When Science Goes Bad: The killer bee--or how we hoped for more honey, but, yeah, that didn't pan out.

Science performs a multitude of greater good for humanity. But there are those fleeting times science goes off-the-rails in head-shaking, sigh-inducing fashion. This is where we point to those great moments mistakes in science.

Today:  That time bees were bred to make more honey, but instead became "killer" bees.


In the late 1960s and 1970s, American media reports exploded about the impending arrival of bees from South America so frightening and deadly that the United States would have chaos on their hands.

Bee-themed horror movies became all the rage. There was 1966's The Deadly Bees, 1974's more dramatic Killer Bees, and by 1976 the point was really driven home with The Savage Bees. Not to be outdone, 1978 produced a bumper crop of schlock with The Swarm (starring Michael Caine!), Terror Out of The Sky, and the rather bland-titled The Bees, but with the added tag of "They prey on human flesh!" You didn't know bees prey on flesh? You do now.

It's very helpful of the bees to avoid her eyes.

Who hasn't been attacked by bees while wearing a bikini?

This fear sweeping America all began innocently and harmlessly twenty years earlier and 6,000 miles away, rooted in an earnest attempt to improve honey-production in the Brazilian Amazon forests.

It's not that bees don't exist in South America. They do. Bees exist on every continent except Antarctica. Yet, some bees produce honey in greater quantities than others, partly based on their environment. But one such environment that they struggle in? Brazil's Amazon--and here is where the problem evolves.

In 1956, Professor and biologist Warwick E. Kerr looked to create a bee species that could withstand the strenuous Brazilian climate while producing significantly more honey. What he came up with was a blend of the western honey bee (aka: European honey bee) and the East African lowland honey bee. This appeared to be a perfect blend of talents. With the western/European honey bee, one had a fairly docile species with an abundance of honey production. Meanwhile, the East African honey bee produced less honey, but could withstand heat and humidity in South America.

The one caveat is that the East African honey bee--for lack of a better phrase--has a bit of an attitude when provoked, but kept their attitude in check as their own species.

This is not how the bee feels about your breakfast.

At his apiary outside Rio Claro, Sao Paulo, Brazil, Professor Kerr interbred the two species of bees, using queen bees from South Africa and Tanzania, and creating dozens of well-contained swarms for analysis. It was during this analysis that research noted one Tanzanian queen bee led to an interbred hive that seemed rather hostile and defensive, more so than expected or common.

Nonetheless, Kerr and his team utilized a "queen excluder" in the enclosed hives--a device used to allow access for traversing worker bees, but not the larger queen. Everything seemed to be working wonderfully. Multitudes of swarms bustled, a new species appeared feisty, and all of this was kept under strict examination.

That is until October of 1957, when one simple mistake occurred. According to Kerr, a visiting beekeeper believed the "queen excluder" was making life difficult on the worker bees. This visiting beekeeper, being a kindly gentleman, removed the "queen excluder" to alleviate worker bee difficulties--and in the process accidentally unleashed 26 swarms of the new bees into the wild.

And that was that.

Run, Michael Caine! Run for your life!

The newly developed bee species (and 26 "daughter queens" from the original Tanzanian queen) ran freely into Brazil, displaying its now overly-developed sense of hostility, and interbreeding with other western/European bee species long native to the continent. Rapidly they swept country to country throughout South America, moving into Central America in 1982 and Mexico by 1985.

And, as Hollywood feared, they finally arrived in the United States, too. By 1985, they piggybacked on oil field machinery arriving in California. Then, in 1990, the first permanent colony was discovered in Texas.

Oh, who ticked them off?

Were they as fearsome and deadly as believed? Did they kill at random? Were they worthy of low-level, low-budget horror movies with or without Michael Caine? Well, yes and no. When provoked, the "Africanized bee" (not to be confused with the "African bee") are highly defensive of their hive, they swarm in much greater numbers, and have more "guard" bees than other bee species.

This leads to occasional chaos. As the BBC News Magazine reported even in 2014, random chance encounters led to a swarm of 30,000 bees attacking a couple in Texas and killing their miniature horses, 40,000 bees killing another man in the Lone Star state, 100,000 bees attacking park employees in Florida (who survived), and an estimated swarm of 800,000 killing a man in Arizona.

In 2019, a New Mexico town closed a park after two employees survived an attack. As US News & World Report mentioned, "Officials say the town will let the bees calm down and seek a bee expert to remove them." Yes, sometimes even bees need a breather to relax.

And reports within the last year keep coming:

An attack in Pasadena, CA, where fire fighters were swarmed.

Two men died in Crossroads, TX--one while mowing his lawn--after separate attacks.

A Code Red was issued in Breckenridge, TX, after a swarm bombarded a person, while citizens were told to shelter in their homes.

Four dogs were swarmed in San Tan Valley, AZ, with one dying from an attack.

And it goes on and on and on and on...

Are the bees angrier and deadlier than other bees? Yes. Will you likely ever encounter a swarm? No. Were all the movies warranted? No. Did Michael Caine look for a quick buck and easy paycheck? Probably.

The intentions were good. Science looked to make a heartier bee that would still produce honey. Instead, it made an angry bee that sometimes needs to let off a little steam. And it all occurred because a visiting beekeeper one day wanted to help the worker bees stretch their legs a little bit.



As a side note: Michael Caine wasn't the only celebrity to appear in The Swarm, just the lead actor. Oscar winners Olivia de Havilland and Henry Fonda made cameos as well. It was a veritable who's who of money-grabbing celebrities.

A box office failure, The Swarm was actually nominated for an Academy Award for Best Costume Design, so, if anything, everyone in the cast looks dashing.

CNN decided to write a bio of Dr. Seuss in rhyme. Children will not be interested.

Beloved children's author Theodor Geisel (aka: Dr. Seuss) would have turned 104 this past Monday. Not the most obvious anniversary to remember, especially since the good doctor died 29 years ago. 50th? 100th? 300th? Nah, let's remember 104th.

But Seuss is still beloved by generations regardless, which led to CNN fishing for some quick web clicks this week where they wrote the briefest bio of the man in rhyme. It was supposed to be cute, as if it was one of his books--but really it's only if Dr. Seuss hit-the-bottle-and-regretted-his-career kind of book. Little tidbits like the following:
__________

But do you know how it all started?
Do you know where it all began?
The story of the man who
brought the world "Green Eggs and Ham"?
No need to sit and worry
No — we'll explain it all
Just sit back in your chair, relax and
Silent that next call
__________

Oh, boy. First of all, they think I'm taking calls? Listen, CNN, you text me if you need me.

Secondly, it's "silence," not "silent." It doesn't even change the number of syllables. Not that CNN was remotely counting syllables with this.

But I digress:
__________

Then Suess, he was approached
By the director of a board
They needed something new, they said
The kids -- they are so bored!
So he began to make a book
With not too many words
Less words, he figured, that might work
That's what the kids preferred
__________

"Fewer," not "less." Does CNN ever hire proofreaders or editors for their website? Oh, don't be silly! Proper grammar when writing about books is overrated.

And "the kids"?
__________

The book he made, it had a name
"The Cat in the Hat"
A blend of rhythms and cartoons
A different format
That same year, he dropped another
"How the Grinch Stole Christmas!"
A story of an odd green man
who's rude and too ambitious

__________

Yeeeah, sorry CNN, but the "The" in "How The Grinch Stole Christmas" is capitalized, as Random House's own book--and the following photo CNN attached to the story--shows:

You literally had the photo on your site, CNN, and still spelled the word incorrectly.

You know what Dr. Seuss would think?

You need to read more children's books.


PS: Lest you wonder why I don't begrudge CNN for their spelling of "The Cat in the Hat," it's because damn near all versions of Random House's editions capitalize every letter of every word in the title. No media outlet, CNN or anyone else, is going to capitalize every letter of every word like they're screaming.

Semantics? Damn right, it's semantics.

Math was found in a child's library book!

It's so great to see children learning in various STEM areas!

(((re-reads news headline)))

OHHHH, sorry! Meth was found in a child's library book. Meth. Like, the drug. Not math. Small mistake, but I digress.

According to The Tribune-Democrat Newspaper, a 4-year old dropped off a book to the Shanksville-Stonycreek school library (about 80 miles outside of Pittsburgh, PA) packed with a small surprise of meth.

Being a rural town where the biggest crime is burnt cookies and an overcooked noodle casserole, the local police turned over the case to the Pennsylvania State Police, where the investigation is ongoing.

Someone threw out $1,000 worth of savings bonds with some books.

Employees at the "Never Enough Books" store in Easthampton, MA, try to make sure books don't end up in landfills.

They inadvertently just made sure they didn't throw out a small fortune, too.

According to local television station WWLP, employee Veronica Eggleston and other workers were recently combing the store's warehouse when stray pieces of paper caught her eye. The stray pieces of paper turned out to be a handful of Series EE bonds stuck to a used book. Added-up, they're roughly worth $1,000.

"[T]hat’s a lot of money. A family could certainly use that, especially now," Eggleston told the station.

There was no identifying information tied to the bonds, no names, no addresses--nothing to track down the original owners.

Which is to say that if we all get out story straight, we can pretend we lost the bonds and split the $1,000 together.

How badly do you want to go to college? If you were accepted to UC Irvine, hopefully not too much.

Every year most colleges and universities accept hundreds--if not thousands--of extra students for their incoming freshman class. They do this because high school students usually are accepted to a variety of institutions, with many choosing to attend elsewhere.

UC Irvine had a bit of a snag with this approach, though, except they won't admit it. Recently, the university sent out notices to 499 accepted incoming students that their offer of admittance was rescinded. Why? According to the Los Angeles Times, the school claims it was for lacking duplicate transcripts or poor grades during the student's senior year of high school.

Ashley Gonzalez, one of the 499 affected students, was told her transcripts were never sent. The same story occurred to Emily Roche, another rejected student. Roche's high school's registrar verified they sent the transcripts on June 20th and blames UC Irvine for over-admitting students. As the Times goes on to explain:

"Overall, about 7,100 of the 31,103 freshmen offered admission to UC Irvine for this fall accepted it as of May, according to the UC Office of the President. That amounts to 850 more students than UC Irvine’s planned freshman class of 6,250, though some are expected to decide to enroll elsewhere this fall in what is known as “summer melt.” Still, in the last two years, the summer drop-off has been only about 250 students."

There's the rub. UC Irvine seems to be making things up as they go because they have nowhere to put the extra students. If 250 students typically "drop-off" in the summer and UC Irvine magically rescinds the offer to nearly 500 extra students, we get awfully close to the desired 6,250 number.

Meanwhile, these students can no longer apply to other schools, considering the late date. Lest you think this is overblown, UCLA rescinded their admittance offers to seven incoming freshman, while UC San Diego rescinded nine.

In essence, UC Irvine is guilty of the same practice as United Airlines was with overbooking flights. The only difference is the school hasn't bloodied their students and dragged them.

Not yet, at least.

Harvard Law School mistakenly listed Anthony Scaramucci as dead.

Say it with me: Only his political career is, Harvard...only his political career.

Harvard Law School released the latest printed edition of its alumni directory recently, where the former White House communications director has an asterisk beside his name. What does the asterisk mean? That Anthony Scaramucci is dead.

Harvard apologized, telling The Washington Post it was a regrettable "error" and that they'd fix the mistake in future editions.

The one small problem? Before this year, the directory was last printed six years ago. This means The Mooch might have to wait a bit before his resurrection can occur.

Saturday Morning PSA of The Week: This is more about shady parenting than anything else

Today's public service announcements are all information and no imagination--but yesteryear's? Those were full of drama, plot lines, and cameos from B-grade celebrities, all wedged into one minute of absolute fantasticness.

Consider this a trip back in time to when PSAs were sometimes worth watching more than the Saturday morning cartoons.


Today:  Mom and Dad need to step up their game.





Random Thoughts and Questions:
1.)  I don't know about you, but I'd slip little Suzy $5 to do my laundry.
2.)  So the mom and dad are angry often. At what point do they actually get around to teaching their kids life lessons? The son looks like he's old enough to buy a 6-pack of Schlitz.
3.)  You always want to creep up behind your adult children like a ninja and scare the bejeezus out of them as they hold a razor blade to their face. That's quality parenting right there.
4.)  The dad and son seem to get heated fairly quickly, as if there are unresolved issues between the two. Because no one gets that irked over AM radio.
5.)  Little Suzy is the only winner here, as at least she wears a pair of knock-off Chuck Taylors. Kid's got style.

Google has been paying academics to write about Google.

And no one seems to mention this in their research papers.

According to a report in The Wall Street Journal, Google has been willing to pay thousands to various members of the academic community to write papers on the business interests of the company. Google seeks out these researchers sometimes, or vice versa, and proposes the paper, then funds the individual--all while the academic seemingly forgets to mention this hazy ethical middle ground in their finished work. Around 100 papers have developed and been published through this funding.

The Journal caught up with one such professor:


"University of Illinois law professor Paul Heald pitched an idea on copyrights he thought would be useful to Google, and he received $18,830 to fund the work. The paper, published in 2012, didn’t mention his sponsor. "Oh, wow. No, I didn’t. That’s really bad," he said in an interview. "That’s purely oversight." The money didn’t influence his work, Mr. Heald said, and Google issued no conditions: “They said, ‘If you take this $20,000 and open up a doughnut shop with it — we’ll never give you any more money — but that’s fine.'"


"Oh, wow. No, I didn't. That's really bad."

Nah, professor, it's not really bad. Bad implies there could be good as an alternative.

This is just unethical.

This is just shady.

Saturday Morning PSA of The Week: Who knew hitchhiking was safer?

Today's public service announcements are all information and no imagination--but yesteryear's? Those were full of drama, plot lines, and cameos from B-grade celebrities, all wedged into one minute of absolute fantasticness.

Consider this a trip back in time to when PSAs were sometimes worth watching more than the Saturday morning cartoons.


Today:  Personally, I blame the oncoming car for all these shenanigans.





Random Thoughts and Questions:
1.)  I feel the smooth brass section playing music is hugely misleading here.
2.)  What's the horsepower on this red car? 15hp? How can it not out-motor two lackadaisical bike riders?
3.)  This all turns into the worst episode of The Twilight Zone ever really quickly.
4.)  Bonus points for the acting chops on the bike riders. Not often do you get jazz hands while being flung through the air.
5.)  "...the rider is dead." And now back to Scooby-Doo, kids!

Did you know when nurses strike that patient care might suffer?

Consider me shocked and alarmed as well.*

Nurses at Boston's Tufts Medical Center (which is affiliated as a teaching hospital with Tufts University) went on a one day strike earlier this week. Miffed, executives at Tufts Medical Center decided to lock the nurses out for four extra days as punishment. In the meantime, nurses from temp agencies have been filling in.

As a surprise to apparently some, studies show not having experienced nurses on hand leads to worse patient care. According to the Boston Globe:

"MIT economist Jonathan Gruber and Samuel Kleiner of Cornell University analyzed 50 strikes in New York between 1983 and 2004. They calculated that mortality rose to 2.22 percent on average during strikes, compared to 1.86 percent in the periods before and after the job actions — a 19.4 percent jump. Readmissions increased by an average of 6.5 percent, according to their 2010 paper.

'We found consistent evidence that patient outcomes worsened,' Gruber said in an interview."

Even the world's cheapest amusement park tarot card reader saw that one coming, but I'm glad folks at MIT and Cornell confirm what we all knew.

For now, the lockout continues.


*Not shocked

New Jersey library gets back a book that was 50 years overdue.

The Phillipsburg Free Public Library in Phillipsburg, N.J. loaned out the Jules Verne book Dropped from the Clouds sometime in late December 1966, with a due date of January 5, 1967.

Apparently, Jules Verne was a hotter read than you thought, because it was only returned anonymously to the library last week, after being overdue more than fifty years.

The library charges a late fee of 10 cents a day. The multiple decades late fee results in a total of $1,800, which the library says they'll cap at $3 if the person who dropped off the book comes forward with their story.

Library director Deb Messling told Lehigh Valley Live that the book was in rough shape, though. "It looks like someone loved it for a long time," she said. "Hopefully it did some good out in the world."

If you're scratching your head as to how you've never heard of this book, you're not alone. Apparently 99.9% of the American population hasn't either, as it has only one review on Amazon.

It costs $7.95 on Amazon, though. But I hear you can borrow it from The Phillipsburg Free Public Library for fifty years and only pay $3.

Savings, people.

When Writers Go Weird: That time William S. Burroughs accidentally killed his wife.

Are writers ever normal? No, otherwise they'd be productive members of society. When Writers Go Weird is when we remember writers acting strange, odd, off, or--yeah--just plain weird. Also known as Tuesday to them.

Today: That time William S. Burroughs played a gun game with his wife. It didn't end well.


Sometimes you see it coming from a mile away. Sometimes someone has enough quirks, enough peculiarities, enough moments of random behavior to know something will go wrong at some point. William S. Burroughs had enough of those sometimes over the years.

Born into a wealthy family, Burroughs grew up torn over his sexuality. Some stories have him losing his virginity as a 16-year old to a fellow male in the next bunk bed at a prestigious boarding school they attended together, while other stories have Burroughs losing his virginity at a brothel he frequented with a particular female prostitute he favored. Regardless, either option is good for a potential memoir.

_________________________________________________________________

While at Harvard University, he...stayed in his room with a ferret and a .32 revolver.

_________________________________________________________________


While at Harvard University, he gained a reputation for being a loner who stayed in his room, all the while with a ferret and a .32 revolver. After graduating, he visited Europe and randomly married a Jewish woman, Ilse von Klapper, so she could escape the German occupation. It was an entirely noble act, if completely unexpected and unplanned. They divorced nine years later after she was allowed to remain in the United States.

At the age of 25, Burroughs randomly cut off his pinky finger at the top joint, then casually brought it to his psychiatrist. The psychiatrist immediately admitted Burroughs into a mental hospital.

The snowball-down-a-mountain effect kept building. In his thirties, Burroughs was arrested for forging narcotics prescriptions, moved to Texas with his then common-in-law wife, Joan Vollmer, grew marijuana, and then was arrested one again in New Orleans for drugs. Shortly thereafter, Burroughs moved with his family to Mexico City.

It was during this time in Mexico City that Burroughs went from a fairly anonymous wealthy expatriate with somewhat erratic behavior patterns into having his face plastered in newspapers in both Mexico and the United States.

Vollmer and Burroughs had an unhappy marriage, especially after they moved south of the border. Burroughs began having regular male partners on the side, all while still using drugs. Meanwhile, Vollmer started drinking heavily and allegedly mocked her husband for abandoning her sexually and his behavior.

_________________________________________________________________

Alas, Burroughs was drunk and not a folk hero with cunning skill. Booze and bullets do not mix.

_________________________________________________________________


One night in 1951, the couple were drinking heavily with friends at the Bounty Bar in Mexico City. Inebriated, Burroughs brandished a handgun he was carrying and told his wife they were going to play a William Tell game. In case you can't place a name with the narrative, William Tell was a folk hero in old European tales that recounted his heroics that involved shooting an arrow through an apple placed on someone's head.

Alas, Burroughs was drunk and not a folk hero with cunning skill. Booze and bullets do not mix. His wife, Joan, placed a whiskey glass on top of her head at some distance from her husband. She closed her eyes, joking to others she couldn't stand the sight of blood. Burroughs took aim--and just as rapidly as the game started, it ended. Burroughs aimed too low, shooting his wife in the head. She died almost instantly. William Tell's reputation was safe.

Our William Tell impersonator and the dearly departed.

Mexican authorities arrested Burroughs, who told investigators about the William Tell game, but then recounted it almost as quickly. He changed his story to say the gun accidentally went off. The investigation continued, but after being in jail for just shy of two weeks, Burroughs's brother went to Mexico, bribed local authorities, and sprung his brother on bail.

The high-priced lawyer representing Burroughs ran into his own legal troubles (a car accident and scuffle with a local government official's son) and fled Mexico. With his case being delayed repeatedly, Burroughs had enough of the situation and soon followed in his former lawyer's footsteps by leaving Mexico.

In his absence, Mexican authorities found Burroughs guilty of culpable homicide and gave him a two year suspended sentence.

The final twist to all of this was that Burroughs--while wealthy from his parents' money--was not yet a famous writer of any note. (As the Associated Press recount above labels him an "heir," not an author.) The killing of Vollmer is what seemed to spark Burroughs, as Junkie, Queer, and Naked Lunch were all written in the first handful of years after the shooting. Burroughs spoke as much in the introduction to Queer (which he sat on for thirty years, finally publishing it in 1985):

"I am forced to the appalling conclusion that I would never have become a writer but for Joan's death, and to a realization of the extent to which this event has motivated and formulated my writing."

Lest you think that Burroughs changed his view toward guns after killing his wife, he spent most of his remaining days armed. He often enjoyed posing for photos with his guns, too, for various media publications:

Bullet Bill Burroughs #1

Bullet Bill Burroughs #2

Bullet Bill Burroughs #3

In the fifty odd (in more ways than one) years that Burroughs lived after killing his wife, he became a cult hero of sorts. He appeared on the famous cover of the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club album (that's Burroughs beside Marilyn Monroe in the middle), worked with bands like R.E.M. and U2 on songs or videos, while a dildo from Burroughs's Naked Lunch inspired the band Steely Dan's name.

Likewise, he made numerous appearances in movies and television shows, as well as a fictionalized version of himself in books by Jack Kerouac and J.G. Ballard.

In 1981, Burroughs randomly moved to Lawrence, Kansas, and spent the rest of his sixteen years there. He spent the rest of those years still enjoying guns, too, telling the Wichita Eagle newspaper once, "The thing I like about Kansas is that it's not nearly as violent, and it's a helluva lot cheaper. And I can get out in the country and fish and shoot and whatnot."

Luckily the shooting in Kansas never involved another round of playing William Tell.

Lateness tends to be a habit in some people.

This is teaching life lessons.

Two years ago, the New York Post documented what was potentially the worst grade school in America.

PS 106 in Far Rockaway, Queens, NYC, smelled of urine, had rats crawling in the walls, lacked textbooks, didn't teach art or gym classes, and lacked formal reading and math programs. As if that wasn't bad enough, students were left to watch movies like Alvin and The Chipmunks and Monsters, Inc. for hours at a time. This suddenly turned more tortuous than a North Korean prison.

This school of such impeccable educational standards was overseen by Marcella Sills, the principal. The school slipped through the cracks because it's evident that no one in a city of seven million cares to oversee deplorable conditions for children--and what 10-year old kid is going to blow the whistle on all-day animated movie marathons?

Now, according to The Post, "Last year, an arbitrator ruled Sills had 'committed theft of time' between September 2012 and January 2014 by failing to document 178 instances of her tardiness and hours absent from school." As a result, she lost her job. Ever the optimistic sort of rascal, Sills filed a reinstatement petition.

The problem with the principal that always showed up late to work is that she--wait for it, wait for it--filed her petition late, too.

As a result, Manhattan Judge Manuel Mendez tossed the reinstatement petition by Sills.

Somewhere in Far Rockaway, Queens, a group of grade schoolers released a collected defeated sigh that they'll never get marathon sessions of Alvin and The Chipmunks ever again.

The comedic stylings of Drexel University professor causes a ruckus.

On Christmas day, Drexel University associate professor of politics George Ciccariello-Maher, went for the open-mic night material and decided to tweet the following (now made private on Twitter):

"All I want for Christmas is white genocide."

If this sounds similar to that time you posted your negative holiday views about fruitcake on Facebook, it's exactly like that, except deadlier and a lot more problematic for millions of racists.

Conservative news sites like Breitbart lathered up the masses, worried that an intellectual was encouraging the death of white society.

Ciccariello-Maher released a statement saying that his tweet was satirical (zing!), even though his follow-up tweet on Sunday also said:

"To clarify: when the whites were massacre [sic] during the Haitian revolution, that was a good thing indeed."

This is the worst Saturday Night Live sketch ever,

Admittedly, I'm not certain the professor understands how satire works, and--if anything--the comedic stylings of Ciccariello-Maher are a little  moderately  massively dry, but it raises multiple issues.

White supremacists and their poorly run websites irrationally fear an American "white genocide" that will topple them from the socio-economic power position in the United States. Meanwhile, academics fear that freedom of speech will be smothered by a notable American university as a means to kill bad press.

In the end, what will really happen from all of this?

Nothing.

It'll blow over. News will cycle. Drexel University will sweat it out. Ciccariello-Maher will remain hidden on Twitter. White supremacists will spread hate. And everything old is new again is old again is new.

Zing!

Because satire is hard.

Bob Dylan won the Nobel Prize in Literature.

Bob Dylan was announced as the winner of the 2016 Nobel Prize in Literature.

And Bob Dylan is a plagiarist.

The Swedish Academy, which votes on the prize, can make their reasons and rationales. They can call Dylan a "great poet in the English-speaking tradition," and suggest Dylan "created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition."

But Dylan isn't a poet. He's a cult of personality, a creation solely conjured up to captivate the gullible, and a plagiarist who has repeatedly stolen lines and passages from obscure writers and passed it off as his own work.

There was the story in 2003 of Dylan being accused of stealing passages from Japanese writer Junichi Saga's novel Confessions of a Yakuza.

There were allusions in 2006 of Dylan using words, phrasing, and imagery of the relatively obscure American Civil War poet Henry Timrod.

In 2009, people noticed that Dylan's 2004 memoir seemed to borrow heavily from vintage editions of Time Magazine.

There were even questions in 2011 if Dylan's original artwork in a show wasn't actually just direct copies of historical photographs.

There have been other accusations as well--and not all believe Dylan is the stunningly skilled writer the Swedish Academy and his cult of followers believe him to be. His contemporary, Joni Mitchell, has repeatedly called Dylan out. In a 2010 interview, Mitchell let loose. "Bob is not authentic at all," she said. "He's a plagiarist and his name and voice are fake. Everything about Bob is a deception." In a 2013 interview with Uncut, Mitchell continued the feeling. When asked about calling Dylan a plagiarist, Mitchell said, "It's not like I outed him. He stole all of his lines out of a Japanese hoodlum's novel. There was a lawsuit impending, but it got dropped. He told me 'I haven't written a song in years.'"

There's the old, overused adage that good writers borrow; great writers steal, and by that very vague qualifier Dylan is worthy of the Nobel Prize.

By any other metric, by any other definition, by any sense of ethics, Dylan has succeeded only by piggybacking off the backs of people who spent many long days and longer nights trying to craft a beautiful line of poetry, a phrase that instills awe, a piece of art. Dylan is not an artist, he is not a writer, and he is not original.

The 2016 Nobel Prize in Literature doesn't belong to Bob Dylan, although he may claim it. The award belongs to obscure Civil War poets, and Japanese storytellers, and the long deceased writers of Time Magazine of years gone by.

Randomness Corner: Extra sunscreen needed around 5pm.

I don't know, but Katie feels really nonchalant about forecasting the end of the world.

Well, that's one way to woo a voting constituency...

How can you further annoy a voting constituency that you're already offending? By finding subtle ways to butcher their language!

Case in point:

RNC botches grammar on Spanish sign claiming Hispanics support Trump: https://t.co/tpUZ9xfvBa pic.twitter.com/5nEpx2y9A9

— The Hill (@thehill) July 22, 2016

The issue is two-fold. It's not "para" but "por" they want to have that sign say. They also forgot to translate "Hispanics" into "Hispanos." This would take two seconds on Google Translate to figure out--but, admittedly, we've all been burned by an online translator at some point.

The Huffington Post dove deeper and asked New York University lecturer Félix Manuel Burgos, who who holds a Ph.D in Hispanic Linguistics, to really get at the specifics:


If you want to express support for someone with your vote, it should be “por.” That is the preposition that goes with the verb “votar.”

“Para” doesn’t make sense in that context, unless you work for him, that is the preposition that goes with “trabajar.” ... [But] actually the best option would have been “con,” that expresses general support. “Latinos con Trump.” But I don’t think they will print many of those signs. 


Subtle digs are the best digs.

Political plagiarism as a teachable moment.

By now we all know Melania Trump channeled her inner 14-year old high school freshman and played a little verbal Freddy Fast Fingers with her speech at the Republican National Convention the other night.

In it, Trump plagiarized Michelle Obama's Democratic National Convention speech eight years earlier. Words and phrases like hard work, American dream, values--yada, yada, yada--the sort of political speech making where nothing but white noise is said, but it's an easy sell. Americans love a good fairy tale, regardless of political affiliation.

Which leads us to the teachable moment that has American teachers giddy with excitement. They can teach popularized plagiarism! The BBC reached out to various teachers, including Brad Francis, an English teacher at Davis Middle School in Evanston, Wyoming.

"Melania's speech is probably the most blatant example that I have ever seen," Francis told the BBC. "Eighth grade students need very literal examples, and her speech is basically verbatim to Michelle Obama's. It will help them learn absolutely what not to do in their writing."

Admittedly, Francis might need to learn a little bit of nuance. The speech is absolutely a case of plagiarism, but the entire thing isn't "basically verbatim." Francis would get a C+ grade for such hyperbole and exaggeration in his argument.

"I have students who try to copy and paste material from the internet all the time to pass it off as their own," Francis continued telling the BBC. "That speech was Michelle Obama's intellectual property."

The real disappointing angle that's falling through the cracks with all of this is that two different political parties actually wanted to claim that feeble and uninspired speech as either intellectual or property.

91-year old museum visitor fills in crossword puzzle that's actually a piece of modern art.

The wave of criminal shenanigans by elderly people has hit the museum world.

Case in point: An elderly 91-year old German woman recently visiting Nuremberg’s Neues Museum saw a blank crossword puzzle on a wall, beside it which had a sign saying "Insert words."

Maybe it was age talking or a stunning susceptibility to do as signs command, but the 91-year old threw caution to the wind and proceeded to fill in the crossword puzzle with an abundance of words. The small problem was that the crossword puzzle was actually modern artist Arthur Köpcke's 1977 creation "Reading work-piece," valued at everyday affordable price of $90,000.

"The lady told us she had taken the notes as an invitation to complete the crossword," a police spokesman said, according to The Telegraph. True. You can't deny the allure of a good crossword puzzle invitation. It's like Tinder for the elderly.

The Telegaph also added, "If the museum didn’t want people to follow the artist’s instructions, they should put up a sign to make that clear, she told police."

Grade-A sass from a 91-year old grandma who gives no you-know-whats at this point. She's thisclose to doodling all over Picasso's Guernica any day now.

Canadian copy editor isn't down with that.

Now they've done it. They've angered John Wayne.

No one knows for certain where the term "ten gallon hat" came from. It might be from the Spanish tan galán, meaning so gallant or so fine, or maybe it comes from an English language corruption of the Spanish galón, which means galloon in English, a type of braided trimming around the crown of a hat. Whatever the reason, "ten gallon hat" doesn't reference the measurement of ten gallons of liquid.

Regardless, a copy editor at Maclean’s, a Canadian weekly news magazine, was very literal in their work this week. In the middle of a story referencing Hillary Clinton's campaign in New Jersey, the following passage was changed:


"Inside the coliseum, which serves as the athletic centre for the inner-city satellite campus of the state university of the Garden State, there was a high-school marching band performing in 38-litre hats and white boots, and cheerleaders in gold lamé hot pants."


The metric system! Canada's obsession with sensible scientific measurements has struck again. This copy editor went the extra mile 1609.34 meters and stuck it right in America's midsection.

There will be hell to pay once John Wayne hears about this.