Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Brainiacs from Mars: Paint My House (brainiacsfrommars.com)
We're looking for houses to paint. In fact, paint is an understatement. We're looking for homes to turn into billboards. In exchange, we'll pay your mortgage every month for as long as your house remains painted.
Tom Danehy: Tucson's congressional races are the contests to watch this year (Tucson Weekly)
State Sen. Frank Antenori, like Alexander the Great before him, looked out and saw that he had no more public employees' lives to ruin, and he wept. While it's never a good idea to bet against somebody who's on a winning streak, sooner or later, Antenori's bull-in-a-china-shop routine is going to wear thin with voters. Not everyone agrees with his vision of minimum-wage teachers working, with no job protection whatsoever, at the whim of brain-dead bureaucrats in schools where there are guns, but no lunch program.
Simon Collins: "Mum: Prostitution to pay for studies" (New Zealand Herald)
A solo mum who wants to study so she can get off welfare says she has had to turn to prostitution to pay for childcare and transport to the course.
How the Greeks Are Living Now (Includes Link to 'New York Times' Article)
A quarter of all Greek companies have gone out of business since 2009, and half of all small businesses in the country say they are unable to meet payroll. The suicide rate increased by 40 percent in the first half of 2011. A barter economy has sprung up, as people try to work around a broken financial system. Nearly half the population under 25 is unemployed. Last September, organizers of a government-sponsored seminar on emigrating to Australia, an event that drew 42 people a year earlier, were overwhelmed when 12,000 people signed up.
Jennifer Meckles: Emery's 5 & 10 report steady Saturday business (wbir.com)
A day after Knox County Mayor Tim Burchett made Emery's 5 & 10 the first "Cash Mob Hit", employees report the success is continuing into the weekend.
Froma Harrop: French Model for American Parents (Creators Syndicate)
One item in the annals of American exceptionalism is how exceptionally badly behaved American children are. We who hang around international airports often marvel at how European toddlers wait calmly while their American cohorts run down the halls or lie sprawled on the floor in a screaming tantrum.
Katy Waldman: Get Your Own Damn Coffee! (Slate)
Most unpaid internships are illegal. Why don't more interns protest?
Rob Shook: My Gay Agenda
There's only one thing that I wrote that "entitles" me to equal treatment under the law, and that's my first three words: "I'm an American."
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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Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Mostly sunny and warmer.
Judge Won't Halt Anti-Whaling Group's Activities
Sea Shepherd
A federal judge in Seattle declined to immediately restrain the activities of a Washington state-based anti-whaling group Thursday.
Judge Richard Jones said he would issue a written ruling later, but that he's inclined to deny a request for a preliminary injunction made by Japanese whalers against the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society.
The whalers - the Institute for Cetacean Research - said the Sea Shepherd group has attacked and rammed their ships off Antarctica during the whaling season, and asked the judge to order them to stop. Some of the clashes have been shown on the "Whale Wars" reality TV show.
Sea Shepherd activists use stink bombs and other nonlethal means to interfere with the whalers. The group argues that its activities are supported by international law, that the court doesn't have jurisdiction in the Southern Ocean, and that it's the whalers who have rammed its vessels.
"It is a victory for the Sea Shepard, for environmentalists. It's a victory for the whales," said Charles Moure, an attorney with the Seattle firm of Harris & Moure representing the Sea Shepherd.
Sea Shepherd
Meets With Chavez
Sean Penn
Actor Sean Penn criticized Republican presidential candidates during a visit to Venezuela on Thursday, saying that right-wing policies in the United States aim to benefit the wealthy.
Penn made the remarks after meeting with socialist President Hugo Chavez at Venezuela's presidential palace, when he was asked by a reporter about criticisms of Chavez by some Republican candidates.
Penn said he doesn't think "the use of those exploitive sort of demonizations will be very beneficial to this crew of candidates."
"That would be the least amongst their weaknesses," Penn said. "It's never predictable what can happen in an American election, but we certainly believe at this point that it's becoming increasingly clear to the American people that the policies of the far right are the policies of the rich, and that they are to the exclusion of the middle class and the poor, and that no society has a future on that basis."
Sean Penn
Real Name A Mystery
Charlie Chaplin
The real name and birthplace of legendary silent-film star Charlie Chaplin is shrouded in mystery, Britain's domestic spy agency concluded after a probe into U.S. claims he was a communist sympathizer, documents released on Friday revealed.
British MI5 agents were asked in 1952 to investigate Chaplin's background by the FBI, which believed he was using an alias and that his real name was Israel Thornstein, over long-running U.S. suspicions abouSean Pennt the actor's left-wing leanings.
Chaplin, one of Hollywood's first and greatest stars famed for his "Little Tramp" character, believed he was born on April 16, 1889, in south London.
But, an exhaustive search by MI5 found no record of his birth anywhere, nor anything to suggest he was any kind of security risk, declassified files from the spy agency revealed.
The file shows no one called Charles or Israel was born on April 16, and further inquiries into suggestions Chaplin had been born in France near Fontainebleau also proved fruitless.
Charlie Chaplin
Grant Wilson Exiting
"Ghost Hunters"
Ghosts are haunting a little more casually today: Grant Wilson, co-lead investigator of SyFy's "Ghost Hunters," is leaving the show.
Wilson, who has hunted ghosts with Jason Hawes for eight seasons -- and founded The Atlantic Paranormal Society with him nearly two decades ago -- will wrap production next month. His last episode will air Wednesday, May 16.
"It is with mixed emotion that I am announcing my departure from the cast of 'Ghost Hunters,'" said Wilson, whose exit was announced on Wednesday's episode.
"While paranormal investigating has always been and will remain a passion for me, after enjoying nearly eight successful seasons on television, I have made the decision to leave the series in order to focus on other aspects of my personal life."
"Ghost Hunters"
Racist Hatemongers
Suspended Get Paid VacationLA Radio
A Los Angeles radio station has pulled two popular talk radio hosts off the air for comments they made about Whitney Houston.
KFI AM 640 suspended John Kobylt (R-Clear Channel) and Ken Chiampou (R-Clear Channel), the hosts of the "John and Ken Show," for "making insensitive and inappropriate comments about the late Whitney Houston," it said in a statement Thursday.
According to audio posted online at UrbanInformer.com, the hosts called the late singer a "crack ho" and said she was "cracked out for 20 years."
The hosts, who broadcast their show weekday afternoons, will return to the airwaves Feb. 27.
LA Radio
Corporate-Funded
Climate Change
In a sort of reverse "Climategate," the libertarian Heartland Institute is embarrassed by a major leak. Here, 6 of the highlights
The war over climate change flared up again this week, after an anonymous tipster leaked a trove of documents from the Chicago-based Heartland Institute, a libertarian group known, among other things, for opposing regulation of greenhouse gasses. In a sort of funhouse-mirror image of "Climategate" - the giant 2009 leak of supposedly conspiratorial emails among climate scientists - the Heartland document dump outlines one group's efforts to sow doubts about the scientific consensus that humans are dangerously changing the long-term climate through gas emissions. The Heartland Institute has implied that nearly all of the documents are authentic - they were apparently obtained when someone posing as a board member convinced a staffer to "re-send" the documents to a new email account. That's criminal fraud, Heartland said , and "we intend to find this person and see him or her put in prison for these crimes." In the meantime, here are six takeaways from what's already being called "Denialgate" :
One ambitious plan detailed in the leaked documents is a K-12 curriculum designed to convince students that "whether humans are changing the climate is a major scientific controversy." Also "controversial": Whether carbon dioxide is a pollutant, and the reliability of the models showing how climate change works. This is necessary, Heartland says, because "principals and teachers are heavily biased toward the alarmist perspective." Heartland is clearly taking a page from "the religious Right's war on biology education and the science of evolution," says Brad Johnson at ThinkProgress.
Climate Change
Out At MSNBC
Pat Buchanan
MSNBC dropped conservative commentator Pat Buchanan on Thursday, four months after suspending him following the publication of his latest book.
The book "Suicide of a Superpower" contained chapters titled "The End of White America" and "The Death of Christian America." Critics called the book racist, anti-Semitic and homophobic, charges Buchanan denied.
MSNBC President Phil Griffin said last month that he didn't think Buchanan's book "should be part of the national dialogue, much less part of the dialogue on MSNBC."
The network said on Thursday that "after 10 years, we have decided to part ways with Pat Buchanan. We wish him well."
Pat Buchanan
March 8
The Internets
The Federal Bureau of Investigation may soon be forced to shut down a number of key Domain Name System (DNS) servers, which would cut Internet access for millions of Web users around the world, reports BetaBeat. The DNS servers were installed by the FBI last year, in an effort to stop the spread of a piece of malware known as DNSCharger Trojan. But the court order that allowed the set up of the replacement servers expires on March 8.
In November of last year, authorities arrested six men in Estonia for the creation and spread of DNSCharger, which reconfigures infected computers' Internet settings, and re-routes users to websites that contain malware, or other illegal sites. DNSCharger also blocks access to websites that might offer solutions for how to rid the computer of its worm, and often comes bundled with other types of malicious software.
By the time the FBI stepped in, DNSCharger had taken over computers in more than 100 countries, including half-a-million computers in the US alone. To help eradicate the widespread malware, the FBI replaced infected servers with new, clean servers, which gave companies and individuals with infected computers time to clean DNSCharger off their machines.
Unfortunately, DNSCharger is still running on computers "at half of the Fortune 500 companies," and at "27 out of 55 major government entities," reports cybersecurity journalist Brian Krebs. These computers rely on the FBI-installed DNS servers to access the Web. But if the court order is not extended, the FBI will be legally required to remove the clean servers, which would cut off the Internet for users still infected with DNSCharger.
The Internets
Deal Reached With 'Spider-Man' Producers
Julie Taymor
Producers of "Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark" have agreed to pay the hit Broadway musical's former director and co-book writer Julie Taymor royalties as part of a settlement that ends one chapter in the two sides' bitter legal dispute.
The Stage Directors and Choreographers Society and the show's producers, 8 Legged Productions LLC, announced the deal Thursday. No amount was disclosed.
Under the deal, producers have agreed to pay Taymor full royalties as director from the beginning of previews in November 2010 through the run of the Broadway show, however long that is. She was fired in March after years of delays, accidents, critical backlash and ballooning costs that all pushed the show's price tag to a record-setting $75 million.
The settlement does not end a federal copyright infringement lawsuit brought by Taymor against the producers over her role as co-writer of the musical and a countersuit filed by them against Taymor and her company, LOH Inc.
In that still-ongoing legal dispute, Taymor is seeking half of all profits derived from the sale or license of any rights in the original "Spider-Man" book. It also seeks a jury trial to determine her share of profits from the unauthorized use of her version of the superhero story, which the lawsuit said was believed to be in excess of $1 million.
Julie Taymor
White House Party Crasher Sues Wife
Tareq Salahi
White House party crasher Tareq Salahi is suing his wife, claiming she had an affair with a Journey guitarist as part of a calculated attempt to make money for herself and the band at his expense.
The $50 million lawsuit was filed Monday in Virginia. Tareq Salahi says Michaele Salahi's actions have ruined him "physically, emotionally and financially."
The Northern Virginia Daily reports that Tareq Salahi accuses his wife of running away with the guitarist in September and "campaigning to show him as a buffoon with respect to that affair and humiliating him."
The Salahis married in 2003, but are now going through a divorce.
Tareq Salahi
Contents On Auction Block
Mardi Gras Museum
Designed as a celebration of Mardi Gras when it opened in 1992, a museum in the New Orleans suburb of Kenner has closed and its stock of memorabilia will go on the auction block.
The Mardi Gras Museum suffered from a drop in attendance, and its city-sponsor, like many communities around the country, has been forced to tighten its budget.
Bidders will have the chance to acquire costumes, classic invitations to exclusive balls and other items associated with Louisiana's famous festival.
Auctioneer Bradley Mutz will handle the March 8 auction and expects buyers generally will get the stuff at bargain prices.
Mardi Gras Museum
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