"Crimea dispatch: 'There will be no war. We're not going to point our weapons'"

"Colonel Sergey Starozhenko walked out of the gates of the 36th border guards brigade base in Perevalnoye on Sunday afternoon, and trudged down a grassy slope toward a line of 20 huge green Volga trucks."

Backed by a mobile radio truck with a towering antennae, half a dozen armoured jeeps, a field ambulance and a handful of UAZik's – the Russian answer to the snatch range rover – this line of trucks was the command post of the Russian invasion force that has held his base under siege since morning.

But the Colonel was calm, despite the standoff.

"There will be no war," he said, after climbing back up the hill from a meeting with his counterpart.

"After negotiations with the Russian Federation, we have agreed not to point our weapons at one another, and that they will not enter the base."

Meanwhile, president Obama wants everybody to know he is on his phone... minus his pen.

"Johns Hopkins doctors remove baby's brain tumor that contained teeth"

"Doctors at Johns Hopkins Hospital have removed a rare tumor that contained several fully grown teeth from a baby boy's brain."

The tumor was found in the then-4-month-old from West Virginia in 2012 after a pediatrician noticed that his head was unusually large for his age.

Doctors wrote about the findings in an article that appeared this week in the New England Journal of Medicine. The discovery could someday help researchers trying to cure diseases or grow new organs, medical experts said.

"It gives us more insight into the origins of the tumor," said Dr. Edward Ahn, a pediatric neurosurgeon at Johns Hopkins who was the lead surgeon in the case.

"We had to think twice," Ahn said. "We first thought they were flakes of calcium. When we looked at it closer, we were like, 'Those really look like teeth.' "

Chicago Tribune

WLEM AM

Where we feel your pain.



The very bird,
grown taller as he sings, steels
his form straight up. Though he is captive,
his mighty singing
says, satisfaction is a lowly
thing, how pure a thing is joy.

-Marianne Moore

"The Social Oscars: Academy Award Predictions From Across the Web"

The Social Oscars

"Last year we proved that social buzz could successfully predict the Academy Award winner for Best Picture. So this year we wanted to see what else social could predict for Hollywood’s big night."

 

Adapted Screenplay

Nominees:

• 12 Years a Slave
• Before Midnight
• Captain Phillips
• Philomena
• The Wolf of Wall Street

Social Winner: 12 Years a Slave

Original Screenplay

Nominees:

• American Hustle
• Blue Jasmine
• Dallas Buyers Club
• Her
• Nebraska

Social Winner: Her

Actor in a Supporting Role

Nominees:

• Barkhad Abdi for Captain Phillips
• Bradley Cooper for American Hustle
• Jared Leto for Dallas Buyers Club
• Jonah Hill for The Wolf of Wall Street
• Michael Fassbender for 12 Years a Slave

Social Winner: Jared Leto

Actress in a Supporting Role

Nominees:

• Jennifer Lawrence for American Hustle
• Julia Roberts for August: Osage County
• June Squibb for Nebraska
• Lupita Nyong’o for 12 Years a Slave
• Sally Hawkins for Blue Jasmine

Social Winner: Lupita Nyong’o

Guest Post & Open Thread

[A guest post* from commenter Rhythm and Balls]:

Poet Chickie had a fact

but Poet Chickie lacked the tact

to use the knack and take the act

to put said knowledge to good effect.

Instead he writhed and roared in pain

that no one loved all of the gains

that benefited no one - save his dames

and their good masters at places like Bain

"Why can't," he cried, "the wretched love"

"The closed off kindness we see above?"

"The generosity sphincter has released enough!" "Now send us speedily peace-bearing dove!"

"For if we do not hate the poor,"

"And insufficiently abhor,"

"Industrious activity, exchange for all,"

"Then financial gods will appear too small!"

"For worshipping them is just the point,"

"And fractured economies we must anoint."

"Bar from commerce these wretched fleas!"

"For stinginess is virtue - and DESTINY!" 

______________________

*Link to original

NYT City Tales: "A Yellow Beverage"

"Taking my place in the cashier’s line at a Midtown Duane Reade chain drugstore last week, I eavesdropped on the conversation between the two women just ahead of me, who were comparing the drink in the bottles that one of them was holding with other drink products: color, sugar content, taste, etc.

"The woman with the bottles appeared to have second thoughts about the drink, and she left the line, asking me if I would hold her place as she went back to the shelf for one more look. I said O.K. When she returned, she was still holding the same bottles, an orange-ish liquid that looked like nothing ever found in nature. Had she overcome her doubts?

"As the line moved forward, I exercised my New Yorker’s right to butt in, and asked her why in the world she would drink that stuff.

"She looked at me as if I were asking a dumb question, and said: “I wouldn’t touch it. I need it for a prop in a play. The character has to drink his own urine, and this is the closest I can get to the right look.”

NY Times

KLEM FM

"Rudy"

Rudy's on a train to nowhere, halfway down the line

He don't wanna get there, but he needs time

He ain't sophisticated, nor well-educated

After all the hours he wasted, still he needs time.

He needs time - he needs time for livin',

He needs time - for someone just to see him.

He ain't had no lovin'

For no reason or rhyme

And the whole world's above him.

Well it's not as though he's fat-

No there's more to this than that-

See he tries to play it cool-

Wouldn't be nobody's fool.

Rudy thought that all good things comes to those that wait

But recently he could see that it may come too late.

All through your life, all through the years

Nobody loved, nobody cared.

So dim the light, dark are your fears

Try as I might, I can't hold back the tears

How can you live without love, it's not fair?

Someone said give but I just didn't dare.

What good advice are you waiting to hear?

Hearing's alright for them that's all there

You'd better gain control now

You'd better show'em all now

You'd better make or break now

You'd better give and take now

You'll have to push and shove now

You'll have to find some love now

You'd better gain control now.

Now he's just come out the movie.

Numb of all the pain,

Sad but in a while he'll soon be

back on his train...

The studio version of that song is much better than this live one, but I can't find the former to post here. Buy it, if you have the dime. I like how the train sound effects bracketed the song at the beginning and the end and you realize that the protagonist was having a sort of internal dialog but then slipped back into numbness. When I was of a certain tender age I remember talking with a best friend about how it must suck to be much older and to be "spent, yet malcontent." 

"Morning Glory: Jogger Ticketed for Crack-of-Dawn Run Through Central Park"

"Runners have joined jaywalkers on the NYPD’s to-ticket list."

CEO Peter Shankman was issued a summons for running in Central Park too early in the morning, Gothamist reports.

Mr. Shankman, who is an “author, entrepreneur, speaker, and worldwide connector,” and founder of Help a Reporter Out, was stopped by cops around 4:30 a.m. on Thursday near 85th Street on the park’s East Side.

He said he was training for the Ironman Triathlon and getting his 10 miles in before his morning meeting, Mr. Shankman wrote on Facebook.

But apparently, Central Park is closed between 1am and 6am, making his early morning run a criminal act.

Mr. Shankman claims there were no signs, gates, or traffic cones indicating that the park was closed.

NY Observer. Tweeted ticket and comments at the link

"Kiev on Edge After Russia OKs Putin's Military Intervention Plan"

"Kiev was on edge Saturday after Russian parliament’s upper house unanimously approved President Vladimir Putin’s request for a military intervention in Ukraine, according to a Kremlin statement."

The approval came within two hours of Putin appealing to parliament, saying the move is needed to protect ethnic Russians and the personnel of a Russian military base in Ukraine's strategic region of Crimea, a peninsula the size of Massachusetts where three out of four people speak Russian.

However, the vote does not specify that Russian troops are authorized to enter Crimea; instead, it states Russia's military force can enter "Ukraine," giving themselves a legal cloak to target more than Crimea.

NBC

double lotus pop-up completed

This card is for a person who is grieving. A public person. Owns a shop downtown, does a lot of business for other businesses, large events, gives speeches in his field. Does everything large, everything loud. Does like attention. Funeral reception at the Art Museum next door but I did not attend.

I feel a bit bad about that.

I wanted this card to be slightly more complicated than necessary, two flowers where one will do, offset and complicating things somewhat where along the central fold will do, and then all that elevated to float where flat on the card surface will do.

Additionally, the card is provided a rigid backing that is not necessary, and book repair binding that is not needed and a separate art cover that could have been applied directly. Each step invites trouble and after all that, simplicity is actually very nice. I do not recommend making a card this way, still, looking this over might give ideas how you'd approach such a thing and do this or similar better. It needn't be this involved. If you bother, I hope you will see things you can subtract or do differently.

The Dull Men's Club

"Celebrate the ordinary.  We take our time - it's a great invention - it keeps things from happening all at once.  Glitz and glam - not worth the effort."

The Dull Men's Club.  Where dull men - and women who appreciate dull men - share thoughts and experiences about ordinary things.  Not to be confused with Trooper York's.

Today's event is the Chiditarod.  It's a version of the Iditarod dog sled race, except it takes place in a neighborhood in Chicago, with shopping carts in stead of dog sleds.

There's also the 10th Annual Orange Marmalade Festival, if you can stand the excitement.

Best of all is the event that lasts the entire month of March - Watching Sap Drip.

Celebrate your inner dullness!

Eagles linebacker: "My job is very, very different from your job"

"I get asked a lot about “locker room culture” these days. Ever since the Jonathan Martin-Richie Incognito bullying situation and the recent coming out of Michael Sam, it seems the media has become fascinated with understanding the inner workings of an NFL team. I’ve seen countless articles discussing how bullying or homosexuality is dealt with in an office setting and others comparing our workplace with the traditional American workplace."

I am sure an MLB clubhouse has its perks, hockey players must be really fun to crush beers with, and the NBA is probably, well . . . an interesting place to work. (Can you imagine having a locker next to J.R. Swish?) But in my estimation, absolutely nothing compares to an NFL locker room. I played a lot of different sports growing up. None of them quite creates the brotherhood, the camaraderie, the fraternity that exists on a football team...

What we end up with in the NFL is a room full of 65 of the most athletic, driven, and—let’s face it—reckless men in the country. Not many sane, rational individuals would voluntarily choose to play a game that threatens to take years off your life, possibly lead to CTE, and leave your joints feeling like rusty bicycle chains. What you do have, however, is one of the most diverse melting pots in the world. “Parks and Rec” has nothing on the character ensemble I work with every day. Cowboys from Texas locker next to rappers from L.A., guys blasting “Yeezus” on the stereo across from guys talking about Jesus with the chaplain, married guys with three kids next to married guys with three girlfriends.

Bill Maher has a funny bit in which he says, “Any institution where there’s no women around—like the Church, like football, like the Middle East, like fraternities—things go to s—.” I’d have to say there’s more than a little bit of truth in that joke. The NFL locker room is the ultimate boys club. Yes, we talk about horrendously inappropriate things. Yes, we make fun of each other. And yes, we have a tendency to take pranks a bit too far. (An Icy-Hot-in-the-helmet incident in 2011 cost one rookie a practice and earned me some time in coach Gary Kubiak’s doghouse.) But at the end of the day, this is not a normal job. Contracts are not guaranteed, career-altering injuries are commonplace, the average career lasts three-and-a-half years. READ MORE

There is usually, at the very least, two sides to every controversy. I like rare opportunities to hear the other side.

CNN: "Sarah Palin may be having a bragging rights moment"

"In 2008, when she was the GOP vice presidential nominee, Palin questioned in a speech whether then-Sen. Barack Obama would have the foreign policy credentials to handle a scenario in which Russian President Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine."

After the Russian army invaded the nation of Georgia, Senator Obama's reaction was one of indecision and moral equivalence – the kind of response that would only encourage Russia's Putin to invade Ukraine next," she said in Reno, Nevada on October 21, 2008.

The former Alaska governor was happy to highlight her prediction on Friday and scold those who criticized her 2008 comments.

"Yes, I could see this one from Alaska," she said on Facebook. That remark was a reference to a 2008 interview in which Palin argued that Alaska's proximity to Russia helped boost her foreign policy experience.

Left leaning publication The Wire is having to grudgingly acknowledge that Sarah Palin was right.

So some of these things did happen! Administration officials sat down with Iran and worked out a temporary agreement to curb the refinement of uranium. The United States violated Pakistan's sovereign territory without its knowledge — to kill Osama bin Laden. And he is drawing down troops in Iraq. Whether or not you think that all of these things resulted in "crises," in Palin's evocative terminology, is up to you.

But it doesn't really seem like she deserves credit for the Ukraine thing. For one thing, calling what's happening at the moment an "invasion" is overly strong...

Overly strong? Palin's predictions, coming to be as a result of the election of Obama, have come to pass, just as she had predicted them. Watch the video after clicking Read More below.

Meanwhile, former Defense secretary Gates, "dismantles Joe Biden’s elder statesman status*", declaring in his recent memoir that Biden had been “wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades.”

CNN, The Wire, Politico *6th paragraph

WLEM AM

Where only your hairdresser knows for sure.

What’s madness but nobility of soul

At odds with circumstance? The day’s on fire!   

I know the purity of pure despair,

My shadow pinned against a sweating wall.   

That place among the rocks—is it a cave,   

Or winding path? The edge is what I have.

-Theodore Roethke