Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Andrew Tobias: "What a Field [of Democratic Party Presidential Candidates]!"
I reject the notion that there's only one way to win - go left to excite the base or go moderate to reassure independents. The only thing I know for sure is that all the candidates need to compete by touting their own visions and qualifications, not by knocking their opponents. And that once we do have a nominee, all the rest must rally around her or him with enthusiasm.
Paul Krugman: On Paying for a Progressive Agenda (NY Times Blog)
Getting fiscal about policy proposals.
Elizabeth Warren: My plan for Universal Child Care (Medium)
I remember how hard it was to find affordable and high-quality child care when I was a working mom with two little ones.
Matthew Yglesias: Amazon's $0 corporate income tax bill last year, explained (Vox)
The mystery of stock-based compensation.
Jillian: I Don't Care What Marie Kondo Thinks of My Space (Medium)
How I came to love being a maximalist in a minimalist world.
Katelyn Constantino: 16 Reasons Why You Should Support The Local Music Scene (theodysseyonline)
The local music scene is the best scene out there.
Ken Consor: What You Didn't Know About Radio Royalties (Blog, from 2014)
When you hear a song on the radio, who gets paid? It's probably not who you think. Today, we're going to answer your questions and squash one of the most common misconceptions in the royalties/music publishing world.
Did Taylor Swift's Dad Buy Her Career? (Saving Country Music, from 2012)
The short answer is, no. But you wouldn't believe that from listening to Taylor Swift detractors or reading the comment threads on Swift articles. Quick to discount the young songstress, this is the first accusation you will see of why Taylor Swift's success is a sham.
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Presenting
Michael Egan
answered:
has returned to semi-retired status.
In memory.
Reader Suggestion
Michelle in AZ
from Bruce
Anecdotes - Gambling
• During a performance of Hamlet a leading lady had made a mistake in saying her words, at which the audience had laughed. This led to an old actor asserting to Basil Dean the next day, "You can say anything, my boy, providing you said it with proper conviction. I'll bet you a pint of beer that I will say something quite absurd in the next act, and no one will laugh." They made the bet, and in the next act, the old actor, who was playing the King, did not say, "And you, the others, bear a wary eye," but substituted, "And you, the others, wear a beery eye." The old actor said the line with conviction, no one laughed, and after the play had been completed, the old actor turned to Mr. Dean and said, "Laddie, my pint."
• Wilson Mizner used to travel on ocean liners, where he made a living inveigling rich passengers into playing poker with him. In fact, quite a few cardsharps made quite a lot of money that way. Once, Mr. Mizner invited a man to play poker with him, but the man kept on winning no matter what Mizner did. In the final hand of the game, Mr. Mizner manipulated the cards so that he had four queens, but the other man had four kings. Realizing that he had met a superior cardsharp, Mr. Mizner said, "You win, but those are not the cards I dealt you."
• Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur were friends and writing collaborators. They liked to play board games together and bet on the outcome. However, Mr. MacArthur habitually lost, complained about cheating, and never paid Mr. Hecht. Whenever the total amount of money he owed to Mr. Hecht reached $100,000, Mr. MacArthur would take out a $5 bill from his wallet, lay it on the table, and say, "Tear up that crooked score, and we'll start playing for cash."
• Preacher George Whitefield (1714-1770) and a friend were staying at an inn where they were disturbed by gamblers in the next room. Mr. Whitefield felt that gambling was a sin and so he went next door and remonstrated with the gamblers about their behavior, and then he returned to his room and prepared for bed. His criticisms had no effect, for the people next door continued gambling, so his friend asked what he had received for his trouble. Mr. Whitefield replied, "A soft pillow," and then he went to sleep.
• Alexander Woollcott belonged to the Young Men's Upper West Side Thanatopsis and Inside Straight Club, whose members met regularly to play poker. Once, a member of the club brought a rich man to play poker at the club, announcing that the rich man would be easy to pluck. The next morning, Mr. Woollcott and his friends looked up the rich man in Dun and Bradstreet, found that he was worth $60,000,000, and then they sent that publication this note: "Dear Sirs: He now has $60,000,210."
• The cast and crew of Peter Pan were on tour in New England at a time when many people thought that actors and actresses were scandalous. On the train, the actors playing pirates noticed that some scandalized Puritans were staring at them as they played poker (also a no-no), so they seated the child playing Liza at the poker table, gave her some cards, and set some poker chips in front of her. The child gazed intently at the cards.
• Lord Brampton, formerly Mr. Hawkins (1817-1907), was a judge who enjoyed gambling on the races. One day a member of the jury had a telegram put into his hand. Reading the telegram, he was overjoyed, and shouted, "Silvio's won, and I've won." Judge Hawkins criticized the outburst severely, saying, "It is most improper, and I trust it will never occur again." Then Judge Hawkins asked, "By the way, did the telegram say what was second and third?"
• At one time, comedian Phil Silvers bet quite a lot of money on sports games. Once, he visited with his mother for a day, and he had her radio tuned to a game he had bet on. At the end of the day, he realized that he had spent the day with his mother, but he couldn't remember a single thing she had said because he had been listening to the game, not to her.
• Beatrice Lillie's husband, Robert Peel, enjoyed gambling. One night, he broke the bank at Monte Carlo. Beatrice made him promise to leave Monte Carlo with her at daybreak, but the next morning there was a railroad strike and they were unable to leave. Bobby went back into the casino and lost all of the money he had made the night before.
• Sir Thomas Beecham once bet Richard Strauss £100 that he could conduct - without a score - Elektra. Mr. Strauss made the bet, but he didn't pay up when Sir Thomas won. Therefore, when it was time for Mr. Strauss to be paid his royalties, Sir Thomas deducted £100 from the check.
• Wilson Mizner once defined gambling as "the sure way of getting nothing for something."
• "The only way to double your money in a casino is to fold it and put it in your pocket." - Benno Moisewitsch.
• Golf has had its share of tricksters and conmen. Amarillo Slim once made a bet that he could use a club to drive a ball half a mile. He won the bet by hitting the ball onto a large frozen lake.
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In The Chaos Household
Last Night
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Center for Biological Diversity
"Rubber Dodo Award"
The 2018 Rubber Dodo Award - awarded to the person or group who has most aggressively sought to destroy America's natural heritage or drive species extinct - has been announced, and there are no prizes for guessing who won because who else could it be?
Yes, that's right, President Donald J Trump (R-Buffoon), the man in charge of protecting the United States, has done more in the last 12 months to destroy the natural heritage of the US than any other person, as voted by the people, announced award founders, the Center for Biological Diversity (CBD).
The CBD lists the slashing of more than 2 million acres from the Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments in Utah, opening up Alaska's National Petroleum Reserve to drilling after the Obama administration expanded protections to make it off-limits, and ramping up offshore drilling in most coastal states (though Florida, home of his Mar-a-Lago golf club, is strangely exempt).
His dubious ability to appoint leaders to the various US agencies designed to protect the environment also came under fire. From coal lobbyist Andrew Wheeler as head of the Environmental Protection Agency (Trump's previous appointment, Scott Pruitt, famously resigned due to numerous scandals), to gas and oil lobbyist David Bernhardt leading the Department of the Interior (his predecessor Ryan Zinke, also resigned after numerous "ethics investigations"), and ardent Endangered Species Act opponent Susan Combs heading up its Wildlife and Parks department.
They also listed his anti-science stance, his climate change denying (or inability to even understand it), his attempts to repeal long-standing wildlife protections, from the Endangered Species Act to removing wolf protections in all 48 contiguous states, increasing logging on public lands, relaxing existing rules on air pollution, clean water, coal emissions, fuel emissions, methane emissions, and attempting to silence scientific research.
"Rubber Dodo Award"
Gender Pay-Gap Suit Settled
Boston Symphony Orchestra
Elizabeth Rowe, the principal flutist of the Boston Symphony Orchestra (BSO), has settled the lawsuit she filed against the orchestra last July, in which she claimed that she was being paid substantially less than her closest, male peer. Rowe sought more than $200,000 in unpaid wages.
Rowe and the orchestra entered mediation in December, and the case was closed in Massachusetts' Suffolk Superior Court last Thursday. The terms of the settlement have not been disclosed.
Rowe was among the first women to file a gender pay-equity claim under the Massachusetts Equal Pay Act (MEPA), which went into effect last July. Her case was being closely followed by the classical music industry as well as by those interested more broadly in gender parity issues.
Rowe was hired in 2004 by the BSO - an ensemble widely considered one of the top orchestras not just in the U.S., but worldwide - to serve in this high-profile and extremely competitive position. According to the suit, she has appeared as a soloist with the orchestra more than any other BSO principal musician in the fifteen years since she was hired, and has been heavily promoted in the orchestra's publicity and marketing campaigns.
According to a 2016 study, about 47 percent of musicians in U.S. orchestras were women; the number of female players has improved significantly since the widespread introduction of "blind" auditions in the 1970s and '80s, in which musicians' genders are masked by screens and with carpeting, to muffle the sound of women's shoes.
Boston Symphony Orchestra
Google Doodle
Steve Irwin
Steve Irwin, the celebrated Australian conservationist and TV personality, is being remembered with a Google Doodle this Friday, on what would have been his 57th birthday.
Born in the suburbs of Melbourne on 22 February, 1962, Irwin became known throughout his life for his love of Australia's wildlife, which he shared on many TV programmes.
Irwin, whose father Bob was a naturalist and conservationist, developed an interest in animals from a young age. His parents founded the Beerwah Reptile and Fauna Park, now known as the Australia Zoo, in 1970.
In 1991, Irwin became the manager of the park and met Terri Rains, a visitor at the venue who would eventually become his wife, according to Irwin's official website.
Rains and Irwin spent their honeymoon filming what would become the pilot of the popular nature documentary series The Crocodile Hunter.
Steve Irwin
Google Moves To Fix Glitch
YouTube
Google-owned YouTube said Thursday it was taking action to close a loophole that enabled users to share comments and links on child pornography over the video-sharing service.
The response came after a YouTube creator this week revealed what he called a "wormhole" that allowed comments and connections on child porn alongside innocuous videos.
The move came after Matt Watson, a YouTube creator with some 26,000 subscribers, revealed the workings of what he termed a "wormhole" into a pedophile ring that allowed users to trade social media contacts and links to child porn in YouTube comments.
Watson, who uses the name MattsWhatItIs, added that YouTube's recommendation algorithm "due to some kind of glitch is actually facilitating this."
Because ads automatically appear with many YouTube videos, Watson said the actions of the company amounted to "monetizing" the exploitation.
YouTube
Migrant Families Still Being Separated
Texas
Migrant families are still being separated by the Trump administration, sometimes over "uncorroborated allegations" of crimes, according to a report published Thursday by a Texas civil rights group.
"Family separations are still very much happening in the southern border, they're still being torn apart by the U.S. government," Efrén Olivares, director of racial and economic justice at the Texas Civil Rights Project, told NBC News.
While the separations were not happening at the same scale as when the Trump administration announced the "zero tolerance" policy last spring, some occurred under troubling circumstances, Olivares said. The report, which looked at cases between June 22 through Dec. 17 in McAllen, Texas, comes roughly eight months since the government formally ended the policy.
The report said it found 38 cases of parents and legal guardians separated from their children.
The government had identified more than 2,700 children who were separated under the policy. But it's estimated that many more may have been separated since the summer of 2017, according a report by the HHS inspector general.
Texas
Fuels Rise Of U.S. Hate Groups
'Fear-Mongering'
The number of hate groups operating in the United States rose 7 percent to an all-time high last year, the Southern Poverty Law Center said on Wednesday, attributing the increase largely to anti-immigrant rhetoric from President Donald Trump.
The SPLC, which has tracked hate groups since 1971, found there were 1,020 operating in the United States in 2018, breaking the 1,018 record set in 2011. It marked the fourth consecutive year of growth.
The group blamed Trump, whose administration has focused on reducing illegal and legal immigration into the United States.
"The words and imagery coming out of the Trump administration and from Trump himself are heightening these fears," Heidi Beirich, director of the SPLC's Intelligence Project, told reporters on a conference call. "These images of foreign scary invaders threatening diseases, massive refugee caravans coming from the south. This is fear-mongering."
The SPLC defines hate groups as organizations with beliefs or practices that demonize a class of people. The number of groups has risen 30 percent since 2015 when Trump declared his presidential candidacy.
'Fear-Mongering'
Not Extinct
Wallace's Giant Bee
The world's largest bee is a big, black wasp-like insect as long as an adult's thumb, and it was extinct - or so scientists thought. The massive bee was rediscovered alive in Indonesia last month, decades after it was last seen.
Wallace's Giant Bee was named after discoverer Alfred Russell Wallace, who found the massive species in 1958. The last time a specimen was spotted was 1981. In January 2019, a group retraced Wallace's steps and journeyed to Indonesia to see if they could find the bee. Their long trek paid off.
Natural history and conservation photographer Clay Bolt described the team's five-day search for Global Wildlife Conservation. On the last day of their expedition, everyone on the team had fallen ill, but they persisted and eventually came across what they believed to be a bee's nest. Bolt called it "the most remarkable thing I'd ever laid my eyes on."
The newly rediscovered Wallace's Giant Bee, also called "Raja ofu," or king of bees, has gained widespread media attention. Live Science called it a "nightmare bee." Little is known about the insect, which has a dark body about 1.5 inches in length - four times bigger than European honeybees.
While a giant bee may sound horrifying, Bolt said "just knowing that this bee's giant wings go thrumming through this ancient Indonesian forest helps me feel that, in a world of so much loss, hope and wonder still do exist."
Wallace's Giant Bee
Neptune's Smallest Moon
Hippocamp
A faint and frigid little moon doesn't have to go by "Neptune XIV" anymore.
Astronomers have given a name - "Hippocamp" - to the most recently discovered moon of Neptune, which also formerly went by S/2004 N1. They've figured out how big the satellite is as well, and teased out some interesting details about its past, a new study reports.
A team led by Mark Showalter, of the SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) Institute in Mountain View, California, announced the existence of S/2004 N1 in 2013. The scientists did so after analyzing photos taken by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope between 2004 and 2009.
Back then, the team determined that S/2004 N1 lies about 65,400 miles (105,250 kilometers) from its parent planet and completes one orbit every 23 hours or so. For comparison, Earth's own moon - at 2,160 miles wide (3,475 km) a giant compared with the Neptune satellite - orbits our planet at an average distance of about 239,000 miles (384,600 km).
But things have changed a bit since then, as the new study - also led by Showalter - reports. The team has updated its assessment of the moon, after incorporating new Hubble observations made in 2016.
Hippocamp
Dragon-Shaped Aurora
Iceland
Provided you know a thing or two about shutter speeds and apertures, aurora borealis can be the subject of some truly mind-bendingly spectacular photographs. But even by the exceptionally high standards of images showcasing the Northern Lights, this is particularly special.
The photograph of a huge dragon-shaped aurora was shot in Iceland earlier this month by photographers Jingyi Zhang and Wang Zheng.
"This iconic display was so enthralling that the photographer's mother ran out to see it and was captured in the foreground," NASA explains on the Astronomy Picture of the Day blog.
Aurora borealis, known as the Northern Lights when they occur in the Northern Hemisphere, aren't just a pretty sight - they are the result of cosmic forces journeying across the Solar System. They are caused by solar particles spat out of the Sun's corona, its upper atmosphere. When these solar winds reach Earth and smash into its magnetosphere (two to three days after they leave the Sun), they release their energy and excite oxygen and nitrogen in our upper atmosphere. The excitement causes ionization of the atmospheric molecules and the release of light photons. Oxygen produces green and yellow light, while nitrogen creates a red and blue light.
Earth experiences more auroral activity during solar storms, where the Sun's solar wind are especially plentiful. NASA's Picture of the Day blog notes that early February did not appear to have any sunspots, so numerous reports of aurora this month are "somewhat surprising".
Iceland
In Memory
Peter Tork
Peter Tork, the guitarist and wise-cracking character in the 1960s teen-pop sensation the Monkees, died today at the age of 77, a rep for the group confirmed to Variety. Speaking with the Washington Post, Tork's sister Anne Thorkelson did not specify a cause of death, although the guitarist had been diagnosed with a rare form of cancer a decade ago.
"There are no words right now… heartbroken over the loss of my Monkee brother, Peter Tork," Mickey Dolenz tweeted.
Michael Nesmith posted a lengthier appreciation. "Pardon me if I am being dogmatic - but I think it is harder to put together a band than a TV show - not to take anything away from TV shows," he wrote. "These days I watch MSNBC - mostly aghast at what I see - and what I am missing is 'madcap.' … Peter Tork died this a.m. I am told he slipped away peacefully. Yet, as I write this my tears are awash, and my heart is broken. Even though I am clinging to the idea that we all continue, the pain that attends these passings has no cure. It's going to be a rough day. I share with all Monkees fans this change, this 'loss,' even so. PT will be a part of me forever.
"I have said this before - and now it seems even more apt: the reason we called it a band is because it was where we all went to play," Nesmith continued. "A band no more, and yet the music plays on, an anthem to all who made the Monkees and the TV show our private - dare I say 'secret' - playground. As for Pete, I can only pray his songs reach the heights that can lift us and that our childhood lives forever - that special sparkle that was the Monkees. I will miss him - a brother in arms. Take flight my Brother."
Tork had been part of the Greenwich Village folk scene before becoming instantly famous. "To be in Greenwich Village in the '60s was pure joy; to be young was pure bliss," he said in an interview with UK Music Reviews. "When I talk about having a well favored life, I went from Greenwich Village almost directly into The Monkees. … I had first heard about the Monkees in the early summer of 1965 from a good friend of mine, one Mr. Stephen Stills," who had been considered for the show himself and made a call to Tork, whom he figured would be better suited.
Tork attributed the huge initial success of the Monkees to two factors. "We were lucky to lock into one of the greatest song writing gangs of all time. … We had Carole King writing songs for us. Please, there has never been a better songwriter - really, come on," he said to UK Music Reviews. "Secondly there was television. When you got to see the guys playing off of each other, even if they were reading scripts and playing parts, you still got a sense of who they were. There was a much more personal connection to us as people with the audience than there was with even the Beatles or the Stones, or even the more recent boy bands."
When the series began, the four had never played together as a band. One day while on break, Tork recalled, they asked if the amplifiers on the set actually worked. Being told that they did, the group launched into their first spontaneous jam session, playing some rock oldies - with Tork reminiscing that he had taught Dolenz how to play the drums the night before. Soon they were out on tour during filming breaks, and after two initial albums that mostly featured L.A.'s top session players, they assumed most of the instrumental and much of the songwriting work on 1967's "Headquarters," the third of nine albums they released during their original 1966-70 run.
Tork was by some accounts the most musically proficient member of the Monkees, and someone comfortable with a variety of instruments. In the 1960s, George Harrison invited him to play banjo on his first solo album, the "Wonder Wall" soundtrack, although his picking reportedly only appears on bootleg outtakes and in the film itself. Although he was usually seen playing guitar in his solo acoustic or blues-band shows, in his spare time, he played piano, telling Medium in a 2017 interview that a typical day for him included some casual classical music. "I enjoy playing Johann Sebastian Bach for a hobby, just to take my mind into different places," he said.
All four members of the Monkees had rarely played together since Tork left the group in 1968 and the band officially broke up two years later. But after MTV reruns made the band newly hip, Tork regularly participated in reunion tours that began in 1986 and included all of the original members except for Michael Nesmith, who rejoined briefly for a 1996 album and '97 UK tour. After Davy Jones died in 2012, Nesmith warmed up more to participating in reunion events. Tork, Nesmith and Micky Dolenz made their last appearance as a trio at the Pantages Theatre in Hollywood on Sept. 26, 2016.
Peter Tork
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