Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Richard L. Trumka: Millionaire Steve Forbes has a cynical campaign to keep working people down (Guardian)
A minimum wage hike would improve the lives of 30 million working Americans. Forbes wants to falsely spin it as a job killer.
Arianna Huffington announces launch of World Post news website (Guardian)
The 1% are about to get their own publication. The digital media titan Arianna Huffington and the billionaire investor Nicolas Berggruen on Wednesday announced the launch of World Post, a comment and news website that looks set to become a platform for some of the most powerful people on the planet.
Tom Danehy: This week, Tom takes a moment to celebrate a former Tucson high school star (Tucson Weekly)
It is my duty to inform The Haters out there that this column deals, at least in part, with females who play basketball. I thought I'd warn them in case reading about that subject matter would cause a sudden spike in their blood pressure. So, you guys, don't read it and I'll just assume that y'all don't like sports or maybe you don't think girls should play sports.
Chris Bucholz: 4 Weird Side Effects of Learning How to Write (Cracked)
A few months ago, several years after beginning this column, I finally learned how to write, the last piece of the puzzle being someone showing me how semicolons work.
Sean Farrell: The rise and rise of Domino's Pizza (Guardian)
As the UK has got fatter, one company's found its food being ordered into homes across the country on Saturday nights …
Paula Cocozza: Is this white-van man the new Van Gogh? (Guardian)
Rick Minns began drawing on the side of his florist's delivery vehicle to pass the time. Now growing numbers of people are following his art on his Facebook site.
Ben Blatt: On Loins (Slate)
The incredibly popular, highly contentious Wikipedia pages for penis and vagina. Plus: Meet a guy who uploaded one of the penis photos.
Eddie Deezen: "Little Buddy: The Life of Bob Denver" (Neatorama)
Robert Osbourne David Denver was born in New Rochelle, New York, on January 9, 1935 (that is exactly one day after the birth of Elvis Presley). Just as his "distinguished-sounding" real name seems a bit incongruous for the actor who was to achieve worldwide fame playing a perennial goofball named "Gilligan", so the real-life Bob Denver was almost a direct dichotomy to the character too.
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Michelle in AZ
From The Creator of 'Avery Ant'
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Sunny and dry.
3 Kids = $1.2 Million
Zhang Yimou
Chinese authorities said Thursday they have fined the country's best-known film director Zhang Yimou 7.5 million yuan ($1.2 million) for violating the one-child policy.
After months of rumours that he had fathered as many as seven children with several different women, Zhang -- who already has a daughter with his ex-wife -- acknowledged in December that he has two sons and another daughter with his current wife -- all born before they got married.
Zhang directed "Red Sorghum" and "Raise the Red Lantern", as well as the opening and closing ceremonies for the 2008 Beijing Olympics.
China's family planning law, implemented since the late 1970s, restricts most parents to one child. Exceptions include some rural families whose first child is a girl, ethnic minorities and couples where at least one is an only child.
Zhang Yimou
Oligarchy Ahoy
Congress
Lawmakers with a net worth below $1 million are now a minority in Congress, an analysis of congressional financial disclosure data finds.
A new study conducted by the Center for Responsive Politics discovered that for the first time, more than half those in the House and Senate are millionaires. The study examined disclosures filed last year, the most recent available, and found that 268 have an average net worth above the threshold. Lawmakers are required to make ranges of their financial assets public each year.
In the House, the study found that Democrats on average were wealthier than Republicans. In the Senate, the opposite was true.
"The median net worth for the 530 current lawmakers who were in Congress as of the May filing deadline was $1,008,767 -- an increase from last year when it was $966,000."
Congress
Shameful Stats
Crime & Delinquency
Almost half of black males and almost 40 percent of white males are arrested in the United States by the time they are 23 years old, according to a study released this week.
In findings published in the journal Crime & Delinquency, researchers at several universities studied a representative sample of 7,335 people who reported that they'd been arrested at a young age, said Robert Brame, criminology professor at the University of South Carolina and lead author of the study.
Researchers found that more black and Hispanic men had been arrested as youths than white men for something other than a minor traffic violation. More men than women had been arrested by the time they are 23 years old.
By the time they reached 23 years old, 49 percent of black males, 44 percent of Hispanic males, and 38 percent of white males had been arrested for something other than a minor traffic violation.
In 2010, the team began researching what fraction of the U.S. population has been arrested, using national survey data from 1997-2008 from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Last year, the researchers reported that one-third of Americans had been arrested by age 23.
Crime & Delinquency
Fate Revealed In Hebrew Text
Ark of the Covenant
A newly translated Hebrew text claims to reveal where treasures from King Solomon's temple were hidden and discusses the fate of the Ark of the Covenant itself.
But unlike the Indiana Jones movie "Raiders of the Lost Ark," the text leaves the exact location of the Ark unclear and states that it, and the other treasures, "shall not be revealed until the day of the coming of the Messiah son of David …" putting it out of reach of any would-be treasure seeker.
King Solomon's Temple, also called the First Temple, was plundered and torched by the Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar II in the sixth century B.C., according to the Hebrew Bible. The Ark of the Covenant is a chest that, when originally built, was said to have held tablets containing the 10 commandments. It was housed in Solomon's Temple, a place that contained many different treasures.
The newly translated text, called "Treatise of the Vessels" (Massekhet Kelim in Hebrew), says the "treasures were concealed by a number of Levites and prophets," writes James Davila, a professor at the University of St. Andrews, in an article in the book "Old Testament Pseudepigrapha More Noncanonical Scriptures Volume 1" (William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2013).
Ark of the Covenant
Taunts Cease and Desist on Twitter
Shia LaBeouf
Last month, Shia LaBeouf landed in a rough patch after word surfaced that his short film HowardCantour.com contained scene-for-scene similarities as Justin M. Damiano, a 2007 comic from Daniel Clowes. LaBeouf apologized -- sort of -- but the mea culpa seemed cribbed from the Internet. Since then, LaBeouf has been digging his hole deeper and deeper with stunts like commissioning a skywritten apology and making faux apologies to the likes of Lena Dunham and Taylor Swift.
Throughout this time, Clowes' attorney has been in communication with LaBeouf's. That was revealed late yesterday in a tweet made by LaBeouf. The actor provided a copy of a cease and desist letter sent by attorney Michael Kemp at Kinsella Weitzman. The letter describes LaBeouf as "seriously out of control" and adds, "We have been waiting since December 27 to hear how Mr. LaBeouf intends to make right, but all that has happened is further wrongful acts…and more foolishness such as Mr. LaBeouf's New Years' Day sky-writing frolic that exposed Mr. Clowes to further ridicule."
There are many ways to respond to a legal demand. Many adjust themselves accordingly, to use the famous C&D phrase. Others try to be funny. Then, there's the strategy of taunting. One good example from the department of mockery comes from a response given to Kanye West after the hip hop star's attorney sent a cease and desist on Monday over "Coinye West," a new cryptocurrency. The anonymous person behind "Coinye" basically responded by saying that an attempt at a restraining order would be useless. (Some legal observers largely agree.)
But then, on Wednesday morning, LaBeouf took out his shovel again. He not only reposted the cease and desist communication, but also a re-delivered a tweet that had triggered it: A photo of a storyboard for what LaBeouf said would be his next short -- "Daniel Boring," described as "Fassbinder meets half-baked Nabokov on Gilligan's Island."
Shia LaBeouf
Under Fire Over Stalin Calendar
Russian Orthodox Church
The Russian Orthodox Church has come under heavy criticism on the Internet this week over a 2014 wall calendar published by a revered monastery's printing house that features portraits of Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin.
The black-and-white calendar, titled "Stalin" and costing 200 roubles ($6), is advertised as "a great gift for veterans and history fans". Historian Mikhail Babkin brought it to public attention on his blog on January7.
"Disgrace, shame and insult to all those who perished," one person wrote in one of nearly 200 comments under Babkin's post, referring to the millions who died because of Stalin's forced farm collectivization and brutal political repression.
The Russian Orthodox Church, which was severely persecuted under Stalin but has enjoyed a resurgence since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, said it dismissed the head of the printing house in July once it found out about the printing but the calendars had already been delivered.
Russian Orthodox Church
Books Are Latest Victim
Lebanon
The masked men came in the night, ripped off the front door and set the bookstore on fire. They were out to punish the owner, an elderly priest, after false rumors that he had written an anti-Islamic tract.
Thousands of books that lined the walls became the latest victim of Lebanon's sectarian tensions, which have been swelling as civil war rages in neighboring Syria.
But the blaze in the northern city of Tripoli also moved many residents, Muslims and Christians alike, to offer to help repair the 40-year-old shop, showing how some Lebanese are rising up in protest. The outpouring echoes a similar response last month after a teenager was killed in a car bombing that targeted a prominent politician in the Lebanese capital. His death ignited protests and an online campaign.
On Sunday, a day after the fire, a dozen activists gathered in an arched alleyway outside the Saeh bookstore. A music box blared the melancholy song "I Love You, Lebanon" by the country's beloved singer Fairouz. A Lebanese army tank was parked at the end of the street, and soldiers in blue-and-khaki camouflage uniforms milled about. A young man with shaggy hair scrubbed soot off the alley's stone floor with a broom, assisted by a middle-aged Muslim woman in a headscarf.
"Most of the people who came don't know the bookstore," said Mutaz Salloum, a 26-year-old volunteer. "There's always fighting, bombs and attacks on people's property. People are really sick of it. We can't be quiet anymore."
Lebanon
Institutionalizing Misogyny?
Canada
A Canadian student's request not to interact with female peers on religious grounds provoked a national debate Thursday on how far secular institutions should go to accommodate faith.
The unusual case also has set the young man's sociology professor, who turned down the request, against the university administration in a standoff.
"One of the main reasons that I have chosen Internet courses to complete my BA (Bachelor of Arts) is due to my firm religious beliefs, and part of that is the intermingling between men and women," the student wrote in a letter made public this week.
After sociology professor J. Paul Grayson turned down the request, he was ordered by the faculty dean, Martin Singer, to accommodate the student's wishes.
"I doubt that we would sanction a student refusing, for religious reasons, to interact with Blacks in classes even though Biblical justification could be found," Grayson wrote in a letter to the university's Centre for Human Rights, cited by the National Post.
Canada
Inbreeding Found In S. California
Mountain Lions
Three mountain lion kittens born last month in the Santa Monica Mountains were inbred, a wildlife expert said, marking a troubling sign for a population penned in by the urban sprawl of metropolitan Los Angeles.
Preliminary DNA tests indicate that the male and two females born in the Malibu Springs area were sired by an adult male and his daughter, the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area announced Thursday.
The mother was tracked by a radio collar as part of a decade-long study of the local puma population, and the 3- to 4-week-old kittens were given ear tags, said Seth Riley, an urban wildlife expert with the recreation area, which is a unit of the National Park Service.
The lions live in a patchwork of local, state and federal parkland that stretches westward from Los Angeles into Ventura County.
Mountain Lions
Oklahoma 'Mystery'
Atomic Wedgie
On December 21, an Oklahoma man was murdered in his own home.
Former Marine Brad Davis, 33, was arrested on a homicide complaint in the death of his stepfather, 58-year-old Denver Lee St. Clair.
According to Davis' testimony, the two men had fought that night at St. Clair's home. Davis claimed that St. Clair "began speaking ill of his mother," which led to a physical confrontation. Davis hit St. Clair in the head several times and knocked him to the ground - then gave his stepfather the classic schoolyard-bully maneuver: the "atomic wedgie."
Davis, who called the police when he saw that St. Clair was no longer breathing, was standing over St. Clair and smoking a cigarette when police arrived.
Police discovered St. Clair dead with his underwear around his neck.
Atomic Wedgie
Top 20
Concert Tours
The Top 20 Concert Tours ranks artists by average box office gross per city and includes the average ticket price for shows in North America. The previous week's ranking is in parentheses. The list is based on data provided to the trade publication Pollstar by concert promoters and venue managers.
1. (New) Beyonce; $1,798,401; $126.05.
2. (1) Bon Jovi; $1,518,974; $93.32.
3. (2) Pink; $1,487,913; $88.08.
4. (3) Pearl Jam; $1,265,566; $69.64.
5. (4) Kanye West; $1,100,148; $87.43.
6. (6) Michael Buble; $897,568; $86.33.
7. (5) Drake; $892,313; $77.51.
8. (9) Trans-Siberian Orchestra; $715,530; $54.37.
9. (8) Luke Bryan; $682,434; $38.04.
10. (11) Nine Inch Nails; $583,832; $73.12.
11. (7) Zac Brown Band; $582,159; $63.54.
12. (12) Alejandro Fernandez; $523,947; $90.52.
13. (New) John Mayer; $498,987; $59.94.
14. (13) Selena Gomez & The Scene; $405,407; $48.93.
15. (15) Macklemore & Ryan Lewis; $323,524; $40.10.
16. (14) Sarah Brightman; $315,130; $78.86.
17. (16) Hillsong United; $313,333; $40.60.
18. (New) Avenged Sevenfold; $263,782; $38.46.
19. (19) John Legend; $226,023; $68.08.
20. (New) Jeff Dunham; $215,544; $49.20.
Concert Tours
In Memory
Amiri Baraka
Amiri Baraka, the militant man of letters and tireless agitator whose blues-based, fist-shaking poems, plays and criticism made him a provocative and groundbreaking force in American culture, has died. He was 79.
His booking agent, Celeste Bateman, told The Associated Press that Baraka, who had been hospitalized since last month, died Thursday at Newark Beth Israel Medical Center.
Perhaps no writer of the 1960s and '70s was more radical or polarizing than the former LeRoi Jones, and no one did more to extend the political debates of the civil rights era to the world of the arts. He inspired at least one generation of poets, playwrights and musicians, and his immersion in spoken word traditions and raw street language anticipated rap, hip-hop and slam poetry. The FBI feared him to the point of flattery, identifying Baraka as "the person who will probably emerge as the leader of the Pan-African movement in the United States."
Baraka transformed from the rare black to join the Beat caravan of Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac to leader of the Black Arts Movement, an ally of the Black Power movement that rejected the liberal optimism of the early '60s and intensified a divide over how and whether the black artist should take on social issues. Scorning art for art's sake and the pursuit of black-white unity, Barak was part of a philosophy that called for the teaching of black art and history and producing works that bluntly called for revolution.
"We want 'poems that kill,'" Baraka wrote in his landmark "Black Art," a manifesto published in 1965, the year he helped found the Black Arts Movement. "Assassin poems. Poems that shoot guns/Poems that wrestle cops into alleys/and take their weapons leaving them dead/with tongues pulled out and sent to Ireland."
He was as eclectic as he was prolific: His influences ranged from Ray Bradbury and Mao Zedong to Ginsberg and John Coltrane. Baraka wrote poems, short stories, novels, essays, plays, musical and cultural criticism and jazz operas. His 1963 book "Blues People" has been called the first major history of black music to be written by an African-American. A line from his poem "Black People!" - "Up against the wall mother f-----" - became a counterculture slogan for everyone from student protesters to the rock band Jefferson Airplane. A 2002 poem he wrote alleging that some Israelis had advance knowledge of the Sept. 11 attacks led to widespread outrage.
He was denounced by critics as buffoonish, homophobic, anti-Semitic, a demagogue. He was called by others a genius, a prophet, the Malcolm X of literature. Eldridge Cleaver hailed him as the bard of the "funky facts." Ishmael Reed credited the Black Arts Movement for encouraging artists of all backgrounds and enabling the rise of multiculturalism. The scholar Arnold Rampersad placed him alongside Frederick Douglass and Richard Wright in the pantheon of black cultural influences.
First published in the 1950s, Baraka crashed the literary party in 1964, at the Cherry Lane Theater in Greenwich Village, when "Dutchman" opened and made instant history at the height of the civil rights movement. Baraka's play was a one-act showdown between a middle class black man, Clay, and a sexually daring white woman, Lula, ending in a brawl of murderous taunts and confessions.
Baraka was still LeRoi Jones when he wrote "Dutchman." But the Cuban revolution, the assassination in 1965 of Malcolm X and the Newark riots of 1967, when the poet was jailed and photographed looking dazed and bloodied, radicalized him. Jones left his white wife (Hettie Cohen), cut off his white friends and moved from Greenwich Village to Harlem. He renamed himself Imamu Ameer Baraka, "spiritual leader blessed prince," and dismissed the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. as a "brainwashed Negro." He helped organize the 1972 National Black Political Convention and founded the Congress of African People. He also founded community groups in Harlem and Newark, the hometown to which he eventually returned.
The Black Arts Movement was essentially over by the mid-1970s, and Baraka distanced himself from some of his harsher comments - about Dr. King, about gays and about whites in general. But he kept making news. In the early 1990s, as Spike Lee was filming a biography of Malcolm X, Baraka ridiculed the director as "a petit bourgeois Negro" unworthy of his subject. In 2002, respected enough to be named New Jersey's poet laureate, he shocked again with "Somebody Blew Up America," a Sept. 11 poem with a jarring twist.
Then-Gov. James E. McGreevey and others demanded his resignation. Baraka refused, denying that "Somebody Blew Up" was anti-Semitic (the poem also attacks Hitler and the Holocaust) and condemning the "dishonest, consciously distorted and insulting non-interpretation of my poem." Discovering he couldn't be fired, the state eliminated the position altogether, in 2003.
Amiri Baraka
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