Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Tom Danehy: Thoughts on the upcoming election and the impending death of the middle class (Tucson Weekly)
With the election year already in full stride, here are several things I absolutely know to be true (and a couple of things about which I am quite certain): If Barack Obama wants to get re-elected, he is going to have to drop his Cool Breeze persona and go on the attack. The soul of America is at stake.
Paul Krugman: The FOF Theory of the GOP Primary (New York Times)
I view the primary race through the lens of the FOF theory - that's for "fools and frauds". It goes as follows: to be a good Republican right now, you have to affirm your belief in things that any halfway intelligent politician can see are plainly false. This leaves room for only two kinds of candidates: those who just aren't smart and/or rational enough to understand the problem, and those who are completely cynical, willing to say anything to get ahead.
Froma Harrop: Obama's Biggest Threat Was Huntsman (Creators Syndicate)
Politically astute Republicans, including many social conservatives, see Mitt Romney as the strongest candidate to beat President Obama in November. The former Massachusetts governor may not be their kind of Republican, but any Republican would be better than Obama, in their opinion. The view that Romney would be Obama's most formidable foe is accurate - but only as of Monday, when former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman dropped out of the race.
Susan Estrich: About the Dog (Creators Syndicate)
So what are we to make of that infamous family vacation during which Romney put the dog in a crate on top of the car - for 12 hours? Or the more recent revelations that the dog and the crate had to be hosed down a few hours into the trip when his bowels gave way?
Matthew Yglesias: Mitt Romney Thinks $360,000 Is "Not Very Much" Money (Slate)
… Mitt Romney fessed up to the fact that he doesn't want to release his tax returns because he pays an embarassingly low tax rate. But it's pretty well known that many economists and basically all conservatives think investment income should be taxed at a lower rate than labor income. I think the real news Romney made is that he lacks perspective on what constitutes "not very much" income …
Brian Palmer: Abandoning Ship: an Etiquette Guide (Slate)
The 4,300-passenger cruise ship Costa Concordia ran aground off the Italian coast on Friday. At least 11 people are confirmed dead, and more remain missing. Some passengers say there was chaos during the evacuation, with no respect for the tradition of women and children first. The Italian Coast Guard reportedly ordered the captain, who had abandoned ship, back onto his crippled vessel to assist in the evacuation, but he refused. Are there laws governing how to abandon ship?
Mark Morford: How to survive an SF cold snap (SF Gate)
Firstly, bundle up! Have you not seen the emails, the flyers and the endless, endless spam? From Gilt to ideali, Barney's to All Saints, everyone's having huge sales on tons of winter outerwear they couldn't offload during Christmas because the economy still sucks, the stuff was way overpriced in the first place and most of it is also very, very ugly and made of something like burlap and straw and the tears of baby pandas.
Logospilgrim, the quiet professor
"Logospilgrim is just a bit interested in the character of Severus Snape from 'Harry Potter.' She has Snape tattoos, dresses like Snape, and has written two books about him. Her home office is a shrine packed with objects and decorations that would please him, including potion bottles that are presumably empty." -- Neatorama
David Bruce has 42 Kindle books on Amazon.com with 250 anecdotes in each book. Each book is $1, so for $42 you can buy 10,500 anecdotes. Search for "Funniest People," "Coolest People, "Most Interesting People," "Kindest People," "Religious Anecdotes," "Maximum Cool," and "Resist Psychic Death."
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Reader Suggestions
Michelle in AZ
From The Creator of 'Avery Ant'
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Mostly cloudy with a storm on the way.
The kid is taking a photography class, so today we bought a couple rolls of brand new B&W film, an envelope of developing paper, and then dug out my old Pentax Spotmatic. He's all set.
Fans Call An End To 'Toaster' Tradition
Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Allan Poe fans waited long past a midnight dreary, but it appears annual visits to the writer's grave in Baltimore by a mysterious figure called the "Poe Toaster" shall occur nevermore.
Poe House and Museum Curator Jeff Jerome said early Thursday that die-hard fans waited hours past when the tribute bearer normally arrives. But the "Poe Toaster" was a no-show for a third year in a row, leaving another unanswered question in a mystery worthy of the writer's legacy. Poe fans had said they would hold one last vigil this year before calling an end to the tradition.
It is thought that the tributes of an anonymous man wearing black clothes with a white scarf and a wide-brimmed hat, who leaves three roses and a half-empty bottle of cognac at Poe's original grave on the writer's birthday, date to at least the 1940s. Late Wednesday, a crowd gathered outside the gates of the burial ground surrounding Westminster Hall to watch for the mysterious visitor, yet only three impersonators appeared, Jerome said.
Baltimore recently cut funding for the museum at the rowhouse where Poe lived with relatives from 1832 to 1835, before he found fame as a writer. It must close if it does not become self-sustaining by June.
Edgar Allan Poe
Democrats Unamused By Colbert
South Carolina
Late-night TV comedian Stephen Colbert is urging his South Carolina fans to cast votes in Saturday's Republican U.S. presidential primary for former candidate Herman Cain, a way Colbert says he will gauge support for his own mock presidential campaign.
Who's not laughing? South Carolina Democrats.
The state's open primary allows Democrats and independents to vote in the Republican primary and Colbert earlier this week called on his home state supporters to cast votes for Cain.
The unamused state Democratic Party shot back with an email titled "NO to GOP Primary": "The South Carolina Democratic Party ... DOES NOT encourage people to vote in the Republican Presidential Primary."
South Carolina
Plans Water-Snow Park
Dolly Parton
Dolly Parton plans a water-snow park in Nashville to join her other tourist attractions in Tennessee.
The $50 million venture, announced Thursday, is a 114-acre park projected to open as early as summer 2014. It is not yet named.
It will join her Dollywood theme park and a water park about 190 miles away in the foothills of the Smoky Mountains.
The venture will be a partnership with Gaylord Entertainment, which owns the sprawling Gaylord Opryland Resort & Convention Center and the Grand Ole Opry country music show in Nashville.
Dolly Parton
Priceline Dropping
William Shatner
William Shatner's 14-year mission with Priceline has come to a close.
The actor, best known as Capt. James T. Kirk, the commander of Star Trek, will go out with a bang. His final ad with the company, set to air Monday, will show Shatner rescuing vacationers on a bus hanging on a bridge's railing. "Save yourselves -- some money," Shatner says, handing his cellphone to one of the passengers. Then Shatner and the bus fall and the bus explodes.
"I'm in grief mode," Shatner told The Associated Press. "It's not the first time I've had an iconic character die off." (The Kirk character died in 1994's Star Trek: Generations.)
In the report, Priceline CEO Christopher Soder explained that the company is changing its strategy so it "decided to do something really over the top to get our message across." That may include a spot in next month's Super Bowl telecast.
Shatner became a spokesman for Priceline during the dot-com boom and originally did the ads to get free stock in the company. That turned out to be a smart move for Shatner, who sold his stock before the ensuing crash and cleared a reported $600 million, though some have questioned that figure.
William Shatner
Let The Payoffs Begin
Rupert
Rupert Murdoch's media empire apologized and agreed to cash payouts Thursday to 37 people - including a movie star, a soccer player, a top British politician and the son of a serial killer - who were harassed and phone-hacked by his tabloid press.
The four - Jude Law, Ashley Cole, John Prescott and Chris Shipman - were among three dozen victims who received financial damages from Murdoch's British newspaper company for illegal eavesdropping and other intrusions, including email snooping.
It was the largest group of settlements announced yet in the long-running hacking scandal, which has shaken Murdoch's global empire, spurred the resignations of several of his top executives and reverberated through Britain's political, police and media elite.
The slew of settlements is one consequence of the revelations of phone-hacking and other illegal tactics at the News of the World, where journalists routinely intercepted voicemails of those in the public eye in a relentless search for scoops.
Many of the statements ended with victims saying they felt vindicated after years in which Murdoch's company denied phone hacking had been widespread at the News of the World. The company had initially vowed to fight the claims in court.
Rupert
Attacks Justice Dept
Anonymous
The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) indicted seven people and two companies which ran the file uploading site Megaupload.com. The site, which billed itself as "the leading online storage and file delivery service," is now offline.
In the indictment, Megaupload and a company associated with it are accused of making $175 million while simultaneously causing approximately half a billion dollars in copyright infringement. Among the indicted are the site's founder, Kim Dotcom (a.k.a. Kim Schmitz), who holds residency in New Zealand and Hong Kong. Employees Bram van der Kolk, aka Bramos, 29, Julius Bencko, Finn Batato, Sven Echternach, Mathias Ortmann, and Andrus Nomm were also indicted.
New Zealand authorities arrested Dotcom, Batato, Ortmann and van der Kolk. Officials said they have not yet captured Bencko, Echternach and Nomm.
According to the indictment, the accused are part of "the Mega Conspiracy, a worldwide criminal organization whose members engaged in criminal copyright infringement and money laundering on a massive scale." They are being charged with participating in a racketeering conspiracy, conspiring to commit copyright infringement, conspiring to commit money laundering and two substantive counts of criminal copyright infringement.
Some 15 minutes after the indictment, the online hacker group Anonymous tweeted from a Sweden-based account that it had retaliated against the DOJ. Soon afterwards, justice.gov was inaccessible -- and it remains down at time of writing.
Anonymous
Flip Floppers Flip Flop
Lawmakers
Some members of Congress switched sides to oppose antipiracy legislation as protests blanketed the Internet on Wednesday, turning Wikipedia dark and putting black slashes on Google and other sites as if they had been censored.
Content providers who favor the anti-piracy measures, such as Hollywood and the music industry, were scrambling to win back public opinion and official support.
Many of the sites participating in the blackout urged their users to contact their legislators on the issue, a plea that brought quick results.
Several sponsors of the legislation, including Senators Roy Blunt, Chuck Grassley, Orrin Hatch and John Boozman and Marco Rubio, said they were withdrawing their support. Some blamed Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid for rushing the Senate version of the bill.
Creative America, a studio- and union-supported group that fights piracy, launched a television advertising campaign that it said would air in the districts of key legislators. In Times Square, it turned on a digital pro-SOPA and PIPA billboard for the day - in space provided by News Corp Rupert, which owns Fox Studios.
Lawmakers
Up Numbers
U.S. Army
Violent sex crimes committed by active U.S. Army soldiers have almost doubled over the past five years, due in part to the trauma of war, according to an Army report released on Thursday.
Reported violent sex crimes increased by 90 percent over the five-year period from 2006 to 2011. There were 2,811 violent felonies in 2011, nearly half of which were violent felony sex crimes. Most were committed in the United States.
One violent sex crime was committed by a soldier every six hours and 40 minutes in 2011, the Army said, serving as the main driver for an overall increase in violent felony crimes.
Higher rates of violent sex crimes are "likely outcomes" of intentional misconduct, lax discipline, post-combat adrenaline, high levels of stress and behavioral health issues, the report said.
Violent sex crimes committed by U.S. Army troops increased at a rate that consistently outpaced the national trend, a gap that is expected to continue to grow, the Army said.
U.S. Army
Former TV Skipper Gets Jail
Clarence "Ole" Helgevold Jr.
An Alaska fishing captain who led a crew on the program that spawned the cable TV show "Deadliest Catch" will serve five years in prison for a fatal crash.
The Peninsula Clarion reports 60-year-old Clarence "Ole" Helgevold Jr. was sentenced Wednesday.
He was originally charged with manslaughter in January 2011 when his car crashed with a snowmobile driven by George Larion, who was thrown from the snowmobile and died.
Under terms of an agreement, Helgevold pleaded guilty to reduced charges in May. He will serve 4 1/2 years for criminally negligent homicide and six months for driving under the influence.
Helgevold was captain of the Arctic Dawn, the vessel featured in a 2004 three-part miniseries "America's Deadliest Season," which was effectively a pilot for "Deadliest Catch."
Clarence "Ole" Helgevold Jr.
Guards Scuffle With Indian Media
Oprah Winfrey
Indian police briefly detained three of Oprah Winfrey's bodyguards after they scuffled with local TV journalists Thursday, a news agency reported.
The American talk-show host had been traveling with both American and Indian bodyguards while visiting the Hindu pilgrimage town of Mathura, about 90 miles (145 kilometers) south of Delhi.
Press Trust of India said police detained three of the guards after local journalists said their video equipment had been damaged in a brawl. No one was reported hurt, and there was no indication that the American bodyguards were involved.
It is Winfrey's first trip to India, where she has been filming her new show "Oprah's Next Chapter."
Oprah Winfrey
Megadeth Seminarian
David Ellefson
Concordia Seminary in suburban St. Louis gets an eclectic mix of students in a program allowing them to train for the ministry online - electricians, farmers, entrepreneurs - and even a founder of one of the best-known thrash metal bands.
David Ellefson plays bass for Megadeth. He also is an online student in the Specific Ministry Program at Concordia Seminary operated by the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod.
The St. Louis Post-Dispatch newspaper reported that Ellefson's studies illustrate why distance learning programs at seminaries have a growing popularity nationwide, allowing students to attend divinity schools without uprooting their lives.
Even in a non-traditional learning setting, Ellefson is a non-traditional student given his band has recorded albums with titles such as "Killing Is My Business ... And Business Is Good!"
David Ellefson
In Memory
Johnny Otis
Johnny Otis, the "godfather of rhythm and blues" who wrote and recorded the R&B classic "Willie and the Hand Jive" and for decades evangelized black music to white audiences as a bandleader and radio host, has died. He was 90.
Otis, who had been in poor health for several years, died at his home in the Los Angeles foothill suburb of Altadena on Tuesday, said his manager, Terry Gould.
Otis, who was white, was born John Veliotes to Greek immigrants and grew up in a black section of Berkeley, where he said he identified far more with black culture than his own. As a teenager, he changed his name because he thought Johnny Otis sounded more black.
"As a kid, I decided that if our society dictated that one had to be black or white, I would be black," he once explained.
His musical tastes clearly reflected that adopted culture and even after he became famous, his dark skin and hair often led audiences and club promoters to assume he was black like his band mates.
Otis was leading his own band in 1945 when he scored his first big hit, "Harlem Nocturne." In 1950, 10 of his songs made Billboard Magazine's R&B chart. His "Willie and the Hand Jive" sold more than 1.5 million copies and was covered years later by Eric Clapton.
He later wrote "Every Beat of My Heart," which was a hit for Gladys Knight & the Pips.
But the influence of Otis was felt most through his ability to recognize and promote talent. He wove into his bands such diverse and legendary R&B vocalists as Etta James, Hank Ballard, Big Mama Thornton and The Robins, the latter a group that would evolve into the Coasters.
He produced Thornton's original recording of "Hound Dog," a song that would later become an even bigger hit for Elvis Presley.
Otis launched his professional music career as an 18-year-old drummer for bawdy barrelhouse pianist Count Otis Matthews, although he had never played the drums until then.
Matthews instructed him to simply pound out the syncopated "shave and a haircut, six bits" beat that would become the backbone of early rock 'n' roll. His mastery of it soon proved his ticket to other bands and eventually to headlining his own group.
Otis saw himself as curator of black popular music, which for him represented much more than a diversion or livelihood. His cross-country R&B reviews and his radio and television appearances were dedicated to delivering black music to white audiences.
While he always returned to playing music, in later years touring with his sons Shuggie and Nicky, Otis' eclectic interests also included politics, art and organic food.
He worked for years as deputy chief of staff to state Assemblyman Mervyn Dymally when Dymally served in the Assembly, state Senate, as lieutenant governor and as a congressman.
In later years, Otis spent much of his time painting and sculpting. He also opened an organic grocery store in Sebastopol in the early 1990s to sell his son Nicky's vegetables, decorating the store with his own colorful murals.
Although he had little success selling groceries, he did draw large crowds to the market every Friday and Saturday night when he performed there with his band.
"It was a smashing success," Gould said. "You had to make reservations three weeks ahead. It was amazing."
Otis also had a regular show playing records on the nonprofit Pacifica Radio Network's stations until failing health prompted him to retire in 2005.
In addition to his sons, Otis is survived by his wife, Phyllis, whom he married in 1941; daughters Janet and Laura; and several grandchildren.
Johnny Otis
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