A GIF of some famous musician mugshots

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Is Bernie Sanders soft on guns? Probably.

By Jack Brummet, 2nd Amendment Ed.

For quite a while, I've wondered why Sanders' supporters—a generally pretty left-leaning group of people—have such a blind spot for his stance on guns.  And a couple of other issues, like immigration.  It seems at odds with what I perceive of as his supporters' core values.  I guess not, eh?

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A strange experiment with cadavers to prove we are still cavemen (the pugilism hypothesis).

A research article recently appeared in The Journal of Experimental Biology — "In vitro strain in human metacarpal bones during striking: testing the pugilism hypothesis of hominin hand evolution."

What they were studying in plain English: University of Utah researchers made a "pendulum-like apparatus" in which they placed cadaver arms, and proceeded to make the arms punch a padded dumbbell with clenched or unclenched fist. The experiment was to test the theory that the human hand evolved its shape so that men could "fistfight over females" (the "pugilism hypothesis"). [Link: http://jeb.biologists.org/content/218/20/3215]

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Middle fingers of the month

By Mona Goldwater, Signs and Gestures Editor

A new batch of fingers found at various sites on the Internet, along with reader submissions. . .

cat lady

salute from a native American

the monkey in Cannonball Run

Brent Mydland of the Grateful Dead

Instagram finger

Paloma Ford

Jon Auer in a green room

Queen

welcoming little brother

Paloma Ford

toe finger

Walter White

unknown woman

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Jeb's meltdown: is this the end of the line?

By Jack Brummet, National Affairs Ed.



I wonder if Jeb Bush's bizarre statement this weekend isn't on a par with, say, Muskie's '72 meltdown, Nixon's '62 concession speech, or Howard Dean's howl?

“If this election is about how we’re going to fight to get nothing done, then I don’t want any part of it. I don’t want to be elected president to sit around and see gridlock just become so dominant that people literally are in decline in their lives. That is not my motivation. I’ve got a lot of really cool things I could do other than sit around, being miserable, listening to people demonize me and me feeling compelled to demonize them. That is a joke. Elect Trump if you want that,” he said. 

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Drawing: Faces #1262

By Jack Brummet

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11 year old's stick figure leads to arrest

By Mona Goldwater, Social Mores Ed.

An 11-year old girl--Rebecca DePietro--drew a stick figure that led police to a man who has now confessed to 10 burglaries in Stratford, Connecticut.  Here is the sketch, and the burglar. 

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Setting the record straight

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"Vintage" social media advertisements

"Vintage" social media ads from the history in pictures twitter feed (no attribution or context).

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The Chafe pulls out, Hillary surges, and The Bern cools down just a bit

By Mona Goldwater, Democratic Primary Ed.

This morning, ex-Rhode Island Gov. Lincoln Chafee pulled the plug on his long, long, long-shot bid for the  Democratic presidential nomination. On the Democratic side, his candidacy was possibly the most puzzling one of all.

Chaffee sited Hillary's "good week" as one reason he is pulling out.  One of the reasons Chafee decided to drop out now: Hillary Clinton had "a good week," in which Ex-Sen. Jim Webb dropped out, Vice President Joe Biden declined to run, and she successfully underwent hours of testimony on Capitol Hill, and in the end mostly came out smelling like a rose, while the committee looked like petty buffoons. Updated Demo scorecard:

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Caesar, one year later

By Jack Brummet

For several years, I have left a broken concrete bust of Caesar in the elements, watching the slow, slow return to dust.  Here is this year's state of Julius.

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POTUS 42 and POTUS 45 hopeful dressed up as Dolly & James Madison (ca 1993).

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