from Bruce
Anecdotes
Problem-Solving
• Milwaukee pitcher Bill Zuber complained often that his arm got sore after games. Aware that the soreness probably came from Mr. Zuber’s frequent use of his blazing fastball, a friend told him that if he were cunning in his choice of pitches and did not rely so much on his fastball, then his arm would not be so sore after games. Mr. Zuber took the advice, and in part because the batters kept looking for his fastball, which he did not throw nearly as often as he usually did, he pitched a shutout. But unfortunately he had a new complaint: “My arm’s all right, but I’ve got a headache. I pitched with my head today.”
• When Cammi Granato, a gold-medal winner as a member of the United States women’s hockey team at the 1998 Nagano Olympic Games, was growing up, she was the only girl player on a boys’ team. During one game, her coach learned that the opposing players had been ordered to “get number 21”—Cammi’s number. The coach solved the problem by having Cammi switch jerseys with a six-foot-tall teammate.
• The 1952 Pittsburgh Pirates baseball team was terrible, losing 112 of 154 games. After a series against the Giants in which the Pirate center fielder had made three throwing errors and had let the ball go between his legs twice, manager Billy Meyer called a meeting to see if anyone could come up with an idea that would make them win. First baseman George “Catfish” Metkovich suggested, “On any ball hit to center field, let’s just let it roll to see if it goes foul.”
Scouting
• As a child, Donna Lopiano wanted to play Little League baseball. However, when she showed up at the beginning of the season, someone else’s father showed her a rulebook, which stated that girls could not play in the Little League. She attended all the games, became convinced that she was a better player than any kid on the field, and kept playing sandlot baseball. She also bugged her parents about finding a team that she could play on. Sal Caginello, an old Army buddy of her father, scouted for the Pittsburgh Pirates and was friends with the coach of the World Champion Raybestos Brakettes Softball Team, located in Stanford, Connecticut. Her father got his old Army buddy drunk, and without ever seeing Donna play, he agreed to drive her to Stanford for a tryout with the World Champions. Sober, he kept his word, but he stayed in the car for the first part of her tryout, afraid that it was going to be a complete disaster. But he watched her play, and he got out of the car and watched. Then he walked closer, by third base, and watched. At the end of the tryout, he was in the dugout, sitting by the coach, who told him that he was the Raybestos Brakettes’ best scout ever. (Donna Lopiano played for the Raybestos Brakettes for three years, from age 16 to 19. She also became a nine-time Amateur Softball Association All-American player as a pitcher, shortstop, first baseman, and second baseman.)
• Coach George Halas of the Chicago Bears was one of the first coaches to scout teams. After losing a game by a score of 7-3 to the Washington Redskins following a controversial call by an official, the Bears complained and in turn the Redskins called them “crybabies.” Mr. Halas responded by scouting the Redskins and creating plays to exploit the Redskins’ weaknesses. The scouting paid off. The next time the Bears met the Redskins, Chicago won, 73-0.
Signs
• In 2001, Barry Bonds broke the single-season home-run record set by Mark McGwire; however, hitting 73 home runs in one season was difficult for Mr. Bonds in part because pitchers preferred to walk him rather than pitch to him and risk having him hit a home run. Late in the season, whenever Mr. Bonds’ young daughters went to the ballpark to watch their father play, they carried a sign that said, “Please pitch to our daddy.”
• In the early 1980s, the Northwestern University football team was mainly known for its losing seasons; after all, it lost 30 games in a row. In fact, when Doug Single interviewed for the job of Northwestern University athletic director, he saw a highway sign. Underneath INTERSTATE 94, someone had written NORTHWESTERN 0.
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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: "No Valium"
EP: NOTHING IS TRUE... ALL IS PERMITTED
Artist: Los Cinicos / Los Cínicos
Artist Location: Burzaco, Argentina
Info: Los Cínicos means “The Cynics.”
“Los Cínicos is a musical-cultural project that reached its current organic in March 2014, it is the sum of a wide range of musical influences. It is a life project faced by its members committed to music and themselves, with the pleasant task of transmitting that everything is possible if it is done from the heart.
“In the songs, various circumstances of daily life are reflected, moments of happiness, sadness, expressed with passion and humility from a moment forever.”
Price: Name Your Price (Includes FREE) for four-track EP
Genre: Rock
Links:
Los Cínicos on Bandcamp
Los Cínicos 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
some guy Suggests
Ivermectin
New Venture
Michael Egan
BRUCE'S Suggestion
Twitter
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.
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
Remember way back in 1961, when all the TV stations spent a week reliving Pearl Harbor?
Me neither.
London Honors
Jim Henson
Kermit the Frog. Miss Piggy. Animal. Statler and Waldorf. The Swedish Chef. The list goes on and on.
Everyone has their favorite Muppet. And everyone owes a debt of gratitude to one man for bringing them to life: Jim Henson.
The American creator of The Muppets was honored Tuesday in Britain with a blue plaque at his former home in north London, which he bought after ‘The Muppet Show’ was commissioned for British television — 50 Downshire Hill in Hampstead.
It’s a very simple message: “Jim Henson 1936-1990 creator of The Muppets lived here.”
Henson, who lived in London from 1979 until his death in 1990 at just 53, was also known for his work on “Sesame Street” and “Fraggle Rock” and as the director of the 1980s movies “The Dark Crystal” and “Labyrinth.”
Jim Henson
Tiny Museum
Vermont
A new museum dedicated to Vermont’s musical heritage will open in Burlington this week.
The Tiny Museum of Vermont Music History opens Friday evening during the first day of the annual South End Art Hop, the Burlington Free Press reported.
The museum on Howard Street will become a permanent addition to the headquarters of the nonprofit group Big Heavy World, which promotes and preserves Vermont-made music.
The museum will feature photographs, posters, instruments and even menus from old venues, the newspaper reported.
The collection “reflects how music is an art form, a catalyst for community-building, and also a contributor to the state’s economy,” James Lockridge, executive director of Big Heavy World, wrote in a news release. “People are — and have been — making music of all kinds across the state, deserving to be heard and celebrated.”
Vermont
Raises Price
Hulu
In a not-terribly-shocking development, Di$ney is raising prices at Hulu, following other increases in recent months at ESPN+ and Disney+.
Effective October 8, the basic, ad-supported version of Hulu will go from $5.99 a month to $6.99, while the ad-free tier rises a dollar to $12.99.
The changes, conveyed to subscribers this morning, do not affect rates for the Disney bundle or Hulu’s live TV service. It is the first update of Hulu’s pricing since an interesting combo move in early 2019, when the monthly cost of the basic tier dropped $2 to $5.99.
Advertising is an increasingly vital part of Hulu’s strategy. Having launched in 2007 — far earlier than more recent ad-supported offerings like NBCUniversal’s Peacock or WarnerMedia’s HBO Max with Ads — Hulu has made steady progress in terms of ad revenue. Total ad revenue this year is expected to top $3 billion, according to eMarketer. Broadcast ad revenue, by comparison, was $3.26 billion in 2020.
Di$ney, which is now more than halfway toward its 2024 subscriber goal, has not been shy about raising prices. As Netflix has shown, scale only increases pricing leverage. The prices for Disney+ and ESPN+ have increased by a dollar in recent months. The Disney bundle also rose by $1 in March, and last December a hefty $10-a-month hike boosted the monthly price of Hulu + Live TV to $64.99.
Hulu
Turkey Cannot Recover Ancient Idol
'Guennol Stargazer'
A U.S. judge ruled on Tuesday that Turkey cannot recover a 6,000-year-old marble idol known as the "Guennol Stargazer" from Christie's and the hedge fund billionaire Michael Steinhardt.
U.S. District Judge Alison Nathan in Manhattan said Turkey "inexcusably slept" on its rights by not suing until April 2017, just before Christie's put the idol up for auction, though it should have known of the idol's whereabouts decades earlier.
She said Turkey also did not prove that the nine-inch (22.9 cm) figurine, named for the slight upward tilt of its head as if toward the heavens, was excavated from Turkey after 1906, making the country its rightful owner under that year's Ottoman Decree.
Nathan also rejected Turkey's suggestion that Steinhardt, a prominent art collector, ignored "red flags" about the idol's provenance.
The decision is a setback to Turkey's legal efforts in the United States to reclaim antiquities it believes were looted.
'Guennol Stargazer'
Unfunny Comedy Routine
Abbott
Gov. Greg Abbott (R - Pro-Incest) of Texas said in a press conference on Tuesday that the state's new abortion law would not force a rape victim to carry their assailant's child to term. To achieve this, the governor pledged to "eliminate all rapists" in Texas, the local NBC affiliate KXAN reported.
"Let's make something very clear: Rape is a crime," Abbott said with a straight face while signing a major GOP election-reform bill. "And Texas will work tirelessly to make sure that we eliminate all rapists from the streets of Texas by aggressively going out and arresting them and prosecuting them and getting them off the streets."
He idiotically added: "So goal No. 1 in the state of Texas is to eliminate rape so that no woman, no person, will be a victim of it." The governor also said Texas had numerous organizations that support rape victims.
The new law, which went into effect on September 1, prohibits people in Texas from having an abortion after a fetal "heartbeat" can be detected on an ultrasound. Doctors told NPR the term "fetal heartbeat" was misleading because it refers to electrical activity, rather than the opening and closing of the heart's valves. The law allows no exceptions for rape or incest.
Abbott
“Whistleblower” Site Violates Rules
Texass
Epik, the domain registrar for controversial sites such as Gab and Parler, says that the Texas abortion-whistleblower website violates its terms of use.
The Texas Right to Life group's prolifewhistleblower.com website was booted by GoDaddy on Friday for violating its rules, including one that prohibits sites from using GoDaddy to "collect or harvest... non-public or personally identifiable information" without people's prior written consent. The website switched its domain registration from GoDaddy to Epik and switched its name servers from GoDaddy to hosting provider Digital Ocean. Digital Ocean quickly cut off service, and the abortion-whistleblower site's domain records now list Epik as both the registrar and name servers.
But the website—which encouraged people to report violations of the restrictive new anti-abortion law in Texas—is offline, and the domain now redirects to Texas Right to Life's homepage. The group says it plans to get the site back online.
Epik general counsel Daniel Prince emailed Ars and other news organizations on Sunday, saying, "When the site owner moved it to Epik's name servers... we contacted the owner of the site, notified them that the website violated Epik's terms of use, and persuaded them to stop collecting anonymous tips and to take it off the Internet entirely. At no time did Epik serve as the web host for prolifewhistleblower.com."
When asked why Epik hasn't terminated the site's domain registration, Prince told us today that "the domain is not currently violating our terms of service by simply redirecting to the main page of Texas Right to Life. If that changes, we'll address it." Epik did not tell us which rule the site breaks, but a Daily Beast article said the "specific violation was reportedly the collection of information on third parties without their consent."
Texass
Credit Suisse
Ai Weiwei
Chinese dissident and artist Ai Weiwei has said Credit Suisse told him it was closing his foundation's bank account in Switzerland earlier this year citing his "criminal record" in China, despite the activist never being convicted of a crime.
One of China's most high-profile artists and political activists, Ai, who now lives in Portugal, wrote in an opinion piece for website Artnet how he was first told by the Swiss bank that it would close the account in the spring of this year.
"Credit Suisse initially informed me that they had a new policy to terminate all bank accounts which are related to people with criminal records," Ai told Reuters in an emailed statement, adding the foundation had been asked at the time to move the funds before September.
Ai helped design the 2008 Beijing Olympics' famed Bird's Nest stadium before falling foul of the communist government, which detained him for 81 days in 2011. He said he has never been formally charged or convicted of a crime.
Ai said Credit Suisse then called him on June 24 to say the bank would like to close the account, which belonged to a free speech and arts foundation he started in 2016, "as soon as possible". He said managers then referred to an interview he had done with a Swiss newspaper several days before, in which he criticised Swiss people for voting in favour of tighter "anti-immigrant policies" as a reason for the closure.
Ai Weiwei
Circadian Rhythms
Asthma
Up to three quarters of people with asthma report that their symptoms get worse at night, a phenomenon noted as far back as the 17th century – however, the reasons why have remained unclear. New research puts some of the blame on circadian rhythms rather than behavior or environment alone.
There are many plausible explanations for why asthma might worsen during the night, including falling temperatures and lying down. The treatments in these cases might be very different than if the observations are mainly attributable to internal biological clocks.
Professor Frank Scheer of Bringham and Women's Hospital and Professor Steven Shea of the Oregon Institute of Occupational Health Sciences co-led a study to try to distinguish between possible causes. In Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, they and co-authors report that in a small sample, the stronger someone's circadian rhythm, the more likely they are to experience a major increase in asthma symptoms when ready to sleep.
One group shifted to a 28-hour wake/sleep cycle, sustained for one week under constant lighting, quickly putting them out of sync with day and night conditions. The others stayed awake for 38 hours under dim light while eating every two hours. Inevitably this wasn't good for any of the participants, but some suffered more than others.
When on a normal 24-hour cycle, the participants' asthma was worst on waking and shortly before sleep. However, on the 28-hour cycle, asthma became most severe at the equivalent of 4:00 AM (ie 20-22 hours after waking). On the one hand, people will sleep through mild breathing difficulties and so may not notice this peak. On the other, deaths from asthma are most common at night, so symptoms at those hours shouldn't be ignored.
Asthma
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