Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Tom Danehy: Tom, representing all you Baby-Boomer readers, pays homage to Phil Chess (Tucson Weekly)
Sadly, the too-small item was buried near the back of the main section of the paper (which, also sadly, is, other than the tiny sports section, the only part of the daily paper these days). There was a small article announcing the passing of longtime Tucsonan Phil Chess. Untold hundreds of millions of people from Baby Boomers on down owe an appreciative nod to Phil Chess for the part that he and his brother Leonard played in laying the groundwork for what would become the soundtrack of their lives.
Dr. Michael Gregor of NutritionFacts.org: "How Not to Die: An Animated Summary" (YouTube)
Subscribe to Dr. Greger's free nutrition newsletter at www.nutritionfacts.org/subscribe and get a free excerpt from his latest NYT Bestseller HOW NOT TO DIE. (All proceeds Dr. Greger receives from his books, DVDs, and speaking go to charity).
Andrew Tobias: The TRUTH About Obamacare
There is a difference between large rate hikes that affect just half of one percent of us - and can be fixed - and large rate hikes that affect everybody, as Trump claimed.
Adam Kirsch: The Meaning of Bob Dylan's Silence (NY Times)
Giving the award to Mr. Dylan was an insult to all the great American novelists and poets who are frequently proposed as candidates for the prize. The all-but-explicit message was that American literature, as traditionally defined, was simply not good enough.
JASON ZINOMAN: "Patton Oswalt: 'I'll Never Be at 100 Percent Again'" (NY Times)
Michelle McNamara, a 46-year-old true-crime writer, died chasing a serial killer. The Golden State Killer, a name she coined while working on a book about him, raped and murdered dozens of victims in the 1970s and '80s and remains at large. After years of investigative reporting into these unsolved murders, Ms. McNamara believed she was close to tracking him down, and was working long days and nights, her obsessive determination overwhelming her mounting anxiety.
Helaine Olen: Ask Me Again on Nov. 9 (Slate)
Why so many Americans are putting off major financial decisions until this election is over.
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responded:
took the day off.
has returned to semi-retired status.
Reader Suggestion
Michelle in AZ
Bonus Links
Jeannie the Temp
from Marc Perkel
Patriot Act
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
"THEY WILL COME IN, RAPE YOUR WATER COMPANY, AND LEAVE WITH MONEY BAGS."
HELP THESE LITTLE BUGGERS OUT!
THE DAY THE INTERNET DIED!
REPUBLICAN FASCISTS!
SPILT PEA SOUP.
DOWN THE RATHOLE!
THE YUUUGEST LOSER!
Visit JD's site - Kitty Litter Music
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Here are a couple of the baby Gulf Fritillary caterpillars.
Headed to New York
Conan O'Brien
Conan O'Brien is hitting the road again. Conan is set to tape five shows from New York beginning Monday, Oct. 31.
Filming at the famed Apollo Theater through Nov. 3, guests will include Louis C.K. on Nov. 1, Ryan Reynolds on Nov. 2 and Tracy Morgan on Nov. 3. Musical guest The Sugar Hill Gang will kick off the week on Oct. 31, and comedian Rory Scovel is slated for Nov. 2.
This marks O'Brien's first string of shows in New York since 2011. However, the comedian has racked up a slew of frequent-flyer miles since coming to TBS in 2010. In the past 18 months, Conan also has broadcast from North Korea, Armenia, Qatar and Cuba in addition his annual trips to San Diego for Comic-Con International.
O'Brien's frequent global excursions have helped lure viewers at a time when late night is struggling to reach beyond viral moments like James Corden's "Carpool Karaoke" and Jimmy Fallon's "Lip Sync Battle," both of which have amassed millions of YouTube views and gone on to become their own shows.
Other traveling late-night hosts include Seth Meyers, who did a week of shows in Washington just last month; Jimmy Kimmel, who has traveled to Brooklyn in past years; Fallon, who telecast a week of shows from Hollywood; and Stephen Colbert, who traveled to Cleveland, Ohio, and Philadelphia for the respective Republican and Democratic National Conventions earlier this summer.
Conan O'Brien
Star On Hollywood Walk O'Fame
Hugh Laurie
British actor Hugh Laurie, best known for playing a cantankerous doctor in the TV series 'House', received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame on Tuesday.
Laurie, 57, was already well-known in Britain in the late 1980s for his role in the comedy series 'Blackadder', and 'A Bit of Fry and Laurie' with his friend and former comedy partner Stephen Fry.
He crossed the Atlantic in 2004 to play Gregory House in the eight-year Fox TV series, twice winning the Golden Globe award for best actor in a TV drama.
Fry, who met Laurie while studying at the University of Cambridge in England, poked fun at his friend during the ceremony.
"It is the tradition in this marvelous town to reward stars by bringing them down to earth, so far down to earth that now Hugh will spend eternity having chewing gum and dog poo trodden into him and very likely worse," Fry told the crowd.
Hugh Laurie
FCC Chairman Wants More Action
Robocalls
A task force of more than 30 major technology and communication companies said they have made progress but have not found a solution to eliminate "robocalls" or automated, prerecorded phone calls, but a top U.S. regulator urged faster action.
"We are not yet where we want to be," Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler said Wednesday at a meeting of industry executives who have been working on the issue since August. "We've not reached the goal. We need solutions now."
The strike force said it would report back by early 2017 on strategies for blocking unwanted automated calls. But Wheeler wants "commitments and timelines" to move up action.
Wheeler wrote major companies in July urging them to take new action to block robocalls, saying it was the top source of consumer complaints at the FCC. Scam artists often times based abroad try to appear to call from a bank or a government phone to trick consumers into disclosing confidential financial or account information.
Robocalls
'Science' Whaling
Japan
The world's whaling watchdog moved Thursday to curtail Japan's annual whale hunt, conducted under scientific licence but blasted by critics as a commercial meat haul.
A resolution on "improving" the review of deadly research programmes, which Japan alone conducts, split the 70-year-old International Whaling Commission (IWC) into familiar camps -- pro- and anti-whaling.
Just two days earlier, the pro camp defeated a bid to create a whale sanctuary in the South Atlantic, which had required 75 percent of IWC member votes.
Thursday's resolution, however, needed a simple majority to pass. It garnered 34 "yes" votes to 17 cast by the camp that includes Japan and commercial whalers Norway and Iceland.
Championed by Australia and New Zealand, it will lead to the creation of a permanent "working group" to assist the IWC and its expert scientific committee to assess whaling programmes conducted in the name of science.
Japan
Populations Plunge Almost 60 Percent Since 1970
Wildlife
Worldwide populations of mammals, birds, fish, amphibians and reptiles have plunged by almost 60 percent since 1970 as human activities overwhelm the environment, the WWF conservation group said on Thursday.
An index compiled with data from the Zoological Society of London (ZSL) to measure the abundance of biodiversity was down 58 percent from 1970 to 2012 and would fall 67 percent by 2020 on current trends, the WWF said in a report.
The decline is yet another sign that people have become the driving force for change on Earth, ushering in the epoch of the Anthropocene, a term derived from "anthropos", the Greek for "human" and "-cene" denoting a geological period.
Conservation efforts appear to be having scant impact as the index is showing a steeper plunge in wildlife populations than two years ago, when the WWF estimated a 52 percent decline by 2010.
Wildlife
Pentagon Halts Effort
Enlistment Bonuses
U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter on Wednesday suspended a Pentagon order that California National Guardsmen repay thousands of dollars in enlistment bonuses and tuition assistance they had received by mistake more than a decade ago.
"While some soldiers knew or should have known they were ineligible for benefits they were claiming, many others did not," Carter, who is in Europe meeting with U.S. allies, said in a statement.
"This process has dragged on too long, for too many service members," he said. "Too many cases have languished without action. That's unfair to service members and to taxpayers."
Thousands of California National Guard troops had been ordered to repay enlistment bonuses - some of more than $15,000 - that were improperly given to them. The Los Angeles Times, which first reported on the bonuses last week, said audits revealed the California Guard had overpaid troops in order to entice them to join and meet enlistment targets.
Senior Defense Department officials have been told to assess the bonus situation and establish a "streamlined, centralized process" by the start of next year, Carter said in the statement. He added that about 2,000 people had been asked to repay erroneous payments.
Enlistment Bonuses
Sheldon Says
Las Vegas
Casino mogul Sheldon Adelson (R-Sugar Daddy) said he is prepared to walk away from a deal to build a stadium that would help relocate the National Football League's Oakland Raiders to Las Vegas if terms offered by the team do not improve.
"I negotiated to bring in the Oakland Raiders, an NFL football team from Oakland, because they don't have a stadium there, that I would build a stadium and rent it out to the Oakland Raiders," Adelson said on Wednesday during a travel technology conference in Tel Aviv.
Adelson, who succeeded this month in getting legislation passed to enable the construction of the stadium, said his problems now involve negotiations with the Raiders.
"They want so much," he said. "So I told my people, 'Tell them I could live with the deal, I could live without the deal. Here's the way it's gonna go down. If they don't want it, bye-bye,'" he said.
Adelson's comments signal potential for discord between the billionaire and the team at a time when momentum to build the stadium has been growing.
Las Vegas
Another GOP Groper
Slappy
A woman who works as a corporate lawyer with an Alaska energy company has accused U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas of groping her in 1999, a charge he called "preposterous" and untrue.
The woman, Moira Smith, said Thomas grabbed and squeezed her buttocks several times during a dinner party when she was 23 years old in the Falls Church, Virginia home of her boss at the time, the National Law Journal reported on Thursday.
Thomas, 68, joined the high court in 1991 after contentious Senate confirmation hearings involving sexual harassment allegations against him made by another female lawyer, Anita Hill.
Smith, currently vice president and general counsel at Enstar Natural Gas Co in Alaska, released a statement in which she said Thomas "touched me inappropriately and without my consent." Laura Fink, a political consultant in San Diego acting as Smith's spokeswoman, said the National Law Journal's account of the allegations was accurate.
The National Law Journal reported that Smith's allegations came to light when she posted an account of the incident on Facebook on Oct. 7 after news broke about Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump's explicit comments recorded in 2005 about groping women.
Slappy
"Comfort Women" Museum
China
A museum dedicated to Chinese "comfort women", as those who were forced to work in Japan's wartime brothels were euphemistically known, opened in Shanghai this month.
Powerful black and white images of the women line the walls of the museum that showcases victims' testimonies as well as historical objects including Japanese military issued condoms, a pair of laced women's shoes and tattered identification documents.
Many of the visitors to the museum, in the Shanghai Normal University, were young students with little knowledge of the stories the museum has collected over the years.
Only a handful of China's "comfort women" are still living and the director of the museum hopes that the collection will shine a light on them into the future.
China
In Memory
Michael Gleason
Michael Gleason, an Emmy-nominated writer and producer who co-created the 1980s NBC detective drama Remington Steele, starring Pierce Brosnan, has died. He was 78.
Gleason, who also worked on Peyton Place, McCloud and Diagnosis Murder, died Friday in Santa Monica, publicist Judith Moose announced.
A native of Brooklyn, Gleason attended the American Academy of Dramatic Arts and then moved to Los Angeles in the early 1960s with his writing partner, William Blinn. They sold a script for a 1962 episode of the Clint Eastwood series Rawhide, then quickly wrote for other shows like Laramie, My Favorite Martian and The Big Valley.
In 1965, Gleason penned the first of more than 130 episodes of the ABC primetime soap opera Peyton Place. He wrote for the show for five seasons, then worked on The Six Million Dollar Man, Cannon, Marcus Welby, M.D. and Sons and Daughters.
Gleason produced and earned two Emmy nominations for the hit NBC drama McCloud, starring Dennis Weaver, on which he worked alongside fabled producer Glen A. Larson. Shortly after, he wrote and executive produced the 1977 ABC miniseries Rich Man, Poor Man: Book Two.
In 1980, Gleason joined forces with writer William Kayden to form Kayden-Gleason Productions, and they developed movies of the week.
Gleason also wrote and/or produced for such series as Murphy's Law, Dick Van Dyke's Diagnosis Murder and Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman and for a pair of Jack MacShayne telefilms starring Kenny Rogers.
Survivors include his wife Jan; children William, Julie, Carol, Jackie, Jessica, Jennifer, Kourtney and Sean; and grandchildren Savannah, Jeffrey, MacKenna, Riley, Celia, Trey and Nicholas.
Michael Gleason
In Memory
Michael Massee
Michael Massee, who accidentally fatally shot Brandon Lee on the set of their 1994 film "The Crow," in which he played Funboy, has died, his agent confirmed to Variety. He was 61.
Actor Anthony Delon first annouced the news in an Instagram post on Monday, writing "R.I.P. my friend Michael. You were 'five seconds away from a clean getaway.'" Massee and Delon worked together on the 2014 French TV series "Interventions."
Massee fired the improperly prepared prop gun that killed Lee on the set of "The Crow" in 1993. Lee, the son of martial arts star Bruce Lee, died in surgery on March 31, 1993. He was 28. "The Crow," directed by Alex Proyas, was released in May of 1994.
Massee, who reportedly never watched "The Crow," returned to New York following the traumatic accident and took time off from acting. "I don't think you ever get over something like that," he said in a 2005 interview.
The actor, who has almost 80 film and television credits, is also known for his role as the man at the massage parlor in David Fincher's 1995 thriller "Se7en." He worked with the director again in 1997 on "The Game." His other film credits include "Lost Highway" (1997), "Catwoman" (2004), "The Amazing Spider-Man" (2012), and "The Amazing Spider-Man 2" (2014), in which he portrayed Gustav Fiers - aka The Gentleman.
On TV, Massee had recurring roles as villain Ira Gaines on the first season of the Fox's "24" and baddie Charles Hoyt on TNT's "Rizzoli & Isles," in addition to making appearances in "The X-Files," "Alias," "Supernatural," "House," and "The Blacklist."
Michael Massee
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