Category Archives: News to use

Useful news for all to advance knowledge of the world and how it works

Editorial: Banning masks at protests is a bad idea – Los Angeles Times

American citizens who speak anonymously or hide their faces might want to avoid police surveillance, and they should be able to do that as long as they don’t threaten or inflict immediate harm on others or engage in other forms of law-breaking. As government and private companies track people’s movements through license-plate readers, traffic cameras, cellphone tracking and other technology, Americans who value their privacy and their rights need not simply give in. They need not give up masks, the lowest-tech means of resisting all the high-tech surveillance.

Masks themselves have become political statements and come within free speech protections. Let’s not forget that very recently, wearing masks in public was not merely permitted, but encouraged and often mandated. Refusing to wear one might have theoretically subjected a person to arrest (although that rarely happened). A person’s masking decision during the COVID-19 pandemic expressed a belief about government policy, personal rights and respect for medical expertise. In some communities across the nation where mask mandates were resisted, stores posted signs advising shoppers that anyone who entered wearing a mask would be considered a thief, and would be treated as such — even if the law required masks in public.

How would law enforcement authorities distinguish between someone wearing a mask to evade identification and someone wanting not to catch COVID?

Source: Editorial: Banning masks at protests is a bad idea – Los Angeles Times

Songs I Like (45) | beetleypete

I might be the only person who actually prefers Janet Jackson to her more famous brother, Michael. But I can live with that.

In 1997, I bought her new album, ‘The Velvet Rope’. I couldn’t stop playing it, and one track in particular. It also made me realise how useful it was to have a CD player instead of a record player, as I could just key in the track number. I still love that album now, especially this song.

And she was quite gorgeous, which doesn’t hurt.

The lyrics are on the video.

Source: Songs I Like (45) | beetleypete

Do Mosquitos Really Color Code Their Victims? | From Behind the Pen

Image Credit: Colfra/Unsplash

Besides being notorious bloodsucking vampires, can someone please tell me exactly what good or service mosquitos serve? Do they have a little mosquito Red Cross Center where they deposit pints of blood they later use in transfusions for malnourished mosquitos needing blood?

They say that mosquitos play a substantial role in our ecosystem. Yeah, right. So, male mosquitoes transfer pollen from flower to flower, which fertilizes plants and allows them to reproduce. Can’t we just leave that pollination process to the bees? Mosquitos are also part of the food web for fish, birds, bats, frogs, and flies. Oh happy, happy, joy, joy! Can’t the birds, bats, frogs, and flies munch on something else like Doritos, Fritos, potato chips, trail mix, or a nice juicy worm?

But get this, female mosquitoes are the culprits who bite people and animals to get a blood meal. Most female mosquitoes cannot produce eggs without a blood meal. Well now, can you say infertility boys and girls? Male mosquitoes do not bite people and animals. Is that so? To me, a mosquito is a mosquito. I apologize to all of you Culicidae lovers out there, but these little flying insects aren’t my cup of tea, or coffee, or wine!

Image – Creator: HAYKIRDI | Credit: Getty Images/iStockphoto

It seems as though mosquitos are attracted to certain colors. Wait, so mosquitos are the vampire-biting fashion police prone to color-coding the shades of clothing their preferred victims wear? Are those Pantone colors by chance? And who do these mosquitos think they are? Louis Vuitton? Coco Chanel? Karl Lagerfeld? Gucci? Vera Wang? Oscar de la Renta? Jimmy Choo? Versace?

It seems like red, orange, cyan (blue-green), and black tend to attract mosquitos while colors like white, green, blue, and purple repel them. The real question is, what if I wear a color that attracts and one that repels at the same time? Hmmm. So then, I turned to the colors in my outdoor living space since I spend a lot of time on my deck. It is suggested that when selecting colors to avoid mosquitoes, consider white wood, metal, plastic, or wicker furniture over black or dark bronze iron. Guess who has black iron outdoor furniture?

The recommendations also suggest when selecting cushions, doormats, and decorative accents, look for items in blues, purples, greens, and white to lower the likelihood of mosquito problems. Well now, guess again who has bright tropical cushions on the front porch, bright red flower pots, and deep gold/ruby red/tan cushions on their deck?

No, I did not consult my mosquito handbook when selecting colors to wear outdoors and what colors to decorate my outdoor living space. Does this mean that I have to walk around with marigolds, citronella candles, and insect repellent every time I sit outside to enjoy the great open-air space I am privy to? UGH, what a nuisance!

Image Credit: Dave Granlund/Gaston Gazette

 

Source: Do Mosquitos Really Color Code Their Victims? | From Behind the Pen

Opinion: Trump’s claims about the economy in the debate will be lies – Los Angeles Times

The truth is, Trump inherited a growing economy from President Obama — much as he inherited his business from his dad — and he left a pandemic-sickened one to Biden. Also, growth on his watch didn’t come close to the average under Obama, or any of the previous seven U.S. presidents. Under Biden, the economy grew last year more than in any year of Trump’s term.

Source: Opinion: Trump’s claims about the economy in the debate will be lies – Los Angeles Times

See Albert Camus’ Historic Lecture, “The Human Crisis,” Performed by Actor Viggo Mortensen | Open Culture

 

 

Back in 2016, New York City staged a month-long festival celebrating Albert Camus’ historic visit to NYC in 1946. One event in the festival featured actor Viggo Mortensen giving a reading of Camus’ lecture,“La Crise de l’homme” (“The Human Crisis”) at Columbia University–the very same place where Camus delivered the lecture 70 years earlier–down to the very day (March 28, 1946). The reading was initially captured on a cell phone, and broadcast live using Facebook live video. But then came a more polished recording, courtesy of Columbia’s Maison Française. Note that Mortensen takes the stage around the 11:45 mark. You can read a transcript of “The Human Crisis” here.

“The Human Crisis” will be added to our collection, 1,000 Free Audio Books: Download Great Books for Free.

Source: See Albert Camus’ Historic Lecture, “The Human Crisis,” Performed by Actor Viggo Mortensen | Open Culture

Thousands of Pablo Picasso’s Works Now Available in a New Digital Archive | Open Culture

If you want to immerse yourself in the world of Pablo Picasso, you might start at the Museo Picasso Málaga, located in the artist’s Spanish birthplace. But to understand how his work developed throughout his life, you’ll have to get out of Spain — which is just what Picasso did to accelerate that development in the first place. At the turn of the twentieth century, an ambitious young European painter had to go to Paris, the continent’s art capital. Picasso ended up spending much of his life there, making it the most suitable location for the Musée Picasso, home to the single largest collection of his artworks, from paintings and sculptures to drawings and engravings, as well as an even larger archive of photographs, papers, and correspondence.

Now, you don’t actually have to make the trip to Paris to see these collections, or at least an increasingly large portion of their holdings. As Sarah Kuta reports at Smithsonian.com, thousands of Picasso’s artworks are “now accessible from anywhere with an internet connection, thanks to a new online archive created by the Picasso Museum. The museum has digitized thousands of Picasso’s artworks, essays, poems, interviews and other memorabilia, including items that have never been seen by the public before.” The project began last year, with the digitization of “around 19,000 photos”; if all goes according to plan, the museum will eventually make “an additional 200,000 documents” available online.

Browse the Musée Picasso’s online archive and you’ll find many works that, assuming you haven’t yet achieved full Picasso immersion, you won’t have seen before: Femme couchée lisant from 1953, seen at the top of the post, for instance, or the earlier Massacre en Corée just above. (Despite living in Korea myself, I had no idea that Picasso painted a Korean War-themed picture, much less an episode of history that took place in the very neighborhood where I used to live.) Not everything is by Picasso, a good deal having been made by artists with whom he was associated, like Man Ray, who took this 1937 photograph of Picasso and his Hispano-Suiza car. You can find much more of interest in the archive’s themed sections, like “Féminin / Masculin” and “Picasso iconophage,” which are navigable only in French — a language that, in any case, every Picassophile should learn. Enter the digital archive here.

Source: Thousands of Pablo Picasso’s Works Now Available in a New Digital Archive | Open Culture