• Vincent van Gogh once gave a painting to a friend named Anton Kerssemakers, who pointed out that he hadn’t signed the painting. Mr. van Gogh replied, “Actually, it isn’t necessary — they will surely recognize my work later on and write about me when I am dead and gone.”
• Pop artist Andy Warhol was a cat person. He and his mother kept a couple of dozen cats in the apartment they shared together. All of the cats were named Sam.
Babies
• When children’s book author Tomie DePaola was in kindergarten, his parents brought home a baby sister for him. At the baby’s baptism, little Tomie saw the priest pour water on his baby sister’s head, and so he wanted water poured on his head. Hearing him, the priest promised, “Little boy, if you’re quiet you can have anything you want after the ceremony.” Knowing little Tomie, his dad said, “Big mistake, Father.” Tomie was quiet, and when the priest asked what he wanted after the ceremony, Tomie said, “Baby Jesus,” by which he meant the baby Jesus in the church’s nativity scene. Of course, Tomie couldn’t have that particular baby Jesus, but his parents bought him another one at Woolworth’s.
• When a family had a baby, their young son insisted on having a private time with the new baby. Of course, the parents were afraid that their young son was jealous of the new baby and might try to hurt it, so they unobtrusively hid and watched their young son as he was “alone” with the new baby. However, the boy did not try to hurt the baby. All he did was request, “Tell me what it was like. I’m beginning to forget.”
• Jimmy Piersall was a Red Sox outfielder who had 10 children and was intimately familiar with changing cloth diapers, so he had the perfect qualifications to teach Yankee catcher Yogi Berra how to diaper a child: “Yog, you take a diaper and put it in the shape of a baseball diamond. Take the baby’s bottom and put it on the pitcher’s mound. Take first base and pin it to third. Take home and slide it to second.”
Birth
• Marty Links was a woman who created a comic strip titled Bobby Sox about a teenager. She was a member of the National Cartoonists Society, and after giving birth to her first child, she mailed the members of the NCS an announcement, so she was somewhat annoyed when they kept sending her mail addressed to Mr. Links. (She even considered sending them her measurements in an attempt to get them to get her sex right.)
• In 1969, New York Met Ron Swoboda became a proud father. The birth occurred back home in New York at 1 a.m. at the same time that Mr. Swoboda was playing an away game in Los Angeles at 10 p.m. due to the three-hour time difference on the coasts. On the scoreboard flashed this message: “Congratulations, Ron Swoboda. Your new son was born tomorrow morning.”
Birthdays
• William C. McVeigh and his wife, Ruth, live in Fountain Hills, Arizona, where they had 14 children. Three of their children, Robert, Charles, and James, were born on December 4, but in different years. As the boys were growing up, each year on their birthday the family would bring a birthday cake, sing “Happy Birthday” to Bobby, then take four candles off the cake and sing “Happy Birthday” to Charlie, and finally take three more candles off the cake and sing “Happy Birthday” to Jimmy.
• When Yoshiko Uchida, author of Journey to Topaz, was a little girl, her grandmother celebrated her 88thbirthday. Little Yoshiko worried about how her grandmother would blow out all those candles on her birthday cake, but when the time came, her grandmother simply took a fan and with one sweep of her arm blew out all the candles. (Her grandmother was always prepared. In her closet was a very nice black dress. Pinned on it was this note: “This one is for my trip to Heaven.”)
Blueberries are perennial flowering plants with blue or purple berries. They are classified in the section Cyanococcus within the genus Vaccinium. Vaccinium also includes cranberries, bilberries, huckleberries and Madeira blueberries. Commercial blueberries—both wild (lowbush) and cultivated (highbush)—are all native to North America. The highbush varieties were introduced into Europe during the 1930s.
Canadian production of wild and cultivated blueberries in 2015 was 166,000 tonnes valued at $262 million, the largest fruit crop produced nationally accounting for 29% of all fruit value.
British Columbia was the largest Canadian producer of cultivated blueberries, yielding 70,000 tonnes in 2015, the world's largest production of blueberries by region.
Source
Deborah, the Master Gardener said:
I’m taking a WAG and going with blueberries. Because otherwise I have no idea.
Jon L took the day off.
Stephen F took the day off.
Randall took the day off.
Mac Mac took the day off.
George M. took the day off.
Roy, the Blue Texan who spent 3 1/2 hours in the car, lined up for the first Pfizer shot took the day off.
John I from Hawai`i took the day off.
Dave in Tucson took the day off.
DJ Useo took the day off.
Barbara, of Peppy Tech fame took the day off.
Leo in Boise took the day off.
David of Moon Valley took the day off.
Ed K took the day off.
Joe S (We resisted, we voted, we won. Get over it) took the day off.
Michelle in AZ took the day off.
Jacqueline took the day off.
Gary K took the day off.
Doug in Albuquerque, New Mexico, took the day off.
Tony DeN took the day off.
Gateway Mike took the day off.
Bob from Mechanicsburg, Pa took the day off.
Stephen aus Oz (& peppy tech, too) took the day off.
Kevin K. in Washington DC, Where Republicans cannot see sedition clearly, even now, took the day off.
-pgw took the day off.
Kenn B took the day off.
Micki took the day off.
Angelo D took the day off.
Harry M. took the day off.
Roy the (now retired) hoghead (aka 'hoghed') ( Without music to decorate it, time is just a bunch of boring production deadlines or dates by which bills must be paid. ~Frank Zappa ) took the day off.
Saskplanner took the day off.
Steve in Wonderful Sacramento, CA, took the day off.
MarilynofTC took the day off.
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Brian S. took the day off.
Gene took the day off.
Tony K. took the day off.
Noel S. took the day off.
James of Alhambra took the day off.
BttbBob has returned to semi-retired status.
~~~~~
Info: “The Beatles, Breeders, Zombies, Kinks, Cars, and Debussy make up just some of the layers of the Warhol-esque sonic power-pop art painting that is The Stan Laurels, the musical creation of earthling Sound Scientist John Lathrop of Austin, TX, USA.”
“THERE IS NO LIGHT WITHOUT THE DARK is the fourth full-length studio album by John Lathrop as The Stan Laurels and marks his debut on the Big Stir Records label.”
Price: $1 (USD) for track; $11 (USD) for 12-track album
CBS begins the night with a RERUN'Bob Hearts Abishola', followed by a RERUN'The Unicorn', then '48 Hours'.
NBC opens the night with 'Dateline', followed by an old 'SNL' (from 03/17/18) with Bill Hader hosting, music by Arcade Fire.
'SNL' is a RERUN (from 01/30/21) with John Krasinski hosting, music by Machine Gun Kelly.
ABC starts the night with a RERUN'Shark Tank', followed by a RERUN'American Idol'.
The CW offers a couple of old 'Friends', followed by a couple of old '2½ Men'.
Faux fills the night with LIVE'College Basketball', then pads the left coast with local crap.
MY recycles an old 'Weather Gone Viral', followed by an old 'Storm Of Suspicion'.
A&E has the movie 'Run All Night', followed by the movie 'Taken 2', then the movie 'Walking Tall'.
AMC offers the movie 'Jurassic Park', followed by the movie 'The Lost World: Jurassic Park'.
BBC -
[6:00AM] SHE WALKS WITH APES
[8:00AM - 11:00AM] WILD SINGAPORE
[12:00PM - 5:00PM] A WILD YEAR ON EARTH
[6:00PM - 3:00AM] PLANET EARTH
[4:00AM] SHE WALKS WITH APES (ALL TIMES ET)
Bravo has the movie 'The Waterboy', followed by the movie 'The Waterboy', again.
Comedy Central has the movie 'Dumb & Dumber', followed by the movie 'Step Brothers'.
FX has the movie 'Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse', followed by the movie 'The House With A Clock In The Walls'.
History has 'The Food That Built America', another 'The Food That Built America', followed by a FRESH'The Food That Built America', and another 'The Food That Built America'.
IFC -
[6:00am - 7:30am] Saved By The Bell: Hawaiian Style
[8:00am - 10:00am] Saved By The Bell
[10:30am] The Bad News Bears
[1:00pm] Blues Brothers 2000
[3:45pm] Caddyshack
[6:00pm] Fast Times At Ridgemont High
[8:00pm] The Blues Brothers
[11:00pm] Fast Times At Ridgemont High
[1:00am] The Blues Brothers
[5:00am] The Three Stooges - I'm A Monkey's Uncle
[5:15am] Three's Company
[5:45am] Three's Company (ALL TIMES ET)
Sundance -
[6:15am - 10:30am] the andy griffith show
[11:00am - 4:30pm] hogan's heroes
[5:00pm] thelma & louise
[8:00pm] grease
[10:30pm] the outsiders
[12:30am] jerry maguire
[4:30am] the andy griffith show
[5:00am] monk - Mr. Monk Makes The Playoffs (ALL TIMES ET)
SyFy has the movie 'Limitless', followed by the movie 'Olympus Has Fallen', followed by the movie 'London Has Fallen'.
Features on the surface of Mars are getting names in Navajo. It’s common for NASA mission members to nickname landmarks and geologic features to make them easier to keep track of. This time around, the Perseverance Rover team is working with the Navajo Nation to come up with informal descriptors for parts of the martian landscape.
Among them, are Navajo words for “red rock,” “diligence,” and “amongst the sand,” and “Máaz” – the Navajo word for “Mars.” President Jonathan Nez and a team of advisors came up with a list of 50 names for the NASA team to start with and plan to keep adding more. According to a news release, the team had some suggestions like, “tséwózí bee hazhmeezh,” or “rolling rows of pebbles, like waves.”
“The partnership that the Nez-Lizer Administration has built with NASA will help to revitalize our Navajo language,” said Nez in a news release. “We hope that having our language used in the Perseverance mission will inspire more of our young Navajo people to understand the importance and the significance of learning our language. Our words were used to help win World War II, and now we are helping to navigate and learn more about the planet Mars.”
According to the same news release, Perseverance touched down in a landing site named for Arizona’s Canyon de Chelly National Monument, in the heart of the Navajo Nation.
The news release states that for Perseverance to recognize landmarks that have been labeled in Navajo, it has to be “taught” the language and the accent marks used in the English alphabet to convey the intonation of the Navajo language cannot be read by the computer languages Perseverance uses.
The annual Golden Raspberry Awards, given to the year’s least best movies, unveiled their nominations Friday, with the Robert Downey Jr remake Dolittle, Sia’s Music, Mr Pillow Mike Lindell’s stolen-election documentary Absolute Proof and Rudy Giuliani’s cameo in Borat Subsequent Moviefilm the most panned by the group.
The Razzies also awarded a “Special Governors’ Trophy” to the year 2020 as “The Worst Calendar Year EVER.”
Other projects that drew Razzie attention were the reimagined Fantasy Island movie and the Netflix comedies Hubie Halloween and The Wrong Missy, as well as the Polish erotic drama 365 Days.
Cats was the runaway winner last year with six Razzies.
About 18 months after Disney/Marvel’s Avengers: Endgame assailed to become the top grossing moving of all-time at the worldwide box office with $2,789.2 billion in July 2019, word is that James Cameron’s Avatar, which the Russo Brothers-directed Marvel movie defeated, will once again bounce back to reclaim that title.
Avatar was re-released in China over the weekend, the country experiencing a massive boom at the B.O. post Covid there, and made $3.5M in the No. 1 spot on Friday or Rmb22.5M. That result puts the PRC gross for Avatar at an estimated $209.9M. Nancy Tartaglione informs me that currently on Saturday in China, Avatar has reached $5.8M in its running weekend total. She first told you about how Avatar pre-sales were doing this weekend.
Heading into Avatar’s re-release this weekend, Avengers: Endgame stood at $858.37M domestic, $1.939 billion overseas for a total $2.797 billion total.
Avatar‘s grosses stood at $760.5M, $2.029 billion foreign and $2.789 worldwide.
Avatar beat out Jim Cameron’s 1997 Titanic, the former global box office champ, after being released in 2009 and held that titles for ten years until Avengers: Endgame came along. Marvel Boss Kevin Feige heralded the news in Hall H during the studio’s panel at Comic-Con in July 2019. Cameron has been working busily on the sequels, returning to production last May in New Zealand on part 2 as Covid cases calmed there. Disney has scheduled Avatar 2 for Dec. 16, 2022; part 3 for Dec. 20, 2024; part 4 for Dec. 18, 2026; and part five for Dec. 22, 2028.
Sen. Rafael "Ted" Cruz (R-Shameless) is trying to cash in on the trendy conservative “cancel culture” by signing and selling hundreds of copies of a children’s book that he did not write.
Cruz, via fundraising emails and Facebook ads, this week asked supporters to pitch in $60 or more for a copy of Dr. Seuss’s “Green Eggs and Ham” that he’d autographed himself.
“Right now, the far left is trying to ‘CANCEL’ Dr. Seuss,” Cruz declared in a paid Facebook ad. “As someone who has always been a big fan of Green Eggs and Ham, I won’t let that stand,” he wrote. “So please rush an urgent Contribution of $60 and I’ll sign a copy of Green, Eggs, and Ham just for you!”
In an email, Cruz boasted Thursday of signing “another 175 copies” because “the response to this has been HUGE.” He described the book signed by him as a “cancel culture collectible.”
Colorado lawmaker Lauren Boebert (R-YouBetcha2) once again used a bogus story about a man being "beaten to death" outside her restaurant to advocate for gun rights, despite the local police department debunking her claims after an autopsy showed that the man had died from a drug overdose.
Boebert was speaking on the House floor during Wednesday's debate on bills that might expand background checks before guns can be purchased.
"There was an altercation outside my restaurant where a man was physically beat to death, there were no weapons involved, he was beat to death by another man's hands," she said, referring to a 2013 incident outside her Shooters Grill restaurant in Rifle, Colorado.
However, it was reported by the Colorado Sun newspaper in September last year that the Rifle Police Department had no record of such a murder.
The police department told the newspaper that a man had indeed died down the street from the gun-themed Shooters Grill restaurant in August, but that an autopsy indicated that he had died after overdosing on drugs.
Britain is the legitimate owner of the Parthenon marbles, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson told a Greek newspaper, rebuffing Greece's permanent request for the return of the 2,500-year-old sculptures.
Since independence in 1832, Greece has repeatedly called for the repatriation of the treasures - known in Britain as the Elgin Marbles - that British diplomat Lord Elgin removed from the Parthenon temple in Athens in the early 19th century, when Greece was under Ottoman rule.
But the British Museum in London has refused to return the sculptures, roughly half of a 160-meter (525-foot) frieze which adorned the 5th century BC monument, saying they were acquired by Elgin under a legal contract with the Ottoman Empire and are part of everyone's "shared heritage".
In an interview with Ta Nea newspaper released on Friday, Johnson, a former student of the Classics much given to quoting Latin and Greek, reiterated that the British Museum was the legitimate owner of the marbles.
He said he understood the feelings of many Greeks about the issue but said Britain had a "firm and long-standing" position about the sculptures. "They were acquired legally by Lord Elgin, in line with the laws that were in force at that time," he said.
Myanmar's first satellite is being held on board the International Space Station following the Myanmar coup, while Japan's space agency and a Japanese university decide what to do with it, two Japanese university officials said.
The $15 million satellite was built by Japan's Hokkaido University in a joint project with Myanmar's government-funded Myanmar Aerospace Engineering University (MAEU). It is the first of a set of two 50 kg microsatellites equipped with cameras designed to monitor agriculture and fisheries.
Human rights activists and some officials in Japan worry that those cameras could be used for military purposes by the junta that seized power in Myanmar on Feb. 1.
That has put the deployment on hold, as Hokkaido University holds discussions with the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), the two Hokkaido University officials said.
Since the coup, university officials had been unable to contact the rector of MAEU, Prof Kyi Thwin, the second official added.
Once on the verge of extinction, the rarest subspecies of the gray wolf in North America has seen its population nearly double over the last five years, with more gains being reported in 2020, U.S. wildlife managers said Friday.
The results of the latest annual survey show there are at least 186 Mexican gray wolves in the wild in New Mexico and Arizona. That marks the fifth straight year that the endangered species has increased its numbers, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
Reintroduction of Mexican wolves to the American Southwest began more than two decades ago. The program has pitted environmentalists, rural residents and wildlife managers against one another, prompting many legal challenges over management of the effort. The latest pending case involves a rewrite of the agency's management plan for the animals.
Meanwhile, ranchers and rural residents who live in the mountainous regions of southeastern Arizona and southwestern New Mexico where the wolves roam say livestock deaths due to predation continue to escalate as the population grows.
Unlike wolf reintroductions in Yellowstone and the northern United States, wildlife managers in the Southwest are faced with a climate that has encouraged a year-round calving season, meaning conflicts between livestock and wolves are constant rather than just a few months out of the year.
A 2,000-year-old device often referred to as the world's oldest "computer" has been recreated by scientists trying to understand how it worked.
The Antikythera Mechanism has baffled experts since it was found on a Roman-era shipwreck in Greece in 1901.
The hand-powered Ancient Greek device is thought to have been used to predict eclipses and other astronomical events.
But only a third of the device survived, leaving researchers pondering how it worked and what it looked like.
Scientists from University College London (UCL) believe they have finally cracked the puzzle using 3D computer modelling. They have recreated the entire front panel, and now hope to build a full-scale replica of the Antikythera using modern materials.
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U.S.A. said:
has returned to semi-retired status.
In memory.
