M Is FOR MASHUP - April 25th, 2018
Chocomang's Reggae Mashup Collection Hits The Net!
By DJ Useo
The famous Parisian bootlegger Chocomang recently helmed a very successful Reggae mashup collection. My Bartcop E article on it
"12 Reggae Mashups Album" is here
( www.suprmchaos.com/bcEnt-Wed-121317.index.html )
The tunes included are highly addictive, & Chocomang felt the drive enough to surge forward & complete a finest kind Reggae mashup album all on his own.
"Chocomang's Reggae Mashup Collection"
( chocomang.org/Albums/ChocomangsReggaeCollection/ )
. We all surely feel the benefit. ( Those of us who listen, that is. ) I think most of us will find the included blends are the "bee's knees".
The fourteen mixes on this collection bring together the best Reggae artists together with various other style artists in such a manner that they sound like they began this way. Chocomang has vast experience, & extensive skills & can work with any style. His handling of production has proved time & again through his posts how much he can thrill the listeners. Once you discover the gems on this Reggae album, you'd be well advised to head over to his site where you can access
almost 200 incredible Chocomang mashups
( chocomang.org/mashup/index_en.htm ) .
This set contains pairings such as Bob Marley vs the Proclaimers, Rootical Record Crew vs The Smiths, LionRiddims vs Evanescence, & so very many more. Reggae mashups remain among the more popular styles, yet also are amidst the scarcest of posted blends. This release from Chocomang displays again his finely-honed sense of what people want to hear in a mashup. Try dropping a few of these tracks onto your music app of choice for your friends, & you'll find some very contented company.
Plenty more Chocomang mashups are coming soon on new
Audioboots
( audioboots.com )
mashup comps, & his single posts. I think we all owe him a big debt for creating, & sharing his love of mixing. For certainly, he could easily be doing crossword puzzles, or any of a number of alternate activities. I know one bootlegger who quit posting, & got into knitting instead. ( & not mashup knitting, either ) The album is "no-charge", so you can have it right now for the cost of a few right-clicks.
Zip file mirror links are here
( chocomang.org/Albums/ChocomangsReggaeCollection/ )
I hope to feature a new mashup album next week. Cross your fingers, & we'll cross the music. Bye for now.
Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Paul Krugman: We Don't Need No Education (NY Times Column)
Why Republicans ended up at war with America's schoolteachers.
JONATHAN MARTIN and DENISE LU: Republicans Are Nervous About Tuesday's Special Election in Arizona (NY Times)
We're watching [the] special election in Arizona closely, not because we expect the Democrats to stage an upset (the congressional district is solidly Republican), but because Republicans are showing concern over the outcome. Here's what makes this House race interesting.
Jonathan Chait: Female Democratic Presidential Candidates Need to Avoid the Victim Trap (NY Mag)
What helps you win attention from activists might not help you win the presidency.
Arwa Mahdawi: Happy birthday to YouTube? It's now a terrifying cesspit of clickbait (The Guardian)
One YouTuber fed a homeless man biscuits filled with toothpaste. Another killed her boyfriend in a prank gone wrong. As the video-sharing site turns 13, it seems to be increasingly out of control.
Lakeyta Bonnette-Bailey: Rap music's path from pariah to Pulitzer (Conversation)
Kendrick Lamar's Pulitzer Prize win is a major milestone for hip-hop, a genre that celebrates its 45th birthday this August. It's also a triumph that many, a mere decade ago, would have never predicted. As someone who teaches and studies the politics of hip-hop and rap, I was pleasantly surprised myself.
MARTA FIGLEROWICZ, AYESHA RAMACHANDRAN: The Erotics of Mentorship (Boston Review)
"Why would anyone want to date their teacher?" a friend said wonderingly. It took a moment to realize that, to her, this was a rhetorical question. "You mean you've never had a crush on one of yours?" She looked back in bewilderment. "God, no!" she certainly had not, and seemed scandalized, as if she had been told an obscene secret.
Coffee (NutritionFacts.org)
The Beverage Guidance Panel, assembled to provide recommendations on benefits and risks of various beverage categories, found tea and coffee-preferably without creamer or sweetener-tied as the number-two healthiest beverages, second only to water.
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David Bruce has over 80 Kindle books on Amazon.com.
Presenting
Michael Egan
responded:
replied:
In memory.
Reader Suggestion
Michelle in AZ
Reader Comment
current Events
He's touching me again!
Make him STOP TOUCHING ME!!!! (Cynthia shared the video link) Ah ha ha ha ha!
Bonus Links
Jeannie the Teed-Off Temp
from Marc Perkel
Marc's Guide to Curing Cancer
So far so good on beating cancer for now. I'm doing fine. At the end of the month I'll be 16 months into an 8 month mean lifespan. And yesterday I went on a 7 mile hike and managed to keep up with the hiking group I was with. So, doing something right.
Still waiting for future test results and should see things headed in the right direction. I can say that it's not likely that anything dire happens in the short term so that means that I should have time to make several more attempts at this. So even if it doesn't work the first time there are a lot of variations to try. So if there's bad news it will help me pick the next radiation target.
I have written a "how to" guide for oncologists to perform the treatment that I got. I'm convinced that I'm definitely onto something and whether it works for me or not isn't the definitive test. I know if other people tried this that it would work for some of them, and if they improve it that it will work for a lot of them.
The guide is quite detailed and any doctor reading this can understand the procedure at every level. I also go into detail as to how it works, how I figured it out, and variations and improvements that could be tried to enhance it. I also introduce new ways to look at the problem. There is a lot of room for improvement and I think that doctors reading it will see what I'm talking about and want to build on it. And it's written so that if you're not a doctor you can still follow it. It also has a personal story revealing that I'm the class clown of cancer support group. I give great interviews and I look pretty hot in a lab coat.
So, feel free to read this and see what I'm talking about. But if any of you want to help then pass this around to both doctors and cancer patients. I need some media coverage. I'm looking for as many eyeballs as possible to read these ideas. Even if this isn't the solution, it's definitely on the right track. After all, I did hike 7 miles yesterday. And this hiking group wasn't moving slow. So if this isn't working then, why am I still here?
I also see curing cancer as more of an engineering problem that a medical problem. So if you are good at solving problems and most of what you know about medicine was watching the Dr. House MD TV show, then you're at the level I was at when I started. So anyone can jump in and be part of the solution.
Here is a link to my guide: Oncologists Guide to Curing Cancer using Abscopal Effect
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
WHAT GREEDY BUNCH OF ASSHOLES!
HERE'S THE BILL.
THE DRUNK.
STEROTYPES.
"THOU SHALT NOT KILL."
TOO WEIRD.
THE LIAR!
Visit JD's site - Kitty Litter Music
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
And another marine layer.
Visited Colbert
Cheech and Chong
The pro-marijuana crowd took a hit Monday night when counterculture icons Cheech and Chong announced on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert that they'd no longer be doing "stoner comedy." It may be that the widespread acceptance of weed took the edge off that sort of comedy. Or maybe being able to buy it without having to pretend to be friends with the person selling to you took the appeal away for Cheech.
"So you're not excited about legalization?" Colbert asked. Cheech said, "Now way! It's boring. The last time I bought weed it was from a store in a strip mall." When Colbert asked where he used to buy it, Cheech replied, "Behind a store in a strip mall."
So the creators and stars of such classics as Up in Smoke and Still Smokin may be evolving from something that smells like skunks to something that smells like feet. "Now we're into unpasteurized dairy products - check this s*** out, man," Chong said while grabbing a cheese platter. They also said they'd be getting into importing exotic reptiles and, they're really playing with fire here, taping and distributing football games without the express written consent of the NFL. But old habits die hard, and Cheech and Chong will still be blazing
in the form of burning leaves without a permit.
Now before this goes and harshes anyone's mellow, rest assured this was just a bit playing up the fact that the kind of humor isn't as rebellious as it used to be, especially now that former Republican Speaker of the House John Boehner has gotten involved in the weed game.
Cheech and Chong
Releases Dropbox Folder of Transcripts, Tweets
Michael Avenatti
Stormy Daniels's attorney Michael Avenatti released a Dropbox folder containing highlighted court transcripts and screen grabs of Sean Hannity's tweets on Monday afternoon. The compilation of already-available material, which he titled "Facts Are Stubborn Things," came as Avenatti defended himself against allegations that he was launching baseless attacks against the Fox News host.
Hannity's colleagues at Fox, specifically Brit Hume and Laura Ingraham, had been criticizing Avenatti for both his myriad media appearances and his attacks on Hannity, who was revealed to be embattled Trump attorney Michael Cohen's mystery third client last week. Avenatti predicted during a weekend appearance on CNN that the relationship between Cohen and Hannity was "far more extensive" than people realize, although he did not provide evidence.
Hume tweeted on Sunday that Avenatti had no basis for those predictions, writing that the lawyer for adult film star Stormy Daniels is playing the news media.
Avenatti responded in a series of tweets Monday afternoon. "In light of @brithume claiming I never have a basis for my statements and he and @ingrahamAngle taking shots at me for my harmless comments re Mr. Hannity on CNN yesterday, I think it's only fair that I shed light on some critical FACTS re the situation," he tweeted, linking to the Dropbox folder.
Inside, he highlighted swaths of testimony. One highlighted portion appeared to contradict Hannity's own description of the relationship he shared with lawyer. The Fox News host claimed he never "retained" Cohen in any legal matter and instead simply consulted the attorney-but a U.S. attorney said in court that Cohen never grouped people he consulted for with his legal clients.
Michael Avenatti
Monkey Can't Copyright His Selfies
Federal Appeals Court
A monkey can't sue over copyright infringement of his selfies because he's not human and therefore has no standing to do so, a federal appeals court ruled on Monday.
"We must determine whether a monkey may sue humans, corporations, and companies for damages and injunctive relief arising from claims of copyright infringement," Judge Carlos Bea wrote in the opinion for the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. "We conclude that this monkey - and all animals, since they are not human - lacks statutory standing under the Copyright Act."
The case involved a series of heart-melting snaps of Naruto, a grinning crested macaque, in 2011. British nature photographer David Slater set up a camera in an Indonesian forest, and Naruto somehow tripped the camera himself (Slater was not on the scene). Essentially, the photogenic animal took his own selfies, argued People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.
PETA sued Slater when he sold some of the photos in 2015. Always pushing the boundaries of animal rights, PETA argued that Naruto owned the rights to the photos, calling the images "original works of authorship."
Both sides eventually reached a settlement, with Slater agreeing to donate 25 percent of future income from the Naruto photos to protect habitats where crested macaques live. But the 9th Circuit still decided to rule in the important case.
Federal Appeals Court
The Great Republican Backfire
Tax Cut
Did you have a happy Tax Day? Are you feeling grateful for the Republican tax cut? Evidently, most American taxpayers are not.
In a sublime case of poetic justice, the so-called Tax Cut and Jobs Act is backfiring on the Republicans big time. Most voters are unimpressed, and Republicans themselves are ceasing to emphasize it in their campaign material.
Previous Republican tax cuts, under Ronald Reagan, and George W. Bush, were also tilted to the top, but made sure to include some real benefits for regular people. But this bill was so heavily skewed to the wealthy that most people won't see any benefits at all in their paychecks.
In their excess, Republicans also managed to accomplish something - for their opposition - that has entirely eluded Democrats on tax politics since Reagan: total party unity. Reagan's two big tax cuts in 1981 and 1986 peeled off lots of Democratic votes in Congress. Though the substance of the supply-side cuts was bogus, many Democrats figured that if the bill was going to pass anyway, they should share in the credit. The same thing happened with the Bush tax cuts of 2001 and 2003.
This time, however, the tax bill was both so extreme in its substance, and so purely partisan in the way it was enacted, that not a single Democrat in either the House or the Senate voted for it.
Tax Cut
Temper Tantrum
NRA
National Rifle Association (NRA) members have been posting videos of destroying products made by Yeti after the company cut ties with the group in the wake of the Parkland, Florida school shooting.
The 14 February tragedy resulted in 17 deaths, several of them students. Yeti primarily makes high-end outdoors products, including iceboxes costing between $250 to $1,300 according to the Washington Post. The company had been offering NRA members a discount on its products often used for outdoor events. The videos posted show NRA members destroying iceboxes and tumblers with bullets and otherwise.
One member, Bryan Atkinson of South Carolina, "placed ammonium nitrate and aluminium powder, packaged in a cardboard box sealed with duct tape," in his icebox. He then took his AR-15 weapon, the same type of weapon used in the Parkland shooting, and shot at the icebox, blowing it up.
A letter was sent on 20 April to NRA members by the NRA Institute for Legislative Action announcing Yeti's decision. Former NRA president and current lobbyist Marion Hammer called the iceboxes, known as coolers in the US, a "hot item" for several years for NRA members. But she wrote: "They will only say they will no longer sell products to The NRA Foundation...That certainly isn't sportsmanlike. In fact, Yeti should be ashamed."
The NRA has repeatedly hit out at students survivors of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School mass shooting whilst they make several media appearances, organise events with celebrities, and hold marches with hundreds of thousands of people across the country to call for gun control reform and a ban on assault-style weapons like the AR-15.
NRA
Prisoner Transport Van
18 Days
Edward Kovari's 18-day ordeal began Sept. 12, 2016, when some guys in a van showed up to take him from a jail in Virginia to Texas, where he was wanted on charges that he had stolen a car.
But the trip from Winchester, Virginia, to Houston took more than two weeks in a crowded van where inmates had to urinate in bottles and take turns sleeping on the van's floor, according to a federal lawsuit filed Tuesday by Kovari. The private company that contracted with the jail to transport Kovari, 39, kept him shackled in the back of that van for 18 days as it wound through the country picking up inmates in an effort at cost efficiency.
The charge on which Kovari was brought to Texas was later dismissed.
The company that transferred him, Nashville-based Prisoner Transportation Services, bills itself as the nation's largest prisoner extradition company. It did not respond Tuesday to messages seeking comment.
Inside the van, no provisions were made for restroom stops, and inmates urinated into bottles which spilled and sloshed on the floor of the van. In one case, a prisoner defecated on the van floor, and in another instance, a prisoner vomited. The lawsuit alleges that nothing was done to clean the mess. "He spent the duration of the transport sitting in human waste and filth," the lawyers wrote.
18 Days
Bizarre Holes
Arctic Sea Ice
On April 14, a group of NASA scientists were flying over the Beaufort Sea, north of Alaska and the Canadian border, when they saw something puzzling: Three holes in the sea ice with what look like rings around them and some wavy ice to their left.
"I don't recall seeing this sort of thing elsewhere," John Sonntag, a meteorologist with NASA who took the above photo, said in a statement.
At first glance, it may look like the frigid equivalent of crop circles, but scientists are pretty sure that in this case there's a simple explanation. "My first guess is that these are seal breathing holes," says Walt Meier, an atmospheric scientist at the National Snow and Ice Data Center who focuses on sea ice. Harp and ring seals have been known to make these kinds of holes in thinner Arctic sea ice, and then use those holes repeatedly to come up for air.
For that theory to hold, there needs to be a good explanation for why the sea ice in this particular spot is thin enough for the seals to break through. Meier says these holes could be the result of warmer water coming in from the nearby Mackenzie delta, the shallow outpouring of the Mackenzie river from the nearby Canadian coast. According to Meier, warmer water from the river flows into the ocean, and then, because warm water is less dense than cold water, it naturally floats to the surface in plumes.
That, in turn, thins out the ice at the surface, and could have drawn seals to the spot since the sea mammals more likely to pick spots to come up for air where the ice is already thin. There are formations near the holes that look like waves, which the scientists say could be the result of water sloshing over the edges-a sign that warm water was rising up through the holes.
Arctic Sea Ice
Warriors Prized Human Bone Daggers
New Guinea
When facing rivals, the warriors of New Guinea had a choice of deadly bone daggers; they could fight with daggers crafted from human thighbones or weapons shaped from the thighbones of cassowaries, flightless, dinosaur-like birds.
But which type of dagger - the human or the cassowary - is stronger?
According to a new study, the dagger fashioned from human bone is stronger than the giant bird's thighbone, largely because of the way the warriors of New Guinea carved the weapons.
"It looks like both bone types are equally suited for making daggers," study lead researcher Nathaniel Dominy, a professor of anthropology at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire, told Live Science. "The difference is that when men are shaping human daggers, they're retaining a lot of the curvature, which gives it a natural, superior strength."
This peculiar investigation started when Dominy came across a drawer full of daggers, each roughly 12 inches (30 centimeters) long and made out of cassowary and human thighbones. He found the weapons at the Hood Museum of Art at Dartmouth College. The elaborately carved daggers were stunning, Dominy said. A little investigation revealed that warriors in New Guinea fought with the close-combat weapons "to kill outright or finish off victims wounded with arrows or spears, by stabbing them in the neck," Dominy and his colleagues wrote in the study. Other historical accounts described how the bone daggers were used to disable prisoners who were later cannibalized, Dominy found.
New Guinea
Prime-Time Nielsens
Ratings
Prime-time viewership numbers compiled by Nielsen for April 16-22. Listings include the week's ranking and viewership.
1. "Roseanne," ABC, 13.27 million.
2. "The Big Bang Theory," CBS, 12.91 million.
3. "Young Sheldon," CBS, 11.67 million.
4. "NCIS," CBS, 11.44 million.
5. "Bull," CBS, 10.83 million.
6. "The Voice" (Monday, 8 p.m.), NBC, 9.35 million.
7. "60 Minutes," CBS, 9.02 million.
8. "Mom," CBS, 8.83 million.
9. "NCIS: New Orleans," CBS, 8.46 million.
10. "The Voice" (Wednesday, 8 p.m.), NBC, 8.39 million.
11. "The Voice" (Tuesday, 8 p.m.), NBC, 8.35 million.
12. "Survivor," CBS, 7.74 million.
13. "NCIS: Los Angeles," CBS, 7.57 million.
14. "Hawaii Five-0," CBS, 7.52 million.
15. "American Idol" (Sunday), ABC, 7.46 million.
16. "Instinct," CBS, 7.11 million.
17. "American Idol" (Monday), ABC, 6.97 million.
18. "Grey's Anatomy," ABC, 6.93 million.
19. "Chicago PD," NBC, 6.62 million.
20. "Law & Order: SVU,' NBC, 6.58 million.
Ratings
In Memory
Bob Dorough
Bob Dorough, the jazzman who created the clever and enduring Schoolhouse Rock toons that taught grammar, math, science, and citizenship to a generation of TV-watching kids, has died. He was 94. His family told the Associated Press that Dorough died Monday at his home in Mount Bethel, PA, but did not give a cause.
Born on December 12, 1923, in Cherry Hill, AR, Dorough was a jazz musician in the early 1970s when a New York ad man complained that his young sons couldn't do multiplication and wanted to have the times tables set to music because the kids could recite every rock lyric of the era. That led to Donough's classic first Schoolhouse Rock song, "Three Is a Magic Number," which is remembered for its brilliant simplicity and sticky chorus that counted to 36 by threes, accompanied by animation.
That led to Schoolhouse Rock, a 1973-85 series of Saturday-morning shortform content on ABC that used music and rhyme to help kids learn basic facts, with such memorable songs as "Elementary, My Dear" (Multiplication Rock, 1973), "Conjunction Junction" (Grammar Rock, 1973), "I'm Just a Bill" (America Rock, 1975), "Electricity, Electricity" (Science Rock, 1978) and countless others. Dorough wrote and/or performed many of them, not including "I'm Just a Bill," which famously was spoofed on Saturday Night Live in 2014.
The series was revived in the 1990s with new and classic episodes, and others were produced direct-to-video in 2009. Donough expanded the brand to include Computer Rock (1982), Money Rock (1994) and Earth Rock (2009).
Rhino Records issued a four-CD box set of Schoolhouse Rock tunes in 1996, and Disney produced a two-DVD set for the series' 30th anniversary in 2002, featuring 52 of the 64 episodes.
Bob Dorough
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