Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Mark Morford: Why you probably suck at sex (SF Gate)
It's the church's fault. All those icepicks of Puritanism and daggers of sin stabbing at your pleasure center, endless guilt and shame directed at your own body, the endlessly cruel idea that ecstasy, soft moaning and a hot rush of blood to the netherparts are all surefire signs of the devil, when of course they are the exact opposite.
Suzanne Moore: 'Welfare' cuts: how the right gets the public on its side (Guardian)
How do you change the attitudes of those who support these cuts? The left must appeal to hearts as well as minds.
Susan Estrich: The Costs of Obamacare (Creators Syndicate)
Second, those who make less than 400 percent of the federal poverty line ($46,000 for individuals, $94,000 for a family of four) will actually pay about 47 percent less for coverage because of federal subsidies.
Susan Estrich: Tony Lewis (Creators Syndicate)
As Lewis told the story, a law clerk found the petition in the pile and brought it to the attention of his justice and the court. Gideon went from having no attorney at all to having Abe Fortas, one of the most powerful lawyers in Washington and later a member of the Supreme Court, and the esteemed firm of Arnold and Porter representing him.
Jessica Shepherd: Limit teaching to four hours a day, says union (Guardian)
NUT wants teachers' classroom hours capped at 20 a week amid claims many hardly see their own children and work late.
Professor Felicia Schmutzgarten: A personal insight
"I'm surprised," said one of our brand-new biology professors, a man I shall call Dr. Fox. Dr. Fox is a recent Ph.D. with Ivy-League medical training, several publications in prestigious journals, a postdoc in genomics, Atlantic-stormy blue eyes, high faceted cheekbones, broad shoulders, and perma-tousled raven-black hair. "Do you know," he went on in his smoky baritone, "it's mid-October already and I haven't had a single absence all semester."
Roger Ebert: A Leave of Presence
Thank you. Forty-six years ago on April 3, 1967, I became the film critic for the Chicago Sun-Times. Some of you have read my reviews and columns and even written to me since that time. Others were introduced to my film criticism through the television show, my books, the website, the film festival, or the Ebert Club and newsletter. However you came to know me, I'm glad you did and thank you for being the best readers any film critic could ask for.
(Sad, the difference 12 hours can make. Decided that the writing is too wonderful not to include a now-dated link ~marty)
Charlie Jane Anders: Bruce Campbell explains the secret of great film-making: "give a sh-t, and don't treat audiences like they're stupid"(io9)
We caught up with Bruce Campbell, the living legend, at Wondercon, and he told us the secret of making an awesome movie, in any genre. He also explained why he thinks horror comedy is making a comeback.
This is what happens when you give a baby a lightsaber (io9)
What happens? Bad news, that's what happens. My favorite part is the older brother's plaintive plea at the end: "Why do they even make Baby Lightsabers?!"
Keith Shaw: "Trend Alert: Get ready for Vadering"
Latest photo meme features fake Darth Vader Force powers.
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David Bruce has approximately 50 Kindle books on Amazon.com.
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Reader Suggestion
Michelle in AZ
From The Creator of 'Avery Ant'
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Mostly sunny but hazy.
Alabama Legislature Votes To Pardon
Scottsboro Boys
Opening a final chapter to one of the most important civil rights episodes in American history, Alabama lawmakers voted Thursday to allow posthumous pardons for the "Scottsboro Boys": nine black teens who were wrongly convicted of raping two white women more than 80 years ago.
The bill setting up a procedure to pardon the group must be signed by Gov. Robert Bentley to become law. He plans to study the legislation but has said he favors the pardons.
All but the youngest member of the group, whose ages ranged from 13 to 19, were imprisoned on death row after false accusations from the women and convictions by all-white juries. All were eventually freed without executions, although several suffered for many years in prison.
One, Haywood Paterson, escaped. While a fugitive, he helped publish a book about the case. Patterson was captured soon after, but the governor of Michigan refused his extradition to Alabama in 1950.
Over time, the case became a symbol of the tragedies wrought by racial injustice. It inspired popular songs, books and films. A Broadway musical was staged in 2010, the same year a museum dedicated to the case opened in Scottsboro.
Scottsboro Boys
Cancels Russia Gigs
Mark Knopfler
British rock star and founder of the band Dire Straits, Mark Knopfler, said on Thursday he had canceled two concerts in Russia due to what he called a crackdown on human rights groups.
Russian prosecutors and tax officials searched the offices of Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and Memorial, Russia's oldest rights group, and other such organizations last month in what Kremlin critics said were raids aimed at stifling criticism of President Vladimir Putin.
"Given the crackdown by Russian authorities on groups including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, I have regretfully decided to cancel my upcoming concerts in Moscow and St. Petersburg in June," Knopfler wrote on his website www.markknopfler.com.
Knopfler, along with British actor Stephen Fry and U.S. pop singer Madonna, has criticized Russia after a Moscow court handed two-year sentences to three members of the band Pussy Riot for their protest performance in a Moscow cathedral.
Mark Knopfler
Motown's Unsung Female Trio
The Andantes
More than 40 years have passed since the recording of Marvin Gaye's "Save the Children," but a replay of the song in the studio where it was recorded compressed time and brought tears to the eyes of Louvain Demps.
Demps was no mere fan visiting what's now the Motown Historical Museum. She was one of the women singing the angelic, high harmonies on the recording - and hearing it in Hitsville USA's Studio A was too much.
For Demps and her fellow Andantes, Jackie Hicks and Marlene Barrow-Tate, moments like these have been private, since the wider world knew only their voices, not their faces. But now in their 70s, the unsung backing group who sang on thousands of Motown songs is finally getting acclaim for its contributions to the groundbreaking, chart-topping music made in Detroit in the 1960s and early '70s before the label moved to Los Angeles.
The trio gathered recently to see the exhibit, "Motown Girl Groups: The Grit, the Glamour, the Glory," which will run through the summer. The Andantes are featured - with equal billing - alongside the Supremes, Vandellas, Marvelettes and Velvelettes.
The Andantes were the go-to backup singers for most Motown artists, including Gaye, Stevie Wonder, The Four Tops and the girl groups themselves. "Save the Children" came from Gaye's "What's Going On," one of Motown's greatest - and last - albums recorded in Detroit. The Andantes sang backup on many of the record's cuts - including the title track - and even traveled with Gaye to his hometown of Washington, D.C., in 1972 to perform the disc in its entirety at the Kennedy Center.
The Andantes
Art Project Tours California
RedBall
It was hard to miss the big red ball wedged underneath a downtown Los Angeles marquee this week.
But in case you didn't catch it, the same ball is set to make appearances throughout California in the coming days.
The inflatable red ball, part of a public art project by New York-based artist Kurt Perschke, was set up in Hollywood on Wednesday and was slated to move to downtown's Pershing Square on Thursday before eventually heading to San Francisco and Sacramento.
The public art project -- appropriately titled RedBall Project -- was also spotted Tuesday at the Edgemar Building in Santa Monica.
Though the ball has appeared in cities across the U.S. (Chicago, St. Louis, Portland, Ore.) and overseas (Barcelona, Taipei, Abu Dhabi), it came to the Golden State as California State Lottery promoted Powerball
RedBall
The kid happened on this art project at Pershing Square in downtown LA Thursday and took some pictures:
Apologizes For Pro-Rape Lyrics
Rick Ross
Rick Ross has formally apologized for lyrics some have called pro-rape.
Thursday's apology - in the form of a tweet - came the same day a women's group, UltraViolet, planned a protest outside of one of his sponsors, Reebok, in Manhattan.
In Rocko's song "U.O.E.N.O," Ross raps about giving a woman the drug MDMA, known as Molly, and having his way with her. The song was released in January but just recently began getting widespread notice.
Although last week Ross said his lyrics were misinterpreted, he tweeted Thursday that he doesn't condone rape and apologized for lyrics that were "interpreted as rape."
He also offered "apologies to my many business partners, who would never promote violence against women," specifically mentioning Reebok and UltraViolet.
Rick Ross
Majority Supports Legalization
Marijuana
For years, supporters of marijuana legalization have pointed to polls trending their way, claiming the issue was about to tip as favorable to a majority of Americans.
Now, their prediction has finally come true.
For the first time, a major U.S. poll shows a majority of nationwide support for legalizing marijuana: 52 percent now back legalized pot, compared with 45 percent who oppose it, according to a new survey from the Pew Research Center
The new Pew survey comes on the heels of two big victories for marijuana supporters in 2012, when Washington and Colorado became the first two states to legalize marijuana for recreational use.
The legalization charge is being led by young people: Support ranked highest among 18-29-year-old respondents, 64 percent of whom think pot should be legal. Politically, liberal Democrats overwhelmingly think marijuana should be legal, at 73 percent.
Marijuana
Tate Pulls Works From Collection
Graham Ovenden
Britain's Tate art collection says it has removed more than 30 prints by the artist Graham Ovenden from its online collection following his conviction for child sex offenses.
The 70-year-old artist was found guilty Tuesday of six charges of indecency with a child and one count of indecent assault. Prosecutors accused Ovenden of abusing children while they modeled for him, but he had denied all charges.
In a statement Thursday, the Tate - which runs the Tate Modern and Tate Britain galleries in London - said it is seeking further information after Ovenden's conviction, and will pull his prints from its online collection until it finishes a review.
The 34 prints, given to the Tate in 1975, include images of naked young girls.
Graham Ovenden
Al Jazeera America
CNN's Ali Velshi
The Al Jazeera America channel says that CNN chief business correspondent Ali Velshi is coming aboard.
The channel, set to launch later this year, said Thursday that Velshi will develop and host a prime-time program that will debut as a half-hour weekly series.
Velshi's magazine-style show is expected to expand to a daily schedule by the end of the year, Al Jazeera America said.
In the as-yet untitled series, Velshi will focus on how the economy in the U.S. and internationally affects American lives, the channel said.
CNN's Ali Velshi
Renames Cuts
Meat Industry
In an effort to boost sales just ahead of the U.S. grilling season, and make shopping at the meat counter a bit easier, the pork and beef industries are retooling more than 350 names of meat cuts to give them more sizzle and consumer appeal.
The revised nomenclature emerged after two years of consumer research, which found that the labels on packages of fresh cuts of pork and beef are confusing to shoppers, said Patrick Fleming, director of retail marketing for trade group National Pork Board.
Recently, the National Pork Board and the Beef Checkoff Program, with the blessing of officials with USDA, got the nod to update the Uniform Retail Meat Identification Standards, or URMIS. Though the URMIS system is voluntary, a majority of U.S. food retailers use it.
So pork and beef industry officials say they hope the new names will show up in stores nationwide by this summer's grilling season.
If it does, the lowly "pork chop" will be gone. Instead, grocery retailers could be stocking stacks of "porterhouse chops," "ribeye chops" and "New York chops." The pork butt - which actually comes from shoulder meat - will be called a Boston roast.
Meat Industry
Ready To Play 'Pong'
Philadelphia
Philadelphia is getting ready for a supersized game of "Pong" - on the side of a skyscraper.
The classic Atari video game will be re-created later this month on the facade of the 29-story Cira Centre, where hundreds of embedded LED lights will replicate the familiar paddles and ball.
Organizers expect hundreds of onlookers as gaming enthusiasts use giant, table-mounted joysticks to play from afar. The players will be standing on the steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, a site that offers an unobstructed view of the office building from across the Schuylkill River.
Now, what might be the world's largest "Pong" game will be played April 19 and 24 as part of Philly Tech Week, the news website's annual series of events, seminars and workshops spotlighting the city's technology and innovation communities.
Philadelphia
Termite Guts
Cthulhu and Cthylla
Scientists have discovered two new species of strange-looking microbes that live in the bellies of termites, and they've named the creatures Cthulhu and Cthylla, an ode to H.P. Lovecraft's pantheon of horrible monsters.
Even though Lovecraft said the mere existence of Cthulhu was beyond human comprehension, the 20th-century American sci-fi author described the ocean-dwelling creature as vaguely anthropomorphic, but with an octopus-like head, a face full of feelers, and a scaly, rubbery, bloated body with claws and narrow wings.
The microbe Cthulhu macrofasciculumque doesn't appear quite as frightful under a microscope, but it does have a bundle of more than 20 flagella that resembles a tuft of tentacles beating in sync.
Cthylla microfasciculumque, meanwhile, is smaller sporting just five flagella, and is named for the Cthylla, the secret daughter of Cthulhu, generally portrayed as a winged cephalopod. Cthylla was not a creation of Lovecraft, but rather British writer Brian Lumley, who added to the "Cthulhu Mythos" in the 1970s.
Cthulhu and Cthylla
Gate To Hell?
"Pluto's Gate"
It sounds like something out of a horror movie. But Italian scientists claim that the "Gate to Hell" is the real deal -- poisonous vapors and all.
The announcement of the finding of the ruins of Pluto's Gate (Plutonium in Latin) at an archeology conference in Turkey last month, was recently reported by Discovery News. Francesco D'Andria, professor of classic archaeology at the University of Salento, who has been excavating the ancient Greco-Roman World Heritage Site of Hierapolis for years -- led the research team.
D'Andria told Discovery News he used ancient mythology as his guide to locate the legendary portal to the underworld. "We found the Plutonium by reconstructing the route of a thermal spring. Indeed, Pamukkale' springs, which produce the famous white travertine terraces originate from this cave."
Scribes like Cicero and Strabo mentioned the gate to hell as located at the ancient site in Turkey, but nobody had been able to find it so far.
"Pluto's Gate"
Top 20
Concert Tours
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.
1. (1) Bon Jovi; $1,754,085; $96.75.
2. (2) George Strait; $1,438,285; $83.57.
3. (4) Justin Bieber; $1,085,510; $71.67.
4. (New) Maroon 5; $906,465; $67.20.
5. (7) Cirque du Soleil - "Quidam"; $892,429; $57.95.
6. (6) The Who; $846,331; $95.72.
7. (5) Ricardo Arjona; $840,988; $84.16.
8. (8) Muse; $592,979; $57.07.
9. (9) Zac Brown Band; $581,647; $50.22.
10. (10) Carrie Underwood; $471,442; $57.78.
11. (11) Eric Church; $395,690; $49.26.
12. (12) Kid Rock; $384,320; $51.99.
13. (13) Jeff Dunham; $361,968; $47.37.
14. (New) matchbox twenty; $200,005; $64.20.
15. (14) Robin Williams; $189,964; $90.66.
16. (15) Shinedown / Three Days Grace; $187,870; $39.00.
17. (16) Chris Tomlin; $171,547; $27.83.
18. (17) "Winter Jam" / Tobymac; $153,814; $12.22.
19. (19) Ron White; $137,119; $51.08.
20. (New) "Rock And Worship Roadshow" / MercyMe; $114,037; $11.56.
Concert Tours
In Memory
Roger Ebert
Roger Ebert, the nation's best-known film reviewer who with fellow critic Gene Siskel created the template for succinct thumbs-up or thumbs-down movie reviews, died Thursday. He was 70.
Ebert, a film critic for the Chicago Sun-Times since 1967, was also the first journalist to win a Pulitzer Prize for movie criticism. He died Thursday at the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago, his office said.
Only a day earlier, Ebert announced that he was undergoing radiation treatment after a recurrence of cancer.
He had no grand theories or special agendas, but millions recognized the chatty, heavy-set man with wavy hair and horn-rimmed glasses. Above all, they followed his thumb - pointing up or down. It was the main logo of the televised shows Ebert co-hosted, first with Siskel of the rival Chicago Tribune and - after Siskel's death in 1999 - with his Sun-Times colleague Richard Roeper.
On the air, Ebert and Siskel bickered like an old married couple and openly needled each other. To viewers who had trouble telling them apart, Ebert was known as the fat one with glasses, Siskel as the thin, bald one.
Despite his power with the movie-going public, Ebert considered himself "beneath everything else a fan."
He was teased for years about his weight, but the jokes stopped abruptly when Ebert lost portions of his jaw and the ability to speak, eat and drink after cancer surgeries in 2006. He overcame his health problems to resume writing full-time and eventually even returned to television. In addition to his work for the Sun-Times, Ebert became a prolific user of social media, connecting with fans on Facebook and Twitter.
In early 2011, Ebert launched a new show, "Ebert Presents At the Movies." It had new hosts, but featured Ebert in his own segment, "Roger's Office." He used a chin prosthesis and enlisted voice-over guests to read his reviews.
Ebert joined the Sun-Times part-time in 1966 while pursuing graduate study at the University of Chicago and got the reviewing job the following year. His reviews were eventually syndicated to several hundred other newspapers, collected in books and repeated on innumerable websites, which would have made him one of the most influential film critics in the nation even without his television fame.
His 1975 Pulitzer for distinguished criticism was the first, and one of only three, given to a film reviewer since the category was created in 1970. In 2005, he received another honor when he became the first critic to have a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
In 1969, he took a leave of absence from the Sun-Times to write the screenplay for "Beyond the Valley of the Dolls." The movie got an "X'' rating and became somewhat of a cult film.
Ebert's television career began the year he won the Pulitzer, first on WTTW-TV, the Chicago PBS station, then nationwide on PBS and later on several commercial syndication services. Ebert and Siskel even trademarked the "two thumbs-up" phrase.
And while the pair may have sparred on air, they were close off camera. Siskel's daughters were flower girls when Ebert married his wife, Chaz, in 1992.
Ebert was also an author, writing more than 20 books that included two volumes of essays on classic movies and the popular "I Hated, Hated, Hated This Movie," a collection of some of his most scathing reviews.
The son of a union electrician who worked at the University of Illinois' Urbana-Champaign campus, Roger Joseph Ebert was born in Urbana on June 18, 1942. The love of journalism, as well as of movies, came early. Ebert covered high school sports for a local paper at age 15 while also writing and editing his own science fiction fan magazine.
He attended the university and was editor of the student newspaper. After graduating in 1964, he spent a year on scholarship at the University of Cape Town in South Africa and then began work toward a doctorate in English at the University of Chicago.
Ebert's hometown embraced the film critic, hosting the annual Ebertfest film festival and placing a plaque at his childhood home.
Ebert also was embraced online in the years after he lost his physical voice. He kept up a Facebook page, a Twitter account with nearly 600,000 followers and a blog, Roger Ebert's Journal.
The Internet was where he forged relationships with his readers, posting links to stories he found interesting and writing long pieces on varied topics, not just film criticism. He interacted with readers in the comments sections and liked to post old black-and-white photos of Hollywood stars and ask readers to guess who they were.
"My blog became my voice, my outlet, my 'social media' in a way I couldn't have dreamed of," Ebert wrote in his memoir. "Most people choose to write a blog. I needed to."
Ebert wrote in 2010 that he did not fear death because he didn't believe there was anything "on the other side of death to fear."
"I was perfectly content before I was born, and I think of death as the same state," he wrote. "I am grateful for the gifts of intelligence, love, wonder and laughter. You can't say it wasn't interesting."
Roger Ebert
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