April rambling: marvelous, melancholy

Tributes to Fountains of Wayne and Bill Withers

book facade
for National Library Week

Click here to fill out the 2020 census online today! This way, census workers won’t have to come to your door. The Census Bureau advises completing the census now even if you haven’t received your 12-digit census ID by mail. Here’s a reminder.

Eight marvelous and melancholy things I’ve learned about creativity.

Garbage Language: Why Do Corporations Speak the Way They Do?.

Grover reads The Monster at the End of This Book (2020).

What Is Color Psychology?

A new search engine:https://www.privado.com/ (they don’t store searches or IPs!)

The difference between baking powder and baking soda thanks to Alton Brown.

How some cities ‘flattened the curve’ during the 1918 flu pandemic.

Notes From The Pandemic. A Diary of Struggling for Survival and Sanity in the Season of the Witch. I have contributed a few links to this effort.

The Week: What Caught Our Eye, including news that the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy were officially considered essential workers.

Little Tips for Better Video Chat (For Teachers…and Everybody Else).

MASH and the coronavirus.

The 12 most annoying co-workers you face on Zoom.

How Frasier Would Shelter in Place During the Coronavirus.

Some Good News with John Krasinski Ep. 2 – Zoom Surprise at 8:25.

Quarantine calls with Joe Buck.

“So long as men worship the Caesars and Napoleons, Caesars and Napoleons will duly arise and make them miserable.” – Aldous Huxley

Study identifies a psychological factor linked to Trump supporters’ vindictiveness.

John Oliver takes a look at One America News, or OAN, a far-right news network being embraced by him at his coronavirus press events.

Now I Know

Why Does It Feel So Weird To Walk on a Stopped Escalator? and Putting a Happy Face On Trash and Badminton’s Sinister Secret and The Problem With Invisible Stone Boogers and Why Mario Has a Mustache and Keggy.

MUSIC

Movie: Sound City, America’s greatest unsung recording studio.

Movie: The Wrecking Crew, which I wrote about here.

Thank you, Adam Schlesinger. Stacy’s Mom – Fountains of Wayne.

Bill Withers, a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee. Ain’t No Sunshine; Grandma’s Hands; Use Me; Lean on Me.

Coverville: 1304: Tributes to Fountains of Wayne & Bill Withers and 1303: Eric Clapton Cover Story.

Stay Away – Randy Newman.

Sing About It (The Wood Brothers) – Seizoenen koor Amsterdam.

Jubilie – Mary Chapin Carpenter (Songs From Home Episode 5).

Wish You Were Here (Pink Floyd Cover) – MonaLisa Twins.

A suite from Catch Me If You Can – John Williams’s score.

Hard to Be the Bard – Christian Borle from Something Rotten.

Yellow River Concerto, themes composed by Xian Xinghai.

K-Chuck Radio: The Hits of Apryll Aileen.

Symphony No. 2 in D Major of Beethoven.

Music for The Creatures of Prometheus of Beethoven.

Coronavirus Blues – Middleburgh Minstrel (it’s all about the TP).

March rambling: 4-stage strategy

The Hammer and the Dance: What the Next 18 Months Can Look Like, if Leaders Buy Us Time

road-to-nowhere
From Wrong Hands Used with Creative Commons 3.0 license.

The 4-stage strategy.

Maps as propaganda.

The 1862 Binghamton Race Riot.

2020 Alzheimer’s Disease Facts and Figures report.

The Accusations Were Lies. But Could We Prove It?

I am recommending the AmeriNZ blog always, but especially from January 10, 2020 to now, involving grief and moving.

Why hard work and specializing early is not a recipe for success.

You could watch Song of the South, the most controversial Disney movie RIGHT NOW.

What Can You Learn from Each U.S. Census? FILL OUT YOUR FORM!

She Came, She Saw, She Conquered: 8 Women Who Changed The World.

Dorie Miller, War Hero.

Muslim man running for Congress helped pay the medical debt of a man who sent him anti-Muslim tweets.

How’s the Water?

Rev. Joseph Lowery, ‘Dean’ Of The Civil Rights Movement, Dies At 98 .

“You think grown-ups have it all figured out? That’s just a hustle, kid. Grown-ups are making it up as they go along, just like you. You remember that, and you’ll do fine.” – Lawrence Woolsey (John Goodman), MATINEE (1993).

Why Doesn’t Disney+ Have More Muppet Stuff?

Biancolli: My week of hand gel and geek bliss on a Star Trek cruise.

Don Adams, Don Rickles in Midnight Cowboy parody.

Found! McLean Stevenson in a Raft on Cher in 1975.

Obstruction In Your Weasand?

Donnybrook

Tanking his own Presidency.

The Strange Case of A Psychological Reckoning.

Newest attack ad against him is scathing and it was done by Republicans.

The Coronavirus Is the Worst Intelligence Failure in U.S. History; It’s more glaring than Pearl Harbor and 9/11—and it’s all the fault of Donald Trump’s leadership.

Narcissist in Charge.

COVID-19
EarthCam-live-cam-of-Tidal-Basin-Cherry-Trees-march-20-2020
EarthCam live cam of Tidal Basin Cherry Trees, March 20, 2020. STAY HOME!

The Hammer and the Dance.

You Can’t Practice Social Distancing if You’re a Refugee.

Why it’s so deadly in Italy.

Americans Are Getting A Hard Lesson In Why Government — And Taxes — Actually Matter.

Without Mass Testing, It Will Keep Spreading.

Is $2 Trillion Too Little, Too Late?

How the US Botched Testing.

Stand Up America urges lawmakers to pass measure to extend vote-by-mail.

We Can’t Let It Drive Us Into Authoritarianism.

Economies Aren’t Built to Stop and Restart.

Historical Black Mondays in 1929, 1987, 2015, and 2020.

How student/athletes can cope with consequences of the pandemic.

Why You Shouldn’t Go To Your Friend’s House While Social Distancing.

Tech Tools to Help Your Library Cope.

Airline and Hotel Loyalty Program Changes.

Athena Says Its Cameras Can Detect 1,000 Infections an Hour.

How some cities ‘flattened the curve’ during the 1918 flu pandemic.

The Sudden Obliteration of Expectation– Hank Green.

What will the exhibition spaces do?

A Guide to Intimacy.

SOCIAL DISTANCE– A Randy Rainbow Song Parody.

The Oatmeal: How to be socially distant.

An Old ‘Scrubs’ Clip Is Going Viral Amidst Novel Social Distancing.

The Right Way to Kill Coronavirus. No, you should not be using vinegar.

How To Make Natural Moisturizing Hand Sanitizer.

Now I Know

Why We Don’t Chat Chit About Flop Flips and How Postage Almost Started a War and Capture the Flag and
Harry Potter and the Need for Fewer Casts and To Boldly Go Where You’re Really Not Allowed To Go and Neither Rain Nor Sleet Nor Crazy Address Will Prevent The Mail Delivery and The Grass With … Less Gas?

MUSIC

Murder Most Foul – Bob Dylan.

Piano Quartet No.3 in C Major– Beethoven.

Coverville: 1300: The Luckiest Episode and 1301: Cover Stories for Hozier, The Darkness and Black Eyed Peas.

Wannabe – Spice Girls (Vintage “Andrews Sisters” Style Cover) – Postmodern Jukebox.

K-Chuck Radio: The Evolution of Manu Dibango and Soul Makossa.

Happy Music.

Jump:Big Daddy in the style of Eddie Cochran; Van Halen; Aztec Camera.

Stoned Soul Picnic – The 5th Dimension.

Rebel Rebel – Rockin’1000 That’s Live Official.

This Too Shall Pass– OK Go.

Last Words of David- Randall Thompson, rehearsal video.

JB Scott’s 1979 – 1982. Photographs from the legendary Albany, NY Rock & Roll night club.

This Land is Your Land belongs to you and me…

Feb. rambling: Jealous of a dog

Republicans sending mailer labeled Census ahead of official forms

Want Your Personal Data? Hand Over More Please.

‘Barbaric’:8 Million Americans Have Been Forced to Start Crowdfunding Campaigns to Cover Medical Costs and When Medical Debt Collectors Decide Who Gets Arrested.

A new study shows Medicare for All will save Americans billions and prevent thousands of unnecessary deaths.

Is Coronavirus Panic Sending Us Back to the Days of Racist Quarantines? and COVID-19 from the CDC.

Identification, Evaluation, and Management of Children With Autism Spectrum Disorder.

How to Spot Fake News.

Last Week Tonight with John Oliver: Modi and Disney blocks episode critical of India’s PM.

Facing Undeniable Reality of Climate Change, Deniers Now Argue It’s Not That Bad.

The folks on Fox & Friends really HAD referred to Fred Rogers (AKA Mr. Rogers of Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood) as an “evil, evil man.”.

FBI: The Most Perpetrated Cybercrime Is Not Getting What You Paid For.

Socialists Will Never Understand Elizabeth Warren, part of a long intellectual tradition that’s gone forgotten in the West: pro-market leftism.

What’s Wrong With a Decision-Making Convention?

National Marriage, Divorce Rates Both Declined in the Last 10 Years.

John Oliver: Quest For U.S. Citizenship Culminated In An “Utterly Petrifying” Citizenship Test.

How Google Got Its Employees to Eat Their Vegetables.

Generations of Handwritten Mexican Cookbooks Are Now Online.

How to Leave Your Lover with Lemons.

World’s oldest married couple celebrates 80th Valentine’s Day together.

Hugging Is A Very Great Spiritual and Emotional Boost.

Katherine Johnson’s NASA bio and the NPR obit.

RIP Kellye Nakahara.

Donnybrook

After impeachment, passing most of the checkpoints on the way to authoritarianism and Accelerating Corruption and Autocracy.

John Kelly Finally Lets Loose.

Family Of Pardoned Felon Gave Heavily To Him and The Trouble with His Clemencies and Pardons.

Jealous of a dog and its positive press.

State Department Struggling on Diversity.

Republican Party sending mailer labeled census ahead of official forms.

Black History Month

“The past is all that makes the present coherent” – James Baldwin

Seeing Black History in Context.

Silent Work in Elmira: Letters from the Wilbur H. Siebert Underground Railroad Collection

Tulsa plans to dig for suspected mass graves from a 1921 race massacre.

The Legacy of Mildred Johnson Edwards.

Backwards, Forwards.

Now I Know

Cheese You Can Bank On and The Feud Over the Top of the Mountains and How to Brew Cleaner Water and The Fake Cold Moment of the Cold War and The Man Who Covered Up An Eruption and This Isn’t His Fight Song.

MUSIC

No Rules For Donald – Randy Rainbow.

The Jeffersons Theme Song, lyrics by Jeff Barry and the late Ja’net Dubois.

Africa by William Grant Still.

Coverville 1296: Peter Gabriel Cover Story III and 1297: The Smokey Robinson & The Miracles Cover Story II.

Hiawatha Overture by Samuel Coleridge-Taylor.

Seventy-Six Trombones– Ambassadors of Harmony.

Sketches of Spain – Miles Davis.

Mama Africa featuring Andrew Tosh.

Touch The Hem of His Garment, plus pop hits by Sam Cooke.

Till There Was You – MonaLisa Twins.

Caroline – Julian Neel.

50 Drug-Addled Albums.

The 100 best guitar albums of all time.

Feb. rambling: Love Me Again

A Touch of Glee

Rebecca Jade.Elton JohnUnaccountable Accounting in the Pentagon.

Facial Recognition Technology and AI Are Tainted With Racial Bias.

Jared’s Plan for Mideast Peace.

Homelessness Czar Seeks to Further Criminalize the Homeless.

Politifact has looked into 42 of Limbaugh’s controversial statements, and found zero of them to be entirely true. Thirty-five were rated Mostly False, False, or Pants on Fire.

BUT… Let’s Talk Each Other Down.

Sir Nicholas Winton, the hero who rescued 669 Jewish children on the eve of WWII.

Son rebukes his racist dad who asked immigrant, “Why didn’t you stay in Mexico?”

We can become more prosperous while taking better care of our planet.

Amy Biancolli on Daniel P. Richardson.

Lin-Manuel Miranda gives us a lesson in the slang of Broadway.

Science and technology

TED talk: “Bonk” author Mary Roach delves into obscure scientific research to make 10 surprising claims about sexual climax.

What it’s like to live without a sense of smell.

Concussion risk in youth football.

The color of your clothing can impact wildlife.

Key challenges, collective insights, and possible futures for the music industry.

Verizon’s latest dirty trick. Planned obsolescence.

Teevee

James Corden: The late-night TV host sees his job as a chance to spread joy and he “comes clean” on the subject of whether he drives the car in his “Carpool Karoke” segments.

John Oliver: asks questions and is interviewed by Ali Velshi and Push Notifications.

In response to a Facebook meme about putting up pictures of sci-fi shows, I posted one from The Wild, Wild West, which we decided was steampunk. Just a couple days later, Robert Conrad had died at 84.

RIP Gene Reynolds.

Pushing Daisies – the great show that never got a fair shake.

Cookie Monster crashes The Washington Post.

One Second from Every Muppet Show Episode.

Mark Twain Award: Jonathan Winters (1999) and Bob Newhart (2002) and David Letterman (2017).

Actor and game show panelist Orson Bean, born Dallas Frederick Burrows, has died. He was the correct response that I got on my first JEOPARDY! appearance. Later, one of the competitors I did not play was happy for that fact, because he had no idea who Orson Bean was.

Now I Know

The Anti-Labor Origins of the Oscars and Why Are There Random Colored Squares on My Box of Almond Milk? and A Creative Way to Pay the Czechs and A Frank-ly Kind Act and The Drones With Brains of Their Own.

MUSIC

Rebecca Jade.Oscars
Rebecca Jade, the niece: (I’m Gonna) Love Me Again – Elton John at the Oscars, 9 Feb 2020. In the video, Rebecca Jade is screen left, in the middle. Also, listen to Miss You.

Overture to Hector Berlioz’s Benvenuto Cellini.

Coverville: 1294: Covering the 2020 Inductees for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and 1295: The 40th Anniversary Tribute to London Calling.

Hoopla: A Touch of Glee by George Walker.

Everybody Wants To Be Sondheim – Alan Chapman.

Non nobis domine by Patrick Doyle from Henry V.

Hooked on a Feeling– Swedish Royal Guards.

That time Johnny Rotten called me a “stupid, filthy sod.”

Top photo: copyright Rebecca Jade, 2020

January rambling: Liar, con artist

Fahrvergnügen

I Love the 20s
xkcd – This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.5 License.
This means you’re free to copy and share these comics (but not to sell them).

The Decade of Democracy’s Decline.

He’s a Liar, a Con Artist and a Snitch. His Testimony Could Soon Send a Man to His Death. A Twitter summary.

1 Billion Animals Killed in Australia Wildfires Is “Very Conservative” Estimate and Its Government Must Stop Denying Climate Crisis.

Why Is Middle School So Hard for So Many People?

Go Green: Eco-Friendly Products We Should All Be Using.

“If the machine of government is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then, I say, break the law.” Henry David Thoreau

‘Here We Go. The Chaos Is Starting’: An Oral History of Y2K. (You may get a popup asking you for an email address before you can read the story.)

How New York’s Bagel Union Fought — and Beat — a Mafia Takeover.

Why Churches Should Ditch The Projector Screens And Bring Back Hymnals. BTW, I own a hymnal from c. 1850.

I ignored warnings from friends and family not to marry my husband. Was I making a big mistake?

Jan Žižka ‘the One-Eyed’ is one of that elite band of great military commanders.

Football Hall of Fame: Congratulations, Coach Cowher.

I Was Captain of the Team that Loses to the Harlem Globetrotters Every Night.

Buck Henry, R.I.P..

Now I Know: How a Flush Beat a Checkmate and The Astronauts Strike Back and The Best-Selling Volkswagen Doesn’t Have Fahrvergnügen and The Soccer Star Who Helped Someone Else Reach Their Goal and Why Public Toilet Seats are U-Shaped.

Cadet Bone Spurs Wags the Dog

Remember Normal Presidents?

7 Stunning New Pieces of Impeachment Evidence Just released by the House.

How He And Mnuchin Slipped Billions In New Tax Breaks To Corporations.

The Year The Press Tried — And Failed — To Stand Up To Trump.

“Men do not learn much from the lessons of history and that is the most important of all the lessons of history. ” – Aldous Huxley

The cost of deceit over Iran and North Korea.

Noam Chomsky: US Is a Rogue State and Suleimani’s Assassination Confirms It.

Trumpist Evangelicals Respond to Christianity Today.

MUSIC

A decade of pop.

It’s Been a Long, Long Time – Kitty Kallen and the Harry James Orchestra.

Spontaneous – Neil Innes.

Never Gonna Give You Up – The Newfangled Four.

A Week and a Day – Boys II Menorah, with James Corden.

Overture in D Major by Franz Joseph Haydn.

Playing for Change: Soul Rebel, featuring Bunny Wailer and Manu Chao. |

Coverville 1292: The R.E.M. Cover Story.

On the Beautiful Blue Danube.

You Can’t Stop the Beat – Masters of Harmony.

Main theme from Star Wars – Attacca Quartet.

Imagine – MonaLisa Twins.

Uptown Funk – Mark Ronson featuring Bruno Mars.

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