Recommended Reading
from Bruce
"This is Water" (YouTube)
In 2005, author David Foster Wallace was asked to give the commencement address to the 2005 graduating class of Kenyon College. However, the resulting speech didn't become widely known until 3 years later, after his tragic death. It is, without a doubt, some of the best life advice we've ever come across, and perhaps the most simple and elegant explanation of the real value of education.
"Students denied regular school lunch during state testing" (RTV)
KENTON COUNTY, Ky. - A week after more than 40 students at a Kentucky elementary school went without a regular lunch during state testing, a Good Samaritan showed up to the school Wednesday and paid $56 so all students could have a regular lunch.
Susan Estrich: An Exciting Gateway (Creators Syndicate)
My doctor and dear friend Larry calls it "an exciting gateway of genetics, for it is leading to specific therapy to specific subsets of a given disease." Some of the folks writing comments call it a conspiracy by the drug companies and the medical establishment motivated by greed.
Lucy Mangan: a little goes a long way (Guardian)
Ever heard of 'microagressions'? No, me neither, but they're out there and they're partly responsible for the state we constantly find ourselves in.
Rosanna Greenstreet: "Q&A: Miss Piggy" (Guardian)
'What is my favourite smell? Wet amphibian.'
Lucy Mangan: Life with Lisa by Sybil Burr (Guardian)
… Life with Lisa, the diary of 12-year-old Lisa Longland who, after coming across Pepys in the library, has decided to record her daily trials at home with her widowed mother and their lodger in a drab, postwar seaside town, and at school with the sarcastic Miss Brownrigg. "If persons are still wanting to read about your wife's hat after 100s of years," she reasons, "they might want to hear about another Ordinary Person (me) because my Life is very interesting in parts."
Terry Savage: Gifts You Hope Mom Won't Use! (Creators Syndicate)
Quick: Think of two Mother's Day presents that mom would really appreciate, is unlikely to buy for herself - and hopefully won't use! They are: long term care insurance and life insurance (on Dad)!
Dr. David Lipschitz: Red Meats, Fried Foods Fuel Heart Attacks, Strokes, Death (Creators Syndicate)
If you must have those delicious foods that we grew up with, moderation is the key. We must saute rather than fry, keep animal fats to a minimum, stick to olive and canola oil, eat lots of fruits and vegetables and limit red meats to one serving a week. Our hearts and even our brains will thank us for it.
Christopher Hitchens: Wine Drinkers of the World, Unite (Slate)
The other night, I was having dinner with some friends in a fairly decent restaurant and was at the very peak of my form as a wit and raconteur. But just as, with infinite and exquisite tantalizations, I was approaching my punch line, the most incredible thing happened.
David Bruce's Amazon Author Page
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David Bruce has approximately 50 Kindle books on Amazon.com.
wrote:
is offline.
responded.
Reader Suggestion
Michelle in AZ
Bosko Suggests
Hilltop Towns
Have a great week,
Bosko.
Thanks, Bosko!
From The Creator of 'Avery Ant'
Infographic
Cher's Birthday
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Sunny, breezy and seasonal.
Fate Of Pot Shops Left To Voters
Los Angeles
Los Angeles politicians have struggled for more than five years to regulate medical marijuana, trying to balance the needs of the sick against neighborhood concerns that pot shops attract crime.
Voters will head to the polls Tuesday to decide how Los Angeles should handle its high with three competing measures that seek to either limit the number of dispensaries or allow new ones to open and join an estimated several hundred others that currently operate.
Election Day in the nation's second-largest city comes just two weeks after a pivotal state Supreme Court decision gave cities and counties the authority to ban pot shops. More than 200 local municipalities have bans, and some cities that were awaiting guidance from the state's highest court have taken immediate action this month and begun shuttering clinics.
While some cities have been able to manage pot collectives, Los Angeles fumbled with the issue and dispensaries cropped up across the city as a result. Councilman Ed Reyes said Los Angeles has run into trouble where other cities such as Oakland haven't because of the sheer size of LA and a movement that is more organized and litigious.
Regardless of the election's outcome, dispensary owners still are under the specter of the federal government, which maintains marijuana is illegal and has raided clinics, prosecuted owners and filed lawsuits against landlords.
Los Angeles
Guitar Auctioned For $408,000
Beatles
A custom-made electric guitar played by the late John Lennon and George Harrison of the Beatles sold at a New York auction on Saturday for $408,000, said officials with the company behind the event.
The semi-hollow-body guitar, manufactured by the VOX company, was sold to an unidentified U.S. buyer at the "Music Icons" event organized by Beverly Hills, California-based Julien's Auctions and held at the Hard Rock Cafe in Manhattan.
Julien's said previously it expected the guitar, which was the centerpiece of Saturday's sale, to fetch between $200,000 and $300,000.
Harrison played the instrument, distinguished by two symmetrical flared shoulders on the upper body, while practicing "I Am The Walrus," and Lennon used it in a video session for the song "Hello, Goodbye," according to a statement from Julien's Auctions.
Beatles
Old Rules Don't Mean Much
Broadcasters
The most striking thing about the broadcast TV networks announcing their new fall schedules this past week was how little that actually meant.
Television schedules seem more like sketches these days. Even the networks admit their prime-time plans for September will be different by January, even more so a few months later. That's not even taking into account the inevitable failures among the 56 new series ordered into production by ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox and the CW.
Television has typically started its new season in late September, a calendar that was set to coincide with the time auto manufacturers rolled out a shiny new line of cars, and wanted something shiny and new on TV to advertise them on. That's the time most new shows appeared, offering a feast for fans and, lately, for digital video recorders.
Not quite half of the new shows - 27 of them - will be on the schedules when a new season starts this September. There are scheduled premiere dates, mostly in mid-winter, for many of the rest. Others have only a vague promise that they will appear, sometime, somewhere. Rebuilding NBC ordered 17 new shows, but only six will be on opening week.
Broadcasters
Hospital News
Frederick "Toots" Hibbert
Officials say the leader of the reggae band Toots and the Maytals was injured when a 19-year-old man threw a bottle and hit the singer during a concert in Richmond.
Police said Sunday the man has been charged with aggravated assault. Authorities have not identified him.
The Richmond Times-Dispatch reports that Frederick "Toots" Hibbert was treated at a hospital for a cut to his head and released.
Hibbert was hit by a glass bottle thrown from the crowd Saturday night as the band was performing at the Dominion Riverrock outdoor sports and music festival. The band stopped playing after he was hit.
Frederick "Toots" Hibbert
Ended Up With Yellowstone's Most-Prized Bison
Ted Turner
It's a quaint picture: 74-year-old billionaire rancher Ted Turner out on his trusty steed roaming the Montana range with his herd of domesticated bison. In this particular image, he's galloping across Flying D Ranch, not far from Yellowstone Park.
As he told the Bozeman Chronicle back in October 2011, he came to Montana three decades ago "mainly to go fishing." But he bought the Flying D and three other ranches for the bison and other wildlife. You may know Turner as the former CNN mogul who lost his fortune in a disastrous merger with AOL Time Warner. But to those who live, work around, and care about bison in Montana, he is a lightening rod for controversy.
It all started back in 1989, when, after buying the 113,000-acre Flying D Ranch, he sold off all of the cattle. Shortly thereafter, he repopulated the land with the great American bison. Since then, his heard (spread across ranches in seven different states) has grown to 55,000, 11 percent of the world's population of 500,000.
People who think bison should roam freely in America have always had a problem with Turner. But in 2010, when Montana governor Brian Schweitzer requested that he set aside a temporary home for 80 Yellowstone bison that had been quarantined so wildlife managers could see if they were free of the cow-turned-bison disease brucellosis, critics went crazy.
It wasn't just that the feds were leasing something owned by the public to a private businessman who makes a portion of his living selling buffalo meat to his 64 Ted's Montana Grills. It was that in exchange for caring for the bison for a five-year period, Turner would get to keep 75 percent of the herd's calves for conservation.
Ted Turner
Sore Losers Can't Accept Legalized Gay Marriage
France
France finally became the 14th country to legalize gay marriage on Saturday when President Francois Hollande signed the bill that legalizes same sex marriage into law. But ugly protests that have marked the legal process will continue even now that the bill is passed.
The country's Constitutional Council approved the law on Friday, clearing the last hurdle before Hollande's signature was required to make it a reality. The French opposition party had tried to argue the bill violated the constitution, but the Council disagreed. They ruled same sex marriage "did not run contrary to any constitutional principles", and that it doesn't violate "basic rights or liberties or national sovereignty." So there you have it: France finally joined the elite club of countries where gay marriage is legal. Hollande campaigned on bringing gay marriage to France and, at the end of the day, he achieved it. He'll always have that to fall back on (it's not going that well otherwise) no matter what else happens during his presidency.
Despite polls showing the majority of France supports gay marriage, ugly and sometimes violent protests have come hand-in-hand with the legal fight over gay marriage. Opposers have shown up in massive numbers to protest the gay marriage bill. And despite their legal loss, they plan to continue protesting. French humorist and one of the country's mout outspoken gay marriage critics Frigide Barjot is already planning a May 26 protest. She promises millions of people will join her in protest even though the legal fight is over.
Seems like a productive use of time.
That France
Trained To Find Land Mines
Honeybees
Mirjana Filipovic is still haunted by the land mine blast that killed her boyfriend and blew off her left leg while on a fishing trip nearly a decade ago. It happened in a field that was supposedly de-mined.
Now, unlikely heroes may be coming to the rescue to prevent similar tragedies: sugar-craving honeybees. Croatian researchers are training them to find unexploded mines littering their country and the rest of the Balkans.
When Croatia joins the European Union on July 1, in addition to the beauty of its aquamarine Adriatic sea, deep blue mountain lakes and lush green forests, it will also bring numerous un-cleared minefields to the bloc's territory. About 750 square kilometers (466 square miles) are still suspected to be filled with mines from the Balkan wars in the 1990s.
Nikola Kezic, an expert on the behavior of honeybees, sat quietly together with a group of young researchers on a recent day in a large net tent filled with the buzzing insects on a grass field lined with acacia trees. The professor at Zagreb University outlined the idea for the experiment: Bees have a perfect sense of smell that can quickly detect the scent of the explosives. They are being trained to identify their food with the scent of TNT.
Honeybees
Cemetery Reveals Baby-Making Season
Ancient Egypt
The peak period for baby-making sex in ancient Egypt was in July and August, when the weather was at its hottest.
Researchers made this discovery at a cemetery in the Dakhleh Oasis in Egypt whose burials date back around 1,800 years. The oasis is located about 450 miles (720 kilometers) southwest of Cairo. The people buried in the cemetery lived in the ancient town of Kellis, with a population of at least several thousand. These people lived at a time when the Roman Empire controlled Egypt, when Christianity was spreading but also when traditional Egyptian religious beliefs were still strong.
So far, researchers have uncovered 765 graves, including the remains of 124 individuals that date to between 18 weeks and 45 weeks after conception. The excellent preservation let researchers date the age of the remains at death. The researchers could also pinpoint month of death, as the graves were oriented toward the rising sun, something that changes predictably throughout the year.
The results, combined with other information, suggested the peak period for births at the site was in March and April, and the peak period for conceptions was in July and August, when temperatures at the Dakhleh Oasis can easily reach more than 100 degrees Fahrenheit (40 degrees Celsius).
The peak period for the death of women of childbearing age was also in March and April (exactly mirroring the births), indicating that a substantial number of women died in childbirth.
Ancient Egypt
Immaculately Conceived?
Baby Anteater
Staffers at a zoological conservation center in Greenwich, Conn., are very confused - as are the rest of us - because their female giant anteater, Armani, has managed to conceive a baby, apparently without the presence of a male anteater.
It all started in August, writes Lisa Chamoff for Greenwich Time. Armani, an anteater at the LEO Zoological Conservation Center, had given birth to anteater baby girl Alice. Alice's father, Alf, was kept away from Armani and Alice because male anteaters have a bad history of committing infanticide. And then one April morning, a zoo staffer entered Armani's abode and found ... another baby. Chamoff explains, "The sudden appearance of little Archie was a surprise, to say the least. The gestation period for anteaters is six months. Armani and Alf had not been back together long enough to do what they needed to do to put the cycle of life into gear a second time."
Hypotheses began to fly about the conservation center and beyond. Some people thought it was "immaculate anteater conception" (though probably no one really thought that). Or that "Alf had somehow gotten the keys to Armani's pen one night in October." Another explanation has been posited by the founder and director of the center, Marcella Leone, who believes that Archie "might have been a case of delayed implantation, when fertilized eggs remain dormant in the uterus for a period of time." Anteater-similar mammals like sloths and armadillos have demonstrated delayed implantation - and yet, still, there is mystery: "some experts say they've never seen a second embryo implant after a mammal has just given birth," and that such a thing would be unlikely in giant anteaters.
Unfortunately, unless the anteaters themselves 'fess up, there appears to be no way to prove what actually happened. It's an anteater mystery for the ages.
Baby Anteater
Why They Are Blue
The Blues
When you listen to a lively Mozart piece in a major key, what colors do you see? If bright yellows and oranges swirled in your mind, it wouldn't surprise a group of scientists at the University of California, Berkeley.
Their new study found that people associate upbeat, major-key music with lighter, more vibrant yellow-toned colors, while slower music in minor keys actually gives people the blues.
These results were the same for participants in both California and Mexico, suggesting humans may have a surprisingly universal emotional color palette.
"The results were remarkably strong and consistent across individuals and cultures and clearly pointed to the powerful role that emotions play in how the human brain maps from hearing music to seeing colors," study researcher Stephen Palmer, a UC Berkeley vision scientist, said in a statement.
Palmer and his colleagues studied nearly 100 men and women, half in the San Francisco Bay Area and half in Guadalajara, Mexico. The participants listened to 18 varied pieces of classical music by Johann Sebastian Bach, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Johannes Brahms. They also were given a 37-color palette and told to choose five colors that best matched each song.
The Blues
Weekend Box Office
"Star Trek: Into Darkness"
"Star Trek: Into Darkness" has warped its way to a $70.6 million domestic launch from Friday to Sunday, though it's not setting any light-speed records with a debut that's lower than the studio's expectations.
Since premiering Wednesday in huge-screen IMAX theaters and expanding Thursday to general cinemas, "Into Darkness" has pulled in $84.1 million, well below distributor Paramount's initial forecast of $100 million. The film added $40 million overseas, pushing its total to $80.5 million since it began rolling out internationally a week earlier.
The "Star Trek" sequel bumped "Iron Man 3" down to second place after two weekends on top. Robert Downey Jr.'s superhero saga took in $35.2 million domestically to lift its receipts to $337.1 million. Overseas, "Iron Man 3" added $40.2 million, raising its international total to $736.2 million and its worldwide tally to nearly $1.1 billion.
While "Iron Man 3" and "Into Darkness" did well overseas, they were outmatched by the debut of Baz Luhrmann's "The Great Gatsby," which followed its domestic debut a week earlier with a wide rollout internationally. "Gatsby" pulled in $42.1 million overseas, coming in a bit ahead of both "Iron Man 3" and "Into Darkness."
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. "Star Trek: Into Darkness," $70.6 million ($40 million international).
2. "Iron Man 3," $35.2 million ($40.2 million international).
3. "The Great Gatsby," $23.4 million ($42.1 million international)
4. "Pain & Gain," $3.1 million.
5. "The Croods," $2.75 million.
6. "42," $2.73 million.
7. "Oblivion," $2.2 million.
8. "Mud," $2.16 million.
9. "Peeples," $2.15 million.
10. "The Big Wedding," $1.1 million.
"Star Trek: Into Darkness"
In Memory
Christine White
Christine White, an actress best known for The Twilight Zone, passed away on April 14 in Washington, D.C., the Carroll County Times reports. She was 86.
White is famous for her role opposite William Shatner in the Twlight Zone episode "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet." Shatner played a man recently released from a sanitarium following a mental breakdown on an airplane. As he and his wife, played by White, fly home, Shatner's character grows increasingly upset as he witnesses a "gremlin" tampering with the wing that only he can see. As Shatner's mental state crumbles, White's character struggles to keep him composed.
In addition to The Twilight Zone, White has also appeared in Bonanza, The Rifleman and The Untouchables.
She is survived by several nieces and nephews.
Christine White
In Memory
Alan O'Day
Alan O'Day, who crafted popular songs for artists like the Righteous Brothers and Helen Reddy before scoring a No. 1 of his own with the bouncy 1977 hit "Undercover Angel," lost his battle with cancer on Friday, his record label announced. He was 72.
The songwriter, producer and artist died at his home in Westwood, Calif. surrounded by family and friends.
O'Day signed with Warner Bros. in 1971, later writing "Train of Thought" for Cher, "Rock and Roll Heaven" for the Righteous Brothers, and the 1974 No. 1 "Angie Baby" by Helen Reddy. Three years later he landed at the top of the Hot 100 with his own single, "Undercover Angel."
In the 1980s, O'Day teamed up with Janis Liebhart to co-write dozens of songs for the popular "Muppet Babies" cartoons.
Throughout his career, O'Day's songs were performed by artists ranging from Johnny Mathis, the 5th Dimension, Tom Jones, Dusty Springfield, Tony Orlando, Three Dog Night and Paul Anka, among others.
O'Day is survived by his wife, Yuka. Funeral services are pending.
Alan O'Day
Long, long time ago I briefly dated Alan. He had a state-of-the-art recording studio in his house, and that's where I saw my first Korg, although I was much more taken by the fully loaded Wurlizter neon jukebox in the living room.
Because of Alan, developed some flourless recipes that I still use today.
A kind and decent man.
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