Marc Dion: Straight Pride and Witchcraft (Creators Syndicate)
The Straight Pride Parade in Boston attracted a couple hundred marchers in a city with a population of 700,000 or so, with many more in neighboring communities. It was, to be brief, a flop. Only a "We Love the New York Yankees Parade" could have done worse in that city. I imagine the crowds for witch burning events got smaller and smaller as the centuries rolled by. We stumble. We bumble. We take a step or two back, but we wobble always forward, on our way to something that may someday be peace.
Froma Harrop: Curb Your Enthusiasms. Biden's the One (Creators Syndicate)
Biden is not "inspiring"? He doesn't have to be because Trump is drumming up passion for him. Trump will inspire Americans eager for a president who isn't sadistic, a menace to the democracy and a national embarrassment to vote for the safety of Biden. After years of Trumpian craziness, a Biden presidency would offer dignified leadership. Biden's no kid, but he's experienced. He respects expertise and would surround himself with smart people. And a more progressive running mate could move things forward as Biden sells new ideas to Middle America. For Democrats, Biden is clearly the one.
Froma Harrop: Looking for Love in the Online Snake Pit (Creators Syndicate)
Federal prosecutors say this is one of the biggest online swindles in U.S. history. The fraud centered mainly on Nigerian nationals who would impersonate American servicemen stationed overseas. They'd strike up intimate conversations of the you're-the-woman-I've-been-waiting-for variety. Once the conmen sensed ardor and trust, they would ask the women to send them money. And the women did. Sometimes large sums to people they never set eyes on or even talked to on the phone.
Mark Shields: Politics as It Should Be Practiced (Creators Syndicate)
Jim Brady, who was dealt a rough hand by fate, lived - and eventually died - with pain as his constant unwelcome companion. Jim and Sarah's determined struggle to pass the Brady Bill - requiring a handgun buyer to wait five days while his background check is conducted before the sale can be approved - was successful in 1993 with the support of President Bill Clinton, a historic achievement. To those who find such background checks inconvenient, think about the inconvenience of Jim Brady's 33-year sentence to a wheelchair and thank him for the better politics he practiced.
Susan Estrich: Trump's Day (Creators Syndicate)
Maybe folks were unfamiliar with Trump's arrogance, his tendency to lie, his instinct to attack and his mental cycling last time around. No more. His growing unfavorability rating reflects that. This time, we all know who Trump is: the man who is allergic to telling the truth or taking responsibility, the loudmouth who lies and manipulates to get what he wants, even if he changes his mind as to what that is. … No, I don't hate the president. I hate the Islamic State group. I hate white supremacists and anti-Semites. Donald Trump just breaks my heart, turning the life's work of so many of us, myself included, into dust.
Lenore Skenazy: Always Helping Kids Isn't Always Helping Them (Creators Syndicate)
My friend Michelle's preschool daughter has autism. Every morning Michelle brings her into school, where the staff takes the time to teach the kids with special needs how to get their boots off, how to stuff their mittens in their pockets, how to hang their coats on the pegs, etc., etc. Meanwhile, right across the hall, there are a bunch of second graders who do not have special needs. You might not realize that, however, because their PARENTS have brought them inside and are busy taking off their little boots, stuffing their mittens in their pockets and hanging their coats on the pegs for them while the kids stand there like lampposts.
The 21-gun salute is reserved for heads of state, with fewer rounds used to salute lower-ranking officials. How many rounds do the Vice President and military officers with five-star rank receive?
The Andes or Andean Mountains (Spanish: Cordillera de los Andes) are the longest continental mountain range in the world, forming a continuous highland along the western edge of South America. The Andes also have the 2nd most elevated highest peak of any mountain range, only behind the Himalayas. The range is 7,000 km (4,300 mi) long, 200 to 700 km (120 to 430 mi) wide (widest between 18° south and 20° south latitude), and has an average height of about 4,000 m (13,000 ft). The Andes extend from north to south through seven South American countries: Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Chile and Argentina.
Along their length, the Andes are split into several ranges, separated by intermediate depressions. The Andes are the location of several high plateaus - some of which host major cities such as Quito, Bogotá, Cali, Arequipa, Medellín, Bucaramanga, Sucre, Mérida and La Paz. The Altiplano plateau is the world's second-highest after the Tibetan plateau. These ranges are in turn grouped into three major divisions based on climate: the Tropical Andes, the Dry Andes, and the Wet Andes.
The Andes Mountains are the highest mountain range outside Asia. The highest mountain outside Asia, Argentina's Mount Aconcagua, rises to an elevation of about 6,961 m (22,838 ft) above sea level. The peak of Chimborazo in the Ecuadorian Andes is farther from the Earth's center than any other location on the Earth's surface, due to the equatorial bulge resulting from the Earth's rotation. The world's highest volcanoes are in the Andes, including Ojos del Salado on the Chile-Argentina border, which rises to 6,893 m (22,615 ft).
Source
Mark. was first, and correct, with:
Seven -- Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Chile and Argentina.
Alan J answered:
Seven. Argentina, Chile, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador,Columbia and Venezuela.
Randall wrote:
Seven
Cal in Vermont said:
Seven. The towering peaks of Belize are not included because Belize is in North America, adjacent to Guatemala. President Orange Butthole and his flying monkeys should forget about Greenland and get together some chump change and buy Belize. They could off-shore all their money and sex and electoral shenanigans and bother the Great Satan Guatemala in all manner of ways any time they want. Maybe put Eric and Steve Bannon in charge of that. And maybe J. Epstein in charge of youth tourism. Oh, wait...
Dave responded:
Seven. The Andes, the world's longest mountain range above the seas, was the location of the Incan civilization and empire. After a century of dominance, the empire was militarily conquered by an alliance of their native rivals, organized and aided by Spanish soldiers. Little reward did the victorious natives have though, because the pitiless Spanish soon betrayed them and then defeated them in detail. And as in North America, the native populations were devastated by Old World diseases unwittingly introduced to them by the Spanish.
Photos: The lost city of Machu Picchu, which was never found or looted by the Spanish after it was abandoned in around 1550. Reclaimed by the jungle, the city was not known to westerners until 1911. | Many of the towering peaks of the Andes mountains exceed 20,000 feet.
Jim from CA, retired to ID, replied:
The Andes extend from north to south through seven South American countries: Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Chile and Argentina.
Mac Mac said:
7
Adam answered:
Seven South American countries: Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Chile and Argentina.
Joe S wrote:
That would be seven. And that's all I got to say about that.
zorch took the day off.
Deborah took the day off.
Rosemary in Columbus took the day off.
Daniel in The City took the day off.
David of Moon Valley took the day off.
Stephen F took the day off.
mj took the day off.
Your Libtard, Snowflake, Socialist friend, Roy in Tyler, TX took the day off.
Kevin K. in Washington, DC, took the day off.
Kenn B took the day off.
John I from Hawai`i took the day off.
Dave in Tucson took the day off.
Micki took the day off.
DJ Useo took the day off.
Barbara, of Peppy Tech fame took the day off.
Ed K took the day off.
Harry M. took the day off.
Marilyn of TC took the day off.
Billy in Cypress U$A took the day off.
Michelle in AZ took the day off.
Leo in Boise took the day off.
George M. took the day off.
Brian S. took the day off.
Doug from Albuquerque, New Mexico took the day off.
Saskplanner took the day off.
Steve in Wonderful Sacramento, CA, 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.
~~~~~
• As you may expect, cartoonist R. Crumb was an eccentric when he was young. At ages 17 and 18, he wore a stovepipe hat that he had found in a junk store, and he wore a frock coat of the kind that Abraham Lincoln might have worn. He says, "I was a teenage social outcast. At the time it made me feel very depressed, and rejected by girls. Later I realized I was actually quite lucky because it freed me. I was free to develop and explore on my own all these byways of the culture that, if you're accepted, you just don't do. I was free to explore the things that interested me." One of the things that interested him was old-time music such as the blues. At age 17, he read a book titled Jazzmen, which included a chapter about collecting old 78 rpm records. The author had collected many records by going to black neighborhoods, and so R. Crumb tried that. He would buy an old 78 record for a dime. He says, "That's how I discovered the old blues. It was unknown to me, it sounded very strange at first, but at the same time there was something very attractive about it, the way it grabbed you and got in under your skin, with cadence, with rhythm."
• Jello Biafra, lead singer of the Dead Kennedys, collects really strange music. One kind of recordings that he likes is Do-It-Yourself Recordings. On one record that he has, you can hear the wife of one of the musicians say on the record, "Oh, are you recording? Should I turn the dryer off?" He has a DIY album that is rare because most copies were shrink-wrapped on a meat-packing machine - which melted most of the vinyl copies. By the way, Jello enjoys telling a story about German singer Heino, who wore sunglasses and a remarkable blonde hairdo on most of his album covers. A German band called Die Totenhosen - a punk band with humor - had a friend come onstage dressed as Heino with sunglasses and a blonde wig. He claimed to be the real Heino, and he and the band deliberately played Heino's songs very, very badly. This did not please the real Heino, and he sued. Apparently, he did not think that he ought to be the subject of parody. Die Totenhosen responded by having their fans attend the trial dressed like Heino.
Education
• Naomi Yang of Damon and Naomi (with Damon Krukowski) fame learned to play bass basically on her own, after taking a few lessons from a teacher who knew his stuff but did not appreciate what he knew. The teacher gave her one lesson, and then he asked her to bring in some bass lines that she liked so he could teach her how to play them. She brought in the Joy Division song "Atmosphere," on which Peter Hook played bass, and the teacher told her, "He's playing a fifth, and then sliding up one octave." This is a simple move, and the teacher made the mistake of saying, "What a genius, huh?" This horrified Ms. Yang, who says, "That teacher had just handed me a miracle! That was one of the most beautiful and elegant things I'd ever heard, and it was so simple. Peter Hook wasn't doing something magical that I couldn't do; he was doing something very simple that I learned in Bass Lesson Number Two." But because the teacher did not appreciate the beautiful and elegant playing, she also thought, "I don't need this teacher anymore!" Still, he had taught her something important: "You don't have to be a virtuoso to play bass. You can play incredibly simple themes, but they can still be melodic and from the heart."
• Ana Samways writes an entertaining humor column titled Sideswipe for the New Zealand Herald. Mike Hickey, one of her readers, sent in this anecdote, which Ms. Samways published under the title "Makes Simon Cowell seem sweet": "I was competing in a school holiday competition for singing, dancing musicians in a Waikato town hall in the 1950s when I received the ultimate put-down. I was in the third division in which there were only two entrants. Everyone was seated towards the back of the hall with the competitors marshalled in the front rows as they waited to compete. I had to sing first of the two in my division and when I finished there was a pause in proceedings. Then, to my horror, one of the judges came on stage and inquired, 'Who is the other singer in this division?' Another boy raised his hand. I was more than a bit demoralised when the judge said, 'We declare you the winner' and, looking towards me, 'because you couldn't be any worse than him!' He won without having to open his mouth!" This anecdote illustrates the truth that Humor = Embarrassment + Time.
CBS starts the night with '60 Minutes', followed by a FRESH'Big Brother', then a RERUN'NCIS: The 2nd One', followed by a RERUN'NCIS: The Expendable One'.
NBC fills the night with LIVE'Sunday Night Football', followed by 'Jimmy Fallon', except on the left coast with there'll be a couple hours of local crap filler between the game & Fallon.
ABC begins the night with a RERUN'America's So-Called Funniest Home Videos', followed by a FRESH'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 has a RERUN'The Simpsons', followed by a RERUN'Last Man Standing', then a RERUN'Family Guy', followed by a RERUN'Last Man Standing'.
MY reycles 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 'American Sniper', followed by the movie 'The Bourne Ultimatum', then the movie 'American Sniper'.
AMC offers the movie 'X-Men: The Last Stand', 'Fear The Walking Dead', followed by a FRESH'Fear The Walking Dead', then a FRESH'Preacher'.
BBC -
[6:00AM] PLANET EARTH: THE MAKING OF PLANET EARTH II
[7:00AM] CHIMPS OF THE LOST GORGE -
[8:00AM] PLANET EARTH: ONE AMAZING DAY - SEASON 1 - EPISODE 1-Planet Earth: One Amazing Day
[10:00AM] A BRONX TALE (1993)
[12:30PM] THE UNTOUCHABLES (1987)
[3:00PM] CAST AWAY (2000)
[6:00PM] SAVING PRIVATE RYAN (1998)
[10:00PM] SAVING PRIVATE RYAN (1998)
[2:00AM] THE UNTOUCHABLES (1987)
[4:30AM] DOCTOR WHO - SEASON 11 - EPISODE 1-The Woman Who Fell to Earth (ALL TIMES EDT)
Bravo has 'Real Housewives Of Potomac', followed by a FRESH'Real Housewives Of Potomac', then a FRESH'Married To Medicine', followed by a FRESH'Watch What Happens Live'.
Comedy Central has the movie 'The Hangover: Part II', followed by the movie 'The Hangover: Part II', again.
FX has the movie 'Daddy's Home', followed by the movie 'Grown Ups 2', then a FRESH'The Weekly', and another 'The Weekly'.
History has 'American Pickers', followed by a FRESH'American Pickers: Bonus Buys'.
IFC -
[6:30A] Godzilla
[8:45A] The Patriot
[12:30P] Zero Dark Thirty
[4:00P] The Green Mile
[8:00P] The Shawshank Redemption
[11:00P] The Shawshank Redemption -
[2:00A] The Mist
[4:45A] Sherman's Showcase - White Music
[5:15A] Sherman's Showcase - July 8, 1995
[5:45A] Night Flight -The Electronic Revolution (ALL TIMES EDT)
Sundance -
[6:00am] Law & Order
[7:00am] Law & Order
[8:00am] Law & Order
[9:00am] Law & Order
[10:00am] Law & Order
[11:00am] Law & Order
[12:00pm] Saturday Night Fever
[2:30pm] Beverly Hills Cop III
[4:30pm] Beverly Hills Cop II
[6:30pm] Trading Places
[9:00pm] National Lampoon's Vacation featured
[11:00pm] National Lampoon's European Vacation
[1:00am] Almost Famous
[3:30am] Saturday Night Fever (ALL TIMES EDT)
SyFy has the movie 'xXx: Return Of Xander Cage', followed by the movie 'Ghost In The Shell'.
Rock legend Mick Jagger attacked US President Don-Old Trump (R-Cheap Veneers) for his rudeness and lies Saturday and for "tearing apart" environment controls when America should be setting the standard for the world.
The Rolling Stones singer said he was "absolutely behind" young climate change activists who had earlier occupied the red carpet at the Venice film festival, where he was starring in the psychological thriller, "The Burnt Orange Heresy".
Jagger said he deplored how politics has descended into name-calling, "including in my own country this week" -- a reference to British Prime Minister Boris Johnson comparing opposition Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn to a "big girl's blouse" and a "chlorinated chicken".
The icon, now 76, bewailed "the polarisation and incivility in public life", although the one-time bad boy of 1960s rock admitted he was "not always for civility" himself.
Jagger, who rarely comments on politics, said "the US should be the world leader in environmental control but now it has decided to go the other way.
Novelist Walter Mosley quit his job as a writer on a television series after being "chastised" for using the N-word, he has revealed.
Mosley, known for his Easy Rawlins detective series, did not reveal which show he departed in an op-ed for The New York Times about his experience, but The Hollywood Reporter reports it was CBS All Access' Star Trek: Discovery.
Showrunners were reportedly informed of the complaint via human resources. Morsley, who allegedly used the N-word multiple times, was informed that typical use of the word was a fireable offence but there would be no action taken against him. Instead, he was told that a writer in the room was uncomfortable with his use of the word and wanted to make sure he was aware of the studio's policy.
"Earlier this year, I had just finished with the Snowfall writers' room for the season when I took a similar job on a different show at a different network. I'd been in the new room for a few weeks when I got the call from human resources. A pleasant-sounding young man said, 'Mr. Mosley, it has been reported that you used the n-word in the writers' room,'" Mosley wrote in the NYT. "I replied, 'I am the N-word in the writers' room.'"
He went on to explain that the HR representative told him that while he was free to use that word in a script, he "could not say it".
A young adult author was disinvited from a literature festival after the hosting library objected to her lesbian-themed erotica.
Julia Watts of Knoxville, Tenn. has written 18 books about kids in Appalachia, with genres ranging from historical, paranormal, and teen romance. Watts was recently invited to be a panel speaker at the "LitUp Festival: Arts and Innovation for the Next Generation," held at the Knox County Public Library on October 13. In addition to panel speakers, the festival will have a literary scavenger hunt, an escape room, and career advice.
The 49-year-old had planned to speak about her 2018 book Quiver, centering on the cultural differences between two female friends, one of whom identities as gender non-binary and the other as evangelical Christian.
But last week, Watts got a phone call from a local bookseller who she says, was assigned with giving bad news: The library was rescinding its invitation due to lesbian erotica anthologies that Watts contributed to and co-edited more than a decade ago.
The questionable anthologies are Once Upon a Dyke (2004), Stake Through the Heart (2007), and Tall in the Saddle (2007. "It was like traveling back in time," Watts tells Yahoo Lifestyle. "These are very mild - more lesbian romance with a bit of sexuality."
An Ohio prison inmate's writing published in biker magazines was cited by police in charging him with the shooting death of a motorist found along the Pennsylvania Turnpike in 1972, police said Friday.
Larry Joseph Via, 75, was charged with criminal homicide and robbery in the death of Morgan Peters, who had been shot in the back, following a grand jury investigation that began two years ago.
Via is serving a life sentence in the Marion Correctional Institute for a killing that occurred shortly after Peters' body was found in September 1972.
After two ex-wives of Via's told police he wrote poems and short stories for Easy Rider magazine under the pseudonym "Jody Via," a trooper found nine writings under that name in Easy Rider and Outlaw Biker magazines from the late 1980s, police said.
"Dangerous Dave," published in Outlaw Biker in September 1985, was about a hitchhiking woman who lured a man to stop for her, and the man is then surprised by a gunman.
In areas where there are no abortion clinics, Google Maps isn't leading people who search for abortion clinics to the nearest center that performs the procedure.
Instead, Google Maps often directs people to centers that don't offer abortions, and some of the results lead to anti-abortion political groups, according to a new Vice report.
The problem appears to stem from how businesses categorize themselves during the listing process on Google Maps, and how Google differentiates a center that does offer abortions against a center that doesn't offer abortions, or an anti-abortion organization.
One result supposedly directed people seeking abortion clinics to a monument to "unborn" children in Chattanooga, Tennessee, the report found.
In the erroneous search results on Google Maps, centers and organizations that don't offer or support abortions are often labeled as "pregnancy care centers," "women's health centers," or "women's health clinics," Vice found in its research. Those are the same categories that an abortion clinic or pro-choice organization might use.
The Trump administration says it will issue permit to a Michigan trophy hunter to import the skin, skull and horns from a rare black rhinoceros he shot in Africa.
Documents show Chris D. Peyerk of Shelby Township, Michigan, applied last year for the permit required by the Fish and Wildlife Service to import animals protected under the Endangered Species Act. Peyerk paid $400,000 to an anti-poaching program to receive permission to hunt the male rhino bull inside a Namibian national park in May 2018.
The International Union for Conservation of Nature lists black rhinos as a critically endangered species, with about 5,500 remaining in the wild. Nearly half of those are in Namibia, which is allowed under international convention to permit five male rhinos a year to be legally killed by hunters.
Records show Peyerk was represented in his effort to get a rhino permit by John J. Jackson III, a Louisiana attorney who provides free legal assistance to trophy hunters through a nonprofit group called Conservation Force. He is also a past president of Safari Club International, a trophy hunting group that has lobbied the Trump administration to loosen import restrictions on endangered big game animals.
Jackson was appointed in 2018 to the International Wildlife Conservation Council, an advisory board set up by then-Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke to help promote trophy hunting. Jackson said he sees no conflict between advising the Fish and Wildlife Service on policy issues while also petitioning the agency on the behalf of his legal clients.
Japanese scientists have identified a new species of dinosaur from a nearly complete skeleton that was the largest ever discovered in the country, measuring eight metres (26 feet) long.
After analysing hundreds of bones dating back 72 million years, the team led by Hokkaido University concluded the skeleton once belonged to a new species of hadrosaurid dinosaur, a herbivorous beast that roamed the Earth in the late Cretaceous period.
A partial tail was first found in northern Japan in 2013 and later excavations revealed the entire skeleton.
The team named the dinosaur "Kamuysaurus japonicus," which means "Japanese dragon god," according to a statement issued by the university.
Kamuysaurus japonicus probably lived in coastal areas, a rare habitat for dinosaurs at that time and the fossils also provide valuable insights into their environment.
That Susan is so funny...oh, I need to bring the car to the wash tomorrow…did I turn off the stove...why is this person being so loud...my toe feels weird...I feel like I know that person...here comes the sun, doo-doo-doo-doo.
We often find ourselves in an endless thought loop. And every so often, we try to stop this endless flow of thoughts by telling ourselves to just stop thinking. But do we or can we ever really stop thinking?
It depends on how you define "thinking," said Michael Halassa, an assistant professor in the department of brain and cognitive sciences at MIT. A thought, which is the result of chemical firing between brain cells, can happen both on the conscious and unconscious level, he said.
The type of thinking we are aware of, such as the endless thoughts that pop up when we're trying to sleep, can, in theory, be silenced. That's presumably what meditation is all about, Halassa said.
But even though that's what meditators strive to do - it's not clear how much of a blank state they can actually achieve. "I don't know if [completely stopping thinking] is theoretically possible and if it is, I think that would be incredibly difficult to test," said Julia Kam, a cognitive scientist at the Knight Lab at the University of California, Berkeley.
For decades, researchers have debated how Indo-European languages came to be spoken from the British Isles to South Asia.
Now, the largest-ever study of ancient human DNA suggests that the answer may lie with a mass migration of Bronze Age herders from the Eurasian Steppes, starting 5,000 years ago, westward to Europe and east to Asia.
Vagheesh Narasimhan, co-first author of the paper published in the journal Science on Thursday, told AFP that the role of population movements over the past 10,000 years was key to understanding linguistic changes and the transition from hunter-gatherer activities to farming.
A global team of geneticists, archeologists and anthropologists analyzed the genomes of 524 never-before-studied ancient individuals from Central and South Asia, increasing the worldwide total of published ancient genomes by about 25 percent.
By comparing the genomes to one another and to previously discovered remains, and by placing that information into its historical context through archeological and linguistic records, the team was able to fill the gaps in our current understanding.
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?
wrote:
has returned to semi-retired status.
In memory.
