from Bruce
Anecdotes
Signs
• In a race to Bermuda, Sherman Hoyt was sailing a tiny yacht when he met the huge ocean liner Monarch of Bermuda, which was making a few minor repairs. Mr. Hoyt immediately ran up some signal flags that asked, “Can I be of any assistance?”
Training
• Sports can toughen a girl—or woman. When Kristine Denise Ferrer first began to study Thailand’s national sport, Muay Thai kickboxing, in Los Angeles, she didn’t do so well. When her coach hit her, she saw stars, then she recovered enough to think, “Wait a minute, I’m a girl—you’re not supposed to do that to me.” Her legs also became very bruised from all of her workouts—she wore sweatpants to hide the bruises from other people, such as her mother. Her hard work paid off; she trained her abdominal muscles until her coach was able to drop a 20-pound medicine ball on her stomach multiple times, and she trained against other Muay Thai kickboxers, including guys. They punched and kicked her, and she punched and kicked them—and she welcomed the training as an important part of her workout.
• Chicago Bear Walter Payton developed his running ability in part through a training program that he and his brother devised that included running up and down the sandy banks of the Pearl River—when the sun was hottest. This training program forced him to adjust to the shifting sand beneath his feet and developed his balance and ability to cut. Of course, it also built up his endurance—other athletes who tried the same training program sometimes had to be carried away—after they finished vomiting.
• At the 1896 Olympic Games in Greece, American discus thrower Robert Garrett was an underdog—he hadn’t even trained with the proper equipment. In fact, he had someone make a discus for him using as a model a drawing of an ancient athlete throwing a discus. But when he handled his first real discus at the Olympic Games, he discovered that it was lighter than the discus he had been using. His training with a heavier discus paid off—he won first place.
• Triathlete Heather Hedrick often trains on cold, windy Illinois roads during the winter. When she first started training seriously, the guys she trained with saw her shivering, so they told her, “Heather, the wind is your friend. The wind will make you strong.” After a while, whenever she trained on a cold, windy Illinois road, she would tell herself, “The wind is my friend. The wind will make me strong.”
• In the late 1980s, after going 10 years without competitive boxing, George Foreman made a comeback. To get into shape, Mr. Foreman lost over 50 pounds. In addition, he attached a heavy punching bag to the back of his truck and every day he ran behind the truck for 10 miles, punching the bag the entire distance. The difficult training paid off. In 1994, he regained the world heavyweight title.
• In modern times, an Okinawan schoolteacher named Gichin Funakoshi revived the art of karate. During typhoons, he used to climb to the top of his roof, assume the horseback stance, and attempt to keep his footing during the wind and the rain. Often, he was blown off the roof, so he used to carry a mat with him so he could land on it. All night, he would fight the typhoon.
• As a professional beach volleyball player, Gabrielle Reece works hard. At Gold’s Gym in Venice, California, her trainer, T.R. Goodman, designed a two-hour workout for her that made her vomit the first time she tried it. Nevertheless, she stuck with the training program he had designed.
Umpires
• John Tener, the President of the National League, was great friends with umpire Charlie Rigler. One day, Mr. Rigler got into a ferocious argument with a player for the New York Giants—an argument so ferocious he punched the player. Giants manager John McGraw wanted Mr. Tener to fire Mr. Rigler. At the meeting of National League president and umpire, Mr. Tener asked Mr. Rigler why he had thrown the punch. Mr. Rigler explained, “I want you to know that I kept my temper when he called me an ugly, stupid this-and-that, and I controlled myself when he said I was a blind, no-good so-and-so and every other name you can think of. That was all right. I’m an umpire. I can take that. But when he said, ‘you’re just as bad as that blankety-blank Tener that you work for,’ I couldn’t hold back any longer. I let him have it.” After hearing this explanation, Mr. Tener shouted, “YOU SHOULD HAVE KILLED HIM!”
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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: "Magic"
Album: GIVING SHELTER
Artist: A Jeff Millar-Sax Project
Artist Location: Los Angeles, California
Info:
“Singer-songwriter; multi-instrumentalist; owner of IMS Technologies, LLC; advocate of changes to cancer care and housing availability; cancer survivor, widower of Janine Millar-Sax (lost to lung cancer, 2011).”
Jeff Millar-Sax is a member of the Shadows of Night, who are most famous for “Gloria.”
Price: $2 for track; $20 for 10-track album
Genre: Blues.
Links:
GIVING SHELTER
Giving Shelter on Bandcamp
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
Dear Democratic Party
Dear Democratic Party
Stephen
Thanks, Stephen!
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
Finally found a pair of functional sweat pants with an elastic waist.
Previously, found a pair of high-end but useless sweats with a wide ribbon instead of elastic around the waist, and you're expected to cinch & retie the damn thing every time
you visit the bathroom. Bah!
Life's too short as it is.
‘Better Call Saul’
Bob Odenkirk
Bob Odenkirk is back shooting “Better Call Saul,” six weeks after having a heart attack.
Odenkirk on Wednesday tweeted a photo of himself getting made up to play title character Saul Goodman in the AMC series, indicating that shooting had resumed on its sixth and final season.
“Back to work on Better Call Saul!” Odenkirk said. “So happy to be here and living this specific life surrounded by such good people. BTW this is makeup pro Cheri Montesanto making me not ugly for shooting!”
The 58-year-old Odenkirk had what he later called a “small heart attack” and collapsed on the show’s set in Albuquerque, New Mexico, on July 27.
Odenkirk has been nominated for four Emmys for playing luckless lawyer Jimmy McGill, who becomes increasingly corrupt and adopts the pseudonym Saul Goodman, the “criminal lawyer” who appeared in dozens of episodes of “Breaking Bad” before getting his own spin-off.
Bob Odenkirk
Nielsen Ratings
College Football
Three college matchups scored among the Nielsen company’s four most-watched television programs last week. Only an episode of NBC’s “America’s Got Talent” broke through.
Since it showed two of the three games, ABC was the week’s most-watched network in prime time, with an average of 4.4 million viewers. CBS had 2.6 million, NBC had 2.53 million, Fox had 2.49 million, Univision had 1.5 million, Ion Television had 1.1 million and Telemundo had 1 million.
ABC’s “World News Tonight” led the evening news ratings race with an average of 8.2 million viewers. NBC’s “Nightly News” had 6.9 million and the “CBS Evening News” had 5 million.
For the week of Aug. 30-Sept. 5, the 20 most-watched programs in prime time, their networks and viewerships:
1. College Football: Georgia vs. Clemson, ABC, 8.86 million.
2. College Football: Notre Dame vs. Florida State, ABC, 7.75 million.
3. “America’s Got Talent” (Tuesday), NBC, 7.19 million.
4. College Football: Ohio State at Minnesota, Fox, 6.3 million.
5. “America’s Got Talent” (Wednesday), NBC, 6.1 million.
6. “60 Minutes,” CBS, 5.91 million.
7. “Tucker Carlson Tonight” (Monday), Fox News, 4.31 million.
8. “Big Brother” (Thursday), CBS, 4.1 million.
9. “Big Brother” (Wednesday), CBS, 4.01 million.
10. “Tucker Carlson Tonight” (Tuesday), Fox News, 3.85 million.
11. “Hannity” (Monday), Fox News, 3.84 million.
12. “NCIS,” CBS, 3.83 million.
13. “College Football Pregame” (Sunday), ABC, 3.82 million.
14. “CMA Summer Jam,” ABC, 3.68 million.
15. “American Ninja Warrior,” NBC, 3.67 million.
16. “Hannity” (Tuesday), Fox News, 3.62 million.
17. “Tucker Carlson Tonight” (Wednesday), Fox News, 3.52 million.
18. “The $100,000 Pyramid,” ABC, 3.514 million.
19. “The Neighborhood,” CBS, 3.505 million.
20. “Hannity” (Wednesday), Fox News, 3.393 million.
College Football
Max Bialystock Lives!
Zachary Horwitz
Zachary Horwitz, an actor in low-budget horror and science-fiction movies, has agreed to plead guilty to running a massive Hollywood Ponzi scheme.
Horwitz, 34, admitted in court papers that he duped investors into giving him more than $650 million for fictitious movie deals with HBO and Netflix.
While Horwitz repaid much of the money in order to lure victims into investing more, he also spent large sums of it to finance his "lavish lifestyle," according to his Sept.1 plea agreement with the U.S. attorney's office in Los Angeles. Horwitz acknowledged that he has failed to repay $231 million.
The agreement calls for Horwitz to plead guilty to one count of securities fraud at a hearing on Oct. 4. Prosecutors indicated in court records they will ask U.S. District Judge Mark C. Scarsi to impose a hefty sentence in light of the huge sum Horwitz swindled. He faces up to 20 years in prison.
Horwitz admitted in the plea agreement that for seven years he falsely represented to investors that his film company, 1inMM Capital, LLC, was buying foreign distribution rights to movies, then licensing them to Netflix, HBO or other platforms to stream online in Latin America, Australia, Europe and Africa.
Zachary Horwitz
Publisher Wants Corrections
Pennsylvania
The academic press that published a Pennsylvania state senator’s book about World War I hero Sgt. Alvin York has asked him to review a list of factual errors and sourcing issues in the book and the press’ director said Tuesday it plans to publish a corrected version early next year.
University Press of Kentucky director Ashley Runyon outlined plans for the potential corrections and revisions to Sen. Doug Mastriano (R-Big Lie)’s book in emails Tuesday to The Associated Press and to another researcher looking into York’s 1918 acts of heroism while fighting in France.
Runyon said the press “will allow the author the opportunity to respond to the sources in question before preparing our final list of errata and corrections for a new printing. The verified sources and other corrections will also be reviewed by an outside scholar for confirmation.”
Mastriano’s opposition to pandemic mitigation efforts in Pennsylvania and support for former President Donald Trump (R-Lock Him Up)’s efforts to overturn his election loss last year have made him a one-man force in state politics. He has said he is considering running for Pennsylvania governor next year, when incumbent Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf is term-limited.
Researchers have questioned Mastriano’s claim that he located York’s battle site with precision, identified erroneous footnotes and raised doubts about a photo that appears on the book’s cover. Mastriano claims the government photo shows York with prisoners from the famed battle, contradicting the military photographer’s caption. The AP also identified sourcing errors in the book in a story published six months ago.
Pennsylvania
Social Media Data
Mass Collection
The Los Angeles Police Department has reportedly instructed its officers to record the social media information of every interviewed civilian — even those "who are not arrested or accused of a crime," The Guardian reports, according to records obtained by the Brennan Center for Justice.
What's more, an internal memo shows Police Chief Michael Moore (R-Anti-Vaxxer) warning officers that supervisors would review their "field interview cards" — the paper on which the social accounts, among other things, are disclosed — to ensure they were complete. Such broad scale collection has alarmed activists and civil liberties pundits, concerned about the "potential for mass surveillance of civilians without justification," writes the Guardian.
"There are real dangers about police having all of this social media identifying information at their fingertips," said Rachel Levinson-Waldman, a deputy director at the Brennan Center. When officers obtain these usernames, "it allows for a huge expansion of network surveillance," she added.
The Brennan Center reportedly analyzed 40 other U.S. police agencies and was unable to locate another department that "required social media collection on interview cards," though many have not publicly disclosed those records, the Guardian notes. Said Hamid Khan of the Stop LAPD Spying Coalition: "This is like stop and frisk," and it's "happening with the clear goal of surveillance."
In other instances, police have asked civilians and interviewees for their social security numbers, claiming "it must be provided" under federal law. Kathleen Kim, a Loyola law professor and immigrants' rights expert, said such a question violates the spirit of sanctuary laws preventing officers from inquring about immigration status.
Mass Collection
Shocking!
Taxes
The top 1% of Americans are avoiding paying an estimated $163 billion in taxes a year, according to the Treasury Department. In contrast, more than 99% of taxes on regular incomes — paid via a paycheck — get paid.
That discrepancy is pushing the estimated tax gap, the amount of money owed by taxpayers that isn't collected, to nearly around $600 billion annually, and to approximately $7 trillion in lost revenue over the next decade, the Treasury Department finds.
Tax evasion is concentrated among the wealthy in part because high-income taxpayers are able to employ experts who can better shield them from reporting their true incomes, the Treasury Department argued in a blog post. More complicated incomes such as partnerships and proprietorships – more frequent among high earners — have a far greater noncompliance rate that can hit as high as 55%.
"The tax gap can be a major source of inequity. Today's tax code contains two sets of rules: one for regular wage and salary workers who report virtually all the income they earn; and another for wealthy taxpayers, who are often able to avoid a large share of the taxes they owe," wrote Treasury Deputy Assistant Secretary for Economic Policy Natasha Sarin.
According to the Treasury Department, the IRS is unable to collect about 15% of taxes owed and the lack of resources has led to a fall in audit rates. It notes, the drop in rates have decreased more in the last ten years for high earners than among low- and moderate-income earners helped by the Earned Income Tax Credit.
Taxes
Inbred Parrots Genetically Thriving
Kakapo
Flightless, ungainly, and famously bad at sex, the critically endangered kakapo of New Zealand—the world’s heaviest parrots—are in surprisingly good genetic health after 10,000 years of inbreeding, according to new research.
An international team of geneticists, biologists, and ecologists recently looked at 49 of the birds’ genomes to understand how the small populations were faring genetically, given their near-extinction 30 years ago. The team came away surprised at how the species, which now totals just over 200, has avoided the kind of damaging mutations that plague other animals on the brink of extinction. Their research is published today in Cell Genomics.
“The main finding of this study is that, even though kakapo are one of the most inbred and endangered bird species in the world, it has much fewer harmful mutations than expected,” said Nicolas Dussex, lead author of the paper and a researcher at the Centre for Palaeogenetics and Stockholm University, in an email to Gizmodo. To explain this unexpected result, Dussex’s team suggests a counter-intuitive genetic phenomenon called purging, by which inbred populations end up having fewer harmful mutations in their genetic code rather than more.
“It seems that one factor favouring purging is the speed of the decline and the rate of increase of inbreeding,” Dussex added. “If inbreeding increases very rapidly, a large number of harmful mutations will be exposed to natural selection in a very short timespan … Conversely, if inbreeding increases gradually, harmful mutations are exposed little by little, over a larger number of generations and not in all individuals at the same time.” In other words, because kakapo inbred over 10,000 years isolated on the islands of New Zealand, a fatal population crash due to genetic corruption never happened.
Kakapo do not look like survivors. The bird, also called an owl parrot, fits into the same category as giant pandas and quokkas as creatures whose survival seems purely aesthetic, at least to the untrained eye. Kakapo like to eat fruit, especially the rimu fruit, nest in ground-level shelters, and can live quite long, perhaps up to 80 years. Kakapo are often infertile and sometimes have poor judgment—one kakapo named Sirocco famously tried to mate with a wildlife photographer’s head.
Kakapo
Exorcist Bishop Resigns
Spain
Xavier Novell had a hell of a resume in the Catholic Church. According to the BBC, he “became Spain’s youngest bishop” in 2010 at 41 years old. He was also an exorcist and such a big fan of conversion therapy and opponent of abortion, euthanasia, and gay marriage that he was considered extreme even by the Church itself.
Now, because he wanted this rap sheet to be a bit more colorful, Novell has left all of this behind to pursue a relationship with psychologist and author of “satanic-tinged erotic fiction,” Silvia Caballol.
The BBC explains that Novell’s resignation—initially attributed to “personal reasons”—”came as a surprise last month” and was followed by him meeting “several times with Vatican officials as well as the Pope himself.” The reason’s become a bit clearer now that Spanish news sites have reported that “he had fallen” for Caballol, author of books like The Hell of Gabriel’s Lust.
“In the blurb for one of her works,” the BBC article states, “the reader is promised a journey into sadism, madness, and lust and a struggle between good and evil, God and Satan with a plot to shake one’s values and religious beliefs.” Novell’s religious beliefs seem to have been well and truly shaken by Caballol’s fiction since he’s apparently now trying to find work as an agricultural engineer while the Church keeps silent, calling his resignation “a strictly personal matter.”
While a bishop giving up his job for the love of a sexy satanist is fun to think about, others suggest that Novell’s history in the Church, notably his ultraconservative views and his loud support of the Catalan independence movement, may, as The Irish Times points out, have made him unpopular enough to resign. The more entertaining alternate explanation, outlined in a National Post article, is that the former exorcist himself is possessed.
Spain
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