (no relation to this author) has been clear that he does not support a third-party alternative. “There hasn’t been any change in his position,” spokesman Kevin Bishop told CNN. “He’s been pretty upfront and outspoken.”
That may be strictly true, but it downplays the magnitude of Graham backing Trump—even if he only does so privately. (One attendee at the fundraiser told CNN that Graham was declining to endorse Trump publicly because he didn’t think it would help the entertainer.) It’s not just that Graham disagrees with Trump on nearly every issue that comes to mind, from foreign policy to immigration. This is Lindsey Graham, whose private cellphone number Trump released publicly in July 2015, in an act of intense bullying that at the time seemed like an oddity but has come to be Trump’s trademark. …
Perry endorsing Trump affirms what’s wrong
Adaptability is a useful if not noble survival mechanism in nature and politics. The mighty tiger, which can’t change its stripes, is endangered. Some lowly lizards that can change color thrive, which brings us to the subject of Rick Perry’s endorsement of Donald Trump.
Our former governor, whom we elected more times than any in Texas history, didn’t just endorse Trump. He also preened for the job of running mate like a contestant on “The Apprentice.”
Perry’s candidacies and performance in office seldom pleased and often alarmed this editorial board. But the one thing he did right was repudiate Trump. His assessment of Trump in July as “a toxic mix of demagoguery, mean-spiritedness and nonsense that will lead the Republican Party to perdition if pursued” was not particularly illuminating. Anyone with half a brain, or Perry’s, already knew it. …
Donald Trump’s brand appears to be thriving – but could his bubble burst?
Trump released his personal financial disclosure statement last week – but it’s unclear if his financial wellbeing is substantial or of the Groupon variety
Could we be about to elect a one-man financial bubble as president of the United States of America?
Donald Trump released his second annual personal financial disclosure statement last week. It was the largest ever and “tremendous”, according to Trump. And it did indeed show that the Trump brand appears to be thriving, financially speaking.
But what remains unclear is whether this kind of financial wellbeing is a substantial, blue-chip prosperity, or whether it’s of the frothy Groupon variety.
Don’t remember Groupon? Launched in 2008 as one of the first of the daily deals websites, Groupon rapidly became a darling of the startup universe. A cover star of Forbes magazine as “the fastest growing company ever” Groupon’s investors celebrated as revenues soared from $313m in 2010 to $1.6bn the following year. They also ignored the fact that its marketing expenses more than doubled to reach $768m in the same time frame; by 2012, marketing spending accounted for a whopping 48% of Groupon’s total revenues. …
Donald Trump isn’t empathetic. Is that a problem?
Donald Trump has cleared every electoral hurdle before him in this presidential race. He went from 1 percent, literally, to the top of the polls. He beat 16 other people for the Republican nomination. He finds himself in a statistical dead heat with likely Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton. And, he has done it all by being himself: brash, bold, controversial and unapologetic.
As the nation turns its eyes to the general election, I have one question that continues to nag at me as I think about the possibility of Trump in the White House: Can he be empathetic? Like, at all? And does he need to be?
“Ultimately, I think a lack of empathy is just one piece of a portrait of a person who is unbalanced and damaged,” said Stuart Stevens, a Republican consultant who has long vocally opposed Trump. “He has spent his life in a bubble, surrounded by hired yes men and women who have never told his inner child to grow up.” …
10 Dark Secrets From Conservative Asian Countries
Asia is Earth’s largest and most populous continent. Though many Asian nations have started to adopt Western moral values and take a more liberal view of life, especially with respect to sexuality, many countries remain shrouded in conservatism.
This leaning toward conservatism can be attributed to several factors, such as culture, history, and religion. Despite upholding some of the world’s strictest moral values, however, many conservative Asian countries hide dark secrets.
10. Cambodia’s Virgins For Sale
With three-quarters of its population living below or just above the poverty line, Cambodia is one of Asia’s most impoverished nations. This dire situation has led to the development of many forms of sexual exploitation, including the rampant but covert trade in female virgins.
LICADHO, Cambodia’s leading human rights organization, estimates that thousands of young virgin girls between the ages of 13 and 18 are sold to wealthy Cambodians or foreign tourists every year.
Solving Cambodia’s “virgins for sale” problem is difficult since “it rarely fits into strict definitions of sex trafficking.” In almost all cases, the innocent girls are sold by their own mothers, fathers, or relatives. The selling price can range from $800 to $4,000 depending on the girl’s physical attractiveness and the buyer’s budget. …
Demon or savior? Aids activist at war to make condoms in porn the law
Michael Weinstein, the head of the billion-dollar Aids Healthcare Foundation, has been vilified by some as the ‘condom Nazi’ – but he’s unfazed
At the entrance to the Aids Healthcare Foundation, a staffer wears a red T-shirt bearing the slogan “Condoms are Cool”. Down the hallway is the office of Michael Weinstein, the forthright head of the billion-dollar not-for-profit organization who is the first to volunteer that he is regarded as a “condom Nazi”.
“What’s the big whoop about condoms?” he said, sitting amid the expansive, 21st-floor views of Los Angeles and photographs showing him with notables such as Whoopi Goldberg and Alicia Keys. “I just don’t get why it’s such a sacrifice.”
His nonchalance is not shared by everyone. Weinstein is behind a ballot that Californians will vote on in November, asking whether actors in porn films should be required to wear condoms. The industry is unimpressed. …
The Aftermath of Reversing California’s Severe Three-Strikes Law
In 1994, California voters passed “Three Strikes,” one of the harshest sentencing laws in U.S. history. People who had been convicted of prior crimes could receive life in prison for nonviolent offenses, like possession of marijuana. In 2012, California Proposition 36 reformed this law, and thousands of prisoners became eligible for reentry overnight. In these first seven minutes of the documentary, The Return, we hear Kaylica Anderson’s testimony: her father is currently incarcerated and she hasn’t seen him in years, but he is now qualified for release. The film profiles the people directly affected by this unprecedented reform, and considers the complex transition of reentry to society after incarceration. The Return premieres on Monday, May 23, on PBS’s POV series.
10 Breathtaking Real Places Plucked Straight From Fantasy Novels
All right, full disclosure: I am a massive fantasy nerd. Dragons, elves, wizards, I love ’em all. And I’m not alone. The hugely popular Harry Potter, Game of Thrones, and of course, The Lord of the Rings novels all have followings that would probably be willing to kill to defend the honor of their favorite characters.
But that stuff’s all just make-believe, right? There isn’t really any place on Earth with all the whimsical architecture and otherworldly landscapes of our favorite medieval guilty pleasures. Right?
10. The Painted Peaks
In China, there exists a mountain range unlike any other on Earth. The Zhangye Danxia Landform Geological Park may be a bit of a mouthful, but it makes up for its wordiness with absolutely breathtaking views.
For miles and miles, the jagged landscape is striped with a rainbow of colors. Rich reds, bright yellows, and vibrant whites are all layered atop one another, lending a bizarrely cartoonish atmosphere to this massive landform. It’s so strikingly unique that it was named a UNESCO World Heritage site in 2010. …
ATM Skimming Malware Is Getting Scarier
In 2009, malware called “Skimer” surfaced and security firms took notice. Skimer is essentially malware that gives hackers full access to an ATM without needing to install any physical hardware, like a card skimmer. According to a new investigation by Kaspersky Lab, the malware is not only seems in use, but it’s also become more powerful.
Kaspersky discovered the latest version of Skimer this month after investigating a break-in at a bank. While the bank found no evidence that it had been attacked, the security firm found that a new version of Skimer had been used and featured improvements that make it harder to detect. This is very scary, because the the Russian-based software makes it relatively easy for hackers to take complete control of any ATM.
The hackers begin by installing a file called Backdoor.Win32.Skimer, malware that hides in the ATM code waiting for the hacker to open it with a particular card. …
The Craziest Black Market in Russia
It’s not for oil or guns. It’s for plagiarized dissertations. And every self-respecting doctor, lawyer, and politician in the country wants one.
Late last year, Russian newspapers reported what would have qualified as a stunning piece of news almost anywhere else: The chairman of the country’s largest parliamentary body had been exposed as a plagiarist. Sergei Naryshkin, the former chief of staff in Vladimir Putin’s administration and a prominent member of his United Russia party, stood accused of receiving the Russian equivalent of a doctoral degree on the strength of a dissertation in which more than half of the pages contained material lifted from other sources.
In a satisfying twist, one of the uncredited guests in Naryshkin’s thesis—a 196-page paper titled “Foreign Investment in Russia as a Factor in Economic Development”—was an unabashedly liberal economist named Vladislav Inozemtsev. “It’s quite amusing that a prominent member of United Russia decided to turn to my article,” Inozemtsev said at the time. “It seems he found it to be of good quality.”
Of course, no one really believed that Naryshkin had read Inozemtsev’s article or that he was guilty of copying it himself. Rather, he was suspected of paying a ghostwriter to produce a thesis in his name, then bribing academic officials to secure its certification. Naryshkin probably never even read the dissertation that had earned him his degree. …
HOW DID THE PET ROCK FAD START?
For all you pet owners out there, has there ever been a time when you’ve just had enough? Enough hairballs, enough grooming, enough messes, enough vet bills and the like? After listening to his friends complain about such things with their pets, Gary Dahl decided to take matters into his own hands and provide the world with the planet’s perfect pet: the Pet Rock. That’s right, folks. In 1975, the biggest fad was to dish over a whopping $3.95 ($17.58 today) to purchase one very ordinary rock. It wasn’t cute or cuddly. It wasn’t a beautiful piece of art. The rock didn’t even have a face! It was just, well, a rock.
What would possess someone to pay for a rock that could probably be found in one’s own backyard? …
Water quality expert: Free chlorine needed for Corpus Christi
Robert Bowcock
A water quality expert who has spent years working alongside environmental activist Erin Brockovich already has thoughts about what’s behind Corpus Christi’s latest water issues.
Robert W. Bowcock, founder of Integrated Resource Management Inc., is expected to attend a special City Council meeting set for Monday.
In an interview with the Caller-Times, Bowcock said, without having yet examined the city’s water system, he already suspects it has suffered biofouling and nitrification. Both conditions have grown increasingly common around the state.
Bowcock also criticized the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality for being disconnected, and of applying a one-size-fits-all approach to regulation.
“They … try to apply ink and black and white to real-life situations,” Bowcock said. “No two treatment systems are the same. They have their own soul. You have to go in and feel them out.” …
A Decade Out From The Mortgage Crisis, Former Homeowners Still Grasp For Stability
Before the mortgage crisis, real estate seemed like a sure bet. Pretty much anyone could buy a house: no money down, thousands of square feet, second and third vacation homes were not out of the question. Then the bubble burst.
Homeowners across the U.S. confronted the reality that their houses were worth a fraction of what they had paid for them. Now, a decade later, even though the recession is over, more than 6 million homeowners are still upside down on their mortgages.
This week on For the Record, we hear the stories of two people who lost their homes in the mortgage crisis and how they’re coping today. …
Has convenience turned you into a monster?
Like me, you might be a liberal who loves Uber and Airbnb. But the darker side of the new economy isn’t something we can simply ignore
As I write this, I’m about to travel to beautiful, sunny Puerto Rico for a brief vacation. If all goes according to plan, there will be keys waiting for me in a mailbox outside an apartment in San Juan, which will hopefully look like the pictures I saw on the Airbnb website.
To get to the airport, I’m probably going to take an Uber, partly because I just moved to New York and still feel like a fool trying to wave down a cab, but mostly because calling an Uber is really, truly, ridiculously easy to do.
Welcome to the new economy, where convenience is king. It’s no wonder these kinds of services are popular – they give us just what we need, when we need them. They make fast lives possible. But is convenience turning us into monsters? …
Words Of Wisdom That Are Complete Bullsh!t
If you know that the early bird gets the worm, I’m sure you also know to stop and smell the roses, that an apple a day keeps the doctor away, and variety is the spice of life. Or maybe not, because those are all completely contradictory and made up by who, exactly? Some sort of internal rhyme shaman or sarcastic centuries-old grandmother?
Where the hell did we get all these idioms from? A stitch in time saves nine? Turns out we’ve been saying that one wrong, there should be a comma in there. Don’t put all your eggs in one basket? Well, I only have two hands, how many baskets should I be carrying? …
Democrats are gay, Republicans are rich: Our stereotypes of political parties are amazingly wrong
Here’s a quiz question for you: What percentage of Democrats identify as gay, lesbian or bisexual? Here’s another: What percentage of Republicans make more than $250,000 a year?
Got your answers? Now keep reading.
It’s pretty well known that Democrats and Republicans like each other less than they used to. And it’s pretty well known that being a Democrat or Republican can bias how we view virtually everything, including objective facts such as the state of the economy.
Now new research illuminates a key source of partisan animosity: Our internal pictures of the opposite party are terribly inaccurate. When asked about the groups historically associated with each party, we think these groups make up a vastly larger fraction of each party than they really do. In other words, we think each party is essentially a huge bundle of stereotypes — and this tendency is particularly pronounced when we’re characterizing the opposite party. …
Solving a Century-Old Typographical Mystery
How a strange face in a random 19th-century newspaper ad became a portal to a forgotten moment in ASCII art history
One of the joys of modern technology is how easy it is to immerse yourself in the past. Every day, more libraries and archives are pushing pieces of their collections online in easily browsable interfaces.
The New York Public Library, for instance, has historic menus and interactive floor plans. Chronicling America is a searchable repository of newspapers published between 1836 and 1922 from the Library of Congress, which is also one of the many institutions in the Flickr Commons public image archive. Wikipedia has its own Wikimedia Commons, to which anybody can upload images and videos. Project Gutenberg continues to add new public-domain books to its collection every day, and New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art has posted thousands of images online with metadata as part of its Open Access for Scholarly Collections initiative.
My personal favorite however is TimesMachine, a site available to all New York Times subscribers that lets readers virtually flip through any historical issue of The New York Times all the way up through 2002. …
10 Tales Of Sacrifice And Ceremony About History’s Hidden Food Tasters
Being rich and powerful isn’t all fun and games—it seems like someone is always scheming to get you kicked off the throne. Once poison was viewed as a legitimate weapon (which happened around 331 BC), the fear that a would-be murderer would try to slip something into the food or drink of his victim was very real. And that gave rise to the thankless job of the food taster.
10. Emperor Claudius’ Murder
Claudius came to power after Caligula’s murder, and it wasn’t long before he became the target of conspiracies, too. He had a series of failed marriages, and it was his last wife, Agrippina, who plotted to kill him to ultimately put her son, Nero, at the head of the Roman Empire. In his last days, Claudius was overheard being very vocal about regretting his marriage and his adoption (and advancement) of Nero, which historians think isn’t a coincidence.
Just what killed Claudius is still debated, but the popular theory is that his food taster, a eunuch named Halotus, was at the center of the plot. Accounts of Claudius’s death come mainly from Pliny (who uses the presence of a comet as proof of murder) along with Tacticus, Dio, and Seutonius, who all recount the last days of the emperor.
They agree that Claudius was at a banquet on October 12, 54, and that he was served one of his favorite foods—mushrooms—by Halotus. …
Tufts grads enter the world with words of wisdom from ‘The Simpsons’
In 1985, when Hank Azaria marched with his class at the Tufts University commencement, he received an empty box. It would take him another two years, and some pestering from his mother, to finish all the credits needed for his degree.
But on Sunday, Azaria appeared at the 160th commencement of Tufts University in a rather different position. He was the guest of honor, and in his commencement address, he treated the 3,601 graduates to the standard bits of life advice but with a twist – they were delivered as characters from “The Simpsons.”
“If a cop even thinks you’re going to throw up in their backseat they will immediately let you go,” Azaria, the Emmy Award-winning actor, said as one of the many characters he voices on “The Simpsons,” Chief Wiggum.
As Moe the Bartender, he took a gentle swipe at a cross-town rival. …
THE SIMPSONS: “ORANGE IS THE NEW YELLOW” REVIEW
Marge can’t hack it in the outside world anymore.
Warning: Full spoilers for the episode below.
It would be really nice to be able to review new episodes of The Simpsons solely on their own merits and not in terms of how great the show used to be 20 years ago. But the longer the show lasts, the more it becomes guilty of retreading familiar ground and even directly rehashing old storylines. The Season 27 finale reached hinged on Marge being unfairly punished and being sent to prison, which is pretty much exactly the premise of Season 4’s “Marge in Chains.” “Orange Is the New Yellow” was a generally decent cap to the season, but like so many before it this episode failed to put a new spin on an old formula.
This episode was notable, if nothing else, for being the first to be scripted by ex-Futurama writer Eric Horsted, who was responsible for gems like “War Is the H-Word” and “Bendless Love.” The hope being that Horsted might bring some of that trademark Futurama charm over to Springfield. There were definitely moments this week where the show had a greater energy and more scathing wit than usual. “Orange Is the New Yellow” was at its best not when it focused on the prison storyline, but in poking fun at contemporary society’s overprotective approach to child-rearing. …
THE CURIOUS CASE OF ALIEN HAND SYNDROME
Although modern medicine has made tremendous advances in many areas, even mapping the human genome, there remain aspects of human health that continue to elude our full understanding. Alien hand syndrome is one of these puzzles- with its sufferers having one of their hands, usually the non-dominant one, acting as if it has a mind of its own.
Many of us have seen people with this condition, albeit on the big screen. In the campy 1935 horror film, Mad Love, deranged surgeon Peter Lorre replaces a pianist’s hands with those of a knife-throwing murderer, and the hands take over. More recently and more well known, in Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964), Peter Sellers in the eponymous role repeatedly and compulsively fights to keep his right arm from striking a Nazi salute. (In fact, the syndrome is also sometimes called “Dr. Strangelove Syndrome”.) …
Video Goodnesses
(and not-so-goodnesses)
(and not-so-goodnesses)
CAUTION: Some language may not be appropriate for work or children.
THANKS to HBO and Real Time with Bill Maher for making this program available on YouTube.
CAUTION: Some language may not be appropriate for work or children.