'Best of TBH Politoons'
Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Lindsay Beyerstein: Connecticut Teacher Convicted of Endangering Kids With Pop-Up Porn (AlterNet.org)
Rights and Liberties: When lax cybersecurity meets anti-porn hysteria, an innocent computer infection can land you in jail. Just ask Julie Amero, a 40-year old substitute teacher who maintains she's a victim of a malicious software infestation that caused her computer to spawn porn uncontrollably.
Terrence McNally: Atheist Richard Dawkins on 'The God Delusion' (AlterNet.org)
In the last few years, Americans have seen the harm that results when political decisions are made in the name of religion. Now, the non-believers are fighting back.
Jane Smiley: The Psychology Behind the Worst Possible President (HuffingtonPost.com)
Bush is the worst possible president because he is simultaneously unusually ignorant for a president and unusually shallow, as well as desperate for a success he can call his own. I can see how in a certain sort of era - say an era of prosperity and world peace (can you think of one? I can't) an unusually ignorant and shallow man could bump along in the presidency for a few years without creating havoc and destruction, but these years didn't happen to be peaceful and prosperous, they happened to be delicate and dangerous.
Richard Roeper : Presidential candidates off and running . . . now give it a rest (suntimes.com)
In the meantime, in what might well be my only comment on the 2008 election until, you know, 2008, if I could vote for one candidate -- the person most qualified to lead the country on matters ranging from Iraq to the economy to the environment to counterterrorism -- one name springs to mind. Al Gore.
Froma Harrop: Backdating Out of a Jobs (creators.com)
Steve Jobs was in geek-genius mode as he strode across the dramatically lit San Francisco stage. Wearing his faded jeans and black turtleneck, Jobs gave a giant-screen tour of the iPhone, Apple's gorgeous new super-phone. He had the Macworld audience in rapture. But while the gadgeteers cheered the latest demo of the Jobs magic, a terrible noise was happening offstage. It was the sound of Apple stockholders crying rape and federal investigators rifling the corporate files.
'I had a lot of guts back then' (guardian.co.uk)
In the 70s, Patti Smith was the high priestess of punk. Then she traded in fame for a quiet life at home with her children. Now, aged 60, she talks to Laura Barton about her new collection of poetry, the loss of her husband and how she still hopes to write a literary masterpiece.
Mark Morford: 8 Uncommon Ways To Keep Warm (sfgate.com)
Frigid weather got you down? Warm the heart of your cockles with these smokin' tidbits
Correction Correction Correction
Re: Treeline
Maybe we should ask the guy himself, but 200 meters is a pretty trivial
distance along a tangent to the surface of the earth, however it is not so
trivial in the vertical direction.
Willliam
Thanks, William!
The first time I saw the treeline was on a drive from PA to LA, a bit west of Limon, Colorado, crossing the Rocky Mountains.
Saw another one on my travels in Alaska.
Wish I'd paid more attention.
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Still sunny and nearly back to seasonal.
Criticizes Chickenhawk Cheney's Actions
Fritz Mondale
Vice President Dick '5-Deferment' Cheney has bullied federal agencies and given absurd advice about the nation's risk and Iraq, Walter Mondale said Friday, adding that never would have been tolerated when Mondale was vice president.
"I think that Cheney has stepped way over the line," Mondale said at the opening of a three-day conference about former President Jimmy Carter at the University of Georgia.
Mondale, who served under Carter, said Cheney and his assistants pressured federal agencies as they prepared
"I think Cheney's been at the center of cooking up farcical estimates of national risks, weapons of mass destruction and the 9/11 connection to Iraq," he said.
Fritz Mondale
Richest Woman In Show Biz
Oprah
Surprise, surprise. Grass is green, the world is round and Oprah Winfrey is the richest woman in entertainment. The talk-show titan, who's amassed $1.5 billion over the course of her impressive career, has bested " Harry Potter" author J.K. Rowling and lifestyle guru Martha Stewart to take the No. 1 spot on Forbes.com's list of "The 20 Richest Women in Entertainment."
Rowling, who is finishing the seventh and final installment in her boy wizard series, ranks second with $1 billion. Stewart is third with $638 million.
Madonna ranks fourth with $325 million, followed by Celine Dion ($250 million), Mariah Carey ($225 million), Janet Jackson ($150 million), Julia Roberts ($140 million), and Jennifer Aniston and Jennifer Lopez (both $110 million).
Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen, the twin actresses who started out on the '80s comedy "Full House" and created a multimedia empire, Dualstar Entertainment Group, are No. 11 with an estimated "combined net worth at around $100 million," Forbes said.
Oprah
50th Anniversary
Daniel Barenboim
Daniel Barenboim thought back to a half-century ago, when he was living in Paris at age 12 and auditioned for conductor Leopold Stokowski.
"He said, `That's very good. Would you like to play in New York?'" Barenboim recalled. "What kind of a question - I said of course."
Barenboim, who had turned 14 by the time of the performance, triumphed when he played Prokofiev's First Piano Concerto with Stokowski and the NBC Symphony of the Air. On Saturday night Barenboim becomes the first to play at Carnegie Hall on the actual 50th anniversary of his debut.
Carnegie Hall had said pianist Vladimir Horowitz also did that, and even used his example to persuade Barenboim to make an extra trip to New York from Europe for the concert. But a check of records shows Horowitz made his Carnegie debut on Jan. 12, 1928, and played his 50th anniversary concert there on Jan. 8, 1978 - by then he would perform only on Sundays.
Daniel Barenboim
Tops In Profitability
'Ice Age'
"Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest" sold a boatload of DVDs and took in a treasure trove at the box office, but it was merely the runner-up to a cartoon when it came to making money last year.
In a report released Thursday, Kagan Research called "Ice Age: The Meltdown" the most profitable widely released movie of 2006, estimating its cost at $256.4 million and revenue for all release windows at $1.1 billion. When the latter is divided by the former, the result is 4.11, which Kagan calls its Kagan Profitability Index.
Fox's "Ice Age" bests Kagan's No. 2 pick "Pirates," which sports a 3.93 KPI. Kagan puts costs at $423.8 million and revenue at $1.7 billion for Disney's "Pirates."
In fact, four of the top 10 on Kagan's list of more than 160 wide releases last year were computer-animated films; the other three were Disney/Pixar's "Cars" (No. 8), DreamWorks/Paramount's "Over the Hedge" (No. 9) and Warner Bros.' "Happy Feet" (No. 10).
'Ice Age'
Mardi Gras Parade
Pete Fountain
Pete Fountain says he'll be back on the parade route for Mardi Gras after missing last year due to illness.
Fountain, a Bay St. Louis, Miss., resident, will be making his 46th trek from Commander's Palace to the French Quarter with the 165 members of his Half-Fast Marching Club on Feb. 20.
The New Orleans native lost his $1.5 million house in Bay St. Louis, as well as his gold records, memorabilia and 10 musical instruments, when Hurricane Katrina hit the Mississippi Gulf Coast. He is now building a new house, he said.
Pete Fountain
Unconstitutional Effort?
FBI
An effort by the FBI and U.S. prosecutors to remove a short fictional film about a military takeover of New York City from the Internet may have violated the U.S. Constitution, a federal appeals court said Friday.
But the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan said a lower court was still correct to toss out a lawsuit brought against an FBI agent and a federal prosecutor by a web hosting service operator and Michael Zieper, who wrote, directed and produced the film.
The appeals court said in a written opinion FBI agent Joseph Metzinger and assistant U.S. attorney Lisa Korologos, were immune from the lawsuit because it would not have been clear to a reasonable officer in their position that they were doing anything wrong.
The appeals court said Metzinger and Korologos were free to ask filmmaker Zieper and website operator Mark Wieger to take the film down - but Metzinger went too far when he said FBI agents were heading to Zieper's home and he could not stop them.
FBI
Special Effects Accident
'Charlie Wilson's War'
A special-effects explosion that critically injured a crew member on a Tom Hanks film occurred when there was no fire safety officer present, a fire official said Friday.
The 34-year-old man suffered critical head and facial injuries from a blast Thursday, when a hand-held mortar exploded while being tested at Downey Studios, southeast of Los Angeles, during work on Universal's "Charlie Wilson's War," said Capt. Darren Moon.
There was no Fire Department film safety officer on the set, Moon said. The officer is required when pyrotechnics are being used but Moon said the production company had not notified the Fire Department that any work was being done Thursday.
The cause of the accident was under investigation by the Downey Fire Department and the state fire marshal's office, which could issue citations if it finds any safety laws were violated, Moon said.
'Charlie Wilson's War'
Cambodian "Jungle Girl"
Ro Cham H'pnhieng
A Cambodian woman who went missing in the jungle for 18 years before being found last week is struggling to adapt to life as a human and wants to return to the forest, police said on Friday.
The girl, called Ro Cham H'pnhieng, went missing as an eight-year-old along with her cousin when they were sent to tend cows near the border with Vietnam.
Villagers believed they had been eaten by wild animals until a girl was caught last week by a logging team as she was trying to steal some food they had left under a tree.
After 18 years in the wilderness, police said she was able to say only three words: father, mother and stomach ache.
Ro Cham H'pnhieng
Plagiarism Appeal Goes Ahead
Baigent & Leigh
An appeal by two historians who lost a plagiarism case against "The Da Vinci Code" author Dan Brown wound up on Friday but a judgment is not expected for several weeks.
Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh, who wrote "The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail," have been at London's High Court this week to try to prove that Brown copied their work when he wrote his religious bestseller.
Their lawyer, Jonathan Rayner James, argued that the original judge had been wrong to dismiss the idea of a "central theme" in the historians' research which he said was used extensively in six chapters of "The Da Vinci Code."
He said Brown's wife Blythe, who emerged during the original case last year as a key researcher and inspiration for the author, knew she was relying exclusively on the historians' book for the chapters.
Baigent & Leigh
Grave Found?
Mona Lisa
An amateur Italian historian said Friday he has found the final resting place of the woman some believe inspired Leonardo da Vinci's most renowned painting, the "Mona Lisa." A death certificate shows Lisa Gherardini - the Renaissance woman some believe was the model for the "Mona Lisa" - died July 15, 1542, in Florence and is buried in a convent in central Florence, Giuseppe Pallanti said.
It's not certain Gherardini, who was born in 1479 and married a rich silk merchant named Francesco del Giocondo, is the woman in the painting whose smile has inspired speculation for centuries.
Tradition links Gherardini to "La Gioconda," as the painting is known in Italian, because Giorgio Vasari, a 16th-century artist and biographer of Leonardo and other artists, wrote da Vinci painted a portrait of del Giocondo's wife.
Pallanti, who has written a book about the Mona Lisa, also points out del Giocondo was a neighbour and acquaintance of the artist's father, Piero da Vinci.
Mona Lisa
In Memory
Denny Doherty
Denny Doherty, one-quarter of the 1960s folk-rock group the Mamas and the Papas, known for their soaring harmony on hits like "California Dreamin'" and "Monday, Monday," died Friday at 66.
The group burst on the national scene in 1966 with the top 10 smash "California Dreamin'." The Mamas and the Papas broke new ground by having women and men in one group at a time when most singing groups were unisex. John Phillips, the group's chief songwriter; his wife, Michelle; and another female vocalist, Cass Elliot, teamed with Doherty.
"Monday, Monday" hit No. 1 on the charts and won the band a Grammy for best contemporary group performance. Among the group's other songs were "I Saw Her Again Last Night," "Go Where You Wanna Go," "Dancing Bear," and versions of "I Call Your Name" and "Dedicated to the One I Love."
The Halifax-born Doherty started his music career in Montreal in 1960 as the co-founder of the Colonials, which later became the Halifax Three.
Doherty made a solo album in 1974 and achieved a bit of immortality by both playing the Harbormaster and voicing all the characters for the children's TV series "Theodore Tugboat."
Doherty, who was married twice, is survived by three children, John, Emberly and Jessica; three sisters; and a brother. Both of his wives predeceased him.
Denny Doherty
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