from Bruce
Anecdotes
Food
• A baseball player named Cletus Elwood (Boots) Poffenberger was once interviewed on a program sponsored by a cereal company. The interviewer tried to make Mr. Poffenberger give a free endorsement of the cereal by asking, “Now tell us, Boots, what is your favorite breakfast, taken with cream, sugar, and some sort of fruit?” But Boots, who would not allow himself to be manipulated, responded with, “Ham, eggs, and two bottles of beer.”
• In the old USSR, Soviet coaches had a problem. They wanted their athletes to eat caviar because of its high protein content; however, many athletes preferred to use the tins of caviar to barter for Western goods such as blue jeans. Russian ice skater Ekaterina Gordeeva writes that at the Calvary Olympics, the Soviet coaches solved the problem by opening each tin of caviar before giving it to the athletes.
• When Czech tennis player Martina Navratilova first began touring in the United States, she fell in love with American fast food and gained 25 pounds in eight weeks. Other tennis players called her the “pancake champ,” and when she returned home to Czechoslovakia, her father stopped calling his formerly skinny daughter by the nickname Prut (“Stick”).
Friends
• At the Nazi Olympics, held in Germany in 1936, Adolf Hitler hoped to demonstrate the superiority of the Aryan race. However, African-American track star Jesse Owens, representing the United States, demolished that myth by winning four gold medals. A German athlete named Luz Long helped him to win one of the gold medals. To qualify for the long jump finals, Mr. Owens needed to make one of three attempts to jump a certain distance. Unfortunately, Mr. Owens committed faults on his two attempts. At this time, Mr. Long introduced himself to Mr. Owens and said, “You should be able to qualify with your eyes closed.” Because Mr. Owens had faulted due to stepping on the take-off line instead of jumping before he reached it, Mr. Long put a towel on the ground a few inches before the take-off line, and Mr. Owens used that as the mark for his takeoff. On his third and final attempt, Mr. Owens qualified easily. The following day, Mr. Owens won the gold medal in the long jump, and Mr. Long won the silver medal. The two athletes, one black and one white, walked off arm in arm. Hitler was not pleased.
• Chris Evert and Martina Navratilova fought fiercely but with affection on the tennis court. In one game, Chris hit a ball that struck Martina on the head. It knocked Martina down, but she quickly got up again and smiled. Chris even rubbed Martina’s head when the two met again at the net. After Martina had defeated her, Chris said, “I can’t believe it. I hit you in the head and you started playing better.”
Gambling
• Pittsburgh Phil Smith made millions of dollars from betting on the horses, partly because he bet on the great jockey Tod Sloan, who was ahead of his time. It was Mr. Sloan who learned that riding on the horse’s neck made its gait freer and faster and who learned to let the other horses serve as wind breakers until the sprint at the end of the race. Mr. Sloan told Mr. Smith that he was bound to lose money betting on him no matter what horse he rode, but Mr. Smith replied, “Never mind that — look at the fun I have. If I lose on you today, I’ll bet like hell on you tomorrow.”
• In 1961, before becoming a famous golfer, Lee Trevino worked at Hardy’s Pitch-N-Putt, where he entertained people by hitting golf balls with a quart-sized soda bottle that he wrapped with tape. One day, a man offered to bet him that he couldn’t use the bottle to hit a golf ball that would strike a 100-yard sign. Mr. Trevino asked, “What zero do you want me to hit?” The man decided not to bet.
• Boxer Sugar Ray Robinson used to play golf with professional golfer Sam Snead. To even up the competition, Mr. Snead would spot Mr. Robinson one stroke per hole. Mr. Robinson once offered to return the favor if Mr. Snead ever wanted to box him — he would spot Mr. Snead the first five rounds of a six-round fight. Mr. Snead replied, “That’s fine — as long as I can use my wedge.”
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© Copyright Bruce D. Bruce; All Rights Reserved
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Presenting
Michael Egan
U.S.A. said:
has returned to semi-retired status.
In memory.
BRUCE'S RECOMMENDATION
BANDCAMP MUSIC
BRUCE'S RECOMMENDATION OF BANDCAMP MUSIC
Music: "Peter Gunn Theme"
EP: PEDRO PISTOLA PIÑATA PARTY
Artist: Secret Agent
Artist Location: Mexico City, Mexico
Info: SECRET AGENT is a Psy Spy Instro [Instrumental] Surf band from Mexico City.
Suspected agents: RICK DELIZ (Guitar), RACK AGUIRRE (Bass), ALIS EMERSON (Drums).
Modern Surf grooves with Psychedelic Rock, Punk, Rockabilly & Spaghetti Western twang.
This EP contains covers of four classic surf instrumentals.
Price: $4 (USD) for four-track EP
Genre: Instrumental Surf.
Links:
PEDRO PISTOLA PIÑATA PARTY
Secret Agent on Bandcamp
Secret Agent on YouTube
Other Links:
David Bruce's Amazon Author Page
David Bruce's Smashwords Page
David Bruce's Blog #1
David Bruce's Blog #2
David Bruce's Blog #3
David Bruce's Apple iBookstore
David Bruce has over 140 Kindle books on Amazon.com.
Reader Suggestion
Michelle in AZ
Stephen Suggests
Twofer
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
This coming Monday the epage will have been around for 20 years.
Secret Cameos
Mark Hamill
C-3PO actor Anthony Daniels may be the only actor to appear in every movie in the “Star Wars” canon so far (yep, he has a cameo as Tak in “Solo”), but Mark Hamill is trailing him at a close second. A recent tweet from Wookieepedia observed that Mark Hamill voiced the droid bartender EV-9D9 on the wildly popular, Emmy-nominated series “The Mandalorian,” in which he also rebooted his role as Luke Skywalker. In response, Hamill, ever the active voice on Twitter, responded, “Did you know… I voiced multiple secret voice-cameos in every #StarWars movie released since 2015?”
“Star Wars” fans new and old will certainly recognize Mark Hamill as Luke Skywalker in 2015’s “The Force Awakens,” 2017’s “The Last Jedi,” and 2019’s “The Rise of Skywalker,” what they have missed is Hamill’s secret roles in other Disney-era “Star Wars” movies, including “Rogue One” and “Solo: A Star Wars Story.” Meanwhile, in “The Last Jedi,” he also voiced Dobbu Scay, an amphibious goblin gambler, as well as Resistance miner Boolio in “The Rise of Skywalker.”
For “Rogue One” and “Solo,” Hamill previously revealed that his pseudonym, inspired by his younger and older brothers, William M. Patrick, was used in the credits for those films. “It was never about billing or salary,” he tweeted. “It was for fun & the fans & because I??#EasterEggs! I misremembered my pseudonym as ‘Patrick Williams’ — It was actually ‘William M. Patrick’ (for my older & younger brothers) I’m not telling what the M. stands for. #Guess”
Mark Hamill recently lent his voice to the role of Skeletor in “Masters of the Universe: Revelation,” the newly premiered Netflix animated series created by Kevin Smith and based on the original Mattel franchise. He also voices Art Rosenbaum in the Amazon animated series “Invincible,” and along with “The Mandalorian,” recently appeared in “What We Do in the Shadows.”
Mark Hamill
Charlamagne Tha God and Stephen Colbert
Comedy Central
South Carolina native Charlamagne Tha God has a new late-night show coming to Comedy Central, the network announced Wednesday.
The show, “Tha God’s Honest Truth with Lenard ‘Charlamagne’ McKelvey,” was co-created by Stephen Colbert, who is also from South Carolina.
It will debut on Comedy Central starting Sept. 17 at 10 p.m. EST, and air each Friday night.
“This weekly half hour late-night series features Charlamagne’s culturally fluent take on social issues in a variety of deep dives, sketches, and social experiments that deftly unpacks the most pressing topics permeating politics and culture,” Comedy Central wrote in a press release. “Redemptively comedic, refreshingly unfiltered, and unapologetically Black, nothing is off limits.”
Comedy Central
Algerian Quits
Tokyo Olympics
Algerian judoka Fethi Nourine is quitting the Olympic games after the competition’s draw set him up for a potential matchup against an Israeli opponent.
Nourine told Algerian TV that his political support for Palestine made it impossible for him to compete against Tohar Butbul, the Israeli judoka.
Nourine was set to face Sudan’s Mohamed Abdalrasool on Monday, and if he earned the victory, he would have faced Butbul, who has a first-round bye in their weight class.
Athletes from other countries, including Egypt and Iran, have also declined the option to face Israeli athletes previously. For Nourine, this is not the first time he has done so.
In 2019, he withdrew himself from the world championships in Tokyo for the same reason.
Tokyo Olympics
Turbulent Past Emerges
Herschel Walker
At first glance, Herschel Walker has a coveted political profile for a potential Senate candidate in Georgia.
He was a football hero at the University of Georgia before his long NFL career. He’s a business owner whose chicken products are distributed across the U.S. And he’s a Black conservative with backing from former President Donald Trump (R-Lock Him Up), a longtime friend.
But an Associated Press review of hundreds of pages of public records tied to Walker’s business ventures and his divorce, including many not previously reported, sheds new light on a turbulent personal history that could dog his Senate bid. The documents detail accusations that Walker repeatedly threatened his ex-wife’s life, exaggerated claims of financial success and alarmed business associates with unpredictable behavior.
Walker, now 59, has at times been open about his long struggle with mental illness, writing at length in a 2008 book about being diagnosed with dissociative identity disorder, once known as multiple personality disorder. But it’s unclear how he would discuss these events as a candidate.
In his book, Walker acknowledges violent urges. He writes that he played Russian roulette and recounts sitting at his kitchen table in 1991 pointing a gun, loaded with a single bullet, at his head. “I wasn't suicidal,” Walker explained, but “just looked at mortality as the ultimate challenge.”
Herschel Walker
Heatwave
Pacific North-West
The recent heatwave that broiled the US Pacific north-west not only obliterated temperature records in cities such as Seattle and Portland – it also put a torch to a comforting bromide that the region would be a mild, safe haven from the ravages of the climate crisis.
Unprecedented temperatures baked the region three weeks ago, part of a procession of heatwaves that have hit the parched US west, from Montana to southern California, over the past month. A “heat dome” that settled over the area saw Seattle reach 108F (42.2C), smashing the previous record by 3F (1.7C), while Portland, Oregon, soared to its own record of 116F (46.7C). Some inland areas managed to get up to 118F (47.8C).
The conditions in a corner of the US known for its moderate, often lukewarm, summers bewildered residents.
An old joke in Seattle is that you will know more people with a boat than people with air conditioning and the latest figures show just 44% of households in the city are fitted with air con. The Pacific north-west’s image as a place of rugged natural beauty, comfortable climes and forward-thinking politics has helped draw plenty of newcomers – Seattle was the fastest-growing major US city last year – but the freakish heatwave has provided a sobering reality check to its blossoming status as a refuge.
The Pacific north-west has heated up by an average of 2F (1.1C) over the past century, with growing wildfires, failing coastal fisheries, receding snowpack and increasing heat taking its toll upon a region historically unprepared for such extremes. The recent heatwave would have been “virtually impossible” without human-induced climate breakdown, scientists have said.
Pacific North-West
Will Tell You If
Weather App
Carrot Weather, the customizable weather app known for its whimsical forecasts, rolled out a new update this week that includes reports on whether or not your temperatures in your area are, well, survivable. The app will now show so-called wet bulb readings, a key climate metric.
Wet bulb temperature is a metric that combines measurements of temperature, humidity, heat radiation, and wind in a complicated equation to determine what conditions our bodies can withstand. It’s designed to mimic a measurement taken by a thermometer covered by a water-soaked cloth.
In the Carrot app, the wet bulb temperature reading is still accompanied by the app’s quirky comments. But the risks are serious. Take the 80-degree-Fahrenheit (26.7-degree-Celsius) conditions, for instance. Scientists have found that at that wet bulb temperature, working in the sun for more than half an hour or so can put the human body under serious stress.
Research shows that the human body reaches its limit at a wet bulb temperature of 95 degrees Fahrenheit (35 degrees Celsius); spending more than six hours in these conditions would be fatal, even for people in perfect health. As the planet heats up due to the continued release of greenhouse gas emissions by fossil fuel companies and other industries, in some places, these conditions are not just something to theoretically muse about, but rather something to be wary of in day to day life. This summer, Jacobabad, Pakistan—a city of 200,000 people—surpassed the deadly wet bulb threshold.
Weather App
“Battle Born Solar Project”
Scrapped
The push to transition from carbon-emitting fuel sources to renewable energy is hitting a roadblock in Nevada, where solar power developers are abandoning plans to build what would have been the United States' largest array of solar panels in the desert north of Las Vegas.
“Battle Born Solar Project” developers this week withdrew their application with the federal Bureau of Land Management, which oversees the Moapa Valley hilltop where the panels were planned, KLAS-TV Las Vegas reported.
California-based Arevia Power told the television station that its solar panels would be set far enough back on Mormon Mesa to not be visible from the valley. But a group of residents organized as “Save Our Mesa” argued such a large installation would be an eyesore and could curtail the area's popular recreational activities — biking, ATVs and skydiving — and deter tourists from visiting sculptor Michael Heizer's land installation, “Double Negative.”
Solar Partners VII LLC, another California firm involved in the project, submitted a letter to the Bureau of Land Management saying it intended to withdraw its application “in response to recent communication” with the agency, the Las Vegas Review-Journal reported.
The proposed plant would have spanned more than 14 square miles (37 square kilometers) atop the scenic mesa and had an 850 megawatt capacity — roughly one-tenth of Nevada's total capacity and enough to provide daytime energy to 500,000 homes, according to the company.
Scrapped
Medical Case
Japan
In a recent medical case study, doctors in Japan tell the story of how masturbation sparked a bleed on the brain of a 51-year-old man. A stroke that led to a stroke, so to speak.
As reported in the Journal of Stroke and Cerebrovascular Diseases earlier this year, doctors at the Nagoya City University Graduate School of Medical Sciences in Japan explained that the right-handed man (the case report was very particular about that) was single and was in the habit of masturbating several times each day.
He headed to the hospital after orgasming and suddenly experiencing a searing headache that lasted for around one minute, followed by an intense bout of vomiting. A CT scan of the patient’s brain revealed an acute subarachnoid hemorrhage – a life-threatening type of stroke caused by bleeding into the space surrounding the brain – in the left hemisphere.
Strokes come in a few different forms, but they tend to refer to ischemic stroke (when a blockage occurs in the artery that supplies blood to the brain) or hemorrhagic stroke (when an artery in the brain leaks blood or ruptures). The researchers note that masturbation causes an increase in heart rate, blood pressure, and noradrenaline plasma levels – which are likely to contribute to the risk of splitting a blood vessel in the brain and result in a hemorrhagic stroke.
The study authors say that they found just two other cases of masturbation-linked strokes in other scientific literature. In one of the cited studies, a woman in Serbia died from a stroke while performing anal self-stimulation. The case report read explains: “A 39-year-old woman was found dead on a couch, with the wooden handle of a spring twirl whisk inserted inside her anus and rectum as a dildo-like object.” The initial death scene investigation found no other injuries and no signs of foul play, but an autopsy later revealed she had suffered from a massive subarachnoid hemorrhage, the same time of stroke more recently experienced by the man in Japan.
Japan
Master Dumpster Diving
Cockatoos
A few years ago, a Sydney scientist noticed a sulfur-crested cockatoo opening his trash bin. Not every resident would be thrilled, but ornithologist Richard Major was impressed by the ingenuity.
It’s quite a feat for a bird to grasp a bin lid with its beak, pry it open, then shuffle far enough along the bin’s edge that the lid falls backward — revealing edible trash treasures inside.
Intrigued, Major teamed up with researchers in Germany to study how many cockatoos learned this trick. In early 2018, they found from a survey of residents that birds in three Sydney suburbs had mastered the novel foraging technique. By the end of 2019, birds were lifting bins in 44 suburbs.
“From three suburbs to 44 in two years is a pretty rapid spread,” said Major, who is based at the Australian Museum.
The researchers’ next question was whether the cockatoos had each figured out how to do this alone — or whether they copied the strategy from experienced birds. And their research published Thursday in the journal Science concluded the birds mostly learned by watching their peers.
Cockatoos
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