from Bruce
Anecdotes
Problem-Solving
• As an Impressionist painter, Claude Monet was obsessed with recreating the effect of light on various objects. In 1890, he began painting a picture of meules — stacks of wheat or oats. The light changed suddenly, so he got another canvas and began painting the effect of that light on the meules. Again, the light changed, and again, he got another canvas and began painting the effect of that new light on the meules. After this experience, he started to always paint on more than one canvas. As the light changed, he switched to a different canvas. This allowed him to keep on working whether the day was sunny or cloudy, and when the day was sunny in the morning and cloudy in the afternoon.
• Before baseball had modern stadiums, some people always watched the games for free by standing in back of the outfield. In Boston in 1884, the club’s owner decided to put up fences to prevent freeloaders from seeing the games; however, many freeloaders simply climbed the telegraph poles and watched the games from their high perch. This made the owner angry, so he waited until the middle of an exciting game, then sent out crews to paint several feet of the telegraph poles — from the ground to the freeloaders. All of the freeloaders ruined their clothing getting down from the telegraph poles.
• During her rule, Queen Mary I of England persecuted the Protestants. Benjamin Franklin’s great-great-grandfather was a Protestant under her rule, but he continued to read the Bible even when doing so was forbidden. He kept the Bible strapped underneath a covered stool, and when he wanted to read it, he stationed one of his children to serve as a lookout, then he turned the stool over. Whenever the child said that an officer of the crown was coming near, Benjamin Franklin’s great-great-grandfather would immediately hide the evidence of his Bible reading by turning the stool right-side up.
• Occasionally an actor forgets his lines. Once an actor was on stage when he forgot his lines while playing a king who was supposed to roar out his orders at another character. Instead of roaring out his orders, he motioned for the other character to come close to him, then whispered to him that he couldn’t remember his part. Then, when the other character walked away from him, the actor said loudly, “Forget nothing that I have told you.” The audience was completely unaware that the actor had forgotten his lines.
• This is an example of underground political humor from the time when Lithuania suffered from Russian rule: A Lithuanian in the days of Communist domination had a never-ending supply of fresh fruits and vegetables. A visitor marveled at this plenitude and asked the Lithuanian how he managed it. “It’s easy,” he said. “I have a parrot which I taught to say pro-Communist slogans. I take the parrot to the market, and when it squawks, ‘Long live Communism,’ everyone throws fruits and vegetables at it.”
• During Prohibition, bootleggers used to smuggle small boatloads of alcohol into the United States. If federal agents were about to apprehend them, the bootleggers would throw the alcohol overboard to get rid of the incriminating evidence. Often, the illegal alcohol was weighted down with salt to sink it. When the salt dissolved long after the federal agents had gone, a small buoy was released to float on the surface of the water and let the bootleggers know exactly where to find the alcohol.
• Heinie Zimmerman, who played third base for the Chicago Cubs early in the last century, hated umpires. In 1913, he received an interesting letter in the mail. The letter contained half of a $100 bill and a note saying that he would receive the other half if he would quit verbally abusing umpires for two weeks. Mr. Zimmerman managed to restrain himself, and after the two weeks was up, an umpire gave him the other half of the $100 bill.
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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: "Oh Yeah"
Album: ZAHAVA
Artist: Jordana Talsky
Artist Location: Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Info:
“Jordana Talsky is a singer, songwriter and vocal looper. She accompanies herself by voice with a Roland Boss RC505 loop machine. Her ethos is to incorporate digital means into live performance in an organic way, and with the loop machine, she creates a choir on the spot with no pre-recorded parts. Jordana weaves unique interpretations of covers with original material.”
“This is an all-vocal-looping record. All of the sounds were made by my voice or body. I began using the loop machine a few years ago as a composition tool to capture ideas because I couldn’t notate quickly and needed a fast way to document musical thoughts. It took me a number of years to feel comfortable enough to use the loop machine as a form of accompaniment. On the journey of learning to do a new thing with myself, I have had to face my impatience, criticism and doubt, and have found that in many ways, this creation journey has mirrored the challenge to feel at home with myself. I grapple with not wanting to be defined as any one thing, whether that is the type of personality, professional, or musician I am, and I wonder if I am an artist at all. I think we have different parts to our identities that are in conflict, but which can be harmonized as we grow into ourselves. I am a person of several voices, and now a choir of one. The record is titled ZAHAVA, my middle name, to acknowledge my pursuit to learn and accept all the parts of me.”
Price: $1 (CAN) for track; $10 (CAN) for six-track EP
Genre: Acapella. Vocal Layering. Vocal Looping.
Links:
ZAHAVA
Jordana Talsky on Bandcamp
Jordana Talsky Official Website
Jordana Talsky on YouTube
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Reader Comment
Current Events
Linda >^..^<
We are all only temporarily able bodied.
Thanks, Linda!
that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Grand Sumo returns!
Library of Congress
Rolling Stones
Nearly a half-hour of unseen 8mm footage of the Rolling Stones, the Flying Burrito Brothers, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young and other artists performing at Altamont has been recovered by the Library of Congress and published on its website, thanks to an unlikely find among 200,000 reels of film that were acquired 20 years ago.
The footage is silent and on the crude side by contemporary standards, and does not appear to have been shot by the documentary crew shooting the footage that ended up in the film “Gimme Shelter.” The portions that include the Stones’ nighttime performance are nearly too murky to make out, and there’s nothing in it related to the stabbing death of an audience member during that set that made Altamont go down in history.
Nonetheless, the daytime parts of the “home movie” will be fascinating to aficionados of late ’60s rock, offering close-up shots of some of the legends of that era from a position on or close to the stage, including glimpses of many artists that were never seen in the “Gimme Shelter” movie, caught in performance or just casually hanging out behind the stage.
Their acquisition dates back to 1996, when archivist Rick Prelinger bought 200,000 reels from Palmer Labs, a San Francisco film processing company, as it was going out of business, with no other interest than eventually scouring the non-pro footage for their interest as ephemeral films. In 2002, the collection was bought by the Library of Congress, which announced at the time that it “would take several years… to provide access to these films,” though archivists now note that it’s been 19 years and they’re still being gone through.
Watch the 25 minutes of footage here.
Rolling Stones
National Society Of Film Critics
‘Drive My Car’
The National Society of Film Critics has named Drive My Car for its Best Picture Awards of 2021.
Drive My Car is a Japanese drama cowritten and directed by Ryusuke Hamaguchi, It is based on the short story of the same name. The film follows Yusuke Kafuku (played by Hidetoshi Nishijima as he directs a production of Uncle Vanya while dealing with the death of his wife.
The NSFC features elected and eligible members from major media outlets. The annual awards honors the best in acting, direction, writing, cinematography and more across onscreen and streaming releases in the US.
The 60-members NSFC include critics from major papers and outlets in Los Angeles, Boston, New York, Philadelphia and Chicago including from outlets Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, the New Yorker, the Christian Science Monitor and NPR.
List of winners: ‘Drive My Car’
Leaving Nevada
Heidi Fleiss
The woman dubbed the “Hollywood Madam” when she was accused in the mid-1990s of running a Los Angeles prostitution ring said she is moving out of a southern Nevada town where she has lived for about 15 years.
Heidi Fleiss told the Pahrump Valley Times she is angry that someone shot one of her cherished pet parrots with a pellet gun just before Christmas.
Fleiss told the newspaper she contacted Nye County Animal Control officers and kept the pellet that a veterinarian removed from the bird’s leg as evidence. She said she would pay up to $5,000 for information leading to the arrest of the shooter.
Fleiss said she bought a property in Missouri, where she plans to relocate her exotic bird collection by the end of February.
Fleiss, 56, has lived for about 15 years in Pahrump, a high desert community about 60 miles (96 kilometers) west of Las Vegas.
Heidi Fleiss
Off Message
Radio Host
Dave Ramsey, personal finance radio host, full-time philistine, and outspoken evangelical Christian, was the target of social media criticism Saturday, as outraged individuals slammed him for saying that if tenants at his residential properties are displaced because he raised rental rates to meet market price, it does not make him “a bad Christian.”
Ramsey, who hosts the nationally syndicated three-hour radio program and podcast “The Ramsey Show,” is once again the center of controversy, this time for these words about tenants forced from buildings that he owns because of rent increases:
“The ratio of the income that they earned to their housing expense displaced them,” Ramsey said on the air. “I didn’t cause any of that. And so you are not displacing them, you’re taking too much credit for what’s going on. If they need to move to a cheaper house, because they can’t afford they’re gonna move to a lesser house because if they move they’re gonna pay market rent. Okay, I own rental property, single family homes, among many other properties that we own. And if I raised my rent to be market rate that does not make me a bad Christian. I did not displace the person out of that house if they can no longer afford it.”
Ramsey is not noted for compassion about the concerns of the average citizen. He was sued in December for requiring employees at his company to disregard COVID-19 work-from-home orders and attend in-person gatherings of more than 900 workers who were encouraged not to wear masks or maintain social distance.
Employees at Ramsey Solutions – the Franklin, Tennessee, headquarters for the evangelical Christian bestselling author and media mogul – who wanted to work from home instead of coming to office were guilty of “weakness of spirit,” Ramsey said, according to the lawsuit.
Radio Host
Traction
Hannity
Much of the media world scrambled to cover the revelation this week that the congressional committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection is seeking the cooperation of Fox News Rupert Murdoch's (R-Evil Incarnate) host treasonist propagandist Sean Hannity (R-Fascist). But his employer wasn't part of that rush.
The unexpected request - revealed by the committee Tuesday along with text messages Hannity sent the defeated ex-President Donald Trump's aides last year expressing concern before the riots about the White House's plans for that day - generated a flood of news articles as well as hours of panel discussions and analysis on Fox's cable rivals, CNN and MSNBC.
But it was quieter on the network on which Hannity has starred for the past 25 years. Over three days, Fox journalists collectively devoted 88 seconds to the news.
Yet none of the airtime Fox has devoted to the matter has explained why the committee wants to talk to Hannity - because he was the author of dozens of text messages that suggested advance knowledge about Trump's efforts to undermine the election results.
It was similarly restrained in covering a subsequent series of harassment scandals involving Bill O'Reilly, its most-popular personality until he and the company abruptly parted ways in 2017.
Hannity
Turkmenistan
'Gates of Hell'
The president of Turkmenistan is calling for an end to one of the country’s most notable but infernal sights — the blazing natural gas crater widely referred to as the “Gates of Hell.”
The desert crater located about 260 kilometers (160 miles) north of the capital, Ashgabat, has burned for decades and is a popular sight for the small number of tourists who come to Turkmenistan, a country which is difficult to enter.
The Turkmen news site Turkmenportal said a 1971 gas-drilling collapse formed the crater, which is about 60 meters (190 feet) in diameter and 20 meters (70 feet) deep. To prevent the spread of gas, geologists set a fire, expecting the gas to burn off in a few weeks.
The spectacular if unwelcome fire that has burned ever since is so renowned that state TV showed President Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov speeding around it in an off-road truck in 2019.
But Berdymukhamedov has ordered his government to look for ways to put the fire out because it is causing ecological damage and affecting the health of people living in the area, state newspaper Neitralny Turkmenistan reported Saturday.
'Gates of Hell'
Aggressive Moose Behavior
Alaska
It’s not just people who are a bit irritated by the deep snow this winter in Alaska.
A wildlife official in Alaska tells Fairbanks television station KTVF-TV that the deep snowfall and strong winds that have been prevalent across the state this winter have prompted moose to act more aggressively toward humans.
“The December snowfall was really high,” said Tony Hollis, Fairbanks area wildlife biologist for the Department of Fish and Game. “This deep snow has caused moose to not want to be out in the snow. They want to be out on the sidewalks, or hard packed trails or groomed trails where traveling is easier for them.”
“They don’t want to have to travel into the deep snow, and so if forced to, they get aggressive … to just stay on the hard ground,” Hollis said.
He advised people to be patient and wait for a moose to leave an area instead of trying to engage the moose, but he says it may take some time because moose are not moving fast at this point.
Alaska
Rabbit-Shaped Rock
'Moon Cube'
China's mysterious "moon cube" is a mystery no longer. The big reveal: It's a rock that's not even shaped like a cube.
The nation's Yutu-2 rover discovered the object — which appeared to be a gray cube looming on the lunar horizon — in early December. The China National Space Administration (CNSA) dubbed it "mysterious hut," playfully speculating that the cube might be an alien house or spacecraft.
The CNSA estimated the object was about 80 meters (262 feet) away, according to the blog "Our space," which is affiliated with the agency, and prepared to drive the rover toward it. The blog said it would take two or three months to reach the cube.
After several weeks of preparations and driving, the rover is close enough to see that the "mysterious hut" is just a rock. Its sharp-lined geometric appearance on the horizon was a simple trick of perspective, light, and shadow.
One of the rover's ground controllers noted in the blog that the rock is shaped like a rabbit, with smaller rocks in front of it that resemble a carrot. The rover's name, Yutu, means "Jade Rabbit" — which is now the name of the rock, too.
'Moon Cube'
'Dead Heart'
Australia
Buried in Australia's so-called dead heart, a trove of exceptional fossils, including those of trapdoor spiders, giant cicadas, tiny fish and a feather from an ancient bird, reveal a unique snapshot of a time when rainforests carpeted the now mostly-arid continent.
Paleontologists discovered the fossil treasure-trove, known as a Lagerstätte ("storage site" in German) in New South Wales, in a region so arid that British geologist John Walter Gregory famously dubbed it the "dead heart of Australia" over 100 years ago. The Lagerstätte's location on private land was kept secret to protect it from illegal fossil collectors, while scientists excavated the remains of plants and animals that lived there sometime between 16 million and 11 million years ago.
The researchers unearthed remains that are unique in the Australian fossil record for the Miocene Epoch (23 million to 5.3 million years ago), they reported in a new study. Most of the prior Miocene finds that other scientists have unearthed in Australia were bones and teeth from larger animals — which are commonly preserved in Australia's dry landscapes. However, the new cache held fossils of small and delicate creatures such as spiders and insects, as well as flora from the Miocene rainforest.
By examining the well-preserved fossils with scanning electron microscopes (SEM), the study authors were able to image details as fine as individual cells and subcellular structures. Some of the images even revealed animals' last meals, such as fish, larvae and a partially digested dragonfly wing preserved inside fishes' bellies. In other fossilized scenes, a freshwater mussel clung to a fish's fin, and pollen grains were stuck to insects' bodies.
Millions of years ago, this site was a lush rainforest ecosystem that was home to diverse plant and animal species.
Australia
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