Marc Dion: For What It's Worth (Creators Syndicate)
My mother, a workingman's widow who lived on a fixed income of less than $1,200 a month, paid $300 a month for supplemental insurance. At the end of her life, I sometimes paid it for her. I didn't tell her that, of course. I didn't want her to feel she was trading the last of her time to me, as she had traded the rest of her time to other people.
Mark Shields: It May Not Build Character, but Politics Can Reveal Character (Creators Syndicate)
First, an anecdote circulating about the most courageously candid staff person in the White House allegedly speaking to President Donald J Trump: "Mr. President, you're coming across as mean-spirited, abusive and so unlikable that people frankly do not want to work for you. Sir, in all due respect, you have to make some immediate changes." President Trump to courageously candid staffer: "I agree. You're fired."
Lenore Skenazy: Will Santa Bring Lawn Darts? (Creators Syndicate)
The '90s brought youngsters a toy called the Sky Dancers, plastic fairies with spinning wings. You attached the doll to a base, pulled a ripcord and off she flew - erratically and fast. It took six years for the Consumer Product Safety Commission, or CPSC, to ground the dancers, which it did in 2000, saying the manufacturer had received 150 reports of injuries, including scratched corneas, facial lacerations and a broken rib. That might seem dangerous, but this was a recall of 9 million dolls. Is your child's bike as safe?
Froma Harrop: Raise Revenues, but Hold the Drama (Creators Syndicate)
Democratic candidates offer two basic approaches to raising revenues for public programs. One is grand opera - accusing the wealthy of greed (Bernie Sanders) and malice, that is, "leaving everyone else behind" (Elizabeth Warren). For this bad behavior, there must be punishment in the form of taxation. The other approach is to simply increase their taxes a reasonable amount and not get personal. Many rich people may not like it, but they won't feel under moral condemnation. Some even back the idea. That is Joe Biden's approach. And it was the way Democratic Presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton succeeded in raising taxes on the higher income.
Froma Harrop: Paul Volcker Was a Great Man (Creators Syndicate)
Paul Volcker administered the tough medicine when the American economy badly needed it. It was 1980, and the inflation rate had passed 14 percent. OPEC, a cartel of foreign oil producers, had launched an oil embargo against the United States a few years before, causing prices to soar. Older Americans remember long lines of cars snaking to gas pumps. The country felt in crisis.
The most populous country in Africa is also the seventh most populous country in the world. What is the name of this self-defined democratic secular state?
Gadsby is a 1939 novel by Ernest Vincent Wright written as a lipogram, which does not include words that contain the letter E. The plot revolves around the dying fictional city of Branton Hills, which is revitalized as a result of the efforts of protagonist John Gadsby and a youth group he organizes.
Though vanity published and little noticed in its time, the book has since become a favorite of fans of constrained writing and is a sought-after rarity among some book collectors. Later editions of the book have sometimes carried the alternative subtitle 50,000 Word Novel Without the Letter "E".
Despite Wright's claim, published versions of the book may contain a handful of uses of the letter "e". The version on Project Gutenberg, for example, contains "the" three times and "officers" once.
Source
Randall was first, and correct, with:
the letter "e"
Mark. said:
There are no words with the letter E.
Mac Mac wrote:
a 50,000-word novel which, except for the introduction and a note at the end, did not use the letter "e".
Alan J answered:
The letter "E".
Dave responded:
The letter 'e.' Wright used words that did not include that letter. Some people thought that was a worthy use of the time he took to write the book. Book publishers were not interested so in 1939 Wright spent his own dough to self publish it. I don't know how many copies were printed, but supposedly the warehouse holding most of the books burned down, making the remaining examples very rare. Wright died within the year (of disappointment?) and nobody else was interested in publishing it. In spite of Wright's best efforts several words with the letter 'e' slipped in unnoticed. If anyone cares?
Jim from CA, retired to ID, replied:
Gadsby is a 1939 novel by Ernest Vincent Wright written as a lipogram, which does not include words that contain the letter E.
Cal in Vermont wrote:
The author did not use the letter "e". Nop, not a on.
zorch said:
The letter e is mostly missing. The word 'the' is used three times.
Deborah responded:
Sorry to be so late. It's been a day, for sure; not bad, just a day.
That novel is written without the letter E. I don't know that I could write even a sentence without using at least one E. Now I may have to read it just to see what it's like.
Joe S replied:
Read it years ago, can't remember a thing about it. I guess I wasn't impressed. I've never been able to get into Hemingway novels either.
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~~~~~
Info: Classical music group that records albums with titles such as My Top 10 Favorite Frédéric Chopin Waltzes; My Top 10 Most Powerful, Epic, Intense Classical Piano Songs; and Epic Voices.
• Harpo Marx was a great friend of theatrical critic Alexander Woollcott, and when Harpo announced that he had taken up painting, Mr. Woollcott was enthusiastic and wanted to see some of his paintings. Harpo was willing, and one day Mr. Woollcott walked into Harpo's art studio. A nude female model was posing, and Harpo asked Mr. Woollcott to wait a few minutes as he put a few finishing touches on the paintings. So Harpo looked at the nude model and painted a little more, and then he allowed Mr. Woollcott to see the painting - which depicted not a nude model, but a banana.
• Oscar Levant once became interested in the daughter of a Los Angeles society family, but she declined to date him until he and a member of his family were introduced to her family. Since no members of his family were in LA, Mr. Levant took along Harpo Marx when he visited her family and introduced Harpo as his uncle. Big mistake. Within five minutes, Harpo had insulted the butler, flirted with the maid, and chased the society woman's mother through the house. Of course, Oscar and Harpo were thrown out of the house as quickly as possible.
• Comedians tend to play practical jokes on each other. While performing in the Ziegfeld Follies, Eddie Cantor was supposed to lift and carry around two empty suitcases, but during one performance they were enormously heavy - W.C. Fields had filled the suitcases with bricks. Mr. Cantor got Mr. Fields back by inviting him to play a game of golf, a game that Mr. Fields took seriously. But when Mr. Cantor took off his coat upon arriving at the gold course, he was wearing his pajamas and slippers and played the entire game in his jammies.
• Occasionally, practical jokes are played during operatic performances. In a performance of La Bohème in Philadelphia, Frances Alda was surprised when her fellow singers turned toward her on stage with monocles in their eyes. When snow fell on stage, mixed with it were such items as buttons that hit the top of the bonnet she was wearing. A glass of water turned out to be a glass of ink. And when De Segurola put on a hat on stage, he discovered that it was filled with powder that cascaded over his shoulders.
• Phil Silvers once played a joke on Jerry Lewis and Dean Martin. Mr. Silvers was suffering from insomnia in a hotel and suddenly remembered that the comedy team of Lewis and Martin was performing in the lounge. So he put on slippers and a robe, and walked into the lounge, where Lewis and Martin were in the midst of their wild shenanigans. The famous comedy team saw Mr. Silvers, stopped, and stared. Mr. Silvers said, "Fellas, could you hold it down a little? I'm upstairs trying to sleep."
• Harpo Marx was always ready to make people laugh on the spur of the moment, and he often poked fun at dignified people. Once a dignified woman (whom Harpo didn't know) got out of a taxi in front of a hotel, and Harpo picked her up, ran with her to the hotel desk, and told the clerk, "Register us quickly!" (Because of Harpo's reputation as a comedian, I think the woman would be flattered and not regard this as sexual harassment.)
• Practical joker Hugh Troy once heard the owner of a small general store say that he was due to take inventory soon. So Mr. Troy went to another store, bought $20 worth of items that the small general store carried, then smuggled them into the general store and put them on the shelves. Mr. Troy's name for his action was "Shop-stuffing. Makes a nice change from shop-lifting, don't you think?"
• In Act 4 of Puccini's La Bohème, Mimi lies dying of tuberculosis, and Musetta gives her a muff to keep her hands warm. Frederick Jägel once surprised the singer playing the role of Mimi. When she slipped her hands inside the muff, she discovered a warm Polish sausage.
America 2019: a power-mad demented imbecile is facing impeachment for abuse of office and his loudest defenders are a degenerate half-dressed wrestling coach, Drunk Florida Man and a fake farmer suing an imaginary cow - just as our founding fathers envisioned.
An idea:
I'm gonna print out the House Impeachment report and use it to wrap Christmas presents for all my Trump-loving relatives this year.
Linda >^..^<
We are all only temporarily able bodied.
So humid that salt has melted and sealed the holes in the salt shakers.
Tonight, Sunday:
CBS starts the night with '60 Minutes', followed by the FRESH, but pre-taped & edited, 'The 42nd Annual Kennedy Center Honors', then a RERUN'NCIS: The Expendable One'.
NBC fills the night with LIVE'Sunday Night Football', then pads the left coast with local crap and maybe an old 'Dateline'.
ABC fills the night with the movie 'The Sound Of Music'.
The CW offers the FRESH'The Christmas Caroler Challenge', followed by another FRESH'The Christmas Caroler Challenge'.
Faux has a FRESH'The Simpsons', followed by a FRESH'Bless This Mess', then a FRESH'Bob's Burgers', followed by a FRESH'Family Guy'.
MY recycles an old 'How I Met Your Mother', followed by another old 'How I Met Your Mother', 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 'Hacksaw Ridge', followed by the movie 'American Sniper'.
AMC offers the movie 'National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation', followed by the movie 'Blazing Saddles', then the movie 'National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation'.
BBC -
[6:00AM] NATURE'S GREAT EVENTS - SEASON 1 - EPISODE 3-The Great Migration
[7:00AM] PLANET EARTH: THE HUNT - SEASON 1 - EPISODE 1-The Hardest Challenge
[8:00AM] PLANET EARTH: THE HUNT - SEASON 1 - EPISODE 2-In The Grip of Seasons - Arctic
[9:00AM] PLANET EARTH: THE HUNT - SEASON 1 - EPISODE 3-Hide And Seek - Jungles
[10:00AM] DEATH RACE: INFERNO (2013)
[12:30PM] DEATH RACE 4 (2018)
[3:00PM] DEATH RACE (2008)
[5:30PM] DEATH RACE 2 (2010)
[8:00PM] TAKEN (2008)
[10:00PM] TAKEN (2008)
[12:00AM] ROBIN HOOD: PRINCE OF THIEVES (1991)
[3:00AM] PLANET OF THE APES (2001)
[5:30AM] MONTY PYTHON'S FLYING CIRCUS - SEASON 1 - EPISODE 5-Man's Crisis of Identity in the Latter Half of the Twentieth Century
[5:45AM] MONTY PYTHON'S FLYING CIRCUS - SEASON 1 - EPISODE 7-You're No Fun Any More (ALL TIMES EST)
Bravo has 'Real Housewives Of Atlanta', followed by a FRESH'Real Housewives Of Atlanta', then a FRESH'Married To Medicine', followed by a FRESH'Watch What Happens Live'.
Comedy Central has the movie 'Wedding Crashers', followed by the movie '21 Jump Street'.
FX has the movie 'The Fate Of The Furious', followed by the movie 'American Made', then a FRESH'The Weekly', and another 'The Weekly'.
IFC -
[6:00A] Pee-wee's Playhouse - Let's Play Office
[6:30A] Pee-wee's Playhouse - I Remember Curtis
[7:00A] The Three Stooges - If a Body Meets a Body
[7:15A] All I Want for Christmas
[9:15A] A Dennis the Menace Christmas
[11:15A] Big Momma's House
[1:30P] Stand by Me
[3:30P] I Love You, Man
[6:00P] Vegas Vacation
[8:00P] Tommy Boy
[10:15P] Tommy Boy
[12:30A] I Love You, Man
[3:00A] Carrie
[5:15A] Stan Against Evil - Nubbin but Trouble
[5:45A] The Three Stooges - Pardon My Scotch (ALL TIMES EST)
Sundance -
[6:00am] Law & Order
[7:00am] Law & Order
[8:00am] Law & Order
[9:00am] Law & Order
[10:00am] Coach Carter
[1:00pm] Draft Day
[3:30pm] Sahara
[6:00pm] Ocean's Eleven
[8:30pm] Ocean's Twelve
[11:30pm] Ocean's Thirteen
[2:30am] Sahara
[5:00am] M*A*S*H
[5:30am] M*A*S*H (ALL TIMES EST)
SyFy has the movie 'Journey 2: The Mysterious Island', followed by the movie 'RIPD'.
A pair of John Lennon's sunglasses The Beatles legend once left behind in the back seat of a car sold Friday for nearly $200,000 at an auction in London.
Billed as one of the most famous specs in rock-and-roll, the round, green-tinted lenses and their golden frame belonged to Alan Herring, the chauffeur for the Liverpool quartet's drummer Ringo Starr and band mate George Harrison.
"In the summer of 1968 I had picked John up with Ringo and George in Ringo's Mercedes and driven the boys into the office," Herring recalled in a statement released by the Sotheby's auction house.
"When John got out of the car I noticed that he'd left these sunglasses on the back seat and one lens and one arm had become disconnected. I asked John if he'd like me to get them fixed for him. He told me not to worry they were just for the look!"
Herring said he never did get them fixed, and the pair sold for £137,500 ($183,500, 165,000 euros) in an online auction to an unnamed bidder.
Hallmark maintained its reputation as the network where romantic miracles can happen-but not in a good way-this week, by performing a high-profile vanishing act on a series of commercials from wedding planning site Zola. Said ads had the temerity/gall/etc. to show two women kissing each other at their wedding, in America, in 2019. As though that might be a thing that actually happens in real life, right?
Per The New York Times, the network reportedly caved like a stack of greeting cards to pressure from One Million Moms, an anti-LGBTQ rights organization that managed to fall about 975,000 moms short of its stated membership with a recent petition calling for the ads to be pulled. (Previous targets of the group's homophobic windmill tilting have included the Muppets, Skittles, and Ellen.) But those 25,000 or so die-hard button clickers were still apparently enough to get the network to deem 4 of the 6 Zola ads-i.e., all of the ones that showed a same-sex couple getting married, natch-to be pulled, vanished as quickly as a manufactured third-act conflict in one of the network's 8 million different Christmas movies.
A representative for the company claimed that it was put off by the ads' "public displays of affection," which took the form of two women kissing for roughly 1.5 seconds at their wedding, an event entirely based around displaying affection in a public fashion. (And also free bacon-wrapped shrimp.) As the Times notes, the company seemed just fine with the PDA in the other two ads, centered as they were on a heterosexual couple similarly sucking face. "We are not allowed to accept creatives that are deemed controversial," a network representative stated, politely allowing the rest of us to fill in the blanks on what "controversial" in this case means.
More than 40 years after Grease's release, John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John are back as Danny and Sandy.
Travolta, 65, and Newton-John, 71, reunited and dressed up as the iconic lovebirds during the Meet n' Grease sing-along event at the Coral Sky Amphitheater in West Palm Beach, Florida on Friday.
In a backstage photo shared by Newton-John, the actress can be seen wearing a yellow cardigan and matching skirt similar to the outfit her character wore in the 1978 film, while her former costar rocks an all-black ensemble complete with a leather jacket.
Later in the evening, Newton-John ditched the "good girl" outfit for a leather jacket and black leggings like the one she wore during the Grease finale. She also joined Travolta for a Q&A with fans following the sing-along.
Since its first season, Starz's fantasy drama American Gods has seen its share of cast and crew shake-ups, including a carousel of showrunners. After the unceremonious departures of original point men Bryan Fuller and Michael Green, who adapted Neil Gaiman's novel in 2017, and Jesse Alexander, who was essentially fired after ongoing script issues with the season two finale, Charles Eglee stepped in to helm the third season. However, it looks like the former Dexter and The Shield executive producer is already making some bold and, quite frankly, perplexing decisions ahead of the new season... like firing fan favorite Orlando Jones.
Jones took to Twitter Saturday morning to candidly inform the public of his surprising ouster.
"September 10, 2018, I was fired from American Gods," Jones says at the top of the video. Soon after, he clarified that he was actually fired in 2019. "There will be no more Mr. Nancy. Don't let these motherfuckers tell you they love Mr. Nancy. They don't." He's careful not to name names, but he goes on to share that the new "Connecticut-born, Yale-educated" showrunner-obviously Eglee-felt Mr. Nancy's "angry" persona was the "wrong message for Black America." He continues: "This white man sits in that decision-making chair and I'm sure he has many Black BFFs who are his advisors and made it clear to him that if he did not get rid of that angry god Mr. Nancy, he'd start a Denmark Vesey uprising in this country. I mean, what else could it be?"
Jones went on to thank Gaiman, Fuller, and Green before signing off. In subsequent tweets, he states that Fremantle, the production company behind the series, was a "nightmare" that treated employees like "2nd class [citizens]." He also made it clear that he had more to share on the matter. As of now, Fremantle, Eglee, nor Starz have commented.
To the naked eye, there is nothing out of the ordinary at the DCP Pegasus gas processing plant in West Texas, one of the thousands of installations in the vast Permian Basin that have transformed America into the largest oil and gas producer in the world.
But a highly specialized camera sees what the human eye cannot: a major release of methane, the main component of natural gas and a potent greenhouse gas that is helping to warm the planet at an alarming rate.
Two New York Times journalists detected this from a tiny plane, crammed with scientific equipment, circling above the oil and gas sites that dot the Permian, an oil field bigger than Kansas. In just a few hours, the plane's instruments identified six sites with unusually high methane emissions.
Operators of the sites identified by The Times are among the very companies that have lobbied the Trump administration, either directly or through trade organizations, to weaken regulations on methane, a review of regulatory filings, meeting minutes and attendance logs shows. These local companies, along with oil-industry lobby groups that represent the world's largest energy companies, are fighting rules that would force them to more aggressively fix emissions like these.
Next year, the administration could move forward with a plan that would effectively eliminate requirements that oil companies install technology to detect and fix methane leaks from oil and gas facilities. By the Environmental Protection Agency's own calculations, the rollback would increase methane emissions by 370,000 tons through 2025, enough to power more than 1 million homes for a year.
For the coca farmers of western Bolivia's Las Yungas region, the loss of president Evo Morales -- himself a one-time coca grower, and a champion of indigenous rights -- is less worrying than the drop in price of their "holy leaf" crop.
And the growers of the coca leaf -- the raw material for making cocaine but also a mainstay of pre-colonial life -- are warning of "war" if the amount of land under legal cultivation is reduced by the interim government in power since Morales resigned last month.
"Coquita," as it is known locally, is the only crop grown in Cruz Loma, a village near the town of Coroico, perched 1,700 meters (5,500 feet) above sea level in the Andes.
"There are no citrus trees, no coffee plants, nothing," said Gladys de Quispe, pointing at a hilly parcel of land of some 1,600 square meters (17,200 square feet), divided into terraces, where her family grows coca leaf.
"The price can't go down, or we'll all die," said the 38-year-old.
Israel on Saturday welcomed a decision by the U.N.'s educational, scientific and cultural agency to drop a famous Belgian carnival off its heritage list after protests over displays of anti-Semitism.
Israel's rare appreciation of UNESCO came a day after the organization removed the Aalst carnival from its Intangible Cultural Heritage list.
The festivity was criticized by anti-discrimination groups after this year's edition included a float depicting Jews with side curls and over sized noses atop piles of money.
The festival was expelled during an annual meeting of a 24-nation committee in Bogota, Columbia, to review nominations. The Belgian delegates declined to react to the decision, but it was the Belgian government which requested the move.
Israel and the United States quit UNESCO at the start of 2019, saying the organization was fostering anti-Israel bias.
A pair of 3D-printed homes built in 24 hours are kicking off the 'world's first 3D-printed community.' They cost residents just $20 per month.
In a rainy, rural site in the Mexican state of Tabasco, a pair of 3D-printed homes represent a milestone: They're the initial two structures in a community that aims to be the world's first 3D-printed housing development.
This month, a team of designers and philanthropists unveiled the houses, which are part of a planned 50-home neighborhood for low-income families.
It's the result of a collaboration between New Story, a San Francisco-based housing nonprofit, and Icon, a construction-technology company that designs 3D printers.
Icon's printer, known as Vulcan II, weighs about 3,800 pounds. It can operate during a power shortage and comes with LED lighting for printing at night.
At a prehistoric archaeological site in Turkey, researchers have discovered two 8,500-year-old human teeth, which had been used as pendants in a necklace or bracelet. Researchers have never documented this practice before in the prehistoric Near East, and the rarity of the find suggests that the human teeth were imbued with profound symbolic meaning for the people who wore them.
During excavations at the Neolithic site of Çatalhöyük in Turkey between 2013 and 2015, researchers found three 8,500-year-old-teeth that appeared to have been intentionally drilled to be worn as beads in a necklace or bracelet. Subsequent macroscopic, microscopic and radiographic analyses confirmed that two of the teeth had indeed been used as beads or pendants, researchers conclude in a newly published article in Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports.
"Not only had the two teeth been drilled with a conically shaped microdrill similar to those used for creating the vast amounts of beads from animal bone and stone that we have found at the site, but they also showed signs of wear corresponding to extensive use as ornaments in a necklace or bracelet," University of Copenhagen archaeologist and first author of the article Scott Haddow said. He added:
"The evidence suggests that the two teeth pendants were probably extracted from two mature individuals post-mortem. The wear on the teeth's chewing surfaces indicates that the individuals would have been between 30-50 years old. And since neither tooth seems to have been diseased-which would likely have caused the tooth to fall out during life, the most likely scenario is that both teeth were taken from skulls at the site."
Researchers have previously found human teeth used for ornamental purposes at European sites from the Upper Palaeolithic and the Neolithic, but this practice has never been documented before in the Near East during these or subsequent timeframes. This makes these finds extremely rare and surprising.
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