Mark Morford: Believe This and Live Forever (SF Gate)
Who the hell told you you're broken? Who told you you're an addict, a loser, a Type-A, a manic depressive? Who said you're too weak to quit smoking, to start exercising, to eat better, to find love or to quit being an overbearing jerk with zero redeeming qualities? Who told you humanity must operate a certain way? Who told you you're full of trauma and rage? Who dared tell you you're not already God? You really believe that? Good lord, why?
Tom Danehy: Tom examines the sociology of the bumper sticker (Tucson Weekly)
I read books, magazines and multiple newspapers-every day and all the time. I read billboards and the crawl at the bottom of the screen on SportsCenter. I even read the Watchtower thing that the nice Jehovah's Witnesses bring to my door. It's like comic relief.
Andrew Tobias: Debra Knows Sewage
My friend Debra Shore is Chicago's water commissioner. Her latest newsletter: … Here's why using a garbage disposal is better for the environment than throwing food waste out to be trucked to a landfill.
Eddie Deezen: Why was Charles M. Schulz's Comic Strip Called Peanuts? (Neatorama)
The appeal of Peanuts was obvious, since as Nat Gertler, author and webmaster of a startlingly detailed guide to Peanuts book collecting, notes: "The name Peanuts invoked the 'peanut gallery'- the in-house audience for the then-popular Howdy Doody television series."
15 Epic Male Cosplayers You Need to Check Out Today! (Geeks are Sexy)
For each good picture of a male cosplayer you find online, there's plenty more featuring females. However, today, I'm looking to change all that by featuring 15 guys who really know what they're doing when it comes to cosplay. For the sake of diversity, I've picked people from all around the globe, from the United States to Australia, passing through Finland, Italy, Canada, and more!
Brave New World is a novel written in 1931 by Aldous Huxley and published in 1932. Set in London of AD 2540 (632 A.F. - "After Ford" - in the book), the novel anticipates developments in reproductive technology, sleep-learning, psychological manipulation, and classical conditioning that combine to profoundly change society.
Huxley used the setting and characters from his science fiction novel to express widely held opinions, particularly the fear of losing individual identity in the fast-paced world of the future. An early trip to the United States gave Brave New World much of its character. Not only was Huxley outraged by the culture of youth, commercial cheeriness, sexual promiscuity and the inward-looking nature of many Americans, he had also found the book My Life and Work by Henry Ford on the boat to America, the principles of which he saw applied in everything he encountered after leaving San Francisco. There was a fear of Americanization in Europe. Thus seeing America firsthand, and from reading the ideas and plans of one of its foremost citizens, Huxley was spurred to write Brave New World with America in mind. The "feelies" are his response to the "talkie" motion pictures, and the sex-hormone chewing gum is a parody of the ubiquitous chewing gum, which was something of a symbol of America at that time.
Source
Marian was first, and correct, with:
Brave New World
Charlie said:
Brave New World
Sometimes one wonders if Huxley and Orwell were way too optimistic.
Lois Of Oregon answered:
Ah, the answer is "Brave New World", which was an upbeat,
optimistic prediction of our future. For a realistic
appraisal, watch the movie "Idiocracy". It's funny 'cause
it's true. "There was a time in this country, a long time
ago, when reading wasn't just for fags and neither was
writing. People wrote books and movies, movies that had
stories so you cared whose ass it was and why it was
farting, and I believe that time can come again!"
- Idiocracy (2006)
We can only hope.
mj wrote:
If I remember correctly
They were mostly aimed at betas. Alphas didn't need them and for gammas
it didn't matter. It was such a Brave New World that had such people in it.
Harry M replied:
Brave New World - Huxley
Jim from CA, retired to ID, responded:
Brave New World
Sally said:
Snowing like crazy here!
In "Brave New World" (by Aldous Huxley), the citizens entertained by the "feelies." I think that "feelies" are mentioned in "1984" by Orwell too... (I have both books but can no longer read the small print...)
PS: No kiddies today, just sitting here and waiting for the power to go out...
Adam answered:
Brave New World. Read it when I was 14, I think.
Sandra responded:
brave new world
Dale of Diamond Springs, Norcaliful, replied:
Brave New World (1932). Brave New World Revisited (1958). Read them both. I today will concede any analysis to the anal provocateurs of literary criticisms!
PS I shit my pants in 1970 when the total of my books for a behavioral pathology psychology class was over $100.00. But that was for five books! But Algebra 101. Brave New World, eh?
DJ Useo said:
Good job of stumping me. It seems very familiar, and I reckon it's from a book I read, but the answer eludes me.
I do have some records by the band "The Feelies". No points for that, I imagine. Sigh...
MAM wrote:
"Brave New World" by Aldous Huxley
BttbBob replied:
~~~~~
Wow... only 35 cents... that would make me happy.
~~~~~
11 years ago today I underwent heart surgery performed by the "Pros from Dover" that had embroidered in Maize and Blue, "University of Michigan" with a big block "M" (as well as their names and what they did) on their long white lab coats... Yeah, heart surgery on Valentine's Day... Go figure... Oh, and that was at the Ann Arbor VAMC, too, We vets are damn'd fortunate to have that crew's expertise in all areas of medicine on staff. They're awesome. They saved my life twice. A whole bunch of 'em... I say, "Happy Valentine's Day" to the ones that I remember and to those that I don't... Seriously... Go Blue!
And, Joe S said:
I had to look it up, it just wouldn't come to me. I knew the answer but I just couldn't put my finger on it. It's "Brave New World" of course.
CBS begins the night with a RERUN'Hawaii Five-0', followed by another RERUN'Hawaii Five-0', then a RERUN'Blue Bloods'.
On a RERUNDave (from 1/14/14) are Michael Strahan and Jennifer Nettles.
Scheduled on a FRESHCraig are Elizabeth Banks and Chris Voth.
ABC opens the night with the chestnut 'Be My Valentine, Charlie Brown', followed by the chestnut 'A Charlie Brown Valentine', then a RERUN'Shark Tank', followed by '20/20'.
On a RERUNJimmy Kimmel (from 1/30/14) are Zac Efron, Alison Brie, Sara Bareilles.
The CW offers a RERUN'Whose Line Is It Anyway?', followed by another RERUN'Whose Line Is It Anyway?', then a RERUN'The Originals'.
Scheduled on a FRESHArsenio Hall are Regina King, Patti Stanger, and Dean Edwards.
Faux has a RERUN'Bones', followed by a RERUN'Enlisted', then a RERUN'Raising Hope'.
MY has an old 'Monk', followed by another old 'Monk'.
AMC offers the movie 'The Green Mile', followed by the movie 'Face/Off'.
BBC -
[6:00AM] BBC WORLD NEWS
[7:00AM] BBC WORLD NEWS
[8:00AM] DOCTOR WHO - Season 7 - Ep 9 - Hide
[9:00AM] DOCTOR WHO - Season 7 - Ep 10 - Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS
[10:00AM] TORCHWOOD - Season 2 - Ep 6 - Reset
[11:00AM] STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION - Season 6 - Ep 11 - Chain of Command (Part 2)
[12:00PM] STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION - Season 6 - Ep 12 - Ship in a Bottle
[1:00PM] RAMSAY'S KITCHEN NIGHTMARES REVISITED US - Season 3 - Ep 1 - Revisited: Mojito's, The Junction, Bazzini
[2:00PM] RAMSAY'S KITCHEN NIGHTMARES US - Season 3 - Ep 5 - Hot Potato Cafe
[3:00PM] RAMSAY'S KITCHEN NIGHTMARES US - Season 4 - Ep 11 - Oceana
[4:00PM] TOP GEAR - Season 10 - Episode 2
[5:00PM] TOP GEAR - Season 10 - Episode 3
[6:00PM] STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION - Season 3 - Ep 1 - Evolution
[7:00PM] STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION - Season 3 - Ep 2 - The Ensigns of Command
[8:00PM] THE MATRIX
[11:00PM] FLEMING: THE MAN WHO WOULD BE BOND-Episode 3
[12:00AM] THE MATRIX
[3:00AM] STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION - Season 7 - Ep 26 - All Good Things... (Part 2)
[4:00AM] STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION - Season 3 - Ep 1 - Evolution
[5:00AM] STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION - Season 3 - Ep 2 - The Ensigns of Command (ALL TIMES EST)
Comedy Central has last night's 'Colbert Report', last night's 'Jon Stewart', followed by the FRESH'Tosh.0 - Sports Night', 'Tosh.0', and another 'Tosh.0'.
FX has 'How I Met Your Mother', another 'How I Met Your Mother', followed by the movie 'Date Night', then the movie 'Date Night', again.
IFC -
[6:00AM] Monty Python: Almost the Truth (The Lawyer's Cut)-Finally! The Last Episode (Ever) (For Now ...)
[7:15AM] Whitest Kids U'Know
[7:30AM] The Blair Witch Project
[9:15AM] Boiler Room
[11:45AM] Beverly Hills Ninja
[1:45PM] The Blair Witch Project
[3:30PM] Boiler Room
[6:00PM] Maximum Overdrive
[8:00PM] Eyes Wide Shut
[11:30PM] Wonderland
[1:45AM] Eyes Wide Shut
[5:15AM] The Spoils of Babylon-So Sweet the Bells
[5:45AM] Whitest Kids U'Know (ALL TIMES EST)
Sundance -
[6:00AM] The Writers' Room-Parks and Recreation
[6:30AM] Law & Order-Guardian
[7:30AM] Pride
[9:45AM] An Education
[12:00PM] The Pelican Brief
[3:00PM] Kingpin
[5:30PM] Working Girl
[8:00PM] Law & Order-Progeny
[9:00PM] Unfaithful
[11:45PM] Unfaithful
[2:30AM] The Hurt Locker
[5:30AM] The Writers' Room-Breaking Bad (ALL TIMES EST)
SyFy has 'Helix', followed by a FRESH'WWE Steroid SmackDown!', then a FRESH'Helix'.
American actress Meryl Streep, poses as she arrives at the French premiere of the film"August: Osage County" in Paris, Thursday, Feb. 13, 2014.
Photo by Michel Euler
Issues Early Renewals to Supernatural, Reign, The Originals
CW
The CW is getting an early jump on the 2014-15 season, issuing early renewals to five series, including freshman dramas The Originals and Reign.
The network is also bringing back established hits Supernatural, The Vampire Diaries and Arrow for Season 10, Season 6 and Season 3, respectively.
"This season we've had great success with our new hit series The Originals paired with Supernatural, giving us our best Tuesday nights in years," said CW prez Mark Pedowitz in a statement. "The Vampire Diaries is No. 2 in its time period in the young adult demos, and with Arrow continuing to gain among young men, and Reign growing its time period, we now have strong nights on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. I'm very pleased to announce early pickups for all five series, and let our fans know they'll have more great drama to look forward to next season."
Additional pickups could come closer to the May upfronts, so don't administer last rites to The Carrie Diaries, Hart of Dixie, The Tomorrow People and Beauty and the Beast just yet.
British film director Ken Loach pose during a photocall during the 64th Berlinale International Film Festival in Berlin February 13, 2014.
Photo by Tobias Schwarz
Oscar-winning actress Natalie Portman was back in her native city of Jerusalem on Thursday shooting for her directorial debut, to the annoyance of the local ultra-Orthodox Jewish community.
The Hollywood actress, who was born in Jerusalem, is directing a film adaptation of "A Tale of Love and Darkness," an award-winning 2002 novel by Israel's best known writer, Amos Oz.
Translated from Hebrew into 28 languages, the story is a heart-wrenching memoir of Oz's childhood in Jerusalem in the 1940s and 1950s, before and after the creation of the Jewish state.
The shoot, which has seen several of the narrow alleyways of the Nahlaot neighbourhood transformed into a scene from Mandate Palestine, has incurred the wrath of some ultra-Orthodox locals.
After wearing a paper bag on his head to a red carpet premier and walking out of a press conference for his new film, actor Shia LaBeouf's latest bizarre antic was to reveal an art project on Tuesday.
LaBeouf, 27, a former Disney star who later became known as the lead of the "Transformers" film franchise, set up an art installation entitled #IAMSORRY at a Los Angeles gallery, to run daily from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. local time (1900 to 0200 GMT) until Sunday with free admission.
About 30 people were lined up to enter the gallery one by one, where each attendee is asked to pick one item from a table that held a wrench, a vase of flowers, a bottle of bourbon and Hershey's chocolate kisses among other items.
Whether LaBeouf is transitioning away from movies to become a conceptual artist or just finding novel ways to drum up press for his film work, the media have been amused and perplexed by his recent behaviour.
Actor Johnny Depp attends the premiere of "3 Days to Kill" in Los Angeles, California February 12, 2014. The movie opens in the U.S. on February 21.
Photo by Mario Anzuoni
A windy stretch of the Mojave Desert once roamed by tortoises and coyotes has been transformed by hundreds of thousands of mirrors into the largest solar power plant of its type in the world, a milestone for a growing industry that is testing the balance between wilderness conservation and the pursuit of green energy across the American West.
The Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System, sprawling across roughly 5 square miles (13 sq. kilometers) of federal land near the California-Nevada border, formally opened Thursday after years of regulatory and legal tangles ranging from relocating protected tortoises to assessing the impact on Mojave milkweed and other plants.
The $2.2 billion complex of three generating units, owned by NRG Energy Inc., Google Inc. and BrightSource Energy, can produce nearly 400 megawatts - enough power for 140,000 homes. It began making electricity last year.
Larger projects are on the way, but for now, Ivanpah is being described as a marker for the United States' emerging solar industry. While solar power accounts for less than 1 percent of the nation's power output, thousands of projects from large, utility-scale plants to small production sites are under construction or being planned, particularly across the sun-drenched Southwest.
The Ivanpah site, about 45 miles (75 kilometers) southwest of Las Vegas, has virtually unbroken sunshine most of the year and is near transmission lines that carry power to consumers.
The websites of Las Vegas Sands' casinos around the world on Thursday remained down for a third straight day, as the company and U.S. federal investigators race to unravel a hacking attack that defaced home pages and also exposed sensitive employee information.
Sands, which owns the Venetian on the Vegas Strip as well as in the Chinese gambling boomtown of Macau, had not ruled out the theft of customer information such as credit card numbers. But it has verified that "certain" core operations had not been affected, spokesman Ron Reese said.
As of Thursday afternoon, the websites including the main corporate site, still displayed "undergoing maintenance" messages. The company's internal email system, taken down Monday, remained non-functional.
According to the Associated Press, a local newspaper posted screen shots of sites - before they were taken down - that showed Sands Chief Executive Officer Sheldon Adelson (R-Newtie's Uncle Sugar) posing with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, alongside a message condemning weapons of mass destruction.
Actress Patricia Arquette poses for photographers on the red carpet for the film Boyhood during the International Film Festival Berlinale in Berlin, Thursday, Feb. 13, 2014.
Photo by Joel Ryan
Drake says he won't do interviews with magazines following a recent story in Rolling Stone magazine.
The rapper was supposed to be on the cover of the magazine's new issue, but was replaced with the late Philip Seymour Hoffman. Drake tweeted Thursday that he's "done doing interviews with magazines."
"I just want to give my music to the people," he wrote. "That's the only way my message gets across accurately."
Other Thursday tweets from the 27-year-old were deleted, including one about his discomfort with Hoffman gracing the cover of Rolling Stone.
"I'm disgusted with that. RIP to Phillip Seymour Hoffman. All respect due. But the press is evil," he tweeted.
The federal government has underestimated methane emissions from the United States by 50 percent for the past 20 years, according to a comprehensive new study.
Methane, also called natural gas, is a powerful but short-lived greenhouse gas. It lasts just nine years in Earth's atmosphere but is about 34 times more potent at trapping infrared radiation (the greenhouse effect) than carbon dioxide, which is more abundant and lasts longer. While methane spews into the sky from both natural sources, such as wetlands, and human activities, including oil and gas production, the government estimates only track manmade sources.
The review of scientific studies of methane emissions suggests that Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) methane counts are about 50 percent too low, though the underestimate could range from 25 percent to as much as 75 percent. That means the United States is pumping about 14 million tons more methane than thought into the atmosphere each year, according to the findings, published today (Feb. 13) in the journal Science.
The review analyzed the results of more than 200 studies that traced methane emissions across the United States and were published in the past 20 years. The results were compared to the EPA's Greenhouse Gas Inventory, which records methane emissions and other climate-changing gases.
Figures depicting President of Russia Vladimir Putin, left, and French actor Gerard Depardieu are seen on a float during preparations for the 130th Nice carnival parade, Thursday, Feb. 13 , 2013, in Nice, southeastern France. The 130th Nice Carnival runs from February 14 until March 4 and will celebrate the theme "King of gastronomy". Depardieu was granted citizenship of Russia in January 2013 and the same year became a cultural ambassador of Montenegro.
Photo by Lionel Cironneau
A portrait by Francis Bacon has sold for 42.2 million pounds ($70 million) at a London auction, while an egg by U.S. artist Jeff Koons cracked the 14 million pound ($23 million) mark.
Auctioneer Christie's says Bacon's image of his lover and muse, "Portrait of George Dyer Talking," sold Thursday to an anonymous telephone bidder.
The price was well over the pre-sale estimate of about 28 million pounds.
The value of Bacon's work has soared since his death in 1992. In November, a Bacon triptych depicting artist Lucian Freud fetched $142 million, becoming the most expensive artwork ever sold at auction.
Koons' stainless steel sculpture "Cracked Egg (Magenta)" sold for almost 14.1 million pounds, near its upper estimate.
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.
Ralph Waite, who played the kind patriarch of a tight-knit rural Southern family on the TV series "The Waltons," has died, his manager said Thursday. He was 85.
Waite, who lived in the Palm Springs area, died midday Thursday, said his manager, Alan Mills.
Mills did not know the cause of death. He said he was taken aback because Waite had been in good health and still working. He appeared last year in episodes of the series "NCIS," ''Bones" and "Days of Our Lives."
"The Waltons," which aired on CBS from 1972 to 1981, starred Waite as John Walton, and Richard Thomas played his oldest son, John-Boy, an aspiring novelist. The gentle family drama was set in the Blue Ridge mountains of Virginia.
The show was narrated by its creator, Earl Hamner Jr., who based it on his family memories.
A flock of starlings fly over an agricultural field near the southern Israeli city of Netivot February 12, 2014. The starlings migrate from central and Eastern Europe to spend the winter in Israel, said an employee of Israel's nature and parks authority on Wednesday.
Photo by Amir Cohen
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