from Bruce
Anecdotes
Birth
• A friend of Quaker humorist Tom Mullen was a sports nut with an expectant wife. He said that he didn’t care whether the baby was a boy or a girl, but many people thought he would prefer a boy because he loved sports so much. When his child — a daughter — was born, the sports nut called up all his friends and said, “You ought to see her hands. They’re great! She’ll be the best girl basketball player in Indiana!”
Children and Teenagers
• Olympic gold medalist figure skater Tara Lipinski started out as a roller skater. She began to ice skate only on a fluke. This is what happened. The mother of a friend of Tara’s wanted Tara to start figure skating because the future of a roller skater — even a champion roller skater — was limited. (Roller skating is not an Olympic event.) However, Tara’s mother resisted the idea because there weren’t any good ice rinks near where they lived and Tara’s taking ice skating lessons would be very inconvenient. But she decided to let Tara go ice skating just once to prove to Tara’s friend’s mother that Tara would be terrible at it. Sure enough, Tara was terrible at first and fell down a lot. Relieved, her parents went out for hot chocolate. But when they returned 45 minutes later, Tara had figured out how to skate and was doing axels and waltz jumps and was skating backwards. The other skaters were amazed at how much she had progressed in just 45 minutes. Instead of being terrible at ice skating, Tara was hooked on it and began taking lessons.
• When Summer Sanders was two years old, her parents installed a swimming pool. Of course, this led to a problem — how could they keep Summer safe? They tried giving her swimming lessons, but it seemed that Summer preferred to cry rather than listen to her teacher, so her parents gave up on the swimming lessons, bought her flotation devices for her arms, and prepared to keep an eye on her whenever she was near the pool. However, Summer surprised them one day by taking off the flotation devices, jumping into the pool, and swimming. She had been paying attention to her teacher after all. The lessons and swimming pool paid off in a big way — Summer became a gold medalist in the butterfly at the 1992 Olympic Games in Barcelona, Spain.
• Eric Gregg, the third black umpire in the major leagues, got an early lesson in umpiring while working a Little League game early in his career. Billy, a seven-year-old kid playing for a team being battered 21-1, came up to bat and told him, “Mister, you see that guy coaching third base? That’s my dad. I’ve struck out three times today, and if I strike out again, he’s really gonna let me have it.” With a full count on the kid, a pitch was close enough to be called a strike, but Mr. Gregg called it a ball and the kid walked. Later, he started to tell the other umpires about the kid, and they knew immediately who the kid was: “Billy! That kid get you, too? He pulls that sh*t every week! You didn’t give him a free walk, did you?”
• Muhammad Ali, whose name at birth was Cassius Clay, began to box as a result of someone stealing his bicycle. He had gone into an auditorium to attend a bazaar, and when he got out his bike was gone. He complained to police officer Joe Martin and said, “If I find the kid who stole my bike, I’ll whip him!” Mr. Martin, an amateur boxing coach, suggested, “If you plan to whip somebody, maybe you’d better come down [to the gym] and learn how.” The young Cassius took Mr. Martin’s advice. He never did find out who had stolen his bike, but he challenged a neighborhood bully to a fight and busted his nose. After the fight, he and his friends stopped fearing the bully.
• When Lynette Woodard was five years old, one of her cousins, Geese Ausbie, told her about his experiences playing for the Harlem Globetrotters, and so young Lynette wanted to play for the Harlem Globetrotters. She practiced her cousin’s basketball tricks around the house as she grew up, with the result that she broke many things around the house as she grew up. However, the practice paid off. She became a scoring sensation at Kansas University, finishing her collegiate career with 3,649 points. In addition, in 1985, she became the first female Globetrotter, debuting on October 17 in a game played in Brisbane, Australia.
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© Copyright Bruce D. Bruce; All Rights Reserved
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Presenting
Michael Egan
U.S.A. replied:
has returned to semi-retired status.
In memory.
BRUCE'S RECOMMENDATION
BANDCAMP MUSIC
BRUCE'S RECOMMENDATION OF BANDCAMP MUSIC
Music: "Louisa"
Album: WHATEVER IT TAKES IS WHAT I’VE GOT
Artist: Kings of the Quarter Mile
Artist Location: England, UK
Info:
“UK rock meets Americana and alt. country, but the pigeons are out of their holes; we're all about songs that reach you and stay with you. KOTQM are: Steve Counsell/vocals and guitar, Pete Juzl/guitars, Dave Smaylen/drums and backing vocals, Brian Richards/bass, Jenny Curtis/backing vocals and Simon Moth/keyboards.”
Price: £1 (GBP) for track, £7 for 11-track album.
Genre: Alternative Country. Pop.
Links:
WHATEVER IT TAKES IS WHAT I’VE GOT
Kings of the Quarter Mile on Bandcamp
Kings of the Quarter Mile 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
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
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
Not quite as toasty.
‘The Problem’
Jon Stewart
Jon Stewart is set to get back in front of a live studio audience for his new Apple show.
The former host of The Daily Show is shooting The Problem with Jon Stewart in New York on July 14 and 16 in front of a fully vaccinated crowd.
It is the latest “late-night” show to shoot in front of an audience after the likes of The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, The Late Show with Stephen Colbert and Jimmy Kimmel Live! brought back audiences.
The Apple TV+ series will require attendees to be fully vaccinated, provide an official vaccination card and complete a wellness screening prior to entering. Audiences and crew members will be required to wear masks at all times.
The show, which launches this fall, is a one-hour current affairs format with a single issue topic explored in each episode.
Jon Stewart
Joins NBC News And MSNBC
Julian Castro
Julian Castro has joined NBC News and MSNBC as a political analyst.
Castro is the former secretary of Housing and Urban Development who ran for president in the 2020 cycle. Morning Joe co-host Mika Brzezinski announced his new role in an appearance on the show on Monday, as Castro joined to talk about voting rights and the debate over amending the filibuster. Rep. James Clyburn (D-SC) has called on President Joe Biden to support changes to the Senate rule.
Castro served as HUD secretary from 2014 to 2017, after serving as mayor of San Antonio. He launched his presidential campaign in January, 2019, one of the first candidates to get in the race, but dropped out almost a year later. He went on to endorse Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA).
Castro is one of the few 2020 presidential contenders to go on to cable news gigs, given the sheer number of candidates who still hold elective office. After he dropped out of the presidential race, Andrew Yang joined CNN as a political commentator, but he then went on to run for mayor of New York.
Added Disclaimer
CPAC Speech
During Donald Trump (R-Lock Him Up)‘s CPAC speech on Sunday, Fox News added a disclaimer that “voting system companies have denied the various allegations made by President Trump and his counsel regarding the 2020 election.” The chyron appeared after Trump started talking about how many votes he received.
Trump claimed the “witch hunts” started when he announced his presidential campaign because he “put America first, all because of MAGA.”
“And now, it’s also because I got more votes — 75 million — than anybody in the history of the presidency, and far more than Clinton, far more than Obama, and a record 12 million more than 2016,” he said. “Think of it, in the history usually they go down a little bit second term and they win, but they go down a little bit.”
He continued: “I was told by a great pollster, really somebody great, John McLaughlin, ‘Sir, you got 63 million votes if you get it up to 64 or 65, nobody can beat you. Can’t lose.’ Thank you, John, very much. I got it to 75 and I lost, in quotes, ‘I lost.’ It’s a disgrace.”
Fox’s chyron reiterating that Trump’s claim that he won the election is untrue then popped up and stayed for 38 seconds (although Trump did not discuss the 2020 election any further during that time).
CPAC Speech
Pitches A Hissy
Little Tucker
Tensions are reportedly high between Fox News host Tucker Carlson and network executives after they have failed to support his claims that the National Security Agency spied on him.
Carlson is "furious" with Fox News executives "for not backing him up" after he alleged the NSA spied on him and was seeking to get his show taken off the air, CNN reports.
Carlson, citing an alleged whistleblower, first made his claim late last month that the NSA was "monitoring our electronic communications and is planning to leak them in an attempt to take this show off the air," prompting the NSA to release a statement denying his allegations as "untrue." CNN notes that one would normally expect statements from Fox News strongly denouncing the NSA's actions if Carlson's allegations were correct, but executives haven't done so, and the claim also hasn't received coverage on the air from Fox's news department.
Following a report from Axios that Carlson made his claims after seeking an interview with Russian President Vladimir Putin, Fox did say it supports "any of our hosts pursuing interviews and stories free of government interference," but according to CNN, Carlson saw this statement as being "wholly insufficient." Another source told CNN that while Carlson has "always had tension with" Fox News' management, he's now "extra pissed." Carlson, meanwhile, denied CNN's "absurd" reporting.
"I'm not mad at anyone at Fox," Carlson told a CNN reporter. "If I was, I'd say so. I'm mad at you for lying relentlessly. What a loathsome person you are. Please print that."
Little Tucker
Twice As Likely To Refuse
Vaccine
A recent survey on how news consumption affects policy views found that Fox News viewers are much less vaccine hesitant than those who tune into further right-wing cable channels Newsmax and One America News Network (OAN).
In a summary of the findings from the Public Religion Research Institute published on the data news site FiveThirtyEight, a shifting landscape in conservative media emerged as a possible explanation for the disparity.
It also showed how news consumption correlates with not just vaccine hesitancy - one of the biggest issues facing the Biden administration in its efforts to bring the US fully out of the pandemic - but also belief in QAnon conspiracy theories and the "Big Lie" that the 2020 election was stolen.
For Republicans who identified as getting most of their news from Fox, 54% said they've either already taken the COVID-19 vaccine or plan to get it as soon as possible. Just 32% of GOP Newsmax and OAN viewers said the same.
As for those who said they would refuse the vaccine, 16% of Fox watchers said they would compared to 32% for Newsmax and OAN.
Vaccine
False Election Claims
‘Kraken’ Lawsuits
The Michigan federal judge who rejected a lawsuit seeking to overturn Michigan's 2020 election results appears sceptical of pro-Trump lawyers' claims that they should not face financial and professional sanctions for filing scores of dubious affidavits with her court.
In December, Judge Linda Parker rejected an effort by attorneys Sidney Powell and Lin Wood to have the court throw out certification of President Joe Biden's victory, writing that the court would not "ignore the orderly statutory scheme established to challenge elections and ... ignore the will of millions of voters."
More than six months later, Ms Powell, Mr Wood, and a host of other GOP lawyers who assisted them were back in Judge Parker's courtroom to answer to motions filed by the City of Detroit, the State of Michigan, and the Democratic National Committee, in which the defendants of the so-called "Kraken" lawsuit asked her to throw out the plaintiff's lawyers' legal careers instead, by way of referring each of them for disbarment by authorities in their respective states.
Over the course of the more than five-hour hearing, Judge Parker questioned attorneys on whether they'd done any work to vet the allegations made in any of those affidavits, calling one such sworn declaration – in which a man walking his dog claimed that he saw a couple hand a trio of plastic bags which he asserted "might" contain ballots to a postal worker in a car park – "really fantastical".
"The seriousness of respondent's uncontroverted misconduct cannot be overstated," the judges wrote.
‘Kraken’ Lawsuits
California Wildfires
Firenadoes
As brutal heat continues to scorch the West, it is sparking wildfires that are burning through hundreds of thousands of acres of land. In California, this year’s wildfires are outpacing the damage caused by last year’s record-setting fire season.
One blaze in California sparked a firenado over the weekend—the state’s second in three weeks. It’s indicative of the severity of the fires burning in the state, and spreading across the West in general. With more heat and single-digit humidity on tap for the start of the week, there could unfortunately be more extreme fire behavior.
The Beckwourth Complex, made up of two lightning-caused fires on the east edge of the Plumas National Forest, north of Lake Tahoe, doubled in size late last week and became the state’s largest fire of 2021 at nearly 90,000 acres as of Monday morning. On Saturday, the flames also whipped up a firenado. Firefighters captured terrifying footage of the occurrence.
“Fucking tornado,” a firefighter can be heard yelling in a video posted to Instagram as people scramble for cover inside vehicles while smoke and debris whip around. Watch the videos if you want to believe that hell is a place on Earth.
Firenadoes are also known as fire tornadoes, fire twisters, or perhaps most accurately, fire devils. (They’re also sometimes called fire whirls, though some meteorologists draw a distinction for that term for smaller but still terrifying fire weather occurrences.) They occur when large wildfires superheat the air. That causes the air to rise. As it rises, it cools and condenses in the upper reaches of the atmosphere, creating unstable conditions and a clash of air that can causes firenadoes to form. Researchers are still studying exactly what conditions lead to firenadoes, but they are among the world’s rarest extreme weather phenomena.
Firenadoes
‘Inappropriate And Offensive’ Names
Moth And Ant Species
Scientists are to stop using names “gypsy moth” and “gypsy ants” for two insect species after a review of “inappropriate or offensive” terms.
The Entomological Society of America (ESA), which oversees the common names of bugs, announced the change as part of its effort to re-evaluate “problematic” terminology.
It is the first time it has changed a name because it is considered offensive. In the past it has only reassigned names that were not scientifically accurate.
The ESA has removed “gypsy moth” and “gypsy ant” from their Common Names of Insects and Related Organisms List.
The group has called on the public to help suggest alternative names to the moth - which is invasive and destructive in the caterpillar stage - and the lesser-known ant.
Moth And Ant Species
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