Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Tom Danehy: Tom doesn't think the recreational marijuana initiative stands a chance with voters (Tucson Weekly)
Three things that are dead-solid-perfect guaranteed to be Dead On Arrival: 1) The movie Independence Day III, 2) The book "The Wit and Wisdom of Melania Trump," and 3) Arizona's marijuana legalization initiative that appears to have been written by a committee of stoners while binge-watching a Cheech and Chong Film Festival.
Hadley Freeman: "Garry Marshall: a genuine mensch who made everything improbably joyous" (The Guardian)
The Hollywood legend behind Pretty Woman and Happy Days took the most unlikely material and made it delightful. No wonder he inspired such deep affection.
Pamela Hutchinson: "The best is silence: why Shakespeare in early film is worth celebrating" (The Guardian)
As a new DVD shows, in rare and innovative early adaptations of the Bard on film - even when condensed - you don't need to hear the words to feel the quality.
Suzanne Moore: Yes, the world seems like it's going to hell in a handcart - but this is no time to disengage (The Guardian)
Many people are currently caught in a deep mood of uncertainty, but I refuse to give in to the spiral of anxiety.
Jonathan Jones: A human skin handbag is not fashion - it's a crime (The Guardian)
Fashion student Tina Gorjanc plans to make clothes using Alexander McQueen's cloned skin. Is this a macabre joke or an ethical minefield?
Hermione Hoby: "Unsquashable squirts: the legacy of Roald Dahl's girl heroes" (The Guardian)
The children's author was a known womaniser and bigot. But in characters such as Matilda or The BFG's Sophie, he wrote quietly valiant heroines who continue to give solace - even to grown women.
Kanye West reps pay for Sydney mural to be destroyed (BBC)
An artist in Sydney, Australia, has painted over his own mural of Kanye West kissing himself.
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 over 80 Kindle books on Amazon.com.
wrote:
took the day off.
has returned to a semi-retired basis.
Reader Suggestion
Michelle in AZ
David E Suggests
American Flag
David
Thanks, Dave!
Team Coco
CONAN
Reader Observation
Food for Thought
from Marc Perkel
Patriot Act
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
"KING" OF THE SHITPILE!
THE CRACKER!
UNBELIEVABLE!
THE JEWS DID IT!
WHAT A LOSER!
"VOTE YOUR CONSCIENCE."
A THOUSAND EXCUSES. ONE REAL REASON!
Visit JD's site - Kitty Litter Music
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Unpleasantly hot.
More Likely to Dislike T-rump
Harry Potter Readers
A new study finds that Harry Potter readers are more likely to dislike Donald Trump (R-Grifter).
The study, which will be published in the journal PS: Political Science and Politics, found that readers of the fantasy series were more inclined to dislike the Republican nominee, even after controlling for party affiliation, age, gender, education, evangelical identification and social dominance orientation.
University of Pennsylvania Professor Diana Mutz, who teaches at Trump's alma mater, argued that readers might see parallels between Trump's political style and the book's villain, Lord Voldemort.
She also argued that the book was potentially more effective in promoting its perspective than political advertisements because it's seen as entertainment.
The correlation between the popular fictional series and politics can be explained by subtle messages of tolerance present in the series.
Harry Potter Readers
Up 648% In Cleveland During Republican Convention
Pornhub
Thanks to the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, Ohio, this week, the city has seen a surge of visitors . And once the convention is over and attendees head to their hotel for the night - well, there's only so much you can do in Cleveland.
The GOP just adopted a platform that declared internet porn a "public health crisis," but many of their members may not have received that memo. There has been a huge surge of porn watching in Cleveland and we don't think it's just that the locals have gotten lonelier.
According to an insights post from Pornhub, its statistics team saw a 4.2 percent increase in traffic from the the Cleveland area from July 18 through July 21. A majority of that traffic was from mobile devices, suggesting that those increased views were from visitors so desperate to get off that they'll do it staring at a 3-inch screen.
While the increased traffic is expected, Pornhub also noticed that searches with the word "Trump" in them had a 648 percent increase, while Muslim or Arab searches increased 204 percent and Pornhub's gay site traffic increased 7.9 percent from visitors in the Cleveland area.
Pornhub
To Visit US
Aung San Suu Kyi
Myanmar's Burma's de facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi has accepted an invite from Barack Obama to visit the United States, her government said Thursday, the first time the pair will meet since last year's landmark elections.
"She accepted the invitation and will discuss a visit there at a mutually convenient time," Aye Aye Soe, a Ministry of Foreign Affairs official, told AFP.
The invitation reinforces Suu Kyi's primacy on the international stage as the real head of a government she is technically barred from leading.
Despite winning a landslide in last November's elections, an event that brought to an end decades of brutal military rule, Suu Kyi is banned from being president by a junta-era constitution.
Instead she has taken the role of Foreign Minister and created a new position for herself titled "State Counsellor". She has also appointed a long term friend and ally, Htin Kyaw, to be a proxy president.
Aung San Suu Kyi
Archeological Projects Start
Alamo
The first systematic archaeological study of the grounds around the Alamo started on Wednesday, looking for artifacts at the former Catholic mission in downtown San Antonio that was the scene 180 years ago of a battle for Texas independence.
The first stage of the project is tasked with finding the west and south walls of the original Alamo Mission, which dates from the 1720s and was damaged in the famed 1836 battle, which lasted nearly two weeks. The walls were demolished or crumbled as the city of San Antonio grew around it.
The initial archeological site is across the street from the Alamo church, with its facade that is one of the most recognizable parts of the structure. It also sits on the banks of the San Antonio River, upon which the Alamo and four other 18th century Spanish colonial missions were built.
While descriptions, drawings, paintings - and later, photographs - of the Alamo Church are widespread, there are no descriptions regarded as entirely accurate of what the original mission looked like and what buildings stood on the site, officials said.
The excavation, using ground-penetrating radar, will later turn to the streets of central San Antonio to uncover artifacts from the battle and learn about the development of the U.S. Southwest as well as the arrival of the Native Americans some 9,000 years ago, Anderson said.
Alamo
Out At Fox
Ailes
Roger Ailes (R-Jabba the Horndog) is out as chief executive at Fox News Channel, his career at the network he built from scratch and ran with an iron hand for nearly 20 years over with stunning swiftness following allegations that he forced out a former anchor after she spurned his sexual advances.
Network parent 21st Century Fox said Thursday that Rupert Murdoch (R-Evil Incarnate), the company's executive chairman, would run Fox News and its sister Fox Business Network, which Ailes had also led, until a successor could be found.
Murdoch and 21st Century Fox didn't address the widening scandal in the statement on the resignation but lauded Ailes for his contributions. Ailes didn't comment in the statement, and no details were given on a settlement agreement.
Fox is heading into a general election campaign in its customary spot at the top of the ratings, but without the man who sets its editorial tone.
The blustery, 76-year-old media executive built a network that both transformed the news business and changed the political conversation. Fox News Channel provided a television home to conservatives who felt left out of the media, and played a part in advancing a rough-and-tumble style of politics that left many concerned that it was impossible to get things done in government.
Ailes
Taken Down
KickassTorrents
KickassTorrents (KAT) is the biggest pirate site in the world, hosting thousands of torrents covering the biggest movies and music in the world. The 30-year-old Ukrainian founder, Artem Vaulin, was arrested in Poland today, and the US government has requested his extradition.
A court in Chicago has also ordered the seizure of bank accounts and domain names related to the site.
Vaulin has been formally charged with conspiracy to commit criminal copyright infringement, conspiracy to commit money laundering, and criminal copyright infringement. As of the moment, the main KickassTorrents site appears to be down worldwide.
An undercover IRS agent allegedly pinned KAT's bank account by going undercover to buy and ad on the site. The agent bought a "faster download" ad for five days, at a rate of $300 per day. Banner ads were priced at thousands of dollars, allowing a witness to estimate KAT's annual advertising revenue at $16 million.
Based on the DOJ press release, the case against Vaulin seems to be quite clear-cut. Assuming the extradition goes through, this will be a landmark first case against the head of a major pirate site. But if history has taught us anything, it's that there will be three new torrent sites springing up in KAT's place tomorrow.
KickassTorrents
Large Underground Xenon Experiment
LUX
Scientists have come up empty-handed in their latest effort to find elusive dark matter, the plentiful stuff that helps galaxies like ours form.
For three years, scientists have been looking for dark matter - which though invisible, makes up more than four-fifths of the universe's matter - nearly a mile underground in a former gold mine in Lead, South Dakota. But on Thursday they announced at a conference in England that they didn't find what they were searching for, despite sensitive equipment that exceeded technological goals in a project that cost $10 million to build.
"We're sort of proud that it worked so well and also disappointed that we didn't see anything," said University of California, Berkeley physicist Daniel McKinsey, one of two scientific spokesmen for the mostly government-funded project.
The mine project, called Large Underground Xenon experiment or LUX, was one of three places looking for dark matter. Another is on the International Space Station and a third is an effort to create dark matter at the Large Hadron Collider, run by the European consortium that found the Higgs Boson particle.
At the South Dakota site, more than 4,800 feet of earth helped screen out background radiation. Scientists used a large vat of liquid xenon that they hoped would produce a flash of light when weakly interacting massive particles, or WIMPS, bounced off the super-cooled liquid.
LUX
Bows Out In 2016
The VCR
Funai Electric Company, the last remaining Japanese manufacturer of VCR devices -- sold under various brand names, such as Sanyo in North America -- has announced an end to production this summer. The manufacturer reported sales of 750,0000 video recorders worldwide in 2015. This latest nail in the coffin for the VCR spells the end of a technological era spanning over 40 years.
Philips and Sony presented their first reel-to-reel videotape recorders in the 1960s. The first home devices followed in the 1970s, showcased at the CES technology show. Over the years, several formats sprung up to compete in the consumer market, such as Sony's Betamax and the widely adopted VHS (Video Home System) format developed by JVC. This was officially launched in 1976, with the first compatible video recorders released in Japan before rolling out worldwide.
VHS cassettes could record between 30 minutes and five hours of video footage such as TV shows. Over time, VCR recorders were even capable of doubling this capacity, recording up to 10 hours of video on one cassette.
Although considered better quality among specialists, Betamax never managed to rival the VHS format, which offered higher-capacity and lower-cost cassettes. At the end of 2015, Sony announced it would stop selling Betamax cassettes commercially this year. Its last VCR devices date back to 2002. Funai has been making VHS recorders since 1983.
The DVD, which launched in 1996, followed by the Blu-ray in 2003, has now definitively overtaken the VHS. However, the VCR still holds a strong place the world's collective memory as the first means of recording video for home users. Although the device has been obsolete for several years, the death of the VCR still marks the end of an era.
The VCR
Los Angeles Sewage Spill
Long Beach
There is no sign that a huge sewage spill in downtown Los Angeles reached the ocean 20 miles away, but the waters off Long Beach and parts of neighboring Seal Beach will remain closed at least until another round of tests comes back clean on Thursday.
The first sample taken showed no excessive levels of bacteria, Nelson Kerr of the Long Beach health department said Wednesday.
About 4 miles of coastline in Long Beach and a mile in neighboring Seal Beach will be closed until a sample taken Wednesday shows it's safe.
A buried pipe near downtown Los Angeles collapsed Monday, causing a blockage and spill of 2.4 million gallons of raw sewage onto streets and into storm drains that feed into the river.
Long Beach
In Memory
Bill Cardille
Bill Cardille, a Pittsburgh TV personality nicknamed "Chilly Billy" who hosted late-night "Chiller Theater" as well as "Studio Wrestling," has died. He was 87.
Lori Cardille, his actress daughter, announced on Facebook that Cardille died early Thursday in his home in McCandless Township, just north of the city. She had announced last month that he was diagnosed with cancer.
Cardille began his television career at WICU in Erie but moved in 1962 to Pittsburgh. There, he worked for WIIC, which is now WPXI, the city's NBC affiliate.
He co-created and hosted "Chiller Theater," which featured campy horror flicks on Saturday nights from September 1963 until January 1984. The show was so popular in Pittsburgh that WPXI aired it instead of "Saturday Night Live" during that program's first four seasons. After that, NBC persuaded the station to air SNL, so a shorter version of "Chiller Theater" aired afterward at 1 a.m.
Cardille hosted the "Studio Wrestling" show, which aired for most of its run at 6 p.m. Saturdays to advertise live professional wrestling shows promoted in Pittsburgh by Joseph "Toots" Mondt. The promotion ran monthly shows at the former Civic Arena. The TV show went off the air in 1972.
Cardille's first television job in Erie included hosting a Saturday morning spelling bee and beer commercials during Cleveland Indians games.
"I don't drink," Cardille told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette in a recent interview, so Cardille only pretended to drink the beer during the live commercials "and then I'd pour mine down the sewer. They were the happiest rats in Erie."
Cardille was offered a management job in Erie, but returned to Pittsburgh in September 1962, preferring to work as a TV director and announcer.
After his work with WIIC and WPXI, Cardille made public appearances and spent 19 years at WJAS-AM as a radio host until August 2014.
Bill Cardille
| CURRENT MOON lunar phases |
