June 7, 2016

Cat’s Broken Again…

THE LOST LEONARDO

Only 15 paintings by the Italian Renaissance master Leonardo da Vinci are known to exist. But what if there were more…and what if Leonardo’s greatest work—one that’s been presumed destroyed since 1563—was safely hidden, just waiting to be discovered?

THE BIG PICTURE

In 1503 the Republic of Florence (now part of Italy) commissioned Leonardo da Vinci to paint a mural in the Palazzo Vecchio (“Old Palace”), which housed the city-state’s government. The mural was to be painted on a wall of the palace’s Hall of the Five Hundred, the room where the city’s 500-member grand council conducted its affairs. The city fathers wanted scenes of Florence’s military triumphing over its enemies, so Leonardo painted the Battle of Anghiari, in which Florence and its allies defeated Milan in June 1440.

Typically, murals on walls were painted using the fresco technique: dry pigments were mixed with water and brushed into wet plaster as the wall was being built. Frescoes can be spectacular, but they come at a cost: the artist must paint quickly, before the plaster dries, and he cannot revise his work because once the pigments have soaked into the plaster, they can’t be removed or painted over. And the choice of colors is limited, because lime contained in the plaster bleaches many types of pigments. Only pigments that are resistant to chemical bleaching can be used. …

The GOP’s Purity Problem

^{What the Renee Ellmers race in North Carolina says about the Republican Party.}

The Democratic presidential primary is in its final stretch and its outcome will dominate airwaves Tuesday night. But under the radar in North Carolina, a very different politician than Hillary Clinton is fighting her own battle against an ideological challenger in a race that almost acts as a microcosm for all the problems and dysfunctions of the Republican Party—the same ones that propelled Donald Trump to its presidential nomination.

When Renee Ellmers entered Congress in 2011, she was the hero. One of dozens of conservative Republicans elected in the Tea Party wave of 2010, she made national news as a vocal opponent of the proposed mosque at Ground Zero and won support from former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as one of her “Mama Grizzlies.” Ellmers campaigned as a hard-right conservative and for the most part, she’s acted as one, building a solid conservative voting record in her three terms as representative for North Carolina’s second congressional district.

Unlike many of her Tea Party peers, however, Ellmers seems to think government should function on the day-to-day. …

A Primary That Pitted Democrats Against Independents

^{According to exit polls, one of the biggest gaps between Clinton and Sanders has been supporters’ actual loyalty to the Democratic Party.}

As Bernie Sanders reaffirms his pledge to contest the Democratic presidential nomination all the way through July’s party convention, one of his fundamental obstacles remains his consistent weakness among voters who identify as actual Democrats.

Results from the exit polls conducted in 27 states through the nominating contest so far show that Hillary Clinton has established a huge lead over Sanders among voters who self-identify as Democrats. Sanders, though trailing in the popular vote and delegate count, has remained competitive only because he has built a virtually identical lead among primary voters who self-identify as independents.

This pattern has persisted across all regions of the country and crystallizes the offsetting strengths and weaknesses that have defined the two combatants through their unexpectedly extended contest. …

Top 10 Curious Encounters With Fairies

Think you know about fairies, do you? The twinkly little things on TV are a mostly modern, Disney-inspired invention. In the 18th, 19th, and early 20th centuries, fairies were seen and talked about much in the same sense that Bigfoot is today. Despite modern skepticism regarding fairies, weird, perplexing encounters and sightings continue to be reported.

10. Dangerous Curiosity

On a midsummer day around 1853 in County Donegal, Ireland, a boy named Neil Colton was out behind his home with his brother and a female cousin gathering berries when the three of them heard music playing nearby. Stepping around some large rocks, the trio saw a group of six to eight small people dancing in a circle a few hundred feet away.

As soon as they spotted the dancers, a small woman dressed in red broke from that group and ran at the children, striking Colton’s cousin across the face with what seemed to be a green rush. Not surprisingly, the children ran for the house. But as soon as they reached it, Colton’s female cousin fell down dead. …

Lindsey Graham Is Now Urging Other Republicans to Un-Endorse Trump

On May 23rd, we here at Mediaite ran this headline:

Lindsey Graham Caves, Quietly Tells Fellow Republicans to Get Behind Trump

14 days later, Graham has not only done a complete 180, but he is telling other Republicans to un-endorse Donald Trump.

Yes, just so we’re clear, Graham went from “hell no” on Trump to “eh maybe” on Trump to “okay let’s do this” on Trump to “ABANDON THIS SINKING SHIP WOMEN AND CHILDREN AND DONORS FIRST.” …

Karl Rove Made A Joke About Slavery To A Bunch Of Hedge Fund Managers. It Didn’t Go Well.

Politics has gotten very ugly. Arguments that used to be limited to fringe groups and the dark corners of the internet are now embraced by presidential candidates.
So what are things like behind closed doors? Even worse.
A column in the Financial Times published Tuesday gave us a peek. Mary Childs, a financial correspondent for FT, reported on what she observed at a private hedge fund conference in May.

The conference featured a debate between Donna Brazile, former campaign manager for Al Gore’s unsuccessful presidential run and prominent member of the Democratic Party, and Karl Rove, a Republican strategist and commentator best known as the chief political adviser to George W. Bush.
At a certain point the discussion Rove offered this “joke” to Brazile, who is black:

I did you a great favor bringing you into politics in the 1860 campaign and this is how you repay me? We’re happy you got the right to vote but it wasn’t your current party that was responsible for it.

Childs didn’t find this funny, calling Rove’s quip “patronizing and insensitive.” …

10 Documents With A Profound Influence On History

History can prove hard to uncover. When delving back hundreds or even thousands of years into our past, we have to make do with whatever bits and pieces we find, hoping they can provide us with an accurate picture of a time long gone. Sometimes, we get lucky, though. Occasionally, we uncover documents that detail some of the most notable events in history.

10. The Cyrus Cylinder

In 1879, archaeologist Hormuzd Rassam was excavating in Mesopotamia when he uncovered a number of clay tablets which provided us with an unparalleled look at the ancient world. Among them was the Cyrus Cylinder, a document written in cuneiform script which, according to some, represents the oldest charter on human rights.

The cylinder was created around 538 BC, shortly after Persian King Cyrus the Great conquered Babylon. According to the cylinder, Cyrus is portrayed as a liberator. He was chosen by the Babylonian god Marduk to free the city from the reign of Nabonidus, who had perverted the cults of the gods and enslaved his own people through forced labor. Cyrus entered the city without a fight, and the Babylonian people delivered Nabonidus to him and accepted Cyrus’s kingship.

Afterward, the cylinder is written in the first person to represent Cyrus giving an edict. He abolishes the forced labor instituted by his predecessor and promises to bring back the people deported by Nabonidus and restore the religious cults and temples that were previously forbidden. …

Where Is the Heir to Rage Against the Machine?

^{The super-group Prophets of Rage come at a time of much political music, but few iconically political musicians.}

Do dangerous times demand dangerous songs? That’s the thesis behind “Make America Rage Again,” an imminent concert tour by Prophets of Rage, a supergroup formed by members of Rage Against the Machine, Public Enemy, and Cypress Hill. The press release for the tour features two hashtags—#MakeAmericaRAGEAgain and #TakeThePowerBack—and quotes the guitarist Tom Morello describing the Prophets as an “elite task force of revolutionary musicians determined to confront this mountain of election year bullshit.”

The revolutionary branding has a retro air. Prophets of Rage’s debut set list included hits recorded by their former bands, plus the Beastie Boys’ “No Sleep Till Brooklyn” reworked as “No Sleep Till Cleveland” (a reference to the Republican National Convention, which the band intends to protest). There was just one new track, called “The Party’s Over,” which they dedicated to “Donald Trump, Mr. Combover.”

All of this messaging insists that at this time, in the midst of the 2016 election, the band’s existence is vital. Implicit in that idea is a dig at the current musical moment—an assertion that there’s a 21-century protest-song drought that can only be filled by 20th-century icons. “There’s not music that speaks to what’s going on right now,” Cypress Hill’s B-Real told Bloomberg reporters at the band’s first gig. This is a popular opinion, and a dubious one. Political music is flourishing, but it just doesn’t sound or look like what Prophets of Rage does—these days, artists are mixing advocacy and art more fluidly than ever. …

Will there be enough white voters to elect Donald Trump?

Race isn’t the only demographic factor influencing the outcome of the 2016 presidential election. But, along with gender and education, it’s likely to be a powerful way to understand the contours of the electorate and the overall contest.

For that reason, the most important question of 2016 is: Can Donald Trump turn out enough white voters to beat Hillary Clinton?

In every presidential election since 1968, the Republican nominee has carried whites, sometimes with a plurality, sometimes narrowly, but increasingly by a comfortable margin. (see 1976-2012 exit poll data from the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research at Cornell University; and 1968 and 1972 data from Gallup’s final pre-election surveys.) …

WHY DO MANY COUNTRIES’ NAMES END IN “-STAN,” AND HOME COUNTRY DESIGNATIONS OFTEN END WITH “–AN” AS IN “AMERICAN”?

Denoting that it is a piece of the earth associated with a particular group of people, the suffix -stan simply means “land of.”

An ancient suffix of Persian origins, for many people, particularly in Central Asia, the addition of –stan to the name of their cultural or ethnic group identifies that a certain place belongs to them, e.g., Kazakhstan is the “land of the Kazakhs.”

-Stan‘s roots go even further back than Persia, however, to the Indo-Iranian element, *stanam, which meant both “place” or even more literally, “where one stands.” This old construction is derived from the even earlier Proto-Indo-European root *sta, which also meant “to stand.” …

Healthy Fats in Mediterranean Diet Won’t Boost Weight

An eating plan that includes healthy fats such as olive oil and nuts isn’t likely to cause weight gain, a new study finds.

That’s good news for people who’d prefer to try the Mediterranean diet — which includes healthy fats — over a diet that’s low in fat. And the study authors suggest that current health guidelines may be creating an unnecessary fear of these healthful fats.

“More than 40 years of nutritional policy has advocated for a low-fat diet, but we’re seeing little impact on rising levels of obesity,” said study lead author Dr. Ramon Estruch, of the University of Barcelona in Spain.

“Our study shows that a Mediterranean diet rich in vegetable fats such as olive oil and nuts had little effect on body weight or waist circumference compared to people on a low-fat diet. The Mediterranean diet has well-known health benefits and includes healthy fats, such as vegetable oils, fish and nuts,” Estruch explained in a journal news release. …

The Unsung Hero of Western Science

^{A friend and pupil of Aristotle, Theophrastus isn’t always credited for launching botany, and much else.}

In 345 B.C.E., two men took a trip that changed the way we make sense of the natural world. Their names were Theophrastus and Aristotle, and they were staying on Lesbos, the Greek island where tens of thousands of Syrian refugees have recently landed.

Theophrastus and Aristotle were two of the greatest thinkers in ancient Greece. They set out to bring order to nature by doing something very unusual for the time: they examined living things and got their hands dirty. They turned away from Plato’s idealism and looked at the real world. Both Aristotle and Theophrastus believed that the study of nature was as important as metaphysics, politics, or mathematics. Nothing was too small or insignificant. “There is something awesome in all natural things.” Aristotle said, “inherent in each of them there is something natural and beautiful.”

Aristotle is the more famous of the two men, but Theophrastus deserves equal bidding in any history of naturalism. Born around 372 B.C.E. in Eresos, a town on the southwestern coast of Lesbos, Theophrastus was 13 years younger than Aristotle. According to Diogenes Laërtius—a biographer who wrote his Eminent Philosophers more than 400 years afterwards but who is the main source for what we know about Theophrastus’ life—Theophrastus was one of Aristotle’s pupils at Plato’s Academy. For many years they worked closely together until Aristotle’s death in 322 B.C.E. when Theophrastus became his successor at the Lyceum school in Athens and inherited his magnificent library. …

6 People Who Prove Sometimes You Really Should Give Up

As children, we’re taught that we can grow up to be whatever we want if we put in enough elbow grease and gumption, especially if our dream job is “elbow grease and gumption manufacturer.” However, when your dream is to walk across the ocean or make a sequel to a 25-year-old Mike Myers movie, arguably better advice would be “Give up now, while you still have some life left ahead of you.” The following six people refused to let adversity or common sense stand in their way of their dreams, no matter how “dumb” or “ridiculous” the rest of the world may find them.

#6. Wayne’s World 3: The Script Hollywood Has Ignored For Two Decades

Hollywood has seen its fair share of hopeful screenwriters, most of whom have had their dreams squashed by bigwigs who don’t have the time or patience to care about sci-fi space opera takes on the Watergate scandal — which is, statistically speaking, the bulk of the The Black List. But some of these writers refuse to stop pushing their story, even after the Universe gives them billboards demanding they give up. Trevor Schindeler, for example, has been trying to convince anyone and everyone to check out his script for Wayne’s World 3 for the past 23 years.

^{Remember the SNL 40th Anniversary show?
Imagine that mixed with Dumb And Dumber To for 90 minutes.}

…

‘Dear California jackhole…’: Tesla driver publicly shamed for parking across three Supercharger spots

^{This is the perfect example of how not to comport yourself while charging an electric vehicle.}

Electric vehicles are still in their infancy, so there are many EV-related trails that have not yet been fully blazed. One of those is charger etiquette. If you’re a first-time EV owner you may not be sure how to behave at a charging station. Let the story here stand as a lesson to those who think that parking across three charging spaces is a perfectly fine thing to do.

Electrek pointed our attention to the Tesla Worldwide Owners Facebook group, where a user named Debra called out the Model X pictured above. The offending Tesla was parked at a Supercharger station in Delaware. The post begins: “Dear California jackhole, Here in Delaware we think it is rude to take 3 supercharger spaces with one vehicle. What is wrong with you?????? This takes selfishness to a new level.”

Aside from “California jackhole” being my new favorite insult to hurl at someone, this story highlights the troubles that will undoubtedly continue to appear — not just at Tesla’s Superchargers, but also at other charging spaces across the country. …

The ‘Windsor Hum’: where is the noise plaguing a city of 210,000 coming from?

^{The low rumbling that’s been reverberating in the Canadian city’s ears for six years is getting louder – and more debilitating. The source may be on an American industrial island but muffling the sound has not been an easy task.}

^{Zug island, the potential source of the ‘Windsor Hum’, is located a few miles from the Ambassador bridge that connects Detroit to Windsor, Canada.}

It’s been compared to a subwoofer blasting Barry White’s greatest hits or an idling diesel truck.

Others say the low, rumbling noise that has stalked residents in the Canadian city of Windsor for years sounds like Star Trek’s Enterprise gearing up for warp speed.

“Very destructive,” is how Mike Provost, a 62-year-old retired insurance salesman describes the so-called Windsor Hum. “If you think of thunder, and you take that thunder and constantly repeat it for hours and days, weeks, that’s all it is.”

Residents on the west and south side of Windsor – a city of 210,000 people that sits just across the river from Detroit – began complaining of a mysterious noise some six years ago, blaming it for rattling windows and trembling wall hangings. …

10 Victims Lured To Mysterious Meetings

These days, you often hear cautionary horror stories about Craigslist, where innocent victims will either post or answer an advertisement on the website and end up crossing paths with a psychopath who used the ad to lure them to a meeting and do them harm. However, this type of thing occurred long before Craigslist even existed. There have been numerous frightening tales of unsuspecting victims who were lured to a meeting with an unknown individual and wound up being murdered or vanishing without a trace. In many of these unsolved cases, the identity and motive of the person who arranged the ill-fated meeting is unknown, and it’s possible that the victim was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time.

10. The Disappearance Of Leonard Dirickson

Leonard Dirickson was a 39-year-old divorcee who lived with his teenage son Jared at their dairy farm in Strong City, Oklahoma. On the morning of March 14, 1998, Leonard and Jared were eating breakfast when an unidentified man in a pickup truck showed up at their farmhouse. Leonard went to speak with the man for several minutes, and when he came back inside, he told Jared that the stranger was interested in buying one of his horses. Curiously, Leonard had never advertised having horses for sale. Nevertheless, Leonard left with the mysterious stranger in his pickup truck to go show him the horse. This would be the last time Jared ever saw his father.

There was no indication that Leonard ever visited the barn where he kept his horse, but a waitress did report seeing Leonard and the stranger at a nearby coffee shop two hours after he left the farm. The case took a bizarre turn six months later, when police received an anonymous phone call from a man who reported seeing Leonard at a bar in Amarillo, Texas. When police arrived at the bar, the caller was gone, and there was no sign of Leonard. …

The New Economics of Cybercrime

^{Digital thieves’ most crucial adaptation in recent years has little to do with their technical tools and everything to do with their business model.}

It’s a good time to be a cybercriminal. There are more victims to target, there is more data to steal, and there is more money to be made from doing so than ever before.

It would seem to follow, then, that there’s been very little progress since 2007, when hackers stole at least 45.6 million credit-card numbers from the servers of TJX, the owner of TJ Maxx and Marshalls, catapulting the now-commonplace narrative of the massive data breach to national prominence.

But the truth is that the forces of cyber law and order have made lots of headway in the past decade. There are still large-scale data breaches, but credit-card companies are getting better at detecting them early and replacing customers’ cards as needed, payment networks are pushing microchip-enabled cards that render transaction data worthless to criminals, and law enforcement has gotten smarter and savvier. Just ask Albert Gonzalez, who masterminded the TJX breach and is currently serving a 20-year prison sentence. …

New algorithm may lead to a picture of an actual black hole

^{It stitches data gathered by the Event Horizon Telescope.}

MIT grad student Katie Bouman and her team have developed an algorithm that could finally show us a photo of an actual black hole. See, all the black hole “photos” you’ve seen thus far, including the one above, are merely artist interpretations depicting what we think they look like. In order to capture, say, a picture of the supermassive black hole in the center of our own galaxy, we’ll need an enormous telescope with a diameter almost as big as our planet. Since it’s impossible to build something that massive, Bouman’s algorithm called Continuous High-resolution Image Reconstruction using Patch priors or CHIRP stitches data gathered by the Event Horizon Telescope array.

The EHT array is made up of several radio telescopes from around the world that can penetrate through galactic dust. Astronomers treat them collectively as one large, Earth-sized telescope by combining the data they gather. Problem is, the telescopes don’t receive data at the same time due to all the dust and dirt in outer space. …

ORIGIN OF THE TERM “BOOZE”

Today I found out the origin of the term “booze”.

The first references to the word “booze” meaning “alcoholic drink” in English appear around the 14th century, though it was originally spelled “bouse”. The spelling, as it is today, didn’t appear until around the 17th century.

The word “booze” itself appears to have Germanic origins, though which specific word it came from is still a little bit of a mystery. …

Video Goodnesses
(and not-so-goodnesses)

As primary season draws to a close, we take a walk down memory lane, climb memory bridge, and throw ourselves into the memory ocean.

Support the Military Justice Improvement Act, and help protect our privates’ privates. #PassMJIA

Senator Kirsten Gillibrand is reaching across the aisle to prevent military officers from reaching into their subordinates’ pants. #passMJIA

Stephen’s joy at the arrival of the Whopperrito is quickly overshadowed by news of Donald Trump’s latest episode of racial insensitivity.