Recommended Reading
from Bruce
59-Year Old Woman Who Had Never Held a Hockey Stick Before Wins a Truck with One Amazing Shot (YouTube)
59-year-old Brenda Hewlett whom has never held a hockey stick in her life makes a hole in one from the far blue line. the hole was the same size as the hockey puck. For making the hole in one she has won a brand new 2012 Ford F-150 from Frenchie's Ford in Massena, NY 13662.
Marc Dion: The Christmas Underground (Creators Syndicate)
"Eat the rich, feed the poor" was a slogan that scared the red, white and blue crap out of people when I was maybe 11 years old.
Nick R. Martin: Video Shows Joe Arpaio's Officer Used Taser On Latino Vet Who Later Died (Talking Points Memo)
More than eight hours of video footage released Friday showed it was one of Sheriff Joe Arpaio's officers who used a Taser on a Latino military veteran that later died. The video also showed the veteran was nearly lifeless when officers put him naked in a cell and left him alone for about 11 minutes.
Josh Marshall: Note Well (Talking Points Memo)
One of the major effects of the 2010 Republican wave election was the subsequent passage of a raft of voter ID laws and other legislation aimed at curtailing voting rights across the country. The aim, often little disguised, is to reduce voting among racial minorities, students and poorer voters generally, all of whom tend to vote disproportionately for Democrats.
Roger Ebert: A Majority of You (from 2008)
When a critic votes with a vast majority, I think one reason is that some films are obviously good or bad (in the eyes of most people). But when one lonely critic stands apart from the mob, there may be a message to be learned, and that may be the critic you should make a point of reading, assuming he or she has been interesting in the past.
Robert Lloyd: "Television review: 'Jerry Lewis: Method to the Madness'" (LA Times)
Gregg Barson's Encore documentary is fundamentally a testimonial to the veteran clown.
Steve Rose: "Elijah Wood: 'I was thrilled to play Frodo Baggins in The Hobbit'" (Guardian)
'Since Lord of the Rings, the actor has avoided big-budget epics. But now he's reprising his hobbit role and starring in a lavish Treasure Island adaptation.
Paul Constant: "'Girl with the Dragon Tattoo': An Entertaining, Inessential American Remake" (Stranger)
There's no way to say this without sounding like a snob, so I'm just gonna get it out of the way: The Swedish version of 'The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo' is better.
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."
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Michelle in AZ
From The Creator of 'Avery Ant'
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Sunny and warmer than seasonal.
The Top 11 Of All Time
Toys
'Tis the season for buying toys, so Life's Little Mysteries counts down the best-selling (and best-loved) toys from the ages. We have assembled them according to sales data, which is a bit skewed as people tend to have bought more things in recent years than in decades past.
So in no particular order, we present the greatest-selling toys of all time, from Pet Rock to Mr. Potato Head.
View-Master
Reaching far back to the 1930s, the View-Master was the brainchild of piano tuner William Gruber. During World War II, viewers were used in training for the U.S. military, with slides designed to help troops become familiar with gun range values, possible landing sites and enemy aircraft. More than 1 billion View-Master units have been sold thus far. What's the most popular View-Master reel? The scenic reel of Mecca.
Slinky
The Slinky came to life on a battleship during World War II in Philadelphia's Cramp Shipyard. A torsion spring used in a testing meter fell off a marine engineer's desk and tumbled end over end across the floor, creating a fad that continues sixty years later. With more than 300 million Slinkys sold, the walking spring is still marching strong.
For the whole list - Toys
Girl's Plight Deepens Debate
Zealots
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stepped up pledges to curb Jewish zealotry in Israel on Sunday after an 8-year-old girl complained of being menaced by ultra-Orthodox men who deemed her dress immodest.
While his conservative government insists such incidents are fringe phenomena in the mostly secular country, Netanyahu's repeated announcements on the matter reflected concern about widening religious and political schisms.
The statement appeared to have been prompted by an expose on Israel's top-rated weekend news about intra-Jewish friction in Beit Shemesh, a town of about 87,000 people near Jerusalem.
Naama Margolese, 8, told Channel Two television she was terrified of walking to her moderate Orthodox school because of passersby who want her "to dress like a Haredi" - the Hebrew term for the ascetic, black-coated Jews who are in "awe" of God.
Margolese's mother Hadassa, an American immigrant who wore a headscarf and skirt in deference to religious Jewish tradition, said the sidewalk abuse could include spitting, curses like "whores" and "bastards" and calls to "clear out of here."
Zealots
More Accurate View Of Crossing Debuts
George Washington
One of America's most famous images, a painting of George Washington crossing the Delaware River, got much of the story wrong: The American commander wouldn't have stood triumphantly on a rowboat in daylight, but on a ferry bracing himself against a fierce snowstorm on Christmas night.
That's the historic scene depicted in a new painting that goes on display this week at the New-York Historical Society museum in Manhattan.
"No one in his right mind would have stood up in a rowboat in that weather," artist Mort Kunstler said. "It would have capsized."
Relying on military experts and historians, plus visits to the river site, Kunstler came up with a list of inaccuracies in Leutze's painting and set out to correct them in his new work.
George Washington
Gets Boost
Web Gambling
The Obama administration cleared the way for states to legalize Internet poker and certain other online betting in a switch that may help them reap billions in tax revenue and spur web-based gambling.
A Justice Department opinion dated September and made public on Friday reversed decades of previous policy that included civil and criminal charges against operators of some of the most popular online poker sites.
Until now, the department held that online gambling in all forms was illegal under the Wire Act of 1961, which bars wagers via telecommunications that cross state lines or international borders.
The new interpretation, by the department's Office of Legal Counsel, said the Wire Act applies only to bets on a "sporting event or contest," not to a state's use of the Internet to sell lottery tickets to adults within its borders or abroad.
If a state legalized intra-state games such as poker, as Nevada and the District of Columbia have done, "there is simply no federal law that could apply" against their operators, said I. Nelson Rose, a gaming law expert at Whittier Law School who consults for governments and the industry.
Web Gambling
Hackers Target Think Tank
'Anonymous'
The loose-knit hacking movement "Anonymous" claimed Sunday to have stolen thousands of credit card numbers and other personal information belonging to clients of U.S.-based security think tank Stratfor. One hacker said the goal was to pilfer funds from individuals' accounts to give away as Christmas donations, and some victims confirmed unauthorized transactions linked to their credit cards.
Anonymous boasted of stealing Stratfor's confidential client list, which includes entities ranging from Apple Inc. to the U.S. Air Force to the Miami Police Department, and mining it for more than 4,000 credit card numbers, passwords and home addresses.
Austin, Texas-based Stratfor provides political, economic and military analysis to help clients reduce risk, according to a description on its YouTube page. It charges subscribers for its reports and analysis, delivered through the web, emails and videos. The company's main website was down, with a banner saying the "site is currently undergoing maintenance."
Proprietary information about the companies and government agencies that subscribe to Stratfor's newsletters did not appear to be at any significant risk, however, with the main threat posed to individual employees who had subscribed.
"Not so private and secret anymore?" Anonymous taunted in a message on Twitter, promising that the attack on Stratfor was just the beginning of a Christmas-inspired assault on a long list of targets.
'Anonymous'
Tracking Japan's Whaling Fleet
Sea Shepherd
Hardline whaling opponents attempting to stop Japan's annual whale hunt in the Antarctic said Sunday they had intercepted and photographed its whaling fleet using pilotless drone aircraft.
The Sea Shepherd Conservation Society said it located the Japanese factory ship Nisshin Maru off Australia's western coast Saturday using the drones, the first time this season it has made contact with the whalers.
However, other Japanese ships shielded the vessel "to allow it to escape," Sea Shepherd said in a statement.
"We caught them due west of Perth," founder Paul Watson told Reuters by satellite phone from the ship Steve Irwin. "For the next few days we will be chasing them. We are heading south."
The two drones are equipped with cameras and detection equipment and allow Sea Shepherd to monitor the whaling fleet from a distance, he said.
Sea Shepherd
Ancient Seal Found Near Temple Site
Jerusalem
Israeli archaeologists said on Sunday they had found a 2,000-year-old clay seal near Jerusalem's Western Wall, confirming written accounts of ritual practices in the biblical Jewish Temple.
The button-shaped object bears the Aramaic words "pure for God," suggesting it was used to certify food and animals used in sacrificial ceremonies.
The Western Wall is part of the compound revered by Jews as the Temple Mount, where Islam's al-Aqsa mosque and Dome of the Rock shrine now stand in a holy complex Muslims call the Noble Sanctuary.
"It seems that the inscribed object was used to mark products or objects that were brought to the Temple, and it was imperative they be ritually pure," the Israel Antiquities Authority said in a statement announcing the find.
Jerusalem
Caribbean Frogs In Hawaii
Coqui
The coqui is a tiny, coin-sized frog whose distinctive nightly mating calls are a beloved sound in Puerto Rico and other Caribbean islands. But people in Hawaii don't share the same sentiment.
The frogs have been growing in population in the state in recent years and are now starting to show up in larger numbers on Oahu - home to most of the state's population. The frogs already have a strong foothold on the less-populated Big Island, and people there complain of being kept awake at night with a thunderous roar of chirps as thousands of male coqui simultaneously summon partners - a mating chorus some say can be as loud as a jet airplane.
There have been just as many reports of coqui on Oahu in 2011 as the seven prior years combined, said Derek Arakaki, who helps hunt coqui frogs for the state Department of Agriculture. Before, Arakaki and two others on the coqui-eradication team would head out to capture the frogs on Oahu once a month or maybe twice a month. This year, there have been times when they've had to go coqui hunting twice a week.
The frogs are a significant problem in their non-native Hawaii because the state has no natural predators to stop their advance. As a result, they have spread quickly through the lush forests and yards near Hilo since they were accidentally introduced to the Big Island in the 1990s. They have been making a steady advance into the more heavily populated Oahu in recent years, sneaking onto the island on plants and stowing away in cars, piles of lumber, cargo pallets and whatever else that's being sent to Honolulu.
Coqui
Weekend Box Office
"Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol"
Tom Cruise's latest mission has won a holiday weekend that's shaping up with some silent nights at movie theaters as business continues to lag.
Studio estimates Sunday placed Cruise's "Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol" a solid No. 1 with $26.5 million domestically over its first weekend in full release. The movie raised its total to $59 million since it started a week earlier in huge-screen cinemas and expanded nationwide last Wednesday, and distributor Paramount estimated that revenues will reach $72.7 million by Monday.
Generally well-reviewed movies from Steven Spielberg ("The Adventures of Tintin"), David Fincher ("The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo") and Cameron Crowe ("We Bought a Zoo") - with casts that include Matt Damon, Scarlett Johansson and Daniel Craig - opened with modest to weak results.
The picture gets worse taking into account higher ticket prices, which mean Hollywood brings in fewer fans for each dollar spent. Actual domestic attendance for 2011 will close out at about 1.27 billion, down 5.3 percent from the previous year's and the lowest head count since 1995, when admissions totaled 1.26 billion.
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. "Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol," $26.5 million.
2. "Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows," $17.8 million.
3. "Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked," $13.3 million ($20.1 million international).
4. "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo," $13 million.
5. "The Adventures of Tintin," $9.1 million.
6. "We Bought a Zoo," $7.8 million ($1.1 million international).
7. "New Year's Eve," $3 million.
8. "Arthur Christmas," $2.7 million ($9.7 million international).
9. "Hugo," $2.03 million.
10. "The Muppets," $2 million ($500,000 international).
"Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol"
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