from Bruce
Anecdotes
Practical Jokes
• Sports columnist Fred Russell of the Nashville Banner made lots of telephone calls in his business. Whenever he heard that a VIP was out and therefore unavailable to talk, he would say something like, “This is Mr. Haynes at the Cameo Pool Hall [pool halls were then regarded as disreputable places]. He left his cap over here last night. Just tell him I’ll take good care of it and he can get it tomorrow night.”
• Members of the Benson Company, a traveling Shakespearean troupe, often played practical jokes on newcomers to the company. Once, a newcomer arrived at the train station wearing a kilt because the company was crossing the border into Scotland that day, and he had been told that it was a tradition that members of the Benson Company wore a kilt whenever they traveled into Scotland.
• Baseball player Bob Uecker was on an airplane when the intercom mike at the back was left unguarded. Mr. Uecker picked it up and said, “This is your captain speaking. Please remain seated and keep your safety belts fastened until the plane has hit the side of the terminal building and come to a stop.”
Prayer
• A farmer and his wife — who were childless — came to the Hasidic leader known as the Maggid of Mezeritch and pleaded with him to pray to God to allow them to have a child. The Maggid agreed, but he believed that such a prayer should come from the farmer and his wife, so he named a high price for his services. The farmer tried to bargain with him, but the Maggid refused, saying that the farmer and his wife must pay the full price. Finally, the farmer turned to his wife and said, “Let’s go home and pray to God by ourselves. God will help us for free.” After the farmer and his wife had left, the Maggid smiled.
• R’ Levi Yitzchak of Berdichev once prayed to God on a Rosh Hashanah that fell on the Sabbath that He must write the names of all human beings in the Book of Life. Why? Since writing is forbidden on the Sabbath, God cannot write names in the Book of Death. However, God can write names in the Book of Life because when there is danger to human life (piku’ach nefesh), then writing is permitted on the Sabbath to save those lives.
Prejudice
• Lots of people know that Jackie Robinson broke the color line barring blacks from playing in major-league baseball, but they don’t know that he broke the color line barring black baseball players from dining in restaurants — even in northern cities. For a long time — even after black and white professional baseball players started staying at the same hotels — the black players wouldn’t eat in the hotel dining rooms, but would instead order room service. One day, Mr. Robinson walked into a dining room in a Cincinnati hotel. The headwaiter showed him to a seat, a waiter gave him a menu and took his order, Mr. Robinson ate his meal, none of the other diners walked out in high dungeon, and the sky did not fall. After that, other black baseball players started eating in hotel dining rooms.
• Adolf Hitler felt that the 1936 Olympic Games in Germany would show the superiority of white Aryans over other human beings, such as blacks. Instead, African-American runner Jesse Owens became the star of the Olympics and non-Aryans won most of the medals. Hitler would have disapproved of the friendship that sprang up between Mr. Owens and white German long jumper Luz Long. Mr. Long even gave Mr. Owens good advice that helped him to reach the finals of the long jump.
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Presenting
Michael Egan
has returned to semi-retired status.
In memory.
BRUCE'S RECOMMENDATION
BANDCAMP MUSIC
BRUCE'S RECOMMENDATION OF BANDCAMP MUSIC
Music: "Stranger (featuring SAMMUS)"
Album: A SELF-BANISHMENT RITUAL
Artist: Seeming
Artist Location: Ithaca, New York
Record Company: Artoffact Records
Record Company Location: Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Info:
“Menacing. Vulnerable. Furious. Intimate. Seeming makes posthuman dirge pop. Their 2017 LP SOL: A SELF-BANISHMENT RITUAL was crowned LP of the Year by tastemakers IDieYouDie and Album of the Decade by UK alt. culture site A Model of Control. Their followup, co-produced with avant-garde composer Sarah Hennies, comes out August 2020 on Artoffact Records. Frontman Alex Reed previous was in the band ThouShaltNot. He has taught songwriting at NYU, and is the author of a 33 1/3 book as well as ASSIMILATE: A CRITICAL HISTORY OF INDUSTRIAL MUSIC.”
MxAshlynn, a fan, wrote, “Sammus + Seeming is pure heaven. Favorite track: ‘Stranger (feat. SAMMUS) (Null Device Mix).’”
Stream on Spotify
Price: $1.30 (USD) for track; $10 (USD) for 13-track album
Genre: Goth-Pop.
Links:
SOL: A SELF-BANISHMENT RITUAL
Seeming on Bandcamp
Seeming on YouTube
Sammus on Bandcamp
Sammus on YouTube
Artoffact Records
Other Links:
Bruce’s Music Recommendations: FREE pdfs
David Bruce's Amazon Author Page
David Bruce's Smashwords Page
David Bruce's Blog #1
David Bruce's Blog #2
David Bruce's Blog #3
David Bruce's Apple iBookstore
David Bruce has over 140 Kindle books on Amazon.com.
Reader Suggestion
Michelle in AZ
Stephen Suggests
Twofer
New Venture
Michael Egan
BRUCE'S RECOMMENDATION
Recommended: Betty Bowers
Other Links:
David Bruce's Amazon Author Page
David Bruce's Smashwords Page
David Bruce's Blog #1
David Bruce's Blog #2
David Bruce's Blog #3
David Bruce's Apple iBookstore
David Bruce has over 140 Kindle books on Amazon.com.
Bonus Links
Jeannie the Teed-Off Temp
Reader Comment
Current Events
Linda >^..^<
We are all only temporarily able bodied.
Thanks, Linda!
that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
A most welcome return to sunny and seasonal.
Hasty Pudding Woman of the Year
Jennifer Garner
Jennifer Garner has been named Woman of the Year by Harvard University’s Hasty Pudding Theatricals, based not just on her career as an actor, but also because of her record as a philanthropist and entrepreneur, the organization said Thursday.
Garner, 49, will be the guest of honor at a parade through Harvard Square, followed by a roast at which she will receive her pudding pot, the theater troupe said in a statement.
Hasty Pudding Theatricals, which dates to 1844 and bills itself the third oldest theater group in the world, established its Woman of the Year award in 1951 to honor people who have made “lasting and impressive contributions to the world of entertainment.” Last year’s recipient was Viola Davis, and previous winners include Meryl Streep, Katharine Hepburn, Ethel Merman and Cher.
The date of the parade, Feb. 5, is also opening night for the group’s latest performance.
Garner is a Save the Children trustee and has advocated on Capitol Hill and around the nation to raise awareness and funds for the organization. She also co-founded the organic food company Once Upon a Farm in 2017, with a goal of providing children with the highest quality food grown using sustainable methods.
Jennifer Garner
Gets Serious About Anime
AMC
AMC Network is now adding Sentai Filmworks and Hidive to its stable. As Variety points out, Sentai and its Hidive streaming service will join AMC’s current lineup, alongside BBC America, IFC, SundanceTV, WE tv, and IFC Films. By 2025, AMC hopes to reach as many as 25 million paid subscribers through all its streaming services.
Besides Hidive, Sentai’s properties also include Sentai Studios, Anime Network, and SentaiFilmworks.com. Sentai also has a huge anime catalog that includes K-On!, Clannad, Food Wars!, Girls and Panzer, and High School of the Dead. Sentai is also doing an HD remaster of Nana.
“With strong industry relationships and access to key content creators in Japan, Sentai distributes and curates one of the anime industry’s most diverse libraries of top trending and classic titles, with its content available on Crunchyroll, Hulu and Amazon Prime, among others,” said AMC in an official statement.
AMC is just the latest to make sizable moves in the anime streaming and distribution space. Last August, Sony took full ownership of the popular anime streaming platform Crunchyroll, paying out over a billion dollars. This move brought Crunchyroll and Funimation under the same corporate umbrella.
AMC
Returns January 15
Saturday Night Live
The host and musical guest are set for the first Saturday Night Live of 2022. Barring any unforeseen circumstances (more on which in a moment), West Side Story star and Tony nominee Ariana DeBose will headline the 10th episode of the sketch series’ 47th season, alongside “Late At Night” rapper Roddy Ricch.
The episode marks more than just SNL’s return from its customary winter break—it should also mark the show’s return to mid-pandemic-business-as-usual, after the surge of COVID-19 cases prompted by the Omicron variant muted the holiday revelry of the December 18 telecast hosted by Paul Rudd. Of that episode, which fleshed out Rudd’s sparsely attended induction into the Five-Timers Club with re-gifted sketches from Christmases past, The A.V. Club’s Dennis Perkins wrote:
I suppose some might quibble about the seemingly slapdash selection of old holiday sketches SNL trotted out in this unnervingly sparse trouper’s effort to fill 90 minutes of network airtime. Saturday Night Live’s had to scramble before in its long, long history, whether coping with drunk and/or intransigent hosts or the occasional anthrax attack. But this was different. With the five hardy souls on hand gamely ensuring that the show must, indeed, go on, the empty Studio 8H sounded cavernous, and oddly funereal. When [Tina] Fey (filling in for an absent Colin Jost) and [Michael] Che sat on director’s chairs and rattled off the night’s Weekend Update material to [Tom] Hanks, Rudd, and Kenan [Thompson] seated in the empty front row, the cutaways for their reactions were chillingly intimate, their laughter the knowing camaraderie of people living through something powerfully strange and potentially perilous, together.
Of course, there’s no reason to expect that the same fate will befall DeBose’s big moment—no reason other than the hosts of the other Lorne Michaels-produced late-night shows taped at 30 Rockefeller Center coming down with COVID in recent weeks. January 15 is a whole nine days away, but just in case, maybe somebody should be checking the Broadway Video archives for re-runnable vintage sketches. If it’s not safe for DeBose to do a comedic riff on “America,” maybe we can just spool up good ol’ “Space Pants” instead?
Saturday Night Live
Will Not Be Livestreamed
Golden Globes
The controversy-plagued Golden Globes looks set to return this weekend, but no one will see it online or otherwise.
“This year’s event is going to be a private event and will not be livestreamed,” an HFPA spokesperson told Deadline on Thursday. “We will be providing real-time updates on winners on the Golden Globes website and our social media.”
Full results from Sunday’s pared-down Globes will be announced via a press release after the approximately 90-minute ceremony is over, we hear.
The decision not to host an online version of the mini-Globes is actually not primarily related to the Hollywood Foreign Press Association’s multimillion-dollar and multi-year contract with NBC. A source at the Comcast-owned network tells us that NBC is not standing in the HFPA’s way over the livestream.
Golden Globes
Weasels
Corporations
One year ago, supporters of Donald Trump the defeated ex-president carried out a violent attack on the U.S. Capitol based on false claims of a stolen election. That day, 147 Republican lawmakers voted to overturn the election results of at least one of the states that voted for Joe Biden.
Major U.S. corporations responded by vowing to halt donations to Republicans who objected to certifying Joe Biden as president. But the money began trickling back to those lawmakers within months. Now, a host of new research around the one-year anniversary of the attack finds that millions of dollars are once again flowing freely to these Republicans from businesses as well as individuals.
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy — who voted against certifying Arizona’s vote before visiting Trump in Florida a few weeks later — raised nearly $9.1 million in the first nine months of 2021, according to the group. That puts him as the highest fundraiser in the House Republican conference.
OpenSecrets is not the only group looking into funding of election objectors. A self-described nonpartisan, progressive group called accountable.us released an “interactive report” around this week’s anniversary focused on 30 corporations and trade groups — from Chevron to the National Stone, Sand & Gravel Association — whose “promises were broken when they funneled millions of dollars to election objectors in Congress.”
Corporations
Conservative Networks
Minimize Coup
At one point Thursday afternoon, Rep. Adam Kinzinger was on CNN recounting what he was doing a year earlier when the U.S. Capitol was attacked. At the same time, MSNBC was reporting on the Justice Department probe into what led up to the riot.
Yet on Fox Rupert News Channel, the story was something else entirely. The network, stocked with hosts allied with the former President Donald Trump (R-Lock Him Up), aired video of a painting dog to illustrate a discussion about people maxing out on screen time.
That slice of airtime was one of many television moments that unfolded on the first anniversary on the Jan. 6 insurrection attempted coup, when a mob of Trump supporters violently swarmed the U.S. Capitol in an effort to prevent the certification of President Joe Biden’s election victory. But it served as a potent illustration of how conservative media often refuses to acknowledge the severity of what happened last year.
Yet between 6:20 and 9 a.m. on the agenda-setting “Fox & Friends” show, the anniversary was mentioned twice — once in a news headline package and another as an aside by host Brian Kilmeade to suggest Biden wanted to direct attention to topics that were less damaging to him.
Instead, the show interviewed Lara Trump (R-Fucks Eric) about how much time Biden spent in Delaware; spoke to a nurse fired for not being vaccinated against COVID-19; reported on the “credibility crisis” at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; brought on a former U.S. Marine who had criticized Biden’s Afghanistan pullout; gave Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis time to “step up” and announce distribution of COVID test kits; and featured commentator Charles Payne saying that “every time Biden opens his mouth ... he insults the American people.”
Minimize Coup
Unpublished Books
Filippo Bernardini
Authorities say they’ve solved a publishing industry whodunit with the arrest Wednesday of a man accused of numerous literary heists in recent years, allegedly impersonating others in the industry to amass a veritable library of unpublished works.
Filippo Bernardini, an Italian citizen working in publishing in London, was arrested Wednesday after arriving at John F. Kennedy International Airport, said Damian Williams, U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York in a statement.
Bernardini, 29, faces charges including wire fraud, which carries a penalty of up to 20 years in prison, and aggravated identity theft. He was expected to appear in federal court on Thursday. No information on an attorney for him was available.
For years, the publishing industry has been baffled by an international phishing scheme in which someone with apparent inside knowledge impersonated an editor or an agent — by setting up a fake email account — and attempted to trick an author or an editor into sending links to unpublished manuscripts. Works by Margaret Atwood and Ethan Hawke were among those targeted.
The ongoing scheme was all the more mysterious because whoever was seeking the manuscripts was apparently not attempting to sell them or otherwise publicly exploit having them.
Filippo Bernardini
Design Is Unfeasible
1960 Ramjet
In Poul Anderson's 1970 novel Tau Zero, a starship crew seeks to travel to the star Beta Virginis in hopes of colonizing a new planet. The ship's mode of propulsion was a so-called "Bussard ramjet," an actual (though hypothetical) means of propulsion which had been proposed by physicist Robert W. Bussard just a decade earlier. Now, physicists have revisited this unusual mechanism for interstellar travel in a new paper published in the journal Acta Astronautica, and alas, they have found the ramjet wanting. It's feasible from a pure physics standpoint, but the associated engineering challenges are currently insurmountable, the authors concluded.
A ramjet is basically a jet engine that "breathes" air. The best analog for the fundamental mechanism is that it exploits the engine's forward motion to compress incoming air without the need for compressors, making ramjet engines lighter and simpler than their turbojet counterparts. A French inventor named Rene Lorin received a patent in 1913 for his concept of ramjet (aka, a flying stovepipe), although he failed to build a viable prototype. Two years later, Albert Fonó proposed a ramjet propulsion unit to increase the range of gun-launched projectiles and eventually was granted a German patent in 1932.
A basic ramjet has three components: an air intake, a combustor, and a nozzle. Hot exhaust from fuel combustion flows through the nozzle. The pressure of the combustion must be higher than the pressure at the exit of the nozzle in order to maintain a steady flow, which a ramjet engine achieves by "ramming" external air into the combustor with the forward speed of whatever vehicle is being powered by the engine. There is no need to carry oxygen on board. The downside is that ramjets can only produce thrust if the vehicle is already moving, so they require an assisted takeoff using rockets. As such, ramjets are most useful as a means of acceleration, such as for ramjet-powered missiles or for increasing the range of artillery shells.
Robert Bussard thought the concept might be modified as a means for interstellar propulsion. The basic premise outlined in his 1960 paper is to scoop up interstellar protons (ionized hydrogen) using enormous magnetic fields as a "ram scoop." The protons would be compressed until they produced thermonuclear fusion, and magnetic fields would then divert that energy into rocket exhaust to produce thrust. The faster the ship traveled, the higher the proton flow, and the greater the thrust.
1960 Ramjet
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