Spent the evening spinning Cher on the turntable. Listened to 1987's CHER ("We All Sleep Alone" is the track for that album -- after that "Main Man," "Perfection" and "Perfection"), HEART OF STONE (every track is a first-rate classic), CLOSER TO THE TRUTH ("FAVORITE SCARS," "My Love," "Sirens," "I Hope You Find It") and DANCING QUEEN ("The Winner Takes It All," "S.O.S." and "One of Us").
Update to "3 posts wrongly banned by BLOGGER/BLOGSPOT" -- all three are reinstated. I hope you read Rebecca's "lousy blogger and lousy crooked clarence" from last night about the same topic. And I hope you read "Books (Kat, Ava and C.I.)" which was me talking the books I covered in "3 books to skip" with Ava and C.I.
Thank God. Tim Curry's alive. I saw CLUE last weekend and that always makes me dream about Tim Curry. For some reason, it's usually a violet dream in some way. I dreamt last night -- and forgot until I was writing the paragraph before -- that Tim and I were in a car, I was in the drivers seat, I go to start it and it flips into reverse and -- with no pedal work from me -- is barreling backwards. This is a regular dream of mine -- by the way -- at least once a year, for about 20 years. I'm in a car (usually by myself) and it's going backwards at this intense speed and either the brakes don't work or my feet can't move and I crash. So, in last night's dream, Tim and I died when the car crashed into a bus that was parked -- a city bus -- no kids were injured in my dreams.
So Tim's alive. When I remembered the dream, I went to WIKIPEDIA and he's still alive.
I felt so bad in my dream -- and I had feelings in my dream even after I was dead -- because I'd killed Tim.
Looking for a tour to check out? Try this one:
Boy George and Culture Club today announced the 25-date “Letting It Go Show” North American amphitheater tour, a celebration of new wave pop that will find the “Karma Chameleon” hitmakers joined by contemporaries Howard Jones and Berlin.
The tour opens July 13 in West Palm Beach, Florida, and runs through late August, with shows in Atlanta, Nashville, Toronto, Chicago and more, before concluding Aug. 20 in Concord, California.
A presale for Citi cardholders begins at 10 a.m. local time Wednesday, April 19, with additional presales expected through the week. The general on-sale date is 10 a.m. local time Friday, April 21, at livenation.com.
Boy's gotten the passion back in his voice in the last four or so years. So that's one reason to go. Another is the songs of Culture Club. Third reason? Berlin. "Take My Breath Away," for sure. Howard Jones? "What Is Love?" and "No One Is To Blame."
That's a lot for one event.
Closing with C.I.'s "Iraq snapshot:"
Juan Williams, a political analyst at Fox News, as well as a decades-long friend to Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, expressed his support f0r an investigation into the conservative justice following a recent spate of corruption allegations.
Thomas is facing renewed scrutiny following the revelation last week that the he sold his childhood home to GOP mega-donor Harlan Crow — and never disclosed the sale.
The ProPublica report came days after the outlet first reported that Thomas has been accepting and failing to disclose several luxury vacations from Crow for years. While Thomas defended the undisclosed trips by citing an ill-defined "personal hospitality" exemption included in disclosure requirements, the real estate revelation has thus far been harder to explain away.
CNN reported on Monday that Thomas plans to amend his financial disclosure forms to accurately reflect the real estate deal, but four ethics law experts told ProPublica last week that the justice likely violated a federal disclosure law that was enacted in the wake of Watergate, sparking public pressure for an official investigation into Thomas' financial dealings, as well as growing calls for his resignation and impeachment.
Following The Washington Post's report, lawyer David R. Lurie tweeted: "Thomas's disregard for legal disclosure mandates exemplifies the attitude of the Supreme Court's extremist majority toward the citizens to whom they issue increasingly imperious dictates: Contempt."
Newsweek reached out to Lurie via Twitter and a Supreme Court spokesperson via email for comment.
He wrote that "the corrupt conduct of Justice Thomas demonstrates, some members of the Trump Era judiciary appear to believe there is no longer a need for them even to maintain an appearance of judicial probity."
He noted that Thomas had not recused himself from election cases following the 2020 election even though his wife, Virginia Thomas, a conservative activist, had reached out to the Trump White House and lawmakers to urge them to attempt to overturn election results.
"We now know that — even as Ginni Thomas was raking in hundreds of thousands of dollars from 'family friend' Harlan Crow — Thomas himself was receiving lavish gifts of travel and other benefits from the billionaire, a right-wing activist, with an intense interest in the subject matters of many cases that come before the Court," Lurie wrote.
The Supreme Court keeps tripping over its own robes. Last week, ProPublica revealed that a conservative megadonor has been secretly subsidizing the lifestyle of Justice Clarence Thomas. In a rare public statement, the justice claims he asked others on the Court and in the judiciary, who assured him he need not disclose such beneficence.
It’s not clear which is worse: if this is true, or if it isn’t.
Thomas said all this merely involved “personal hospitality” from a friend (albeit a billionaire who befriended Thomas only after he was appointed to the Court). That might evoke a dinner party or a weekend at a friend’s lake house. Hardly: Thomas frolicked on Harlan Crow’s superyacht, flew on his personal jet, vacationed at his private resort, and traveled with him to Bohemian Grove, an all-male retreat in California. According to ProPublica, the largesse was worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Thomas claimed to want to avoid chichi vacations. “I prefer the RV parks. I prefer the Walmart parking lots to the beaches and things like that. There’s something normal to me about it,” Thomas said. “I come from regular stock, and I prefer that — I prefer being around that.” They say hypocrisy is the tribute vice pays to virtue.
This all shows the perils of DIY ethics. The Supreme Court is the only court in the country with no enforceable code of ethics. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) has pointed out that the Court quickly launched a formal investigation of the leak of the Dobbs decision last year. It could do so again. If the Court will not craft a set of ethics rules — and pronto — Congress can and should do so.
Congress should also investigate. There’s ample precedent: Justice Abe Fortas, too, was found to be receiving support from a wealthy benefactor, and the controversy proved so intense that he resigned.
But beyond stronger rules, the scandal shows how lifetime tenure can engender justices with a startling sense of entitlement and a belief that they are beyond accountability. Thomas almost certainly knows that cavorting around the globe in a superyacht isn’t “personal hospitality” in the spirit of current rules. After briefly disclosing the trips and causing a minor stir in 2004, he decided it would be better to keep them to himself. He was confident he could avoid consequences.
Where did that confidence come from? At least in part from the assurance that comes with years of accumulated power and influence.
Few government jobs anywhere in the world are quite like that of U.S. Supreme Court justices: nine unelected people who dictate wide swaths of national policy. And if they’re put on the Court at a young age, they get to do so for many decades with no real risk of removal. Only one justice has ever been impeached (Samuel Chase in 1804). None has ever been convicted. Supreme Court justices are, in this way, more akin to royalty than public servants. Only a single U.S. state mirrors the federal system — the rest have either fixed terms or mandatory retirement.
We can make a change, as I recently argued in the Los Angeles Times. There is a broad bipartisan consensus in favor of term limits for Supreme Court justices. Justices would serve for up to 18 years, with each president allowed two appointments per presidential term. I describe all this in my upcoming book, The Supermajority: How the Supreme Court Divided America.
Term limits would ensure that the composition of the Court better mirrors the preferences of American voters and stop presidents from influencing national policy decades beyond their terms in office. Term limits would also prevent any individual from accumulating unaccountable power, as Thomas seems to believe he has.
Meanwhile, Madeleine Muzdakis (MY MODERN MET) reports:
After a hard day's work, ancient people liked to unwind at the pub just like modern folks. At least, that is what new findings on the important archeological site of Lagash in Iraq indicate. As recently announced by the University of Pennsylvania, archeologists digging at the site uncovered a tavern dating to around 2700 B.C.E. The find is complete with an oven, benches, a clay refrigerator known as a zeer, and bowls with food remnants. These findings can tell historians and archeologists a lot about daily life in a busy, ancient industrial center.
Lagash is one of the largest archeological sites in southern Mesopotamia. The city dates to the Early Dynastic period from 2900 to 2300 B.C.E. The urban center was part of a trio of cities that formed a powerful polity. Lagash was situated near fertile lands, but archeologists also believe it was an important center of craftsmen and industry. Excavations have uncovered ceramic kilns and trenches where wet clay was stored. Tables and benches nearby suggested a workroom. These workers may have lived in the domestic quarters also discovered on the site, which contained a kitchen, bowls with food, a grinding stone, and a toilet.
A surprising feature of the neighborhood was the tavern. Benches for guests, a zeer, an oven, and remnants of storage vessels containing food all suggest a thriving working-class watering hole. “It’s a public eating space dating to somewhere around 2700 BCE,” says Professor Holly Pittman, curator of the Penn Museum’s Near East Section and the Lagash project director. “It’s partially open air, partially kitchen area.”
To uncover the tavern, the team employed modern technologies. Using drone imagery and magnetometry analysis (testing the magnetism of objects under the soil), they could determine where best to dig. They then removed the dirt in microstratigraphic layers—very thin slices with surgical precision. Pittman described it in a statement as “like doing very careful surgery…Just 50 centimeters down, we were able to capture all of this. We were happily astounded.”
AFP notes that, in the past. looting was the biggest threat to Iraqi artifacts; however:
Now the changing weather and its impact on the land, especially creeping desertification, spell an additional threat to ancient sites all across southern Iraq, according to Mansrawi.
“In the next 10 years,” he said, “it is estimated that sand could have covered 80 to 90 per cent of the archaeological sites.”
[. . .]
Compounding its woes, Iraq is also one of the five countries most affected by some effects of climate change, including drought, according to the United Nations.
Upstream dams in Turkey and Iraq have reduced the flow of its big rivers, and more water is wasted by Iraq’s ancient irrigation system and outdated farming practices.
Iran. I believe AFP meant "Upstream dams in Turkey and Iran have reduced the flow of its big rivers."
Still on artifacts, Rachel Avraham (INTERMOUNTAIN JEWISH NEWS) notes:
Iraqi historian Omar Mohammed, known for his Mosul Eye blog, now an NGO, is known for documenting life in his city under ISIS rule.
He has started a new project, “Reviving the Jewish history of Mosul.”
Under ISIS, the tombs of the Prophets Jonah and Daniel were both destroyed, as were the local mikveh ritual bath and a couple of synagogues.
In a recent talk that Mohammed gave to Qesher, he emphasized that what happened to the Tomb of Jonah was not only a tragedy for the Jewish people but for all of the people of Mosul.
“I used to hear stories about the Prophet Jonah. The people of Nineveh were the only people who heeded his warning,” said Mohammed.
“After three days of studying the offer from G-d, they decided to follow G-d’s message and received divine protection. Unfortunately, this divine protection left us in 2014, when Mosul was overrun by ISIS, who systematically destroyed the cultural heritage of Iraq.”
The ancient Assyrian city of Nineveh was located in what is now the city of Mosul in northern Iraq. Today, Nineveh is a common name for the half of Mosul that lies on the eastern bank of the Tigris River.
Mohammed said that the Tomb of Jonah was not presented to him as a Jewish site. “I learned everything about Jonah except for his Jewish heritage. Later on, I went to a school and learned that it was once the Jewish school. In 2000, it was demolished to the ground by Saddam Hussein and then they built a new structure.”
Mohammed first learned about the Jewish heritage of Mosul from Iraqi Jewish historian Sami Ibrahim. Mohammed was still living under ISIS rule when Ibrahim managed to send him a book in digital form that really inspired him.
In anticipation of worsening dust storms, EARTH.ORG notes Iraq is talking of a tree initiative which would see the planting of five million trees:
15% of Iraq’s total surface area is currently categorised as being in a state of desertification. The country is particularly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change because of its extensive oil reserves – with the fifth largest reserve in the world at over 140 billion barrels’ supply.
Iraq’s fragile social contract under an oil-led growth model has reportedly been a source of economic volatility and, according to the new World Bank Group’s Country Climate and Development Report (CCDR), the country faces the challenge of moving away from total oil dependence towards a more sustainable future. Without the capacity to achieve sustainable development, leaders will have to come up with costly, extensive projects.
For decades, Iraq has suffered from summer heatwaves, frequent droughts, and desertification triggered by intense dust storms – the duration and intensity of which are increasing due to global warming and increased vulnerability due to arid conditions almost all year round.
According to government figures, more than seven million citizens have been affected by climate change, with extreme weather events and natural disasters displacing hundreds of thousands of people who rely on agriculture and hunting for a living. Climate change has also impacted the physical environment in Iraq, as declining surface water reserves, recurring drought and increasing water salinity continue to contribute to large-scale desertification.
Projections of water availability in Iraq are highly uncertain under different climate change scenarios, which has huge implications for both human health and the natural environment.
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The Power, Kindred and an online fool8 hours ago
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COVID failures8 hours ago
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