Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Why Are Finland's Schools The World's Best? (Disinfo.com)
The secret seems to be emphasizing art, foreign languages, and physical activity, paying teachers like lawyers and doctors, and doing away with standardized testing. A shame that the United States is trending in the opposite direction regarding all of the above.
Bethany McLean: No, You Can't Invest Like Warren Buffett (Slate)
His Bank of America deal is a bargain no ordinary investor could get.
Susan Estrich: The Death Penalty, Take Two (Creators Syndicate)
This week, Garcetti joined a new coalition that is trying to end the death penalty in California, arguing that it serves no purpose and unnecessarily taxes the system, imposing costs that would better be spent solving crimes and supporting efforts to keep kids from going into crime in the first place.
CONNIE SCHULTZ: Show me the fraud (Creators Syndicate)
Show me the hordes of college students using fake IDs to cast votes for president. Show me the poor people boarding buses and trains or walking for miles so they can cast a vote in the wrong precinct using somebody else's name. Show me throngs of citizens spending entire days traveling from precinct to precinct to cast their votes over and over in the same election.
Andrew Tobias: Whence the Middle Class
I'd prefer to see no tax levied on the first dollars one earns that cover the costs of basic food and shelter (nothing fancy, but, yes, a refrigerator, too, and the electricity it takes to run it, and other such things); but then some reasonable graduated income tax on the remainder. Which was pretty much what we had under Clinton when we balanced the budget and created 23 million new jobs.
Jon Henley: Paris's Post-it wars (Guardian)
French workers are fighting an art battle on their office windows - using multicoloured sticky notes.
Tom Danehy: Brigetta, with help from Sheldon, is singing her way to track stardom (Tucson Weekly)
I once knew a guy named Hymie Hyman Fishenfeld. The problem was that he looked just like his name, like he would have been picked last in P.E., after Woody Allen and Paul Simon. It's horribly stereotypical-and yet, at the same time, quite a lot of fun-to try to categorize people based solely on their names.
Elana Estrin: "The Art of the Letter: What we can learn from illustrated letters in the collections" (utexas.edu)
"What can I possibly say!!?!?" Thus begins a 1965 letter from comedian Joan Rivers to future 'New York Times' theater critic Mel Gussow.
Roger Ebert: Review of "Blood Simple" (Rated R, 4 stars)
A lot has been written about the visual style of "Blood Simple," but I think the appeal of the movie is more elementary. It keys into three common nightmares: (1) You clean and clean but there's still blood all over the place; (2) You know you have committed a murder, but you are not sure quite how or why; (3) You know you have forgotten a small detail that will eventually get you into a lot of trouble.
Roger Ebert: Review of "Blood Simple" (15th Anniversary) (Rated R, still 4 stars)
The genius of "Blood Simple" is that everything that happens seems necessary. The movie's a blood-soaked nightmare in which greed and lust trap the characters in escalating horror. The plot twists in upon itself. Characters are found in situations of diabolical complexity. And yet it doesn't feel like the film is just piling it on. Step by inexorable step, logically, one damned thing leads to another.
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 Suggestions
Michelle in AZ
From The Creator of 'Avery Ant'
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Another marine layer kept it quite pleasant.
Obama's Warm-Up Act
Aretha
President Barack Obama will have a royal warm-up act when he comes to Detroit to speak during the city's annual Labor Day festivities.
Queen of Soul Aretha Franklin is scheduled to perform Monday before Obama speaks near the Renaissance Center at an event sponsored by the Metro Detroit Central Labor Council. Also scheduled to perform is Detroit's Mosaic Youth Theater.
The event is free and open to the public.
It will be Obama's second trip to Michigan in a month. Obama visited a battery plant in Holland on Aug. 11.
Aretha
U.S. Judge Signs Off On Buy
Comcast NBC Universal
A federal judge, who had been critical of the Justice Department deal to allow Comcast Corp to buy NBC Universal, signed off on the transaction on Thursday, but added reporting requirements.
The department announced in January that Comcast could buy NBC Universal on the condition it cede control of the popular video website Hulu and make stand-alone broadband service available to customers at $49.95 per month for three years. But the settlement still required final approval from a judge.
In his final order, Judge Richard Leon said he would require Comcast and the department to collect data for at least two years on how many online video distributors, such as Hulu or Netflix Inc, demand arbitration because of a dispute with Comcast.
Comcast completed the purchase of 51 percent of NBC Universal from General Electric Co in January. The deal created a $30 billion business that includes broadcast, cable networks, movie studios and theme parks.
Comcast NBC Universal
Farewell To Original Cast Member
"The Phantom of the Opera"
Saturday night's performance of "The Phantom of the Opera" on Broadway will be perhaps most memorable for someone who's seen the show a lot.
It will be the last one for actor George Lee Andrews, who will have wrapped up his 9,382nd show over 23 years. The show helped him capture the Guinness World Records title for the most performances in the same Broadway show.
Producers revealed this week that 68-year-old Andrews would not be continuing in the role of Monsieur Andre. Aaron Galligan-Stierle, who is Andrew's son-in-law, will take over the part beginning Sept. 5.
Andrews' other credits include the original Broadway productions of "On the Twentieth Century" and "A Little Night Music." He was an original cast member of "Phantom," the longest-running show in Broadway history.
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"The Phantom of the Opera"
Greek Police Recover Stolen Painting
Pieter Paul Rubens
Greek police recovered a 17th century painting by Flemish master Pieter Paul Rubens stolen from a museum in Belgium a decade ago, authorities said Thursday.
Two people, both Greeks, were arrested in the operation, he said. Neither the police nor the Culture Ministry would give further information on the raid, the painting or which Belgian museum it was stolen from, saying investigations were still ongoing into the case.
The artwork, dating from 1618 and stolen in 2001, was "a particularly important painting," the ministry said. The artwork had been examined by experts from the ministry and determined to be genuine and "of priceless value," Greek police spokesman Panagiotis Papapetropoulos said.
The ministry said it would publicly present the painting and other items at a later date, possibly next week. No further details were immediately available, and Belgian police had no immediate comment.
Pieter Paul Rubens
Declared In Oxnard
Mistrial
A judge has declared a mistrial in the case of a California teen accused of murdering a gay classmate at a junior high school three years ago.
Jurors on Thursday told Judge Charles Campbell they were unable to reach a unanimous decision whether Brandon McInerney was guilty of killing 15-year-old Larry King.
The panel had deliberated since Friday and was considering convictions ranging from voluntary manslaughter to first-degree murder.
Prosecutors now have to decide whether to re-file murder and hate crime charges against McInerney, now 17, who was tried as an adult.
Mistrial
Explosive Legal Battle
"Napoleon Dynamite"
The producers of the sleeper hit "Napoleon Dynamite" are suing Fox Searchlight for more than $10 million dollars, accusing the company of paying less than half the amount they promised for home video sales.
In a lawsuit filed in Los Angeles County Superior Court on Wednesday, Napoleon Pictures Ltd., the production company that made "Napoleon Dynamite," says the movie's home video royalties were "drastically lower than Fox represented and agreed it would be."
The producers' lawyer, Martin Singer, wrote that the production company "never would have entered into a distribution deal with Fox" if it had known how little it would receive.
According to the lawsuit, a focal point of negotiations "was the royalty that Napoleon would receive for home video sales of the picture." That worked out to 31.66 percent of net profits, the lawsuit says.
"Napoleon Dynamite"
Taps Finance Firm To Sue Arista
Elvis Estate
Elvis Presley's estate is turning to a litigation-finance firm to sue Arista Music in Germany for unpaid royalties from ringtones, downloads and apps that feature the icon's hit songs.
UK-based Calunius Capital, the exclusive adviser to a $60 million litigation fund, is backing a lawsuit against Arista Music, formerly RCA Records. The lawsuit alleges that Arista exploited Presley in a 1973 buyout agreement that left the King with only a small share of the revenue from his sound recordings, according to a press release from Elvis Presley Enterprises.
If the estate prevails or the case settles, Calunius Capital will share in the proceeds. Typically, a firm's returns range from 20 percent to 35 percent of any recovered proceeds or two to 2-1/2 times the amount invested, according to Christian Stuerwald of Calunius Capital. If the estate loses, the fund covers the costs, which in Germany include the winning side's attorney's fees.
Plaintiffs are increasingly turning to litigation finance firms, mostly because of high litigation costs. The model is especially attractive for lawsuits in foreign countries where the risks are hard to assess, Stuerwald said.
Elvis Estate
Exposed In Mundane Billing Lawsuit
Rendition Flights
The CIA's super-secret rendition program--to whisk terrorist suspects in the dark of night to CIA black sites for interrogation--has been further exposed to the light of day in rather humble fashion: a billing dispute in upstate New York.
The flight logs for a Gulfstream IV plane hired by a one-man Long Island firm are among the 1,700 pages of documentation in court records filed in conjunction with a 2007 breach-of-contract suit filed in Columbia County, New York. The records show, among other things, a curious itinerary for the plane over a four-day period in August 2003--northern Virginia's Dulles airport, Bangkok, Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, the United Arab Emirates, Tripoli, Ireland.
The two contractors involved in the litigation are Richmor Aviation, a Hudson, NY-based aviation services firm which leases out private aircraft and flight crews; and Sportsflight, based in Long Island, NY, which hired Richmor to conduct dozens of flights between 2002 and 2007. Richmor, in turn, was reportedly hired by defense contractor DynCorp, working at the behest of the CIA, the Associated Press reports.
Under the arrangement, one Richmor Gulfstream with the tail number N85VM "was identified publicly in 2005 after it was used in the rendition of Abu Omar," a Milan cleric kidnapped by the CIA and sent to Egypt in 2002, the Post report explains, leading to "negative publicity, hate mail and the loss of a management customer as a consequence," the company charged in a complaint. (You can see the tracking of other aircraft that may have been employed in the CIA rendition program here.)
In addition, "Richmor accused SportsFlight in 2007 of failing to pay more than $1.15 million for at least 55 missions flown by planes and crews chartered by DynCorp for government use," the AP writes.
Rendition Flights
Protest Disrupts UK Concert
Israel Philharmonic Orchestra
Protesters disrupted a performance by the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra in one of Britain's most venerable concert series and forced the BBC to pull the concert off the air, the broadcaster said Thursday.
Pro-Palestinian group The Palestine Solidarity Campaign had called for the BBC to cancel the concert and urged people to boycott the event in protest.
The orchestra was due to perform at London's Royal Albert Hall on Thursday as part of BBC Proms, an annual summer concert series dating back to 1941 broadcast live on the radio.
Shouting and booing erupted just as conductor Zubin Mehta was about to lead the orchestra in Bruch's violin concerto.
Israel Philharmonic Orchestra
Ohio Teacher Sues
Computer Tracking
When Susan Clements-Jeffrey struck up a webcam chat with her boyfriend, she assumed - like all but the most paranoid among us would - that the interaction was entirely private. Little did she know that her laptop was actually stolen property being aggressively monitored by Absolute Software, a private security company that specializes in tracking stolen computers.
The odd tale began when Clements-Jeffrey, an Ohio substitute teacher, purchased the used laptop from one of her students for a thrifty $60 in 2008. While that probably wasn't the best-advised idea to begin with, Clements-Jeffrey claims to have had no idea the laptop was actually stolen - the student had bought it for $40 at a bus station and made a quick buck by passing it off to the naive instructor.
What Clements-Jeffrey probably didn't see coming is that the laptop was property of Ohio's Clark County School District. The school, through a contract with Absolute Software, installs hidden tracking software on all of its machines to assist in recovery in the case of theft. Absolute's software, known as LoJack for laptops, gives the company total remote access to the computer's data, which it records. LoJack is a highly-rated security service - and an entirely legal one - but in this case, Absolute is under fire for potentially violating the Electronic Communications Privacy Act and the Stored Communications Act, which details guidelines for virtual privacy.
Had Absolute merely tracked the stolen laptop through its unique IP address, there wouldn't be much to debate. Instead, through LoJack, Absolute's theft officer Kyle Magnus began recording the unsuspecting teacher's keystrokes, web habits, and even snapped three sexually explicit screenshots of Clements-Jeffrey's video chat with her boyfriend. Magnus passed this data on to the Springfield, Ohio police department. Clements-Jeffrey and her partner are currently suing Absolute, Magnus, the city of Springfield, and two police officers for violating their Fourth Amendment rights.
Computer Tracking
Bones Identified
Ned Kelly
Australian authorities have identified the remains of bushranger Ned Kelly, 131 years after the iconic outcast was hanged for murder and his body buried in the yard of a Melbourne gaol.
But mystery remains over the location of Kelly's skull, which was last thought to have sat on the desk of a Victorian state police detective in 1929.
Scientists have used DNA from Kelly's great great nephew to identify the bushranger's bones from others in a mass prison grave.
Kelly, known for wearing home-made armor in a shootout with police, is an iconic figure in Australian history. Kelly and his gang symbolized social tensions of the time, particularly between poor Irish settlers and the wealthy establishment.
Ned Kelly
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