Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Tom Danehy: Mr. Mitch Dorson, 1948-2012 (Tucson Weekly)
Mr. Dorson's integrity, passion and willingness to go out on a limb for what he knew was right was (and should remain) an inspiration to us all. One of the few things I've done consistently right in my life is tell people how important they are to me before they're gone. I'm pretty sure he knew, but it's still not enough. I miss him a lot. And for the rest of my life, when I go to buy a book, I'm going to wonder whether Mr. Dorson would have liked it.
Susan Estrich: Susan Mary Riley, We Will Miss You (Creators Syndicate)
It's her voice that I keep hearing in my head. "Susan," she would say, in that quiet, commanding tone she had, before explaining something to me: how to deal with the Irish boys in politics in the '80s, what to do about a friend's son having problems, or how I definitely, absolutely needed to start buying real estate.
Susan Estrich: Boring (Creators Syndicate)
Politics shouldn't be boring. People around the world are willing to fight and die for the right to participate in the political process, even as millions of us change the station. Maybe the television folks and the reporters and, yes, the candidates need to work harder to engage us in the process. Or maybe we just have to do it ourselves.
Andrew Tobias: The Contrast Between Democrats and Republicans
Which is better - 44 million jobs in 22 years, or 24 million jobs in 28? A tenfold return in the stock market over 22 years, or a doubling over 28?
Annalee Newitz: Lies You've Been Told About the Pacific Garbage Patch (io9)
You've probably heard of the "Pacific garbage patch," also called the "trash vortex." It's a region of the North Pacific ocean where the northern jet stream and the southern trade winds, moving opposite directions, create a vast, gently circling region of water called the North Pacific Gyre - and at its center, there are tons of plastic garbage.
Michele Hanson: Why is there a dildo in the upstairs window? (Guardian)
Maybe I am a prude, but my upstairs neighbours certainly have an unusual taste in home décor.
For Extreme Artist Stelarc, Body Mods Hint at Humans' Possible Future (Wired)
Legendary Australian performance artist Stelarc is known for going to extremes, from aggressive voluntary surgeries and robotic third arms to flesh-hook suspensions and prosthetics. For more than four decades, he has used his body as a canvas for art on the very edge of human experience: He once ingested a "stomach sculpture" that could have killed him.
Sanford Pinsker: "Girls" and the Post-College Blues (Irascible Professor)
"Girls" has enough juice behind it to succeed, whether I end up a fan or not. That said, however, let me hasten to add that I think comedy shows should be judged on whether or not they make one laugh. "Girls," so far, has had its moments, even though there are also moments when I just want to slap these selfish, overly-coddled twits.
'I Was There': On Kurt Vonnegut (The Nation)
"The cruelest thing you can do to Kerouac," Hanif Kureishi has a character say in 'The Buddha of Suburbia,' "is reread him at thirty-eight." If that was true, I wondered as I opened the first two volumes of the Library of America's ongoing series of the complete novels, then what of Vonnegut at a decade older still? The two are linked, of course, as items on the syllabus of adolescent male samizdat that used to go like this: Mad magazine at 13, Vonnegut at 15, Salinger at 17, Hunter Thompson at 18, Kerouac at 20. (When you got real big, you read Kundera.)
Adam Gopnik: CAN SCIENCE EXPLAIN WHY WE TELL STORIES? (New Yorker)
Of all the indignities visited on the writer's life these days, none is more undignified than the story or pitch meeting, a ritual to which every writer, from the gazillion-dollar screenwriter to the lowly essayist, will sooner or later submit.
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."
wrote:
said:
Reader Suggestion
Michelle in AZ
From The Creator of 'Avery Ant'
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Coastal Eddy is parked off the coast, setting up shop for a lovely weekend featuring May Gray mornings.
Think Campaign Money Aids Rich
Most Americans
Most Americans, no matter what their political party, believe there is too much money in politics and reject the idea that people should be allowed to spend what they want, a Reuters/Ipsos poll showed on Thursday.
Seventy-five percent of Americans feel there is too much money in politics, and only 25 percent feel there is an intrinsic right to unfettered election spending, an argument commonly used by opponents of controls on campaign finance.
Almost the same proportion - 76 percent - feel that the amount of money in elections has given rich people more influence than other Americans, the online survey found.
The poll found 79 percent of Democrats believe there is too much money in politics, compared with 68 percent of Republicans. Independents largely agreed with Democrats on the issue, with 77 percent saying there is too much money in politics and campaigns.
There was a similar gap between the parties on whether rich people have more influence because of the additional money in elections. Four out of five Democrats and independents - 81 percent and 80 percent, respectively - agreed with that statement. Sixty-five percent of Republicans agreed.
Most Americans
25 Mortgage-Free Homes
Tim McGraw
Tim McGraw will be saluting veterans in a big way while on tour this summer.
The country music superstar is giving away 25 mortgage-free houses - one for each stop on his upcoming "Brothers of the Sun" tour with Kenny Chesney - to wounded or needy service members.
McGraw will kick off the campaign with a Memorial Day concert for military members at New York City's Beacon Theatre during Fleet Week.
Fans can watch a live stream of the show on YouTube and it also will be available to military bases around the world via The Pentagon Channel website.
McGraw is partnering with the charity Operation Homefront and Chase on the program, dubbed HomeFront, with contributions from the Academy of Country Music's ACM Lifting Lives program and The Premier Group on behalf of the North Carolina Furniture Manufacturers.
Tim McGraw
Addresses Alma Mater
Viola Davis
Viola Davis addressed graduating seniors Thursday at the high school in the struggling Rhode Island city where she grew up, urging them to treasure "hard times and joyous moments" and telling them that the "privilege of a lifetime is being who you are."
The Oscar-nominated actress from the film "The Help" spoke to Central Falls High School's class of 2012, student actors and members of student government and other alumni nearly 30 years after receiving her own diploma there. She was also inducted into the school's Alumni Hall of Fame.
A member of the class of 1983, Davis has continued to support the 1.3-square-mile city of 19,000 just north of Providence.
Central Falls has found itself the subject of national headlines over its floundering finances - a state receiver filed for bankruptcy on its behalf last year - and for the mass firing in 2010 of all the high school's teachers. They were later rehired.
Viola Davis
Cancels 3 Las Vegas Shows
Elton John
Elton John is canceling three Las Vegas performances on doctors' orders after being hospitalized with a respiratory infection.
Officials with Caesars Entertainment say the Thursday, Saturday and Sunday performances of "The Million Dollar Piano" are being cancelled.
Show officials say Elton John came down with the infection last weekend and was admitted Wednesday to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. He was later released.
Doctors recommended he not perform for a week and take antibiotics.
Elton John
At Record Low, Poll Finds
'Pro-Choice' Americans
The percent of Americans who identify as "pro-choice" regarding legalized abortion is at a new low of 41 percent, according to a newly released Gallup poll
The decline appears to fall along party lines, with the percent of Republicans identifying as "pro-choice" decreasing from 28 percent last May, to 22 percent in this most recent poll. Democrats remain somewhat consistent, around 60 percent identify as pro-choice.
Potentially troubling for Democrats heading into the fall is the drop among voters who are registered as Independents identifying as "pro-choice." The survey found 41 percent of Independents identified as "pro-choice," while 47 percent identified as "pro-life," marking only the second time since 2001 that the number of "pro-life" Independents has outweighed the number of "pro-choice" Independents.
When polled on the question of legality, 52 percent of Americans said they believe that abortion should be legal "in certain circumstances." That number remains consistent with polling from May 2011.
'Pro-Choice' Americans
Campaign Aims to Kill CISPA
'Privacy Is Awesome'
Fight for the Future, a nonprofit with the self-described goal of protecting the Internet, has launched an informational campaign designed to kill off the Cyber Information Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) once and for all.
The campaign, called "Privacy is Awesome," says that CISPA's been tucked into the Senate's Lieberman-Collins cybersecurity bill, which enjoys bipartisan support in that chamber and the backing of the White House.
The only hope to kill CISPA, according to the campaign's organizers, is for concerned Internet users to reach out to their senators during the upcoming Memorial Day recess before a vote is cast. Accordingly, their website makes it easy for users to find their senators' contact information.
Privacy is Awesome also posted a simple, five-step process that it wants people to follow to kill the bill.
'Privacy Is Awesome'
Sues Auction House Over Dolls
Candy Spelling
The widow of TV producer Aaron Spelling is suing a Maryland auction house that sold part of her extensive collection of antique dolls, claiming it owes her money and failed to return unsold items.
Candy Spelling filed the lawsuit against Annapolis-based Theriault's at the end of April. The lawsuit, which was filed in California, claims that the auction house didn't live up to its contract because it failed to give her a timely and complete account of the sold items and pay her for them. Spelling's lawyers declined to comment. Theriault's president disputed the allegations.
Spelling offered nearly 400 of her dolls for sale at a Theriault's auction in New York City in November. The majority of the dolls were made by the iconic New York-based American doll company Madame Alexander and dated from the 1950s. One doll, a plastic ballerina with a white lace and satin tutu, sold for $11,000, according to an online record of the sale. Another, a doll with red hair and a lavender dress with flower details, sold for $6,250. The published prices for the dolls total about $460,000.
"We are saddened at this dispute with an important customer, and are puzzled at this turn of events, especially since, until her lawyers got involved, Mrs. Spelling had voiced nothing but unqualified compliments regarding the services we were providing," said Theriault president Stuart Holbrook in a statement.
Candy Spelling
Mystery Deer
Hawaii
Deer can swim, but not very far. When they showed up for the first time on the Big Island of Hawaii, mystified residents wondered how they got there.
The island is some 30 miles southeast of Maui, where deer are plentiful.
Hawaii wildlife authorities think someone dropped a few from a helicopter on the northern tip of the island. And tracks along the southern coast indicate deer were pushed into the ocean from a boat and forced to paddle ashore.
Whether they arrived by air or sea, wildlife managers want to eradicate them to avoid a repeat of the destruction seen on other islands where they ate through vineyards, avocado farms and forests where endangered species live.
Officials estimate that there are 100 deer on the northern and southern ends of the Big Island. A government-funded group is leading efforts to get rid of them before they breed.
Hawaii
New Exhibit
Albrecht Dürer
A new exhibit in Albrecht Dürer's hometown opened Thursday, bringing together works by the German Renaissance artist from a dozen countries with a focus on his formative early years.
The Dürer exhibition at the Germanisches Nationalmuseum is the largest in Germany in 40 years, encompassing the artist's creative period until 1505, including self-portraits and portraits of family and friends, as well as his ambitious nature studies and drawings.
The oldest work - "Self-Portrait" from the Albertina museum in Vienna - dates back to 1484 when Dürer was only 13-years-old. The latest, from 1504, is the "Adoration of the Magi" from the Uffizi in Florence.
Dürer was born in 1471 in Nuremberg Nürnberg, which was an economic and cultural center at the time. He died there in 1528.
Albrecht Dürer
Climate Change Winner
Argus Butterfly
Global warming is rescuing the once-rare brown Argus butterfly, scientists say.
Man-made climate is threatening the existence of many species, such as the giant polar bear. But in the case of the small drab British butterfly, it took a species in trouble and made it thrive.
It's all about food. Over about 25 years, the butterfly went from in trouble to pushing north in Britain where it found a veritable banquet. Now the butterfly lives in twice as large an area as it once did and is not near threatened, according to a study in Friday's issue of the journal Science.
Biologists expect climate change to create winners and losers in species. Stanford University biologist Terry Root, who wasn't part of this study, estimated that for every winner like the brown Argus there are three loser species, like the cuckoo bird in Europe. Co-author Jane Hill agreed that it's probably a three-to-one ratio of climate change losers to winners.
Argus Butterfly
Top 20 from Pollstar
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) Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band; $2,031,105; $91.27.
2. (2) Cirque du Soleil - "Michael Jackson: The Immortal"; $1,755,442; $113.26.
3. (3) Elton John; $1,215,209; $109.60.
4. (New) Radiohead; $1,114,246; $58.33.
5. (New) Romeo Santos; $749,885; $73.22.
6. (5) Brad Paisley; $613,255; $42.71.
7. (4) Jason Aldean; $606,359; $44.95.
8. (6) Lady Antebellum; $551,924; $50.28.
9. (7) The Black Keys; $530,634; $47.07.
10. (8) Miranda Lambert; $380,811; $42.68.
11. (9) Blake Shelton; $365,387; $47.76.
12. (10) Jeff Dunham; $303,862; $45.07.
13. (11) Eric Church; $278,239; $35.80.
14. (12) Kelly Clarkson; $196,597; $54.28.
15. (14) Rain - A Tribute To The Beatles; $172,608; $49.34.
16. (13) Yanni; $166,899; $59.84.
17. (15) "Mythbusters"; $159,242; $51.54.
18. (New) Celtic Woman; $158,746; $58.15.
19. (17) Bassnectar; $134,163; $33.99.
20. (19) Casting Crowns; $133,964; $28.37.
Concert Tours
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