from Bruce
Anecdotes
Problem-Solving
• At age 16, Jessica Hopper started a band that opened for DIY band Fugazi in the Twin Cities. This was a highly coveted gig, and many, many Twin Cities bands had telephoned the club’s booker to ask to be the opening band. How did Jessica’s band get the opening slot? Simple. She telephoned Fugazi directly. She says, “It worked — and p*ssed off every other band in town, because we were terrible.”
• A master carpenter had a job open, and an apprentice approached him for it. The master carpenter asked, “Have you ever made a mistake?” The young apprentice replied, “No,” thinking that his answer would get him the job. However, the master carpenter told him, “There is no way that I am going to hire you because when you do make a mistake, you won’t know how to fix it.”
• Until 1954, when he was drafted, New York Yankee Billy Martin, a small man, wore No. 12. During his military service, No. 1 became available, and it was waiting for him when he returned to professional baseball. According to Mr. Martin, the Yankee clubhouse manager had saved the number for him: “He said my back wasn’t big enough for two numbers.”
• While traveling by train, the great actress Sarah Bernhardt was annoyed by a German officer who would neither quit smoking nor allow her to open the window. Therefore, to breathe clean air she smashed her elbow against the window and broke it.
Profanity
• Harry S. Truman occasionally used profanity, something that Richard “Expletive Deleted” Nixon tried to make a campaign issue when he ran for President against John F. Kennedy. Mr. Kennedy responded, “I would not want to give the impression that I am taking former President Truman’s use of language lightly. I have sent him the following wire: ‘Dear Mr. President: I have noted with interest your suggestion as to where my opponent should go. While I understand and sympathize with your deep motivation, I think it important that our side try to refrain from raising the religious issue.”
• President Abraham Lincoln once reviewed the first corps of the army. Being driven to the place of review by an ambulance composed of a wagon and a team of six mules, President Lincoln listened for a while as the driver cursed his six mules, then he asked the man, “Are you an Episcopalian?” Startled, the mule-driver replied, “No, Mr. President, I am a Methodist.” President Lincoln then said, “I thought you must be an Episcopalian, because you swear just like Governor Seward, who is a church warden.”
• Umpire Augie Donatelli was the only umpire ever to throw Bobby Thompson out of a game. Later, Mr. Thompson asked Mr. Donatelli why he had done that. Mr. Donatelli explained that he had been forced to do it — Mr. Thompson had called him a #$%^&*. “That’s right,” said Mr. Thompson, “but why did you throw me out for that? No one heard it but you and me and the catcher.” “I know, Bobby,” said Mr. Donatelli, “but I didn’t want that catcher going through life thinking I was a #$%^&*.”
• The men soccer referees in Derby, England decided that they didn’t want to officiate the games of the women soccer players, so in 1973 they started teaching women to be referees. Why? Because the language of the women soccer players was too strong for the male referees; as an official explained, “Although the ladies’ keenness is commendable, [male] referees who officiate at their matches rarely want to do so again. … The language can be quite startling.”
***
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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: "Madison Ave. Shuffle"
Album: RESTING PLACE
Artist: Terry Robb
Artist Location: Portland, Oregon
Record Label: Yellow Dog Records
Record Label Location: Memphis, Tennessee
Info:
“TERRY ROBB has been praised by ROLLING STONE, VINTAGE GUITAR, DOWN BEAT, ACOUSTIC GUITAR, LIVING BLUES, GUITAR PLAYER, BLUES BLAST, GUITAR WORLD, BLUES MATTERS, BLUES REVUE, OPRAH'S O MAGAZINE and countless more esteemed journals, placing him among the top acoustic blues guitarists of our time. His signature fingerpicking style landed him in the Oregon Music Hall of Fame and earned him international acclaim from music critics, peers and fans. Incorporating elements from the Mississippi Delta, ragtime, country, swing and jazz, Robb is a dynamic live performer with an unmistakable one-man-band sound.
“‘Exquisite musicality … unquestionably, Robb ranks right up there with the heavy hitters, a player of dazzling skill and technique … finger gawkers flood to his shows,” says Frank Matheis of LIVING BLUES magazine.
“‘It’s the rare guitarist who can whip off a killer 12-bar blues solo, then turn around fingerpick Travis-style with speed and subtlety,’ mused Ian Zack of ACOUSTIC GUITAR magazine.”
“‘Acoustic Blues with a contemporary edge’ from twenty-time winner (actually, we've lost count a while back) of the Cascade Blues Association's Muddy Award.”
“Guitar virtuoso Terry Robb – multiple winner of the Cascade Blues Association’s Muddy Award – is one of the most heralded players of the flourishing Pacific Northwest blues scene. Resting Place, his debut album with Yellow Dog Records, features well-chosen covers that compliment Robb’s originals, echoing a broad swath of roots legends such as Merle Travis, Joe Callicott, Reverend Gary Davis, Lightning Hopkins, and John Fahey.
“Robb traveled to Memphis for a dream recording session with engineer Roland Janes (Jerry Lee Lewis) — linchpin of hundreds of Sun Records and Sam Phillips recording sessions. Anchoring the date were some of Memphis’ finest: drummer Willie Hall (Isaac Hayes, The Blues Brothers, The Bo-Keys), bassist Paul Taylor (North Mississippi Allstars), and keyboard man Charlie Wood (B.B. King, The Bo-Keys).
“Combined with solo tracks showcasing Robb’s phenomenal fingerpicking, the resulting album is a tour-de-force of acoustic blues guitar.”
“Yellow Dog Records carries the living lore of authentic American music into the present. Featuring new interpretations of Blues, Jazz, Soul, and Americana styles by established and emerging artists, Yellow Dog Records is where innovation confronts tradition. What’s left after the collision? Inspired explorations of America's musical roots.”
Price: $1 (USD) for track; $8 (USD) for 13-track album
Genre: Instrumental Blues.
Links:
RESTING PLACE
Terry Robb on Bandcamp
Terry Robb on YouTube
Terry Robb Official Website
“Terry Robb” Wikipedia Article
Yellow Dog Records
“Yellow Dog Records” Wikipedia Article
Other Links:
Bruce’s Music Recommendations: FREE pdfs
David Bruce's Amazon Author Page
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Reader Comment
Current Events
Linda >^..^<
We are all only temporarily able bodied.
Thanks, Linda!
that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
And back to sunny and seasonal.
What Happened
Golden Globes
Long billed as Hollywood’s “party of the year,” Sunday’s Golden Globes more closely resembled an intimate tax attorneys’ convention.
Still rebounding from months of controversy triggered by a February 2021 Times investigation, largely shunned by the industry and hampered by a coronavirus surge, the HFPA held its 79th awards ceremony, for all intents and purposes, in the dark. There were no celebrities (at least outside of pretaped well-wishes from Jamie Lee Curtis and Arnold Schwarzenegger, separately lending support to the group's charitable giving), red carpet, audience or marquee-name host onstage the Beverly Hilton’s ballroom. The ceremony itself wasn’t broadcast on television nor was it or livestreamed.
Instead, the ceremony took place notably in the shadow of actor Tom Cruise having returned his three Globes while actress Scarlett Johansson urged her fellow actors to "step back" from the association. The usual galaxy of stars and boozy revelry was replaced with a focus on the HFPA’s philanthropic activities and its new five-year partnership with the NAACP to promote greater inclusion in the film industry. Presenters included representatives of arts organizations such as NewFilmmakers Los Angeles and the Latino Film Institute.
And "it took about hour an half," the member said with a laugh. "That might be something we want to keep for future, instead of going three hours."
The complete list of 2022 Golden Globe winners
Golden Globes
Weekend Box Office
“Spider-Man: No Way Home”
Spider-Man’s box office dominance continued in its fourth weekend in theaters, adding another $33 million, according to studio estimates on Sunday. With $668.8 million in North American ticket sales to date, “Spider-Man: No Way Home” is now the sixth highest grossing release of all time domestically. Globally, with $1.5 billion and counting, it ranks in eighth place.
The only major new film this weekend was Universal’s “The 355,” an original spy thriller starring Jessica Chastain, Lupita Nyong’o, Diane Kruger and Penelope Cruz, which debuted in third place with $4.8 million from 3,145 North American theaters. Directed by Simon Kingberg, reviews for the film about a global coalition of female spies have been less than stellar: It holds a 27% on Rotten Tomatoes.
“The 355” came in behind the animated “Sing 2,” also distributed by Universal, which grossed an estimated $12 million in its third weekend in theaters, bringing its global total to $190.8 million.
Estimated ticket sales for Friday through Sunday at U.S. and Canadian theaters, according to Comscore. Final domestic figures will be released Monday.
1. “Spider-Man: No Way Home,” $33 million.
2. “Sing 2,” $12 million.
3. “The 355,” $4.8 million.
4. “The King’s Man,” $3.4 million.
5. “American Underdog,” $2.4 million.
6. “The Matrix Resurrections,” $1.9 million.
7. “West Side Story,” $1.4 million.
8. “Ghostbusters: Afterlife,” $1.1 million.
9. “Licorice Pizza,” $1 million.
10. “House of Gucci,” $632,348.
“Spider-Man: No Way Home”
Rupert's State TV
Cable Cabinet
Fox News hosts were more influential in the White House than previously known, often acting as shadow advisors to the president in private phone calls. According to a Washington Post report, the former President Donald Trump would frequently speak with Fox anchors like Sean Hannity or Judge Jeanine Pirro, who had a direct phone number to reach him in the White House residence, and then pass their recommendations on to his staff.
“There were times the president would come down the next morning and say, ‘Well, Sean thinks we should do this,’ or, ‘Judge Jeanine thinks we should do this,’ ” Grisham, who resigned after the Jan. 6 insurrection, told the paper. These suggestions from Fox personalities, she said, would often frustrate staff as the hosts shared their thoughts on topics ranging from White House personnel to how to frame the president’s message. Trump The election loser would even dial Hannity and former Fox Business host Lou Dobbs into Oval Office staff meetings, a former administration official told The Post. Grisham also recently revealed that on Jan. 6, Trump was “gleefully” watching the violence unfold on television.
Text messages Meadows turned over to the Jan. 6 committee further confirmed the close relationship between the Trump administration and Fox News. Hosts were frantically messaging Meadows, begging him to get Trump to make a statement to quell the violence. “Can he make a statement? Ask people to leave the Capitol,” Hannity wrote on Jan. 6. Days earlier, the Fox host pushed Meadows to get the president to stop talking about the election, which Trump falsely and repeatedly claimed was stolen from him.
Even as the coronavirus began to spread in the winter and spring of 2020, Fox News hosts were intimately involved with Trump. That March, host Tucker Carlson met with Trump at his Mar-a-Lago resort where he warned the president that Covid-19 could cost him the election, The Post reported. Trump, however, droned on about how the virus was not as deadly as the flu.
Cable Cabinet
National Library
Israel
Israel's national library says the number of visitors to its Arabic website more than doubled last year, driven by a growing collection of digitized materials and an aggressive outreach campaign to the Arab world.
Around 650,000 users, predominantly from the Palestinian territories, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Algeria, visited the National Library of Israel's English and Arabic sites in 2021, said library spokesman Zack Rothbart.
One of the most heavily trafficked resources on the Arabic website is a newspaper archive with more than 200,000 pages of Arabic publications from Ottoman and British Mandate Palestine, said Raquel Ukeles, head of the library’s collections.
The Jerusalem library is home to an extensive collection of Islamic and Arabic texts, including thousands of rare books and manuscripts in Arabic, Persian and Turkish ranging from the 9th to the 20th centuries.
Among the jewels in the crown of the collection are a 9th-century Quran from modern-day Iran with the earliest known example of Persian written in the Arabic script; an illuminated manuscript from 17th century India with illustrations of the life of Alexander the Great; and a 16th century Ottoman Turkish text on ophthalmology.
Israel
'Sacred Number'
Loser Lies
Former President Donald Trump complained that the media doesn't report how "massive" the crowd was for his speech on January 6 before his supporters stormed the Capitol.
"The crowd itself was the biggest crowd I've ever – and I've spoken before the biggest crowds – the biggest crowd I've ever spoken by far, by numerous times I think," Trump said in an interview with right-wing propaganda network One America News that aired on Wednesday.
"The real number I won't say because it'll be a headline 'oh he exaggerated the number.' The real number was over that sacred number– you know what that number was right?" Trump said.
It is unclear what the former president meant by "sacred number," but OAN host Christina Bobb said she knew what he meant.
"There was love that day. There was so much love out there during the speech," Trump said.
Loser Lies
Really?
Civil War
Joe Biden had spent a year in the hope that America could go back to normal. But last Thursday, the first anniversary of the deadly insurrection at the US Capitol, the president finally recognised the full scale of the current threat to American democracy.
“At this moment, we must decide,” Biden said in Statuary Hall, where rioters had swarmed a year earlier. “What kind of nation are we going to be? Are we going to be a nation that accepts political violence as a norm?”
It is a question that many inside America and beyond are now asking. In a deeply divided society, where even a national tragedy such as 6 January only pushed people further apart, there is fear that that day was the just the beginning of a wave of unrest, conflict and domestic terrorism.
A slew of recent opinion polls show a significant minority of Americans at ease with the idea of violence against the government. Even talk of a second American civil war has gone from fringe fantasy to media mainstream.
The mere fact that such notions are entering the public domain shows the once unthinkable has become thinkable, even though some would argue it remains firmly improbable.
Civil War
Spur Paternity Surprises
DNA Tests
Vanner Johnson’s wife, Donna, had purchased the take-home genetic testing kit 23andMe for fun. But when her husband received his family’s 23andMe results in August 2019, he noticed something odd. His 11-year-old son, Tim, wasn’t listed as his biological relative. The couple soon learned that the hospital where Donna had undergone in vitro fertilization, or IVF, 12 years earlier had most likely mixed up the sperm samples. Vanner wasn’t Tim’s biological dad.
“There were so many questions with no answers,” Donna said. “We had no idea who our son’s biological father was.” When the Johnsons finally tracked down Tim’s biological dad early last year, using a second DNA test and some strategic Googling, they learned that he had been another patient at the fertility clinic.
The Johnsons’ story is one of many paternity secrets that have come to light in recent years as the popularity of take-home genetic tests has exploded. In September and October, 23andMe’s website sales shot up by more than 47 percent, according to data from the analytics firm Bloomberg Second Measure. Some fertility lawyers said they tended to see more such cases after family members gave the tests as holiday gifts.
“I have seen a substantial increase in these cases over the past few years,” said Adam B. Wolf, a lawyer specializing in fertility fraud lawsuits. “Our clients typically call in February after receiving the results of the at-home DNA tests they receive for the holidays.”
DNA Tests
Growing Global Shortage
Potatoes
There's a growing global potato shortage - a real problem for a planet addicted to french fries and chips.
A number of popular items, including marmite and cream cheese, have faced scarcities amid supply chain disruptions wrought by the coronavirus pandemic and extreme weather. Potatoes are the latest to join the list, becoming unevenly available in some countries and fast-food chains because of a confluence of factors.
In Japan, McDonald's locations stopped offering large and medium-size french fry orders late last month, after pandemic-related supply chain issues and floods in the Port of Vancouver delayed potato shipments.
Days later, South Africa's leading makers of potato chips warned that potatoes were in disturbingly short supply after a bad frost and excessive rains led to low local yields, on top of global sourcing shortages.
China, Russia, India and the United States are the world's top potato producers. But last year, U.S. farmers had to destroy a glut of millions of potatoes after lockdowns and stay-at-home orders led to a steep decline in demand, including from restaurants. The U.S. potato crop declined by 2% in 2021, according to a November report by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Potatoes
Discovering 'Nothing'
Science
In science, as in life, we all like to celebrate the big news.
We confirmed the existence of black holes by the ripples they create in space time. We photographed the shadow of a black hole. We figured out how to edit DNA. We found the Higgs boson!
What we don't usually hear about is the years of back-breaking, painstaking hard work that delivers inconclusive results, appearing to provide no evidence for the questions scientists ask – the incremental application of constraints that bring us ever closer to finding answers and making discoveries.
Yet without non-detections – what we call the null result – the progress of science would often be slowed and stymied. Null results drive us forward. They keep us from repeating the same errors, and shape the direction of future studies.
Often, however, null results don't make it to scientific publications. This not only can generate significant inefficiencies in the way science is done, it's an indicator of potentially bigger problems in the current scientific publication processes.
Science
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