from Bruce
Anecdotes
Mothers
• Arianna Huffington’s mother supported her. When young Arianna expressed a desire to go to Cambridge University, lots of people told her that she would never go there, but her mother borrowed some money and flew Arianna and herself from Athens, Greece, to Cambridge, England, so that Arianna could visit the campus. Arianna went to school at Cambridge, and later she moved to London, where critic Bernard Levin mentored and taught her. He put this message on a plaque on her desk: “You can break every grammatical and syntactical rule consciously when, and only when, you have rendered yourself incapable of breaking them unconsciously.”
• Early in his career, Marvel comic-book maven Stan Lee wrote many, many comic-book stories, and he used a number of pseudonyms: Stan Martin, S.T. Anley, Stan Leen, and Neel Nats (Stan Leen spelled backwards). By the way, Mr. Lee’s real name is Stanley Martin Lieber. Because he wanted to get out of comic books later so he could write the Great American Novel, he decided to break his first name in two for his comic-book writing byline and save his real name for the serious writing he would do later. Fortunately for comic-book fans, Mr. Lee’s serious writing turned out to be his comic-book writing.
• J.K. Rowling, creator and author of the Harry Potter books, was not as poor as perhaps the media has made her out to be when she was writing the first Harry Potter book, but she was a single mother who did lack money. One day, she visited another mother whose boy was roughly the same age as J.K.’s daughter. That little boy had a room full of toys, and J.K. remembers, “When I packed Jessica’s toys away, they fitted into a shoe box, literally. I came home and cried my eyes out.” Those feelings of depression are the kind that the Dementors give in the Harry Potter books.
• Mary Effie Lee was serious about her writing. In fact, at age 11 she wrote a “novel” that was all of three chapters and four pages long. Actually, she is better known as Effie Lee Newsome, the name under she published collections of poetry for children such as Gladiola Garden: Poems of Outdoors and Indoors for Second Grade Readers. When she married the Reverend Henry Nesby Newsome, she took his last name and dropped her first name. Why? She explained, “Because four names in a row would be like the long row of houses on our street in Philadelphia.”
• When he was a child, Gary Paulsen spent time in the Philippines with his father, who was in the military, and with his mother. Once, they traveled down a river in a canoe to a lake. Young Gary fell overboard, but fortunately a young Filipino boy rescued him. Gary’s mother held him tight for a while, relieved that he was still alive, and then she made him get back into the water, saying that if he didn’t do it now, he would be afraid of the water. She played with him in the shallow water until he no longer felt afraid. The grown-up Gary enjoys sailing.
• While growing up, comedian Carol Burnett never thought of herself as beautiful — and neither did other people. When young Carol told her mother that she wanted to be an actress when she grew up, her mother replied, “Why don’t you write instead? You can always write, no matter how you look.”
Names
• Gore Vidal’s name is a Russian phrase that, literally translated, means, “He has seen grief.” However, author/critic Jonathan Raban asked his Russian housekeeper about it and discovered that it has a stronger meaning than you may suppose. She told him, “Yes, but it is worse than grief. It is terrible. A woman, she have five sons, her only children, they all are killed at once in the war — gore vidal! It has many, many meanings. ‘I was beaten so much nothing hurts me any more’ — gore vidal. Sometimes it is sarcastic: we say ‘gore vidal!’ like Americans say ‘F**k you!’ It is very common. I use it all the time.” (Mr. Vidal’s name when he was a boy was apparently Eugene Luther — but “Louis” appeared on his birth certificate. At age 17, he changed his name to “Gore” in honor of Senator T.P. Gore of Oklahoma, his maternal grandfather.)
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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: “Lake Michigan” (live)
Album: WATERCOLORS (Live Studio Recordings)
Artist: Nicholas Rowe
Artist Location: Columbus, Ohio
Info:
“NICHOLAS ROWE is an indie singer-songwriter from Columbus, Ohio with a brooding, folksy style that often draws comparisons to Jason Isbell, Wilco, or Conor Oberst. A self-proclaimed 'narcissist crippled with self-doubt' who started out as a rocker but got into folk songwriting after hearing legend Bob Dylan‘s 1975 masterpiece BLOOD ON THE TRACKS.”
Price: Name Your Price (Includes FREE)
Genre: Folk. Singer-Songwriter. Acoustic.
Links:
WATERCOLORS
Nickolas Rowe on Bandcamp
Nicholas Rowe on YouTube
Other Links:
Bruce’s Music Recommendations: FREE pdfs
David Bruce's Smashwords Page
David Bruce's Blog #1
David Bruce's Blog #2
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Reader Suggestion
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David E Suggests
Antifascism
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Michael Egan
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Reader Comment
Current Events
Youngkin faux pas
He's such a Republican:
that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
If Mike Lindell is wearing a pink & gray striped tie, he's pitching half-price pillows.
If he's wearing a red & gray striped tie, it's half-price towels.
And if he's wearing no tie, he's pushing his latest angle - a new website offering his crap and that of fellow entrepreneurs (cough, cough).
New Zealand Tries Earworms
Barry Manilow
Some countries might send in a riot squad to disperse trespassing protesters. In New Zealand, authorities turned on the sprinklers and Barry Manilow.
Initial moves to try and flush out several hundred protesters who have been camped on Parliament’s grassy grounds since Tuesday had little effect.
The protesters, who have been voicing their opposition to coronavirus vaccine mandates, responded to the soaking from the sprinklers by digging trenches and installing makeshift drainpipes to divert the water.
By evening, Parliament Speaker Trevor Mallard had come up with a new plan to make the protesters uncomfortable: using a sound system to blast out vaccine messages, decades-old Barry Manilow songs and the 1990s earworm hit “Macarena” on a repeat loop.
Protesters responded by playing their own tunes, including Twister Sister’s “We’re Not Gonna Take It.”
Barry Manilow
China Censors Storyline
Friends
Call it "The One Without the Lesbian Wedding."
Chinese streaming services have heavily censored multiple episodes of Friends featuring references to and appearances by LGBTQ characters, according to the Hong Kong-based newspaper South China Morning Post. CNN also reported that conversations about Ross's (David Schwimmer) ex-wife, Carol (Anita Barone), who divorces him after coming out as a lesbian, were removed from the series' first episode, while scenes featuring the character were deleted from the second episode, per the Morning Post.
Censors also reportedly removed a scene of Chandler (Matthew Perry) and Joey (Matt LeBlanc) kissing on New Year's Eve and altered dialogue in the show's Chinese-language subtitles, such as changing a line about women having "multiple orgasms" to "women have endless gossips."
After the first season of Friends debuted on several streaming platforms in censored form on Friday, Chinese fans of the show took to the social media site Weibo to protest the changes, pushing #FriendsCensored to the top of the site's trending topics. However, that hashtag was also censored on the platform by Saturday morning, CNN reports.
Western films and TV shows are often censored in China, even more so recently as the government has tightened its grip on the media. HBO Max's Friends reunion special was also heavily edited, with segments featuring stars like BTS, Lady Gaga, and Justin Bieber removed. Censors also purged all LGBTQ references from the special, including a reflection from a gay German Friends fan named Ricardo, who said the show helped him feel like he belonged.
Friends
“Who Gets To Decide”
Jon Stewart
Former Daily Show host Jon Stewart is taking on one of the bigger questions of our time: “Who gets to decide” what information constitutes “misinformation.”
Speaking on his Apple+ podcast, Stewart cast a cynical eye at so-called “fact-checkers” and the legacy media labeling certain narratives as bad information and casting them out.
“The New York Times, right, was a giant purveyor of misinformation, and disinformation,” Stewart said, citing the media outlet’s support of the reasons for the Iraq war. “And that’s as vaunted a media organization as you can find, but there was no accountability for them.”
Stewart pointed out that he was “very vocal” about his opposition to the Iraq war in 2003, a minority opinion at the time.
“In the Iraq war, I was on the side of what you would think, on the mainstream is misinformation, I was promoting what they would call misinformation, but it turned out to be right years later and the establishment media was wrong,” Stewart said. “But my point is, these are shifting sands, and I think I get concerned with, well, who gets to decide?”
Jon Stewart
Laurel-Jones County Library
Mississippi
A Mississippi county is working to bridge the digital divide by making access to the internet more available.
The Laurel-Jones County Library received 2,000 hotspot devices that will be available for checkout to residents beginning next week through the use of their library card. For those who don’t have a card, one can be obtained by providing proof of residency, either by ID, utility bail or a current piece of mail.
The hotspots were purchased through a $1 million grant from the American Rescue Plan Act’s Emergency Connectivity Fund program, WDAM-TV reported.
Library Director Karyn Walsh said only 68% of Jones County residents have online access and the hotspots will benefit families who are under-served with internet access.
A hundred community hotspots were also purchased and will go into county community centers along with participating churches and businesses. The library’s website will provide a list of those locations.
Mississippi
No Charges Filed Against Reporter
St. Louis
There will be no charges against a St. Louis Post-Dispatch reporter accused of "hacking" by Missouri Gov. Mike Parson (R-Dolt).
The investigation related to a report by the newspaper that found personal information of teachers across Missouri was stored on the website of the state’s Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE), leaving it vulnerable.
The Post-Dispatch alerted state officials about the issue, which they said was “in a web application that allowed the public to search teacher certifications and credentials.” State officials took down the pages involved after it was brought to their attention. State officials were alerted before the paper published the story.
Cole County prosecuting attorney Locke Thompson released a statement on Friday about the decision to not prosecute reporter Josh Renaud.
Renaud released his own statement on Friday night about the decision: "Today, the Cole County prosecutor declined to file charges against me over my discovery of a flaw in a public website run by the Missouri Department of Education and Secondary Education that exposed thousands of teachers’ sensitive information.
St. Louis
Starlink Satellite
SpaceX
A recent video showed a satellite owned by SpaceX's Starlink burn up in the Earth's atmosphere.
Astronomy group Sociedad de Astronomía del Caribe posted the video to YouTube. In it, flaming debris can be seen flying through the air.
As the video progresses, fireworks emerge, which were believed to either be pieces of the same satellite or a different one that had broken apart, Mashable reported.
The event came after a recently launched batch of Starlink satellites were wiped out by a geomagnetic storm. SpaceX said it lost up to 40 satellites out of the 49 that were deployed into low Earth orbit via a Falcon 9 rocket.
Due to the speed and intensity of the storm, the "atmospheric drag" ascended to levels up to 50% higher than previous launches, SpaceX said in a statement. That made it harder for satellites to reach their orbital position.
SpaceX
Can Linger
Ebola
Ebola can lurk in fluid-filled cavities in the brain and kill monkeys, even after the animals have been treated for the disease and seem to have recovered, a new study shows.
The study, conducted in rhesus macaques (Macaca mulatta), hints at why some human Ebola survivors relapse and die months or years after recovering from their initial infections, The Scientist reported. Past studies of monkeys and humans suggested that the Ebola virus can lurk in various places in the body — including the testes, eyes and brain — and the new report may reveal where in the brain the virus persists.
The research, published Wednesday (Feb. 9) in the journal Science Translational Medicine, included 36 rhesus macaques that scientists infected with Ebola. The team treated the monkeys with monoclonal antibodies, which latch onto the virus and interfere with its ability to infect cells; all of the treatments used for the study have been approved for use in humans. After the treatment, the team screened the monkeys' blood for Ebola virus genetic material, or RNA, and also searched for viral RNA in the primates' cerebrospinal fluid (CSF), the clear fluid that surrounds the brain and spinal cord.
The researchers found that, two and four weeks after the monkeys' initial Ebola exposures, seven of the monkeys carried high levels of Ebola RNA in their CSF, hinting that the animals had developed persistent infections in their nervous systems. Two of these seven monkeys then fell ill, despite having recovered from their initial infections. These two macaques died 30 and 39 days after their initial exposure to the virus, while most of the other monkeys in the study survived for months.
The surviving macaques were euthanized about four months after infection so that the team could examine the monkeys' brain tissue and compare it to that of the monkeys that died from Ebola. In the seven macaques with viral RNA in their CSF, the researchers discovered Ebola RNA in the brain ventricles, the cavities in the brain where CSF is produced.
Ebola
Finding A Link
Circadian Rhythms
Long before Alzheimer's disease is diagnosed, once-trusty proteins start to knot together in the brain in a process that may be hastened by poor sleep.
Now, scientists have uncovered a possible mechanism linking disruptions in circadian rhythms and the build-up of proteins associated with Alzheimer's disease, by studying the rhythmic operation of immune cells and finding the molecular 'timers' that control them.
Circadian rhythms are the daily rhythms of bodily functions which are tied to our natural body clock, respond to light exposure, and govern our sleep-wake cycles.
Poor sleep habits can throw circadian rhythms out of whack (aging and stress also don't help) and patchy sleep would mean less time for immune cells to cleanse the brain of waste products that build up throughout the day.
Sleep disturbances starting years before any symptoms emerge have been linked to a greater risk of developing Alzheimer's disease, the most common form of dementia, and more severe symptoms.
Circadian Rhythms
World’s Oldest Land Animal
Jonathan
Jonathan the tortoise has lived on one of the most remote islands in the world for 140 years. He has become something of a media star recently, as he just got a lofty distinction: the oldest living land animal in the world.
Jonathan is turning 190 this year. Well, that's the best guess about the age of the 440-pound chelonian.
“To be honest, I suspect he’s older, but we can never know,” says Joe Hollins, the veterinarian who cares for Jonathan on St Helena island, a tiny volcanic British territory more than 1,000 miles off the coast of Africa.
Jonathan is estimated to have hatched in 1832, according to a letter that mentions he arrived “fully grown” on St Helena in 1882 from the Seychelles in the Indian Ocean, he says. “Fully grown” in turtle terms meant at least 50 years, Hollins says.
A photo taken between 1882 and 1886 shows Jonathan grazing at Plantation House, where he’d been presented to the governor of St. Helena as a gift, according to Hollins.
Jonathan
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