Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Paul Krugman: Trump and His Party of Pollution (NY Times Column)
Given what we've seen in the impeachment hearings so far, there is literally no crime, no abuse of power, that would induce Republicans to turn on President Trump. So if you're waiting for some dramatic political turn, don't hold your breath.
David Smith: "Alan Alda: 'It's amazing that most of us live as if we're not gonna die'" (The Guardian)
The former M*A*S*H star has Parkinson's disease - but remains optimistic. He talks about his new film, Marriage Story, how actors can help heal political division and working with Woody Allen.
Nicola Upson: Top 10 golden age detective novels (The Guardian)
For some, 'cosy crime' of the 1920s and 30s is class-ridden and formulaic - but classic authors such as Agatha Christie and Josephine Tey paved the way for modern fiction as we know it.
Brenna Ehrlich: Taylor Swift Claims She Can't Play Hits at AMAs Unless She Ceases Rerecording Her Masters (Rolling Stone)
"I'm hoping that maybe they can talk some sense into the men who are exercising tyrannical control over someone who just wants to play the music she wrote," she said.
Mary Beard: Electioneering, ancient and modern (TLS)
In truth, similar as it is to the Ciceronian precedent, this kind of promising is also in many ways wildly different (Cicero was usually promising just a single favour to a single person, not policy decisions or public spending). And the idea that all we need do is shrug our shoulders and say that democratic politics has always been about unfulfilled promises obscures the big question of how - in a political world packed full of unfulfilled/unfulfillable promises - the voters responsibly make up their minds.
Alexis Petridis: Merry Xmas Everybody! The 20 most annoying Christmas songs of all time (The Guardian)
From Wham's "Last Christmas" to Leona Lewis's "One More Sleep," it's not so much the quality of the songs that grates as the awful repetition. But some are definitely more irritating than others.
Jessica Glenza: This man wants to convince America beef is healthier than meatless burgers (The Guardian)
Richard Berman is running a campaign to educate the public on plant-based meat burgers such as Impossible and Beyond Beef.
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Presenting
Michael Egan
wrote:
has returned to semi-retired status.
In memory.
BRUCE'S RECOMMENDATION
BANDCAMP MUSIC
BRUCE'S RECOMMENDATION OF BANDCAMP MUSIC
Music: "You're to Blame" from the album POP PUNK EP
Artist: Anthony Castleberry
Artist Location: Owasso, Oklahoma
Info: "I never released this, nor did I ever finish it. It was something fun that I had an idea for and I had next to no experience on guitar to make it awesome, so i just left it alone." - Anthony Castleberry
"The instrumental rock track 'You're to Blame' sounds awesome to me." - Bruce
Price: The track is FREE.
The album price is Name Your Price (Includes FREE).
If you are OK with paying for it, you can use PAYPAL or CREDIT CARD.
Genre: Rock Instrumental
POP PUNK EP
Anthony Castleberry on Bandcamp
David Bruce has over 140 Kindle books on Amazon.com.
Reader Suggestion
Michelle in AZ
New Venture
Michael Egan
Reader Comment
As far as I'm concerned . . .
As far as I'm concerned . . .
As long as there is one road or bridge that is dangerous because of neglect;
As long as there is a single school that lacks up-to-date textbooks or science equipment due to of lack of funds?;
As far as that goes, as long as there are teachers that qualify for SNAP because they don't earn enough?;
As long as there is one little kid that has no shoes or is hungry, or can't have lunch at school?;
As long as any person goes into crushing debt or DIES through lack of proper health care insurance?;
As long as there is one single homeless veteran?;
. . . there should be no such thing as a billionaire in this country.?
Randall
Thanks, Randall!
from Bruce
Anecdotes
• Famous illustrator Will Eisner remembers the day that he became a professional. He dressed professionally and took his portfolio to a buyer of illustrations. The buyer looked at his illustrated story and said, "This is an awful story! Bah! Stupid faces! Worse drawing! Ugh!" His final comment was, "We don't publish junk." Head hanging down, Mr. Eisner left the buyer's office, and an older man sitting outside the office told him, "So … your first rejection, eh? There's an old Talmudic saying: 'If you can't sell your wares in this city, go ye to another.'" Then the older man introduced himself to Mr. Eisner and said, "Good luck!" before entering the buyer's office. The man was Ludwig Bemelmans, creator and illustrator of a famous series of children's books starring the character Madeline. Of course, as the world knows, Mr. Eisner persevered and became a renowned illustrator like Mr. Bemelmans.
• While working as an artist at a syndicate called NEA Service, Chic Young received a telephone call that requested that he go to New York and work for King Features Syndicate - with a big raise. He assumed that it was a joke phone call from one of the other employees at NEA Service, and so he replied, "Sorry, but I'm satisfied right here." A few months later, he was fired, and so he went to New York and applied for a job as an artist at King Features Syndicate. One of the first questions that the head of the comic art department, J.D. Gortatowski, asked him was this: "What was the big idea of refusing to come here a couple of months ago when I called you?" United King Syndicate knew a good man when it saw him; Mr. Young created Blondie for the syndicate.
• Dean Kamen, inventor of the Segway, learned from his father, who loved his work as an artist and who would sit in front of his drawing board for 12 hours daily. Dean once complained, "Gee, Dad, all the other fathers have time after they come home to play ball or sit around. At the end of the day, you're working." His father replied, "Those fathers are doctors, lawyers and bankers. When they come home, all they want to do is their hobby. My work and my hobby are the same. Find work in something you love and it won't feel like work." The grown-up Dean says, "I listened to him. And I have been fortunate enough to work at something that I love."
• I.T. Frary used to handle publicity for the Cleveland Museum of Art. As a young man new to the staff, he was once hushed in the museum library because he was speaking above a whisper. At night, when the museum was closed and no one was around, Mr. Frary let out a series of loud whoops in the library and felt much better. Other people felt the same way as Mr. Frary about museums - despite being museums, they need not be stuffy. Late at night, when no one else was around, Mr. Frary and a clergyman friend once straddled the museum's marble balustrades and slid down.
• Russ Westover, the cartoonist of the long-ago comic strip Tillie the Toiler, got his first drawing job at the San Francisco Bulletin. In those days, newspapers used drawings instead of photographs, and one of his first assignments was to go to the mortuary and draw a portrait of a recently drowned person. However, the mortuary was so dark and eerie that Russ left quickly and handed in a drawing of an imaginary recently drowned person.
• Children's book illustrator and author Margot Zemach worked as a movie usherette at the famous Grauman's Chinese Theater when she was young. Unfortunately, she could not see well in the dark and so she was a horrible usherette, often stepping on people's feet and often seating people on top of other people. Fortunately, she got married, started to raise a family, and became a book illustrator - a job she could work at while using one foot to rock a baby bed.
• Some female artists remain creative well into their old age. For example, in 2008 at age 73 Paula Rego was still active and still creating art, pointing out that being creative creates energy: "Even if I'm tired when I start working, by the end I have a lot of energy."She will never willingly retire, saying, "Hopefully [my life] will end at my easel - I'll just fall down sideways. Either that or in a drunken stupor."
• Sculptor Louise Bourgeois worked hard. While on vacation in 1983, without supplies such as clay or wax or Plasticine, she asked her assistant, Jerry Gorovoy, for the shirt he was wearing. She shaped it, sewed it into position, and applied gesso to it. Then she created a marble version of the work of art. The shirt off Mr. Gorovoy's back became the work of art titled Femme Maison.
• Thomas Eakins was an instructor at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in the 19th century. He believed that artists ought to have a thorough knowledge of human anatomy, and he was fired after someone walked into his studio and discovered cadavers - which Mr. Eakins had been dissecting.
• American landscape artist George Inness was a perfectionist. Often, he would walk into his studio, look at a painting he had finished the previous day, shake his head, and then paint a new picture on top of the old one.
***
© Copyright Bruce D. Bruce; All Rights Reserved
***
THE COOLEST PEOPLE IN ART
Bonus Links
Jeannie the Teed-Off Temp
Reader Comment
Current Events
The new, ineffective attack dog
Have watched this woman on Wednesday and today and wondered who the vicious pit bull is. Slate answered--article below. I would HATE to be the person, male or female, to sleep next to this, human bundle of thorns.
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
JD is on vacation.
Visit JD's site - Kitty Litter Music
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Running even later.
Joins Farrelly Brothers
Bill Murray
Bill Murray is set to recur in The Now, the Quibi comedy series to be directed by Bobby Farrelly and Peter Farrelly. His character details are under wraps.
Written by Green Book Oscar winner Peter Farrelly, Steve Leff (The Ranch) and Pete Jones (Hall Pass), The Now examines what exactly makes life worth living. For Ed Poole (Dave Franco), clarity comes when a secret from his past has seemingly destroyed his future. He soon realizes the only thing that will make his life worth living is to forget the past, screw the future and just live in the Now.
O'Shea Jackson Jr., Daryl Hannah and Jimmy Tatro also star.
Bill Murray
#IStandWithTaylor
Taylor Swift
On Thursday afternoon, Taylor Swift dropped a major bombshell, claiming in Twitter, Facebook and Instagram posts titled "Don't know what else to do" that Big Machine label head Scott Borchetta and his new partner, Scooter Braun, are trying to stop her from her performing her Big Machine-era hits during an upcoming retrospective performance at the 2019 American Music Awards - where she is set to accept the first-ever Artist of the Decade award on Nov. 24.
Swift also claimed that Borchetta and Braun are denying the use of her recordings in an upcoming Netflix documentary about her career, and that they told her she could only use her old songs if she agreed to never re-record them and agreed to not publicly speak badly of Braun, Borchetta and Big Machine in the future.
"This is WRONG. Neither of these men had a hand in the writing of those songs. They did nothing to create the relationship I have with my fans… I just want to be able to perform MY OWN music. That's it. I've tried to work this out privately through my team but have not been able to resolve anything. Right now my performance at the AMAs, the Netflix documentary and any other recorded events I am planning to play until November of 2020 are a question mark," Swift wrote.
After laying out her case, Swift begged her fans to "let Scott Borchetta and Scooter Braun know how you feel about this." She also asked her followers to reach out to Braun's famous SB Projects clients - which, though not mentioned by name in her posts, include Ariana Grande, Demi Lovato, Justin Bieber, J Balvin, Dan + Shay, Carly Rae Jepsen, the Zac Brown Band, Usher, Idina Menzel, David Guetta, Tori Kelly and Swift's longtime nemesis, Kanye West.
Many celebrities have rushed to Swift's defense.
Taylor Swift
Tom Hanks' Replacement
'Friends'
Who could ever forget Freddie Prinze Jr.'s role as Sandy, the recorder-playing, hand-puppet-loving, expert "manny" who was the very short-term nanny to Ross (David Schwimmer) and Rachel's (Jennifer Aniston) baby daughter, Emma, on "Friends"? Well, you could have, if the role had gone to the actor who was going to play the male nanny: Tom Hanks.
"I wasn't even supposed to be [Sandy], that was originally offered to Tom Hanks but he wasn't gonna make it back from his film on time," Prinze told Entertainment Weekly in an interview published Thursday. "And so my agent called me and said, 'Do you want to be on Friends? And I said, 'Yeah, I'll do an episode of 'Friends.' That'll be great.' He said, 'Yeah, it shoots tomorrow.' And I was like, 'What?' He said, 'Yes, tomorrow so I'll send you the script.'"
And not only did he have to learn his lines quickly, he had to master the recorder pretty darn fast, too.
"I had just learned for the last like four hours of my day there how to play 'Greensleeves' on the recorder because I'd never played it before. And [Schwimmer] was like, 'I heard you practicing, man. You're going to crush the song,'" Prinze said. "I told him he shouldn't have said that because it's bad luck. But he was like, 'No! You're going to crush it.'"
'Friends'
Artwork Under Floodwater
Banksy
One of Banksy's most famous pieces is now underwater following massive flooding in Venice. As the city faces its worst floods in 50 years, the artwork of a child refugee has slowly become submerged.
Italy has declared a state of emergency as the historic city faced "apocalyptic" flooding in its famous basilica, squares and centuries-old buildings. The damage will cost hundreds of millions of dollars to repair, and now a poignant Banksy piece may become another cultural casualty of the rising water levels.
The artwork depicts a migrant child wearing a life jacket and signaling for help with a neon pink flare. Photographs of the piece on Friday show the child partially submerged in water beside one of the city's canals.
The piece first appeared during the prestigious Venice Biennale earlier this year. The elusive street artist confirmed the work belonged to him on Instagram in May.
Exceptionally high tides continued to plague Venice on Friday, prompting Mayor Luigi Brugnaro to close the iconic St. Mark's Square. St. Mark's Basilica, a structure that dates back around 1,000 years, has been flooded just six times in its history - twice in the last two years.
Banksy
Anti-Vaxxer Ads
Facebook
Facebook finally bent earlier this year to public pressure to do something about the trash heap of anti-vaccine-related misinformation that's managed to fester on its site, but not before anti-vaccination conspiracy theorists were able to exploit its tools to spread harmful and factually inaccurate information on the platform.
New research recently published in the peer-reviewed journal Vaccine indicates the extent to which just a small number of individuals exploited ads on Facebook to promote misinformation about vaccinations. Using Facebook's Ad Archive tool, which the social media giant introduced in October of 2018 as a way to search ads purchased on the platform, researchers discovered that two primary players were behind a rash of anti-vaxxer advertising on Facebook earlier this year.
During the period between Dec. 13 and Feb. 22, researchers pulled data on 505 ads that included the word "vaccine." Then, they broke them down into categories of either pro-vaccination or anti-vaccination and weeded out any other ads that weren't relevant. Of the remaining 309 vaccine-related relevant ads that were left, the researchers identified 163 as pro-vaccine and 145 as anti-vaccine.
While 53 percent were pro-vaccine, the researchers found that those ads came from 83 unique buyers and with varying goals, be they related to philanthropy, policy, or education. By contrast, the researchers found that for the anti-vaccine ads, 54 percent were purchased by just two buyers. Those buyers were the World Mercury Project and an unidentified individual buying ads for the group Stop Mandatory Vaccination.
The paper did not name the individuals associated with these groups, but as the Guardian noted, both are connected to highly visible anti-vaxxer figures. Stop Mandatory Vaccination is run by Larry Cook, who the Daily Beast reported in February amassed tens of thousands of dollars in crowd-funded donations to fund his anti-vaxxer agenda and bankroll his personal finances. The other, World Mercury Project, is chaired by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., whose own family has publicly slammed his conspiracy theories about vaccines.
Facebook
Overpaid Boeing
NASA
NASA "overpaid" Boeing by hundreds of millions of dollars on a fixed contract to develop a spaceship to carry astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS), an audit report has said, compensation it called "unnecessary."
The US has relied on Russia to transport its crews to the ISS since the end of the Space Shuttle program in 2011, but has hired Boeing and SpaceX under multi-billion dollar contracts, with the two companies already two years behind schedule.
"We found that NASA agreed to pay an additional $287.2 million above Boeing's fixed prices to mitigate a perceived 18-month gap in ISS flights anticipated in 2019," the inspector general's report issued Thursday said.
The auditors determined the amount of additional spending was not required because the risk of such a gap occurring was minimal, and SpaceX was not provided an opportunity to propose a solution "even though the company previously offered shorter production lead times than Boeing."
NASA
Moved To Vienna
Central European University
Billionaire George Soros opened the new main campus of his Central European University in Vienna on Friday, saying it would not halt its struggle to defend academic freedom from Viktor Orban, the right wing leader he says hounded it from Hungary.
CEU's decision last year to move the bulk of its courses out of Hungary followed a long struggle between Hungarian-born Soros, who promotes liberal causes through his charities, and Orban's anti-immigrant government.
Since it was founded by Soros in 1991, CEU has been a gateway to the West for thousands of students from eastern Europe, offering U.S.-accredited graduate degree programmes in an academic climate that celebrates free thought.
But after sustained public campaigns to vilify Soros, Hungary's ruling Fidesz party changed the law in 2017 to ban foreign-registered universities that do not also offer courses in their home country.
The university has moved its U.S.-accredited courses to Vienna. It has maintained a presence in Budapest, which Soros said was in recognition of the support shown by other academics.
Central European University
Parole Rejected
California
A third consecutive California governor is blocking parole for a former follower of late cult leader Charles Manson who has been in prison for decades for two of the Manson family's slayings in the 1960s.
Gov. Gavin Newsom on Friday reversed a parole recommendation for Bruce Davis, now 77, for the 1969 slayings of musician Gary Hinman and stuntman Donald "Shorty" Shea. It was the sixth time Davis was recommended for parole but blocked by a governor.
Davis was not involved in the more notorious killings of actress Sharon Tate and six others by the Manson group the same year.
Davis was convicted of helping kill both men in separate slayings, after which other members of the cult wrote "political piggy" on the wall of Hinman's home in his own blood.
Parole panels have repeatedly decided Davis is no longer a public safety risk, citing his age and good behavior. But his release has been blocked by Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Democrats Jerry Brown and Newsom.
California
Ancient 'Shaman' Woman
Sweden
A hunter-gatherer woman who lived in what is now Sweden 7,000 years ago was recently brought to life in a remarkable reconstruction. The blue-eyed woman wears a feather cape, a slate necklace and a belt made of 130 animal teeth; her dark skin is painted with white patterns and she glowers as she sits cross-legged on a "throne" of deer antlers.
Her body was found in the 1980s, buried upright in a grave at Skateholm - an archaeological site on Sweden's southern coast - among other burials dating from 5,500 B.C. to 4,600 B.C. National Geographic reported.
Because her corpse was so richly adorned, the woman is thought to have been a person of importance in her hunter-gatherer community, according to National Geographic. The life-size reconstruction will be revealed to the public in an exhibit opening Nov. 17 at Sweden's Trelleborg Museum, museum representatives said in a statement.
Known as Burial XXII by archaeologists, the woman was between 30 and 40 years old when she died, and she stood about 5 feet (2 meters) tall. Based on DNA evidence collected from other graves at Skateholm, researchers determined that the people who lived in the region at the time had light-colored eyes and dark skin, Nat Geo reported.
Sweden
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