Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Paul Krugman; "G.O.P. Cruelty Is a Pre-existing Condition: Republicans just won't stop trying to take away health care." (NY Times Column)
The G.O.P. recently rammed through a tax cut, disproportionately benefiting the wealthy, that will probably cost $2 trillion over the next decade - with no offsetting savings. Enhanced health care could easily be paid for by rescinding just part of this big giveaway. If Republicans won't do that, it's not Democrats' problem.
Paul Waldman: Republicans can't destroy the safety net. So they're making it an instrument of misery. (Washington Post)
If you truly believe that wealth is a sign of virtue - and conservatives certainly seem to - then the flip side is that those who don't have any must be morally unworthy, their station in life the product of only their own sins and sloth. So of course when government deals with those people, it should shower them with the contempt they deserve. That's what drives these policies: If they can't destroy the safety net, Republicans will add as much misery to it as they can muster.
Greg Sargent: Republicans furious with Trump for making it harder to lie about health care (Washington Post)
Sure, Republicans are rhetorically committed to keeping some form of protections for preexisting conditions (just not the ones Obamacare has put in place). But as Peter Suderman notes, there's still no serious GOP plan for actually doing this, precisely because Republicans won't make the hard policy choices necessary to create such a plan. So their position, functionally, is still full repeal. Republicans just want to be able to say they're also for protecting preexisting conditions, without saying how.
Jonathan Chait: Conservatives Can't Distinguish Between Democratic Reform and Authoritarianism (NY Mag)
Conservatives have spent three years explaining away the overt authoritarian tendencies of President Trump - who, just in the last week, called the media the "enemy of the people," demanded retribution against satirists, urged his attorney general to reopen an investigation into his opponent who has already been cleared of wrongdoing, and goaded his supporters in the police and military to unleash extra-legal political violence on the opposing party. But now they have decided it is their turn to take sweet revenge and throw the same accusations back in Democrats' faces.
Mary Beard: The Brexit exam (TLS)
I often think that one of the best ways of getting a perspective on one's own world is to imagine what the historians of the future will think about us. In particular, how will we appear in the history exams of pupils and students in 50 or 100 or 150 years time? One obvious example of that for me is prisons. Why on earth do we bang up so many people at enormous expense, when they are no danger to the world at large, and prison is better at making criminals than reforming them?
Mary Beard: The delights of Isernia (TLS)
Isernia is the complete reverse of the 'hotspot' problem. There is hardly a tourist in sight. And there is plenty to see. We were given a wonderful whirlwind tour of some of the best bits. At the very top of this post is the great view from the battlements of the Castello Pignatelli, in the nearby village of Monteroduni. But there is loads more.
Mark Coker: How to Fight the Commoditization of Books (Smashwords Blog)
2. Don't underprice: readers will pay for quality. The e-book sweet spots for quality bestselling full-length indie fiction are typically $3.99 and $4.99, and $7.99 to $9.99 are good prices for quality nonfiction.
David Bruce's Amazon Author Page
David Bruce's Smashwords Page
David Bruce's Blog #1
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David Bruce's Lulu Storefront
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David Bruce has over 100 Kindle books on Amazon.com.
Presenting
Michael Egan
said:
has returned to semi-retired status.
In memory.
Reader Suggestion
Michelle in AZ
Reader Suggestion
Starman
Starman is on it's second crossing of Mars orbit, although it will still take till next October for the actual flyby.
Click the "orbit" pic on the website then scroll below.
from Bruce
Anecdotes
In 1842, Franz Liszt played some concerts in Berlin. He realized that many of the university students in that city were impoverished, so he scheduled a student concert for which the tickets were sold at a very low price. Unfortunately, the university professors considered themselves invited to the concert, and they bought so many tickets for themselves, their families, and their friends that few if any students could attend the concert. Liszt noticed this and was made unhappy by it, but he performed as usual. After the concert, Liszt met some students and promised them a concert for students only - no professors allowed. He kept his promise, and a few days after the students-only concert, he took 800 students to a near-by castle for a lunch that was provided by a wealthy friend. At the lunch, List made a speech and said to the students, "If at any time any of you meets me anywhere, he is my invited guest."
When she was 18, Ethel Merman first starred on Broadway in a musical by George Gershwin. Mr. Gershwin invited Ms. Merman to his penthouse, where he played the two songs she was to sing in Girl Crazy. After hearing the songs, Ms. Merman sat quietly, thinking about how she would phrase the lyrics while singing. Mr. Gershwin joked, "Miss Merman, if there's anything about these songs you don't like, I'd be happy to make any changes." The 18-year-old unknown replied, "I think these'll do very nicely, George." (One of the songs was the hit "I Got Rhythm.")
On April 6, 1759, shortly before his death, George Frideric Handel conducted his Messiah at Covent Gardens. One of the singers, Matthew Dubourg, didn't like to sing his part the way Handel had written it; instead, he preferred to add his own embellishments. While singing, Mr. Dubourg got off key, and it was quite a while before he got on key again. When he did, Handel shouted to the amusement of the audience, "Welcome home, Mr. Dubourg!"
Early in his career, Jimmy Durante played piano at the Chatham Club in New York's Chinatown. Part of his job was to be on the lookout for customers trying to sneak away without paying their check. Each waiter was assigned a certain tune, and if Mr. Durante noticed a customer sneaking away he would play the tune of the waiter assigned to that customer. When the waiter heard his tune, he knew one of his customers was trying to sneak out without paying.
English entertainer Joyce Grenville knew a couple of sisters who were interested in music. Whenever they needed a housemaid or a cowman, they would advertise for a housemaid or a cowman with a particular musical talent; for example, a contralto-housemaid or a tenor-cowman. These servants formed a choir for which the sisters provided professional direction. Frequently, the choir composed of servants gave concerts.
Jascha Heifetz (1901-1987) was a great violinist, who often performed music with pianist Arthur Rubinstein and cellist Gregor Piatigorsky. Always, Mr. Rubinstein received top billing. Once, Mr. Heifetz said, "If the Almighty Himself played the violin, the credits would still read Rubinstein, God, and Piatigorsky, in that order."
Jack Benny was not a virtuoso violinist, but neither was he as bad as he pretended to be to get laughs. After Mr. Benny played the violin well at a benefit, a friend said, "Jack, I didn't know you played the violin so beautifully." Mr. Benny modestly said, "When I was younger, they used to call me another Heifetz. Not Jascha - another Heifetz."
At the height of Beatlemania, it was impossible to hear the Beatles perform in concert because of all the screaming teenyboppers. John Lennon once told journalist Arthur Unger that he and Paul McCartney would sometimes make up "wild lyrics" and sing them, knowing that no one would ever hear the lyrics.
George Kaufman once saw Marc Connelly coming from a concert by Jascha Heifetz and asked how he had liked it. Mr. Connelly shrugged, then said, "It was all right, I suppose, if you happen to like absolutely superb performances."
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. In answer, she would smile, then ask, "Would you practice eight hours a day?"
At a party, Charlie Chaplin once brilliantly sang an aria from Rigoletto. After he was finished, friends congratulated him, saying that they didn't know he could sing. "I can't," Mr. Chaplin explained. "I was just imitating [Enrico] Caruso."
Ignace Paderewski practiced many hours each day for several years to develop into a world-class pianist. After Queen Victoria heard one of his concerts, she told him that he was a genius. "Perhaps," Mr. Paderewski replied, "but before I was a genius, I was a drudge."
Actor Jack Gilford had trouble with reporters misspelling his name as "Guilford." He once wrote a letter of complaint to columnist Earl Wilson and began the letter, "Dear Mr. Wuilson."
While in London, Groucho Marx once interrupted a heated debate in Parliament by standing up in the visitors gallery and singing "When Irish Eyes are Smiling." He and his family were thrown out.
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© Copyright Bruce D. Bruce; All Rights Reserved
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Current Events
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We are all only temporarily able bodied.
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Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
JD is on vacation.
Visit JD's site - Kitty Litter Music
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
The hard drive in the kid's computer crapped out - just in time for mid-terms. Sigh.
Calls For Boycott
George Clooney
George Clooney is calling for the boycott of nine hotels in the U.S. and Europe with ties to the sultan of Brunei, which next month will implement Islamic criminal laws to punish gay sex by stoning offenders to death.
The Hollywood actor wrote Thursday in Deadline Hollywood: "Are we really going to help fund the murder of innocent citizens?"
He writes that you can't shame "murderous regimes," but you can shame "the banks, the financiers and the institutions that do business with them."
Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah rules the oil-rich monarchy with full executive authority, and the hotels are owned by the Brunei Investment Agency. An email seeking comment was sent to the agency Friday.
The hotels are The Dorchester and Coworth Park in the U.K.; Beverly Hills Hotel and Hotel Bel-Air in Los Angeles; Le Meurice and Hotel Plaza Athenee in Paris; Hotel Eden in Rome; and Hotel Principe di Savoia in Milan.
George Clooney
When There Are Nine
Ruth Bader Ginsburg Beer
Brew-th Bader Ginsburg is a thing.
Well, almost. Samuel Adams has a new limited-edition beer inspired by U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
It's a Belgian Brut IPA, called When There Are Nine, a reference to Ginsburg's famous reply to the question about when there will be enough women on the Supreme Court.
But before you swap "oyez" for "cheers," know that this is a blink-and-you-miss-it beer. The booze - brewed on International Women's Day, a.k.a. March 8 - will be served on Friday 5-8 p.m. at the Samuel Adams Boston Brewery at an event hosted with the Pink Boots Society, a national organization that supports women working in the beer industry.
Samuel Adams brewed 20 kegs, the equivalent of about 2,500 beers. What isn't consumed at the fundraiser will be served at the Tap Room while supplies last, according to the Boston Beer Co., which makes Samuel Adams.
Ruth Bader Ginsburg Beer
Billboard Removes Rapper From Country Chart
Lil Nas X
Billboard told rapper Lil Nas X to take his horse and giddy up when they decided to remove his viral hit "Old Town Road" from their country charts because they determined it wasn't country enough.
The song , which debuted on the charts just three weeks ago, has been turned into a meme on social media app Tik Tok. It features references to the Western-themed video game "Red Dead Redemption 2," and plenty of cowboy imagery in its lyrics, but also a trap beat and a softly plucked banjo from a Nine Inch Nails sample.
The song debuted at No. 19 on Billboard's Hot Country chart for the week of March 16, between Kelsea Ballerini and Morgan Wallen. In a story first reported by Rolling Stone, Billboard removed the song from the country chart, although it remains on rap/hip hop charts and reached 32 on the all genre Hot 100 chart.
"Upon further review, it was determined that 'Old Town Road' by Lil Nas X does not currently merit inclusion on Billboard's country charts," Billboard said in a statement. "When determining genres, a few factors are examined, but first and foremost is musical composition. While 'Old Town Road' incorporates references to country and cowboy imagery, it does not embrace enough elements of today's country music to chart in its current version."
"Billboard's decision to take the song off of the country chart had absolutely nothing to do with the race of the artist," the statement said.
Lil Nas X
Rammstein
Government officials and Jewish leaders have condemned the German metal band Rammstein for apparently referencing Holocaust imagery in their new music video.
A teaser clip for "Deutschland" showed Rammstein frontman Till Lindemann and his bandmates dressed in striped prison uniforms, with nooses around their necks.
While the teaser did not appear to shown any explicit reference to the Holocaust, German newspaper Bild, translated via Reuters, quoted a number of leading public figures who spoke out against the video.
Felix Klein, the German government's commissioner for anti-Semitism, called it a "tasteless exploitation of artistic freedom" while Charlotte Knobloch, former president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, said the band had "crossed a line".
The full video is expected to air later today (28 March). It is the first new material from Rammstein's as-yet-untitled seventh album, which is scheduled for release in April and will mark the band's first full-length release in a decade.
Rammstein
Conspiracy Claims
Alex Jones
Conspiracy theorist Alex Jones blamed the various claims he's made over the years, including that the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre was a hoax, on "psychosis," according to a deposition the "Infowars" host has given as part of a Texas lawsuit.
Jones described his conspiracy thinking as a kind of mental disorder during the deposition taken earlier this month for the lawsuit filed against him by the family of a 6-year-old who was among the 20 children and six adults killed in the Newtown, Connecticut, attack, the Austin American-Statesman reported .
Jones said during the deposition that he "almost had like a form of psychosis back in the past where I basically thought everything was staged, even though I'm now learning a lot of times things aren't staged."
Jones blamed his mental state on "the trauma of the media and the corporations lying so much, then everything begins - you don't trust anything anymore, kind of like a child whose parents lie to them over and over again, well, pretty soon they don't know what reality is."
Jones' attorneys have defended his speech in court as "rhetorical hyperbole," but denied it was defamation.
Alex Jones
Not Bullying
Farting
A man who claimed his former supervisor at work repeatedly broke wind at him has lost his multimillion dollar compensation claim for bullying.
David Hingst had demanded his former employer, Construction Engineering, pay him $1.8m (Australian dollars - about £980,000) in damages.
He accused his former supervisor Greg Short of repeatedly breaking wind inside his small, windowless office, which he said amounted to bullying.
But the Court of Appeal in the Australian state of Victoria has dismissed Mr Hingst's case, and ruled even if his allegations of malicious flatulence were true it would not necessarily mean he had been bullied.
The 56-year-old testified he had moved out of a communal office space at the engineering firm's building to try to escape Mr Short's constant farting.
But Mr Short allegedly then began coming into Mr Hingst's new private office and continued to break wind several times a day.
Farting
Bones Glow Through Their Skin
Wee Orange 'Pumpkin' Frogs
In eastern Brazil's Atlantic Forest, poisonous "pumpkin toadlets" use their vivid colors to warn off predators. But these tiny frogs also broadcast a secret visual signal: They glow bright blue under ultraviolet light.
Scientists unexpectedly discovered the glowing patterns in two species of pumpkin toadlets (Brachycephalus ephippium and B. pitanga) while investigating the tiny frogs' mating calls. To the human eye, the frogs appear orange, red or yellow in natural light.
But when researchers shone a UV lamp on the frogs, blue patterns emerged on the toadlets' heads, backs and legs. [In Photos: Cute and Colorful Frogs]
Fluorescence is extremely rare in land animals with backbones, and while scientists don't know how the pumpkin toadlets use their glow, it may help them to recognize prospective mates or protect them from predators, the researchers reported in a new study.
Unlike bioluminescence, in which chemical reactions in an animal's body generate light, fluorescence won't work in complete darkness. In fluorescence, special molecules absorb light and then emit it at longer wavelengths, creating a glow that usually shows up in shades of red or green.
Wee Orange 'Pumpkin' Frogs
$2 Baseball Card
Babe Ruth
It's been difficult for Dale Ball to keep his emotions in check.
Ball says a 1921 Babe Ruth card he bought for $2 has been authenticated.
He says he brought his Babe Ruth card to a lab to put it through a fiber ID process and compare it to another card from the same era.
Fresno State Anthropology professor John Pryor studies items such as Native American artifacts. Baseball cards are new to him but he analyzed the lab results of the Babe Ruth card.
"I was told by an auction place back east that the beginning bid would start at $1.5 (million) through them and that it would probably go for $4.5 (million) and up."
Babe Ruth
Top 20
Global Concert Tours
The Top 20 Global Concert Tours ranks artists by average box office gross per city and includes the average ticket price for shows Worldwide. The list is based on data provided to the trade publication Pollstar by concert promoters and venue managers. Week of March 27, 2019:
1. Eric Church; $2,893,598; $97.80.
2. Elton John; $2,662,708; $139.46.
3. Fleetwood Mac; $2,186,678; $139.51.
4. Justin Timberlake; $2,174,805; $132.36.
5. Metallica; $2,047,611; $121.15.
6. Luis Miguel; $1,889,054; $83.74.
7. Marc Anthony; $1,600,003; $113.78.
8. Michael Bublι; $1,505,890; $125.78.
9. Bob Seger & The Silver Bullet Band; $1,404,527; $113.76.
10. Cher; $1,345,126; $114.96.
11. KISS; $1,205,057; $103.08.
12. Travis Scott; $1,175,889; $73.61.
13. Blake Shelton; $1,044,392; $89.58.
14. Trans-Siberian Orchestra; $1,037,030; $64.34.
15. Mumford & Sons; $1,036,110; $71.31.
16. Kevin Hart; $1,034,919; $81.40.
17. Florence + The Machine; $1,024,553; $66.66.
18. Andrι Rieu; $864,487; $93.57.
19. Snow Patrol; $845,997; $73.14.
20. Twenty One Pilots; $788,188; $68.48.
Global Concert Tours
In Memory
Agnes Varda
Agnes Varda, the Belgian-born grande dame of French cinema and an influential force behind the New Wave movement, died at her home in Paris on Friday. She was 90 years old.
A close contemporary of cinema legends such as Francois Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard, Varda won an honorary Oscar in 2017 and the Berlin Film Festival's Berlinale Camera lifetime achievement award only last month.
She made her most recent film, "Agnes by Varda", which shows her discussing her work before live audiences and extracts from earlier films spliced in, to help bid farewell to her audience.
"I have to prepare myself to say goodbye and go away," Varda told a news conference in Berlin in February.
Varda began her career as a stills photographer before becoming one of the leading voices and maverick of the Left Bank Cinema and French New Wave.
Her films focused on the issues faced by ordinary people, such as harvesters (The Gleaners and I, 2000), drifters (Vagabond, 1985) and on women in particular (Cleo from 5 to 7, 1962).
A rare female voice in the New Wave movement, Varda's works are often considered feminist because of her use of female protagonists.
Varda was making movies until the end. At the age of 89, she partnered with the French photographer and muralist known as JR on "Faces Places", a film that featured the two meandering through rural France, encountering the locals and forming their own friendship.
Agnes Varda
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