Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Ruth Spencer: "Ira Glass: 'The first time I took ecstasy, my anxiety lifted away' (Guardian)
Host and producer of This American Life on Orange is the New Black, why he doesn't tweet and how his dog Piney is doing.
Scott Burns: Can Your Car be a Life Annuity? (AssetBuilder)
Your next car may be a life annuity. It will look like a car. It will drive like a car. It will function like a car. But, if you do it right, it may also provide more effective income than any conventional savings vehicle.
Henry Rollins: The Texas Paradox (LA Weekly)
I am in San Antonio, Texas. I have been in the state for several days, shooting the next season of 10 Things You Don't Know About for the H2 network. There is a lot to like about Texas. I don't think there is a state in the Union as much as its own sovereign entity. If Texas were to somehow secede from the United States and go back to its pre-1845 annexation status, I wonder if many Texans would even notice!
Henry Rollins: Blowing the Lid Off the Pot (LA Weekly)
Before we went to the airport, we ate in a restaurant along the way. Christian rock - that strange, neither-fish-nor-flesh music genre - filled the establishment. The servings were enormous. Diners labored through their meals with grim determination. Entire families overweight, shrinking the diameters of their arteries with every rapidly congealing mouthful.
Barbara Ellen: After Bob Hoskins, it's curtains for working-class actors these days (Guardian)
Bob Hoskins had a rich and varied career that would not happen now as upper-class men get all the good parts.
Cezary Jan Strusiewicz: 4 TV Shows You Loved That Were a Nightmare Behind the Scenes (Cracked)
#4. Star Trek: The Next Generation Was Terrorized by a Dying Despot and Body Odor
Felix Clay: 4 Celebrities Who Are Clearly Trolling the World (Cracked)
Ugh. That's how every story on Nancy Grace should begin, owing to her detestable and repugnant nature. If goodness smelled like roses, Nancy Grace would smell like a Magnum condom dredged from the bottom of a cistern in a Mumbai sewage treatment plant.
Seth Boyden: Hoof It (Vimeo)
A boy goes on a perilous quest through the mountains to rescue his family's missing goat. My 3rd Year film at CalArts!
David Bruce's Amazon Author Page
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David Bruce's Blog
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David Bruce's Apple iBookstore
David Bruce has approximately 50 Kindle books on Amazon.com.
"Doug's Most Shared Facebook Post" Today
wrote:
, replied:
answered:
Reader Suggestion
Michelle in AZ
From The Creator of 'Avery Ant'
from Marc Perkel
BartCop
Hello Bartcop fans,
As you all know the untimely passing of Terry was unexpected, even by
him. We all knew he had cancer but we all thought he had some years
left. So some of us who have worked closely with him over the years are
scrambling around trying to figure out what to do. My job, among other
things, is to establish communications with the Bartcop community and
provide email lists and groups for those who might put something
together. Those who want to play an active roll in something coming from
this, or if you are one of Bart's pillars, should send an email to
active@bartcop.com.
So - to let you know what's going on, the guestbook on bartcop.com is
still open for those who want to write something in memory of Bart.
I did an interview on Netroots Radio about Bart's passing
( www.stitcher.com/s?eid=32893545 )
The most active open discussion is on Bart's Facebook page.
( www.facebook.com/bartcop )
You can listen to Bart's theme song here
or here.
( www.bartcop.com/blizing-saddles.mp3 )
( youtu.be/MySGAaB0A9k )
We have opened up the radio show archives which are now free. Listen to
all you want.
( bartcop.com/members )
Bart's final wish was to pay off the house mortgage for Mrs. Bart who is
overwhelmed and so very grateful for the support she has received.
Anyone wanting to make a donation can click on this the yellow donate
button on bartcop.com
But - I need you all to help keep this going. This note
isn't going to directly reach all of Bart's fans. So if you can repost
it on blogs and discussion boards so people can sign up then when we
figure out what's next we can let more people know. This list is just
over 600 but like to get it up to at least 10,000 pretty quick. So
here's the signup link for this email list.
( mailman.bartcop.com/listinfo/bartnews )
Marc Perkel
Thanks, Marc!
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Sunny and nearly seasonal.
Winning Political Respect
Clay Aiken
"American Idol" runner-up Clay Aiken readily signs autographs and poses for selfies with voters in his bid for a North Carolina congressional seat, but tries hard to keep his pitch at campaign stops focused on political issues.
"I have done my very best not to sing," said Aiken, 35. "Because I think there's a challenge ... to get people to not see me as a singer but instead as someone who is capable and wants to fight for them."
The entertainer has gained respect as he seeks the Democratic nomination in his home state's 2nd congressional district next Tuesday. In April, the Washington-based Cook Political Report admitted surprise after Aiken proved to be well-versed on political affairs, "washing away any notion he's another superficial, stage-managed Hollywood star dabbling in politics as a new hobby."
Even so, political experts say the first-time candidate is in an uphill, perhaps futile, battle to win the primary and then unseat the incumbent in a district North Carolina's Republican-led legislature re-drew to favor their party.
Clay Aiken
Mayor Wants Lucas Museum
San Francisco
San Francisco's mayor is putting his staff to work to find a site for "Star Wars" filmmaker George Lucas' planned art museum, three months after a proposal was rejected to build the center on a prime slice of federal parkland at the city's northern edge.
San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee faces competition from Chicago, which is also seeking to attract the Lucas Cultural Arts Museum and its 10,000 pieces ranging from animation to fine art, with works by Maxfield Parrish and Norman Rockwell.
In February, the board of the Presidio Trust, a federal agency created to preserve and repurpose a park and former military base known as the Presidio on the northern tip of the San Francisco Peninsula, rejected a proposal from Lucas to build the museum on a coveted eight-acre (3.2-hectare) piece of land.
Lee has directed city staff to develop a shortlist of potential sites, public and private, that San Francisco could present to Lucas before the end of May as possible locations.
San Francisco
To Open In September
Picasso Museum
Five years after it closed for a two-year renovation, Paris's Picasso museum -- which houses one of the world's most extensive collections of the Spanish master's work -- will finally reopen its doors in September, the culture ministry announced Sunday.
The delay has caused controversy, with the painter's son Claude Picasso on Friday accusing the French government of indifference and saying he was "scandalised and very worried" about the future of the museum.
He asked the government to do its best to ensure that the establishment reopens in June, as announced earlier this year by the gallery's president Anne Baldassari.
The final bill for the refurbishment of the 17th-century baroque mansion in Paris's historic Marais quarter now stands at 52 million euros ($71 million), 22 million euros higher the original budget due to changes in the scope of the work.
Picasso Museum
High School Ag Programs Flourish
FFA
High school agriculture programs sprouting across the nation's Corn Belt are teaching teenagers, many of them in urban environments, that careers in the field often have nothing to do with cows and plows.
The curriculums, taking hold as school budgets tighten and the numbers of farms in the U.S. decline, are rich in science and touted as stepping stones for college-bound students considering careers in everything from urban forestry to renewable natural resources and genetic engineering of crops, perhaps for agribusiness giants such as Monsanto, Dow, DuPont and Pioneer.
Ag-minded students are in luck: Tens of thousands of jobs open up each year in the broader agriculture field, and roughly half are filled by college grads with actual ag-related degrees, observers say.
Along with school programs, membership in Future Farmers of America is up to about 580,000 - nearly double its ranks of the mid-1980s. That spike dispels the notion the national organization is merely a haven for farm kids, given that the number of U.S. farms are on a long-term downward trend, shrinking another 4 percent between 2007 and 2012, according to the latest federal figures available.
FFA
U-2 Spy Plane Caused Shutdown
'Dragon Lady'
A U-2 spy plane caused a computer glitch at a California air traffic control center that led officials to halt takeoffs on Wednesday at several airports in the Southwestern United States and ground planes bound for the region from other parts of the country, NBC reported on Saturday.
The computer problem at a Federal Aviation Administration center slowed the journeys of tens of thousands of arriving and departing passengers at Los Angeles International Airport, one of the busiest in the country.
Bob Hope Airport in Burbank, California, John Wayne Airport in Santa Ana, California, and McCarran International Airport in Las Vegas were among other facilities affected by the order to keep planes grounded.
NBC, citing unnamed sources, reported a U-2, a Cold War-era spy plane still in use by the U.S. military, passed through air space monitored by the Los Angeles Air Route Traffic Control Center and appears to have overloaded a computer system at the center.
Computers at the center began operations to prevent the U-2 from colliding with other aircraft, even though the U-2 was flying at an altitude of 60,000 feet and other airplanes passing through the region's air space were miles below, NBC reported.
Sources told NBC News the U-2 plane had a U.S. Defense Department flight plan. "It was a 'Dragon Lady,'" one source told NBC, using the nickname for the plane.
'Dragon Lady'
May Strike Far from Wells
Fracking-Linked Earthquakes
Fracking may cause earthquakes much farther from the sites of its wastewater wells than previously thought, researchers said here Friday (May 2) at the annual meeting of the Seismological Society of America.
In central Oklahoma, a cluster of four high-volume wastewater injection wells triggered quakes up to 30 miles (about 50 kilometers) away, said lead study author Katie Keranen, a geophysicist at Cornell University in New York. The earthquakes have since spread farther outward, as fluids migrate farther from the massive injection wells, she said.
Scientists here noted the vast majority of injection wells haven't triggered any quakes, and the link between earthquakes and fracking or wastewater injection is not conclusive. However, there are now more earthquakes in the United States than before the fracking boom began. Between 1967 through 2000, there were an average of 21 earthquakes yearly above magnitude 3.0. That rate shot up to an average of 300 earthquakes yearly after 2010.
Keranen's new findings were among several studies presented here this week that draw a strong connection between fracking practices and earthquakes. Many geoscientists suspect America's recent sharp increase in earthquakes results from the growth in fracking. Plotted on a U.S. map, earthquakes since 2009 cluster near oil and gas operations in states such as Oklahoma, Ohio, Arkansas and Texas, as well as the usual quake hot zones in the seismically active Western states.
Fracking-Linked Earthquakes
More At Risk Than Thought
East Antarctica
Part of East Antarctica is more vulnerable than expected to a thaw that could trigger an unstoppable slide of ice into the ocean and raise world sea levels for thousands of years, a study showed on Sunday.
The Wilkes Basin in East Antarctica, stretching more than 1,000 km (600 miles) inland, has enough ice to raise sea levels by 3 to 4 meters (10-13 feet) if it were to melt as an effect of global warming, the report said.
The Wilkes is vulnerable because it is held in place by a small rim of ice, resting on bedrock below sea level by the coast of the frozen continent. That "ice plug" might melt away in coming centuries if ocean waters warm up.
"East Antarctica's Wilkes Basin is like a bottle on a slant. Once uncorked, it empties out," Matthias Mengel of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, lead author of the study in the journal Nature Climate Change, said in a statement.
East Antarctica
Bans 'Hatefest'
Belgium
Riot police in Brussels Sunday used water cannon to disperse a crowd defying a ban on a gathering of controversial far-right figures including French comic Dieudonne, which critics called an "anti-Semitic hatefest".
Citing a threat to public order, the mayor of the Brussels district of Anderlecht banned both the meeting and any protests connected to it.
But organisers of the so-called "European Dissidents' Congress" -- a Brussels bookshop and a group called "Debout les Belges!" (Belgians, Rise up!) -- urged supporters to head to the venue for "a surprise", sparking the standoff with riot police.
The event was to bring together a string of far-right figures, including the comedian Dieudonne M'bala M'bala, who has faced repeated accusations of anti-Semitism, Holocaust denial and incitement to racial hatred.
Belgium
Texas
Framed
The ex-wife of a disgraced Texas police officer who has been sentenced to 30 days in jail and five years probation for framing her on drug charges said today she is glad the "nightmare" is over but said, "I will always be looking over my shoulder."
"If anyone would have ever told me I would have drugs planted on me by my ex-husband, another police officer and a local criminal, I would have never believed them," Laura Covington told ABC News today.
Her former husband, Madisonville police Sgt. Jeffrey Covington, was convicted last week of retaliation for planting methamphetamines in Laura Covington's car in 2011 during a child custody battle. The drugs were found after she was stopped by police and she was promptly jailed.
The court determined that Jeffrey Covington and a second police officer arranged with a third person to plant drugs in Laura Covington's vehicle. She was seven months pregnant when she was arrested and her two children were taken away from her for five weeks.
"Having my babies taken from me was the worst part about this entire ordeal and if Jeff would have succeeded in his scheme, I could have lost them forever. My family and I will move on, but I will always be looking over my shoulder," Laura Covington said.
Framed
Population Ages & Shrinks
Japan
The number of children in Japan has fallen to a new low, while the amount of people over 65 has reached a record high as the population ages and shrinks, the government said Sunday.
There were an estimated 16.33 million children aged under 15 as of April 1, down 160,000 from a year earlier, the Internal Affairs and Communications Ministry said.
It was the 33rd straight annual decline and the lowest level since records began in 1950, according to the ministry.
Children accounted for 12.8 percent of the population, the ministry said. In contrast, the ratio of people aged 65 or older was at a record high of 25.6 percent.
The proportion of people aged 65 or over is forecast to reach nearly 40 percent of Japan's population in 2060, the government has warned.
Japan
Weekend Box Office
"The Amazing Spider-Man 2"
"The Amazing Spider-Man 2" debuted with $92 million in North American theaters over the weekend, according to studio estimates Sunday. It was a solid opening for Sony's Columbia Pictures, which has released five movies about Marvel's web-slinging superhero in the last 14 years.
The release of "The Amazing Spider-Man 2" essentially kicks off Hollywood's summer season and its annual parade of sequels and spectacle. Marvel movies have regularly commenced summer moviegoing in recent years, and the "Spider-Man 2" opening begins the season with a business-as-usual blockbuster performance.
Last week's No. 1 film, the female revenge comedy "The Other Woman," starring Cameron Diaz, slid to a distant second with $14 million in its second weekend.
Estimated ticket sales for Friday through Sunday at U.S. and Canadian theaters, according to Rentrak. Where available, latest international numbers are also included. Final domestic figures will be released on Monday.
1. "The Amazing Spider-Man 2," $92 million ($116 million international).
2. "The Other Woman," $14 million ($19.5 million international).
3. "Heaven Is for Real," $8.7 million.
4. "Captain America: The Winter Soldier," $7.8 million ($10 million international).
5. "Rio 2," $7.6 million ($24.5 million international).
6. "Brick Mansions," $3.5 million ($3 million international).
7. "Divergent," $2.2 million ($9.8 million international).
8. "The Quiet Ones," $2 million.
9. "God's Not Dead," $1.8 million.
10. "The Grand Budapest Hotel," $1.7 million ($8.6 million international).
"The Amazing Spider-Man 2"
In Memory
Michael Travis
Michael Travis, best known for designing Liberace's famously extravagant costumes, died on Thursday. He was 86.
He had been hospitalized last month due to serious ailments, including heart problems. He died in his Studio City home.
Though Travis designed for several other performers, he will likely be best remembered for his work for 16 years with Liberace before the performer's death in 1987, creating the over-the-top stage outfits that would become Liberace's signature. The two began working together in the early 1970s. The outfits were known for incorporating jewels, sequins, feathers, fur and other adornments, causing some to weigh more than 100 pounds.
One outfit that Travis designed for Liberace in 1979, widely known as the "flame" costume, included 1,600 tiny lights. Some of the costumes were inspired by royalty, being less flashy but featuring meticulous detailing. Many of the memorable costumes Travis designed are on display at the Liberace Museum.
In addition to Liberace, Travis also designed for Dionne Warwick, Diana Ross and the Supremes and Nancy Sinatra, along with a number of others.
Travis was born in Detroit on April 13, 1928. He served three years in the Army in postwar Europe after graduating high school. After his service, he went on to live in Paris, where he studied fashion. Upon moving to New York, he designed costumes for plays.
He worked under legendary costume designer Edith Head in after moving to Los Angeles in 1960, working on the Academy Award shows. Also after moving to L.A., Travis began his work on "Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In" and TV specials.
In his late 40s, Travis learned he had multiple sclerosis. It was then he began to work for Las Vegas entertainers.
Travis left no survivors.
Michael Travis
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