Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Paul Krugman: The Economics of Soaking the Rich (NY Times Blog)
What does Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez know about tax policy? A lot.
Jonathan Chait: Rich People's Houses Have Walls. Also Roofs. The U.S. Should Have a Roof. (NY Mag, Satire)
No serious person would dispute that any features found in high-end housing should be replicated for the United States as a whole. Once the roof is installed, the country should get to work on national granite countertops, a national mud room - Florida would be perfect, it would hardly have to change a thing - and maybe even a national panic room. Actually, given the way things are going now, the panic room might be the first priority.
Jonathan Chait: Donald Trump Was Never Vetted (NY Mag)
One reason Trump has escaped scrutiny, of course, is that he has withheld his tax returns. The more information about his finances that dribbles out, of course, the more explicable that decision appears. Trump has an obvious motive to conceal his decades of dependency on his father's largesse, as well as the apparent role played by Russian money laundering in replacing those cash infusions after his father's money ran out.
Alexandra Petri: How to be likable (Washington Post, Satire)
Foul language is out. No swearing if you want to be liked. Not if you want to be respected. Foul language is for ill-bred people not fit to be seen in polite company, such as the president of the United States.
Ian Lecklitner: RANKING VEGETABLES BY HOW HEALTHY THEY ARE (Mel Magazine)
I've said it before, and I'll say it again: Everyone should eat more vegetables. But if navigating the produce section gives you anxiety, don't worry: I asked nutritionist David Friedman, author of Food Sanity: How to Eat in a World of Fads and Fiction, to help me rank popular vegetables - from superfood to just plain really healthy.
Good News (Future Crunch)
"For the past year, despite all the tragically terrifying news that we have heard on the news, Future Crunch has been scouring all over to find the stories that could make you feel some good vibes for a change. This is their collection of good news for 2018." - Neatorama
Everything that no one tells you about being an introvert - and a parent (iNews)
Lucy Mangan just wants some peace and quiet.
Lucy Mangan: "Black Mirror: Bandersnatch review - the TV of tomorrow is now here" (The Guardian)
In just one episode, Charlie Brooker's interactive adventure has upended everything we relied on for entertainment and sanity. What a rush.
Dante PDFs and Links (davidbruceblog#2)
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 Lulu Storefront
David Bruce's Apple iBookstore
David Bruce has over 100 Kindle books on Amazon.com.
Presenting
Michael Egan
took the day off.
has returned to semi-retired status.
In memory.
Reader Suggestion
Michelle in AZ
Reader Comment
Rump's foul mouth
Hello again ---
I thought you might want to see this video:
from Bruce
Anecdotes
Mariah Carey worked hard to become the major musical success she is. When she was a teenager, she got very little sleep. During the day, she worked in a restaurant, and at night she went to a music studio, writing and recording songs until 7 a.m. Then she slept for "a couple of hours," she says, and woke up and did the same thing again. Some of her older musician friends were amazed at what she was doing. They would ask her, "Why are you working so hard?" Ms. Carey says that she knew that they were "loafing about in the middle of the day," and she would think, "Because I don't want to be like you." Her first five singles all reached No. 1 in the United States. She has a bit of a reputation for being a diva, but she says, "I try not to be a jerk. I really do." She also says that rumors about her are just that: rumors. For example, she says, "They said I wouldn't come into a hotel unless there were petals on the floor. I'm like, do you really think at 3 a.m. I give a s**t what I'm walking on?"
While serving in the United States Army in Germany, Richard Peck noticed that the soldiers were bored by the chaplain's sermon, so he wrote a sermon that he knew would address a topic that the soldiers were interested in, and he slipped it under the chaplain's door. He was happy when the chaplain delivered it the next Sunday, so he wrote another sermon. This time, he made sure that he was caught when he slipped the sermon under the chaplain's door, and he became the chaplain's assistant. Not only did he write the chaplain's sermons, but he also counseled the soldiers, an experience that helped him when he became an author of novels for young people.
David Wolff, the manager of musician Cyndi Lauper, started his career as a musician, an insecure job that necessitated stints at ordinary jobs to get money to live on. Once, he needed a job as an exterminator. He knew that the person doing the hiring would not like his long hair, so he wore a short-hair wig when he interviewed for the job, which he got. However, on his first day on the job he did not wear the wig. The man who had hired him looked at his long ponytail and said, "You didn't look like that yesterday. You better be real good at this." Actually, Mr. Wolff quit after a month because he hated the straight job.
Phil Schaap, a jazz disc jockey in New York, really knows his stuff. While he was in college, he auditioned to be a disc jockey at WKCR. Another student gave him a blindfold test, playing records for him to identify while he was blindfolded so he could not look at the album cover. Mr. Schaap quickly identified some famous pianists such as Count Basie and McCoy Tyner, so the student played someone who was not nearly as well known. Ms. Schaap immediately identified him: "That's Richard Aaron Katz, born March 13, 1924, in Baltimore, Maryland." The other student was impressed. By the way, the other student was Mr. Katz' son.
Action movie star Jean-Claude Van Damme worked for a while as a limo driver. Once, a customer-the publisher of a big magazine-asked him if he could drive from the airport to Malibu in 20 minutes. Mr. Van Damme did it, flooring the gas pedal and driving through red lights. When he got to Malibu, he opened the door for the magazine publisher, who told him, "You drive too fast"-and did not give him a tip.
***
© Copyright Bruce D. Bruce; All Rights Reserved
***
Bonus Links
Jeannie the Teed-Off Temp
Reader Comment
Current Events
Quotations by Women
You might find this interesting:
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
JD is on vacation.
Visit JD's site - Kitty Litter Music
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Dry day, rainy night.
Doubles Down
Robert De Niro
Just over two months after receiving a pipe bomb in the mail from a Trump supporter, Robert De Niro is doubling down on his criticism of the president.
"When you see someone like [Trump] becoming president, I thought, well, OK, let's see what he does - maybe he'll change," De Niro told The Guardian in an interview published Sunday. "But he just got worse. It showed me that he is a real racist. I thought maybe as a New Yorker he understands the diversity in the city but he's as bad as I thought he was before - and much worse. It's a shame. It's a bad thing in this country."
The actor told the newspaper he believes Trump is a white supremacist, and when asked if he also thinks the president is a fascist, he answered, "I guess that's what it leads to. If he had his way, we'd wind up in a very bad state in this country. I mean, the way I understand it, they laughed at Hitler. They all look funny. Hitler looked funny, Mussolini looked funny and other dictators and despots look funny."
De Niro has six biracial children with three black women: two with his first wife, actress Diahnne Abbott; two with longtime girlfriend Toukie Smith, also an actress; and two with soon-to-be ex-wife Grace Hightower. He said this makes him feel even more concerned about the right-wing leanings of the current administration.
"Yeah, I worry, and one of my kids is gay, and he worries about being treated a certain way. We talk about it," De Niro told the Guardian.
Robert De Niro
J/P Haitian Relief Organization
Anderson Cooper
When Anderson Cooper first met Sean Penn after the 2010 earthquake in Haiti, the CNN anchor was initially skeptical of the actor's intentions to help the recovery efforts in the ravaged country. In time, Penn won Cooper over.
"I'm not sure how Sean got to Port-au-Prince, Haiti. It certainly was not easy. I'm not sure how much of a plan he had when he got there. But he didn't just come by himself, he came with a team," Cooper told a star-studded crowd Saturday night at Penn's ninth annual benefit for the J/P Haitian Relief Organization.
The fundraiser raised $3.5 million at the Wiltern Theater in Los Angeles. Some individual plates cost $10,000, while tables ranged up to $100,000.
During Saturday's event, Penn unveiled the name change of his Haitian Relief Organization to the Community Organized Relief Effort (CORE). He wants his charity to expand its efforts from Haiti to more areas in the United States.
Larry David, Casey Affleck, Sarah Silverman, Jimmy Kimmel, Ben Stiller and Garcelle Beauvais were among the guests at the gala dinner. Musical performances were by Macy Gray, Billie Eilish and Yusuf Islam (Cat Stevens) as the headliner.
Anderson Cooper
Raising Prices, Again
Disneyland
Disneyland Resort is raising prices ahead of the scheduled opening of a Star Wars-themed expansion, with the cheapest daily ticket costing more than $100.
Less than a year ago, prices were raised by up to 18 percent. The prices that took effect Sunday for tickets, annual passes and parking represent increases of up to 25 percent.
A one-day, one-park ticket is now $104 for low-demand days, such as May weekdays. Tickets for regular- and peak-demand days are more.
The least expensive one-day ticket to Disney World in Florida is $109.
Disneyland
Bluefin Tuna
Sushi
Japan's self-styled "tuna king" has set a new record by paying £2.5m for a single fish.
Kiyoshi Kimura, who owns a chain of sushi restaurants paid the huge sum for a 278kg bluefin tuna caught off the coast of northern Japan's Aomori prefecture, at Tokyo's famous new year fish auction.
The previous record was £1.1m, also paid by Mr Kimura in 2013. The sushi tycoon had spent the most on a single fish at the auction each year from 2012 to 2017.
The auction was the first since the historic Tsukiji fish market in Tokyo closed down and moved to a new site, at a former gas plant in Toyosu.
Ordinarily, a similar-sized tuna would sell for only £47,000, but Mr Kimura regularly pays huge sums at the new year auction in part to drum up publicity for his Sushi Zanmai chain of restaurants.
Sushi
Sharp Drop In California
Monarch Butterflies
Researchers with an environmental group have labeled as "disturbingly low" the number of western monarch butterflies that migrate along the California coast.
A recent count by the Xerces Society recorded fewer than 30,000 butterflies, which it said is an 86 percent decline since 2017.
By comparison, the group in 1981 counted more than 1 million western monarchs wintering in California, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.
The Xerces Society conducts annual Thanksgiving and New Year's counts and was not certain what caused the numbers to drop. It said there is no substantial evidence of a delayed migration and butterflies are not being reported in other parts of the country.
Scientists say the butterflies are threatened by pesticides, herbicides and destruction along their migratory route. They also have noted climate change impacts.
Monarch Butterflies
King Abdicates
Malaysia
Malaysia's King Muhammad V abdicated on Sunday, the palace said, after two years on the throne, the first time a monarch has stepped down before completing their five-year tenure.
The king's resignation took effect immediately, the National Palace said in a statement. No reason was given and palace officials did not respond to requests for comment.
A week ago, the king, 49, had resumed duties after spending two months on medical leave. Images purporting to show him getting married in Russia appeared on social media in December. The palace did not respond to requests for comment on the photos or reports of a marriage.
Malaysia is a constitutional monarchy and the king assumes a largely ceremonial role, including as the custodian of Islam in the Muslim-majority country. However, the king's assent is needed before the appointment of a prime minister or senior public officials.
Malaysia has nine royal households, who typically take turns to sit on the throne, and the selection of the next king is decided by a vote in the Council of Rulers, made up of all nine royal households.
Malaysia
Makeshift Goldmine
Afghanistan
At least 30 people have been killed after a landslide destroyed an illegal gold mine in in Afghanistan's northern Badakhshan province.
Sanaullah Rohani, a provincial police spokesman, said a further seven people were injured while working in a tunnel in Kohistan district on Sunday.
Officials said the victims were villagers who were mining for gold in the makeshift tunnel when a landslide and flash flood engulfed a nearby riverbed.
"Poor villagers during winters try to compensate their earnings by pursuing illegal mining," Nek Mohammad Nazari, a spokesman for the provincial governor, said.
He added that casualty numbers could rise as about 50 miners were present in the tunnel when it caved in.
Afghanistan
An Expanding Bubble in an Extra Dimension?
Our Universe
Like a bit of froth on the crest of an ocean wave, our observable universe may be nothing more than a sliver sitting within the edge of a bubble that's constantly expanding into a higher dimension.
While this mind-boggling idea might sound like something out of a physicist's fever dream, it is in fact a new endeavor to reconcile the mathematics of string theory with the reality of dark energy, a mysterious, all-pervading cosmic force that acts in opposition to gravity.
String theory is an attempt to unite the two pillars of 20th century physics - quantum mechanics and gravity - by positing that all particles are one-dimensional strings whose vibrations determine properties such as mass and charge. The theory has been described as mathematically beautiful, and for a long time has been one of the leading contenders for what scientists call a Theory of Everything, meaning a framework to explain all physics, popularized in books like Brian Greene's The Elegant Universe (Norton, 1999).
But string theorists have lately been lost in a warren of their own speculations. Many versions of string theory require that reality consist of 10 or more dimensions - the three of space and one of time we normally experience, plus many others that are rolled up into an extremely tight point. Exactly how those extra dimensions are configured determines the characteristics of the universe we perceive.
In the early 2000s, researchers realized that string theory allowed for as many as 10^500 (that's the number 1 followed by 500 zeroes) unique universes to exist, creating a multiverse landscape in which our particular universe was just a tiny subsection, as Live Science previously reported. But string theory equations also mostly produced hypothetical universes lacking in dark energy, which astronomers discovered in the 1990s and which is currently accelerating the expansion of the cosmos.
Our Universe
Weekend Box Office
'Aquaman'
"Aquaman" is still the champ at the box office three weeks in, but the high-concept thriller "Escape Room" also drew some substantial crowds in its debut weekend.
Warner Bros. on Sunday says that "Aquaman" has added an estimated $30.7 million from over 4,000 North American theaters. That brings its domestic grosses to nearly $260 million. The DC comics film starring Jason Momoa has had a tidal wave of successes internationally too.
Even with the slew of holiday releases, from blockbusters to awards darlings, Sony's PG-13 rated thriller "Escape Room" managed to sneak into second place in its first weekend in theaters generating an estimated $18 million in ticket sales - double its production budget.
Disney's "Mary Poppins Returns" landed in third place in its third weekend with $15.8 million. The nostalgic musical has earned $138.7 million domestically and is competing for four Golden Globe Awards Sunday evening. Globally, it's made $257.9 million.
Estimated ticket sales for Friday through Sunday at U.S. and Canadian theaters, according to Comscore. Where available, the latest international numbers for Friday through Sunday are also included. Final domestic figures will be released Monday.
1."Aquaman," $30.7 million ($56.2 million international).
2."Escape Room," $18 million.
3."Mary Poppins Returns," $15.8 million ($23 million international).
4."Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse," $13 million ($11.7 million international)
5."Bumblebee," $12.8 million ($82.7 million international).
6."The Mule," $9 million.
7."Vice," $5.8 million ($1.3 million international).
8."Second Act," $4.9 million ($1.4 million international).
9."Ralph Break the Internet," $4.7 million ($25 million international).
10."Holmes and Watson," $3.4 million ($1.7 million international).
'Aquaman'
| CURRENT MOON lunar phases |
