Tag: Now I Know

September rambling: nothing to fear but Fear itself

Congrats to Dustbury on 3 million visits to his blog

Paraphrased from here: Bob Woodward’s book gets released this week. Donald Trump has nothing to fear but Fear itself

Someone inaccurately describes libel law

In a small Alabama town, an evangelical congregation reckons with God, Trump and the meaning of morality

The Weekly Sift: What should we make of “Anonymous”?

Rudy Giuliani’s theatrical, combative style of politics anticipated—and perfectly aligns with—his boss

The problem with the Left

‘Designing Women’ Creator Goes Public With Les Moonves War: Not All Harassment Is Sexual

Vlogbrothers: The Book Was Better? and the episode in which it turns out that John did not forget about Hank’s birthday

Stephen Colbert – The Rolling Stone Interview

Scientist robbed of Nobel Prize gets $3 million science award

Our local minor-league baseball team! The Tri-Cities ValleyCats lay claim to New York-Penn League’s top dogs

Portrait of an Artist as an Old Man: Mel Brooks in His 90s

You Should Always Put a Quarter on a Frozen Cup of Water Before a Power Outage

The perfect guide to the perfect gift

Comparative religion, squirrel division

Tony Isabella, “black Lightning”, and creator credit

Congrats to Dustbury on 3 million visits to his blog

Now I Know: A Really Bad Way to Become a Senator and The First Digital Camera (That Wasn’t) and Los Angeles’ One Waze Street and Who Kept the Dogs Out

Cut THIS cheese from your diet

The Facts Concerning the Recent Carnival of Crime in Connecticut – Mark Twain, June 1876

MUSIC

Leonard Bernstein conducting Aaron Copland’s Appalachian Spring ballet

Elegy by Mark Camphouse, played by the United States Marine Band

Coverville 1231: Led Zeppelin Cover Story V and When the Levee Breaks – Zepparella

Coverville 1233: Cover Stories for Michael Jackson and Amy Winehouse

Suppe overture. Morning, Noon, and Night in Vienna

Train to Nowhere – The Champs (plus its B-side)

Weekend Diversion: Imagine Dragons

Ascending Bird – Yo Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble

K-Chuck Radio: More Forgotten 1960’s Classics

The Sound of Silence – Harp Twins

Maria Bartiromo – Joey Ramone

Vibes – Vivian Green (no relation)

Mood Indigo – Ella Fitzgerald

Old Movie Stars Dance to Uptown Funk

Baroque Poultry in D major

Paul McCartney Breaks Down His Most Iconic Songs

The Top 20 Tom Petty songs

The many voices of late Thurl Ravenscroft

The graphic is courtesy of Amanda Peterson at Enlightened Digital

August rambling #2: Fibonacci sequence music

Robert Mueller’s Indictment Song

A friend wrote: “Suddenly, it all makes perfect sense to me. Tubby all grown up=?”
Boston Globe, 22 August 2018: “It’s hard to come up with a satisfactory explanation that doesn’t end up with ‘because he got his hand caught in the cookie jar.'”

The drift towards autocracy continues

“That’s Obstruction of Justice”

How the National Enquirer helped DJT’s fixer keep scandals off the front page

‘Like a State Dinner’: Huge White House Event Honoring Evangelical Christians and he lied to them that he got rid of a law

The 47-page indictment against California Congressman Duncan Hunter and his wife Margaret details a shocking list of improper uses of campaign funds and financial mismanagement. The Hunters are accused of spending $250,000 of campaign funds on expenses that no reasonable person would believe were legitimate campaign expenditures

Why peace doesn’t last without women

Trade: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver – Jared is to blame

Commission on State Fragility, Growth and Development

Another deadly pandemic is coming — and the United States is not ready

Cancer: It’s Not Always What You Eat, But When You Eat It

Climate change will be deadlier, more destructive and costlier for California than previously believed, state warns

Life After Quitting; Five people on addiction, in their own words

America Soured on My Multiracial Family

Elizabeth Warren stakes out her message

Court Backs Activists Who Feed Homeless

The interwoven systems that shape our destiny even though we rarely pause to think about them

TV debate between William F. Buckley and Groucho Marx

When a Stranger Decides to Destroy Your Life

While We Sleep, Our Mind Goes on an Amazing Journey

Meet The People Who Spend Their Free Time Removing Fake Accounts From Facebook

Ken Levine interviews Peri Gilpin of Frasier, Part 1 and Part 2

A mouse walks into a bar

Jaquandor geeks out

Pulp Empire – “A Tarantino inspired Star Wars mashup and remix”

The insidious lure of nostalgia

Fonts of knowledge

Who needs the Kwik-E-Mart?

Snapping dry spaghetti into just two pieces

Mean Hetty Green

Scrambled eggs in a microwave

Now I Know: Why Bird Poop is White

MUSIC

Music from the Fibonacci sequence

Robert Mueller’s Indictment Song -James Corden

René and Georgette Magritte with Their Dog After the War – Paul Simon (2018)

The Cedar and the Palm,”symphonic picture” Vasily Kalinnikov

Bobaflex – Hey You (Pink Floyd cover)

SEUNGRI – ‘WHERE R U FROM (Feat. MINO)’

A Pentatonix kind of day

Kaze no Torimichi (The Path of Wind) from From My Neighbor Totoro – Joe Hisaishi, adapted for chamber performance

Coverville 1229: The Madonna Cover Story III

The Mamas and the Papas “If You Can Believe Your Eyes and Ears”

overture to Les Horaces – Antonio Salieri

Inspecta – Jain

The evolution of Dragon’s “Young Years”

Do songs of the summer sound the same?

Inductee insights: Moody Blues

Dirty Prank Calls, Done For $250,000

Newly Released FBI Files Expose Red-Baiting of Woody Guthrie

July Rambling #1: Even darkness must pass

Lin-Manuel Miranda and William Daniels Talk Hamilton and 1776

Sister Leslie is out of the hospital, as of ndependence Day. Still healing at home. More probably on July 23.

Flirting with Fascism

The Coming Collapse and Why It is Extraordinary

We Were Warned: What the Movie Villains Should Have Taught Us

As our democracy is dismantled right before their eyes, Americans remain silent

“America First” means China wins

During CBS interview, government agents chillingly showed up to intimidate former ICE spokesman

On July 4th Eve, Jeff Sessions Quietly Rescinds a Bunch of Protections for Minorities

If Pixar Made A DACA Movie

The retirement of Supreme Court Associate Justice Anthony Kennedy is as bad as it seems and Anthony Kennedy, You Are a Total Disgrace to America

Larry Kudlow is Never Ever Right

If You Think Basic Income is ‘Free Money’ or Socialism, Think Again

Turks Have Voted Away Their Democracy

Trust Issues, examining the state of trust in 2018

Fatal accidents, off-the-books workers, a union once run by a mobster. The rogue world of one of New York’s major trash haulers

That Property Down In Coeymans: The City of Albany is still trying to get rid of the proposed site of Jerry’s Dump

Tim Berners-Lee has seen his creation debased by everything from fake news to mass surveillance. But he’s got a plan to fix it

Radical Democrats Are Pretty Reasonable

Israeli airline says it will no longer accommodate Orthodox Jewish men who refuse to sit next to women

There’s some good in this world. And it’s worth fighting for

An Interview with Deborah Mends, UK College Diploma Graduate and Owner of Your Visual Mind – I first met my friend in the summer of 1977 in NYC

Atomic Roundtable: Harlan Ellison 1934-2018

Gene Editing: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver

How’s the Water?

Agent Zigzag

Geographical oddities

What to Do When an ATM Won’t Give You Any Money

The Counterfeit Queen of Soul

Lin-Manuel Miranda and William Daniels Talk Hamilton, 1776, Mr. Feeny, and More (2016)

Five Muppeteers explain how they operate their characters on Sesame Street

Shat!

Now I Know: When the Jazz Didn’t Stop Playing and How To Fool the World Starting with Two All-Beef Patties and The Macroeconomic Madness Behind Extra Cheesy Pizza

Yes! The Wedding of Winnie & Thomas

MUSIC

I Don’t Know – Paul McCartney
Come On To Me – Paul McCartney

We Are the World video, re-created by a bunch of talented folks from Broadway

Rasta Children – Playing for Change

First Burn (Hamilton)

Smells Like Karen Carpenter – Moneyshot Cosmonauts

Beautiful Life – Rick Astley

Coverville 1223: Cover Stories for George Michael, Men At Work, and Cyndi Lauper

K-Chuck Radio: Gorillaz in our midst and It’s All About That Bass

Friends don’t let friends clap on the 1 and 3 (Harry Connick Jr)

June rambling #2: some more social justice

Leslie’s still in the hospital, getting incrementally better.

You can’t compromise with bs

Is Trumpism becoming a new religion?

When The White House Can’t Be Believed

The 2017 Comprehensive Plan For Reorganizing The Executive Branch is codified in the June 2018 Delivering Government Solutions in the 21st Century. They’re DOING all of it, or trying to. (HT, Steve Bissette)

Family Separations: Should we be horrified, relieved, or just confused?

This Isn’t the First Time the White House Attempted to Cut the Dept. of Ed.

The corporate tax cut will never trickle down

Space defense will be a major concern for the U.S., but the “Space Force” is not the answer

Browser extension to fix the NYT’s squeamishness about calling him a liar

Reporter is raising her daughter to speak three languages; a stranger demanded she ‘speak English’ to her

Living While Black

More than one percent of Oklahoma’s population is in the slammer

Last Week Tonight with John OliverXi Jinping

We could use some more social justice when it comes to fandom

Father’s Day for children of abusive fathers

“In moral crisis” or “immoral crisis”?

Judge tosses Kansas law that disenfranchised thousands of eligible voters, orders KS Secretary of State Kris Kobach to take remedial law classes

Sales tax: Different items are taxable in different states

You don’t really know who Bernie Sanders was in the 1960s

Anthony Bourdain interviewed on The Daily Show, January 2018

RIP Dan Ingram

A natural gas power plant with no carbon emissions or air pollution

How does Disney World control mosquitoes?

‘I had to guard an empty room’: the rise of the pointless job

The Curious Origins of 16 Common Phrases

Now I Know: The Radio Reporter Who Found a New Voice, Literally and Why Is it Named Idaho? and The Tractors that Turn Farmers into Hackers and the Sound of Sneezes and The Man Who Takes Apostrophes Very Seriously and the National Animal of Scotland

The patron saint of the tacky

The LESLIE Chronicles

This is the picture of my sister’s bicycle after her accident on June 4; you can’t really tell that the handlebars are sheared off.

Leslie’s still in the hospital, getting incrementally better. Great strides in the past week, actually. She’s had a fourth surgery this week, on her palate. She has a coterie of friends tending to her, besides the hospital staff.

Most notably, I was able to talk with her this week! She has these different colored caps that cover the trachea incision that allows her to be audible. She was tired but coherent and rational. THAT is a very good sign.

If she were not wearing a helmet, there almost certainly would have had have been a different outcome. So if you are riding a motorcycle or bicycle or scooter, wear the damn helmet.

MUSIC

We’re Not Gonna Take It – Dee Snider (stripped down version)

77 Cover Songs – “Weird Al” Yankovic

Art of the song parody

Still A Friend Of Mine – MonaLisa Twins

99 Luftballons – Kaleida (Atomic Blonde Soundtrack)

Whitney Avalon sings again!

Anema e core – Pier Angeli

Just A Song Before I Go – Graham Nash (original demo)

John McElrath of the Swingin’ Medallions died at 77

Why Modern Music Is Awful

June rambling: sister Leslie, continued

A Simple Way to Improve a Billion Lives

I take the fact that I’ve heard variations of this message about sister Leslie from three different people as confirmation of its accuracy. If you first see her, you may have an OMG reaction. But if you see her again, even the next day, you will likely see incremental improvement.

She had less swelling generally. But she can’t open her mouth yet, so communication is raising her hand, thumbs up/down, wiggling toes on command, etc.

She’s had her surgery, this time on her wrist Tuesday. They put in two metal plates. They want to be able to remove one of them in a couple weeks.

She still needs to be able to cough out the bad stuff, and she needs pain meds to deal with the 4 broken ribs.

So Leslie won’t be out of the hospital for at LEAST another week; she’s currently in the ICU. She has multiple broken bones and other issues. She’s not in peril, but this is NOT just a fall off a bike with a couple of bruises and scrapes, which I’ve experienced myself.

Incidentally, she has changed hospitals, not for good medical reasons but because her insurance required it. At least she HAS insurance, I reckon.

I’ll probably go out to San Diego sometime this summer.
***
Within 23 seconds, the Sacramento police encountered and shot dead Stephon Clark in his backyard – video looks at how the shooting unfolded

A visit to a nearby restaurant turns ugly

Can a white person use the N-word? Ever?

Still no Pride in the White House

A Senior White House Official Defines the Trump Doctrine: ‘We’re America, B!tch’

*Shady foundation that just got him sued by the New York attorney general, explained

What is impeachment for?

Rose Tico/ Kelly Marie Tran and Star Wars fandom

John Oliver: guardianship

The ‘Sex Cult’ That Preached Empowerment

How noise pollution is ruining your hearing

A Simple Way to Improve a Billion Lives: Eyeglasses

Read This Story and Get Happier

Positive Tomorrows school

Behold the magnificent glory of ‘Reefer Madness’

What Makes The Spelling Bee So Hard

What it takes to become an Olympic athlete – 15 essentials according to Nick Catlin

26-Year-Old Georgia Official Takes Her Oath On Malcolm X’s Autobiography

Ken Levine interviews Mark Evanier

Jake Tapper, Amateur Cartoonist Extraordinary

Jerry Maren, the last surviving actor to play a Munchkin in The Wizard of Oz (1939) in At the Circus (1939)

Now I Know: The T-Word You Couldn’t Talk About and When a Calendar Defeated Russia in the Olympics and The Little TV Accident that Made Miami Golden and How the Soviet Union Saved Vulcan

Tallest Bonfire in the World Made From Over 4000 Pallets

Rooneyer than thou

ihop to ihob

MUSIC

:

Helpless – The Regrettes, cover of the Hamilton song

Roseanna – Weezer

Africa – Weezer

Teach Me Tonight – Amy Winehouse, a Dinah Washington standard

Coverville 1220: The Prince Cover Story V

Rocket Man – Little Big Town

Ravel’s Bolero