from Bruce
Anecdotes
Prayer
• George Washington said grace at his table although a clergyman was dining with him. After the clergyman had left, Mr. Washington’s wife told him that he should have asked the clergyman to say grace. Mr. Washington expressed regret, then added, “The reverend gentleman will at least be assured that we are not entirely graceless at Mount Vernon.”
• A little girl had been naughty, so she was sent to her room for a quiet time. Afterward, all smiles, she returned to her family, saying, “I prayed to God.” “That’s good,” said her mother. “Did you pray that God would help you be a good girl?” “No,” she replied. “I prayed that God would help you put up with me.”
• When Mark Twain was dying, a relative wrote him to say that she had asked some nuns to pray for him. Mr. Twain wrote back, “I am grateful for the prayers of those good nuns and for yours; they have already answered themselves in giving me a deep pleasure.”
• Edward Everett Hale used to be Chaplain of the United States Senate. He was asked, “When you look at the state of our country, do you pray for the Senators in your charge?” He replied, “No — when I look at our Senators, I pray for our country.”
• Comedian Lou Costello’s mother was Catholic, and she often prayed in the Catholic Church. However, on occasion she also prayed in a nearby synagogue, saying, “It’s closer to home, and I can pray there just as well.”
• If you ever watch gardeners, you will realize that a common weed sometimes accomplishes what God does not — get people on their knees.
Preachers
• Lyndon Baines Johnson used to enjoy telling a story about a man who habitually napped during church services. One day, the preacher got tired of the man’s napping, so he told the congregation, “If you want to go to Heaven, please stand up.” Everyone in the congregation — except the sleeping man — stood up. After the preacher asked everyone to sit down, he said in his normal voice, “If you want to go to Hell,” then he shouted, “STAND UP!” The sleeping man woke up and immediately jumped to his feet, only to look around and see that the other members of the congregation were sitting. So the man looked at the preacher and said, “I don’t know what we’re voting on, but it looks like you and I are the only ones in favor of it.”
• Some people go to great lengths to protect the health of their pastor. Wesleyan preacher William Woughter received a telephone call from a woman who wanted him to go to a hospital and pray with her father. The woman explained that she had gotten his name from a relative who attended his church, and she would have asked her own pastor to pray with her father — except that her father had a highly communicable disease that she didn’t want her own pastor to catch. Yes, Pastor William did go to the hospital to pray with the woman’s father, and no, he didn’t catch the highly communicable disease.
• When St. Patrick was speaking about the Trinity — the doctrine that there is only one God, who is Father, Son, and Holy Ghost — someone asked what sense it made to believe in only one God and yet believe God is Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. St. Patrick bent down and plucked a shamrock — a leaf of the clover plant. He displayed it and showed that it was only one leaf, yet it had three parts. The three parts of the one shamrock leaf correspond to the three parts of the one God. Since then, the shamrock has been a symbol of St. Patrick.
• Preacher George Whitefield and a friend were staying at an inn where they were disturbed by gamblers in the next room. Mr. Whitefield felt that gambling was a sin and so he went next door and remonstrated with the gamblers about their behavior, then he returned to his room and prepared for bed. His criticisms had no effect, for the people next door continued gambling, so his friend asked what he had received for his trouble. Mr. Whitefield replied, “A soft pillow,” and then he went to sleep.
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© Copyright Bruce D. Bruce; All Rights Reserved
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Presenting
Michael Egan
U.S.A. said:
has returned to semi-retired status.
In memory.
BRUCE'S RECOMMENDATION
BANDCAMP MUSIC
BRUCE'S RECOMMENDATION OF BANDCAMP MUSIC
Music: "Cool Like David Suzuki"
Album: HALCYON DAYS
Artist: The Silverbeets
Artist Location: Hobart, Tasmania, Australia
Info: Founded in 2014, The Silverbeets are:
Farnz Cordeaux: Rhythm Guitar & Vocals
Billy O’Brien: Drums
Nigel Hope: Bass
Jamie Scott: Lead Guitar & Vocals
“Girlfriend” is also on the album.
Price: $1 (AUS) for track; $8 (AUS) for 8-track album
Genre: Alternative.
Links:
HALCYON DAYS
The Silverbeets on Bandcamp
The Silverbeets on YouTube
Other Links:
David Bruce's Amazon Author Page
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
David Bruce has over 140 Kindle books on Amazon.com.
Reader Suggestion
Michelle in AZ
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
Haven't seen a single caterpillar this year. Sigh.
Burns Again 13 Years To The Day
Universal Studios
A fire has been extinguished after it burned through parts of Universal Studios in Los Angeles on the 13th anniversary of a fire in the same amusement resort that torched iconics pieces of American pop culture history.
Footage of the blaze was shared on Twitter and shows the flames destroying a car park with a huge blown-up Minion figure from Despicable Me attached. Another video shared Twitter showcases someone crying out, “Oh my god, the Minion!”
The fire is believed to have began early on Wednesday morning. at the Universal City section of the park, located to the 101 Freeway, near Lankershim Boulevard.
A fire in 2008 destroyed a King Kong attraction and the masters of many legendary American recording artists signed to Universal Records, such as Aretha Franklin, Joan Baez, Billie Holliday and Chuck Berry.
“Lost in the fire was, undoubtedly, a huge musical heritage,” documents about the fire read, as reported by The New York Times. The full extent of the loss was not fully understood until two years ago when the findings of an investigation into the 2008 fire was published.
Universal Studios
Prime Time Nielsens
Ratings
In a designation that feels a little less significant every year, CBS has finished the 2020-21 television season as the nation’s most-watched television network for the 13th consecutive time.
CBS averaged 6.28 million prime time viewers in the Nielsen company’s measurement of live-plus-seven viewing, which includes everyone who watched a particular program live and within the next week. CBS has won 18 of the last 19 years, the one-time exception being Fox when “American Idol” dominated TV.
NBC’s autumn telecasts of “Sunday Night Football” finished as the most-watched individual program for the 10th straight year.
ABC’s “World News Tonight” won the evening news ratings race, averaging 7.4 million viewers last week. NBC’s “Nightly News” had 6.4 million and the “CBS Evening News” had 4.8 million.
The 20 most popular shows for the week of May 24-30, their networks and viewerships:
1. “NCIS,” CBS, 8.96 million.
2. “Chicago Fire,” NBC, 7.263 million.
3. “Chicago Med,” NBC, 7.259 million.
4. “FBI,” CBS, 7.08 million.
5. “The Voice” (Tuesday), NBC, 6.73 million.
6. “The Voice” (Monday), NBC, 6.55 million.
7. “911,” Fox, 6.35 million.
8. “Chicago PD,” NBC, 6.33 million.
9. “60 Minutes,” CBS, 6.09 million.
10. “FBI: Most Wanted,” CBS, 5.79 million.
11. “The Masked Singer,” Fox, 5.51 million.
12. “911: Lone Star,” Fox, 5.21 million.
13. “This is Us,” NBC, 5.14 million.
14. “Station 19,” ABC, 4.59 million.
15. “Law & Order: SVU,” NBC, 4.38 million.
16. “Grey’s Anatomy,” ABC, 4.33 million.
17. “Young Sheldon,” CBS, 4.25 million.
18. “United States of Al,” CBS, 4.06 million.
19. “Law & Order: Organized Crime,” NBC, 4.04 million.
20. “The Good Doctor,” ABC, 4.03 million.
Ratings
Paid $4 Billion to Music Industry
YouTube
YouTube on Wednesday said it paid more than $4 billion to the music industry last year, including artists, songwriters and rights holders.
That $4 billion payout amounts to about 20% of the Google-owned video giant’s ad revenue from last year. It also represents a 33% increase from the amount YouTube paid out the year prior, when YouTube forked over $3 billion to the music industry.
Lyor Cohen, YouTube’s global head of music, said in a blog post that 30% of its $4 billion went toward user-generated content.
“YouTube is the world’s largest stage, and advertisers are eager to tap into the deep music engagement that the platform enables,” Cohen said. “With over 2 billion users watching music videos monthly, YouTube allows advertisers to reach audiences they can’t find anywhere else. In addition, we added more paid members in Q1 ’21 than in any other quarter in our history.”
While the post was light on details, it did offer some clarity on how YouTube stacks up against other major players in the music business. Spotify, for example, recently shared it paid $5 billion to the music industry in 2020 – and more than $23 billion overall since the streaming service launched in 2006. On Wednesday, Cohen said Youtube’s goal is to “become the leading revenue generator for the music industry” – and it’ll need to leapfrog Spotify to make it happen.
YouTube
Long Beach
Queen Mary
In the 85 years since its maiden voyage, the RMS Queen Mary has survived rogue waves, transatlantic crossings and even a world war.
For the last five decades, it's enjoyed a second life docked in Long Beach, riding waves of popularity and tough times as a tourist attraction.
After years of neglect by a string of operators, the Queen Mary is so creaky and leaky that it needs $23 million in immediate repairs, according to a trove of court documents and inspection reports released last month. There is growing concern that if something is not done soon, the ship could fall into critical disrepair and be in danger of sinking.
The Queen Mary's current state of disrepair is extensive: Structural steel is corroded, the bilge system is aging, the hull is compromised and leaks and safety hazards abound, according to an April 28 inspection by city-hired marine engineering firm Elliott Bay Design Group, as first reported in the Long Beach Post.
But nobody seems willing or able to pay for it. The city of Long Beach owns the Queen Mary, but officials said it's not their responsibility to make repairs on the ship that for decades has been leased out to operators. The current operator is locked in bankruptcy proceedings.
Queen Mary
Phone Records Seized
4 NYT Reporters
The Trump Justice Department secretly obtained the phone records of four New York Times reporters as part of a leak investigation, the newspaper reported Wednesday.
It is the third instance in the last month in which a news media organization has disclosed that federal authorities seized the records of its journalists in an effort to identify sources for national security stories published during President Donald Trump (R-Lock Him Up)’s administration.
Justice Department spokesman Anthony Coley said the department notified the newspaper on Wednesday that it had obtained phone records for the four reporters last year and that it had tried to obtain non-content email records as part of “a criminal investigation into the unauthorized disclosure of classified information.”
The newspaper said the records that were seized covered a nearly four-month period in 2017 and belonged to reporters Matt Apuzzo, Adam Goldman, Eric Lichtblau and Michael S. Schmidt. Lichtblau has since left the newspaper.
The Justice Department did not disclose which article it was investigating, according to the newspaper. But the period covered by the phone record seizure encompasses an April 2017 story from the four journalists that described the decision-making of then-FBI Director James Comey during the Hillary Clinton email investigation, and described a classified document obtained by Russian hackers.
4 NYT Reporters
Patient Influx
Kansas
The number of abortions performed in Kansas increased by 9.1% last year as far more women traveled from Oklahoma and Texas to terminate pregnancies than in 2019 and the state reported that out-of-state patients outnumbered Kansas patients for the first time in almost 50 years.
The state Department of Health and Environment says 7,542 abortions were performed in 2020, an increase of 626 from 6,916 in 2019.
Advocates on both side of the issue said Tuesday that much of that increase likely occurred because Republican governors in Oklahoma and Texas sought to ban most abortions last spring, prompting women from those states to travel to Kansas for the procedure. In Kansas, Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly refused to take a similar step, calling “reproductive health” an “essential need.”
Women and girls from Oklahoma and Texas had 566 abortions in Kansas in 2020, up from 110 in 2019. The additional 456 abortions were the bulk of the total increase in abortions in Kansas.
The Kansas health department said 3,901 abortions, or nearly 52%, were for patients from outside the state. The last time the department had reported that more abortions were performed on patients from outside Kansas than on patients from Kansas was 1973, the same year that the U.S. Supreme Court legalized abortion nationwide.
Kansas
Boaters Rescue
Lake Moses
It could be viewed as a dramatic demonstration of the concept of karma: a group of young boaters hurling homophobic abuse towards another vessel flying gay pride flags, then needing to be rescued by their intended victims when their own boat explodes into a ball of flame.
Sunday’s incident on Washington state’s Lake Moses occurred two days before the start of June, which is known as gay pride month because of demonstrations and celebrations centered on the annual pride parades in cities around the world to commemorate the Stonewall uprising for LGBTQ equal rights in New York in 1969.
Video of last weekend’s happenings has gone viral on TikTok, amassing more than 8m views and prompting an investigation by the Grant county sheriff, Tom Jones.
“We got them out of the water safely, we were nicer than they were,” the video’s author posted alongside the clip, noting that the three people rescued, two men and a woman, did not offer any thanks.
The video shows a woman in the boat flipping her middle finger as they sped by, and according to Robbie the boat made a sharp turn and then circled around them at least six times, spraying water on to them and causing their boat to rock.
Lake Moses
Baby Name Plummeted in Popularity
‘Karen’
In news that will come as unsurprising to anyone who hasn’t been living under a rock, the popularity of ‘Karen’ as a baby name has dropped dramatically in 2020.
Huff Post reports that new data from the Social Security Administration suggests ‘Karen’ fell out of favor with new parents in 2020, likely due to how the name became associated with entitled, obnoxious, aggressive, and racist middle-aged white women. The name ranked No. 831 in popularity in the United States for female baby names last year, giving the name ‘Karen’ its lowest ranking on the list since 1927.
Only 325 babies were named Karen in 2020, but the year prior there were 439. That’s the lowest number of newborn girls named Karen since 1932 and contrasts heavily with 1965, which was the peak-Karen year with almost 33,000 Karens born. The name has been gradually losing popularity over the past few decades, and it’s unclear if the memeification of ‘Karen’ as a pejorative sparked the decrease. It is, however, hard not to make some sort of connection here.
On an almost weekly basis, the internet has gotten a new Karen video to talk about. In fact, a TikTok video that circulated last week showed an unidentified woman making a scene at an airport. “I want the manager of the airport here,” she said in the clip, which is essentially the defacto catchphrase for entitled white women in America.
‘Karen’
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