Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Paul Krugman: Things Come to a Head (New York Times)
A decade ago, in the introduction to my collection The Great Unraveling, I argued that the modern Republican party was a "revolutionary power" in the sense once defined by, of all people, Henry Kissinger - a power that no longer accepted any of the norms of politics as usual, that was willing not just to take radical positions but to act in ways that undermined the whole system of governance people thought they understood.
Why Are American Health Care Costs So High? (YouTube)
In which John discusses the complicated reasons why the United States spends so much more on health care than any other country in the world, and along the way reveals some surprising information, including that Americans spend more of their tax dollars on public health care than people in Canada, the UK, or Australia. Who's at fault? Insurance companies? Drug companies? Malpractice lawyers? Hospitals? Or is it more complicated than a simple blame game? (Hint: It's that one.)
Mark Morford: Russell Brand and the Genius Celebrity (SF Gate)
Who you got? What faces, egos, reputations come immediately to mind when you try to name any celebrities of high intellectual acumen, famous actors, rock stars, comics who can not only speak in complete sentences, but who know a thing or two of the world and can eloquently analyze, satirize and flip that wicked world around like a slippery gemstone made of Swarovski crystals and cocaine and dark, kinky dreams?
Russell Brand: "Russell Brand and the GQ awards: 'It's amazing how absurd it seems'" (Guardian)
The comedian on his evening at the GQ awards, from which he was ejected after cracking a joke about sponsor Hugo Boss.
Emma Brokes: "Samantha Geimer on Roman Polanski: 'We email a little bit'" (Guardian)
In 1977, the film director had 'unlawful sex' with 13-year-old Samantha Geimer, an event that has overshadowed their lives ever since. So why would he get in touch with her now?
Katy Salter: "Green juice: drink your way to five a day" (Guardian)
Juice made from green leafy vegetables is the latest health-food trend. Is it really good for you, or just an expensive fad?
Rosa Silverman: Teacher gives birth in school classroom (Telegraph)
A primary school teacher has given birth to her son in a classroom.
A Juggling Otter (Neatorama)
Watch the otter on the left put on a show with his personal pebble. The little guy has talent! Spotted at Sea Life aquarium in Oberhausen, Germany.
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:
took the day off.
said:
Reader Suggestion
Michelle in AZ
From The Creator of 'Avery Ant'
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Nicely overcast morning.
Recipients Announced
Muhammad Ali Humanitarian Awards
Former President Jimmy Carter will receive a lifetime humanitarian achievement award bearing Muhammad Ali's name next month, headlining a list of winners that includes singers Christina Aguilera and Michael Bolton for the first-ever awards that promote achievements in the fight for social justice.
Ali, who was a three-time heavyweight champion, plans to be in his hometown of Louisville, Ky., for the presentation of the Muhammad Ali Humanitarian Awards on Oct. 3.
The award winners were announced Thursday by the Muhammad Ali Center. The winners include a half-dozen young adults and teenagers from around the world who are being recognized for their contributions to peace, social justice and other humanitarian efforts.
Carter, the nation's 39th president and a Nobel Peace Prize winner, has crisscrossed the world since leaving the White House to promote efforts to resolve conflict, promote democracy, protect human rights and prevent disease in many of the world's poorest countries. Carter also helps build houses for Habitat for Humanity and has authored more than two dozen books.
Aguilera, a multiple Grammy Award winner who has sold more than 43 million records, will receive the Muhammad Ali Humanitarian of the Year Award.
Muhammad Ali Humanitarian Awards
MusiCares Person Of The Year
Carole King
Carole King will be honoured as the MusiCares person of the year during the 2014 Grammy Awards week.
The Recording Academy announced Thursday that King will be saluted by performers Lady Gaga, the Dixie Chicks, Bette Midler, Steve Tyler, James Taylor and Jason Mraz. More performers will be announced later.
The fundraiser for the academy's charitable foundation will be held Jan. 24 in Los Angeles, two nights before the Grammy Awards. Previous honorees include Bruce Springsteen, Paul McCartney and Neil Young.
A songwriter and performer with scores of hits from "Will You Love Me Tomorrow" to "You've Got a Friend," King has won four Grammy Awards and was honoured with a lifetime achievement award at this year's ceremony.
Carole King
'Like' Button Is Free Speech
Facebook
Hitting the "Like" button on Facebook is an element of free speech protected by the US constitution, a federal court ruled Wednesday, in a case closely watched by employment lawyers.
The US Court of Appeals based in Richmond, Virginia, made the judgment in the case of a Virginia sheriff's department worker who claimed he was fired for exercising his free speech rights -- in this case "liking" a political opponent of his boss.
"His conduct qualifies as speech," the court said in a 81-page decision that sent the case back to a lower court for review of those issues.
"In sum, liking a political candidate's campaign page communicates the user's approval of the candidate and supports the campaign by associating the user with it.
"In this way, it is the Internet equivalent of displaying a political sign in one's front yard, which the Supreme Court has held is substantive speech."
Facebook
NY Auction
Pierre-Auguste Renoir
A collection of 143 letters, photos, plasters, drawings and personal items that once belonged to Pierre-Auguste Renoir will be sold at auction Thursday in New York, despite protests from the Impressionist master's great-grandson.
Heritage Auctions, which has organized the sale, expects the items, billed as the largest collection of Renoir memorabilia, to bring in some $3 million. The sale is due to begin at 2000 GMT.
Renoir's glasses, his signature polka-dot scarf, his marriage certificate and letters written to him by friends and contemporaries such as Claude Monet, Edouard Manet and Auguste Rodin will go under the hammer.
The entire collection belonged to one of Renoir's grandsons, Paul, who moved to the United States and sold the belongings before his death in 2005.
In France, Jacques Renoir, the artist's great-grandson, denounced the "dismembering of Renoir's private life by publicly selling family memorabilia... including personal objects, personal letters and photographs including Renoir on his death bed."
Pierre-Auguste Renoir
What A Putz
Putin
Russian President Vladimir Putin rallied behind his old friend Silvio Berlusconi on Thursday, saying the former Italian prime minister would not have faced trial for having sex with a minor if he were gay.
"Berlusconi is being tried because he lives with women. If he were homosexual, no one would lift a finger against him," he told a gathering of journalists and Russia experts.
Putin's comment provoked laughter in the audience over what appeared to be a reference to criticism abroad over a law he signed this year banning the spread of "anti-gay propaganda" among minors in Russia.
Berlusconi and Putin regard each other as friends and the former KGB spy has proved loyal, telling a conference in 2011 that "However much they nag Signor Berlusconi for his special attitude to the beautiful sex ... he has shown himself as a responsible statesman."
Putin
Canals Running Dry At Venetian
Las Vegas Strip
It's not often you can use the word "dry" to describe a Las Vegas landmark, but tourists hoping to cruise along the Venetian hotel-casino's indoor canals are finding them tapped out.
The waterways were emptied for a once-every-14-year repainting. When the canals reopen in October, the water will once again appear to sparkle below the hotel's ersatz sky that brightens and darkens throughout the day.
On Thursday, piped-in Italian music echoed off cement mixers and construction tools strewn around the bottom of the canals that meander through the hotel's shopping mall.
Tourists leaned over the ornate stone and iron railings, surprised that the 280,000 gallons of water that normally course below the cobblestone walkways was gone.
Las Vegas Strip
NJ 'Joking Judge' Resigns
Vince Sicari
Vince Sicari can tell all the lawyer jokes he wants - he just can't play a judge in real life.
The New Jersey municipal judge, who is also an established stand-up comedian and actor, resigned Thursday after the state Supreme Court ruled he can't moonlight as an entertainer.
Sicari told The Associated Press he tendered his resignation after the high court released a unanimous opinion that said his acting and comedy career is "incompatible" with judicial conduct codes and essentially gave him the choice of doing one or the other.
The 44-year-old lawyer, whose stage name is Vince August, has carved out a career as a comic and actor, appearing on network television, in New York City comedy clubs and as a warm-up for Comedy Central audiences. He was also a part-time municipal judge in South Hackensack, where he handled things like traffic ticket cases and disorderly persons offenses.
Vince Sicari
Gathering of the Juggalos
Insane Clown Posse
Vendors at the latest outdoor festival featuring rap-metal group Insane Clown Posse are complaining they're owed thousands of dollars by promoters of the southern Illinois event, who now pledge they'll find a way to pay the tab.
Several vendors at the Gathering of the Juggalos say they've received bad checks from those publicizing the festival last month near Cave-In-Rock, the (Carbondale) Southern Illinoisan reported.
Hardin County Sheriff Jerry Fricker said his department got a check from promoters Psychopathic Records Inc. as a donation for protective vests, stun guns and other equipment. But that check bounced, Fricker said, declining to specify the amount other than calling it "decent."
"I'm kind of old-fashioned. I waited until the check cleared before I ordered anything," the sheriff told the newspaper.
Event-Tex, a vendor that has supplied power generation and distribution for the event the past three years, has issued a "provisional warning to other industry professionals" about Farmington Hills, Mich.-based Psychopathic Records and its affiliates, saying a $54,000 check for its services this year has not cleared the bank.
Insane Clown Posse
Cancels Campaign
Coke
Coca-Cola has cancelled a Canadian promotion that paired randomly generated English and French words inside bottle caps after an Edmonton woman got one that said "You Retard."
Blake Loates said she and her husband were eating at a restaurant in Edmonton earlier this week when her husband read the cap off his bottle of Vitaminwater.
Shannon Denny, director of brand communications with Coca-Cola Refreshments Canada, said consumers were supposed to collect the caps to combine words into humorous sentences.
Anglophones would use the English words and Francophones would use the French ones, she explained.
Denny said the problem was the word lists for each language were approved separately and that in French, "retard" simply means late.
Coke
Archeologists Find Imperial Objects
Brazil
An ivory toothbrush thought to have belonged to Brazil's Emperor Pedro II and a minty toothpaste made by a European chemist for the Portuguese queen are among more than 200,000 pieces dating from the 17th through 19th centuries that archeologists have unearthed from a site in Rio de Janeiro being used for an extension the city's subway lines.
A team of more than two dozen archeologists, historians and others began excavating the plot in northern Rio last March. The plot, once the site of a slaughterhouse, is near the former imperial palace and thought to have once been used as a landfill by the imperial family and others, team members said Wednesday.
The ivory toothbrush thought to have belonged to Dom Pedro II, who ruled over Brazil from 1831-1889, has turned brown with age. Its boar bristles are long gone, but the inscription remains legible: "His Majesty the Emperor of Brazil." A round white porcelain pot emblazoned with "to the Queen of Portugal Maria of Saboia" is thought to have contained mint-flavored tooth paste made specially for the queen by a chemist with offices in London and Paris.
The site has also yielded dozens of intact glass and ceramic bottles thought to have once contained water imported from Europe for the imperial family. Six sealed bottles still contain unidentified liquids that the team plans to send to a laboratory for analysis. Dozens of coins and pipes were also found, along with a golden ring and a tie tack.
Brazil
NYC Auction
Norman Rockwell
Three popular Norman Rockwell masterpieces that depict slices of American life are heading for the auction block.
"Saying Grace," ''The Gossips" and "Walking to Church" are among seven works by the Saturday Evening Post illustrator going on sale at Sotheby's Dec. 4.
"Saying Grace," a scene of a crowded restaurant with a boy and woman bowed in prayer at their table, is estimated to bring between $15 million to $20 million. It could beat the Rockwell record of $15.4 million set at Sotheby's in 2006 for "Breaking Home Ties."
Rockwell was paid $3,500 for "Saying Grace," which appeared on the cover of the Nov. 24, 1951 issue. It was voted Post readers' favorite cover in a 1955 poll.
All seven works are being sold by the family of Kenneth Stuart, Rockwell's longtime art director at the magazine. The sale comes years after a legal battle over the works among Stuart's three sons. Rockwell and Stuart worked together at the magazine for 18 years.
Norman Rockwell
In Memory
Hiroshi Yamauchi
Hiroshi Yamauchi, who ran Nintendo for more than 50 years and led the Japanese company's transition from traditional playing-card maker to video game giant, has died. He was 85.
Kyoto-based Nintendo said Yamauchi, who was also known for owning the Seattle Mariners major league baseball club, died Thursday of pneumonia at a hospital in central Japan.
Yamauchi was Nintendo president from 1949 to 2002, and engineered the company's global growth, including developing the early Family Computer consoles and Game Boy portables.
Nintendo, which makes Super Mario and Pokemon games as well as the Wii U home console, was founded in 1889.
Reputed as a visionary and among the richest men in Japan, Yamauchi made key moves such as employing the talents of Shigeru Miyamoto, a global star of game design and the brainchild of Nintendo hits such as Super Mario and Donkey Kong.
A dropout of the prestigious Waseda University in Tokyo, Yamauchi's raspy voice and tendency to speak informally in his native Kyoto dialect was a kind of disarming spontaneity rare among Japanese executives.
Yamauchi had little interest in baseball, but was approached to buy the Mariners, who may have had to move out of Washington state where Nintendo of America Inc. was headquartered to Florida without a new backer. The acquisition in 1992 made the Seattle club the first in the major leagues to have foreign ownership.
Yamauchi never watched his baseball team play in person and transferred his majority shares to Nintendo of America in 2004.
After being succeeded at the helm of Nintendo by Satoru Iwata, Yamauchi stayed on as adviser, but his role increasingly diminished with the years.
Yamauchi is survived by Katsuhito Yamauchi, his eldest son. A funeral is scheduled for Sunday at Nintendo, following a wake on Saturday.
Hiroshi Yamauchi
| CURRENT MOON lunar phases |
