Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Josh Vorhees: Why Hillary Is Finally Embracing the Inevitability Narrative She Tried to Avoid for So Long (Slate)
The campaign's new power pose makes sense. Earlier this year, Clinton was pretending to sweat to avoid looking like she was coasting to her party's nomination. But now that the heat is on she's eager to look calm, cool, and collected. There are plenty of good reasons
Jamelle Bouie: The Hillary Doubters Are Wrong (Slate)
Yes, she's vulnerable, but she's still the heavy favorite.
HENRY ROLLINS: THE AMAZON RAINFOREST IS AN ORGY OF LIFE (LA Weekly)
While I am sure that the places we are visiting have been chosen carefully to give us the best eco-bang for our buck, every moment has been extraordinarily beautiful. Varieties of monkeys, caimans, a Peterson Field Guide's worth of birds: toucans, macaws, vultures, kingfishers, hawks, eagles, parakeets, herons. The vegetation, as you would expect, is wonderfully out of control. It is an orgy of life.
Scott Burns: Cash is King Only When Stores are Stocked (AssetBuilder)
It's important […] to make a distinction between access to cash and access to retail markets. In emergency situations, such as major floods, hurricanes or blizzards, it is possible to have cash for purchases- but not be able to use that cash. Why? Because the local markets are closed or empty (maybe looted) by emergency buyers who got to the store before you did.
Scott Burns: "Lacy Hunt: Why Interest Rates Won't Rise" (Asset Builder)
Economist Lacy Hunt thinks long-term Treasury bonds are a buy. That's definitely not the conventional wisdom. He's nearly alone in his view, but it has been correct year after year. The conventional wisdom has been wrong.
Luis Prada: 10 Very Dumb Questions You Should Answer Right Now (Cracked)
Let's do something different. Cracked readers, I want to get to know you better. I don't actually want to see you in real life and engage you in deep conversation. I'd rather you sum up the infinite complexity residing within the shimmering light of your soul by way of a questionnaire, the most comprehensive way of learning about a person that doesn't involve hiding in bushes with binoculars.
Adam Rowe: That Time the SF/F Author Community Crowdsourced the Worst Novel of All Time(Barnes and Noble)
The 2004 novel Atlanta Nights was engineered to be just two things: 1) bone-chillingly unreadable, and 2) published. It was all a hoax, designed to expose "traditional publisher" PublishAmerica as a vanity press.
Felix Clay's Creative Debt Relief (Indiegogo)
Cracked.com columnist Felix Clay will custom produce personalized tales of wonder just for you!
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.
wrote:
took the day off.
, has returned to semi-retired status.
Reader Suggestion
Michelle in AZ
Spud Goodman « My POV
President Trump
I had this dream the other night; ok maybe nightmare would be a more apt description. I'm pretty sure it was a figment of my imagination and not one of those premonitions thingy's. At least I am praying to God that's what it was. I guess this would be the time to let you know what my dream was about. The subject matter is somewhat disturbing but nonetheless I will share it and let you know it centered on the first hundred days of a Donald Trump administration. Yes, he did survive in office that long at least in this dream and I must say what our country resembled, well it was something I'm sure not looking forward to seeing while wide awake.
Let's start with the White House itself. Shortly after he was elected he chose to make his penthouse at Trump Towers in Manhattan the new Gotham White House. He paid some fancy decorator to make an oval office in a spare bedroom of his. Every detail was re-created except instead of paintings of prior presidents on the wall the place was plastered with various oil paintings of…… yeah easy call right? You would think being surrounded by paintings of himself would give him the willies but I guess not (please see Saddam Hussein). I sorta remember the First Lady Melania not being real happy about the décor. She was on him to give the room more of an Eastern European vibe but he laid the law down. I guess as a former model from Slovenia she has her own vision of what looks cool and wanted a cat walk.
As someone who does read newspapers and watch cable news programs occasionally I was aware of all the pundits who were telling us that there was no possible way for The Donald to be elected without the Hispanic vote. Guess they were off on that one as there turned out to be more people who prefer those old "only whites need apply" signs in the windows at places of business. Don't remember anything about drinking fountains but I was blown away from seeing what happened on day 65 of the Trump presidency. No, they didn't start building that stupid wall yet but the National Guard did start knocking on doors in neighborhoods across this country. To my surprise it wasn't only in the red states so it wasn't that difficult to find most of the 11 million "illegals" as some people jumped at the chance to spray paint a big question mark on the front doors of apartments and houses around them. Of course as with most of the human purges in world history the final chapter always ends with the thing going off the rails and those who participated later denying any involvement in the outing process. Maybe now with Facebook though it won't be that hard down the road to identify these citizens and a lot cheaper than tracking them down later in like Brazil or Argentina.
I can recall that most of the rest of the world began to pull away from America, like stopped buying our stuff except for our golden oldies gangsta rap CD's and it was reassuring to know that not all US products can be manufactured cheaply in other countries. I guess we are all in debt to the late Death Row Records. Anyway, I digress. So with the rest of the world outside of that sandy part of the world saying hey President Trump what the hell are you doing, his response was to just flip them all off. Literally. In a 30 second news conference. It was carried live on all the cable news channels. I then surfed around to see what the talking heads had to say afterwards and though most said they were totally embarrassed with the Trump Doctrine, Charles Krauthammer on FOX NEWS did chime in with an Atta Boy! This was about the time I woke up in my bed drenched in a warm sweat. I wish it had been a cold sweat but with this climate change deal those days are gone for good.
Like I said at the start this was just some stupid dream. Nothing to get all worked up about. A Trump presidency could never happen in this country. No way. I know this because most of the big wigs in the GOP keep saying it over and over so they must know right? But….. if for any reason they are wrong on this one, well I'm thinking we all should keep a least one can of spray paint handy and maybe some approved pics of him so we can make a run to Kinko's and print up some fat head posters of his mug. You know, slap them up all over as a sign of good faith. I've read that this is a decent insurance policy in some of those countries in that previously mentioned sandy part of the world. Oh and you might find it comforting to know this purge he speaks about nightly on the cable news channels probably won't be anything like the current Sunni/Shia disagreement still going strong there 13 centuries later. Nope and one more positive thing, I do remember him saying "the good ones will be let back in" so it's important to not freak out here. I mean it's not like I heard him issuing an executive order to cut anybody's head off so who knows, maybe he will make America great again. Whatever, I gotta go now and play some more Candy Crush. Later
President Trump « My POV
Thanks, Spud!
From The Creator of 'Avery Ant'
Lois in Oregon
Rebuttal to Some Guy
Bernie HAD to run as a Democrat because he does NOT want Republicans to win from a split vote as happened when Ralph Nader got in the mix and allowed Florida to install that disaster in the white house. And you know what?
HE COULD WIN.
I was so disappointed with Mr. Obama and his business as usual that I seriously expected to never vote again. What the hell is the point? Then Bernie came up to bat, and suddenly there was a REASON to vote!
For the first time in my adult life I may have the opportunity to vote FOR someone I genuinely want elected instead of voting against the worst case scenario. FOR THE FIRST TIME, I am pretty excited to vote! GO BERNIE!
Lois in Oregon
Thanks, Lois!
from Marc Perkel
Patriot Act
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Still too hot. Way too humid.
ABFT
Denali
President Barack Obama will change the name of North America's tallest mountain peak from Mount McKinley to Denali, the White House said Sunday, bestowing the traditional Alaska Native name on the eve of a historic presidential visit to Alaska.
By renaming the peak Denali, an Athabascan word meaning "the high one," Obama is wading into a sensitive and decades-old conflict between residents of Alaska and Ohio. Alaskans have informally called the 20,320-foot mountain Denali for years, but the federal government recognizes its name invoking the 25th president, William McKinley, who was born in Ohio and assassinated early in his second term.
The announcement came as Obama prepared to depart early Monday on a three-day visit to Alaska, becoming the first sitting president to travel north of the Arctic Circle. As part of his visit, Obama is attempting to show solidarity with Alaska Natives, and planned to hold a round-table session with a group of Alaska Natives just after arriving Monday in Anchorage.
The state of Alaska has had a standing request to change the name dating back to 1975, when the legislature passed a resolution and then-Gov. Jay Hammond (D-Damn Good Guy) made a request to the federal government. But those efforts and legislation in Congress have been stymied by members of Ohio's congressional delegation.
Denali
Iran Bars
Daniel Barenboim
Iran has barred famed conductor Daniel Barenboim from entering the Islamic republic because of his Israeli citizenship, thwarting his plan to lead a performance in Tehran, media reported Sunday.
Barenboim, the 72-year-old general music director of the Berlin State Opera House, said Thursday he was in talks with Iran about a concert, in what would have been a major example of cultural diplomacy.
But an Iranian culture ministry spokesman, Hossein Noushabadi, said an investigation meant Barenboim could not enter the country for "security reasons", though the Berlin orchestra was welcome.
"He has multiple nationalities and one of them is Israeli. For security reasons and to prevent issues following the entry of certain people into Iran, we stopped it."
Barenboim also holds Argentinian and Palestinian citizenship.
Daniel Barenboim
Hundreds Protest
'Mephistopheles'
More than a thousand Russians rallied in Saint Petersburg on Sunday after a century-old bas relief of a mythical demon was destroyed amid fears of increasing religious intolerance under President Vladimir Putin.
Last week, the figure of Mephistopheles was ripped down from the facade of a century-old building in Saint Petersburg. An obscure group calling itself the Cossacks of Saint Petersburg claimed responsibility.
The seemingly religiously-motivated act of vandalism caused an outcry in the former imperial capital and police launched a probe.
A spokesman for the powerful Russian Orthodox Church said the attack was an understandable reaction.
'Mephistopheles'
City Basks In Loch Ness Monster Effect
Walbrzych, Poland
Polish tour guide and ex-treasure-hunter Andrzej Gaik cannot contain his excitement as he points to the train track slope that has left the world spellbound: hidden in its depths may very well be a Nazi gold train.
"There it is, that's where the tunnel's entryway was located, that's where the train is hidden," Gaik says while indicating a slightly sunken-in part of the railway embankment in the southwestern city of Walbrzych.
Initially taken with a grain of salt, the story has gained credibility after a culture ministry official said he saw a ground-penetrating radar image of the alleged train on which he could make out platforms and cannons.
Poland's very own Loch Ness Monster has catapulted Walbrzych into the public eye, with swarms of treasure-hunters and foreign television crews showing up at what is known as "kilometre 65" of the Wroclaw-Walbrzych train track.
Walbrzych, Poland
Wants History To Repeat Itself
T-rump
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump's call for the mass deportation of millions of immigrants living in the U.S. illegally as well as their American-born children bears similarities to a large-scale removal that many Mexican-American families faced 85 years ago.
During the 1930s Great Depression, counties and cities in the American Southwest and Midwest forced Mexican immigrants and their families to leave the U.S. over concerns they were taking jobs away from whites despite their legal right to stay.
The result: Around 500,000 to 1 million Mexican immigrants and Mexican-Americans were pushed out of United States during the so-called 1930s' repatriation.
At that time, immigrants were rounded up and sent to Mexico, sometimes in public places and often without formal proceedings. Others, scared by the violence, left voluntarily.
About 60 percent of those who left were American citizens, according to various studies on the 1930s' repatriation. Later testimonies show families lost most of their possessions and some family members died trying to return. Neighborhoods in cities such as Houston, San Antonio and Los Angeles became empty.
T-rump
Removes Jefferson Davis Statue
University of Texas
A statue of Jefferson Davis was removed from its pedestal Sunday on the campus of the University of Texas at Austin, days after a court rejected an appeal from a Confederate heritage group.
Crews were seen removing the statue of the Confederate president from its place near the university's iconic clock tower.
Davis' statue will eventually be displayed in the Briscoe Center history museum on campus, which university officials said is a more appropriate place for it. The Briscoe Center has one of the nation's largest archives on slavery.
The statue has been a target of vandalism as well as criticism that it is a symbol of racism and discrimination. Confederate symbols nationwide are being re-considered following the recent mass shooting of members of a black church in Charleston, South Carolina.
A judge last week ruled against the Sons of Confederate Veterans, which sued to stop the university from moving it.
University of Texas
John C. Calhoun
Yale
Yale University's leaders on Saturday urged a campus conversation about whether to change the name of a residential college named for 19th century alumnus John C. Calhoun, a U.S. vice president and senator from South Carolina who was an ardent supporter of slavery.
Debate over the name began this summer with a petition circulated after nine black worshippers were slain in a Charleston, South Carolina, church. The petition said the Calhoun name, in place since the 1930s, represents "an indifference to centuries of pain and suffering among the black population."
President Peter Salovey and Dean Jonathan Holloway said in a letter to alumni that weren't taking a position on the question but urging a discussion in welcoming speeches to first-year students, and "we encourage you to take part as well."
Holloway, a scholar of African-American history, said the university's benefactor, 18th century British shipping magnate and philanthropist Elihu Yale, probably didn't own slaves, but undoubtedly profited from the international slave trade.
Yale
When The Well Runs Dry
California
Looking for water to flush his toilet, Tino Lozano pointed a garden hose at some buckets in the bare dirt of his yard. It's his daily ritual now in a community built by refugees from Oklahoma's Dust Bowl. But only a trickle came out; then a drip, then nothing more.
Millions of Californians are being inconvenienced in this fourth year of drought, urged to flush toilets less often, take shorter showers and let lawns turn brown. But it's dramatically worse in places like Okieville, where wells have gone dry for many of the 100 modest homes that share cracked streets without sidewalks or streetlights in California's Central Valley.
Farming in Tulare County brought in $8.1 billion in 2014, more than any other county in the nation, according to its agricultural commissioner. Yet 1,252 of its household wells today are dry, more than all other California counties combined.
Lozano, a 40-year-old disabled vet and family man, has worked with his neighbors to rig lines from house to house, sharing water from a well deep enough to hit the emptying aquifer below. County trucks, funded with state drought relief money, fill 2,500-gallon tanks in many yards. Residents also get containers of drinking water, stacking them in bedrooms and living rooms.
These "Third-World-type conditions" are hidden from plain sight, says Andrew Lockman, of Tulare County's Office of Emergency Services. "It's not an earthquake or flood where you can drive down the street and see the devastation."
California
Weekend Box Office
"Straight Outta Compton"
The Christian drama "War Room" made a surprise bid for the box-office lead, Zac Efron's music drama "We Are Your Friends" fell completely flat and the N.W.A biopic "Straight Outta Compton" keeps chugging along.
Universal's "Straight Outta Compton" topped the box office for the third-straight week with $13.2 million at North American theaters over the weekend, according to studio estimates Sunday. The film, which has now made $134.1 million in total, has continued to dominate August moviegoing. It joins "Jurassic World" as the only movies to lead the box office three consecutive weeks this summer.
With another low-key weekend looming over Labor Day, Hollywood's summer is slowing to a crawl. Overall business on the weekend was down 21.4 percent from last year, according to Rentrak.
Estimated ticket sales for Friday through Sunday at U.S. and Canadian theaters, according to Rentrak. Where available, the latest international numbers for Friday through Sunday are also included. Final domestic figures will be released Monday:
1. "Straight Outta Compton," $13.2 million.
2. "War Room," $11 million.
3. "Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation," $8.3 million ($15.3 million international).
4. "No Escape," $8.3 million.
5. "Sinister 2," $4.7 million.
6. "Man From U.N.C.L.E.," $4.4 million.
7. "Hitman: Agent 47," $3.9 million ($13.1 million international).
8. "The Gift," $3.1 million.
9. "Jurassic World," $3.1 million.
10. "Ant-Man," $3.1 million.
"Straight Outta Compton"
In Memory
Oliver Sacks
There was the blind man who had the disastrous experience of regaining his sight. The surgeon who developed a sudden passion for music after being struck by lightning. And most famously, the man who mistook his wife for a hat.
Those stories and many more, taking the reader to the distant ranges of human experience, came from the pen of Dr. Oliver Sacks.
Sacks, 82, died Sunday at his home in New York City, his assistant, Kate Edgar, said. In February, he had announced that he was terminally ill with a rare eye cancer that had spread to his liver.
In his best-selling 1985 book, "The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat," he described a man who really did mistake his wife's face for his hat while visiting Sacks' office, because his brain had difficulty interpreting what he saw. Another story in the book featured twins with autism who had trouble with ordinary math but who could perform other amazing calculations.
Discover magazine ranked it among the 25 greatest science books of all time in 2006, declaring, "Legions of neuroscientists now probing the mysteries of the human brain cite this book as their greatest inspiration."
Sacks' 1973 book, "Awakenings," about hospital patients who'd spent decades in a kind of frozen state until Sacks tried a new treatment, led to a 1990 movie in which Sacks was portrayed by Robin Williams. It was nominated for three Academy Awards.
Oliver Wolf Sacks was born in 1933 in London, son of husband-and-wife physicians. Both were skilled at recounting medical stories, and Sack's own writing impulse "seems to have come directly from them," he said in his 2015 memoir, "On the Move."
After earning a medical degree at Oxford, Sacks moved to the United States in 1960 and completed a medical internship in San Francisco and a neurology residency at the University of California, Los Angeles. He moved to New York in 1965 and began decades of neurology practice. At a Bronx hospital he met the profoundly disabled patients he described in "Awakenings."
Even apart from his books, he wrote prolifically. He began keeping journals at age 14, and in his 2015 memoir he said he'd filled more than a thousand at last count. He kept a notebook nearby when he went to bed or swam, never knowing when thoughts would strike. They often arrived in complete sentences or paragraphs.
As his hearing worsened, he even devoted a notebook to instances in which he misheard something, like "cuttlefish" for "publicist."
Sacks reflected on his own life this year when he wrote in the New York Times that he was terminally ill. "I am a man of vehement disposition, with violent enthusiasms, and extreme immoderation in all my passions," he wrote.
In the time he had remaining, he said, he would no longer pay attention to matters like politics and global warming because they "are no longer my business; they belong to the future. I rejoice when I meet gifted young people. ... I feel the future is in good hands."
Oliver Sacks
In Memory
Wes Craven
Wes Craven, the prolific writer-director who thrilled audiences with iconic and bloody suburban slashers like "Nightmare on Elm Street" and "Scream" that made his name synonymous with horror, has died. He was 76.
In a statement, Craven's family said that he died in his Los Angeles home Sunday, surrounded by family, after battling brain cancer.
A prolific writer, director and editor, Craven is credited with reinventing the teen horror genre with the 1984 release of "A Nightmare on Elm Street" starring a then-unknown Johnny Depp. The movie and its indelible, razor-fingered villain Freddy Krueger (played by Robert Englund) led to several sequels, as did his 1996 success, "Scream."
Besides his work in horror films, Craven also directed the drama "Music of the Heart," which earned Meryl Streep an Oscar nomination.
Wesley Earl "Wes" Craven was born in Cleveland, Ohio, on Aug. 2, 1939. Though he earned a Master's Degree in philosophy and writing from John Hopkins University and briefly taught as a college professor in Pennsylvania and New York, his start in movies was in pornography, where he worked under a pseudonym.
Craven's feature debut under his own name was 1972's "The Last House on the Left," a horror film about teenage girls abducted by thugs and taken into the woods. Made for just $87,000, the film, though graphic enough to be censored in many countries, was a hit. Roger Ebert said it was "about four times as good as you'd expect."
"Nightmare on Elm Street," however, catapulted him to far greater renown in 1984. The Ohio-set film about teenagers who are stalked in their dreams, which Craven wrote and directed, spawned a never-ending franchise that has carried on until, most recently, a 2010 remake.
The concept, Craven said, came from his own youth in Cleveland, where he lived next to a cemetery on an Elm Street.
Craven is survived by his wife, producer Iya Labunka, a son, a daughter and a stepdaughter.
Wes Craven
In Memory
Wayne Dyer
Dr. Wayne Dyer, the renowned motivational guru and author of dozens of self-help books, has died at age 75, his family announced over social media Sunday.
"Wayne has left his body, passing away through the night. He always said he couldn't wait for this next adventure to begin and had no fear of dying. Our hearts are broken, but we smile to think of how much our scurvy elephant will enjoy the other side. ... We Love You Forever Dad/Wayne," his family posted in a message on Dyer's Facebook page.
Dyer rose to prominence after the publication of his first book, 1976's "Your Erroneous Zone," became an international bestseller. That launched Dyer's career as an author and speaker and garnered him a legion of ardent fans, who dubbed him the "father of motivation."
His basic message was simple: Think good thoughts, and good things will surely follow.
Dyer's own story is motivating in its own right: Born Michigan, he spent part of his childhood in orphanages and foster homes. He went on to earn a doctorate in educational counseling from Wayne State University and was teaching at St. John's University in New York when the success of "Your Erroneous Zone" altered his professional course.
Wayne Dyer
| CURRENT MOON lunar phases |
