Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Tom Danehy: This Week, Tom has Statues on His Mind (Tucson Weekly)
A few weeks ago, I wrote about Philo Farnsworth, the Utah man who invented television back in the 1920s when he was just 21. I mentioned that there is a statue of Farnsworth in the U.S. Capitol, which is a great honor seeing as how each state is allowed two statues and Utah's other one is of Brigham Young.
Lucy Mangan: When the French clock off at 6pm, they really mean it (Guardian)
A new labour agreement in France means that employees must ignore their bosses' work emails once they are out of the office and relaxing at home - even on their smartphones.
Alex Hern: "Heartbleed: don't rush to update passwords, security experts warn" (Guardian)
The severity of the Heartbleed bug means that rushing to change passwords could backfire.
Selina Todd: The working classes don't want to be 'hard-working families' (Guardian)
The rhetorical label 'hard-working families' has won Labour no voters and ignores the true nature of social change.
ELIZABETH HYDE STEVENS, "Millennials just don't get it! How the Muppets created Generation X" (Salon)
The Muppets shaped "30 Rock," Jimmy Fallon, "The Office," Zadie Smith -- and gave Gen X license to change the world.
Zachary Karabell: Reality Has No Partisan Bias (Slate)
It's time to face facts: The problems facing the American jobs landscape are structural, not cyclical.
Emma Brockes: The secret joy of doing your taxes is a life audit - like time travel for the soul (Guardian)
Filing to the IRS might be boring. But the side effect of tax season is the nostalgia of looking back at a year in your life.
Natalie Haynes: Monty Python reinvented British comedy - despite the odd 'crap' sketch (Guardian)
Michael Palin is typically self-deprecating about the Pythons' work. Their gleaming jewels more than make up for any 'dross'.
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Reader Suggestion
Michelle in AZ
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David
Thanks, Dave!
From The Creator of 'Avery Ant'
from Marc Perkel
BartCop
Hello Bartcop fans,
As you all know the untimely passing of Terry was unexpected, even by
him. We all knew he had cancer but we all thought he had some years
left. So some of us who have worked closely with him over the years are
scrambling around trying to figure out what to do. My job, among other
things, is to establish communications with the Bartcop community and
provide email lists and groups for those who might put something
together. Those who want to play an active roll in something coming from
this, or if you are one of Bart's pillars, should send an email to
active@bartcop.com.
So - to let you know what's going on, the guestbook on bartcop.com is
still open for those who want to write something in memory of Bart.
I did an interview on Netroots Radio about Bart's passing
( www.stitcher.com/s?eid=32893545 )
The most active open discussion is on Bart's Facebook page.
( www.facebook.com/bartcop )
You can listen to Bart's theme song here
or here.
( www.bartcop.com/blizing-saddles.mp3 )
( youtu.be/MySGAaB0A9k )
We have opened up the radio show archives which are now free. Listen to
all you want.
( bartcop.com/members )
Bart's final wish was to pay off the house mortgage for Mrs. Bart who is
overwhelmed and so very grateful for the support she has received.
Anyone wanting to make a donation can click on this the yellow donate
button on bartcop.com
But - I need you all to help keep this going. This note
isn't going to directly reach all of Bart's fans. So if you can repost
it on blogs and discussion boards so people can sign up then when we
figure out what's next we can let more people know. This list is just
over 600 but like to get it up to at least 10,000 pretty quick. So
here's the signup link for this email list.
( mailman.bartcop.com/listinfo/bartnews )
Marc Perkel
Thanks, Marc!
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Not quite as hot.
Replacing Letterman
Stephen Colbert
CBS moved swiftly Thursday to replace the retiring David Letterman with Comedy Central's Stephen Colbert, who will take over the "Late Show" next year and do battle with Jimmy Fallon and Jimmy Kimmel for late-night television supremacy.
Colbert, 49, has been hosting "The Colbert Report" at 11:30 p.m. ET since 2005, in character as a fictional conservative talk-show host. The character will retire with "The Colbert Report."
Letterman, who turns 67 on Saturday, announced on his show last week that he would retire sometime in 2015, although he hasn't set a date. CBS said Thursday that creative elements of Colbert's new show, including where it will be based, will be announced later.
The decision opens up a hole on Comedy Central's schedule. The network said in a statement Thursday that "we look forward to the next eight months of the ground-breaking 'Colbert Report' and wish Stephen the very best."
Stephen Colbert
Joining 'CBS Sunday Morning'
Jane Pauley
Veteran NBC News journalist and former "Today" anchor Jane Pauley will be joining CBS News as a contributor to "CBS Sunday Morning," Bob Schieffer announced at a symposium at Texas Christian University late Wednesday.
In explaining her decision to join the network, Pauley credited her start at a CBS affiliate in Indiana for her long career at NBC.
"NBC has been my home and I valued that loyalty, but CBS is the reason I had a 40 year career at NBC," Pauley said according to TCU's live blog of the event.
"I followed 'M.A.S.H', 'All The Family,' 'Mary Tyler Moore', 'Bob Newhart,' 'The Carol Burnett Show' … so thanks to CBS, I was the most watched newscast in Indiana."
Jane Pauley
Rare 'Tetrad'
Lunar Eclipses
In the wee hours of the morning on April 15 the sun, Earth and moon will be in 'syzygy', lined up perfectly so that the full moon will pass through the centre of Earth's shadow, producing a total lunar eclipse that will be visible throughout North America and South America. The last time this part of the world saw a total lunar eclipse was back in December of 2011, but what's even more special about this one is that it marks the beginning of a 'tetrad' - four total lunar eclipses in a row, each separated by a period of roughly six months.
For anyone living in Canada or the continental United States, if you don't want to miss any of it, the eclipse starts at 12:55 a.m. ET and ends at 6:38 a.m. ET, on the morning of April 15 (no guarantees that the weather will cooperate, though). That's from the point where the moon enters Earth's penumbra - the defuse outer 'ring' of the planet's shadow - to the point where it leaves the penumbra. However, from the start up until just before 2 a.m., there won't be too much to see except a slight dimming of the moon's brightness. If you really want to see the good part, be sure to be watching starting at just before 2 a.m until after 5:30 a.m., since that's when the moon will pass through the Earth's umbra - the darkest part of its shadow - and it will reach the peak of the eclipse ('totality') around 3:47 a.m. Eastern Time.
Unlike meteor showers, where you can ignore time zones because the shower 'rises' at the same relative time no matter where you live (as that part of the world rotates to face into the stream), eclipse times have to be adjusted for time zone or you'll miss it. So, on the Pacific coast, the eclipse runs between just before 10 p.m. on the 14th to just after 3:30 a.m. on the 15th, while on the Atlantic coast (which will only be seeing a partial lunar eclipse, by the way), it will be between around 2 a.m. to 6:30 a.m. (or 2:30 a.m. to 7 a.m. if you're in Newfoundland).
Lunar Eclipses
1,000-Year-Old Dugout Canoe
Minnesota
For 46 years, a canoe thought to date to the 1700s sat in the back of a display case as a minor exhibit at a small museum run by a volunteer historical group in Minnesota.
But this week, archaeologists who conducted radio carbon tests on the canoe said it was crafted almost 1,000 years ago, making it the oldest canoe in the state and shedding light on early navigation of Minnesota lakes.
"It was a total shock," said Russ Ferrin, president of the Western Hennepin County Pioneer Association museum. "It's been kind of in a background display; not much was made of it."
The canoe was found in 1934 buried in mud in Lake Minnetonka, a large body of water in suburban Minneapolis, by a family building a dock, Ferrin said.
Minnesota
'Hateful Eight' Reading Rescheduled
Quentin Tarantino
The stage reading of Quentin Tarantino's shelved script for "The Hateful Eight" has been rescheduled for April 19 at the theater at the Ace Hotel in downtown Los Angeles.
Film Independent said that "unforeseen circumstances" had forced it to switch the time and location of the event, previously scheduled to take place April 24 at the the Los Angeles County Museum of Art's Bing Theater.
The $200 tickets will go on sale to members of Film Independent, LACMA Film Club and New York Times Film Club on Friday at noon PT. If any tickets remain, they will go on sale to the general public at 5 p.m. PT on April 16.
Earlier this year Tarantino decided to shut down production after the script leaked without his approval. The event will not be recorded or live streamed.
Quentin Tarantino
'Pop-Up' Film Theatres
Adam Beach
Film and TV star Adam Beach says he's hoping a plan to bring first-run and aboriginal films to First Nations reserves in Canada will help unify families and inspire a new generation of aboriginal filmmakers.
The initiative is set to launch Friday at the Brokenhead Ojibway Nation on their reserve about 45 minutes north of Winnipeg.
It's hoped that the "pop-up" theatre - which uses portable technology including a nine-metre-wide screen and Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround Sound to convert school gyms and arenas into screening rooms - will also make its way to far-flung reserves across the country.
"A lot of these isolated communities have no access to film and for me it's an honour to be able to bring them first-run movies now, as opposed to them waiting a month later," says Beach, noting it offers families a night out together as well as a way for different reserves to mingle.
Adam Beach
Delusional Sex Tourist Oinks
Pigboy
Rush Limbaugh (R-Oxycontin) wasted no time Thursday responding to the news that Stephen Colbert would replace David Letterman on CBS' "The Late Show," and the conservative talk radio host not happy about the choice.
In fact, Limbaugh said, he thinks the network has "declared war on the heartland of America" by hiring Colbert, whose Comedy Central show "The Colbert Report" regularly spoofs the conservative movement that Limbaugh has spearheaded.
"You really care what I think about that?" Limbaugh said on Thursday's edition of "The Rush Limbaugh Show," when the topic was broached. "Well, I'll give you the short version: CBS has just declared war on the heartland of America."
"No longer is comedy going to be a covert assault on traditional American values … now it's just wide out in the open," Limbaugh warned. "What this hire means is a redefinition of what is funny, and a redefinition of what is comedy. They're blowing up the 11:30 format under the guise that the world's changing, and people don't want the kind of comedy that Carson gave us, or even Letterman. It's media planting a flag here … it's a declaration."
Pigboy
Flaps His Gums
Rupert
Media mogul and News Corp. Executive Chairman Rupert Murdoch (R-Evil Incarnate) sat down for his first interview in nearly five years.
The still very active and opinionated 83-year-old opened up to Fortune about a number of personal and political details during the interview, including his current favorite potential Republican candidates for 2016.
Murdoch told Forbes he thinks the 2016 presidential election "is between four or five people," and places Jeb Bush and Paul Ryan atop his personal rankings. He called Ryan "the straightest arrow I've ever met."
Murdoch was defiant when asked if the right-leaning Fox News Channel's editorial content has hurt the political discussion or even the Republican Party itself. "I think it has absolutely saved it," he said.
Rupert
Government Didn't Play a Role in Ending Slavery
DeMint
"No liberal is going to win a debate that big government freed the slaves," Heritage Foundation president and former senator Jim DeMint told a radio host on Wednesday. And he's right, unless you consider the U.S. government circa 1865 a "big government."
DeMint was speaking to religious radio host Jerry Newcombe when he made the claim, as Right Wing Watch reports.
Well the reason that the slaves were eventually freed was the Constitution, it was like the conscience of the American people. ... But a lot of the move to free the slaves came from the people, it did not come from the federal government. It came from a growing movement among the people, particularly people of faith, that this was wrong. People like Wilberforce who persisted for years because of his faith and because of his love for people. So no liberal is going to win a debate that big government freed the slaves.
DeMint then continued. "In fact, it was Abraham Lincoln, the very first Republican," he said, "who took this on as a cause and a lot of it was based on a love in his heart that comes from God."
DeMint
Another Class Act Bagger
Mississippi
In the spirit of fast-rising white Republicans who say dumb things about race, Mississippi State Sen. Chris McDaniel can now add his name to the list after Mother Jones uncovered a 2006 tape where the Tea Party darling bragged about not wanting to pay slavery reparations and only knowing how to hit on girls and find the bathroom in Spanish. McDaniel is challenging fellow Republican Thad Cochran for his U.S. Senate seat.
"If they pass [slavery] reparations, and my taxes are going up, I ain't paying taxes," McDaniel said during a late 2006/early 2007 broadcast. McDaniel wasn't through. He went on to explain how poor Mexico was, and how he could live like a king there since "a dollar bill can buy a mansion in Mexico."
He was then asked if that meant learning Spanish. "Yes, regrettably…You'll have to learn just enough to ask where the bathroom is. Baños. Baños. That's what you say," McDaniel explained.
But one does not live on baños alone, McDaniel explained. He told his audience that you also have to know how to cat call a good-looking woman. "Mamacita works. ... I'm an English-speaking Anglo. I have no idea what it means, actually, but I've said it a few times, just for, you know, fun. And I think it basically means, 'Hey, hot mama.' Or, you know, 'You're a fine looking young thing.'"
McDaniel's spokesman didn't deny that he made those remarks and somehow blamed it on the liberal press. Mind you, McDaniel was on a conservative talk show when he said these things. "The liberal press clearly loves to attack conservatives of all types. When Chris got into this race he knew they would throw mud, so it's no surprise they'd dredge up decade-old comments made on conservative talk radio," his spokesperson Noel Fritsch said. Curiously, Fristch did not say if McDaniel still held those beliefs.
Mississippi
Earworm Turns 50
'It's a Small World'
The timeless Disney tune "It's a Small World" that wafts through our memories from past theme park vacations turns 50 this year, and on Thursday, Disney parks worldwide hosted a global sing-along.
At Walt Disney World Resort in Florida, a huge chorus of the song was performed in front of Cinderella Castle at Magic Kingdom by cast members and a children's choir from Central Florida Performing Arts.
The kids - who didn't seem to mind belting out several takes of what some consider an earworm - sang for a live broadcast on "Good Morning America." Tributes to the song will also be held throughout the park all day, and other parks around the world also held sing-alongs.
Not that the parks are in short supply of the song on any regular day. Disney officials estimate that during a 16-hour operating day, the song is played, on average, 1,200 times.
'It's a Small World'
Declared A Public Nuisance
Sriracha
A Southern California city has declared the factory that produces the popular Sriracha hot sauce a public nuisance.
The Irwindale City Council's action Wednesday night gives the factory 90 days to make changes to stop the spicy odours that prompted complaints from some residents last fall. Declaring a public nuisance will allow city officials to enter the factory and make changes if the odours persist after the deadline.
The decision came despite testimony by air-quality experts that progress was being made toward a resolution. The South Coast Air Quality Management District said its inspectors have taken air samples inside the plant, and believed the information gathered should allow the factory and the city to resolve their differences.
Attorney John Tate, who represents Sriracha maker Huy Fong Foods, Inc., said the company had been working with the AQMD on its filtration system since the complaints first arose and was committed to finding long-term solutions by June 1.
Huy Fong Foods moved to Irwindale two years ago, opening a new $40 million plant in the largely industrial city of 1,400 residents.
Sriracha
Ancient Pueblos Trade Network
Turquoise
About a millennium ago, the ancestral Pueblo Indians in the Chaco Canyon in northwestern New Mexico obtained their precious turquoise using a large trade network spanning several states, new research reveals.
In the new study, researchers traced Chaco Canyon turquoise artifacts back to resource areas in Colorado, Nevada and southeastern California. The results definitively show, for the first time, that the ancestral Puebloans - best known for their multistoried adobe houses - in the San Juan Basin area of New Mexico did not get all of their turquoise from a nearby mining site, as was previously believed.
What's more, the study reveals the Puebloan people in the Moapa Valley of southern Nevada obtained some of their turquoise from as far away as Colorado and New Mexico, suggesting the trade network ran in both directions.
Initially, scientists thought the gems came from the nearest turquoise deposit more than 124 miles (200 kilometers) away - the Cerrillos Hills Mining District near present-day Santa Fe, N.M. But the discovery of other extensively mined turquoise deposits throughout the southwestern United States led some scientists to believe the Chaco residents acquired some of their gems through long-distance trade networks. However, the evidence was mostly circumstantial, as chemical analyses weren't able to link the artifacts with specific mining sites.
Turquoise
Not A Modern Forgery
'Jesus's Wife'
In 2012, the discovery of a tattered papyrus fragment rocked the biblical studies community after some alleged its text proved that Jesus was married.
Now tests show the fragment is not only likely legit - it's also superold.
The controversial fragment known as the "Gospel of Jesus's Wife" dates to between the sixth and ninth centuries, and could possibly date back as early as the second to fourth centuries, according to a newly published study in the Harvard Theological Review.
The fragment, which contains the words, "Jesus said to them, my wife," first came to light several years ago. Harvard University Divinity Professor Karen L. King, who announced the fragment's existence at a conference in 2012, was quick to point out that the fragment does not prove that Jesus had a wife.
"The main topic of the fragment is to affirm that women who are mothers and wives can be disciples of Jesus - a topic that was hotly debated in early Christianity as celibate virginity increasingly became highly valued," King said in a statement.
'Jesus's Wife'
Buried Ancient Village
New Mexico
Thermal images captured by an small drone allowed archaeologists to peer under the surface of the New Mexican desert floor, revealing never-before-seen structures in an ancient Native American settlement.
Called Blue J, this 1,000-year-old village was first identified by archaeologists in the 1970s. It sits about 43 miles (70 kilometers) south of the famed Chaco Canyon site in northwestern New Mexico and contains nearly 60 ancestral Puebloan houses around what was once a large spring.
Now, the ruins of Blue J are obscured by vegetation and buried in eroded sandstone blown in from nearby cliffs. The ancient structures have been only partially studied through excavations. Last June, a team of archaeologists flew a small camera-equipped drone over the site to find out what infrared images might reveal under the surface.
For example, the thermal images revealed a dark circle just inside the wall of a plaza area, which could represent wetter, cooler soil filling a kiva, or a huge, underground structure circular that would have been used for public gatherings and ceremonies. Finding a kiva at Blue J would be significant; the site has been considered unusual among its neighbors because it lacks the monumental great houses and subterranean kivas that are the hallmark of Chaco-era Pueblo sites, the authors wrote in the May issue of the Journal of Archaeological Science.
New Mexico
In Memory
Mary Cheever
Mary Cheever, an accomplished author and poet best known as the enduring spouse and widow of John Cheever, has died, surviving by decades a husband who used their lonely, but lasting, marriage as an inspiration for some of his most memorable stories. She was 95.
She had been battling pneumonia and died Monday night at her colonial-style manor in suburban Ossining, her daughter Susan Cheever said.
The home served as a well-publicized backdrop to John Cheever's facade as the gentleman scribe of "The Swimmer" and "The Five-Forty-Eight." Time magazine wrote in 1964, "John Cheever, almost alone in the field of modern fiction, is one who celebrates the glories and delights of monogamy."
As numerous books about the author later revealed, however, John Cheever was the least contented of men, an alcoholic who carried on desperate affairs with men and woman, including the actress Hope Lange. Yet the Cheevers remained married, long after they stopped sleeping in the same bed or speaking on a daily basis. Mary nursed him when he was gravely ill with cancer and was at his bedside when he died in 1982.
Mary Cheever was a teacher, fiction editor of Westchester Magazine, author of "The Changing Landscape: A History of Briarcliff Manor-Scarborough" and writer of "The Need for Chocolate and Other Poems," which included the poem "Gorgon" and its note of "life-denying husbandry."
Born in New Haven, Conn., in 1918, Mary Winternitz came from an accomplished and imposing family. Her father, Dr. Milton Winternitz, was the dean of the Yale School of Medicine. Her mother, Dr. Helen Watson, was the daughter of Thomas Watson, to whom Alexander Graham Bell called out during the first telephone conversation.
Mary would remember an isolated childhood - her parents often away, her siblings older and at boarding school.
A graduate of Sarah Lawrence College, the dark-eyed Mary was artistic and attractive and John Cheever was immediately taken when they met in 1939 at a Fifth Avenue office building. Cheever soon moved in with her and they married in 1941, the then-struggling author promising his bride, in a letter shortly before their wedding, a "wonderful and beautiful life."
Following the settings of Cheever's stories, they lived on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, then moved to the suburbs in the 1950s, when the author devised his imaginary Shady Hill. They had three children, two of whom - Susan and Benjamin - became writers. The third, Federico, is an attorney who teaches at the Sturm College of Law at the University of Denver.
Blake Bailey would describe the wife in "The Ocean" as perhaps Cheever's "most cruelly deliberate caricature of Mary Cheever." Mary later remarked that she feared arguing with her husband, because her words would end up in his fiction.
After his death, Mary approved - to some criticism - the publication of his highly personal and explicit journals. She also was involved with a nasty legal struggle between the Cheevers and the publisher Academy Chicago.
Mary Cheever
In Memory
Edmond Harjo
Edmond Harjo, one of the last surviving members of a group of American Indians who used their Native languages to outmaneuver the enemy during World Wars I and II, died last week in Oklahoma. He was 96.
Edmond Harjo died March 31 at Mercy Hospital in Ada, Okla., according to the Swearingen Funeral Home. Harjo's nephew, Richard Harjo, said his uncle had a heart attack.
Harjo, a member of the Seminole Nation of Oklahoma, traveled to Washington D.C. last November to take part in a ceremony where congressional leaders bestowed the Congressional Gold Medal, its highest civilian honor, on American Indian code talkers. The ceremony honored 33 tribes.
Richard Harjo said there was some controversy following the ceremony because his uncle had been under the impression the medal was being presented to him, not the tribe. But the ceremony and honor still meant a lot to him, Richard Harjo said.
"He sought to do what was right and wanted that same recognition in return," Richard Harjo said.
Edmond Harjo was born on Nov. 24, 1917, in Maud, Okla. Harjo was a school teacher for most of his life and a classical pianist.
Edmond Harjo never married and had no children, Richard Harjo said. He is survived by several nieces and nephews.
Edmond Harjo
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