Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Paul Krugman: Manhood, Moola, McConnell and Trumpism (NY Times)
The motivations behind policy, from tariffs to the wall.
Greg Sargent: Trump is digging the GOP in deeper. And there's no bottom in sight. (Washington Post)
In the run up to the 2012 presidential election, allies of then-President Barack Obama hit on a phrase to sum up his first term: "Osama Bin Laden is dead, and General Motors is alive." The latter, of course, referred to Obama's bailout of the auto companies, which were cratering amid the brutal financial recession. Now, as we approach the two-year mark of President Trump's tenure, it can perhaps be summed up this way: The case against Trump's corruption and criminality is getting built, and his border wall isn't.
Martin Belam: Londoners troll New York Times with deluge of 'petty crimes' (The Guardian)
An appeal for victims of petty crime in the UK's capital has been met with sarcasm.
Mary Beard: Academics' holidays? (TLS)
my last week of "holidays" was spent in the other "unseen" versions of university jobs (happily undertaken). I guess forty hours were spent in reading, examining, and commenting on a PhD thesis (yes, a lot of hours, but if you had written 80,000 original words, would you not want someone to devote some time to it?). Another 30 were spent in writing references and recommendations, for students, ex-students, and colleagues.
Mary Beard: Once a knight is quite enough (TLS)
I had a damn nice time picking up my medal on Friday. I had long since done all the scrutinising of the conscience (no I don't think the UK has an empire any more, so DBE seems quaint rather than wicked
and anyway the idea of a classicist getting a gong for being a classicist is a tribute to all hard-working classicists). So the "pinning on" ceremony was just the next and jolly stage
The Many Facets of Character Voice Acting (Neatorama)
Everyone is familiar with the many voices of Mel Blanc (seen above with Director Chuck Jones (left) and fellow voice actress June Foray), who gave life to most of the Warner Brothers cartoon characters, and you may be familiar with other voice actors such as Dan Castellaneta and those found on The Simpsons. Many prolific voice actors such as Don Messick and Bill Thompson lived and died in obscurity, but their ranks are swelling with the infusion of A-list actors such as Cameron Diaz, whom producers seem to think are worth paying $5 million for two weeks' work, and
John Gray: How Hermann Hesse became a hero of the Sixties counterculture (New Statesman)
"Before your LSD session, read Siddartha and Steppenwolf," advised Timothy Leary.
My Blue, Blue Girl (Wordpress)
Written & performed by George J. Raymond.
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 Lulu Storefront
David Bruce's Apple iBookstore
David Bruce has over 100 Kindle books on Amazon.com.
Presenting
Michael Egan
took the day off.
has returned to semi-retired status.
In memory.
Reader Suggestion
Michelle in AZ
from Bruce
Anecdotes
When he was a young boy, one of Mark Twain's prayers was answered. In church he had heard in a sermon that God answered prayers, and so he put that information to the test. One of his schoolmates, Margaret Kooneman, brought gingerbread to school each day as part of her lunch, and since young Mark liked gingerbread, at school one day he prayed for gingerbread. Looking up after his prayer, he saw young Margaret's gingerbread, and he saw that young Margaret had her back turned toward the gingerbread. Mr. Twain later reflected in his Autobiography, "In all my life I believe I never enjoyed an answer to prayer more than I enjoyed that one."
The Carroll Theatre in Crown Heights, Brooklyn used to give away dishes as an incentive to get people away from their television sets and in front of live entertainment. One week, the theatre gave away dinner plates, the next week soup bowls, another week saucers, etc. Each week, without fail, the audience would sit with their free dishes in their lap, become engrossed by the show, and forget about the dishes. After the show, they would applaud, then stand up - and their free dishes would fall to the floor and break.
A general had an antique teacup which he greatly prized. One day, he was admiring it when it nearly slipped out of his hand, greatly alarming him. This made the general think: "I have been a general in battle after battle, often risking my life, yet never have I been as alarmed as I was when I nearly dropped this teacup. Why is this?" The general realized that he had become overly attached to the teacup, so he walked away, throwing the teacup over his shoulder and smashing it.
"The enemy has no definite name, though in a certain degree we all know him. He who puts always the body before the spirit, the dead before the living; who makes things only in order to sell them; who has forgotten that there is such a thing as truth, and measures the world by advertisement or money; who daily defies the beauty that surrounds him, and makes vulgar the tragedy." - Gilbert Murray.
Author Maurice Maeterlinck once tried to take the photograph of opera singer Mary Garden, saying, "Come into my dark room. I want to photograph your soul." However, Ms. Garden demurred and replied, "I should say not. Everything about me the world seems to own. That is the only thing that belongs to me and I can't let it go on a plate."
While touring the Orient, Ted Shawn and his dance troupe purchased many unusual items - fans, mandarin coats, amber, jade, etc. Mr. Shawn once asked the electrician of his troupe if he had purchased anything. He replied, "You bet I have. Today I found something I've been looking for ever since we got to the Orient - an alarm clock."
Actress Ellen Terry once dumped out the contents of her heavily filled pocketbook onto a table as she searched for a note she wanted to give to Harry Fiske. Mr. Fiske surveyed the contents of the purse, then asked, "No slingshot?" Ms. Terry replied, "No slingshot."
In 2009, the city council of Tucson, Arizona, fired city manager Mike Hein. Mr. Hein is a personal friend of Tucson Weekly columnist Tom Danehy, who regarded the firing as the dumb action of a smart city manager by dumb politicians and wrote forcibly about it. After he wrote about the dumb action, the smart city manager, and the dumb politicians, a woman who had read his column asked him, "Are you the horrible person who wrote those awful things about the [City Council members]?" Mr. Danehy replied, "I'm one of them." The woman then said, "How do you get away with writing things like that? You probably don't even know [City Council members] Karin Uhlich or Regina Romero. How can you call them 'dumb'?" Mr. Danehy replied, "Because the editor probably wouldn't have let me use 'f-in' ignorant.'"
Herbert Hoover built his career on Americans' fear of Communism. On January 2, 1920, he was responsible for the arrest of 10,000 Americans suspected of being Communists, most of whom were found to be innocent and were released. These police-state tactics were widely condemned. In fact, few Americans have been Communists. By 1971, the members of the Communist Party in America numbered only 2,800 - but many of them were really FBI agents. In 1963, Hoover told the assistant secretary of the State Department, "If it were not for me, there would not even be a Communist Party, because I've financed the Communist Party in order to know what they're doing." FBI agent William Sullivan's duties included closely monitoring the Communist Party. He once suggested that Hoover release the membership numbers of the Communist Party in order to show Americans that the FBI was winning the war against subversion. Hoover refused to do so, asking, "How do you think I'm going to get my appropriations out of Congress if you keep downplaying the Communist Party?" After Hoover died, Mr. Sullivan said that the "Communist threat" was actually "a lie perpetrated on the American people."
***
© Copyright Bruce D. Bruce; All Rights Reserved
***
Bonus Links
Jeannie the Teed-Off Temp
Reader Comment
Current Events
Total ripoff
This is a total ripoff! I was on the board of an organization that puts on an annual convention in the DC area--I was even the hotel liaison one of the years I was on the board.
Every hotel we've used gives us FREE use of meeting rooms; they also comp rooms for every board member during the conference (and for several days before and after the conference dates so we can be on-site to deal with issues); we have free office space to use; free storage space for our materials; they comp a banquet the night before the conference begins for every board member and select honored guests; comp rooms for our honored guests; comp our parking (and the honored guests' parking) in their garage, etc:
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
JD is taking a vacation.
Visit JD's site - Kitty Litter Music
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Cloudy and cool.
Super Bowl LIII Halftime Show
Maroon 5
Us Weekly reports Maroon 5 is "having a lot of trouble finding guests" to share the stage with them for the Super Bowl LIII halftime show. The group's difficulties stem from the belief that musical acts do not want to "associate themselves with the NFL" in light of the league's response to the silent protest conducted by Colin Kaepernick throughout the 2016 season when he took a knee during the playing of the national anthem.
According to Us Weekly, the NFL reportedly saw the repercussions of their treatment of Kaepernick earlier this year when Rihanna declined an offer to perform at Super Bowl LIII, citing "the kneeling controversy," and her opposition to "the NFL's stance" as the reasons behind her decision.
Even though the league hasn't officially announced Maroon 5 as this year's halftime performers, the reports have drawn negative responses. A Change.org petition calling for the band to drop out has received a little over 72,000 signatures, inching closer to its goal of 75,000. Bruno Mars, who already performed at two Super Bowls, called for a halftime show celebrating the rise of hip-hop in Atlanta-where the game is taking place-with an artist(s) who hails from the city. It's quite possible that even if a rapper was presented with the opportunity, they would turn down the offer because of the Kaepernick situation.
Despite early rumors that Cardi B would be performing with Maroon 5, Us Weekly says nothing has been set in stone. "As of today, she's not," a source said. "She's been going back and forth, but it's a no right now." If all else fails, the NFL could always take up the petition that wants the league to honor the late SpongeBob SquarePants creator Stephen Hillenburg and play "Sweet Victory" during halftime.
Maroon 5
Apple Lands Rights
Snoopy
Charles M. Schulz's Midwestern pals are heading to their new streaming platform.
It's truly been a dog day afternoon for Apple. The company has secured the rights to the late Charles M. Schulz's iconic Peanuts brand, meaning Snoopy and the gang are headed to their forthcoming streaming platform.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, Apple came out on top of "a highly competitive bidding situation," ultimately flying away on the Red Barron to tell new stories and adventures beginning next year.
The deal includes a partnership with Canadian-based kids programming giant, DHX, which nabbed a major stake in the Peanuts franchise back in 2017 and will help produce any of the forthcoming projects.
Snoopy
Dance Number
Dick Van Dyke
Dick Van Dyke's chimney-sweep dance is one of the most memorable parts of Mary Poppins - and he steals the show in the sequel, too!
The legendary 93-year-old actor dusted off his dancing shoes for Mary Poppins Returns, a sequel taking place 25 years after the original story's ending. With Emily Blunt and Lin-Manuel Miranda in charge of carrying the movie this time, Van Dyke makes a poignant cameo in which he reminds the audience all about the magic of the first movie.
"The minute I heard I was going to do a little number, that sold me," Van Dyke tells PEOPLE in the latest issue out Friday. "And I thought I could contribute by just being a little bit of a reminder of the original. And I think it turned out well. I got to jump up on a desk and do a dance number. It surprised everybody, but nobody was as surprised as I was. We did several takes of it, and I was just amazed. And I enjoyed it, of course."
While Van Dyke is now happy about his small cameo, the actor admits that he originally wasn't convinced by the idea of a sequel 54 years after Julie Andrews first floated down onto Cherry Tree Lane. But he quickly changed his mind.
"I had some misgivings, because almost traditionally sequels don't work. They're never quite as good as the original," he says. "[But] This is an homage to Walt and the original movie. I was so impressed that their heart was in the right place. They wanted to pay respect to the original. And I was so tickled when they asked me, because it was kind of like bookends for me."
Dick Van Dyke
Copyright Suit Ends
'Blurred Lines'
The lengthy legal battle over Robin Thicke and Pharrell Williams' "Blurred Lines" finally came to an end this week with a payday for the Marvin Gaye family.
The copyright lawsuit was settled on Monday when California Judge John A. Kronstadt entered a judgement of approximately $5 million against Thicke and Williams.
According to Billboard, it all comes out to $4,983,766.85: $2,848,846.50 comes from Thicke, Williams, and Williams' More Water From Nazareth Publishing Inc., $1,768,191.88 comes from just Thicke, and an additional $357,630.96 comes from Williams and his publishing company.
The Gayes are also entitled to half of all the royalties "Blurred Lines" accrues in the future.
'Blurred Lines'
To Pay TNT $1.2 Million
Morgan Spurlock
Morgan Spurlock has reached a settlement with Turner Entertainment Networks a year after he confessed to a history of sexual misconduct and walked away from a documentary series.
Spurlock's company, Warrior Poets, has agreed to pay Turner $1,173,707, according to a final judgment filed in federal court in Los Angeles on Thursday.
In the spring of 2017, TNT announced that Spurlock would team with Sarah Jessica Parker to produce a show titled "Who Rules the World?" The show would focus on issues facing women, including the "policing of their bodies and judgments to their family-planning choices, to the micro-aggressions they face in the media, the workplace and everyday life," according to the announcement.
But on Dec. 14, 2017, as the #MeToo movement gained traction, Spurlock wrote a lengthy post saying he was "part of the problem." In the post, he admitted to serial infidelities and said he had settled an allegation of sexual harassment from a former assistant. He also said he had been accused of rape in college.
Turner sued Spurlock in March, saying he had failed to communicate with the network after abandoning the show. The suit sought the return of production funds. In June, Judge Manuel Real ordered Spurlock's company to deposit the production funds in an escrow account pending the outcome of the case.
Morgan Spurlock
Future Humans May Call Us
'Chicken People'
Long-lost cultures are sometimes known by the goods they leave behind. The Neolithic Corded Ware people of Europe, for example, got their name from the distinctive decorated pottery they made. If today's humans ever get a similar moniker, we might be known as the Chicken People.
Domesticated chickens, it turns out, could be a signpost for future archaeologists that screams, "Humans were here!" The total weight of the species Gallus gallus domesticus not only exceeds the weight of all wild birds combined, domesticated chickens also carry distinctive signs of industrialized farming in their very bones.
"They're an example, really, of how we've changed the biosphere to suit our needs as humans," said Carys Bennett, the lead author of a new study published today (Dec. 11) in the journal Royal Society Open Science that argues that chicken-bone fossils may mark a new geological epoch, the Anthropocene.
Bennett is a geologist, and she and her colleagues are interested in finding markers of a potential new era of geological history. The Anthropocene is a still-controversial epoch defined by humans as the major drivers of Earth's environment. One key requirement of an epoch, Bennett told Live Science, is having an "index fossil." Index fossils are fossils that can be found around the world in a particular era and are unique enough to mark that period of time as different from what came before and after.
Chickens might just be that index fossil for the Anthropocene. The numbers tell the story: There are approximately 21.4 billion domesticated chickens alive on the planet today, making them by far the most numerous birds on the planet. Their combined weight, or biomass, is around 11 billion lbs. (5 billion kilograms). And chickens are found worldwide. Humans consumed an estimated 62 billion of them in 2014 alone.
'Chicken People'
Genetic Sleuthing
Corn
The history of corn, one of humankind's indispensable staple crops, is far more complicated that previously known, according to scientists who conducted a comprehensive genetic and archeological analysis of its domestication.
The process of turning corn's wild predecessor into a vital food source began 9,000 years ago in Mexico, but an early partially domesticated version was then brought to South America 6,500 years ago, and crucial further development of the plant proceeded in parallel in both places, the researchers said on Thursday.
Until now, it was thought that the domestication process had occurred in south-central Mexico's Balsas River Valley, south of Mexico City, and that corn - also called maize - only later was introduced by people elsewhere in the Americas.
The new findings revealed a previously unknown but pivotal second phase of domestication occurred in the southwestern Amazon region spanning parts of Brazil and Bolivia even as domestication continued in Mexico.
Corn became a global crop after Europeans reached the Americas half a millennium ago. Other crops originating in the Americas include potatoes, sweet potatoes, chocolate, tomatoes, peanuts and avocados.
Corn
World's Most Advanced Digital Cadaver
Susan Potter
In 2000, a feisty, 72-year-old disabled cancer survivor named Susan Potter wheeled into the office of Dr Victor Spitzer at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus and demanded to donate her body to the Visible Human Project. Meaning that she was requesting, following her natural death, for her body to be sawed into thousands of hair-thin sections that would be photographed, digitized, and painstakingly labeled in order to create an immortal online cadaver that could advance medical training and research.
In 2015, Potter passed away from pneumonia at age 87, and during the spring of 2017, her frozen remains were cut into 27,000 slices, each 63-microns thick. As each layer was removed by a seriously sharp carbide blade, a high-resolution image was snapped. The process to create her complete, open-access body map will continue for a year or so, but when completed, Potter's body will join two previous Visible Humans in becoming the world's most well-known human forms.
But who was the woman in life? National Geographic has been following Potter and her legacy for 16 years - here is her story.
The Visible Human Project was dreamed up in 1987, but did not get off the ground until 1991, when the National Institutes of Health (NIH) awarded Dr Spitzer and his late collaborator, Dr David Whitlock, a $720,000 grant to begin work.
The goal was to provide a resource that could be utilized to study normal male and female anatomy in greater detail than flesh-and-blood cadavers, which is how researchers and students have examined physical structures for millennia. On top of the obvious limitation of only being usable for a small number of dissections, cadavers are expensive and not always widely available.
Susan Potter
Surprising Growth
Viking Cats
Many animals shrink when they become domesticated-the average dog is about 25% smaller than its wild cousin the gray wolf, for example-but a curious thing appears to have happened to cats during the Viking era: They got bigger. More research is needed to confirm the new finding, but there's a good chance it had to do with being better fed.
"Such a shift has never been documented elsewhere, as far as I know," says archaeozoologist Wim Van Neer of the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences in Brussels, who was not involved in the study.
When Julie Bitz-Thorsen was an undergraduate at the University of Copenhagen, her adviser, archaeozoologist Anne Birgitte Gotfredsen, gave her an unusual task: Sift through dozens of bags of material from archaeological sites all over Denmark, and carefully pick out all the cat bones. Gotfredsen wanted to find out how much Iron Age, Viking, and medieval cats differed from modern house cats.
All domesticated cats are descendants of the Near Eastern wildcat (Felis silvestris lybica), a diminutive, tawny feline that still stalks Middle Eastern deserts. Although the oldest evidence of domesticated cats comes from a 7500-B.C.E. grave in Cyprus-early Egyptians likely did the slow, patient work of cultivating house cats' lovable personalities. As early as 1700 B.C.E., cats started to sail across the Mediterranean, carried aboard ships as gifts and to eradicate pests.
By 200 C.E., the people of Iron Age Denmark were keeping cats. Among charred human bones in a cremation grave from that period, researchers discovered a cat ankle bone with a drill hole, suggesting it was worn as an amulet. The Vikings-who were farmers as well as seafaring marauders-apparently raised cats for their warm fur and to control pests. By 850-1050 C.E., cat pelts started to bring a high price in Denmark.
Viking Cats
| CURRENT MOON lunar phases |
