Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Tom Danehy: Stoners may get the last laugh-in California, at least (tucsonweekly.com)
If a bona fide jerk calls you a jerk, does that make you the opposite of a jerk, or are you a jerk squared?
Leo Hickman: "James Lovelock: 'Fudging data is a sin against science'" (guardian.co.uk)
In his first major interview since the climate-change emails scandal, James Lovelock says he is disgusted by the actions of some scientists, applauds 'good' climate sceptics, and warns that global warming could even lead to war.
Andrew Tobias: Free Vacuum Cleaners And Dumpster Diving (andrewtobias.com)
It may be hard to convey all this in a sound bite. But passage of the health care bill is going to lead to more efficient, quality health care - a very big deal.
"Green Metropolis: Why Living Smaller, Living Closer, and Driving Less Are the Keys to Sustainability" by David Owen: A review by Catherine Tumber
Contrary to environmentalism's anti-urban bias, David Owen argues, New York City -- the ur-metropolis itself -- is among the greenest human settlements on the planet, measured in terms of its carbon footprint.
MARGALIT FOX: Ai, a Steadfast Poetic Channel of Hard Lives, Dies at 62 (nytimes.com)
Writing in The Times Book Review in 1976, the Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Louis Simpson described her work this way: "What separates poets from mere versifiers is a quality of feeling based in experience. This is why the poems of Ai, for example, make the poems of most of her contemporaries seem like kid stuff."
PAUL CONSTANT: "You're reading your heart out into the void" (thestranger.com)
A Conversation with Sam Lipsyte About Humor, Finances, and Children as Greek Choruses.
Interview by Laura Barnett: "Portrait of the artist: Dee Dee Bridgewater, jazz singer" (guardian.co.uk)
'Ray Charles told me: You can always get another agent or manager - but you are the only Dee Dee Bridgewater.'
Dan DeLuca: "British band The xx: masters of simplicity, generators of buzz" (The Philadelphia Inquirer)
The breathy back-and-forth vocals and simmering erotic tension that suffuse the debut album "xx" by the British indie band The xx might lead you to think that singers Romy Madley Croft and Oliver Sim are more than just friends.
Mark Swed: At 85, conductor and composer Pierre Boulez is a work in progress (Los Angeles Times)
Pierre Boulez, everyone says, has mellowed. A half-century ago, he was famed as a maestro with a frighteningly formidable ear, a French composer of frightfully formidable music and a polarizing polemicist.
Michael Codron - six decades in the West End (guardian.co.uk)
How much does it cost to stage a play? Do reviews matter? What should the bar staff be paid? Legendary producer Michael Codron tells Mark Lawson what a lifetime in theatre has taught him.
Ada Calhoun: Is tween TV skewered toward girls? (latimes.com)
Not really, say Nickelodeon and Disney executives. Boys' tastes are changing.
Susan King: Bringing film noir out of the shadows (latimes.com)
Eddie Muller and Alan K. Rode are on a mission -- to prevent our film-noir heritage from fading away.
David Bruce: Philosophy for the Masses: Interesting Philosophical Arguments About Ethics (lulu.com)
Download: FREE
The Weekly Poll
New Question
The 'Ten Little Questions' Edition
It's Census time again! (What? Already? Didn't we just do this 10 years ago?)
so, just fer fun, I'll add four of my own...
1.) Did you fill out your census form and send it back yet?
2.) If not, will you?
3.) Did you answer all the questions?
4.) If not, what questions didn't you answer and why?
(Warning! Big Brother says we have to fill it out and return it otherwise we'll get a knock on the door from the friendly Census Police politely asking us to do so...
Go easy on the poor bastards, eh? They're mostly unemployed people trying to make a few bucks and probably are scared to death that they're gonna get slammed. It's not their fault, OK?... P.S. you answers here are entirely confidential and will not be shared with ANYBODY, especially You-Know-Who...)
BadtotheboneBigBrother...er, Bob
Send your response to
All of the United States' 50 states have a state motto, as do the District of Columbia and three US territories. A motto is a phrase meant to formally describe the general motivation or intention of an organization. State mottos can sometimes be found on state seals or state flags. Some states have officially designated a state motto by an act of the state legislature, whereas other states have the motto only as an element of their seals.
wrote:
From The Creator of 'Avery Ant'
Michael Dare
Global Warm(onger)ing
Claudia Suggests
Classical TV
Classical TV brings "performance on demand" to a new level, taking high-brow arts events out of stuffy halls and streaming them directly to your computer.
The site's extensive collection includes hundreds of world-class performances, and runs the gamut from the latest Met in HD offerings to a rare Diana Krall concert in Paris. Many of the offerings are even free to watch, including Johnny Cash's amazing set at the 1994 Montreux Jazz Festival. An accompanying blog provides commentary and keeps viewers up to date with cultural happenings.
Browse the complete Classical TV archives, follow the site on Twitter, and become a fan on Facebook.
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Sunny and cool.
The steel belting in one of my car's tires made an appearance today.
Had no idea it could make that much noise.
I'm grateful we weren't on the freeway, and we were close to home, but the timing sucks.
Musician Remixes
"19"
British musician Paul Hardcastle is releasing an updated version of his international anti-war hit "19" 25 years on, but this time his focus is on the Afghan conflict rather than Vietnam.
The 1985 hit topped charts in 13 countries when it was released, appealing to audiences with its dance beat, catchy tune, anti-war message and accompanying video featuring harrowing footage of U.S. troops fighting in Vietnam.
It was inspired by a documentary Hardcastle saw which stated that the average age of a combat soldier in Vietnam was 19, compared with 26 in World War Two -- figures which are disputed by some.
On April 19, the musician is releasing a re-mixed version and new video which cuts film of British troops serving in Afghanistan with the older footage in the original.
"19"
Upsets Aussie
Robin Williams
Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has lashed out at US comedian Robin Williams for calling Australians "rednecks", suggesting the star should look closer to home before bashing Aussies.
Rudd hit back at the Oscar-winning actor during a radio interview after Williams told US talk show host David Letterman that "Australians are basically English rednecks. You down there, 'how are ya? Good to see you. Hello.'"
"I think Robin Williams should go and spend a bit of time in Alabama before he frames comments about anyone being particularly redneck," Rudd said on Melbourne commercial radio on Wednesday.
The comedian went on to say: "I realised that if Darwin had landed in Australia, he would have gone: 'I'm wrong'."
Robin Williams
April Hosts
`SNL'
Tina Fey, Ryan Phillippe and Gabourey Sidibe will be taking turns as "Saturday Night Live" hosts this month.
NBC said Thursday that Fey, former "SNL" cast member and head writer, is hosting the April 10 show and will be joined by pop star Justin Bieber.
Phillippe is set to host the April 17 show with Ke$ha as the musical guest. On April 24, "Precious" star and Oscar nominee Sidibe will take on hosting duties and the band MGMT is to perform.
Fey, the star and creator of NBC's "30 Rock," is making her second appearance as host, while Phillippe and Sidibe are first-timers.
`SNL'
Give a Damn Campaign
Anna Paquin
Oscar winner Anna Paquin came out as bisexual on Thursday in a video campaign for gay rights advocates, surprising the "True Blood" star's fans and causing the organization's web site to crash.
The actress' message came in a celebrity-laden public service announcement for the Give a Damn campaign, a web-based anti-discrimination effort backed by singer Cyndi Lauper's True Colors Fund.
"I'm bisexual," Paquin said, before adding that "one hate crime is committed approximately every hour of every day in this country."
Lauper, Whoopi Goldberg, Elton John and Sharon Osbourne were among the other stars who appeared in the message.
Anna Paquin
Web Gets Makeover
April Fools
The Internet got an April Fools' Day makeover, as many of the major destinations on the Web continued the annual tradition of lighthearted hoaxes.
The prank Web sites were rolled out Thursday in a collective effort to amuse, not confuse. In a way, it's the Internet's biggest holiday.
YouTube offered the curious option of watching videos in text - essentially a stream of code instead of images.
Google renamed itself Topeka, an ironic one-upmanship with the Kansas city, which renamed itself "Google, Kan." in March to help lure the company's experimental fiber-optic network.
April Fools
Cancels Asia Concerts
Tom Jones
Doctors' orders have forced "genuinely ill" British singer Tom Jones to cancel concerts in South Korea and Singapore, where he was supposed to perform this week.
Last Friday, Jones, 69, began a concert at Singapore's newly opened $4.4 billion Resorts World Sentosa casino and entertainment complex but left the stage after two songs.
He then rescheduled the performance to Thursday to give him time to recover from "acute laryngitis," said his website.
Despite resting his voice in Singapore, and checks with specialists, doctors are "unable to guarantee that Sir Tom would be able to perform the full show tonight at 100 per cent vocal strength," said the statement on www.tomjones.com.
Tom Jones
Palin's Rock Star Contract
CSU Stanislaus
A controversy is erupting over Sarah Palin's June speaking engagement at a campus of California State University.
A student protest group and other critics want the university to reveal how much they're paying her, which they suspect might be more than $100,000. A professor has started a Facebook gripe group. And a state senator is pressuring university officials to disclose Ms. Palin's compensation or be prosecuted under state law.
The CSU speech, held at the Stanislaus campus in Turlock, will celebrate the university's 50th year. CSU officials have publicly stated they cannot release Palin's compensation due to a confidentiality term in her contract. But Sen. Leland Yee (D) of San Francisco, who chairs of the committee on public records and open meeting laws, says the public - including students - have a legal right to the information.
"Most sensible people understand that colleges should give a forum to controversial speakers in order to make students and others think and react," says Larry Sabato, a political scientist at the University of Virginia. "We have a 'stirring-the-pot' role to play in society. But that doesn't mean you have to pay big bucks in tough times to give controversial speakers a platform. Expenses are one thing; a big fat speaking fee isn't free speech."
"Our students are being slammed by enormous fee hikes while cuts mean they can't get the classes they need," says Lillian Taiz, president of the California Faculty Association. "This resistance to transparency is another slap in the face. CSU executives are at the top of these so-called auxiliaries, and they need to show more respect for the people they supposedly serve."
CSU Stanislaus
Legal Drama Over Madoff
John Malkovich
Actor John Malkovich's lawyers have complained to a judge in New York overseeing the bankruptcy of jailed financier Bernie Madoff that he'll only get $670,000 of his $2.2 million claim.
The lawyers filed papers Thursday in U.S. Bankruptcy Court saying the actor should be entitled to $2.2 million. They say the trustee handling the estate determined that the actor was entitled to the smaller number and that's wrong.
The 56-year-old star of such films as "Being John Malkovich" and "Burn After Reading" is among thousands of investors who lost tens of billions of dollars in the multi-decade fraud that Madoff revealed in December 2008 when he ran out of money.
John Malkovich
Blames Parents
Boy Scouts
The president of the Boy Scouts council for the Portland metro area has testified he believes the parents of some Scouts were negligent and even criminal for allowing sleepovers that led to sex abuse.
Eugene Grant told a jury in a $29 million sex abuse lawsuit against the Boy Scouts of America and its Cascade Pacific Council that parents should not have allowed boys to stay overnight with a single man at his apartment.
The man, Timur Dykes, has admitted molesting the victim who filed the lawsuit and has been convicted of other sex abuse dating back to the early 1980s, when Dykes was an assistant Scoutmaster.
Kelly Clark, an attorney for the victim, had called Dykes a "pied piper" earlier in the trial for filling his apartment in the early 80s with things such as exotic pets, an aquarium and games to attract boys from a Scout troop organized by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Grant, who is an attorney and church member, also said he did not know that lawyers for the council had denied there had been any abuse until shortly before the trial began.
Boy Scouts
Sentencing Delayed
Gerald and Patricia Green
Sentencing has been delayed for a Los Angeles film-making couple convicted of bribing Thai officials so they could run the Bangkok International Film Festival.
Gerald and Patricia Green could each face more than 20 years in prison when they are sentenced April 29.
They were convicted of conspiracy and money laundering charges. They had been scheduled for sentencing Thursday.
The Greens are the first entertainment industry figures convicted under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.
Gerald and Patricia Green
Fans Want Name Back On LA School
Michael Jackson
Los Angeles school officials told Michael Jackson to beat it seven years ago. Now, fans of the late pop star want him back.
Supporters have started a Facebook petition to have Jackson's name restored to the auditorium of Gardner Street Elementary School. They want fans to download and sign a letter to the school district superintendent.
Jackson donated money to the Hollywood school and attended the naming ceremony in 1989. But school officials, acting on parental requests, covered up his name in 2003 after Jackson was arrested for investigation of child molestation.
The Facebook campaigners note that Jackson was acquitted of the charges and they want the name restored.
Michael Jackson
Nutjobs Ignore Facts
Rewriting U.S. History
In articles and speeches, on radio and TV, conservatives are working to redefine major turning points and influential figures in American history, often to slam liberals, promote Republicans and reinforce their positions in today's politics.
The Jamestown settlers? Socialists. Founding Father Alexander Hamilton ? Ill-informed professors made up all that bunk about him advocating a strong central government.
Theodore Roosevelt? Another socialist. Franklin D. Roosevelt ? Not only did he not end the Great Depression, he also created it.
The effort in Texas and nationwide is controversial, however, even among many conservatives. McLeroy was defeated in a recent primary after he led the campaign for a more conservative version of history, a defeat that the National Review , a leading conservative organ, called "sensible."
Rewriting U.S. History
Sherpa Carrying Ashes To Everest Summit
Edmund Hillary
More than half a century after Edmund Hillary first stood on the top of Mount Everest, the ashes of the world-famous mountaineer are to be carried to the summit by a Nepalese Sherpa.
Apa Sherpa, who has scaled the world's highest peak a record 19 times, said Thursday he will carry Hillary's ashes with him when he attempts his 20th ascent this year.
Most of Hillary's ashes were scattered in the sea off Auckland in his native New Zealand after his death in 2008 aged 88, but Apa said some had been kept in a Buddhist monastery in the Himalayan village of Kunde in eastern Nepal.
Hillary later opened a foundation that built schools and clinics in the Solokhumbu region at the base of Everest, and Apa, 50, said he wanted to honour the New Zealander's contribution to the Sherpa community.
Edmund Hillary
In Memory
Herb Ellis
Herb Ellis, the critically acclaimed jazz guitarist who played with such luminaries as Ella Fitzgerald and was a member once of the celebrated Oscar Peterson Trio, died Sunday, his son said. He was 88.
Mitch Ellis, the musician's son, told The New York Times and Los Angeles Times that his father died of complications associated with Alzheimer's disease at his Los Angeles home.
Ellis, born in 1921 in Farmersville, Texas, was regarded as one of the finest jazz guitar soloists. He mixed bebop with country twang in a career that spanned six decades.
After an early stint playing with big band leader Jimmy Dorsey, Ellis and two Dorsey colleagues formed the Soft Winds trio, whose "Detour Ahead" became a jazz standard, recorded most memorably by Billie Holiday.
Ellis attracted the most notoriety performing with the Oscar Peterson Trio for five years from 1953 to 1958 with pianist Peterson and bassist Ray Brown. He later went on to tour and record with Fitzgerald and was a frequent participant in record producer Norman Granz's all-star Jazz at the Philharmonic touring shows.
Ellis is survived by his wife Patti, son, daughter and three grandchildren.
Herb Ellis
In Memory
Henry Edward Roberts
Dr. Henry Edward Roberts, the developer of an early personal computer that inspired Bill Gates to found Microsoft, died Thursday in Georgia. He was 68.
Son David Roberts tells The Associated Press his father died after several months battling pneumonia.
The man better known as Ed Roberts developed and marketed the MITS Altair 8800 in the 1970s. The build-it-yourself kit was operated by switches and had no display screen, but it inspired Gates and childhood friend Paul Allen to found Microsoft in 1975 after they saw an article about it in Popular Mechanics.
They located in Albuquerque, N.M., to be based near MITS, or Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems.
Ed Roberts once described his efforts to bring the world a personal computer as an "almost megalomaniac kind of scheme" that he pursued out of youthful ambition.
"But at that time you know we just lacked the, eh, the benefits of age and experience," Roberts said on a program called "Triumph of the Nerds" that aired on PBS in 1996. "We didn't know we couldn't do it."
Henry Edward Roberts
In Memory
Edward "Coots" Matthews
Edward "Coots" Matthews, a famed oil well firefighter and part of a trio who inspired the 1968 movie "Hellfighters" starring John Wayne, has died. He was 86.
Matthews and Asger "Boots" Hansen co-founded Houston-based Boots & Coots International Well Control Inc. in 1978, after a 20-year career fighting oil well fires alongside counterpart - and later rival - Red Adair. Boots & Coots said Matthews died Wednesday.
Matthews began his career with Halliburton in 1947 after serving as a U.S. Air Force tail gunner on a B-17 during World War II.
Matthews and Hansen then joined forces with Adair, fighting some of the best known oil well flares, including the "Devil's Cigarette Lighter" in Algeria in 1961. The geyser was so great, astronaut John Glenn reported seeing it from space as he passed over the Algerian desert.
After Iraq's 1991 invasion of Kuwait, Matthews was again called to service, flying to the Persian Gulf to help extinguish some 700 fires in Kuwaiti oil fields.
Matthews retired in 1994 and Boots & Coots was sold to employees.
Edward "Coots" Matthews
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