Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Jon Stewart Nails Fox News Hypocrisy On Teachers Vs. Wall Street Pay Levels (VIDEO)
Given how much Fox News has called teachers unions greedy for their pay and benefit packages, Jon Stewart expected them to have a consistent record of calling out greed in other sectors as well -- perhaps even in the financial sector.
Bob Herbert: College the Easy Way (New York Times)
For a large portion of the nation's seemingly successful undergraduates, studying is such a drag.
Marc Dion: Squaring Off for the Union (Creators Syndicate)
"I read your button," I said to her. "Yeah?" she said, turning her chin up a fraction of an inch, leaning her head back a little. "If you strike, this store won't get a nickel from me or anyone in my family until it's over," I told her. "Tell your boss." "Thank you," she said.
Gail Collins: Poison Pen Politics (New York Times)
We're in the era where bad writing is just as damaging to a political career as a sex scandal.
Susan Estrich: How Law Works (Creators Syndicate)
My guess is that there was not a single member of the United States Supreme Court who was not personally appalled that the Westboro Baptist Church would target the funeral of a soldier who died in battle so they could get publicity for their anti-gay views. It is hard to think of any good reason why the Snyder family, having lost their beloved (and, if it matters, not gay) son while serving his country in Iraq, should be exposed to such abuse. And it's easy to understand why they would sue and seek the kind of damages that would ensure Westboro could not continue to abuse others.
Lucy Mangan: The feminist fight is not over yet (Guardian)
Silvio Berlusconi isn't the only reason we still need International Women's Day...
Terry Savage: Stagflation Is the Worst of All Worlds (Creators Syndicate)
The word "inflation" has been in the headlines recently because of the rising price of oil and other commodities ranging from corn to cotton, from coffee to copper. But inflation is more than just rising prices. It's also a monetary phenomenon - and a state of mind.
Marilyn Preston: In the Land of the Fat and Confused, Food Rules (Creators Syndicate)
Eat (real) food. Mostly plants. Not too much. That's the mighty mantra behind Michael Pollan's classic "Food Rules" (Penguin), a small book that can have a huge impact on your life and your poundage if you're willing to swallow whole the thoughtful guidelines he presents.
Chuck Norris: Conventional Medicine and Alternative Medicine (Creators Syndicate)
I genuinely value the expertise in the traditional medical fields; they have made amazing advances over the decades. At the same time, I believe alternative approaches have made great advances, too, for they often seek natural or holistic approaches with the same fervency that traditional experts seek results in their own specialty fields. (For clarification, the terms holistic, alternative, complementary and unconventional care often are used today interchangeably.)
Gretchen Reynolds: Can Exercise Keep You Young? (New York Times)
The potential benefits have attractions even for the young. While Dr. Tarnopolsky, a lifelong athlete, noted with satisfaction that active, aged mice kept their hair, his younger graduate students were far more interested in the animals' robust gonads. Their testicles and ovaries hadn't shrunk, unlike those of sedentary elderly mice. Dr. Tarnopolsky's students were impressed. "I think they all exercise now," he said.
Douglas Martin: "John Haines, a Poet of the Wild, Dies at 86" (New York Times)
John Haines, whose experience hunting, trapping and surviving as a homesteader in the Alaskan wilderness fueled his outpouring of haunting poetry of endless cold nights, howling wolves and deep, primitive dreams, died on Wednesday in Fairbanks. He was 86.
Dennis Hevesi: "Arnost Lustig, Writer of the Holocaust, Is Dead at 84" (New York Times)
Arnost Lustig, an acclaimed Czech author who drew on his own harrowing experiences as a teenager in World War II to produce novels and short stories laced with tales of young people who survive the Holocaust, died on Feb. 26 in Prague. He was 84.
Stephen Miller: Niche Publisher Wooed Public With Romance (Wall Street Journal)
Walter Zacharius built one of the largest independent book publishers in the nation by exploiting niches the bigger houses ignored.
David Bruce has 41 Kindle books on Amazon.com with 250 anecdotes in each book. Each book is $1, so for $41 you can buy 10,250 anecdotes. Search for "Funniest People," "Coolest People, "Most Interesting People," "Kindest People," "Religious Anecdotes," and "Maximum Cool."
wrote:
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"Kilroy was here!"
answered:
From The Creator of 'Avery Ant'
Reader Suggestions
Michelle in AZ
Reader Recommendation
'some guy'
Evidence of Alien Life Claimed
now the real test will be to prove that there is intelligent life in the republicant party
some guy
Thanks, guy!
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Started out sunny, then the clouds rolled in.
Thanks Chavez For Haiti Aid
Sean Penn
Sean Penn thanked Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez on Saturday for supporting the actor's relief organization in Haiti, saying the aid has helped its humanitarian work in distributing medicines.
Chavez met with Penn at the presidential palace and praised the actor's efforts with his J/P Haitian Relief Organization, which was founded in response to the catastrophic 2010 earthquake in Haiti.
The Oscar-winning actor noted that in addition to Venezuela's financial help, his organization has also received support from the U.S. military.
Penn called that ironic, adding: "We hope that this kind of collaboration can be an example for future approaches to many other issues" - in spite of limited U.S.-Venezuelan diplomatic contacts.
Sean Penn
Starts Dialogue
Grammys
The chairman of the Recording Academy and the music industry veteran who wrote a scathing critique of this year's Grammy results have agreed to start a dialogue.
Neil Portnow, chairman and CEO of the academy, and Steve Stoute, a former top music executive who now works in marketing, released a joint statement Thursday saying they planned discussions on how each side could better understand each other.
"This is a beginning, because Steve put his hand up and wanted to express his opinion, and I think the place to start is a few of us at the Academy," Portnow said in an interview Thursday night. "We'll see where that goes and that makes sense. I'm a collaborative person, the academy is always changing."
Stoute took out a full-page ad in The New York Times on Feb. 20 to take the Grammys to task. During the Feb. 13 broadcast, Eminem, who was nominated for a leading 10 awards, took home just two in the rap field and lost in the prestigious record, song and album of the year categories, despite having 2010's best-selling album with "Recovery" and one of the most popular songs with "I Love the Way You Lie" featuring Rihanna.
Grammys
Film Finishes Cincinnati-Area Scenes
George Clooney
Hometown hero George Clooney and the cast and crew of "Ides of March" have finished filming in the Cincinnati and northern Kentucky areas and are moving on to Detroit.
The Cincinnati Enquirer reports that, over three-and-a-half weeks ending Friday, as many as 20 sites were filmed, including Xavier University and Fountain Square in Cincinnati and Miami University in Oxford, where students were extras in a scene depicting a presidential primary debate
Clooney acts in and directs the film about a presidential campaign. It's his first movie to have filming in the area where he grew up.
The Oscar-winning actor was born in Lexington, Ky., and grew up in Cincinnati area communities.
George Clooney
Adds Broadway To Resume
Chris Rock
How do you top a winter in which you've made fun of Oprah Winfrey to her face, gleefully butchered a classic Simon and Garfunkel song during a telethon and made a guest appearance on Kanye West's mega-selling CD?
If you're Chris Rock, the next stop is Broadway.
"I always look for everything," says the comedian, sitting at a table at the theater-district hangout Sardi's before rehearsals of his new gritty play by Stephen Adly Guirgis.
"You want to give your audience something funny or something good - that can be anything. It can be a play, it can be a movie," he says. "Hey, I was on Kayne's record! That's funnier than probably anything I've done in a couple of years. You know what I mean? How can I be funny this year?"
The answer now is "The Motherf----- With the Hat," a play that Rock describes as "`The Honeymooners' with drugs." It's about a man on parole and trying to live clean with his volatile girlfriend, who is far from sober. Rock, making his Broadway debut, plays the man's drug counselor.
Chris Rock
Cash-Strapped States Rethink Tax Breaks
Hollywood
Thanks to a tax break used to lure Disney filmmakers away from North Carolina to coastal Georgia, Harry Spirides figures his beachfront hotel raked in an extra $85,000 because Miley Cyrus spent a summer filming here.
The producers of Cyrus' film, "The Last Song," were brought in with an across-the-board tax credit of 20 percent when they rolled into Tybee Island in June 2009. Lawmakers in Georgia and other states, though, are worried that they can't afford to offer Hollywood those incentives any longer as they struggle to find enough money to pay for programs like Medicaid.
In January, a Georgia state council said those benefits are fleeting. It said even though the crews bring jobs - and lots of people who spend money locally on food and lodging - those benefits are lost when they pack up and leave after filming.
The council recommended ditching the film tax break, which meant $140.6 million in lost tax revenues last year. Film producers spent $617 million in Georgia last year.
An Associated Press survey found that from 2006 to 2008, states shelled out $1.8 billion in tax breaks and other advantages to the entertainment industry. The recession has officials in several states wondering if the incentives are worth the lost revenue.
Hollywood
Documentary Plays Despite Judge's Order
Mexico
A highly-popular documentary exposing serious flaws in Mexico's justice system was still playing in Mexican theaters Saturday despite a judge's order to suspend the screenings last week.
"For the moment, we haven't received a legal or administrative order to stop us showing 'Presumed Guilty,'" distributor Cinepolis said in a statement.
More than 500,000 people have already seen "Presumed Guilty" since its Mexican release on February 18, making it the most successful Mexican documentary of all time.
But the film's main witness -- the cousin of a murder victim who later changed his story -- last week said he had not given permission to be filmed and argued that the Mexican screenings had affected his private life.
Mexico
EU Drops Probe
Hollywood Studios
European regulators dropped Friday a probe into deals done by major Hollywood film studios that it feared would stifle access to digital screens for low-budget European movies.
"I am pleased that Hollywood studios considered our legitimate concerns and modified the contracts so that cinema-goers can watch both Hollywood blockbusters but also small budget and art-house films with the latest state-of-the-art technology," said Joaquin Almunia, European Union competition commissioner.
"As the majors concerned have modified those contracts, all ends well, like in a good film," Almunia's spokeswoman added.
Almunia's office said that an antitrust investigation probing investment deals concluded during the switchover from film projection to digital cinemas had closed after the big producers changed the terms of contracts signed.
Hollywood Studios
Research Satellite Plunges
NASA
For the second time in two years, a rocket glitch sent a NASA global warming satellite to the bottom of the sea Friday, a $424 million debacle that couldn't have come at a worse time for the space agency and its efforts to understand climate change.
Years of belt-tightening have left NASA's Earth-watching system in sorry shape, according to many scientists. And any money for new environmental satellites will have to survive budget-cutting, global warming politics and, now, doubts on Capitol Hill about the space agency's competence.
The Taurus XL rocket carrying NASA's Glory satellite lifted from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California and plummeted to the southern Pacific several minutes later. The same thing happened to another climate-monitoring probe in 2009 with the same type of rocket, and engineers thought they had fixed the problem.
NASA's environmental division is getting used to failure, cuts and criticism. In 2007, a National Academies of Science panel said that research and purchasing for NASA Earth sciences had decreased 30 percent in six years and that the climate-monitoring system was at "risk of collapse." Then, last month, the Obama administration canceled two major satellite proposals to save money.
Also, the Republican-controlled House has sliced $600 million from NASA in its continuing spending bill, and some GOP members do not believe the evidence of manmade global warming.
NASA
Jewish Groups Oppose Ban
Circumcision
Jewish groups and others are up at arms over an attempt to outlaw male circumcision in San Francisco by putting the issue to a popular vote.
Self-described "intactivist" Lloyd Schofield has been collecting signatures for a voter initiative that would criminalize infant circumcision in the Californian city.
After two months of collecting names, he claims to be more than half way toward getting the 7,168 signatures he needs by late April to put the matter on the November ballot.
Schofield and a growing community of anti-circumcision activists say that infants should not be forced to participate in what is essentially culturally accepted genital mutilation.
Circumcision
Director Says Film "Was Crap"
"Transformers 2"
Director Michael Bay has labeled as "crap" his 2009 movie "Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen," blaming its shortcomings on the Hollywood writers' strike.
In an interview with Britain's Empire magazine, Bay admits that they "made some mistakes" while filming the critically panned sequel.
"The real fault with (Transformers 2) is that it ran into a mystical world," he explains. "When I look back at it, that was crap. The writers' strike was coming hard and fast. It was just terrible to do a movie where you've got to have a story in three weeks."
This isn't the first time Bay has blamed the writers' strike for the blockbuster's faults. In July 2010, he told USA Today, "I'll take some of the criticism. It was very hard to put (the sequel) together that quickly after the writers' strike."
"Transformers 2"
Weekend Box Office
`Rango'
"Rango," the animated Paramount film featuring Johnny Depp as the voice of a Wild West chameleon sheriff rode into town with a $38 million debut, according to studio estimates released Sunday.
"Rango," which was directed by "Pirates of the Caribbean" film franchise maestro Gore Verbinski, is the first animated feature from Industrial Light and Magic, the special effects studio founded by George Lucas in 1975.
Universal's mind-bending thriller "The Adjustment Bureau," starring Matt Damon and Emily Blunt, debuted in the No. 2 spot with $20 million. CBS Films' fantasy tale "Beastly" with Alex Pettyfer and Vanessa Hudgens opened at No. 3 with $10.1 million, rounding out the weekend's top three films. It was another down weekend for Hollywood, with grosses coming in less than the corresponding weekend last year.
Estimated ticket sales for Friday through Sunday at U.S. and Canadian theaters, according to Hollywood.com. Final figures will be released Monday.
1. "Rango," $38 million.
2. "The Adjustment Bureau," $20.9 million.
3. "Beastly," $10.1 million
4. "Hall Pass," $9 million.
5. "Gnomeo and Juliet," $6.9 million.
6. "Unknown," $6.6 million.
7. "The King's Speech," $6.5 million.
8. "Just Go With It," $6.5 million.
9. "I Am Number Four," $5.7 million.
10. "Justin Bieber: Never Say Never," $4.3 million.
`Rango'
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