• The always fascinating Ed Yong reminds us that nature is really strange, and that there’s still so much we don’t understand. Why does the pearlfish seek shelter inside the toxic anus of a sea cucumber? We don’t know, but it seems like a metaphor for something.
• John Fea wrote a book called “Why Study History?” His recent Religion News Service op-ed provides yet another compelling answer to that question: Because if you don’t, you might end up voting for Donald Trump.
• RIP William Schallert, or, as Mark Evanier says, “Oh, that guy!” You may not know his name, but you’ll recognize his face from one of the 375 credits in his IMDB filmography. The obits say he was best-known for playing Patty Duke’s father, but that’s before my time — I thought of him as Nancy Drew’s father. The kindly twinkle in his eye made him ideal for that sort of role, and it made him even more effective when he played against type as a villain.
Anyway, pause for a second to review that IMDB listing. It’s like a survey of TV history — from Fireside Theatre in 1951 to True Blood in 2014. Schallert was in Space Patrol and in “The Trouble With Tribbles” and on Deep Space Nine. He was in the 1967 movie In the Heat of the Night and on the 1990 TV series based on it. And even if that list includes a lot of forgettable roles in forgettable productions, I never saw the guy phone it in with a bad performance, even while he kept working into his 90s.
May you have the good fortune to find a calling you love so much, to pursue it for so long, and to do it so well.
On a related note: Dear James Lipton, Please book James Hong as a guest on Inside the Actor’s Studio. Thank you.
• Still crazy after all these years.
• The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists has produced a searchable online database of offshore shell companies and trusts listed in the Panama Papers, exposing the tax-shelters of wealthy individuals and businesses, money-launderers and criminals, and even the few folks who might have some legitimate, non-sleazy purpose for creating such a dodgy financial entity.
• So this happened, and it was glorious:
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