Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Connie Schultz: Tip in Cash, and Don't Be a Jerk (Creators Synicate)
This week, sure enough, the bartender had a similar story. In this case, she was allowed to keep cash tips. She wanted me to know, however, that tips left on charge cards never found their way to her or other servers.
Mark Shields: Time to Fight for "Citizen Responsibilities" (Creators Syndivcate)
In the historic struggles to extend and guarantee civil rights for African-Americans, women, workers, gays and lesbians, those with disabilities, and immigrants, American liberals have provided truly indispensable public and political leadership. Because of their efforts, the United States is today a fairer, better and more humane place.
Ted Rall: How to Deal with a Media Pile-On
Over the holiday weekend I found myself in a uncomfortable yet not entirely unfamiliar place. I was the target of the online equivalent of the Two Minute Hate in Orwell's "1984." The subject: the way I draw President Obama. Which I've been doing since 2009. But this column is not about that. It's about a few things I've learned about how online witch hunts and mob mentality have evolved in recent years.
Froma Harrop: Data Debris and the Time of Our Lives (Creators Syndicate)
An elderly friend I'll call Jeff perfectly summed up the stress of digital living. He'd read an article on the race by cyber-merchants to get online purchases into consumers' hands within an hour of their pushing the "place your order" button. One such service, eBay Now, has its own app enabling shoppers to follow the delivery people as they bike or drive to their address.
Froma Harrop: Consumer Finance Needs Better Morals (Creators Syndicate)
Drawing moral lines in our rough-and-tumble capitalist system can be hard. But it should not tax too many ethical muscles to set aside some protections for trusting, unsophisticated borrowers of modest means. That is, unless you're a politician working on behalf of predatory lenders.
Susan Estrich: The Criminal System at Its Worst (Creators Sundicate)
You may remember hearing about the Montana judge who sentenced a former high school teacher who admitted to raping a 14-year-old student to 30 days in prison. As if that wasn't bad enough, he blamed the victim, who committed suicide before the case could go to trial.
Lenore Skenazy: Do Helicopter Parents Win in the End? (Creators Syndicate)
After all, if we were measuring the parenting prowess of Mrs. Van Gogh when her son was a young painter, we might say: "What a disaster! Vinnie's broke, and he just sliced off his ear. You sure did a number on him!" But if we waited a few years (or 100), we all would want copies of "How to Raise a Genius," by Mama Van Gogh.
Oliver Burkeman: "This column will change your life: don't let your friendships die of neglect" (Guardian)
'If you fail to get in touch because you've nothing worth saying, or too little time to say much of it, you'll be doing nobody any favours.'
Henry Rollins: A Bloody Mess (LA Weekly)
What a week. Over the last several days, I have been repeatedly shot and stabbed, acquired bruises and scrapes whose origins are lost in the mist of adrenalized hours. It was a great time. It is a marvelous thing to be working on this film, He Never Died, to be a part of this high-speed, incredibly kickass group of people all working with great focus and intensity. For me, it's like living in a dream.
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Reader Suggestion
Michelle in AZ
From The Creator of 'Avery Ant'
Reader Suggestion
Christmas Carol-a-thon
Glad to hear that you have hot water again. Seems like every time I call in a plumber it's at least $2000, but it's not like you can do without toilets or hot water.
Just heard on Turner Classic Movies that they're going to show 5 versions of A Christmas Carol on Thursday, December 19:
[8:00 PM] Scrooge (1970) (Albert Finney)
[10:00 PM] A Christmas Carol (1951) (Alastair Sim)
[11:30 PM] Scrooge (1935) (Seymour Hicks)
[1:00 AM] A Christmas Carol (1938) (Reginald Owen)
[2:15 AM] A Carol for Another Christmas (1964) (Sterling Hayden)
[3:45 AM] David Copperfield (1935)
Linda >^..^<
We're all only temporarily able bodied.
Thanks, Linda!
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Sunny, but brisk (for these parts).
Olympic Gold Medal Sells For $1.4M
Jesse Owens
An Olympic gold medal won by Jesse Owens at the 1936 Berlin Games has sold for a record $1.4 million in an online auction.
SCP Auctions said an anonymous bidder paid $1,466,574, the highest price for a piece of Olympic memorabilia. The online auction ended Sunday.
According to the auction house based in Laguna Niguel, Calif., the medal is unidentifiable to a specific event. It said Owens gave the medal to his friend, dancer and movie star Bill "Bojangles" Robinson, as thanks for helping Owens find work in entertainment after he returned from Berlin.
The medal was sold by the estate of Robinson's late widow, Elaine Plaines-Robinson. SCP Auctions Vice President Dan Imler said the Owens family confirmed the medal is original; the whereabouts of the other three is unknown.
Jesse Owens
Maze Of Ancient Tunnels Mapped
Rome
Deep under the streets and buildings of Rome is a maze of tunnels and quarries that dates back to the very beginning of this ancient city. Now, geologists are venturing beneath Rome to map these underground passageways, hoping to prevent modern structures from crumbling into the voids below.
In 2011, there were 44 incidents of streets or portions of structures collapsing into the quarries, a number that rose to 77 in 2012 and 83 to date in 2013. To predict and prevent such collapses, George Mason University geoscientists Giuseppina Kysar Mattietti and scientists from the Center for Speleoarchaeological Research (Sotterranei di Roma) are mapping high-risk areas of the quarry system.
Ancient Romans quarried rock to build their city, which later expanded over the tunnels.
The mapping is important, Kysar Mattietti told LiveScience, because through the years, Roman citizens have taken the patching of the quarry systems into their own hands.
Rome
Statue Of Pharaoh's Sister Recovered
Tutankhamon
Egypt said on Sunday it has recovered a statue of pharaoh Tutankhamun's sister looted from the southern Mallawi museum during riots by supporters of ousted president Mohamed Morsi.
The 32 centimetre (12.6 inches) limestone statue of Ankhesamon, sister of the famous boy king and daughter of pharaoh Akhenaten, who ruled around 1,500 BC, was stolen on August 14.
"The piece is one of the most important in the museum," said antiquities minister Mohamed Ibrahim in a statement.
Authorities have recovered 800 of the 1,050 artefacts stolen from the museum in southern Egypt during nationwide riots on August 14 after police clashed with Islamists in Cairo, he added.
Tutankhamon
Ancient Estate and Garden Fountain Unearthed
Israel
The remains of a wealthy estate, with a mosaic fountain in its garden, dating to between the late 10th and early 11th centuries have been unearthed in Ramla in central Israel.
The estate was discovered during excavations at a site where a bridge is slated for construction as part of the new Highway 44.
"It seems that a private building belonging to a wealthy family was located there and that the fountain was used for ornamentation," Hagit Torgë, excavation director on behalf of the Israel Antiquities Authority, said in a statement. "This is the first time that a fountain has been discovered outside the known, more affluent quarters of Old Ramla."
Researchers found two residential rooms within the estate along with a nearby fountain made of mosaic and covered with plaster and stone slabs; A network of pipes, some made of terra cotta and connected with stone jars, led to the fountain. Next to the estate, archaeologists also found a large cistern and a system of pipes and channels used to transport water.
Israel
Satanists Seek Spot On Statehouse Steps
Oklahoma
In their zeal to tout their faith in the public square, conservatives in Oklahoma may have unwittingly opened the door to a wide range of religious groups, including satanists who are seeking to put their own statue next to a Ten Commandments monument on the Statehouse steps.
The Republican-controlled Legislature in this state known as the buckle of the Bible Belt authorized the privately funded Ten Commandments monument in 2009, and it was placed on the Capitol grounds last year despite criticism from legal experts who questioned its constitutionality. The Oklahoma chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union has filed a lawsuit seeking its removal.
But the New York-based Satanic Temple saw an opportunity. It notified the state's Capitol Preservation Commission that it wants to donate a monument and plans to submit one of several possible designs this month, said Lucien Greaves, a spokesman for the temple.
Greaves said one potential design involves a pentagram, a satanic symbol, while another is meant to be an interactive display for children. He said he expects the monument, if approved by Oklahoma officials, would cost about $20,000.
Oklahoma
Weigh In On Defamation Suit
Internet Giants
From Twitter and Facebook to Amazon and Google, the biggest names of the Internet are blasting a federal judge's decision allowing an Arizona-based gossip website to be sued for defamation by a former Cincinnati Bengals cheerleader convicted of having sex with a teenager.
In court briefs recently filed in the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati, the Internet giants warn that if upheld, the northern Kentucky judge's ruling to let the former cheerleader's lawsuit proceed has the potential to "significantly chill online speech" and undermine a law passed by Congress in 1996 that provides broad immunity to websites.
"If websites are subject to liability for failing to remove third-party content whenever someone objects, they will be subject to the 'heckler's veto,' giving anyone who complains unfettered power to censor speech," according to briefs filed Nov. 19 by lawyers for Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Twitter, Amazon, Gawker and BuzzFeed, among others.
Those heavy hitters "really tell you how major of an issue this is," said David Gingras, attorney for Scottsdale, Ariz.-based thedirty.com and its owner, Nik Richie, 34, who lives in Orange County, Calif.
The case centres on the federal Communications Decency Act, passed in 1996 to help foster growth and free speech on the Internet by providing immunity from liability to websites for content posted by their users. The law also was designed to encourage websites to self-police offensive material.
Internet Giants
Uh-Oh, Apology
SpaghettiOs
Campbell Soup apologized Saturday for a tweet by its SpaghettiOs brand that marked the anniversary of the Pearl Harbor attacks with a picture of its smiling mascot jauntily holding an American flag.
The Twitter account for the canned pasta brand had sent the message Friday night asking its followers to "Take a moment to remember #PearlHarbor with us." The cartoon mascot, drawn to look like an O-shaped noodle, sported orange sneakers and was licking his lip, with one hand on his hip.
The tweet spread rapidly, with thousands retweeting it and noting its jarring tone, given the gravity of the occasion. More than 2,400 Americans were killed in the Pearl Harbor attacks that prompted America's entry into World War II.
A representative for Campbell Soup Co., which owns SpaghettiOs, said Saturday that the message had been deleted. SpaghettiOs, which has more than 11,000 followers, sent out a follow-up tweet stating, "We apologize for our recent tweet in remembrance of Pearl Harbor Day. We meant to pay respect, not to offend."
SpaghettiOs
Tied To European, U.S. Teatwaves & Downpours
Arctic Thaw
A thaw of Arctic ice and snow is linked to worsening summer heatwaves and downpours thousands of miles south in Europe, the United States and other areas, underlying the scale of the threat posed by global warming, scientists said on Sunday.
Their report, which was dismissed as inconclusive by some other experts corporate whores and right-wing propagandists, warned of increasingly extreme weather across "much of North America and Eurasia where billions of people will be affected".
Writing in the journal Nature Climate Change, experts in China and the United States said they could not conclusively say the Arctic thaw caused more extreme weather, or vice versa.
But they said they had found evidence of a relationship between the two. Rising temperatures over thawing snow on land and sea ice in the Arctic were changing atmospheric pressure and winds, the report said.
The changes slowed the eastward movement of vast meandering weather systems and meant more time for extreme weather to develop - such as a heatwave in Russia in 2010, droughts in the United States and China in 2011 and 2012, or heavy summer rains that caused floods in Britain in 2012, the paper added.
Arctic Thaw
Counterfeiters Get More Sophisticated
Wine
An FBI agent recently showed Arnaud de Laforcade a file with several labels supposedly from 1947 bottles of Chateau Cheval Blanc, one of France's finest wines. To the Saint-Emilion vineyard's CFO, they were clearly fakes - too new looking, not on the right kind of paper. But customers may be more easily duped.
Regardless of his skill, the counterfeiter had ambition: 1947 is widely considered an exceptionally good year, and Cheval Blanc's production that year has been called the greatest Bordeaux ever. The current average price paid for a bottle at auction is about $11,500, according to truebottle.com, which tracks auctions and helps consumers spot fakes.
Counterfeiting has likely dogged wine as long as it has been produced. In the 18th century, King Louis XV ordered the makers of Cotes du Rhone to brand their barrels with "CDR" before export to prevent fraud.
But it is getting more sophisticated and more ambitious, particularly as bottle prices rise due to huge demand in new markets, mainly in Asia. After decades of silence, producers across the $217-billion industry are finally beginning to talk about the problem and ways to combat it.
Wine
Ancient Farming Techniques
Biodiversity
Ancient farming practices, such as raising fish in rice paddies in China or Aboriginal Australian fire controls, will get a new lease of life under plans to slow extinctions of animals and plants, experts said on Monday.
Turning to traditional farming is seen as a way of limiting what U.N. studies say is the worst spate of extinctions since the dinosaurs vanished 65 million years ago, driven by a rising human population that is wrecking natural habitats.
A 115-nation group seeking to protect the diversity of wildlife, which underpins everything from food supplies to medicines, will look at ways to revive and promote indigenous peoples' practices at talks in Turkey from December 9-14.
"Indigenous and local knowledge ... has played a key role in arresting biodiversity loss and conserving biodiversity," Zakri Abdul Hamid, founding chair of the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), told Reuters.
The idea is partly to compare traditional farming around the world and see if the practices can be used in other nations.
Biodiversity
Weekend Box Office
'Frozen'
In its second weekend at the box office, the Disney animated tale "Frozen" finally cooled off "The Hunger Games: Catching Fire," while the week's lone new wide-release "Out of the Furnace" wasn't a match for either blockbuster.
According to studio estimates Sunday, "Frozen" led the multiplexes with a haul of $31.6 million over the weekend, taking over the top spot from "Catching Fire." Lionsgate's "Hunger Games" sequel had topped the box office for the last two weeks, but slid to second with $27 million in its third week of release.
Relativity Media's steel-town drama "Out of the Furnace," starring Christian Bale and Casey Affleck, posed no challenge for the bigger blockbuster holdovers. It opened with $5.3 million, good enough for third place on what's typically a quiet early December weekend, sandwiched between Thanksgiving and the coming holiday season releases.
But it was an excellent weekend for Hollywood, with box office up 16.9 per cent over the same weekend last year. Opening in a limited release of four theatres, the Coen brothers' folk tale "Inside Llewyn Davis" also had one of the year's highest per-theatre averages of $100,500 for CBS Films.
Estimated ticket sales for Friday through Sunday at U.S. and Canadian theatres, according to Rentrak. Where available, latest international numbers for Friday through Sunday are also included. Final domestic figures will be released Monday.
1."Frozen," $31.6 million ($30.6 million international).
2."The Hunger Games: Catching Fire," $27 million ($44.3 million international).
3."Out of the Furnace," $5.3 million.
4."Thor: The Dark World," $4.7 million ($5.4 million international).
5."Delivery Man," $3.8 million.
6."Homefront," $3.4 million ($1.5 million international).
7."The Book Thief," $2.7 million.
8."The Best Man Holiday," $2.7 million.
9."Philomena," $2.3 million.
10."Dallas Buyers Club," $1.5 million.
'Frozen'
In Memory
Kate Williamson
Character actress Kate Williamson, who appeared in such films as "Disclosure," ''Dahmer," ''Dream Lover" and "Racing With the Moon," has died at age 82 after a lengthy illness, said her manager, Judy Fox.
Williamson died Friday at her suburban Encino home, less than a month after the passing of her husband of nearly 60 years, veteran character actor Al Ruscio. "They were the epitome of true and forever sweethearts," Fox said.
Williamson also appeared in dozens of TV shows going back to the 1970s, including "7th Heaven," ''JAG," ''NYPD Blue," ''Home Improvement" and "Ellen."
Williamson is survived by four children and five grandchildren.
Kate Williamson
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