Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Paul Krugman: Bain, Barack, and Jobs (New York Times)
When the dust settled after the companies that Bain restructured were downsized - or, as happened all too often, went bankrupt - total U.S. employment was probably about the same as it would have been in any case. But the jobs that were lost paid more and had better benefits than the jobs that replaced them. Mr. Romney and those like him didn't destroy jobs, but they did enrich themselves while helping to destroy the American middle class.
Paul Krugman: The Nonsense Problem (New York Times)
I understand that many people find the notion of a world in which Nobel Laureates and ECB presidents declare that 2+2=5 very unappealing, and that they wish we lived in a different and better world. But we don't - and it's not my job to create the illusion that we do.
Andrew Tobias: Of Taxes and Sewage
If only we had people looking for work who could get on this. Oh, wait - we do! And putting them to work would not only get the job done, it would get the economy moving, tax revenues rising, unemployment checks, food stamps, foreclosures, and the deficit falling - a virtuous cycle.
Froma Harrop: The Unbearable Consequence of Iowa (Creators Syndicate)
So Mitt Romney "won" Iowa by eight votes, giving him the "Big Mo" (that's momentum) as he marches forth into the primaries. What happened to Rick Santorum's surge? Did a Dodge Caravan full of supporters break down on the way to the gymnasium? I mean, world history has pivoted on less.
Connie Schultz: We Are the Women (Creators Syndicate)
The recent wave of anti-choice legislation in my state and across the country has made me keenly aware of attacks on women in America. Perhaps that is why I was so drawn to the Times' stunning chronicle of women's lives. I still can be astonished by how regularly the target of masculine rage is women.
Roger Ebert: "Nobody has the right to take another life"
And then Captain Fred Allen, who walked into the death chamber with more than 100 prisoners, concludes by giving voice to the strongest argument against the death penalty: "Nobody has the right to take another life."
The Perfect Score: Cheating on the SAT (CBS News)
For Sam Eshaghoff, getting a high score on the SAT college admissions exam was more than a point of pride. It was a lucrative business. As Alison Stewart reports, other students paid Eshaghoff up to $2,500 each to take their tests using easily manufactured fake IDs. His scam came crashing down in fall 2011, when he was arrested for criminal impersonation and fraud. Eshaghoff has since accepted a plea deal, but the case still raises major questions about the integrity of the test itself.
Simon Doonan: Marilyn Monroe's Two Secrets (Slate)
What I learned about the icon by folding her capri pants.
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."
M Is FOR MASHUP - January 4th, 2012
TV QUIZ
By DJ Useo
Howdy y'all. I trust the new year is already a big improvement.
I ain't gonna take up too much of your time, but I do have a quick fun tv quiz that wont task the brain & is just perfect for the early-year mindstate we are all adjusting to.
Simply tell us the relevance of each television show picture.
01 - Who lives in this house?
02 - What show does this man speak on?
03 - What town is this?
04 - Who lives in this house?
05 - Who performs behind this wall?
06 - Why do these people look so strange?
07 - Who is wearing these rather jazzy sunglasses?
08 - Name this tv show announcer & the show he is in.
09 - Who is this guy with his brain in a bowl?
10 - What is Curly dreaming about?
11 - What show advertises this bizarre product?
12 - Name this rarely seen tv show employer & the show he is on.
13 - What did PFC Gomer Pyle just blow up?
14 - Who works making what in this factory?
Send your responses to Marty by 6pm (pst) Sunday, 9 January, 2012.
Results Monday, 10 January, 2012.
There are no prizes.
Aw, c'mon - there have been only 2 responses!
wrote:
replied:
Reader Suggestion
Michelle in AZ
From The Creator of 'Avery Ant'
BadtotheboneBob
You saw it here first
From the 'You saw it here first (Unless you read Pravda)' File...
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Still sunny and summery.
Sued IMDb
Junie Hoang
An anonymous actress who sued Amazon.com and its Internet Movie Database for revealing her age has revealed her identity.
It's Huong Hoang of Texas, who may be better known by her stage name, Junie Hoang. She has appeared in such films as "Gingerdead Man 3: Saturday Night Cleaver" and "Hoodrats 2: Hoodrat Warriors."
The actress filed a million-dollar claim against Amazon, saying the company mined her IMDb account information to learn her advanced age, which is 40, and then posted it on her profile - causing her offers for roles to dry up. Last month a federal judge in Seattle ordered the lawsuit dismissed, saying she had no grounds to proceed with an anonymous complaint.
Hoang refiled her lawsuit Friday under her real name.
Junie Hoang
Good Deed Doer
Charlie Sheen
Actor Charlie Sheen has donated $25,000 to help tornado relief in Alabama, making good on a promise to help survivors of the deadly twisters.
The head of Tuscaloosa's tourism agency, Don Staley, says Sheen gave money that came though his fundraising website.
Sheen visited Tuscaloosa after the April 27 twisters and talked about staging a relief show and celebrity ball game to raise funds. Staley says those plans didn't materialize, but the actor donated the money shortly before Thanksgiving.
Some people criticized Sheen for going to Alabama amid the media frenzy following his firing from the hit CBS show "Two and a Half Men." Staley says Sheen gave the money without making any public announcement and just wants to help.
Charlie Sheen
Merger Team Readies For Talks
SAG-AFTRA
Members of the Screen Actors Guild and the American Federation of Television and Radio Arts and Sciences merger committee will meet in Los Angeles for nine days beginning Saturday to iron out details of how to combine the unions.
The committee will release a statement at the end of the meetings, but spokespeople for the two unions declined to discuss specifics.
The unions have said that they hope to have detailed proposals for each board to review this month. The unions need approval from their members before they can merge.
The meetings will bring together members of the "G1," or "Group for One Union" committee, made up of AFTRA's New Union Committee and SAG's Merger Task Force.
SAG-AFTRA
Hospital News
Keith Richards
Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards has undergone laser eye surgery and is "doing very well," a spokeswoman said Friday.
British media reported that the 68-year-old, famous for surviving years of rock-n'roll excess, underwent the procedure to correct his deteriorating vision.
The Rolling Stones, one of rock music's most successful acts, celebrate their 50th anniversary this year.
The music press, including Rolling Stone magazine, has reported that another tour could be on the cards, although internal rifts within the band would have to be resolved first.
Keith Richards
NASA Questions
James Lovell
NASA is questioning whether Apollo 13 commander James Lovell has the right to sell a 70-page checklist from the flight that includes his handwritten calculations crucial in guiding the damaged spacecraft back to Earth.
The document was sold by Heritage Auctions in November for more than $388,000, some 15 times its initial list price. The checklist gained great fame as part of a key dramatic scene in the 1995 film "Apollo 13" in which actor Tom Hanks plays Lovell making the calculations.
After the sale, NASA contacted Lovell and Heritage to ask whether Lovell had title to the checklist. Greg Rohan, president of Dallas-based Heritage, said Thursday the sale has been suspended pending the outcome of the inquiry. The checklist, he said, is being stored for now in the company's vault.
NASA has also raised questions about title rights for two items Heritage had sold from Apollo 9 astronaut Rusty Schweikart: a lunar module identification plate that brought more than $13,000 and a hand controller bid at $22,705. The space agency also targeted a fourth item, a hand glove worn by Alan Shepard during training for Apollo 14 that brought more than $19,000.
The letters follow a federal lawsuit NASA filed last year in Miami against Apollo 14 astronaut Edgar Mitchell seeking return of a camera he brought back from his 1971 moon mission. That lawsuit was settled in October when Mitchell agreed to give the camera to NASA, which in turn is donating it to the National Air and Space Museum in Washington.
Mitchell's attorney had argued prior to the settlement that NASA officials told astronauts long ago they could keep certain equipment from the missions, and many such items wind up on auction house lists. A 1972 NASA memo seems to back up that claim, requiring only that the astronauts provide the agency with lists of items in their possession.
James Lovell
Closure-Threatened Museum Gets Reprieve
Bosnia
A regional government is providing emergency funding to Bosnia's National Museum to save the 125-year-old institution from being forced to close due to unpaid utility bills.
The Bosniak-Croat region announced Friday it will pay €25,000 to cover the bills, but added this will not solve the long-term problem.
Ethnically divided Bosnia has no culture ministry on state level and the political leaders of the country's Serb, Croat and Bosniak peoples can't agree on what to do with their common historical and cultural heritage.
The National Museum - whose collection includes the 600-year-old Jewish manuscript known as the Sarajevo Haggadah - and six other institutions housing Bosnia's heritage have over the years received only state budget leftovers.
Bosnia
Highest in Richer Nations
Drug Abuse
About 200 million people worldwide use illicit drugs each year, and use is highest in wealthier nations, a new study shows.
The researchers also found that the burden of health problems caused by illicit drug use in developed countries is similar to that caused by alcohol, but much less than that caused by tobacco.
Experts in the United States weren't surprised by the numbers, and said that more needs to be done to reduce Americans' dependence on illegal drugs.
The study "serves to confirm something addiction experts have known for some time -- that the extent of illicit drug use and abuse in developed countries like the United States has reached epidemic proportions," said Dr. Jeffrey T. Parsons, a professor in the department of psychology at Hunter College, in New York City.
Drug Abuse
Imaginary Polluted Water
Dimock, Pennsylvania
Federal regulators are considering trucking fresh water to households in a Pennsylvania town where residents say wells have been polluted by hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, for natural gas.
Only a month after declaring water in Dimock, Pennsylvania, was safe to drink, the Environmental Protection Agency has once again become concerned about supplies. Dimock residents recently supplied to the EPA hundreds of pages of data that link water pollution to fracking.
If the EPA delivers water to the village, it would be the clearest sign yet regulators are concerned about the effect of drilling on drinking water in Dimock.
Dimock residents began complaining of cloudy, foul-smelling water in 2008 after Cabot Oil & Gas Corp began fracking, which involves injecting chemical-laced water and sand into wells to release gas in shale rock deep below the surface.
Cabot had trucked water to a dozen Dimock households for three years until November when state regulators agreed it could stop. Now residents are onto the last of their water. Some are using pondwater for showers.
Dimock, Pennsylvania
Bluefin Tuna Fetches Record
"Kuro Maguro"
A deep-pocketed restaurateur shelled out nearly $750,000 for a tuna at Japan's Tsukiji fish market on Thursday, smashing the record price for a single bluefin.
The 269-kilogramme (592-pound) fish -- caught off the coast of Japan's northern Aomori prefecture -- stood at an eye-popping 56.49 million yen ($736,500) when the hammer came down in the first auction of the year.
The figure dwarfs the previous high of 32.49 million yen paid at last year's inaugural auction at Tsukiji, a huge working market that features on many Tokyo tourist itineraries.
Decades of overfishing have seen global tuna stocks crash, leading some Western nations to call for a ban on catching endangered Atlantic bluefin tuna.
Japan consumes three-quarters of the global catch of bluefin, a highly prized sushi ingredient known in Japan as "kuro maguro" (black tuna) and dubbed by sushi connoisseurs the "black diamond" because of its scarcity.
"Kuro Maguro"
In Memory
Bob Weston
Bob Weston, a British guitarist who played with Fleetwood Mac, has died aged 64.
Police say Weston's body was found in his north London home on Tuesday after neighbors raised the alarm.
Police said Friday that his death was not being treated as suspicious. An autopsy revealed the causes of death as gastric intestinal hemorrhage, cirrhosis of the liver and throat problems.
Weston joined Fleetwood Mac in 1972 as replacement for Danny Kirwan, and played on the band's albums "Penguin" and "Mystery to Me."
But during an American tour the next year, Mick Fleetwood discovered Weston was having an affair with his wife, Jenny Boyd. Weston was fired.
He released several solo albums and played with musicians including Long John Baldry, Murray Head, Sandy Denny and Steve Marriott.
He is survived by a brother.
Bob Weston
In Memory
Richard Alf
Richard Alf, one of the co-founders of San Diego's Comic-Con, has died from pancreatic cancer at age 59.
U-T San Diego reports that Alf joined up with a band of volunteers in 1970 to start the now-annual convention celebrating comic books.
Friend and fellow Comic-Con co-founder Mike Towry says Alf fronted a few thousand dollars to pay for the convention for the first three years and gave other co-founders rides in his car.
In 1970, the first Comic-Con was relatively modest compared to the convention that now draws more than 125,000 people to San Diego every summer for a 3-day extravaganza.
Alf also founded the Comic Kingdom shop in North Park in the 1970s.
Alf was diagnosed with advanced pancreatic cancer in December.
He is survived by his mother.
Richard Alf
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