Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Joe Bob Briggs: Resisting the Campus Speech Nazis (Taki's Magazine)
Every time I perform, I start out with a few comments about Safe Spaces and Trigger Warnings. I flash onto the screen a picture of a sensory deprivation chamber in a hostel in downtown Cleveland and say, "This is your safe space. It's not here."?And then I show a 15-second clip of a guy emptying about 47,000 rounds of machine-gun fire into a battered car, and I say, "Whenever I feel like pulling the trigger, I probably will."
Matthew Yglesias: Trump's incompetence and authoritarianism are both scary (Vox)
Would he, in a crisis moment, respect the limits the law and the Constitution place on his authority? Will he, by the time a crisis arrives, have a team in place that even has the backbone to inform him of what those limits are, or will he have successfully staffed the administration with a solid bloc of sycophants and yes men? And is his inclination to prefer sycophants and yes men to competent officials making a crisis more or less likely?
Andrew Tobias: Ranked-Choice Voting - Frozen, With Salt
I've long favored Instant Runoff Voting - also called Ranked-Choice Voting. It's the very simple idea that if you're ordering a lychee frozen margarita and the waiter says he's not sure they have lychee today, you say, "Well, if they don't have lychee, I'll take pineapple." Just substitute Ralph Nader for lychee and Al Gore for pineapple.
Helaine Olen: The moral and ethical rot at Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg's Facebook (Washington Post)
It shouldn't come as a massive surprise that the people responsible for running a website that entices people to reveal their personal innards so that the website can, in turn, monetize their heartfelt ruminations and day-to-day minutiae are so ethically challenged. All of this sort of stuff just flies right by them until they are called on it.
Rebecca Onion: "(French!) Kissing the Teen Mag Goodbye" (Slate)
With Seventeen moving to "digital-first," the era of the teen print magazine is over. As it should be.
Nathan Ingraham: Facebook removed over 1.5 billion fake accounts in the last six months (Engadget)
The latest transparency report shows government requests for user data are increasing, as well.
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
took the day off.
has returned to semi-retired status.
In memory.
Reader Suggestion
Michelle in AZ
David E Suggests
Number Plates
David
Thanks, Dave!
Bonus Links
Jeannie the Teed-Off Temp
from Bruce
Anecdotes
While filming a scene in the movie Awakenings, Robin Williams' character was required to restrain Robert De Niro's character. Mr. Williams heard a loud pop, knew that he had accidentally broken Mr. De Niro's nose, and started going, "Oh, no! Oh, God! Oh, Jesus!" Director Penny Marshall thought at first that he was overacting, but as soon as she saw the blood streaming down Mr. De Niro's face, she realized what had happened. Mr. De Niro insisted on filming the scene nine more times, because his doctor wasn't available yet, and he knew that his face was going to swell up and he wouldn't be able to film for a week. Of course, Mr. De Niro was annoyed by the accident, but his nose had previously been broken, and Mr. Williams broke his nose in such a way that it was pushed back to where it belonged. The accident actually improved Mr. De Niro's appearance.
Pat Hutchins wrote a children's book titled The Mona Lisa Mystery, in which someone smuggles the famous painting from the museum by wrapping it around a leg then wrapping a bandage over the painting. After the book was published, a child wrote her to say that the painting could not be smuggled out of the museum in that way - the Mona Lisa is painted on wood. Ms. Hutchins did some extra research and discovered that the child was right.
While Emma Albani was singing at a benefit night for herself at Covent Garden, an admirer threw a bouquet of flowers and a jewel case to her. Unfortunately, the jewel case struck her squarely on the forehead (greatly upsetting the gentleman who had thrown it), and Ms. Albani was forced to leave the stage. However, when she opened the jewel case and discovered that it contained a beautiful jeweled diadem, she was not angry with the gift giver.
Coloratura soprano Lily Pons was a perfectionist. Before singing in an auditorium, she noticed that red velvet curtains hung at the back of the stage. Concerned that the curtains would absorb too much of the sound of her voice, she insisted that they be taken down. They were taken down, but unfortunately this revealed a large sign that was clearly visible as Ms. Pons sang during her concert: "RESTROOMS - THIS WAY."
Baseball manager Casey Stengel's team was behind when an umpire wanted to call the game on account of darkness. Casey protested vigorously, saying, "Look, I'm sixty years old, and I can still see the ball!" To prove his point, he threw the baseball high into the air and attempted to catch it. The baseball smashed Casey's nose, and the umpire ruled that it was too dark to play baseball.
Before George Cehanovsky started singing with the Metropolitan Opera, he sang the title role in Eugene Onegin. During the scene where he was supposed to shoot and kill the poet Lensky in a duel, his gun would not fire. (Later, he discovered that he and the singer playing Lensky had picked up the wrong guns - the singer playing Lensky had the gun with the blank in it.) The singer playing Lensky decided to fall over "dead" anyway, and when he hit the floor, the blank in his gun went off. Mr. Cehanovsky asked Eugene's second, "Is he killed!" The second replied, "He died of a heart attack."
Mstislav Rostropovitch owns a Stradivari cello with a long scratch on a lower bout. Why hasn't he had the scratch repaired? Because the scratch was made by a very important person. Napoleon Bonaparte had asked a previous owner for permission to play the cello, and as he was sitting down, one of his spurs made the scratch.
***
© Copyright Bruce D. Bruce; All Rights Reserved
***
Reader Comment
Current Events
Linda >^..^<
We are all only temporarily able bodied.
Thanks, Linda!
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
"
IT'S NOT WORTH OUR WHILE TO EVEN TRY."
TRUMP BLINKS.
"HE IS A CRACKPOT"
"WHERE NOW?"
??JoeInWV ?????? on Twitter: "Unpacked our Nativity scene yesterday. Removed all the Jews, Arabs, and foreigners. Ended up with a jackass and a handful of sheep."
Visit JD's site - Kitty Litter Music
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Mostly cloudy and on the cool side.
Hollywood Walk O' Fame
Snoop Dogg
Beloved rapper Snoop Dogg received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame on Monday.
The ceremony began at 11:30 a.m. right in front of the El Capitan Entertainment Center on Hollywood Boulevard, where "Jimmy Kimmel Live!" is taped.
Kimmel was there to honor the 16-time Grammy-nominated rapper. Dr. Dre, Warren G and Quincy Jones were also on hand to celebrate.
Born Calvin Broadus on Oct. 20, 1971 in Long Beach, he got his stage name from his mother Beverly who joked he looked like the Peanuts character Snoopy.
The Walk of Fame ceremony is just four days before the 25th anniversary of the release of his debut album "Doggystyle," which was released on Nov. 23, 1993. The album debuted No. 1 on the Billboard 200 and sold more than 11 million copies worldwide through November 2015.
Snoop Dogg
Ditches Comics
White House Correspondents' Dinner
Next year's White House Correspondents' Dinner will be no laughing matter. The organization has decided to forgo a comedian as emcee - historian Ron Chernowwill be the featured speaker next April.
Last year's host, comedian Michelle Wolf, called the White House Corespondents' Association "cowards."
"The @whca are cowards," tweeted Wolf, who drew criticism at last spring's dinner for making jokes about White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders. "The media is complicit. And I couldn't be prouder."
Known as the D.C. Nerd Prom, the dinner has often been controversial, even in the pre-Trump era, as when Stephen Colbert hosted and roasted George W. Bush in 2006. In 2011, when Seth Meyers hosted, President Barack Obama blasted the in-attendance Trump so harshly that speculation later arose attributing Trump's anger at fueling his presidential ambitions. In 2017, host Larry Wilmore was criticized after he affectionately called the outgoing Obama "my nigga" on live TV.
In recent years, TBS's Samantha Bee has hosted a Full Frontal episode opposite the dinner, called Not The White House Correspondents Dinner.
White House Correspondents' Dinner
Governors Awards
Honorary Oscars
Things were a bit different at this year's Governors Awards, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences annual gala in which honorary Oscars are presented to icons of the film industry.
Instead of being held two Saturdays before Thanksgiving, the ceremony took place the Sunday just before Turkey Day due to scheduling conflicts at the Ray Dolby Ballroom in Hollywood. For the first time, a deejay provided the tunes during the cocktail reception. And, like so many events in the past week, the red carpet was scaled back to photos-only out of respect for the victims of the California wildfires.
After guests mixed and mingled and unofficially campaigned for Oscar nominations over dinner, the gala transformed into a celebration of the 2018 honorees: Cicely Tyson, publicist Marvin Levy, composer Lalo Schifrin, and producers Kathleen Kennedy and Frank Marshall.
Tyson, who was presented with her Oscar by Quincy Jones, gave an emotional speech, recalling how her mother was not one to offer compliments or words of encouragement. "Mom, I know you didn't want me to do this, but I did and here it is" she said, raising her Oscar to the sky.
Tyson recalled that not long after receiving critical acclaim for her work in TV-movie adaptation of "The Autobiography of Jane Pittman" in 1974, she called her mother. "I said to her, 'Well?' and she said, 'Well what?'" Tyson remembered. "I said, 'You better tell me something.' And she said, 'I am so proud of you.' And I think if I had not heard those words from her, none of this would make a difference to me."
Honorary Oscars
Actors Hint at Reboot
'Pinky and the Brain'
What are we going to do tonight? The same thing we do every night, Pinky: Try to get rebooted. That's one takeaway from a Vulture Festival panel in which voice actors read famous movie scenes, including Maurice LaMarche and Rob Paulsen of "Pinky and the Brain," performing the Ferris wheel scene from "The Third Man" in character. They'd already done so once before on the cartoon itself, leading Paulsen to say to his co-star, "If we get our show back
"
LaMarche's response? "Quiet, Pinky, or I'll have to beat you over the head with an NDA." Whether it was a joke or a sign of things to come remains unclear, but it's not like it would be surprising for another '90s classic to get the reboot treatment. To wit, "Animaniacs" - where the two animated mice first debuted in 1993 - is itself being brought back courtesy of Hulu in 2020.
"Pinky and the Brain" premiered as a series unto itself in the fall of 1995, airing four seasons and 66 episodes across the next three years. Brain - whose voice is more than a little reminiscent of Orson Welles - is the evil genius to Pinky's kindhearted dunce. The episode "A Pinky and the Brain Christmas" won an Emmy Award for Outstanding Animated Program, with Paulsen winning the award for Outstanding Performer in an Animated Program.
The first three seasons of "Pinky and the Brain" are currently streaming on Hulu.
'Pinky and the Brain'
Inmates Fight Fire For $1 An Hour
California
Scores of prison inmates are engaged fighting California's deadliest ever wildfire for just $1 an hour - a deployment campaigners say has created the potential for "exploitation and abuse".
Around 200 prisoners are involved in the fight against the Camp Fire, that has so far claimed 77 lives and destroyed the community of Paradise in northern California. Around 1,000 people have been listed as missing by emergency teams, although the list is not considered fixed.
Meanwhile, as many as 3,700 inmates are among the estimated 9,000 firefighters currently tackling various blazes throughout the state. Approximately 2,600 of those are 'fire line qualified'inmates.
"An inmate must volunteer for the fire camp programme; no one is involuntarily assigned to work in a fire camp," Alexandra Powell, a spokesperson for the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR), told The Independent.
Reports suggest the use of inmate labour to tackle wildfires saves the state as much as $100m (£77.8m) a year, and that the so-called Conservation Camp Programme, has made prisoners available since the 1940s.
California
New Record Deal Affects Other Musicians
Taylor Swift
When Taylor Swift announced her new record deal on Monday with Universal Music Group and Republic Records, she coupled the long-awaited deal with an unusual provision: As part of her joint contract with the label, UMG must promise to hand over to artists, on a non-recoupable basis, a portion of the windfall from its Spotify shares in the future.
Not just to Swift, but to all its artists.
The caveat is broad, if vague. All three "Big Three" record labels - Universal, Sony and Warner - took shares in Spotify a few years ago, and all of them promised at some point that artists would benefit if the labels sold their stakes in the Swedish music-streaming company. Universal, the last of the three to make such a commitment, announced in March right before Spotify's public-company debut on the New York Stock Exchange that artists will "share in the proceeds" from a share sale. But according to sources, Swift's deal on Monday specifies that the hypothetical equity sale will result in payments to Universal's artists regardless of their account status, meaning they'll receive money even if they're in the red with the company for unrecovered advances. (Sony gave those terms to its artists when it cashed out in Spotify shares earlier this year, but Warner declined to ignore artist balances, meaning that much of the money Warner gave out just went back to the label.)
A source close to the matter tells Rolling Stone that Swift's alignment with UMG chairman/CEO Sir Lucian Grainge's approach to artist payments - specifically, his interest in offering Spotify equity to artists without withholding any money owed - was instrumental in the singer's decision to sign a deal with Universal over the other labels. While sources declined to give financial details, citing the still-hypothetical nature of the matter, Swift said in her announcement that the Spotify provision involves "much better terms" than what Sony and Warner offered.
For Swift to use her status as one of the world's most influential (i.e. revenue-driving) artists as a negotiating platform isn't new: She demanded that Apple make sure artists were compensated during Apple Music free trials in 2015 and went on a three-year boycott of Spotify over the relatively meager royalty payouts from its free tier. (In a volte-face, she restored her catalog on Spotify last summer.)
Taylor Swift
Creative Bookkeeping
'Spinal Tap'
The creators of "This Is Spinal Tap" have agreed to put their fraud lawsuit against Vivendi SA on hold while a mediator tries to resolve their $400 million case over the 1984 cult film.
In a court filing on Tuesday, lawyers for Vivendi and for the plaintiffs Christopher Guest, Michael McKean, Rob Reiner and Harry Shearer said they have chosen a mediator who will "attempt to resolve or narrow" the lawsuit.
A mediation was scheduled for March 11, 2019, the earliest date everyone could agree on, and the case against Paris-based Vivendi was stayed until April 1, 2019.
The filing followed an Aug. 28 ruling by U.S. District Judge Dolly Gee in Los Angeles that the plaintiffs could try to show that Vivendi's StudioCanal unit deprived them of a "fair return" from "Spinal Tap," its music and its merchandise by breaching a 1982 agreement to finance and produce the film.
Vivendi has controlled "Spinal Tap" rights for nearly three decades. The plaintiffs have said it has estimated their share of "Spinal Tap" income as just $81 from merchandising between 1984 and 2016, and $98 from music sales between 1989 and 2016.
'Spinal Tap'
First-Ever All-Female
Antarctic Expedition
Women who trekked across Antarctica in the first-ever all-female expedition broke more than gender norms - they also busted the gender myth that, when it comes to extreme endurance exercise, women are weaker than men.
The new findings - presented today (Nov. 19) at the Society for Endocrinology's annual meeting in Glasgow, Scotland - contradict some previous research that suggested women experienced more negative effects on their hormone and stress levels than men in response to extreme physical activity.
To better understand the effects of extreme endurance on women, researchers in the new study examined members of the Ice Maiden team, a group of six women from the British army who became the first all-female team to ski across Antarctica. During the two-month journey (from November 2017 to January 2018), the women covered more than 1,000 miles (1,700 kilometers) while pulling 170-pound (80 kilograms) sledges behind them, according to the BBC. The women faced treacherous conditions, including 60-mph winds and temperatures as low as minus 40 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 40 degrees Celsius).
Before, during and after the expedition, the researchers monitored several markers of health, including indicators of stress, hormone levels, body weight and bone strength.
In addition, markers of metabolic, hormonal and bone health were largely unaffected by the trip, and those that did change went back to normal shortly afterward.
Antarctic Expedition
'More Likely To Drink Heavily'
Cold Climates
People living in cold climates with less sunlight are more likely to drink heavily, say experts.
The US research establishes a link between average temperature and hours of sunlight and alcohol consumption.
Climate contributed to higher incidence of binge drinking and liver disease, according to data examined from 193 countries.
Alcohol is a vasodilator, relaxing blood vessels and increasing the flow of warm blood to the skin.
Drinking also is linked to depression, which tends to be more prevalent when sunlight is scarce.
Cold Climates
| CURRENT MOON lunar phases |
