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David Bruce has approximately 50 Kindle books on Amazon.com.
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took the day off.
Reader Suggestion
Michelle in AZ
From The Creator of 'Avery Ant'
Spike Jenson « My POV
To Secede Or Not Secede, That Is The Question???
I know this thing has been tried before but with re makes of anything that was even a tiny bit popular way back there's always someone who thinks it just might work better the second time around. At least they can hope. Pretty sure most people on the Blue side saw this one coming on election night when our still President gave his victory speech. To those in the 47.5% who voted for Mitt Romney it does probably hurt to see your country is not exactly what you thought it was. I mean who would've thunk this black dude could ever get re-elected? To those on the Red side it must have felt like a really scary Stephen King book with a few lively paragraphs from The Turner Diaries tossed in. For sure in their world Obama was dead man walking 2 months into his term and now he gets 4 more years? Huh? Can you feel their pain? I can. Makes me remember how I felt when I paid good money to see that Ben Affleck-Jennifer Lopez piece of shit Gigli. Ok I really didn't pay to get in, my cousin Craig gave me one of his free passes he got from our Aunt Louise that Xmas but I did have to pay 9 bucks for popcorn and that bummed me out more than the acting.
So now it seems they want to quit on what has been since 1865 the United States of America. I mean if they can't beat us fair-n-square then I guess they can take their low income, high cholesterol, bad school test score states and make a new country with the same address for all I care. Even if these very sad GOP voters are actually able to split off from the rest of us welfare loving/high grade weed smoking socialists does anyone think they will be happy for very long? I mean what happens when one of their politicians (I am guessing that they'll still have guys in blue suits and red ties to represent them in whatever kind of government they throw together) wants to pass some law that says they have to pay taxes for fire and police departments? Or for tanks and air craft carriers? Or for fixing a bridge that fell down after killing a girls scout troupe on the way to visit the place that makes their cookies? Stuff costs money and that's where the problems will come up. You see no one who wants to live in this motherland could ever agree on what is worth kicking in on and what is a threat to their freedom.
What are those of us who are living in the snooty states, you know the ones who believe in junk like evolution, that climate change dealy bob and the 65 Voting Rights Act supposed to do with nobody around to feel smarter than? It was always nice to have an Alabama or Mississippi as go to states to think of when you are watching Jeopardy and messing up every other answer. I mean sometimes when you are surrounded by smart people you end up feeling really stupid and it's nice to know there are still places in this country you can go and find people who are pretty sure the earth is 6,000 years old. Or that deep frying anything but most rocks is mighty tasty, especially with ample amounts of mayonnaise/ketchup dipping sauce. I know it's not nice to make fun of people but for real these humans are totally proud of not knowing stuff. I guess life must be a hell of lot less stressful for those in areas where NASCAR is thought to be a real sport and guys spend hours sitting in blinds waiting to waste ducks, deer and just about anything that doesn't look just like them. I mean if they really do secede we can still make jokes about them but it will be like using Peru or Romania as a punch line. Not the same and fairly lame if you ask me.
If this thing is going to happen then we will all have to be ready for the TV networks to choose sides. You know we get to keep NBC & ABC which isn't half bad. Losing CBS and their geezer shows (except for Letterman) is no big deal. Now I have to admit I do have mixed feelings about only Confederate states getting to watch the Simpsons, Family Guy and New Girl on FOX. That will be tough to get over but then Hannity, O'Reilly & Cavuto will be speaking only to the choir and not to young innocent brain cells so it's a wash I guess. Yeah we will lose Spike, Hitler Highlights on The History Channel, CBN, The Speed Channel and WWE Wrestling on USA. To some on our side that's a deal breaker but I say sometimes you have to make sacrifices for your country. Or at least your part of the country. If it will make people on my team feel better just remember they will be losing some good stuff too, like the NBA on TNT, NBC's Parks and Recreation, ABC's Jimmy Kimmel, MSNBC's Rachel Maddow & that channel with all the good looking dudes with perfect haircuts (Bravo). Yeah there might not be a lot of testosterone dripping from our shows but they still kick ass. Now of course there will be other differences like in radio drive time jocks, clothes in our Malls, height of women's hair, number of syllables in our words, Popeye's vs. Chick-fil-A, smoking vs. chewing, Oxy vs. heroin and cars vs. trucks. Things that have and will continue to set us apart.
Everyone has had a friend who is always threatening to do something really; really stupid and you always get sucked in by spending valuable minutes telling him or her that it would be a bad idea to do it. Not like kill themselves but maybe leave their husbands or wives for someone they met at a Rush concert or quit their job to be a full time professional mime. It sometimes takes hours to talk them out of something that they probably never would actually do but they desperately need someone to beg them not to. So this "friend" who has been playing this game for a hell of a long time tries it one more time but this day is not going well for you and instead of listening and politely nodding your head before giving him/her all the reasons why it would not be in their best interest to try this you blurt out "just do it for god's sake, I don't give a shit!" That's kinda where I'm at with this secession plan. If those people are jonesing for another chance to toss on the gray uniform then all I have to say is good riddance and don't let the door hit you in the rear end on the way out. Sure I will have to toss out my flag with 50 stars I got after my uncle died (he was in that Apocalypse Now war) but I took Home Ec in high school and I can sorta sew. Al I have to do is just cut it up a little and stitch it back together. It'll take maybe 15 minutes max and I can still put it up on the 4th of July.
If Republicans seriously want their own country I hope they know though there is no 48 hour return policy. This part of America is not like Nordstrom's and we aren't buying any weak excuse why they want to come back. If they do decide to go then they are dead to us so don't start crying like little babies begging to see the Statue of Liberty in person or shop on Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills. Even If they try and put some cute little kid with a very sad face on FOX NEWS 24/7 they can still kiss my hairy buttocks. A little tough love will be in order here. I say this to all you wannabe civil war re-enactors, be careful what you wish for. When you run out of cool things to see, do and eat (2 weeks max) remember payback's a bitch and then you die. Later.
Spike Jenson
To Secede Or Not Secede, That Is The Question??? « My POV
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Sunny and seasonal.
Weighs In on Gay Marriage
Morgan Freeman
Guess which side of the gay marriage debate Morgan Freeman's beautiful voice is on. You get three chances. We'll give you some time to weigh your options. Did you guess that he supports it? Because, duh.
The last time we checked in with Morgan Freeman's heavenly voice was when it narrated an ad for Obama's re-election campaign. Here, it lays out an argument for marriage equality in a concise 30 second television spot for the Human Rights Campaign by comparing it to the civil rights movement and women's suffrage. "Now, across our country, we're standing together for the right of gay and lesbian Americans to marry the person they love," Freeman says. "And, with historic victories for marriage, we've delivered a mandate for full equality. The wind is at our back, but our journey has just begun."
The 'mandate' Freeman's voice refers to is the many gay marriage victories that came at the polls at that election that happened at the beginning of November. Remember that? Gay marriage was legalized in two states and a ban was voted down in another. "This year proved to be a pivotal turning point in the movement for marriage equality and now we press onward with renewed vigor and public opinion squarely on our side," HRC president Chad Griffin told Buzzfeed.
It's hard to lose with Morgan Freeman's voice on your side. Just ask the President.
Morgan Freeman
Ads For Personal Data
Profiling
Dr. Latisha Smith, an expert in decompression sicknesses afflicting deep sea divers, has cleared criminal background checks throughout her medical career. Yet someone searching the Web for the Washington State physician might well come across an Internet ad suggesting she may have an arrest record.
"Latisha Smith, arrested?" reads one such advertisement.
Another says: "Latisha Smith Truth... Check Latisha Smith's Arrests."
Instantcheckmate.com, which labels itself the "Internet's leading authority on background checks," placed both ads. A statistical analysis of the company's advertising has found it has disproportionately used ad copy including the word "arrested" for black-identifying names, even when a person has no arrest record.
Latanya Sweeney is a Harvard University professor of government with a doctorate in computer science. After learning that her own name had popped up in an "arrested?" ad when a colleague was searching for one of her academic publications, she ran more than 120,000 searches for names primarily given to either black or white children, testing ads delivered for 2,400 real names 50 times each.
Profiling
Some States Preserve
Penmanship
The pen may not be as mighty as the keyboard these days, but California and a handful of states are not giving up on handwriting entirely.
Bucking a growing trend of eliminating cursive from elementary school curriculums or making it optional, California is among the states keeping longhand as a third-grade staple.
The state's posture on penmanship is not likely to undercut its place at the leading edge of technology, but it has teachers and students divided over the value of learning flowing script and looping signatures in an age of touchpads and mobile devices.
Some see it as a waste of time, an anachronism in a digitized society where even signatures are electronic, but others see it as necessary so kids can hone fine motor skills, reinforce literacy and develop their own unique stamp of identity.
Whether it's required or not, cursive is fast becoming a lost art as schools increasingly replace pen and paper with classroom computers and instruction is increasingly geared to academic subjects that are tested on standardized exams. Even the standardized tests are on track to be administered via computer within three years.
Penmanship
Your Mini-Me
3D
Just in time for the annual holiday family portrait, designers in Japan have come up with a unique alternative to standard prints: miniature action figures of the family.
Gone are the days of photo sessions requiring nothing more than a still camera and lights. The photographers behind the world's first 3D studio, "Omote 3D Shashin Kan," uses a high-tech scanner that captures every wrinkle and every strand of hair.
The catch - you need to hold your pose for 15 minutes.
"CT-scans used to be the only way to accurately capture a person's (body shape and texture)," said Naoki Ito, creative director for Party Inc, the group behind the project. "The advancement of technology has changed that."
The result is a hyper-realistic figurine that brings every last detail back to life. The mini-mes range in size from four to eight inches, with prices starting around $260.
3D
Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade
Confetti
Eagle-eyed parade fans noticed something strange when the confetti rained down at the annual Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade on Thursday: that some of the confetti was poorly shredded police documents with important information on it.
WPIX first reported the discovery that some of the confetti came from Nassau County police department documents. Attendees found strips of paper with social security numbers, incident reports, license plate numbers, and even something about Mitt Romney's motorcade from when he visited Long Island on them at the parade. Some of the information on the pieces of paper would normally be confidential.
The real question is how the confetti got there in the first place. Macy's claims they only use "commercially manufactured, multicolor confetti, not shredded paper," but here we are, with police documents laying in the streets. And a Nassau County police source told the New York Post the confetti would have had to come straight from their headquarters. So the question becomes how and why the police confetti was being used in the first place.
Tinfoil hat conspiracy theorists can calm down, though. It doesn't seem like some kind of cover-up. Someone trying to cover their own trail wouldn't shred everything so poorly and then dump it on people's heads. That's just asking to get caught. But the police are investigating to try and figure out how the documents got there in the first place.
Confetti
Warrior's Tomb Reveals Mystery Amputation
Renaissance
A noble-but-brutal Renaissance warrior who fell to a battle wound may not have died exactly as historians had believed, according to a new investigation of the man's bones.
Italian researchers opened the tomb of Giovanni dalle Bande Nere, or Giovanni of the Black Bands, this week to investigate the real cause of his death. Giovanni was born in 1598 into the wealthy and influential Medici family, a lineage that produced four Popes and two regent queens of France, among many other nobles. He worked as a mercenary military captain for Pope Leo X (one of the Medici family's Popes), and fought many a successful skirmish in his name. When Pope Leo X died in 1521, Giovanni altered his uniform to include black mourning bands, earning him his nickname.
Giovanni was wounded in battle in 1526; reportedly, his leg was amputated and he died several days later of infection. However, the new investigation of the Giovanni remains reveals that it was not his leg that was sawn off, but his foot. Nor is there any damage to the man's thigh, where the shot supposedly hit.
Giovanni's grave has been opened five times already, including an investigation in 1945. This confirmation of the man's actual wound has created a medical mystery.
"Giovanni was wounded in the right leg (maybe above the knee) but was amputee[d] [at the] foot," Marco Ferri, a spokesman for the Superintendent of Fine Arts of Florentine Museums, wrote in an email to LiveScience. "Why? The surgeon was not a good doctor or the news [that] reached us [is] not accurate."
Renaissance
Historic Jewish Cemetery Fades Away
Curacao
Headstones are pockmarked, their inscriptions faded. Stone slabs that have covered tombs for centuries are crumbling. White marble has turned grey, likely from the acrid smoke that spews from a nearby oil refinery.
One of the oldest Jewish cemeteries in the Western Hemisphere, Beth Haim on the island of Curacao, is slowly fading in the Caribbean sun.
Beth Haim was established in the 17th century and is considered an important landmark even on an island so rich in history that its downtown has been designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The sparsely populated island of nearly 150,000 people just north of Venezuela is known today mostly as a diving destination or for its namesake blue liqueur made from citrus fruit.
With its lavish monuments and multilingual epitaphs, Curacao's cemetery helps tell the little-known history of Jews in the Caribbean who fled Spain and Portugal to escape the Inquisition aimed at ridding the Christian nations of Jews, Muslims and others people deemed heretics. Many of the exiles first found refuge in the Netherlands, with their descendants later settling in this former Dutch colony, now a highly diverse society and a semi-autonomous part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands.
But the landmark is in danger. The steady erosion, likely intensified by the proximity of the antiquated refinery, is now considered unstoppable, said Rene Maduro, president of the Mikve Israel-Emanuel Synagogue, which owns and maintains the cemetery.
Curacao
Another Use
Facial-Recognition
Ever see an attractive person and wonder what he or she looked like naked?
Two porn websites have made that fantasy a reality, using facial-recognition technology to match user-submitted photos of people to porn stars.
Face Match, available at face.naughtyamerica.com (the front page is safe for work), lets you upload, link to or email a JPEG file from a computer or mobile device.
But there's a catch. We tried it using a public-domain photo of former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, but whether we used a URL link or a direct upload, the Naughty America site told us that "high domain volume" prevented the feature from working immediately.
Instead, the site wanted our email address in order to send us the matches. We don't want porn emails coming to us at work, so we stopped right there.
Facial-Recognition
Weekend Box Office
"The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 2"
Kristen Stewart's finale as Bella in "The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 2" was No. 1 again with $64 million during the five-day holiday stretch that began Wednesday, according to studio estimates Sunday.
Daniel Craig's Bond adventure "Skyfall" came in at No. 2 with $51 million, while Daniel Day-Lewis and Steven Spielberg's Civil War saga "Lincoln" finished third with $34.1 million.
According to box-office tracker Hollywood.com, the three films paced Hollywood to an all-time Thanksgiving week best of about $290 million from Wednesday to Sunday.
This Thanksgiving also was a huge 25 percent jump from a year ago, when domestic revenues were a weak $232 million as some big holiday releases fizzled.
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. "The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 2," $43.1 million ($97.4 million international).
2. "Skyfall," $36 million ($41.3 million international).
3. "Lincoln," $25 million.
4. "Rise of the Guardians," $24 million ($10 million international).
5. "Life of Pi," $22 million ($17.5 million international)
6. "Wreck-It Ralph," $16.8 million ($2.1 million international).
7. "Red Dawn," $14.6 million.
8. "Flight," $8.6 million ($723,000 international).
9. "Silver Linings Playbook," $4.6 million ($1.6 million international).
10. "Argo," $3.9 million ($6 million international).
"The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 2"
In Memory
Dann Cahn
Using a newly developed editing machine that he dubbed the "three-headed monster," Dann Cahn pioneered multi-camera editing on sitcoms in the 1950s while helping to craft a classic, "I Love Lucy."
Cahn, 89, the last surviving member of the original creative team behind "I Love Lucy," died Wednesday of natural causes at his West Los Angeles home, said his son, Daniel Cahn.
A second-generation film editor, he was the son of Philip Cahn, who in 1937 co-founded what is now the Motion Picture Editors Guild. Dann Cahn's son, who is also a film editor, is president of the guild.
"The amazing thing about 'I Love Lucy' is that they were making up things as they were going along, and Dann was a big part of that," said Gregg Oppenheimer. His father, Jess Oppenheimer, was the creator-producer behind the wildly successful comedy that starred Desi Arnaz as a bandleader and Lucille Ball as his wife.
Daniel Richard Cahn was born April 9, 1923, in Los Angeles. His mother ran a dress shop on Hollywood Boulevard that catered to silent movie stars, according to a biography by the American Cinematography Editors, which gave Cahn a career achievement award.
After raising chickens on property near Universal Studios, his father joined the studio in the 1930s after a power outage put an end to his ranching. With two associates, he later founded the editors guild.
The younger Cahn started out as a child actor, appearing in the 1938 Jackie Cooper movie "Newsboys' Home" and other films before working as an assistant editor on the 1942 movie "Pittsburgh."
While in the Army Air Forces, he honed his editing skills at "Fort Roach," the nickname given the old Hal Roach Studios in Culver City when it housed the First Motion Picture Unit during World War II. He worked on training films and spent a year at the Pentagon editing combat footage into newsreels.
He served as an assistant editor on the 1948 Orson Welles film "Macbeth" and the next year was given his first chance at full-fledged editing when a fellow soldier, producer Stanley Rubin, hired him for the NBC dramatic anthology "Your Show Time."
Often called "Danny," he wanted a more distinctive name for the "Lucy" credits and decided to drop the "y" from his first name, Oppenheimer said.
At Desilu, Cahn oversaw a slate of TV shows that included the 1950s sitcom "Our Miss Brooks" and the crime drama "The Untouchables," which debuted in 1959.
His nearly 100 television and film projects also included such shows as "The Beverly Hillbillies" and "Police Woman," and the 1970 film "Beyond the Valley of the Dolls."
After he married Judy Baker, a former professional golfer, in 1953, the couple had two children. His daughter, Dana, died in 1973 and his wife died two years ago. Diagnosed with dementia, he had moved in with his son, Daniel, who is his only survivor.
Dann Cahn
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