From Now I Know -
The Poop Collector
We all have different hobbies. Some of us like to play golf, others enjoy cooking, still others write trivia email newsletters. Some hobbies are mundane, but some are weird. Take, for example, a Florida man named George Frandsen. He collects something called coprolite — or, to use Merriam-Webster’s definition, “fossilized excrement.” Basically: Frandsen collects really old pieces of poop — poop specimens that have been preserved over millions of years and are now considered fossils.
http://nowiknow.com/the-poop-collector/
Tuesday, August 1, 2017
A Scary Thought
An excerpt from Slate -
A Stymied Trump Is a Dangerous Trump
Since he can’t score any wins at home, he just might look for glory overseas—and that means war.
By Joshua Keating
The collapse of efforts to repeal Obamacare last week leaves Donald Trump without a single legislative achievement more than half a year into his presidency. With relations souring between the president and his own party, with the West Wing thrown into chaos, and with the Russia investigation continuing to dog the administration, the president’s governing agenda has lost momentum. At first glance, this must be reassuring to Trump’s opponents, but it really shouldn’t be: The more he’s stymied at home, the more likely he is to look for victories abroad, a dynamic that significantly raises the risk of armed conflict.
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2017/07/why_trump_might_be_itching_to_start_a_war_against_north_korea_or_iran.html
A Stymied Trump Is a Dangerous Trump
Since he can’t score any wins at home, he just might look for glory overseas—and that means war.
By Joshua Keating
The collapse of efforts to repeal Obamacare last week leaves Donald Trump without a single legislative achievement more than half a year into his presidency. With relations souring between the president and his own party, with the West Wing thrown into chaos, and with the Russia investigation continuing to dog the administration, the president’s governing agenda has lost momentum. At first glance, this must be reassuring to Trump’s opponents, but it really shouldn’t be: The more he’s stymied at home, the more likely he is to look for victories abroad, a dynamic that significantly raises the risk of armed conflict.
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2017/07/why_trump_might_be_itching_to_start_a_war_against_north_korea_or_iran.html
What Are the Odds?
An excerpt from Vanity Fair -
Trump Has Fired Enough Staffers for an All-Trump Season of Dancing with the Stars
But which castoff would win the coveted Mirrorball Trophy?
by LAURA BRADLEY
In fact, now that we think of it, Dancing with the Stars could air an entire season populated solely with ex-Trump staffers looking for their second acts. Naturally, that raises one crucial question: who would win? Let’s consider the odds.
https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2017/07/anthony-scaramucci-fired-trump-dancing-with-the-stars
Trump Has Fired Enough Staffers for an All-Trump Season of Dancing with the Stars
But which castoff would win the coveted Mirrorball Trophy?
by LAURA BRADLEY
In fact, now that we think of it, Dancing with the Stars could air an entire season populated solely with ex-Trump staffers looking for their second acts. Naturally, that raises one crucial question: who would win? Let’s consider the odds.
https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2017/07/anthony-scaramucci-fired-trump-dancing-with-the-stars
Monday, July 31, 2017
Another Outster
TONIGHT: A dejected Stephen Colbert feels like he’s been front-stabbed in the heart after learning of The Mooch’s resignation. #LSSC pic.twitter.com/Ttmlk1ujJw— The Late Show (@colbertlateshow) August 1, 2017
Crusty Eyes
An excerpt from Now I Know -
Why We Wake Up With Crusty Eyes
They go by many names — crusties, eye boogers, sleep dust, goop, or sometimes simply “sleep.” But whatever you call it, you’ve experienced this: you wake up in the morning and, in the corner of your eyes, there are shards of a hard, yellowish-white crust hanging out. Why does this happen?
The short version: When we sleep, we don’t blink.
Eye crusties (or whatever you call this stuff) are made up of something called rheum, pronounced like the word “room,” which Wikipedia describes as a “thin mucus naturally discharged from the eyes.” Rheum protects our eyes from dust and whatever other bad stuff would otherwise irritate our eyes — it’s a barrier watch catches the bad stuff before it causes us any problems. Of course, we don’t want specks of dust or whatever floating around our eyes, so we have to get rid of the rheum pretty often. Blinking takes care of this. Blinking moves tears from the outside of the eyes inward, toward our tear ducts. And when that happens, the tears wash the rheum away ever so subtly; unless you’re thinking about it, you probably don’t even notice it happening.
http://nowiknow.com/why-we-wake-up-with-crusty-eyes/
Why We Wake Up With Crusty Eyes
They go by many names — crusties, eye boogers, sleep dust, goop, or sometimes simply “sleep.” But whatever you call it, you’ve experienced this: you wake up in the morning and, in the corner of your eyes, there are shards of a hard, yellowish-white crust hanging out. Why does this happen?
The short version: When we sleep, we don’t blink.
Eye crusties (or whatever you call this stuff) are made up of something called rheum, pronounced like the word “room,” which Wikipedia describes as a “thin mucus naturally discharged from the eyes.” Rheum protects our eyes from dust and whatever other bad stuff would otherwise irritate our eyes — it’s a barrier watch catches the bad stuff before it causes us any problems. Of course, we don’t want specks of dust or whatever floating around our eyes, so we have to get rid of the rheum pretty often. Blinking takes care of this. Blinking moves tears from the outside of the eyes inward, toward our tear ducts. And when that happens, the tears wash the rheum away ever so subtly; unless you’re thinking about it, you probably don’t even notice it happening.
http://nowiknow.com/why-we-wake-up-with-crusty-eyes/
Aggressive Incompetence
An excerpt from USA Today -
Anthony Scaramucci's aggressive incompetence
Tom Krattenmaker, Opinion columnist
Sure, take the flashy flatterer who has been singing the president’s praises on cable news and make him White House communications director, never mind the fact he has no communications experience. What could go wrong?
How quickly we learned.
The PR disaster during Anthony Scaramucci’s first week on the job — a profanity-laced diatribe to a national magazine in which the president’s new communications director blasted supposed colleagues and exposed the knife-fight chaos in the White House —tells us something worth remembering:
Communications is not for amateurs. Nor is governing.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2017/07/30/scaramucci-mess-demonstrates-communications-not-amateurs-tom-krattenmaker-column/521156001/
Anthony Scaramucci's aggressive incompetence
Tom Krattenmaker, Opinion columnist
Sure, take the flashy flatterer who has been singing the president’s praises on cable news and make him White House communications director, never mind the fact he has no communications experience. What could go wrong?
How quickly we learned.
The PR disaster during Anthony Scaramucci’s first week on the job — a profanity-laced diatribe to a national magazine in which the president’s new communications director blasted supposed colleagues and exposed the knife-fight chaos in the White House —tells us something worth remembering:
Communications is not for amateurs. Nor is governing.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2017/07/30/scaramucci-mess-demonstrates-communications-not-amateurs-tom-krattenmaker-column/521156001/
All Electric. All the Time.
An excerpt from the NY Times Editorial -
Britain Joins the Shift to Electric Cars
By THE EDITORIAL BOARD
The drive to switch to electric cars went a mile further last Wednesday when Britain joined France in pledging to end the sale of new gas and diesel cars by 2040. Norway and India have also said they want to get rid of gas and diesel cars, and at least 10 other countries have set targets for electric cars. All that is good news for the planet and for human health, even if caveats and challenges abound.
Cars powered by gasoline or diesel are major polluters. The Volkswagen emissions scandal in the United States put to rest the longstanding European faith in diesel as a more environmentally friendly fuel, not least because it generates large quantities of health-threatening nitrogen oxides. VW’s extensive efforts to conceal the true extent of that pollution has now turned consumers against the fuel.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/31/opinion/britain-electric-cars.html?action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=opinion-c-col-left-region®ion=opinion-c-col-left-region&WT.nav=opinion-c-col-left-region
Britain Joins the Shift to Electric Cars
By THE EDITORIAL BOARD
The drive to switch to electric cars went a mile further last Wednesday when Britain joined France in pledging to end the sale of new gas and diesel cars by 2040. Norway and India have also said they want to get rid of gas and diesel cars, and at least 10 other countries have set targets for electric cars. All that is good news for the planet and for human health, even if caveats and challenges abound.
Cars powered by gasoline or diesel are major polluters. The Volkswagen emissions scandal in the United States put to rest the longstanding European faith in diesel as a more environmentally friendly fuel, not least because it generates large quantities of health-threatening nitrogen oxides. VW’s extensive efforts to conceal the true extent of that pollution has now turned consumers against the fuel.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/31/opinion/britain-electric-cars.html?action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=opinion-c-col-left-region®ion=opinion-c-col-left-region&WT.nav=opinion-c-col-left-region
Will He Listen?
An excerpt from the NY Times -
Sage Advice From the ‘Gold Standard’ of White House Chiefs of Staff
By PETER BAKER
When a new White House chief of staff takes over, the smart ones check in with James A. Baker III, the only man to have occupied the office two different times for two different presidents and who is widely considered to be the gold standard.
Mr. Baker has plenty of advice from running the White House during Ronald Reagan’s first term and again at the end of George Bush’s presidency, but it usually boils down to this: “You can focus on the ‘chief,’ or you can focus on the ‘of staff.’ Those who have focused on the ‘of staff’ have done pretty well.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/30/us/politics/john-kelly-james-baker-white-house.html?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=newsletter_axiosam&stream=top-stories&_r=0
Sage Advice From the ‘Gold Standard’ of White House Chiefs of Staff
By PETER BAKER
When a new White House chief of staff takes over, the smart ones check in with James A. Baker III, the only man to have occupied the office two different times for two different presidents and who is widely considered to be the gold standard.
Mr. Baker has plenty of advice from running the White House during Ronald Reagan’s first term and again at the end of George Bush’s presidency, but it usually boils down to this: “You can focus on the ‘chief,’ or you can focus on the ‘of staff.’ Those who have focused on the ‘of staff’ have done pretty well.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/30/us/politics/john-kelly-james-baker-white-house.html?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=newsletter_axiosam&stream=top-stories&_r=0
Sunday, July 30, 2017
Let's Count the Ways
An excerpt from Business Insider -
Trump may have just had his 'worst week' yet
By Natasha Bertrand
The Boy Scouts were forced to apologize. the Pentagon was caught flat-footed. The GOP failed to pass a crucial healthcare vote.
The president openly undercut his attorney general. The White House communications director publicly attacked the White House chief of staff. The White House chief of staff was then ousted.
Congress backed the president into a corner on Russia, and the police department that hosted the president's speech on gang violence quickly denounced his remarks.
And that was just last week.
http://www.businessinsider.com/trump-scaramucci-reince-priebus-health-care-2017-7?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=newsletter_axiosam&stream=top-stories
Trump may have just had his 'worst week' yet
By Natasha Bertrand
The Boy Scouts were forced to apologize. the Pentagon was caught flat-footed. The GOP failed to pass a crucial healthcare vote.
The president openly undercut his attorney general. The White House communications director publicly attacked the White House chief of staff. The White House chief of staff was then ousted.
Congress backed the president into a corner on Russia, and the police department that hosted the president's speech on gang violence quickly denounced his remarks.
And that was just last week.
http://www.businessinsider.com/trump-scaramucci-reince-priebus-health-care-2017-7?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=newsletter_axiosam&stream=top-stories
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