Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Heidi Moore: "Obama's job-training unicorn: it's time for some new ideas already" (Guardian)
Seven years after the crash, corporate and political leaders haven't made much of a dent in unemployment. Maybe they're listening to the wrong people.
Sam Jackson: 5 Terrifying Ways Police Can Legally Screw You Over (Cracked)
#5. Throw You in Jail and Repeatedly Strip Search You (Even if You're Innocent)
Leo Benedictus: Five perfect books for men who never read (Guardian)
Just under a third of the male population don't read books, says a Reading Agency survey. Here are five man-friendly page-turners they might enjoy anyway.
Eddie Deezen: A Few Facts You May Not Know About Mickey Rooney
Sadly, the passing of movie legend Mickey Rooney (on April 6th) truly brought the end to an era. Born Joseph Yule Jr. the Mick, all 5' 2" of him, was really the last of the genuine "movie stars" from Hollywood's golden age. He had, without a doubt, one of the most amazing career runs in the history of show business. Mickey kept coming back and entertaining us again and again.
Tom Danehy: The "NAACP championship," college basketball cheating and Leonard Peltier (Tucson Weekly)
Heather Childers is Fox News' Generic Blonde No. 117. (If you watch Fox News for any period of time, you learn that a whole lotta white people really do look alike.) Anyway, after the University of Connecticut won the NCAA men's basketball championship last week, Childers announced on the air that UConn won "the NAACP basketball championship." She was probably fired immediately, not for biffing on air but for hinting to Fox News viewers the existence of actual people of color.
Les Pyramides d'Égypte (Vimeo)
"There are more ancient Egyptian secrets than we can imagine waiting to be discovered underneath the sands of time. If only we could find the remote control! This video from Kheops Pyramides lets us in on one story that no one ever believed because there was no hard evidence to be found." - Neatorama)
What is Your Disney Personality Type? (Disney)
You know those personality tests that can give you quite a bit of insight into who you and your fundamental traits? Well, when it comes to fundamentals, it doesn't get any more essential to us than Disney. So, take the Myers-Briggs test online, then come back to see which Disney characters share your personality type. It's up for interpretation, but here's our very scientific* thoughts on where certain characters fall:…
2048
Addictive game.
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David Bruce has approximately 50 Kindle books on Amazon.com.
wrote:
, took the day off.
said:
Reader Suggestion
Michelle in AZ
[CONAN]
Bill Clinton's Paintings
From The Creator of 'Avery Ant'
BadtotheboneBob
From the 'This is not an "Onion" headline' file...
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
Marine layer rolled in so not a lot of sun.
Found these at the store tonight.
Little sample bottles.
Think it bears some investigating.
What An Oligarchy Looks Like
American Politics
The US government does not represent the interests of the majority of the country's citizens, but is instead ruled by those of the rich and powerful, a new study from Princeton and Northwestern Universities has concluded.
The report, entitled Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens, used extensive policy data collected from between the years of 1981 and 2002 to empirically determine the state of the US political system.
After sifting through nearly 1,800 US policies enacted in that period and comparing them to the expressed preferences of average Americans (50th percentile of income), affluent Americans (90th percentile) and large special interests groups, researchers concluded that the United States is dominated by its economic elite.
The peer-reviewed study, which will be taught at these universities in September, says: "The central point that emerges from our research is that economic elites and organised groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on US government policy, while mass-based interest groups and average citizens have little or no independent influence."
The positions of powerful interest groups are "not substantially correlated with the preferences of average citizens", but the politics of average Americans and affluent Americans sometimes does overlap. This is merely a coincidence, the report says, with the the interests of the average American being served almost exclusively when it also serves those of the richest 10 per cent.
American Politics
Starts Marijuana Column
Whoopi Goldberg
Whoopi Goldberg says she's in love with her marijuana-vaporizing pen.
In her new column for The Denver Post's Cannabist website, the Oscar-winning entertainer writes that her "vape pen" relieves the devastating glaucoma headaches she suffers without overwhelming her with a marijuana high.
Goldberg's debut column appeared Thursday.
She writes that marijuana eases the pressure, pain and stress of glaucoma, and her vaporizing pen allows her to get the right amount in small sips.
Whoopi Goldberg
Rediscovered Recordings
Hank Williams
Previously unreleased recordings of country music legend Hank Williams performing songs on a 1950 radio show will be released next month for download and on vinyl.
"The Garden Spot Programs, 1950" features 24 songs and jingles from a taped show that aired on early country radio stations, sponsored by a Texas plant nursery. Most of the tapes were lost, but only the copies from one station, KSIB-AM in Creston, Iowa, survived. The recordings were transferred, restored and mastered for release May 20 by Omnivore Records.
The singer's daughter, Jett Williams, said in a written statement that no one knew these recordings existed.
Williams' biographer, Colin Escott, wrote the liner notes for the album and said the recordings were used to augment live acts on local radio stations.
Hank Williams
Malcolm Young Takes 'Break'
AC/DC
Australia's pre-eminent hard rock band AC/DC announced Thursday they will carry on making music without ailing rhythm guitarist Malcolm Young.
"After 40 years of life dedicated to AC/DC, guitarist and founding member Malcolm Young is taking a break from the band due to ill health," the group said on their website, without disclosing the nature of his illness.
Rumours about the band's future began circulating earlier this week following an anonymous tip-off to a Perth radio station by someone calling themselves "Thunderstruck" who said that 61-year-old Malcolm Young was "very ill" and had returned with his family to Australia.
The band appealed for Young's privacy to be respected and its website was full of comments and prayers for the guitarist and his family.
AC/DC
Moved Into Care Facility
Glen Campbell
Glen Campbell has been moved into a care facility three years after been diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease, People.com reports.
"He was moved to an Alzheimer's facility last week," a family friend told the title. "I'm not sure what the permanent plan is for him yet. We'll know more next week."
The singer, whose "Rhinestone Cowboy" topped the charts in 1975, had been suffering from short-term memory loss in recent years. He was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease in early 2011.
A brand new collection of recordings from the legendary singer, "See You There" (Surfdog) was released last December. With the Campbell's health apparently in decline, it's increasingly likely the collection will be the final studio recording of the Arkansas native's career.
Glen Campbell
Privacy Concerns?
Google
Against a backdrop of growing privacy concerns, with every week bringing revelations of data breaches at government or corporate websites, online search behemoth Google quietly updated its terms of service Monday, spelling out just how much personal data it mines as part of its normal business model.
The new language states: "Our automated systems analyze your content (including e-mails) to provide you personally relevant product features, such as customized search results, tailored advertising, and spam and malware detection."
While corporate fine-tuning to an online policy that few users read closely - indeed, most don't read at all - would not normally be news, Google is singular, say security and legal experts. Not only is the company in the midst of contentious lawsuits over both the spirit and letter of these privacy issues, but, more important, it dominates the online search space to such an extent that what happens at Google impacts the entire cyber-landscape.
"The new policy means that if a user shares information with one arm of Google, they're sharing it with the whole shebang," says attorney Jeremy Mishkin, co-chair of the litigation department at Montgomery McCracken Walker & Rhoads in Philadelphia. The revisions underline this point by stating: "This analysis occurs as the content is sent, received, and when it is stored."
Google
Director Sued
'X-Men'
A man who claims he was sexually abused by "X-Men" franchise director Bryan Singer said Thursday that he reported the molestation to authorities at the time, and he does not know why charges were never pursued.
With his voice occasionally wavering, Michael Egan III described abuse he said began when he was 15 years old at the hands of Singer and others. He told of being plied with drugs and promises of Hollywood fame while also enduring threats and sexual abuse in Hawaii and Los Angeles over several years.
"You were a piece of meat," Egan said of how he and other teenage boys were viewed at the home where he claims Singer abused him.
Singer's attorney Marty Singer wrote in a statement after Egan's remarks that the accusations were "completely fabricated."
Singer is the director of the upcoming film "X-Men: Days of Future Past" and directed previous films in the franchise, as well as the thriller "The Usual Suspects."
'X-Men'
Boss From Hell
Mitchell Casado
A Canadian flight simulator business fired an instructor who figured prominently in CNN's coverage of missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, saying he showed up late to his regular job and "shamed Canadians" by dressing like a teenager.
uFly company owner Claudio Teixeira said he fired Mitchell Casado on Wednesday in part for refusing to dress professionally and making Canadians "look very bad all over the world."
Casado's relaxed style of jeans and plaid shirts attracted wide attention during CNN's constant coverage of the search for the missing flight. CNN's Martin Savidge and Casado logged many hours reporting from the fake cockpit located at the company's office in near the Toronto airport, which has a simulator that is the same model of the lost plane.
Teixeira called Casado a nice guy and wished him luck but said a change had to be made.
"I am the boss. I am the owner. I put in the money. It has to be my rules. If you don't agree with them you have to find another job," he said.
Mitchell Casado
Eliminating Conjugal Visits
New Mexico
New Mexico will end conjugal visits between inmates and their spouses next month, officials said Wednesday, in a move that will leave the once-widespread practice in place in only three U.S. states.
In addition to addressing concerns over pregnancies, the spread of sexually transmitted diseases and smuggled contraband, eliminating the program will save the state about $120,000 per year, New Mexico Department of Corrections spokeswoman Alex Tomlin said.
The debate over conjugal visits has pitted political conservatives who view the practice as inconsistent with the ethic of punishment against some prison officials who say the visits improve inmate behavior and maintain family bonds, said Stewart J. D'Alessio, a criminal justice professor at Florida International University who has studied the issue.
Once a common practice in U.S. prisons, soon only California, Washington state and New York state prisons will permit conjugal visits. Federal prisons do not allow them.
A 2012 study co-authored by D'Alessio found that prisons in states where conjugal visits are not allowed have more than four times the number of incidents of inmate-on-inmate sexual violence compared to states where the practice is permitted.
New Mexico
Limits Sea Cucumber Harvest
Florida
Florida is capping the number of sea cucumbers that fisherman can pull from state waters after booming Asian demand led to four times as many being harvested in 2013 compared to previous years.
The leathery, cylindrical creatures scour ocean floors across the globe feeding on decaying organic matter. Named for their similarity to the vegetable, the marine animals are prized in China, sought for everything from an aphrodisiac to a cure for joint pain.
The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC) said in a statement on Wednesday that from June 1, daily sea cucumber hauls will be limited to 200 per vessel.
The decision was prompted by a booming trade that saw fisherman pull nearly 60,000 of them from the waters surrounding Key West in 2013.
Previously about 16,000 were caught annually, the agency said. The rule showed how the sea cucumber was "an important part of the ecosystem and how easily affected they are by over-harvesting," said FWC spokeswoman Amanda Nalley.
Florida
Caught On Surveillance Video?
Banksy
The BBC is reporting that video of Banksy, the elusive street artist, has been captured by surveillance video outside of his latest installation.
In the CCTV video (which can be seen here on our Yahoo! News UK site), two people dressed as workmen are seen emerging from a white van with equipment early Sunday morning, just hours before the new Banksy work was discovered nearby. Interestingly, another piece of artwork recently found and thought to be a Banksy, comments on the surveillance state and was found in Cheltenham, home of the British intelligence agency, GCHQ (Government Communications Headquarters).
His latest piece appeared near the Broad Plains Boys Club in Bristol, England. It depicts an embracing couple whose faces are illuminated as they stare at their cell phones. An image of the Mobile Lovers appeared on Banksy's website on Monday.
The CCTV camera was actually put in place by the club to deter vandalism, but its footage is now thought to perhaps hold one of only a few images in existence of the world famous graffiti artists.
Banksy
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. (2) Justin Timberlake; $1,912,698; $112.70.
2. (3) George Strait; $1,591,432; $91.43.
3. (New) Paul Simon/Sting; $1,467,002; $130.59.
4. (6) Jason Aldean; $644,985; $50.81.
5. (7) Kings Of Leon; $556,737; $55.83.
6. (9) Imagine Dragons; $487,301; $38.20.
7. (10) Lady Antebellum; $432,695; $59.36.
8. (11) Demi Lovato; $412,833; $46.35.
9. (12) Jeff Dunham; $269,768; $45.07.
10. (13) Darius Rucker; $259,532; $42.96.
11. (14) The Moody Blues; $199,022; $78.04.
12. (16) The Band Perry; $174,006; $41.71.
13. (17) "Winter Jam"/Newsboys/Lecrae; $157,370; $13.28.
14. (18) Blue Rodeo; $156,763; $52.49.
15. (19) Justin Moore; $148,747; $33.26.
16. (New) Zoe; $134,774; $35.80.
17. (21) Ron White; $126,031; $51.66.
18. (New) Pixies; $121,923; $50.24.
19. (New) Third Day/Skillet; $120,445; $25.51.
20. (New) Celtic Woman; $120,043; $58.25.
Concert Tours
In Memory
Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Nobel laureate Gabriel Garcia Marquez crafted intoxicating fiction from the fatalism, fantasy, cruelty and heroics of the world that set his mind churning as a child growing up on Colombia's Caribbean coast.
One of the most revered and influential writers of his generation, he brought Latin America's charm and maddening contradictions to life in the minds of millions and became the best-known practitioner of "magical realism," a blending of fantastic elements into portrayals of daily life that made the extraordinary seem almost routine.
Garcia Marquez's own epic story ended Thursday, at age 87, with his death at his home in southern Mexico City, according to two people close to the family who spoke on condition of anonymity out of respect for the family's privacy.
Known to millions simply as "Gabo," Garcia Marquez was widely seen as the Spanish language's most popular writer since Miguel de Cervantes in the 17th century. His extraordinary literary celebrity spawned comparisons with Mark Twain and Charles Dickens.
His flamboyant and melancholy works - among them "Chronicle of a Death Foretold," ''Love in the Time of Cholera" and "Autumn of the Patriarch" - outsold everything published in Spanish except the Bible. The epic 1967 novel "One Hundred Years of Solitude" sold more than 50 million copies in more than 25 languages.
With writers including Norman Mailer and Tom Wolfe, Garcia Marquez was also an early practitioner of the literary nonfiction that would become known as New Journalism. He became an elder statesman of Latin American journalism, with magisterial works of narrative non-fiction that included the "Story of A Shipwrecked Sailor," the tale of a seaman lost on a life raft for 10 days. He was also a scion of the region's left.
Like many Latin American writers, Garcia Marquez transcended the world of letters. He became a hero to the Latin American left as an early ally of Cuba's revolutionary leader Fidel Castro and a critic of Washington's interventions from Vietnam to Chile. His affable visage, set off by a white moustache and bushy grey eyebrows, was instantly recognizable. Unable to receive a U.S. visa for years due to his politics, he was nonetheless courted by presidents and kings. He counted Bill Clinton and Francois Mitterrand among his presidential friends.
Garcia Marquez was born in Aracataca, a small Colombian town near the Caribbean coast on March 6, 1927. He was the eldest of the 11 children of Luisa Santiaga Marquez and Gabriel Elijio Garcia, a telegraphist and a wandering homeopathic pharmacist who fathered at least four children outside of his marriage.
Just after their first son was born, his parents left him with his maternal grandparents and moved to Barranquilla, where Garcia Marquez's father opened the first of a series of homeopathic pharmacies that would invariably fail, leaving them barely able to make ends meet.
Garcia Marquez was raised for 10 years by his grandmother and his grandfather, a retired colonel who fought in the devastating 1,000-Day War that hastened Colombia's loss of the Panamanian isthmus.
His grandparents' tales would provide grist for Garcia Marquez's fiction and Aracataca became the model for Macondo, the village surrounded by banana plantations at the foot of the Sierra Nevada mountains where "One Hundred Years of Solitude" is set.
Garcia Marquez's parents continued to have children, and barely made ends meet. Their first-born son was sent to a state-run boarding school just outside Bogota where he became a star student and voracious reader, favouring Hemingway, Faulkner, Dostoevsky and Kafka.
Garcia Marquez published his first piece of fiction as a student in 1947, mailing a short story to the newspaper El Espectador after its literary editor wrote that "Colombia's younger generation has nothing to offer in the way of good literature anymore."
His father insisted he study law but he dropped out, bored, and dedicated himself to journalism. The pay was atrocious and Garcia Marquez recalled his mother visiting him in Bogota and commenting in horror at his bedraggled appearance that: "I thought you were a beggar."
Garcia Marquez wrote in 1955 about a sailor, washed off the deck of a Colombian warship during a storm, who reappeared weeks later at the village church where his family was offering a Mass for his soul.
"The Story of a Shipwrecked Sailor" uncovered that the destroyer was carrying cargo, the cargo was contraband, and the vessel was overloaded. The authorities didn't like it," Garcia Marquez recalled.
Several months later, while he was in Europe, dictator Gustavo Rojas Pinilla's government closed El Espectador.
In exile, he toured the Soviet-controlled east, he moved to Rome in 1955 to study cinema, a lifelong love. Then he moved to Paris, where he lived among intellectuals and artists exiled from the many Latin American dictatorships of the day.
Garcia Marquez returned to Colombia in 1958 to marry Mercedes Barcha, a neighbour from childhood days. They had two sons, Rodrigo, a film director, and Gonzalo, a graphic designer.
Garcia Marquez's writing was constantly informed by his leftist political views, themselves forged in large part by a 1928 military massacre near Aracataca of banana workers striking against the United Fruit Company, which later became Chiquita. He was also greatly influenced by the assassination two decades later of Jorge Eliecer Gaitan, a galvanizing leftist presidential candidate.
Garcia Marquez wrote the epic "One Hundred Years of Solitude" in 18 months, living first off loans from friends and then by having his wife pawn their things, starting with the car and furniture.
By the time he finished writing in September 1966, their belongings had dwindled to an electric heater, a blender and a hairdryer. His wife then pawned those remaining items so that he could mail the manuscript to a publisher in Argentina.
When Garcia Marquez came home from the post office, his wife looked around and said, "We have no furniture left, we have nothing. We owe $5,000."
She need not have worried; all 8,000 copies of the first run sold out in a week.
Garcia Marquez's politics caused the United States to deny him entry visas for years. After a 1981 run-in with Colombia's government in which he was accused of sympathizing with M-19 rebels and sending money to a Venezuelan guerrilla group, he moved to Mexico City, where he lived most of the time for the rest of this life.
Garcia Marquez famously feuded with Peruvian author Mario Vargas Llosa, who punched Garcia Marquez in a 1976 fight outside a Mexico City movie theatre. Neither man ever publicly discussed the reason for the fight.
A bon vivant with an impish personality, Garcia Marquez was a gracious host who would animatedly recount long stories to guests, and occasionally unleash a quick temper when he felt slighted or misrepresented by the press.
In 1998, already in his 70s, Garcia Marquez fulfilled a lifelong dream, buying a majority interest in the Colombian newsmagazine Cambio with money from his Nobel award.
"I'm a journalist. I've always been a journalist," he told the AP at the time. "My books couldn't have been written if I weren't a journalist because all the material was taken from reality."
Before falling ill with lymphatic cancer in June 1999, the author contributed prodigiously to the magazine, including one article that denounced what he considered the unfair political persecution of Clinton for sexual adventures.
He is survived by his wife, his two sons, Rodrigo, a film director, and Gonzalo, a graphic designer, seven brothers and sisters and one half-sister.
Gabriel Garcia Marquez
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