'Best of TBH Politoons'
Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Robert Parry: CIA: Osama Helped Bush in '04 (consortiumnews.com)
On Oct. 29, 2004, just four days before the U.S. presidential election, al-Qaeda leader Osama bin-Laden released a videotape denouncing George W. Bush. Some Bush supporters quickly spun the diatribe as "Osama's endorsement of John Kerry." But behind the walls of the CIA, analysts had concluded the opposite: that bin-Laden was trying to help Bush gain a second term.
10,000 EPA SCIENTISTS PROTEST LIBRARY CLOSURES - Loss of Access to Collections Will Hamper Emergency Response and Research
Washington, DC - In an extraordinary letter of protest, representatives for 10,000 U.S. Environmental Protection Agency scientists are asking Congress to stop the Bush administration from closing the agency's network of technical research libraries. The EPA scientists, representing more than half of the total agency workforce, contend thousands of scientific studies are being put out of reach, hindering emergency preparedness, anti-pollution enforcement and long-term research, according to the letter released today by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER).
E&P Staff: 'NY Post' Cites Evidence That Ann Coulter Plagiarized Parts of Book, Columns (editorandpublisher.com)
Well, Ann Coulter may be "liberal" in one respect, anyway. The New York Post reported Sunday that author/columnist Coulter "cribbed liberally in her latest book" and also in several of her syndicated columns, according to a plagiarism expert. John Barrie, creator of the iThenticate plagiarism-probing system, claimed he found at least three examples of what he called "textbook plagiarism" in the new Coulter book "Godless" after he ran its text through the program. He also discovered verbatim copying in Coulter's weekly column, which is syndicated to more than 100 newspapers by Universal.
Annalee Newitz: Updike Makes Himself Obsolete (AlterNet.org)
Why is the prolific writer arguing against online publishing, which promises to spread even his books into a vastly larger public space?
'I'm a celebrity, get me an honorary degree!' (guardian.co.uk)
Why bother going to college, studying hard and getting into debt for the sake of some letters after your name? All you need to do is get famous - and they'll throw doctorates at you. But why? Stuart Jeffries reports.
How I put my husband through the hoops (guardian.co.uk)
After learning about the tricks that trainers use on wild animals, Amy Sutherland decided to try the same techniques on her husband - with dramatic results.
A Loeb Classical Library Reader: The red and green guides to the wisdom of the ancient world (weeklystandard.com)
THEY DO CATCH THE EYE, those handsome, pint-sized green and red books keeping their own elite company in the more recondite or otherwise up-market bookstores.
Resistance is useful (guardian.co.uk)
For years we've been told the only way to burn off fat is endless hours of aerobic exercise. But now researchers say the secret lies in 'resistance training'. By Fiona Russell.
Man Who Delivers 113-Page Marriage Proposal Gets One-Word Answer (lulu.com)
A man who asked his girlfriend to marry him by writing her a 113-page proposal and publishing it as a paperback book has received a one-word answer: "Yes."
Free Move On Bumper Sticker
The Wall St. Poet
A Bummer Summer
Hubert's Poetry Corner
BLISTERS ON MY EARDRUMS
A LITTLE GONZO POETRY [sic]!
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Sunny & tolerable.
All the nominees for the Emmy Awards - 2006
No new flags.
19th Concert
Farm Aid
The seeds of Farm Aid were planted here in 1985 when Bob Dylan, performing in the Live Aid benefit for Africa, said something should be done to help American farmers. Twenty-one years later, Farm Aid is returning to the region to hold its 19th fundraising concert on Sept. 30 at the Tweeter Center in Camden, N.J.
Musician Neil Young, one of the organization's founders, announced the date Thursday at Reading Terminal Market, a downtown Philadelphia landmark known for its fresh produce.
Farm Aid's goals include supporting family farms, fighting corporate agriculture, advocating fair prices and encouraging people to buy food grown locally. The organization has raised more than $29 million over two decades, officials said.
Farm Aid
Parking Ticket Survey
Diplomats
Researchers who examined tens of thousands of parking tickets issued to United Nations diplomats found those least likely to pay up were from countries where people hold a dim view of the United States.
The study was conducted by economists from Columbia University and the University of California, Berkeley, who were hoping to uncover why officials from some countries frequently abused their diplomatic immunity by parking illegally, while others played by the rules.
Their main finding was that diplomats were more likely to run up unpaid parking fines if they hailed from countries with a history of unchecked corruption, such as Nigeria.
But a second factor - poor U.S. image - emerged when the researchers matched the list of offenders against a 2002 world public opinion survey performed by the Pew Research Center.
Based on statistics supplied by the city, the report said the worst offenders were Kuwait, which averaged 246.2 unpaid tickets per diplomat per year, followed by Egypt, with 139.6; Chad, with 124.3; and Sudan, with 119.1.
The researchers said they also linked their list of tickets to an index intended to measure the prevalence of corruption in each country. Diplomats hailing from countries with low levels of corruption, such as Norway, "behave remarkably well even in situations where they can get away with violations," the researchers said.
Diplomats
Honorary Law Degree
JK Rowling
"Harry Potter" author JK Rowling received an honorary law degree from the University of Aberdeen on Thursday to mark her support for research into multiple sclerosis.
Rowling, whose mother died aged 45 from MS in 1990, has helped fund a program of research at the university into the debilitating condition.
She became patron of the MS Society Scotland in 2001 after discovering what she has described as the "appallingly poor quality of care" available to people with the condition in Scotland.
The 40-year-old writer has already been honored for her contribution to literature by three other Scottish universities, St Andrews, Edinburgh and Napier.
JK Rowling
Jazz Radio Blues
Chicago
The iPod and a growing need for local news have done the unthinkable: They have cost Chicago, one of America's great jazz cities, its last major source for jazz programming on local radio.
WBEZ, Chicago's National Public Radio (NPR) member station and among the oldest public radio outlets in the United States, has decided to scrap scheduled music programming -- the bulk of which was nightly jazz -- and move to a 24-hour news and public affairs format.
The change -- which has sparked a backlash from loyal fans -- speaks volumes about the worries facing independent radio stations.
Around the United States, changes similar to WBEZ's are taking place. Connecticut Public Radio's WNPR-FM dropped most of its classical programming in favor of news and information early in June. WETA, another public FM station in Washington, D.C., made the switch to all-talk more than a year ago. Stations in New York, Boston and elsewhere have made similar moves.
Chicago
Baby News
Tenyson Spencer Crowe
Oscar-winning actor Russell Crowe's wife Danielle Spencer gave birth to their second child on Friday, his Australian manager said.
Tenyson Spencer Crowe was born at Sydney's Royal North Shore Hospital weighing about 8 pounds, Crowe's manager Grant Vandenberg said.
Tenyson Spencer Crowe
Tour Change
Journey
Journey will have a new lead singer on its summer tour with Def Leppard while Steve Augeri recovers from a throat infection.
Jeff Scott Soto, who has performed with Journey guitarist Neal Schon, will step in for Augeri starting with a show Friday in Bristow, Va.
"Steve's been suffering with an acute throat condition since before we kicked off the tour with Def Leppard. We were hoping he'd be in well condition to handle the rigors of the road but unfortunately it appears to be a chronic condition requiring total voice rest," the band said in a statement Thursday.
Journey
Flames Scorch Mansion
Ozzy Osbourne
Flames scorched Ozzy and Sharon Osbourne's English country mansion Thursday morning, the result of a faulty lamp, the fire service said.
Neither the couple nor their children, Amy, Jack and Kelly, were at the house in Jordans, 26 miles west of London, when the fire occurred, a family spokesman said. Paramedics treated a member of the household staff for smoke inhalation.
The blaze caused minor fire and smoke damage to the entrance hallway of the mansion.
Ozzy Osbourne
'New' Words Added
Dictionary
Need tips on how to groom a unibrow or soul patch? Just google it. Or get a mouse potato to do it for you. If you're still lost, grab the latest edition of Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary for a definition of those and about 100 other words that have made their way into its pages.
But be warned: you might come across a drama queen (a person given to often excessively emotional performances or reactions), an empty suit (an ineffectual executive), or a himbo (an attractive but vacuous man - think "male bimbo".)
"We try to have a mix that address the wide range of people's information needs when adding new words," said John Morse, president of the Springfield-based (Merriam-Webster) dictionary publisher. "It could be a technical term or some lighthearted slang that sends people to a dictionary."
To make it into the dictionary, a word has to be more than a flash-in-the-pan fad. It needs staying power.
Dictionary
'Redneck Wishing Well'
Outhouse Humor
A citizens group is trying to pay the street light bill with a little potty humor.
The Chauncey (Ohio) Emergency Management Group places an old-fashioned, wooden outhouse on a resident's lawn with a donation box where the toilet bowl should be and a sign on the door that says "Redneck Wishing Well."
People who find the latrine in their yard have to chip in to get it shipped out. They also get to pick the next home it graces.
The emergency management group's Jerry Dowler, whose phone number is posted inside the outhouse, hauls the privy in his pickup truck.
Outhouse Humor
Photograph Found In Bavaria
Mozart's Widow
A print of the only photograph ever taken of Austrian composer Mozart's widow, Constanze, has been found in the archives of the southern German town of Altoetting, local authorities said.
The long-lost photograph was taken in October 1840, when Constanze Weber was 78 years old, at the home of Swiss composer Max Keller.
The Altoettingen state archive said it was the only time in her life that she was photographed and the picture serves as one of the earliest examples of photography in Bavaria.
Constanze Weber was only 29 when Mozart died in 1791. She later married Danish diplomat Georg Nissen and they regularly visited Keller at his home in Altoettingen.
Mozart's Widow
In Memory
Ralph Ginzburg
Ralph Ginzburg, a magazine publisher who was at the center of two First Amendment battles in the 1960s, tangling with Barry Goldwater and serving eight months in federal prison for obscenity, died Thursday. He was 76.
Ginzburg, who launched a later career as a photographer, died in a Bronx hospice after battling multiple myeloma for three years, said his wife of 49 years, Shoshanna, who collaborated with her husband on many projects.
Ginzburg's Avant Garde, first published in 1968, was a literary and art magazine that boasted fans like John Lennon and Pablo Picasso. When that magazine folded, he came up with Moneysworth, a consumer financial newsletter.
But it was two other publications, an erotic art quarterly called Eros and the magazine Fact, which called Goldwater's psychological background into question, that placed Ginzburg in the courts for years.
He was convicted in Philadelphia of obscenity for using allegedly "salacious" promotional methods. (Eros was mailed from Middlesex, N.J., and Ginzburg had sought to mail it from Intercourse, Pa.) Ginzburg laughed off the charges while defending the magazine's content.
The Supreme Court upheld the conviction in 1966 in a 5-4 vote, ruling that the way a publication is promoted - if "the purveyor's sole emphasis is on the sexually provocative aspects of his publications" - could justify a finding of obscenity for erotic material that might otherwise be deemed marginally acceptable.
In 1964, Ginzburg had started another magazine, Fact, when he sent out questionnaires to 12,000 psychiatrists asking, "Do you believe Barry Goldwater is psychologically fit to be president of the United States?"
Ginzburg wrote that the 2,400 responses indicated the Arizona GOP senator, then seeking the presidency, was paranoid, had a cold relationship with his father, and played cruel practical jokes as a child.
Goldwater - who lost to President Johnson in a landslide - sued for libel, eventually winning $1 in compensatory damages and $75,000 in punitive damages from Ginzburg and the magazine. Once again, the case went to the Supreme Court, which upheld the damage verdicts in a one-line order in 1970.
Besides his wife, Ginzburg is survived by three children.
Ralph Ginzburg
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