Recommended Reading
from Bruce
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Presenting
Michael Egan
responded:
has returned to semi-retired status.
In memory.
Reader Suggestion
Michelle in AZ
from Bruce
Anecdotes
• Polar bears like to eat ringed seals. Often, a polar bear will find a breathing hole in the ice - a place where the ice is broken and where underwater ringed seals swim to breathe. If the polar bear is lucky and the ringed seal is unlucky, when the ringed seal comes to the breathing hole, the polar bear will pounce and enjoy a meal of ringed seal. Polar bears also sometimes sneak up on a ringed seal sleeping on the ice. If the ringed seal wakes up, the polar bear will hide its black nose with a white paw, then keep still and try to blend into the snowy environment until the ringed seal goes back to sleep. When the polar bear gets close enough to the ringed seal, it pounces on it and eats it. In addition, polar bears sometimes find a ringed seal's den in the snow. When that happens, the polar bear will jump up and down on the roof of the den until it collapses, then feast on the ringed seal.
• In 1769, the first mission in Alta California (now the state of California) was founded; it was called San Diego de Alcalá and was protected by soldiers. Unfortunately, times were rough, food grew scarce, and the soldiers even ate their mules for food. Captain Gaspar de Portolá had requested that a supply ship bring them food, but the supply ship was slow in coming. Finally, Captain Portolá ordered the missionaries to abandon the mission if the supply ship had not arrived by March 19, 1770. On that date, the ship was seen, but it continued to sail northward. Captain Portolá again wanted the missionaries to abandon the mission, but Father Serra argued that the ship was a sign that they ought to stay. In a few days, the ship, loaded with food and supplies, sailed into the San Diego harbor, saving the mission.
• In 1903, while Mother Jones was leading a march to New York City of children employed in mills in Philadelphia, she and the children relied on donations of food to live on while they marched. Basically, they ate whatever they were given. One morning, they ate ice cream for breakfast. One evening, a hotel owner invited all of them to come to his hotel restaurant and order whatever they wanted - at no charge. Farmers used to meet the marchers, taking along a wagon full of produce to give to them. Once, some police officers were ordered to keep the marchers out of a certain town - the officers ended up giving the children lunches made by their wives.
• In 1983, author Gary Paulsen first competed in the 1,049-mile Iditarod Sled Dog Race in Alaska. At one point, he had to feed most of his own food to a sled dog that had stopped eating the food he carried for his dogs. This meant that Mr. Paulsen had to survive on only butter until he reached the next checkpoint - where he ate 19 bowls of chili made with moose meat. (By the way, no one is really sure how many miles they travel in the Iditarod Sled Dog Race. The Iditarod Trail is definitely more than 1,000 miles long, but when people say the Iditarod Trail is 1,049 miles long, the "49" is in honor of Alaska's being the 49th state.)
• One morning, President Theodore Roosevelt sat down to a breakfast of sausages with a book in his hands. The book was The Jungle, by Upton Sinclair, and President Roosevelt read, "There was never the least attention paid to what was cut up for sausage … meat on the floor, in the dirt and sawdust, where workers had tramped and spit uncounted billions of germs … meat stored in great piles … and thousands of rats would race about on it." President Roosevelt screamed, "I'm poisoned!" - then he threw his breakfast sausages out a White House window.
• In 1947, the All American Girls Professional Baseball League went to Cuba for spring training. There they played several exhibition games against the Cuban women's team, Las Cubanas. However, on May Day, the players were not allowed to leave their hotel rooms because different Cuban political factions sometimes fought on that day and so the streets might not be safe. The only way the players could get food was by lowering baskets to Cuban boys playing in the street and paying them to load the baskets with food.
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© Copyright Bruce D. Bruce; All Rights Reserved
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Reader Comment
Current Events
Today's Borowitz
Burns on The Southern Cow, the Saudis, AND Penis Face:
Trump Dispatches Sarah Huckabee Sanders to Saudi Arabia to Provide Lying Advice
10/19/18 WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)-Donald J. Trump has dispatched the White House press secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, to Saudi Arabia to provide what the White House on Thursday called "essential lying advice and assistance."
According to the counsellor to the President Kellyanne Conway, "The President was not happy with the quality of lies coming out of the Saudi royal family, and who better to fix that than Sarah Sanders?"
Sources close to Sanders said that the press secretary was "horrified" during her first meeting in Riyadh to discover that the crown prince's lying skills were "rudimentary at best."
For the rest - Trump Dispatches Sarah Huckabee Sanders to Saudi Arabia to Provide Lying Advice
Still covering up for his murdering buddies, he's inciting more violence against reporters at his love-me rallies. One murder isn't enough, he wants more: Trump on Thursday praised Rep. Greg Gianforte's body slamming a reporter in 2017, saying that anyone who did such a thing was 'my kind of guy.'
Linda >^..^<
We are all only temporarily able bodied.
Thanks, Linda!
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
WHAT A FASCIST PIG! MAY HE DROWN IN A PUDDLE FECES, PEE AND DIRT.
"JARED THE JACKAL!"
THEY ARE ALL GOING TO HELL.
"WEIRD AND CRAZY"
GET RID OF DUNCAN HUNTER!
THE PLASTIC FANTASTIC KILLER!
"THE TERRIBLE TRUMP PORTRAIT…"
Visit JD's site - Kitty Litter Music
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Santa Ana's are blowing hot, dry winds and the humidity is in single digits.
Announces New Wings Reissues
Paul McCartney
Paul McCartney has announced elaborate reissues of his first two albums with Wings, 1971's Wild Life and 1973's Red Rose Speedway. Their debut, Wild Life, will be released as a four-disc set (three CDs and one DVD), featuring a bevy of bonus tracks and rare footage, plus a 128-page book and a 48-page scrapbook.
The new edition of Red Rose Speedway spans six discs (three CDs, two DVDs, and one Blu-ray), featuring "a reconstruction of the originally conceived double album version," plus McCartney's previously unreleased, partly-animated, quasi-concert film The Bruce McMouse Show. Additionally, it comes with a folio of character sketches for the film, a 128-page book, and a 64-page photobook.
Both sets will be compiled in the limited edition box Wings 1971-73, which also includes an additional live album. They're all due out December 7 via MPL/Capitol/UMe. Find full tracklists and pre-order information at Paul McCartney's official site. Below, listen to an unreleased take of "Live and Let Die" from the Red Rose Speedway set.
Earlier this year, Paul McCartney released the new album Egypt Station. A 50th anniversary deluxe edition of the Beatles' White Albumis due out in November.
Paul McCartney
Sells For More Than $600,000
Lunar Meteorite
A 12-pound (5.5 kilogram) chunk of the moonthat fell to the Earth as a lunar meteorite has been sold at auction for more than $600,000.
Boston-based RR Auction announced Friday the $612,500 winning bid for the meteorite, composed of six fragments that fit together like a puzzle, came from a representative working with the Tam Chuc Pagoda complex in Ha Nam Province, Vietnam.
The meteorite was found last year in a remote area of Mauritania in northwest Africa.
It is considered one of the most significant lunar meteorites ever found because of its large size and because it has "partial fusion crust" caused by the tremendous heat that sears the rock as it falls to Earth.
Lunar Meteorite
Shredded Painting Stunt Didn't Go Entirely To Plan
Banksy
Banksy stunned the art world this month with the partial shredding of his "Girl With Balloon" artwork moments after it sold at Sotheby's auction house in London for $1.4 million.
But a new video that the guerilla street artist shared to YouTube on Tuesday suggests the stunt was slightly botched.
The clip, titled "Shred The Love," purportedly shows Banksy, originally from Bristol in southwest England, testing out the secret shredding mechanism that he'd inserted into the frame prior to the sale.
"In rehearsals it worked every time," a note reads - before showing a painting being entirely shredded by the hidden device.
Banksy's new video also showed extended footage from the auction house on the day of the painting's sale, and offered further insight into how the prank was pulled. It revealed that a remote-control button was pressed by someone inside the venue to activate the cutting mechanism.
Banksy
The Ice Is 'Singing'
Antarctica
The Ross Ice Shelf in Antarctica has a haunting voice. Winds scouring its chilly snow dunes create waves of surface vibrations; these produce near-nonstop seismic tones that resemble a mournful song, scientists recently discovered.
While the ice shelf's "music" is played at a frequency that isn't audible to human ears, the researchers were able to eavesdrop using seismic sensors, they wrote in a new study.
When they listened to recordings gathered over two years on the ice shelf, they found that the ice was almost constantly "singing" at a frequency of 5 hertz - five cycles per second - its doleful hum generated by the blowing of regional and local winds. They also learned that features of its song changed in response to events that affected the surface snow and ice, such as storms that shifted snow dunes' positions, or excessive melting.
Scientists detected the vibration unexpectedly; they had installed 34 seismic sensors, on the Ross Ice Shelf from 2014 to 2017, to monitor other aspects of ice shelf behavior. But when they reviewed the readings, they noticed that the topmost snow layer was vibrating practically all the time from the active winds that whipped over its uneven surface, causing a seismic hum.
The pitch of the hum also changed subtly under certain conditions; after powerful storms altered the shape of the snow dunes, and when a warming event in January 2016 led to surface melt, they reported in the study.
Antarctica
Most Americans
Impeachment
Democratic candidates have been advised to avoid talking about the potential impeachment of Donald Trump (R-Crooked), even though a majority of Americans - and 75 per cent of Democrats - support such a move.
Three weeks from midterm elections that will determine whether Democrats flip the House of Representatives, the lower chamber of Congress where any proceedings against the president would begin, candidates and officials are doing all they can to avoid the I-word.
In a calculation that has upset those pushing for Mr Trump's impeachment, party officials have calculated that raising the issue could play badly among the independent and moderate Republicans they are seeking to win over. They fear it would also energise Mr Trump's base.
From Democrats such as Harley Rouda, contesting California 48th congressional district, to Angie Craig seeking to bag Minnesota's second, and the president of EMILY's List, a DC-based group that supports women Democratic candidates nationwide, their carefully calibrated responses are strikingly similar when asked whether they support impeachment - namely that Robert Mueller should be given time to complete his investigation into alleged collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia, that voters do not really bring up the issue, and in the meantime, they are focussed on promoting a "positive agenda" about affordable healthcare and the economy.
Even Justice Democrats, a political action committee that supports progressive policies and backs candidates such as New York's Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, says it wants to promote "bold ideas" and that being anti-Trump cannot be its main message, according to Nasim Thompson, a spokeswoman.
Impeachment
Rapidly Disappearing Around The World
Insects
Insects around the world are in a crisis, according to a small but growing number of long-term studies showing dramatic declines in invertebrate populations.
A new report suggests that the problem is more widespread than scientists realized. Huge numbers of bugs have been lost in a pristine national forest in Puerto Rico, the study found, and the forest's insect-eating animals have gone missing, too.
In 2014, an international team of biologists estimated that, in the past 35 years, the abundance of invertebrates such as beetles and bees had decreased by 45 percent.
A study last year showed a 76 percent decrease in flying insects in the past few decades in German nature preserves.
The latest report, published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, shows that this startling loss of insect abundance extends to the Americas.
Insects
Artificial Moon
China
If the Moon's light isn't bright enough for you, just get another one. Seems simple enough. That's exactly what a Chinese city is planning on doing within the next couple of years - they want to launch a massive fake moon to light up the city's streets at night.
Apparently, the city of Chengdu is hoping to unveil its artificial moon by 2020. Chengdu is the capital of Sichuan province in southwestern China and is home to over 14 million people.
The idea is that the moon's light will be bright enough to replace streetlamps, illuminating an area with a diameter of 10 to 80 kilometers (6-50 miles). The moon's light will be adjustable within the range of a few dozen meters.
The plans were revealed on October 10 by Wu Chunfeng, chairman of the catchily named Chengdu Aerospace Science and Technology Microelectronics System Research Institute Co., Ltd (or "Casc" for short). This company is the main contractor for China's space program.
Although many details about both the moon and whether it will actually launch are still unclear, Chunfeng said that it should appear in the sky by 2020, and that tests on the tech have been going on for years.
China
Actually Solid
Earth's Core
For the first time, geologists have confirmed that our planet's inner core is indeed solid - although not quite as firm as previous models have suggested.
Thanks to a new method for detecting soft whispers of seismic waves, analysis of an elusive type of earthquake ripple has revealed key properties of our planet's deepest layer.
Researchers from the Australian National University (ANU) zeroed in on a low amplitude 'J-phase' seismic wave that passes through the planet's core, allowing them to finally put constraints on its solidity.
As the planet's crust grinds and groans on the surface, waves of energy are sent rippling their way through its gooey insides.
These come in various forms. Some, described as compressional waves, push back and forth through the planet's body like a series of jittering train carriages. Others, called shear waves, surge up and down like the ocean's surf along surfaces.
Earth's Core
Unveils New Constellation Names
NASA
Although the International Astronomical Union recognizes just 88 official constellations, the latest NASA initiative enriched the sky with 21 additional star configurations, one more creative than the other.
These new - and unofficial - constellations are positively stellar and evoke legendary characters, both from the science world and from modern mythology. From Albert Einstein to the Incredible Hulk and the Little Prince of the eponymous French novella, all sorts of famous figures are now mirrored on the sky, alongside iconic objects such as the Eiffel Tower, the Roman Colosseum, and the Fermi satellite itself.
Godzilla was also given its own constellation. The TARDIS, the time-warping police box from Doctor Who, has its own place in the sky as well, and so does the Starship Enterprise from Star Trek.
According to the Business Insider, these picturesque additions to the night sky were created for a very special occasion. Unveiled on Wednesday by the space agency, the new constellations celebrate the Fermi Gamma-Ray Space Telescope and its 10 years of activity.
NASA
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