Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Neil Macdonald: "American shakedown: Police won't charge you, but they'll grab your money" (CBC News)
U.S. police are operating a co-ordinated scheme to seize as much of the public's cash as they can.
Alison Flood: Young read more books than older generation, research finds (Guardian)
Study of American 'millenials' finds 88% of the under-30s read at least one book a year, compared to 79% of their elders.
Talia Jane: 4 Harsh Realities About Working at a Thrift Store (Cracked)
Cracked has had articles from some pretty wild sources -- doctors, child stars, spies -- but I know what you've all been thinking this whole time: "When are we going to hear from someone who worked at a thrift store?!"
J.F. Sargent, Chitinous Radula: 6 Awful Realities Behind the Scenes at SeaWorld (Cracked)
A few years ago, I began working as a dolphin-training intern at SeaWorld Orlando. After half a decade of volunteering at every backwoods animal shelter and zoo I could find, as well as building my entire academic career around this possibility, I was finally reaping the benefits of my labors and working my dream job, so I lived happily ever after.
Candice Pires: "Chrissie Hynde: 'I don't have to worry like women who were known for their beauty and then get freaked out as they get older'" (Guardian)
The singer, 62, on playing a horse, being a single mother and why she loves Jeremy Paxman.
Interview by Alex Clark: "Richard Branson: Never do anything that discredits the brand" (Guardian)
The Virgin founder on the lessons of turning failure into success, the ice-bucket challenge and space travel.
Tim Lewis: "David Cronenberg: 'My imagination is not a place of horror'" (Guardian)
The great Canadian director made his name with the body-horror classics Dead Ringers and The Fly and most recently with the savagely funny Maps to the Stars. Here he answers questions from Observer readers and cultural figures including Margaret Atwood and Viggo Mortensen.
Emma Brockes: "Emma Thompson: 'It's a different patch of life, your 50s'" (Guardian)
Emma Thompson couldn't give a damn about fame, or getting older: she just wants to save the planet, and be a good parent in the meantime.
David Bruce's Amazon Author Page
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David Bruce's Blog
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David Bruce has approximately 50 Kindle books on Amazon.com.
"Doug's Most Shared Facebook Post" Today
wrote:
took the day off.
has retired.
Reader Suggestion
Michelle in AZ
Television Question
Noel Fielding's Luxury Comedy
My favorite TV show is easily Noel Fielding's Luxury Comedy, which just finished it's second ( last? ) season.
I think it's incredibly creative & successfully hilarious. Reviews aren't easily found, though, so I'm asking y'all if any of you are enjoying the show?
You can watch it here
( www.channel4.com/programmes/noel-fieldings-luxury-comedy )
Plus most of the first season is on Youtube.
Here's some reviews that seem to like it.
Noel Fielding's Luxury Comedy gets funnier the more it apologises for its own rubbishness
Noel Fielding's Luxury Comedy, E4, review: 'best watched drunk' - Telegraph
Please send in your thoughts, yay, or nay.
DJ Useo
Thanks, Conrad!
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.
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
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Again, hotter than yesterday.
'So Help Me God'
Air Force
The US Air Force has gotten itself into a bureaucratic, legal, and public relations snarl over what would seem to be a simple thing: Four words included in its reenlistment oath.
Those words - "So help me God" - didn't used to be in the oath, nor are they required by any of the other branches of the US military. And for a service branch that's had difficulty with criticisms involving proselytizing in recent years, they're particularly ticklish.
The Air Force used to allow airmen to omit the phrase "so help me God" if they so chose. But an Oct. 30, 2013, update to Air Force Instruction 36-2606, which spells out the active-duty oath of enlistment, dropped that option, according to the Air Force Times.
Since that quiet update to the instruction, airmen have been required to swear an oath to a deity when they enlist or reenlist - a problem for who are serious about their nonbelief and want to stick up for what they see as their right under the US Constitution.
But, as the Air Force Times reports, "The Air Force said … that the change was made to bring its oath in line with the statutory requirement under Title 10 USC 502. The Air Force said it cannot change its AFI to make 'so help me God' optional unless Congress changes the statute mandating the oath."
Air Force
To The Rescue
Science
Vincent van Gogh's "Sunflowers" are losing their yellow cheer and the unsettling apricot horizon in Edvard Munch's "The Scream" is turning a dull ivory.
Some of our most treasured paintings are fading, warn experts who would like more money for the use of sophisticated technology to capture the masters' original palettes before the works are unrecognisably blighted.
"Our cultural heritage is suffering from a disease," Robert van Langh, director of conservation and restoration at Amsterdam's Rijksmuseum, told AFP in Paris this week. "These priceless icons of our culture are deteriorating," he said. And the amount spent on conserving them "should be multiplied by ten."
Van Langh was speaking on the sidelines of a conference on the use of synchrotron radiation technology in art conservation at the molecular level.
Science
Unseen Letter
Picasso
A previously unseen letter written by Pablo Picasso, complete with sketches, has gone on display in western France.
The letter, to his friend the French poet Max Jacob, comes from a private collection and is displayed at the fine arts museum in the western city of Quimper.
Beginning "my dear Max" and signed "your brother Picasso", the letter shows the close bond between the Spanish artist and Jacob, who was "his best friend at the time and the person who really discovered him", according to museum director Ambroise Guillaume.
It was written in 1903 when Picasso was in Barcelona and offers details of his life there and also his wish to come back to Paris.
Picasso
Aquarium Politics
'Dolphin Tale'
The family-friendly hit "Dolphin Tale," whose sequel opened in theaters this weekend, tells the true story of a dolphin who learns to swim without a tail. The movie ends with Winter, the tail-less dolphin, helping save the struggling Florida aquarium that rescued her. In real-life, the story has not yet wrapped up so neatly.
Even Hollywood fame could not provide Winter a pass on aquarium politics at a time when live marine animal exhibitions are facing intense public scrutiny.
An ambitious proposal to build Winter a new waterfront home was scaled back recently amid concern about expenses and the potential for staged performances like those under fire at SeaWorld's theme parks.
"Winter can't do those kind of shows, even if we wanted to, which we don't," said David Yates, chief executive officer at her home, the Clearwater Marine Aquarium. "We have never been about big shows. That was a misperception."
Winter's latest dilemma started when crowds of camera-toting tourists showed up to meet the chirping star of the 2011 hit, featuring Harry Connick Jr., Ashley Judd and Morgan Freeman.
'Dolphin Tale'
Intelligence Hits Back
Israel
Scores of veterans of elite Israeli intelligence unit 8200 rallied to its defence Sunday after 43 comrades said they would no longer take part in its "injustices" against millions of Palestinians.
The open letter, which was sent to Israel's political and military leadership last week, was one of the most high-profile expressions of conscientious objection in years.
The signatories -- reservists and former members of 8200 -- said the intelligence collected by the unit "was an integral part of Israel's military occupation", and that they would refuse to continue to serve.
They charged that information gathered by Unit 8200 was used by civilian intelligence agencies to coerce Palestinians uninvolved in militant activity, and urged other members of the intelligence corps "to speak out against these injustices and to take action to bring them to an end".
Israel
Shackles Scholar's Feet
China
For more than a month, Chinese authorities have shackled the ankles of an outspoken minority Uighur scholar accused of separatism while he awaits trial, his lawyer said Thursday.
The treatment of Ilham Tohti, an economics professor, is rare and unnecessarily harsh, his lawyer, Li Fangping, said.
Tohti was arrested earlier this year in Beijing amid rising tensions in the western region of Xinjiang between the minority Muslim Uighurs and majority Han people. Tohti is awaiting trial in Urumqi, the regional capital, on charges of splitting the country.
Authorities put shackles on Tohti's ankles on Aug. 9, and they have remained there ever since, even when he goes to sleep, he told Li.
China
Bonus Parts
Foster Farms
After 621 people were sickened in 29 states in an outbreak that lasted nearly a year and a half, Foster Farms finally recalled its salmonella-tainted products in July. But an unappetizing report released this week might keep consumers wary of California's largest chicken producer.
The Natural Resources Defense Council on its website published 300 pages of USDA documents detailing health and safety violations at Foster Farm facilities across the country.
"The inspection reports include descriptions of mold growth, cockroaches, an instance of pooling caused by a skin-clogged floor drain, fecal matter, and 'Unidentified Foreign Material' (which has its own acronym, UFM) on chicken carcasses, failure to implement required tests and sampling, metal pieces found in carcasses, and many more," the NRDC said in a statement.
The USDA's ramped-up efforts to monitor two Foster Farms facilities in California linked to the salmonella outbreak did little, according to the report. Fecal contamination stayed at almost the same rate.
Foster Farms
Border Patrol Homes
$680,000
The federal government wasted millions of dollars in building a housing project for Border Patrol agents in Arizona near the Mexican border, spending nearly $700,000 per house in a small town where the average home costs less than $90,000, a watchdog report found.
The analysis by the Department of Homeland Security's inspector general found that U.S. Customs and Border Protection overspent by about $4.6 million on new houses and mobile homes in the small town of Ajo southwest of Phoenix. The agency has spent about $17 million for land, 21 two- and three-bedroom houses and 20 mobile homes. Construction was completed in December 2012.
Customs and Border Protection paid about $680,000 per house and about $118,000 per mobile home, according to the report. The average home cost in Ajo is $86,500.
The agency realized there was a need for more housing around 2008, when the Border Patrol doubled in size. There are currently about 21,000 border agents, roughly 5,000 of whom are in Arizona. In fiscal year 2004, there were about 10,800 agents, with about 2,400 in Arizona.
Building in Ajo became a priority because of its proximity to two Border Patrol stations and because nearby towns lacked sufficient public services for agents and their families.
$680,000
Weekend Box Office
'No Good Deed'
It took a murderous Idris Elba and a pair of dolphin buddies to defeat "Guardians of the Galaxy" at movie theaters.
The Sony thriller "No Good Deed," which stars Elba as an escaped convict and Taraji P. Henson as the innocent he terrorizes, opened on top of the box office with $24.5 million, according to studio estimates Sunday. And Sony wasn't surprised.
The Warner Bros.' feel-good film "Dolphin Tale 2" debuted in second place with $16.5 million. The family-friendly story stars Morgan Freeman and Ashley Judd reprising their roles from the 2011 original.
"Guardians" slipped to third place with $8 million in ticket sales. The Marvel space adventure, which held the No. 1 spot for four weeks, is the top-grossing film of the year domestically, collecting more than $300 million in North America and $600 million worldwide.
Estimated ticket sales for Friday through Sunday at U.S. and Canadian theaters, according to Rentrak. Where available, the latest international numbers are also included. Final domestic figures will be released Monday.
1. "No Good Deed," $24.5 million.
2. "Dolphin Tale 2," $16.5 million ($1.3 million international).
3. "Guardians of the Galaxy," $8 million ($9.3 million international).
4. "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles," $4.8 million ($10.5 million international).
5. "Let's Be Cops," $4.3 million ($2.5 million international).
6. "The Drop," $4.2 million.
7. "If I Stay," $4 million ($3.2 million international).
8. "The November Man," $2.7 million.
9. "The Giver," $2.6 million ($3 million international).
10. "The Hundred-Foot Journey," $2.4 million.
'No Good Deed'
In Memory
(Shirley) Yoshiko "Rikoran" Yamaguchi
Japanese film idol Yoshiko Yamaguchi, who was known as Rikoran and symbolized Japan's wartime dreams of Asian conquest, has died at age 94.
Known as Shirley Yamaguchi in the U.S. and one of biggest Japanese film stars during and after World War II, Yamaguchi died of heart failure Sept. 7, according to Japanese public broadcaster NHK.
Born to Japanese parents in northern China in 1920 and raised in Japan's wartime puppet state Manchukuo, Yamaguchi was adopted by a Chinese friend of her father and was renamed "Xianglan," or "Fragrant Orchid," when she was 13.
She debuted as Chinese singer Li Xianglan - Rikoran in Japanese - and starred in Chinese-language films made by the Japanese-run Manchurian Cinema Association, many of them propaganda movies.
During its militaristic march across Asia in the first half of the 20th century, Japan operated coal mines and railroads and forced China's last emperor, Pu Yi, to be head of a puppet government in Manchuria, which the Japanese called Manchukuo.
Widely believed to be Chinese, Yamaguchi was a star in Asia, particularly in Japan.
"Yue Lai Xiang," one of her best known songs, is still popular among Chinese singers. In the movie "Song of the White Orchid," she depicted a young Chinese woman who falls in love with a Japanese man after her family is killed by the Japanese.
Chinese authorities arrested Yamaguchi after the war and accused her of being a Chinese traitor. But a friend produced family records proving her Japanese origin, saving her from execution. She apologized for her duplicity and was allowed to leave China.
After the war, Yamaguchi appeared in two Hollywood films and on Broadway during the 1950s. At home, she starred in Akira Kurosawa's film "Scandal," Seijun Suzuki's "Escape at Dawn" and other movies.
She then largely withdrew from the silver screen, but the story of her dramatic life was made into dramas and musicals that are performed even today. Her 1987 autobiography "Half My Life as Rikoran" was a bestseller.
After her first marriage to Japanese-American sculptor Isamu Noguchi ended in the mid-1950s, Yamaguchi married Hiroshi Ohtaka, who was Japan's ambassador to Burma, now Myanmar, and occasionally appeared on television. In 1974, she was elected to parliament's Upper House as a member of the governing Liberal Democratic Party and served until 1992. She was among the contributors to a private atonement fund for Asian "comfort women" used as prostitutes for Japan's wartime military.
(Shirley) Yoshiko "Rikoran" Yamaguchi
In Memory
Bob Crewe
Songwriter Bob Crewe, who co-wrote such hits as "Can't Take My Eyes Off You" and "Walk Like a Man" and played a key behind-the- scenes role in the rise to stardom of the Four Seasons pop group, has died at age 83, his brother said on Saturday.
Crewe died on Thursday at a nursing home in Scarborough, Maine, succumbing to complications from a fall he suffered about four years ago, said his brother and former business partner, Dan Crewe.
Crewe, who grew up in Belleville, New Jersey, began writing music professionally in the 1950s after quitting the Parsons School of Design in New York where he had studied to become an architect.
He was already an established songwriter and had some success as a pop singer and model when he met the vocal group that would become the Four Seasons, and produced their first No. 1 hit in 1962, "Sherry."
The group, which featured frontman Frankie Valli and his falsetto singing style, quickly gained fame, as Crewe collaborated with the band's keyboardist and backing vocalist, Bob Gaudio, to write some of their most enduring hits.
Perhaps their biggest hit was "Can't Take My Eyes Off You," a 1967 song that has been covered numerous times by other artists and was used in such films as "Bridget Jones's Diary" and "The Deer Hunter."
Crewe specialized in writing lyrics, and he was known as a demanding producer in studio sessions, Dan Crewe said.
Crewe wrote most of his hit songs between the 1950s and the 1970s, but he was reintroduced to audiences in recent years through the "Jersey Boys" Broadway musical that delved into the story behind the Four Seasons, and a film of the same name directed by Clint Eastwood that was released earlier this year.
The play and the film both featured a character based and named after Crewe.
Crewe in the 1980s turned much of his creative energies to painting and sculpture. He is a member of the Songwriters Hall of Fame.
Bob Crewe
In Memory
Joe Sample
Pianist and composer Joe Sample, a founding member of the genre-crossing Jazz Crusaders who helped pioneer the electronic jazz-funk fusion style, has died. He was 75.
Sample died of complications due to lung cancer Friday evening at the MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, his manager, Patrick Rains, told The Associated Press on Saturday. Rains said Sample's family was at his bedside.
A prolific songwriter, his songs were sampled by hip-hop artists, including Tupac Shakur, who used "In All My Wildest Dreams" on his "Dear Mama." Nicole Kidman sang Sample's "One Day I'll Fly Away" in director Baz Luhrmann's film "Moulin Rouge."
A Houston native, Sample teamed with high school friends, saxophonist-bassist Wilton Felder and drummer Stix Hooper, to form a band as teenagers in the mid-'50s. Trombonist Wayne Henderson, a classmate at Texas Southern University, later joined the group, which became known as The Jazz Crusaders when the group later moved to Los Angeles. The band made its first recording, "Freedom Sounds," in 1961, the first in a series of albums for the Pacific Jazz label.
Originally, the band played hard-bop, the most popular style of jazz at the time, and were influenced by Cannonball Adderley, Art Blakey and Horace Silver. But the group, which featured an unusual lineup with a trombonist rather than a trumpeter in the front line and Sample's hard-swinging piano, began to fuse elements of R&B, soul and funk into their jazz.
In the early '70s, Sample became one of the pioneers of the electric piano in jazz as he increasingly used the Fender Rhodes. The group, by then calling itself The Crusaders, turned from acoustic jazz to electric fusion, relying on catchy grooves and pop songs by the Beatles, Carole King and others to gain a crossover appeal on a series of albums for the Blue Thumb and MCA labels. The group placed 19 albums on the Billboard Top 200 chart.
After Henderson and Hooper left the group, The Crusaders began recording less frequently in the 1980s and eventually disbanded. In the 1990s, Sample began focusing more on his solo career, often returning to acoustic piano. He recorded albums with singers Crawford and Lalah Hathaway as well as the 2002 album, "The Pecan Tree," dedicated to his hometown.
In 2003, Sample, Felder and Hooper reunited as The Crusaders to record the album "Rural Renewal," with guitarist Eric Clapton making a guest appearance.
His final album, "Live," featuring Crawford, drummer Steve Gadd, and his son, Nicklas, on bass, was released by PRA Records in 2012.
Sample was also an in-demand studio musician who worked with artists including Joni Mitchell, B.B. King, Marvin Gaye, Steely Dan and Quincy Jones, according to a 2011 profile in the Houston Chronicle.
Joe Sample
In Memory
Tony Auth
Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist Tony Auth, whose sharp and creative commentary appeared in The Philadelphia Inquirer for more than 40 years, died of cancer on Sunday. He was 72.
Auth had worked for the past two years as the artist-in-residence at NewsWorks/WHYY, which announced his death.
Family members told the Inquirer that Auth had been battling brain cancer and recently went into hospice care.
Auth worked at the Inquirer for 41 years starting in 1971. He won the Pulitzer for editorial cartoons in 1976 and was a finalist twice after that.
In 2010, the Pulitzer board praised Auth's "masterful simplicity in expressing consistently fearless positions on national and local issues."
He left the Inquirer amid ownership turmoil in 2012 after having covered eight U.S. presidents and seven Philadelphia mayors.
Auth was born in Akron, Ohio, in 1942 and began drawing at age 5 while bedridden with an unspecified illness, according to a biography on his website.
He became a medical illustrator after earning a bachelor's degree in biological illustration from the University of California in Los Angeles in 1965. He began drawing political cartoons on the side for a weekly alternative publication and then for the Daily Bruin, UCLA's campus newspaper.
Auth also illustrated numerous children's books.
He is survived by his wife and two adult children.
Tony Auth
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