• Laura Numeroff got her start writing and illustrating children’s books when she took a course called, of course, “Writing and Illustrating Children’s Books.” Children’s book writer and illustrator Barbara Bottner, who praised Laura’s first effort at writing and illustrating a children’s book, taught the course at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York. Laura was so excited by the praise that she tried to get the book, Amy for Short, published. She says, “After four rejections, a big publisher bought my homework.” Her most famous book is probably If You Give a Mouse a Cookie, and she thought up the idea for the book on a long and boring car trip. She told her companion, “What if you gave a mouse a cookie?” She then added, “He’d probably want some milk to go with it.” She says, “I ended up telling the entire story from beginning to end. It’s the first time that ever happened, and it hasn’t happened since.”
• Basketball player Bill Bradley had a good senior year at Princeton, averaging 30.2 points per game and leading his team to the semifinals of the NCAA Championship Tournament. Princeton lost the semifinal game to Michigan, but in the consolation game, it earned third place in the tournament, with Mr. Bradley scoring a remarkable 58 points. Afterward, he was named to many All-America teams and could have made many publicity appearances, but he disappeared from public view for a while. Why? He was at a friend’s house writing his senior thesis — a 150-page paper on the 1940 U.S. Senatorial Campaign in Missouri, an election that was won by future President Harry S. Truman. By the way, Mr. Bradley — a Rhodes Scholar — wrote his autobiography, Life on the Run, himself instead of enlisting the services of a ghost writer.
• When Marshall McLuhan started teaching at the University of Toronto in Canada, some professors were opposed to him, including ASP Woodhouse, a Milton scholar, who said, “This is not the sort of person we want at this university.” Taking a graduate seminar taught by Professor McLuhan was Lennie Anderson, a man of great intelligence. Professor McLuhan gave him a B, a grade that Mr. Anderson protested in a letter. Professor McLuhan responded, “Oh, you were definitely the best. But an A from me in this university could mark you unfit. Keep your head down, assemble your credentials, get tenure. Then you can tell them all to go to hell.”
• Do great writers make great teachers? Not necessarily. Emily Brontë, author of Wuthering Heights, taught briefly at Law Hill School in Halifax, England. She preferred the school dog to any of her pupils — a fact that she told her students. Anne Brontë, author of Agnes Grey, got a job with the Ingham family as a governess, a position that requires teaching. The two Ingham children were so unruly that she ended up tying them to a table leg — something that Mrs. Ingham discovered when she checked up on her children. Charlotte Brontë, author of Jane Eyre, also got jobs as a governess. The adjectives she used to describe the children she taught in her job included “riotous, perverse, and unmanageable.”
• During Mary Beard’s first year studying classics at Newnham College, Cambridge, a male friend saw one of her essays that had been marked by a tutor, who had written, “This is very good; I think it would get a first.” The male friend was shocked and said, “You! Get a first!” Of course, a first is a top honor in Britain, and at the time — the mid-1970s — lots of men thought that women were incapable of getting firsts, especially in a male-dominated field such as classics. She says, “From that moment, I was bloody determined to show them.” And she did show them, becoming a Cambridge professor and the author of many well-read books on the ancient world.
A mezcal worm is an insect larva found in some types of mezcal produced in Oaxaca, Mexico. The larva is usually either a gusano rojo ("red worm") or a chinicuil ("maguey worm"), the caterpillar of the Comadia redtenbacheri moth. The red worm is typically considered tastier.
Contrary to popular belief, a true tequila does not contain a worm. It is only in mezcal, a closely related beverage.
Although the custom is relatively recent, larvae are used frequently by several brands of mezcal to give flavor to the drink. A whole larva is deposited in the bottle, normally after having previously been cured in pure alcohol. Nacional Vinicola (NAVISA) was the first company to add a worm to its Gusano Rojo mezcal. Andres Paniagua and Jacobo Lozano, creators of Gusano Rojo and Dos Gusanos, first introduced the practice of adding larva to mezcal. Today, several brands are doing this including Patron.
Source
Alan J was first, and correct, with:
Mezcal.
Dave wrote:
Mezcal. A single moth larvae is added to each bottle of certain brands of mezcal as a marketing gimmick that started in the 1950’s. At least one brand of mezcal goes one better and puts a scorpion in the bottle.
Cal in Vermont said:
Mezcal, especially the blue agave variety much loved by the late Bartcop!
mj answered:
The arthropod addition
Is found in mescal.
Billy in Cypress replied:
Mescal
Mark. responded:
Mezcal.
Jacqueline said:
The potent vodka Souchuu has a hornet in it. They put it in alive until it drowns.
David of Moon Valley responded:
it's Saturday mornng....
…(and no, not that song from The Sterile Cuckoo….) and i’m gonna go with Mezcal, which i have yet to drink, but the day is early and there is still time….
Jim from CA, retired to ID, said:
mezcal
Deborah, the Master Gardener wrote:
Is it mezcal?
My son, a professional mixologist, went on a business trip with the owner of a tapas bar in San Francisco, to Mexico, to an area that specializes in very specific types of mezcal. Son was setting up the bar, with an obvious slant, and toured distilleries, agave farms, and tastings to learn about the subtitles of mezcal and tequila. I know just enough about growing agaves and their cousins to start an agave farm. I’m benignly interested in that.
Fresh air following a pleasantly long, gentle, soaking rain, the first since May, is a marvelous thing.
Michelle in AZ answered:
Mezcal
Stephen F took the day off.
Jon L took the day off.
John I from Hawai`i took the day off.
Leo in Boise took the day off.
Daniel in The City took the day off.
DJ Useo took the day off.
Joe ( -- Vote Blue, No Matter Who -- ) took the day off.
Dave in Tucson took the day off.
Rosemary in Columbus took the day off.
Barbara, of Peppy Tech fame took the day off.
Roy, Lifelong member of Antifa, in Tyler, TX took the day off.
Mac Mac took the day off.
Doug in Albuquerque, New Mexico, took the day off.
Kevin in Washington DC took the day off.
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Kenn B took the day off.
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Ed K took the day off.
Angelo D took the day off.
Harry M. took the day off.
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Roy the (now retired) hoghead (aka 'hoghed') ( Without music to decorate it, time is just a bunch of boring production deadlines or dates by which bills must be paid. ~Frank Zappa ) took the day off.
Saskplanner took the day off.
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Gene took the day off.
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James of Alhambra took the day off.
BttbBob has returned to semi-retired status.
~~~~~
Can finally make a fist with my left hand without it hurting (much).
Tonight, Sunday:
CBS starts the night, as usual, with '60 Minutes', followed by a FRESH'NCIS: The Expendable One', then a FRESH'NCIS: The 3rd One', followed by a RERUN'NCIS'.
NBC fills the night with LIVE'Sunday Night Football', then pads the left coast with local crap and maybe an old 'Dateline'.
ABC begins the night with a FRESH'America's So-Called Funniest Home Videos', followed by a FRESH'Supermarket Sweep', then a FRESH'Who Wants To Be A Millionaire', then a FRESH'Card Sharks'.
The CW offers a RERUN'iHeartRadio Music: Festival Night 2'.
Faux has a FRESH'The Simpsons', followed by a FRESHBless The Harts', then a FRESH'Bob's Burgers', followed by a FRESH'Family Guy'.
MY recycles an old 'Big Bang Theory', followed by another old 'Big Bang Theory', then still another old 'Big Bang Theory', followed by yet another old 'Big Bang Theory'.
A&E has the movie 'American Sniper', followed by the movie 'Olympus Has Fallen', then the movie 'American Sniper'.
AMC offers the movie 'The Day After Tomorrow', 'Fear The Walking Dead', followed by a FRESH'Fear The Walking Dead', then a FRESH'The Walking Dead: World Beyond'.
BBC -
[6:00AM] PLANET EARTH: BLUE PLANET II - THE MAKING OF BLUE PLANET II
[7:00AM] EARTHFLIGHT -EUROPE (EXTENDED)
[8:00AM] EARTHFLIGHT - SOUTH AMERICA (EXTENDED)
[9:00AM] EARTHFLIGHT - ASIA AND AUSTRALIA (EXTENDED)
[10:00AM] EARTHFLIGHT - FLYING HIGH (EXTENDED)
[11:00AM] MOON LANDING
[1:00PM] THE LAST SAMURAI
[4:30PM] GLADIATOR
[8:00PM] TOP GEAR
[9:00PM] GLADIATOR
[12:30AM] THE LAST SAMURAI
[4:00AM] STAR TREK: DEEP SPACE NINE - EMISSARY
[5:00AM] STAR TREK: DEEP SPACE NINE - EMISSARY (ALL TIMES ET)
Bravo has a FRESH'Real Housewives Of Potomac', followed by another FRESH'Real Housewives Of Potomac', then the FRESH'The E! People's Choice Awards', followed by a FRESH'Watch What Happens: Live'.
Comedy Central has the movie 'We're The Millers', followed by the movie 'Identity Thief', then the movie 'Hot Tub Time Machine'.
FX has the movie 'Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom', followed by a FRESH'Fargo'.
History has 'History's Greatest Mysteries', 'Buried: Knights Templar & The Holy Grail'.
IFC -
[7:30am - 11:00am] Saved By The Bell
[11:30am] Event Horizon
[1:45pm] Oblivion
[4:45pm] Contact
[8:00pm] 2012
[11:30pm] 2012
[3:00am] Oblivion (ALL TIMES ET)
Sundance -
[6:45am] monk - Mr. Monk Goes To The Circus
[7:45am] monk - Mr. Monk And The Very, Very Old Man
[8:45am] monk - Mr. Monk Goes To The Theater
[9:45am] monk - Mr. Monk And The Sleeping Suspect
[10:45am] airplane!
[12:45pm] rv
[2:45pm] caddyshack
[4:45pm] tommy boy
[7:00pm] vegas vacation
[9:00pm] national lampoon's vacation
[11:00pm] national lampoon's european vacation
[1:00am] vegas vacation
[3:00am] national lampoon's european vacation
[5:00am] hogan's heroes
[5:30am] hogan's heroes (ALL TIMES ET)
SyFy has the movie 'Fast & Furious', followed by the FRESH'The E! People's Choice Awards'.
The Country Music Association has faced criticism after failing to mention John Prine, Billy Joe Shaver or Jerry Jeff Walker during last night’s (12 November) CMA awards ceremony.
Prine died of coronavirus-related causes in April, while Shaver and Walker passed away last month. All three artists are considered hugely significant musicians by many country music fans.
Grammy-winning singer-songwriters Jason Isbell and Amanda Shires announced that they were returning their lifetime membership cards to the Country Music Association in protest.
Sturgill Simpson, the Grammy-winning artist who also played with Prine, posted a video to Instagram condemning the apparent snub.
“Two seconds. That’s all it would have took. Two seconds, literally two syllables. John Prine. That’s it. Nope,” says Simpson in the clip.
A 35-year-old man was arrested Saturday in the New York City attack on actor Rick Moranis of "Honey, I Shrunk the Kids" fame, authorities said.
Suspect Marquis Ventura was spotted by transit officers in the subway system near 72nd Street and Broadway, a few blocks from where the Oct. 1 assault took place at Central Park West near 70th Street, Sgt. Anwar Ishmael said.
Police did not identify the victim as Moranis but referred to the assault outside the actor's Upper West Side building. Moranis was punched by a man in an "I Love NY" sweatshirt, and the assault was captured on security video.
Moranis, 67, hit the ground after the punch and later took himself to a hospital. It did not appear the actor did anything to provoke his assailant.
Police said Ventura was apprehended and later arrested on suspicion of assault in the second degree, which includes the allegation that he had "intent to cause serious physical injury to another person."
A bunch of people who were stalked by a maniac killer two decades ago are getting together today to relive the good times and share a few laughs.
The cast of the 1996 film Scream is holding a virtual reunion today for a video chat to benefit the National Breast Cancer Coalition, the Los Angeles “I Have A Dream Foundation,” and the East Los ANgeles Women’s Center.
Film star Neve Campbell headlines the reunion, which also features David Arquette, Jamie Kennedy and Rose McGowan, along with screenwriter Kevin Williamson.
The gathering will be held today at 3 PM Pacific time on Looped Live. Fans can buy $20 tickets for the event, and gain access to individual meet-and-greets with the actors.
Tucker Carlson (R-Propagandist) has walked back his assertions that a late Georgia resident named James Blalock voted in the 2020 election after the Georgian’s widow provided an explanation. On Friday’s episode of Tucker Carlson Tonight, the eponymous host, apologized for spreading misinformation on James Blalock’s voting.
“One of the people who voted in last week’s election isn’t dead. James Blalock is still dead, we told you about him. But it was his wife who voted,” Carlson explained. “She voted as Mrs. James Blalock. It’s old-fashioned and we missed it.”
Carlson and the Trump campaign were proven incorrect when Newton County officials issued a press release that revealed Blalock’s widow voted in his name.
“The Secretary of State’s database does not pick up the pre-fix of Mrs., and a check in her profile shows she is a female. Her signature on the records reflects that her voter registration was signed as Mrs. James E. Blalock, Jr. and that is exactly how she signed her name when she voted in the Nov. 3 General Election,” the official Newton County statement reads.
Along with the Trump campaign, GOP figures including Lindsey Graham and Mitch McConnell have echoed the president’s claims of voter fraud in this year’s presidential election, despite little evidence to back their assertions. On Saturday it was announced that Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani would head the legal challenges of the 2020 election.
A federal judge in New York City on Saturday said Chad Wolf has not been acting lawfully as the chief of Homeland Security and that, as such, his suspension of protections for a class of migrants brought to the United States illegally as children is invalid.
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in June that the Trump administration wrongly tried to shut down protections under the Obama-era legislation known as DACA, or Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals. On July 28, Wolf nonetheless suspended DACA pending review.
Judge Nicholas Garaufis said court conferences would be held to work out details of his ruling.
He concluded, "Wolf was not lawfully serving as Acting Secretary of Homeland Security under the HSA [Homeland Security Act] when he issued the Wolf Memorandum" that suspended DACA.
Karen Tumlin, a lawyer in the case and director of the Los Angeles-based Justice Action Center, said the ruling means, "the effort in the Wolf memo to gut the DACA program is overturned."
Officials under President Donald Trump (R-Nationalist) unveiled the new civics test on Friday that replaces a President George W. Bush-era test that's been used for the last 12 years. It's the final hurdle to naturalization before America's immigrants receive their decision from the US Citizenship and Immigration Services and take the Oath of Allegiance in a naturalization ceremony.
Basic civics questions remain the same including "how many U.S. senators are there?" and "how many amendments does the U.S. Constitution have?" but the wording for some is more complex. Applicants are asked to "name two important ideas from the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution" instead of "what are two rights in the Declaration of Independence?"
In the former test, the applicant need only say a combination of terms in the famous phrase: "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." Correct answers to the new test, however, include more specifics terms such as "equality," "social contract," "natural rights," "limited government," and "self-government."
The term "citizen" also replaces "people" when it comes to representation in some questions, as the Washington Post noted. When asked, "who does a member of the House of Representatives represent?" or "who does a U.S. senator represent?" the correct answer must include citizens and not people. For US representatives, the right answers would be "citizens in their (congressional) district" and "citizens in their district," while for senators, the right answer would be "citizens of their state."
Changes are also coming to the testing procedure and scoring. Instead of correctly answering only six questions, candidates must correctly answer 12 and must answer the full 20 instead of stopping once they've reached the passing mark, according to the Washington Post.
The Trump Administration will take key steps to finalize a sale of oil drilling leases in the sensitive Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) in Alaska just before Democrat Joseph Biden, who opposes drilling there, becomes president, a government spokeswoman said on Friday.
The White House will be sending out a call for nominations in coming days, according to a spokeswoman for the U.S. Bureau of Land Management in Anchorage, Alaska. The call is a request to energy companies on what specific land areas should be offered for sale.
That would start the clock on a 60-day period before sales could take place in ANWR, where drilling had been banned for decades before a Republican-led tax legislation signed in 2017 removed that ban. Biden opposes drilling in ANWR, while lawmakers in Alaska have long pushed to open up the ecologically sensitive area for oil and gas exploration.
Following a 30-day period after the call for nominations, the government would have to issue a notice for an impending sale of leases. Thirty days after that, the sale would take place, just before Biden's inauguration on Jan. 20.
Egypt announced Saturday the discovery of an ancient treasure trove of more than a 100 intact sarcophagi, dating back more than 2,500 years ago, the largest such find this year.
The sealed wooden coffins, unveiled on site amid much fanfare, belonged to top officials of the Late Period and the Ptolemaic period of ancient Egypt.
They were found in three burial shafts at depths of 12 metres (40 feet) in the sweeping Saqqara necropolis south of Cairo.
Archaeologists opened one coffin to reveal a mummy wrapped in a burial shroud adorned with brightly coloured hieroglyphic pictorials.
Saqqara, home to more than a dozen pyramids, ancient monasteries, and animals burial sites, is a vast necropolis of the ancient Egyptian capital of Memphis, a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
An elegant white shoe made of silk and goat leather that belonged to Marie-Antoinette, France's last queen before the 1789 revolution, goes up for auction on Sunday, the auctioneers said.
The 22.5 centimetre-long (8.8 inches) shoe, adorned with four ribbons near its tip, is in good condition apart from slight wear of the silk, the Osenat auction house said.
The reserve price is 8,000 to 10,000 euros ($9,450 to $11,800).
In the throes of the French Revolution the shoe ended up in the possession of Marie-Emilie Leschevin, a close friend of the queen's head chambermaid, and whose husband later died by the guillotine during the French Revolution.
Her family held on to it for generations before it came to auction 227 years after her death.
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has returned to semi-retired status.
In memory.
