Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Lucy Mangan: "It costs women 26% more than men to rent in London. Why?" (Stylist)
When I got my first job in London after graduating, I worked out where I could rent using two factors alone: my pay packet and how close I could live to the office and still feel safe coming home on the train. I couldn't afford anywhere near a Tube station, but I needed to feel safe walking back to the flat after dark. Local amenities, shops, distance from friends, family - none of that mattered. I basically needed a postcode that, decoded, read "Unraped, unbankrupted".
Suzanne Moore: "Find a room of your own: top 10 tips for women who want to write" (The Guardian)
Give up wanting to be liked, live with imposter syndrome and love what you do. Suzanne Moore advises aspiring women writers.
Suzanne Moore: Greta Thunberg's defiance upsets the patriarchy - and it's wonderful (The Guardian)
The 16-year-old climate-emergency activist refuses to kowtow to old men, and it has left them squirming.
Alison Flood: Philip Pullman attacks politicians claiming to know the 'will of the people' (The Guardian)
Dark Materials author says that power based on what 'cannot be questioned' is 'extremely dangerous' at launch of new book The Secret Commonwealth.
Alison Flood: 'Sci-fi makes you stupid' study refuted by scientists behind original research (The Guardian)
After finding readers devoted less attention to science fiction than literary fiction, researchers say quality determines comprehension - not genre.
Alison Flood: "US prisons banning thousands of books 'on arbitrary grounds'" (The Guardian)
George Orwell, John Updike and Barack Obama are among the names PEN America says have been illogically withheld from prisoners.
Jonathan Jones: "The stolen golden toilet: the perfect punchline to an 18-carat joke" (The Guardian)
Maurizio Cattelan is right to enjoy the loss of his fully-functioning conceptual wonder. It makes his comment on art, money and Trumpian desire even more brilliant.
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Presenting
Michael Egan
answered:
has returned to semi-retired status.
In memory.
BRUCE'S RECOMMENDATION
BANDCAMP MUSIC
BANDCAMP MUSIC YOU WILL PROBABLY NEVER HEAR ON THE RADIO
Music: "Fun Punk (Instrumental)" an instrumental song from the album VEDICARDI III
Artist:
Vedicardi
Artist Minneapolis, Minnesota
Info: Simply a good instrumental song from a punk band.
Price: Name Your Price, including FREE
If you are OK with paying for it, you can use PAYPAL or CREDIT CARD
Genre: Punk Instrumental
Vedicardi III by Vedicardi
David Bruce has over 140 Kindle books on Amazon.com.
Reader Suggestion
Michelle in AZ
New Venture
Michael Egan
from Bruce
Anecdotes
Frank Churchill and Paul Smith wrote beautiful music for Walt Disney, and they won Academy Awards for their music. One day, Mr. Disney was showing some guests - Charlie Chaplain and H.G. Wells - around his studio, and they all walked into the room where Mr. Churchill and Mr. Smith were supposed to be writing the music for Snow White. Apparently, the two composers were taking a break from music; instead of composing music together, one composer was setting on fire the other composer's fart.
Krissi Murison was the first female editor of NMEmagazine, aka New Music Express. When she was 15 years old, she was into music in a big way, and put green dye in her hair and tried to play guitar and sing in a band. She certainly looked the part of an indie music chick, but she admits, "I had absolutely no musical talent. I played a bit of really bad guitar and I tried to sing. I was so bad at guitar that when we played gigs they would just turn my mic down so I would just look the part."
In 1960, jazz guitarist Jim Hall couldn't afford a telephone. Jazz tenor saxophonist Sonny Rollins was reclusive and didn't want or have a telephone. Nevertheless, they communicated. A note by Mr. Rollins appeared in Mr. Hall's mailbox one day. Mr. Hall then put his own note in Mr. Rollins' mailbox. They exchanged notes for a while, and when Mr. Rollins decided to start playing jazz in public again in 1961, he offered Mr. Hall a job playing in his pianoless quartet.
The early punk rock group Television wanted to play music at CBGB's, so they asked owner Hilly Kristal for permission. He asked what kind of music they played, and in return they asked what the sign "CBGB-OMFUG" meant. Hilly told them it meant "Country, Bluegrass, Blues, and Other Music for Uplifting Gourmandizers." The members of Television then lied and said that that was exactly the kind of music they played.
Chicago tenor saxophonist Von Freeman started playing professionally at age 12. When he showed up for his first day at work, he gave this note from his mother to the nightclub manager: "Don't let him drink, don't let him smoke, don't let him consort with those women, and make him stay in that dressing room." The nightclub manager told him to do something to make himself look older, so he drew a mustache on his face.
Harry "Sweets" Edison played jazz trumpet for Count Basie, but he almost quit shortly after being hired. The band played mostly without written music, and Sweets wasn't sure what notes to play. He told this to Count Basie, who knew that Sweets could play and who told him, "If you find a note tonight that sounds good, play the same d*mned note every night!"
Communism has some major faults, including giving way much power to petty bureaucrats. One city official insisted that musicians paid to perform in a park must play for eight straight hours with no intermissions. When the musicians protested, the official stated, "The Government knows best what is and is not possible."
For various reasons, people decide to make their living creating music.The Mississippi Sheiks' Walter Vinson, who used to work as a field hand, had a very good reason for quitting and taking off with his guitar to play country blues: "I'm not going to spend the rest of my life behind a mule that's farting."
Marian Anderson was a famous singer of opera and African-American spirituals. Occasionally, someone would tell her that they would do anything to be able to sing like her. She would smile and then ask, "Would you practice eight hours a day?"
***
© Copyright Bruce D. Bruce; All Rights Reserved
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Current Events
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Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
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In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Gas is 'down' to $3.95/gal at the cash-only no-name station.
Controversy Stalks
Nobel Peace, Literature Prizes
Controversy stalks the Nobel prizes for peace and literature in a way it rarely does for science.
The revamped panel at the Swedish Academy who will hand out the Nobel Literature prizes Thursday for both 2018 and 2019 would relish arguments about the winners, rather than intrigue about the #MeToo scandal that forced the institution to suspend the prize last year.
And U.S. President Don-Old Trump (R-Aderall) has done his part to kindle intrigue about the 2019 Peace Prize winner, by simultaneously seeming to pitch himself for the prize while also slamming the Norwegian panel that awards it.
"Controversy is a natural effect of the Literature Prize," says Mats Malm, the Swedish Academy's new permanent secretary, appointed to head a reformed 18-person panel after two years of convulsions at the prestigious institution. "We want to contribute to the international discussion about literature and what it is supposed to be."
Across the border, the five-person Norwegian Nobel Institute that oversees the Peace Prize usually claims not to enjoy the controversy that accompanies its choices. But Geir Lundestad, the non-voting secretary of the committee from 1990 to 2014, says some members have traditionally thrived on the controversies that the high-profile prize inevitably brings.
Nobel Peace, Literature Prizes
University Of Kansas Clutches Pearls
Snoop Dogg
A Snoop Dogg performance apparently got too steamy for the University of Kansas.
The school issued an apology Friday night after the hip-hop star performed as part of the "Late Night in the Phog" preseason celebration following scrimmages by the men's and women's basketball teams.
Snoop's 35-minute set at Allen Fieldhouse featured scantily dressed women gyrating on stripper poles and doing the splits, along with fake money being shot into the crowd and unedited versions of the rapper's hit songs, including "Drop It Like It's Hot" and "Gin and Juice."
After the show raised eyebrows, Kansas athletic director Jeff Long issued a statement to the Kansas City Star, saying oops, the school expected a "clean version" of the performance.
This afternoon, Snoop brushed off the controversy and shared a brief statement on Instagram saying he enjoyed performing at the school. "Thank. U for letting me be me. This is America," he captioned the post.
Snoop Dogg
Universal Basic Income Experiment
Stockton
When Stockton Mayor Michael Tubbs suggested giving residents in his California city $500 a month with no strings attached, he wasn't floating a new idea. The system of paying someone for being alive - now known as universal basic income - stretches back to the 16th century. Tubbs got the idea from Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., who proposed a guaranteed minimum income for citizens in 1967.
Today, it's still considered a radical approach. The system's critics say it reduces the incentive for people to find jobs and uses up government funds that could be better spent elsewhere.
Tubbs' program, which started in February, could serve as a test case. For eight months, 125 Stockton residents living at or below the median income line (around $46,000 annually) have been getting $500 monthly stipends. The money is distributed through the mail in the form of debit cards.
This week, the city released the first set of data about the program. Most participants, it found, have been using their stipends to buy groceries and pay their bills.
On average, participants in Stockton's trial spent most of their stipends (around 40%) on food and another 24% on sales and merchandise, including trips to Walmart or dollar stores. Another 11% went to paying their utilities, and around 9% went to buying gas and repairing their cars. That left around 16% to be divided among categories like medical expenses, transportation, education, insurance, recreation, and self-care.
Stockton
Disinterment Permitted
John Dillinger
Is it in fact the notorious American gangster John Dillinger who lies buried in an Indiana cemetery? Family members want to know, and the authorities have agreed to allow his exhumation.
Dillinger and his heavily armed "Terror Gang" robbed at least a dozen banks -- killing 10 men, including a police officer, in the process -- during the 1930s. He escaped from jail three times, stole submachine guns from police armories, and fashioned a well-earned reputation as "Public Enemy Number One."
His bloody career ended in 1934, when Dillinger was killed in a shootout with federal agents as he left a Chicago movie theater where he and two female friends had seen the Clark Gable movie "Manhattan Melodrama," police said.
In a sworn declaration accompanying an exhumation request, Carol Thompson, Dillinger's niece, said she had new information suggesting that the man in the grave is not the infamous bank robber.
She said records of his eye color, scar shape, teeth condition and fingerprints did not match up.
John Dillinger
Posts Loss for Seventh Year in Row
Aberdeen Golf Course
President Don-Old Trump (R-Feckless)'s golf links north of Aberdeen in Scotland again lost money in 2018.
The Trump International club, which he touted earlier this year as "perhaps the greatest," reported a loss of 1.1 million pounds ($1.3 million) last year, according to a filing with the Companies House registry in the U.K., first reported by The Scotsman newspaper.
It was the seventh year consecutive of losses at the operation, Trump's first U.K. golf resort, according to the Scotsman. The loss narrowed from the previous year.
The Aberdeenshire Council in September approved a capital investment including a 550-unit residential village at Trump International over the objections of thousands of local residents. A second 18-hole layout is also in the works.
In February, the Trump Organization was ordered to pay the Scottish government's legal costs following a lengthy court battle over an offshore wind farm near the course, the BBC reported.
Aberdeen Golf Course
Iconic Tree
Alaska
An iconic Alaska tree that is dying off from rising forest temperatures and diminished winter snowpack was deemed ineligible by U.S. wildlife officials on Friday for special protection under the U.S. Endangered Species Act.
The Trump administration, though acknowledging that climate change is a factor in the decline of the yellow-cedar, rejected a petition to list the tree as a threatened species under the landmark environmental law.
The trees, which can grow to be more than 1,000 years old, are mostly found in the coastal temperate rain forests of southeastern Alaska and British Columbia, though some stands occur as far south as northern California.
Environmentalists seeking the threatened species listing were trying to secure new safeguards for the trees in Alaska, where a long-running die-off extending across more than 1,500 square miles is concentrated.
A 2016 University of Alaska-led study found at least 70% of the trees had been lost in the hardest-hit areas.
Alaska
Temple Unearthed
King Ptolemy IV
Construction workers digging for sewer lines in the Egpytian city of Tama instead unearthed something incredible: an elaborately carved, 2,200-year-old temple from the era of King Ptolemy IV.
According to the country's Ministry of Antiquities, construction was stopped and archaeologists were called in to explore the find. So far, the team has discovered an east-west wall, a north-south wall and the southwestern corner of the temple, which is decorated with carvings of the Egpytian god Hapi, the god of fertility and of annual Nile River flooding, which enabled agriculture to flourish in the region in ancient Egypt.
These carvings show Hapi carrying offerings while surrounded by birds and other animals. Fragments of text mention Ptolemy IV, the fourth pharaoh of Egypt's Ptolemaic dynasty. The Ptolemies were Macedonian Greeks who ruled in Egypt from 305 B.C. to 30 B.C., often taking on the royal and religious symbols of earlier, homegrown Egyptian rulers. (The famous Cleopatra, who ruled Egypt from 51 B.C. to 30 B.C., was the last of the Ptolemies.)
Ptolemy IV ruled Egypt from 221 B.C. to 204 B.C. He was the son of Ptolemy III and Berenice II, the latter a famed equestrienne who outlived her husband only to be poisoned at the behest of her son, who had been her co-ruler. Berenice had a violent past; according to ancient histories, Berenice had her first husband, Demetrius, killed after Demetrius and Berenice's mother had an affair. The assassination apparently occurred in Berenice's mother's bedroom.
Ptolemy IV's reign was not a successful one. According to historians, the pharaoh was more interested in carousing and pretending to be an artist than in running a kingdom, and he supposedly outsourced most of the work of kingship to an ambitious priest named Sosibius. Under Ptolemy's reign, Egypt narrowly avoided losing its territory of Coele-Syria (now the region spanning parts of Lebanon and Syria) to its rival, the Seleucid Empire. Not long after this crisis passed, the Egpytian people began to revolt against Ptolemy IV's rulership, creating instability and deadly fighting that marred the last five years of his reign.
King Ptolemy IV
3.5 Million Years Ago
Our Galaxy
The centre of the Milky Way galaxy is a relatively calm place now (compared to other galactic centres), but that hasn't always been the case. In fact, just 3.5 million years ago, it was positively riotous - expelling a burst of energy that eventually blasted 200,000 light-years above and below the galactic plane.
The shockwaves of this colossal flare - called a Seyfert flare - can be observed today in the Magellanic Stream, a high-velocity stream of gas extending from the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds, 200,000 light-years from the Milky Way.
It's so powerful, astronomers believe it could only have come from Sagittarius A*, the supermassive black hole at the centre of the Milky Way. Because the first evidence for the flare was published in 2013, they have named the event BH2013.
In 2013, astrophysicist Joss Bland-Hawthorn of the University of Sydney and the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR) and colleagues estimated that the event occurred between 1 and 3 million years ago.
Now, more observations taken using the Hubble Space Telescope - and therefore a bigger dataset - have provided even more compelling evidence for the event. And the team has been able to narrow down a timeframe for both when the event occurred, as well as its duration.
Our Galaxy
Weekend Box Office
'Joker'
Warner Bros. said Sunday that "Joker" grossed an estimated $93.5 million in ticket sales from 4,374 screens in North America. The previous October record-holder was the Spider-Man spinoff "Venom" which opened to $80 million last year. Internationally, "Joker" earned $140.5 million from 73 markets, resulting in a stunning $234 million global debut.
In the landscape of R-rated comic book films, "Joker" is nestled between "Deadpool" and its sequel, both of which opened over $125 million, and "Logan," which launched with $88.4 million.
"Joker" was the only new wide release this weekend, which is down from last year when both "Venom" and "A Star is Born" opened. Holdovers populated the top 10: The more family friendly "Abominable" landed in second place with $12 million in its second weekend and "Downton Abbey" took third in its third weekend with $8 million.
And in limited release, Pedro Almod๓var's critically acclaimed "Pain and Glory" launched on four screens to a solid $160,087. Less fortunate was the Natalie Portman-led astronaut drama "Lucy in the Sky" which earned only $55,000 from 37 theaters resulting in a dismal $1,500 per screen average.
Estimated ticket sales for Friday through Sunday at U.S. and Canadian theaters, according to Comscore. Where available, the latest international numbers for Friday through Sunday are also included. Final domestic figures will be released Monday.
1."Joker," $93.5 million ($140.5 million international).
2."Abominable," $12 million ($24.6 million international).
3."Downton Abbey," $8 million ($6.6 million international).
4."Hustlers," $6.3 million ($1.9 million international).
5."It Chapter Two," $5.4 million ($5.6 million international).
6."Ad Astra," $4.6 million ($7.3 million international).
7."Judy," $4.4 million ($1.9 million international).
8."Rambo: Last Blood," $3.6 million ($4.3 million international).
9."War," $1.5 million ($2.9 million international).
10."Good Boys," $900,000.
'Joker'
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