Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Froma Harrop: Energizer Bunny Biden Spooks the Left (Creators Syndicate)
Biden has been very progressive on the fight against global warming. In 1986, when almost no one was talking about this, he introduced a bill ordering the president to set up a task force on climate change. It was eventually passed and funded. As vice president, Biden was Barack Obama's point man on setting limits on coal plant and tailpipe emissions. He also led the charge in bringing the United States into the 2015 Paris climate agreement. Biden's current proposal is to spend $1.7 trillion over a decade and slap a tax on greenhouse gases. His goal to bring carbon emissions to net zero by 2050 matches the European Union's.
Mark Shields: 'Nations with Allies Thrive' (Creators Syndicate)
Retired Marine Corps Gen. Jim Mattis, the former secretary of defense and an exceptionally well-read warrior, has said, "Throughout history, we see nations with allies thrive, and nations without allies wither."
Marc Dion: Opening Up a Can of America (Creators Syndicate)
Well, we done it. We kicked Iranian butt. We butt-kicked 'em. Their butts were kicked. We put a boot in their butts. Their butts, they were kicked. We opened up a can of butt-kick. We came to eat lollipops and kick butt, and we were out of lollipops. We took names and kicked butts. Butt kick. Kick butt. Works the same way backward and forward. Offered a butt, by God, Americans will kick. No butt un-kicked. We are butt-kickers. Kickers of butts.
Ted Rall: Iran Is Not What You Think (Creators Syndicate)
At our hotel in Tehran, we overheard a European couple complaining to the desk clerks that they had been robbed of 1,200 euros the night before. The clerks repeatedly entreated them to report the loss to the police, but the Europeans were understandably hesitant. The next day, I encountered the pair in the elevator. "You won't believe what happened," the wife told me. "We went to the police, and they gave us 1,200 euros." There was a law that foreign tourists had to be made whole if they suffered a financial loss due to crime. Iranians we talked to were surprised that it wasn't the same in the West.
Susan Estrich: Microtargeting (Creators Syndicate)
The Russians in 2016 targeted minority voters with horror stories about the obstacles they would face if they were to try to vote. The question is not how far the Russians will go this time; they'll go as far as they can, which may be equally true of various groups supporting the candidates. It is whether American companies are willing to play ball with them and, in doing so, further divide us.
Lenore Skenazy: Parents as Prison Guards (Creators Syndicate)
"So I asked my daughter, 'Do you want to come with me or wait here for a few minutes?' And she said, 'Wait.' So I told the librarian, 'I'll be right back.' And the librarian said, 'Well ... OK. But I must warn you: The same dangers that are out on the street are here in the library.'"
Froma Harrop: Anxiety Grips Leaderless America (Creators Syndicate)
George W. Bush and Barack Obama both had Gen. Qassem Soleimani in their gunsights. Neither ordered the trigger pulled because of the enormous risks involved in killing one of Iran's top leaders. In listing the possible responses to recent Iranian provocations, U.S. military commanders told President Donald Trump that doing this would be the most dangerous.
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David Bruce has over 140 Kindle books on Amazon.com.
Presenting
Michael Egan
took the day off.
has returned to semi-retired status.
In memory.
BRUCE'S RECOMMENDATION
BANDCAMP MUSIC
BRUCE'S RECOMMENDATION OF BANDCAMP MUSIC
Song: "Surf Explosão" on the album BRAZILIAN TSUNAMI
Artist: The Dead Rocks
Record Company: Reverb Brasil
Artist Location: Brazil
Info: This is a collection of 63 surf instrumentals from 63 different Brazilian surf bands.
"Recording the current moment of the surf music scene in Brazil is the main purpose of Brazilian Tsunami, a collection produced by the labels Orleone Records and Reverb Brasil, in a cooperative way with the 63 bands […]." - Google Translate
Price: $15 (USD) for 63-track DIGITAL album; you cannot buy songs individually
Genre: Brazilian Surf and Garage Music
REVERB BRASIL
BRAZILIAN TSUNAMI
David Bruce has over 140 Kindle books on Amazon.com.
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How Big
Jeopardy: GOAT
Through its first three airings on ABC, Jeopardy: The Greatest of All Time is averaging close to 15 million viewers in same-day ratings.
To say it's been a while since a network show consistently put up those kinds of numbers would be an understatement. And in the context of the current season, the show is pulling in audiences almost no other entertainment show can match - even with the benefit of delayed viewing.
The Greatest of All Time has grown its audience each night it has aired so far: 14.42 million for its debut on Jan. 7, 14.87 million the next night and 15.55 million for round three. The competition featuring Jeopardy hall of famers Ken Jennings, James Holzhauer and Brad Rutter will air at least one more time, on Tuesday; the tournament ends when one player notches three nightly wins.
Those three episodes rank second, third and fourth among all entertainment programs so far this season in viewers. Only NBC's Golden Globes broadcast, with 18.32 million viewers, currently ranks ahead of it.
Each episode of The Greatest of All Time has also outdrawn the first four games of the 2019 NBA Finals, the first five games of the 2019 World Series, all but one of ESPN's 17 Monday Night Football telecasts and seven of Fox's 11 Thursday Night Football showcases.
Jeopardy: GOAT
Hosting Golden Globes In 2021
Tina Fey & Amy Poehler
Tina Fey and Amy Poehler are returning to host the Golden Globes in 2021.
The announcement was made by NBC Entertainment Chairman Paul Telegdy during the network's day at the Television Critics Association Tour in Pasadena.
They replace Ricky Gervais, who hosted this year. It marks the return of Fey and Poehler, who hosted the Globes from 2013 to 2015.
It will be produced by Dick Clark Productions in association with the HFPA. Lorenzo Soria is president of the HFPA. Mike Mahan, CEO of Dick Clark Productions, Amy Thurlow, President of Dick Clark Productions and Barry Adelman, Executive VP of Television at Dick Clark Productions serve as executive producers.
Tina Fey & Amy Poehler
ABC Gave Him Pills
Burt Ward
Earlier this week, Burt Ward, famous player of Robin in the 1960s Batman TV show, received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. During the ceremonies, he revealed some information that has us just bursting at the seams with curiosity.
It turns out, while there was nothing flaccid about Ward's charismatic performance as the (clearly actually an adult) Boy Wonder, there was one part of Ward's Robin that ABC wanted to have a little less on-screen presence.
"They thought Robin had a very large bulge for television," Ward told Page Six. So large was Dick's dick that, apparently, the Catholic League of Decency complainted, and apparently ABC was so concerned about the enormity of the problem that the company took matters into its own hands. According to Ward, he was put on medicine from a studio doctor that would, in his words, "shrink me up."
"I took them for three days and then I decided that they can probably keep me from having children," Ward said. "I stopped doing that and I just used my cape to cover it."
Ward also made a point to say that, while his bulge was au naturale, Adam West's wasn't. "With Adam they put Turkish towels in his undershorts," Ward said. Apparently, ABC had a rigid set of rules for super undershorts in the 1960s to which all Bat-bulges had to conform.
Burt Ward
Sells For $3.74 Million
'Bullitt' Mustang
The Highland Green 1968 Ford Mustang GT featured in the film "Bullitt" was sold Friday at a Florida auction house for $3.74 million.
The sale at Mecum Kissimmee marks the most expensive Mustang ever sold, surpassing a 1967 Shelby GT500 Super Snake that sold last year for $2.2 million, the Orlando Sentinel reported.
Owner Sean Kiernan, with his sister Kelly Cotton riding shotgun, drove the car across the auction block at Silver Spurs Arena and then addressed a crowd of about 25,000 before the bidding started.
"This car had sold twice in its life, it's been in my family for 45 years. Each time it has sold, it was $3,500," Kiernan said. "So we're going to start it off at that price and go from there."
Bidding surpassed $3 million in the first minute. The top bid went back and forth between someone present and a bidder on the phone for several minutes before the mystery buyer on the phone won, agreeing to pay $3.4 million plus a 10 percent buyer's premium.
'Bullitt' Mustang
The Great Dismantling
America's National Parks
Under this administration, nothing is sacred as we watch the nation's crown jewels being recut for the rings of robber barons.
For more than 100 years, professional management of our national parks has been respected under both Democratic and Republican administrations. Yes, they have different priorities, the Democrats often expanding the system and the Republicans historically focused on building facilities in the parks for expanding visitation. But the career public servants of the National Park Service (NPS), charged with stewarding America's most important places, such as the Grand Canyon, Yellowstone and the Statue of Liberty, were left to do their jobs.
Even in the dark days of interior secretaries James Watt and Gail Norton, both former attorneys with the anti-environmental Mountain States Legal Foundation, the National Park Service (NPS) was generally left untouched, perhaps because they recognized that some institutions have too much public support or their mission too patriotic to be tossed under the proverbial bus.
This time is different and we should know, as Jon, one of this story's authors, worked for the last 10 interior secretaries as a career NPS manager, and ultimately led the agency under Barack Obama, and Destry, Jon's brother and co-author, has worked with the past 12 NPS directors as a conservation advocate. The change began within 24 hours of the inauguration when Donald Trump complained that the NPS was reporting smaller crowds on the National Mall than Obama had drawn. Perhaps this is when the NPS wound up on the list of transgressors. Soon the interior secretary, Ryan Zinke, attempted to double the entrance fees, rescinded climate policies and moved seasoned senior national park superintendents around to force their retirements.
After Zinke's abrupt resignation, secretary David Bernhardt populated too much of the department's political leadership with unconfirmed, anti-public land sycophants, and announced a reorganization to install his own lieutenants to oversee super regions, realigning NPS from seven regions to twelve in the name of greater efficiency.
America's National Parks
'Unprecedented' Climate Disinformation
Australia
Australia's bushfire emergency has sparked an online disinformation campaign "unprecedented" in the country's history, researchers told AFP Friday, with bots deployed to shift blame for the blazes away from climate change.
And they have also prompted misleading online claims about the extent of the blazes and a concerted campaign to blame the crisis on arson, rather than climate change, drought or record high temperatures.
One hashtag in particular, #arsonemergency, has gained traction rapidly and conservative-leaning newspapers, websites and politicians across the globe have promoted the theory arson is largely to blame.
Timothy Graham, a digital media expert at the Queensland University of Technology, told AFP his research showed half of the Twitter users deploying the hashtag displayed bot- and troll-like behaviour.
Those accounts were created very recently, often without profile pictures. Twitter handles were sequences of numbers or characters, sometimes a meaningless combination of both.
Australia
Horse Sanctuary
Roberta Bartington
A pensioner has turned her home into an animal sanctuary after 50 horses were abandoned on her land.
Roberta Bartington and her husband, David, bought a property with some modest stables in the leafy area in Swansea after retiring from running a bed and breakfast in the Home Counties. They hoped their life would calm down and that they could enjoy a peaceful retirement.
Now, after being forced to turn their home into a horse sanctuary by the volume of horses tied to their driveway, they wake at the crack of dawn and work until 10pm nursing horses back to health, as they live in one of the horse-dumping capitals of Britain.
Mrs Bartington could not stand by and do nothing, and is now working harder in retirement than she did when she ran her B&B.
She now has over 50 horses, and while she rehomes some, free of charge, if she can find a suitable home, most are so unwell or traumatised that they have stayed on the property to be nursed back to health and live out the rest of their lives in peace.
Roberta Bartington
Galapagos Giant Tortoise Diego Retires
Diego
Job done, prolific Galapagos giant tortoise Diego is being released back into the wild after being credited by authorities with almost single-handedly saving his species from extinction.
The 100-year-old tortoise, who was recruited along with 14 other adults for a captive breeding program, will be returned to his native island of Espanola in March, the Galapagos National Parks service (PNG) said Friday.
Diego's contribution to the program on Santa Cruz Island was particularly noteworthy, with park rangers believing him responsible for being the patriarch of at least 40 percent of the 2,000-tortoise population.
Around 50 years ago, there were only two males and 12 females of Diego's species alive on Espanola, and they were too spread out to reproduce.
Diego was brought in from California's San Diego Zoo to join the breeding program which was set up in the mid-1960s to save his species, Chelonoidis hoodensis.
Diego
Rainbow Colors
Hummingbirds
Hummingbirds are some of the most brightly-colored things in the entire world. Their feathers are iridescent- light bounces off them like a soap bubble, resulting in shimmering hues that shift as you look at them from different angles. While other birds like ducks can have bright feathers, nothing seems to come close to hummingbirds, and scientists weren't sure why. But a new study in Evolution shows that while hummingbird feathers have the same basic makeup as other birds', the special shape of their pigment-containing structures enables them to reflect a rainbow of light.
"The big question that keeps me up at night is, why are some groups of birds more colorful than others?" says Chad Eliason, the paper's first author and a postdoctoral researcher at the Field Museum in Chicago. "You can look out your window and see drab brown birds, and then you have this glittering gem flutter to your hummingbird feeder. Why are hummingbirds so colorful? Is it the environment, is it sexual selection? Or is it something about the internal mechanisms, the physics and the way colors are produced?"
To answer these questions, Eliason and his international team of colleagues conducted the largest-ever optical study of hummingbird feathers. They examined the feathers of 35 species of hummingbirds with transmission electron microscopes and compared them with the feathers of other brightly-colored birds, like green-headed mallard ducks, to look for differences in their make-up.
All birds' feathers are made of keratin, the same material as our hair and nails, and they're structured like tiny trees, with parts resembling a trunk, branches, and leaves. The "leaves," called feather barbules, are made up of cells that contain pigment-producing organelles called melanosomes. We have melanosomes too- they produce the dark melanin pigment that colors our hair and skin. But pigment isn't the only way to get color. The shape and arrangement of melanosomes can influence the way light bounces off them, producing bright colors.
Hummingbirds
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