Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Would You Rob This Truck? (Funny Photo)
Tom Danehy: Here's the back story of that guy who's managing the modern streetcar project (Tucson Weekly)
Jesse has always been a good guy, but a bit on the mischievous side. We used to go down to the international border on the east side of Douglas. He'd climb over the fence into Mexico, and then we'd throw a football back and forth across the border to see if we could trigger a sensor. Or he'd drive around town in a pickup truck until he spotted a Border Patrol vehicle. He'd then turn off his lights and start driving down alleys. When they were just about ready to close in on him, he'd turn the lights back on and pull into a Circle K for a soda.
Froma Harrop: Education Replaces Housing as the Bubble Machine (Creators Syndicate)
A modern knowledge economy thrives on highly trained workers. The way to get them, obviously, is through education - from basic reading skills for some, to mastery of algorithms for others. It thus would seem a basic public good to provide that learning at little or no cost to students, which most advanced countries do. But America has turned post-high-school education into a taxpayer-subsidized business - a business not unlike real estate at the height of the housing bubble.
Michael Roth: "Education Unplugged: Learning Through Conversation" (Huffington Post)
One of the wonderful things about teaching through conversation is that we get to help our students unplug from the inputs they have customized to reinforce their own tastes, expectations and identities. We get to introduce them to stories and poems, historical events and paintings, scientific experiments and political debates that they might not have attended to, even googled, on their own.
Robert F. Bukaty: Disabled border collie 'wakes up happy every day' (Bangor Daily News)
When Stephanie Fox went to see the puppy almost three years ago at New England Border Collie Rescue, she knew the breed didn't always make the best pet. As an experienced owner of other border collies, she was well aware of their need for constant work and attention. So how much more of a challenge would it be if she adopted one with deformed front legs?
Sumitra: Baseball Fan Has Caught over 5,800 Home Run and Foul Balls (Oddity Central)
Zack Hample, from New York, is a baseball fan and bawl hawk - he's great at catching and stealing balls. But Zack isn't an ordinary ball hawk, because no one else boasts a collection as impressive as his: more than 5,800 balls, both home runs and fouled balls. The way he goes after balls at matches can be characterized as almost professional.
Forrest Wickman: The Simpsons Tells Fox to Eat Its Shorts (Slate)
When The Simpsons celebrated Fox's 25th anniversary Sunday night by taking a swipe at Fox News, it was only the latest example of what has become a long tradition
Rachel Cooke: "Hannah Rothschild on Nica: 'I saw a woman who knew where she belonged'" (Guardian)
The moment she first heard Thelonious Monk play the piano, Baroness Pannonica de Koenigswarter walked out on her own life, including five children, and devoted herself to the American jazz genius. The Rothschild family disowned her, but now her great niece, Hannah Rothschild, tells her extraordinary story.
David Bruce has 42 Kindle books on Amazon.com with 250 anecdotes in each book. Each book is $1, so for $42 you can buy 10,500 anecdotes. Search for "Funniest People," "Coolest People, "Most Interesting People," "Kindest People," "Religious Anecdotes," "Maximum Cool," and "Resist Psychic Death."
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Reader Suggestion
Michelle in AZ
From The Creator of 'Avery Ant'
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Damp but sunny day.
Found out that if one tries to purchase a pac of Bic lighters at, oh, let's say, Target, you are carded like a teenager attempting to buy beer.
A prompt comes up on the register and the clerk requests your ID. Now, since the store seemingly doesn't trust their employee, everything stops until that employee swipes your ID through a card-reader.
It's been over 30 years since I've been carded for a purchase.
Had no idea lighters were more fearsome than tobacco, alcohol or ammo.
Grand Marshal Of Rose Parade
Jane Goodall
Chimpanzee expert and conservationist Jane Goodall was named Wednesday as grand marshal of the 2013 Tournament of Roses.
The honor was announced outside the tournament's stately mansion headquarters, where Goodall greeted well-wishers with the kind of chimpanzee call she said can be heard in Tanzania's Gombe National Park.
Goodall, 78, said she was startled when she was asked to be grand marshal of the annual floral spectacle, which next year will have the theme "Oh, the Places You'll Go."
As grand marshal, the British primatologist will ride in the 124th Rose Parade and attend the 99th Rose Bowl football game on New Year's Day.
Departing from the ceremony's standard cheeriness, Goodall briefly delved into serious matters.
Jane Goodall
Class Of 2012
Presidential Medal of Freedom
Bob Dylan, John Glenn, Toni Morrison and Madeleine Albright will be among the 13 prominent figures to receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest American civilian honor, from President Barak Obama later this Spring.
Along with the musical megastar, the astronaut-turned-senator, the best-selling author and the former secretary of state, the award will go to former Justice Department official John Doar, a pivotal civil rights movement figure; William Foege, a doctor and epidemiologist who helped eradicate smallpox in the 1970s; the late Gordon Hirabayashi, who openly denounced the World War II-era internment of Japanese-Americans; pioneering farm worker union leader Dolores Huerta; the late Jan Karski, who fought the Nazis as a member of the Polish Underground and warned the world about the Holocaust; Girl Scouts founder Juliette Gordon Low, who died in 1927; Israeli President Shimon Peres; former Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens; and former University of Tennessee women's basketball coach Pat Summitt.
Presidential Medal of Freedom
Smaller Arts Grants Awarded
PBS
The National Endowment for the Arts has awarded significantly smaller grants to established PBS programs this year.
"Live From Lincoln Center" received no funding under the 2012 Arts in Media grants. Last year it received $100,000.
The Metropolitan Opera received $50,000 for its "Great Performances at the Met" telecasts. That's $100,000 less than last year.
WNET in New York received $50,000 for "American Masters," compared to $400,000 in 2011.
PBS
Sites Compete For Preservation Grants
New York City
Forty New York City cultural institutions and historic sites will compete for millions of dollars in grants for preservation efforts in a new grassroots campaign announced on Thursday.
Members of the public can vote online for the projects that are most important to them, ranging from a historic homestead in the New York borough of Staten Island to world-famous landmarks like the Guggenheim Museum and the Apollo Theater.
The four winning sites will receive grants and an advisory committee of community leaders working with the project's organizer, Partners in Preservation, will allocate the rest of the $3 million fund to the remaining nominees.
Voting will continue through May 21. All of the sites in the city's five boroughs will hold open houses on May 5 and 6 and feature behind the scenes tours and re-enactments, arts and crafts, musical performances and art installations.
New York City
The Poor Put-Upon Victim
Rupert
Rupert Murdoch (R-Evil Incarnate) used his testimony before a U.K. inquiry on Thursday to portray himself as the victim, not perpetrator, of a cover-up over phone hacking - a bold claim unlikely to be accepted by those suing his company for invading their privacy.
The 81-year-old media magnate apologized. He said he had failed. He noted that the corporate cleanup of the British phone hacking scandal had cost his New York-based News Corp. hundreds of millions of dollars and transformed its culture.
Murdoch's words, delivered under oath, offered an unusual public glimpse into the media mogul's personality, alternately combative and contrite. Murdoch showed the occasional sign of annoyance, but pointed questions about his alleged vast political influence and business interests were largely parried with firm denials and touches of dry wit.
A few new revelations tumbled out, among them his admission Thursday that his dramatic decision to shut down the 168-year-old News of the World - the Sunday paper at the center of the scandal - was an impulse move. He said he snapped his fingers and "it was done like that."
Murdoch also revealed that he had been taken aback at the size of the 2008 payout made to phone hacking victim and former England soccer manager Gordon Taylor - testimony at odds with what his son James Murdoch told the inquiry earlier in the week.
Rupert
Donor Comes Forward
"Girls Gone Wild"
A member of a Los Angeles temple apologized Thursday for offering an internship in a U.S. senator's office as part of a charity auction that the founder of "Girls Gone Wild" says he won.
Chad Brownstein said he didn't get Sen. Mark Pryor's permission to list the internship and didn't think it would be posted online before he had a chance to check with the office. He apologized to Pryor, an Arkansas Democrat, in a letter Brownstein provided to The Associated Press.
A day earlier, Pryor asked the FBI to investigate who offered his internship in the auction benefiting the Wilshire Boulevard Temple.
"Girls Gone Wild" founder Joe Francis says he won the internship in the auction and planned to include it in a prize package for his TV contest, "The Search for the Hottest Girl in America." The temple has returned his money and he's no longer listing the internship as part of the prize package.
"Girls Gone Wild"
Former Bodyguard Claims Blanket
Michael Jackson
Michael Jackson's former bodyguard, Matt Fiddes, is ready to take legal action to get access to Jackson's son Prince Michael II, claiming he is the biological father.
The Daily Mail reports that Fiddes claimed that he gave Jackson his sperm in 2001 at London hotel - a year before Blanket (the name Prince Michael goes by) was born. The donation came after Jackson told Fiddes, a British martial arts expert, that he wanted an "athletic-child."
Fiddes said he wants to spend time with his 10-year-old, and bring him to see his ailing mother.
He has claimed paternity of Blanket for years, and is now willing to give DNA samples to prove it so he can have legal visitation rights.
Michael Jackson
A "Grave, Immoral Sinner" & A Church "Scandal"
Emily Herx
A Catholic school teacher in Indiana is suing a diocese there, claiming that she was unlawfully terminated after school officials learned she was undergoing fertility treatments to become pregnant.
In a federal lawsuit filed in a Fort Wayne, Ind., teacher Emily Herx claimed that she was fired and told by a senior church official that her attempt to become pregnant through in-vitro fertilization made her a "grave, immoral sinner."
Between 2003 and 2011, Herx, who taught literature and language arts at the St. Vincent de Paul School, was well regarded, receiving high marks when evaluated by administrators, according to court documents.
In 2010, Herx, who is married, learned that she "suffers from a diagnosed medical condition which causes infertility" and told the school's principal she would be undergoing IVF treatments, according to court documents.
At the time, the principal told Herx "You are in my prayers," and allowed her to take time off to receive treatments, according to court documents.
One year later in May 2011, after requesting time off for a second round of fertility treatments, she was told to report to Msgr. John Kuzmich, the pastor of the St. Vincent de Paul Catholic Church.
At that meeting, attended by Herx, her husband and father, Kuzmich called her a "grave, immoral sinner" and added that if news of her IVF treatments got out it would cause a "scandal" for the church, according to her civil complaint.
Emily Herx
Was 2,630 Years Old
Nok Figure
An art collector is suing a publisher for $300,000 after a 2,630-year-old Nigerian sculpture was smashed by a butter-fingered photo crew during a magazine shoot in her Manhattan apartment.
Corice Arman asked Louise Blouin Media Inc., publisher of Art + Auction magazine, to pay $300,000 for a terra cotta figurine that was destroyed when the crew tried to move it across a room.
"During the photographers' move of the Nok Figure, the Nok Figure fell onto the floor and was smashed into myriad pieces, cannot be restored and is a total loss," said the lawsuit filed Tuesday in state Supreme Court in Manhattan.
The Nigerian sculpture, approximately 2,630 years old and valued at $300,000, was moved without Aman's permission during the May 12, 2011, shoot, the lawsuit said.
Nok Figure
Salp Shuts Down California Nuke Plant
Diablo Canyon
The workers of the Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant received a very slimy surprise this week when they discovered hoards of jellyfish-like creatures clinging to the structure, leading to the shutdown of the plant.
The organisms, called salp, are small sea creatures with a consistency similar to jellyfish.
The influx of salp was discovered as part of the plant's routine monitoring system, according to Tom Cuddy, the senior manager of external and nuclear communications for the plant's operator, Pacific Gas & Electric.
The plant consists of two units. Unit 1 was shut down previously because of refueling and maintenance work and will not be functional for several weeks. Now that Unit 2 has been shut down because of the influx of salp, the plant has ceased all production.
"We've had salp cling to the intake structure before, but nothing to this extent," Cuddy said.
Diablo Canyon
Found In Sierra Foothills
Meteorites
Robert Ward has been hunting and collecting meteorites for more than 20 years, so he knew he'd found something special in the Sierra foothills along the path of a flaming fireball that shook parts of Northern California and Nevada with a sonic boom over the weekend.
And scientists have confirmed his suspicions: it's one of the more primitive types of space rocks out there, dating to the early formation of the solar system 4 to 5 billion years ago.
"It was just, needless to say, a thrilling moment," Ward of Prescott, Ariz., told The Associated Press in a telephone interview Wednesday as he walked through an old cemetery in search of more meteorites about 35 miles northeast of Sacramento.
He found the first piece on Tuesday along a road between a baseball field and park on the edge of Lotus near Coloma, where James W. Marshall first discovered gold in California, at Sutter's Mill in 1848.
Ward, who has found meteorites in every continent but Antarctica and goes by "AstroBob" on his website, said he "instantly knew" it was a rare meteorite known as "CM" - carbonaceous chondrite - based in part on the "fusion crusts from atmospheric entry" on one side of the rock.
Bits of the meteor could be strewn over an area as long as 10 miles, most likely stretching west from Coloma.
Meteorites
Green Clouds
Moscow
Russia's weather and emergency officials soothed fears of Moscow residents Thursday with statements that green-tinged clouds over the capital were not an alien invasion, but tree pollen.
"Today Muscovites felt like characters in a disaster film about an alien invasion: people living in the southwest of the city saw that the sky had been coloured green," said Russia's weather service on its website.
The clouds crept up on the Russian capital from the south in the morning, and reached the centre by the afternoon, causing office workers to gawk at the suspiciously coloured sky.
Green dust also covered streets and cars. Some people in Moscow and the region apparently called emergency numbers in a panic, leading officials to say the air was thick with tree pollen, not disaster fallout.
The emergency situation ministry said the sudden onset of spring and rapidly rising temperatures "caused blooming of several species of trees, and resulted in a yellow-green pollen coating over pavement, windows, and cars."
Moscow
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) Cirque du Soleil - "Michael Jackson: The Immortal"; $2,140,271; $114.17.
2. (New) Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band; $1,988,992; $90.73.
3. (New) Elton John; $1,295,560; $115.62.
4. (2) Jason Aldean; $614,023; $44.35.
5. (4) Brad Paisley; $592,300; $53.01.
6. (3) The Black Keys; $591,358; $47.33.
7. (5) Lady Antebellum; $521,178; $48.74.
8. (6) Blake Shelton; $361,236; $47.85.
9. (7) Miranda Lambert; $347,481; $44.96.
10. (8) Jeff Dunham; $309,200; $45.47.
11. (9) Eric Church; $252,872; $35.14.
12. (10) Kelly Clarkson; $190,025; $54.88.
13. (11) "Gigantour" / Megadeth; $170,897; $48.20.
14. (12) Rain - A Tribute To The Beatles; $162,317; $49.46.
15. (14) "Mythbusters"; $161,554; $51.66.
16. (New) Rise Against; $144,233; $33.90.
17. (15) Peter Frampton; $131,036; $64.55.
18. (16) The Moody Blues; $129,112; $62.33.
19. (18) "Winter Jam" / Skillet; $128,865; $11.11.
20. (17) Casting Crowns; $126,856; $28.59.
Concert Tours
In Memory
Ernest "Chick" Callenbach
The film scholar who wrote the 1975 cult novel "Ecotopia" that inspired generations of environmentalists and readers yearning for an ecologically sustainable society has died in California. Ernest "Chick" Callenbach was 83.
His wife, Christine Leefeldt, said Thursday he died of cancer on April 16 in Berkeley.
Callenbach self-published "Ecotopia" in which a new, environmentally conscious nation comprised of Northern California, Oregon and Washington existed. The book sold nearly one million copies and was translated into a dozen languages.
Callenbach grew up on a farm in Williamsport, Pa., and moved to California, where he worked as an assistant editor for UC Press. He founded Film Quarterly in 1958, a magazine he led for 33 years.
He also wrote "Living Cheaply with Style," offering advice to those seeking a simpler life.
Ernest "Chick" Callenbach
In Memory
Pete Fornatale
Rock music fans are mourning the death of Pete Fornatale, a beloved radio disc jockey who promoted the best new musicians for decades in his easy, free-form style.
Fornatale was 66 when he died Thursday in New York.
At New York's Fordham University, his alma mater, president Joseph McShane called the DJ "the voice of several generations" who interviewed the hottest musicians and played their new songs.
As a DJ on WNEW-FM in the 1970s, his format was to play lesser-known artists and album cuts beyond the hit singles.
Until his death, Fornatale still hosted a Saturday show for Fordham University's WFUV-FM station.
Pete Fornatale
In Memory
Thomas Christian Marth
A saxophone player who toured with The Killers has been found dead in Las Vegas in an apparent suicide.
The Clark County coroner's office confirmed Thursday that 33-year-old Thomas Christian Marth was pronounced dead of a gunshot wound to the head on Monday. He was found in the backyard, though it's unclear whose.
Band spokeswoman Jen Appel says Marth was not a full member of the Las Vegas-based rock band, but played saxophone on their 2006 album "Sam's Town" and their 2008 album "Day & Age."
He also played on the band's tour for "Day & Age."
Thomas Christian Marth
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