Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Rachel Maddow: Democrats Support Medicare, and Republicans Don't
HAZEL COURTENEY: Eighth wonder of the world? The stunning temples secretly carved out below ground by 'paranormal' eccentric (Daily Mail)
Here, 100ft down and hidden from public view, lies an astonishing secret - one that has drawn comparisons with the fabled city of Atlantis and has been dubbed 'the Eighth Wonder of the World' by the Italian government. For weaving their way underneath the hillside are nine ornate temples, on five levels, whose scale and opulence take the breath away.
Chris Anderson: Vermont governor signs country's first single-payer law (Healthcare Finance News)
In what he described as "both an opportunity and an obligation," Vermont Gov. Pete Shumlin has signed the country's first single-payer law, setting the state on a course to be first with a publicly financed healthcare system.
Marc Dion: Goodbye to the Boys (Creators Syndicate)
You all had wives and kids, and you looked askance at the unmarried man over 35. You wore wristwatches with an expandable metal band and plain gold wedding bands. When your wife went to stay with her mother, who was recovering from surgery, you said you were "batching it," and you ate Post Toasties for supper every night until she came back.
Terry Savage: Rising Prices a Symptom of Inflation, While Debt Is the Cause (Creators Syndicate)
Q: This sounds like a simple question, but we have argued over it for weeks: What is inflation? The dictionary says it is rising prices, but I think it has something to do with all our debt.
Marilyn Preston: Arthritis Pain? Tai Chi and Gin-Soaked Raisins to the Rescue (Creators Syndicate)
People with arthritis soon discover that if they don't stay active and keep exercising, they have more pain, more stiffness and more fatigue.
Chuck Norris: Healthy Summer Picnic Alternatives (Creators Syndicate)
Q: Mr. Norris, summer picnics are loaded with sweet treats. Any advice about throwing a picnic that is nutritious and tastes good, too? - C. Scarberry, Oklahoma City
A: Jim Fowler, a great naturalist and former TV host, once said, "If you have a place where you can go and have a picnic with your family, it doesn't matter if it's a recession or not; you can include that in your quality of life."
Betsy Sharkey: "Movie review: 'Kung Fu Panda 2'" (Los Angeles Times)
Po returns in fine, paunchy form under Jennifer Yuh Nelson's direction.
Roger Ebert: Review of "KUNG FU PANDA 2" (PG; 3 ½ stars)
"Kung Fu Panda 2" is exactly as you'd expect, and more. The animation is elegant, the story is much more involving than in the original, and there's boundless energy. I enjoyed it as fully as I possibly could, given the horror of its 3-D.
Roger Ebert's Journal: The dying of the light
Do you remember what a movie should look like? Do you notice when one doesn't look right? Do you feel the vague sense that something is missing? I do. I know in my bones how a movie should look. I have been trained by the best projection in the world, at film festivals and in expert screening rooms.
Bruce Dancis: Charlie Chaplin Transcended Clowndom with 'The Great Dictator' (McClatchy-Tribune News Service)
Using satire as his weapon in his first all-talking film, the legendary screen comedian, Charlie Chaplin, gave the world a devastating indictment of fascism, anti-Semitism and the threat of Germany's Nazi regime to the future of humanity.
David Bruce has 42 Kindle books on Amazon.com with 250 anecdotes in each book. Each book is $1, so for $42 you can buy 10,500 anecdotes. Search for "Funniest People," "Coolest People, "Most Interesting People," "Kindest People," "Religious Anecdotes," "Maximum Cool," and "Resist Psychic Death."
Hubert's Poetry Corner
"The Reluctant Lottery Winner"
One Lottery No one Desires to Win?
The (Occasional) Weekly Poll Presents...
New Question(s)
The "That Was The Week That Was' Edition...
This past week we had a number of marvelously eclectic stories to captivate one's attention and give us some distractions to our otherwise hum-drum lives (haha) ...
Which, if any, of these stories piqued your interest the most this past week?
1.) Ah-nuld's 'Living Loving Maid' and 'Love Child'... (Why am I not amazed?)
2.) The Oprah 'I'll Always Love You' Fan-Fest count-down to her last show...(OMG! What to do? What to watch?... p.s. is she really a 'closet' Scientologist?)
3.) Saturday's 'Apocalypse Now' fizzle... (Good excuse fer a party, though, I'm sayin'...)
4.) Lizzie does Dublin... (No Sex Pistols singin', 'God Save the Queen', more's the pity...)
5.) Obama lectures Israel (Israel sez, "Get real, Dude") Obama then sings, 'We are Family' to AIPAC...
6.) 'When the Levee Breaks'..or, the Great American Flood, as it were...(Gators and snakes and bears, Oh My!)
7.) The 'Helter Skelter' hilarity of GOP presidential candidates doin' the 'You're Hot and then You're Cold' shuffle (featuring 'Newt the Hoot', so much the better...)
8.) Your pick... (Give us a thrill, would ya now, maybe?)
Well, then, Poll-fans... Have at it!
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From The Creator of 'Avery Ant'
Reader Question
Cuban Blue Cats
Thanks for carrying the story, Marty! You're the first place I've heard it. Any chance you can help track down a picture of a Cuban blue? I followed your link, but the story there doesn't have a picture. I would love to see one.
Linda >^..^<
Thanks, Linda!
Found this picture -
A Cuban Blue cat is pictured in Havana May 25, 2011. Cuban cat lovers believe there is a newly identified breed of short-hair cat they call the Cuban blue.Uriarte Rubio, president of the Cuban Association of Cat Enthusiasts, is spearheading the effort to identify the Cuban blue as a new breed and hopes it will one day take its place alongside the world's five other cat breeds known as "blues."
Photo by by Desmond Boylan
Reader Answer
Re: Cuban Blue
I shared the Cuban Blue article with some friends and told them we were trying to find a picture. One of them beat us to the punch and found the attached picture. Ya gotta love cat people!
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Bit of morning rain.
Perpetual Music Maker
Quincy Jones
After a frenetic career as producer to Frank Sinatra, Ray Charles, Michael Jackson and many other music legends, 78-year-old Quincy Jones refuses to slow down and has just signed up for a new project in the Arab world.
"I'm 78 and I've still got a lot of energy and I want to do what my dreams are, which is to see people come together across the barriers," Jones told Reuters in the Moroccan capital Rabat where he appeared in the Mawazine music festival.
He scoffs at a question as to whether age and past medical woes, such as a serious cerebral aneurysm he suffered in 1974, might encourage him to ease up.
As a performer, Jones was already touring North Africa and other parts of the world in the 1950s with some of the biggest names of jazz including Lionel Hampton and Dizzy Gillespie.
He arranged Sinatra's "Fly Me to the Moon" and produced Michael Jackson's album "Thriller" and the 1985 "We are the World" recording for African famine relief.
Quincy Jones
Thousands Turn Out
'SlutWalk'
Thousands of people turned out for Australia's first "SlutWalk" on Saturday, organisers said, protesting for women to be able to wear whatever they like without fear of being sexually assaulted.
SlutWalk began in Canada in April after a Toronto police official said that "women should avoid dressing like sluts in order not to be victimised".
Australian Lauren Clair, one of the organisers of the Melbourne event, said about 2,500 people showed up to march through the city's streets.
While women were often judged on how they dressed, it was wrong to suggest that only those who wore provocative clothes were the victims of sexual assault, she added.
'SlutWalk'
Protected Free Speech
Colorado
A harassment charge has been dropped in the case of a 35-year-old Colorado man who faced prosecution for displaying his middle finger to a Colorado State Patrol trooper.
The State Patrol said in a statement late Friday that it asked that the case be dropped.
The American Civil Liberties Union had argued that while the gesture may be have been rude, it amounted to protected free speech.
According to the ACLU, Shane Boor was driving to work in April when he saw a trooper pull over a car. As Boor passed by, he extended his middle finger in the trooper's direction.
Boor was later stopped and received a criminal summons ordering him to appear in court to answer a criminal charge of harassment, which carries a possible six-month jail term.
Colorado
Record Snow Makes Spectacular Waterfalls
Yosemite
Record Sierra snowfall over the winter now means record snow melt as temperatures rise, swelling Yosemite National Park's iconic waterfalls, streams and rivers to their most turbulent level in years.
Yosemite Falls, the nation's tallest, is spewing enough water to fill a gasoline tanker truck every two seconds. The force of water at Bridalveil Falls across the valley kicks up a mist that clouds the meadow below.
It means that until the peak melt around mid-June, visitors will experience more treacherous beauty in Yosemite than even the travel brochures promise.
Water cascading from the many signature falls that cut across Yosemite's granite walls (as well as countless unnamed ones that spout only in peak years like this) is swelling the Merced River. For the next few months the roar of violently churning water will drown out all other background noise in the park.
Yosemite
Under Fire From The Right
Cate Blanchett
Hollywood A-lister Cate Blanchett found herself under fire for fronting a campaign promoting the government's planned carbon tax, with critics saying she is out of touch with ordinary Australians.
The wealthy Oscar winner features in a new advert, funded by a coalition of unions and green groups, urging Australians to "Say Yes" to a tax on carbon.
Australians are among the world's worst per capita carbon polluters and Labor Prime Minister Julia Gillard has proposed a carbon tax to be levied on major industrial polluters by July 1, 2012.
But the proposals are not popular, with the conservative opposition saying a tax would damage the economy and drive up the cost of living by making energy far more expensive, bumping up electricity bills.
Cate Blanchett
Pleas Guilty
Clarence "Ole" Helgevold Jr
An Alaska fishing captain who led a crew on the program that spawned the cable TV show "Deadliest Catch" has pleaded guilty to criminally negligent homicide and driving under the influence in a fatal crash.
Clarence "Ole" Helgevold Jr. of Soldotna pleaded guilty Friday in Kenai Superior Court.
The 60-year-old Helgevold originally had been charged with manslaughter in January when his car crashed with a snowmobile driven by 47-year-old George Larion.
Helgevold was captain of the Arctic Dawn, the vessel featured in a 2004 three-part miniseries titled "America's Deadliest Season."
Clarence "Ole" Helgevold Jr
Hollywood Stars At Center Of Backlash
Broadway
Every year, Hollywood celebrities head to Broadway where they get plenty of attention for their headlining efforts.
The Tony Awards, being presented on June 12, are the ultimate judge of the skills of any stage actor, famous or not, and many lesser-known performers worry that the value of the award diminishes as film stars continue to take them home.
Last year's star-studded broadcast disheartened many New York actors, including Hunter Foster, who started the Facebook group Give the Tonys Back to Broadway!! in an effort to combat the Tinseltown effect. With the now almost 9,000-member group, Foster hopes to restore the ceremony as a beacon of hope for the next generation of stage performers.
Whether stage actors like his sister, Sutton Foster -- nominated this year for her performance in "Anything Goes" -- will disappear from Broadway's future if the Tonys continue to focus on Hollywood stars is debatable. Many actors appearing on Broadway -- including Al Pacino, a nominee this year for "The Merchant of Venice" -- began their careers on stage, but their mass appeal comes from their films.
Broadway
Ice Melt To Close Off Interior Riches
Arctic
Global warming will likely open up coastal areas in the Arctic to development but close vast regions of the northern interior to forestry and mining by mid-century as ice and frozen soil under temporary winter roads melt, researchers said.
Higher temperatures have already led to lower summer sea ice levels in the Arctic and the melting has the potential to increase access for fishermen, tourists and oil and natural gas developers to coastal regions in coming decades.
The Arctic is increasingly a region of deep strategic importance to the United States, Russia and China for its undiscovered resource riches and the potential for new shipping lanes. The U.S. Geological Survey says that 25 percent of the world's undiscovered oil and natural gas lies in the Arctic.
But the warming also will likely melt so-called "ice roads", the temporary winter roads developers now use to access far inland northern resources such as timber, diamonds and minerals, according to a study published on Sunday in the journal Nature Climate Change.
Arctic
Married Couples In Less Than Half
US Households
Three mornings a week, when Becky Leung gets ready for work, her boyfriend is just getting home from his overnight job. When her mother drops hints about her twin sister's marriage, she laughs it off. And when she thinks about getting married herself, she worries first about her career.
Leung, 27, cohabits in a Portland, Ore., townhome with her boyfriend but has no plans yet to wed, a reflection of the broader cultural shift in the U.S. away from the traditional definition of what it means to be a household.
Data released Thursday by the U.S. Census Bureau shows married couples have found themselves in a new position: They're no longer the majority.
It's a trend that's been creeping along for decades, but in the 2010 Census, married couples represent 48 percent of all households. That's down from 52 percent in the last Census and, for the first time in U.S. history, puts households led by married couples as a plurality.
US Households
Their Secret Lives Revealed
Outdoor Cats
Where does your kitty go when you let her out? What do stray cats do all day? Do alley cats hang out with each other?
These are just some of the questions answered by a newly completed research project in which 42 free-roaming cats - some with no owner, some outdoor pets - were radio-collared and tracked for two years by researchers at the University of Illinois.
Together, the cats roamed 6,286 acres in and around the cities of Urbana and Champaign. The strays turned out to have surprisingly huge territories. One feral cat, a mixed breed male, had a home range of 1,351 acres, covering both urban and rural, residential and agricultural, forest and prairie areas.
"That particular male cat was not getting food from humans, to my knowledge, but somehow it survived out there amidst coyotes and foxes," Jeff Horn, a former graduate student in the Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Sciences who led the study, said in a press release. "It crossed every street in the area where it was trapped. (It navigated) stoplights, parking lots. We found it denning under a softball field during a game."
Even though the free-roaming pet cats tended to stay within the two acres surrounding their homes, "some of the cat owners were very surprised to learn that their cats were going that far," Horn said. "That's a lot of backyards."
Outdoor Cats
Weekend Box Office
'Hangover'
"The Hangover Part II" hauled in $86.5 million in its first weekend, putting Hollywood on course to set a new revenue record for the long Memorial Day weekend, according to studio estimates Sunday.
From Friday to Sunday, Hollywood's domestic take totaled about $220 million. Once Monday's receipts are counted, the industry should finish the four-day weekend with around $270 million, easily topping the $254.6 million Memorial Day record set in 2007, said Paul Dergarabedian, box-office analyst for Hollywood.com.
"The Hangover" sequel did nearly twice the business of the original blockbuster comedy in its $45 million opening weekend two years ago.
DreamWorks Animation's "Kung Fu Panda 2" opened solidly with a $48 million weekend, though it came in well below the $60.2 million debut of the first installment three years ago.
'Hangover'
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