from Bruce
Anecdotes
Olympics
• As a little girl, figure skater Sasha Cohen sometimes watched a videotape of Kristi Yamaguchi winning a gold medal at the 1992 Olympics; however, she was so young that she didn’t realize that she was watching a tape. She thought that she was seeing a new competition each time, and she was impressed that Ms. Yamaguchi kept winning gold medal after gold medal. Even as a little girl, Sasha had won a few medals at kids’ competitions. These were displayed on her bedroom wall, and she thought that Ms. Yamaguchi’s wall had to be covered with gold medals.
• In 1968, the Soviet Union invaded Czechoslovakia. Czech gymnast Vera Caslavska did not want the Soviets in her country, so she was not permitted to train in a proper facility. She ended up practicing her floor exercise in a field, and tree limbs substituted for bars during her training. Nevertheless, despite the lack of proper training facilities, she triumphed at the 1968 Olympic Games, winning four gold medals, including one in the all-around competition, and two silver medals, including one in the team competition.
• At the 1896 Olympic Games in Greece, James Connolly competed in the hop, skip, and jump, an event that is now known as the triple jump. The French competitor made a very good effort, so Mr. Connolly threw his hat a little further than the French competitor had gone, then he proceeded to better the French competitor’s effort. When Mr. Connolly threw out his hat, the crowd was shocked, but when he tripled-jumped past his hat, they cheered.
• Watching TV with someone who has a lesbian sensibility can be interesting. Lesbian comedian Kate Clinton and her significant other were watching the Salt Lake Winter Olympics when the women’s luge event came on the screen. Her significant other said, “The luge is a very gay event.” Almost immediately, as they watched the luge sled hurtling down a chute, the TV announcer said, “She’s controlling the whole thing with her inner thighs.”
• During autumn of 1975, David Leonardi took several photographs of figure skater Dorothy Hamill outside. During the photo session, a single leaf fell on top of Ms. Hamill’s head. When Mr. Leonardi snapped her photograph, the leaf looked exactly like a small crown. The leaf was prophetic—Ms. Hamill became queen of the 1976 Winter Olympic Games in Innsbruck, Austria, when she won the gold medal in women’s figure skating.
• American Al Oerter became a discus thrower by accident. In high school, he had been running the mile, but when an errant discus fell near him during practice he picked it up. Rather than walk it back, he threw it back—and it landed 50 feet past the discus throwers. His coach ran up to him and said, “You’re now my discus thrower.” Good choice. Mr. Oerter won the gold medal in discus at the 1956, 1960, 1964, and 1968 Olympic Games.
• At the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich, Germany, Soviet Olga Korbut captured the hearts of sports fans everywhere with her open personality that reflected happiness or sadness and with her incredible flexibility and gymnastics skills. Fans were so taken with her that at one point when the television coverage broke away for a commercial, the announcer said, “We’ll be back with the Olga Korbut show in just a minute.”
• To get ready for the 1996 Olympic Games, softball shortstop Dot Richardson installed a batting cage in her apartment, and she practiced whenever she felt like it. One day, she discovered this note on the door to her apartment: “Please train for the Olympics a little earlier in the evening. Thanks.”
Opera
• Lots of people enjoy opera when it is broadcast on the radio. A football fan had an unusual problem when the Metropolitan Opera was broadcast on the radio at the same time his favorite football team was playing a game on TV. He solved the problem by listening to the opera on the radio while watching the football game on TV with the sound turned off.
• In 1946, opera singer Helen Traubel met the widow of a famous baseball player. The widow told her, “My husband was always such a fan of yours. He would go and hear you whenever he could. He never told any of the fellows on the team because he was afraid they would think he was a sissy.” The baseball player was Lou Gehrig.
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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: "Birdy Cage"
Album: NEVER HAVE I EVER
Artist: Shirley Shrimp
Artist Location: Las Cruces, New Mexico
Info:
“Our first official album! A special thanks to our friends and family for being there. This one is for everyone who helped us become Shrimps along the way.”
“Glittery garage-soul for your inner diva. Ya best leave your heart at home cuz' we bound to break it.”
“Hailing from the arid New Mexican desert, Shirley Shrimp will keep you hydrated (in tears). Our glittery diva hoedown will feed your inner chihuahua — with lots of bark and lots of bite.”
Price: Name Your Price (Includes FREE) for 15-track album
Genre: Various, Including Doo Wop.
Links:
NEVER HAVE I EVER
Shirley Shrimp on Bandcamp
Shirley Shrimp on YouTube
Shirley Shrimp on Instagram
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
Stephen Suggests
Ruthless Con
Ron Johnson Revealed the Secret GOP Ruthless Con to the World - by Thom Hartmann - The Hartmann Report
Stephen F
Thanks, Stephen!
New Venture
Michael Egan
BRUCE'S RECOMMENDATION
Thread
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.
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
Computer is acting up. Uh-oh.
The Trevor Project
Lil Nas X
Lil Nas X has been awarded the inaugural Suicide Prevention Advocate of the Year Award from the advocacy group The Trevor Project.
The Trevor Project is a nonprofit dedicated to suicide prevention and crisis intervention for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer and questioning young people.
The group cited Lil Nas X’s “openness about struggling with his sexuality and suicidal ideation, his continued advocacy around mental health issues, and his unapologetic celebration of his queer identity.”
The Trevor Project’s national survey on LGBTQ youth mental health in 2021 found that 42% of LGBTQ youth seriously considered attempting suicide in the past year, including more than half of transgender and nonbinary youth.
Lil Nas X
Astoundingly Wrong
Susan Collins
It turns out that Susan Collins was wrong. Again.
Collins, the Republican senator from Maine, has long cultivated an image as one of her party's moderates, particularly on the issue of abortion. But in 2018 she cast a critical vote for conservative Brett Kavanaugh to replace moderate swing vote Anthony Kennedy on the Supreme Court — and did so despite opposition from pro-choice activists. Kavanaugh recognized the court's 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling as a long-established precedent, Collins said. "Protecting this right [to abortion] is important to me," she told the Senate. She defended her support the next year, even after Kavanaugh voted to let a Louisiana anti-abortion law take effect.
Collins' belief in Kavanaugh was implausible in 2018. It's less plausible now. On Wednesday, the Supreme Court allowed a new Texas law — one that bans abortions after six weeks of pregnancy — to go into effect. Later this year, justices will hear a direct challenge to Roe in a case from Mississippi. Abortion rights in the United States have rarely seemed more fragile than at the present moment.
If the court does indeed overturn Roe — or finds a way to gut the ruling without exactly striking down the precedent — Kavanaugh won't do it by himself. There are five other conservative justices on the nine-member court, including Amy Coney Barrett. But Kavanaugh's elevation to the court will rightly be judged as a key moment in shifting the court's ideological balance on abortion and other issues. And Collins will have enabled that shift, in spite of her professed values.
At this point, Collins doesn't have the greatest track record in judging people. She voted against convicting Donald Trump during his first impeachment, famously saying Trump had learned "a pretty big lesson" from the affair. He hadn't, and Collins ended up voting for conviction at his second impeachment trial. Kavanaugh, however, has a lifetime appointment to the bench. Susan Collins won't get a do-over this time.
Susan Collins
Treasure Trove
Teotihuacan
More than a decade after Sergio Gomez began excavating a tunnel under a towering Mexican pyramid, the archeologist still spends most of his time studying the massive cache of sacred artifacts carefully placed there by priests some 2,000 years ago.
The volume and variety of objects hidden in the sealed tunnel under Teotihuacan's ornate Feathered Serpent Pyramid has shattered records for discoveries at the ancient city, once the most populous metropolis of the Americas and now a top tourist draw just outside modern-day Mexico City.
Over 100,000 artifacts from the tunnel have been cataloged so far, ranging from finely-carved statues, jewelry, shells, and ceramics as well as thousands of wooden and metallic objects that mostly survived the passage of time intact.
On a recent tour of the tunnel and conservation workshops where his 30-member team pores over the trove, Gomez showed off some of the dig's most spectacular and until now unreported finds - all part of ceremonial offerings left along the 100-meter-long (330 ft) tunnel, which ended in three chambers directly under the pyramid's mid-point.
"Can you see it?" Gomez asked, shining the light of his cellphone on a tennis-ball-sized carved amber sphere he picked up from a workshop table. Illuminated, it looks like molten lava.
Teotihuacan
On Command
Pupils
A 23-year-old student in Germany can shrink and enlarge his pupils on demand, according to a new case report — a feat that was previously thought to be impossible.
Two tiny opposing muscles in the eye act as puppeteers of each pupil (the dark center of the eye), dilating or enlarging them in a dark environment to let in more light and constricting them in a bright environment to limit the amount of light that flows in. This process was thought to be completely automatic; when you step into a dark room, you don't have to consciously tell your pupils to change size. Pupils can also change size in response to other factors, such as increases in arousal.
For example, researchers already knew that just thinking about the sun could constrict the pupils and that thinking of a dark room or mentally calculating something could dilate them, said Christoph Strauch, senior author of the new case report and an assistant professor in the experimental psychology department at Utrecht University in the Netherlands.
But no one thought it was possible to change pupil size by directly controlling it like a muscle — that is, until a student of psychology at Ulm University in Germany contacted Strauch after taking one of his courses. (Strauch was previously a doctoral student at Ulm University).
When he was about 15 or 16 years old, the young man — identified in the case report by his initials, D.W. — realized that he could change the size of his pupils. "I showed a friend that I can 'tremble' with my eyeballs, and he noticed that my pupils became small," D.W. told Strauch and his colleagues at Ulm University. But D.W. didn't notice that he had this ability until he played computer games for long periods of time.
Pupils
Breached
Voter System Software
Republican efforts questioning the outcome of the 2020 presidential race have led to voting system breaches that election security experts say pose a heightened risk to future elections.
Copies of the Dominion Voting Systems software used to manage elections — from designing ballots to configuring voting machines and tallying results — were distributed at an event this month in South Dakota organized by MeinPillow CEO Mike Lindell (R-Bender Ahead), an ally of former President Donald Trump (R-Lock Him Up) who has made unsubstantiated claims about last year’s election.
The software copies came from voting equipment in Mesa County, Colorado, and Antrim County, Michigan, where Trump allies had sue unsuccessfully challenging the results from last fall.
The Dominion software is used in some 30 states, including counties in California, Georgia and Michigan.
Election security pioneer Harri Hursti was at the South Dakota event and said he and other researchers in attendance were provided three separate copies of election management systems that run on the Dominion software. The data indicated they were from Antrim and Mesa counties. While it’s not clear how the copies came to be released at the event, they were posted online and made available for public download.
Voter System Software
Granted Immunity
OxyContin Pushers
Members of the billionaire Sackler family, long accused of misleading the public about the addictiveness of the OxyContin sold by their privately owned pharmaceutical company, Purdue Pharma, were granted sweeping immunity from civil lawsuits by a federal judge on Wednesday.
As part of a bankruptcy plan that was negotiated behind closed doors, the Sacklers—who are said to possess net assets in excess of $11 billion—have agreed to forfeit ownership of Purdue and pay out $4.5 billion over the course of nine years. The settlement will also dissolve the company.
The Sacklers will be shielded from future lawsuits related to opioids, though the deal offers no protection from criminal charges. No such charges have been filed, however, and none so far have been reported as pending. The drugmaker has previously pleaded guilty to widespread misconduct, including illegal kickbacks to doctors, and for misleading federal law enforcement officials and downplaying OxyContin’s addictiveness.
Wednesday’s settlement, which resolves some 3,000 lawsuits brought against the Connecticut-based company and the family, does not require the Sacklers to admit to any wrongdoing in the country’s two-decades-long opioid epidemic, which has claimed roughly 500,000 lives since 1999.
Documents disclosed in early 2019 showed Richard Sackler, former chairman and president of Purdue, telling company officials in 2008 to measure Purdue’s performance by the strength of the drugs being prescribed. Higher dosages, which also carried a higher risk for addiction, netted the family the most profit.
OxyContin Pushers
Snows In Hell
Coulter
The conservative commentator Ann Coulter backed President Joe Biden's defense of his military withdrawal from Afghanistan and said former President Donald Trump "abandoned" his promise to withdraw troops.
Coulter on Tuesday shared a New York Times tweet that quoted Biden as saying he would not continue a "forever war."
Coulter wrote: "Thank you, President Biden, for keeping a promise Trump made, but then abandoned when he got to office."
She said in another tweet that "Trump REPEATEDLY demanded that we bring our soldiers home, but only President Biden had the balls to do it."
She also shared some old tweets of Trump's during his presidency in which he said the US should bring its troops home. "Here are a few of Trump's wuss, B.S. - I mean 'masterful' - tweets," she said.
Coulter
DNA Secrets
Interbreeding
We think of DNA as the vitally important molecules that carry genetic instructions for most living things, including ourselves. But not all DNA actually codes proteins; now, we're finding more and more functions involving the non-coding DNA scientists used to think of as 'junk'.
A new study suggests that satellite DNA – a type of non-coding DNA arranged in long, repetitive, apparently nonsensical strings of genetic material – may be the reason why different species can't successfully breed with each other.
It appears that satellite DNA plays an essential role in keeping all of a cell's individual chromosomes together in a single nucleus, through the work of cellular proteins.
According to biologists Madhav Jagannathan and Yukiko Yamashita who authored the new study, that important role is managed differently in each species, leading to genetic incompatibility. The clash of the different strategies between species may be what causes chromosomes to scatter outside of the nucleus, at least in part, preventing reproduction.
In this new study, experimenting on the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster, the researchers noticed that deleting a gene which produces a protein called Prod – which binds to a specific bit of satellite DNA – caused the flies to die, as their chromosomes scattered outside the cell nucleus. However, that crucial bit of satellite DNA is missing altogether in the flies' nearest relatives, which survive just fine without it.
Interbreeding
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