Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Tom Danehy: Tom's mad as hell, and he's going to write about it (Tucson Weekly)
There's a guy in Florida who is stinking rich (not through any of his own doing). He owns an international polo club, which bleeds money, but apparently not at a rate that can keep up with how fast he inherits it. A while back, he killed a guy with his car.
Froma Harrop: Whether Obamacare Wins or Loses, Obama Wins (Creators Syndicate)
Small wonder President Obama chose not to delay the U.S. Supreme Court case on his health care reforms until long after the election. His advisors are clearly in the lab transforming the president's signature legislation into a potent election issue - whether the justices leave it intact or rip it apart.
Paul Krugman: Attack of the Prison People (New York Times)
A word about this sort of thing: anyone who steps on the toes of either corporate interests or major conservative institutions (which are often more or less the same thing) has to expect to run into a buzzsaw. The purpose of that buzzsaw is not so much to get specific corrections as to intimidate - to deter the journalist and his or her colleagues from going there again.
Aditya Chakrabortty: How we fell out of love with Keynes (Guardian)
The same intellectual retreat can be seen all over the western world and it shows that noble intentions and half-decent ideas don't get you very far.
The originality of the species (Guardian)
A frenzied desire to be first inspired Darwin and Einstein to bursts of creativity. Like writers and artists, scientists strive to have their names attached to a work of brilliance, but any breakthrough depends on the efforts of countless predecessors. Ian McEwan reflects on originality and collaboration.
Meredith Woerner: Everything 'The Hunger Games' Movie Left Out (io9)
Now that 'The Hunger Games' has gobbled up all the world's money, it's time to take a hard look at how well it captured everything we loved from the book.
Roger Ebert: Hollywood's highway to Hell
I've seen some incredibly brutal South Korean films recently, like "The Chaser," that contain enough violence to stun any fan of "The Raid" but also have the advantage of being very good films, with intriguing characters, puzzling plots, and ingenious situations. I watched spellbound.
Robert T. Gonzalez: "10 Things Alcohol is Excellent At (Besides Getting You Drunk)" (io9)
alcohol - and ethanol, in particular - has many interesting effects and applications that extend well beyond the walls of your local bar or restaurant. Here are ten things alcohol excels at that don't involve getting you properly sloshed.
Kathryn Hawkins: 8 Surprising Strategies for Becoming a Centenarian (Gimundo)
If you want to live to 100 and beyond, try these expert-recommended tips for longevity.
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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Michelle in AZ
From The Creator of 'Avery Ant'
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Deep marine layer never really burned off.
From Signal Hill it looked like there were mountains of gray whipped cream rolling in.
To Sandra Fluke: I Get It
Chelsea Clinton
Rush Limbaugh (R-Toast) has done a lot of things over the course of his career, but female bonding would probably not be on the list.
And yet, there was Chelsea Clinton reminiscing with Sandra Fluke, who made headlines for her stance on contraception coverage earlier this year, over their shared Rush beat-downs.
The daughter of Hillary Clinton moderated a women in politics panel discussion sponsored by Glamour magazine in New York City that included the Georgetown University law student.
Clinton introduced Fluke by saying, according to BuzzFeed, "She and I actually have something in common: We both have been attacked by Rush Limbaugh." Fluke was called a "slut" by the conservative radio host for her stance that health insurers should include contraception coverage. The veteran of public life added, "She was 30, I was 13."
The conservative pundit hatemonger lashed out at the White House resident back in 1993 when he said on his TV show , "Socks is the White House cat. But did you know there is also a White House dog?" Up came a picture of the president's daughter. He issued rare apologies on both occasions.
Clinton later delivered this zinger picked up by Twitter, "I do also believe that if you have the right type of enemies, you're doing something correct."
Chelsea Clinton
Newest Exhibit
Birmingham Civil Rights Institute
Founded to teach about human rights and the fight for equality during the days of racial segregation, the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute is introducing a new topic: Lesbian awareness in the South.
The museum opens a new exhibit Friday night featuring photographs of lesbian couples and families living in the Deep South. Some women are depicted arm-in-arm or embracing with their faces fully visible. Others who weren't comfortable being identified publicly are pictured with their backs to the camera. Some photos include the women's children.
The 40 images are stark and plain. Shot against a white background, there's nothing but the women and their kids to draw viewers' eyes.
Organizers say the exhibition is meant to encourage civil dialogue about inclusion and equality in Birmingham, once a flashpoint of conflict and violence in the civil rights movement. The museum is down the street from the spot where firefighters used water hoses to douse young civil rights demonstrators in 1963.
While lesbians are the focus of the exhibit, titled "Living in Limbo: Lesbian Families in the Deep South," professional photographer Carolyn Sherer said her work also is meant to encourage greater inclusion for gay men, bisexuals and people who are transgendered.
Birmingham Civil Rights Institute
PBS Gets $1 Million Gift
'Masterpiece'
Even the landed gentry of "Downton Abbey" would be impressed: A philanthropist is giving $1 million to PBS' "Masterpiece," U.S. home of the British upstairs-downstairs drama series.
The gift is the largest yet for the Masterpiece Trust, a fund-raising initiative started last year, PBS said Wednesday. The donor is Darlene Shiley of San Diego, who previously gave $250,000 to support "Masterpiece."
The drama showcase scored a hit with the second season of "Downton Abbey," which drew a total of 17 million viewers to make it the most-watched "Masterpiece" miniseries on record, PBS said.
"Masterpiece," from WGBH Boston, began searching for new funding sources after losing longtime sponsor Exxon Mobil in 2004. The series finally gained a new corporate supporter last year when Viking River Cruises came aboard.
'Masterpiece'
Expanding To 1 Hour
'Face the Nation'
Five years ago, just off a bout from cancer, Bob Schieffer was set to retire from CBS's "Face the Nation." That never stuck, and now he's doubling his workload.
Starting Sunday, the public affairs program expands to an hour. Vice President Joe Biden, whom Schieffer interviewed Thursday in Milwaukee, is the featured guest. Republican presidential candidates Newt Gingrich and Ron Paul are also booked.
With a presidential campaign under way, it's an attention-getting time for the Sunday morning shows. The landscape changed already this year when George Stephanopoulos returned to the helm of ABC's "This Week" in January.
Although the voluble Biden would seem the perfect guest for a newly expanded show, Schieffer said the move doesn't mean all interviews will be twice as long. Rather, it offers the show a better chance to react to the news, have more guests and feature CBS correspondents Norah O'Donnell and John Dickerson more.
'Face the Nation'
Health Issues
Candice Bergen
Candice Bergen suffered a stroke in 2006, and she's only now talking about it.
The former "Murphy Brown" star told New York Magazine that she kept the stroke a secret because "I just don't want it to be a liability." While she only took two weeks off her job on ABC's "Boston Legal" to recover, now, six years later, "my memory is just
It's not quite the same."
Bergen, 65, has had other health problems as well. Five months ago, she broke her pelvis while riding a bike. She mused, "now I can fall and I'll break." She's also come to terms with her decidedly un-plasticized appearance."The reality is that I don't look like I used to look," she said. "I just don't care enough, and in a way it's saved me."
Bergen is making her Broadway debut in "Gore Vidal's The Best Man." While she was nervous about doing theater - "I had no confidence in my memory," she said - she's now "so grateful" that she took on the challenge.
Candice Bergen
Educated Conservatives Become Non-Believers
Science
Conservatives, particularly those with college educations, have become dramatically more skeptical of science over the past four decades, according to a study published in the April issue of the American Sociological Review. Fewer than 35 percent of conservatives say they have a "great deal" of trust in the scientific community now, compared to nearly half in 1974.
"The scientific community ... has been concerned about this growing distrust in the public with science. And what I found in the study is basically that's really not the problem. The growing distrust of science is entirely focused in two groups-conservatives and people who frequently attend church," says the study's author, University of North Carolina postdoctoral fellow Gordon Gauchat.
In fact, in 1974, people who identified as conservatives were among the most confident in science as an institution, with liberals trailing slightly behind, and moderates bringing up the rear. Liberals have remained fairly steady in their opinion of the scientific community over the interim, while conservative trust in science has plummeted.
Interestingly, the most educated conservatives have led that charge. Conservatives with college degrees began distrusting science earlier and more forcefully than other conservatives, upending assumptions that less educated people on the whole are more distrustful of science.
Previous studies have shown that climate change, the widely-accepted theory that man-made carbon emissions are causing the world to grow warmer, is very unpopular among conservatives, and especially white conservative males. In 2008, half of all conservatives believed in climate change. By 2010, only a third did, compared to more than 70 percent of liberals, according to a Gallup poll.
Science
Judge Ends Probation
Lindsay Lohan
Lindsay Lohan's days as a criminal defendant could be over - if she can behave herself.
A judge on Thursday ended the long-running probation of the problem-prone actress in a 2007 drunken driving case after a string of violations, jail sentences and rehab stints.
The 25-year-old actress will remain on informal probation for taking a necklace without permission last year, but will no longer have a probation officer or face travel restrictions and weekly shifts cleaning up at the morgue.
Lohan, wearing a powder blue suit and black blouse, let out a sigh of relief as she left Judge Stephanie Sautner's courtroom, possibly for the last time.
Lindsay Lohan
Megadeth's Frontman Is a Birther
Dave Mustaine
Megadeth frontman Dave Mustaine has been slowly trending toward the Right side of the American political spectrum, and only recently gave signs that he was leaning toward supporting Rick Santorum for the Republican Presidential nomination.
Now, depending on your perspective, Mustaine has either let his conservatism get as heavy as his metal, or has jumped the shark completely. In an interview with Canadian television, Mustaine made it quite clear that he didn't know where President Barack Obama was born, except that he knew it wasn't in the United States.
"I have a lot of questions about [Obama], but certainly not where he was born," Mustaine said. "I know he was born somewhere else than America. . . I'm not calling a question to it, I just
How come he was invisible until he became whatever he was in Illinois?"
Dave Mustaine
Apologizes For Not Being Funny
Carson Daly
"The Voice" host Carson Daly apologized for joking on his radio show Tuesday that gay passengers wouldn't have been able to handle the JetBlue pilot who had a meltdown.
"This morning on my radio show I attempted to make fun of myself & offended others by mistake. I sincerely apologized," Daly tweeted on Wednesday.
The Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation on Wednesday posted this statement, issued from Daly, on its website: "We live in a time where gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender individuals find courage every day to overcome adversity, stand up to bullying and find equality. I'm truly saddened that my words today suggested otherwise.
Daly talked about the pilot, who began acting bizarrely and had to be subdued, on his radio show on Los Angeles' KAMP-FM. He mentioned the flight was full of passengers on their way to a security conference.
"With my luck, it would be like
this is the flight going to (the gay pride parade) in San Francisco," he joked. "That would be my colleagues
'Uh, we're headed down to Vegas for the floral convention
could we get a little help up here with the pilot?'
Carson Daly
Gets Injunction
Shell
A federal judge has ordered representatives of Greenpeace USA to stay a kilometer away from Shell Oil's drilling vessels destined for Arctic Ocean waters off Alaska's northern shores.
The 29-page order signed Wednesday by Judge Sharon Gleason in Anchorage grants a preliminary injunction requested by Shell through Oct. 31, the end of the open water drilling season. A 500-meter safety zone is in place for support vessels.
The restrictions apply to U.S. territorial waters up to 12 miles from shore and could be extended to 200 miles off shore.
Shell sought the injunction after Greenpeace New Zealand activists, including actress Lucy Lawless, in February boarded the Shell drill ship Noble Discoverer before it left for the U.S. West Coast for cold-weather modifications. The activists were arrested.
Shell
Turns From Adventuring
Richard Branson
Virgin Group founder Richard Branson, involved in such ventures as selling space travel to the affluent, is now pushing for people to have the freedom to get high here on Earth without risking going to jail.
The British billionaire argues criminal punishment fails to stem drug abuse, and is calling on countries to decriminalize drug use and eliminate criminal penalties on narcotics consumers or even consider legalizing drugs.
"The prohibition of drugs has worked no better than the prohibition of alcohol, and serves only to empower violent criminal cartels and harm U.S. citizens," Branson said in an e-mail interview with Reuters.
The Virgin Group mogul serves on the Global Commission on Drug Policy, which has among its members former presidents of Colombia, Brazil and Switzerland and grew from the Latin American Commission on Drugs and Democracy.
Last year, the panel released a report critical of the drug war, dismissing arguments that the threat of criminal prosecution was necessary to get addicts into treatment.
Richard Branson
Knocks Nickelodeon From Top Ratings Perch
Disney Channel
Nickelodeon said last fall that its ratings woes were temporary, but that doesn't look to be the case: This month, kids-TV rival the Disney Channel beat it for the first time in its average number of total daily viewers.
It's a notable milestone that Nick understandably downplays. It has ruled in the ratings category every month since June 1995, when TNT was tops. While other networks focus on primetime, kids networks fight for total-day bragging rights because their young viewers have many more hours of free time to spend in front of a TV set.
The total viewers category counts all those 2 and older. But cable networks -- and especially kids' networks -- carefully parse ratings data to find areas where they won. Accordingly, Nick notes that it beat Disney among 2-to-11 year olds in March, and in total daily viewers in the first quarter of the year.
Nick also points out that its mouse-eared rival lost viewers from March 2011 to this month, which is true. It's just that Nick lost far more.
Disney Channel
Pulling Penny From Circulation
Canada
The Canadian government announced on Thursday that it plans to pull the penny from circulation at the end of 2012, saying the copper-coated currency is more expensive for the Royal Canadian Mint to produce than its actual currency value.
"Pennies take up too much space on our dressers at home. They take up far too much time for small businesses trying to grow and create jobs," said Finance Minister Jim Flaherty. He also said it costs 1.5 cents to produce each penny.
"We will, therefore, stop making them," he said.
The U.S. faces a similar dilemma, where it costs nearly two cents to produce a single penny. U.S. pennies are in fact composed primarily of zinc, and have a thin copper coating. The Wall Street Journal wrote that the Obama Administration has proposed using less expensive materials in the production of pennies and nickels, but public misinformation on the perceived value of coins would likely stir up controversy.
The Canadian penny will still be accepted indefinitely as a form of currency, but the government says it will eventually require cash transactions to be rounded to the nearest five-cent increment. Customers are already forbidden from using more than 25 pennies in a single purchase.
Canada
India's 'Lost Tribe'
Bnei Menashe
In a synagogue in northeast India, a group of men pray for the chance to "return home" to a country they have never seen and which their ancestors fled nearly 3,000 years ago.
"India is not our country," says Haniel Reuben, 72, one of the eldest members of a tiny community that claims to have descended from the Manasseh -- one of the biblical "lost tribes" of Israel exiled in 720 BC by Assyrian conquerors.
The Bnei Menashe, as the community is known, comprise around 7,200 members of the Kuki-Chin-Mizo tribe who live in the northeast Indian states of Mizoram and Manipur near the border with Myanmar.
Their oral history tells of a centuries-long exodus through Persia, Afghanistan, Tibet and China, all the while adhering to certain Jewish religious practices, like circumcision.
In India they were converted to Christianity by 19th century missionaries and, in reading the bible, recognised stories from their own traditions that convinced them they actually belonged to the Jewish faith.
Bnei Menashe
In Memory
Warren Stevens
Actor Warren Stevens, whose most memorable role was his portrayal of "Doc" Ostrow in the 1956 sci-fi movie "Forbidden Planet," has died in Los Angeles at 92.
Publicist Dale Olson says Stevens died Tuesday of respiratory failure complicated by lung disease at his Sherman Oaks home.
Stevens's career in stage, film and television spanned 60 years. He co-starred with Lou Diamond Phillips, Ernest Borgnine and Lee Majors in the 2004 western movie "The Trail to Hope Rose" on The Hallmark Channel.
His first role was a bit part in "The Frogmen" in 1951.
Besides "Forbidden Planet," he had a supporting role in 1954's "The Barefoot Contessa" with Humphrey Bogart.
Stevens was later a familiar face on TV, with guest appearances on such shows as "Bonanza," ''Star Trek" and "Combat."
Warren Stevens
In Memory
Harry Crews
Harry Crews, an author best known for his gritty tales of the rural South, died Wednesday in Gainesville, Fla. He was 76.
His ex-wife, Sally Ellis Crews, said he had suffered from neuropathy.
Crews, author of 17 novels and numerous short stories, taught graduate and undergraduate fiction writing workshops at the University of Florida from 1968 until his retirement in 1997.
He cut a colorful figure, shaving his head or wearing a Mohawk.
Crews once wrote, "A writer's job is to get naked, to hide nothing, to look away from nothing ... To not blink, to not be embarrassed by it or ashamed of it. Strip it down and let's get to where the blood is, where the bone is."
He was a Georgia native but a longtime Florida resident.
Harry Crews
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