M Is FOR MASHUP - September 26th, 2018
Top Notch Mashups
By DJ Useo
You're all in the luck this week, because I've got some time-proven mashups for you that will delight y'all. This batch is all tracks that have stuck in my head, despite the flow of new mashups daily. Of course, I've only provided six classics here, but it could have easily been hundreds. There are actually that many excellent mashups posted constantly, all around the world. Let's begin -
01 - Shahar Varshal - "I Knew You Were Waiting For Uptown Funk" ( M. Ronson + .B Mars vs Aretha Franklin + G.Michael )
A Tribute To The "Queen Of Soul" Aretha Franklin, With A Double Couple Mashup.
( sowndhaus.audio/track/10909/i-knew-you-were-waiting-for-uptown-funk-mronson-+-b-mars-vs-aretha-franklin-+gmichael )
02 - djrageface - "Win Feeling Song is all I Put On f San Holo" ( MOONZz, Prince Fox, CP, octbr, YJ )
( sowndhaus.audio/track/9520/win-feeling-song-is-all-i-put-on-f-san-holo-moonzz-prince-fox-cp-octbr-yj )
03 - deemashups - "Now Or Never Billie Jean" ( Michael Jackson vs Halsey )
( sowndhaus.audio/track/8493/michael-jackson-vs-halsey-now-or-never-billie-jean-mashup )
04 - The Homogenic Chaos- "Havanna Heaven" ( Camila Cabello vs Emeli Sande )
( sowndhaus.audio/track/8808/camila-cabello-vs-emeli-sande-havanna-heaven-the-homogenic-chaos )
05 - Mr Smuggler - "Soldat" ( Abd al Malik vs ProleteR )
( sowndhaus.audio/track/8857/soldat-abd-al-malik-vs-proleter )
06 - Les Mashups de Vianney - "Need You Tonight for That" ( Hall & Oates vs INXS )
( sowndhaus.audio/track/8076/need-you-tonight-for-that-hall-amp-oates-vs-inxs )
Well, that ought to hold you for a few minutes. & I guarantee you that mashups won't cheese you off as much as most other things you find on the net. Toodle-oo, & pip pip till next week.
Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Helaine Olen: The staggering hypocrisy of Brett Kavanaugh (Washington Post)
The questions Kavanaugh wanted to ask of Clinton - long before anyone went public with allegations against him - are clear proof there is a side to Kavanaugh that many of his defenders, both male and female, do not want to acknowledge. Now that he faces not one, but two accusations of misconduct, he deserves every question that comes his way, no matter how invasive. What goes around comes around.
Paul Krugman: The Party of No Ideas (NY Times Column)
Republicans aren't even trying to run on their policies.
German Lopez: The past year of research has made it very clear: Trump won because of racial resentment (Vox)
Another study produces the same findings we've seen over and over again.
Paul Waldman: Yes, the Supreme Court is facing a legitimacy crisis. And we know exactly whose fault it is .(Washington Post)
We don't have to go back that far to recall a time when confirmation of a president's nominees, except in cases of truly unusual scandal, was a given. There was plenty of political drama surrounding the court and its decisions, but members of both parties would regularly vote for a nominee from the other party. Antonin Scalia was confirmed 98 to 0; Anthony M. Kennedy was confirmed 97 to 0; Ruth Bader Ginsburg was confirmed 96 to 3; and Stephen G. Breyer was confirmed by an 87-to-9 vote.
Paul Waldman: Even if he fires Rosenstein, it's too late to protect Trump from Mueller (Washington Post)
… given how meticulous they've been, it would be a shock if Mueller and his team haven't prepared for the eventuality of being shut down. Perhaps they've kept a running, frequently updated report outlining everything they've found, a report that would one way or another find its way to the public. I'm guessing that if Democrats take over the House in November as everyone expects, they'll use their power to subpoena documents and witnesses to do everything they can to bring the information assembled by the Mueller team to light.
Catherine Rampell: The GOP's two top priorities seem to be duds. So what does the party even stand for? (Washington Post)
If you'd asked me a few years ago to name the Republican Party's top policy priorities, I would have said: 1) Obamacare repeal and 2) tax cuts. Today, the GOP seems to believe that both are duds with voters. Worse than duds: huge liabilities, ripe for Democratic exploitation.
Jonathan Chait: Guess Who's Blocking 'Due Process' for Brett Kavanaugh? (Washington Post)
It is Democrats who are requesting that the FBI be brought in to investigate the charges against Kavanaugh, and the Trump administration that is denying them. It is Democrats who are demanding the testimony of Mark Judge, an eyewitness to one of Kavanaugh's alleged offenses. And it is McConnell who will not allow it, and who insists the entire matter must be decided solely on the basis of competing testimony from a maximum of two people: Kavanaugh and Christine Blasey Ford. It is bizarre that conservatives have managed to pose as champions of due process without acknowledging this, pretending to care about evidence while supporting the side that is preventing it from being considered.
Andrew Tobias: Reasonable Doubt
Here are the Senators who voted against reauthorizing the Violence Against Women Act in 2013 - all of them Republicans, of course. And here are the members of the Senate Judiciary Committee who will vote to decide whether Judge Kavanaugh is telling the truth. See any overlap? I notice Chuck Grassley, the committee chair … Ted Cruz and John Cornyn from Texas . . . Orrin Hatch and Mike Lee from Utah (really? Utah represents 1% of the US population but 10% of the Judiciary Committee?) … and Lindsay Graham, who says that if the Ford allegation is all there is, he can't see "ruining Kavanaugh's life" over it.
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 Lulu Storefront
David Bruce's Apple iBookstore
David Bruce has over 100 Kindle books on Amazon.com.
Presenting
Michael Egan
responded:
replied:
In memory.
Reader Suggestion
Michelle in AZ
from Bruce
Anecdotes
• Criticism can be funny, it can be devastating, and it can be educational. (So can insults.) Sometimes the accompanist is much better than the singer: Henry Bird once told a singer, "Young lady, I have tried playing for you on the white notes, I have tried playing for you on the black notes, but I simply cannot play in the cracks."
• Lotte Lehmann once sang the role of Elsa in Lohengrin and later learned that conductor Bruno Walter had been in the audience to listen to a new singer. She saw him the following day and waited for a few words about her performance, but he said nothing. Finally, she asked him if her performance had been so bad that he could say nothing about it. He replied, "Yes! Yesterday I saw something which I don't want to ever see in you, which doesn't go with you at all-routine." She listened to him. Later, she said, "Never again did I sing Elsa with routine." Like Mr. Walter, Ms. Lehmann believed, "Whatever we do or however often we do it, it must be each time reborn-each time a new creation. It is only when we are able to do this that we deserve the title Artist."
• Musician and impresario Maurice Strakosch once took opera singer Adelina Patti, before she was famous, to sing to Gioachino Rossini. She sang for him a song from Rossini's Barber of Seville: "Una vove poco fa." However, Mr. Strakosch had embellished the song greatly with fancy "improvements." Mr. Rossini kept praising the singing: "Brava!Bravissia!" After Ms. Patti had finished singing, Mr. Rossini said to her, "Beautiful voice! Excellent method!" Then Mr. Rossini, a master of sarcasm, added, "And what a brilliant and effective song! Pray tell me the name of the composer."
• In 1975, Beverly Sills made her Metropolitan Opera debut in The Siege of Corinth, which also starred Shirley Verrett and Justino Diaz. This production was much anticipated, and Ms. Sills wondered aloud during a rehearsal whether the critics would think the production had lived up to the anticipation. In those days of political correctness, Mr. Diaz said, "How can we miss? I'm a Puerto Rican, Shirley is black, and you're a Jew. Who would dare to criticize us?"
• As you would expect, Hans von Bülow took music seriously. At a concert, Emma Thursby sang some German songs by Schubert and Schumann to accompaniment by the piano. This was fine. But as an encore, she sang a song that was popular but was not in the class of the Schubert and Schumann songs. The trivial song infuriated von Bülow, and when he came out to play piano, he ostentatiously wiped off the keyboard before he improvised on part of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony.
• Rudolf Bockelmann, a German dramatic baritone best known for his roles in Wagner's operas, did not read English, but he closely examined his critical notices in London newspapers. Classical record producer Walter Legge wrote that Mr. Bockelmann would search for the word but: "If he found it, he grunted in German, 'It's all sh*t anyway.'"
***
© Copyright Bruce D. Bruce; All Rights Reserved
***
Bonus Links
Jeannie the Teed-Off Temp
Reader Comment
Supreme Court Nominee
Like with #45, I can't bring myself to say his name. But in case your readers want to take action, or learn more, here's a way to do that:
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
MAKE TRUMP RICH AGAIN!
WHITE TRASH!
Visit JD's site - Kitty Litter Music
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Wasn't expecting my new glasses until Thursday but they were ready this afternoon.
Good old Costco.
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar Joins Writing Staff
'Veronica Mars'
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar is a man of many talents with an already long list of different career pursuits. His latest will take him into the throes of a cult TV favorite.
"Veronica Mars" creator Rob Thomas announced Tuesday the writing staff for the show's revival on Hulu, officially announced last week, and included is the 7-foot-2 all-time leading scorer in NBA history.
Abdul-Jabbar, 71, is a six-time NBA champion and three-time NCAA champion with UCLA, but he hasn't let that be his entire life script. He writes columns, many of which are on race and religion, for various publications including Time, The Hollywood Reporter and The Guardian.
He's also a New York Times bestselling author with his recent book, "Becoming Kareem: Growing Up On and Off the Court." He's written more than 10 books, including one he co-wrote with Anthony Walton. "Brothers in Arms: The Epic Story of the 761st Tank Battalion, World War II's Forgotten Heroes" is about the history of an all-black armored unit of distinction in Europe.
In the Veronica Mars realm, he wrote a 2015 mystery novel with Anna Waterhouse, "Mycroft Holmes," that features spirits draining blood out of children.
'Veronica Mars'
Bid On Props
'The Office'
It's hard to believe that everyone's favorite mockumentary TV show "The Office" has been off the air for over five years now, but that hasn't stopped die-hard fans from constantly binging it on Netflix or dressing up as Dwight for Halloween.
Now, fans can bring their love for the show to an even higher level by bidding on set pieces and props that are currently being auctioned off on the website Screenbid. The auction runs until Oct. 5 and there are around 500 items up for bid, and some of these items are pretty iconic.
There are little, not-so-exciting items like Jim's desk lamp or Pam's mouse pad, but there are some goodies up for auction that will seriously make some "Office" fans' heads spin.
There is a photocopy of the script to one of the show's best episodes ever, "Dinner Party," Pam's entire reception desk and a framed photo of Dwight's cousin, Mose.
The auction even gets better with Michael's neon beer sign that Jan won't allow him to hang in the house, the pop art canvas of Jan that hangs in Michael's condo and Dwight's nunchucks.
'The Office'
Ashland, Oregon
Shakespeare Festival
The famed Oregon Shakespeare Festival that attracts tourists from around the world said Tuesday that it lost $2 million this summer because wildfire smoke forced it to cancel more than two dozen outdoor performances.
The organization will have an indoor venue next season for smoky days as an alternate to its award-winning outdoor theater and will shift its outdoor season back a week to avoid the worst of the wildfire season, said Julie Cortez, the festival's spokeswoman.
The event in Ashland, Oregon, had to cancel 26 outdoor performances starting in July and running through earlier this month, she said. That's more canceled shows than in all five previous seasons combined, Cortez said.
It comes as climate change extends the wildfire season and makes blazes bigger and more destructive, threatening to make air quality worse in urban areas.
The Tony Award-winning Oregon Shakespeare Festival is among the oldest and largest professional nonprofit theaters in the nation. It prides itself on offering outdoor showings of Shakespeare's plays performed in a venue similar to what his contemporary audiences would have experienced, but it also offers other types of theater in indoor performance halls.
Shakespeare Festival
Check Your Weedkiller
Honeybees
It turns out that a popular weedkiller might also be linked to deaths of something else: honeybees.
That's according to a study published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, which found that honeybees exposed to glyphosate, the main ingredient in weedkillers like Roundup, are more likely to die from a bacterial infection than those that weren't.
Researchers exposed the honeybees to glyphosate, then marked them with black dots before letting them free. The bees were examined three days later, the study says, and it was found that four types of gut bacteria in the insects were reduced.
The affected gut bacteria helped ward off diseases and digest food, according to the study's authors.
Researchers then introduced the bees to a bacterium called Serratia marcescens - and the rates of survival depended upon exposure to glyphosate. Bees with healthy gut bacteria survived the infection about half of the time, and the others lived just 10 percent of the time.
Honeybees
Loses Another Honor
Cosby
It's hard to overstate what a big deal Bill Cosby was in pop culture at one time. In his more than 50 years in showbiz, the 81-year-old comedian and star of The Cosby Show had garnered enough awards and honors to fill a small museum.
He began losing them in 2014, after comedian Hannibal Buress referenced accusations that Andrea Constand and other women had made against the formerly beloved TV star in a standup routine that went viral. Dozens of women, 60 in all, came forward with their own accusations. On Tuesday, as Cosby was sentenced to three to 10 years in Pennsylvania state prison for sexually assaulting Constand, he lost one more.
The Television Critics Association, which includes more than 200 TV critics and journalists nationwide, voted overwhelmingly to take back the Career Achievement Award given to Cosby in 2002. "This marks the first time the TCA has repealed an award," according to a new release.
Among the most significant honors that have been stripped from Cosby are two achievement awards bestowed upon him by the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts: his inclusion in the group of performers recognized in 1988 and the 2009 Mark Twain Prize for American Humor.
When Cosby was convicted of crimes against Constand in April, he was kicked out of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, which hands out the Oscars, and was removed from the online list of the Television Academy's Hall of Fame honorees. (He was allowed to keep his multiple Emmys, including the Bob Hope Humanitarian Award that he accepted in 2003.)
Cosby
20-Year High
Syphilis
A resurgence of syphilis in the United States has led to a dramatic spike in cases of the disease among newborns, according to a new report.
The report found that in recent years, cases of syphilis among newborns - a condition known as congenital syphilis - more than doubled in the U.S., from 362 cases in 2013 to 918 cases in 2017. The latter is the highest number of congenital syphilis cases reported in the U.S. in 20 years, according to the report, from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
The rise parallels recent increases in syphilis rates among U.S. adults. For nearly two decades, rates of the disease have increased among men, and rates are now rising among women as well. From 2016 to 2017, cases of syphilis increased 21 percent among U.S. women, the report said.
In 2017, congenital syphilis cases were reported in 37 states, but five states accounted for 70 percent of those cases, the CDC said. The five states were California, Arizona, Texas, Louisiana and Florida.
The report highlighted the need for all pregnant women to receive early prenatal care, including a syphilis test at their first pregnancy-related doctor's visit.
Syphilis
Japanese Colonies
Termites
There are obviously lots and lots of species in the animal kingdom that require both a male and female for reproduction, but not all of them. Asexual reproduction is a well-documented natural phenomenon by which creatures can produce offspring without needing a partner. Now, a new species has been added to the list of creatures capable of the feat.
For a long time, scientists have known that termite colonies reproduce when a male gives the queen sperm, which results in fertilized eggs that hatch and become baby termites. Surprisingly, researchers in Japan have now documented that some colonies of termites are able to continue building their numbers without a single male being present.
The colonies which are described in a new study published in BMC Biology were getting along just fine without a single male termite in the group. The queens in these colonies had no sperm available to them but somehow managed to produced viable eggs which hatched despite being unfertilized.
This is an incredibly interesting discovery from a biology standpoint, but what the researchers discovered next was even more surprising. When the team subsequently surveyed mixed-sex colonies - that is, groups of termites where males were present - some of the queens were producing unfertilized eggs anyway. The team suggests this might have been an evolutionary advantage.
"Interestingly, we observed the occasional development of unfertilized eggs in the mixed-sex populations too. This suggests the ability to produce offspring from unfertilized eggs may have originated in mixed-sex ancestors and provided a potential pathway to the evolution of all-female colonies," Toshihisa Yashiro, co-author of the work, explains. "We also found that all-female colonies had a soldier caste with a more uniform head size than their mixed-sex counterparts and fewer soldiers overall. This suggests that uniform female soldiers are more efficient at defense which may have contributed to the persistence and spread of the all-female colonies."
Termites
A Personalized Cloud
Microparticles
Don't worry. We're not about to go full Goop and suggest you have your aura read. We're actually talking about the exposome - the cloud of chemicals, microbes, and particles that follows your every move with the determination of a particularly aggressive hawk. A kind of living, breathing aura, so to speak.
Researchers at Stanford University spent two years analyzing the exposome and its contents using a re-engineered monitoring device roughly the same size as a large matchbox. Their results have been published the journal Cell.
"Human health is influenced by two things: your DNA and the environment," Michael Snyder, professor and chair of genetics at Stanford, said in a statement. "People have measured things like air pollution on a broad scale, but no one has really measured biological and chemical exposures at a personal level."
Data were collected from 15 individuals who, between them, passed through more than 66 locations. Each wore a device (nicknamed the exposometer) that "breathed in" tiny amounts of air one-fifteenth the volume of a human breath and trapped particulate matter in its sub-micron filter. Some were monitored for a week, others a month, and Snyder the full two years.
In the lab, the matter underwent chemical profiling and DNA and RNA sequencing to determine what exactly was lurking in each individual exposome. The result: a horrid-sounding concoction of fungi, plants particulates, chemicals, and bacteria.
Microparticles
Prime-Time Nielsens
Ratings
Prime-time viewership numbers compiled by Nielsen for Sept. 17-23. Listings include the week's ranking and viewership.
1. NFL Football: New England at Detroit, NBC, 19.46 million.
2. "NFL Pre-Kick," NBC, 13 million.
3. "America's Got Talent" (Tuesday), NBC, 12.99 million.
4. "America's Got Talent" (Wednesday), NBC, 12.88 million.
5. NFL Football: Seattle at Chicago, ESPN, 11.89 million.
6. "The OT," Fox, 11.55 million.
7. "Emmy Awards," NBC, 10.22 million.
8. "911," Fox, 9.83 million.
9. "Football Night in America," NBC, 9.13 million.
10. "60 Minutes," CBS, 8.99 million.
11. NFL Football: N.Y. Jets at Cleveland, NFLN, 8.69 million.
12. "The Big Bang Theory," CBS, 7.26 million.
13. "Young Sheldon," CBS, 6.31 million.
14. "NCIS," CBS, 6.07 million.
15. "I Feel Bad," NBC, 5.72 million.
16. "Big Brother" (Thursday), CBS, 5.7 million.
17. "Big Brother" (Wednesday), CBS, 5.57 million.
18. "Bull," CBS, 5.48 million.
19. "Big Brother" (Sunday), CBS, 5.44 million.
20. "NCIS: New Orleans," CBS, 4.91 million.
Ratings
| CURRENT MOON lunar phases |
