You should read this for 2/10/2017:
Art, Film, and Music
In Conversation: Quincy Jones I’m not really sure what to make of this err . . . interview? Performance ? Confessional? It’s interesting though.
Books, Writing, and Language
via mirabilis.ca: The BBC on Spain cracks King Ferdinand’s 500-year-old secret code “Ferdinand of Aragon’s letters have tantalised historians for centuries. Constructed using more than 200 special characters, they were deciphered by the country’s intelligence agency.”
Via Life Hacker: Comic Books Are Books Ask anyone who’s worked with illuminated manuscripts if they think comic books are books; of course they are.
Charles Sprawson wrote a celebrated book. Then he vanished
Plagiarism Software Unveils a New Source for 11 of Shakespeare’s Plays
Food and Drink
Coffee, Caffeine, and Health Outcomes: An Umbrella Review “Given the spectrum of conditions studied and the robustness of many of the results, these findings indicate that coffee can be part of a healthful diet.”
Easy Peach Cobbler I know the recipe calls for fresh peaches, but you can use frozen peaches, or even canned peaches or canned cherries.
History and Archaeology
Sprawling Mayan network discovered under Guatemala jungle and this from National Geographic: Laser Scans Reveal Maya “Megalopolis” Below Guatemalan Jungle
Researchers have identified the ruins of more than 60,000 houses, palaces, elevated highways, and other human-made features that have been hidden for centuries under the jungles of northern Guatemala.
Tomb of 5th Dynasty top official Hetpet discovered near Pyramid of Khafre on Giza Plateau After almost 109 years of searching, the tomb of Hathor’s priestess Hetpet has been uncovered
Genetic study of prehistoric girl: Dating and DNA show Paleoamerican-Native American connection “Cave diver Alexandro Alvarez inspects the newly-discovered skull of Naia, the 12,000-13,000 year-old human skeleton discovered in a submerged cave on the Yucatan peninsula of Mexico. An international team of researchers detailed their analysis of what is the oldest most complete, genetically intact human skeleton in the New World”
This is from May, 2014; the original article was published in the journal Science.
Individuals from 9,000 or more years ago have morphological attributes—physical form and structure—distinctive from later Native American peoples,” said Douglas Kennett, professor of environmental archaeology, Penn State. “What we have here is the unique combination of an adolescent Paleoamerican skeleton with a Native American DNA haplotype.
First modern Britons had ‘dark to black’ skin, Cheddar Man DNA analysis reveals “The genome of Cheddar Man, who lived 10,000 years ago, suggests that he had blue eyes, dark skin and dark curly hair”
There’s video from the BBC.
Pay It Forward and Make It Better
Science and Technology
Brent Simmons wisely notes: On Missing the Point “There’s no sacred verse that says businesses acting lawfully can’t be criticized. Nothing says we can’t advocate for change. In fact, I’d say that that’s part of capitalism, too.”
John Perry Barlow has died.
Barlow knew that new technology could create and empower evil as much as it could create and empower good. He made a conscious decision to focus the former: “I knew it’s also true that a good way to invent the future is to predict it. So I predicted Utopia, hoping to give Liberty a running start before the laws of Moore and Metcalfe delivered up what Ed Snowden now correctly calls ‘turn-key totalitarianism.’”
See this 1995 conversation between John Perry Barlow, and bell hooks. See also John Perry Barlow’s Principles of Adult Behavior (via Steve Silberman on Twitter).
Confessions of a Digital Nazi Hunter “In the wake of Trump’s victory, I built a bot to expose bigots. Then Twitter suspended it — and kept the bigots.”
Society
Green card veteran facing deportation starts hunger strike “ICE has arrested a U.S. army veteran who served two tours of duty in Afghanistan and has two U.S. citizen children. His name is Miguel Perez Jr. and he has lived in the U.S. since he was 8 years old.”
Does college turn people into liberals? A new study reveals that students gain an appreciation for views across the political spectrum during their first year in college
Among all students, 48 percent viewed liberals more favorably in their second year of college than when they arrived on campus. However, among the same students, 50 percent also viewed conservatives more favorably. In other words, college attendance is associated, on average, with gains in appreciating political viewpoints across the spectrum, not just favoring liberals.
Foxconn package cost Wisconsin eight times as much per job as similar 2017 state jobs deals “To land the massive Foxconn factory, Gov. Scott Walker has committed the state to paying more than eight times as much per job as Wisconsin will provide under similar job creation deals struck last year, a Milwaukee Journal Sentinel analysis has found.”
‘Pillar of the community’ deported from US after 39 years to a land he barely knows
Women’s Work
💩🔥💰 Trumpery 💩🔥💰
NPR on the GOP memo: Get Ready For Another Week Of Memo Madness — This Time Over Democrats’ Response
Nunes’ memo charges that “biased” officials in the FBI and Justice Department abused their surveillance powers in asking for a warrant to monitor the communications of a former Trump campaign foreign policy adviser, Carter Page.
Although the document makes a narrow case about the specific practices involving Page, Trump and his supporters also say it suggests a “systemic” pattern of abuse. That is not described.
Trump also said on Twitter that it “totally vindicates” him. It does not; the memo delineates how the FBI’s Russia investigation began earlier with another foreign policy aide who has since pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI.
