Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Drag Queen Elsa Helped Save A Police Wagon During A Blizzard In Boston (Neatorama)
When Elsa stopped being a cold-hearted villain and changed her wicked ways she promised her sister Anna that she would become a chilly force for good, dropping the brooding bad girl act to become a hero. And it appears Elsa has kept her promise to Anna and is continuing to help us mere mortals whenever she can, making an appearance in Boston during a blizzard.
Jeremy Stahl: The Only Relevant Known Fact About McCabe's Firing Is That He Is a Key Witness Against Trump (Slate)
Former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe would be one of the top two or three key witnesses in any obstruction of justice case against President Donald Trump. On Friday, Trump's Attorney General Jeff Sessions destroyed McCabe professionally in a way that could ruin his reputation for telling the truth.
Ted Rall: Democrats Should Run On Impeachment (Creators Syndicate)
Democrats are already counting their electoral chickens for the midterms - but their unwillingness to lay out a clear agenda may be about to hand the party their second devastating defeat in two years.
Lenore Skenazy: Spies and Dolls (Creators Syndicate)
A recent article in The New York Times noted that the My Friend Cayla doll "talks and responds to children's questions. ... But there's something else that Cayla might bring into homes as well: hackers and identity thieves."
Froma Harrop: Report From the Chemo Infusion Room (Creators Syndicate)
I write you from the infusion room at a community hospital. I'm here not as a patient but as a driver and companion of an elderly friend being treated for cancer. Right now, he's attached to a chemo bag and snoozing. Let me share some observations.
Froma Harrop: What Computers Know About Us and Think They Know (Creators Syndicate)
The electric company sends me colorful reports on my monthly energy habits. A recent one rated me "above average" in electricity use compared with my supposedly more extravagant neighbors. I'm usually "average." I would have basked in such praise were it not for this pertinent fact: I wasn't home that month.
Mark Shields: 50 St. Patrick's Days Ago (Creators Syndicate)
After a lifetime spent in the company of the rogues, the rascals and, yes, the phonies of politics, I have concluded that American voters are searching for one of two presidential types: a warm conservative with a generous heart or a tough liberal with a steel backbone. As the late wise conservative leader Jeffrey Bell once said admiringly of Robert F. Kennedy, who began his tragic run for president on the eve of St. Patrick's Day a half-century ago, since RFK, "no liberal leader has come close to uniting blacks and northern working-class whites."
David Bruce's Amazon Author Page
David Bruce's Smashwords Page
David Bruce's Blog
David Bruce's Lulu Storefront
David Bruce's Apple iBookstore
David Bruce has over 80 Kindle books on Amazon.com.
Presenting
Michael Egan
wrote:
has returned to semi-retired status.
In memory.
Reader Suggestion
Michelle in AZ
Reader Comment
Current Events
Linda >^..^<
We are all only temporarily able bodied.
Thanks, Linda!
Bonus Links
Jeannie the Teed-Off Temp
from Marc Perkel
Marc's Guide to Curing Cancer
So far so good on beating cancer for now. I'm doing fine. At the end of the month I'll be 16 months into an 8 month mean lifespan. And yesterday I went on a 7 mile hike and managed to keep up with the hiking group I was with. So, doing something right.
Still waiting for future test results and should see things headed in the right direction. I can say that it's not likely that anything dire happens in the short term so that means that I should have time to make several more attempts at this. So even if it doesn't work the first time there are a lot of variations to try. So if there's bad news it will help me pick the next radiation target.
I have written a "how to" guide for oncologists to perform the treatment that I got. I'm convinced that I'm definitely onto something and whether it works for me or not isn't the definitive test. I know if other people tried this that it would work for some of them, and if they improve it that it will work for a lot of them.
The guide is quite detailed and any doctor reading this can understand the procedure at every level. I also go into detail as to how it works, how I figured it out, and variations and improvements that could be tried to enhance it. I also introduce new ways to look at the problem. There is a lot of room for improvement and I think that doctors reading it will see what I'm talking about and want to build on it. And it's written so that if you're not a doctor you can still follow it. It also has a personal story revealing that I'm the class clown of cancer support group. I give great interviews and I look pretty hot in a lab coat.
So, feel free to read this and see what I'm talking about. But if any of you want to help then pass this around to both doctors and cancer patients. I need some media coverage. I'm looking for as many eyeballs as possible to read these ideas. Even if this isn't the solution, it's definitely on the right track. After all, I did hike 7 miles yesterday. And this hiking group wasn't moving slow. So if this isn't working then, why am I still here?
I also see curing cancer as more of an engineering problem that a medical problem. So if you are good at solving problems and most of what you know about medicine was watching the Dr. House MD TV show, then you're at the level I was at when I started. So anyone can jump in and be part of the solution.
Here is a link to my guide: Oncologists Guide to Curing Cancer using Abscopal Effect
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
"ECOLOGICALLY BASED POST-CAPITALISM."
"IT'S BARE-FACED GREED."
PRESIDENT TRUMP IS A TRAITOR!
THE REPUG ZOMBIE-CONS ARE BACK.
A PREDICTION FOR DISASTER!
IS 'FACEBOOK' A DANGER TO HUMAN FREEDOM?
I LOVE THE SMELL OF 'FEAR' IN THE MORNING.
HE SAID. HE SAID!
THE JEFF SESSIONS.
"HORRIFIED AND EMBARRASSED"
Visit JD's site - Kitty Litter Music
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
The of the big springs for the garage door snapped. Yikes.
Renewed for Season 3 - Or Is It 11?
'Will and Grace'
Will and Grace's return to TV doesn't look to be all that temporary.
NBC announced Saturday at PaleyFest that it has committed to a third season of the revived sitcom, its 11th season overall. This early order comes before production has even begun on the second season of the popular revival. The second and third seasons of the revival will be for a total of 18 episodes each, up five from this year's run.
Stars Eric McCormack, Debra Messing, Megan Mullally and Sean Hayes - each of whom received a nice raise for the 2018-19 season - are all returning, as are co-creators and showrunners David Kohan and Max Mutchnick. This is the second time that NBC has jumped the gun and given Will & Grace the early re-up, its cast's busy schedules being a prominent factor. NBC announced a renewal before the new episodes even started airing last fall.
The network's faith has not been misplaced. Season-to-date, the new Will & Grace ranks as NBC's No. 1 comedy and the No. 2 comedy, overall, on TV. (With an average 3.1 rating among adults 18-49, its tied with ABC's Modern Family for runner-up status to The Big Bang Theory.)
Will & Grace's influence on the TV ecosystem has been significant. When NBC chief Bob Greenblatt announced that the series would be returning after nearly ten years off the air, inspired by a politically-motivated viral video reunion, others quickly followed suit. ABC commissioned a new season of long-dead Roseanne, and CBS ordered a revival of Candice Bergen starrer Murphy Brown. The through-line between this trio, of course, is that they all have something to say about the current political divide in America - not that it's stopping some of the less-topical sitcoms from making a go at it. Sony is trying to reassemble Helen Hunt and Paul Reiser for a new string of Mad About You episodes.
'Will and Grace'
No #MeToo Moment
Barbra Streisand
Barbra Streisand said she's never suffered sexual harassment but has felt abused by the media.
During a tribute to Streisand's decades of TV music specials and other programs, producer and long-time admirer Ryan Murphy queried her about her career, the #MeToo movement and her aversion to interviews.
"Never," she replied when asked if she had been sexually mistreated. "I wasn't like those pretty girls with those nice little noses. Maybe that's why."
Her reluctance to talk to news outlets is based on years of what she called inaccurate reporting, including one story that claimed she has an "awards room" at home dedicated to her Oscars, Emmys and other trophies. But it was the late TV journalist Mike Wallace who came in for the sharpest criticism.
Streisand also is known for her political activism on behalf of Democratic candidates and issues including gay rights.
Barbra Streisand
Paints a Portrait
Jim Carrey
Jim Carrey's a complicated guy. Between the Netflix documentary "Jim & Andy: The Great Beyond" and his own candid remarks, the last year has revealed more and more about the actor's inner world - which isn't always funny. Carrey's proclivity for art has also made headlines, and yesterday he tweeted his latest creation: an unflattering portrait of White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, whom he describes as "monstrous."
"This is the portrait of a so-called Christian whose only purpose in life is to lie for the wicked. Monstrous!" he wrote alongside the painting, which almost makes Sanders look like a character from "Beavis & Butt-Head." Sanders has a contentious relationship with the media and anyone else who questions the erratic actions, tweets, and attitude of her boss; the problem, it seems, is always the press and never the president.
Carrey's Twitter feed is largely devoted to his art. Earlier this week he unveiled a far more flattering portrait of Stephen Hawking, "the greatest mental athlete of our time," upon the physicist's passing at age 76.
Jim Carrey
Funnier Than Us
Terry Gilliam
Monty Python's Terry Gilliam could be forgiven for thinking the whole Donald Trump (R-Crooked) presidency is a joke on him.
This is a man after all who renounced his American citizenship in protest at George W. Bush.
"For years I was saying we are getting to the point of having a complete conman for a president," the film director and animator told AFP, "And now here we are...
"For somebody who likes turning things upside down, I should be enjoying this -- but Trump is an idiot," said the maker of "Brazil" and "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas".
"It makes me feel like I've gotten very old and I am living through a nightmare," he added.
Terry Gilliam
Man Behind The Discovery
'Steve'
Notanee Bourassa was a teenager in a run-down part of Regina. His father was dying of lung cancer. School and home were trouble alike. Then he tilted back his neck.
"The Northern Lights allowed me to escape all of that and to realize there's more to life than where you are right now, and to survive," he says, 30 years later. In his first sighting, he says bands of light on both sides of the sky appeared to meet in a continuous arc. "The aurora ribbons had actually joined, and I was underneath the ribbons in a back alley because it's the darkest place I could find. I was hooked."
Bourassa is an everyday citizen who helped NASA and other scientists identify for the first time a light display in the sky, on which they published a journal article in Science Advances. The purple and green streaks resemble an aurora borealis, but scientists say it's a different phenomenon that "may be an extraordinary puzzle piece" in understanding Earth's magnetic fields. Bourassa photographed the light and says he called it "Steve," a name from an animated movie, for which scientists later matched an acronym: Strong Thermal Emission Velocity Enhancement.
Researchers across North America and in the United Kingdom are now studying STEVEs; NASA has called for more citizens to help collect data on them; the discovery could be important for future aircrafts, and one of the catalysts behind the research was a 45-year-old father with a camera and a celestial coping mechanism.
On July 24, 2016, around 11 p.m., Bourassa drove to a wheat field 21 km from Regina to photograph the sky, bringing his five- and seven-year-old children because it was not a school night. From other "aurora chasers," he had heard rumours of an unidentifiable glow, which they inaccurately called a proton arc, and which can last from 20 minutes to one hour.
'Steve'
Schooner Sank In 1873
Michigan
Michigan shipwreck hunters have found the remains of a schooner that sank in Lake Michigan in 1873 during a storm.
The Lizzie Throop was found in 280 feet (85 meters) of water along western Michigan's coastline some 15 miles (25 kilometers) northwest of the city of South Haven, the Michigan Shipwreck Research Association announced this past week.
The vessel set sail from Muskegon, Michigan, on Oct. 16, 1873, on a lumber run to Chicago, but sank after it began leaking during a squall, Valerie van Heest, the shipwreck association's director, told MLive.com. Two of its six crewmen died when the two-masted, 86-foot-long (26-meter-long) schooner went down.
"We realize now that the deck and the masts floated ashore with the survivors, while the hull went to the bottom," van Heest told WZZM-TV.
The Lizzie Throop was built in 1849 from wood milled at one of the Grand Haven area's earliest sawmills and was owned by prominent city resident Nathan Throop. It was named after Caroline Elizabeth Throop, who died in 1869.
Michigan
Weekend Box Office
'Black Panther'
Not since "Avatar" has a box-office hit had the kind of staying power of "Black Panther." Ryan Coogler's comic-book sensation on Sunday became the first film since James Cameron's 2009 smash to top the weekend box office five straight weekends.
The Disney release grossed $27 million in ticket sales over the weekend, according to studio estimates, pushing its domestic haul to $605.4 million. Worldwide, "Black Panther" has grossed more than $1.1 billion.
That left second place to the MGM-Warner Bros.' rebooted "Tomb Raider," starring Alicia Vikander as the archaeologist adventurer Lara Croft. The $90 million film opened with $23.5 million, largely failing to stir much excitement among moviegoers. Critics gave it mediocre reviews (49 percent fresh on Rotten Tomatoes) and ticket-buyers responded with a "meh," giving it a B CinemaScore.
The surprise of the weekend was the Lionsgate-Roadside Attractions Christian drama "I Can Only Imagine," which grossed $17.1 million on 1,629 screens - less than half the number that "Black Panther," ''Tomb Raider" and "A Winkle in Time" played on. The film, which co-stars Dennis Quaid and Cloris Leachman, cost only $7 million to make. It stars J. Michael Finley as the singer behind one of the most popular Christian songs, by the band MercyMe.
Estimated ticket sales for Friday through Sunday at U.S. and Canadian theaters, according to comScore. Where available, the latest international numbers also are included. Final three-day domestic figures will be released Monday.
1. "Black Panther," $27 million ($30 million international).
2. "Tomb Raider," $23.5 million ($84.5 million international).
3. "I Can Only Imagine," $17.1 million ($195,000 international).
4. "A Wrinkle in Time," $16.6 million ($3.2 million international).
5. "Love, Simon," $11.5 million.
6. "Game Night," $5.6 million ($3.7 million international).
7. "Peter Rabbit," $5.2 million ($14.5 million international).
8. "Strangers: Prey at Night," $4.8 million.
9. "Red Sparrow," $4.5 million ($8.9 million international).
10. "Death Wish," $3.4 million ($1.3 million international).
'Black Panther'
| CURRENT MOON lunar phases |
