The Ledes

Thursday, September 19, 2024

New York Times: “A body believed to be of the suspect in a Kentucky highway shooting that left five people seriously injured this month was found on Wednesday, the authorities said, ending a manhunt that stretched into a second week and set the local community on edge. The Kentucky State Police commissioner, Phillip Burnett Jr., said in a Wednesday night news conference that at approximately 3:30 p.m., two troopers and two civilians found an unidentified body in the brush behind the highway exit where the shooting occurred.... The police have identified the suspect of the shooting as Joseph A. Couch, 32. They said that on Sept. 7, Mr. Couch perched on a cliff overlooking Interstate 75 about eight miles north of London, Ky., and opened fire. One of the wounded was shot in the face, and another was shot in the chest. A dozen vehicles were riddled with gunfire.”

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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.”

Washington Post: “An early Titian masterpiece — once looted by Napolean’s troops and a part of royal collections for centuries — caused a stir when it was stolen from the home of a British marquess in 1995. Seven years later, it was found inside an unassuming white and blue plastic bag at a bus stop in southwest London by an art detective, and returned. This week, the oil painting 'The Rest on the Flight into Egypt' sold for more than $22 million at Christie’s. It was a record for the Renaissance artist, whom museums describe as the greatest painter of 16th-century Venice. Ahead of the sale in April, the auction house billed it as 'the most important work by Titian to come to the auction market in more than a generation.'”

Washington Post: The Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C., which houses the world's largest collection of Shakespeare material, has undergone a major renovation. "The change to the building is pervasive, both subtle and transformational."

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Wednesday
Dec142016

Trump's Laws of Politics

(A Riff on Newton's Laws of Physics, with apologies to Sir Isaac)

By Akhilleus

Physics, schmisics.

So. Rick Perry, eh? Energy Secretary. Does that mean he'll be taking dictation and getting coffee for the big oil and gas execs?

After all, he comes from a state where oil is king and he benefited enormously from oil industry contributions to his various political campaigns, including the one where he obsequiously meant to let all his oil pals know that he was going to kill the pesky Department of Energy, but, oops, he, um, er, he forgot what it was called. He's also, oddly enough, director of the board of the two major companies involved in the Dakota access pipeline project, a scheme in which, funnily enough, Donald Trump has invested a lot of money. But, hey, no conflict of interest there, right?

The previous two Energy secretaries were not making coffee for oil execs. They were, in fact, working physicists, both highly respected. One, Steven Chu, had a Nobel Prize in physics. Is Perry up to those guys, intellectually? Well, let's put it this way. Steve Chu figured out things that stumped BP's experts during the horrendous Deepwater Horizon oil spill (if you haven't read the piece Gloria linked yesterday, take a few minutes to do so. The name of the piece is "How Science Stopped BP's Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill"--the science didn't come from the oil industry, by the way, it came from Obama's energy secretary, Steven Chu). Rick Perry, in contrast, couldn't even remember the name of the department he will soon be running.

Hey, Ricky. I take my coffee black, please, no sugar.

But, buried in that Scientific American article is a sentence that could explain why Trump is replacing world class physicists with a guy who would have trouble getting through "Physics for Dummies": "There is something of the owl in [Steven] Chu's heart-shaped face—giving the impression of proverbial wisdom but also of a veiled raptor, ready to strike the intellectually unprepared. He may look oddly casual...but he attacks with questions...the bespectacled Energy secretary posed a danger to the oil company scientists and executives, especially as he quickly acquired knowledge about the problem posed by [the ruptured oil well]. The only question was: Whose scientific expertise would prevail?"

And there it is, right there. Chu "...posed a danger to the oil company scientists and executives..." Trump wants to make sure that the only science that prevails is the made-to-order oil industry science. The only danger Perry might pose is substituting sugar for Sweet'N Low.

And anyway, physics, schmisics. Trumpy didn't need to understand physics to become a legend in his own mind, right? Just a lot of crazy numbers and weird symbols. Who needs it?

And so, genius that he is, he has replaced Newton's Laws with Trump's Laws. And what do those laws say? Funny you should ask:

Newton's first law: objects will remain at rest or in motion, and continue moving in a straight line, unless acted upon by an external force.

Trump's first law: Idiots will remain idiots no matter how many external facts confront their dimwitted world view (very important for getting a dangerous baboon elected president!)

Newton's second law: a force acting on a mass creates acceleration and can be determined by the expression F=ma, or force equals mass x acceleration.

Trump's second law: money acting on the ethically challenged creates an acceleration in corruption. (A most desired effect in the Trump universe.) This can be expressed as F=ma or fraud equals money x assholes.

Newton's third law: for every force, there is an equal and opposite reaction.

Trump's third law: for every fact there is a ridiculously unequal and opposite reaction by wingnuts to what they see as an attack on their fact-free world view.

In light of the new rules of physics, I'd say Perry is the ideal choice. He won't vex oil companies with troublesome questions about Sciiiiiieeennnccccce, or maaaaath or lame stuff like that. Any time someone tries to do that fact thingy, he'll scream and yell and throw things, and when big oil and gas guys come around, he'll make them coffee and make sure they get whatever they want.

Intellectually unprepared? Eh, so what? Perry is the perfect Trumpian solution to a department that really should prob'ly just be mothballed completely. Because science, ya know? Who needs it?

The Standard Republican Way, as horrible as it is, is starting to look positively halcyon.

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Reader Comments (1)

Well done, Akhilleus.

Already, one application hit me as I read this NYTimes header a moment ago.

"Trump Test Core G.O.P Doctrine: Russia is the Enemy"

Not for long, if I read the Second Law aright. God's Own Party is massively ethically challenged and Putin and Exxon have oodles of money. They'll cloak it, hide it, take baby steps maybe, but the Repugnants will cave, all the while feigning rectitude that (See First Law) some of dullest may still believe is warming their corrupted hearts.

December 14, 2016 | Unregistered CommenterKen Winkes
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