Recommended Reading
from Bruce
See how President Obama has helped your state
President Obama led the country out of the most severe economic crisis since the Great Depression, growing the economy from the middle class out, not the top down. There is still more work to do, but take a look at just some of the ways that the President has helped your state and community over the past four years.
Tom Danehy: Here's why using standardized tests as the main way to evaluate teachers is a stupid idea (Tucson Weekly)
A teenage girl walks into a classroom every day, usually a few minutes late. She then puts her head down on the desk and falls asleep. When the teacher asks the kid why she even bothers to show up at all, the girl explains that she has two kids of her own (who are being taken care of, free of charge, at the day-care center elsewhere on campus), and her social worker has told her that if she doesn't show up to school, she won't get her government checks (yes, checks, multiple) every month.
Steven Bertoni: "Chuck Feeney: The Billionaire Who Is Trying To Go Broke" (Forbes)
Chuck Feeney is the James Bond of philanthropy. Over the last 30 years he's crisscrossed the globe conducting a clandestine operation to give away a $7.5 billion fortune derived from hawking cognac, perfume and cigarettes in his empire of duty-free shops.
Lunch lady slammed for food that is 'too good' (The Local)
A talented head cook at a school in central Sweden has been told to stop baking fresh bread and to cut back on her wide-ranging veggie buffets because it was unfair that students at other schools didn't have access to the unusually tasty offerings.
Pat Conroy: Book-Banners are Invariably Idiots (Letters of Note)
The world of literature has everything in it, and it refuses to leave anything out. I have read like a man on fire my whole life because the genius of English teachers touched me with the dazzling beauty of language.
Jana Prikryl: Waking Up at the Movies (New York Review of Books)
Kael's taste tended toward quick pacing and a down-to-earth story that could grab an audience and make it feel something. A movie didn't have to be hysterically funny to win her over; she found it especially thrilling when a loose, jocular tone somehow eloped with otherwise straight-faced genres-hence her lifelong allegiance to Jean Renoir and Robert Altman and Jonathan Demme.
Ask a grown-up: how can there be one God when there are Zeus, Athena and all those ones? (Guardian)
Five-year-old Zachary's question is answered by classics scholar Mary Beard.
I, Anonymous: Crack Cracks Are Wack (the Stranger)
Stop making my friend the butt of your jokes before I make you the reason I'm on death row.
John Cheese: 5 Pieces of Advice Every Adult Wishes They Got as a Teenager (Cracked)
#5. Realistically, no, you can't do "anything" you set your mind to. But that doesn't mean you shouldn't give it a shot or 20.
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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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From The Creator of 'Avery Ant'
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Thunder, lightning, and an intense downpour around 6am. Twelve hours later, we more thunder & lightning and another very intense downpour.
Although the dinner show ended with a rainbow.
Nobel Literature Prize
Mo Yan
Novelist Mo Yan, this year's Nobel Prize winner for literature, is practiced in the art of challenging the status quo without offending those who uphold it.
Mo, whose popular, sprawling, bawdy tales bring to life rural China, is the first Chinese winner of the literature prize who is not a critic of the authoritarian government. And Thursday's announcement by the Swedish Academy brought an explosion of pride across Chinese social media.
The reactions highlight the unusual position Mo holds in Chinese literature. He is a genuinely popular writer who is embraced by the Communist establishment but who also dares, within careful limits, to tackle controversial issues like forced abortion. His novel "The Garlic Ballads," which depicts a peasant uprising and official corruption, was banned.
The state media hoopla and government cheer contrasted with the last Nobel prizes given to Chinese. Beijing disowned China-born French emigre dramatist, novelist and government critic Gao Xingjian when in 2000 he became the only other Chinese writer to win the literary prize.
Mo Yan
Sues Disney Over Marvel Rights
Stan Lee Media
Stan Lee Media, a company that says it controls the rights to Marvel characters including Spider Man and Iron Man, has filed suit in U.S. District Court in Colorado against the Walt Disney Co seeking "billions of dollars of profits."
Stan Lee, no longer associated with the company, created many of Marvel's stable of comic book characters. The company claims Lee assigned it his rights to those characters in 1998 but then agreed a month later to assign the same rights to Marvel Enterprises.
Disney acquired Marvel Enterprises, which had been renamed Marvel Entertainment, in 2009 for $4.3 billion.
The lawsuit focuses on successful movies based on Marvel characters that Disney has released since its Marvel acquisition. Those films include "The Avengers," which has grossed more than $1.5 billion in worldwide sales and is second only to "Avatar" and "Titanic," according to movie site Box Office Mojo.
Stan Lee Media
Reality TV Show Features Prettiest Sheep
Senegal
The street level of Ousmane Ndiaye's building features a fabric shop. He and his family live in a posh apartment on the second floor. Their upstairs neighbors? His beloved ram Billal and 10 other sheep.
Here his animals prance on a sunny outdoor terrace well above the commotion of buses and vendors below, and only rarely use the building's winding staircase.
Billal is fed the family's dinner leftovers, and Ndiaye jokes that his wife is jealous of his sheep. The family even foregoes potential rental income by leaving the upper level of their building unfinished.
"I could rent this place out for 250,000 francs ($500) a month, but I prefer to keep Billal and my sheep here," says Ndiaye, 60, sporting a royal blue boubou as he strokes the head of the sheep he hopes will become a reality television star.
In a nation where sheep are given names and kept inside homes as companion animals, the most popular television show is "Khar Bii," or literally, "This Sheep," in the local Wolof language.
Senegal
Controversial Documentary
Donkey Love
Controversy over a documentary about bestiality has forced a Kelowna film festival to try and secure a new home on the eve of its scheduled opening.
The Okanagan Film Festival International had been slated to start its four-day run on Thursday at Kelowna's Paramount Theatre, which has hosted the festival for several years.
But this year's program includes the movie Donkey Love, a documentary about village life in remote parts of Colombia where men have sex with donkeys.
It has screened at four film festivals around the world and won the best documentary award at the Melbourne Underground Film Festival.
Donkey Love remains on the program and its filmmaker, Daryl Stoneage, plans to be at the screening. He says the outrage over his movie is misplaced.
"The film is a well made film, it's a well researched film. We interview animal rights activists, police officers, lawyers, doctors, history professors, musicians. We even interview a guy who wrote a book on the topic. I think people are forgetting that this actually is a documentary."
Donkey Love
Russian Judges Defend Ruling
Pussy Riot
The Russian judges who ruled to keep two of the three Pussy Riot band members behind bars took the unusual step of publicly defending their decision, saying Thursday that it was made independently and without pressure.
A panel of three judges at the Moscow City Court on Wednesday upheld a lower court ruling to send Nadezhda Tolokonnikova and Maria Alekhina to prison for two years, but they released Yekaterina Samutsevich after giving her a suspended sentence.
The presiding judge said the appeals court deemed it necessary for Tolokonnikova and Alekhina to remain incarcerated.
Samutsevich's lawyer made the case at the appeals hearing that her client should be treated differently because she had been nabbed by security guards and taken out of the cathedral before she was able to join other band members in the performance.
Pussy Riot
NJ Trial Continues
Amy Locane-Bovenizer
Testimony continues at the aggravated manslaughter trial of a "Melrose Place" actress accused of killing a New Jersey woman in a 2010 motor vehicle accident.
Jurors on Wednesday heard from a woman who followed Amy Locane-Bovenizer for four miles after she said the actress had rear-ended her minivan in a minor fender-bender.
Maureen Ruckelshaus said the actress appeared wasted and drove off before police could be called.
However, the defense tried to show that Ruckelshaus may have contributed to the deadly crash in Somerset County. Ruckelshaus followed Locane-Bovenizer, flashing her lights and honking her horn.
Ruckelshaus watched as the Locane-Bovenizer's SUV struck a car pulling into a driveway, killing the woman.
Amy Locane-Bovenizer
'Some Girls Rape Easy'
Wisconsin
Republican vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan has withdrawn his endorsement of a Wisconsin state lawmaker who has come under fire for controversial comments he made about rape.
Late last year, while discussing an alleged rape at a high school in his district, Rep. Roger Rivard told a local newspaper that his father taught him "some girls rape easy."
"State Rep. Rivard's comments are outrageous and offensive," Kevin Seifert, the manager of Ryan's congressional campaign, said in a statement on Thursday. "Congressman Ryan believes there is no place in our discourse for rhetoric such as this. Congressman Ryan cannot support Mr. Rivard or his indefensible comments."
Rivard, a freshman state representative running for re-election against Democrat Stephen Smith, was endorsed by Ryan on Aug. 9, two days before GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney selected Ryan to be his running mate.
Wisconsin
No Police Report
SUV
Radio talk show host Glenn Beck's family had a close call when their sport utility vehicle rolled down a steep hill in New York's Finger Lakes region just after they had exited the SUV.
In a slanted account of the mishap posted on Beck's website, TheBlaze.com, he says he was hugging his newly married daughter as his wife got their young son out of the vehicle. They had just arrived at the cottage rented for the daughter's wedding reception last weekend in Lodi, on Seneca Lake. Beck says the SUV slid down the hill and overturned, coming to rest near the shoreline.
Photos on the website show the SUV with broken windows and damage to its passenger side.
The Seneca County Sheriff's Office says the accident wasn't reported to police in the county.
SUV
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) Madonna; $5,128,536; $165.55.
2. (2) Kenny Chesney / Tim McGraw; $4,467,950; $89.56.
3. (4) Cirque du Soleil - "Michael Jackson: The Immortal"; $2,649,429; $96.72.
4. (5) Coldplay; $2,461,130; $84.99.
5. (6) Dave Matthews Band; $1,421,798; $55.11.
6. (7) Phish; $1,271,069; $55.02.
7. (8) Enrique Iglesias / Jennifer Lopez; $1,114,513; $79.70.
8. (9) "Gigantes Tour" / Marc Anthony / Marco Antonio Solis / Chayanne; $1,042,502; $106.99.
9. (10) Jason Aldean; $742,641; $39.58.
10. (11) "Honda Civic Tour" / Linkin Park; $702,819; $49.66.
11. (12) James Taylor; $690,346; $54.69.
12. (13) Iron Maiden; $620,383; $57.67.
13. (14) Brad Paisley; $612,029; $40.66.
14. (15) Rascal Flatts; $569,159; $38.28.
15. (16) Journey; $535,889; $57.48.
16. (17) Def Leppard / Poison; $507,830; $61.21.
17. (New) Carrie Underwood; $492,178; $60.07.
18. (18) Wiz Khalifa / Mac Miller; $449,346; $27.21.
19. (New) Mumford & Sons; $415,747; $45.39.
20. (19) "Vans Warped Tour"; $389,434; $29.07.
Concert Tours
In Memory
Sammi Kane Kraft
Sammi Kane Kraft, whose baseball skills earned her the role of a youth league pitcher in the 2005 remake of "The Bad News Bears," has died in a Los Angeles car crash. She was 20.
The Los Angeles Times says Kraft was a passenger in an Audi that rear-ended a big rig and was struck by another car at about 1:30 a.m. Tuesday on Interstate 10.
The California Highway Patrol says the Audi's driver was treated for moderate injuries and arrested on suspicion of drunken driving.
Kraft was 13 when she was discovered on an LA baseball diamond and cast in her only film. She played the role originated by Tatum O'Neal in 1976.
Sammi Kane Kraft
In Memory
Paddy Roy Bates
Paddy Roy Bates, who occupied an abandoned fort in the North Sea and declared it the sovereign Principality of Sealand with himself as its prince, has died aged 91, his son said on Wednesday.
Michael Bates said his father died on Tuesday at a care home in Leigh-on-Sea, Essex. He had been suffering from Alzheimer's.
In the 1960s, inspired by the "pirate radio" movement, Bates set up Radio Essex on an offshore fort. When that was closed down, he moved in 1966 to Fort Roughs, a disused second world war platform in international waters about seven miles off the coast.
Michael Bates said his father initially intended to set up another radio station, but then "had the bizarre idea of declaring independence".
Rejecting a British order to leave, he proclaimed the fort the Principality of Sealand, declaring himself Prince Roy and his wife, Joan, as princess.
The 550-square-metre (5,920-square-foot) fort two concrete towers connected by an iron platform claimed to be the world's smallest sovereign state, though it was not internationally recognized.
Despite the lack of legal status, Bates gave Sealand its own constitution, red, white and black flag, passports, stamps, coins, national anthem and a motto, E Mare Libertas: "From the sea, freedom".
Today, Sealand makes money by selling aristocratic titles and hosting Internet servers.
According to Sealand's official website, Bates fought in the Spanish civil war and worked at Smithfield meat market in central London before joining the British army during the second world war, serving in North Africa, the Middle East and Italy.
After the war, he imported meat from Ireland to northern England, where rationing was still in effect, imported rubber from Malaysia and ran fishing boats off Britain's east coast before founding Sealand.
In his old age, Bates moved to the mainland, making his son, Michael, regent and head of state of Sealand.
Bates is survived by Joan, Michael and his daughter Penny.
Paddy Roy Bates
In Memory
Harris Savides
Harris Savides, the acclaimed cinematographer who worked frequently with Gus Van Sant and David Fincher, has died at 55.
Savides died Wednesday night, his representatives at The Skouras Agency confirmed Thursday. They did not release a cause of death.
He was known for vividly recreating the hazy hues of 1970s cinema in films like Fincher's "Zodiac" and Ridley Scott's "American Gangster," and for mesmerizingly fluid, long takes with Van Sant in movies including "Last Days," ''Elephant" and "Gerry." The last film he shot was Sofia Coppola's "The Bling Ring," based on the true story of teens who burglarized celebrities' homes, which is due out next year.
Savides also shot several influential music videos, working often with director Mark Romanek on clips including Michael Jackson's "Scream" and Madonna's "Rain."
Harris Savides
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