Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Tom Danehy: Are we really suppose to applaud Gov. Douche-y for a job well-done? Tom says NO. (Tucson Weekly)
Is anybody really buying this nonsense? The Legislature has been shirking its constitutional responsibility for nearly a decade and was facing an angry court that had finally become impatient. El Douche-y had his moistened finger to the wind and realized that his (ugh!) national aspirations were about to devolve into a one-term governorship.
Lucy Mangan: Why can't noisy children be silenced with a phaser? (Telegraph)
Now that we can't beat children, ultrasonic deterrents may be the only way to keep them on the straight and narrow.
Tom Cox: "Annie Hall: the funniest screenplay ever written?" (Telegraph)
As the Writer's Guild of America vote Annie Hall the funniest screenplay ever written, read this appreciation of the film from our archives.
Every Woody Allen film, ranked from worst to best (Telegraph)
1. Hannah and Her Sisters (1986)
Robbie Collin: Why do I feel cheated by Philip Seymour Hoffman's death? (Telegraph)
Mockingjay - Part 2 is more than just the final Hunger Games film. It's our last chance to mourn the loss of one of this generation's greatest actors.
Katerina Tikhonova: Putin's boogie-woogie dancing daughter (The Guardian)
She's also an influential academic and author - so why haven't you heard of the Russian president's younger daughter?
David Bruce: Shakespeare play gets a retelling in modern English (Athens News)
Shakespeare, of course, is often considered the greatest playwright in English literature. One problem with Shakespeare, unfortunately, is that he lived 400 years ago and so some of his verbal comedy is difficult to understand because the English language has changed so much, resulting in dead puns - puns that no longer work because the language has changed. Often, some of the verbal comedy is cut from modern productions because the language is so difficult to understand […]. For what it's worth […] here is my retelling in contemporary English of part of a comic scene (3.4) in "Much Ado About Nothing."
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wrote:
took the day off.
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Reader Suggestion
Michelle in AZ
from Marc Perkel
Patriot Act
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
"THE ORIGIN OF THE SPECIES"
THE COMING WATER WARS!
BABY GOATS!
GJ 1132b
SUE ME!
"JESUS FREAKS" SUCK!
"UNPARALLELED EVIL"!
THEY'RE ALL "BATSHIT CRAZY"!
"CAROL WILL ALWAYS BE ONE OF THE BOYS".
"FOR THE TIMES THEY ARE A-CHANGING"!
Visit JD's site - Kitty Litter Music
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Santa Ana winds are blowing and the humidity is in single digits.
Reputed Mobster Cleared
'Goodfellas' Heist
An 80-year-old reputed mobster was found not guilty on Thursday of participating in a brazen 1978 New York airport heist that helped inspire the Mafia movie "Goodfellas."
Vincent Asaro, whose arrest more than 35 years later had supposedly closed one of the most infamous unsolved crimes in the United States, was cleared of murder, extortion and other crimes by a jury in Brooklyn federal court.
The verdict is a surprising rebuke to prosecutors in what may be one of the last major Mafia trials stemming from organized crime's heyday in New York decades ago.
Prosecutors said Asaro waited in a decoy car with another gangster, Jimmy Burke, about a mile from John F. Kennedy International Airport on Dec. 7, 1978, as a group of masked men stole $6 million in cash and jewels from a Lufthansa Airlines cargo building.
The caper was memorialized in Martin Scorsese's Academy Award-winning 1990 film, in which Robert DeNiro played a character based on Burke, long believed to be the mastermind of the robbery.
'Goodfellas' Heist
Tycoon Buys 7-Year-Old Daughter $77M In Diamonds
Hong Kong
A Hong Kong billionaire tycoon paid a total of $77 million at auctions in Geneva for two large and rare colored diamonds for his 7-year-old daughter Josephine - and renamed them after her, his office said Thursday.
Joseph Lau was the top bidder for the 12.03-carat "Blue Moon" diamond that sold Wednesday night for a record-setting 48.6 million Swiss francs ($48.5 million), said a spokeswoman for Lau, who declined to give her name. Sotheby's said the buyer promptly renamed the pricier gem "The Blue Moon of Josephine,"
Lau was also the buyer of a 16.08-carat vivid pink diamond that sold for 28.7 million Swiss francs ($28.5 million) auctioned by Christie's the night before, she said. The buyer renamed that diamond "Sweet Josephine," Christie's said.
Lau, a property developer with a fortune estimated by Forbes at $9.9 billion, has a habit of snapping up expensive gems for his children.
Hong Kong
Expected To Rebound In Mexico
Monarch Butterflies
After a staggering decline over the past two decades, the population of the iconic monarch butterfly is expected to recover following coordinated efforts across North American governments, Mexico's environment minister said on Thursday.
The monarchs, unique among butterflies for the length of their annual migration, are a major tourist draw to the temperate forests of central Mexico where millions hunker down for the winter.
The black-and-orange insects have been damaged by illegal logging and pesticide use that have destroyed the milkweed plants they depend on for food and to lay their eggs.
As a result, monarch populations plunged almost 90 percent to a record low of about 35 million two years ago, compared with a peak of roughly 1 billion in the 1990s.
During the current season, which started earlier this month, authorities expect up to a four-fold increase of the delicate-winged insects in the pine and fir forests of central Mexico, where they arrive after a nearly 2,500-mile (4,000-km) journey that stretches as far north as Canada.
Monarch Butterflies
Numbers Surge In Columbia River System
Chinook Salmon
Chinook salmon are swimming in nearly unprecedented numbers this fall through the U.S. Northwest's Columbia River system, a federal official said on Wednesday, even as fish advocates worry about forecasts for unusually hot, dry conditions ahead.
The Bonneville Power Administration has counted 1.2 million Chinook salmon returning to spawn in the Columbia and Snake river systems, which run through Oregon and Washington states, since Aug. 1. It is the second-highest autumn run since fish counts began in 1938, Joel Scruggs, a spokesman for the federal agency, said. The record was set in 2013.
Bonneville Power's tally does not break out how many of the Chinook salmon spawning this fall are from wild populations, some of which are federally protected under the U.S. Endangered Species Act, and how many were hatchery bred, and thus not protected.
"Fall Chinook returns are probably the brightest spot in the salmon story in the Columbia basin today," said Joseph Bogaard, executive director of Portland-based Save Our Wild Salmon. "But we can't lose track of the fact that we have 13 stocks of fish in the basin listed as threatened or endangered under the Endangered Species Act."
Chinook Salmon
'Dramatic Retreat' Seen In Glacier
Greenland
A major glacier in northeastern Greenland is rapidly crumbling into the Atlantic Ocean and experts warned on Thursday the breakup will likely raise global sea level by 18 inches (a half meter).
The glacier, known as Zachariae Isstrom, "entered a phase of accelerated retreat in 2012" tripling the pace of melting. It is now losing mass at a rate of five billion tons per year, said the study in the journal Science.
"The shape and dynamics of Zachariae Isstrom have changed dramatically over the last few years," said lead author Jeremie Mouginot, an assistant researcher in the Department of Earth System Science at the University of California, Irvine.
The glacier is dumping "high volumes of icebergs into the ocean, which will result in rising sea levels for decades to come," he said.
The findings are based on 40 years of satellite data from global space agencies as well as aerial surveys monitoring the shape, size and position of glacial ice over time.
Greenland
More Honorary Degrees Rescinded
Cosby
Drexel and Bryant universities have joined a number of schools in rescinding honorary degrees awarded to Bill Cosby, citing accusations of sexual assault.
Drexel President John Fry says the misconduct that came to light in a deposition Cosby gave "stands in clear opposition" to the Philadelphia school's values.
He said in a letter Thursday to the Drexel community that universities are "critical arenas" in addressing sexual violence and Drexel takes that responsibility seriously.
Rhode Island-based Bryant said on its website Thursday that Cosby's "egregious conduct" is "inconsistent with the character, values and behaviour" it expects of the holder of an honorary degree.
Cosby
Lottery Ticket Sales Plunge
Illinois
Illinois Lottery ticket sales dropped to the lowest point yet this year in October, the same month lottery officials announced they were delaying payouts over $600 because of the state budget impasse, according to data obtained Thursday by The Associated Press.
Sales for most tickets, including instant games and Powerball, declined about $21 million - with October sales at roughly $215 million compared to September's approximately $236 million. The high was about $260 million in March, according to data obtained in a freedom of information request.
The figures confirm what ticket vendors at gas stations, convenience marts and grocery stores have said anecdotally for weeks about people's frustration with Illinois' budget problems.
Lottery officials announced in mid-October that anyone winning over $600 wouldn't get the money right away because the account used to pay those winnings was dwindling. That followed news in late August that payouts over $25,000 were on hold because there wasn't the authority to cut checks that big.
The state has entered its fifth month without a budget plan as first-year Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner and Democrats who control the Legislature remain deadlocked. Rauner wants pro-business and anti-union reforms, while Democrats say many of those ideas hurt the middle class and they want him to support new taxes.
Illinois
Kentucky Tax Dollars At Work
Noah's Ark
A controversial Noah's Ark-themed amusement park in Kentucky will open on July 7, 2016 and should attract 1.4 million people annually, the park's founder said on Thursday.
Currently under construction in Williamstown, northern Kentucky, Ark Encounter will include a full-sized wooden replica of the ship from the Biblical story of Noah and the great flood.
Ken Ham, president and chief executive of Answers in Genesis, the Christian organization behind the project, announced the opening date at a press conference and said the park will be able to accommodate 16,000 guests per day.
In the summer of 2014, Kentucky officials awarded the park's developers tax incentives, potentially worth more than $18 million over 10 years. However, state officials in December pulled the credits after developers said they would only hire workers who shared their fundamentalist Christian beliefs.
Ark Encounter officials then sued the state in federal court in February to get the incentives reinstated.
Noah's Ark
Sotheby's Auction
1189 Bible
Sotheby's is offering what experts consider the world's most important private library of Hebrew books and manuscripts, collected by a London diamond dealer.
The 11,000 items document life in the Jewish diaspora from Europe and Africa to Asia, spanning a millennium, Sotheby's vice chairman David Redden told The Associated Press on Thursday. Some items have burn or water marks or other signs of religious persecution such as censored, inked-over passages.
On Dec. 22, a dozen treasures from the collection will go on the auction block, including a Hebrew Bible from 1189, the only surviving dated Hebrew manuscript written before the Jews were expelled from England in 1290, Sotheby's said.
The "glory" of the auction, Redden said, is the first printing of the Talmud in Venice in the 1520s. The pope in Rome then issued an edict banning Hebrew books, and by 1550 most were burned or otherwise destroyed.
While institutions such as the British Library, the National Library of Israel and New York's Jewish Theological Seminary have vast Judaica holdings, "this is the greatest collection of Hebrew books and manuscripts in private hands," Redden said.
1189 Bible
Growing Movement
French Protest
About 100 people gathered in Paris on Wednesday to protest a French tax on tampons and sanitary pads, as anger grows among women worldwide over high taxation of the essential items.
Men and women -- some dressed up as giant vaginas and bloodied tampons -- joined the rally in central Paris, brandishing colourful flags and banners reading: "No tax on my uterus," "Each time I bleed, the State wins," and "let us bleed without over-charging us".
One feminist group at the protest hung pairs of women's underwear soiled with fake menstrual blood from a clothes line.
"What is not right is that at a time when women are underpaid, when they are more likely to be unemployed, when they are paid less than men, each month, they have to pay a tax on their uterus: the tampon tax," Ophelie Latil, who founded the French feminist collective Georgette Sand, told AFP.
Georgette Sand called for the protest after France's National Assembly last month rejected an amendment to reduce the VAT on tampons and other feminine sanitary products to 5.5 percent from the current rate of 20 percent.
French Protest
Cancels Play
Clarion University
A small state college in northern western Pennsylvania has canceled a musical about a week before it was scheduled to open after the playwright objected to the use of white actors for South Asian characters.
Clarion University had spent much of the year preparing to stage the punk rock version of "Jesus in India," by dramatist Lloyd Suh, which ran off-Broadway in 2013 and received favorable reviews.
Suh, who owns the rights to the musical, sent an e-mail on Monday to the school's play director Marilouise Michel ordering her to either replace the non-Asian actors with "ethnically appropriate actors" or cancel the production, which was due to open Nov. 18.
Michel told Reuters on Thursday that one of the Indian roles was to be played by a biracial girl, and the rest by whites. They were not doing the roles in "brownface" or using dialects, she said, but Suh rejected any solution other than removing them.
Michel said Clarion University, with about 4,900 students, has a student body that is 0.6 percent Asian and that no Asians auditioned for the play.
Clarion University
In Memory
Phil 'Philthy Animal' Taylor
Heavy metal band Motorhead says former drummer Phil Taylor, an iconic metal thrasher nicknamed "Philthy Animal," has died. He was 61.
"Fast" Eddie Clarke, guitarist with the Grammy-winning rockers, said on Facebook that Taylor died late Wednesday.
He didn't disclose a cause of death, saying Thursday that Taylor "had been ill for some time but that does not make it any easier when the time finally comes."
Taylor drummed on Motorhead's best-known albums, including "Overkill," ''Bomber," ''Ace of Spades" and the live recording "No Sleep 'til Hammersmith."
His distinctive double bass-drum style on tracks like "Overkill" helped define a new genre - thrash metal.
Taylor left the band in 1984, rejoined in 1987 and left again in 1992.
Phil 'Philthy Animal' Taylor
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