Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Garrison Keillor: In the Fatherland for Father's Day
On Sunday our cousin Lulu rode up on her bicycle from Notting Hill, a Swede from Stockholm, who's become a TV producer here and who speaks English with a lovely accent, part high tea, part fried herring. I test her English. She doesn't know "perfidy" or "preposterous" and has only a faint idea of "propensity." No problem. If the Brits go through with Brexit, she can get dual citizenship and stay if she wishes, but she's 29 and a year from now she could be in Sweden or Los Angeles or New York. At the moment, she's excited about an August trip to Texas. She'll go to Austin, go line dancing, see a rodeo, ride through the Hill Country on horseback. After that, she hopes to lose her job so as to be free again.
Steve Israel: Five myths about perks of Congress (The Hill)
The third myth is that members of Congress do not pay into Social Security. The fact is that lawmakers certainly do. The Social Security amendments that became law in 1983 require members of Congress to pay into Social Security, just like most federal government employees.
Andrew Tobias: Has Morgan Freeman Gone Too Far?
June is Pride Month.
Steve Rose: Are horror's audience-baiting puzzles detracting from the plot? (The Guardian)
Both Brightburn and Midsommar leave clues for fans to follow, but there's a danger it's leading them down a rabbit hole.
The Matrix's male power fantasy has dated badly (BBC)
Ahead of its time when it was released 20 years ago, The Matrix is a monument to Generation X self-pity that is out of step with today, writes Nicholas Barber.
Interviews by Phil Hoad: "Richard Linklater: how we made Dazed and Confused" (The Guardian)
'When the studio head realised I was directing, he thought, "Oh no, it's going to be one of those arty, jerk-offski movies." I still have PTSD thinking about it'.
Peter Bradshaw: Toy Story 4 review - new characters but the same old Story (The Guardian)
It may only be a repeat of earlier ideas and plotlines, but compare it to the fourth films in other franchises and Pixar's latest is an amusing and charming gem.
Adam Rasmi: The best way to tell when food goes bad isn't by looking at its label (Quartz)
If you've ever found yourself in your local grocery store wondering what the difference is between "sell by," "best by," "expires by," or "use by" food labels, you're not alone. That confusion contributes to American consumers trashing $161 billion in food each year. Yet most people might be surprised to know that these labels often have very little to do with food safety.
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Presenting
Michael Egan
took the day off.
has returned to semi-retired status.
In memory.
Reader Suggestion
Michelle in AZ
from Bruce
Anecdotes
A man once plagiarized the work of R' Shmuel Shmelkis, taking the good Rabbi's interpretations and saying they were his. R' Shmuel was unconcerned, saying, "As long as he quotes my interpretations and says they are his, I don't mind at all. I would be concerned if he gave his own interpretations and called them mine."
Henry Rowley Bishop wrote the opera Aladdinin competition with Carl Maria von Weber's Oberon. Unfortunately, his "Hunting Chorus" was very similar to Weber's "Hunter's Chorus." When the audience heard Bishop's "Hunting Chorus" at the premiere of Aladdin, they derisively whistled Weber's "Hunter's Chorus."
Ben Hecht, co-author of the comic play The Front Page, was once a starving writer in New York City. He read a book by noted eccentric Charles Fort titled Book of the Damned. The book suggested a plot for a short story when Mr. Hecht immediately wrote and sold. Because of that, he always felt kindly toward Mr. Fort.
Mark Twain once listened to a sermon, and then he told the preacher that he had at home a book that contained every word of the preacher's sermon. This astonished the preacher - and worried him, too, because he did not want to be guilty of even unintentional plagiarism. Mr. Twain later sent the preacher the book - it was a dictionary.
Jacques Offenbach once spent an evening playing the music of Bach for a colleague who was also a composer. The colleague said, "That's grand, but you ought not to make this music known to the public. There is much in it that we might utilize in our own works."
Two plays were written about Dorothy Parker: one by George Oppenheimer and one by Ruth Gordon. Thinking about this, Mrs. Parker said, "Now, I suppose, if I ever wrote a play about myself I'd be sued for plagiarism."
Lou Costello was reading a script for the radio show The Abbott and Costello Program when he said that a certain line wasn't funny. One of Abbott and Costello's writers said, "It got a big laugh on Fred Allen's show last week." Mr. Costello replied, "OK, we'll use it."
George Frideric Handel occasionally "borrowed" from other composers. After being told that something he had supposedly composed was actually written by Bononcini, Handel merely remarked, "It was much too good for Bononcini."
"If you copy from one author, it's plagiarism. If you copy from two, it's research." - Wilson Mizner.
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Bonus Links
Jeannie the Teed-Off Temp
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
JD is on vacation.
Visit JD's site - Kitty Litter Music
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Marine layer burned off in time for lunch.
Mark Hamill Nominates
Carrie Fisher
It's been almost one year since the West Hollywood City Council voted to approve a proposal calling for the removal of Donald Trump's star from the Hollywood Walk of Fame back in August 2018. And although it hasn't yet happened, people on Twitter are banding together to suggest that another celebrity take the president's place - Carrie Fisher.
The trending hashtag #AStarForCarrie was born on Wednesday morning when Fisher's "Star Wars" co-star Mark Hamill addressed last year's city council vote and suggested she'd be a perfect permanent addition to the famed walk.
"Good riddance!" the actor wrote. "I know just who should replace him."
Hours later, tens of thousands of people have joined in support, noting that there's "no one more deserving" than Fisher.
Carrie Fisher
U.S. Poet Laureate
Joy Harjo
Joy Harjo, the acclaimed poet, writer, and musician from Muscogee Creek Nation, has been named the next U.S. Poet Laureate. She is the first Indigenous woman to hold the title, succeeding Tracy K. Smith as the country's 23rd Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry, the official title. The news was confirmed today by Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden.
As the nation's official poet, Harjo will "raise the national consciousness to a greater appreciation of the reading and writing of poetry," reports NPR. She will begin her post in the fall. "It's such an honoring for Native people in this country, when we've been so disappeared and disregarded," said Harjo of her new role. "And yet we're the root cultures, over 500-something tribes and I don't know how many at first contact. But it's quite an honor...I bear that honor on behalf of the people and my ancestors. So that's really exciting for me."
The historic appointment continues last year's momentum for Indigenous women in positions of power. Two Native American women won seats in the House of Representatives in November: Deb Haaland, a Laguna Pueblo from New Mexico, and Sharice Davids, a member of the Ho-Chunk Nation in Kansas. In December, Ruth Buffalo was also sworn in as the first Native American Democratic woman to be elected to the state legislature in North Dakota.
Harjo-who is 68 and lives in Oklahoma, where she was born-began publishing in the 1970s with her first acclaimed book of poems, She Had Some Horses. She has since written seven more books of poetry, including In Mad Love and War, for which she received the American Book Award in 1990, and the 2013 memoir Crazy Brave. She is the recipient of a Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize and recently was elected a Chancellor of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Her newest collection of poetry, An American Sunrise, will be published in September.
Though she has not yet announced concrete plans for her new role as Poet Laureate, Harjo hopes to use her platform to educate others about Indigenous culture and the impact her ancestors have had on the country. "I don't have a defined project right now, but I want to bring the contribution of poetry of the tribal nations to the forefront and include it in the discussion of poetry," she says. "This country is in need of deep healing. We're in a transformational moment in national history and Earth history, so whichever way we move is going to absolutely define us."
Joy Harjo
Nominations
TCA Awards
FX's Pose and Netflix's Russian Doll lead the Television Critics Association's 35th Annual TCA Awards nominations with four each. Pose is nominated for Outstanding Achievement in Drama and Russian Doll for Comedy. Both are nommed for Program of the Year and Outstanding New Program. Pose star Billy Porter is up for Individual Achievement In Drama and Russian Doll actress and co-creator Natasha Lyonne is nommed in the Individual Achievement In Comedy category. The two series will face off in the Outstanding New Program category against fellow freshmen Netflix's Dead To Me, Comedy Central's The Other Two, HBO's Succession, and FX's What We Do In The Shadows.
Additional nominees for the coveted Program Of The Year award are HBO's Chernobyl and Game Of Thrones, Netflix miniseries When They See Us and Amazon's British hit Fleabag.
HBO leads with 15 nominations this year, inching past Netflix which scored 14. FX ranks third with eight nods. Amazon follows with five nominations while CBS and PBS each have four; NBC and Showtime have three; and BBC America and Pop TV have two. AMC, Comedy Central, Disney Jr., Lifetime, MSNBC, Starz, and TBS each has one.
The TCA Awards honor the best series, creators and stars of the 2018-2019 season for outstanding achievements in news and information, youth, reality, drama, comedy, miniseries, and sketch/variety shows. Winners will be announced at the invitation-only presentation on Saturday, August 3 at the Beverly Hilton. Comedy duo and fellow TCA Awards nominees Desus & Mero will host.
The 35th Annual TCA Awards coincide with the 2019 Summer TCA Press Tour, running from Tuesday, July 23 through Thursday, August 8.
TCA Awards
Anchorwomen Sue
NY1
Five newscasters at NY1, a New York City news station, are suing parent company Charter Communications over age and gender discrimination. In a lawsuit obtained by the Associated Press, the anchors allege NY1 "blatantly marginalized them and cast them aside in favor of younger women and men."
Emmy-winning anchor Roma Torre and her co-plaintiffs say Charter Communications, which acquired NY1 in 2016, altered their career trajectories. They say they would like return to the positions they occupied before Charter took control of NY1, and are seeking unspecified damages in the lawsuit.
Joining Torre in the lawsuit are Amanda Farinacci, Vivian Lee, Jeanine Ramirez and Kristen Shaughnessy. They range in age from 40 to 61, according to The New York Times. "We feel we are being railroaded out of the place," Torre told the Times. "Men age on TV with a sense of gravitas, and we as women have an expiration date."
NY1, a first-of-its-kind 24-hour local news channel, is a part of Spectrum News, which has local affiliates across the U.S.
In a news release, the five anchors said women on television "should accurately reflect women in society and be celebrated at every age, not treated like decoration that can be disposed and replaced with a newer version."
NY1
Artists Owed 'Transparency' Over Fire
Universal
The world's largest music group Universal owes artists "transparency" over revelations that a 2008 fire devoured some 500,000 recordings in its care, its chief said in an internal memo.
Universal Music Group CEO and chairman Lucian Grainge released the note to staff Tuesday following a bombshell New York Times magazine investigation that found the blaze tore through a warehouse housing irreplaceable master recordings spanning decades.
The work of stars including Billie Holiday, Louis Armstrong, Bing Crosby, Ella Fitzgerald, Sonny and Cher, Joni Mitchell, Eric Clapton, Elton John, Janet Jackson, Nirvana and Tupac was reportedly engulfed in the flames.
News of the loss of such a treasure trove of master recordings -- one-of-a-kind source material used to create vinyls, CDs and digital copies -- sent shockwaves through the industry, while accusations that UMG downplayed the incident for 11 years sparked an angry backlash.
A subsidiary of French media giant Vivendi headquartered in Santa Monica, California, Universal Music Group is considered one of the "Big Three" music conglomerates alongside Sony Music Entertainment and Warner Music Group.
Universal
Losing Ground To Climate Change
Himalayan Glaciers
Keeping watch over ice on the Himalayan glaciers was certainly not the intended mission of a U.S. spy satellite program, called Hexagon, which operated from 1971 to 1986. Nevertheless, the declassified photos have revealed a rapid acceleration of Himalayan ice melt - doubling in just one generation.
A new study by Columbia University's Earth Institute finds the glaciers have been losing 20 vertical inches of ice per year since 2000, double the rate of the late 20th century. To put that into perspective, the recent amount of ice lost each year is enough to fill 3.2 million Olympic-size swimming pools and more than enough to supply drinking water to every person on Earth for longer than a lifetime.
To reach these conclusions, lead author Joshua Maurer and his team took a unique approach. They analyzed 40 years of satellite images of 650 glaciers spanning 1,200 miles across India, China, Nepal and Bhutan. Much of the 20th-century data came from images taken by U.S. spy satellites. The researchers then created a system to automatically turn these images into 3D models in order to measure the changing elevations of glaciers over time. They then compared these images with more recent data from newer satellites to determine ice volume changes.
Another recent study estimates that water flowing down the mountains each year from 2000 to 2016 was 1.6 times greater because of excess melting. As a result, meltwater lakes are swelling rapidly behind natural dams. These are threatening downstream communities with potentially destructive "glacial lake outburst floods." In Pakistan alone, the U.N. estimates 7.1 million people are at risk.
Another factor for the melting is black carbon. Increasingly, Asian nations are burning record amounts of fossil fuels and biomass, launching soot into the sky. That soot eventually lands on white glacial surfaces, turning them black, which absorbs more sunlight and accelerates melting. The change between 1975 and 2007 can be seen below, with significantly less ice in 2007. The trend has accelerated in recent years.
Himalayan Glaciers
Lost 40% Of Honeybee Colonies
US Beekeepers
Beekeepers across the US lost four in 10 of their honeybee colonies over the past year, as the worst winter on record for tracked bee populations raised fresh concerns over the plight of the crucial pollinators.
Over the past winter, 37% of honeybee colonies were lost to beekeepers, the worst winter decline recorded in the 13-year history of a nationwide survey aimed at charting bees' fortunes. Overall, 40% of colonies died off over the entire year to April, which is above the 38% average since the survey began.
Researchers said the numbers were concerning given the intensive efforts to stem the loss of honeybees, which pollinate an estimated $15bn in US crops each year, enabling the farming of foods including apples, melons, cherries, almonds and blueberries.
The latest survey included data from 4,700 beekeepers from all 50 states, capturing about 12% of the US's estimated 2.69m managed colonies. Researchers behind the survey say it's in line with findings from the US Department of Agriculture, which keeps data on the remaining colonies.
Native wild bee species, such as the American bumblebee, are also thought to be in sharp decline. The troubles faced by bees are part of a broader trend of stunning drops in insect abundance around the world, although the exact contours of this crisis are obscured by a lack of data in many places.
US Beekeepers
Revolver Sells At Auction
Vincent van Gogh
The revolver with which Vincent van Gogh is believed to have shot himself sold for 162,500 euros ($182,000) at a Paris auction on Wednesday - nearly three times the estimate. Billed as "the most famous weapon in the history of art," the rusty 7 mm Lefaucheux revolver was bought by a private collector with a telephone bid.
The troubled Dutch painter died in July 1890 and experts believe he shot himself with the revolver in a field near Auvers-sur-Oise, a village north of Paris where he spent the last few months of his life. Discovered by a farmer in 1965 in the same field, the gun has previously been exhibited at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam.
But the sale was hit by controversy on the eve of the auction as the Van Gogh Institute, which looks after the village inn where the artist spent his last days, condemned the sale. "Nothing suggests that the remains (of the gun) are formally linked with the death of van Gogh," it said in a statement, deploring the "commercialization of a tragedy which deserves more respect."
While Art Auction, which sold the gun, said there is no way of being absolutely certain it is the fatal weapon, they insisted tests showed it has been in the ground for 75 years, which would fit. The Dutch artist had borrowed the gun from the owner of the inn.
He died 36 hours later after staggering back wounded to the inn in the dark. The bullet extracted from van Gogh's chest was the same caliber as the one used by the Lefaucheux revolver.
Vincent van Gogh
Officially A New Species
Cat-Fox
Meet one of the world's 'newest' species - the cat-fox.
There are just 16 cat-foxes roaming around the northern parts of the Mediterranean island of Corsica, and efforts are being made to make them a protected species.
They resemble domestic cats and measure 90cm from head to tail, have wide ears, short whiskers and highly developed canine teeth.
Other distinguishing features include the stripes on the front legs, very dark hind legs and a russet stomach.
The dense, silky coat is a natural repellent for fleas, ticks and lice. The tail usually has two to four rings and a black tip.
Cat-Fox
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