Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Uniformed killers walk free after beating and tasing unarmed homeless man to death (PoliceStateUSA)
"I guess its legal to go out and kill," said the victim's mother, Cathy Thomas. "It breaks my heart. Part of me died that night with Kelly, part of me died that night, part of me died in court. I feel dead inside," she said. "They got away with murdering my son."
This Is What Happened to Kelly Thomas (YouTube)
Excessive violence. Not for kids. Feel safe yet.
Tom Danehy: If you're planning on reading next week's column, this one is a preface of sorts (Tucson Weekly)
Back in the 1920s, the Ku Klux Klan was at the peak of its popularity in the United States. Estimates of dues-paying members ranged anywhere from 5 million to 8 million in a country of only about 60 million adults at the time. At one point in that decade, 75 members of Congress were either open members or clear supporters of the Klan. Several cities had Klan mayors and Oklahoma and Oregon had Klan governors.
Lucy Mangan: "False positive pregnancy tests: for sale on the internet" (Guardian)
Fancy a slice of revenge? Or just some fun pranking friends? Either way, now for less than a tenner your worst impulses can be indulged.
Juliette Lewis: 'I faced my fears' (Guardian)
At 18, Juliette Lewis was a Hollywood star. But fame brought drug addiction and panic attacks. As she returns to the big screen, she talks revolt, rehab and rock'n'roll with Ryan Gilbey.
Tim Jonze: "William S Burroughs: the naked photographer" (Guardian)
He's a beat icon famed for being a junkie wild man. But a new exhibition shows a new, softer side to William S Burroughs.
Andrew Marinus, Alan Boyle, Jon Pearl: 6 Shocking Studies That Prove Science Is Totally Broken (Cracked)
#6. A Shocking Amount of Medical Research Is Complete Bullshit.
John Cheese: 5 Reasons High School Doesn't Prepare You For Work (Cracked)
#5. Don't Be Afraid of the Phrase "Ass Kisser"
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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
Hot and ashy.
Most Influential Celebrity
Steven Spielberg
Director Steven Spielberg on Wednesday dethroned media mogul Oprah Winfrey as the most influential celebrity in the United States, according to an annual study by Forbes magazine that was dominated by film directors.
The magazine said the 67-year-old director's ability to attract foreigners to a U.S. drama about the back-room dealings and minutiae of 19th-century Washington politics spoke to his prowess. "Lincoln" grossed $93 million in foreign markets.
Winfrey, 59, who topped the list with 49 percent last year, slipped to 45 percent this year, which Forbes said could be due to her retreat from the spotlight while running her cable television network OWN.
Film director and "Star Wars" creator George Lucas placed third despite working little in the public eye in recent years. He sold his Lucasfilm company to Walt Disney Co for $4.05 billion in October 2012.
Directors Ron Howard and Martin Scorsese placed fourth and fifth on the list respectively.
Steven Spielberg
Movie With Meryl Streep
Harvey Weinstein
Harvey Weinstein stirred up gun rights advocates when he said on Howard Stern's radio show that he plans to make a project that takes on the National Rifle Assn. and the issue of firearms "head on."
"They are going to wish they weren't alive after I'm done with them," Weinstein told Stern on Wednesday, referring to the NRA's lobbying and political strength.
Weinstein did not go into specifics about the project, but said that Meryl Streep was involved and that it would not be a documentary but "a big movie like 'Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.'"
"I don't think we need guns in this country, and I hate it," Weinstein told Stern. "The NRA is a disaster area."
Harvey Weinstein
Ratings Down 28%
'Duck Dynasty'
Did the controversy surrounding Duck Dynasty star Phil Robertson take a toll on the show's appeal? A&E's flagship reality series clocked 8.5 million viewers Wednesday night, snapping a streak of ratings records and posting its first season-to-season drop. Among adults 18-49, the premiere averaged 4.2 million viewers, down 33%. Those are still huge numbers for a cable series, but the Season 5 opener was down from the show's Season 4 debut, which drew nearly 12 million to become the No. 1-rated nonfiction series telecast in cable history. It edged the Season 4 finale, which was watched by 8.4 million. More recently, the one-hour Duck Dynasty Christmas special logged nearly 9 million viewers.
The two back-to-back episodes were the first appearance on A&E of the Robertson family since patriarch Phil's controversial comments about gay men and blacks in a GQ interview that caused A&E to suspend him. After the rest of the family indicated they would not do the show without him, and religious organizations and a legion of conservatives stood by him, A&E reversed its decision, lifting Phil's suspension.
In the season kickoff, Uncle Si determined Air Bud is a better movie than the Bourne franchise, Si came down with "bird flu" caused by Si-crobes, the Robertson women plan a party and, as promised by Willie Robertson on Fox News Channel 's New Year's Eve telecast, he hired a personal assistant - his wife's cousin. There was no discussion about the GQ interview and aftermath. That's because the episodes - and virtually all of this spring season - had been shot before the article came out and A&E took Phil out behind the woodshed and slapped his wrists.
'Duck Dynasty'
Climax Filmed 8 Years Ago
"How I Met Your Mother"
Producers filmed the climactic scene of CBS' "How I Met Your Mother" finale eight years ago, fearing the actors involved would become unrecognizable, and have kept it under wraps ever since.
The Monday-night comedy concludes after nine seasons on March 31 with a one-hour episode.
The comedy's central conceit is that it's a story told by actor Josh Radnor's character, Ted, to his teenage children about how their mom and dad met. The children, played by David Henrie and Lyndsy Fonseca, were depicted in the series' early days sitting on a couch, shifting uncomfortably in boredom as their dad narrated the long-winded story.
Although the mother, played by actress Cristin Milioti, was introduced in last season's final episode, the details of how they met still haven't been revealed.
Yet in 2006, with the series in its second season and the possibility existing that it could be on for several more years, Bays and Thomas realized they'd better film that final scene right away. After all, the actors were growing up, would soon look different and wouldn't even be able to fit in the clothes they wear while sitting on the couch.
"How I Met Your Mother"
Disbelief Rises in America
Climate Change
The number of Americans who believe global warming isn't happening has risen to 23 percent, up 7 percentage points since April 2013.
The latest survey, taken in November 2013, finds that the majority of Americans - 63 percent - do believe in climate change, and 53 percent are "somewhat" or "very" worried about the consequences.
The proportion of people who do believe in climate change has been steady since April 2013, but the proportion of those who say they "don't know" whether climate change is happening dropped 6 percentage points between April and November 2013, suggesting that many "don't knows" moved into the "not happening" category.
"People who prior said don't know are increasingly saying they don't believe it," said Anthony Leiserowitz, the director of the Yale Project on Climate Change Communication, which released the new results today (Jan. 16).
For example, 42 percent of Americans correctly believe that most scientists agree that global warming is happening. Only 22 percent, however, know that more than 80 percent of climate scientists agree on that basic fact. The rest of the survey respondents perceive more disagreement than actually exists.
Climate Change
Renews Entire Daytime Lineup
CBS
CBS renewed the entire daytime lineup, which includes soap operas, game shows and talkers, for the 2014-15 season.
Let's Make a Deal, The Price Is Right, The Young and the Restless, The Bold and the Beautiful and The Talk will all return, keeping the network's daytime offerings intact.
The renewal brings Let's Make a Deal, averaging 3 million viewers and up double digits in key demos, back for a sixth season. The Price Is Right remains daytime's most-watched program.
Soap operas The Young and the Restless and The Bold and the Beautiful are up 9 percent and 14 percent in total viewers, respectively.
The Talk, averaging 2.8 million viewers, is up 19 percent from last year and is up 10 percent in women 25-54.
CBS
The CW Cancels
'Breaking Pointe'
"Breaking Pointe" will not go forward will not go forward with a third season, CW president Mark Pedowitz said at the Television Critics Association press tour on Wednesday.
The reality series chronicled the behind the scenes action at Salt Lake City ballet company Ballet West.
Pedowitz announced the cancellation at the Television Critics Association press tour in Pasadena on Wednesday, where he addressed a number of topics, including the decision to make the network's "Flash" project a full pilot rather than a backdoor pilot on the CW's hit superhero series "Arrow."
The fates of CW series "The Carrie Diaries" and "Beauty and the Beast" will be determined in May, Pedowitz noted.
'Breaking Pointe'
Volume Falls to New Low
Album Sales
U.S. album sales have again fallen to a new weekly low. In the week ending Jan. 12, 4.25 million albums were sold according to Nielsen SoundScan, which began tracking music sales in 1991.
The previous SoundScan-era low was set in the week ending Oct. 27, 2013, when just 4.49 million albums were sold.
To compare, the SoundScan-era high for album sales in a single week came in late December of 2000, during the height of CD sales, when 45.4 million albums were sold in the week ending Dec. 24. (To put that figure in perspective, in all of 2013, there were 289.41 million albums sold. But in 2000, there were 785.14 million albums sold.)
It's normal to see soft sales figures in January every year -- as the market adjusts back to normal after the Christmas shopping season, and because there are few new major albums to drive sales. This week's top selling album, for example, is the Frozen soundtrack, with 86,000 sold.
Album Sales
How Loud Will $ Talk?
Alaska
Large-scale mining in the Bristol Bay watershed poses serious risks to salmon and native cultures in this pristine corner of southwest Alaska, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said in a report released on Wednesday.
The EPA said a mine could destroy up to 94 miles of salmon-supporting streams and thousands of acres of wetlands, ponds and lakes. The report focused on the impact of mining in an area where a Canadian-based company wants to build a large copper and gold mine.
Polluted water from the mine site could enter streams, causing widespread damage in a region that produces nearly 50 percent of the world's wild sockeye salmon, the EPA said.
The report, which concludes a three-year study and follows two drafts that also warned of widespread ecological damage from mining, does not recommend policy or regulatory decisions.
Northern Dynasty Minerals Ltd's Pebble project would develop an open-pit mine in the region, which has one of the world's largest copper-gold deposits.
Alaska
Photographed for the 1st Time in Uzbekistan
Snow Leopards
A camera trap snapped the first-ever pictures of the elusive snow leopard in Uzbekistan. Even better, it caught not one, but two of the endangered cats on camera.
The new images of the cats released by conservation groups Panthera and the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) confirm that there are at least two individual snow leopards
Uzbekistan, which is about the size of California, is one of 12 countries in Asia where snow leopards still roam through rugged mountainous terrain. It's estimated that only 3,500 to 7,000 of the endangered cats are left in the wild. [Rare Photos: Snow Leopard Babies in Dens
Because of their scarcity and elusive nature, snow leopards are rarely photographed. In Uzbekistan, the cats had previously been confirmed only through traditional surveys and rare sightings.
Snow Leopards
Astronomers Discover
'Silent' Black Hole
Astronomers have discovered a new first: a silent black hole orbiting around a fast-spinning blue star. This new discovery hints at a much higher population of these unusual binary star systems in our galaxy.
Roughly 8,500 light years from Earth, there's a star called MWC 656, which is about 10 times the mass of our sun. MWC 656 is what's known as a Be star - hot, bright and blue. It's spinning very quickly, roughly one million kilometres per hour. That's about 140 times faster than our sun spins, which is impressive for a star so massive and it's fast enough that the star throws off material from its surface to form a wide disk around its equator.
Astronomers gazing at MWC 656 using two of the optical telescopes at the Canary Island's Roque de los Muchachos Observatory were not only able to see this disk around the star, but they also spied another disk right next to it, which was spinning around a stellar companion. However, they didn't see any light source at the centre of the disk, and measurements of the disk showed it had to be something massive, which pointed to one thing - a black hole.
"It turned out to be an object with a mass between 3.8 and 6.9 solar masses," said Ignasi Ribas of CSIC at the Institute of Space Sciences, according to Astronomy. "An object like that, invisible to telescopes and with such large mass, can only be a black hole because no neutron star with more than three solar masses can exist."
There are two strange thing about this, though. In all the Be stars in our galaxy that astronomers have found in binary systems, the companion has always been a small, dense neutron star. Also, although all neutron star and black hole binaries emit X-rays as a tell-tale marker of their presence, this black hole is quiet, emitting no X-ray radiation at all.
'Silent' Black Hole
In Memory
Ruth Robinson Duccini
Ruth Robinson Duccini, one of the original Munchkins from the 1939 movie "The Wizard of Oz," has died. She was 95.
Duccini worked as a "Rosie the Riveter" in Santa Monica, Calif., during World War II, using her short statute to squeeze into hard-to-reach parts of planes.
She also appeared in the spoof "Under the Rainbow" starring Chevy Chase and Carrie Fisher.
In her later years, she appeared at festivals and screenings celebrating "The Wizard of Oz."
Ruth Robinson Duccini
In Memory
Russell Johnson
Actor Russell Johnson, who became known to generations of TV fans as "The Professor," the fix-it man who kept his fellow "Gilligan's Island" castaways supplied with gadgets, has died. He was 89.
Johnson was a busy but little-known character actor when he was cast in the slapstick 1960s comedy about seven people marooned on an uncharted Pacific island.
During its three-season run on CBS, critics repeatedly lambasted the show as insipid. But after its cancellation in 1967, it found generations of new fans in reruns and reunion movies.
One of the most recent of the reunion films was 2001's "Surviving Gilligan's Island: The Incredibly True Story of the Longest Three-Hour Tour in History," in which other actors portrayed the original seven-member cast while Johnson and two other surviving cast members narrated and reminisced.
He admitted he had trouble finding work after "Gilligan's Island," having become typecast as the egg-headed professor. But he harboured no resentment for the show, and in later years he and other cast members, including Bob Denver, who had played the bumbling first mate Gilligan, often appeared together at fan conventions.
Johnson, Dawn Wells and Tina Louise were the last of the cast's survivors. Wells played vacationing farm girl Mary Ann Summers and Louise was sexy movie star Ginger Grant. Besides Denver, the other stars were Alan Hale Jr. as Skipper Jonas Grumby and Jim Backus and Natalie Schafer as snooty millionaires Thurston and Lovey Howell.
"Russell was a true gentleman, a dear friend with a fantastic wit, and a wonderful actor," said Wells in a statement on Thursday.
"The other half of 'The rest' is gone," she said, in a reference to the way her character and The Professor were lumped together in the original version of the show's theme song.
Before "Gilligan's Island," Johnson had appeared in dozens of films and television shows. His TV credits included "77 Sunset Strip," ''Gunsmoke," ''Rawhide," ''Wagon Train," ''The Lone Ranger," ''Twilight Zone," ''Ben Casey," ''Hawaiian Eye" and "Death Valley Days."
He also appeared in more than two dozen feature films, including "MacArthur," ''The Greatest Story Ever Told" and cult science fiction favourites such as "It Came From Outer Space and "Attack of the Crab Monsters." In the 1953 Western "Law and Order," he took part in a gunfight with the film's star, Ronald Reagan.
Although he didn't work as often after "Gilligan's Island," Johnson remained active into the late 1990s, appearing on such shows as "My Two Dads," ''Dynasty" and "Newhart."
The future actor was part of a family of seven children raised in Ashley, Pa.
He joined the Army Air Corps during World War II and served as a B-24 bombardier on missions over the Pacific war zone, breaking his ankles in 1945 when his plane was shot down over the Philippine island of Mindanao. He was discharged as a first lieutenant in November 1945, having earned a Purple Heart and other medals.
Upon his discharge, Johnson enrolled at the Actors Lab in Hollywood under the GI Bill. Fellow actor Paul Henreid saw him in a play there and landed him a role as a villain in the film "For Men Only." Until "Gilligan's Island," the ruggedly handsome Johnson often played villains.
He married actress Kay Cousins after leaving the Army, and the couple had a son, David, and a daughter, Kim. His wife died in 1980, and his son, a prominent Los Angeles AIDS activist, died of AIDS in 1994.
After remarrying, Johnson and wife Constance Dane moved to Bainbridge Island, Wash., in 1988.
Survivors include his wife and daughter.
Russell Johnson
In Memory
Dave Madden
Comic actor Dave Madden, who played the child-hating agent on the hit 1970s sitcom "The Partridge Family," died in Florida on Thursday at age 82.
Towering and rumpled, Madden was best known for his role as Reuben Kincaid, who managed the Partridge family band and regularly clashed with its impish pre-teen bassist, played by Danny Bonaduce.
While the series starred Shirley Jones, with her real-life step-son David Cassidy as the resident heart-throb, it was Madden and the freckle-faced Bonaduce who became the reigning comic duo.
"His relationship with Danny Bonaduce is what made the show work: this strange, mad little boy and the grown man who was even worse as a father figure," Jones said Thursday. "It was hysterical!"
Before "The Partridge Family," Madden was part of the ensemble on the "Laugh-In" comedy series, sipping and sometimes spitting milk along with joining in the show's zany sketches and crazy jokes. He later had a recurring role as one of the customers at Mel's Diner on the long-running sitcom "Alice."
Madden was born in Ontario, Canada, and grew up in North Terre Haute, Ind. He began show business as a nightclub comic and then landed his first acting job on the short-lived sitcom "Camp Runamuck" in the mid-1960s.
During his career, he also appeared on such series as "Bewitched," ''Barney Miller," ''Happy Days," ''The Love Boat" and "Fantasy Island."
Survivors include his wife, a daughter and a son.
Dave Madden
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