Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Mark Shields: Iowa in August (Creators Syndicate)
If you're interested, you reportedly can make your own fried butter on a stick at home by dipping an eighth of a pound of butter into a thick batter loaded with cinnamon and honey. With the coating thoroughly applied, three minutes in the deep fryer and you have a taste treat that, I have been assured, surpasses the sweetest sweet roll ever.
NICK MILLER: Bill Maher is Bummed (Sacramento News and Review)
The comedian and Real Time With Bill Maher host on debt ceilings, Super Congresses, Obama, Rick Perry and more.
Bethany McLean: Risk On! (Slate)
Do the Fed, computer trading, and a few hedge funds rule the market? That might explain why it's lost its mind.
Terry Savage: What's Happening in the Financial World, and What You Should Do (Creators Syndicate)
So that brings back the question: Where is safety? The safest course is the most difficult one to take in scary times. Yes, you want some long-term holdings in good, dividend-paying stocks. And some money in gold or gold stocks. But you can't go chasing these markets. It's tough to leave your "chicken money" in bank deposits and Treasury bills paying nothing. But at least you won't lose any money there right now.
Marilyn Preston: Hard Times Call for Soft Skills: Five Ways to Lessen Your Stress (Creators Syndicate)
No matter your politics, party or pulse rate, panic is in the air. The market is tanking, jobs are scarce, civility has left the building arm-in-arm with common sense, and top economists are telling us that things will get worse before they get better. It's going to get worse? Have you ever felt so much tension, seen so much dissension as our government rises to new levels of dysfunction every day? Our collective nerves are shot. Our national migraine won't go away. What can we do?
Charlie Jane Anders: Finally Revealed: The 100 Greatest Science Fiction and Fantasy Books, According to NPR's Readers (io9)
When NPR revealed its list of finalists for its "Top 100 Science-Fiction and Fantasy Books" survey, we were struck by how diverse and wide-ranging that list was. Now the actual list of the 100 greatest books has been revealed... and it's quite a bit more conservative.
Your Picks: Top 100 Science-Fiction, Fantasy Books (NPR)
#1 "The Lord of the Rings," by J.R.R. Tolkien.
Juliet Lapidos: Overrated (Slate)
Authors, critics, and editors on "great books" that aren't all that great.
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."
wrote:
is taking some time off to re-set his sleepy-time clock.
3 4 5 6 7 8 CaterpillarsGulf Fritillary Butterfly
Reader Suggestion
Michelle in AZ
From The Creator of 'Avery Ant'
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Sunny and pleasant.
AMC, Sony Reach Deal For Finale
'Breaking Bad'
The AMC network and producers of its popular "Breaking Bad" series about a chemistry teacher gone bad have agreed on making a fifth and final season of the show.
Production on the final, 16-episode run will begin early next year and hasn't been scheduled for air.
Negotiations with series maker Sony Television had reportedly been tense, with Sony even contacting other networks to see if they'd be interested in picking up the show if AMC bowed out. The cable network, with another costly and popular series in "Mad Men," was looking to keep expenses down and had been seeking a shorter run of episodes.
Producers may have gained leverage with the strong performance of the series in its fourth season this summer. The season debut on July 18 had the series' highest ratings ever, and overall "Breaking Bad" has 28 percent more viewers this season than it had the last, the Nielsen Co. said.
'Breaking Bad'
Baby News
Penelope Athena Richmond
"30 Rock" creator and star Tina Fey gave birth to a girl on Wednesday, People magazine has reported.
Penelope Athena Richmond is the second child for Fey, 41, and her composer husband, Jeffrey Richmond, 50.
The Emmy-winning writer/performer and author of the nonfiction book "Bossypants," Fey first revealed her pregnancy to Oprah Winfrey in April.
Fey told Winfrey, "My husband and I really decided that we felt rather than risk having '30 Rock' end in several years and feeling like part of our family is missing that we were going to prioritize our family."
Penelope Athena Richmond
Wedding News
Burke - Charvet
"Dancing With the Stars" co-host Brooke Burke and former "Baywatch" star David Charvet have tied the knot after a five-year engagement.
Burke hinted at the news Saturday morning on Twitter, posting that she had "big news to share." Her rep later confirmed the marriage reports to E! News.
The couple, who are both 39 and have two children together, were married Friday aboard a yacht off the Caribbean island of St. Barts, Life & Style magazine reported. Burke also is the mother of two daughters, ages 9 and 11, from her previous marriage to "Extreme Makeover" plastic surgeon Garth Fisher.
Burke - Charvet
Nabs Surfer
Pterodactyl
A bronze surfer statue near San Diego that's been the target of many gags has been hit again.
Unknown pre-dawn pranksters on Saturday constructed an elaborate scene of a pterodactyl seemingly about to pluck the sculpture of a young surfer off his board. The pranksters placed a painted backdrop of a volcanic eruption behind the surfer statue.
Last year someone surrounded the roadside statue in Cardiff-by-the-Sea with a papier mache model of a great white shark that appeared to be swallowing it whole.
The $120,000 sculpture called "Magic Carpet Ride" has been derided by local surfers who criticize the boy's pose as too awkward.
The statue has been bedecked with bras, skirts and witch hats so often that locals have come to call it "The Cardiff Kook."
Pterodactyl
Cellphones Disappear On Plane
Paris Hilton
Paris Hilton is suffering a new bout of cellphone drama. The heiress-turned-TV star reportedly lost two mobile devices on a flight to the Philippines for a visit to promote a hotel resort.
Television footage showed Hilton combing through a bag looking upset while she was surrounded by airline staff at the Manila airport late Sunday after arriving from Dubai.
Manila radio station DZBB reported that airport and airline authorities are investigating.
The latest loss apparently didn't leave Hilton completely cut off - she greeted fans with a tweet "I love you" in the local Tagalog language.
Paris Hilton
Stolen From California Hotel
Rembrandt
Investigators were examining hotel surveillance video on Sunday for clues to the disappearance of a drawing by Rembrandt from a private exhibit near Los Angeles, officials said.
The pen-and-ink drawing known as "The Judgment" by the 17th century Dutch artist Rembrandt van Rijn, vanished on Saturday night from the Ritz-Carlton Marina del Rey while the curator was "distracted" for about 15 minutes, said Steve Whitmore, a spokesman for the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Office.
The drawing, which is valued at $250,000 and measures about 11 by 6 inches, was part of a weekly exhibit hosted at the exclusive hotel by the Linearis Institute, Whitmore said.
Sheriff's officials were reviewing hotel surveillance tape on Sunday, he said.
Rembrandt
Hackers Protest
BART
Hackers broke into a website for San Francisco's mass transit system Sunday and posted contact information for more than 2,000 subscribers, the latest showdown between anarchists angry at perceived attempts to limit free speech and officials trying to control protests that grow out of social networking and have the potential to become violent.
Bay Area Rapid Transit officials blocked underground cellphone service for a few hours Thursday at several stations as protesters tried to use social networking to organize a demonstration over the recent fatal shooting of a 45-year-old man by police. The decision was criticized by many as heavy handed, and some raised questions about whether the move violated free speech.
The hacker group known as Anonymous responded Sunday by posting the names, phone numbers, and street and email addresses of a Bay Area Rapid Transit website's subscribers. The hackers got the information from a database of 55,000 subscribers who receive alerts and other information from the transit agency's MyBart.org, BART spokesman Jim Allison said.
He did not know if the group had obtained information from all the subscribers. No personal financial information, such as bank accounts or credit card information was listed, according to Allison.
BART
Sisters Fight For Numbers
Social Security
For more than two decades, a pair of sisters in rural Kentucky have lived without Social Security numbers, doing odd jobs like bartending and making jewelry to earn cash under the table. One of them even posed as their mother to gain employment.
Now Raechel and Stephanie Schultz want steady, legitimate work, yet the federal government has refused to issue numbers to the women, saying they need more proof the pair were born in the U.S. The predicament prompted the women, who have lived for years on society's fringes, to sue.
"I'm proud to be American but they don't want me," 23-year-old Stephanie Schultz told The Associated Press in an interview at their lawyer's office in southeastern Kentucky.
The earliest years for the Schultz sisters were nomadic. The family traveled through 42 states, never staying too long in one place. Their father found occasional work in construction or at restaurants and the children picked up cans to make a few bucks. They stayed in motels or camped and the sisters' grandparents sent money to help.
Raechel was born at a home in Madison County, Ky., near where the family lives now; Stephanie was delivered in the back of a Dodge van in southern Alabama. The births were recorded in a family Bible but were otherwise undocumented.
Social Security
Clash In Nevada
Comstock Mining
More than 150 years after the discovery of one of the world's richest silver veins touched off a mining frenzy that drew thousands of people west and made Virginia City a wealthy boomtown, a mining company wants to resume digging for riches in the dusty hills southeast of Reno.
But unlike the scrappy miners who used picks and shovels to chisel away at the massive, underground pocket of silver and gold known as the Comstock Lode, the company's plans are for open pit mining. They aren't being met with open arms.
Residents in the historic Comstock region embrace the catacombs of century-old mines with pride and purpose. But these days, it's not wealth from gold and silver but the mining of tourists lured by the rich history of the Old West that keep the town humming.
Tours are conducted in an old underground mine beneath a saloon, and The Way It Was Museum displays artifacts from the past. Camel and outhouse races and a Rocky Mountain oyster festival keep tourists coming to take a "Step Back in Time" - the region's marketing slogan.
Residents fear that Virginia City image is threatened by the Comstock Mining Co.'s proposal to use earth-moving machinery to dig up truckloads of earth and process the loads to extract flecks of the minerals that have reached record prices.
Comstock Mining
Panic Grips Rural Sri Lanka
"Grease Devil"
Panic over nighttime assaults blamed on "grease devils" has struck across rural Sri Lanka, leading to the deaths of at least three people this week, prompting women to stay indoors and men to arm themselves, police and local media said.
Historically, a "grease devil" was a thief who wore only underwear and covered his body in grease to make himself difficult to grab if chased. But lately, the "grease devil" has become a nighttime prowler who frightens and attacks women.
"The story we hear is he comes and bites young women's necks and breasts. Despite several complaints, the police have failed to act on that and in fact in two places have released the culprits," a 36-year-old airline ticketing agent from the Hill Country district of Matale said, speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of upsetting authorities.
Two men whom villagers identified as "grease devils" were hacked to death on Wednesday by a mob in the central Sri Lankan village of Kotagala, in a tea-growing area, police said.
At least 30 incidents have been reported across seven districts from Sri Lanka's east coast and across its tea-growing regions in the central Hill Country. Police have arrested 47 people since last month.
"Grease Devil"
Weekend Box Office
"Rise of the Planet of the Apes"
Studio estimates Sunday pegged "Rise of the Planet of the Apes" at $27.5 million, good enough for its second-straight No. 1 finish. The 20th Century Fox release raised its 10-day domestic total to $104.9 million.
The "Planet of the Apes" prequel came in just ahead of "The Help," a drama about black maids in Mississippi during the civil-rights movement that debuted at No. 2 with $25.5 million. "The Help," a DreamWorks release distributed by Disney, has taken in $35.4 million domestically since opening Wednesday.
The Warner Bros. horror sequel "Final Destination 5," the latest in the franchise where death stalks victims who had been fated to die earlier, opened at No. 3 with $18.4 million.
The singers from TV's "Glee" failed to find a big-screen audience as 20th Century Fox's "Glee: The 3D Concert Movie" opened outside the top-10, finishing at No. 11 with just $5.7 million. The concert film was shot during the cast's recent North American tour.
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. "Rise of the Planet of the Apes," $27.5 million ($40.5 million international).
2. "The Help," $25.5 million.
3. "Final Destination 5," $18.4 million.
4. "The Smurfs," $13.5 million ($60 million international).
5. "30 Minutes or Less," $13 million.
6. "Cowboys & Aliens," $7.6 million ($7 million international).
7. "Captain America: The First Avenger," $7.1 million ($12.2 million international).
8. "Crazy, Stupid, Love.," $6.93 million.
9. "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2," $6.9 million ($30 million international).
10. "The Change-Up," $6.2 million.
"Rise of the Planet of the Apes"
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