REALITYCHEX.COM - Constant Comments - The Commentariat -- June 12, 2013

The Ledes

Monday, October 7, 2024

Weather Channel: “Hurricane Milton has rapidly intensified into a Category 3 and hurricane and storm surge watches are now posted along Florida's western Gulf Coast, where the storm poses threats of life-threatening storm surge, destructive winds and flooding rainfall by midweek. 'Milton will be a historic storm for the west coast of Florida,' the National Weather Service in Tampa Bay said in a briefing Monday morning.”

CNN: “This year’s Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine has been awarded to Victor Ambros and Gary Ruvkun for their work on the discovery of microRNA, a fundamental principle governing how gene activity is regulated. Their research revealed how genes give rise to different cells within the human body, a process known as gene regulation. Gene regulation by microRNA – a family of molecules that helps cells control the sort of proteins they make – ... was first revealed by Ambros and Ruvkun. The Nobel Prize committee announced the prestigious honor ... in Sweden on Monday.... Ambros, a professor of natural science at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, conducted the research that earned him the prize at Harvard University. Ruvkun conducted his research at Massachusetts General Hospital, and is a professor of genetics at Harvard Medical School.”

The Wires

The Ledes

Sunday, October 6, 2024

New York Times: “Two boys have been arrested and charged in a street attack on David A. Paterson, a former governor of New York, and his stepson, the police said. One boy, who is 12, was charged with second-degree gang assault, and the other, a 13-year-old, was charged with third-degree gang assault, the police said on Saturday night. Both boys, accompanied by their parents, turned themselves in to the police, according to Sean Darcy, a spokesman for Mr. Paterson. A third person, also a minor, went to the police but was not charged in the Friday night attack in Manhattan, according to an internal police report.... Two other people, both adults, were involved in the attack, according to the police. They fled on foot and have not been caught, the police said. The former governor was not believed to have been targeted in the assault....”

Weather Channel: “Tropical Storm Milton, which formed in the Gulf of Mexico on Saturday, is expected to become a hurricane late Sunday or early Monday. The storm is expected to pose a major hurricane threat to Florida by midweek, just over a week after Helene pushed through the region. The National Hurricane Center says that 'there is an increasing risk of life-threatening storm surge and wind impacts for portions of the west coast of the Florida Peninsula beginning late Tuesday or Wednesday.'”

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Public Service Announcement

Washington Post: "Americans can again order free rapid coronavirus tests by mail, the Biden administration announced Thursday. People can request four free at-home tests per household through covidtests.gov. They will begin shipping Monday. The move comes ahead of an expected winter wave of coronavirus cases. The September revival of the free testing program is in line with the Biden administration’s strategy to respond to the coronavirus as part of a broader public health campaign to protect Americans from respiratory viruses, including influenza and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), that surge every fall and winter. But free tests were not mailed during the summer wave, which wastewater surveillance data shows is now receding."

Washington Post: “Comedy news outlet the Onion — reinvigorated by new ownership over this year — is bringing back its once-popular video parodies of cable news. But this time, there’s someone with real news anchor experience in the chair. When the first episodes appear online Monday, former WAMU and MSNBC host Joshua Johnson will be the face of the resurrected 'Onion News Network.' Playing an ONN anchor character named Dwight Richmond, Johnson says he’s bringing a real anchor’s sense of clarity — and self-importance — to the job. 'If ONN is anything, it’s a news organization that is so unaware of its own ridiculousness that it has the confidence of a serial killer,' says Johnson, 44.” ~~~

~~~ Marie: I'll be darned if I can figured out how to watch ONN. If anybody knows, do tell. Thanks.

Washington Post: “First came the surprising discovery that Earth’s atmosphere is leaking. But for roughly 60 years, the reason remained a mystery. Since the late 1960s, satellites over the poles detected an extremely fast flow of particles escaping into space — at speeds of 20 kilometers per second. Scientists suspected that gravity and the magnetic field alone could not fully explain the stream. There had to be another source creating this leaky faucet. It turns out the mysterious force is a previously undiscovered global electric field, a recent study found. The field is only about the strength of a watch battery — but it’s enough to thrust lighter ions from our atmosphere into space. It’s also generated unlike other electric fields on Earth. This newly discovered aspect of our planet provides clues about the evolution of our atmosphere, perhaps explaining why Earth is habitable. The electric field is 'an agent of chaos,' said Glyn Collinson, a NASA rocket scientist and lead author of the study. 'It undoes gravity.... Without it, Earth would be very different.'”

The New York Times lists Emmy winners. The AP has an overview story here.

New York Times: “Hvaldimir, a beluga whale who had captured the public’s imagination since 2019 after he was spotted wearing a harness seemingly designed for a camera, was found dead on Saturday in Norway, according to a nonprofit that worked to protect the whale.... [Hvaldimir] was wearing a harness that identified it as “equipment” from St. Petersburg. There also appeared to be a camera mount. Some wondered if the whale was on a Russian reconnaissance mission. Russia has never claimed ownership of the whale. If Hvaldimir was a spy, he was an exceptionally friendly one. The whale showed signs of domestication, and was comfortable around people. He remained in busier waters than are typical for belugas....” ~~~

~~~ Marie: Oh, Lord, do not let Bobby Kennedy, Jr., near that carcass. ~~~

~~~ AP Update: “There’s no evidence that a well-known beluga whale that lived off Norway’s coast and whose harness ignited speculation it was a Russian spy was shot to death last month as claimed by animal rights groups, Norwegian police said Monday.... Police said that the Norwegian Veterinary Institute conducted a preliminary autopsy on the animal, which was become known as 'Hvaldimir,' combining the Norwegian word for whale — hval — and the first name of Russian President Vladimir Putin. 'There are no findings from the autopsy that indicate that Hvaldimir has been shot,' police said in a statement.”

New York Times: Botswana's “President Mokgweetsi Masisi grinned as he lifted the diamond, a 2,492-carat stone that is the biggest diamond unearthed in more than a century and the second-largest ever found, according to the Vancouver-based mining operator Lucara, which owns the mine where it was found. This exceptional discovery could bring back the luster of the natural diamond mining industry, mining companies and experts say. The diamond was discovered in the same relatively small mine in northeastern Botswana that has produced several of the largest such stones in living memory. Such gemstones typically surface as a result of volcanic activity.... The diamond will likely sell in the range of tens of millions of dollars....”

Click on photo to enlarge.

~~~ Guardian: "On a distant reef 16,000km from Paris, surfer Gabriel Medina has given Olympic viewers one of the most memorable images of the Games yet, with an airborne celebration so well poised it looked too good to be true. The Brazilian took off a thundering wave at Teahupo’o in Tahiti on Monday, emerging from a barrelling section before soaring into the air and appearing to settle on a Pacific cloud, pointing to the sky with biblical serenity, his movements mirrored precisely by his surfboard. The shot was taken by Agence France-Presse photographer Jérôme Brouillet, who said “the conditions were perfect, the waves were taller than we expected”. He took the photo while aboard a boat nearby, capturing the surreal image with such accuracy that at first some suspected Photoshop or AI."

Washington Post: “'Mary Cassatt at Work' is a large and mostly satisfying exhibition devoted to the career of the great American artist beloved for her sensitive and often sentimental views of family life. The 'at work' in the title of the Philadelphia Museum of Art show references the curators’ interest in Cassatt’s pioneering effort to establish herself as a professional artist within a male-dominated field. Throughout the show, which includes some 130 paintings, pastels, prints and drawings, the wall text and the art on view stresses Cassatt’s fixation on art as a career rather than a pastime.... Mary Cassatt at Work is on view at the Philadelphia Museum of Art through Sept. 8. philamuseum.org”

New York Times: “Bob Newhart, who died on Thursday at the age of 94, has been such a beloved giant of popular culture for so long that it’s easy to forget how unlikely it was that he became one of the founding fathers of stand-up comedy. Before basically inventing the hit stand-up special, with the 1960 Grammy-winning album 'The Button-Down Mind of Bob Newhart' — that doesn’t even count his pay-per-view event broadcast on Canadian television that some cite as the first filmed special — he was a soft-spoken accountant who had never done a set in a nightclub. That he made a classic with so little preparation is one of the great miracles in the history of comedy.... Bob Newhart holds up. In fact, it’s hard to think of a stand-up from that era who is a better argument against the commonplace idea that comedy does not age well.”

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Jun122013

The Commentariat -- June 12, 2013

I know there's lots more out there, but I haven't time to look for it today. Please use the Comments section to share what you find. Thanks. -- CW

Seung Min Kim of Politico: "The Senate on Tuesday overwhelmingly agreed to launch a major effort to rewrite U.S. immigration laws, setting the stage for weeks of debate on securing the nation's borders, legalizing undocumented residents and modernizing the country's immigration system. Senators voted 82-15 to move forward on the Gang of Eight immigration bill; 60 votes were needed for passage. All 15 votes against the motion were from Republicans. The bill cleared a second procedural vote later Tuesday." ...

... Suicide by Bigotry. Francis Wilkinson of Bloomberg News: " ... it's impossible to know how effectively [House Speaker John] Boehner can manage his unruly troops -- or how far to the right his definition of 'immigration bill' will ultimately be. Last week, House Republicans voted to overturn President Barack Obama's executive order enabling young undocumented immigrants -- who had been brought to the U.S. as children -- to avoid deportation. As policy, the vote was pointlessly cruel. As politics, it was disastrous, targeting the most sympathetic group of undocumented immigrants for punishment, and revealing a Republican rank and file marching behind their most virulently anti-immigrant colleagues. Writing in U.S. News under the headline 'A Finger in the Eye of Hispanic Voters,' Robert Schlesinger asked the obvious question: 'Does this party have a death wish?' We'll soon learn the answer." ...

Markos Moulitsas: it'll be a blue Texas soon, & anti-immigration stances like Ted Cruz's could speed up the state's metamorphosis.

The Grand Old Misogynist Party

Awwwk-ward! Scott Shane & Jonathan Weisman of the New York Times: "For years, intelligence officials have tried to debunk what they called a popular myth about the National Security Agency: that its electronic net routinely sweeps up information about millions of Americans.... Since the disclosures last week showing that the agency does indeed routinely collect data on the phone calls of millions of Americans, Obama administration officials have struggled to explain what now appear to have been misleading past statements." ...

... Fred Kaplan of Slate: "If President Obama really does welcome a debate about the scope of the U.S. surveillance program, a good first step would be to fire Director of National Intelligence James Clapper. Back at an open congressional hearing on March 12, Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) asked Clapper, 'Does the NSA collect any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans?' Clapper replied, 'No sir ... not wittingly.;' As we all now know, he was lying." ...

... Dan Roberts, et al., of the Guardian: "Anger was mounting in Congress on Tuesday night as politicians, briefed for the first time after revelations about the government's surveillance dragnet, vowed to rein in a system that one said amounted to 'spying on Americans'." ...

... Adam Serwer of NBC News: "Seeking to drag the shadowy world of U.S. national security law into the light, a bipartisan group of senators has proposed a bill that would declassify significant legal opinions reached by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. The court is charged with approving intelligence agency requests for surveillance on suspected foreign agents." ...

... Sahil Kapur of TPM: "Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) both defended the National Security Agency's surveillance program on Tuesday." ...

... Craig Timberg & Cecilia Kang of the Washington Post: "Technology companies stung by the controversy over the National Security Agency's sweeping Internet surveillance program are calling on U.S. officials to ease the secrecy surrounding national security investigations and lift long-standing gag orders covering the nature and extent of information collected about Internet users." ...

... Do We Really Need to Know This? Ellen Nakashima of the Washington Post: "U.S. intelligence operatives covertly sabotaged a prominent al-Qaeda online magazine last month in an apparent attempt to sow confusion among the group's followers, according to officials." As Robert Chesney & Benjamin Wittes pointed out, the Post's story on PRISM (but not the Guardian's) was likely damaging to national security. This one can't be helpful, either.

Twivial Pursuits. Maureen Dowd is so past Obambi & is throttling up the old Clinton scandal train, this time focussing on Hillary's new Twitter account, which she morphs into something to do with a U.S. ambassador & prostitutes.

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Re: I know what you know more than you know; Just got done pawing over yesterday's cell calls, texts, dial-up calls, cables, twitters, telegrams, and pony express deliveries. I'm beat. Over two billion types of communication and what do you know? Marie has got a new egg topper. This new spy thing is working out well. I'm on as a contractor so I work from home; sweet, just me and my canine friends checking the wires for incoming threats to your security. Rest easy my friends, we are listening.
Just a thought... If every red blooded man, woman and canine added key words to every bit of communication round the world would the NSA computers over heat? "Like I got bombed last night at the airport bar with two Muslims that should have known better than to drink on a flight to Kabul. They forgot their bags of cash the drug dealer from Cali gave them." Whoops, got to go; there's a call.

June 12, 2013 |

JJG

It shouldn't require to much thought to figure out that women are treated as 2nd class in almost any sphere.The exercise of twisted male dominance is especially okay if the men are rapists under color of uniform. Carl Levin just fell hard into the pig trough head first yesterday. There isn't any critical reasoning here. Its all about male power. If men were the victims of rape in the military at the same alarming rates as women, the response would be swift and I wager, vicious. Its at least as serious a crime to treat rape by shaming, blaming and minimizing the victim as the rape itself.

And good for Claire McCaskell - keep holding up the Susan Helms appointment. Embracing the macho-good-ol-boy position in favor of promotion is extremely damaging. I used to see it in law enforcement all the time.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/12/us/politics/proposed-measure-to-curb-sexual-assault-in-military-to-be-cut-from-bill.html?_r=0

June 12, 2013 |

Diane

Yesterday in a little back and forth on films dealing with surveillance, several excellent ones were mentioned, Brazil, a great one for generalized goofy political dysfunction, and "The Conversation", the granddaddy of crippling paranoia.

I have to agree with James' suggestion of this film being one of the best. Like "Lives of Other People" it surveys (because isn't film the most voyeuristic art form?) surveillance expert Harry Caul (Gene Hackman) who deludes himself into believing that he is just doing a job and has no interest in what happens to the people affected by his work. But like the Stasi watcher in "Lives" he is drawn into the world of those he watches. I won't give anything away to those who might want to see this film, only to say that it demonstrates the danger and difficulty of interpreting what you see and hear, a danger that no doubt remains with us. The last scene is a killer.

What really makes "The Conversation" work, appropriately for a film dealing with audio surveillance, I think, is its sound; the soundtrack, a brilliant Satie-ish piano score by David Shire, and the sound editing by the legendary Walter Murch, whose aphorisms on the art of editing are well known by almost anyone who has cut film or edited video.

The Shire score creates a weird, dreamlike effect. I remember first seeing this film in the theater in 1974 then racing home to try to figure out the main themes on the piano. It was difficult because Shire, at certain places, uses different time signatures in the left and right hands, a perfect way to simulate, musically, the difficulties of reconciling the various data points (or notes) into a pleasingly resolved narrative or theme. The slight dissonance also mirrors Harry's efforts to understand exactly what people are saying on his tapes and their meanings.

One final note about "The Conversation", a few years ago I watched a Tony Scott film called "Enemy of the State" starring Will Smith as a lawyer being followed by the NSA and a surveillance expert, long hidden underground, played by Gene Hackman. As I watched the film I noticed more and more correlations to "The Conversation" and at one point, as the NSA try to find out who he is, they find an old ID photo. The picture is of Harry Caul.

As great as "The Godfather" and "Godfather pt II" were, I think "The Conversation" is Francis Ford Coppola's masterpiece.

If you do decide to watch it, don't miss a young Harrison Ford as a very creepy bad guy.

A short clip from David Shire's score for The Conversation

A conversation from The Conversation

June 12, 2013 |

Akhilleus

Hi Marie,

I really miss your comments on the NYT opinion pages.

Jennifer

June 12, 2013 |

Jennifer

An Amy Davidson column in the New Yorker commenting on a Brooks editorial. I am surprised at the number of responses asking why she was wasting editorial space on this NYT columnist. He really is a has-been. Or perhaps a never-was

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/closeread/2013/06/david-brooks-and-edward-snowden.html

June 12, 2013 |

cowichan's opinion

One other note on "The Conversation." It co-starred the amazing John Casales. In his short movie career, Casales appeared in five films, each of which was nominated for a best picture Oscar.

June 12, 2013 |

James Singer

European reaction to PRISM. Apparently the slaves of socialist europe are more concerned with data-mining than residents of the Land of the Free.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/11/europe-us-privacy

June 12, 2013 |

cowichan's opinion

While some folks are bobbing for the bad apples Mayor Bloomberg from The Big Apple is on the rampage. He has written to Democratic donors urging them NOT to give any money to those gun loving bastards that won't vote the way he thinks they should. "And the four Democratic senators who sided with Republicans filibustering the background check bill — Mark Pryor of Arkansas, Max Baucus of Montana, Mark Begich of Alaska and Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota — have raised more than $2.2 million from New York" in the past. This story on the front page of the Times today.

June 12, 2013 |

PD Pepe

Some perspective on the current brouhaha re:NSA: http://www.nationalmemo.com/fourth-amendment-purists-are-living-in-a-dream-world.

As I said the other day, according to Glen Greenwald, the sky is always falling. He always seems (to me) shouting at the top of his lungs.

June 12, 2013 |

Barbarossa

James,

I never realized Cazale's feat until you mentioned it. Just phenomenal.

I got to see Cazale onstage once with Al Pacino, back in the mid 70s when they were working in Bertolt Brecht's riff on fascism, "Arturo Ui". He was brilliant. In some ways more affecting than Pacino who played the volatile, unstable title character.

June 12, 2013 |

Akhilleus

Marie has asked for posts of interest. This may or not qualify, but it certainly deserves inclusion in RC's "Right Wing World" section (sub section for loonies).

So....Li'l Randy wants (needs, gimme, gimme, gimme) to be president, right? He's doing all the things right-wing presidential candidates have been doing recently, correct? Sending up lead weighted trial balloons, building up a war chest, doing the polling thing, and spouting crazy bullshit.

But Aqua Buddha Boy has gone where even the previous collection of clown car riders refused to go. Through a blog written by Randy's director of outreach to Christians for his presidential run, one David Lane, there is a call now for Christians to martyr themselves in order to show all those icky gay marriage supporters and horrible homosexuals who are trampling on our rights and "imposing gay marriage" on poor unsuspecting real Americans, that they are not going to take it anymore and are willing to be torn to pieces by lions in order to stop the gay plague.

No, brothers and sisters, this is the real deal. I couldn't make this shit up.

We are all evil, gay-loving pagans who deserve horrible stuff to be decided at a later time, but Christians, according to Randy's outreach guy, should be laying down their lives to stop this perverted shit right this fucking minute. As in right away. Now.

Like I said, even in a drug induced fever dream, I could never come up with batshit crazy stuff like this. And to show you just how crazy this shit is, WND (World Nutbag Daily) had it up on their site but decided to remove it. So, if it's too nuts for those loonies, you KNOW it's deliriously stupid.

But David (Martyrdom is Fun) Lane is Rand Paul's guy for reaching out to the holy rollers.

And calling for them to die to stop those awful gays from getting married.

Wow.

Below is a screen grab of this kookamunga blog before World Nutbag took it down:

Stop gay marriage! Kill yourselves!

June 12, 2013 |

Akhilleus

Just one more observation about the aforementioned David Lane diatribe, to demonstrate how completely bereft of rationality these people are (and it would be one thing if he was standing on corners, running out to wash windshields for a quarter before the lights changed, but this guy is in the inner circle of a teabagger senator who is taken seriously as a potential candidate for president!) in the same sentence, he screams that Christians are falling down on the job of imposing their theocratic will on the rest of us (a good thing) which in turn is allowing evil secularists to impose a multicultural, secularist religion on their children (a very bad thing).

So, to sum up, imposition of religion on an entire population (sounds a bit like Sharia Law, no?) is okay as long as it's Christianity, but imposition of anything else is evil.

Got it? It's okay for them to do it, but anybody else gets the axe. Right in the neck.

Finally......another war? Really? We don't have enough wars already? WTF is it about right-wingers and war? Their wars on women, immigrants, the poor, the left, non-Christians, the media, sex, the government, and New York style clam chowder aren't plenty?

Sheesh. Enough already with the furshlugginer wars.

June 12, 2013 |

Akhilleus

Charles Pierce's essay "Tell Me What Is Being Done in My Name" seems to have hit a chord that is resonating across the web. Well, at least across Facebook and Twitter.

http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/A_Simple_Question

June 12, 2013 |

James Singer

A very pertinent TED talk putting a little perspective on the NSA debacle. It puts a good spin on whether its the government combing through largely "anonymous" data or individuals cherry picking info. for personal advancement.

Digital Tattoos
http://www.ted.com/talks/juan_enriquez_how_to_think_about_digital_tattoos.html

June 12, 2013 |

safari

@James & Ak: As you probably know, but maybe not, John Casales was married to Meryl Streep.

June 12, 2013 |

PD Pepe

Sorry–-Cazales, not Casales. AK: Just read David Lane's screed: and we fear the terrorists? This guy is demented and dangerous and you're right–-would be different if he were the looney that stands on corners and screams that the world is coming to an end while he picks the pockets of little children, but he's connected to a U.S. senator. And yet––our history is fraught with little people with small minds that think they can make a difference––seldom do they succeed without getting their just desserts in the end.

June 12, 2013 |

PD Pepe

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