from Bruce
Anecdotes
Heroes
• In November 2002, Dustin Baker, age 12, was at the Redlands Municipal Airport in Redlands, California. A pilot in a blue ultra-light aircraft took off, but it lost a wheel in the process. Without that wheel, the pilot would have a hard time landing the plane, and if the pilot did not know that the wheel was missing and tried to land the plane at the usual speed, the landing could be fatal. Dustin and a woman at the airport tried making a sign — “LANDING GEAR OFF” — to alert the pilot about the missing wheel, but the wind knocked it over. Therefore, Dustin grabbed the wheel and drove a yellow GMC truck equipped with sirens, lights, and fire extinguishers onto the runway. When the pilot approached the runway, Dustin turned on the truck’s emergency lights and waved the wheel in the air to show the pilot that it had fallen off his plane. Dustin said, “When he flew by, I stood on top of the truck and showed the pilot the wheel.” The pilot slowed down and landed safely. Pilot Randy Lehfeldt said about Dustin’s action, “I think it was very heroic. He was a take-charge guy.” He added, “Dustin’s a hero in my eyes.” Police spokeswoman Renee Groese said, “For a 12-year-old to be so alert and attentive to what’s going on, he really did a great thing.” Dustin’s mother, Lita, said, “That’s Dustin. He’s so attentive and inquisitive. I’m not surprised, but I’m very proud.” Lita added about her son, “He thought he was going to be arrested for driving the truck.” However, police spokeswoman Renee Groese said, “The Police Department wants to recognize the achievements of people, especially young people, when they do good deeds such as these.” Dustin’s father, Steve, said, “We’ve always been extremely proud of him. He’s a 45-year-old trapped in a 12-year-old’s body.”
• In November 2005, Rosalia DeSantis, age 58, grew dizzy and fell onto a Toronto (Canada) Transit Commission subway track. Fortunately, Theo Parusis, age 25, and Alvaro Mejia, age 26, jumped onto the tracks and rescued her seconds before a train came into the station. The three people met later at Sunnybrook Hospital in Toronto. Ms. DeSantis stated, “I said, ‘Thank you, because you are my angels. I’m so happy you were there at the time.’ I think they’re fantastic. I call them my angels. Yes, they are, they deserve all the credit.” Mr. Mejia said, “I don’t know what to say. I don’t feel like a hero. I just saved a life.” Mr. Parusis said, “I wouldn’t say ‘hero.’ It’s just a part of what we should be. If we all helped each other, it would be a much better place.” Ms. DeSantis, a secretary, added, “I’m very happy they were there, and I thank God they were there to help me.” Mr. Parusis, a warehouse worker, remembered, “My initial reaction was to jump down and check if she was still alive. I tried to bring her up, but I struggled, so [Mr. Mejia] jumped down and attempted to help me. And an incoming train was coming. As soon as we saw the incoming train, we panicked and we just got an adrenalin rush and managed to get her up in time. Five seconds later, the train just passed by.” Mr. Mejia, who had arrived from Colombia two months previously as a refugee, said, “I didn’t think [about] anything, I just tried to help him.” Mr. Parusis said, “I just jumped, there’s no thought. It all happened so quickly. Of course, if I was in that situation, I hope someone would do the same thing.” Toronto Police Constable Scott Villers of 13 Division said that “what they did was incredible.”
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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
Music: "Strasborg St Denis"
Album: TRIP CLUBS AND TRIGGERS: A COMPILATION FOR THE SHARP MODERNIST
Artist: French Boutik
Record Company: Aldora Britain Records
Record Company Location: Rothley, UK
Info:
“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.”
French Boutik - the new modernist pop of Paris
Price: £2.50 (GBP) for 23 tracks by various artists
Genre: Pop. Variouss.
Links:
TRIP CLUBS AND TRIGGERS: A COMPILATION FOR THE SHARP MODERNIST
French Boutik on YouTube
Aldora Britain Records on Bandcamp
Aldora Britain Records on YouTube
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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
Nearly another inch of rain this afternoon.
First NFT Collection
Ozzy Osbourne
Ozzy Osbourne has announced his first dive into the world of NFTs (non-fungible tokens) with the upcoming ‘Cryptobatz’ collection.
The Prince of Darkness will unveil 9,666 unique NFT bats in January – a knowing nod to the infamous moment he bit the head off a bat during a 1982 performance in Des Moines, Iowa. The news was first announced by Rolling Stone UK.
Created by Osbourne himself, the new collection will be available to purchase next month and brings an innovative world-first feature to the NFT market. According to an official release, each Cryptobat will give collectors a unique opportunity to birth an additional NFT; activating a feature that will allow their purchase to “bite” and mutate with another NFT from their digital wallet.
Known as ‘MutantBatz,’ the pioneering feature will subsequently allow owners to combine the attributes of two separate projects – making ‘MutantBatz’ a rare offering for NFT collectors. So far, the likes of Bored Ape Yacht Club, SupDucks, Cryptotoadz and a fourth mystery name have all teamed up for the combination of NFTs as part of the project.
NFTs, which came into widespread popularity earlier this year, are a form of cryptocurrency asset. Most cryptocurrencies are fungible (or “spendable”) tokens that can be exchanged for other cryptocurrencies or spent on goods at places where they’re accepted as currency. However, NFTs are a one-off digital asset that can be kept on the blockchain and traded or sold as collectibles.
Ozzy Osbourne
Key To The City
Patti Smith
Singer Patti Smith received the Key to the City Monday.
Mayor Bill de Blasio bestowed the honor at City Hall. He also presented Smith with a cupcake in honor of her 75th birthday.
Smith said she came to New York in 1967 with just a few dollars in her pocket.
“I wish I could give New York City the key to me, because that’s how I feel about our city. With all it’s challenges and difficulties, it remains – and I am quite a traveler – the most diverse city, to me, in the world. The city that has so many possibilities, so much possibilities for growth,” she said. De
Blasio has also recently given the Key to the City to Spike Lee, Gloria Steinem and Hazel Dukes, among others.
Patti Smith
That's Entertainment
Cable News
The presidential election, pandemic and racial reckoning were stories that drove intense interest and engagement to news outlets in 2020. To a large degree, 2021 represented the inevitable hangover.
Cable news networks were the main form of evening entertainment for millions of Americans last year. In 2021, weekday prime-time viewership dropped 38% at CNN, 34% at Fox News Channel and 25% at MSNBC, according to the Nielsen company.
The decline was less steep but still significant at broadcast television evening newscasts: 12% at ABC’s “World News Tonight” and the “CBS Evening News;” 14% at NBC’s “Nightly News,” Nielsen said.
The Trump era saw explosive subscriber growth for some digital news sites like The New York Times and Washington Post. Yet readers aren’t spending as much time there; Comscore said the number of unique visitors to the Post’s site was down 44% in November compared to November 2020, and down 34% at the Times.
Fox News, while doubling down on conservative commentary following perceived threats from outlets like Newsmax and OANN, directed fans to its Fox Nation streaming service. Arguably Fox’s most attention-getting programming of the year was a documentary on the Jan. 6 Capitol riot by Tucker Carlson, that asserted it was an effort to silence Trump supporters.
Cable News
Schmuck
Schmeck
The Oregon man who called President Biden and first lady Jill Biden and said the anti-Biden phrase "Let's Go Brandon" pushed the baseless claim that the 2020 election was stolen from former President Trump (R-Lock Him Up) while speaking on a podcast with Steve Bannon (R-Lock Him Up).
Appearing on Bannon's "War Room" podcast, Jared Schmeck said he initially thought the Christmas Eve call with the Bidens would be prerecorded, and it was when he realized that the call was live that the idea "popped" in his head to say "Let's Go Brandon."
Schmeck, wearing a MAGA hat on the podcast, said that while he thought the call was funny, he still felt that it was a "very serious thing" to voice his disapproval of the Biden administration.
"I am a Christian man. For me, it's God first and foremost. I don't follow any one man blindly. Some of the media's run with that and said I don't support Donald Trump. That's absolutely false, Donald Trump is my president and he should still be the president right now. The election was 100 percent stolen," said Schmeck.
During his interview, the former police officer also criticized the withdrawal from Afghanistan, supply chain disruptions, vaccine mandates, inflation and policies on providing access to abortions.
Schmeck
Dead People Voting In Georgia
Four
In early January, then-President Donald Trump (R-Lock Him Up) invoked debunked, baseless conspiracy theories, and just flat-out lied in an attempt to pressure Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to overturn the results of that state’s presidential election. In addition to making the laughable assertion that the attendance at his campaign rallies was evidence of his victory, Trump claimed that close to 5,000 dead Georgians voted.
We now know Trump as off by 4,996.
State election investigators found only four absentee ballots from dead voters were cast in last year’s presidential election, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported Monday. All four of the invalid ballots were submitted by family members of the deceased.
While pushing Raffensberger to overturn Georgia’s election results, Trump painted a picture of a widespread, coordinated effort to pad Biden’s vote totals with ballots that had been mailed to dead people.
Trump lost Georgia, which hadn’t voted for a Democrat since 1992, by about 12,000 votes. In that notorious call with Raffensperger, which is the subject of a criminal investigation by a Georgia district attorney and a probe by Raffensperger’s office, Trump had urged the public official to “find” the votes to reverse the election outcome. But Raffensperger resisted, correcting him that the “data you have is wrong.”
Four
Zuckerberg Buys More Land
Hawaii
Billionaire Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has purchased more property in Hawaii, including most of a reservoir that unleashed a deadly flood 15 years ago.
Property records show Zuckerberg’s Kaloko LLC bought a 110-acre (44.5-hectare) site on Kauai last month for $17 million from a company owned by the Pflueger family, the Honolulu Star-Advertiser reported.
The purchase includes most of a reservoir that flooded in 2006, killing seven people, after a section of a dam burst following 40 days of near-constant rain. James Pflueger was held responsible for the tragedy for his management of the dam.
The reservoir remains unrepaired and on the state's list of high-risk dams.
The couple plan to extend farming, ranching, conservation and wildlife protection work on the land, LaBolt said. They already had 1,300 acres (526 hectares) on the island.
Hawaii
The Universe
Red Sky Paradox
On the grand cosmic scale, our little corner of the Universe isn't all that special – this idea lies at the heart of the Copernican principle. Yet there's one major aspect about our planet that's peculiar indeed: Our Sun is a yellow dwarf.
Because our home star is what we know most intimately, it would be tempting to assume that yellow and white dwarf stars (FGK dwarfs) are common elsewhere in the cosmos. However, they're far from the most multitudinous stars in the galaxy; that particular feather belongs in the cap of another type of star – red dwarf (M dwarfs).
Not only do red dwarfs make up as much as 75 percent of all stars in the Milky Way, they are much cooler and longer-lived than stars like the Sun. Much, much longer lived.
Since red dwarfs are so abundant, and so stable, and since we shouldn't automatically consider ourselves to be cosmically special, the fact we're not orbiting a red dwarf should therefore be somewhat surprising. And yet, here we are, orbiting a not-so-common yellow dwarf.
This, according to a paper by astronomer David Kipping of Columbia University, is the Red Sky Paradox – a corollary to the Fermi Paradox, which questions why we've not yet found any other forms of intelligent life, out there in the big wide Universe.
Red Sky Paradox
Concentration
Tongues
The protruded tongue is often our proof of a child's ultimate concentration — for example, when a youngster is learning to write letters or an infant is trying to mimic their parents. But it's not just kids; even adults stick out or press their tongues to the roofs of their mouths during especially difficult tasks. So what is it about deep thinking that causes us to engage, clamp and even stick out our tongues?
While it might seem that you're sticking out your tongue when thinking intently, it's really a product of what you're doing, Gillian Forrester, a professor of comparative cognition and deputy dean of the School of Science at Birkbeck, University of London. "What we've found is what people mean is they [stick out their tongue] when they are doing something delicate that requires fine motor activation of their hands."
One theory for why this happens is called motor overflow. Neuroimaging reveals that the region of the brain devoted to language (located in the inferior frontal gyrus) is highly overlapping with neural networks devoted to dexterity and tool use, according to a 2019 study published in Frontiers in Psychology. Motor overflow suggests that neurons firing in the dexterity region are so activated that they overflow into neighboring neural tissue (which happens to direct the mouth). Therefore, when you're deeply focused on a fine-motor task, the effect "spills over" into the language region, causing you to engage your mouth and tongue.
This idea is likely part of what's happening, Forrester said. The hands and the tongue are the "only fine articulators on our bodies and are controlled by overlapping bits of our brain" in the left hemisphere, Forrester told Live Science. The 2019 study mentioned above, found that motor proficiency predicts language production, especially when using complex tools. The authors conclude that this means that tool-use (fine motor skills) and language share a cognitive process.
That said, the research about the tongue-concentration behavior is far from settled. Forrester said there's likely more to the story, and there may even be an evolutionary component.
Tongues
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