Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Mark Morford: My miracle can beat up your miracle (SF Gate)
The wow factor of what our consumer tech can do is now so routinely high, so commonplace, we look right past the fact we're no longer heading toward a truly miraculous tech age; we're already there.
David Dennis: Unpaid internships and a culture of privilege are ruining journalism (Guardian)
Media companies that rely on unpaid interns marginalize the voices of low-income communities and minorities.
Andrew Tobias: SPEND VERSUS DO (Scroll Down)
As you know, many average Americans hate government spending. But the indispensable Rachel Maddow notes that they love much of what government does. They love those Medicare and Social Security checks, love our military, love that our meat is inspected and our planes don't collide . . . so Rachel suggests we remind people what they're saying when they demand the government spend less: they are demanding government do less.
Froma Harrop: A World of Rotten Tax Laws (Creators Syndicate)
Guy writes a film script full of four-letter words. But when the actors repeat them, he gets all huffy about the dirty language. An absurd reaction, wouldn't you say? But it's not so different from the scene in which our lawmakers scold corporate chieftains for exploiting tax loopholes their legislatures helped create.
Paul Krugman: Taxing the Rich (New York Times)
… if we choose to raise less revenue from the rich than we can without hurting the economy, we will be forced either to raise more taxes from or provide fewer valuable services to everyone else.
Heidi Moore: Don't be fooled by the false economic recovery (Guardian)
We all want to believe a recovery is here, but indicators are that it's not. We're getting swindled again by banks and politicians.
Susan Estrich: I Love You More (Creators Syndicate)
When you're young, three years seems like a lifetime. The difference between 15 and 18, or 18 and 21; the difference between a 2-year-old and a kindergartner; the difference between the first date and the wedding. It's been three years since my beloved friend Kath died. It feels like yesterday.
Lucy Mangan: Fireweed by Jill Paton Walsh (Guardian)
… I love another of Jill Paton Walsh's books just as much. A Parcel of Patterns is a masterly tale based on the true story of a Derbyshire village that isolated itself from the rest of the world when the plague arrived there, letting nobody leave until the disease had run its course. At the time of its first publication, the Guardian hailed it as "a pocket masterpiece", and no one should disagree.
Evan Peter Smith: Betties ride like bats out of hell (Athens News)
Roller-derby troupe holds fundraiser like none other.
David Bruce: Wise Up! War (Athens News)
Major Alexis Casdagli found an interesting way of defying the Nazis while he was in a World War II prisoner-of-war camp: He did needlework. He created a cross-stitch sampler that had a border of dots and dashes that were messages in Morse code. What were the messages? "God save the King" and "F**k Hitler." Many Nazis saw the sampler, but none deciphered the Morse code messages.
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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
Sunny, warmer, and much more humid.
Minaj, Carey Not Returning
'American Idol'
Nicki Minaj is following Mariah Carey out the door on "American Idol."
The hip-hop diva posted Thursday on Twitter that it was "time to focus on the music," just a few hours after Carey announced she wasn't coming back to the Fox talent competition so that she could focus on her upcoming tour.
Minaj and Carey became new judges on "Idol" this season, along with country singer Keith Urban. Minaj and Carey frequently bickered on the show, creating a feud that was uncomfortable for both viewers and contestants.
Randy Jackson, the show's lone remaining original judge, announced earlier this month that he was leaving the show ahead of its 12th season finale, which crowned booming R&B vocalist Candice Glover as the latest "Idol."
'American Idol'
Another Seattle Start-Up
Jamen Shively
A former Microsoft executive plans to create the first U.S. national marijuana brand, with cannabis he hopes to eventually import legally from Mexico, and said he was kicking off his business by acquiring medical pot dispensaries in three U.S. states.
Jamen Shively, a former Microsoft corporate strategy manager, said he envisions his Seattle-based enterprise becoming the leader in both recreational and medical cannabis - much like Starbucks is the dominant name in coffee, he said.
Shively, 45, whose six years at Microsoft ended in 2009, said he was soliciting investors for $10 million in start-up money.
Shively laid out his plans, along with his vision for a future in which marijuana will be imported from Mexico, at a Thursday news conference in downtown Seattle.
Joining him was former Mexican President Vicente Fox, a longtime Shively acquaintance who has been an advocate of decriminalizing marijuana. Fox said he was there to show his support for Shively's company but has no financial stake in it.
Jamen Shively
Canada Council for the Arts
Baumgartner Stradivarius
An Irvine, Calif., concert violinist is playing sweet music on one of the rarest instruments in the world - a $5 million Stradivarius.
The Orange County Register reports Iryna Krechkovsky will use the instrument for three years.
The so-called Baumgartner Stradivarius is 324 years old. Krechkovsky says its tone is sweet as dark chocolate.
The violin is one of 17 rare instruments loaned out every three years by the Canada Council for the Arts.
Baumgartner Stradivarius
75th Anniversary
Superman
What to get Superman for his 75th birthday? DC Entertainment's starting with a new logo.
The company, part of Warner Bros. Entertainment, unveiled the new logo Thursday in honor of Superman's 75th anniversary. It ties in the iconic character's familiar red and blue colors, along with his ever-present cape, and the legend "75 Years."
Its first appearance is on the cover of "Superman Unchained" by DC co-publisher Jim Lee and writer Scott Snyder on June 12, along with a new animated short being produced by Zack Snyder, portions of which will be shown at San Diego Comic-Con in July as a sneak-peak.
Snyder's finished version, which will pay homage to Superman, will debut in full later this summer.
Superman
Reality TV Lawsuit Filed
Wrongful Death
The mother of a man killed when a helicopter crashed during a shoot for a reality television show has claimed in a wrongful death lawsuit that the aircraft's operators and producers negligently operated the helicopter.
Jerie S. Rydstrom filed the lawsuit Wednesday, claiming the helicopter's operators negligently maintained and operated the Bell 206B Jetranger that was used during filming. Darren Rystrom was one of three people, including a pilot, killed during the early morning crash on Feb. 10 in the Acton area of northeast Los Angeles County.
The men were filming a scene for an untitled military-themed show being produced for the Discovery Channel, which is not named in the lawsuit.
An initial report by the National Transportation Safety Board report stated the helicopter was being used for scenes in which an actor dropped a backpack to the ground from the hovering aircraft.
The production crew on the ground was not filming at the time, but there was a camera operator aboard and a GoPro camera pointed at an actor in the left front seat, the report said. The recording devices were sent to NTSB headquarters for examination.
Wrongful Death
WWE Tag-Team
'The Flintstones'
Have you ever been watching a "Flintstones" cartoon and thought, "This would be much better with professional wrestlers?" Us neither. But we're getting it anyway.
WWE Studios has tag-teamed with Warner Bros. to co-produce a "Flintstones" direct-to-home-video animated movie, to be released on Blu-ray, DVD, VOD and digital download in early 2015, WWE Studios said on Wednesday.
WWE talent John Cena, CM Punk and others will join owner Vince McMahon to provide voices for the movie, which will see Fred, Barney and the gang attending a WWE match. Naturally, the wrestlers will play Bedrock versions of themselves, cutely named "John Cenastone," "CM Punkrock" and "Vince McMagma" respectively.
This is not the first time that WWE has infiltrated your old cartoons. The wrestling giant and Warner Bros. also have co-produced an animated "Scooby Doo" cartoon that will be released in March, just before Wrestlemania XXX. (That's "30," not porn. Though expect porn parodies. Just not from Warner Bros.)
'The Flintstones'
Sharia Law
El Salvador
A seriously ill Salvadoran woman whose struggle to get a medical abortion drew international attention received permission on Thursday to end the troubled pregnancy with a cesarean section.
El Salvador's Health Minister on Thursday approved the C-section for the 22-year-old woman suffering from kidney failure and lupus, a day after the Supreme Court ruled that she could not have an abortion despite her lawyers' appeal that the pregnancy was life-threatening.
Ultrasound images indicate that her fetus is developing with only a brain stem and is given no chance of surviving.
The case of the mother known only as Beatriz drew widespread attention and criticism as she sought to end the pregnancy in a country with some of the strictest abortion laws in Latin America. Salvadoran laws prohibit all abortions, even when a woman's health is at risk, and the woman and any doctor who terminated her pregnancy would face arrest and criminal charges.
The Supreme Court said physical and psychological exams done on the woman by the government-run Institute of Legal Medicine found that her diseases are under control and she could continue the pregnancy. The judges voted 4-to-1 to reject the appeal by the woman's lawyers, who argued that continuing with the pregnancy put her life at risk.
El Salvador
Art Auction
TS Eliot
A multimillion-dollar trove of works by artists including J.M.W. Turner, Francis Bacon, Lucian Freud and Winston Churchill that were owned by poet T.S. Eliot's widow will be sold in London later this year, Christie's auction house announced Friday.
Valerie Eliot, who died in November aged 86, bought the artworks with royalties from the hit Andrew Lloyd Webber musical "Cats," which was based on her husband's volume of light verse "Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats."
The musical proved more lucrative than Eliot's poetry, and allowed his widow to assemble a collection of British art valued at more than 5 million pounds ($7.6 million) in the London home she had shared with her husband.
Valerie met T.S. Eliot at London publisher Faber & Faber, where the Nobel literature laureate was a director and she a star-struck secretary who had been a fan of his work since her teenage years.
In keeping with his wishes, she refused to cooperate with would-be biographers. But she welcomed the unlikely idea of a stage musical based on "Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats," which became a global sensation.
TS Eliot
Sonar Image
Amelia Earhart
A sonar image may point to the wreckage site of Amelia Earhart's plane, the Electra, The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery announced. The nonprofit organization has been on the hunt for the Earhart plane for the last 25 years.
"What we have is something that looks like what we think the expected wreckage should look like right in the place where we expect it to be," Ric Gillespie, TIGHAR's executive director told Yahoo News. "That's what's so enticing about this, it looks different from anything else out there."
The image was taken from a remotely operated vehicle 600 feet below the water off an uninhabited island in the southwestern Pacific republic of Kiribati. It shows, says the TIGHAR website, an "anomaly."
"The most prominent part of the anomaly appears to be less than 32 feet long," states TIGHAR, which also notes the plane was 38 feet and 7 inches long.
Amelia Earhart
Russians Find Carcass
Woolly Mammoth
A perfectly preserved woolly mammoth carcass with liquid blood has been found on a remote Arctic island, fueling hopes of cloning the Ice Age animal, Russian scientists said Thursday.
The carcass was in such good shape because its lower part was stuck in pure ice, said Semyon Grigoryev, the head of the Mammoth Museum, who led the expedition into the Lyakhovsky Islands off the Siberian coast.
"The blood is very dark, it was found in ice cavities bellow the belly and when we broke these cavities with a poll pick, the blood came running out," he said in a statement released by the North-Eastern Federal University in Yakutsk, which sent the team.
The researchers collected the samples of the animal's blood in tubes with a special preservative agent. They were sent to Yakutsk for bacterial examination in order to spot potentially dangerous infections.
The carcass' muscle tissue was also in perfect condition.
Woolly Mammoth
Tudor Warship New UK Museum
The Mary Rose
The remains of a Tudor warship that sank more than 400 years ago will be displayed along with thousands of its artifacts for the first time at a new British museum.
Museum officials and historians say the 27 million-pound ($41 million) museum not only allows visitors to view the wreck of the Mary Rose, Henry VIII's flagship, but also provides a snapshot of Tudor life onboard the vessel.
The Mary Rose Museum, located at the historic dockyards in the southern English city of Portsmouth - near the exact spot where the 16th-century vessel was built - opens to visitors Friday.
The Mary Rose led the English fleet in battle against France from 1512, but sank after three decades in service during the Battle of The Solent on July 19, 1545. The ship remained on the seabed off the south coast of England and was not discovered until 1971, when divers noticed its exposed timbers.
The new museum, located next to Lord Nelson's flagship, the HMS Victory, replaces a smaller museum which only housed some of the artifacts, not the wreck.
The Mary Rose
In Memory
Rev. Andrew Greeley
The Rev. Andrew Greeley was, it seems, always writing. At home on a typewriter, later on a computer, then on a plane with a laptop and even in his car dictating into a tape recorder as he drove.
By the time he finished, the outspoken Roman Catholic priest and Chicago newspaper columnist had written more than 100 non-fiction books and some 50 novels, many international mystery thrillers that routinely climbed onto best-seller lists. They were translated into a dozen languages.
And he also often spoke out about various religious topics, even criticizing the hierarchy of his own church over the child sex abuse scandal.
On Wednesday night, nearly five years after he suffered a brain injury during a fall that put him in a coma for weeks, Greeley died in his home in downtown Chicago. He was 85.
Greeley, who was ordained in 1954, wrote a weekly column that appeared in the Chicago Sun-Times and other newspapers on the relationship between religion and politics. An internationally recognized scholar, he also was a contributor to the New York Times, National Catholic Reporter and other publications.
His final book, "Chicago Catholics and the Struggles Within Their Church," was published in 2010, exploring a topic that he had written about for years, sometimes giving him a reputation for generating controversy in the church.
Greeley also had said that neither the church nor the government was willing to do much about priests who sexually abused children, telling a lay Catholic group in 1992: "The sexually maladjusted priest has been able to abuse the children of the laity and thus far be reasonably secure from punishment."
And during a news conference in 1987, Greeley said that if he were heading a church fundraising campaign, he would admit to church members that "we've really goofed. People are resentful over what they take to be the insensitivity of church leaders - particularly on matters relating to sex."
Greeley was born in the Chicago suburb of Oak Park in 1928, and he spent much of his life close to home. He worked as a sociology professor at the University of Arizona and a researcher at the University of Chicago's NORC, formerly known as the National Opinion Research Center. He earned post-graduate degrees from the University of Chicago in the 1960s.
The priest became often quoted and interviewed in the media. In a biography published on his website, Greeley described himself as having "unflinchingly urged his beloved church to become more responsive to evolving concerns of Catholics everywhere."
Former President Bill Clinton listed Greeley among those who had stayed the night at the White House. Clinton's deputy White House press secretary said Greeley's novel "Irish Lace" was one of the books the then-president had on a vacation reading list in July 1997.
In 1986, Greeley offered the Archdiocese of Chicago $1 million to create a foundation to help inner-city Catholic students. The archdiocese refused the money but wouldn't say why.
So, Greeley set up his own Catholic Inner-City School Fund to distribute money to the 80 Catholic schools in the city with student enrollments that are more than 50 percent black or Hispanic.
Rev. Andrew Greeley
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