Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Paul Krugman: Cockroach Ideas (New York Times)
Three decades ago, when I went off for my year in the U.S. government, an old hand explained to me the nature of the job: it was mostly about fighting bad ideas. And these bad ideas, he went on to explain, were like cockroaches: no matter how many times you flush them down the toilet, they keep coming back. Lovely image, isn't it? But I'm feeling a bit grumpy this morning, and have been noticing a lot of cockroaches lately.
Roger Ebert: Gabby Giffords made me cry. America? And you?
The battle over gun control is ending. It won't end today and it won't end tomorrow, but it is surely ending. There will still be guns. But during the next session of Congress, legislation will be passed bringing reason and moderation to our guns laws. Oh, yes, there will be. And fewer children lying dead in their blood.
Bob Yirka: Expert psychologist suggests the era of genius scientists is over (PHYS.ORG)
Dean Keith Simonton, a psychology professor at the University of California, has published a comment piece in the journal Nature, where he argues that it's unlikely mankind will ever produce another Einstein, Newton, Darwin, etc. This is because, he says, we've already discovered all the most basic ideas that describe how the natural world works. Any new work, will involve little more than adding to our knowledge base.
Lucy Mangan: who in their right mind would want to move here? (Guardian)
The coalition government's plans to dissuade Bulgarians and Romanians from moving to the UK show just how out of touch they really are.
Romania campaign mocks UK anxiety about worker influx (BBC)
A Romanian media campaign called "Why don't you come over?" is poking fun at British anxiety about a possible influx of Romanian job-seekers next year.
Reuben Fischer-Baum: Second Graders Correct Tweets From NFL Players And It's Magical (Deadspin)
This week, a second-grade class from Elmwood Franklin Elementary in Buffalo, N.Y., took a break from (presumably) learning about monarch butterflies to correct the grammar of a recent Chris Culliver tweet, as well as those from a few other NFL players.
Kirk Smallwood: 4 Ingenious Ways Celebrities Used Their Autographs (Cracked)
Celebrities get paid to write their names on things, because the world is hardly fair and rarely makes sense. However, these people discovered ways that are nothing short of brilliant to squeeze every last dime out of their signatures.
10 tips to raise happy children by Mom-cat Coco (Neatorama)
"Covo gave birth to a litter of 15 kittens. Fifteen. Here are her mothering methods guaranteed to raise happy, healthy kittens."
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Michelle in AZ
From The Creator of 'Avery Ant'
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Sunny, warm and oddly humid.
'Argo' Wins Top Honor
Directors Guild
Ben Affleck has won the top film honor from the Directors Guild of America for his CIA thriller "Argo," further sealing its status as best-picture front-runner at the Academy Awards.
Saturday's prize also normally would make Affleck a near shoo-in to win best-director at the Feb. 24 Oscars, since the Directors Guild recipient nearly always goes on to claim the same prize at Hollywood's biggest night.
But Affleck surprisingly missed out on an Oscar directing nomination, along with several other key favorites, including fellow Directors Guild contenders Kathryn Bigelow for "Zero Dark Thirty" and Tom Hooper for "Les Miserables."
Affleck's Oscar snub has not hurt "Argo" and may even have earned it some favor among awards voters as an underdog favorite. "Argo" has dominated other awards since the Oscar nominations.
Peer loyalty might play in Affleck's favor at the Oscars. The acting branch in particular, the largest block of the academy's 5,900 members, might really throw its weight behind "Argo" because of Affleck's directing snub. Actors love it when one of their own moves into a successful directing career, and Affleck - who's rarely earned raves for his dramatic chops - also delivers one of his best performances in "Argo."
Directors Guild
'Wreck-It Ralph' Dominates
Annie Awards
Walt Disney's video-game romp "Wreck-It Ralph" has won top animation honors at the Annie Awards.
The comedy hit about a video-game villain who wants to turn hero was named best animated feature at Saturday night's Annies, which are presented by the International Animated Film Society. "Wreck-It Ralph" won out over a field that included "Brave," ''Frankenweenie," ''ParaNorman" and "Hotel Transylvania."
With a voice cast led by John C. Reilly, "Wreck-It Ralph" dominated the film categories, also winning Annies for director Rich Moore, voice co-star Alan Tudyk and for its music and screenplay.
Among live-action films, "The Avengers" won the Annie for animated effects and "Life of Pi" won for character animation.
On the TV side, an episode of "Robot Chicken" won for best general audience animated show.
Annie Awards
Scientists To Reveal Results
Richard III
On Monday, scientists will announce the results of tests conducted to determine whether a battle-scarred skeleton found under a municipal parking lot in central England belongs to 15th-century King Richard III, the last English monarch to die in combat.
The University of Leicester, which is leading the search, refuses to speculate on what the announcement will say. But archaeologists, historians and local tourism officials are all hoping for confirmation that the monarch's long-lost remains have been located.
So are the king's fans in the Richard III Society, set up to re-evaluate the reputation of a reviled monarch. Richard was immortalized in a play by William Shakespeare as a hunchbacked usurper who left a trail of bodies - including those of his two young nephews, murdered in the Tower of London - on his way to the throne.
Richard III remains an enigma - villain to many, hero to some. He ruled England between 1483 and 1485, during the decades-long tussle over the throne known as the Wars of the Roses. His brief reign saw liberal reforms, including introduction of the right to bail and the lifting of restrictions on books and printing presses.
Richard III
Music Troupes Launch Carnival Parades
Argentina
Argentina's carnival celebrations may not be as well-known as the ones in neighboring Uruguay and Brazil, but residents of the nation's capital are equally passionate about their "murgas," or traditional musical troupes.
The more than 100 murgas in Buenos Aires launched their annual festivities over the weekend in a last blowout before the start of the somber Christian season of Lent. In some cases, carnival is also an excuse to celebrate a murga troupe's favorite soccer team.
In the working class neighborhood of La Boca, Susan Martinez was doing just that, patiently sewing sequins onto the costumes her children would wear with their neighborhood's murga, "Los amantes de La Boca," or "The Lovers of La Boca." The name referred both to the neighborhood and the soccer team Boca Juniors, among the most popular in Argentina and the world.
The troupe bedazzles pants and other pieces of clothing with colorful stars, suns, flowers and other decorations. When the celebrations get under way, dancers march to the frenetic rhythm of "bombos con platillos," or shallow bass drums with cymbals, and "redoblantes," or snare drums.
Argentina
Director Knows
Bolshoi
The Bolshoi Ballet's artistic director was quoted on Sunday as saying he knew who was behind an attack on him in which a masked assailant splashed acid over his face threatening his eyesight.
Sergei Filin, who has undergone several operations on his eyes and face since the January 17 attack, did not give any names but made clear he linked the case to his job.
"I not only have a suspicion about who did this, but I'm absolutely certain I know who did this. But I will only speak about this when investigators are ready to announce this," the 42-year-old told the BBC in an interview published on Sunday.
Filin was due to be released from a Moscow hospital on Monday and immediately leave for Germany for further treatment.
Bolshoi
Governor Good Hair
Texass
Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R-Prissy) said emphatically Saturday that the Boy Scouts of America shouldn't soften its strict no-gays membership policy, and dismissed the idea of bending the organization to the whims of "popular culture."
Perry is an Eagle Scout and in 2008 he authored the book "On My Honor: Why the American Values of the Boy Scouts Are Worth Fighting For." It detailed the governor's deep love for the organization and explained why it should continue to embrace traditional, conservative values - including excluding openly gay members and Scout leaders.
America's longest-self-serving governor addressed the Texas Scouts' 64th annual Report to State, where hundreds of Scouts from around Texas filled the state House of Representatives to announce their delegation's recent accomplishments.
Perry has addressed the gathering several times before, most recently in 2010, but not since the announcement that the Scouts' national leadership is mulling scrapping the mandatory exclusion of gay members. Instead, the group could allow different religious and civic groups that sponsor Scout units to decide for themselves how to address the issue - either maintaining the exclusion or opening up their membership.
Perry told the youngsters that the Scouts was a key reason he joined the U.S. Air Force and later sought public office, and that society's failure to adhere to the organization's core values was a cause for high rates of teen pregnancy and wayward youth who grow up to be "men joining their fathers in prison."
Texass
Artists Spat
A Russian Tradition
When famed viola player Yuri Bashmet declared that he "adored" President Vladimir Putin, he stirred little controversy in a country where classical musicians have often curried favor with the political elite.
But political drama spilled into the orchestra pit last month when Bashmet refused to condemn a new law prohibiting Americans from adopting Russian children, and in response the beloved singer Sergei Nikitin canceled his appearance at a concert celebrating the violist's 60th birthday.
The spat joins a long Russian tradition of artists who have jumped - or been dragged - into the political fray. From composer Dmitri Shostakovich, who lived in fear of arrest under dictator Josef Stalin, to the cellist Mstislav Rostropovich, who returned to a liberalizing Soviet Union in 1991 and took up arms to defy Communist hardliners, Russian musicians and other artists have had a habit of becoming politicized figures.
At the core of the argument today is a question about what an artist's role should be in Putin's Russia: Attracting generous state funding for bigger and better artistic projects? Or challenging the political system in a way most ordinary citizens cannot afford to do?
Some of Russia's cultural figures brought their star power to the anti-Putin rallies that rocked Moscow last winter. Others were recruited to back up Putin as he ran for a third term as Russia's president. As the expression goes: "A poet in Russia is always more than a poet."
A Russian Tradition
Up In Young Children
Diabetes
The number of cases of insulin-requiring type 1 diabetes rose sharply in children under the age five, in f Philadelphia over a two decade span, paralleling increases seen across the United States and in Europe, according to a U.S. study.
Researchers whose work appeared in the journal Diabetes Care found that the number of Philadelphia children under 5 diagnosed with type 1 diabetes increased 70 percent in 2005 from 1985, when a registry of such patients was begun.
The number of diagnosed cases among all children up to age 14 rose by 29 percent.
"Why are we seeing this large increase in type 1 diabetes in very young children? Unfortunately, the answer is we don't know," said lead author Terri Lipman, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing.
Diabetes
Weekend Box Office
'Warm Bodies'
The love-struck zombies of "Warm Bodies" swarmed the box office on Super Bowl weekend with a $20 million opening.
On a weekend that Hollywood largely punts to football, the PG-13 film from Lionsgate's Summit Entertainment easily led the box office, according to studio estimates Sunday. The Super Bowl always means a significant slide in movie-going on Sunday - studios predict a decrease of as much as 70 percent from Saturday to Sunday - but "Warm Bodies" still lured many teenage fans.
Action films continued to fare poorly in 2013, as Sylvester Stallone's "Bullet to the Head" opened with just $4.5 million for Warner Bros. That meant his brawny cohort Arnold $chwarzenegger (R-Family Values) bested him when his "The Last Stand" opened with $7.2 million in January.
Last week's top film, Paramount's "Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters," dropped to second with $9.2 million on the weekend.
Estimated ticket sales for Friday through Sunday at U.S. and Canadian theaters, according to Hollywood.com. Where available, latest international numbers are also included. Final domestic figures will be released Monday.
1. "Warm Bodies," $20 million.
2. "Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters," $9.2 million, ($15 million international).
3. "Silver Linings Playbook," $8.1 million, ($7.8 million international).
4. "Mama," $6.7 million, ($2.4 million international).
5. "Zero Dark Thirty," $5.3 million, ($3.7 million international).
6. "Bullet to the Head," $4.5 million, ($1.1 million international).
7. "Parker," $3.2 million.
8. "Django Unchained," $3 million, ($30.6 million international).
9. "Les Miserables," $2.4 million, ($12.2 million international).
10. "Lincoln," $2.4 million, ($13 million international).
'Warm Bodies'
In Memory
Lavonne "Pepper" Paire-Davis
Lavonne "Pepper" Paire-Davis, a star of the All American Girls Professional Baseball League in the 1940s and an inspiration for the central character in the movie "A League of Their Own," has died, her son said Sunday.
Paire-Davis died of natural causes in the Van Nuys section of Los Angeles on Saturday, her son, William Davis, told The Associated Press. She was 88.
Paire-Davis was a model for the character played by Geena Davis in the 1992 hit "A League of Their Own," which also starred Rosie O'Donnell, Madonna and Tom Hanks as the crusty manager who shouted the famous line, "there's no crying in baseball!"
In 1944, Paire-Davis joined the league, created out of fear that World War II would interrupt Major League Baseball, and played for 10 seasons.
She was a catcher and shortstop, and helped her teams win five championships. She chronicled her baseball adventures in the 2009 book "Dirt in the Skirt."
"I know what it's like for your dream to come true, mine did," Paire-Davis said in an AP story in 1995, when she was 70. "Baseball was the thing I had the most fun doing. It was like breathing."
After graduating from high school, she enrolled at UCLA as an English major, worked as a welder's assistant at the shipyards in Long Beach, and spent every spare moment playing in local softball leagues.
Her heart, however, belonged to hardball.
The All American Girls Baseball League was founded in 1943 by Chicago Cubs owner Philip K. Wrigley. Most of the league's talent came from greater Chicago, but Paire-Davis was one of a half-dozen players scouted and chosen from California.
The players wore skirts and the teams often had cutesy names, but the players maintained a genuine big league lifestyle, playing 120 games over four months.
"We played every night of the week," Paire-Davis said, "doubleheaders on Sundays and holidays."
She won championships with the Racine Belles, the Grand Rapids Chicks and the Fort Wayne Daisies, but she never actually played for the team featured in the film, the Rockford Peaches.
The league was "temporarily suspended" in 1954. Play was never resumed.
Davis said his mother spent much of the rest of her life as a sports fan - she rooted for the Dodgers, Angels and Lakers - and an advocate for her favorite game.
"She taught me how to switch hit when I was 3 years old," said Davis, one of two sons, a daughter, four grandkids and an older brother who survived Paire-Davis. "She touched a lot of people around the world with her baseball exploits. She was a great ambassador for the game."
Lavonne "Pepper" Paire-Davis
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