February 14, 2018

The Harlem Hellfighters

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/369th_Infantry_Regiment_(United_States)

The 369th Infantry Regiment, formerly known as the 15th New York National Guard Regiment, was an infantry regiment of the New York Army National Guard during World War I and World War II. The Regiment consisted mainly of African Americans, though it also included a number of Puerto Rican Americans during World War II. It was known for being the first African American regiment to serve with the American Expeditionary Forces during World War I. Before the 15th New York National Guard Regiment was formed, any African American that wanted to fight in the war had to enlist in the French or Canadian armies.[2] The regiment was nicknamed the Harlem Hellfighters, the Black Rattlers, and the Men of Bronze, which was given to the regiment by the French.[3] The nickname "Hell Fighters" was given to them by the Germans due to their toughness and that they never lost a man through capture, lost a trench or a foot of ground to the enemy.[4]

February 8, 2018

Shep Smith and Fox make fun of Trump's military parade plans

February 7, 2018

Why Trump eats McDonalds

Chemical in McDonald’s Fries Could Cure Baldness, Study Says
By Christina Zhao On 2/5/18 at 10:01 AM

Japanese scientists may have discovered a cure for baldness—and it lies within a chemical used to make McDonald’s fries.



http://www.newsweek.com/chemical-mcdonalds-fries-may-cure-male-baldness-study-say-799439


A stem cell research team from Yokohama National University used a “simple” method to regrow hair on mice by using dimethylpolysiloxane, the silicone added to McDonald’s fries to stop cooking oil from frothing.

<snip>

According to the study, released in the Biomaterials journal last Thursday, the breakthrough came after the scientists successfully mass-produced “hair follicle germs” (HFG) which were created for the first time ever in this way.

<xnip

“The key for the mass production of HFGs was a choice of substrate materials for the culture vessel,” Professor Junji Fukuda, of Yokohama National University, said in the study. “We used oxygen-permeable dimethylpolysiloxane (PDMS) at the bottom of culture vessel, and it worked very well.”

<snip>

Within days, Fukuda and his colleagues reported black hairs on the areas of the mouse where the chip had been transplanted. The photos below demonstrate the findings.

<snip>

BEFORE LUNCH:


AFTER LUNCH:

February 7, 2018

Jasper Johns Still Doesnt Want to Explain His Art

Jasper Johns Still Doesn’t
Want to Explain His Art

Mr. Johns, who is now 87 and widely regarded as
America’s foremost living artist, has a new retrospective
at the Broad called “Something Resembling Truth.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/07/arts/design/jasper-johns-retrospective-broad-museum.html

LOS ANGELES — Not long ago, Jasper Johns, who is now 87 and widely regarded as America’s foremost living artist, was reminiscing about his childhood in small-town South Carolina. One day when he was in the second grade, a classmate named Lottie Lou Oswald misbehaved and was summoned to the front of the room. As the teacher reached for a wooden ruler and prepared to paddle her, Lottie Lou grabbed the ruler from the teacher’s hand and broke it in half. Her classmates were stunned.

“It was absolutely wonderful,” Mr. Johns told me, appearing to relish the memory of the girl’s defiance. A ruler, an instrument of the measured life, had become an accessory to rebellion.

<snip>

Mr. Johns himself is loath to offer biographical interpretations of his work — or any interpretations, for that matter. He is famously elusive and his humor tends toward the sardonic. He once joked that, of the dozens of books that have been written about his art, his favorite one was written in Japanese. What he liked is that he could not understand it.
Continue reading the main story
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The Broad show, which remains on view through May 13 and covers six decades, offers a relatively intimate glimpse at his work. In a welcome departure from curatorial convention, the exhibition is organized thematically rather than chronologically. You come to see how the American flags and targets that remain Mr. Johns’s most acclaimed motifs are no more persistent than other motifs and themes, including forks and spoons, unsettling images of the human body broken into fragments and the drama of a muted self unable to express its needs.

<snip>

The idea for the current show originated with Roberta Bernstein, an art historian whose scholarship on Mr. Johns assumed magisterial proportions last year, with the publication of a five-volume catalogue raisonné of his paintings and sculptures. She was joined in assembling the Broad show by Joanne Heyler, the museum’s founding director; and Ed Schad, a curator and critic. The threesome visited Mr. Johns at his home last November, after sending him an elaborate Gatorfoam-board model of their installation. They wanted to ensure that he was happy or at least not miserable about the show’s accents and emphases, which include the flashy and rather L.A. idea of opening with as many flag paintings as they could gather.

<snip>




Interesting article, he says his favorite book about his art is one from Japan "because he can't read it".

February 5, 2018

Judge Failed To Disclose Donation From GOP Defendant In Gerrymandering Suit

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/pennsylvania-judge-gerrymandering-lawsuit_us_5a787b05e4b0905433b6cf0c?ncid=inblnkushpmg00000009

Judge Failed To Disclose Donation From GOP Defendant In Gerrymandering Suit
Pennsylvania Supreme Court Justice Sallie Updyke Mundy was one of two justices who wanted to uphold the state’s congressional map.
By Sam Levine

<snip>

Justice Sallie Updyke Mundy filed an updated disclosure in the case on Monday, noting the $25,000 donation during her Supreme Court candidacy from a PAC supporting Senate President Pro Tempore Joe Scarnati. She apologized for failing to disclose the money before the Supreme Court heard the lawsuit, and said she still believes she can judge the litigation impartially.

<snip>

Her failure to disclose the donation, first reported by Mother Jones, is the latest in an escalating fight over the gerrymandering decision that challenges the impartiality of the justices on Pennsylvania’s highest court. On Friday, House Speaker Michael Turzai (R) and Scarnati moved to disqualify the vote of Justice David Wecht, a Democrat, because he made statements against gerrymandering when he was a candidate in 2015.

<snip>

Scarnati said in a statement Monday that he and Mundy had properly disclosed the donation from his PAC in campaign finance reports. He also said three Democrats on the Supreme Court failed to disclose contributions from a PAC supporting Gov. Tom Wolf (D), who also is a defendant in the gerrymandering case. Those justices ― Wecht, Kevin Dougherty and Christine Donohue ― also did not disclose millions in donations from labor unions that filed amicus briefs in this case, Scarnati said.

<snip>

“Justice Wecht and Justice Donohue promised an outcome prior to the League of Women Voters’ filing of the lawsuit,” Scarnati said, adding, “Justice Wecht’s numerous unequivocal statements regarding “gerrymandering,”, calling it an “abomination” on several occasions, establish that even before he was elected to the Supreme Court, his mind was made up.”
<snip>

February 2, 2018

And this Wiley be my last Post....