Garrison Keillor: Listen to your uncle, for crying out loud
Let's liven up the conversation. Let's not sit discussing the relative virginity of our olive oils. The Brits will have to figure out Brexit. Hong Kong is between the mob in the streets and the commissariat and I'm with the mob for all the good it does them. As for democracy, we have a president who reflects this country better than we communists realize. Crude, ignorant chauvinists have done pretty well in this country for generations. I had a couple cranky uncles who did their job well and now they're gone and if I don't take their place, who will? Want me to defend the devil himself? Glad to do it. For a fallen angel, he's given God a run for his money and when he lands in the fiery inferno, he will not lack for company.
Arwa Mahdawi: The lonely tragedy of Tiffany Trump (The Guardian)
I hope whoever leaked Westerhout's alleged comments is having a belated crisis of conscience. It's true that Tiffany campaigned for her dad in 2016, so she isn't a wholly sympathetic figure. However, she hasn't courted the spotlight like her adult siblings and is not expected to join the 2020 campaign. If any of the Trumps deserve some serenity, it's Tiffany.
Blue Öyster Cult (often abbreviated BÖC or BOC) is an American rock band formed on Long Island, New York in 1967, perhaps best known for the singles "(Don't Fear) The Reaper", "Burnin' for You", "Cities on Flame with Rock and Roll", and "Godzilla." Blue Öyster Cult has sold more than 24 million records worldwide, including 7 million in the United States alone.
Blue Öyster Cult's longest-lasting and most commercially successful lineup included Donald "Buck Dharma" Roeser (lead guitar, vocals), Eric Bloom (lead vocals, "stun guitar", keyboards, synthesizers), Allen Lanier (keyboards, rhythm guitar, backing vocals), Joe Bouchard (bass, vocals), Albert Bouchard (drums, percussion, vocals). The band's current lineup includes Roeser and Bloom, as well as Danny Miranda (bass, backing vocals), Jules Radino (drums, percussion) and Richie Castellano (keyboard, rhythm guitar, backing vocals).
Their hit single "(Don't Fear) The Reaper" was featured in the famous Saturday Night Live sketch, "More cowbell". The original recording was produced at The Record Plant in New York by David Lucas, who sang background vocals with Roeser and played the now famous cowbell part. Manager Sandy Pearlman mixed the record.
Source
Randall was first, and correct, with:
Don't Fear the Reaper
. . . come on, baby - we can learn how to fly!
Stephen F said:
Don't Fear the Reaper
Alan J answered:
(Don't Fear) The Reaper.
mj wrote:
It's on my memorial service play list
Don't Fear the Reaper.
Dave responded:
(Don't Fear) The Reaper. The Cult's highest charting single at #17. I listened to the longer version of "(Don't Fear) the Reaper", a cut off the "Agents of Fortune" album, a lot in 1976 on my Camaro's 8 track player. I removed the original AM radio and installed a Pioneer brand AM/FM 8 track player. Four years later I regretfully abandoned the 8 track format for cassette tapes when I ditched the rusty Camaro.
Photos: Later on I bought the Cult's 1982 concert album, "Extraterrestrial Live," and I prefer that live version of "(Don't Fear) The Reaper." Stereo Review surprisingly gave that hard rock album a rare "Recording of Special Merit" rating. | SNL cast member, Will Ferrell. | SNL guest host Christopher Walken. | 8 track player like mine. The radio tuner face doubled as the door that flipped up when you inserted a tape. Pretty nifty.
Kevin K. in Washington, DC, replied:
"(Don't Fear) The Reaper" by Blue Oyster Cult. Has to be one of the most overplayed songs on Classic Rock stations. Ever.
zorch said:
"Don't Fear the Reaper." which does need more cowbell.
Cal in Vermont wrote:
(Don't Fear) The Reaper. Good song. Lotsa cowbell.
Dave in Tucson responded:
Never saw the sketch but I'm guessing the song is Caesars Don't Fear The
Reaper?
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• Nickelback has its fans; Nickelback also has its non-fans, including Josh Gross, who writes for the Boise Weekly in Idaho. When Nickelback came to the Idaho Center to play a concert, this is what Mr. Gross wrote: "You can spend $45 to go see Nickelback this week. Or you could buy 45 hammers from the dollar store, hang them from the ceiling at eye level and spend an evening banging the demons out of your dome. That $45 would also buy you a lot of pickles, which have more fans on Facebook than the band. It would also buy you an introduction to rock guitar video course that would allow you to surpass the band's skill level in five hours or less. $45 is also enough to see Men in Black III five times, buy a dozen Big Macs, do 10 loads of laundry or so many other experiences as banal and meaningless as seeing Nickelback but that come without having to actually hear Nickelback. But if you must, the band is playing the Idaho Center on Wednesday, June 13, [2012,] at 6 p.m. Tickets start at $45." (For what it's worth, the author of this book likes Nickelback.)
• David L. Ulin is a critic for the Los Angeles Times (California). When he was in high school, he was a fan of Neil Young - he still is. One day, he was playing one of Mr. Young's albums - loudly - in his bedroom. His mother came to his bedroom and told him to turn down the volume. Mr. Ulin wrote much later, "When I protested that Young was a genius, my mother looked at me as if I were speaking a language she didn't understand. 'If he was a genius,' she told me, 'he wouldn't be playing electric guitar.'" By the way, Mr. Young undertakes what seems to be constant renovation, and he seemingly always eventually breaks up with whatever band he's playing in. In the middle of a tour with Stephen Stills in 1976, he sent Mr. Stills this telegram: "Funny how some things that start spontaneously end that way. Eat a peach. Neil."
• Lotte Lehmann once sang the role of Elsa in Lohengrinand later learned that conductor Bruno Walter had been in the audience to listen to a new singer. She saw him the following day and waited for a few words about her performance, but he said nothing. Finally, she asked him if her performance had been so bad that he could say nothing about it. He replied, "Yes! Yesterday I saw something which I don't want to ever see in you, which doesn't go with you at all - routine." She listened to him. Later, she said, "Never again did I sing Elsa with routine." Like Mr. Walter, Ms. Lehmann believed, "Whatever we do or however often we do it, it must be each time reborn - each time a new creation. It is only when we are able to do this that we deserve the title Artist."
• Men used to be shaved by barbers, who used a straight-edged razor to do the job because today's safety razors had not been invented back then. Of course, an accident with a straight-edged razor could be painful and bloody. Gioachino Rossini's barber once played first clarinet in one of Mr. Rossini's early operas. Mr. Rossini could be very severe with musicians who made mistakes during rehearsals, but even though his barber made many mistakes during rehearsals, Mr. Rossini never criticized him. By the way, Mr. Rossini used crosses to mark errors in his students' compositions. One pupil was happy that few crosses were marked in his composition, but Mr. Rossini explained, "If I had marked all the errors in the music with crosses, your score would be a cemetery."
• A critic once criticized the German diction of operatic soprano Marilyn Horne. She telephoned the critic and started talking to him in German. The critic protested, "I don't speak German." She said, "This is Marilyn Horne, and I do!" Another kind of undeserved criticism occurred when Ms. Horne gave many recitals in places such as high school auditoriums. At one school, the only place she could go in between sections of the recital was the girls' bathroom, so she would go there to drink some water or wipe her brow. Her accompanist, Gwen Koldolsky, overheard a girl say to her mother, "I like that lady's singing, but why does she always have to go to the bathroom?"
He can lie until the cows come home and show all the doctored (with HIS stupid sharpie!) maps he wants, Dorian was never, ever, in any way or stretch of the imagination a threat of any kind to Alabama!
Lies when telling the truth would be easier! Lies just to lie! F*cking liar!
Linda >^..^<
We are all only temporarily able bodied.
CBS opens the night with a RERUN'Young Sheldon', followed by another RERUN'Young Sheldon', then a FRESH'Big Brother', then a RERUN'FBI'.
Scheduled on a FRESHStephen Colbert are Pete Buttigieg and Graham Norton.
Scheduled on a FRESHJames Corden, OBE, are Orlando Bloom, Yvonne Strahovski, and O-Town.
NBC fills the night with LIVE'Thursday Night Football', then pads the left coast with local crap.
Scheduled on a FRESHJimmy Fallon are Kendall Jenner, Desus & Mero, and Tanya Tucker featuring Brandi Carlile.
Scheduled on a FRESHSeth Meyers are Sen. Bernie Sanders, DeRay Mckesson, and Carter McLean.
On a RERUNCarson 'The Scab' Daly (from 2/6/19) are Killer Mike, Lucy Dacus, and Shane West.
ABC starts the night with the movie 'The Lego Movie', followed by a FRESH'Reef Break'.
Scheduled on a FRESHJimmy Kimmel are Kirsten Dunst, June Diane Raphael, and Clairo.
The CW offers a FRESH'The Outpost', followed by a RERUN'Two Sentence Horror Story', then another RERUN'Two Sentence Horror Story'.
Faux fills the night with a FRESH'Spin The Wheel'.
MY recycles an old 'The Good Wife', followed by another old 'The Good Wife'.
AMC offers the movie 'Independence Day', followed by the movie 'Ace Ventura: Pet Detective', then the movie 'Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls'.
BBC -
[2:00AM] ZERO DARK THIRTY (2012)
[5:30AM] HIDDEN HABITATS - SEASON 1 - EPISODE 16-The Secret To Their Success
[6:00AM] STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION - SEASON 6 - EPISODE 17-Birthright (Part 2)
[7:00AM] STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION - SEASON 6 - EPISODE 18-Starship Mine
[8:00AM] STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION - SEASON 6 - EPISODE 19-Lessons
[9:00AM] STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION - SEASON 6 - EPISODE 20-The Chase
[10:00AM] STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION - SEASON 6 - EPISODE 21-Frame of Mind
[11:00AM] STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION - SEASON 6 - EPISODE 22-Suspicions
[12:00PM] STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION - SEASON 6 - EPISODE 23-Rightful Heir
[1:00PM] STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION - SEASON 6 - EPISODE 24-Second Chances
[2:00PM] STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION - SEASON 6 - EPISODE 25-Timescape
[3:00PM] THE UNTOUCHABLES (1987) -
[5:30PM] FIELD OF DREAMS (1989)
[8:00PM] GHOST (1990)
[11:00PM] GHOST (1990)
[2:00AM] FIELD OF DREAMS (1989)
[4:30AM] DOCTOR WHO: VOYAGE OF THE DAMNED (ALL TIMES EDT)
Bravo has 'Million Dollar Listing NY', another 'Million Dollar Listing NY', followed by a FRESH'Million Dollar Listing NY', and another 'Million Dollar Listing NY'.
Comedy Central has all old 'The Office' all night.
Scheduled on a FRESHThe Daily Show are Gov. Steve Bullock and Tracee Ellis Ross.
Scheduled on a FRESHLights Out with David Spade are Anthony Jeselnik, J.B. Smoove, and Annie Lederman.
FX has the movie 'Jurassic World', followed by the movie 'The Emoji Movie'.
History has 'Ax Men', followed by a FRESH'Ax Men', then a FRESH'Mountain Men', followed by a FRESH'Knife Or Death'.
IFC -
[6:00A] The Three Stooges -
[6:25A] The Three Stooges - Gents Without Cents
[6:45A] Sherman's Showcase - White Music
[7:15A] The Incredible Burt Wonderstone
[9:30A] Revenge of the Nerds IV: Nerds in Love
[11:30A] Revenge of the Nerds III: The Next Generation
[1:30P] Revenge of the Nerds II: Nerds in Paradise
[3:30P] Galaxy Quest
[6:00P] Cheech & Chong Still Smokin'
[8:00P] Up in Smoke
[10:00P] Revenge of the Nerds
[12:00A] Revenge of the Nerds II: Nerds in Paradise
[2:00A] Revenge of the Nerds III: The Next Generation
[4:00A] Revenge of the Nerds IV: Nerds in Love (ALL TIMES EDT)
Sundance -
[6:20am] The Andy Griffith Show
[6:55am] The Andy Griffith Show
[7:30am] The Andy Griffith Show
[8:00am] The Andy Griffith Show
[8:30am] The Andy Griffith Show
[9:00am] The Andy Griffith Show
[9:30am] The Andy Griffith Show
[10:00am] Shakespeare in Love
[1:00pm] Law & Order
[2:00pm] Law & Order
[3:00pm] Law & Order
[4:00pm] Law & Order
[5:00pm] Law & Order
[6:00pm] Law & Order
[7:00pm] Law & Order
[8:00pm] Law & Order
[9:00pm] Law & Order
[10:00pm] Law & Order
[11:00pm] No One Saw a Thing - Small Town Requiem
[12:00am] Law & Order
[1:00am] Law & Order
[2:00am] Law & Order
[3:00am] No One Saw a Thing
[4:00am] The Mary Tyler Moore Show
[4:30am] The Mary Tyler Moore Show
[5:15am] The Mary Tyler Moore Show
[5:45am] The Mary Tyler Moore Show (ALL TIMES EDT)
SyFy has the movie 'Jack The Giant Slayer', followed by the movie 'Stephen King's It'.
TBS:
On a RERUNConan (from 4/17/19) it's Conan Without Borders: Australia.
Grace and Frankie is set to end after its seventh and now final season - but not before amassing the most episode of any Netflix original series.
The digital platform has handed the Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin comedy a 16-episode run for its final season, taking the total number to 94.
This comes ahead of the Season 6 premiere in January.
Fonda, Tomlin, Sam Waterston, Martin Sheen, June Diane Raphael, Brooklyn Decker, Baron Vaughn and Ethan Embry will all return for the seventh season of the Skydance Television-produced series.
Marta Kauffman and Howard J. Morris will return as showrunners and executive producers of the final season, alongside executive producers Paula Weinstein, Robbie Tollin, Jane Fonda, Lily Tomlin, and Skydance's David Ellison, Dana Goldberg, and Marcy Ross.
Five centuries ago, newly arrived in what is now Mexico, the Spanish conquistadors banned an indigenous game involving a heavy ball, circular stone goals and human sacrifice.
Now, a group of young players are bringing the game back to life for the first time in Mexico City -- without the human sacrifice -- at the site of an old garbage dump.
The players proudly tie thick leather belts around their waists as they prepare to play "ulama," as the game is known in the Nahuatl language: a mixture of sport, ritual and ceremony whose promoters are now using it to help at-risk youth in a downtrodden neighborhood on the Mexican capital's north side.
Pre-Columbian ballgames dating back thousands of years were once played across a broad swathe of the Americas by civilizations including the Mayas, Incas and Aztecs, and they have been revived elsewhere in Mexico and the region in modern times.
But this is the first time in half a millennium that there has been a place in Mexico City, once the capital of the Aztec empire, to play the game known in Spanish as "juego de pelota."
A newly described Denisovan finger fossil holds a skeletal surprise, adding to the mystery of this extinct Stone Age crowd.
A decade ago, scientists found a tiny fragment of a fossil pinkie bone in Siberia's Denisova Cave. That bone yielded the first known Denisovan DNA and helped identify the hominids (SN: 8/30/12). Now paleogeneticist E. Andrew Bennett of Paris Diderot University and colleagues say they've identified the rest of the finger bone, which comes from the right hand of a roughly 13-year-old female Denisovan.
Unexpectedly, this ancient digit looks more like corresponding bones of ancient and recent humans than of Neandertals, the scientists report September 4 in Science Advances.
Yet Denisovans, who inhabited parts of Asia from around 300,000 to 50,000 years ago, had closer genetic ties to Neandertals than to Homo sapiens (SN: 5/1/19). The new finding raises the possibility that other yet-to-be-found Denisovan body parts may be largely humanlike. (Aside from the finger, only teeth, a partial jawbone and part of a braincase have been found so far.) As a result, Bennett's team recommends caution in trying to identify Denisovan fossils based on shape alone.
Russian scientists unearthed the newly identified finger fossil in 2008 in Denisova Cave. Then they cut the specimen into two the next year and sent the pieces to separate DNA-research teams. Bennett's group matched mitochondrial DNA extracted from one finger segment to mitochondrial DNA already taken from the smaller Denisovan finger fragment, indicating that the bones came from the same individual. Mitochondrial DNA is typically inherited from the mother.
It was only a matter of time: Amateur sleuths think they've tracked down the satellite that took a high-resolution image of the aftermath of an Iranian missile disaster.
President Don-Old Trump (R-Dolt) tweeted out the photograph on Aug. 30, writing, "The United States of America was not involved in the catastrophic accident during final launch preparations for the Safir SLV launch at Semnan Launch Site One in Iran. I wish Iran best wishes and good luck in determining what happened at Site One." Intelligence experts immediately noticed the high resolution of the photograph and pegged it as likely classified - classified, that is, until the president declassified it with his tweet. Many experts told news agencies that they were concerned that the declassified photo could reveal unknown information about U.S. drone or satellite surveillance.
Apparently, they were right. Amateur satellite trackers have reverse-engineered the image and figured out that it likely came from the highly classified USA 224 satellite. USA 224 is suspected to be a KH-11 surveillance satellite, a classified piece of equipment about which the public knows little.
Even classified satellites are easy to spot, said Purdue University graduate student Michael Thompson, who tracks satellites in his spare time. Thompson told MPR News that once a satellite is spotted, calculating where it will be in its orbit at any given time just takes some simple math.
According to the online network of trackers, shadows in the pictures Trump tweeted enabled sleuths to determine what time the photograph was taken. Langbroek was also able to calculate the viewing angle by looking at the obliqueness of the circular launchpad. From there, he and his co-trackers matched the photograph to the closest satellite at the time, which was USA 224.
An Alabama judge has dismissed a wrongful death lawsuit filed on behalf on an aborted embryo by a man who was upset that his ex-girlfriend ended her pregnancy.
Madison County Circuit Judge Chris Comer ruled Friday that Ryan Magers could not bring a wrongful death claim over a legal abortion. Magers had sued the Alabama clinic where he believed his ex-girlfriend obtained the abortion pill, on behalf of himself and the estate of the aborted embryo.
The Alabama case, which attempted to vest the embryo with legal rights, drew national attention in March after a probate judge allowed Magers to open a legal estate for the aborted embryo called "Baby Roe" in court filings. In seeking to open the estate, Magers pointed to a newly approved state constitutional amendment that says Alabama recognizes the "rights of unborn children." The probate judge's decision allowed Magers to represent the estate of the aborted embryo in the litigation.
In the brief order, Comer wrote that Magers didn't assert the defendants were engaged in unlawful conduct and the wrongful death claims are "precluded by existing state and federal laws pertaining to the conduct in question."
The ruling says that although Magers placed "great significance to the probate court's" decision, Judge Comer found the probate court's process "to be ministerial in nature." The phrase means it follows a prescribed procedure.
Take a look into the geological record, and you might just find...plastic?
A new study based on sediment collected off the coast of Santa Barbara, California found that plastics have been building dramatically in the sediment record since 1945.
Published in Science Advances Wednesday, the study looks at a single sediment core that dates back to 1834. However, plastics didn't really enter the environment until after World War II in 1945 because that's when its production really ramped up. And that's all clear in the sediment core, which the Scripps Institution of Oceanography Cal-Echoes research cruise extracted back in 2010. Interestingly enough, the increase in plastics correlates with worldwide plastic production and the population growth along the Southern California coast that feeds the watershed where the team collected this sample.
So what does this all mean? Plastics are taking over. And this "plastic footprint," as study author Jennifer Brandon, a biological oceanographer at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography put it, is so stark that the authors suggest it could serve as a geological proxy in the sedimentary record. Scientists have dubbed the current period we're living in the Great Acceleration to mark our exploding industrial activity and its impact on the planet. Typically, geologists rely on radioisotopes to flag the beginning and ends of eras, but the team behind this study thinks plastics can be the marker for when this new type of geological began.
What's more, the ocean sediment tells a clear story of the world's growing reliance on plastic. Between 1945 and 2009, the rate of plastic deposition doubled every 15 years on average. And the plastics found in the core aren't just the fragments people typically think of when they hear the word microplastics. Most of the plastics-67.5 percent-found in the post-1945 core are fibers. Yes, you read right: fibers from clothes. And oddly enough, most of the fibers they found were white.
A series of genetic variants can influence handedness, according to a new paper.
No, researchers have not discovered a "handedness gene." But through brain imaging of 9,000 people in the United Kingdom, researchers devised a list of genetic variations that contribute to the way different brain processes end up on either side of the brain. This, in turn influences handedness-and can also influence whether someone will develop certain neurological diseases, according to the paper published in the journal Brain.
"The skew in distribution of handedness is a uniquely human characteristic. We know from pre-historic art that around 90% of humans have been right handed for at least 10,000 years," the study's corresponding author, Dominic Furniss, told Gizmodo in an email. "Most other animals have a much more even distribution of left- and right-handed individuals. Therefore, beginning to understand what is responsible for this distribution in humans helps us start along the road to understanding the question 'what makes us human?'"
Despite its ubiquity to the human experience, there are lots of unresolved questions related to handedness, such as how lefty and righty brains differ and the influence of genetics.
The analysis revealed four locations in our genomes whose identity was associated with left-handedness, three of which were also associated with brain development, specifically areas related to language.
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