from Bruce
Anecdotes
Freedom of Religion
• The Puritans faced religious discrimination in Great Britain, so they moved to Massachusetts Bay — where they engaged in discrimination. When the Quakers arrived in Massachusetts Bay in 1655, the Puritans whipped them, put them in prison, and then banished them. After some Quakers returned to Massachusetts Bay, the Puritans passed a law calling for the execution by hanging of any Quaker who had been banished, but returned. The Puritans also banned Catholic priests and sometimes whipped and imprisoned Baptists. James Madison put freedom of religion into the Bill of Rights in order to outlaw such religious discrimination.
• The Puritans did not practice freedom of religion. When Native Americans in New England did not keep the Sabbath, the Puritans used that as an excuse to seize their lands.
Gays and Lesbians
• Not all churches are loving. A minister speculated that the son of a family in the church was gay, and he started spreading that speculation around. The speculation turned out to be true. Very quickly, the family of the gay boy came under verbal attack from other members of the church. Meanwhile, the gay boy was being both verbally and physically attacked at school. The mother of the family complained about the church: “Instead of being overwhelmed by love, we were overwhelmed by judgment.” The family was unwilling to give up on religion because of a few bigots, including a bigoted minister, so the family left that church and attended a much more loving Episcopal church.
• Gays and lesbians have their own church in which to worship God. The worldwide network of Metropolitan Community Churches is nondenominational. In addition, many gay and lesbian groups exist within established denominations. Integrity is a group for gay and lesbian Episcopalians, Dignity is for gay and lesbian Catholics, and Affirmation is the name of two groups, one for gay and lesbian Mormons and one for gay and lesbian United Methodists. Some synagogues specifically serve gay, lesbian, and bisexual Jews — the oldest such synagogue is Temple Beth Chayim Chadashim in Los Angeles whose Rabbi, Lisa Edwards, is a lesbian.
• As a lesbian, Lois Hoxie didn’t feel comfortable at a Catholic Church in the Oakland, California, area, so she stopped attending. Shortly afterward, she was surprised when the priest stopped by to visit her and asked, “Why don’t you go to church?” She replied, “I don’t feel welcome at Saint Pascal’s.” “Why is that?” the priest asked. She replied, “Because I’m gay.” The priest asked, “Yes, but why don’t you feel welcome at Saint Pascal’s?” The priest didn’t mind that she was gay; however, other Catholics made her feel unwelcome, so eventually she became a Friend, aka Quaker.
• Following a Gay Pride march, several gay men and lesbians gathered at a church for worship. Unfortunately, some protesters arrived and shouted, “Sinners! Repent of your sick and evil ways!” The gay men, lesbians, and the minister of the church began chanting in return, “Jesus loves me and Jesus loves you. Jesus loves me and Jesus loves you.” This angered the protesters, and they shouted, “Jesus hates you! Jesus hates you!” In this case, the protesters won — they shouted down the gay men, the lesbians, the minister, and this message: “Jesus loves me and Jesus loves you.”
• Lesbian comedian Kate Clinton appeared on a daytime talk show, the producers of which decided to create controversy by busing in a group of churchwomen to sit in the audience and watch the show. To the surprise of the producers, the churchwomen fully supported the rights of gays and lesbians.
• When people tell lesbian comedian Judy Carter that homosexuality is a sin against God, she replies, “So is judging people.”
Heaven and Hell
• Among Mark Twain’s favorites of the books he had written was Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc, about a French heroine for whom Mr. Twain had enormous respect. Mr. Twain met the Archbishop of Orléans, who told him that St. Joan (aka the Maid of Orléans) would no doubt see to it that anyone who wrote so beautifully about her would get into Heaven. Mr. Twain replied that he would be “perfectly satisfied” in the next life if he were near Joan of Arc and as far away as possible from her enemies.
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Presenting
Michael Egan
U.S.A. responded:
has returned to semi-retired status.
In memory.
BRUCE'S RECOMMENDATION
BANDCAMP MUSIC
BRUCE'S RECOMMENDATION OF BANDCAMP MUSIC
Music: "Tu Cariño se Me Va" [“Your Love is Leaving Me]"
Album: This track is a one-sided single.
Artist: Los Reverbs
Artist Location: San Jose, Costa Rica
Info: “The Reverbs are a psychedelic bolero band that under certain conditions transforms into the Musical Reverberation Ensemble. The band has performed on the regular stages of the metropolitan area, International Arts Festival, Epicenter Festival, International Film Festival and in December 2018 they were invited to play [in] Honduras at the Nu Festival.”
Price: FREE Download
Genre: Spanish Language.
Links:
“Tu Cariño se Me Va” [“Your Love is Leaving Me]”
Los Reverbs on Bandcamp
Los Reverbs 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
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David Bruce's Apple iBookstore
David Bruce has over 140 Kindle books on Amazon.com.
Reader Suggestion
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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
Not much marine layer, whole lotta heat.
WeHo Celebrates ‘Born This Way Day’
Lady Gaga
In West Hollywood, May 23rd is now officially Born This Way Day. The new holiday celebrates the release date of Lady Gaga’s 2011 album Born This Way, which turned 10 on Sunday.
During the in-person ceremony on Sunday, Gaga was presented with a key to the city by Mayor Lindsey P. Horvath. A street painting on Robertson Boulevard was also revealed as a tribute to the LGBTQIA+ community, with the album title painted out in colors representing the trans pride flag and the gay pride flag.
“You’ve been the motherfuckin’ key to my heart for a long time,” Gaga said to the audience during the presentation.
Gaga shared photos of the event on social media along with a message about the album and its meaning. “Born This Way, my song and album, were inspired by Carl Bean, a gay black religious activist who preached, sung, and wrote about being ‘Born This Way.’ Notably his early work was in 1975, 11 years before I was born, ” she explained. “Thank you for decades of relentless love, bravery, and a reason to sing. So we can all feel joy, because we deserve joy. Because we deserve the right to inspire tolerance, acceptance, and freedom for all.”
Lady Gaga
Sponsored Content
John Oliver
Local news is very important to any community, and "not just in a civic sense," John Oliver said on Sunday's Last Week Tonight. It's a trusted source of information, a way to hold local politicians and businesses accountable, and also "a major money-maker for stations," he said. "But the need to both inform a community and make money has always been tricky to reconcile."
"Clearly, maintaining journalistic independence from advertisers is critically important — so important, in fact, it's frequently referred to as the church-state wall," Oliver said. "And the FCC has rules requiring broadcast stations to announce when content has been sponsored or paid for in any way. Unfortunately, many local stations have either completely broken those rules or violated the spirit of them through a practice known as sponsored content," where "advertising is blended directly into the broadcast." Sponsored content is "both more widespread and harder to detect than you might realize," he said. "Sometimes local businesses will pay for an interview where they can script the questions and make sure that they're presented glowingly."
Even if these "trusted local TV" shows stay just on the legal side of the FCC rules, they still shouldn't sell themselves out for uncritical coverage of questionable medical devices and treatments, Oliver argued. "You might think viewers should be smart enough to approach anything on these shows with skepticism. The thing is, though, many of these stations also swap figures between their newsroom and their sponsored-content shows."
If you watch Last Week Tonight regularly enough, you might see where this is going. "Right now, it's far too easy to make a ridiculous product that makes outlandish claims and get it onto local TV," Oliver said. "And the reason I know that is, we did. We started a company called Venus Inventions and created something called the 'Venus Veil,' an absurd medical product based on technology that absolutely doesn't exist." His team also created a website and hired an actress — and humiliated a trio of local TV shows.
"It was all shockingly affordable and, sadly, on some stations, didn't even look that out of place," Oliver said. And given the importance of local news, "that is not good." You can watch the real TV news segments and fake testimonials about the "sexual wellness blanket" at the website, and watch Oliver's segment, with cameos from George Clooney and NSFW language, below.
John Oliver
Graphic Novel
Freddie Mercury
Z2 Comics has announced it will be publishing the first-ever graphic novel based on Freddie Mercury this fall.
Freddie Mercury: Lover of Life, Singer of Songs, created in partnership with Universal Music Group and Mercury Songs Ltd, will follow the Queen singer’s life through his childhood in Zanzibar and India to his rise to stardom as the effervescent frontman of one of the world’s most famous rock bands.
The graphic novel is written by Tres Dean and based on the book Freddie Mercury: A Life, in His Own Words, compiled by Greg Books and Simon Lupton. Illustrations are by Kyla Smith, Robin Richardson, Safiya Zerrougui, Tammy Wang, and Amy Liu, with an accompanying cover painting by David Mack.
Freddie Mercury: Lover of Life, Singer of Songs is available for preorder in standard 136-page softcover ($19.99) and hardcover ($29.99) editions, and will be available in comic shops and book and record stores in November. Z2 Comics is also offering a limited hardcover deluxe edition for $99.99, complete with an exclusive vinyl LP as well as limited edition prints by Sarah Jones, Kyla Smith, and Sanya Anwar.
Freddie Mercury
West Virginia Road Named
Bill Withers
West Virginia native Bill Withers has been honored with a road named in his honor.
“Bill Withers Memorial Road” is the new name for Slab Fork Road from the Lester Highway to the Coalfields Expressway in Raleigh County, the state Department of Transportation said.
The musician died at the age of 81 in 2020. He is best known for writing and recording “Ain’t No Sunshine,” “Lovely Day,” and “Lean on Me.” He was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2015.?
The Division of Highways installed a sign last week renaming the road. The move was passed by the West Virginia Legislature last month.
Bill Withers
Deluded
53%
A majority of Republicans still believe Donald Trump (R-Lock Him Up) won the 2020 U.S. presidential election and blame his loss to Joe Biden on illegal voting, according to a new Reuters/Ipsos opinion poll.
The May 17-19 national poll found that 53% of Republicans believe Trump, their party's nominee, is the “true president” now, compared to 3% of Democrats and 25% of all Americans.
The figures were roughly the same in a poll that ran from Nov. 13-17 which found that 28% of all Americans and 59% of Republicans felt that way.
The Reuters/Ipsos poll showed that 61% of Republicans believe the election was "stolen" from Trump. Only about 29% of Republicans believe he should share some of the blame for his supporters' Jan. 6 deadly riot at the U.S. Capitol.
Still, 67% of overall respondents say they trust election officials in their town to do their job honestly, including 58% of Republicans, according to the poll.
53%
In Numbers
Faith
Fox "News" possesses an “outsized influence” on the American public, especially among religious viewers.
That was the conclusion of the nonprofit Public Religion Research Institute in a report released just after the 2020 presidential election. It noted that 15% of Americans cited Fox News as the most trusted source – around the same as NBC, ABC and CBS combined, and four percentage points above rival network CNN. The survey of more than 2,500 American adults also suggested that Fox News viewers trend religious, especially among Republicans watching the show. Just 5% of Republican viewers of the channel identified as being “religiously unaffiliated” – compared to 15% of Republicans who do not watch Fox News and 25% of the wider American public.
Some very interesting patterns emerged across religious traditions – and the nonreligious – and the type of media being consumed. For instance, of the the big three legacy news operations – ABC, CBS and NBC – there was no strong base of viewership in any tradition.
In most cases, about a third of people from each religious tradition said that they watched one of those legacy networks in the last 24 hours. PBS scored very low among every tradition. In most cases fewer than 15% of respondents reported watching PBS in the time frame.
However, the numbers for the three major cable news networks – CNN, Fox News and MSNBC – were much higher across the board. In eight of the 16 religious and nonreligious traditions categorized in the poll, CNN viewership was at least 50% of the sample. This was led by 71% of Hindus who watched CNN and 63% of Muslims.
Faith
Worldview Inventory Survey
Millennials
Millennials in the United States are far less likely to believe in God and the Bible’s teachings than older generations, according to a new survey.
Arizona Christian University’s American Worldview Inventory survey showed younger adults are less likely to identify with organized religion and instead are embracing other beliefs, such as horoscopes.
While 57% of millennials surveyed consider themselves Christian, 43% “don’t know, care or believe that God exists.”
The Cultural Research Center polled 2,000 adults in the survey, which has a margin of error of plus-or-minus 2 percentage points. The survey defines millennials as individuals born between 1984 and 2002 and members of Generation X born from 1965 to 1983.
Just 36% of millennials belong to a church, mosque or synagogue, and only 6% engage in religious activities daily, according to Gallup.
Millennials
Curdling Theory
Gold Veins
Gold, for all its wonderful uses, isn't hugely abundant in Earth's upper layers. For each ton of crust material, there's an estimated just 0.004 grams of the precious metal.
Yet somehow, there are regions that contain "bonanza" abundances - hyper-enrichment, in the scientific parlance. How these gold veins form in time spans as short as days from hydrothermal systems that only contain trace amounts of the metal has been a geological mystery.
It's one that now has an answer, from the most unlikely of clues: the separation and clumping of fat particles in soured milk.
The souring process involves bacteria in the milk converting lactose to lactic acid, lowering the pH level accordingly. This causes the surface charge on the fat particles to break down, and the fat particles separate from the milk serum and clump together with each other via coagulation, forming a sort-of gross decomposing milk fat jelly.
Williams-Jones, McLeish and their colleagues found a similar process when using transmission electron microscopy to study gold deposits from the Brucejack Mine in British Columbia. This is one of the spots around the world where bonanza-grade mineralization can be found, up to 41,582 grams per ton.
Gold Veins
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