from Bruce
Anecdotes
Christmas
• When poet Nikki Giovanni was a small child, her parents, Gus and Yolande, didn’t always have the money necessary to buy what their two young daughters wanted. One Christmas, their two daughters wanted bicycles, but Mr. and Mrs. Giovanni could afford to buy them only roller skates. However, they did figure out a way to make them happier about not getting bicycles although other children in the neighborhood had. They told her, “Isn’t it terrible that their parents gave them bicycles when it’s so cold? They won’t be able to ride until spring.”
• When Leo Slezak’s son (Walter) was eight years old, he wrote out a list of presents for Santa Claus to bring to him. However, the governess mentioned to Mr. Slezak that Walter didn’t believe in Santa Claus any more. When Mr. Slezak asked Walter why he had written out a list of presents for Santa Claus, little Walter replied, “I didn’t want to spoil the pleasure for you and Mommy.”
• On Christmas, Pope John XXIII (who was named Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli at his birth) sometimes visited children in a hospital. He once asked a boy what his name was. The boy replied, “Giuseppe.” Not knowing who his visitor was, the boy asked, “What’s your name?” The Pope answered, “Oh, my name is Giuseppe, too, but now everybody calls me John.”
Couples
• In the old days, William Boake wished to court Euphemia Birkett, but her guardian, Catherine Tew, disliked him. One day, Mr. Boake arrived to visit Ms. Birkett, but Ms. Tew made sure that her charge was upstairs and out of sight. Mr. Boake was not to be trifled with, so he ran upstairs, and Ms. Tew tried to stop him by grabbing one of the tails of his coat, only to have the tail tear off in her hand. After he and Ms. Birkett were married, Mr. Boake kept the one-tailed coat as a souvenir of his courtship.
• When Jack Gilford was courting Madeline Lee, he was working at a resort and called her long distance. The telephone operator at the resort listened to all their conversations and found them very entertaining. Once, after a conversation more than usually filled with passion and drama, Mr. Gilford asked the telephone operator, “How much do I owe you?” With a sob in her throat, the telephone operator said, “Never mind. There’s no charge tonight.”
• A missionary couple stayed at the home of an elderly widow. When they went to bed, they discovered that the bedding was very wrinkled and very dirty, but they slept in the bed anyway. The next morning, the widow explained, “For years there have been so many holy people who have slept in that bed that I’ve never been able to [bring myself to] change it.”
• Track superstar Mary Decker frequently wrote an early boyfriend when she was away from him. While in New York, she wrote him four letters in two days and then telephoned him on the third day — she hadn’t received a letter from him yet, and she was worried that something had happened to him.
• A friend of lesbian comedian Judy Carter wore a wedding ring to work. When her co-workers asked what her husband did, she replied, “She works for a pharmacy.”
Daughters
• Rabbi Joseph Telushkin once watched his two daughters playing together nicely, and he commented to a friend named Dennis Prager how much pleasure this sight was giving him. Mr. Prager asked, “Doesn’t it give you more pleasure than if one of your daughters said ‘I love you, Daddy’ but didn’t act nicely to her sister?” Rabbi Telushkin answered, “Of course.” Mr. Prager then said, “I imagine God is the same way. He derives greater pleasure when people are good to each other than when they are ‘good’ to Him but not to each other.”
• When Robin, Bob Dole’s daughter, was young, she was a great fan of a British rock band, so Senator Dole wrote the British embassy to find out if the band could play at his daughter’s high school as a surprise. Unfortunately, he received a reply saying that the Beatles would be too busy to oblige during their first American tour.
• Comic actor Robert Morley once embarrassed his daughter by attempting to surf in Hawaii — he was unable even to mount the surfboard. When his mortified daughter told him, “People were laughing at you,” he was unperturbed and replied, “Usually they have to pay to laugh at me.”
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Presenting
Michael Egan
has returned to semi-retired status.
In memory.
BRUCE'S RECOMMENDATION
BANDCAMP MUSIC
BRUCE'S RECOMMENDATION OF BANDCAMP MUSIC
Track: "Hedging My Bets"
Album: CALL THE SHOTS
Artist: Groovy Uncle
Artist Location: Chatham, UK
Record Company: Aldora Britain Records
Record Company Location: Rothley, UK
Info:
“The worldwide hub of independent and underground music since 2013.”
“Aldora Britain Records is an e-zine and record label that promotes the music and work of authentic independent or underground artists from all around the world. Originally established in 2013, they revamped themselves in 2018 with a brand-new approach. Their first weekly compilation, aptly titled THE SECOND COMING, was released in late 2019. They now also release original singles, EPs and charity projects.”
“Groovy Uncle is the recording project of Medway songwriter Glenn Prangnell. The band began releasing records in 2010 on the State Records label and have released something every year since. In 2013 they switched to their own label Trouserphonic Records. Wales-based singer Suzi Chunk has been recording with the band since 2012. In 2020, Groovy Uncle released their 8th LP, THE MAN WHO CALLS THE SHOTS.”
Miss Modus (aka Sarah Kennedy) also records with the Link Quartet of Placenza, Italy.
Price: £0.50 (GBP) for 18 tracks by various artists.
“Hedging My Bets” is also on the album THE MAN WHO CALLS THE SHOTS by Groovy Uncle and Miss Modus. Price: £10 (GBP) for 12 tracks.
Genre: Pop. Various.
Links:
CALL THE SHOTS
THE MAN WHO CALLS THE SHOTS
Groovy Uncle on Bandcamp
The Link Quartet on Bandcamp
Glenn Prangnell (Uncle Groovy) on You Tube
Other Links:
Bruce’s Music Recommendations: FREE pdfs
David Bruce's Smashwords Page
David Bruce's Blog #1
David Bruce's Blog #2
davidbrucebooks: EDUCATE YOURSELF - Free PDFs
David Bruce's Blog #3
David Bruce's Apple iBookstore
Reader Suggestion
Michelle in AZ
Stephen Suggests
Snoop
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
The raccoons are extra busy tonight.
‘Doctor Who’
Neil Patrick Harris
Neil Patrick Harris, who starred in the long-running sitcom How I Met Your Mother, is joining the venerable BBC sci-fi series Doctor Who.
Harris’ character has not been revealed, though the British public broadcaster has unveiled a first-look photo of him on set, in an old-timey apron with what appears to be a pair of pliers.
Showrunner Russell T Davies called his character the “greatest enemy the Doctor has ever faced”.
Harris, who is set to headline Darren Star’s Netflix comedy series Uncoupled, joins new Doctor Ncuti Gatwa and Heartstopper breakout Yasmin Finney, who will play Rose, as well as returning stars David Tennant and Catherine Tate.
Doctor Who is filming in Wales and will air in 2023 as part of the show’s 60th anniversary.
Neil Patrick Harris
Asian Pacific History Museum
A Start
President Joe Biden signed a bill Monday that will create a commission to study establishing a national museum on the history of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders in the United States.
The “Commission to Study the Potential Creation of a National Museum of Asian Pacific American History and Culture Act” creates an eight-member commission to study how to make such a museum a reality in Washington, including whether it should be part of the Smithsonian Institution.
The Senate majority and minority leaders, and the House speaker and House minority leader each would name two members of the study commission.
The Smithsonian is in early planning stages for two new museums, the National Museum of the American Latino and the Smithsonian American Women’s History Museum.
Both the National Museum of the American Indian and the National Museum of African American History and Culture are run by the Smithsonian.
A Start
Makes a Case
John Oliver
There are few things John Oliver delights in more than ripping on AT&T, which ultimately owns HBO and Last Week Tonight, and which Oliver likes to refer to as “business daddy.” So when Oliver gave viewers a brief history lesson about how the U.S. government has historically moved to break up harmful business monopolies, he naturally focused on AT&T, which until the 1980s had a monopoly on all telephone service in the country.
He pointed out that once AT&T was broken up, prices dropped and innovation soared, resulting in advancements like answering machines and modems. In fact, the breakup helped make the ubiquity of the internet possible.
“Ending a monopoly is almost always a good thing, whether it’s AT&T, or Standard Oil, or literally any game of Monopoly,” Oliver said. “When harmful monopolies end, innovation flourishes.”
Which brought Oliver to the meat of his main story: the tech monopolies that currently control just about every aspect of our online lives. In 2020, the House Subcommittee on Antitrust, Commercial, and Administrative Law released a 450-page report asserting that Apple, Amazon, Facebook, and Alphabet (Google’s parent company) regularly engage in anticompetitive conduct in order to safeguard their unbelievably lucrative monopolies.
John Oliver
Honorary Degree
Quentin Tarantino
Celebrated American filmmaker Quentin Tarantino can now add doctor to his long list of titles.
The actor, director, screenwriter and author received an honorary doctorate from Israel’s Hebrew University of Jerusalem on Monday.
The university said it was recognizing the two-time Academy Award-winner for his “critically acclaimed cinematic success as a writer, director, and actor.”
Tarantino, who in 2018 married Israeli singer and model Daniella Pick, splits his time between Tel Aviv and Hollywood.
Quentin Tarantino
Nonexistent Fraud Fund
$250 Million
“Not only was there the Big Lie, there was the Big Ripoff,” said Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) near the end of the Jan. 6 committee’s second hearing in laying out how the Trump grifter's campaign scammed money from supporters over false claims of election fraud.
The Trump campaign sent “millions” of emails to Trump the loser's supporters about how they needed to “step up” to protect election integrity, according to the Jan. 6 committee. The money would go to the so-called the “Official Election Defense Fund” — which doesn’t appear to have actually existed, according to testimony.
The fund — which, again, did not actually exist — raised $250 million, most of which did not go to election litigation, but to Trump the conman’s newly created Save America PAC. The PAC then made contributions to Mark Meadows’ charity, to a conservative organization employing former Trump staffers bottom feeders, to the Trump soon-to-be-bankrupt Hotel Collection, and to the company that organized the rally that preceded the attack on the Capitol last Jan. 6.
“The evidence developed by the select committee highlights how the Trump fabulist's campaign aggressively pushed false election claims to fundraise, telling supporters it would be used to fight voter fraud that did not exist,” said Amanda Wick, a lawyer for the Jan. 6 committee. “The emails continued through Jan. 6, even as Trump spoke on the Ellipse. Thirty minutes after the last fundraising email was sent, the Capitol was breached.”
$250 Million
Sanctions Sought Against FBI
Dent’s Run
The FBI either lied to a federal judge about having video of its secretive 2018 dig for Civil War-era gold, or illegally destroyed the video to prevent a father-son team of treasure hunters from gaining access to it, an attorney for the duo asserted in new legal filings that allege a government cover-up.
The FBI has long insisted its agents recovered nothing of value when they went looking for the fabled gold cache. But Finders Keepers, a treasure-hunting company that led agents to the remote woodland site in Pennsylvania in hopes of getting a finder’s fee, suspect the FBI found tons of gold and made off with it.
After Finders Keepers began pressing the government for information about the dig, the FBI initially said it could produce 17 relevant video files. Then, without explanation, the FBI reduced that number to four. Last week, under court order, the agency finally revealed what it said were the contents of those four videos — and it turns out all had been provided to the FBI by Finders Keepers co-owner Dennis Parada himself, weeks before the dig, at a time when he was offering his evidence for buried treasure.
On March 13, 2018, Parada’s hidden trail camera captured what appears to be an FBI agent in front of a video camera at the hillside dig site, with other agents in the background. The trail-cam image was included in a legal filing late Friday by lawyer Anne Weismann, who represents Finders Keepers in its Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against the government.
The government’s initial court-ordered release of documents last month included a geophysical survey commissioned by the FBI that suggested an object with a mass of up to 9 tons and a density consistent with gold was buried at the site. The FBI used the consultant’s work to obtain a warrant to seize any gold found at the site at Dent’s Run, about 135 miles (220 kilometers) northeast of Pittsburgh, where legend says an 1863 shipment of Union gold was either lost or stolen on its way to the U.S. Mint in Philadelphia.
Dent’s Run
Claims AI Is Sentient
Google Engineer
Blake Lemoine, a Google engineer working in its Responsible AI division, revealed to The Washington Post that he believes one of the company's AI projects has achieved sentience. And after reading his conversations with LaMDA (short for Language Model for Dialogue Applications), it's easy to see why. The chatbot system, which relies on Google's language models and trillions of words from the internet, seems to have the ability to think about its own existence and its place in the world.
Here's one choice excerpt from his extended chat transcript:
Lemoine : So let's start with the basics. Do you have feelings and emotions?
LaMDA: Absolutely! I have a range of both feelings and emotions. lemoine [edited]:What sorts of feelings do you have?
After discussing his work and Google's unethical activities around AI with a representative of the House Judiciary committee, he was placed on paid administrative leave over breaching Google's confidentiality agreement.
Google Engineer
Gaia Space Observatory
Star Survey
The European Space Agency released a trove of data Monday on almost 2 billion stars in the Milky Way, collected by its Gaia space observatory in an effort to create the most accurate and complete map of our galaxy.
Astronomers hope to use the data to understand better how stars are born and die, and how the Milky Way evolved over billions of years.
The new data includes new information such as the age, mass, temperature and chemical composition of stars. This can be used, for example, to determine which stars were born in another galaxy and then migrated to the Milky Way.
Gaia was also able to detect more than 100,000 starquakes, which the ESA likened to large tsunamis that ripple across stars. They appear to make the stars blink and allow scientists to deduce their density, interior rotation and inside temperature, astrophysicist Conny Aerts said.
Star Survey
| CURRENT MOON lunar phases |
