from Bruce
Anecdotes
Food
• Back in the days when Catholics did not eat meat on Friday, Rear Admiral George Dufek and Father Linehan (a geo-physicist from Boston College), were at the South Pole. Rear Admiral Dufek pulled some sandwiches out for lunch, but Father Linehan looked at the sandwiches, saw that they were made with ham and roast beef, and said, “None for me. It’s Friday, you know.” Rear Admiral Dufek replied, “If you’ll step about 15 paces to the left, it will still be Thursday.” Father Linehan did so, and then he enjoyed lunch.
• Some of the food eaten on the Jewish Sabbath is especially good. For example, the bread known as Hallah is eaten on the Sabbath. One day, a Jew had a visitor who ate only the expensive Hallah but did not touch the common, inexpensive bread. The host hinted to the visitor, “Taste the bread,” but the visitor continued to eat the Hallah, remarking that Hallah is better than plain bread. “True,” said the host, “but it’s expensive.” The guest replied, “The extra expense is worth it.”
• While walking along a river, two monks noticed a lettuce leaf floating downstream. “How sad,” said one of the monks, who knew that Zen master Gizan lived one mile upstream. “Gizan has started to waste food.” Just then, Gizan burst out of the bushes, panting and sweating, jumped into the river, and began to swim downstream after the lettuce leaf. The two monks bowed low in the direction of Zen master Gizan, and then they continued their walk.
• A rich man came to the Maggid of Mezeritch and tried to impress him with his piety. When the Maggid asked the rich man what he ate, he replied that he ate nothing but bread. The Maggid shook his head sadly, and then he ordered him to eat cake. When the rich man asked why, the Maggid explained, “If you are content to eat bread, you will believe that the poor can live by eating stones, but if you eat cake, you will give bread to the poor.”
• On the American frontier, getting enough food to eat was sometimes a major struggle and thus took precedence over other things. One frontier preacher was giving a sermon when some dogs near the camp started barking at a bear. The preacher listened for a moment, then told the women to pray while he and the other men took off after the bear. After they had killed the bear, the preacher resumed his sermon.
• Zen master Taji was on his deathbed. His disciples knew that he liked a certain kind of cake, so they went from shop to shop in Tokyo until they found the kind of cake he liked, then they brought him a piece. After Taji had eaten the cake, his disciples asked if he had any last words for them. “Yes,” he replied, and as his disciples leaned toward him, he said, “My, but this cake is delicious.” Then he died.
• The Buddhists believe in a realm of being that is populated by “hungry ghosts.” They have enormous bodies but very small mouths, so they are constantly feeding themselves to fill up the emptiness inside. Thich Nhat Hanh, a Buddhist teacher in Vietnam, was asked what the realm of the hungry ghosts is like. He replied, “America.”
• A preacher ate a couple of Sunday dinners with the same farming family, who served chicken each time. After the second dinner, the preacher remarked on a hen that he said was particularly proud looking. “She should be proud,” said the farmer. “She has two children in the ministry.”
• After Mother Teresa gave a piece of bread to a small, hungry girl lost in the streets, the girl began to eat the bread very slowly, crumb by crumb. Mother Teresa said, “Eat, eat the bread! Aren’t you hungry!” The girl replied, “I am just afraid that when I run out of bread, I’ll still be hungry.”
• God cares more about how you earn your money than what you eat. As Israeli economist Meir Tamari has pointed out, in the Torah, over 100 commandments concern economics, but only 24 commandments make up the foundation for traditional Jewish dietary practice.
• A starving dervish asked a rich man for food, but the rich man asked him to return the next day, when he was holding a feast. The dervish replied, “Give me some food today, so that I may live until tomorrow to attend your feast.”
***
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***
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Presenting
Michael Egan
U.S.A. answered:
has returned to semi-retired status.
In memory.
BRUCE'S RECOMMENDATION
BANDCAMP MUSIC
BRUCE'S RECOMMENDATION OF BANDCAMP MUSIC
Music: "The Same and Far Away"
Album: THE SAME AND FAR AWAY
Artist: Erin O’Neill
Artist Location: Los Angeles, California
Info: All songs written by Erin O’Neill
Erin O’Neill- vocals, acoustic guitar, electric guitar
Elyadeen Anbar- electric guitar
Zephyr Avalon- bass
Jacob Mann- piano, B3, Wurlitzer, synth
Efa Etoroma Jr.- drums and percussion
Price: $1 (USD) for track; $8 (USD) for eight-track album
Genre: Singer-Songwriter
Links:
THE SAME AND FAR AWAY
Erin O’Neill on Bandcamp
Erin O’Neill on YouTube
Other Links:
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David Bruce's Blog #1
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David Bruce has over 140 Kindle books on Amazon.com.
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Michael Egan
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Reader Comment
Current Events
Linda >^..^<
We are all only temporarily able bodied.
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that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Big party down the street had a live band with a tuba.
Dylan Project
Hibbing
On Thursday, Katie Fredeen drove by Hibbing High School and, as she said, flipped her lid — in a good way. The construction fencing was up around the spot where ground will be broken for a public art installation that celebrates Bob Dylan.
Hibbing Dylan Project has been in the works since 2016 when Dylan won the Nobel Prize in Literature. In the past four years, a group of volunteers has worked to create an easily accessible monument to the artist who graduated from Hibbing High School in 1959 — a process that has ranged from fundraising upward of $150,000 to gaining permission to use the likeness of the Nobel medal on the piece.
The ground-breaking is at 1 p.m. Saturday at Hibbing High School, near the intersection of East 22nd Street and Seventh Avenue East, which is also known as Bob Dylan Drive. There will be music by the Bluejackets' band and choir, and local musicians. A celebration will follow at the home where Dylan grew up, 2425 Seventh Ave. E., with music by Greg Tiburzi — a musician who will also play Monday, on Dylan's 80th birthday, on the porch of the Central Hillside duplex in Duluth where Dylan spent the first half-decade of his life.
Construction is expected to run through the summer with a dedication in mid-October. The kickoff of the Hibbing Dylan project also marks the beginning of the "Year of Dylan Celebration," which is expected to include concerts, a Dylan-themed bike tour, and more — running into late May 2022.
Saturday is also the start of Duluth Dylan Fest, which runs through May 30 and includes concerts, poetry, and lectures both online and in-person.
Hibbing
Garden Of Ancient Beasts
California
A park ranger wandering through a petrified forest in California has unearthed a trove of prehistoric fossils, including a stunningly preserved mastodon skull and the remains of a 400-pound (181 kilograms) monster salmon, SFGate reported.
Paleontologists unearthed dozens of fossil species near the Mokelumne River watershed in the foothills of the Sierra mountains southeast of Sacramento. The fossil site, which dates back roughly 10 million years to the Miocene epoch, is one of the most significant such troves ever discovered in the Golden State.
Greg Francek, a ranger naturalist with the East Bay Municipal Utility District (EBMUD), which provides drinking water for the area, was ambling near the watershed when he noticed something that looked like wood, but was smooth like stone, according to a statement from the EBUMD.
"I happened upon a petrified tree," Francek said in a voice recording included with the statement. "This tree was partially encased in the burial sediments, and because one end was exposed, I could actually see the tree rings inside."
He looked around and discovered a second, then a third, and so on, and it suddenly dawned on him that he was walking in a petrified forest.
California
Box Office
‘Spiral’
In a scary-good box office milestone, the stomach-churning “Saw” franchise has surpassed $1 billion in worldwide ticket sales.
“Spiral,” the lastest entry in the horror series, earned another $4.5 million in North America and $2.67 million overseas this weekend. That haul pushed the property to $1,000,799,533 globally across nine films.
It’s a significant achievement because the “Saw” movies carry modest production budgets — ranging from $1 million to $20 million — making profit margins all the sweeter. Even more notable, the “Saw” films aren’t particularly well received among critics or audiences. On Rotten Tomatoes, the nine films usually generate an average around 30%, while its CinemaScore rating from moviegoers tends to range between “B” and “C” grades. However, the horror genre tends to be review-proof at the box office.
James Wan and Leigh Whannell created the “Saw” franchise, revolving around the mysterious and disturbing Jigsaw Killer, who puts his victims through deadly games to test their will to live. It kicked off with 2004’s “Saw,” which earned a massive $103 million worldwide from a $1.2 million budget. Except for 2009’s “Saw VI,” each of the “Saw” films have easily eclipsed the $100 million mark globally while keeping production budgets below $20 million. The third installment, 2016’s “Saw III,” is the highest-grossing entry with $164 million worldwide.
To date, “Spiral” — starring Chris Rock and Samuel L. Jackson — has amassed $15.8 million in the U.S. and $6.7 million internationally for a global haul of $22.5 million. Lionsgate and Twisted Pictures are distributing the film.
‘Spiral’
Abandoned Finale Ideas
‘Star Trek: Voyager’
“The biggest decision was whether or not we actually wanted them to get home. That was a decision that really came down to the wire.”
That was the creative challenge facing Star Trek: Voyager’s series finale, according to former Voyager showrunner Brannon Braga in a 2001 interview from Star Trek Monthly. Whether or not “Endgame, Parts 1 and 2” was entirely successful in meeting that challenge is a debate fans have had since the feature-length final episode aired 20 years ago on May 23, 2001.
“Endgame” centers on a future Admiral Janeway (Kate Mulgrew) altering the past to ensure that every member of her crew gets back to Earth after spending seven years stranded in a distant corner of the Final Frontier known as the Delta Quadrant. One would think our intrepid heroes would be given more than a scene or two depicting their dream coming true, of seeing their home planet again, but that’s all “Endgame” gives them. The episode’s abrupt final moments (less than three minutes of screentime!) end the series on one of the franchise’s most underwhelming and anti-climatic notes. As beloved as Voyager is among fans, even they struggle to overlook how “Endgame” falls short of giving this iconic series and crew the ending they deserved.
Like Star Trek: The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine before it, Voyager’s creative staff was afforded the rare gift of essentially being able to “cancel” themselves after the series’ seven-season run. That bittersweet privilege came with a figurative kitchen crowded with cooks that had a deserved say in how the show wrapped. That included Mulgrew and executive producers Braga, Rick Berman and “Endgame” co-writer Kenneth Biller — with the latter taking over showrunner duties from Braga during the series’ final season. (Biller brought on then-Voyager staff writer Robert Doherty to help with scripting duties.) The creative input from stakeholders ultimately resulted in a “dish” that incorporated Biller and Berman’s suggestion of time travel, along with Mulgrew’s request that Janeway had to go down with the ship, “but not at the full cost of her being.”
The end result opened ten years after Voyager’s journey ends, with what’s left of the main crew gathering to celebrate their homecoming’s tenth anniversary. A silver-haired Admiral Janeway reviews old footage of Voyager doing a flyby over and around the Golden Gate Bridge outside Starfleet Command. (This choice works in a “cool teaser” way to hook in audiences, but ultimately is less effective in the context of the overall episode; we are shown a version of Voyager’s homecoming in a way that somewhat undercuts the actual event the characters fans have invested in for seven years will experience.)
‘Star Trek: Voyager’
"Audit"
Arizona
In early March, a Boston-based vote-counting firm called Clear Ballot Group sent a bid to Arizona’s state Senate to audit the 2020 presidential election results in Maricopa County.
The firm has conducted more than 200 such audits over 13 years in business. “Our level of comparison data is unmatched,” Keir Holeman, a Clear Ballot Group vice president, wrote to the Republican-controlled Senate. He never heard back, he says.
Instead, the state Senate hired a small Florida-based cybersecurity firm known as Cyber Ninjas that had not placed a formal bid for the contract and had no experience with election audits. Senate President Karen Fann says she can’t recall how she found the firm, but her critics believe one credential stood out: Cyber Ninjas’ chief executive officer had tweeted support for conspiracy theories claiming Republican Donald Trump (R-Lock Him Up), and not Democrat Joe Biden, had won Maricopa County and Arizona.
Now the untested, little-known cybersecurity firm is running a partly taxpayer-funded process that election experts describe as so deeply flawed it veers into the surreal. Its chief aim, critics say, appears to be testing far-fetched theories, rather than simply recounting votes — an approach that directly undermines the country’s democratic traditions.
Experienced vote counters have watched the process in shock. Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, a Democrat, said this week Maricopa County will need to replace all of its election machines because their security has been permanently compromised by the auditors. Experts note the review isn’t following standard recounting procedures and, unlike with other election audits in Arizona, members of each major political party are not at each table observing the counting.
Arizona
They Knew
Texass
Texas Governor Greg Abbott’s office knew of looming natural gas shortages on February 10, days before a deep freeze plunged much of the state into blackouts, according to documents obtained by E&E News and reviewed by Ars.
Abbott’s office first learned of the likely shortfall in a phone call from then-chair of the Public Utility Commission of Texas DeAnne Walker. In the days leading up to the power outages that began on February 15, Walker and the governor’s office spoke 31 more times.
Walker also spoke with regulators, politicians, and utilities dozens of times about the gas curtailments that threatened the state’s electrical grid. The PUC chair’s diary for the days before the outage shows her schedule dominated by concerns over gas curtailments and the impact they would have on electricity generation. Before and during the disaster, she was on more than 100 phone calls with various agencies and utilities regarding gas shortages.
After the blackouts began, Abbott appeared on Fox News to falsely assert that wind turbines were the driving force behind the outages.
In public, Bill Magness, then-CEO of ERCOT, the state’s electric grid regulator, didn’t seem concerned about the approaching weather. In a virtual meeting on February 9, Magness said, “As those of you in Texas know, we do have a cold front coming this way... Operations has issued an operating condition notice just to make sure everyone is up to speed with their winterization and we’re ready for the several days of pretty frigid temperatures to come our way.” During the two-and-a-half-hour public portion of the meeting, Magness devoted just 40 seconds to the unusual weather.
Texass
Daddy's Playbook
Ivanka
As Donald Trump (R-Lock Him Up) works his way through a series of legal cases after leaving the White House in January, several of his adult children, including Ivanka Trump (R-Vapid), are also finding themselves involved due to their association with the Trump Organization. In one particular case regarding the misuse of inaugural funds back in 2017, Ivanka conveniently found a way to appear confused about one of her father’s longtime colleagues — from the same company she worked for as an executive vice president since 2005.
She was deposed last December by the District of Columbia Attorney General’s Office and chose to make a move out of Donald’s playbook — deflect, deflect, deflect. The former senior White House advisor was asked a very simple question, “Who is Allen Weisselberg?” The simple answer, as tweeted by former senior advisor (and former friend) to Melania Trump, Stephanie Winston Wolkoff, is, “Allen Weisselberg has been the Trump Organizations CFO and the Trump Family’s BOOKKEEPER since the 1970s.” Ivanka chose a shadier answer in the deposition, appearing confused as to his role within the corporation.
“He is the — I would have to see what his, his — I don’t know his exact title, but he’s an executive at the company,” she said to the investigator. Not only did Weisselberg work for Ivanka’s grandfather, Fred Trump, he controlled her father’s finances and he appeared several times on Celebrity Apprentice. Even Donald’s former personal attorney Michael Cohen seems to agree that Ivanka learned a thing or two from her dad.
“Donald taught @IvankaTrump well…I don’t know, I wasn’t there, Allen who?, it was someone else’s fault,” he tweeted. “Soon they will all answer for their own dirty deeds!” As someone who worked intimately with the former president for 12 years, Cohen has been predicting jail time for many members of the Trump family. He recently told MSNBC’s Joy Reid, “I do have to say that my credibility, I believe, is going to end up getting Donald, Don Jr., Ivanka, Jared, Eric, Weisselberg, his kids, some orange jumpsuits.”
The Washington, D.C. inquiry is different from the New York State and Manhattan attorney generals’ criminal investigation into the Trump Organization. In New York, they are hoping to get Weisselberg to cooperate with authorities and help take the pressure of their additional research into his personal taxes. This possible power move is likely why Ivanka wanted to feign ignorance when it came to how important of a role Weisselberg played in the Trump Organization for decades. The family has been able to slip by many of their misdeeds over the years, but they may not be able to outrun the law this time around.
Ivanka
'Disastrous Weather'
21 Runners
Twenty-one people were killed after hail, freezing rain and high winds hit runners taking part in a 100km (62-mile) cross-country mountain race in China.
The extreme weather struck a high-altitude section of the race held in the scenic Yellow River Stone Forest near Baiyin city in northwestern Gansu province on Saturday afternoon.
Among the dead were elite Chinese long-distance runners, local media reported.
Baiyin city mayor Zhang Xuchen said that at around noon on Saturday a section of the rugged ultramarathon course - between kilometres 20 and 31 - was "suddenly affected by disastrous weather".
"In a short period of time, hailstones and ice rain suddenly fell in the local area, and there were strong winds. The temperature sharply dropped," Mr Zhang said.
21 Runners
Shocking Benefit
Lightning
What is the purpose of lightning? That might sound like a deeply philosophical question, but scientists may have shed some more light on the answer with the results of a recently released study.
The new study published at the end of April in Science found that lightning may play a bigger role in global climate change than was previously known by the scientific community. "Lightning increases the atmosphere's ability to cleanse itself," the researchers wrote in the study.
The Earth is struck by lightning nearly 20 million times each year, and bolts of lightning can travel as much as 10 to 12 miles from a thunderstorm, instantly heating the air to 50,000 degrees Fahrenheit, according to the National Weather Service.
Essentially, lightning occurs due to the buildup of electric charges in the atmosphere. In order to balance out the different charges, lightning is triggered between two clouds or between a cloud and the ground.
The study, which included contributions from nine different atmospheric researchers across almost a dozen universities and meteorological agencies, was based on an airborne research flight conducted by a NASA DC-8 storm-chasing plane in 2012. The plane was used to examine the top portion of thunderstorm clouds, which are known as anvils.
Lightning
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