Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Suzanne Moore: In the digital economy, we'll soon all be working for free - and I refuse (Guardian)
The digital economy operates as a kind of sophisticated X Factor: someone will make it, but most won't - and the real loser is society.
Dennis Loo (with assistance from Ralph Westfall): Why MOOCs Are Not The Answer (Irascible Professor)
[Ed. note: For readers who are unfamiliar with the acronym "MOOC," it stands for "massive open online course." These are online course that enroll hundreds to thousands of students, have either no or very minimal entrance requirements, and either are free or available at minimal cost to the student. Typically, these courses are "taught" by a very well-known instructor in the field.]
Sophie Heawood: Music has died now I've thrown away my CDs and only listen on my laptop (Guardian)
Streaming music has made it so dull I've lost all interest in it.
Mark Morford: Again with the face-eating monsters (SF Gate)
Oh, no. You guys. There is something under the ice. Alive. Malevolent. Bizarre. Enormously terrifying. It will soon hurl our entire cluster of space-traveling heroes into fits of insanity and violence and much panicked screaming. Oh, no.
Neil Gaiman: Who should be the next Doctor Who?
I think that if you'd asked me who should be the 11th Doctor 5 years ago I wouldn't have listed Matt Smith, because I didn't know who he was or what he was capable of, and if you'd asked me who should play Sherlock Holmes in a modern day revival around the same time I wouldn't have said Benedict Cumberbatch, because I didn't know who he was either.
Rob Bricken: "The brutally honest 'Last Airbender' trailer (emphasis on the brutal)" (io9)
… the guys at Honest Trailers decided to take a look at [M. Night Shyamalan's] most astoundingly awful work, "The Last Airbender," and do their thing.
VINCZE MIKLÓS: Famous Scifi And Fantasy Authors In Their Workspaces (io9)
It can be a revelation to see an author in the place where he or she invented your favorite fantasy worlds. Out of these humble machines and cluttered studies come alternate realities.
Lauren Davis: Science Fiction Novelists Reveal Their Daily Writing Routines (io9)
Isaac Asimov awoke each morning 6 AM and worked well into the night, sometimes churning out entire books in a matter of days. Kingsley Amis' writing binges were fueled by nicotine, alcohol, and numerous cups of tea, while surrealist Haruki Murakami claims to work himself into a routine-induced trance.
Lucy Mangan: "Daddy-Long-Legs by Jean Webster" (Guardian)
It is the summer holidays. It is time for some fun. Quiet fun, otherwise your parents may put a boot heavily on your neck. It is time, in short, for Daddy-Long-Legs.
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is visiting the land of Jell-O and orderlies.
wrote:
took the day off.
Reader Suggestion
Michelle in AZ
From The Creator of 'Avery Ant'
Reader Suggestion
Gezi Park in Istanbul
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Deep marine layer hung around most of the day.
Bill To Legalize Introduced
Web Poker
Republican New York Congressman Peter King introduced legislation Thursday that would rescue online gambling from a legal gray zone and fully regulate it.
The federal government cracked down on online poker in 2011. But the same year, the U.S. Justice Department issued a ruling making online gambling legal so long as it's permitted on the state level.
King says his measure, called the Internet Gambling Regulation, Consumer Protection and Enforcement Act of 2013, would allow states and players to navigate the world of online betting with confidence.
The bill would create an office of gambling oversight in the Treasury Department, impose safeguards against underage and compulsive gambling, and facilitate interstate online wagering. Individual states could continue to ban the practice.
Web Poker
Biggest Films Leaving L.A. For London
Hollywood
Brad Pitt, Robert Downey Jr., Vin Diesel and J.J. Abrams call Los Angeles home, but for the world premieres of their latest films like "Iron Man 3" and "World War Z," they all decamped for the new hub of Hollywood's biggest productions -- London.
It is a testament to how the U.K. city is attracting filmmakers in droves because of lucrative tax incentives that make one of the most expensive cities in the world cheaper to shoot films in than Los Angeles.
More than 1,000 films have used the country's film tax credit in the five years since they were established, with the U.K. doling out an estimated £800 million (about $1.2 billion) in rebates.
Nearly every studio has embraced the U.K., with Disney readying movies like the next "Star Wars" film and "Guardians of the Galaxy" for production there and Paramount premiering movies like "Star Trek Into Darkness" in Leicester Square.
Hollywood
Salacious Secret Files
Rock Hudson
Rock Hudson's wife once confronted him for being gay, Judy Garland kept several caches of drugs hidden throughout her house, and Marilyn Monroe and John F. Kennedy were recorded having sex - all this according to newly uncovered files from former cop-turned-private investigator Fred Otash. The files, which had been hidden in a storage unit, were given to The Hollywood Reporter by Otash's daughter Colleen.
Otash, who was one of the inspirations for Jack Nicholson's character in Chinatown, was a notorious freelance investigator in the 1950s and '60s. L.A. Confidential novelist James Ellroy met Otash several times before his death and even wrote Shakedown, an e-book featuring a fictionalized (and not so flattering) version of Otash. Now that Ellroy is developing an FX pilot based on Otash's life, Colleen hopes that releasing some of his secret files will counter Ellroy's interpretation of her father.
Among the highlights in the files, which fill 11 overflowing boxes, are a transcript of when Rock Hudson's wife grilled the actor about his exploits with men and how a Rorschach test he had taken seemed to indicate that he was a homosexual.
Otash's notes also detail how he was hired by Marilyn Monroe to install listening devices in her home. The private eye reportedly listened to Monroe have sex with President John F. Kennedy and another time heard a confrontation between Monroe, Bobby Kennedy and JFK's brother-in-law Peter Lawford on the day Monroe died.
Rock Hudson
Reappears in Israel
'Extinct' Frog
The Hula painted frog was declared extinct in 1996, the first time any amphibian had been declared extinct by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), a conservation group.
The decision was guided by the best available scientific data at the time: Nobody had seen any sign of the creature since its sole known habitat, the Hula Valley wetlands in northern Israel, had been drained in 1955. Then, in October 2011, a routine patrol turned up an adult male of the species. Further searching uncovered another 10 Hula painted frogs.
It's a remarkable case of a species reappearing, said Rebecca Biton, a paleontologist at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and co-author of a study describing the reappearance of the frog published this week in the journal Nature Communications.
But the story doesn't end there. An equally amazing finding, Biton said, is that the Hula painted frog, contrary to its previous classification, is the only surviving member of a long-lost group of frogs, in the genus Latonia (genus is the taxonomic classification above species). Her team arrived at this conclusion in two ways. First, Biton's analysis of ancient frog bones showed they looked much more like Latonia then the other painted frogs of the Middle East, to which they were supposedly more closely related. Second, DNA analysis suggested the same.
'Extinct' Frog
Lesson In Semantics
'Direct Access'
Major tech companies including Apple Inc, Google and Facebook Inc on Thursday said they do not provide any government agency with "direct access" to their servers, contradicting a Washington Post report that they have granted such access under a classified data collection program.
The newspaper reported that the U.S. National Security Agency and the FBI are "tapping directly into the central servers of nine leading U.S. Internet companies" through a secret program known as PRISM, and extracting massive amounts of data including audio, video, photographs, emails, documents and connection logs.
It named nine companies, including Apple, Facebook, Microsoft Corp and Google Inc, as having joined the secret program.
Google, the Internet's largest search provider, said that, despite previous reports that it had forged a "back door" for the government, it had never provided any such access to user data.
Microsoft said it does not voluntarily participate in any government data collection and only complies "with orders for requests about specific accounts or identifiers."
'Direct Access'
Attend Ballet, Announce Divorce
Putins
Vladimir Putin pulled off one of his most audacious pieces of stagecraft, attending a ballet with his rarely seen wife, then emerging smiling and announcing their marriage is over.
The end of the marriage of the Russian president and Lyudmila Putina less than two months shy of their 30th anniversary came on state television after a Thursday evening that started out like a model of domestic contentment - a devoted husband taking his wife out for an artsy interlude.
After the performance of "Esmeralda" at the Great Kremlin Palace, the two came into a luxurious room to speak to a reporter.
After about a minute, the reporter asked about rumors that the two didn't live together. Putin smiled slightly, like a boy caught misbehaving, and turned his head toward Lyudmila. "This is so," he said.
The peculiar format for the announcement appeared aimed at underlining that this wasn't just a powerful man dumping his faithful helpmate. That's a potentially important strategic move for Putin, who has based his public image on rectitude and support of traditional values.
Putins
Some Regrets
Beck
A reflective Glenn Beck said Thursday he regrets that some of his fiery opinions caused division in the country over the last several years.
He wasn't fully aware of the perilous times and people "at each other's throats," said the conservative radio host, who accepted a First Amendment award from Talkers magazine, the trade publication for his industry.
Beck said he was puzzled by activists who organize boycotts of people who say things they disagree with. Beck's popular show on Fox News Channel ended in 2011 after a successful advertiser boycott organized after he said President Barack Obama had "a deep-seated hatred for white people."
"For any role that I have played in dividing, I wish I can take them back," Beck said. "I don't wish I could take back the truth that was spoken but perhaps - not perhaps - many times I could have said it differently."
He didn't specify any particular incidents.
Beck
New Best-Seller
Norway
It may sound like an unlikely No. 1 best-seller for any country, but in Norway - one of the most secular nations in an increasingly godless Europe - the runaway popularity of the Bible has caught the country by surprise. The Scriptures, in a new Norwegian language version, even outpaced "Fifty Shades of Grey" to become Norway's best-selling book.
The sudden burst of interest in God's word has also spread to the stage, with a six-hour play called "Bibelen," Norwegian for "the Bible," drawing 16,000 people in a three-month run that recently ended at one of Oslo's most prominent theaters.
Officials of the Lutheran Church of Norway have stopped short of calling it a spiritual awakening, but they see the newfound interest in the Bible as proof that it still resonates in a country where only 1 percent of the 5 million residents regularly attends church.
Scholars aren't surprised at the success of the plays or the new Bible translation, explaining that faith is a deeply personal matter in this nation of taciturn Scandinavians who regularly withdraw from city life to spend holidays at remote cottages in the solitude of the mountains, fjords and forests.
Norway
New North America Voyage Discovered
Vikings
Some 1,000 years ago, the Vikings set off on a voyage to Notre Dame Bay in modern-day Newfoundland, Canada, new evidence suggests.
The journey would have taken the Vikings, also called the Norse, from L'Anse aux Meadows on the northern tip of the same island to a densely populated part of Newfoundland and may have led to the first contact between Europeans and the indigenous people of the New World.
Evidence of the voyage was discovered by a combination of archaeological excavation and chemical analysis of two jasper artifacts that the Norse used to light fires. The analysis, presented at the annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology in Honolulu, suggests the jasper used in the artifacts came from the area of Notre Dame Bay.
The jasper artifacts were found L'Anse aux Meadows and the Norse explorers likely set out from that outpost. They would've headed due south, traveling some 143 miles (230 kilometers) to Notre Dame Bay. When they reached their destination Norse would have set foot in an area of Newfoundland that modern-day researchers know was well inhabited.
Vikings
Changing Northern Forests
Deer
The booming deer population in the northern United States is bad for the animal's beloved hemlocks, a new study finds.
During Michigan winters, white-tailed deer converge on stands of young hemlocks for protection from winter chill and predators. The same deer return every year to their favorite clumps of the bushy evergreens, called deeryards. The high concentration of deer in a small space saturates the soils with nitrogen from pee, according to a study published online in the journal Ecology. While deer pee can be a valuable source of nitrogen, a rare and necessary nutrient for plants, some deeryards are now too rich for the hemlocks to grow.
Slow-growing hemlocks prefer low-nitrogen soil, and the prolific pee results in nitrogen-loving species like sugar maple outgrowing the hemlocks, the researchers found.
With the reduced hemlock cover available for deer, the booming white-tailed deer population means more deer crowd into the remaining forest. The researchers found more than 100 deer per square mile (2.6 square kilometers) in popular deeryards. And young hemlocks have a tough time recovering from the deer nibbling and browsing.
Deer
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) Taylor Swift; $1,784,275; $82.24.
2. (3) Kenny Chesney; $1,654,532; $79.23.
3. (2) Bon Jovi; $1,558,922; $99.04.
4. (4) Pink; $1,095,291; $75.65.
5. (5) Maroon 5; $897,350; $65.73.
6. (6) Jason Aldean; $770,262; $53.91.
7. (New) Alicia Keys; $601,182; $78.89.
8. (7) Muse; $537,416; $55.92.
9. (8) Leonard Cohen; $499,280; $109.36.
10. (9) Carrie Underwood; $491,343; $61.39.
11. (12) Motley Crue; $342,127; $79.83.
12. (14) Tiesto; $230,594; $43.73.
13. (13) Jeff Dunham; $213,237; $43.93.
14. (15) Diana Krall; $191,525; $85.21.
15. (16) Heart; $176,362; $74.03.
16. (17) Chris Tomlin; $163,637; $27.87.
17. (19) "Winter Jam" / Tobymac; $159,817; $12.51.
18. (18) Shinedown / Three Days Grace; $155,808; $39.24.
19. (20) Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds; $136,669; $51.43.
20. (New) Bassnectar; $127,938; $34.62.
Concert Tours
In Memory
Esther Williams
Esther Williams, the swimming champion turned actress who starred in glittering and aquatic Technicolor musicals of the 1940s and 1950s, has died. She was 91.
Williams died early Thursday in her sleep, according to her longtime publicist Harlan Boll.
Following in the footsteps of Sonja Henie, who went from skating champion to movie star, Williams became one of Hollywood's biggest moneymakers, appearing in spectacular swimsuit numbers that capitalized on her wholesome beauty and perfect figure.
Such films as "Easy to Wed," ''Neptune's Daughter" and "Dangerous When Wet" followed the same formula: romance, music, a bit of comedy and a flimsy plot that provided excuses to get Esther into the water.
When hard times signaled the end of big studios and costly musicals in the mid-'50s, Williams tried non-swimming roles with little success. After her 1962 marriage to Fernando Lamas, her co-star in "Dangerous When Wet," she retired from public life.
She came to films after winning 100-meter freestyle and other races at the 1939 national championships and appearing at the San Francisco World's Fair's swimming exhibition.
As with Judy Garland, Donna Reed and other stars, Williams was introduced in one of Mickey Rooney's Andy Hardy films, "Andy Hardy's Double Life" (1942).
She also played a small role in "A Guy Named Joe" before "Bathing Beauty" in 1944 began the string of immensely popular musical spectaculars.
Among them: "Thrill of a Romance," ''Fiesta," ''This Time for Keeps," ''On an Island with You," ''Take Me out to the Ball Game," ''Duchess of Idaho," ''Pagan Love Song," ''Texas Carnival," ''Skirts Ahoy," ''Million Dollar Mermaid" (as Annette Kellerman, an earlier swimming champion turned entertainer), "Dangerous When Wet," ''Easy to Love" and "Jupiter's Darling."
Williams in a bathing suit became a favorite pinup of GI's in World War II, and her popularity continued afterward. She was a refreshing presence among MGM's stellar gallery - warm, breezy, with a frankness and self-deprecating humor that delighted interviewers.
Esther Jane Williams grew up destined for a career in athletics. She was born Aug. 8, 1921, in Inglewood, a suburb southwest of Los Angeles, one of five children.
A public pool was not far from the modest home where Williams was raised, and it was there that an older sister taught her to swim. They saved the 10-cent admission price by counting 100 towels.
Lamas was Williams' third husband. Before her fame she was married briefly to a medical student. In 1945 she wed Ben Gage, a radio announcer, and they had three children, Benjamin, Kimball and Susan. They divorced in 1958.
After Lamas' death in 1982, Williams regained the spotlight. Having popularized synchronized swimming with her movies, she was co-host of the event on television at the 1984 Olympic Games in Los Angeles. She issued a video teaching children how to swim and sponsored her own line of swimsuits.
Esther Williams
In Memory
Tom Sharpe
British novelist Tom Sharpe, who satirized everything from apartheid to academe in a series of best-sellers, has died at 85.
Sharpe's Spanish publisher, Anagrama, said he died early Thursday in the Catalan town where he lived. Spanish newspapers said he had been suffering from diabetes.
Born in 1928, Sharpe sharpened his satirical ax as a young man working in South Africa. He was deported in 1961 for criticizing the apartheid regime.
His first novel, the South Africa-set "Riotous Assembly," was published in 1971. He became one of Britain's most popular comic novelists with "Blott on the Landscape," the "Wilt" series about a long-suffering college lecturer, and "Porterhouse Blue," set in a fictitious Cambridge University college.
Many of his works were adapted for TV.
Sharpe moved from England to Spain in the early 1990s, where he became something of a local celebrity.
Sharpe studied at Lancing College and Pembroke College in Cambridge before serving in the Marines.
Tom Sharpe
In Memory
Joey Covington
Former Jefferson Airplane drummer Joey Covington has died in a Palm Springs car crash.
A Riverside County coroner's report says the 67-year-old Palm Springs resident wasn't wearing a seat belt when his car hit a retaining wall at about 5 p.m. Tuesday. He died at the scene.
The Palm Springs Desert Sun says police don't believe alcohol or drugs were involved.
A friend, Keith McCormick, tells the paper that Covington's wife, Lauren, suspects he had a stroke or heart attack before the accident.
Covington replaced Spencer Dryden as the Airplane's drummer from 1970-72. Before that, he was with the Airplane offshoot Hot Tuna and played congas on the 1969 Airplane album "Volunteers."
Covington co-wrote several Airplane songs, including "Pretty as You Feel" and the 1976 tune "With Your Love."
Joey Covington
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