from Bruce
Anecdotes
Royalty
• You’ve heard of the Cadbury bunny, haven’t you? The Cadbury Chocolate Works used to be owned by George and Elizabeth Cadbury, both Quakers. King George V and Queen Mary once visited the Cadburys, who took them on a tour. Mr. Cadbury took off his hat during the tour, but Queen Mary was worried about his catching cold, so she requested that he put his hat back on, but he declined. Queen Mary then said that she would ask her husband the King to tell him to put his hat back on, but Mr. Cadbury again declined to put on his hat. Mrs. Cadbury then said firmly, “George, put on your hat.” Mr. Cadbury — and King George V — put on their hats.
• During the Restoration in England, Dr. Robert South was preaching to Charles II when he noticed that several members of the congregation were sleeping through his sermon. Keeping his presence of mind, he called to one of the sleepers, “Lord Lauderdale, let me entreat you, rouse yourself; you snore so loud that you will wake the King.”
Sabbath
• Edwin Porter was a strict Methodist preacher who was active in Texas during the first half of the 20th century. As a strict preacher, he didn’t believe in having ragtime music played during the family’s musical Sunday afternoons, although love songs and of course gospel were fine. One day he asked his oldest daughter, Katie, to play something on the piano. Katie decided to play the newest ragtime hit, “Twelfth Street Rag,” but she told her father it was a new song titled “Love in My Heart.” Rev. Porter liked the new song so much that he asked his daughter to play it three times.
• Stand-up comedian Marc Weiner, creator of the finger puppets known as the Weinerettes, ran into some problems when he began to observe the Sabbath, which for Jews begins at sunset Friday. Of course, Friday evening is a big day for Gentiles to go to comedy clubs, and in observance of the Sabbath, Mr. Weiner declined to work then. Fortunately, some club owners are willing to work around his schedule.
• A Jewish man married a Gentile woman although his father advised him not to. Later, the man told his father that he had been right: “That woman will drive me to the poorhouse. The rabbi told her that it is a sin to do business on the Sabbath, and now she won’t let me open my store on Saturdays.” His father replied, “See. A Jewish man is a fool if he marries a Gentile.”
Satan
• While working as a stand-up comedian in Oklahoma, Jay Leno saw that many members of the audience had something written on the soles of their shoes. Later, he asked the promoter about it and discovered that a local preacher had told members of his congregation to write “Satan” on the soles of their shoes because just by walking around they could stomp out Satan.
• A Christian was caught backsliding, so his pastor told him, “When you are tempted, say, ‘Satan, get behind me!’” The backslider replied, “I do say that, but Satan says, ‘All right, I’ll get behind you. It doesn’t matter who is in front as long as we are both going in the same direction.’”
Scripture
• Some people treat the Bible as a device of divination by opening it at random and pointing blindly to a verse, repeating the process as many times as necessary. Rolf E. Aaseng is very much against this practice. In teaching his Sunday School class, he has the students imagine that they try it and point first to Matthew 27:5 (“Judas … went off and hanged himself”), then imagine that they try it again and point to Luke 10:37 (“Jesus replied, ‘You go, then, and do likewise’”).
• Henry Cadbury, an early 20th-century scholar, professor, and Quaker wit, stayed away from telling risqué humor with one exception. Sometimes he told about staying in a hotel room in which a Bible had been placed. In the Bible was a listing of verses for various problems, including “Worried? See verse so and so. Troubled? See verse so and so. Lonely? See verse so and so.” After the listing for lonely, someone had written: “Still lonely? Call Mabel at 123-4567.”
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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: "PTSD"
Album: TIME & FATE
Artist: Ben Matchett
Artist Location: Hudson’s Hope, British Columbia
Info:
“Everyday we get to see the good, bad, ugly, and beautiful. I feel there is a song hiding in all of it.”
Price: $1 (CAD) for track; $7 (CAD) for eight-track album
Genre: Singer-Songwriter
Links:
Ben Matchett on Bandcamp
Ben Matchett on YouTube
Other Links:
David Bruce's Amazon Author Page
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David Bruce's Blog #1
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David Bruce's Apple iBookstore
David Bruce has over 140 Kindle books on Amazon.com.
Reader Suggestion
Michelle in AZ
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
They're calling this sumo tournament 'the body-count basho' - 2 went to hospital yesterday.
‘Poison For America’
Rupert
A former Fox executive has condemned the network as “poison for America”, accusing the broadcaster of having “contributed” to deaths and division in the US by providing a platform for anti-mask views during the coronavirus pandemic, as well as for unfounded claims from the right, including former President Donald Trump (R-Lock Him Up)’s repeated claims of fraud in the 2020 election.
In an op-ed published by The Daily Beast, Preston Padden, a former broadcast executive who helped launch Fox, said he believed the broadcaster had started out with the goal of filling an “opening for a responsible and truthful centre-right news network”.
However, he said: “In recent years things have gone badly off the tracks at Fox News. Fox News is no longer is a truthful centre-right news network [sic]”.
Noting a recent poll suggesting that more than 70 per cent of Republicans blame “left-wing protesters” for the 6 January insurrection at the US Capitol, he said: “Of course, that is ludicrous.”
“All one has to do is look at the pictures or videos of the attack to see that the violent mob was comprised of Trump supporters,” he said.
Rupert
Corporate Pledges Fall Flat
Capitol Assault
As shockwaves spread across the country from the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, corporate America took a stand against the lies that powered the mob. Or so it seemed.
Dozens of big companies, citing their commitment to democracy, pledged to avoid donating money to the 147 lawmakers who objected to Congress’ certification of Joe Biden’s victory on the false grounds that voting fraud stole the election from then-President Donald Trump.
It was a striking gesture by some of the most familiar names in business but, as it turns out, it was largely an empty one.
Six months later, many of those companies have resumed funneling cash to political action committees that benefit the election efforts of lawmakers whether they objected to the election certification or not. When it comes to seeking political influence through corporate giving, business as usual is back, if it ever left.
Walmart, Pfizer, Intel, General Electric and AT&T are among companies that announced their pledges on behalf of democracy in the days after Trump supporters stormed the Capitol in a violent bid to disrupt the transfer of power.
Capitol Assault
Buys L.A.’s Vista Theatre
Quentin Tarantino
Quentin Tarantino has purchased Los Angeles’ the historic Sunset Boulevard venue Vista Theatre, the director and film buff announced on a podcast.
“I bought the Vista on Sunset,” Tarantino said today on Dax Shepard’s Armchair Expert podcast. “We’ll probably open it up around Christmas time. And again: only film. It won’t be a revival house. We’ll show new movies that come out where they give us a film print. It’s not going to be like the New Beverly. The New Beverly has its own vibe.”
Tarantino bought the Landmark New Beverly in 2007. That venue, which shows 35mm and 16mm films, reopened last month.
“The Vista is like a crown jewel kind of thing,” Tarantino said. “We’ll show older films, but it will be like you can hold a four-night engagement.” The Vista has been closed due to the Covid pandemic shutdown.
Quentin Tarantino
Retrieved Own Loot
Forrest Fenn
A French treasure hunter has sued the estate of a Santa Fe, New Mexico, antiquities dealer who sparked a yearslong search across the American West by hiding a chest filled with gold, coins and other valuables.
Bruno Raphoz is seeking $10 million in a complaint filed last week in U.S. District Court in New Mexico. He claims the late Forrest Fenn deprived him of the riches by moving the treasure chest after he solved a riddle that would lead him to the loot.
The lawsuit comes a year after another man found the treasure in Wyoming, the Santa Fe New Mexican reported.
“It appeared suspicious to everyone,” Raphoz said in the lawsuit. “Our assumption is that (Forrest) Fenn went to retrieve the chest himself, declared it found publicly and kept the content for himself.”
Raphoz said he used the clues to determine Fenn’s treasure was in southwestern Colorado. He informed Fenn he solved the puzzle and was on his way to retrieve the chest. However, his plans were derailed by the coronavirus pandemic, and Fenn announced a short time later that the treasure had been found.
Forrest Fenn
Welcome To Dystopia
Amazon
We were initially anxious about the introduction of robots into our workforce because of the potential disappearance of manual labor jobs. Robots would take over factories, we were told, they’d drive our cars and trucks, and they would do all of the cleaning that janitorial and domestic workers are currently hired to do. But it turns out auto-pilots drive cars about as well as my cat when he’s drunk, and the way my friend’s Roomba always gets lost under the kitchen table, spinning uselessly, unable to find his way out, suggests we’ll still need people with brooms for a while now.
Instead, the robots are here not to replace this lower tier of underpaid and undervalued work. They are here to smugly sit in the middle, monitoring and surveilling us, hiring and firing us. Amazon has recently replaced its middle management and human resources workers with artificial intelligence to determine when a worker has outlived their usefulness and needs to be let go. There is no human to appeal to, no negotiating with a bot. This is the most boring possible Terminator sequel, where the robots aren’t here to murder or enslave you but rather to text you snidely that you won’t need to come into work tomorrow or, for that matter, ever again.
According to a report by Bloomberg, Flex drivers, who are Amazon contract workers and not granted the protections reserved for full-time employees, are being hired and fired via an app. A software program monitors each worker to determine whether they are working quickly enough, whether they are driving safely enough, and whether they are efficiently meeting their delivery quotas. That this program is rife with errors and punishes workers for things that are not their fault, from traffic problems to incorrect delivery directions, does not seem to concern Amazon. Workers have often complained about the unfair monitoring and lack of human oversight, but Amazon has maintained its system.
This system works for Amazon because the US maintains a large population of insecure and underpaid workers
It’s not even difficult to figure out why. Jeff Bezos, who keeps promising us he is going to leave Earth and go to space but here he still is, seems to believe all workers are inherently lazy. And look, it’s always very helpful when our billionaire overlords just say the evil thing out loud so we don’t have to speculate. The man who designed Amazon’s warehouses has pretty much said that Amazon’s systems are set up to promote high employee turnover, because longer-term workers are more comfortable and less desperate to please.
Amazon
Another Warning
CDC
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is warning against swimming with diarrhea this summer, and the visual it's using to give that warning is making quite a splash.
The agency tweeted a warning that "one person with diarrhea can contaminate the entire pool," along with a cartoon gif of a girl going down a slide leaving a brown streak behind.
The CDC added a link to its guidance on diarrhea and swimming, but the comments on the tweet appeared to be concerned with what was behind the colorful graphic.
Many were grossed out, while others pointed out taxpayer dollars may have funded the work behind this.
CDC
Renewed Quest To Find HMS Endurance
Ernest Shackleton
It's arguably the most famous shipwreck whose location has yet to be found.
The Endurance vessel, which was lost on Antarctic explorer Ernest Shackleton's ill-fated expedition in 1914-17, lies at the bottom of the Weddell Sea.
Many have thought about trying to identify its resting place; a few have even had a go. But sea-ice cover in the region makes navigation very tricky.
Dr John Shears and colleagues, however, are undaunted. Having been beaten on their last mission, they're returning.
Shackleton's ship is a site of historic importance and has been designated as a monument under the international Antarctic Treaty. It mustn't be disturbed in any way.
Ernest Shackleton
51,000-Year-Old Bone Carving
Einhornhöhle
Patterns deliberately etched onto a bone belonging to a giant deer is further evidence that Neanderthals possessed the capacity for symbolic thought.
Neanderthals decorated themselves with feathers, drew cave paintings, and created jewelry from eagle talons, so it comes as little surprise to learn that Neanderthals also engraved patterns onto bone. The discovery of this 55,000-year-old bone carving, as described in Nature Ecology & Evolution, is further evidence of sophisticated behaviour among Neanderthals.
“Evidence of artistic decorations would suggest production or modification of objects for symbolic reasons beyond mere functionality, adding a new dimension to the complex cognitive capability of Neanderthals,” as Silvia Bello, an archaeologist at the Natural History Museum in London, explained in an associated New & Views article.
The carving was found at the Einhornhöhle archaeological site in the Harz mountains of northern Germany, and it features a line pattern consisting of six etchings that form five stacked chevrons. The “parallel and regularly spaced engravings have comparable dimensions and were very probably created in a uniform approach suggesting an intentional act,” according to the study, led by archaeologist Dirk Leder from the State Service for Cultural Heritage Lower Saxony in Hannover, Germany.
Radiocarbon dating places the 2.2-inch-long toe bone to the Middle Paleolithic, and shortly before the arrival of Homo sapiens to the region. Microscopic analysis of the fossil suggests it was boiled prior to etching, which was likely done to soften the bone prior to carving, according to the research. The markings don’t resemble cuts typically associated with butchering, and the decorated item is of “no practical use,” as the researchers write in the study. The carving likely held significant symbolic meaning given the rarity of giant deer north of the alps during this time period. The exact meaning of the patterns, however, is anyone’s guess.
That the bone carving was produced by Neanderthals is not a certainty. Genetic evidence presented earlier this year places the arrival of anatomically modern humans to central Europe at around 45,000 year ago, which post-dates the carving by around 6,000 years. This apparent temporal gap points to the artifact as belonging to Neanderthals, but it’s not entirely implausible to suggest that Homo sapiens produced, or possibly influenced, the creation of this artwork.
Einhornhöhle
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