Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Paul Krugman: Bernie Sanders and the Myth of the 1 Percent (NY Times)
The very rich are richer than people imagine.
Paul Waldman and Greg Sargent: "The Mueller report leaves little doubt: Trump obstructed justice" (Washington Post)
Mueller also conspicuously declined to conclude that "no criminal conduct occurred," and declined to reach the judgment that Trump "clearly did not commit obstruction of justice." Taken all together, that's a clear message from Mueller to Congress and the public. Barr may not prosecute Trump; indeed, his intent to protect the president is why he's attorney general today. But Congress can still conclude that the multitudinous acts of obstruction the report lays out provide more than ample reason to take action. It's just a matter of deciding to do it.
Alexandra Petri: "My book report on 'The Mueller Report'" (Washington Post)
I enjoyed reading "The Mueller Report," a book that contained 448 pages, each more exciting than the last, as well as more than 1,000 footnotes! The book was published in 2019, meaning it is relevant to our times, and it contained many themes and symbolism which I will explain in the course of this report. At the back it also included a list of characters. Some people just skimmed through this report to come to conclusions they already had, but I did not, as this report will show.
Mary Beard: Plus ca change? (TLS)
The same goes… you can tell I had a bit of time for thought … for kitchen equipment too. Nothing is ever going to beat the old-fashioned metal saucepan (I am still cooking in some that were my parent wedding presents 65 years ago - couldn't be bettered). But, my goodness, there has been a revolution in the design of the potato peeler.
Mary Beard: What should we teach in history? (TLS)
But my ears pricked up when I heard (as I recall) Anita Anand say that education was the thing, and that we should teach kids about this. Rather than, she implied, about the Romans and the Tudors. Of course, I bristled a bit.
Mary Beard: Botticelli in Boston (TLS)
But the discussion was much more wide ranging than that. We focussed on the very different architecture on each panel, on the black slave at the front left of the Lucretia panel, on the original domestic context ('I've got a lovely pair of paintings, darling, each showing violence against women and their deaths… you'll love them, they'll be great in the bedroom?!') and on how you teach this to students in a world where they are quite likely to say they don't want to focus on scenes of brutality against women such as these.
Hannah Jane Parkinson: From Distracted Boyfriend to Unhelpful Teacher, I love the twists of a meme's journey (The Guardian)
Memes bring out the best in people: their wit, their absurdist thinking, their quick turns of phrase.
Kim Newman: Exposing children to horror films isn't the nightmare you think it is (The Guardian)
Don't worry about the Peppa Pig fans shown a horror trailer: scary films stoke children's imaginations and build resilience.
Eamonn Forde: "'The great untold scandal': the sordid tale of boyband mogul Lou Pearlman" (The Guardian)
Lance Bass of 'NSync discusses a new documentary that reveals the darker side of the man who made them and the Backstreet Boys.
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Presenting
Michael Egan
took the day off.
has returned to semi-retired status.
In memory.
Reader Suggestion
Michelle in AZ
Team Coco
CONAN
from Bruce
Anecdotes
• Comedian Milton Berle once guest-starred on Marlo Thomas' TV series That Girl, and he was a pain in the butt, complaining constantly about everything. Things got so bad that Marlo telephoned her father, the comedian Danny Thomas, to ask for advice. Danny told her, "Ask him to spell words that begin with R." This, of course, makes no sense whatsoever, so Marlo replied, "What? Ask him to spell words that start with R? What are you talking about?" Danny told her, "Just do it." Marlo yelled to Milton, "Hey, Milton, how do you spell recluse?" Milton replied, "R-E-C-Q-U-L-S-E," and people laughed. Then Marlo yelled, "How do you spell remember?" Milton replied, "R-E-M-M-M-E-M-M-M-B-M-M-E-R-M," and everybody laughed. As soon as Milton got a few laughs, he stopped complaining. Marlo says, "Milton just wanted to feel comfortable. And he felt comfortable when people were laughing. Now he could go to work."
• Lindley Miller Garrison served as Secretary of War under President Woodrow Wilson. Much of the reading he had to do in office was dry and boring, but once he came across something interesting. A colonel had ordered a lieutenant to take 15 men across a swamp, but although the lieutenant was a capable man, he did not want to do so, arguing that the mud was too deep. However, under orders he made the attempt, but returned with himself and his men covered with mud. The lieutenant told his colonel, "Sir, the mud is over my men's heads. I cannot do it." The colonel then ordered the lieutenant to requisition anything that was needed for him to take 15 men across the swamp, so the lieutenant filled out the necessary requisition form: "I want fifteen men eighteen feet long to cross a swamp fifteen feet deep."
• Educators tend to be creative problem-solvers. For example, a number of schools in England had problems with girls wearing skirts that were much too short and violated the schools' dress codes. Teachers were spending too much time enforcing the dress code, and they wanted to spend more time teaching. They solved the problem of too-short skirts by banning skirts altogether. Now girls as well as boys have to wear trousers. Publicly funded Nailsea School is one school that banned skirts. Headmaster David New says about the dress-code violations that resulted in the ban, "We didn't want to waste any more time on it. [The ban] just means that teachers can concentrate on what's important in education."
• Kathleen Engle, a middle-school physical-education teacher in Newcastle, Wyoming, is famous there for her toe talks. When kids are mean to each other, perhaps without realizing it, she makes the kids touch their toes when she lectures them "about their behavior, how it looks to others, and whether they realize what they're doing." Why make the kids touch their toes? She explains, "Because they're staring at their toes, they can't play off of each other with the rolled eyes and the shrugs and touching each other. Because when they're looking at each other, they're not listening to me." This really works. She says, "Often kids will come to me and say, 'I didn't really realize what I was doing."
• In August 2005 a team of cheerleaders attending cheerleading camp in Ann Arbor, Michigan, witnessed a hit-and-run accident. In order to remember the license number of the car driven by the hit-and-run driver, they turned it into a cheer. Kimmie Ostrowski, senior captain of the Lincoln High School varsity cheerleading squad, and junior co-captain Amy Sirois led the cheerleading squad, which has nine members, in chanting the license plate number until police arrived. Ms. Ostrowski said, "We just started to chant it so we'd remember it and help them get the guy." It worked. The police traced the license plate number and found the driver.
• What is a polite way to stop talking to someone on the telephone? Mike Desert remembers talking to Kathleen Hanna of Bikini Kill and Le Tigre. After they had talked for a while, Kathleen said, "I need to run because my bath water is running." A week later, Mike's girlfriend of the time talked to Kathleen on the telephone, and after they had talked for a while, Kathleen made the same excuse! Mike is OK with that. Now, when he needs a polite way to stop talking to someone on the telephone, he says, "I need to run because my bath water is running."
• Rosanna Gartley, a nurse in McKees Rocks, PA, had an elderly patient who was a problem-solver. He needed foot care, which normally required a 10-minute pre-soak. However, he showed up wearing shorts and rubber boots and said that he didn't have time for a pre-soak: "I've got things to do." He had gotten up early, put on rubber boots and filled them with water, and then gone about his daily routine, which included gardening and having coffee with friends. Ms. Gartley writes, "He had the cleanest, most shriveled feet I have ever seen!"
• Norman Rockwell used children as live models for his paintings, but sometimes they grew fidgety. He found a way to help keep them still. He paid the children 50 cents per hour, with the child model posing for 25 minutes and then taking a 5-minute break. At the start of a modeling session, Mr. Rockwell would put a pile of nickels on a table, and at the end of each 25-minute modeling period, he put five nickels in a stack to show the child how much money the child had earned.
• At age 16, Jessica Hopper started a band that opened for DIY band Fugazi in the Twin Cities. This was a highly coveted job, and many, many Twin Cities bands had telephoned the club's booker to ask to be the opening band. How did Jessica's band get the opening slot? Simple. She telephoned Fugazi directly. She says, "It worked - and p*ssed off every other band in town, because we were terrible."
• In 1993 at the Hong Kong Open, rain washed out the first two rounds. Greg Norman wanted to practice despite the rain, so he hit golf balls through an open window in his hotel residence into the harbor. And yes, he won the Hong Kong Open.
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© Copyright Bruce D. Bruce; All Rights Reserved
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Bonus Links
Jeannie the Teed-Off Temp
Burak Suggests
Online Video Alarm Clock
Marty -
The Avnoy Alarm Clock, mentioned here, is not working anymore. If you consider replacing it, I'd be glad if you give more priority to a one that I've developed in which people can wake to their favorite song via YouTube:
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
JD is on vacation.
Visit JD's site - Kitty Litter Music
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Still sunny, but cooler.
First Appearance Post Surgery
Mick Jagger
Mick Jagger has made his first public appearance after reportedly undergoing heart surgery, supporting his partner Melanie Hamrick at the premiere of her new ballet.
The rock star was present on Thursday night as the choreographer presented her first work Porte Rouge, which is based on Rolling Stones songs, at the Lincoln Centre in New York City.
Jagger did not appear on stage nor was he present in the audience, but he greeted the crowd thanks to a backstage microphone.
Hamrick, who dances with the American Ballet Theatre, created the ballet for the 20th anniversary of Youth America Grand Prix, the world's largest ballet scholarship competition.
Jagger arranged the score of three Stones classics - "Sympathy for the Devil", "She's a Rainbow", and "Paint it, Black".
Mick Jagger
To Re-Create Lear Sitcoms
Jimmy Kimmel
Jimmy Kimmel will stage live re-creations of two classic Norman Lear sitcoms for ABC, the late-night host announced on Thursday.
Set to take place on Wednesday, May 22, the 90-minute primetime special will re-create one episode each from "All in the Family" and "The Jeffersons," featuring an all-star cast led by Woody Harrelson and Marisa Tomei starring as Archie and Edith Bunker, and Jamie Foxx and Wanda Sykes as George and Louise Jefferson.
Ellie Kemper will play Gloria Stivic; Will Ferrell will appear as Tom Willis, and Justina Machado is set to play Florence Johnston. Additional cast members will be announced in the future.
Veteran sitcom director James Burrows will direct the live special, with Lear, Kimmel, Ferrell, Brent Miller, Adam McKay and Justin Theroux on board as executive producers.
"Live in Front of a Studio Audience: Norman Lear's 'All in the Family' and 'The Jeffersons'" will be produced by Smoking Baby Productions, ACT III Productions, Gary Sanchez Productions and Sony Pictures Television.
Jimmy Kimmel
Yankees Discovery
Kate Smith
The New York Yankees have played "God Bless America" during the seventh-inning stretch since 9/11, and for most of that time, the version fans would hear booming from the speakers was Kate Smith's well-known rendition. But the Yankees have stopped playing her recording of the song.
Why did the Yankees eliminate Smith from their seventh-inning routine? According to the New York Daily News, it's due to several songs Smith recorded in the late 1930s that include shockingly racist language and imagery.
Smith was a famous singer before and during WWII who recorded the offensive jingle, "Pickaninny Heaven," which she directed at "colored children" who should fantasize about an amazing place with "great big watermelons," among other treats. She shot a video for that song that takes place in an orphanage for black children, and much of the imagery is startlingly racist. She also recorded, "That's Why Darkies Were Born," which included the lyrics, "Someone had to pick the cotton. … That's why darkies were born."
The Daily News reported that the Yankees are investigating the recordings of both of those songs, including the circumstances surrounding them, because Smith's personal feelings and intentions aren't clear. "That's Why Darkies Were Born" was recorded with African-American actor, singer, and activist Paul Robeson, and according to the Daily News, was considered to be satire at the time. But Smith also endorsed the Aunt Jemima-esque "mammy doll" in 1939, which is based on a racist stereotype most notably on display in the 1939 film, "Gone with the Wind."
The Yankees are still playing "God Bless America" during the seventh-inning stretch, but are using several different versions instead of Smith's. In fact, the Daily News reported that the team had plans to spruce up the "God Bless America" portion of the seventh-inning stretch with live performances even before Smith's old songs were discovered.
Kate Smith
Sues Film Academy
Roman Polanski
Film director Roman Polanski is suing the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, demanding reinstatement to the prestigious organization after he was expelled last May.
The suit, filed in the state of California, says AMPAS did not follow proper protocol in dismissing him nearly a year ago. The Academy did so "in accordance with the organization's Standards of Conduct," they said at the time, adding their leadership expected members to "uphold the Academy's values of respect for human dignity."
Polanski's suit says the Academy's expulsion decision "is not supported by findings, and the Academy's findings are not supported by evidence." The eight-time Oscar winner wants the decision reversed and the Academy to pay costs incurred by the suit.
"We are litigating the fairness of their procedure. They threw him out without warning and without giving him a chance to respond. There was not even any notice of why. After 40 years on the same day as [Bill] Cosby. Give me a break," Polanski's attorney Harland Braun told Variety on Friday.
Braun indicated that Polanski would pursue legal action in 2018, sending a heated letter to Academy president John Bailey saying Polanski had a right to go to court "and require your organization to follow its own procedures, as well as California law."
Roman Polanski
Lowering The Standards
Frozen Cherry Pie
President Donald Trump (R-Compromised) may soon be able to claim a sweet victory for his deregulation push, with officials preparing to get rid of the decades-old rules for frozen cherry pies.
Emails show the Food and Drug Administration planned to start the process for revoking the standard for frozen cherry pies this week, followed by a similar revocation of the standard for French dressing. Plans to get rid of the obscure rules had been tucked into the Trump administration's deregulation agenda .
Standards for an array of foods including cottage cheese and canned peas were put in place decades ago partly to ensure a level of quality. They spell out how products with specific names can be made, including ingredients that are required or not allowed. The rules for frozen cherry pies say they must be 25% cherries by weight with no more than 15% of the cherries being blemished.
It's not always clear why some food terms have standards and others don't. The rules are seen as arcane by many and are a sore spot in the food industry, with companies saying they prevent innovation or prompt lawsuits. The FDA under Trump has said it plans to update the standards.
The FDA also plans to take another look at milk, which federal regulations define as coming from a cow. The dairy industry has called for a crackdown on soy, rice and almond drinks makers that use the term.
Frozen Cherry Pie
Mount Everest
Sherpas
Five years after one of the deadliest disasters on Mount Everest, three people from Nepal's ethnic Sherpa community are preparing an ascent to raise awareness about the Nepalese mountain guides who make it possible for hundreds of foreign climbers to scale the mountain and survive.
Kami Rita, a renowned climber who lived through the 2014 ice avalanche on Everest's western shoulder that killed 16 fellow Sherpa guides, aims to break his own record by reaching the mountaintop a 23rd time this spring.
Furdiki Sherpa, who lost her husband in a mountaineering accident, and Nima Doma, whose husband was killed in the 2014 avalanche, are also attempting to summit Everest, to bring attention to the plight of Sherpa families living in the shadow of the world's highest peak.
Rita, Sherpa and Doma hail from different villages in Nepal's Himalayas, but share a goal of highlighting the bravery, sacrifice and athletic achievements of the ethnic Sherpa people, they told The Associated Press.
Sherpa's husband, Mingma Sherpa, was part of an elite team of icefall "doctors" who are the first to fix ropes and aluminum ladders over the crevasses. In 2013, he slipped off a ladder and fell into the crevasse at the Khumbu Icefall just above base camp, long considered one of the most treacherous stages of the South Col route to Everest's summit.
Sherpas
Tiny Earthquakes Every 3 Minutes
Southern California
Southern California is a lot shakier than ever before realized. According to a new study, a tiny earthquake rumbles through the southern portion of the Golden State every 3 minutes.
These temblors won't knock down walls or send palm trees swaying. In fact, they're too small for even typical seismic instruments to regularly detect. But their discovery reveals seismic activity that scientists couldn't previously detect. Understanding the full pattern of activity should help seismologists understand how larger earthquakes get started and how quakes can trigger one another.
"The Earth is failing all the time," said study author Zachary Ross, a postdoctoral researcher in geophysics at the California Institute of Technology. "What really starts to come out is that these events, they're really communicating with each other in space and time."
Humanity is naturally most interested in large, damaging earthquakes, Ross told Live Science, the kind that take lives and bring cities to a standstill. But those quakes don't happen on the same time scale as human lifetimes. On a single fault, one big quake might occur every century, or even every thousand years.
Smaller quakes are a lot more frequent. For each drop in unit of magnitude, there are 10 times more quakes, Ross said - so for every magnitude 7.0 temblor, for example, there are 10 magnitude 6.0 quakes, 100 magnitude 5.0 quakes and so on.
Southern California
Rare Recordings
River Dolphins
Discovered to be a unique species just five years ago, the Araguaian river dolphin of Brazil is a fascinating, yet poorly understood, aquatic creature. As new research shows, these dolphins produce a surprising array of sounds-an important clue in our understanding of how and why dolphins evolved the capacity for communication.
The Araguaian river dolphins, also known as botos, were first identified in 2014. Botos live exclusively in the Amazon, Orinoco, and Tocantins River Basins of South America, where they use their long beaks to hunt for fish.
These dolphins are considered evolutionary relics, having diverged from other cetaceans (a family that includes dolphins and whales) earlier than other dolphins. Because of their unique position within the cetacean family tree, scientists can study these creatures to better understand the ancestors of marine dolphins, such as the bottlenose dolphin. What's more, by studying botos in the wild, scientists can acquire new insights into the origin of certain dolphin behaviors, such as their communication skills. Biologists would like to know, for example, if those iconic clicks and whistles emerged as a consequence of river life or ocean life.
Botos are notoriously elusive. Unlike marine dolphins and their dramatic breaching displays, botos don't make a fuss when they come up for air. They tend to be solitary and shy, living in small social groups. These dolphins are critically endangered, and there may be only 1,000 of them left. Not much is known about their ability to make sounds or communicate with one another, but research done a few years ago suggested they're able to make noises like clicks, whistles, jaw-snaps, and other sounds. Beyond this, not much was known.
Fortuitously, however, there's a group of botos in the Tocantins River in the town of Mocajuba, Brazil, that have become acclimated to humans. People in this town feed the dolphins at a fish market along the river. Melo-Santos, along with biologist Laura May-Collado from the University of Vermont, visited this market to study this particular population. Their new research, published today in PeerJ, shows that Araguaian river dolphins are capable of producing hundreds of different sounds to communicate.
River Dolphins
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 April 17, 2019:
1. Eric Church; $2,848,366; $97.59.
2. Elton John; $2,537,107; $138.32.
3. Fleetwood Mac; $2,345,717; $143.93.
4. Justin Timberlake; $2,146,500; $132.55.
5. Metallica; $2,094,252; $119.42.
6. Luis Miguel; $2,003,661; $80.67.
7. Michael Bublé; $1,517,024; $124.47.
8. Bob Seger & The Silver Bullet Band; $1,405,405; $115.69.
9. Cher; $1,345,126; $114.96.
10. Trans-Siberian Orchestra; $1,309,680; $64.80.
11. KISS; $1,243,595; $105.96.
12. Mumford & Sons; $1,230,658; $73.96.
13. Marc Anthony; $1,190,570; $104.62.
14. Florence + The Machine; $1,144,592; $73.15.
15. Travis Scott; $1,136,791; $75.16.
16. Blake Shelton; $1,044,392; $89.58.
17. Dave Matthews Band; $1,014,332; $94.92.
18. André Rieu; $947,246; $87.54.
19. Shawn Mendes; $861,630; $68.73.
20. Panic! At The Disco; $785,504; $60.47.
Global Concert Tours
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