RandySF
RandySF's Journal'Agent Carter’ review: Cool addition to Marvel’s TV universe
Gosh, “Marvel’s Agent Carter” is a heck of a lot of fun, and if that statement feels a bit old-fashioned, well, it fits the sprightly period piece about a female secret agent fighting bad guys and sexism just after World War II....
Atwell is terrific in the title role, as capable in the efficient, unflappable skin of Peggy as she is when pretending to be a blond American floozy in a gin joint. James D’Arcy is a model of amusing dry wit as Jarvis, Stark’s butler and his official liaison with Peggy. Jarvis believes in order above all things: Dinner at 7, “Jack Benny” on the radio at 8, to bed with his wife at 9. Cooper oozes ’40s authenticity as Stark, to the point where you’ll almost believe you’re watching a black-and-white period film instead of a full-color TV show.
The cast also includes Chad Michael Murray as an SSR agent with little apparent tolerance for skirts in the SSR, and Enver Gjokaj as a fellow agent who lost a leg in the war and gained a lot more tolerance than his male colleagues. James Landry Hébert plays evil to the hilt as an icy Green Suit.
Many of these characters relate to characters in other Marvel films and TV shows. Howard Stark, of course, is the father of “Iron Man’s” Tony Stark, who was conceived by Stan Lee in the image of Howard Hughes.
http://www.sfgate.com/tv/article/Agent-Carter-review-Cool-addition-to-5990386.php
Blame Anti-Vaxxers for Your Flu
The bigger problem is that the anti-vax crowd waits for this sort of mess to pounce, as if the biologic unpredictability of a living virus is enough to make their point. Their point of course is a slippery one: One day it is poor vaccine efficacy; another it’s not efficacy at all but toxicity or side effects such as autism that make the argument against shots; or lastly, the most absurd and therefore best embraced, the argument is that catching the real infection is somehow more natural and health-making—and therefore better for the kid who is sick.
It is this fear of giving the anti-vaxxers a leg up that has stifled any sort of honest discussion about the very real limits of the flu vaccine. Because let’s face it, by modern standards, where measles vaccine and hepatitis B vaccine are 99 percent effective in every study, a report card coming in at 60 percent efficacy is pretty lame.
Though this too is debatable given that 25,000 to 40,000 people a year die of influenza—the vast majority of them unvaccinated. A simple halving of the number with today’s mediocre vaccine would represent a major public-health triumph. By way of comparison, about 14,000 people in the U.S. died of AIDS in 2011—a vaccine to cut that number in half likely would result in a Nobel Prize.
In other words, the anti-vax crowd, basing their debate well outside the corridors of standard science, has somehow pushed the entire public-health discussion of how best to control infectious diseases to a place outside the rational and evidenced-based. And that’s where a flimsy but emotionally effective argument can do real harm by causing an outbreak not of influenza but of deliberate and profound misunderstanding.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/01/01/when-you-get-the-flu-this-winter-you-can-blame-anti-vaxxers.html
Observation from Hunter S. Thompson on the "clubby" relationship between politicians and journalists
This was one of the traditional barriers I tried to ignore when I moved to Washington and began covering the '72 presidential campaign. As far as I was concerned, there was no such thing as "off the record." The most consistent and ultimately damaging failure of political journalism in America has its roots in the clubby/cocktail personal relationships that inevitably develop between politicians and journalists – in Washington or anywhere else where they meet on a day-to-day basis. When professional antagonists become after-hours drinking buddies, they are not likely to turn each other in... especially not for "minor infractions" of rules that neither side takes seriously; and on the rare occasions when Minor infractions suddenly become Major, there is panic on both ends.
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/timewarp-campaign-72-19730705#ixzz3NeqlF9y6
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Mario Cuomo has died.
Former New York Gov. Mario Cuomo, known as a liberal lion and likely Democratic candidate for president in the 1980s and 1990s, died today at age 82, multiple sources confirmed to ABC News.
Cuomo, governor of the Empire State from 1983 to 1994, was the father of current New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo.
Mario Cuomo's imprint on liberalism in American politics was nearly without parallel. The strains of liberalism and populism coursing through the Democratic Party today -- through the voices of Elizabeth Warren and others -- are echoes of Cuomo.
Andrew Cuomo noted both his father's absence -- and his spiritual presence -- as he was sworn in to a second term as governor today, becoming the first Democrat to enter a second term as New York governor since his father.
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/york-gov-mario-cuomo-dead-82/story?id=27952816
I knew it! Shanghai stampede was over money.
SHANGHAI (Reuters) - A stampede killed at least 35 people during New Year's Eve celebrations in Shanghai, authorities said, possibly caused by people rushing to pick up fake money thrown from a building overlooking the city's famous Bund waterfront district.
The Shanghai government said large crowds started to stampede in Chen Yi Square on the Bund just before midnight, with authorities working to rescue and aid the wounded.
The trigger for the stampede has still to be confirmed, but state media and witnesses said the incident was at least partly caused when people tried picking up fake money.
A man who brought one of the 48 injured to a local hospital for treatment said fake money had been thrown down from a bar above the street as part of the New Year's Eve celebrations. People rushed to pick up the money, triggering the stampede, said the man, who gave his family name as Wu.
http://www.thestar.com.my/News/World/2015/01/01/At-least-35-dead-42-injured-in-Shanghai-New-Years-stampede/
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