Tag: The Breakfast Club

It’s kind of a parody of the Nobel Prize, the stated goal is to make you laugh, then think.

We’re brought up with this concept of the Scientist as a sort of Warrior/Priest battling space alien buggy things (or making them) and inventing wizzy bang death rays and such, clad in their mystic lab coat ($21 in any Work Clothing/Uniform catalog).  Well, maybe not personally, usually there’s a whole puddle of corpses before the climax of the story when the Scientist is destroyed by his creation (or nemisis) so the hero can get the girl who’s been emotionally conflicted (or mind controlled) up to his timely demise.  The End.

Science is nothing at all like that and is in fact mostly about measuring things and writing down numbers.

Let’s say you’re a swashbuckling Archeologist.  You’ll be stuck in a jungle or desert sure, but you’ll spend all day every day digging, measuring, writing and for every hour in the field you’ll have to work 20 or more to figure out what exactly you found.

Let alone what it means, about which you’re almost sure to be totally, completely wrong.

And that’s if you’re a Lion Tamer, if you’re an Accountant you’ll work your entire lifetime on some quirky subject that nobody understands or appreciates.  Better love it, you’ll be spending a looong time with it.

The thing about the Ig Nobels is that they are, for the most part, genuine typical science.  The subjects may seem odd and funny (see 4 penised Echidnas below.  Relax, only 2 ejaculate at a time) but like the Golden Fleece the projects generally relate to larger and more important goals of which the named research is only a small part.

For instance unboiling eggs, that is so silly.

The chemistry prize went to American and Australian researchers who managed to partially unboil an egg with a vortex fluid device, a high speed machine that converts unfolded proteins into folded proteins.

Their results, published in ChemBioChem, show that the team was able to refold proteins thousands of times faster than previous methods. In theory, the device has far greater application than resetting eggs: it could do everything from revolutionize the manufacturing of cancer treatments to overhaul the industrial production of cheese.

Yup.  So remember that as you consider the 2015 winners.

2015 Ig Nobel prizes: dinosaur-like chickens and bee-stings to the penis

by Alan Yuhas, The Guardian

Thursday 17 September 2015 23.31 EDT

Entomologist Justin Schmidt and Cornell researcher Michael Smith jointly won for their painstaking experiments charting how painful insect stings are, and where the stings hurt worst. Smith pressed bees up against different parts of his body until the insects stung him, five stings a day, a total of 25 different locations, for 38 days. He rated the pain one to 10, and published.

The most painful parts: the nostril, the upper lip, the shaft of the penis.

Smith was joined onstage by Schmidt, who has also sacrificed various parts of his body for science in his decades specializing in stinging insects. Schmidt’s “sting pain index” rates only on a scale of one to four, but also features the entomologist’s descriptions of 78 sorts of stings, written with the flair of a sommelier in a wine cellar with something to prove.

The bald-faced hornet, for instance, is in Schmidt’s estimation: “rich, hearty, slightly crunchy. Similar to getting your hand mashed in a revolving door.” Yellowjackets, on the other hand, sting “hot and smoky, almost irreverent. Imagine WC Fields extinguishing a cigar on your tongue.” Both rate a two.

The four-plus-rated bullet ant, in contrast, punishes a victim with “pure, intense, brilliant pain, like fire-walking over flaming charcoal with a three-inch rusty nail grinding into your heel”.

Science Oriented Video

The law that entropy always increases holds, I think, the supreme position among the laws of Nature. If someone points out to you that your pet theory of the universe is in disagreement with Maxwell’s equations – then so much the worse for Maxwell’s equations. If it is found to be contradicted by observation – well, these experimentalists do bungle things sometimes. But if your theory is found to be against the second law of thermodynamics I can give you no hope; there is nothing for it but to collapse in deepest humiliation.

–Sir Arthur Stanley Eddington, The Nature of the Physical World (1927)

Science News and Blogs

• Coral-eating crown-of-thorns starfish can be killed with vinegar, scientists find, by Oliver Milman, The Guardian
• Meteorite from birth of solar system to go on display, by Ian Sample, The Guardian
• Google charges advertisers for fake YouTube video views, say researchers, by Ben Quinn, The Guardian
• Enceladus Is Home To A World-Wide Ocean, by Andrew Liptak, io9
• Human evolution hasn’t been a process of gradual fine-tuning – as finds like Homo naledi in South Africa make plain, by Ian Tattersall, Salon
• How to Not Get Attacked by a Bear, By Christine Dell’Amore and Todd Wilkinson, National Geographic
• The sisters who spoke to spirits: How two mischievous girls gave birth to a religion, by Ada Calhoun, Narratively
• Scientists just smashed the distance record for quantum teleportation, By Rachel Feltman, Wasington Post
• Echidnas’ ‘bizarre’ mating no longer obstacle to successful breeding program, Australian Associated Press
• Edward Snowden: we may never spot space aliens thanks to encryption, by Nicky Woolf, The Guardian
• How the Higgs boson is born and how it dies: the most precise picture so far, by Jon Butterworth, The Guardian
• How different are your online and offline personalities?, by Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic, The Guardian
• The secret to being a convincing liar? Tell your fibs on a full bladder, by Stuart Heritage, The Guardian
• The nudge theory and beyond: how people can play with your mind, by Nick Chater, The Guardian
• Linking brains: UW scientists say they’ve done it, By Katherine Long, Seattle Times
• We’ve Discovered a Lost World of Snow Dinosaurs, by Maddie Stone, Gizmodo
• Bizarre Giant Hexagon on Saturn May Finally Be Explained, by Charles Q. Choi, Space.com

Obligatories, News and Blogs below.

Welcome to The Breakfast Club! We’re a disorganized group of rebel lefties who hang out and chat if and when we’re not too hungover  we’ve been bailed out we’re not too exhausted from last night’s (CENSORED) the caffeine kicks in. Join us every weekday morning at 9am (ET) and weekend morning at 10:30am (ET) to talk about current news and our boring lives and to make fun of LaEscapee! If we are ever running late, it’s PhilJD’s fault.

Breakfast Tune: The KroppDusters – Age (Jim Croce)

Today in History: September 20th

Magellan begins globe-trotting voyage; Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal dies; Actress Sophia Loren born; Billie Jean King beats Bobby Riggs in ‘Battle of the Sexes’; Singer Jim Croce dies in plane crash. (Sept. 20)

Something to Think about, Breakfast News & Blogs Below

Welcome to The Breakfast Club! We’re a disorganized group of rebel lefties who hang out and chat if and when we’re not too hungover  we’ve been bailed out we’re not too exhausted from last night’s (CENSORED) the caffeine kicks in. Join us every weekday morning at 9am (ET) and weekend morning at 10:30am (ET) to talk about current news and our boring lives and to make fun of LaEscapee! If we are ever running late, it’s PhilJD’s fault.

Breakfast Tune: Tupac Shakur Bluegrass version of Pain

Today in History: September 13th

Israel and the Palestinians sign a major accord; President George W. Bush takes responsibility for the federal response to Hurricane Katrina; Attica prison uprising ends; Rapper Tupac Shakur dies. (Sept. 13)

Something to Think about, Breakfast News & Blogs Below

A set of unrelated and usually short instrumental pieces, movements or sections played as a group, and usually in a specific order.

Key Igor Stravinsky work found after 100 years

by Stephen Walsh, The Guardian

Saturday 5 September 2015 19.05 EDT

Igor Stravinsky composed his Pogrebal’naya Pesnya (Funeral Song) in memory of his teacher, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, shortly after Rimsky’s death in June 1908. The 12-minute work was performed only once, in a Russian symphony concert conducted by Felix Blumenfeld in the Conservatoire in January 1909, but was always thought to have been destroyed in the 1917 revolutions or the civil war that followed.

Stravinsky recalled it as one of his best early works, but could not remember the actual music.

…

Stravinsky was 26 when The Funeral Song was performed and was by no means advanced as a composer. He was completely unknown outside Russia – and barely known even there. Yet in the next four years he would compose The Firebird, Petrushka and The Rite of Spring, transforming himself into the most notorious modernist of them all.

…

There is a touching postscript to the story. Stravinsky was desperate to have his composition included in one or other of the memorial concerts being planned, and his surviving letters to Rimsky’s widow, to their son, Vladimir, and to the conductor Alexander Ziloti, positively cry out with the insecurity of a young composer who had never quite been accepted at the heart of musical St Petersburg and feared its judgment. They are the first hint of a split that would rapidly widen after Stravinsky’s dramatic successes in Paris. But by then of course, it hardly mattered.

The lost genius of Mozart’s sister

by Sylvia Milo, The Guardian

Tuesday 8 September 2015 09.54 EDT

“I am writing to you with an erection on my head and I am very much afraid of burning my hair”, wrote Nannerl Mozart to her brother Wolfgang Amadeus. What was being erected was a large hairdo on top of Nannerl’s head, as she prepared to pose for the Mozart family portrait.

…

Maria Anna (called Marianne and nicknamed Nannerl) was – like her younger brother – a child prodigy. The children toured most of Europe (including an 18-month stay in London in 1764-5) performing together as “wunderkinder”. There are contemporaneous reviews praising Nannerl, and she was even billed first. Until she turned 18. A little girl could perform and tour, but a woman doing so risked her reputation. And so she was left behind in Salzburg, and her father only took Wolfgang on their next journeys around the courts of Europe. Nannerl never toured again.

But the woman I found did not give up. She wrote music and sent at least one composition to Wolfgang and Papa – Wolfgang praised it as “beautiful” and encouraged her to write more. Her father didn’t, as far as we know, say anything about it.

Did she stop? None of her music has survived. Perhaps she never showed it to anybody again, perhaps she destroyed it, maybe we will find it one day, maybe we already did but it’s wrongly attributed to her brother’s hand. Composing or performing music was not encouraged for women of her time. Wolfgang repeatedly wrote that nobody played his keyboard music as well as she could, and Leopold described her as “one of the most skilful players in Europe”, with “perfect insight into harmony and modulations” and that she improvises “so successfully that you would be astounded”.

Like Virginia Woolf’s imagined Shakespeare’s sister, Nannerl was not given the opportunity to thrive. And what she did create was not valued or preserved – most female composers from the past have been forgotten, their music lost or gathering dust in libraries. We will never know what could have been, and this is our loss.

Lubec, Maine

The story that goes with this picture is about Hopley Yeaton, the first officer commissioned (March 21, 1791) under the Constitution of the United States by George Washington into the Revenue Marines.  By most Coast Guarders (of whom Alex Haley is one and I am not but… New London) he is considered the first Commandant.

So in a friendly gesture the Coast Guard dug him up and planted him in New London where you can lie on his grave and think about death.

Now even though his grave was threatened by development, that of his family were not and they remain six feet (more or less, it’s pretty rocky) under the sod in North Lubec, once a bustling industrial center and now a wasteland of corrugated metal strapped around concrete slabs that machines and production lines used to be anchored on.

The libertarian impulse would be to point out the decline in commerce stems from an EPA ruling that it was no longer cool to dump buckets of blood, fish guts, and chicken beaks and feet straight into the water until the bay was red with it.

Scavanger species went into a predictable decline.  Yes, I like lobster and I know what they eat.  Do you like Pollack, Haddock, and Cod?

Seagulls I can do without even if they are agreeable to a close up.

So Lubec North, South, East, and West is available for about a dime and it is a bustling hub of International commerce.

I still don’t think grave robbing is an acceptable practice but when in Rome…  It certainly made things easier when I injured myself and had to exchange body parts after the beach amputation with shell edged tools.

What?  I had seaweed to grind my teeth on.  You guys are so effete.

Which brings us to Valhalla, New York and not by way of Wagner (Pfui!).

Family Balks at Talk by Russia to Move Rachmaninoff’s Remains

By JAMES BARRON, The New York Times

SEPT. 6, 2015

Resolutely nationalistic Russians want his body back. His great-great-granddaughter, Susan Sophia Rachmaninoff Volkonskaya Wanamaker, says “nyet.” Or she might, if she spoke Russian, but probably not. In a conversation about where his remains belong, she repeatedly used words like “dignity” and “respect.”

…

The dispute over his burial place started last month, when Russia’s culture minister, Vladimir Medinsky, said that Rachmaninoff’s remains should be exhumed and sent to Russia. “The composer dreamed of being buried in Russia, that’s why returning his remains to his motherland would be a great deed,” he said, according to a report on the ministry’s website.

Ms. Wanamaker said Rachmaninoff had no such dream.

…

(W)hile he died in Beverly Hills, Calif., on March 28, 1943, “the family’s roots in New York were deeper than their roots in Beverly Hills,” Ms. Wanamaker said. Rachmaninoff, who left his homeland to escape the Russian Revolution in 1917, had rented a house on Riverside Drive when he arrived in Manhattan in the 1920s. He became an American citizen eight weeks before he died.

Mr. Medinsky accused the United States of laying claim to Rachmaninoff’s legacy. “If you look at American sources, you’ll see that Sergei Rachmaninoff is a great American composer of Russian descent,” he said. “Americans are presumptuously privatizing the name of Rachmaninoff.”

That idea was echoed by Valery Poliansky, the president of the Rachmaninov Society in Moscow (the group spells his last name with a V). Mr. Poliansky told the Govorit Moskva radio station that “nobody in America needs him,” referring to Rachmaninoff, or his remains. “America doesn’t need anyone, except itself,” he said.

Ms. Wanamaker disputed that. “It’s not possible to privatize a name that’s well known,” she said, also noting that her great-great-grandfather “was always proud to be a Russian, even while he was living in exile in America.”

“There is no separating Sergei Rachmaninoff from Russia,” Ms. Wanamaker said. “His music is the embodiment of the Russian romantic spirit. It’s the embodiment of the Russian soul.”

She added, “I believe the name Rachmaninoff, because it’s recognized and respected, gives Medinsky a platform to spout his nationalism.” She suggested that Mr. Medinsky was “trying to politicize a personal choice” – Rachmaninoff’s decision to leave Russia and never return.

…

Ms. Wanamaker said that Rachmaninoff, great as he was, was not the only one to think about.

“He rests next to his wife and his daughter,” she said, “and there’s no mention of moving them. So they want to separate his family, one that he fought to keep together through the Russian Revolution, through World War II? It’s simply unconscionable.”

My wishes?  I want to go like El Cid.  Shove a stick up my butt, light me on fire, and give my horse a slap on the ass.

It’s kind of unfair to the horse.

Obligatories, News and Blogs below.

Windows 10 is primarily spyware.  Chrome never pretended to be anything but.  Once virtuous Ubuntu is now as bad as any ‘commercial’ software (not the way things were supposed to devolve) with incomprehensible interfaces, swaths of proprietary code, and intrusive default monitoring.

This disqualifies a whole lot of derivatives including my favorite, Mint with Mate, that use the Ubuntu code base.

I’ve always liked the standard GNOME2 interface and think it’s highly similar, other than positioning, to your Windows Classic Desktop which has been basically the same in business IT since ’95.  If you learn it, and don’t screw it up by personalizing too much, the learning curve is not that steep.

The Gnome people didn’t think that was good enough and screwed it to the point of unusability.

So KDE right?

Sure, if you want to be wacky and customize your machine to look like IOSX or Windows 8.1 however why are you wasting that time?  But getting any kind of usable Desktop is a chore unless you favor the ‘why do you need more than a spreadsheet and a word processor peon’ approach to IT.  Besides you can just grab any program you like from the k library and install it.  Yup, point and click.  Free.

So my favored interface is now Mate which is a GNOME2 variant done by some South American programmers who liked GNOME2 a lot and thought that the Gnome people were certifiable idiots.  It works like I would expect.

Which brings us to distributions.

Almost everything is based on Debian.  There are 2 code bases, the development track and the stable track.  The stable track can stay stable for a really long time because the rules about what is acceptable are very strict.  While this is attractive on paper, in practice it means that many pieces of hardware either don’t function at all or only partially.

So your video and network cards don’t work very well, get new ones!  Easy on a desktop, not so much on your lap.

The development track is developmental.  The truth is that it deosn’t change very much either.  The rules are not as strict, but there are still rules.  What makes it look like things are changing all the time is that each piece of software is on its own schedule.

You should be able to safely install and operate either track directly from the source, what then adds value to a distribution?

They break some rules.  Most times they will install proprietary drivers for maximum performance.  Sometimes these are entirely written by the manufacturers, others simply comply with the published standards.  In neither case is the code usually public which breaks a rule.  Many times they will add their own code for features they think have been poorly implemented and hardly anyone can resist screwing with the wallpaper, icons, and taskbar.  Almost all add programs technically still in development.

I insist on 3 things from my environment- hardware control including drives and network, environment control of the look and feel, and software control of all the programs on my system.  It should operate off a menu.  I’ve gotten fairly good results with these distributions that are available in Mate.

Fedora is a non-Debian that has been separate since the late 90’s.

Sabayon is a Gentoo base.  Gentoo and Arch have the reputation of being the most difficult distributions to install, Saboyon, provided it supports your hardware, goes in like a champ.

Mageia is a non-commercial spin-off of Mandriva.

openSUSE gets a mention as another independent code base, but they don’t have a Mate interface.

Windows 10 – Spyware Disguised as an Operating System

by Gaius Publius, Hullabaloo

8/31/2015 07:30:00 AM

(I)t didn’t take long to discover that Windows 10 is not only worse than Windows 8, it is worse in a worse way. It’s one thing to install an application that spies on you. It’s another when that spyware application you just installed is the operating system, and controls the whole machine.

Is Windows 10 Worth Installing?

The answer is No, if you’re asking me. In fact, it’s worth never installing. I’d avoid it until the final minute you’re forced to change, and even then, you should hesitate to upgrade. Reason? Under its default settings, Windows 10 is widely reported to be spyware, an operating system that watches you work, even offline, and reports back to Microsoft anything it feels like reporting. If you approve the licensing agreement – and how can you use any software without clicking “I Agree”? – you’re giving Microsoft permission to collect any data they can get (based on your settings) and share it in any way they want.

Windows 10 is the ultimate privacy violator – an operating system that wants to watch everything you do and send back whatever it finds or figures out about you.

Microsoft slips user-tracking tools into Windows 7, 8 amidst Windows 10 privacy storm

by Brad Chacos, PCWorld

Aug 31, 2015 12:59 PM

No, the company’s not walking back its privacy-encroaching features. Instead, Microsoft’s quietly rolling out updates that bake new tracking tools into Windows 7 and Windows 8.

Yes, really.

The story behind the story: Privacy concerns have marred an otherwise sterling launch for Windows 10, which is already installed on 75 million PCs. Rolling out this Windows 7 and 8 updates amidst the controversy smacks of insensitivity-and it’s just plain poor timing, to boot.

Ghacks discovered four recent KB updates for Windows 7 and 8, all designed to send Microsoft regular reports on your machine’s activities.

KB3068708 – “This update introduces the Diagnostics and Telemetry tracking service to existing devices. By applying this service, you can add benefits from the latest version of Windows to systems that have not yet upgraded. The update also supports applications that are subscribed to Visual Studio Application Insights.” This update replaced KB3022345.

KB3075249 – “This update adds telemetry points to the User Account Control (UAC) feature to collect information on elevations that come from low integrity levels.”

KB3080149 – “This package updates the Diagnostics and Telemetry tracking service to existing devices. This service provides benefits from the latest version of Windows to systems that have not yet upgraded. The update also supports applications that are subscribed to Visual Studio Application Insights.”

The latter two updates are flagged as Optional, but KB3068708 holds Recommended status, which means it would be downloaded and installed if you have Windows Updates set to automatic. It’s only functional in PCs that participate in Microsoft’s Customer Experience Improvement Program, which already sends Microsoft information on how you use your computer.

…

If you don’t want these new tracking tools on your PC, the best thing to do seems to be simply uninstalling the offending updates, then blocking them from being reinstalled.

To do so, head to Control Panel > Programs > Uninstall or change a program. Here, click View installed updates in the left-hand navigation pane. In the search box in the upper-right corner, search for the KB3068708, KB3022345, KB3075249, and KB3080149 updates by name. If they’re installed, they’ll pop right up. If you find one, right-click on it and select Uninstall to wipe it from your system.

To block the updates from being downloaded again, dive back into the Control Panel and head to System and Security > Windows Update > Check for updates. The system will look for updates, then say you have a certain number of updates available, separated by status (Optional, Recommended, Critical). Simply click the recommended updates link, find the KB3068708 and KB3022345 updates, then right-click them and select Hide update. Boom! Done.

Now dive into the optional updates and hide KB3075249 and KB3080149 as well.

Microsoft Retrofitting Windows 7, 8.1 With Windows 10’s Privacy-Invading ‘Features’

by Karl Bode, Tech Dirt

Wed, Sep 2nd 2015

Microsoft now seems intent on retro-fitting its older operating systems (specifically Windows 7 and Windows 8.1) with many of the annoying, chatty aspects of Windows 10. GHacks has noticed that four updates to the older operating systems, described as an “update for customer experience and diagnostic telemetry,” connect to vortex-win.data.microsoft.com and settings-win.data.microsoft.com. These addresses are hard-coded to bypass the hosts file, and ferry all manner of personal information back to Microsoft.

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(I)t’s annoying that Microsoft continues to insist on expanding this kind of OS behavior, without making opting out simple and comprehensive. And it certainly doesn’t exactly deflate arguments by folks like Richard Stallman, who consistently argue that Windows is effectively malware. More than anything though, it’s a continued advertisement for Linux and operating systems that the end user actually has some degree of control over.

Science Oriented Video

Science and Technology News and Blogs

• How y’all doin’?, by Tom Sullivan, Hullabaloo
• Russian artifact is estimated to be 11,000 years old, say scientists – 6,000 yrs older than Stonehenge, by David Ferguson, Raw Story
• Carbon dating suggests ‘world’s oldest’ Koran could be older than the Prophet Muhammad, by Travis Gettys, Raw Story
• The Really Big One, By Kathryn Schulz, The New Yorker
• Thomas Edison Was Right About Solar Power, by Thom Hartmann, Truthout
• Wikipedia Editors Uncover Extortion Scam And Extensive Cybercrime Syndicate, by Lauren C. Williams, Think Progress
• New Species of Human Ancestor, Homo Naledi, Is Found in a South African Cave, By JOHN NOBLE WILFORD, The New York Times
• Homo naledi: New species of ancient human discovered, claim scientists, by Ian Sample, The Guardian
• ‘Archaeology on steroids’: huge ritual arena discovered near Stonehenge, by Ian Sample, The Guardian
• Could Physics’ Reigning Model Finally Be Dethroned?, by Tia Ghose, Live Science
• Hackers Can Trick Driverless Cars With A Handheld Laser, By Dave Gershgorn, Popular Science

The law that entropy always increases holds, I think, the supreme position among the laws of Nature. If someone points out to you that your pet theory of the universe is in disagreement with Maxwell’s equations – then so much the worse for Maxwell’s equations. If it is found to be contradicted by observation – well, these experimentalists do bungle things sometimes. But if your theory is found to be against the second law of thermodynamics I can give you no hope; there is nothing for it but to collapse in deepest humiliation.

–Sir Arthur Stanley Eddington, The Nature of the Physical World (1927)

Obligatories, News and Blogs below.

Welcome to The Breakfast Club! We’re a disorganized group of rebel lefties who hang out and chat if and when we’re not too hungover  we’ve been bailed out we’re not too exhausted from last night’s (CENSORED) the caffeine kicks in. Join us every weekday morning at 9am (ET) and weekend morning at 10:30am (ET) to talk about current news and our boring lives and to make fun of LaEscapee! If we are ever running late, it’s PhilJD’s fault.

This Day in History

Galveston hurricane kills thousands; President Gerald Ford pardons Richard Nixon; Nazis begin Leningrad siege during World War II; Comedian Sid Caesar born; Original ‘Star Trek’ premieres on TV.

Breakfast Tunes

Something to Think about over Coffee Prozac

We won’t have a society if we destroy the environment.

Margaret Mead

Welcome to The Breakfast Club! We’re a disorganized group of rebel lefties who hang out and chat if and when we’re not too hungover  we’ve been bailed out we’re not too exhausted from last night’s (CENSORED) the caffeine kicks in. Join us every weekday morning at 9am (ET) and weekend morning at 10:30am (ET) to talk about current news and our boring lives and to make fun of LaEscapee! If we are ever running late, it’s PhilJD’s fault.

Breakfast Tune: Fearless (Pink Floyd cover)

Today in History: September 6th

President William McKinley shot in Buffalo, N.Y.; Funeral held for Britain’s Princess Diana; Mother Teresa mourned in India; Movie director Akira Kurosawa dies; Roger Waters of Pink Floyd fame born. (Sept. 6)

Something to Think about, Breakfast News & Blogs Below

They change.

I find myself suddenly having to cram 2 weeks into one so blogging will be much suckier than usual.

Entertainment

• Garrison Keillor on retiring, the trouble with nostalgia, and the state of America, by Caty Enders, The Guardian
• The Shepherd’s Crown review – Terry Pratchett’s farewell to Discworld, by Amanda Craig, The Guardian
• The scifi fans are alright: I saw the future at the Hugo Awards – and it will never belong to the toxic right-wing trolls, by Arthur Chu, Salon
• Caught in the smart-mean trap: Is “Another Period” funny, or just awkwardly tasteless?, Sonia Saraiya, Salon
• Jennifer Lawrence drops accidental bombshell in New York Times interview, reveals she’s writing screenplay with Amy Schumer, by olin Gorenstein, Salon
• Here’s why Paul Feig’s “Ghostbusters” reboot has even more “girl power” than you thought, by Anna Silman, Salon
• Hunter S Thompson, High Times and how to survive the hangover from hell, by Jill Rothenberg, The Guardian
• Dan Rather: ‘Have the guts to dig into stories people in power don’t want’, by Andy Meek, The Guardian
• ‘Hannibal’ Finale Postmortem: Bryan Fuller Breaks Down That Bloody Ending and Talks Revival Chances, by Laura Prudom, Variety
• Hannibal recap: season three finale – The Wrath of the Lamb, by Brian Moylan, The Guardian
• “Mr. Robot” is the only TV show that actually understands the Internet-down to the last chilling detail, by Sonia Saraiya, Salon
• “Mr. Robot” finale postponed because of graphic scene similar to Virginia TV journalist killings, by Erin Keane, Salon
• From ‘Buffy’ To ‘Mr. Robot’: When Pop Culture Collides With Real-Life Violence, by Jessica Goldstein, Think Progress
• The latest “Game of Thrones” fan-theory about Jon Snow is just about insane enough to be right, by Scott Eric Kaufman
• Stannis Baratheon is not dead – at least in the “Game of Thrones” books, by Anna Silman, Salon
• Hamlet review – Benedict Cumberbatch imprisoned in a dismal production, by Michael Billington, The Guardian
• Benedict Cumberbatch is a bloody good Hamlet, says his mum, by Hannah Ellis-Petersen, The Guardian
• Patrick Stewart Discusses Hilarious New Show ‘Blunt Talk’, By LeftOfCenter, Crooks & Liars
• Stephen Colbert announces eclectic guest list for first week on Late Show, by Alan Yuhas, The Guardian
• The line-up for the first week of “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” was just announced – and you’re going to want to see this, by Colin Gorenstein, Salon
• Stephen Colbert reveals the truth about his “Colbert Report” character: “I had to actually leave – I had to change”, by Colin Gorenstein, Salon
• Jon Stewart gets slammed during WWE appearance, by Arturo Garcia, Raw Story
• NYPD Asks Disney, Marvel To Abuse IP Law To Help Rid Times Square Of Spiderman, Mickey Mouse, by Tim Cushing, Tech Dirt

Sport

• Five things we learned from the Belgian Grand Prix, by Giles Richards, The Guardian
• ESPN suspends analyst Curt Schilling from Little League World Series coverage for Islamophobic tweet, by Scott Eric Kaufman, Salon
• Little League teams gets hero’s welcome as it returns home, Associated Press
• Column: IndyCar is clearly too risky; time to shut it down, Associated Press
• Scott Dixon wins fourth IndyCar championship in tiebreaker, By Chris Jenkins, USA Today
• A Passion for Hurling, the All-Ireland Game, By DAN BARRY, The New York Times
• Spaniard becomes 12th person to die after being gored by bull, Reuters
• This golfer hit the first hole-in-one of his PGA career. Then he hit another one., By Des Bieler, Washington Post

The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance.

–Aristotle

Obligatories, News and Blogs below.

Welcome to The Breakfast Club! We’re a disorganized group of rebel lefties who hang out and chat if and when we’re not too hungover  we’ve been bailed out we’re not too exhausted from last night’s (CENSORED) the caffeine kicks in. Join us every weekday morning at 9am (ET) and weekend morning at 10:30am (ET) to talk about current news and our boring lives and to make fun of LaEscapee! If we are ever running late, it’s PhilJD’s fault.

Breakfast Tune: Steve Martin plays the banjo on the Gong Show

Published on Aug 7, 2013

what the title sez

Today in History

Published on Aug 29, 2013 Highlights of this day in history: The Civil War’s Second Battle of Bull Run ends; Thurgood Marshall confirmed as first black Supreme Court justice; First black astronaut blasts off; Ty Cobb’s baseball debut; David Letterman moves to CBS. (Aug. 30)

Something to Think about, Breakfast News & Blogs Below

One of the things about traveling is that a lot of your time is taken up by- well, traveling.

If you have a job in a cubicle or on a line and your input is just another unit of labor this is not usually a hardship as your temporary replacement will generally handle the routine minutia and while you may find a big pile of “too difficult” waiting on your return at least it’s not a huge backlog of EVERYTHING!

As a photon artist, particularly one working in the ephemeral field of politics, policy, news, and cultural criticism that I do, for many years I rarely left my desk for more than 12 or 18 hours in a row and all my other ambitions had to be accomplished in that time frame.

The tyrany of deadlines.

Now, upon advice from my therapist and others, I have adopted a more relaxed attitude though each mark missed still evokes torrents of self recrimination.

Yesterday was such a day.  I was up at the crack of dawn (which is still cracking pretty early where I am), wrote 2 pieces, and set up the page.  I spent the rest of the day (all 16 hours or so) traveling and visiting.  Was it fun?  Sure, but last night while I was busy not sleeping all I could think about was the fact I’d forgotten to put up a Cartnoon.

I’ll bet you didn’t even notice.

But that’s my craziness.  It puts me in mind though, that in times not so long ago people would disappear for months (or 10 years in the case of Odysseus) and literally sail off the end of the Earth (did I mention I had no cell service?).

Today’s Art Music is mostly about such a person, Sinbad, who not only did that, but did it repeatedly.  The stories of his travels to distant and fantastic lands make up a large part of 1001 Nights, a collection of Arabian folk tales initially translated by Sir Richard Burton (the explorer, not the actor) who is also remembered as one of the group searching for the source of the Nile and as the first Westerner to visit Mecca.

The conceit of the Arabian Nights is that some Muckety-Muck has the habit of marrying women, spending the night with them, and then executing them in the morning.  Scheherazade is selected for this dubious distinction but rather than amorously seduce she tells stories whose cliff hanger dawn breaks led the Muckety-Muck to postpone her disposal for 1001 days at the end of which he pretty much gives up and decides to keep her around.

Needless to say this plot is a long time favorite of writers who can only aspire to be as enthralling as Scheherazade.

In 1888 Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, a member of ‘The Five’ (most influential mid-Romantic Russian composers) was at work finishing up Prince Igor, an opera by his good friend Alexander Borodin (also a member of ‘The Five’) who had just died.

Perhaps for relief from this grim task he composed Scheherazade as a symphonic poem.  No, I don’t really know the difference a symphonic poem and a symphony except these Romantics were constantly striving for pure emotional effects, structurally they’re virtually the same with 4 movements in different time signatures.

It’s a still a big hit with Figure Skaters and the Santa Clara Vanguard featured it in both their 2004 and 2014 shows.

What?  Not into DCI?  Oh well, here’s the orchestra version- Vienna Philharmonic at the Salzburg Festival 2005.

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