Arthur@AmeriNZ Archives - Page 12 of 47

January rambling: quotidian stupidity

How Much of the Internet Is Fake? Turns Out, a Lot of It, Actually

The Impact of Climate Change on Language Loss

NBC’s Meet the Press devotes the entire show to climate change with no time for deniers

Saving American Democracy

Are powerful women likable?

A double diagnosis — cancer while poor

NOW I AM

Chronic lying and self-contempt

Why He Reigns as King Cyrus

He Is the Damn Emergency; Post-Speech

The wall speech v. the prediction; it is not about the wall

He Was Never Vetted

Celibacy isn’t the cause of the church sex-abuse crisis; the priesthood is

Comic book artist Batton Lash, October 29, 1953 – January 12, 2019

Former Yankees Starter, Pitching Coach Mel Stottlemyre Dies at 77 – I was there at the Stadium when they retired his number

Broadway legend Carol Channing dies at 97

Bob Einstein, R.I.P.

Arthur answers my questions about blogging stuff and gay conversion therapy and current gay issues and his parents

The Crimson Permanent Assurance (Monty Python’s)

Everyday smartness is definitely no match for quotidian stupidity

On books, and joy, and hoarding, and having too many books…

I Used to Write for Sports Illustrated. Now I Deliver Packages for Amazon

After 30 years, Elisa Streeter has retired from WTEN-TV 10 in Albany

Every The Dick Van Dyke Show Episode, Ranked

Review time! with ‘Planet of the Apes Visionaries’

Lady Cop: A 70s Comic that Tried (and Failed)

Disgusting Food Museum opens

What is Glitter?

Cookie Monster in the UK, interview by Melissa Nathoo and Cookie Monster visits the Ellen show

Now I Know: The Dog With Strings Attached and Meet Kelly, The Really Smart Dolphin and The Avengers Burial Ground and Why You Can’t Make a Phone Call with a Calculator and How to Beat Traffic in Moscow

11 foot 8 bridge

Archie Comics

2018/2019

In review

The Story that Really Mattered

Bringing out the dead

fillyjonk’s year

The Worst Political Predictions

35 years ago, Isaac Asimov was asked to predict the world of 2019

Dave Barry: What made 2018 so awful? A month-by-month look at the most outrageous highlights

MUSIC

Hope Is A Dangerous Thing For A Woman Like Me To Have – But I Have It – Lana Del Rey, and other songs

K-Chuck Radio: Sail on, Captain… (Daryl Dragon)

Emerson, Lake & Palmer – Fanfare For The Common Man (complete)

Winter Melody – Donna Summer

Getting Better – MonaLisa Twins

All Along The Watchtower – Playing For Change

Loving You Today – Amy Barlow

Downtown – Saw Doctors with Petula Clark

Lawyers, Guns and Money – Warren Zevon

Don’t Turn Away – Hollie Sue

Some People, from the Broadway show Gypsy, performed by several big stars

Safety Dance – Men Without Hats

Overture to Johann Strauss’s operetta The Gypsy Baron – Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra

22 Musicals In 12 Minutes w/ Lin Manuel Miranda, Emily Blunt, and James Corden

Year Of The Cat – Al Stewart

Nature Boy: Eden Ahbez and Annie Haslam and Sun Ra

Coverville: 1246: Cover Stories for Marilyn Manson and Foo Fighters and 1247: Cover Stories for Susanna Hoffs and Sade

Dawn over the Land – Night Breeze

I Just Want to Be a Star – Nunsense

Always Look on the Bright Side of Life – Sonny Vande Putte

Meow Mix – cats at a rave

Baby Shark went viral and hit the Billboard Hot 100

How one designer created the “look” of jazz

The End of Owning Music: How CDs and Downloads Died

Review time! with ‘Crossroad Blues’

December rambling #2: how to do sanctuary

Is tech ruining the way we use exclamation points?!

onam.empire Oligarchy Is Destroying Our Society and the Planet

Free the Free Press from Wall Street Plunderers

The main problem with privatization is that it tends to socialize risk and privatize profits

Moments of madness: Freud’s thoughts on human nature resonate today

Low nurse staffing levels directly linked to higher patient mortality, study finds

The politics of ’12 Angry Men’ has never really left us and probably never will

The Postal Inspector Who Took Down America’s First Organized Crime Ring

Pew’s ‘striking findings’ from 2018

150 Minutes of Hell

Can Compassion Be Taught?

Now this is how you do sanctuary right

Walter Ayres: New Hope Budget

My friend and former pastor Donna Elia: Woman of the cloth, woman of the belt

Being Mortal review – a surgeon’s view of how we should end our days

Morrie Turner: Wee Pals, Kid Power

Curios from the Outer Rim: SUPERMAN at 40

Is tech ruining the way we use exclamation points?!

In Vermont, a small-town feud leads to a big middle finger (literally)

A simple, free way to pass your permit test; the New York State version

A few of the 700some stories about the street names of Albany

The annual obit reel from Turner Classic Movies

Word of the year? listen or risk

The Internet has screwed up Christmas shopping

Holiday weight gain: Can it be avoided? Probably not

Now I Know: The Starbucks That Never Gets Your Name Wrong and Rodentia Intelligencia and A Crowd-Pleasing Side Dish and The Transatlantic Battery Bunny Battle and Is a Burrito (Legally) a Sandwich?

A woman tricked her dad by replacing Ferrero Rocher chocolates with chocolate-covered brussels sprouts

Chuck Miller: Photos of 2018

Dustbury notes my Advent devotional

Arthur answers my questions about where to live and religion and his likes

WHICH SIDE IS HE ON?

Russia picked him and ran him for President, former Israeli intelligence officer says

No, These Tariffs Have Not Been Good for America

He says: Give Me a Wall or I’ll Engineer a Recession

He took credit for a growing economy – Now what?

Shutdown halts civil court cases — including those against him

Regime Suggests Unpaid Federal Workers Do Odd Jobs to Cover Rent

Daughter of the podiatrist who helped defer him from Vietnam says ‘bone spurs’ were a lie

Trials of Individual-1: a scorecard

The E.P.A. proposed new rules for assessing pollution that would make it easier for power plants to release mercury and other toxic substances

Here’s how his environmental record is hurting communities worldwide

Is this any way to run a superpower?

Back when (a) he was just an annoying, self-promoting business tycoon and (b) Jon Stewart manned the desk at The Daily Show

MUSIC

Who Cares – Paul McCartney, video with Emma Stone

Coverville Countdown: The 40 Greatest Covers of 2018, Part One and Part Two

I’ll Be Seeing You – Nancy Wilson

Crimson and Clover – Prince

Love Always Wins – Hande Yener

Jerusalem – Emerson, Lake & Palmer

Bourée – Jethro Tull

“The Chipmunk Song” Turns 60: Secrets of a Holiday Novelty Smash

Ask Arthur Anything; then Ask Roger Anything

Arthur the AmeriNZ does his Ask Arthur Anything every year in the autumn. Wait, November is SPRING in New Zealand. I’m so confused.

Arthur’s a smart and interesting guy, and another old political science major to boot. So you can AAA. Then you can Ask Roger Anything. Heck, it can be the same questions; I’m not proud. (Note to Michael Rivest: that was a proper use of a semicolon.)

You can ask us both about our late parents. I already asked him about his favorite Republicans, and that’d be a fair question to ask of me. Ditto favorite composers (classical), artists (painters, sculptors, et al).

You can’t ask me about being a preacher’s kid, because I wasn’t one, but I can ask Arthur. Request that he explain the New Zealand parliamentary procedure, but my knowledge is extremely limited. Don’t ask him what it was like to grow up as a black kid in America.

I was thinking about this a LOT actually because of something I saw on The Daily Show with Trevor Noah the first week in December. Trevor went to South Africa to host an event honoring Nelson Mandela. He went back to the United States and developed laryngitis. So the correspondents spoke, sometimes saying they were Trevor, while Trevor sat beside them. The disconnect was very funny.

In case you’re new to this, you can AsK Roger ANYTHING. For reasons unknown, I must respond, usually within the month, to the best of my ability. I allow for obfuscation, but it’s not generally required.

As always, you can leave any of your questions, no matter how weird, in the comments section or on Facebook or Twitter; for the latter, my name is ersie. Always look for the duck. If you prefer to remain anonymous, that’s fine, but you need to SAY so. E-mail me at rogerogreen (AT) gmail (DOT) com, or send me an IM on FB and note that you want to remain unmentioned; otherwise, I’ll assume you want to be cited.

December rambling: Ken Berry “Bush-wacked”

Here’s to the State of Mississippi –

Your Tax Dollars Help Starve Children in Yemen

The End of the American Order

America’s democracy problem

Self-dealing – of the money contributed to his 2020 campaign, $1.1 million has been spent at his businesses

“Witch hunts” explained

The Lame-Duck Power Grab

The Media isn’t “Polarized”, It Has a Right-Wing Cancer

Racism in America: Why Nothing Has Changed

Deconstructing a Genius Climate Change Argument

The Insect Apocalypse

On The Melian Dialogue

My car lost its hometown…

Understanding Rheumatoid Arthritis

How Restaurants Got So Loud

Graduate School Can Have Terrible Effects on People’s Mental Health

Everything That’s Ethical to Steal From Work—And Why We Do It in the First Place

Ken Berry, Star of ‘F Troop’ and ‘Mama’s Family’ has dieds at 85 and Dance like Ken Berry and Ken Berry’s been “Bush-wacked”

Did Ross Perot cost George HW Bush a second term as President? and The Dirty Secrets of George HW Bush and Why All the Bush Nostalgia?

This ’80s PBS Show Made It Cool To Love Math

The first installment of the Gasoline Alley newspaper strip appeared in newspapers 100 years ago, and it is still running

Toy Industry to Induct Three New Members into Esteemed Hall of Fame, including the late Stan Lee

Chuck Dixon is now the most prolific comic book writer of all time

The Chilling Killing Wind cover reveal

City Lights is the greatest silent film ever made

Now I Know: The International Dispute That Slowed Down Time and The Space Capsule That Crashed in Oklahoma and The Helium Balloon With a Magical Ending and Floating Away On a Raft of Disappointment and The Hockey Save that Started in the Stands

Cookie Monster: pays a visit to the popular vlog, Rocketboom and The Lord of the Crumbs and C is for Cookie and CM Nosh and Les Mousserables and Furry Potter and the Goblet of Cookies and the Cookie Ballet with superstar ballerina Misty Copeland and HashtagPBS with Martha Stewart

MUSIC

Here’s to the State of Mississippi – Phil Ochs

The Split – Cordell Jackson, the rockin’ granny

Coverville 1242: The Randy Newman Cover Story III

Franz Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsody #2

K-Chuck Radio: I need a good Squeeze right now

Overture from Der Freischutz, composed by Carl Maria von Weber

Arthur’s Weekend Diversion: George Ezra and Hot Chocolate

Tightrope – Janelle Monáe

The Little Things – Chris Heron

Jump For My Love – Perpetuum Jazzile

Saturn (Sleeping at Last cover) – That Cello Guy

Help You Out – AlexSpacesOut

Hell No- Ingrid Michaelson, who attended Binghamton University

Hazel Scott Was Once the Biggest Star in Jazz. Here’s Why You’ve Never Heard of Her

Once was smooth jazz

Deadpool defends Nickelback

Joy, sharing gifts – Saint Nicholas Day

“Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit.”

As you may know, “Saint Nicholas became a priest, and later, a Bishop of the early Catholic Church. True to the Christian concept of giving up belongings and following Christ, St. Nicholas gave up all of his belongings.

“He was well known for giving to needy people, especially children. There are many stories and tales of him helping out children in need.”

What I had somehow missed, though, was that St. Nicholas Day commemorates his death on December 6th.”

Arthur linked to the Vlogbrothers’ call for more celebration. The AmeriNZ writes: “These days, people don’t celebrate enough… Most of us ignore the little things, and not so little things, that go on all the time. We need to celebrate the little things, the small victories, because they make the bigger ones possible.”

I think this is fundamentally true. And maybe it’s because the world is scary, and life can be difficult, I think it’s more important than ever.

Arthur also linked to an Apple video called Share Your Gifts. “In the ad, a young woman is creative, but won’t share her gift with the world until the dog intervenes. I have found this can happen in real life…

He wondered if “a certain subset of Americans would be outraged that the ad is called ‘Holiday’, but it really has nothing to do with any one particular holiday, does it?”

Well, maybe someone will take offense. But the Bible is filled with Scripture that discuss sharing gifts.

For instance, in 1 Corinthians 12 – that’s cited as 1st Corinthians, BTW – “Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; and there are varieties of service, but the same Lord; and there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who empowers them all in everyone.

“To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good. For to one is given through the Spirit the utterance of wisdom, and to another the utterance of knowledge according to the same Spirit…”

My Saint Nicholas Day wish is that we express joy, appreciating our gifts and the gifts of others. These could be wonderful presents that cost nothing in terms of money, but may pay dividends nonetheless.