Good Morning and Good Day to all you seekers after a Wednesday helping of Good News! You have come to the right place here on the Inter Tubes. Once a month as part of my Permanent Therapy, the Very Nice People, all dressed in white scrubs and carrying nets, kindly bring me to the Computer Room and let me cut and paste for a while. I can even look over through the Unbreakable Interior Window and see the rest of the Gnuville Breakfast Brunch and Holiday Party Room. Many of you are kind enough to swing by my window and offer up Mug toasts of coffee, tea or mocha-cocoa. Some of the Mimosa crowd even try to smuggle a sample of the morning libation through the little round-about through the wall when Very Nice People aren’t looking. (Also the croissants and cinnamon rolls are very tasty, thank you. Even the Very Nice Net People thank you for these.) Thank you my friends and for the chance to fly the Round Up for all of you. I hope you will enjoy the flight.
Good News, WineRev Style means not only is there plenty of space for your comments, whether written, pictorial or video-ed down below, but your reactions, expansions, digressions, additions, subtractions, derivatives, cube roots and corrections all make for a better mutual interchange and experience (you know, the Internet at its best.) The Round Up with all your participation takes the Best Spot on the Internet to a whole different level and I’m glad to be part of that phenomenon. As is my custom, you will also note not only Today’s Good and Goofy news, and/or last week’s, but also the Good and the Goofy from years, decades, even centuries past, to give a certain Historical angle perhaps worth a thought or two.
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For your Solstice, Christmas, Advent, Three Kings Days
“May you have
warm words on a cold evening,
A full moon
on a dark night,
and a smooth road
all the way to your door”
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(A little Irish bit, copyright by cjc.)
Good News in Society and Politics
>>» Rudi Giuliani took it in the Legal Neck on Friday: Moss and Freeman’s defamation suit came back from the jury with an award for them against Rudi for $148 million. Even for the GQP “too rich for their own good” rat bastards, 148 Big Ones got their attention. But lawyer Michael Popok over at MeidasTouch offered his lawyerly Good News on this as well when the verdict came down. Does Rudi have the money? Doubtful. Will Moss and Freeman ever collect? Or will Rudi A) declare bankruptcy and/or B) appeal/appeal and delay and delay? (Where did he learn that, I wonder?)
Well Popok points out that Rudi, having LOST, will now be required to list all his assets and their values to a court appointed administrator. (And Rudi? If you lie about this, either by (Mis-)stating/ (Mis-)listing “$5million yacht” as “$50,000 yacht”, or by the sin omission (“I forgot to mention my savings account balance written with 2 commas in the Wilbur Ross National Bank of Cyprus…..”) that counts as Contempt of Court, which is JAIL-ABLE, even though this is a Civil case.)
As far as bankruptcy goes, the idea of Chapter 11 (or chapter 7, depending on circumstances) is that creditors admit they will never get anything from this debtor and so they have to write off the loss (cost of doing business; happens sometimes.) But there are rules about what debts can be discharged and which cannot be. According to Mr. Popok the lawyer, under federal statue, Rudi has been found liable for an “intentional tort” (he really meant to do harm.) Therefore this is NOT written off in bankruptcy; it is one of those exceptions. (For good reason. If someone can harm someone else in reputation, life, prospects, etc., and the victim sues and wins, but the perp can skip over paying for his/her crime by filing bankruptcy, they will just keep on doing it.) So chapter 11 or chapter 7 DOES NOT HELP Rudi get out from under this court result.
The other route is to appeal. And yes, he can appeal. BUT an appeal has conditions. The judge in the case will require a Bond for Appeal. How much? Up to the judge, but 10% or 20% of the awarded amount is not uncommon. So, split the diff and say….$20 million!? Rudi has to put this up, in cash, bonds and/or liens on property with the court BEFORE he can even file for an appeal. (Take as much time as you want, Rudi. Meantime, that court administrator will start in on awarding your stuff…….) Oh, and if he LOSES the appeal? The Appeal Bond, being held by the court, automatically goes to the winners of the case, just about immediately. So if Rudi can actually move along this line (and come up with, in this example, 20 LARGE) Moss and Freeman have won $148 million, and receiving the Appeal Bond would be collecting a visible fraction of that.
>>>» Do you remember Dominion Voting Systems? The builder of voting machines that sued the ASS off of Faux Noise for defaming the company and causing harm to their business by spreading the Trump Big Lie about rigged voting machines? That case was headed for trial but, as happens fairly often, Faux Noise settled out of court for about half what they were facing, or $787 million.
Now comes the jury finding against Rudi Giuliani for $148 million.
Put these 2 numbers together and you’re right around $935 million (just a hop-skip-and-jump shy of that Big ‘Ol Billion-with-a-B.) But Washington Post columnist Philip Bump has reminded us these 2 gigantic numbers are related, because they stem from the same event. They are both expressions of the cost of the Big Lie, that “voter fraud” “stole the election” from Trump and handed the White House to Biden. (My bolding below:)
... (T)he cost of Trump’s effort to retain power has cost his allies more than $936 million — without including attorney costs and other incidentals. Without including, too, the costs of the attorneys for the hundreds of other defendants in riot prosecutions, fake-elector cases or the indictments targeting Trump. Even without that, it’s an enormous amount of money, a sum that is hard for a normal person to grasp ...
If we were to head to our local Bank of America and ask for $936 million in ones — perhaps giving the branch a heads-up on our request, just as a courtesy — the result would be a stack of bills that soared more than 63 miles into the sky ...
If you started in D.C. and lined the bills up heading to the west, you’d go around the Earth three times and then end up near the Prime Meridian.
Of course, you’d have a bit of a problem just moving the bills around. The total would weigh about as much as 2½ Boeing 747s fueled for takeoff ...
Don’t forget the Other Voting Machine Company out there, SmartMatic, has its OWN $2.5 billion (with-a-B) lawsuit still coming up against Faux Noise, along with other assorted suits against other assorted individuals.
And just think: both Faux Noise and Rudi G. and all the other defendants in various lawsuits and indictments could have SAVED THEMSELVES $936 million (and counting, so far) if they could do 1 single little thing. For that kind of money, wouldn’t they agree to the One Little Thing? And what is this magic bullet?
Rupert Murdoch and Rudi Giuliani, just step up, pull the sheet off the box, open curtain #4, and/or invite anybody and everybody in for a look at……….EVIDENCE! (Smoking fresh from the innards of a Mike Lindell My Pillow Mattress) SHOW US the mug shots of Juanita* Chen* Al-Hassan*, the Known CEO (of Latino and Chinese heritage before she married a Druze Muslim.) After all, JCA-H is the founder and director of Deep State LLC**, hired by Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders to stuff ballot boxes from Saginaw to Sun City. Deep State operatives snuck in to insert thumb drives into USB ports of voting machines from Ankle Mud, Alabama to Walrus Bluff, Alaska that either cause the machine to double count all ballots marked “Biden”, or to shred Trump votes.
*Made up first name, playing to an expected villain of a certain non-male, non-white, non-Jesus religion, who speaks 9 languages other than Murkin’…...X3.
**Made up company name, just naming the usual fevered suspects…..
Show us the thumb drives! Lay out the machine code from the election algorithms! Play the grainy, hand-held footage of iPhone videos of the “operatives” operating on the voting machines in Log Jam, Pennsylvania. Bring it on and save yourselves nearly a billion dollars so far! Cling to this story of “stolen election”, 2020, and you gotta pay the Billion+ and counting!…….Yeah, they are REALLY deluded, and it is costing them SERIOUS money. This is the Price of LYING.
>>>>» Speaking of Rat Bastards, the Febrile Orange Fascist, the Donald himself continues to rant anti-democratic twaddle (saying nice things and blowing air kisses to Xi of China, Vlad of Russia, and Orban of Budapest.) But over the weekend MSNBC had on former FBI asst. director for counter-intelligence Frank Figliuzzi. Figliuzzi thinks there is a fair chance the Back-in-the-News “10 inch Classified File” that Mark Meadows dragged out of the White House to Mar-a-Lago after the J6 Coup attempt has, in part or even (gulp!) in whole, ended up with Putin. (Background story HERE.) Is that why Trump is saying nice things about friends/handlers that he hopes will bail him out…...or even take him in, beyond extradition? Hmmmm…. the interview is here:
Of course, things have been boiling in politics and society for a long time, on older December 20ths that have the dignity of age.
1669 New Castle, Delaware It’s the New World and there are settlers from everywhere settling things newly. There are New France and New Spain covering big chunks of land. There is that whole section of land up the Atlantic coast called New England. There is New Netherlands and along the Delaware River there is New Sweden. The New Dutch acted like the Old Dutch and decided they didn’t like the Swedes, new or old, and told them they would be running things from now on. Then a few years ago the British had landed in New Amsterdam in force and told the New Dutch that the town would now be called New York and they had better learn better English. Same went for the former New Sweden. Well, a New Swede, Marcus Jacobson, went around raising the question maybe we should go back to being New Sweden and kick out the New English overlords. The overlords had Jacobson arrested and on this day, the 1st American jury trial was held. The jury found him guilty of inciting rebellion (without any success, mind you) but to make an example of him he was sentenced to flogging, branding and was made a (white) slave on a plantation. (Word to the wise, ex-general Flynn, Roger Stone, Stephen “Forehead” Miller, Mark Meadows, you Donald…there is precedent……LONG precedent.)
1820 Columbia, Missouri By act of the legislature and the governor’s signature, the brand new state of Missouri (admitted this year!) imposed an annual $1 bachelor tax on unmarried men between 21 and 50. (A very early example of imposing “family values”…….and against those freeloading citizens who don’t want to contribute to the Great Replacement…...)
1861 Liverpool, England This past spring those Americans have started a Civil War. The Confederates sent 2 chaps, Slidell and Mason, as “ambassadors” to the UK to try to gain British recognition of the South. Their ship (a British civilian passenger vessel) was stopped at sea by a Union Navy warship commanded by Captain Wilkes, and Mason and Slidell were imprisoned in Boston. Britain was mad as hell (“One simply does NOT interfere with a British vessel! Harrumph!”) and this day 8000 British troops boarded and set sail for (British) Canada to express British displeasure (with
bullets, if necessary.) The Confederates were ecstatic, and there was a burst of Northern pugnacious spirit to “we can beat those British again! Remember 1776 and 1812!” However President Lincoln and Secretary of State Seward poured cold water on this blooming popular Union sentiment, deciding they already had their hands full. “One war at a time,” was Lincoln’s declared path, so Seward and US Ambassador to the UK Charles Francis Adams (Dad was President #6 John Quincy; Grandad was President #2 Adams) managed to cool things down. (They were helped by some intermittent use of the newly-completed but unreliable telegraph cable clicking on the Atlantic floor.) The British troops in Canada were recalled to Britain a few months later and the Confederates were denied their dream of a North having to fight a two-front war.
1864 Savannah, Georgia Confederate General William Hardee can see his 10,000-man command has no chance against the 60,000 strong surrounding troops of General Sherman’s besieging Union Army. Overnight, Hardee takes advantage of a hard, cold rain to ferry his troops away across the Savannah River to South Carolina. Sherman marches in the next morning and his troops have fairly comfortable quarters for Christmas. Sherman finds the civilians are hungry to the point of starving and orders Army rations (now being unloaded from the Union Navy at the docks) be distributed to the town folk. The next few days he sends patrols into the hinterland to cut firewood for the troops and civilians; they leave piles of wood on street corners for the taking. (Some of his Michigan and Wisconsin troops put tree branches into the head harnesses of army mules pulling the firewood carts back into town
and tell children they are actually reindeer “but not like Santa Claus’ flying kind.”)
1971 Paris Bernard Kouchner and a group of journalists (who really helped with publicity) this day founded “Doctors without Borders” to treat disease and hurt everywhere in the world as a matter of conscience and medical ethics.
Good News in Science and Engineering
Every little bit helps, and bigger bits help more. Climate change is upon us. 19th century technology started us down into this mess (coal power, followed by oil power, gasoline, diesel, the coming of natural gas and various other fossil fuels.) Well now, if we are going to have a chance, the scientists and engineers of our times need to come through, and every time you turn around, it sure looks like they are. The article at THIS LINK is a heartening story of a new form of air conditioning. It is a souped up and enhanced form of heat pump that seems to work without using any refrigerant gasses (Freon, etc.) Since for some time more and more areas are going to need more air conditioning (one uncomfortable down side of global warming) at least this sort of breakthrough will both give cooling and no longer add to the problem. (And retro-fitting will move us in a Good direction.)
>>>>» Undoing the damage of generations will be the work we have saddled our grandchildren and great-grandchildren with, and for that we are truly sorry. Now, this story is in the “what took you so long?” category, but still…...it is definitely a Good Thing. Brazil’s rainforest contributes in many different ways to global climate in a moderating sort of way, so the slash-and-burn policies of decades have not been a good thing. But that worm seems to be turning too. THIS HOPEFUL STORY is pointing the way toward both restoring a global carbon sink, and also reversing years of despoilation of Brazil’s native peoples who call the Amazon home. Signs of a win-win.
>>>>>>Holland likes bicycles. Even given the size of the country (just over 16,000 sq. miles; about the size of Massachusetts and New Hampshire combined) there are about 22,000 miles of cycling paths, virtually all of them paved. (The 17 million Dutch own about 23 million bicycles; not a typo. These people like to pedal!) Now the Dutch have been using wind(mill) energy for over 400 years, capturing wind power to drive the pumps that keep their country from becoming Holland Marsh. It is fitting they would be open to other non-fossil fuel energy solutions. Now comes THIS STORY that a solar panel company is starting to pave the paved bike paths with solar panels. These do their typical light-to-electric conversion while the pedalers pedal over them. (They have also designed a clear cover panel that has a gripping surface, rather than glassy-smooth, so bike tires grip it the same as they do asphalt (ahem…..”displaying comparable co-efficient of friction to that of asphalt”; just seeing if I can speak Physics…...) The energy from such panels could eventually light up tens of thousands of Dutch homes. Another moment of Living in the Future.
Of course, the scientists and engineers have forebears that have shown their chops on many former December 20ths.
1790 Pawtucket, Rhode Island The Industrial Revolution has begun in England, by chance in the weaving industry. Knowing a monopolistic advantage when they see one, the British guard their machinery, drawings of the parts, and even ban the builders and repairmen from leaving the country. At age 16 Samuel Slater begins a 7-year apprenticeship in a spinning mill. He memorized the machine specifications, disguised himself as a 23-year-old farm worker, and emigrated to America in 1789. Slater partnered with Pawtucket merchant Moses Brown and together they built a small spinning mill—but it produced the equivalent output of 72 home spinning wheels each day. He hired several children between ages 7 and 12 to re-tie broken strands but by 1800 the mill employed over 100 adults (in much larger quarters.) New England became America’s workshop, and the Industrial Revolution went global.
1879 Menlo Park, New Jersey This town is starting to take a bow on the world stage thanks to Ohio native Thomas Edison. The very clever Mr. Edison has set up a facility/laboratory here, using (among other sources) royalties he has collected for his invention from a few years ago of the ticker tape machine for reporting stock price changes in near-real time. This day Edison gives a demonstration of a flame-less light source, powered by electricity: the light bulb. He is quick to get a patent on this, and sets up a place in town to manufacture them. They become the wonder of the age……...and already NEXT YEAR, in 1880, on this same, DOUBLEHEADER date, New York City embraces the idea big time. The city has been doing wiring and minor public construction per Edison’s specs along one of their main avenues for a few months. On this day, (143 years ago!) they flip a switch and it works: for the first time Broadway is lit up with electric lights, soon to be christened “The Great White Way.”
1928 Minot, Maine (NOT the one in North Dakota!) “The mail must go through!” has been a postal watchword for centuries. Tucked in a pocket, stuffed in saddle bags, on foot, by canoe and steamboat, by mail car on the rails, the mail got sorted and sent. (In 1912 the ‘RMS Titanic’ (RMS: Royal Mail Ship) sailed for New York, and despite an incident with an iceberg, all the mail aboard made it through to harbor.) The earliest airlines (Eastern, Pan American, Trans World) competed for US mail contracts to make a profit since other freight and passengers were too rare to be reliable sources of income. On this day, another moment of moving the mail: the first international mail leaves Minot for Montreal, Canada…..by dog sled! (Yeah, they had them in Alaska and the Yukon, but apparently not across the border.)
1990 Meyrin, Switzerland The "Conseil Européen pour la Recherche Nucléaire" (CERN) discovered awhile ago that computers are a GREAT help, and that connecting computers together is an even GREATER help in their nuclear research. So, to get input from everywhere and everyone near a computer, on this day the world's first website and server go live at CERN. (The main reason you are reading this Round Up started 33 years ago TODAY!)
Good News in Arts, Music and Literature
I suppose this next item could have fit under the Science section above, but, as I thought about it, I thought that thinking that can be thought through in completely human ways is more than science and engineering. Let there be inspiration, talent, uplift, the sweep of emotions that make humans human. So it is worth chewing on your wasabi seeds to read about wasabi: it seems a Japanese research team has discovered that wasabi improves memory and recall, particularly in adults over 60. I now remember I fall into this category, so I too am going to take that article to heart…...if I remember to pick up some wasabi…..
>>>>» Yes, it is the Christmas season, and outdoor lights on trees have been around for decades. There are cases of wretched excess (and massive January electric bills), sometimes done for comic effect (National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation.) But sometimes, it’s just right. A tree, glowing in the night, dazzling in the dark, hoisting a light into the dark sky, beckoning the Sun to turn at the Solstice and begin its journey of light toward the Northern Pole.
Jerry Lageson has lived over 40 years outside of Faribault, Minnesota, within (near) hearing distance of the main drag of the loud and ceaseless traffic on Interstate 35. He also has a red oak on his property and he has taken to putting lights on it for this dark season. Its a 40-foot-tree and he rents a power lift each year to put 50,000 tiny white lights on every limb, branch and twig. And as you can SEE IN THIS VIDEO STORY the effect is magical and inspiring. Thousands of passing vehicles every night are downright enchanted (like my sweetie SageHagRN, passing by last week on the long road to that out-of-state memorial service for a friend.) Professional truckers sound their horns and will even pull into the left lane for a better look. Just charming and just right for these days…..
Then too, the December 20th contributions to the human imagination and spirit are worthy of remembering (so here are some, presented without wasabi…..)
1786 Rome Birth of Pietro Raimondi, composer. Raised in Naples he lived in both Genoa and Sicily before settling in Naples. Hoped to be a composer of operas but after several failures turned to composing for the Church. Still kept up secular composing as a sideline and in 1848 finished his Triple Oratorio. It was designed to be performed first consecutively and then simultaneously. It was performed for the first time in 1852 in Rome; the concert took 6 hours and required 430 singers plus orchestra. It was an amazing success and even the Pope rewarded him by making him choral director for St. Peter’s Cathedral. Raimondi set to work on a double opera on the same sort of model: one a serious opera and the other a comic one, to be performed simultaneously, as each offered a running commentary on the other. Finished most of it before he died in 1853. (Talk about outside of the box creativity……!)
1812 Across Germany. Two brothers, Jacob and Wilhelm, have a good ear and a winning way about them. They go around to schoolyards, taverns, quilting circles, market squares and after church Sunday chatter, listening, interviewing and transcribing all sorts of stories that have been told and retold for centuries. (The fancy term today for this sort of research is “preserving the oral tradition.”) This day their collection is published for sale (under a typical, 19th century double title) of “Children’s and Household Tales” OR “Fairy Tales”, as collected by the Brothers Grimm. It was soon translated into other languages, with everlasting success.
1921 Minneapolis Birth of George Roy Hill, film director. Born into a well-off Catholic family, his father was the owner of the Minneapolis Tribune newspaper. (Still extant as part of the Minneapolis Star-Tribune.) Got to attend a private school (Blake) and graduated from Yale in 1943. Loved flying (got his pilot’s license at age 16) and was a WWII transport plane pilot for the Marines, and then a fighter pilot in the Korean War. Studied theater in Ireland, then was a writer in early television, eventually becoming a director. Broke into film directing “Period of Adjustment” (1962) and then had a breakout success with “Hawaii” (1966). Noted as director for “Butch Cassidy & the Sundance Kid”, “Slaughterhouse 5”, “The Sting”, “The Great Waldo Pepper”, “Slap Shot”, “A Little Romance” (one of my personal, all-time favorite films), and “The World According to Garp.” (Quite a collection!)
1937 Across American movie theaters. Drawing on our 1812 entry, the premiere of “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs”. This was the Walt Disney Studio’s first feature length, animated feature, and in color. It was a sensation and opened a new genre on the screen. (BTW, the studio did research for the Grimm story but were frustrated that all the versions of the story centered on Snow White and only mentioned the dwarfs in passing (maybe 1, maybe 2, maybe 12 of them.) The screenwriters finally settled on 7, gave them names, and wrote up biographies for each of them, along with script lines, so the cartoonists had an idea of how to draw them with certain personality traits. They did it well…...)
1969 Across America. Milt Okun was a successful record producer and his prime act was Peter, Paul & Mary. He had also taken on a new kid a couple years back, Henry John Deutschendorf, who had been a club singer after dropping out of Texas Tech. Okun bought the rights to one of Henry’s songs and passed it on to his stars. On this day, "Leaving on a Jet Plane" reached #1 on the record charts, and it did Henry’s career a world of good too, under his stage name of John Denver.
Jammin’ with Peter, Paul and Mary, and that kid in the wire-rim glasses…..who wrote the song…..
So now friends and neighbors, its your turn! Comments! Snark! Questions1 Expansions! Digressions!
New stuff dropped in from deep left field or from out of nowhere (for those of you who know the passcode for opening the WormHole Portal to the other side of Universe…...). There’s lots of pixel space below for each and all of you to make this an even finer Wednesday Round Up of Good News, so join in!
May all your News be Good, comforting and inspiring.
Shalom.
P.S. To end this Winter-themed Round-Up…...
(Vivaldi, “The Four Seasons.” Each season is in three musical movements. Below is a selection from “Winter”, the 2nd movement, which is marked “Largo” (slow). In Italy winter snow is not that common, but it rains a lot, like in Vivaldi’s city of Venice. In the margin of this part he left a note: “The rain falling, dropping on everyone and making them wet”. In this arrangement you can hear the (back-up) percussion section doing “the weather” (and of course rain drops should sound like this) while the strings caress the soul with shelter from the cold rain…...three minutes long, but many, many years from now……. I want this played at my funeral….)