from Bruce
Anecdotes
Mass
• Three major league umpires, Tom Gorman, Augie Donatelli, and Artie Gore, went to Mass. Afterward, the three umpires and the priest, Father John, were standing outside the church when Milwaukee shortstop Johnny Logan walked by. Father John said to Mr. Logan, “How nice to see you. Do you see my three umpires? They all went to Mass and hit the rail. How about you?” Mr. Logan replied, “Father, they need it.”
• Pope John XXIII was the son of winegrowers, and he knew and appreciated good wine. After tasting some new wine from the Vatican vineyards, he joked with the papal gardener, “Enrico, do me the favor of not allowing any of the priests who come here to taste this wine. The Monsignors will all want to have it for their Masses, and then they might want to say Mass four or five times a day!”
Money
• As a Methodist preacher in Texas, Edwin Porter attended Annual Conference each year, where he found out to which church he would be assigned for the following year and where stewards voted on allocating funds to worthy projects. One such project was the bishops’ fund, but when discussion arose on this important topic, one steward didn’t hear the final letter of the word “fund.” The steward stood up and said, “Now, Brother Porter, I want to be a good member of the church and pay my part, but there’s one thing I’m not willing to contribute to — that’s the bishop’s fun. Why can’t the bishop pay for his own fun?”
• Comedian Eddie Cantor was getting ready to star at one of the many benefits he supported to raise money for Israel. At this particular benefit, the admission was the purchase of a $1,000 Israel bond per person. On an elevator, Mr. Cantor happened to overhear an elderly couple talking about the benefit, which they were going to attend. The husband whispered to the wife, “Think of it. It’s costing us $2,000 for this dinner today.” The wife whispered back to the husband, “See, I’m telling you, Sam, it’s costing more and more to eat out these days.”
• Lillian Baylis of the Old Vic and Sadler’s Wells knew how to get people to work for her cheap. First, she would get on her knees and pray to God: “Please, God, send me a good tenor. And let him be cheap.” After the tenor had asked for more money than she was prepared to pay, she would say, “You are asking for more money? Just a minute, dear. I will have to ask God.” As the tenor stood in her office, she would get on her knees again and pray to God, and then she would stand up and tell the tenor, “I’m sorry, dear. God says ‘No.’”
• Mulla Nasrudin was sitting upstairs when a beggar knocked at his door. Nasrudin poked his head outside the window and asked, “What do you want?” The beggar replied, “Come downstairs and I will tell you.” Nasrudin went downstairs, where the beggar asked Nasrudin for alms. Nasrudin said, “Follow me,” then he and the beggar went upstairs, where Nasrudin answered, “No.” “Why did you drag me upstairs?” asked the beggar. Nasrudin replied, “For the same reason you dragged me downstairs.”
• W.C. Fields got his first paying juggling job in 1891, when the deacon of a Methodist church agreed to pay him and a friend 30 cents to perform their act at a festival hosted by the church. However, after the act, the Methodist deacon refused to pay the money. This made Mr. Fields and his friend so angry that they stole 31 umbrellas from the Methodist church and pawned them for $1.20. After this unfortunate experience, Mr. Fields formed the resolution to do his act only for Baptists.
• Gregor Mendel, whose research on peas led to the development of the science of genetics, joined the Order of Saint Augustine and eventually became the abbot at his monastery in Brünn, Moravia. One of the reasons the other monks elected him as abbot was that the government taxed the monastery each time it elected a new abbot and therefore it preferred to elect young abbots, such as the 45-year-old Father Mendel, who would probably live for many years.
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© Copyright Bruce D. Bruce; All Rights Reserved
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Presenting
Michael Egan
U.S.A. wrote:
has returned to semi-retired status.
In memory.
BRUCE'S RECOMMENDATION
BANDCAMP MUSIC
BRUCE'S RECOMMENDATION OF BANDCAMP MUSIC
Music: "First Aid Kit"
Album: SHE’S THE BOMB
Artist: The Control Freaks
Artist Location: San Francisco, California
Record Company: Slovenly Recordings
Record Company Location: Reno, Nevada
Info:
Price: $1 (USD) for track; $7 (USD) for 13-track album
Genre: Punk. Pop Punk.
Links:
SHE’S THE BOMB
Slovenly Recordings
Slovenly Records on YouTube
Other Links:
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David Bruce's Blog #1
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David Bruce has over 140 Kindle books on Amazon.com.
Reader Suggestion
Michelle in AZ
New Venture
Michael Egan
Bonus Links
Jeannie the Teed-Off Temp
Reader Comment
Current Events
Linda >^..^<
We are all only temporarily able bodied.
Thanks, Linda!
that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Vinnie the shitten is talking up a storm tonight.
Joins Rally
Danny Glover
Health care workers demonstrating against anti-Asian bias were joined by actor and longtime activist Danny Glover on Thursday at a rally, where he spoke of solidarity and communities supporting each other.
Glover told the crowd of local 1199SEIU union members and residents of Manhattan’s Chinatown neighborhoods, “We stand here, will stand here, we’ll fight here. We’ve got your back.”
He was joined on stage by Rev. Al Sharpton at the rally.
“We wanted to come to this community so Asian mothers can know that they don’t have to fear coming out because they have brothers and sisters that will stand with them,” Sharpton said.
“You can’t fight for George Floyd and ignore the hate that is being done in the Asian community,” he said.
Danny Glover
Loses Top-Rated Spot on Rotten Tomatoes
‘Paddington 2’
“Paddington 2” is no longer the highest-rated film on Rotten Tomatoes. A negative review has dropped the previously-universally-beloved flick’s Tomatometer score to 99%, tying it with some movie called “Citizen Kane.”
On Friday, writer Eddie Harrison of film-authority.com posted the review that ended Paddington’s month-long reign as the best-reviewed movie of all time, at least by the review aggregator’s metric. “Citizen Kane,” the film that many consider Orson Welles’s magnum opus, previously held the honor until an 80-year-old Chicago Tribune review claiming it “failed to impress” resurfaced in April.
The critic’s issues with “Paddington 2” include everything from the animated bear’s design (“evil, beady eyes and ratty fur”) to star Ben Whishaw’s voice work (“sounds like a member of some indie-pop band coming down from an agonising ketamine high”).
Harrison’s review, which he originally delivered on BBC Radio, posits that “the charm is entirely missing” from not just “Paddington 2” but its 2014 predecessor as well.
“This is not my Paddington Bear, but a sinister, malevolent imposter who should be shot into space, or nuked from space at the first opportunity. Over-confident, snide and sullen, this manky-looking bear bears little relation to the classic character, and viewers should be warned; this ain’t yo mamma’s Paddington bear, and it won’t be yours either. Maybe if you’ve never seen the tv show and don’t know any better, this’ll work, but long-term Paddington fans will find this too much to bear.”
‘Paddington 2’
Donates $1M To Morehouse
Michael Jordan
Basketball great Michael Jordan and Nike’s Jordan Brand are giving $1 million to Morehouse College in Atlanta to boost journalism and sports-related studies.
The gift announced Friday will help enrich its journalism and sports program that was originally launched with a donation from director and actor Spike Lee. The school, in a news release, said the donation will help fund scholarships, technology and educational programming for students in those fields.
The donation is part of a larger philanthropic donation by Jordan and Jordan Brand called the Black Community Commitment, which has directed donations to the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of African American History and Culture and the Ida B. Wells Society, among other organizations.
The program, which has focused on the lack of Black leadership in sports journalism and athletics, has produced more than 80 graduates who now work in media and sports.
Michael Jordan
Rises
CEO Pay
As COVID-19 ravaged the world last year, CEOs’ big pay packages seemed to be under as much threat as everything else.
Fortunately for those CEOs, many had boards of directors willing to see the pandemic as an extraordinary event beyond their control. Across the country, boards made changes to the intricate formulas that determine their CEOs’ pay — and other moves — that helped make up for losses created by the crisis.
As a result, pay packages rose yet again last year for the CEOs of the biggest companies, even though the pandemic sent the economy to its worst quarter on record and slashed corporate profits around the world. The median pay package for a CEO at an S&P 500 company hit $12.7 million in 2020, according to data analyzed by Equilar for The Associated Press. That means half the CEOs in the survey made more, and half made less. It’s 5% more than the median pay for that same group of CEOs in 2019 and an acceleration from the 4.1% climb in last year’s survey.
At Carnival, the cruise operator gave stock grants to executives, in part to encourage its leaders to stick with the company as the pandemic forced it to halt sailings and furlough workers. For CEO Arnold Donald’s 2020 compensation, those grants were valued at $5.2 million, though their full value will ultimately depend on how the company performs on carbon reductions and other measures in coming years. That helped Donald receive total compensation valued at $13.3 million for the year, up 19% from a year earlier, even as Carnival swung to a $10.2 billion loss for the fiscal year.
Meanwhile, regular workers also saw gains, but not at the same rate as their bosses. And millions of others lost their jobs.
CEO Pay
Majority of Americans
Poll
A majority of Americans think that when supporters of former President Donald Trump stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6 as lawmakers voted to certify President Biden's election win, it was an attack on democracy, according to a new Quinnipiac University poll released Thursday.
Of the respondents, 55 percent said it was an "attack on democracy that should never be forgotten," while 39 percent said "too much is being made of" the riot and it's "time to move on." Looking at it through a political lens, 84 percent of Democrats surveyed said the riot was an attack on democracy and 74 percent of Republicans said too much is being made of it.
Dozens of law enforcement officers were injured during the violent incident, and one of the rioters was shot and killed by police as she attempted to enter the Speaker's Lobby through a broken door. The House passed a bill to establish a bipartisan independent commission to investigate the Jan. 6 riot, but Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) is encouraging Republicans to block the legislation.
Poll
‘Left-Wing Protesters’
Non-Existent
Most Republicans blame the non-existent presence of “left-wing protesters” for the 6 January pro-Trump attack on the US Capitol, according to a new poll, while few think the former president, who spread election-related lies for months and helped incite the riot, is to blame.
Just 41 per cent of Republicans in a Yahoo News/YouGov poll conducted this week said Trump supporters bore responsibility for the attack, which sought to disrupt the certification of Joe Biden’s election win and “Stop the Steal”, while 73 per cent says “some” or a “great deal” of the blame rests with “left wing protesters trying to make Trump look bad”.
This finding in the 1588-person poll is striking because there’s no concrete evidence of any meaningful left-wing involvement behind the riot, according to the FBI as well as Republican minority leader Kevin McCarthy. But the claim, reported by the conservativeWashington Times newspaper and later championed by Trump-esque congressman Matt Gaetz, has proved a popular one, with similar results from an American Enterprise Institute poll in February.
But it’s also not that surprising. Both the Republican party faithful, its elected leaders, and its media allies have sought to downplay the relevance of the Capitol breach, even though it left multiple people dead, injured more than 140, and is the most significant attack on the seat of US government in two centuries.
Their reasons vary from genuinely believing lies about what happened, to seeking to protect the party’s reputation ahead of 2022 midterm elections.
Non-Existent
Now as Popular
QAnon
As hopes fade for a bipartisan inquiry into the Capitol riot on Jan. 6, it’s increasingly clear that the Republican base remains in thrall to the web of untruths spun by Donald Trump — and perhaps even more outlandish lies, beyond those of the former president’s making.
A federal judge warned in an opinion Wednesday that Trump’s insistence on the “big lie” — that the November election was stolen from him — still posed a serious threat. Presiding over the case of a man accused of storming Congress on Jan. 6, Judge Amy Berman Jackson of the U.S. District Court in Washington wrote: “The steady drumbeat that inspired defendant to take up arms has not faded away. Six months later, the canard that the election was stolen is being repeated daily on major news outlets and from the corridors of power in state and federal government, not to mention in the near-daily fulminations of the former president.”
But it’s not just the notion that the election was stolen that has caught on with the former president’s supporters. QAnon, an outlandish and ever-evolving conspiracy theory spread by some of Trump’s most ardent followers, has significant traction with a segment of the public — particularly Republicans and Americans who consume news from far-right sources.
Those are the findings of a poll released Thursday by the Public Religion Research Institute and the Interfaith Youth Core, which found that 15% of Americans say they think that the levers of power are controlled by a cabal of Satan-worshipping pedophiles, a core belief of QAnon supporters. The same share said it was true that “American patriots may have to resort to violence” to depose the pedophiles and restore the country’s rightful order.
And fully 20% of respondents said that they thought a biblical-scale storm would soon sweep away these evil elites and “restore the rightful leaders.”
QAnon
Bachelor Pads
Worker Ants
Worker ants are known to take on many different job roles, from trash collectors to nurses that dress the wounds of injured comrades, to babysitters that care for their leader's young. But one Mediterranean ant species takes royal work to the extreme: The worker ants use their mandibles to haul their young queen to faraway nests so she can mate, according to new research.
Despite their miniscule size — around 0.1 inch (2 to 3 millimeters) — Cardiocondyla elegans ant workers have been observed carrying queens up to 50 feet (15 meters) from their home nests and dropping them off outside neighboring colonies. (That's about 5,500 times the ant's body length. If a 5-foot-tall (1.5 meters) person made the equivalent journey, they'd cover 27,500 feet, or more than 8,300 m.)
Scientists think that this piggybacking of queens to distant nests is the first recorded case of third-party matchmaking in animals; and it's all to avoid inbreeding.
"They need genetic diversity in order to survive," lead author Mathilde Vidal, a doctoral student at the University of Regensburg in Germany, told Live Science. "In other species, the male ants can just fly away, but here the males don't have wings and the queens won't use their wings. Neither will the queens leave the nests by themselves — it's up to the workers to carry them out."
Between 2014 and 2019, Vidal and her colleagues mapped out 175 Cardiocondyla elegans ant colonies across southern France; they observed how the worker ants carry the queens by gripping them firmly in their mandibles and hauling them on their backs, only releasing the queen once outside a foreign nest.
Worker Ants
Bobcat Tree Den Found
California
Biologists studying Southern California bobcats found a mother and three kittens this spring in an unusual den in a cavity up in a tree in an area intensely burned by a huge 2018 wildfire west of Los Angeles, the National Park Service said.
Bobcat “denning” in a tree is unusual, according to biologist Joanne Moriarty.
Their dens are usually found in hollow areas of thick chaparral or coastal sage or in woodrat nests made of piles of sticks and leaves.
Scientists believe the bobcat used the cavity because little vegetation has grown since the Woolsey Fire ravaged the Santa Monica Mountains and Simi Hills, the park service said Thursday.
The mother was first captured in the Simi Hills more than a year after the fire. A radio tracking collar was placed on her and she was given the designation B-370 in the study of how bobcats survive in a region where wilderness is fragmented by urban development.
California
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