Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Ping Pong 3D
Flash game.
Paul Krugman: Income, Race and Voting (New York Times)
This in turn suggests a problem Republicans may not fully realize with their new strategy, which is in effect to be even more the white Christian party. You can think of this as an attempt to persuade Ohio whites to start voting like Alabama whites, which I guess could happen. But what if the effect is, instead, to persuade Hispanics to start voting like African-Americans?
Helaine Olen: "CEOs and the rest of us: a tale of two economies" (Guardians)
CEOs earn 273 times more than their employees - a pay disparity which is having an increasingly corrosive effect.
Brent Rose: I Wore a Bionic Leg, And I Never Wanted To Take It Off Again (Gizmodo)
Say you've just had ACL surgery. Or you're recovering from a bad break. Or, worse, you suffer a stroke, or MS, or spinal or neurological damage. Regaining the power to walk is one of the toughest things you can do, and it may be impossible without a crutch, rail, or physical therapist to lean on. The AlterG Bionic Leg-straight out of the sci-fi future-may be the answer you've been dreaming of. I should know. I tried it.
George Dvorsky: Is human super-intelligence a bad idea? (io9)
Advocates of human enhancement often say that we ought to increase our intelligence as a species. But the consequences of actually doing this have never fully been explored. An excessive amount of intelligence might actually prove to be a bad thing - and a distraction from what really matters.
JOSEPH BENNINGTON-CASTRO: These fish are evidence that humans aren't the only evil animals (io9)
It's a common (but evil) survival strategy in zombie movies: Injure somebody else and run like hell while they get eaten. But humans aren't the only bastards who do this. Some shoaling fish also use this selfish tactic when they're being chased by predators, according to new research.
Brian Palmer: Tipping Is an Abomination (Slate)
Here's how to get rid of it.
Eddie Deezen: "It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World: Greatest Slapstick Comedy Ever?" (Neatorama)
The idea of "let's put a bunch of stars together and we'll have a hit" has been attempted on many occasions before and since and, as most of us movie fans well know, it generally does not work. But somehow, under the brilliant direction of Stanley Kramer, this crazy idea worked. And with possibly the most star-studded cast in the history of motion pictures, a true comedy classic was created.
David Bruce: "The Kindest People: Be Excellent to Each Other (Volume 3)" (Free Download at Smashwords)
This book contains 250 stories of good deeds, including this one: Someone who posted anonymously on Quora.com wrote about a man who may have been homeless who came into a truck stop and asked a waitress whether 38 cents was enough to buy a cup of coffee. She replied, "Of course. Have a seat." The real price of a cup of coffee at the truck stop was 50 cents.
David Bruce's Amazon Author Page
David Bruce's Smashwords Page
David Bruce's Blog
David Bruce's Lulu Storefront
David Bruce's Apple iBookstore
David Bruce has approximately 50 Kindle books on Amazon.com.
wrote:
answered:
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
Until last night it'd only rained twice on July 11th since they started keeping records here.
The Highest-Earning
Comedians
It's been 15 years since Seinfeld ended, but when it comes to comedy, Jerry Seinfeld is still the master of his domain. Despite a generally low profile and a $53 million drop in annual earnings compared to 2009, he's still raking in enough cash to land the No. 1 spot for the third year in a row on our list of the highest-earning comedians.
Thanks to the show's lucrative licensing deals, repeats of the 180-episode sitcom have generated over $3 billion in syndication royalties. But stand-up is where Seinfeld really cashes in - he grossed an estimated $27 million from more than 70 tour dates over the past 12 months, giving him a total of $32 million in annual earnings.
Besides Seinfeld, other mainstays on the list who are back this year include Jeff Dunham (No. 4) and Larry the Cable Guy (No. 7), who we estimate banked $19 million and $13 million, respectively. Their earnings have fallen over the years, but the majority on our list are up.
Of the hot new talents surging onto our list, Kevin Hart (No. 6) is undoubtedly the most impressive. The Philadelphia native has a social media followings that boasts 7.7 million Twitter followers, 7.4 million Facebook fans and 390,000 YouTube subscribers. This year, Hart earned an estimated $14 million with the help of his sold-out international comedy tour. It was the world's third most popular comedy tour of 2012, according to Pollstar, the concert data publication. Jeff Dunham was No. 1.
Comedians
the full list: Top-Earning Comedians Of 2013
'Off Their Rockers' Dumped
Betty White
Betty White fans, prepare to fly your flags at half-mast.
NBC network has canceled the reality prank show "Betty White's Off Their Rockers" after two seasons.
The show offered a sort of geriatric version of "Punk'd," during which senior citizens would pull gags on people. The series got off to an encouraging start, scoring a 2.2 rating/6 share in the advertiser-sought 18 49 demographic with a January 16, 2012 preview, which was preceded by a 90th birthday extravaganza for White.
However, ratings were not too kind for the second season of the series. "Off Their Rockers" hit a series low of 0.8/3 last week, though it did grow to a 1.0/3 with its season finale on Tuesday.
Betty White
Names 4 Anchors
Al Jazeera America
Al Jazeera America has announced its first four news anchors as it prepares to launch in August: Jonathan Betz, Richelle Carey, Morgan Fogarty and Del Walters will read the news from Al Jazeera America's studio in New York City.
Betz spent four years at WFAA-TV Channel 8 in Dallas, as a field reporter and fill-in anchor. He was previously a reporter for WWL-TV Channel 4 in New Orleans, where he led the station's coverage of Hurricane Katrina, for which he and the WWL-TV news team won Alfred I. duPont and George Foster Peabody Awards.
Carey is an Emmy Award-winning reporter who spent the last seven years with CNN in Atlanta. She was also a weekday anchor for CNN's HLN.
Fogarty was been part of the Emmy-award winning WCCB News at Ten in Charlotte, N.C. for nearly a decade, and was the broadcast's main anchor for the past three years. She previously co-anchored WCCB News Edge. Her awards include several from the Radio Television Digital News Association and the Associated Press.
Walters spent more than two decades as an anchor and senior investigative reporter for WJLA-TV in Washington, D.C. where he was awarded more than 20 Emmy Awards. He left in 2004 to be the managing editor of investigative operations at WMAR-TV in Baltimore. In 2006, Walters started his own production company 3PE Productions, producing the critically acclaimed film "Apocalypse Africa, Made in America." He was recently awarded the Edward R. Murrow Award for his hour-long feature on Haiti.
Al Jazeera America
Early Story To Be Published
Joseph Heller
Before Joseph Heller satirized the madness of war in "Catch-22," he told a serious tale about the tragedy of racism.
"Almost Like Christmas," to appear next week in Strand Magazine, is a grim short story about the stabbing of a Southern white, the town's thirst for revenge and the black man who has resigned himself to blame. Written in the late 1940s or early '50s, after Heller had returned from World War II, the story has rarely been seen and offers a peek at the early fiction of one of the 20th century's most famous writers.
"Heller was to a large extent a guy who saw through hypocrisy, greed, and the backward nature of a mob better than most writers - so it's no wonder that he turned his pen to a racist mob in a small southern town," said Andrew Gulli, managing editor of the Strand, a publication based in Birmingham, Mich., that has unearthed little known works by Mark Twain, Graham Greene and others.
"William Saroyan was a huge influence on Heller at the time - stories of Depression-era hardships, written in a hard-boiled style," said Daugherty, whose "Just One Catch: A Biography of Joseph Heller," came out in 2011. "The story's lack of humor is very uncharacteristic of the Heller readers would come to know."
Joseph Heller
The Disaster Of Privatization
Edward Snowden
In May, computer analyst Edward Snowden flew to China, handed over volumes of National Security Agency surveillance data to a reporter, and launched a heated national conversation about our nation's surveillance state. Underscoring that conversation was the fact that Snowden was a private contractor, given access to a vast store of information despite having virtually no track record with the NSA or the private firm with which he was employed.
Snowden's leaks exposed a widespread lack of oversight of the contractors working at every level of our government. Outsourcing can be nearly as damaging at the state and local levels as it is for federal contracts. The same lack of transparency, accountability and oversight threatening our national security threatens public services provided each day across the country. Cash-strapped mayors and governors are handing over control of critical public services and assets to for-profit corporations and Wall Street investment banks that promise to handle them better, faster and cheaper. Too often, such deals entirely undermine transparency, accountability, shared prosperity and competition, the very underpinnings of democracy.
In fact, the fine print in these outsourcing deals often gives corporations the power to make public decisions for decades to come. It also often guarantees profits even when getting them conflicts with what was a bedrock value of America: public service provided for the public good.
In 2012, Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), the largest private prison company in the country, sent a letter to 48 states offering to buy public prisons in exchange for a promise to keep the prisons 90 percent filled for 20 years.
While the letter was a public relations fiasco for CCA, it turns out that many existing private prison contracts actually include "occupancy guarantees" of 90 percent and even 100 percent. Governments must keep prison beds filled or taxpayers have to pay the prison company for empty beds.
Edward Snowden
Convicted Of Murder
Nicholas Brooks
The playboy boyfriend of a fashion designer was convicted Thursday of strangling and drowning her in the bathtub of a swank hotel room after a tumultuous six-month relationship.
Nicholas Brooks, whose father was an Oscar-winning composer who wrote "You Light Up My Life," put his face in his hands silently as the murder verdict was read. His girlfriend, Sylvie Cachay, was found partially clothed in an overflowing tub on Dec. 9, 2010.
On the night of Cachay's death, Nicholas Brooks knocked over a candle and started a small fire at her apartment, burning her hair. So they went to the Soho House, an exclusive Manhattan hotel and club that cost $1,800 a year and upward for a membership. Surveillance footage shows them checking in at 12:31 a.m. Brooks is then seen pacing the hallway, then going down to the lobby and returning several times before he puts on a coat and leaves at 2:18 a.m.
Cachay's body was discovered by hotel staff at 3 a.m.
Nicholas Brooks
Apologizes
Bieber
Justin Bieber has apologized by phone to Bill Clinton for cursing the former president and spraying his photo with cleaning fluid in a New York City restaurant kitchen earlier this year.
Clinton's office said Thursday the pop star called and "he apologized and offered to help the Clinton Foundation." Clinton's office declined to provide any other details.
A video released Wednesday by TMZ.com shows the 19-year-old Bieber urinating in a mop bucket as he and others race through the restaurant kitchen. Before exiting, Bieber sprays the Clinton photo and drops the f-bomb in reference to the former president.
Bieber tweeted to his more than 41 million followers Wednesday night, thanking Clinton "for taking the time to talk." Bieber tweeted: "Your words meant a lot. #greatguy."
Bieber
Leaving Batman
Grant Morrison
After killing off Batman's Robin and re-inventing the X-Men, Scottish comic book writer Grant Morrison is looking for other superhuman legends to transform with his pen.
Morrison - who has also taken on Spiderman and Superman in a 25-year career - has decided to leave the caped crusader in the hands of other writers after the final issue of his "BATMAN, INCORPORATED" DC Comics series comes out this month.
Morrison, 53, said his final iteration of Batman had used ideas from the character's entire journey from the crime fighter created by writer Bill Finger and artist Bob Kane in 1939 through his slapstick portrayal in the 1960s US TV series to director Christopher Nolan's brooding 2008 "Dark Knight" film.
His next projects include a re-working of Wonder Woman and a series called "MULTIVERSITY", where superheroes exist in parallel universes. In one alternative scenario, Hitler won the war and Superman is a Nazi. In another, superheroes have vanquished evil and their gifted children have nothing to do.
Morrison, whose popularity is so vast he had his own comic book convention last year in Las Vegas, said his interest in American comics came out of a childhood spent near a naval base, which once had a huge American presence.
Grant Morrison
LA Auction
Milton H. Greene
Fashion and celebrity photographer Milton H. Greene was only 26 years old when he photographed Marilyn Monroe for Look magazine. He went on to take thousands of photos of the Hollywood siren, capturing both her vulnerability and her sex-bomb persona.
Now, 3,700 unpublished black-and-white and color negatives and transparencies of Greene's Monroe archive are going on the auction block - with copyright. They are but a fraction of 75,000 celebrity negatives and slides Greene shot in the 1950s and 1960s that are going on sale July 27 at Profiles in History in Los Angeles and online.
Copyrights are included with all the material, which is spread over 268 lots, meaning a potential buyer can print images from the negatives and transparencies, sell them and license the material.
The archive also includes hundreds of production stills of Faye Dunaway during the filming of "Bonnie & Clyde" and Cary Grant and Doris Day in "That Touch of Mink." Among others are Sid Caesar, Jane Fonda, Audrey Hepburn, Catherine Deneuve, Ava Gardner and Marlene Dietrich.
Most of the lots are expected to fetch between $1,000 and $15,000 depending on the number of negatives in each lot and the featured celebrity. But it's anyone's guess what they will bring. "It's unchartered territory," Maddalena said.
Milton H. Greene
Interns Find Medieval Pottery
Richard III
A week into the new excavation at Richard III's gravesite, archaeology interns have uncovered some medieval artifacts, the dig team announced.
Last year, archaeologists found the battle-bruised skeleton of the British monarch under a parking lot in Leicester, England, among the buried ruins of the lost Grey Friars church. An expanded four-week dig kicked off at the site on July 1 so that the team could further investigate the church, with a special focus on the choir area, where Richard's body was discovered.
The University of Leicester team has recruited student interns for the project. So far, they have unearthed medieval pottery fragments while removing ground layers at the site.
The team is on the lookout for artifacts a bit sexier than pottery sherds this summer in their new 82-by-55-foot (25-by-17-meter) trench. The archaeologists have said they would examine other burials that were exposed at Grey Friars, including a stone coffin suspected to belong to a medieval knight. They will also be watching for evidence of headless friars, who were beheaded by Henry IV and buried at the church, according to legend.
Richard III
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) The Rolling Stones; $7,969,276; $346.09.
2. (2) Taylor Swift; $2,188,099; $85.18.
3. (3) Kenny Chesney; $1,919,435; $74.36.
4. (4) Bon Jovi; $1,612,999; $104.13.
5. (5) Fleetwood Mac; $1,390,010; $108.91.
6. (6) New Kids On The Block; $838,510; $66.69.
7. (7) Jason Aldean; $780,014; $51.47.
8. (8) Tim McGraw; $575,811; $36.47.
9. (9) Brad Paisley; $566,551; $36.20.
10. (11 Carrie Underwood; $495,724; $62.39.
11. (13) Widespread Panic; $416,309; $46.05.
12. (14) Barry Manilow; $354,265; $57.72.
13. (15) Motley Crue; $329,571; $75.99.
14. (16) Styx / REO Speedwagon / Ted Nugent; $221,234; $38.78.
15. (17) Jeff Dunham; $211,902; $48.20.
16. (18) Bassnectar; $179,128; $36.44.
17. (20) Chris Tomlin; $163,206; $28.29.
18. (21) Willie Nelson; $153,714; $55.53.
19. (22) Il Divo; $152,184; $76.21.
20. (New) Juanes; $146,839; $53.27.
Concert Tours
In Memory
Toshi Seeger
Toshi Seeger, folk singer Pete Seeger's wife of 70 years and a close partner in his social and environmental activism, has died. She was 91.
Longtime family friend Thom Wolke confirmed that she died Tuesday night at the couple's home in Beacon in New York's Hudson Valley, about 65 miles north of New York City. The cause of death was not immediately known.
Never famous like her 94-year-old husband, friends say Toshi Seeger was an equal who perfectly complemented Pete Seeger's idealism.
"To understand Pete, you have to know Toshi," Wolke said. "They were the ultimate yin and yang. Where Pete was ... the artist, Toshi kept him grounded."
Toshi Aline Ohta Seeger was born in Germany to an American mother and a Japanese father and was brought to the United States as a baby. She met her future husband as a teenager in New York City when Pete Seeger performed at a square dance and he stayed after to dance.
Pete and Toshi Seeger were married July 20, 1943. The couple built their cabin in Beacon after World War II and have stayed on the high spot of land by the Hudson River ever since. The couple raised three children.
The singer recalls on the recently released spoken work CD "Pete Seeger: The Storm King" how his extraordinary wife raised their young family in the cabin initially without running water or electricity while he spent months on the road.
"I'd be away. She'd put one baby on her hip and the other tugging at her skirt and walk 150 yards down a steep slope into a ravine where there was a little brook of clear water and she got a pail and walked back with water to wash with and cook with," Seeger said.
Toshi Seeger was particularly active with the Hudson River Sloop Clearwater, an environmental group. Tao Rodriguez-Seeger said his grandmother was a pioneer in festival production who played a key role in Clearwater's annual festival.
"Without my grandmother, there would be no Pete Seeger the way people understand it," Rodriguez-Seeger said. "That's not an exaggeration. She kept everything working so that he could focus on the world-saving, civil rights, anti-nukes, Clearwater - all of the projects that my grandfather worked on."
Toshi Seeger
In Memory
Charles "Chuck" Foley
The Minnesota man whose Twister game launched decades of awkward social interactions at parties has died. He was 82.
Charles "Chuck" Foley died July 1 at a care facility in the Minneapolis suburb of St. Louis Park. His son, Mark Foley, said Thursday that his father had been suffering from Alzheimer's disease.
Foley and a collaborator, Neil Rabens, were hired in the mid-1960s by a St. Paul manufacturing firm that wanted to expand into games and toys. They came up with a game to be played on a mat on the floor, using a spinner to direct players to place their hands and feet on different colored circles.
"Dad wanted to make a game that could light up a party," Mark Foley said. "They originally called it 'Pretzel.' But they sold it to Milton Bradley, which came up with the 'Twister' name."
The game became a sensation after Johnny Carson and Eva Gabor played it on "The Tonight Show" in 1966.
Mark Foley said his father made little money from Twister, but that it never seemed to bother him much. The game was not his first invention, and far from his last.
Born in Lafayette, Ind., Foley's first invention came at the age of 8 - a locking system for the cattle pen at his grandfather's farm. As a young man he worked as a salesman, but his interest in games and toys led him to apply for a job at a toy company in the Minneapolis area. He moved his family to Minnesota in 1962.
Over the years, Foley invented dozens of other toys and games. He also invented a product called un-du, a liquid adhesive remover.
Mark Foley is now president of un-du Products Inc., based in St. Louis Park. Chuck Foley had lived in North Carolina for a number of years, but his son said he returned to Minnesota six years ago when his health began to decline, to be closer to his family. Foley and his wife, Kathleen, had nine children. She died of breast cancer in 1975, and Foley never remarried.
Charles "Chuck" Foley
| CURRENT MOON lunar phases |
