Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Donald Bradley: White preacher looks back at 40 years at black church (McClatchy Newspapers)
White boy grows up in Alabama small town during the civil rights era, his father a hard-drinking racist. The son rejects dad, marches with Martin Luther King Jr. and becomes a hippie preacher. At a black church in Kansas City, he spends 40 years doing good deeds for his flock.
Marc Dion: Null-Null-Nullify (Creators Syndicate)
Some folks who have carried a few too many signs are returning to the idea of nullification, a petty Jeffersonian conversational gambit that means the states can "nullify" federal laws they don't like. Like desegregation. (I never thought I'd have to type that word again.) Gun control. Health care.
Ted Rall: HOW OBAMA HELPS MURDER OUR INNER CHILD
As American citizens travel the long road from childhood to adulthood to valued members of the AARP, their political system repeatedly lets them down. Cynicism is taught. Optimism is ruthlessly crushed.
Paul Krugman: The Wal-Mart Decade (New York Times)
Van Ark's data point to a huge surge between 1995 and 2004 in US productivity, not so much in producing goods as in distributing them. And we know what that's about: Wal-Mart and other big box stores.
Paul Krugman: GDP Per Capita, Here and There (New York Times)
The bottom line is that France is a society with the same level of technology and productivity as the US, but one that has made different choices about retirement and leisure. Vive la difference!
Matt Miller: Paul Ryan is not what you think (The Washington Post)
Imagine that President Obama said Tuesday night that it was time to get America's fiscal house in order and then proposed a plan that would not balance the budget until the 2060s-while adding more than $62 trillion to the national debt between now and then. Can anyone imagine Republicans hailing Obama as a "visionary fiscal conservative"? The idea is absurd. But Republicans do hail House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan as a "visionary fiscal conservative,"
Lucy Mangan: A common complaint (Guardian)
To have had a blue-collar job before becoming a politician in this country is still so rare and incredible that it is enough to be a defining feature for ever.
Paul Kix: Peaked performance (Boston Globe)
The case that human athletes have reached their limits.
David Medsker: A Chat with Gary Louris, Guitarist and Singer of the Jayhawks (Bullz-eye.com)
Her voice is incredible, and she came on after we recorded Hollywood Town Hall. She was on those tours, but she wasn't on that record. I think Karen's the glue, and she certainly adds another dimension. This new record is the first one we've recorded with Tim [O'Reagan, Jayhawks drummer], Karen, [bassist Marc] Perlman, Olson and I, so we have four vocalists who can sing. So I think that's really cool.
Greg Kot: The Jayhawks take long road back to fresh start (Chicago Tribune)
Patience and perseverance are the great lost virtues of cultural experience, but sometimes they pay off. The Jayhawks know from experience.
David Bruce: "The Coolest People in Art: 250 Anecdotes" (Lulu; Print $8))
This book contains 250 anecdotes about art and artists, including this anecdote: New York artist Raphael Soyer visited the Sistine Chapel, where he marveled at the paintings - Michelangelo had painted the ceiling when he was in his thirties and many years later had painted The Last Judgment on the wall. After Mr. Soyer had seen the Sistine Chapel for the first time, he and some friends saw an exhibition of European and American non-objective paintings. A young woman who was connected with the exhibition asked him (a friend translated the Italian) what he thought of the paintings. Rather than criticize them directly, he merely replied, "Tell her that I saw the Sistine Chapel this morning." The young woman understood. The friend translated her reply: "True, this [exhibition] does not speak to the heart."
The Coolest People in Art: 250 Anecdotes (Kindle Edition; $1)
David Bruce has 40 Kindle books on Amazon.com with 250 anecdotes in each book. Each book is $1, so for $39 you can buy 9,750 anecdotes. Search for "Funniest People," "Coolest People, "Most Interesting People," "Kindest People," "Religious Anecdotes," and "Maximum Cool."
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From The Creator of 'Avery Ant'
Reader Suggestions
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Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Rainy and cold.
Upset Win
DGA
Tom Hooper pulled off an upset win Saturday for the top film honor at the Directors Guild of America Awards for his British monarchy tale "The King's Speech."
Hooper won out over David Fincher for "The Social Network," who had been considered the favorite for Hollywood's main directing prizes, including the Academy Award on Feb. 27.
Martin Scorsese, who received the guild's lifetime-achievement honor in 2003 and won the feature-film directing prize four years ago for "The Departed," scored a TV win this time for directing the pilot episode of the HBO Prohibition-era gangster drama "Boardwalk Empire."
The evening's other big-screen prize, for documentary, went to "Inside Job," a chronicle of the economic meltdown in 2008 that also is up for an Oscar. The film's director, Charles Ferguson, used "Inside Job" to grill economists and business leaders on who was responsible for the financial chaos.
"Modern Family" earned the TV comedy award for director Michael Spiller, while "Temple Grandin" won the guild honor for TV movie or miniseries for Mick Jackson.
DGA
Complete List
SAG Awards
Winners of winners the 17th annual Screen Actors Guild Awards presented Sunday:
MOVIES:
Actor: Colin Firth, "The King's Speech."
Actress: Natalie Portman, "Black Swan."
Supporting actor: Christian Bale, "The Fighter."
Supporting actress: Melissa Leo, "The Fighter."
Cast: "The King's Speech."
Stunt ensemble: "Inception."
TELEVISION:
Actor in a movie or miniseries: Al Pacino, "You Don't Know Jack."
Actress in a movie or miniseries: Claire Danes, "Temple Grandin."
Actor in a drama series: Steve Buscemi, "Boardwalk Empire."
Actress in a drama series: Julianna Margulies, "The Good Wife."
Actor in a comedy series: Alec Baldwin, "30 Rock."
Actress in a comedy series: Betty White, "Hot in Cleveland."
Drama series cast: "Boardwalk Empire."
Comedy series cast: "Modern Family."
Stunt ensemble: "True Blood."
Life Achievement:
Ernest Borgnine
SAG Awards
Wins French Prize
Art Spiegelman
US comic book artist Art Spiegelman won the top prize for his craft at France's Angouleme world comic strip festival, the organiser announced at a ceremony on Sunday.
The Swedish-born New Yorker Spiegelman, 62, is best known as the creator of "Maus", an animal fable of his Jewish father's experience in the Holocaust -- the only comic book to have won a Pulitzer Prize, the top US book award.
"As my French wife said when she got the news: 'Merde'!" said Spiegelman, who is only the second American to scoop Angouleme's top Grand Prix, after Robert Crumb in 1999.
The Angouleme festival's prize for best comic strip album was awarded on Sunday to 35-year-old Italian artist Manuele Fior, for his "Five Thousand Kilometres Per Second."
Two other Americans, David Mazzucchelli and Joe Sacco, and two Japanese artists, Naoki Urasawa and Osamu Tezeuka, also won awards.
Art Spiegelman
Hospital News
Peter Jackson
"Lord of the Rings" director Sir Peter Jackson is in stable condition in the intensive care unit of Wellington Hospital after surgery for a perforated ulcer.
Publicist Melissa Booth said Monday that Jackson was "doing well" but would be in the hospital for at least a few more days. She said doctors expect Jackson to make a full recovery.
Jackson was admitted to Wellington Hospital last Wednesday after complaining of acute stomach pains. His illness has delayed the start of filming of "The Hobbit," the two-part prequel to his Academy Award-winning Lord of the Rings trilogy.
Production of "The Hobbit" had previously been troubled by financial issues and the departure of its initial director Guillermo del Toro.
Peter Jackson
A Fine Whine For Victimhood
Conservative Actors
It's not easy being a Republican in Hollywood, even if your brother is an A-list director and producer. That's what actor Clint Howard told attendees at a California GOP convention over the weekend.
Howard, an actor since 1961 and the younger brother of filmmaker Ron Howard, said that while he is comfortable speaking publicly about his conservatism, his advice to Republicans looking to break into the industry is to keep their political opinions to themselves, even though Hollywood liberals seldom do.
Howard was joined by Morgan Brittany, one of the stars of the 1980s nighttime soap opera "Dallas." The pair noted a leftward slide in the industry and an intolerance for political dissent over the decades.
"I'd go out on location with the 'Dallas' crew," she told members of the California Congress of Republicans in Valencia on Saturday. "Everybody in the van was bashing (President Reagan). I never said anything because I thought I'd lose my job. And I probably would have lost my job. I got to a point later on, after 'Dallas' was over and I had my two children, that I said, 'enough is enough. I'm not going to be silent any longer'," she said.
Conservative Actors
Told To Shut Down In Egypt
Al Jazeera
Qatar-based satellite channel Al Jazeera was ordered by Egypt's information ministry on Sunday to shut down its operations in the country, and later in the day its signal to some parts of the Middle East was cut.
Tens of thousands of people have taken to the streets in Egypt demanding an end to President Hosni Mubarak's authoritarian 30-year rule, in protests that have sent shockwaves through the Arab world.
The news channel, which says it can reach 220 million households in more than 100 countries, said in a message on its broadcast that Egypt's satellite Nilesat had cut off its signal.
Al Jazeera denounced the closure of its Cairo bureau as "an act designed to stifle and repress the freedom of reporting by the network and its journalists."
Al Jazeera
Votes For Secession
Southern Sudan
The Southern Sudan Referendum Commission says over 99 percent of the people in the south voted for secession in its first official primary results since the vote was held earlier this month.
The head of the commission' southern bureau, Justice Chan Reec Madut, said Sunday in the region's capital, Juba, that the turnout of the 10 states in the south was also 99 percent, more than the 60 percent reported in the north, where also 58 percent of the people voted for secession.
The chairman of the Southern Sudan Referendum Commission, Mohamed Ibrahim Khalil, said 99 percent of the voters in eight nations outside the country have also voted for secession.
Final results from the referendum were scheduled to be announced in February.
Southern Sudan
New Law Could Foster Boom
Community Radio
A tiny nonprofit organization operating a national campaign from a basement for 12 years to get more non-commercial radio stations approved, may soon see its dream come true.
On January 4, the nonprofit Prometheus and other groups seeking to diversify media ownership, scored a victory when President Barack Obama signed into law the Local Community Radio Act. It directs the Federal Communications Commission, which regulates the national airwaves, to allow more low-power stations access to the FM radio dial.
Once implemented, the law is expected to result in as many 2,000 new stations, beginning in about 2013.
That would more than double the approximately 800 low-power stations currently in operation, compared with around 13,000 commercial stations nationwide. About a third of commercial stations are owned by half a dozen corporations, led by Clear Channel Communications, Inc., with almost 900.
Community Radio
?Growing Meat In A Lab
Vladimir Mironov
In a small laboratory on an upper floor of the basic science building at the Medical University of South Carolina, Vladimir Mironov, M.D., Ph.D., has been working for a decade to grow meat.
A developmental biologist and tissue engineer, Dr. Mironov, 56, is one of only a few scientists worldwide involved in bioengineering "cultured" meat.
It's a product he believes could help solve future global food crises resulting from shrinking amounts of land available for growing meat the old-fashioned way ... on the hoof.
Growth of "in-vitro" or cultured meat is also under way in the Netherlands, Mironov told Reuters in an interview, but in the United States, it is science in search of funding and demand.
The new National Institute of Food and Agriculture, part of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, won't fund it, the National Institutes of Health won't fund it, and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration funded it only briefly, Mironov said.
Vladimir Mironov
Letters Reproduced "Baby Talk"
Jonathan Swift
New analysis of a series of love letters from Anglo-Irish satirist and "Gulliver's Travels" author Jonathan Swift to two women shows that the strange, juvenile language he employed reflects the way babies talk.
Abigail Williams of St Peter's College, Oxford, who has been editing the early 18th century letters which constitute "The Journal to Stella," said that her own three-year-old son had helped her solve some of the mysteries of Swift's text.
"If I am really struggling to understand a phrase, I ask my three-year-old son -- who has an excellent lisp -- to say it aloud for me!" she said.
Williams argued that the letters could only fully be understood if they were read out loud, because Swift developed a special baby language with which to address the two women.
In this "little language" he attempted to imitate the speech of small children by changing the consonants in familiar words.
Jonathan Swift
Weekend Box Office
`The Rite'
The Anthony Hopkins horror film "The Rite" topped the box office on a weekend notable for the bump many Oscar-nominated films received, according to studio estimates Sunday.
The Warner Bros. flick earned $15 million from just under 3,000 theaters. The PG-13, "Exorcist"-influenced movie drew most of its audience from the older-than-25 demographic.
In its 10th week of release, the Weinstein Company's "The King's Speech" earned $11.1 million while adding nearly 900 screens.
Estimated ticket sales for Friday through Sunday at U.S. and Canadian theaters, according to Hollywood.com. Final figures will be released Monday.
1. "The Rite," $15 million.
2. "No Strings Attached," $13.7 million.
3. "The Green Hornet," $11.5 million.
(tie) "The Mechanic, $11.5 million.
5. "The King's Speech," $11.1 million.
6. "True Grit," $7.6 million.
7. "The Dilemma," $5.5 million.
8. "Black Swan," $5.1 million.
9. "The Fighter," $4.1 million.
10. "Yogi Bear," $3.2 million.
`The Rite'
In Memory
Milton Babbitt
Composer Milton Babbitt, who was known for his complex orchestral compositions and credited with developing the first electronic synthesizer in the 1950s, died Saturday. He was 94.
Born in Philadelphia, Babbitt earned degrees from both Princeton and New York University. He joined Princeton's faculty in 1938 and became a professor emeritus of music there in 1984.
In the 1950s, RCA hired Babbitt as a consultant as it was developing the Mark II synthesizer. He became a founder and director of the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center, where the synthesizer was installed.
He blended electronic music with vocal performances in compositions such as "Vision and Prayer" and "Philomel" in the 1960s and "Reflections" in 1975.
Princeton awarded Babbitt, then 75, a doctorate in 1992, 46 years after his dissertation on the 12-tone system of modern composers was rejected.
"His dissertation was so far ahead of its time it couldn't be properly evaluated at the time," Theodore Ziolkowski, dean of Princeton's graduate school and a close friend of Babbitt, said at the time.
Babbitt received a special Pulitzer citation for his life's work in 1982, won a MacArthur Foundation grant in 1986 and the Gold Medal of the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters in 1988.
Milton Babbitt
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