from Bruce
Anecdotes
Prayer
• As a boy, Richard Goode practiced at the piano, playing of course the same pieces over and over. A neighbor, Rabbi Ginzburg, once asked Richard’s father why his son did this. Mr. Goode replied, “Rabbi, haven’t you been saying the same prayers over and over since you were a child?” Afterward, Rabbi Ginzburg often could be heard humming to himself Richard’s piano music.
• As choreographer George Balanchine lay dying in a hospital, ballerina Suzanne Farrell stopped by to see him. Mr. Balanchine knew that Ms. Farrell’s knees had been bothering her, so he asked how her knees were. She said, “My knees are great; I could do anything.” Mr. Balanchine smiled and said, “Oh, I’m so glad, because I’ve been lying here praying for your knees.”
• Mark Twain once stayed over at the house of a friend. The next morning, he was seen standing at the top of the staircase. His friend said, “What’s the matter? Why not come on down?” Mr. Twain asked, “Family prayers over yet?” Hearing that they were over, Mr. Twain said, “All right then, I’ll come down.”
• Dolores Curran says that when you teach young children to pray, you should be prepared to hear some strange prayers, such as, “And Jesus, please hit Danny for me because he took my Big Wheel.”
• Peg Bracken’s grandmother occasionally ended her prayers by saying: “And if You’ll just tend to Your business, Lord, I’ll tend to mine.”
Preachers
• Reb Yaakov Krantz was a traveling preacher who was very popular and very well paid. Another preacher, who was envious of Reb Krantz’ success, complained to him, “You and I are both preachers. You and I both borrow ideas from others. When you preach, the synagogue is crowded and you are handsomely rewarded, whereas I have to speak to practically bare walls, and I hardly make my expenses. Tell me, what is the secret of your success?” Reb Krantz replied, “You and I can be compared to two sorts of thieves. One steals a piece of leather and sells it for one ruble. The other takes the leather, makes a pair of fine shoes out of it, and sells them for 10 rubles. The first is a common thief; the second, an artist.”
• A young clergyman was nervous about giving his sermon, so he asked an older clergyman for advice. The older clergyman said that he had suffered from the same problem, and he advised the young clergyman to take a pitcher of martinis to the pulpit with him. The martinis were clear like water, and the young clergyman could take a sip whenever he felt nervous. The young clergyman accepted the advice, gave his sermon, then asked the older clergyman to critique his performance in the pulpit. The older clergyman said, “I have three comments to make. First, don’t put olives in the pitcher. Second, don’t gulp — sip. Third, Daniel slew the lion — he didn’t beat the hell out of it.”
• Elton Trueblood, a Quaker, was committed to equality in ministry. One day, he was invited to preach at a large university. He met with other clergy before the service, and eventually the host pastor told everyone that it was time for them to put on robes and clerical vestments. Mr. Trueblood asked, “Is it required that we wear robes in religious settings?” The host pastor, somewhat flustered, said that it was not required, and Mr. Trueblood replied, “In that case, I’ll be glad to do so.”
• A friend was driving country comedian Jerry Clower around Savannah, Georgia, when the friend said, “John Wesley used to be pastor of that church.” Mr. Clower immediately said, “Stop,” and they went into that church. About the experience, Mr. Clower says, “I felt a tingling all over. Here’s a man that put one foot on Europe and one foot on the United States and preached and started Methodism.”
• At a New England Yearly Meeting, two very educated Quakers by the names of Rufus Jones and Augustus T. Murra, spoke. However, one elderly Quaker worried that the learned discourse of the two gentlemen was way over the heads of their audience. After the gentlemen had spoken, she said for everyone to hear, “Jesus said, ‘Feed my lambs,’ not ‘Feed my giraffes.’”
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© Copyright Bruce D. Bruce; All Rights Reserved
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Presenting
Michael Egan
U.S.A. said:
has returned to semi-retired status.
In memory.
BRUCE'S RECOMMENDATION
BANDCAMP MUSIC
BRUCE'S RECOMMENDATION OF BANDCAMP MUSIC
Music: "Rogue Train (Rattle On By)"
Album: FIND A WAY
Artist: Dana Gehrman
Artist Location: Brisbane, Australia
Info:
Vocals, Electric & Acoustic Guitars, Percussion - Dana Gehrman
Electric, 12 String, Slide & Pedal Steel Guitars, Backing Vocals – Danny Widdicombe
Electric & Acoustic Guitars, Backing Vocals – Dave Orr
Guest Vocals – Tim Rogers
Bass Guitar – Chris Bosley
Drums – Ben Carstens
Wurlitzer, Hammond Organ – Dan Mansfield
Saxophone – Rafael Karlen
Trumpet – Darren Skaar
Synth, Percussion – Yanto Browning
Backing Vocals – Abbie Cardwell
Price: $15 (AUD) for 11-track album
Genre: Country Rock.
Links:
FIND A WAY
Dana Gehrman on Bandcamp
Dana Gehrman Official Site
Dana Gehrman on YouTube
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.
Reader Suggestion
Michelle in AZ
New Venture
Michael Egan
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
Gas is $3.99/gal at the cheapest no-name station in town.
Now A Police Tactic
Taylor Swift
On Tuesday, a group of protesters showed up at the Alameda Courthouse in Oakland, California, for the pre-trial hearing for Jason Fletcher, a police officer who was charged with manslaughter for shooting and killing Steven Taylor, a Black man, inside of a Walmart last year. Along with Taylor’s family, advocates for justice gathered to listen to the hearing broadcast on the courthouse steps, as covid restrictions prevented them from entering the courtroom. That’s when a sheriff’s deputy showed up with some pop tunes.
In a video taken on the steps, policy director for the Anti-Police Terror Project James Burch can be seen asking a sheriff’s deputy why the group can’t use their banner. Midway through the conversation, the sheriff’s deputy pulled out his phone, turned up Taylor Swift’s “Blank Space” on speaker, and slid it into his shirt. “You can record all you want,” he told the person filming, “I just know it just can’t be posted on YouTube.” Sheriff’s deputy David Shelby then turned to show the camera the name on his uniform.
Shelby’s approach is now a known police tactic: weaponizing YouTube’s copyright flagging system against public citizens. Earlier this year, a Beverly Hills officer chose Sublime as the backtrack for his conversation with a man who came to dispute a ticket. (The video remains on Instagram.) The video would predictably trigger YouTube’s automated content ID system, which would pick up on Swift’s copyrighted song and trigger a block on the entire video. It also raises the chances that a record label would explicitly request the video to be removed.
Burch told Gizmodo that the group began filming when a group of four officers repeatedly interrupted their listening to tell them to move “Justice for Steven Taylor” banners they’d hung on the walls. When they moved the banner to the stairs and again gathered to listen to the hearing, the officers then told them that people “could trip,” despite the fact that no one was walking through the area. Burch said the group felt compelled to film because the over-aggressive approach started to feel “concerning.”
Gizmodo has reached out to the Alameda County Sheriff’s Office asking whether the use of pop music is in line with departmental policy.
Taylor Swift
Trailblazing Female Pilot
Wally Funk
Wally Funk, a trailblazing female pilot denied the job of astronaut in the 1960s over her gender, will finally get the chance to fulfill her dreams of going into space.
Billionaire and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos announced Thursday on Instagram that Funk will be part of a four-person crew set to be launched into space by Blue Origin during a 10-minute flight on his rocket New Shepard later this month.
Funk, 82, will be the oldest person ever to travel into space, after the late John Glenn set the current record at age 77 while aboard space shuttle Discovery in 1998.
Funk was one of the “Mercury 13” pilots who volunteered in 1961 to be part of a program to get women to qualify for Nasa’s astronaut program, independently led by William Randolph Lovelace, head of Nasa’s committee on life science.
The program was abruptly cancelled when the federal government decided women shouldn’t be allowed to use the military facilities needed for space training. None of the women ever made it into space – but now, Funk has the opportunity to do so on 20 July.
Wally Funk
Wedding News
Don Cheadle
Don Cheadle and his longtime love, Bridgid Coulter have tied the knot after being in a committed relationship for 28 years.
The 56-year-old Hollywood veteran appeared on The Ellen DeGeneres Show Wednesday and revealed to guest host Wanda Sykes that he and Bridgid Coulter got married amid the COVID-19 pandemic, PEOPLE reports.
“You texted me at the top of the year, I guess, and you told me that you just got married,” Sykes said. “And I was like, ‘Oh damn, the pandemic got to Don and Bridgid.'”
“I was like, ‘What the hell happened, man?'” she joked, noting that her response to him wasn’t joyful. “I think I just text something back, like, ‘Hey, if you’re happy, I’m happy for you.’ … I was like, ‘Cheadle went Hollywood.'”
Sykes went on to explain that she wasn’t aware that Cheadle and Coulter weren’t already married.
Don Cheadle
NFT Has HTML Error?
Tim Berners-Lee
Two weeks ago, World Wide Web creator Tim Berners-Lee sent an NFT of the web’s original source code to the auction block with a starting bid of just $1,000. Yesterday, Sotheby’s announced that the crypto asset sold for $5.4 million. The sum makes Berners-Lee’s work one of the priciest NFTs of all time.
The digital package included not just the source code but also a letter from Berners-Lee reflecting on the creation of the web, some original HTML documents, an SVG “poster” of thousands of lines of code, and a 30-minute visualization of the code being typed on a screen.
But there’s a twist. An eagle-eyed researcher pointed out on Twitter that the animation initially posted on the Sotheby’s site had errors in the code, possibly introduced when the person making the video fed the Objective-C code through an app or web service to produce the typing effect in the animation. Instead of angle brackets that are present in the code ( < and > ), the HTML codes for the symbols ( < and > ) appeared instead. On the poster, which was made by a Python script created by Berners-Lee, the brackets appear correct. Presumably, they are also correct in the code itself.
The code was corrected in later animations, raising questions about this particular NFT and NFTs as a whole. It’s unclear whether the video posted on the listing page for the auction was pulled directly from the animation originally included in the NFT, and we’ve reached out to Sotheby’s for clarification. But if it was, and if the later, corrected animation reflects what was actually sold, it could mean that the original NFT was scrapped and a new one was created.
Tim Berners-Lee
Legal Woes Mount
Divert & Deflect
No one could accuse Donald Trump (R-Lock Him Up) of lying low when the long arm of the law finally caught up with him.
On Wednesday the former US president visited the Mexico border, highlighting his favourite campaign issue, then held an hour-long televised town hall with Sean Hannity, his favourite Fox News host.
It looked like a typically Trumpian bid to deflect attention from a scandal that had been expected to erupt that day: tax-related charges against his company and its longtime money man, Allen Weisselberg.
As it transpired, Weisselberg did not surrender himself to the Manhattan district attorney’s office until 6.20am on Thursday, with a court appearance later in the day. But it is already clear that Trump intends to use all his old tactics to deflect, punch back and undermine the rule of law itself.
This is dangerous, because a significant minority of the American population appears ready to accept his lies and, if the events of 6 January at the US Capitol are any guide, resort to physical violence if necessary.
Divert & Deflect
Mysterious 'Catastrophe'
Undersea Nursery
Five-hundred million years ago, an enclave of ancient crustaceans, worms and other creepy-crawly creatures of the deep were tending to their newborn babies when disaster struck. An avalanche of sediment rushed downhill, burying thousands of the creatures and their offspring in an instant. What was once an undersea nursery became a graveyard — and, for some of the hundreds of species that had been living there, an untimely extinction site.
Now, researchers digging near the city of Kunming, China, have uncovered that Cambrian-era graveyard for the first time in half an eon, revealing one of the oldest and most diverse fossil troves ever found. The site, named the Haiyan Lagerstätte (from a German word meaning "storage place"), contains more than 2,800 fossil specimens from at least 118 species, including the ancestors of modern-day jellyfish, insects, crustaceans, worms, trilobites and sponges.
Seventeen of these species are new to science, according to a study published June 28 in the journal Nature Ecology and Evolution — and more than half (about 51%) of the specimens are juveniles, the researchers wrote, including many larval creatures with their soft tissues remarkably intact.
"It's just amazing to see all these juveniles in the fossil record," study co-author Julien Kimmig, collections manager at the Earth and Mineral Sciences Museum & Art Gallery at Penn State University, said in a statement. "Juvenile fossils are something we hardly see, especially from soft-bodied invertebrates."
The fossil trove dates to about 518 million years ago during the Cambrian period (540 to 490 million years ago), when all life on Earth lived in the oceans. (For comparison, the Triassic period, which saw the birth of the dinosaurs, began about 251 million years ago). This time was an era of biodiversity boom and bust, seeing an explosion of new species that set the stage for all modern animal groups, as well as devastating extinction events.
Undersea Nursery
99-Million-Year-Old Insects
Amber Specimens
Incredible specimens preserved in amber for 99 million years have revealed the amazing technicolor of insects that were alive when dinosaurs were still roaming the Earth. A new study published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B demonstrates in stunning technicolor what some insects from the mid-Cretaceous looked like, shedding new light on the behavior and ecology of insects in the deep geological past.
It’s unusual for fine structural detail to be preserved in the fossil record, meaning the coloration of most prehistoric animals involves extensive analysis combined with some artistic license. However, a treasure trove of 35 amber specimens lifted from a mine in northern Myanmar were found to have preserved the delicate morphology of insect species that coexisted with the dinosaurs.
The incredible collection of resin easter eggs contained a diverse range of insect life, from cuckoo wasps still sporting metallic blue, green, and yellow that CAI says are similar in color to today's cuckoo wasps, to a beetle species steeped in blue and purple. "We have seen thousands of amber fossils but the preservation of color in these specimens is extraordinary," said co-author Professor Huang Diying from NIGPAS.
Colour preserved in this way is called structural color and caused by tiny structures on the surface of the insect's exoskeleton scattering wavelengths of light to produce intense, iridescent colors. Structural color is the same phenomenon that makes the feathers of Cassowary birds so shiny.
Amber Specimens
Discovered In Coprolites
New Beetle
When we think of Jurassic Park, one of the first things that come to mind is John Hammond’s amber staff and the precious “dino DNA” that was extracted from the mosquito within. In reality, amber specimens have unfortunately/fortunately (depending on your persuasion towards giant apex predators) haven’t allowed us to bring dinosaurs back to life, but animals trapped within natural preservatives have provided new insights into ancient ecosystems. Just recently, a 50-million-year-old piece of amber revealed an unknown genus and species of fungus that erupted out of the rectum of an ancient carpenter ant. Now, science has discovered a new species of beetle only this time the preservative was a little less… glamorous.
A new study, published in the journal Current Biology, describes a new-to-science beetle species found preserved within the fossilized droppings of a dinosaur ancestor. Also known as coprolite, the stanky cocoon kept the beetles frozen in time, preserved in 3D formation and some even with their delicate legs and antennae fully intact. The dung is believed to have been deposited by a species from the Triassic period around 230 million years ago. That is one big pile of academic insight.
The team on the new study used synchrotron microtomography to take a look inside the coprolites, an imaging technique they were already familiar with having discussed its benefits for studying coprolites in a 2017 paper.
“We were looking at thin sections of coprolites and realized that there are a lot of interesting food remains still preserved within them,” first author Martin Qvarnström, a paleontologist at Uppsala University, Sweden, told IFLScience. The new-to-science beetle species has been named Triamyxa coprolithica, and it’s thought the samples were probably so well preserved thanks to the coprolites' calcium phosphatic composition and early mineralization facilitated by bacteria in the poop.
So, how did some near complete beetles come to get stuck inside a turd in the first place? The old fashioned way, says Qvarnström. “They were most likely ingested. The reason why we believe so is that most of the beetle remains are just represented by isolated bits and pieces. Only a few specimens are near complete. The reason why a few of the beetles are so complete is likely because a lot of beetles were ingested and that they were very small.”
New Beetle
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