from Bruce
Anecdotes
Dedication
• Murriel Page, a 6-foot-2 forward for the Washington Mystics, a women’s professional basketball team, is known for her physical style of play. She acquired it by playing against male cousins and uncles who didn’t give her a break because of her gender. They declined to let her shoot baskets over them; instead, they knocked her down.
• Gymnasts frequently show enormous dedication to their sport. In 1994, an earthquake shook California, but elite gymnast Vanessa Atler continued to practice even though her family was forced for a while to sleep in a tent in their backyard. According to Ms. Atler, “Rain or earthquakes, we still have practice.”
• As a young boxer, Cassius Clay (who later changed his name to Muhammad Ali) trained intensely. He used to get up at 4 a.m., run, go back to bed, then wake up and go to school. Sometimes, he wouldn’t take the school bus, but instead raced it for the 20 blocks to school.
Education
• While practicing the martial art wing-chun, Joe Hyams was accidentally hit by a workout partner. This made him angry. His teacher, Jim Lau, noticed and spoke to him about his anger, saying that unleashing anger against another person inspires anger in return from the other person. The following weekend, Mr. Hyams went to New York, arriving early in the morning and hoping to get some rest before a business meeting. Unfortunately, his hotel room was not ready and would not be ready for another four hours, so he demanded to see the manager, then angrily confronted her. Later, after having calmed down, he apologized, and the manager said, “You really took me by surprise. I intended to do what I could for you, but when you came on so strong I forgot my good intentions and decided not to go out of my way to help you.”
• While attending Stanford University, Debi Thomas wasn’t sure whether she wanted to enter the 1986 United States National Ice Skating Championships because she had so much schoolwork to do. In fact, when she received the entry form, she tore it up, but then she decided to keep the pieces. Later, she taped the pieces together, filled the form out, then sent it in. It’s a good thing she did. She won the gold medal at the Nationals, then she added another gold medal at the World Championships. In 1988, as the first African American on a United States Olympics ice skating team, she earned a bronze medal in Calgary, Alberta, Canada.
• The father of Olympic gold medal-winning gymnast Shannon Miller is a university physics professor. As such, he knows to take a look at the big picture. Whenever Shannon was upset because she didn’t get a high enough score on a chemistry test, he would ask her a few questions to test her knowledge. If she knew the answers — she usually did — he would tell her, “So you forgot a few things for one hour, but you told me everything you were supposed to know. What’s important is that you learned the material.”
• WNBA star Lisa Leslie also excelled at track in high school, although she took a roundabout way of getting on the track team. At Morningside High School in Inglewood, California, she performed the part of track star Wilma Rudolph in a school play. During her performance, she had to run around the auditorium, and she ran so quickly that the track coach invited her to run for the team.
• When Paul Brown, coach of the Cleveland Browns, spoke about the team’s philosophy, he expected the players to take notes. Once a player kept talking while Mr. Brown told the players how he expected them to act — that player was traded.
• Many colleges recruited Wilt Chamberlain to play basketball for them, including some schools that asked if he wished to be the first African-American player on their team. Mr. Chamberlain always responded, “I’d rather be the second.”
• A football player at Penn State was drafted by the NFL. He asked coach Joe Paterno whether he should play pro football or go to medical school. “Are you nuts?” Mr. Paterno said. “It’s only football. Go to medical school, you jerk.”
***
© 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: "Hodad Girl"
Album: PLANETA TWANGER
Artist: Los Twangers
Artist Location: Mexico City, Mexico
Info:
“Enigmatic members. Instrumental cowboys of the 21st century. Textures of guitars and sound environments. From the most bizarre surfing intros going through the spaghetti western sounds. PLANETA TWANGER offers us a trip from the suggestive desert of northern Mexico, in the cinematic ‘Back To Sonora (Part 1 & 2)’ to the psychedelic ‘Banana Peel,’ passing through the inspiring and wet melodies of ‘Hotel Nayarit,’ ‘Hodad Girl,’ ‘Tres Palmas’ and "Calypso Voodoo,’ to contemporary structure such as the vertiginous ‘Vista Cruiser 69’ and the powerful ‘El Ratador" and ‘Los Diableros,’ return of the most traditional sound of ‘Roma Twist.’To finish off with two excellent versions of the classics ‘El Solo Toro’ (The Lonely Bull) and ‘La Casa Del Sol Naciente’ (The House Of The Rising Sun).”
Price: $1 (USD) for track; $6 (USD) for 13-track album
Genre: Surf. Spaghetti Western.
Links:
PLANETA TWANGER
The Twangers on Bandcamp
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
Next Monday the epage will have been around for 20 years.
Targets
Spyware
An investigation by a global media consortium based on leaked targeting data provides further evidence that military-grade malware from Israel-based NSO Group, the world’s most infamous hacker-for-hire outfit, is being used to spy on journalists, human rights activists and political dissidents.
From a list of more than 50,000 cellphone numbers obtained by the Paris-based journalism nonprofit Forbidden Stories and the human rights group Amnesty International and shared with 16 news organizations, journalists were able to identify more than 1,000 individuals in 50 countries who were allegedly selected by NSO clients for potential surveillance.
They include 189 journalists, more than 600 politicians and government officials, at least 65 business executives, 85 human rights activists and several heads of state, according to The Washington Post, a consortium member. The journalists work for organizations including The Associated Press, Reuters, CNN, The Wall Street Journal, Le Monde and The Financial Times.
Amnesty also reported that its forensic researchers had determined that NSO Group’s flagship Pegasus spyware was successfully installed on the phone of Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi’s fiancee, Hatice Cengiz, just four days after he was killed in the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul in 2018. The company had previously been implicated in other spying on Khashoggi.
The most numbers on the list, 15,000, were for Mexican phones, with a large share in the Middle East. NSO Group’s spyware has been implicated in targeted surveillance chiefly in the Middle East and Mexico. Saudi Arabia is reported to be among NSO clients. Also on the lists were phones in countries including France, Hungary, India, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and Pakistan.
Spyware
Weekend Box Office
‘Space Jam’
“Black Widow” ceded its No. 1 spot to an unlikely foe in its second week in theaters: The Tune Squad.
LeBron James, Bugs Bunny and the rest of the stars of Warner Bros.’ “Space Jam: A New Legacy” defied expectations and won the box office this weekend. According to studio estimates Sunday, “Space Jam: A New Legacy” grossed $31.7 million in North America, while “Black Widow” took in $26.3 million.
“Black Widow,” meanwhile fell 67% in its second weekend, which, although steep, is also fairly normal for superhero films, which tend to have frontloaded audiences. Internationally, the Scarlett Johansson-led film picked up another $29.9 million, bringing its global grosses to $264 million.
“F9” took fourth place with $7.6 million. The “Fast & Furious” film has made $591.2 million globally to date. The fifth and sixth place spots also went to Universal films: “The Boss Baby: Family Business” with $4.7 million and “The Forever Purge,” with $4.1 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. “Space Jam: A New Legacy,” $31.7 million.
2. “Black Widow,” $26.3 million.
3. “Escape Room: Tournaments of Champions,” $8.8 million.
4. “F9,” $7.6 million.
5. “The Boss Baby: The Family Business,” $4.7 million.
6. “The Forever Purge,” $4.2 million.
7. “A Quiet Place Part II,” $2.3 million.
8. “Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain,” $1.9 million.
9. “Cruella,” $1.1 million.
10. “Pig,” $945,000.
‘Space Jam’
National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences
Daytime Emmys
The National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences continued handing out its Daytime Emmy Awards on Saturday and Sunday.
The organization is presenting statuettes in the children’s & animation and lifestyle categories this weekend in two live-streamed events. The Hollywood Reporter is among the nominees, landing a nom for best arts and popular culture program for its roundtable series, Close Up With The Hollywood Reporter, which aired on SundanceTV. (The Daytime Emmy Awards in several other categories, including daytime drama series, talk show, game show and morning news program, were handed out last month.)
The children’s and animation ceremony on Saturday was hosted by Raven-Symoné, a previous Daytime Emmy nominee. The Raven’s Home actress was joined by guest presenter and Odd Squad star Millie Davis.
Top performance wins for Saturday evening included Mark Hamill being honored with outstanding performer in a preschool animated program for his role as Vuli in Elena of Avalor, Sophie Grace winning outstanding younger performer in a children’s program for her role as Kristy Thomas in The Baby-Sitters Club, and Lupita Nyong’o landing an outstanding limited performance in a children’s program win for Bookmarks: Celebrating Black Voices.
Concluding Saturday evening was the winner for outstanding preschool, children’s or family program — The Power of We: A Sesame Street Special Sesame Street. Producer Todd James expressed the importance of such a win after 2020 being a year of “great social unrest” noting that Sesame Workshop “decided to make this show to address those issues.”
Daytime Emmys
Colorado
Salida Circus
Beside a chicken coop in the backyard of a home on the countryside, a dozen kids are flipping, twirling, cartwheeling, juggling, walking on balls and contorting their bodies on silks and rings suspended in the air.
Their ages range between 9 and 13. Their tutor is Joe Lobeck, a muscled 30-year-old fit for “American Ninja Warrior.” Maybe you saw him on season four of the show. That was 2012. A few years later, he found himself in this little mountain town.
“I had no idea,” Lobeck recalls of what he found here. “Like most people who come to Salida, I was like, What? There’s a circus?”
Unlikely as it seems, Salida Circus thrives.
The nonprofit showcases a troupe of acrobats, aerialists, stilt walkers, clowns, magicians and other childlike grown-ups who perform around town and around the world spreading their love of circus. Their main mission is to spread it here. To inspire local kids. In recent years, the team has reported reaching more than 300 youths weekly through outreach programs across the Arkansas River Valley.
Salida Circus
Covid Misinformation
12 People
The vast majority of Covid-19 anti-vaccine misinformation and conspiracy theories originated from just 12 people, a report by the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) cited by the White House this week found.
CCDH, a UK/US non-profit and non-governmental organization, found in March that these 12 online personalities they dubbed the “disinformation dozen” have a combined following of 59 million people across multiple social media platforms, with Facebook having the largest impact. CCDH analyzed 812,000 Facebook posts and tweets and found 65% came from the disinformation dozen. Vivek Murthy, US surgeon general, and Joe Biden focused on misinformation around vaccines this week as a driving force of the virus spreading.
On Facebook alone, the dozen are responsible for 73% of all anti-vaccine content, though the vaccines have been deemed safe and effective by the US government and its regulatory agencies. And 95% of the Covid misinformation reported on these platforms were not removed.
Among the dozen are physicians that have embraced pseudoscience, a bodybuilder, a wellness blogger, a religious zealot, and, most notably Robert F Kennedy Jr, the nephew of John F Kennedy who has also linked vaccines to autism and 5G broadband cellular networks to the coronavirus pandemic.
12 People
Food Monopoly
America
When you walk into a US grocery store the shelves seem to be teeming with choice, with countless brands appearing to offer every type of food and drink.
But a joint investigation published this week by the Guardian and Food and Water Watch showed how this choice is largely an illusion. In fact, a handful of mega firms dominate every link of the food supply chain: from seeds and fertilizers to slaughterhouses and supermarkets to cereals and beers.
And that is not good news for consumers in terms of choice and real competition on prices, or for small and medium-sized farmers given little choice on what they grow or which animals they raise, while food industry workers face low pay and high risks.
“It’s a system designed to funnel money into the hands of corporate shareholders and executives while exploiting farmers and workers and deceiving consumers about choice, abundance and efficiency,” said Amanda Starbuck, a policy analyst at Food & Water Watch.
And our analysis revealed that a shocking 79% of the groceries in a basket of 61 everyday types of food and drink are being sold by a small amount of the top companies, which we defined to mean four firms or fewer.
America
'Way Better'
MSNBC
Former President Donald Trump (R-Lock Him Up) allies, Mike Lindell (R-Mein Pillow) and Steve Bannon (R-Fascist), said MSNBC has "better coverage" than Fox News, according to Newsweek.
"Watch MSNBC. Watch Chris Hayes or Rachel Maddow. They get better coverage... they get better coverage every day," Bannon, said on his podcast "War Room: Pandemic" on Real America's Voice earlier this week. Trump pardoned Bannon, who served as his former chief strategist and campaign CEO, in January.
MyPillow CEO Lindell responded: "Way better than Fox."
"They are blowing us up, and they hate you and the audience, but they're still doing real coverage," Bannon added.
Lindell and Bannon have backed baseless theories of Trump winning the presidential election. Recently, without any evidence, Lindell claimed that Trump garnered more votes than Biden. And during an interview on Bannon's podcast in March, Lindell said Trump would be "back in office in August."
MSNBC
Wilderness Area Grows
New Mexico
U.S. Interior Secretary Deb Haaland visited her home state Saturday to celebrate what marks the largest wilderness land donation in the agency’s history and another addition to the nation's landholdings as the Biden administration aims to conserve nearly one-third of America’s lands and waters by 2030.
The 15-square-mile (40-square-kilometer) donation from the Trust for Public Land increases the size of the Sabinoso Wilderness Area in northeastern New Mexico by nearly 50%. The property includes rugged canyons, mesas covered by pinon and juniper woodlands, pockets of ponderosa pine trees and savannah-like grasslands.
Haaland, who joined other officials at a remote site in San Miguel County, acknowledged that the area makes up part of the ancestral homelands of the Jicarilla Apache and northern pueblos of New Mexico. She said that, for generations, families have relied on the land for sustenance and that it means a lot to many people who visit the area in search of peace and quiet.
The Sabinoso gained federal wilderness protection in 2009, but was inaccessible for visitors since the federal parcel was landlocked by private holdings.
Through the work of conservation groups and members of New Mexico's congressional delegation, the Bureau of Land Management accepted a donation in 2017 of nearly 6 square miles (15 square kilometers) from The Wilderness Land Trust. That provided public access for the first time.
New Mexico
Fragments Pieced Together
Book of the Dead
A torn 2,300-year-old mummy wrapping — covered with hieroglyphics from the ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead — has been digitally reunited with its long-lost piece that was ripped away.
The two linen fragments were pieced together after a digital image of one segment was cataloged on an open-source online database by the Teece Museum of Classical Antiquities at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand. Historians at the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles who saw the image quickly realized that the institute had a shroud fragment that, like a puzzle piece, fit together with the New Zealand segment.
"There is a small gap between the two fragments; however, the scene makes sense, the incantation makes sense and the text makes it spot-on," Alison Griffith, an Egyptian art expert and an associate professor of classics at the University of Canterbury, said in a statement. "It is just amazing to piece fragments together remotely."
Both fragments are covered with hieratic, or cursive, script, as well as hieroglyphics that depict scenes and spells from the Book of the Dead, an ancient Egyptian manuscript thought to guide the deceased through the afterlife.
Versions of the Book of the Dead varied from tomb to tomb, but one of the book's most famous images is the weighing of the deceased's heart against a feather, according to the American Research Center in Egypt (ARCE), which was not involved with the new finding. The tradition of including the "Book of the Dead" in burials began with inscriptions, known as the Pyramid Texts, written directly on tomb walls during the late Old Kingdom, and was initially offered only to royalty buried at Saqqara. The earliest known Pyramid Text was found in the tomb of Unas (who lived from around 2465 B.C. to 2325 B.C.), the last king of the Fifth Dynasty, according to Encyclopedia Britannica.
Book of the Dead
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