• Daniel Handler has made millions of dollars as Lemony Snicket, the author of a series of children’s books that feature unfortunate events. As of 2006, he had sold something like 50 million books, and so he is doing much better financially than the average author. In fact, he has made so much money that he and his wife had to decide when Otto, their young son (two years old in 2006), would get a chunk of it. Mr. and Mrs. Handler went into a lawyer’s office and began discussing when Otto should come into money. The first age the lawyer suggested was 15, but the Handlers replied, “God, no!” The ages discussed grew higher and higher until they were higher than the age of Mr. Handler, who believes, “People of 33 should not be handling this sum of money. That’s absurd!”
• As a young man, food critic Charles Ferruza served as a novice waiter where he was once victimized by four obnoxious customers who placed a pile of dollar bills on the table. One of the customers told him, “This is your tip. For every mistake you make, we’ll take one bill off.” Of course, the situation made Mr. Ferruza nervous, and he made many mistakes, so by the time he served the obnoxious customers dessert, only a single dollar bill remained. The spokesman for the obnoxious customers told him, “Sorry, kid, you’re only getting a dollar.” Mr. Ferruza replied, “Oh, thank you so much, sir. And for your next trick, could you please stick it up your *ss?” (No, he wasn’t fired. His manager disliked the sick tipping game, too.)
• Being critically and popularly successful as a novelist does not guarantee financial success. African-American writer Zora Neale Hurston, whose novel Their Eyes Were Watching God is studied in universities throughout the world today, worked as a maid in her old age to earn money. When she died in 1960, she had little money, and when she was buried, her grave was unmarked. Fortunately, another acclaimed African-American novelist, Alice Walker, and the literary scholar Charlotte Hunt refused to let Ms. Hurston lie in an unmarked grave. In 1973, they located what they hope is her grave and put a headstone on it.
• For years, Newbery Medal-winning children’s book author Lois Lowry carried these two fortune-cookie fortunes in her wallet: YOU WILL BE FAMOUS IN A FAR-OUT PROFESSION and YOU WILL ATTEND A PARTY WHERE STRANGE CUSTOMS PREVAIL. She kept these fortunes because she wished for them to become true. (Actually, she edited one fortune. The original fortune said, YOU WILL BE RICH AND FAMOUS IN A FAR-OUT PROFESSION, but she edited out “RICH AND” because she wasn’t comfortable with an emphasis on money.)
• Theodor Geisel, who is better known as Dr. Seuss, disliked some forms of advertising. He was once offered a large amount of money to allow one of his rhymes to be used in a television commercial. When he turned the money down, he was offered an even larger amount of money, and his agent, Herbert Cheyette, told him, “If you accept this deal, you will go down into The Guinness Book of Records as the writer who was paid the most money per word.” Mr. Geisel replied, “I’d rather go into The Guinness Book of Records as the writer who refused to be paid the most money per word.”
• Advice columnist Ann Landers was thrifty, although she was also very capable of buying pricey clothing. According to Margo Howard, her daughter, she would reuse stamps that had not been canceled by the U.S. Post Office. Of course, in her line of work, she received letters with uncancelled stamps frequently. For a long time, Ms. Landers had her staff rescue these stamps, but finally the bravest person on her staff rebelled, saying, “Eppie [Ms. Landers’ nickname], we’re not doing this anymore. It’s a federal offense.”
Pierre Charles L'Enfant (French: August 2, 1754 – June 14, 1825), self-identified as Peter Charles L'Enfant while living in the United States, was appointed to plan the new "Federal City". By what name is his "Federal City" known today?
Pierre Charles L'Enfant (French: August 2, 1754 – June 14, 1825), self-identified as Peter Charles L'Enfant while living in the United States, was a French-American military engineer who designed the basic plan for Washington, D.C. (capital city of the U.S.) known today as the L'Enfant Plan (1791).
President Washington appointed L'Enfant in 1791 to plan the new "Federal City" (later named the "City of Washington") under the supervision of the three Commissioners, whom Washington had appointed to oversee the planning and development of the federal territory that would later become designated the "District of Columbia". Included in the new district were the river port towns of Georgetown (formerly in Montgomery County of the State of Maryland) and Alexandria (in Fairfax County, in the Commonwealth of Virginia). Thomas Jefferson, who worked alongside President Washington in overseeing the plans for the capital, sent L'Enfant a letter outlining his task, which was to provide a drawing of suitable sites for the federal city and the public buildings. Though Jefferson had modest ideas for the Capital, L'Enfant saw the task as far more grandiose, believing he was not only locating the capital, but also devising the city plan and designing the buildings.
Source
Mark. was first, and correct, with:
Washington, D.C.
Billy in Cypress U. $. A. said:
Washington, D.C.
Alan J answered:
Washington D.C.
mj wrote:
He has a plaza
With its own Metro stop in the city he designed, Washington, DC. He's
rumored to have filled it with Masonic symbols.
Dave responded:
The District of Columbia. Commonly referred to as 'Washington D.C.' or just plain 'Washington'. L’Efant was an interesting character. At age 23 the young French aristocrat was recruited as a volunteer and served in the American Revolutionary Army upon his arrival in 1777. Wounded in battle, he was later a POW until exchanged, and remained in the army until it disbanded in 1783. L’Efant remained in the United States until his death in 1825. There is nothing I saw that indicated he was ever married or fathered any children, and he died penniless at a friend’s estate. In the 20th century L’Efant’s remains were exhumed and he was buried at Arlington. L’Efant was honored with a suitable marble monument paid for by congress.
Jim from CA, retired to ID, said:
He designed Washington, DC
Deborah, the Master Gardener wrote:
How I remember this from grade school history is a mystery, but that Federal City is known as Washington, D.C. I’m all for its becoming a state, along with Puerto Rico, if they want.
Watched the Pete Souza documentary last night. Sure, I know what and why it is, but ignoring the politics and observing the humanity of a fully-formed leader made me weep for our current state of affairs. Damn.
John I from Hawai`i says,
Washington, D.C.
Michelle in AZ answered:
Washington D.C.
Rosemary in Columbus responded:
Washington DC
Joe ( -- Vote Blue, No Matter Who -- ) replied:
Washington, D.C. It's only logical Jim
Kevin in Washington DC wrote:
My house
Washington, DC.
Daniel in The City took the day off.
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Roy, still a libtard, still living the hermit life in Tyler, TX took the day off.
Stephen F took the day off.
Jacqueline took the day off.
David of Moon Valley took the day off.
Dave in Tucson took the day off.
Barbara, of Peppy Tech fame took the day off.
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Harry M. took the day off.
George M. took the day off.
-pgw took the day off.
Gary K took the day off.
Roy the (now retired) hoghead (aka 'hoghed') ( Without music to decorate it, time is just a bunch of boring production deadlines or dates by which bills must be paid. ~Frank Zappa ) took the day off.
Saskplanner took the day off.
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Brian S. took the day off.
Gene took the day off.
Tony K. took the day off.
Noel S. took the day off.
James of Alhambra took the day off.
BttbBob has returned to semi-retired status.
~~~~~
I was at a Jazzercise class in Lompoc when this hit. The floor rolled around some, like when you shake a rug to make it lie flat; those waves move from your hand to the other end. How shocking to see what actually happened. When we moved to NorCal in ’98,. construction on the Bay Bridge and “maze” was ongoing.
It’s not a matter of if, but when, the Big One hits.
FWIW, my computer is acting up and the back-up is still down, so if I disappear for a day or 2, you'll know why.
Tonight, Sunday:
CBS starts the night, as usual, with '60 Minutes', followed by the movie 'Ferris Bueller's Day Off', then a RERUN'Mom'.
NBC fills the night with LIVE'Sunday Night Football', followed by a RERUN'Ellen's Game Of Games', the padding with local crap on the left coast.
ABC begins the night with a FRESH'America's So-Called Funniest Home Videos', followed by a FRESH'Supermarket Sweep', then a FRESH'Card Sharks'.
The CW offers a FRESH'Pandora', followed by a RERUN'Whose Line Is It Anwyay?', then another RERUN'Whose Line Is It Anyway?'.
Faux has a FRESH'The Simpsons', followed by a FRESH'Bless The Harts', then a FRESH'Bob's Burgers', followed by a FRESH'Family Guy'.
MY recycles 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 'Salt', followed by the movie 'American Sniper'.
AMC offers the movie 'Final Destination', 'Fear The Walking Dead', followed by a FRESH'Fear The Walking Dead', then a FRESH'The Walking Dead: World Beyond'.
BBC -
[6:00AM] HIDDEN HABITATS - GREAT BARRIER REEF
[6:15AM] SEVEN WORLDS, ONE PLANET - THE BEST OF SEVEN WORLDS, ONE PLANET
[8:15AM] ENCHANTED KINGDOM
[10:15AM] PLANET EARTH: ONE AMAZING DAY
[12:15PM] THE HOBBIT: AN UNEXPECTED JOURNEY
[4:15PM] THE HOBBIT: THE DESOLATION OF SMAUG
[8:00PM] TOP GEAR
[9:00PM] THE HOBBIT: AN UNEXPECTED JOURNEY
[1:00AM] THE HOBBIT: THE DESOLATION OF SMAUG
[4:44AM] DOCTOR WHO (ALL TIMES ET)
Bravo has 'Real Housewives Of Potomac', followed by a FRESH'Real Housewives Of Potomac', then another Real Housewives Of Potomac', followed by a FRESH'Watch What Happens: Live'.
Comedy Central has the movie 'The Longest Yard', followed by the movie 'Joe Dirt'.
FX has the movie 'Venom', followed by the movie 'Deadpool 2', then a FRESH'Fargo'.
IFC -
[6:00am] Insidious
[8:30am] Friday The 13th, Part 2
[10:30am] Friday The 13th - Part III
[12:30pm] Friday The 13th: The Final Chapter
[2:30pm] The Dark Knight Rises
[6:30pm] The Wolf Of Wall Street
[10:30pm] Inglourious Basterds
[2:00am] The Dark Knight Rises (ALL TIMES ET)
Sundance -
[6:30am] columbo - Old-Fashioned Murder
[8:15am] columbo - Try & Catch Me
[10:00am] erin brockovich
[1:00pm] the devil's advocate
[4:00pm] casino
[8:00pm] scarface
[12:00am] the devil's advocate
[3:00am] reindeer games
[5:30am] hogan's heroes (ALL TIMES ET)
SyFy has the movie 'Harry Potter & The Order Of The Phoenix', followed by the movie 'Harry Potter & The Half-Blood Prince'.
TCM "improved" their website & I can no longer access it.
David Letterman will headline a fundraiser for Joe Biden next week, when he will join Kamala Harris’ husband Doug Emhoff for what is billed as a “virtual conversation.”
Tickets to the Letterman event, to take place on Oct. 22, start at $500 per person, and rise to $25,000, according to an invite. The money goes to the Biden Victory Fund, a joint committee of the Biden campaign, the Democratic National Committee and state parties.
Letterman’s successor as host of CBS’ The Late Show, Stephen Colbert, is headlining a Biden event earlier in the week, along with Harris. Letterman’s late night rival, Jay Leno, has emceed a few events for Biden.
The Biden campaign has tapped into pop culture for what has been a blitz of virtual fundraising. On Friday, the cast of Hamilton will reunite for an event, and actors from Star Trek joined a fundraiser earlier this week.
Also on tap for next week is a fundraiser featuring cast members from Amazon’s The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, a script read with the original cast of Wet Hot American Summer, and a reception with Harris, Justin Timberlake and Ashley Judd.
Sacha Baron Cohen has disclosed several important plot points within the upcoming “Borat” sequel, aptly titled “Borat Subsequent Movie Film: Delivery of Prodigious Bribe to American Regime for Make Benefit Once Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan.”
In a new interview with the New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd, Cohen revealed that the iconic Borat character uses the flower beds in front of the Trump hotel as a bathroom and keeps his daughter in a cage, among other unbelievable antics.
According to the article, Borat’s daughter wonders if her cage is “nicer than Melania’s,” and when Borat takes her shopping, he asks for the “No means yes” section. Upon buying a chocolate cake, he demands that “Jews will not replace us” to be written on it in icing – with a smiley face. And, as teased in its trailer, the new film will see Borat — dressed as Donald Trump — sneak into this year’s Conservative Political Action Conference, at which Mike Pence made a speech.
When asked why he wanted to revive the Borat character, Cohen said he was motivated by the dangers of authoritarianism.
“In 2005, you needed a character like Borat who was misogynist, racist, anti-Semitic to get people to reveal their inner prejudices. Now those inner prejudices are overt. Racists are proud of being racists,” Cohen said, singling out Donald Trump as “an overt racist, an overt fascist.” “My aim here was not to expose racism and anti-Semitism. The aim is to make people laugh, but we reveal the dangerous slide to authoritarianism.”
After five years on Saturday Night Live and an Emmy nomination for her work, Leslie Jones had enough. She stunned many by leaving her gig as a full-time cast member.
Now, she’s resurfaced as executive producer and host of a new version of the game show Supermarket Sweep on ABC.
“I don’t miss it. At all,” Jones said to ET about her SNL days. “That job was hard, man. That job was like two jobs and very restrictive, too. I wasn’t very free there.”
The revived Supermarket Sweep follows the same format as it did when it debuted in 1965: teams answer a few questions that will add time to their shopping clock, then try to accumulate as much as they can in that time period in a mad dash through the grocery store, with the highest-priced food collection winning the competition.
The new version will give away more money. “We have a lot of bonuses, we’re giving money away to essential workers every week,” Jones said. She added that safety protocols will be in effect during the pandemic.
Boston news anchor Alaina Pinto has been fired by station WHDH for appearing in Adam Sandler’s new Netflix Halloween movie, Hubie Halloween.
“Earlier this week I was let go from 7 News,” Pinto tweeted Thursday. “I am posting this because I want to be open and honest with all of you. Last year, I participated in a cameo in the recently released Netflix movie by Adam Sandler, ‘Hubie Halloween.’” The film bowed on Oct. 7 on the streamer.
The appearance was a violation of Pinto’s contract, which she said she “mistakenly violated.”
Pinto played a news anchor for a fictional Boston TV station, Channel 4 Morning News, and led its morning show, “Wake Up, Boston.” The cameo saw Pinto talking about the Salem Halloween festivities while dressed as DC Comics character Harley Quinn.
In an open letter published this week, 1,044 former and current officers of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Epidemic Intelligence Service, a renowned fellowship program that focuses on research and emergency response, expressed concern over the diminished role of the public health agency during the coronavirus pandemic. The letter had one clear demand: Take the CDC off the bench.
The letter, published in the journal Epidemiology Monitor, was written by physicians, nurses, scientists and other health professionals that are former or current members of the EIS program. It was signed by two former CDC directors, Jeffrey Koplan, who served under Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, and Tom Frieden, who served under President Barack Obama.
The letter highlighted the fact that in previous public health crises, the CDC provided the best available information and recommendations to the public. In addition, it also gathered and applied research from scientists at the agency and worldwide.
But that CDC is hardly recognizable today, the former and current agency officers write. They further state that there has been an “ominous politicization and silencing of the nation’s health protection agency” during the covid-19 pandemic.
“The absence of national leadership on covid-19 is unprecedented and dangerous,” the letter states. “The U.S. epidemic is sustained by deadly chains of transmission that crisscross the entire country. Yet states and territories have been left to invent their own differing systems for defining, diagnosing and reporting cases of this highly contagious disease. Inconsistent contact tracing efforts are confined within each state’s borders—while coronavirus infections sadly are not.”
The U.S. Justice Department said on Friday it has scheduled the first federal execution of a woman in almost 70 years, setting a Dec. 8 date to put to death Lisa Montgomery, convicted of a 2004 murder.
Montgomery, who was found guilty of strangling a pregnant woman in Missouri, will be executed by lethal injection at U.S. Penitentiary Terre Haute, Indiana, the department said in a statement.
The last woman to be executed by the U.S. government was Bonnie Heady, who was put to death in a gas chamber in Missouri in 1953, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.
The Justice Department on Friday also scheduled a Dec. 10. execution for Brandon Bernard, who with his accomplices murdered two youth ministers in 1999.
The two executions will be the eighth and ninth the federal government has carried out in 2020.
Texas social workers are criticizing a state regulatory board's decision this week to remove protections for LGBTQ clients and clients with disabilities who seek social work services.
The Texas State Board of Social Work Examiners voted unanimously Monday to change a section of its code of conduct that establishes when a social worker may refuse to serve someone. The code will no longer prohibit social workers from turning away clients on the basis of disability, sexual orientation or gender identity.
Gov. Greg Abbott's office recommended the change, board members said, because the code's nondiscrimination protections went beyond protections laid out in the state law that governs how and when the state may discipline social workers.
The nondiscrimination policy change drew immediate criticism from a professional association. Will Francis, executive director of the Texas chapter of the National Association of Social Workers, called it "incredibly disheartening."
Outgoing Rio Tinto Chief Executive Jean-Sébastien Jacques said on Friday the miner was committed to reform after a lawmaker accused the industry of incremental cultural genocide at an Australian inquiry into the destruction of an ancient cave.
Speaking for a second time at a parliamentary inquiry into how the world's biggest iron ore miner destroyed a culturally significant 46,000-year-old rockshelter in Western Australia, Jacques repeated an apology and vowed Rio would improve its efforts.
"It should have never happened," Jacques told the inquiry into the destruction of the rockshelters at Juukan Gorge as part of an iron ore mine expansion in May, which caused deep distress to the Puutu Kunti Kurrama and Pinikura (PKKP) people.
"Anyone that has been objectively listening to this inquiry ... would have to draw the conclusion that this is a form of incremental genocide," Senator Pat Dodson, an Aboriginal man, told Rio at the inquiry.
Dodson referred to confidentiality clauses in mining agreements that restrict traditional owners from public comment about their heritage concerns, and clauses that restrict their ability to use broader Australian laws for site protection.
Scientists have measured the shortest unit of time ever: the time it takes a light particle to cross a hydrogen molecule.
That time, for the record, is 247 zeptoseconds. A zeptosecond is a trillionth of a billionth of a second, or a decimal point followed by 21 zeroes and a 1. Previously, researchers had dipped into the realm of zeptoseconds; in 2016, researchers reporting in the journal Nature Physics used lasers to measure time in increments down to 850 zeptoseconds. This accuracy is a huge leap from the 1999 Nobel Prize-winning work that first measured time in femtoseconds, which are millionths of a billionths of seconds.
It takes femtoseconds for chemical bonds to break and form, but it takes zeptoseconds for light to travel across a single hydrogen molecule (H2). To measure this very short trip, physicist Reinhard Dörner of Goethe University in Germany and his colleagues shot X-rays from the PETRA III at Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron (DESY), a particle accelerator in Hamburg.
The researchers set the energy of the X-rays so that a single photon, or particle of light, knocked the two electrons out of the hydrogen molecule. (A hydrogen molecule consists of two protons and two electrons.) The photon bounced one electron out of the molecule, and then the other, a bit like a pebble skipping over the top of a pond. These interactions created a wave pattern called an interference pattern, which Dörner and his colleagues could measure with a tool called a Cold Target Recoil Ion Momentum Spectroscopy (COLTRIMS) reaction microscope. This tool is essentially a very sensitive particle detector that can record extremely fast atomic and molecular reactions. The COLTRIMS microscope recorded both the interference pattern and the position of the hydrogen molecule throughout the interaction.
That time? Two hundred and forty-seven zeptoseconds, with some wiggle room depending on the distance between the hydrogen atoms within the molecule at the precise moment the photon winged by. The measurement is essentially capturing the speed of light within the molecule.
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said:
has returned to semi-retired status.
In memory.
