Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Poor Elijah (Peter Berger): Twenty-first Century Exceptionalism (Irascible Professor)
"American exceptionalism" is a notion that floats around at political rallies, especially in an election year when candidates are striving to outdo each other patriotically. Some electoral hopefuls may think they're harking back to Alexis de Tocqueville's nineteenth century praise of our democracy as "exceptional." Ironically, especially for conservative Republicans fond of the phrase, they're actually quoting Joseph Stalin, whose point back in 1929 was that the United States wasn't unique and would inevitably fall to Marxism.
"Australian Video Celebrating Good Samaritans Goes Viral (VIDEO)" (Huffington Post)
Filmed using hidden cameras, the clip follows the antics of regular people who decide to return a pair of sunglasses that they find near the entrance of a shopping center.
Scott Stump: Parents tell how they kept grad gift a secret for 13 years
"There's really no words," said Brenna Martin of book signed by every teacher and coach.
Froma Harrop: Where They Play, Rich Conservatives Like Zoning (Slate)
The brothers' family business, based far away in Wichita, Kan., is a notoriously careless emitter of toxic wastes. The Political Economy Research Institute at the University of Massachusetts ranks Koch Industries as America's 10th worst air polluter. Thus, not a few eyes roll as Bill continues to lead the long fight against a planned wind farm off Osterville's shore. You understand, it would mar the alleged environmental perfection of the waters in which he sails.
Priya Elan: Frank Ocean gets a boost from Jay-Z and Beyoncé Guardian)
The R&B star has had numerous messages of support from many of his fellow musicians, but some stars have remained silent.
Jim Pagels: Stop Binge-Watching TV (Slate)
While it's not surprising that America's unprincipled youth have flocked to the latest trend, some of our most venerable critics have also hopped on the binge-watching bandwagon. Emily Nussbaum, formerly of New York and now of The New Yorker, went on a Breaking Bad bender last summer. "Binge-watching a show like Breaking Bad is probably the purest way to watch a great series," she wrote. But if you ask me, she has ruined the entire batch.
David Haglund: "The Most Passionate Netflix-Envelope Plot Summary Ever Stolen (Updated)" (Slate)
Update: Commenter hoodoozephyr has uncovered the disappointing reality behind this seemingly inspired Netflix sleeve.
Christopher Hitchens: The Importance of Being Orwell (Vanity Fair)
George Orwell's best-known work ('Animal Farm,' 'Nineteen Eighty-Four') emerged from painstaking investigation. In the introduction to a groundbreaking volume of Orwell's diaries, V.F.'s late columnist dissects one of the 20th century's greatest political minds, a writer who was also his lifelong inspiration.
David Bruce has 42 Kindle books on Amazon.com with 250 anecdotes in each book. Each book is $1, so for $42 you can buy 10,500 anecdotes. Search for "Funniest People," "Coolest People, "Most Interesting People," "Kindest People," "Religious Anecdotes," "Maximum Cool," and "Resist Psychic Death."
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Reader Suggestion
Michelle in AZ
From The Creator of 'Avery Ant'
Day 4
Gulf Fritillary
Came across some of Gulf Fritillary larva
on the back fence, so it looks like we'll have a third year of raising butterflies. : )
Click on any picture for a larger version.
Reader Comment
Caterpillars
Marty;
You are midwifing butterflies ... what you are raising are caterpillars.
DanD
Thanks, Dan.
They live on the back fence, and require absolutely no care.
Don't have to feed 'em, don't have to clean up after 'em.
And then they turn into something pretty that will fly away.
This is the 3rd year we've had butterflies, and I'm starting to feel about them the way Bart feels about Bixby corn.
You may consider it midwifing butterflies, but I prefer to think of it as butterfly wrangling. : )
Reader Suggestion
Literary Quotes
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Overcast morning, scattered showers in the afternoon, and a steady rain (with a bit of thunder) most of the night. Downright peculiar weather for these parts.
Celebrate 50 Years
Rolling Stones
Mick Jagger may need to rethink the words he sang more than 45 years ago - "What a drag it is getting old."
Thursday marks 50 years since Jagger played his first gig with a band called the Rolling Stones, and the group is marking its half-century with no letup in its productivity or rock 'n ' roll style. Jagger himself is still the cool, rich frontman of the world's most successful rock band.
Now in their late 60s and early 70s, the band members celebrated the anniversary by attending a retrospective photo exhibition at London's Somerset House - and looking to the future by rehearsing for new gigs.
Jagger, Keith Richards, Ronnie Wood and Charlie Watts mingled with celebrities from Mick Hucknall to Tom Stoppard at a launch party for the exhibition, which charts the band's career from their first official photo shoot - young mop tops lined up against a row of red phone boxes - to their monster stadium tours.
Rolling Stones
Exiting 'American Idol'
Steven Tyler
Steven Tyler says he's exiting "American Idol" to put rock 'n' roll first.
Tyler said he's leaving the hit show after two seasons to rededicate himself to Aerosmith, the band he fronts. The rock star said he loved every minute on the hit Fox singing contest but added, "it's time to bring rock back."
"After some long ... hard ... thoughts ... I've decided it's time for me to let go of my mistress 'American Idol' before she boils my rabbit,"Tyler said in a statement, making a joking reference to the 1987 Michael Douglas-Glenn Close thriller "Fatal Attraction."
Tyler's "Idol" departure leaves original judge Randy Jackson and Jennifer Lopez, but the singer-actress' future with the show is cloudy.
Steven Tyler
The First Image Ever Uploaded
Les Horribles Cernettes
Every day millions of photos are uploaded to the Internet on countless blogs, Facebook, Flickr, Twitter, etc. But have you ever wondered what the very first image upload looked like? Well look no further, because the tech site Motherboard has done the digging for you.
In 1992, a picture of the parody band Les Horribles Cernettes, that was digitally altered in Photoshop, earned the distinction of becoming the first Web photo upload. So who are these ladies pictured in the image? The group of ladies were lab employees who worked for CERN, a research laboratory in Geneva where major discoveries have been made, including the project that started the World Wide Web, created by British computer scientist Tim Berners-Lee.
Berners-Lee was looking to test a Web system that could support photos and asked IT developer Silvano de Gennaro to provide an image. De Gennaro chose an edited image of the ladies of Les Horribles Cernettes, whose nerdy song lyrics included the words "you say you love me but you never beep me." Part of the reason the upload was so revolutionary was because the Internet was previously seen as a place for conducting serious business, not having fun.
De Gennaro, who snapped the picture of the ladies for their next CD cover, never could have imagined the place it would have in history. "I didn't know what the Web was," he said later. "When history happens, you don't know that you're in it."
July 18 marks the photo upload's 20th anniversary.
Les Horribles Cernettes
Reopens In Philly
Rodin Museum
The Rodin Museum, a little jewel box of a building surrounded by formal gardens and showcasing the French artist's monumental sculptures, had by most accounts lost a certain je ne sais quoi in the 83 years since it was built.
Now, for the first time since the museum opened in 1929, the public will get to see it as its architects intended. The Rodin Museum reopens Friday after a more than three-year, $9 million renovation that returned all its sculptures to their original locations inside and out, refurbished almost all of them - only "The Burghers of Calais" has yet to be cleaned up - and restored the grounds' formal French garden, fountain and reflecting pool.
The inside galleries were rearranged to emphasize the way many figures in "The Gates of Hell" - Rodin's colossal masterwork that dominates the museum entrance - inspired his later iconic sculptures from "The Kiss" to "The Thinker." Behind the scenes, a new air-conditioning system will mean a swelter-free visit for summer tourists for the first time in decades.
Located between the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the new Barnes Foundation on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway, the classical Beaux-Arts building contains the largest collection of Auguste Rodin's sculptures outside of the Musee Rodin's collections in Paris and Meudon. It was a gift to the city from movie theater magnate Jules Mastbaum, who was introduced to Rodin's work during a 1923 trip to Paris.
Mastbaum hired two France-born architects living in Philadelphia, architect Paul Cret and landscape designer Jacques Greber, to create the limestone museum. Its holdings include more than 140 bronze, marble and plaster sculptures, plus drawings, prints, letters and books.
Rodin Museum
Feds Crack Down
Harborside Health Center
Federal prosecutors have filed civil forfeiture actions against an Oakland medical marijuana dispensary that bills itself as the world's largest, as part of a crackdown by U.S. authorities on California's massive cannabis trade.
The lawsuits, filed on Monday in U.S. District Court in San Francisco, seek forfeiture of two properties where Harborside Health Center operates, said Melinda Haag, U.S. attorney for the Northern District of California.
Harborside says it is the largest medical marijuana dispensary in the world, serving more than 100,000 patients in a "beautiful waterfront location," and is subject of the Discovery Channel reality TV show "Weed Wars."
"The filing of the civil forfeiture complaints against the two Harborside properties is part of our measured effort to address the proliferation of illegal marijuana businesses in the Northern District of California," Haag said.
In a statement on its website, the clinic said, "Harborside has nothing to be ashamed of, and will contest the Federal actions openly and publicly, with every legal means at our disposal."
Harborside Health Center
Extortionists Ordered To Trial
Stevie Wonder
A judge ordered Stevie Wonder's cousin to stand trial on an extortion charge after hearing testimony that the man and his girlfriend attempted to sell a film ranting against the singer's treatment of his family for millions of dollars.
Superior Court Judge Ray Jurado ruled Thursday that prosecutors had presented enough evidence for a jury to decide whether Alpha L. Walker and his girlfriend Tamara E. Diaz extorted Wonder by threatening to sell it to various media outlets if they weren't paid by the Grammy-winning musician.
The pair has been jailed since May 2, when they were arrested during a sting organized by Wonder's attorney and Los Angeles police. The pair was given a $10,000 down payment on a $500,000 agreement to hand over the film footage and keep its contents confidential.
Attorneys for Walker, who is Wonder's cousin, and Tamara argued that prosecutors hadn't presented enough evidence to support the case. Walker's attorney, Ian Wallach, said his client had made a movie about his own life, was marketing it for sale and his actions were protected by the First Amendment.
A police detective described the film as an 80-minute rant against Wonder. Portions of it were filmed in the former home of the singer's late mother, which is now dilapidated, and it also shows Wonder's son, who the musician is protective of. Walker, 38, accused the musician of being "a slumlord" and made derogatory comments about the singer's mother, two witnesses said.
Stevie Wonder
Rejects Claim Over First Electric Guitar
Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan dismissed Thursday a claim that a woman in New Jerseyhas the guitar he played at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965, when he was infamously booed for going electric.
A lawyer for the music icon said Dylan still has the Fender Stratocaster guitar which he played on July 25, 1965, prompting boos which forced him off stage after only three songs.
The musician had until then played solely on acoustic guitar, making his name as a protest singer with early hits including "Blowin' in the Wind" and "The Times They are a-Changin'."
An upcoming television documentary reportedly claims that the guitar was left on board a plane which Dylan used after the show, and that the pilot took it with him, and left it in an attic.
Bob Dylan
Another Breach
Yahoo
More than 400,000 Yahoo Inc user names and passwords were stolen and published on the Web, putting other websites at risk as well, after hackers exploited a vulnerability inYahoo's computer systems.
Some logins for Google Inc, AOL Inc and Microsoft Corp services were among those compromised. The three companies said they required affected users to reset passwords for sites including Gmail, AOL, Hotmail, MSN and Live.com.
The breach prompted criticism from security experts who said that a major Internet firm like Yahooshould do a better job at protecting user data.
The five most popular passwords in the group were "123456", "password", "welcome" and "ninja", according to an analysis by anti-virus software maker ESET.
Yahoo
Ends Royalties For Music Downloads
Canada Supreme Court
Delivering a blow to artists and a benefit to telecoms companies, Canada'sSupreme Court ruled on Thursday that no performance royalties need be paid to songwriters and song publishers for downloaded music.
The court also said that previews of songs in online stores such as Apple Inc's iTunes are not an infringement of copyright laws and do not merit the payment of royalties, but it kept the royalties on streaming music from the Internet.
The rulings are "definitely good for Internet service providers and bad for songwriters and owners of copyright," said David Donahue, a copyright lawyer at Fross Zelnick Lehrman & Zissu in New York, who was not involved in the case.
The court's distinction between downloads and streaming is similar to the difference between buying a compact disc -- in which case the recording company collects -- and listening to a song on the radio, where the station typically pays the artist via the music publisher or a copyright collective.
Canada Supreme Court
Gets 2 Years
Beanie Sigel
Rapper Beanie Sigel has been sentenced in Philadelphia to two years in prison for failing to file federal income tax returns.
The 38-year-old's real name is Dwight Grant, and he's from the Philadelphia suburb of Lansdale. He was sentenced in federal court Thursday and ordered to report to prison Sept. 12. He pleaded guilty in August.
Prosecutors say Sigel owes more than $700,000 for the tax years 1999 through 2005.
A U.S. District Court judge ordered him to pay all taxes, penalties and interest as determined by theInternal Revenue Service. The rapper told the judge he accepted "total responsibility" for not paying his taxes.
Beanie Sigel
U.S. Returns Stolen Artifacts
Peru
U.S. authorities returned 14 stolen and looted paintings and artifacts to Peru on Thursday, including four archaeological items more than 2,000 years old.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials turned over the items at a ceremony at the Peruvian Embassy, the agency said in a statement.
The items were recovered in five investigations in New York; West Virginia; Wilmington, Delaware; and Houston and Austin, Texas.
The objects had been removed in violation of a 1997 U.S. - Peru agreement. The accord restricts the importation of pre-Columbian artifacts and colonial-era religious objects to the United States without proper documents.
Peru
Mystery Buyer Named
"The Scream"
U.S. billionaire Leon Black is the mystery buyer who paid a record $120 million for Edvard Munch's masterpiece "The Scream" at Sotheby's in May, the most expensive work of art ever sold at auction, the Wall Street Journal said on Wednesday.
Citing several sources close to Black, a New York businessman and avid art collector, the newspaper said his intentions for the iconic painting and whether it would be loaned to a museum were unclear.
Black, the lead partner of Apollo Global Management and No. 330 on Forbes list of billionaires, sits on the boards of both the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art.
"The Scream," Munch's masterpiece from 1895 depicting a bald figure with hands pressed to the head and swirling colors in the background, is one of the world's most famous paintings. Three other versions, including two that were stolen and later recovered, are in museums in Norway.
"The Scream"
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. (New) Kenny Chesney; $4,272,326; $89.80.
2. (2) Roger Waters; $2,086,906; $107.32.
3. (New) Coldplay; $1,969,465; $81.57.
4. (New) Dave Matthews Band; $1,354,667; $54.40.
5. (3) Cirque du Soleil - "Michael Jackson: The Immortal"; $1,300,503; $109.52.
6. (New) Radiohead; $1,243,495; $56.44.
7. (New) Van Halen; $1,168,797; $100.32.
8. (4) Red Hot Chili Peppers; $794,979; $58.31.
9. (New) Drake; $783,513; $56.96.
10. (5) Nickelback; $680,296; $67.58.
11. (New) The Beach Boys; $518,841; $72.48.
12. (New) Blue Man Group; $516,492; $54.74.
13. (7) One Direction; $499,246; $43.06.
14. (6) Lady Antebellum; $490,447; $40.61.
15. (8) The Black Keys; $475,306; $46.90.
16. (9) Miranda Lambert; $432,714; $36.24.
17. (New) Scorpions; $339,848; $54.84.
18. (10) Il Divo; $338,147; $93.66.
19. (New) LMFAO / "Sorry For Party Rocking Tour"; $325,468; $42.12.
20. (11) Eric Church; $320,774; $36.31.
Concert Tours
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