John Brown's Notes and Essays

Tyson images from article Mike Tyson says he smoked marijuana before fight vs. Roy Jones Jr.: 'It's just who I am'  Josh Peter, USA TODAY LOS ANGELES  — Mike Tyson said he smoked marijuana right before he fought Roy Jones Jr. Saturday night in his celebrated return to the boxing ring at the age of 54.   "Absolutely, yes," he said during his post-fight press conference. Tyson and Jones fought to a draw in an eight-round exhibition match at Staples Center as scored by three former WBC champions. After the bout, Tyson indicated he smoked another joint, apparently before he met with the media to discuss his first fight in 15 years. "Listen, I can’t stop smoking," he said. "I smoked during fights. I just have to smoke, I’m sorry. I’m a smoker. … I smoke everyday. I never stopped smoking." Fighting in an exhibition rather than a professional fight apparently gave Tyson some wiggle room. The Voluntary Anti-Doping Association tested the fighters f

from Larry Nassar Nassar in November 2016 Born Lawrence Gerard Nassar August 16, 1963  (age 57) Farmington Hills, Michigan , U.S. Education University of Michigan  ( B.S. ) Michigan State University  ( Doctor of Osteopathic Medicine ) Occupation Osteopathic physician ,  professor Years active 1978–2016 Spouse(s) Stephanie Lynn Anderson ​ ​ ( m.  1996;  div.  2017) ​ Children 3 Conviction(s) July 11, 2017 (pleaded guilty, federal) November 22, 2017 (pleaded guilty, Ingham County) November 29, 2017 (pleaded guilty, Eaton County) Criminal charge Federal : Receiving child pornography, possession of child pornography,  tampering with evidence State : First-degree criminal sexual conduct (10 counts in two counties) Penalty Federal : 60 years in prison, lifetime of  supervised release State  ( Ingham County ): 40 to 175 years in prison State  ( Eaton County ): 40 to 125 years in prison Imprisoned at Incarcerated at  United States Penitentiary, Coleman II ;  Federal Bureau of Prisons  Register

image from " This month the International Monetary Fund said China, where the pandemic originated,  will be the only major economy to grow this year , expanding 1.9%." -- From

  Biden names Jen Psaki White House press secretary along with an all-female senior communications team from , NOV 29 2020 5:39 PM EST UPDATED 38 MIN AGO ( see also) P OLITICS Biden names Jen Psaki White House press secretary along with an all-female senior communications team PUBLISHED SUN, NOV 29 2020 5:39 PM EST UPDATED 37 MIN AGO Emma Newburger @EMMA_NEWBURGER KEY POINTS President-elect Joe Biden on Sunday announced that he’s selected an all-female communications team to work for his administration. It’s the first time in history that the senior communications roles in the White House will be filled entirely by women. The seven women have a great deal of experience in Washington and close ties to Biden. President-elect Joe Biden and Vice-President-elect Kamal Harris address their supporters at Chase Center in Wilmington, DE, on Nov, 7, 2020 after being named the winners. Carolyn Cole | Los Angeles Times | Getty Images

Contemporary hermits are reaching out to people struggling with isolation. Their message: Go inward, and get outside.   Image from article: The Fredettes’ property, 18 miles from the nearest town. Credit...Clark Hodgin for The New York Times By Kelsey Osgood The New York Times Nov. 28, 2020 Article contains other (quite striking) photos Since the beginning of the pandemic, Paul Fredette and Karen Karper Fredette have made some changes to their lives: Ms. Fredette stopped attending her local exercise class, and the couple whittled their interactions with their neighbors down to waves.  But i n many ways, seclusion comes naturally to them. From a house they call Still Wood, nestled in the slope of a mountain surrounded by hundreds of acres of wild woodlands, the Fredettes live their lives “oriented towards solitude,” which is their preferred way of saying that they’re hermits: devoted to simplicity, silence and prayer. The nearest town, Hot Springs, N.C., is 18 miles away and has a pop

November 27, 2020 7:36 PM ET JAMES DOUBEK, NPR Image from article:  Kaavan, pictured Friday in Islamabad, will be transported to a sanctuary in Cambodia on Sunday. Singer Cher was in Pakistan on Friday with a message for "the world's loneliest elephant": There is life after love.   Kaavan the elephant has been languishing in poor conditions in Marghazar Zoo in Islamabad since 1985, according to the animal welfare group Four Paws International. He was brought there as a gift from Sri Lanka at 1 year old.  Kaavan had a partner elephant, Saheli, who lived with him from 1990 to 2012. She died when an infection became gangrenous. A veterinarian with Four Paws told The Associated Press that Kaavan was heartbroken when she died. He's been alone ever since.   On Sunday, Kaavan will move to an animal sanctuary in Cambodia, where he will be able to socialize with other elephants.  Activists around the world, including local Pakistanis as well as Cher's charity, Free the Wil

Image from article  Credit...Jesse Reed    Book review by Arlie Russell Hochschild   The New York Times Sept 15, 2020 THE TYRANNY OF MERIT What’s Become of the Common Good?  By Michael J. Sandel  In an eighth-grade math class at Pacific Palisades Junior High in the late 1960s, Michael J. Sandel’s teacher seated students in precise order according to their grades. As their G.P.A.s shifted with the dramatically announced results of every quiz, so did the seating. “I typically shuttled between the second desk and the fourth or fifth,” Sandel recalls, and at age 14, “I thought this was how school worked.” “The Tyranny of Merit” is like a brilliant response to that misguided but well-meaning math teacher from the viewpoint, as it were, of a kid in some back-row seat of any classroom in a Rust Belt, prairie town or inner-city school in America. What do grades and degrees tell us, Sandel asks, about the widening gap between rich and poor, proud and humiliated, trusting and suspicious, oppone

Image from article: Books produced between the 17th and 19th century, all bound in human skin. Such books are well worth examining, Megan Rosenbloom argues, not despite the visceral disgust they evoke but because of it. Credit...The College of Physicians of Philadelphia Review by James Hamblin  The New York Times Oct. 20, 2020 DARK ARCHIVES  A Librarian’s Investigation Into the Science and History of Books Bound in Human Skin  By Megan Rosenbloom Full disclosure: I was not eager to read about books bound in human skin. I knew almost nothing about the subject, but I felt pretty confident that nothing was more than enough.  I had a vague sense that the practice of binding books in skin — technically called anthropodermic bibliopegy — was associated with the Nazis; they were long rumored to have made lampshades out of human skin. But I imagined that such disconcerting relics, if real, were part of an isolated history, their existence attributable to a murderous sect. The only reason to co

How one magic word became a way of justifying Silicon Valley’s unconstrained power  Image from article:  Audio and video cassettes and floppy discs.  Photograph: Prostock-Studio/Getty Images/iStockphoto by Adrian Daub The Guardian Thu 24 Sep 2020 01.00 EDT; see also Original article contains links and additional illustrations • Adapted from What Tech Calls Thinking: An Inquiry into the Intellectual Bedrock of Silicon Valley, published by FSG Originals x Logic on 13 October There are certain phrases that are central to the sway the tech industry holds over our collective imagination: they do not simply reflect our experience, they frame how we experience it in the first place . They sweep aside certain parts of the status quo, and leave other parts mysteriously untouched. They implicitly cast you as a stick-in-the-mud if you ask how much revolution someone is capable of when that person represents billions in venture capital investment. Among the most influential of these phrases is u

  from The New York Times

Criticizing the wealthy for do-goodism is an old sport. Yet who but they are willing to put money behind activities that lack public support? By Leslie Lenkowsky The Wall Street Journal  Nov. 24, 2020   5:58 pm ET Image from article, which also contains an image of Melinda and Bill Gates By many measures, the past three decades have amounted to a golden age of philanthropy, rivaling the early 20th century, when John D. Rockefeller and other industrialists began to dedicate their wealth to helping the public. Endowments and charitable foundations have mushroomed, along with new ways of giving—e.g., through businesses and investment funds. More than 200 of the world’s richest people have signed a pledge, developed by Bill and Melinda Gates and Warren Buffett, to give most of their wealth to charity. Even more impressive is the vast amount of money donated to charities by the non-wealthy, accounting for the bulk of philanthropy each year in the U.S. and elsewhere. In  “Philanthropy: From