Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Tom Danehy: Could Tom Danehy become Arizona's official state columnist? (Tucson Weekly)
The Arizona Legislature has been catching some heat from left-wing rags and wags recently, but I say it's time to leave the law-making folks alone.
Henry Rollins: The Defense of Marriage Act Blues (Vanity Fair)
So President Obama sees the light and says his administration will no longer defend DOMA in court. Being happy about that would be like rejoicing that doctors are no longer applying leeches to patient's faces when they complain of nasal congestion. It's not a bad thing, though, and about damn time.
Paul Krugman: Rising Oil Prices: Not Exactly Good News for Japan's Economy
Are higher oil prices good for Japan's economy? No, they're not.
James Surowiecki: SPUTNIKONOMICS (New Yorker)
It's hard to make a case for investing more when everyone believes we should be spending less, but there's never been a better time. Interest rates are historically low, so borrowing is cheap. (Corporations have already realized this: they borrowed half a trillion dollars last year.) And the weak economy means that there's less competition for labor and resources. Yet, instead of taking advantage of this, we're too often doing the opposite. ... At the moment, we're spending too much on things that consume resources-like the military and earmarks-and not enough on things that create them.
STANLEY FISH: Sticks and Stones (New York Times)
The Supreme Court, by 8-1, got Snyder v. Phelps wrong.
Meghan Daum: A feeding frenzy (Los Angeles Times)
It's natural to resist change, but the astonishingly ugly attacks from the GOP and the 'tea party' on Michelle Obama's anti-obesity effort lack any logic, reflecting our deeply divisive political times.
Clarence Page: Weighing in on physical fitness
Everyone supports physical fitness, it appears, until first lady Michelle Obama calls for it.
Jim Hightower: SHRINKING GOVERNMENT TO SERVE CORPORATIONS
In assessing today's politics and public policy, it's always helpful to reflect back on previous experiences in our nation's long history - way back to, say, 2007.
Maureen Dowd: Sexy Ruses to Stop Forgetting to Remember (New York Times)
By the time you get to the end of this column, your brain will have physically changed.
HILLEL ITALIE: Walter Dean Myers, 73-Year-Old Author, Beloved By Young Readers (Huffington Post)
It began as a competition between sixth-grader Jailen Swinney and a friend: Who could read a book faster? But after finishing Walter Dean Myers' "Monster," a classic young adult novel about a teen on trial for being an accomplice to murder, Swinney had done more than win a race. She had discovered a book whose characters had similar experiences to people she knew.
Rosana Greenstreet: "Q&A: Gillian Anderson" (Guardian)
'My worst job? The X-Files pilot.'
Henry Rollins: The Underground Is Alive and Well (with Rollins' Props to Labels American Tapes, Hanson, Gods of Tundra, AAA, UgExplode, Fusetron, etc.)
Somewhere in the mid-'80s, I noticed a change happening in the American music scene. Small bands from the clubs were getting airplay on college and other independent-minded stations.
David Bruce has 41 Kindle books on Amazon.com with 250 anecdotes in each book. Each book is $1, so for $41 you can buy 10,250 anecdotes. Search for "Funniest People," "Coolest People, "Most Interesting People," "Kindest People," "Religious Anecdotes," and "Maximum Cool."
wrote:
answered:
From The Creator of 'Avery Ant'
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Sunny and summer-like.
Grovels For Being Punked
NPR
NPR's interim president and CEO said Thursday that she had full confidence in the organization's leadership team and said those who think NPR's news coverage is biased would change their minds simply by listening to its programming.
Joyce Slocum's comments Thursday afternoon in an interview with The Associated Press came just before conservative actvist James O'Keefe posted a follow-up video as part of his undercover investigation of NPR. A video posted Tuesday included a former NPR executive calling the tea party movement racist and led to Vivian Schiller's resignation as NPR's president and CEO.
The new video includes recordings of phone conversations between NPR executive Betsy Liley and an activist posing as a member of a phony group with ties to the fundamentalist Muslim Brotherhood. The two discuss the logistics of a potential $5 million donation from the group to NPR and the ways in which it could be kept anonymous and shielded from government scrutiny.
NPR says it never came close to accepting the money because the phony group did not meet its standards for potential donors. Liley has been placed on administrative leave.
NPR
All-Star Benefit
Tucson
An all-star lineup of Jackson Browne, Alice Cooper, David Crosby and Graham Nash will play a benefit concert in Tucson on Thursday for victims of the shooting spree in January.
The bash, organized by rockers Browne and Cooper, will raise funds for a foundation to promote civility in the wake of the shooting, which killed six people and wounded 13 others, including Democratic Representative Gabrielle Giffords.
On his website, Browne said the nonprofit foundation would support "individuals and families affected by the January 8th shooting in Tucson, and will promote civility and respect in public discourse, schools, and the community."
The benefit starts at 6 p.m. at the Tucson Convention Center, which lies across a road from the federal courthouse where Loughner pleaded not guilty to an expanded, 49-count indictment on Wednesday.
Tucson
LA Home Burns
Annette Funicello
Former Disney Mouseketeer Annette Funicello has suffered smoke inhalation from a fire that badly damaged her Los Angeles home, but her former husband says she wasn't seriously injured.
Fire spokesman Erik Scott says two women - one of them in a wheelchair - and a man were hospitalized for possible smoke inhalation and are in good condition.
Their names weren't released, but Funicello's ex-husband, Jack Gilardi, says the 68-year-old actress was at home with her current husband and a nurse. Funicello has multiple sclerosis.
Gilardi says they were exposed to smoke but will recover.
Annette Funicello
Chopin Experts Debate Photo's Authenticity
Frederic Chopin
Chopin experts are trying to determine whether a photo that has surfaced in Poland is really of the 19th century composer.
If authentic, it would be only the third known photograph of Chopin, who lived from 1810-1849.
Wladyslaw Zuchowski, a photographer and gallery owner in Gdansk, said Thursday that he bought the daguerreotype, the earliest type of photograph, from a private owner in Scotland in December. The framed copper and silver image bears the imprinted year of 1849, when Chopin died in Paris, and the name of Louis Auguste Bisson, a French photographer who took at least one photograph of Chopin during the pianist's lifetime.
On the frame is attached a piece of paper with Frederic Chopin's name.
Frederic Chopin
Files $100 Million Lawsuit
Charlie Sheen
Charlie Sheen brought his verbal war against Warner Bros. and the executive producer of "Two and a Half Men" to the courtroom on Thursday, filing a $100 million lawsuit seeking to recoup his salary and wages for the show's crew.
The breach of contract lawsuit alleges production was halted on the CBS sitcom in part to punish Sheen for recent behavior that has included two hospitalizations and, in recent weeks, a series of interviews in which he has attacked executive producer Chuck Lorre. But the suit and Sheen's attorney, Marty Singer, say most of the incidents cited by Warner Bros. for firing Sheen occurred before his tirades against Lorre began.
The filing comes four days after Sheen was terminated from "Two and a Half Men," leaving the top-rated sitcom's future in doubt.
Sheen's lawsuit alleges that Warner Bros. bowed to Lorre's desire to punish Sheen, and that the producer and studio conspired to blame the actor for causing production to stop.
A termination letter cited concerns about Sheen's health. Singer said it would be illegal for the studio to fire the actor if he had the physical and mental issues described in the letter.
Charlie Sheen
Judge Delays Jail Sentence
Lindsay Lohan
A judge on Thursday gave troubled actress Lindsay Lohan two more weeks to plead guilty to a charge she stole a $2,500 necklace in January, delaying any decision to return the Hollywood starlet to jail.
Lohan, 24, pleaded not guilty to theft of the necklace in early February, and a California judge gave her until Thursday to reach a deal in which she would plead guilty or no contest to the charge, which is the equivalent of guilty. But attorneys failed to strike a bargain, leading to Thursday's ruling.
Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Keith Schwartz set a court date of March 25 to give Lohan's attorney and prosecutors more time. If they still cannot reach a deal, a preliminary hearing will start on April 22 in front of a different judge.
If she does not reach a plea, the case continues to the April hearing where the new judge will decide if enough evidence exists to bring the "Mean Girls" actress to trial.
Lindsay Lohan
'Wire' Actress Arrested
Felicia "Snoop" Pearson
An actress who appeared on the HBO series "The Wire" was among more than 60 people arrested in an early morning drug raid in the Baltimore area, authorities said Thursday.
Felicia "Snoop" Pearson, 30, who played a killer of the same name on the hit television series, is among the dozens arrested in the raids carried out by Drug Enforcement Administration agents, Baltimore police and others, police said. Federal and local officials planned to announce the prosecution of a large Baltimore drug gang at a news conference Thursday afternoon.
"The Wire," which ran from 2002 to 2008, was filmed in Baltimore and put a spotlight on the city's struggle with poverty and drug violence through the stories of the city's police, drug organizations, schools and politicians. The character Snoop knocks off several people for the Stanfield drug gang.
This is not Pearson's first brush with the law. She was convicted of second-degree murder in a slaying committed when she was 14. She served five years of an eight-year sentence and was released in 2000.
Felicia "Snoop" Pearson
Neighbors Enter Mediation
Roseanne Barr
Roseanne Barr and her Hawaii neighbors have appeared in court and agreed to enter mediation after the comedian sought a temporary restraining order against the couple.
District Court Judge Melvin Fujino on Thursday ordered the parties to return to court on April 14.
Barr sought legal action against Roree and Richard Oehlman after they filed a complaint about unauthorized grading work being done on Barr's macadamia nut farm.
Barr accused the Oehlmans of harassment and trespassing. The Oehlmans say work was being done on her Honokaa property without proper permits.
Roseanne Barr
UK Channel To Air Episode With Glitter Hit
"Glee"
Britain's Channel 4 said on Thursday it would air an upcoming episode of U.S. music comedy series "Glee" which featured a cover version of a song written by disgraced pop star Gary Glitter.
The cast of Glee, including actress Gwyneth Paltrow, is credited with the rendition of "Do You Wanna Touch Me? (Oh Yeah)," and the popularity of the series with U.S. audiences has seen the version reach no. 30 on the U.S. iTunes instant charts.
Paltrow performed the 1973 song, also covered by Joan Jett in 1982, during the Glee episode entitled "Sexy," aired in the United States earlier this week.
The song is included on the latest Glee album, and the British media has predicted that Glitter, who spent three years in a Vietnamese jail for child sex abuse, could earn significant royalty payments as a result of the record sales.
His music is largely banished from the British airwaves.
"Glee"
UN Alarmed At Huge Decline
Bees
The UN on Thursday expressed alarm at a huge decline in bee colonies under a multiple onslaught of pests and pollution, urging an international effort to save the pollinators that are vital for food crops.
Much of the decline, ranging up to 85 percent in some areas, is taking place in the industrialised northern hemisphere due to more than a dozen factors, according to a report by the UN's environmental agency.
They include pesticides, air pollution, a lethal pinhead-sized parasite that only affects bee species in the northern hemisphere, mismanagement of the countryside, the loss of flowering plants and a decline in beekeepers in Europe.
Honey bee colony declines in recent years have reached 10 to 30 percent in Europe, 30 percent in the United States,and up to 85 percent in Middle East, said scientist Peter Neumann, one of the authors of the first ever UN report on the issue.
But in South America, Africa and Australia there were no reports of high losses.
Bees
Color Pics from '06
San Francisco
A museum volunteer has unearthed what the Smithsonian Institution believes to be the first - and perhaps only - color photographs of San Francisco after the 1906 earthquake and fire that nearly leveled the city.
The six never-published images were snapped by photography innovator Frederick Eugene Ives several months after the April 1906 "Great Quake," the San Francisco Chronicle reports. Most were taken from the roof of the hotel where Ives stayed during an October 1906 visit.
They were stowed amid other items donated by Ives' son, Herbert, and discovered in 2009 by National Museum of American History volunteer Anthony Brooks while he was cataloguing the collection.
Although hand-colored photographs of the quake's destruction have surfaced before, Ives' work is probably the only true color documentary evidence, Shannon Perich, associate curator of the Smithsonian's photography history collection, told the Chronicle.
She says Ives was one of only a few photographers experimenting with color photography in the early 20th century and that his San Francisco images were meant to be viewed through a 3-D device he invented but which never became a commercial success.
San Francisco
In Memory
Jean Dinning
Songwriter Jean Dinning, who wrote the teen tragedy hit "Teen Angel," has died. She was 86.
Daughter Cynthia Wygal tells the Orange County Register that her mother died Feb. 22 in Garden Grove.
Dinning's brother Mark performed "Teen Angel," which is about a girl who dies tragically. A couple's car stalls on railroad tracks and they safely get out, but the girl runs back to get the boy's high school class ring and a train hits the car.
The song was released in October 1959 and it became an instant hit.
Dinning is survived by her sisters Ginger and Dolores; children Shay Edwards, Cynthia Wygal, Howard Mack, Ronald Surrey and David Surrey; eight grandchildren; and eight great grandchildren.
A memorial service is planned May 21 in Nashville, Tenn.
Jean Dinning
| CURRENT MOON lunar phases |
