from Bruce
Anecdotes
Problem-Solving
• Making maps in ancient times was very difficult. To measure the distances between two points, map makers hired professional walkers — people who had been trained to take steps of the same distance, instead of mixing up long and short steps. The professional walkers would walk the distance between two points, then report to the map maker how many steps they had taken. The ancient Greek mathematician and scientist Eratosthenes hired a professional walker to measure the distance between Alexandria and Syene, then he used the measurement to calculate the circumference of the Earth. He came up with the figure of 29,000 miles, which is close to the actual figure of approximately 24,900 miles.
• The movie Field of Dreams starred Kevin Costner as a man who builds a baseball field in his cornfield. Of course, the movie had to be carefully planned so that the corn would be the right height when the time for filming the scenes in the cornfield came. The corn was planted, and the director filmed the indoor scenes first to allow time for the corn to grow. Unfortunately, because of a drought it seemed that the corn would not grow after all. However, the creators of the film dammed a creek and irrigated the field, and they even paid $25,000 to truck in water. This was so successful that Mr. Costner sometimes had to walk on hidden platforms in the cornfield because the corn was so high.
• Girls at a middle school started to wear lipstick. Unfortunately, this caused a problem. They would put the lipstick on in the girls’ restroom and then kiss the mirror, leaving behind lipstick on the mirror. The principal decided to get the girls to stop doing that. She called all the girls into the bathroom and explained, “The lipstick on the mirror is very difficult for the janitor to get off.” The principal then asked the janitor, “Will you please show the girls how difficult it is for you to get the lipstick off the mirror?” The janitor dipped a toilet brush into the water in a toilet and then used the brush to scrub the mirror. The girls stopped kissing the mirror.
• While on tour with the Mapleson Opera Company, Etelka Gerster became stubborn after her sleeping car broke down, and the train stopped so that the broken car could be put on a side rail. Against all reason, Ms. Gerster absolutely refused to leave the sleeping car. Fortunately, Colonel James H. Mapleson solved the problem by convincing a very handsome station agent to play the role of the president of the railroad. The station agent flattered the stubborn coloratura, then convinced her to travel in another sleeping car that he said had been prepared especially for her.
• When writers Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur ran a movie studio that produced their own scripts in the 1930s, they hired a stage actor named Claude Rains to appear before a movie camera for the first time in their movie Crime Without Passion. Because he had a problem with his feet swelling under the hot movie lights, Mr. Rains performed many of his love scenes while standing barefoot in a pan of cool water — the movie camera, of course, was kept focused above his waist.
• Edwin Booth and Tommaso Salvini appeared together in Othello over a century ago. Mr. Booth appeared as Iago, and Mr. Salvini appeared as Othello. Mr. Booth performed well in the early acts, but he became ill and could barely stand when Othello assaulted him. He nearly fell into the orchestra pit, but Mr. Salvini used his immense strength to hold him up and continued to perform the scene as if Mr. Booth were not ill.
• As a computer pioneer, Grace Hopper thought in original ways. Frequently, after she was told that a problem could not be solved, she went ahead and tried to solve it anyway. She explained, “It’s much easier to apologize than it is to get permission.” She also owned a clock that ran counter-clockwise simply to show people that things can be done in more than the usual way.
• Lord Berkeley often boasted that he would never be robbed by a lone highwayman. One night, he was accosted by a lone highwayman, so Lord Berkeley, thinking quickly, said, “You cowardly dog, do you think that I can’t see your confederate skulking behind you?” The highwayman turned around to look — and Lord Berkeley shot him.
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© Copyright Bruce D. Bruce; All Rights Reserved
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Presenting
Michael Egan
has returned to semi-retired status.
In memory.
BRUCE'S RECOMMENDATION
BANDCAMP MUSIC
BRUCE'S RECOMMENDATION OF BANDCAMP MUSIC
Music: "Broken Toys"
Album: POP SONG
Artist: The Breed
Artist Location: Hobart, Australia
Info:
“The Breed are a band that knows exactly what their brand is and sticks to it. They play a unique blend of 60s punk, merseybeat, mod, 60s American Garage, power-pop and original material in the same vein. The current lineup of the Breed features Wayne Crisp (Guitar), Dan Graver (Bass), and Kenny White (Drums).
Price: $1 (AUD) for track; $10 (AUS) for 14-track album
Genre: Pop. Fab, Far-Out, and Groovy.
Links:
POP SONG
The Breed (Australia) on Bandcamp
The Breed (Australia) on YouTube
The Breed (Australia) Official Site
Other Links:
Bruce’s Music Recommendations: FREE pdfs
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
Two-Fer
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
Another extra foggy night.
Posthumous Ph.D.
Tom Petty
Nearly two decades after earning a place in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and more than four years after his death, rock icon Tom Petty has been awarded an honorary Ph.D. from the University of Florida.
The school’s board of trustees unanimously voted to award Thomas Earl Petty a posthumous doctoral degree in music during a Friday meeting. Born and raised in Gainesville, Petty once worked as a groundskeeper at UF as he tried to make it in the music industry, but he was never enrolled.
Petty passed away from an accidental drug overdose in October 2017. Days later during a UF home football game, the song “I Won’t Back Down” was played at the stadium as a memorial to Petty. The song has since become a regular feature at Gators games.
Usually backed by the Heartbreakers, Petty broke through in the 1970s and went on to sell more than 80 million records, featuring hits like “Free Fallin,’” “Refugee” and “American Girl.” Petty and the Heartbreakers were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2002.
Tom Petty
Sends Flowers to Don McLean
Taylor Swift
Taylor Swift is topping the charts with grace.
The Grammy winner, 31, sent Don McLean a beautiful bouquet of flowers and a special note after her song "All Too Well (Taylor's Version)" topped "American Pie" as the longest song to hit No. 1 on Billboard's Hot 100 chart.
"What a class act! Thank you Taylor Swift for the flowers and note," wrote McLean, 76, alongside a photo of him posing with the gift on Instagram.
"American Pie," which hit No. 1 hit following its 1971 release, runs 8 minutes and 42 seconds long. "All Too Well (Taylor's Version)" clocks in at 10 minutes and 13 seconds.
Last week, McLean congratulated Swift for her accomplishment in a statement shared on his website. "There is something to be said for a great song that has staying power," the artist wrote.
Taylor Swift
‘Ill-Advised Vanity Tour’
‘Weird Al’
“Weird Al” Yankovic is returning to the road next year for an encore run of his Ridiculously Self-Indulgent, Ill-Advised Vanity Tour that he’s calling The Unfortunate Return of the Ridiculously Self-Indulgent, Ill-Advised Vanity Tour. It will once against focus on his lesser-known album tracks and skip over nearly all of his famous parody songs.
It kicks off April 23rd, 2022 and wraps up October 29th with Yankovic’s first-ever show at New York’s Carnegie Hall. Along the way, he’s playing an incredible 133 shows.
“I’ve loved doing every single incarnation of my live show, but honestly the Vanity tour is the most fun I’ve ever had on stage,” Yankovic said in a statement, “so I’ve been dying to get back out there and torture everybody with it once again!”
In 2017, Yankovic told Rolling Stone that he got the idea near the end of one of his regular concert tours. “I think I was in the middle of putting on my ‘Fat’ suit for the thousandth time and getting ready to go back onstage,” he said. “I was thinking, ‘Gosh, next time I go on tour I don’t know if I want to be doing this. I think I need to take a break from all the theatrics. Wouldn’t it be nice to just do a really scaled down, low-key, casual show for the hardcore fans and just go out and be musicians?'”
Just like in 2017, comedian Emo Phillips will serve as an opening act on the tour. “He’s one of my oldest friends, and I also happen to think he’s one of the funniest guys in the world,” Yankovic told Rolling Stone in 2017. “I know that my fans love Emo from his appearance in UHF and also because he’s Emo. He’s an icon.”
‘Weird Al’
3,000-Year-Old Ax
Bronze Age
A day spent metal detecting took an exciting turn for one 13-year-old girl after she discovered a 3,000-year-old ax under the surface of the ground in England.
Milly Hardwick told The New York Times that she was completely stunned following the discovery of the Bronze Age-era item at a field in Royston in September.
Milly said she had just finished up lunch with her father and grandfather when her metal detector started beeping in the field, indicating that she had found something under the surface, the NYT reported.
After digging for approximately 10 minutes, Milly and her family uncovered an item that resembled part of an ax. They went on to dig up 64 more artifacts, including socketed ax heads, winged ax heads, cake ingots and bronze blade fragments, per the NYT.
All 65 items were taken to the Cambridgeshire County Council's environment committee, where chair Lorna Dupré later confirmed that they were believed to be from the Bronze Age, according to the outlet.
Bronze Age
Part Of Job?
Rape
Federal appeals judges asked Friday whether a U.S. president’s every remark is part of the job as they weighed whether former President Donald Trump (R-Lock Him Up) can be held liable in a defamation case that concerns his response to a rape allegation.
Trump and the Justice Department say he was acting in his official capacity when he spoke to the media about writer E. Jean Carroll’s accusation, so they want to swap the U.S. government in for Trump himself as the defendant in her defamtion lawsuit.
The change might sound technical, but it could make a big difference. Federal law makes it difficult to sue U.S. government employees for job-related actions, and a law that sometimes allows such lawsuits specifically excludes libel and slander claims. That could keep Carroll’s case from going forward if courts decide Trump was acting as a government worker.
A federal judge rejected that request in October. Friday’s panel of 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals judges didn’t give a clear indication of how, or when, they would rule.
But the judges floated multiple questions about private and public conduct for the commander-in-chief: Is everything a president says work-related? Does it become so if reporters are there?
Rape
Withheld Data
Missouri
Mask mandates were effective as the delta variant of the coronavirus was driving a surge in COVID-19 cases across Missouri, according to an analysis that the state’s Department of Health and Senior Services conducted in early November.
But the state did not immediately share that data with the public. Instead, the information was released Wednesday, a month later, because of a public records request by The Missouri Independent, a nonprofit news organization that reported the findings, and the Documenting COVID-19 project at the Brown Institute for Media Innovation.
The records include an email dated Nov. 3 from the director of Missouri’s Health Department to a staff member in the governor’s office. The email included two graphs that compared the rates of reported COVID cases and deaths in parts of Missouri with and without mask mandates.
The director, Donald Kauerauf, said in the email that there were many variables to account for when assessing the impacts of mask requirements in Missouri this year, but that the analysis ultimately showed that such requirements were effective.
During that time frame, there were 15.8 cases per day for every 100,000 residents, on average, in the areas that required masks, compared with 21.7 cases per 100,000 residents in unmasked communities, according to The Missouri Independent’s analysis of the data. Regions without mask requirements recorded 1 death per 100,000 residents every 3.5 days, compared with 1 death per 100,000 residents every five days where masks were required, the Independent said.
Missouri
'Shrinkflation'
Japan
It was a chocolate biscuit that turned Masayuki Iwasa, a self-professed penny-pincher with a sweet tooth, into one of Japan's most scrupulous chroniclers of "shrinkflation".
Having sworn off his favourite Chocoliere tartlets for a decade after Bourbon Corp reduced the package size, the newspaper delivery man and part-time stock trader was spurred to action around two years ago after he noticed the biscuits had also gotten smaller.
"I was annoyed they were shrinking and shrinking," said the 45-year-old Iwasa, whose website, http://www.neage.jp (price increases), documents surreptitious price hikes.
Today he tracks prices of some 400 goods and services - everything from washing powder to day passes at Tokyo Disneyland. The bulk of his website is devoted to so-called shrinkflation, when a product gets smaller but the price stays the same.
"In Japan, the impact of deflation means it is difficult to raise prices directly, so shrinkflation is a kind of a measure of last resort," Iwasa said. "But basically it's sneaky and it bothers me."
Japan
Grasping Robotic Drone
SNAG
A newly developed, bio-inspired aerial robot can land on a variety of branches and carry objects like a bird.
“Birds take off and land on a wide range of complex surfaces,” while “current robots are limited in their ability to dynamically grasp irregular objects,” declares the opening paragraph of a new research paper published in Science Robotics. Indeed, bird landings look so effortless, but it’s “not easy to mimic how birds fly and perch,” William Roderick, a roboticist at Stanford University and a co-author of the study, explained in a Stanford release.
Working with Stanford University engineers Mark Cutkosky and David Lentink (now at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands), Roderick sought to build a bona fide perching robot. Levering insights from Cutkosky Lab, which specializes in animal-inspired robots, and Letink Lab, which focuses on bird-inspired aerial bots, the team designed, built, and tested a “biomimetic robot that can dynamically perch on complex surfaces and grasp irregular objects,” according to the paper.
The new contraption is called SNAG, which stands for “stereotyped nature-inspired aerial grasper.” By “stereotyped,” the engineers are referring to the formulaic behavior involved in bird landings. Previous research showed that birds employ the same grasping technique regardless of the surface. As Roderick put it, birds “let the feet handle the variability and complexity of the surface texture itself.”
SNAG’s feet and legs were modeled after those of peregrine falcons, but instead of wings, this robot achieves flight with a quadcopter drone. Made from lightweight materials, it can carry 10 times its own weight. The bot’s “bones” are made from 3D-printed plastic, while its muscles and tendons are built from motors and fishing line. Each leg has its own motor and is capable of 14 degrees of freedom. A servomotor on SNAG’s hip “orients the leg right before perching and balances the robot after landing by rotating the center of mass toward the center of the perch similar to a bird,” the engineers write in their paper.
SNAG
Large Hadron Collider
'Ghost Particles'
Physicists have detected "ghost particles" called neutrinos inside an atom smasher for the first time.
The tiny particles, known as neutrinos, were spotted during the test run of a new detector at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) — the world's largest particle accelerator, located at CERN near Geneva, Switzerland.
The landmark discovery, made by CERN's Forward Search Experiment (FASER) collaboration and presented in a Nov. 24 paper in the journal Physical Review D, is not just the first time that neutrinos have been seen inside the LHC, but it's also the first time they've been found inside any particle accelerator. The breakthrough opens up a completely new window through which scientists can investigate the subatomic world.
"Prior to this project, no sign of neutrinos has ever been seen at a particle collider," study co-author Jonathan Feng, a physics professor at the University of California, Irvine and co-leader of the FASER collaboration, said in a statement. "This significant breakthrough is a step toward developing a deeper understanding of these elusive particles and the role they play in the universe."
'Ghost Particles'
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