Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Marc Dion: The Opportunity to Die (Creators Syndicate)
The story happens everywhere - but it happens most often in places where life is so cheap it should be sold in the dollar store at the end of the block. A mother, under 30. A child, under 5. The child killed. Sometimes the mother dead, as well. What we nonjudgmentally call "the biological father" not there when it happens. Most of our fairness is in our words these days.
Michael Moore: Hey High School Students (http://mikeshighschoolnews.com/)
How inspired are you by the thousands of students from Wisconsin high schools who began walking out of class four days ago and have now occupied the State Capitol building and its grounds in Madison, demanding that the governor stop his assault on teachers and other government workers? I have to say it's one of the most exciting things I've seen in years.
CLARK WHELTON: What Happens in Vagueness Stays in Vagueness (City Journal)
The decline and fall of American English, and stuff.
Jonah Lehrer: Bother Me, I'm Thinking (Wall Street Journal)
The ability to focus may be considered an essential life function, but recently scientists have begun to outline the benefits of not paying attention.
Charlyn Fargo: Eggs are Incredible - Again (Creators Syndicate)
Eggs may have gotten a bum rap all these years. An egg's nutritional value has been re-examined by the USDA, and the findings are promising for egg lovers. In actuality, eggs contain 14 percent less cholesterol than previously thought. And it turns out they have more vitamin D than previously thought.
Chuck Norris: Eggs, Cold, and Sleep (Creators Syndicate)
Here are my top 10 reasons eggs are egg-cellent for you:...
Tim Rutten: "Book review: 'Tough Without a Gun: The Life and Extraordinary Afterlife of Humphrey Bogart' by Stefan Kanfer" (Los Angeles Times)
Bogart didn't put up with phoniness, and that quality is key to the enduring respect for him.
Rebecca Keegan: For animated films, major barrier remains (Los Angeles Times)
A decade ago, when the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences created the Oscar for animated feature, the new category's nominees included "Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius," a Nickelodeon-produced movie memorable for little more than its belch jokes.
Feeling Noirish (New York Times Editorial)
In tragedy, none of the characters know they're going to be tragic until it's too late. The characters in film noir know what terrible cards they're holding. We're the bystanders witnessing a pitiless world where the game is rigged. Just watch "Out of the Past," starring Robert Mitchum and Jane Greer, and you'll see. The only moments of true tenderness involve women lighting cigarettes for men and men lighting cigarettes for each other.
My wonderful life in cinema (Guardian)
Projectionist Ray Mascord retires this week when the cinema where he works switches to digital projectors. He tells Patrick Barkham about his 67-year-old love affair with film.
David Bruce has 40 Kindle books on Amazon.com with 250 anecdotes in each book. Each book is $1, so for $40 you can buy 10,000 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 Suggestion
Michelle in AZ
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Sunny but cold.
Telecast Changes
Oscars
As preparations for next Sunday's Academy Awards move into high gear, the show's producers have booted a number of familiar elements.
Gone will be the movie montages -- like last year's salute to horror movies -- that often contribute to the broadcast's unwieldy running time. While there will be film clips from the ten best picture nominees and brief filmed introductions to different segments of the show, "Within the body of the show, we are not doing any film montage sequences," said Bruce Cohen, who will produce with Don Mischer.
Gone too will be the relatively new tradition, established just two years ago, of using five presenters to offer tribute testimonials about each of the best actor and actress nominees. "We're not going to do that this year," Cohen told the Hollywood Reporter. "What we did love about it was that it was a moment where each of the nominees really gets their due. (But) we found a version of that, without using the five people on stage, from the 1970 Oscars, and we stole it."
This year's producing team is restoring individual performances of the four nominated songs, which were eliminated last year. Producers were upset that Cher, a major audience draw, was not nominated for her Burlesque ballad, "You Haven't Seen the Last of Me."
Oscars
Asks India To Retire Old Monkeys
Pamela Anderson
Former "Baywatch" star Pamela Anderson has appealed to India's top medical institute to retire old monkeys used in scientific research, animal rights group PETA India said Saturday.
The Hollywood actress said she had seen a video allegedly secretly filmed at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) that showed sick monkeys and rabbits which had been kept in cages for up to 20 years.
"It broke my heart to see the suffering," Anderson said in a letter written to AIIMS director R. C. Deka on behalf of the People for Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA).
The video, which was enclosed with the letter, showed animals under extreme distress, with a monkey racing up the walls of the cage to get out and a rat compulsively running in circles, she said.
Pamela Anderson
Star On Hollywood Walk O'Fame
Kobe Bryant
Kobe Bryant became the first athlete to have his foot and hand prints placed in the cement outside Grauman's Chinese Theatre in Hollywood.
The honour, usually reserved for Hollywood's brightest and most glamorous film stars, is another feather in the cap of the 13-time all-star Bryant who has five NBA championship rings and an Olympic gold medal.
Some fans lined up as early as 6:00 am (1400 GMT) on Saturday to get a good viewing spot for the ceremony. But because of rain the ceremony had to be moved inside the iconic movie theatre.
The Los Angeles Lakers star guard Bryant, who wears a size 14 (European 48) shoe, joins such celebrities as John Wayne, Marilyn Monroe and Brad Pitt who have had their hands and feet set in cement in front of the luxury Hollywood movie theater.
Kobe Bryant
CBS News Veteran Leaving
Paul Friedman
Veteran news executive Paul Friedman is leaving CBS News as part of the division's management shake-up.
The 66-year-old Friedman is the division's executive vice president and was the top deputy to CBS News President Sean McManus. CBS announced earlier this month that McManus, who also served as CBS Sports president, was going back to sports full time as the division's chairman.
Jeff Fager, who is "60 Minutes" executive producer, was named CBS News chairman and hired David Rhodes from Bloomberg as his new right-hand man. Fager announced management changes in an internal memo to staff on Friday.
Fager also said that Barbara Fedida, the news division's top talent recruiter, would also be leaving.
Paul Friedman
TV Miners Shouldn't Have Killed Bear
Alaska
In one of the first episodes of the "Gold Rush: Alaska" Discovery Channel series, miners hoping to strike gold kill a bear near their camp.
The killing was unwarranted, even though the shooter had a license and a non-resident black-bear tag, the state Department of Natural Resources said.
In a letter to the mining company, the agency said the bear did not appear to be the same one that entered the camp earlier, and it was not in camp when it was killed, the Anchorage Daily News reported Friday.
No one was cited for the May 2010 shooting at the mining claim in southeast Alaska, about 40 miles north of Haines, but the miners were asked to act with more restraint and to properly store food so it does not attract bears.
Alaska
May Wreak Havoc On Gadgets
Space Weather
A geomagnetic space storm sparked by a solar eruption like the one that flared toward Earth Tuesday is bound to strike again and could wreak havoc across the gadget-happy modern world, experts say.
Contemporary society is increasingly vulnerable to space weather because of our dependence on satellite systems for synchronizing computers, airline navigation, telecommunications networks and other electronic devices.
A potent solar storm could disrupt these technologies, scorch satellites, crash stock markets and cause power outages that last weeks or months, experts said Saturday at the American Association for the Advancement of Science's annual meeting.
The situation will only get more dire because the solar cycle is heading into a period of more intense activity in the coming 11 years.
"This is not a matter of if, it is simply a matter of when and how big," said National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration administrator Jane Lubchenco.
Space Weather
Push To Strip Mine In US Forest
Wyoming
A Canadian company hoping to compete with China's near-monopoly of rare earth elements - metals critical for everything from U.S. military weaponry to wind turbines - wants to open a strip mine inside a national forest in northeast Wyoming.
Processing raw ore into rare earths is an intensive operation that has been associated with radioactive water spills. But with China slashing exports of rare earths and Washington concerned the U.S. military could face a shortage of materials for lasers, smart bombs, guided missiles, night-vision goggles and jet engines, Don Ranta is optimistic about his Black Hills National Forest mine proposal.
"Everything we've seen so far looks very, very bullish for it to be a commercial project," said Ranta, CEO of Vancouver, British Columbia-based Rare Element Resources. If approved and if it goes into production, the mine would be located about 15 miles from Devils Tower National Monument, the nation's first national monument.
For its particular combination of rare earths, Wyoming's Bear Lodge Mountains rank close behind a mine at Mountain Pass in southeastern California as North America's best verified source of the minerals, said John Kaiser, editor of the Kaiser Bottom Fish website, which tracks global metals markets and mining companies.
Rare Element Resources' strip mine would be up to 500 feet deep, though Ranta, a geologist, said that would be small compared to the vast strip mines 60 miles to the west that produce much of the nation's coal.
Wyoming
Record Lobster Harvest
Maine
Preliminary figures show Maine fishermen caught a record 93.4 million pounds of lobster in 2010 valued at more than $308 million.
The Department of Marine Resources said the harvest of Maine's signature seafood broke the previous record of 81.2 million pounds, set in 2009.
The value of the catch was the third-highest on record. The top year was 2005, when the harvest was worth $317.9 to lobstermen.
Lobstermen averaged $3.31 a pound for their catch, representing a 14 percent increase from a year earlier.
Maine
Unit 731
Japan
Japan is excavating the site of a former medical school that may reveal grisly secrets from World War II.
The investigation begins Monday afternoon at the former school linked to Unit 731, a germ and biological warfare outfit during the war. Shadowy experiments conducted by the unit on war prisoners have never been officially acknowledged by the government but have been documented by historians and participants.
It is the first government probe of the Tokyo site, and follows a former nurse's revelation that she helped bury body parts there as American forces began occupying the capital at the end of the war.
The former nurse, Toyo Ishii, now 88, broke 60 years of silence in 2006, saying she and colleagues at an army hospital at the site were ordered to bury numerous corpses, bones and body parts during the weeks following Japan's Aug. 15, 1945, surrender before American troops arrived in the capital.
Japan
Felt Boots Blamed
'Rock Snot'
As an algae with a gross nickname invades pristine trout streams across the U.S., Maryland is about to become the first state to enforce a ban on a type of footgear the organism uses to hitchhike from stream to stream: felt-soled fishing boots.
The state Department of Natural Resources plans to prohibit wading with felt soles starting March 21 to curb the spread of invasive organisms that can get trapped in the damp fibers and carried from one body of water to another.
Similar bans will take effect April 1 in Vermont and next year in Alaska, aimed especially at didymo, a type of algae that coats riverbeds with thick mats of yellow-brown vegetation commonly called "rock snot."
Maryland fishery regulators say didymo, short for Didymosphenia geminata, can smother aquatic insect larvae such as mayflies, stoneflies and caddis flies that are favored food for trout.
A proposed felt ban introduced this year in the Oregon legislature is almost certainly doomed after a state Department of Fish and Wildlife official testified that the agency's own employees prefer felt soles.
'Rock Snot'
Weekend Box Office
`Unknown'
Liam Neeson has proven himself a known quantity again at the box office.
Neeson's thriller, "Unknown," debuted as the No. 1 movie with $21.8 million, following in the footsteps of his 2009 action hit "Taken," according to studio estimates Sunday.
Another action tale, "I Am Number Four," opened at No. 2 with $19.5 million.
Disney's animated comedy, "Gnomeo & Juliet," was No. 3 with $19.4 million, finishing so closely to "I Am Number Four" that the two movies could change rankings when studios release final numbers Tuesday, after the long President's Day weekend. "Gnomeo & Juliet" raised its total to $50.4 million.
Estimated ticket sales for Friday through Sunday at U.S. and Canadian theaters, according to Hollywood.com. Final figures will be released Tuesday.
1. "Unknown," $21.8 million.
2. "I Am Number Four," $19.5 million.
3. "Gnomeo & Juliet," $19.4 million.
4. "Just Go With It," $18.2 million.
5. "Big Mommas: Like Father, Like Son," $17 million.
6. "Justin Bieber: Never Say Never," $13.6 million.
7. "The King's Speech," $6.6 million.
8. "The Roommate," $4.1 million.
9. "The Eagle," $3.6 million.
10. "No Strings Attached," $3.1 million.
`Unknown'
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