'Best of TBH Politoons'
Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Kristina Rizga: Making a Difference, Joyfully ( AlterNet)
The world's leading peace advocate, the Dalai Lama, turns 70 [recently]. Author and activist Isabel Losada asked the Tibetan leader what people can do to make the world a better place.
The Irascible Professor: Climate Change McCarthyism
Read the Irascible Professor's commentary on the attempt by Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX) to intimidate academic scientists who have determined that greenhouse gases are contributing to global warming
Ann Medlock: Saving Social Security (AlterNet)
Saving Social Security requires a level of truth-telling we don't often see in elected officials. It means giving up next-election thinking, and attending to the long-term well-being of our people.
George McClure: Another liberal column. Right? (www.denverpost.com)
The mainstream media in this country are dominated by liberals. I was informed of this fact by Rush Limbaugh. And Thomas Sowell. And Ann Coulter. And Rich Lowry. ...
Map: Where do the troops who have died in the war come from?
The Giraffe Heroes Project
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Still sunny & the temperature is starting to creep up to seasonal.
Haven't seen any Erik Estrada commercials in a couple of days.
Mistrial Declared
Notorious B.I.G.
A mistrial in the Notorious B.I.G. wrongful death case means the rap star's family won't get immediate answers about his slaying, but they can file a new lawsuit seeking to link his unsolved 1997 killing to a Los Angeles Police Department corruption scandal.
U.S. District Judge Florence-Marie Cooper declared a mistrial Wednesday after she expressed concern at a hearing Tuesday that the LAPD had deliberately withheld evidence. Her clerk and attorneys on both sides confirmed the ruling; a written order was to be issued Thursday.
There were only three days of testimony in the trial, which began June 21. It was interrupted when an anonymous tip led to the discovery of large numbers of LAPD documents that hadn't been turned over to family attorneys.
For a lot more, Notorious B.I.G.
Baby News
Zahara Marley Jolie
Angelina Jolie and her "Mr. & Mrs. Smith" co-star Brad Pitt are in Ethiopia to pick up the orphaned baby girl she is adopting, an official said Thursday.
Pitt, Jolie and Jolie's 3-year-old son Maddox arrived Wednesday. The couple have refused to speak to The Associated Press about the adoption.
Jolie has named her 5-month-old daughter Zahara Marley Jolie, according to People magazine's Web site.
Zahara Marley Jolie
Group Wants to Build Statue
James Garner
A group is raising money to build a 10-foot statue of actor James Garner in front of a theater in his hometown.
Organizers want to build a James Garner Commemorative Plaza and install the statue facing the Sooner Theatre. The plaza would cost about $185,000 and is tentatively planned to open in April.
Committee member Roy Hamilton said about two-thirds of the money needed for the project has been raised.
Garner, born in Norman in 1928, starred in the TV series "Maverick" and "The Rockford Files." Most recently, he appeared on ABC's "8 Simple Rules."
James Garner
Replacing Howard Stern?
David Lee Roth
Infinity Broadcasting isn't commenting on an online report penned by a former Howard Stern Show regular that suggests David Lee Roth will be one of the personalities that ultimately replaces the ribald DJ on the airwaves.
Chaunce Hayden, a gossip and celebrity writer for New York/New Jersey entertainment guide SteppinOutMagazine.com, writes that "an Infinity source has confirmed the signing."
In April, Infinity president of programing Rob Barnett told Billboard Radio Monitor he was working with Roth in Boston at classic rock station WZLX. "The station has kind of turned the town on its ear with cab drivers, waiters and waitresses and employees of Barnes & Noble talking about this amazing guy on the radio," Barnett said.
The Diamond Dave-as-morning-man idea actually sprung from an Infinity station 3,000 miles away. VP of FM talk Jack Silver put Roth on the air for three hours earlier this year at KLSX Los Angeles, which Silver programs. "We were so taken by that performance that we created a stunt here in Boston to give classic rock listeners the opportunity to hear him all week long," Barnett said in April.
David Lee Roth
Postpones Shows
Daryl Hall
Pop music duo Daryl Hall and John Oates have postponed upcoming shows because Hall has been diagnosed with Lyme disease.
Hall, 55, is recovering at his home in upstate New York and is expected to make a full recovery, publicist Jonathan Wolfson said Wednesday.
This month's shows have been postponed, but those scheduled for August and September are expected to go on as planned, Wolfson said.
Daryl Hall
Jumps to Top of TV Ratings
'Kim Sam-soon'
She doesn't let men push her around, is overweight, can't dance well, and talks openly about constipation. That's why South Korea
The new TV soap opera "My Name is Kim Sam-soon" has rocketed to the top of the ratings since its premiere last month. Its popularity is driven by an audience of 30-something women who see the gutsy Kim as South Korea's "Bridget Jones" - a woman who speaks her mind and is fed up with societal pressure to marry and settle down while also living up to conventional stereotypes of beauty.
The show soared to 41.7 percent viewership across South Korea one recent Thursday evening and is the highest-rated soap opera this year. TNS Media Korea, which compiles TV ratings, said women in their 30s are the largest group of viewers.
Kim is a restaurant pastry chef, who got the job after working hard to save money and study cooking in France. She has a crush on her handsome, rich boss, but refuses to pander to him - instead making him get on his knees in a recent episode to beg for her to return to her job after she resigns in anger over having to deal with him.
'Kim Sam-soon'
Doctors Clear Artery
Zsa Zsa Gabor
Zsa Zsa Gabor suffered an apparent stroke at her Bel-Air home and underwent emergency surgery to clear a blocked artery.
The two-hour operation late Wednesday was successful and the 88-year-old actress was expected to return home within three days, husband Frederic von Anhalt said Thursday. He declined to disclose the name of the Los Angeles hospital.
Gabor and ninth husband von Anhalt - to whom she's been married for 19 years - filed an elder abuse suit against daughter Francesca Hilton, claiming she stole $2 million by forging her mother's signature to take out a loan on Gabor's $14 million Bel-Air estate. Hilton's father, hotel magnate Conrad Hilton, was Gabor's second husband. (Gabor is the great-aunt of Paris and Nicky Hilton.)
Zsa Zsa Gabor
Starts Design Firm
Lenny Kravitz
Lenny Kravitz's love of all things retro is evident in everything from his style to his sound. Now, the rocker is showcasing it in his newest venture - a design firm.
"We started about two years ago," Kravitz told The Associated Press of the Miami-based Kravitz Design.
"We were quiet at first, just doing some private homes, and then moved into doing a penthouse recording studio," the 41-year-old singer said of his two partners. "(Now) we're doing hotels. We've got three or four things on the table now."
Lenny Kravitz
Lends Hollywood Hype to Scientology
Tom Cruise
There's nothing unusual about celebrities promoting their faith - think Madonna and kabbalah, Richard Gere and Buddhism, Muhammad Ali and Islam - but the Church of Scientology's Celebrity Centers have been unusually adept at cultivating entertainers such as actor Tom Cruise.
It was no ordinary celebrity feud when Cruise criticized Brooke Shields for taking anti-depression drugs, then berated "Today" host Matt Lauer for suggesting that psychiatric treatment might help some patients.
This was, rather, the latest round in a long-running campaign against psychiatry and the pharmaceutical industry by this expanding, Los Angeles-based religion, which has been immersed in controversies over its 51 years of existence.
Scientology was created by science fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard. In "Dianetics" (1950), Hubbard said the "thetan" (soul) suffers from negative "engrams" implanted in this life and innumerable past lives - the church avoids the word "reincarnation."
Over the decades, Scientology has been the target of - and initiator of - an unusual number of legal and rhetorical assaults. These have involved not only psychiatrists but disgruntled dropouts and government agencies, first in the United States and then overseas as the church's missions expanded.
Tom Cruise
Center Of The Universe
Omarion
London was the scene of carnage on Thursday after a series of deadly blasts but American R&B crooner Omarion, who suffered no injury or inconvenience, wants people to pray for him.
"Omarion was in London during the tragic bombings that struck this morning," a statement by the singer's publicist AR PR Marketing, released hours after the bombings, said.
Making no mention of the fatalities or casualties of the blasts, the singer's statement concluded, "He would like his fans to pray that he has a safe trip and a safe return home. He appreciates your support."
Omarion
Decry Abstinence-Only Education
Pediatricians
A leading group of pediatricians says teenagers need access to birth control and emergency contraception, not the abstinence-only approach to sex education favored by religious groups and President Bush.
The recommendations are part of the American Academy of Pediatrics' updated teen pregnancy policy.
"Even though there is great enthusiasm in some circles for abstinence-only interventions, the evidence does not support abstinence-only interventions as the best way to keep young people from unintended pregnancy," said Dr. Jonathan Klein, chairman of the academy committee that wrote the new recommendations.
Teaching abstinence but not birth control makes it more likely that once teenagers initiate sexual activity they will have unsafe sex and contract sexually transmitted diseases, said Dr. S. Paige Hertweck, a pediatric obstetrician-gynecologist at the University of Louisville who provided advice for the report.
Pediatricians
Mystery In Germany
Lower Saxony
A 2,600-year-old corpse has been discovered in the moors of northern Germany. It's not the only one. Such finds are frequent, but have posed an increasingly large riddle: Why were so many of the bodies victims of violence and dismemberment?
Its blade plunging into the earth, the peat-cutting machine crept slowly through the Grosses Uchter Moor (Great Uchte Moor) in the northern German state of Lower Saxony. A worker stacked the sections of turf sliced free by the guillotine-like blade. Suddenly he paused, something having caught his eye. "What's this? An old leather jacket?"
It wasn't. In fact, what the worker had dredged from the moor was a large piece of human skin. It was followed by long bones, a foot, fingernails, an open ribcage and more and more hair, everything colored rust-red by acids in the bog.
The gruesome find was made in Sept. 2000, but it was only last week that the press got wind of it -- and hailed it as a sensation. It was, after all, the first time in 20 years that an ancient corpse had been pulled out of the German moors. "We're overjoyed," says Henning Hassmann of the State Office of Historic Preservation in Hanover.
The corpse found in the bogs is that of a teenage girl, between 16 and 19 years old -- and with perfect teeth. According to the radiocarbon dating method, the corpse is from 650 B.C., meaning she was likely part of an early Germanic tribe. But that wasn't immediately obvious. Because the well-preserved corpse was nude, the criminal investigation department concluded the girl had been the victim of a sex crime and sent the corpse to the forensic medicine department in Hamburg. But the forensic experts were unable to find any evidence of violence. The file was soon forgotten and began to gather dust. Only when peat-cutters -- working at the same location again in January 2005 --happened across more bones embedded in the moor did the officials begin questioning their earlier assessment.
Lower Saxony
In Memory
Evan Hunter
Evan Hunter, who wrote the Ed McBain 87th Precinct detective series as well as novels including "The Blackboard Jungle," died of cancer of the larynx, his agent Jane Gelfman said. He was 78.
He won the Mystery Writers of America's Grand Master Award for lifetime achievement in 1986, and in 1999 became the first American to take the Cartier Diamond Dagger from the British Crime Writers' Association.
Hunter also helped Alfred Hitchcock adapt the screenplay for the 1963 film "The Birds."
Before he became McBain, Hunter had already began writing under his own name, drawing on his own experience as a teacher to pen 1954's "The Blackboard Jungle," a story of big-city school violence that became the 1955 film starring Glenn Ford and Sidney Poitier.
Besides "The Birds," Hunter also worked on screenplays from his own novels, including the 1972 Burt Reynolds movie "Fuzz" and 1960's "Strangers When We Meet," with Kirk Douglas and Kim Novak.
Though he was known as Hunter and also wrote as McBain, he was born Salvatore Lombino in 1926 in New York. He began writing while serving in the Navy during World War II and changed his name in 1952, believing his Italian heritage would otherwise lead publishers to reject his work.
He is survived by his wife, Dragica, and three sons.
Evan Hunter
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