Feb 26

Centuries Before Memes, There Were The LOLCats Of Japanese Woodprints

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Before the age of memedom — before LOLcats and Lil Bub and Grumpy Cat and Henri, le Chat Noir — there was ukiyo-e.

Typically, we associate the centuries-old Japanese art form with wood print masters like Katsushika Hokusai and Hishikawa Moronobu, who rendered everything from “Great Waves” to Edo-era erotica. But, as a recent exhibition has graciously pointed out, cats played a surprisingly prominent role in the work of Japan’s illustrators in the 17th century on. Behold: “Life of Cats: Selections from the Hiraki Ukiyo-e Collection.”

cats
Utagawa Kuniyoshi (1797–1861), Cats Suggested by the Fifty-three Stations of the Tōkaidō, 1847. Color woodblock print; each sheet 14 5/8 x 10 inches. Courtesy Private Collection, New York.

The show, on view at the Japan Society Gallery in New York, will showcase 90 little-known prints that place cats, cats and more cats at the center of their frames. The survey begins with “The Tale of Genji” by Lady Murasaki Shikibu, an early 11th century print considered to be the longest-lasting image of a cat in Japanese literature. From there, the exhibition moves to the crux of the Edo period — the 1600s to the 1800s — to capture the ways in which artists anthropomorphized felines in domestic and exotic scenes, proving a fascination with the more devious species of household pets has origins in the pre(pre-pre-pre)-internet days.

Miwako Tezuka, director of the Japan Society Gallery, hand-picked the works in “Life of Cats,” no doubt capitalizing on the digital age’s preoccupation with watching cats play keyboards. While on the surface, the show is a cheeky way of penetrating mainstream audiences, goading the less fanatic of art admirers into a gallery space with the promise of truly vintage whiskers, the works give a glimpse into a real art world treasure: the Hiraki Ukiyo-e Collection, based in Tokyo. We can’t fault them for that.

The exhibition includes five categories: cats and people, cats as people, cats versus people… you get the gist. (The last two are “Cats Transformed” and “Cats and Play.”) A press release for the show boasts a historical perspective on the ways in which our Japanese ancestors interacted with cats on a daily basis, either mimicking their ways in kabuki theater or channeling cat-related activities into their erotic fantasies. Some visions are more mundane, with cats lounging, provoking play time, gazing out windows. Life as seen through Ukiyo-e is, maybe, not so removed from today.

” Life of Cats: Selections from the Hiraki Ukiyo-e Collection” will be on view at Japan Society Gallery from Friday, March 13 to Sunday, June 7, 2015.

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Feb 26

Craig Sager Is Finally Healthy And Returning To NBA Sidelines, Crazy Suits And All

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Some good news for once: Craig Sager is finally healthy enough to return to work.

The sartorial legend and occasional sideline reporter for TNT and TBS will return to the sidelines on March 5 for the Oklahoma City Thunder-Chicago Bulls Thursday night game, according to a tweet on Wednesday by his son, Craig Sager II:

Sager, 63, was forced to take a leave of absence in April after doctors discovered he had acute leukemia. But according to NBA.com, Sager went into remission late in 2014 after he received bone marrow and stem cell transplants from his son.

Sager hinted at the possibility of a March return during a brief appearance on TNT’s “Inside the NBA” during All-Star Weekend, when he told New York Knicks star Carmelo Anthony that he hoped to return “around March 1 if everything goes well in the next two weeks.”

While Turner Sports has yet to announce the return, sources have confirmed the news to Yahoo’s Balls Don’t Lie blog, so it sounds like it’s good to go. Apparently, Sager will be on the sidelines for March Madness too.

We look forward to laughing at your suits again, Craig.

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Feb 26

Good and Bad News About BPA

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The toxic plastics chemical Bisphenol A (BPA) has recently been in the news. For CEH, BPA exemplifies many of the more problematic aspects of our country’s approach to harmful chemicals in everyday products, and a look at the history and science around BPA is instructive for all who are working to end toxic health threats to our children and families.

BPA and chemical policy history

BPA was first created in the late 1800s, and in the 1930s it was rediscovered by scientists who were looking for a drug that would prevent miscarriages and be used to treat women who suffered from menstrual problems. In their tinkering, they found BPA would work because it can mimic the female hormone estrogen. BPA was abandoned as a drug when the more potent (and now notorious) hormone replacement drug diethylstilbestrol (DES) was discovered, but BPA soon became widely used in other ways: in plastics, in the lining of canned foods, and in other everyday products.

Apparently no one thought that it might be a bad idea to expose people to a chemical that was known to alter the bodies’ natural hormones and potentially cause serious reproductive health problems. And no government rules required companies to demonstrate that BPA would be safe in their products before the products were sold to millions of Americans.

2015-02-11-momchildforumphoto300x240.jpg

But that was the Depression-era 1930s — surely things are better today, right?

Sadly, the situation today is worse. Companies can continue to use BPA and any number of the more than 80,000 chemicals that are on the market without demonstrating first that they are safe for our children and families. Our country’s chemical safety rules were inadequate when they were developed in the 1970s, and today the law still allows companies to sell risky, untested chemicals.

BPA Today: Science and Policy at Odds

Recently the FDA acknowledged that BPA can leach into food from packaging, while reiterating its position that the low BPA levels in our food are safe. French food safety regulators disagreed and have banned packaging with BPA, but European authorities came to a similar conclusion as FDA.

That sounds like good news, until you look at the science more closely. When it comes to chemicals like BPA that can disrupt our natural hormones, many scientists say that low doses may be even more harmful than higher doses. That’s because large doses of these chemicals can overwhelm the receptors in our bodies where hormones do their work. Smaller doses can “fit” into these receptors and damage our health, with studies linking BPA to cancer, developmental and reproductive health problems, heart disease, diabetes and obesity and other serious concerns.

What’s more, just days after FDA’s reassurances were made public, a new study linked BPA exposures to spikes in blood pressure. In just the last few weeks, two more animal studies have come out linking low-dose BPA exposures to developmental health problems (including potential effects on sperm production) and to impacts on fetal brain development.

While FDA maintains its anti-science policy, others are taking a more proactive stance. Several states have banned or restricted uses of BPA, especially in products for young children. And while the FDA was declaring BPA safe, in December a California court ruled that state scientists were correct when they found that BPA is a chemical known to cause serious reproductive health problems.

How to Avoid BPA and Understand “BPA-Free”

If you shop for safer plastics, especially kids’ products, you likely have seen labels that say products are “BPA-Free.” In some cases, these products may be safer — but without regulations that require safety testing and labeling, we can’t know what new, potentially harmful chemicals might be used in place of BPA (one BPA replacement is already suspected of disrupting normal brain development). Without such rules, companies play a toxic shell game: They use risky, untested chemicals until overwhelming evidence of health problems forces regulators to ban the chemical — and then they switch to newer, equally risky untested chemicals.

CEH is pushing Congress to adopt real chemical safety rules that put our children’s and families’ health first. In the meantime, look for products like canned foods from companies that say they don’t use BPA, use glass or stainless steel food containers in place of plastics, and avoid paper receipts (which can be made with BPA) and other hidden BPA hazards.

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Feb 26

New Approaches for Breast Tumor Diagnostics: Epigenetic Profiles

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A challenge to personalized health care is the hurdle we face to understand why people are so different even though all our genes are so similar. We know single base-pair mutations in genes can be extremely important in determining health in some diseases, but we now know that gene mutations cannot account for the large degree of physiological diversity we observe between people in terms of their wellness, disease risks, response to medicines and life-expectancy.

A new field of research has exploded over the last decade termed epigenetics. This research focuses on a layer of chemical modifications that can be attached to the DNA sequence of genes. These chemical layers, the epigenome, have been known for over 50 years, but it hasn’t been until recently that we’ve begun to realize how important this chemical layer is for normal gene function and regulation.

The recognition that this epigenome is functionally important in normal healthy tissues has opened up new avenues of research as if we’ve discovered another whole new genome in ourselves to explore and understand. This new layer of cellular control information in each of us is highly variable between individuals and even within one individual can vary during the course of their life. This new epigenome information provides a high-resolution profile of how and why we can be so different from each other.

The power of profiling and understanding the epigenome is evident in a recent study of breast tumors in “triple negative” women (Stirzaker et al., 2015). In terms of genetics, “triple negative” means that these women tested negative for three standard breast cancer profiling diagnostic tests (looking for mutations in estrogen and growth factor receptor genes) and yet they still developed aggressive tumors. Stirzaker’s team was able to identify specific patterns of epigenetic DNA methylation associated with the tumors in comparison to paired normal control samples and more importantly, was able to discern methylation patterns associated with the prognosis for recovery and therapeutic response in these women.

The goal of personalized diagnostics is based on the realization that often “one size” test does not fit all. Because of our inherent molecular and physiological differences, the efficacy of any diagnostic test can be increased by optimizing the test strategy for specific groups of different people. In the above case, standard breast cancer risk tests were ineffective for these triple-negative women because their tumors developed differently. Better diagnostics lead to earlier detection and better tailoring of intervention strategies and therapeutics. This is called stratification: don’t lump all people into the same test and don’t attack all tumors with the same treatment.

There are several recent medical studies indicating how epigenetic profiling of breast tumors may explain and predict how and why different women develop different types of breast tumors. These tumors are variable in their growth rates, response to therapeutics and invasiveness. Epigenetics is beginning to provide a quantifiable measure of how to differentiate these patient risk groups and tumor types.

The power of epigenetic-based diagnostics and prognostics is exponentially growing with expanding medical research. In the PubMed literature database maintained by the NIH’s National Center for Biotechnology Information, there were 2,576 medical research papers published on epigenetics in 2014, compared to just 103 published 10 years ago in 2004. The epigenome represents a sensitive and highly-individualized source of personalized genetic information that we are just beginning to understand and utilize for better health care and wellness management.

REFERENCES:

Stirzaker et al. (2015).”Methylome sequencing in triple-negative breast cancer reveals distinct methylation clusters with prognostic value.” Nature Communications 6:5899, doi:10.1038/ncomms6899

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Feb 26

Ben Carson: It Would Be 'Too Depressing' To Outline All The Obama Administration's Failures

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WASHINGTON (AP) — A retired neurosurgeon says he would order the military to destroy the Islamic State group if he were to be elected president.

Ben Carson was the first featured speaker kicking at the Conservative Political Action Conference — better known as CPAC — in Washington Thursday.

The event features nearly two dozen potential Republican presidential contenders.

Carson has built a loyal following among conservative activists.

He said that outlining all the failures of the current administration would be “too depressing” and instead focused on his vision for the country.

Carson said during a brief question-and-answer session that when it comes to battling radical Islamic terrorist groups, the U.S. shouldn’t wait to react.

He said he would task the military with destroying them first.

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Feb 26

Rachel Maddow Says It's 'Untenable' For Fox News To Continue To Stand By O'Reilly

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As the controversy surrounding Bill O’Reilly and his war reporting experiences continues to heat up, with more allegations coming out each day, MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow wonders how much longer Fox News can stand by the host.

On Wednesday evening, Maddow spoke with Mother Jones author David Corn, one of the journalists who wrote the original report revealing the inaccuracies in O’Reilly’s story. O’Reilly subsequently called Corn “a liar” and said that he deserves to be put in “the kill zone.” On Tuesday, the Fox News host threatened a New York Times reporter covering the scandal: “I am coming after you with everything I have,” O’Reilly said.

“Apparently, they [Fox News] think it’s proper for one journalist to call another one names,” Corn told Maddow. “Not that it scares me off the story, but I have family and I have friends who are concerned about me now.”

Corn called the threats “highly inappropriate” and noted that O’Reilly still has not disproven “a single fact” from his piece.

Maddow said that after his threats to Corn and the Times’ reporter, it is “untenable” for Fox News to stand by him.

“They employ a lot of journalists, including those who work in risky situations,” she said. “Fox is a good place to work for journalists.”

Maddow made a similar point on her show one night earlier, questioning what O’Reilly’s behavior will do to Fox News’ “work environment” and to the “real reporters” that work there.

Fox News issued the same statement to MSNBC and The Huffington Post:

Bill O’Reilly has already addressed several claims leveled against him. This is nothing more than an orchestrated campaign by far left advocates Mother Jones and Media Matters. Responding to the unproven accusation du jour has become an exercise in futility. Fox News maintains its staunch support of O’Reilly, who is no stranger to calculated onslaughts.

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Feb 26

World's Biggest St. Patrick's Day Celebrations

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Regardless of your actual heritage, everyone’s a little bit Irish during the month of March. That might help explain why elaborate St. Patrick’s Day celebrations can be found across the globe every year. Outside of Ireland, some of the biggest March 17 events are held in the U.S., but all of these cities host parades, festivals, and plenty of Irish dancing. Throw on some green and get ready to party at the world’s biggest St. Patrick’s Day celebrations. Erin go Bragh!

By Annie Bruce

More from Fodors.com:
World’s Most Extravagant Restaurants
World’s Craziest Bar Concepts
Top 20 Free Things To Do In Chicago

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Feb 26

Growing Up Kinky

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Gloria Brame

When you read a lot of popular novels, you get the impression that kinky is a choice you make as an adult.  The protagonist reads a book, sees a movie, or meets that one certain kinky yin to their vanilla yang and their entire sexual identity shifts.  That’s how it happened in Nine and a Half Weeks .  It even happened that way in the Story of O.  You meet someone else and, before you know it, you fall into a pit of lust and do stuff you never even dreamed of doing before. 

In other words, it’s all fiction.  It’s a way for people to rationalize their desires: “oh, I was just walking along, minding by own vanilla business and then WHOOSH,  I saw this hot woman behind me in line and now I’m a lesbian.”  No.  It doesn’t happen like that. Even when it feels as if it does, it doesn’t. 

Sexual identity doesn’t start in adulthood.  You can’t catch sexual identity from someone else or be “turned” if you are not built for it in the first place.  It was that kind of thinking that led 1950s-60s sex hysterics to spread the insane idea that homosexuality was contagious and would somehow infect or alter people who were exposed to it.  That has been the homophobic right’s biggest argument against gay school teachers, although it is, without doubt, one of the sickest lies ever told. 

Sexual identity starts in childhood, usually long before you have any idea that there is a name or a label to describe the things you are most drawn to.  It begins before you have the hormones to turn you on sexually.  In pre-pubertal childhood, most of us already have inklings and inclinations that will develop into full-fledged sexual desires when we get older.  Gay and lesbian children may know they’re same-sex oriented before they experience anything like adult lust; fetishists may already feel a special affection for future fetish objects;  and BDSM’ers typically recall how they loved bondage scenes in movies or getting tied up in kiddy games. 

I’m typical that way.  I always knew there was something different about me. In sixth grade, I had an irrepressible urge to punch my boyfriend when we kissed, something that mystified me as much as it irritated him.   I was a fan of all action/adventure movies that featured bondage and whipping.  I fooled around with girls.  As soon as I could buy my own clothes, I went with the tomboy look, living in workshirts, chinos and army boots.  And, when I started masturbating to sex fantasies at puberty, they always involved captivity, bondage and Tom of Finland-looking men.  

Of course, I didn’t know about Tom of Finland then.  Nor did I know that gender was fluid, and it was okay for me to prefer men’s styles to women’s.  I agonized about clothing just as I agonized about my sexual fantasies.  The real me didn’t fit in the world.  My secret need to do painful things to boys did not fit in with my relaxed, free-loving style.  My bisexuality, my polyamorous nature…I didn’t even have those words to describe myself then.  As a fiery young feminist, the idea of a power relationship was, in itself, offensive.  And yet, when I tied my ankles with a scarf in bed at night, in the dark, when no one could hear me, I soared to ecstasy. 

Growing up kinky, queer, non-binary, non-heteronormative is a mixed bag which often includes struggles and self-doubt, insecurity about being weird, fear that your secret sexual desires make you unlovable, and endless questions about how you’ll live and whether you will ever find anyone who accepts the real you.   But you grow up.  You find ways to deal and, if you’re lucky and work for it, chances are you will find that person or those people who don’t just accept you but are grateful for who you turned out to be. 

But one thing you won’t do: you won’t become someone else.  You can’t pray away your DNA.   No matter how many straight people one may sleep with, it doesn’t turn anyone straight.   Neither do you suddenly turn kinky or queer through exposure.  Who you are, sexually, has been with you all along, waiting to emerge, to blossom, to be resolved or to find support that helps you get where you were heading in the first place. 

 

I grew up kinky, and wrote all about it in my new book, A Fetish for Men, now the #1 Best Seller in Gay & Lesbian History on Amazon.

 A Fetish for Men, Gloria Brame's new memoir

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Feb 26

Cuba Flights From The U.S. Are Now Open To Book Online With CheapAir

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Feb 26

Kim Kardashian Licks Kanye West In Instagram Photo

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Apparently this is how Kim Kardashian kisses Kanye West, or at least how she does it on Instagram:

#KimKAllDay

A photo posted by Kim Kardashian West (@kimkardashian) on Feb 25, 2015 at 6:43pm PST

Don’t ever change, you guys. Don’t ever change.

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