from Bruce
Anecdotes
Practical Jokes
• Screenwriter and playwright Charles MacArthur was a good chess player, and he often played chess at his club. When he met someone new there, he would pretend to be chess grandmaster José Capablanca, affect a Spanish accent, then beat the newcomer at a game of chess. However, once he pretended to be Mr. Capablanca, but the newcomer handily defeated him, getting him in trouble without spending much thought about his moves and dashing off for a dip in the pool while Mr. MacArthur sweated and thought deeply about what move to make next. After the game was over, the newcomer introduced himself — he was the real José Capablanca.
• A retired Navy officer once dined at the home of Theodore Giesel, aka Dr. Seuss, where he fell asleep after supper. The officer’s coat was unbuttoned, revealing his stiff white shirt. This was not an opportunity to be missed, so Dr. Seuss decorated the white shirt with several drawings of fantastical creatures.
Prejudice
• The college-educated father of Virginia Hamilton, famed author of books for young people, faced racial prejudice. He was African-American, and when he dressed himself in a suit and went to a bank where he had been told that a “suitable job” awaited him, he was handed a broom and a mop. He threw both the broom and the mop a long distance inside the bank before leaving. He then got a job managing food services at Antioch College. Virginia also faced racial prejudice. She graduated at the top of her high-school class, which should have resulted in a college scholarship for her, but the scholarship went to a white student instead. Therefore, she approached Jesse Triechler, the wife of a theater professor at Antioch. Both Jesse and her husband, Paul, knew that Virginia was highly intelligent, and they knew that she had written a play that she had produced in high school. Jesse got on the telephone and kept calling people until she found someone in New York who was willing to sponsor a scholarship for Virginia at Antioch. The scholarship paid for her tuition and for her room and board.
• Playwright Tennessee Williams hated racism. In 1947, his Glass Menagerie played to all-white audiences in Washington, D.C. He tried to stop this from happening, but he was unable. Therefore, he wrote to The New York Times that “any future contract I make will contain a clause to keep the show out of Washington while this undemocratic practice continues.” Mr. Williams could see the humor in life as well as the evil. In 1977 he was asked to leave the Shaw Theater in London because he kept laughing during a performance of The Glass Menagerie. Michael Billington writes that “his incessant hilarity at this memory of his own youth was disturbing the rest of the audience.”
Problem-Solving
• In 1923, Argentine author Jorge Luis Borges self-published his first book: a 64-page volume of poetry titled Fervor de Buenos Aires (Adoration of Buenos Aires). Only 300 copies were printed, and Mr. Borges was not out to make money but instead to get noticed. He took 50 or 100 copies to Alfredo Bianchi, an editor of the literary magazine Nosotros, whose offices were frequented by the literati, many of whom left their coats in one of the offices. Mr. Bianchi saw Mr. Borges with the books and asked, “Do you expect me to sell these books for you?” Mr. Borges replied, “No. Although I have written them, I am not altogether a lunatic. I thought I might ask you to slip some of these books into the pockets of those coats hanging out there.” Mr. Bianchi did just that, and some literary VIPs read Mr. Borges’ book, and some of them wrote about the book. In that way, Mr. Borges started to get a reputation as a poet.
• Fantasy author Terry Pratchett discovered the library at an early age, but he also discovered that children were given only four tickets, meaning that they could check out only four books at a time. Therefore, he asked the head librarian if he could help out on Saturdays. The head librarian was willing, and quickly young Terry had 146 library tickets because he wrote the tickets himself. Being an honorary librarian meant that he was an honorary adult, so he began checking out and reading all the books he could find on fantasy, and on all the subjects that looked like fantasy, such as folklore, and mythology, and ancient history, and so on. He says, “And so I got educated by one thing leading to another. What was nice was when facts I came upon began to cross-reference with others I had already learned, when a web of knowledge started to form.”
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© Copyright Bruce D. Bruce; All Rights Reserved
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Presenting
Michael Egan
has returned to semi-retired status.
In memory.
BRUCE'S RECOMMENDATION
BANDCAMP MUSIC
BRUCE'S RECOMMENDATION OF BANDCAMP MUSIC
Music: "Fast Johnny"
Album: COTTONWOOD
Artist: Megan Bee
Artist Location: Athens, Ohio
Info:
“Singer-songwriter Megan Bee writes with an unquenchable wanderlust and a raw love for the land. In the summer of 2020 she released her third studio album, WAITING, which was named album of the year by THE ARK OF MUSIC. The album follows her 2017 release LIKE A CANYON, which won The Ohio Music Awards Best Americana and Best Singer-Songwriter Album along with a finalist spot in the 2018 USA Songwriting Competition.
“Her music is a blend of distinctly homespun vocals, acoustic simplicity, yearning soulfulness, and winsome storytelling. Megan's background as an environmental educator, traveling farmhand, and vagabond once took her into a desert wilderness where she found her voice around a campfire. She bases out of the rolling hills of Athens, Ohio and frequently roams the country playing festivals, coffeehouses, brewpubs, house concerts, and around campfires.
Price: $1 (USD) for track; $12 (USD) for 14-track album
Genre: Americana. Singer-Songwriter.
Links:
COTTONWOOD
Megan Bee on Bandcamp
Megan Official Website
Megan Bee on YouTube
Megan Bee on Facebook
Megan Bee: Live From Home
Megan Bee at Ohio University’s Scripps Amphitheater: 16 September 2021
Other Links:
Bruce’s Music Recommendations: FREE pdfs
David Bruce's Smashwords Page
David Bruce's Blog #1
David Bruce's Blog #2
David Bruce's Blog #3
David Bruce's Apple iBookstore
Reader Suggestion
Michelle in AZ
Stephen Suggests
Ukraine
New Venture
Michael Egan
Bonus Links
Jeannie the Teed-Off Temp
Reader Comment
Current Events
Linda >^..^<
We are all only temporarily able bodied.
Thanks, Linda!
that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Foggy night.
Implores Kids To Read Banned Books
LeVar Burton
On The Daily Show Tuesday night, host Trevor Noah discussed the book ban efforts that are rapidly spreading across the U.S.
Since the start of the school year, the American Library Association has tracked more than 230 book challenges nationwide by groups of parents, officials and lawmakers who are trying to ban books, which baffled Noah, who exclaimed, "They want to burn books? Burn books? We're not in the 1900s. We're living in 2022. We shouldn't be burning books. We have air fryers and microwaves and all kinds of cool shit now. We could be filleting the books." Noah went on to explain how the types of books that are being challenged are getting out of hand.
Books on race, gender and sexuality are disappearing from school shelves, along with books about coming-of-age and dealing with real world issues like depression, gender politics, racial injustice. Even books about history, like the holocaust and slavery are being called out.
However, there were no "acceptable" books Burton could read as he shared, for example, that the Rosa Parks children's book is banned "because reading about segregation is divisive." So the Reading Rainbow host simply pleaded to kids: "There are plenty of books to choose from, but you know what? No. Read the books they don't want you to. That's where the good stuff is."
Finally, Burton yelled, "Read banned books!"
LeVar Burton
Live-Action/Animated Hybrid
Looney Tunes
Following the success of its recent Peacemaker series that included a Season 2 renewal, Warner Bros and John Cena are staying in business together. Cena is set to star in the WB’s Looney Tunes animated hybrid pic Coyote vs. Acme. Dave Green will direct, with a screenplay from Samy Burch based on the Looney Tunes characters and the New Yorker article “Coyote v. Acme” by Ian Frazier.
The film follows Wile E. Coyote, who after ACME products fail him one too many times in his dogged pursuit of the Roadrunner, decides to hires a billboard lawyer to sue the ACME Corporation. The case pits Wile E. and his lawyer against the latter’s intimidating former boss (Cena), but a growing friendship between man and cartoon stokes their determination to win.
Chris DeFaria and James Gunn are producing, the latter, who also created the Peacemaker series, under his Two Monkeys, A Goat and Another, Dead, Monkey production banner. The film is set to bow in theaters on July 21, 2023.
Cena has been on quite the tear as of late including Peacemaker, on which he reprises the character he made famous in last year’s The Suicide Squad. The series created by Gunn, who wrote all eight episodes of Season 1 and directed five, was given a Season 2 renewal today ahead of the Season 1 finale that drops at midnight Thursday.
Looney Tunes
To Auction
De Beers Cullinan Blue Diamond
Sotheby's announced Wednesday that it would offer the largest-ever blue diamond to go up for auction at a sale in Hong Kong in April.
The auction house said it expected the 15.10-carat De Beers Cullinan Blue diamond to sell for more than $48 million.
The diamond is the "largest internally flawless step cut vivid blue diamond" ever graded by the Gemological Institute of America (GIA), Sotheby's said in a statement.
It was cut from a rough stone discovered in discovered at the Cullinan mine in South Africa in April 2021.
The diamond is bigger than the Oppenheimer Blue, a 14.62 carat stone that set the world record price for a blue diamond at auction in May 2016 when it sold for $57.5 million.
De Beers Cullinan Blue Diamond
Daytona 500
Little Rupert
NASCAR on Wednesday named Fox CEO Lachlan Murdoch the honorary starter of the season-opening Daytona 500.
Murdoch, the executive chair and chief executive officer of Fox Corp., will wave the green flag Sunday to start “The Great American Race.” The 64th running will be aired live on Fox, which is in contract negotiations with NASCAR on the current television deal that expires at the end of the 2024 season.
The Daytona 500 will have a heavy Fox presence: Pro Football Hall of Famer Charles Woodson, a Fox Sports analyst, is the grand marshal. Landon Cassill is driving a car fielded by Spire Motorsports and sponsored by Fox Nation.
Little Rupert
A Million 'Extra' Deaths
U.S.
Over a million more Americans than expected have died during the covid-19 pandemic, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has found. An overwhelming majority of these excess deaths can be directly tied to the coronavirus, but others may be the result of increased fatalities from conditions indirectly worsened by the pandemic.
The CDC has been keeping track of excess deaths (deaths above the average baseline of a given time period) throughout the pandemic. As of last week, their tally climbed to over a million dead, and as of Wednesday morning, it stands at 1,045,389. Officially, just around 925,000 Americans have died from covid-19.
Excess deaths are thought to provide a clearer picture of the destruction wrought by large-scale mortality events like a pandemic. Early on, for instance, it was clear that many deaths linked to the pandemic in the U.S. weren’t being counted as such, though tracking has improved since then. But even now, many countries appear to have dramatically underestimated their covid-19 death tolls, likely as a result of poorly functioning health care systems and intentional attempts to downplay the pandemic’s impact.
A substantial proportion of these excess deaths were explicitly caused by an acute infection from the coronavirus. Even people who survive their initial bout of covid-19 can be left with a higher risk of dying from conditions that arose or worsened as a result of infection, particularly cardiovascular problems. But some deaths may be linked to trends indirectly tied to the pandemic.
Fatal car accidents have noticeably risen during the past two years, for instance, perhaps because drivers have taken more risks on emptier roads. Other conditions like cancer or heart disease may have turned deadly as a result of people not getting timely care during spikes of the pandemic or due to a shortage of precious resources like donated blood. Yet some causes of death have actually become less prominent during the pandemic, such as deaths from influenza and other respiratory infections, due to containment measures that curtailed these less contagious diseases.
U.S.
Rape-Kit DNA
San Francisco
The San Francisco district attorney’s stunning claim that California crime labs are using DNA from sexual assault survivors to investigate unrelated crimes shocked prosecutors nationwide, and advocates said the practice could affect victims’ willingness to come forward.
District Attorney Chesa Boudin said he became aware of the “opaque practice” last week after prosecutors found a report among hundreds of pages of evidence in the case against a woman recently charged with a felony property crime. The papers referred to a DNA sample collected from the woman during a 2016 rape investigation.
Boudin read from the report Tuesday at a news conference and said he could not share it because of privacy concerns, but his office allowed the San Francisco Chronicle to review the documents. The newspaper said the woman was tied to a burglary in late 2021 during “a routine search” of a San Francisco Police Department crime lab database. The match came from DNA gathered from the same laboratory listed in a report on the sexual assault, The Chronicle reported.
Boudin said someone at the crime lab told him the practice was a standard procedure, according to Rachel Marshall, Boudin’s spokeswoman. Crime lab Director Mark Powell did not immediately respond Wednesday to an email from The Associated Press seeking comment.
California law allows local law enforcement crime labs to operate their own forensic databases that are separate from federal and state databases. The law also lets municipal labs perform forensic analysis, including DNA profiling, using those databases — without regulation by the state or others.
San Francisco
Stopped At Border
MeinPillows
Stauch supporter of (the) former President Donald Trump and businessman Mike Lindell may have been crying into his MyPillow Tuesday night, after he and a truck chock full of his aforementioned infomercial sleep accessories were denied entry into Canada, the National Post and The Independent report.
Lindell was reportedly on his way to distribute "pillows and Bibles" to the truckers protesting Canada's COVID-19 restrictions, writes the Independent. The MyPillow CEO and an accompanying videographer were later stopped at the Port Huron-Sarnia border crossing, and Lindell was reportedly turned back because he was not fully vaccinated and did not bring a negative PCR test with him.
Meanwhile, a MyPillow truck loaded with over 10,000 MyPillows (including 1,000 "Bible pillows" for children) was intercepted before crossing the Ambassador Bridge into Windsor, Ontario, reports the National Post. That vehicle was turned back because the driver also did not bring a negative PCR test, per a Canadian government official.
MeinPillows
New Breakthrough
Time Crystals
New experimental work has yielded a room-temperature time crystal in a system that is not isolated from its ambient surroundings.
This, the researchers say, paves the way for chip-scale time crystals that can be used in real-world settings, away from expensive laboratory equipment required to keep them running.
"When your experimental system has energy exchange with its surroundings, dissipation and noise work hand-in-hand to destroy the temporal order," says engineer Hossein Taheri of the University of California, Riverside.
In regular crystals, the constituent atoms are arranged in a fixed, three-dimensional grid structure – the atomic lattice of a diamond or quartz crystal is a good example. These repeating lattices can differ in configuration, but within a given formation they don't move around very much; they only repeat spatially.
In time crystals, the atoms behave a bit differently. They oscillate, spinning first in one direction, and then the other. These oscillations – referred to as 'ticking' – are locked to a regular and particular frequency. Where the structure of regular crystals repeats in space, in time crystals it repeats in space and time.
Time Crystals
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