Marc Dion: Shortbread and the Love of a Woman (Creators Syndicate)
I had to buy birthday presents for my wife. Her birthday was last week. I'm not bad at present buying. I specialize in scarves, perfume and jewelry. None of those items come in a specific size, so there's less room for error.
Ted Rall: The Root Cause of Mass Shootings Is the Rage of Alienation (Creators Syndicate)
The rage says, "I hate everybody." It continues, "I wish everyone would die." It concludes, "I will kill them all." I am mystified by the fact that so many people are mystified about rage. I have been there. I have hated everyone. I have been so depressed that I didn't care what happened to me. I was furious at how oblivious everyone was to my pain and how nobody cared about me. I wanted them to pay for it. Haven't you ever felt that way?
Mark Shields: The Arizona Gift (Creators Syndicate)
When his own career came to an unexpected end at the polls, Ashurst set the standard for graciousness: "The welfare of the United States, and the happiness of our people, does not hang on the presence of Henry F. Ashurst in the Senate. When that realization first came to me, I was overwhelmed by the horror of it, but now it is a source of infinite comfort." Wow. Thank you, Arizona.
Lenore Skenazy: Big Brother Comes to Camp (Creators Syndicate)
Sleep-away camps around the country have started using facial recognition techniques to identify campers in photos and dispatch these to their parents. The Washington Post recently wrote about the phenom, interviewing a dad whose phone rings about 10 times a day with pictures of his daughters at their camp. Thus, said Post reported, Papa gets to be part of the fun "whenever one of his girls is photographed enjoying their newfound independence, going water-skiing or making a new friend."
Susan Estrich: The Ultimate Accomplice (Creators Syndicate)
He could never have done it alone. I'm not talking about his suicide. That he did himself.
I'm talking about his crimes. Imagine if Jeffrey Epstein had had to find his prey himself. Imagine a sleazy middle-aged guy hanging around in front of a high school trying to pick up teenage girls. People would notice. Teachers would see. The police might be called. The man would be told to leave.
Froma Harrop: Bernie Sanders Needs a Shot of Dignity (Creators Syndicate)
I have never been a big fan of Bernie Sanders. His authoritarian tendencies and aggressive attacks on any who would disagree have outweighed the good in him. The good is his working-class voice, emphasis on economic issues and some solid ideas. But his recent lashing out at The Washington Post, where he accused the progressive beacon of punishing him, carried an air of populist paranoia - so much so he's being likened to Donald Trump.
Froma Harrop: Boycotting Trump Donors to Save Country (Creators Syndicate)
Trump ensured that his tax bill included tax-avoidance goodies for real estate moguls like Ross (and, of course, himself). Already worth an estimated $7.7 billion, did Ross need his taxes trimmed? … Other fabulously rich Americans, some far richer than Ross, have refused to sell their souls for a tax cut or other Trump-granted favors. They undoubtedly like money, but they love their country more.
The 1940 Tacoma Narrows Bridge, the first Tacoma Narrows Bridge, was a suspension bridge in the U.S. state of Washington that spanned the Tacoma Narrows strait of Puget Sound between Tacoma and the Kitsap Peninsula. It opened to traffic on July 1, 1940, and dramatically collapsed into Puget Sound on November 7 of the same year. This is probably the biggest and most famous non-fatal engineering disaster in U.S. history. At the time of its construction (and its destruction), the bridge was the third-longest suspension bridge in the world in terms of main span length, behind the Golden Gate Bridge and the George Washington Bridge.
Construction on the bridge began in September 1938. From the time the deck was built, it began to move vertically in windy conditions, which led to construction workers giving the bridge the nickname Galloping Gertie. The motion was observed even when the bridge opened to the public. Several measures aimed at stopping the motion were ineffective and the bridge's main span finally collapsed in 40-mile-per-hour (64 km/h) winds the morning of November 7, 1940.
Source
Mark. was first, and correct, with:
Tacoma Narrows Bridge.
Randall wrote:
the Tacoma Narrows bridge
Alan J answered:
The Tacoma Narrows Bridge
Dave said:
The 1940 Tacoma Narrows Bridge. The automobile bridge was the 3rd longest suspension bridge in the US and the public was surprised when it started oscillating wildly in a mild gale wind and collapsed into Puget Sound, November 1940, just months after it was opened to automobile traffic. Only one car was on the bridge at the time, but the panicked driver was able to crawl to safety before the disaster, so the only casualty was a dog that was left in the car. Engineers knew the bridge was in trouble during construction, but the modifications that might have stabilized the structure were still in the planning stage. WWII delayed the bridge's replacement until 1950.
Mac Mac responded:
Tacoma Narrows Bridge
mj replied:
She didn't so much gallop
As buck. Because of deviations (driven by cost) from the original design
specs, the Tacoma Narrows bridge was susceptible to the strong winds
that frequently hit the gap between the mainland and the Kitsap
Peninsula. On a particularly windy day, the winds induced and overdrove
a harmonic oscillation in the bridge that eventually tore it apart. The
only fatality that day was a dog who refused to get out of the car when
the driver ran for his life. I've crossed the replacement a number of
times. The view is breathtaking.
Jim from CA, retired to ID, said:
Tacoma Narrows Bridge
Kevin K. in Washington, DC Now visiting Boston, MA, wrote:
Galloping Gertie was what they called the Tacoma Narrows Bridge when it twisted itself to bits in the wind.
Deborah replied:
Wasn't that a bridge in Tacoma that collapsed? That's what I remember, anyway.
Cooling off nicely these next few days. Just in time.
Dave in Tucson wrote:
Galloping Gertie sounds vaguely familiar though I can't place it. So how about Gertie who was the earliest animated dinosaur?
Cal in Vermont took the day off.
Daniel in The City took the day off.
Kenn B took the day off.
George M. took the day off.
Roy the Libtard Snowflake in Tyler, TX took the day off.
David of Moon Valley took the day off.
Barbara, of Peppy Tech fame took the day off.
DJ Useo took the day off.
Billy in Cypress U$A took the day off.
John I from Hawai`i took the day off.
Joe S took the day off.
Leo in Boise took the day off.
Stephen F took the day off.
Brian S. took the day off.
Rosemary in Columbus took the day off.
Michelle in AZ took the day off.
Ed K took the day off.
Doug from Albuquerque, New Mexico took the day off.
Harry M. took the day off.
Saskplanner took the day off.
Micki took the day off.
Steve in Wonderful Sacramento, CA, took the day off.
Marilyn of TC took the day off.
Gateway Mike took the day off.
Gene took the day off.
Jon L took the day off.
G E Kelly took the day off.
Tony K. took the day off.
Paul of Seattle took the day off.
Noel S. took the day off.
James of Alhambra took the day off.
BttbBob has returned to semi-retired status.
~~~~~
• When soprano Beverly Sills was pregnant with her second child, she received a telephone call from Sarah Caldwell asking her to play Rosalinda in a production of Die Fledermaus with conductor Arthur Fiedler. Ms. Sills was so excited by the offer that she immediately said yes. But when she hung up the telephone and told her husband, he asked her, "What are you planning to wear?" She replied, "Costumes," and then looked at her pregnant belly and realized what her husband meant. She immediately telephoned Ms. Caldwell and told her, "Miss Caldwell, I'm terribly sorry but I can't do your Fledermaus because I'm pregnant." Ms. Caldwell paused and then asked, "Weren't you pregnant five minutes ago?" By the way, Ms. Sills got her nickname - Bubbles - because when she was born, she had a huge bubble of saliva on her mouth.
• This anecdote is not funny, but it does show the love a mother has for her child. During World War II, German soprano Elizabeth Schumann raised money for the Allies, but her son was a pilot for the Nazis. In 1945, while she was in London, she learned that during the Sicilian campaign her son had lost a leg after his plane was shot down. Being a mother, she wanted to help her son, even if he was on the wrong side in the war, so she tried to enlist the help of a friend in getting a well-made prosthesis to her son. The friend - who was bitter because of the many deaths that had occurred due to the Nazi bombing of London - replied that since her son had fought for Hitler, he would not help him. Ms. Schumann never again spoke to the former friend.
• Adelina Patti's mother was willing to use underhanded methods to help her to succeed. Once, Ms. Patti was singing with a rival who had shaved her real eyebrows and put on false eyebrows. Ms. Patti's mother wanted to make the rival look ridiculous, so she began to stare at the rival. Under her breath, the rival asked, "What is the matter?" Ms. Patti's mother lied, "Your right eyebrow has fallen off!" Immediately, the rival tore off her left eyebrow and for the rest of the act wore only a right eyebrow.
• In 1964, in West Berlin, Sarah Caldwell and her mother attended the premiere of Montezuma, an opera by Roger Sessions. Unfortunately, after the opera, the production people were booed. One of the people doing the booing was a man sitting next to Sarah's mother. Her mother was so angry at the man that she hit him with her fists. In 1976, Sarah presented the American premiere of the opera. Mr. Sessions heard the story about Sarah's mother and enjoyed repeating it to others.
Parties
• Italian soprano Claudia Muzio was known for keeping to herself, especially early in her career. She used to arrive at a theater for rehearsals, go directly to her dressing room and stay there until it was time to rehearse, and then disappear from the theater after the rehearsal without speaking to anyone. She also declined to go to most parties, saying, "I love my art and I permit nothing to interfere to its disadvantage. I can't understand how singers can go to suppers and dinners and receptions and still keep in good trim for their work." She and her mother often ate in hotel dining rooms - in a far corner - and didn't even nod to acquaintances who walked into the dining room.
• Mid-1950s Metropolitan Opera basso Giorgio Tozzi and his wife once looked for a quiet apartment in Milan, Italy. He investigated an apartment, found it both charming and inexpensive, then looked around the streets, which were totally empty. Thinking that he had found the perfect place, he leased it. That night, around 10 p.m., the streets began to fill with people, and shouts, laughter, and other noises filled the air. No wonder the apartment had been so quiet in the middle of the afternoon - everyone was sleeping, for the apartment was located in the middle of the Milanese night life, which did not start until 10 p.m. and lasted all night!
• Opera soprano Marilyn Horne tells this story about composers: At a soiree, the hostess gave two composers - Gioachino Rossini and Gaetano Donizelli - a piece of paper each and asked them to write some music. Both wrote a beautiful melody, and when the hostess compared the two pieces of paper, she discovered that they had written the same beautiful melody. She told them, "Two creative talents can arrive at the same result!" But Donizelli replied, "Oh, no. We both stole it from Vincenzo Bellini."
• As a famous opera singer, Geraldine Farrar had her share of invitations to parties just so she could provide entertainment. At one such party, the hostess requested of her, "Dear little songbird, do please sing that heavenly Butterfly entrance, I so seldom hear it." Ms. Farrar replied, "I am so sorry, but if you would arrive in your box before the middle of the first act, and stop chattering, you would hear it, in the opera house, where it belongs."
CBS starts the night with '60 Minutes', followed by a FRESH'Big Brother', then a FRESH'Instinct', followed by another FRESH'Instinct'.
NBC opens the night with a RERUN'America's Got Talent', followed by another RERUN'America's Got Talent', then a RERUN'Bring The Funny'.
ABC begins the night with a RERUN'America's So-Called Funniest Home Videos', followed by a RERUN'Celebrity Family Feud', then a FRESH'The $100,000 Pyramid', followed by a FRESH'To Tell The Truth'.
The CW offers a RERUN'Penn & Teller: Fool Us', followed by a RERUN'Masters Of Illusion', then another RERUN'Masters Of Illusion'.
Faux fills the night with LIVE'NFL Preseason Football', then pads the left coast with local crap.
MY recycles an old 'Cops', followed by another old 'Cops', then an old 'Big Bang Theory', followed by another old 'Big Bang Theory', then still another old 'Big Bang Theory', followed by yet another old 'Big Bang Theory'.
A&E has the movie 'The Expendables 3', followed by the movie 'Godzilla', then the movie 'The Expendables 3'.
AMC offers 'Fear The Walking Dead', another 'Fear The Walking Dead', followed by a FRESH'Fear The Walking Dead', then a FRESH'Preacher'.
BBC -
[6:00AM] PLANET EARTH - SEASON 1 - EPISODE 9-Shallow Seas
[7:00AM] HIDDEN HABITATS - SEASON 1 - EPISODE 15-Making Worlds
[7:30AM] EARTHQUAKE (1974)
[10:30AM] DUNE (1984)
[1:30PM] STAR TREK: GENERATIONS (1994)
[4:00PM] FACE/OFF (1997)
[7:00PM] THE BOURNE ULTIMATUM (2007)
[9:30PM] THE BOURNE ULTIMATUM (2007)
[12:00AM] FACE/OFF (1997)
[3:00AM] EARTHQUAKE (1974) (ALL TIMES EDT)
Bravo has 'Real Housewives Of Potomac', followed by a FRESH'Real Housewives Of Potomac', another 'Real Housewives Of Potomac', then a FRESH'Watch What Happens Live'.
Comedy Central has the movie 'Step Brothers', followed by the movie 'Talladega Nights: The Ballad Of Ricky Bobby'.
FX has the movie 'Logan', followed by a FRESH'The Weekly', and another 'The Weekly'.
History has 'American Pickers', followed by a FRESH'American Pickers: Bonus Buys', then 'Cold Wars'.
IFC -
[6:15A] Batman & Robin
[9:00A] Star Trek
[10:10A] Star Trek - Balance of Terror
[11:20A] Star Trek - The Galileo Seven
[12:30P] Star Trek - Arena
[1:40P] Star Trek - Space Seed
[2:50P] Star Trek - Errand of Mercy
[4:00P] Transporter 3
[6:15P] The Taking of Pelham 123
[8:45P] First Blood
[10:45P] Rambo: First Blood Part II
[1:00A] Rambo III
[3:15A] Inescapable
[5:15A] Night Flight - Rock on the Road
[5:30A] Sherman's Showcase- Enemies (ALL TIMES EDT)
Sundance -
[6:30am] Law & Order
[7:30am] Law & Order
[8:30am] Law & Order
[9:30am] Law & Order
[10:30am] Law & Order
[11:30am] Stripes
[2:00pm] Eraser
[4:30pm] 48 HRS.
[6:30pm] X-Men
[9:00pm] X-Men 2
[12:00am] Days of Thunder
[2:30am] Eraser
[5:00am] M*A*S*H
[5:30am] M*A*S*H (ALL TIMES EDT)
SyFy has the movie 'Sharknado 5: Global Swarming', followed by the movie 'The Last Sharknado: It's About Time'.
The U.S. Department of Justice has weighed in on the next big music copyright case on the horizon following the Katy Perry "Dark Horse" decision, and taken Led Zeppelin's side in the long-running copyright dispute that pits the writers of the group's anthem "Stairway to Heaven" against the publishers of the earlier song "Taurus" by Spirit.
The DOJ filed an amicus brief late Thursday supporting Zeppelin against a claim by the trustees of the late Spirit singer/guitarist Randy Wolfe - a.k.a. Randy California - that it lifted a musical passage for its song from "Taurus."
Michael Skidmore, the trustee of the Randy Craig Wolfe Trust, sued the band in 2014, arguing that "Stairway to Heaven" ripped off elements of Wolfe's composition. A jury ruled in favor of Led Zeppelin in 2016, finding that the two songs were not substantially similar.
Skidmore appealed, and on Friday a three-judge panel of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ordered a new trial. The panel found that U.S. District Court Judge Gary Klausner gave instructions that failed to make clear that an arrangement of otherwise unprotectable elements in a song can be sufficiently original to merit copyright protection.
Thursday's move is significant for a number of reasons, not least because the juries in the recent "Dark Horse" and 2015 "Blurred Lines" decision - in which Robin Thicke and Pharrell Williams were found to have infringed on the copyright of Marvin Gaye's song "Got to Give It up" based on a similar "feel" - ruled against the defendants, which in this case is Led Zeppelin.
Netflix is reimagining Elvis Presley as a spy in a brand new animated series. Yes, really.
The streaming giant has announced Agent King, which will depict the King of Rock 'n' Roll as a secret spy who battles the dark forces that threaten America.
All the while, he still continues his day job as a rock star. The announcement comes as the world marks the 42nd anniversary of the star's death.
Archer's Mike Arnold will write the series and serve as showrunner, while Elvis's widow Priscilla Presley will serve as a co-creator and executive producer.
"From the time Elvis was a young boy he always dreamed of being the superhero fighting crime and saving the world!" she said (via The Hollywood Reporter).
A real-life Rick-roll is 100 times better than an internet Rick-roll.
Foo Fighters frontman Dave Grohl and YouTube's most-beloved '80s singer Rick Astley performed a surprise set at the Moth Club in London Friday night, including Astley's infamous tune "Never Gonna Give You Up."
Pictures and videos circulated around the internet, and it looks like everyone had a great time. How could you not?
Grohl wasn't expecting to get such a reaction from the crowd in attendance and ended up playing five songs, four of them with Astley on the drums, according to a writeup on NME. Along with "Never Gonna Give You Up," the band played some of the Foo Fighters' biggest hits including "Times Like These" and "Best of You."
In his role as agent Jack Bauer on TV's 24, Kiefer Sutherland survived explosions, gunfire and all sorts of physical attacks. As the US President in Designated Survivor, he was spared from a massive explosion that took out most of the cabinet and Congress.
But in real life, he was just done in by some bus stairs.
Sutherland, touring Europe as a singer/songwriter, has postponed the last three shows of the tour because of what were described as serious injuries to his ribs sustained when he slipped on some bus stairs while traveling to Denmark for a performance.
Sutherland vowed to make up the dates this fall. .
The make-up dates for the shows in Denmark and Gothenburg, Sweden will be "announced shortly."
A judge on Friday sentenced the mastermind of the largest known organic food fraud scheme in U.S. history to 10 years in prison, saying he cheated thousands of customers into buying products they didn't want.
U.S. District Judge C.J. Williams said Randy Constant orchestrated a massive fraud that did "extreme and incalculable damage" to consumers and shook public confidence in the nation's organic food industry.
Williams said that, between 2010 and 2017, consumers nationwide were fooled into paying extra to buy products ranging from eggs to steak that they believed were better for the environment and their own health. Instead, they unwittingly purchased food that relied on farming practices, including the use of chemical pesticides to grow crops, that they opposed.
Williams said the scam harmed other organic farmers who were playing by the rules but could not compete with the low prices offered by Constant's Iowa-based grain brokerage, and middlemen who unknowingly purchased and marketed tainted organic grain.
Williams ordered Constant, a 60-year-old farmer and former school board president from Chillicothe, Missouri, to serve 122 months in federal prison, as his wife and other relatives sobbed.
Endometriosis is a condition that involves tissue similar to the lining of the womb growing in other pelvic organs, such as the ovaries and fallopian tubes. The tissue thickens and bleeds just like it would in the uterus during the menstrual cycle.
It's a painful and long-term condition that can have a significant impact, including infertility. Despite affecting around 1 in 10 women, it can take a long time to get a proper diagnosis. On average, from onset of symptoms to diagnosis, the wait is around 7.4 years for those whose main complaint is pelvic pain, and 4 years for those whose main concern is infertility.
More research into the condition is needed to speed up diagnosis and improve quality of life living with the condition. What's probably not needed is a study of how hot a group of scientists find women who are suffering from the condition. However, in a paper that's drawing a lot of criticism, that's precisely what we've got.
The study was published in the journal Fertility and Sterility in 2013, but has resurfaced online recently to people's horror.
In the study, titled "Attractiveness of women with rectovaginal endometriosis: a case-control study", which many contend is quite pointless, the researchers set about studying the link between attractiveness and severity of the condition. They claimed their results showed that "an emerging phenotype" for patients with endometriosis appears to be that they are more attractive than others without the condition.
Climate change and warming rivers may have caused the mass death of salmon in parts of Alaska, scientists say.
Large numbers of salmon died prematurely in some Alaskan rivers in July according to local reports, and scientists believe the cause could be the unprecedented heatwave that gripped the state last month.
"Climate change is here in Alaska. We are seeing it. We are feeling it. And our salmon are dying because of it," said Stephanie Quinn-Davidson, a biologist specialising in salmon and the director of the Yukon Inter-Tribal Fish Commission, in a Facebook post.
Astronomers have observed a supernova unlike any ever observed before, and it might be strong evidence of an important kind of stellar death that would have shaped early galaxies.
The supernova, called SN2016iet, doesn't fit into the classification schemes that scientists use for supernovae today. It seems to look like a "pair-instability supernova" that would happen among the heaviest stars. And according to the research team, led by Harvard University graduate student Sebastian Gomez, this could be the most massive star ever observed undergoing a supernova.
The Milky Way-mapping Gaia telescope first spotted the flash on November 14, 2016, and it was later re-found by sky-surveying telescopes including the Catalina Real-Time Transient Survey and the Pan-STARRS Survey for Transients. The astronomers continue observing the resulting blip today, including its brightness and the identity of the elements it contained.
How is this supernova different? For one, most supernovae flash once and then fade from astronomers' view after a few months. But SN2016iet brightened and dimmed twice, and its remnants persist to this day. Its spectral signature doesn't contain evidence of hydrogen or helium, which would normally place it into one of the other supernovae categories, but SN2016iet shows abundances of calcium and oxygen not matched in other supernova observations. Even the place it occurred was weird, far from the center of a galaxy with an unusually low level of heavier elements.
Three years of observations along with mathematical modeling show that the star could have once been 130 to 260 times the mass of the Sun. It would have shed most of its outer hydrogen and helium over time, becoming a dense core of heavier elements left over from fusion. If models are correct, then the gamma rays that would normally create outward pressure in the core would instead be absorbed by the neutrons of those heavier elements, and the star would collapse in on itself under the weight of its own gravity. The result would be a nuclear explosion, a process called a pair-instability supernova.
A team of physicists from New York University, University of Buffalo, and Wayne State University have discovered a new state of matter, which they say has the potential to increase storage capabilities in electronic devices.
"Our research has succeeded in revealing experimental evidence for a new state of matter-topological superconductivity," says Javad Shabani, an assistant professor of physics at NYU, in a press statement. "This new topological state can be manipulated in ways that could both speed calculation in quantum computing and boost storage."
The discovery is not yet in an academic journal, but has been published in arXiv, which hosts preprints approved for posting after moderation without full peer review.
Titled "Phase signature of topological transition in Josephson Junctions," the paper is focused squarely in the realm of quantum computing. Quantum computing allows computers to make exponentially fast computations through using what are known as qubits: advances made upon the basics of computer memory, or bits.
Within this state of transformation, scientists were able to observe what are known as Majorana particles, named after 20th century Italian theoretical physicist Ettore Majorana. The Italian scientists theorized the particles, which act as their own antiparticles, in 1937. Scientists see them as potential storage for qubits, with the ability to keep quantum information in a special computation space, safe from outside environmental noise.
Richard Williams, the Oscar-winning animator who served as animation director on Who Framed Roger Rabbit, has died at the age of 86.
Williams' family announced Saturday that the Canadian-born animator died Friday at his home in Bristol, England, the Guardian reports.
Williams won three Oscars over the course of his career, first a Best Short Subject, Animated Films Academy Award for 1973's A Christmas Carol, then a pair of Oscars - for Best Visual Effects and Special Achievement Award - for Who Framed Roger Rabbit, a 1989 comedy that seamlessly blended Robert Zemeckis' live-action sequences with animation directed by Williams.
After working as an animator at Disney as a teenager, Williams won a BAFTA for his first animated film, 1958's The Little Island. From there, the animator would go on to create the memorable title sequences for 1965's What's New Pussycat?, 1967's James Bond spoof Casino Royale and a pair of Pink Panther films, 1975's The Return of the Pink Panther and 1976's The Pink Panther Strikes Again.
Williams also served as director, screenwriter, lead animator, producer and voice actor on 1995's The Thief and the Cobbler, an animated film that Williams spent over 30 years making; it was footage from this long-in-the-works film - Williams began work on it in 1964 - that convinced Zemeckis and producer Steven Spielberg to recruit the animator for their similarly gestating Who Framed Roger Rabbit. Williams took the Roger Rabbit job in order to finish financing The Thief and the Cobbler.
"You film the live action first, which is the work of the director of the film Bob Zemeckis. He'd shoot the live action and I'd say to him 'just leave me a hole, mark an X on the floor and we'll draw a rabbit,'" Williams told the BBC in 2008 of working on the film. "So you would then print up each frame of the film in a big photograph and then we'd put a piece of paper down and draw a rabbit."
You have reached the Home page of BartCop Entertainment.
Do you have something to say?
Anything that increased your blood pressure, or, even better, amused or entertained?
Do you have a great album no one's heard?
How about a favorite TV show, movie, book, play, cartoon, or legal amusement?
A popular artist that just plain pisses you off?
A box set the whole world should own?
Vile, filthy rumors about Republican hypocrites?
took the day off.
has returned to semi-retired status.
In memory.
