Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Annalee Newitz: Is it possible to build a city that doesn't isolate people? (io9)
City life is famous for creating a paradox: you're surrounded by thousands of people, but you feel utterly alone. One geographer says we've been trying to solve this problem the wrong way.
The Playboy Interview: A Candid Conversation with Gawker's Nick Denton (playboysfw)
Denton's third company started with Gizmodo, a gadget blog, then blossomed with the launch of Gawker, a nasty and funny blog about New York's cultural and financial elite as viewed by the resentful underclass.* A sensation from its launch, it spawned sister sites covering sports (Deadspin), women's issues (Jezebel) and other subjects.
C. Coville: 5 Symbols of Free Speech You Won't Believe Are Mass-Produced (Cracked)
#5. Some Public Protests Are by Hired Hands (and Breasts)
Stuart Heritage: The alternative Oscars (Guardian)
Here are six awards I'd like to see handed out.
Aisha Harris: 10 Oscar Wins That Would Make History This Sunday (Slate)
At this point, we can only wonder who will be thanked in the acceptance speeches come Oscar night. But we do know who could make history if they stride to the podium this Sunday. There are a number of nominees who, if they won, would set a new precedent or break a new barrier in the 86-year history of the Academy Awards.
Peter Bradshaw: Funny Face review - 'A brittle charm' (Guardian)
This 1957 musical makes an unconvincing May-to-December pairing of Hepburn and Astaire, but the gorgeous confectionary has its moments.
Alice Jones: "'Mummy, I could have done that' - new book pokes fun at modern art" (Independent)
"There is nothing in the room because God is dead", says mummy. "Oh dear," says Peter.
Ria Misra: A map of music that's popular in your state-and only in your state (io9)
The map is the work of Paul Lamere, who used musical data from 250,000 listeners through streaming service The Echo Nest, where he's the Director of Developer Platform. What it's not, however, is a map of the most popular music in each state, which tends to crossover quite a bit between individual states. It's the most distinctive music, the music that's listened to more in that particular state than anywhere else in the rest of the country.
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Who Do You Think Will Win?
2014 Oscars
The Oscars are this coming Sunday, so now's the time to make your predictions of who will win what.
Send your guesses to Marty, by 11pm (est), TONIGHT, Saturday, 1 March, 2014.
Best Picture
"12 Years a Slave"
"American Hustle"
"Captain Phillips"
"Dallas Buyers Club"
"Gravity"
"Her"
"Nebraska"
"Philomena"
"The Wolf of Wall Street"
Actor
Christian Bale: "American Hustle"
Bruce Dern: "Nebraska"
Leonardo DiCaprio: "The Wolf of Wall Street"
Chiwetel Ejiofor: "12 Years a Slave"
Matthew McConaughey: "Dallas Buyers Club"
Actress
Amy Adams: "American Hustle"
Cate Blanchett: "Blue Jasmine"
Sandra Bullock: "Gravity"
Judi Dench: "Philomena"
Meryl Streep: "August: Osage County"
Supporting Actor
Barkhad Abdi: "Captain Phillips"
Bradley Cooper: "American Hustle"
Michael Fassbender: "12 Years a Slave"
Jonah Hill: "The Wolf of Wall Street"
Jared Leto: "Dallas Buyers Club"
Supporting Actress
Sally Hawkins: "Blue Jasmine"
Jennifer Lawrence: "American Hustle"
Lupita Nyong'o: "12 Years a Slave"
Julia Roberts: "August: Osage County"
June Squibb: "Nebraska"
Directing
David O. Russell: "American Hustle"
Alfonso Cuaron: "Gravity"
Alexander Payne: "Nebraska"
Steve McQueen: "12 Years a Slave"
Martin Scorsese: "The Wolf of Wall Street"
Original Song
Alone Yet Not Alone from "Alone Yet Not Alone" - Bruce Broughton and Dennis Spiegel
Happy from "Despicable Me 2" - Pharrell Williams
Let It Go from "Frozen" - Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez
The Moon Song from "Her" - Karen O and Spike Jonze
Ordinary Love from "Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom" - Paul Hewson, Dave Evans, Adam Clayton and Larry Mullen
marty's picks:
Best Picture - American Hustle
Actor - Leonard DiCaprio
Actress - Cate Blanchett
Supporting Actor - Jared Leto
Supporting Actress - Lupita Nyong'o
Director - Alfonso Cuaron
Song - Let It Go (Frozen)
~
Marian's Oscar predictions
Picture - Twelve Years a Slave
Actor - Matthew McConaughey
Actress - Cate Blanchett
Supporting Actor - Jared Leto
Supporting Actress - Jennifer Lawrence
Director - Alfonso Cuaron
Original Song - "Let it Go" from Frozen (my grandkids fav)
~
Dale o de Diamondy Springs's Oscar Picks:
Picture - 12 Years A Slave
Actor - Matthew McConaughey
Actress - Cate Blanchett
Supporting Actor - Jared Leto
Supporting Actress - Lupita Nyong'o
Director - Alfonso Cuaron
Original Song - Let It Go (Frozen)
~
Joe's Oscar Predictions:
Picture - 12 Years A Slave
Actor - Bruce Dern: "Nebraska" (Old and still going strong)
Actress - Sandra Bullock: "Gravity" (Hot)
Supporting Actor - Barkhad Abdi: "Captain Phillips" (I like the way his name sounds)
Supporting Actress - Jennifer Lawrence: "American Hustle" (Hot)
Director - Steve McQueen: "12 Years a Slave" (Loved him in "The Great Escape" before he died)
Original Song - Let It Go (Frozen) - Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez (My granddaughters sing this beautifully)
Just so you know, I have not seen any of these movies.
~
Adam's Picks:
Picture - 12 Years A Slave
Actor - Matthew McConaughey
Actress - Cate Blanchett
Supporting Actor - Jared Leto
Supporting Actress - Lupita Nyong'o
Director - Alfonso Cuaron
Original Song - 'Let It Go'
Another year of comparing apples to oranges to strawberries.
Reader Suggestion
Michelle in AZ
From The Creator of 'Avery Ant'
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Very rainy day.
Higher Prices Warning
Al Franken
U.S. Senator Al Franken warned telecommunications regulators on Thursday that Comcast Corp's proposed acquisition of Time Warner Cable Inc could mean "higher prices, fewer choices, and even worse service for consumers."
In a letter to Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler, Franken, a Minnesota Democrat, said Comcast had failed to live up to a long list of promises made when its 2011 agreement to acquire NBC Universal won U.S. approval.
Franken complained that Comcast had interfered in 2007 with BitTorrent, a peer-to-peer network that Comcast viewed as a competitor to its cable offerings.
The FCC subsequently passed rules requiring all data be treated equally by Internet providers, although those rules were struck down by a federal appeals court. Comcast agreed, however, in 2011 to net neutrality provisions to win approval for the NBC Universal deal. Net neutrality requires that all data be treated equally by Internet providers.
He also questioned whether Comcast had lived up to promises to provide reasonably priced broadband to customers who did not take cable.
Al Franken
88th Birthday
Robert Clary
Robert Clary of "Hogan's Heroes" fame said he will be celebrating his 88th birthday this weekend simply, at a dinner out with friends, and with gratitude for his long life.
"Every day I wake up is a birthday," said Clary, who as a Jewish French teenager survived the Nazi Holocaust that claimed 12 family members, including his parents.
TV viewers still recognize Clary as Cpl. Louis LeBeau from the 1965-71 sitcom improbably set in a World War II prisoner-of-war camp. He also sang in clubs, recorded pop songs and standards and performed in musical theatre.
After "Hogan's Heroes," his TV work included the soap operas "The Young and the Restless," ''Days of Our Lives" and "The Bold and the Beautiful."
Clary remained publicly silent about his wartime experience until the early 1980s when, he said, he was provoked to speak by those who denied or diminished the orchestrated effort by German leader Adolph Hitler's government to exterminate Jews.
Robert Clary
Seen on Google Maps
Egyptian Spiral
To some viewers, it looks like a landing strip for extraterrestrial spacecraft - or perhaps the portal to a parallel universe, if not an ancient monument to a benevolent deity who had a keen eye for design and symmetry.
But what people are actually seeing in the desolate reaches of the Egyptian desert, just a short distance from the shores of the Red Sea, is in fact an environmental art installation. And it's been baffling tourists and armchair travelers since it was constructed in March 1997.
Danae Stratou, Alexandra Stratou and Stella Constantinides worked as a team to design and build the enormous 1 million square foot (100,000 square meters) piece of artwork - called Desert Breath - to celebrate "the desert as a state of mind, a landscape of the mind," as stated on the artists' website.
The entire structure, in fact, is slowly disintegrating as the sand that forms the art piece slowly blows off its cone-shaped hills and fills in its depressions, making it "an instrument to measure the passage of time."
Egyptian Spiral
Secret Tunnels Discovered
Alcatraz
A lot of dark secrets about Alcatraz have been revealed over the years, and now a group of scientists has found one more buried under the former prison's walls.
Researchers from Texas A&M University, using ground-penetrating radar technology, discovered a network of tunnels underneath the San Francisco island prison. Experts had believed the tunnels were destroyed long ago. Professor Mark Everett explained the technology to BBC News.
The tunnels were from the 19th century, when the island was used as a military fort. The researchers believe they also found magazine buildings where ammunition was stored as well as other structures.
The underground discovery can't be physically reached except by radar, Fox News reports.
Alcatraz
Floor Show
George Lopez
A casino in southwestern Ontario says a performance by George Lopez will go on as scheduled Friday night after the U.S. comic was arrested for public intoxication.
A photo posted on Twitter appears to show Lopez passed out on the floor of the casino late Thursday night.
Provincial police say officers stationed at the casino arrested Lopez for allegedly being intoxicated in a public place, then turned him over to local police.
Windsor police say only that a man was arrested at the casino but later released with no charges laid.
George Lopez
Film Appeal
Google
Google Inc, saying a federal appeals court order directing it to remove an anti-Islamic film from its YouTube video sharing website would have "devastating effects" if allowed to stand, asked the court to put it on hold.
Earlier this week, a panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals voted 2-1 to reject Google's assertion that the removal of the film "Innocence of Muslims," which sparked protests across the Muslim world, amounted to a prior restraint of speech that violated the U.S. Constitution.
In a court filing on Thursday, Google argued that the video should remain accessible to the public while it asks that a larger, 11-judge 9th Circuit panel review the issue. Google called this week's order "unprecedented" and "sweeping."
Shortly after Google learned of the 9th Circuit's takedown order, it hired Neal Katyal, the former acting U.S. solicitor general, to advocate for further 9th Circuit review, according to the court docket.
Google
A Lying Senator? Shocking.
Volkswagen
Friday marks the end of the two-week period within which U.S. Sen. Bob Corker promised Volkswagen would announce another line at its factory in Tennessee if workers there rejected representation by the United Auto Workers union.
So far, there's little sign of any pending announcement.
Workers at the Chattanooga plant ended up voting 712-626 against the UAW, in an election the union claims was tainted by threats and intimidation from Republicans like Corker, Gov. Bill Haslam and state lawmakers.
The Senator also dismissed the repeated claim by Volkswagen that a decision about whether to build a new SUV either in Chattanooga or at a plant in Mexico was unrelated to the union vote.
Volkswagen
Paramount Adds Explanatory Note
'Noah'
Paramount has added an "explanatory message" to its Biblical epic, "Noah," at the request of a religious broadcasters group, the studio and the group announced on Thursday.
The decision followed an appeal by Dr. Jerry A. Johnson, President & CEO of National Religious Broadcasters, to help audiences better understand that the feature film is a dramatization of the major scriptural themes and not a line-by-line retelling of the Bible story, the statement said.
The studio has been trying to tread the line between the secularist views of its daring filmmaker Aronofksy and its desire to appeal to religious audiences with the big-budget movie starring Russell Crowe. And it has sparred with one publication that suggested religious groups might not want to see the film.
Paramount agreed to add the message to all its future marketing materials, including a soon-to-be released online trailer, the film's official website, and 100% of print and radio, as well as some of the film's online and broadcast.The movie opens on March 28.
'Noah'
Termites, Too?
Noah's Ark
The founder of a Bible-themed museum in Kentucky who recently debated evolution with TV's "Science Guy" Bill Nye will give an update Thursday on a stalled project to build a massive replica of Noah's Ark.
Creation Museum founder Ken Ham will discuss financing of the Ark Encounter plans during a live stream on the project's website Thursday night.
The Answers in Genesis ministry, which Ham leads, unveiled the $150 million theme park proposal in 2010. But private donations to the project did not keep pace with the construction timeline, forcing its backers to delay construction of the 500-foot-long wooden ship and divide the park development into phases.
The wooden ark would have old-world details, such as wooden pegs instead of nails, straight-sawed timbers and plenty of animals - some alive, some robotic.
Noah's Ark
Can Be Transferred
Bison
A government-funded experiment on diseased bison herds in Yellowstone National Park shows non-infected animals can be safely removed and used to start new herds, researchers from the U.S. Department of Agriculture and a wildlife group said Thursday.
The results bolster arguments that a species driven to the brink of extinction last century could be restored to parts of its once-vast territory without threatening livestock with disease.
Yellowstone's bison are prized for their pure genetics. About half of them test positive for exposure to brucellosis, which causes pregnant animals to prematurely abort their young.
Government workers captured and slaughtered thousands of migrating bison over the past two decades to prevent them from coming into contact with cattle herds in Montana. The practice has resumed this winter under a state-federal agreement that calls for controlling the migration and maintaining their population at about 3,000 animals.
By capturing and putting park bison into quarantine, the animals could be declared brucellosis-free within three years, or even sooner with calves and male animals, according to researchers from the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service and the Wildlife Conservation Society.
Advocates say that means Yellowstone could be used as a supply source for establishing bison herds on public and tribal lands across the West.
Bison
It's Official
'Misery Index'
As if we really needed to have it all tallied up to tell us exactly how bad this winter has been so far. But just to make it official, according to the U.S. National Weather Service's new Accumulated Winter Season Severity Index, this has ranked as the worst winter on record for some cities.
The Accumulated Winter Season Severity Index, or AWSSI, gathers all the temperatures, snowfall and snow depth amounts for any given location, and assigns a point value to each daily record - the lower the temperature (mix and min for the day) or higher the snowfall amount and depth, the more points that day adds to the score.
According to Mashable.com, so far this season, Detroit has racked up a score of 970 on the AWSSI, making it the most miserable winter for the city on record, beating out the winter of 1978-79. Also, Detroit's score is the all-time highest value accumulated by a city since 1950-51, according to what Mashable was told by Barbara Mayes Bousted, a meteorologist with the NWS that presented this new index system at the American Meteorological Society conference back in January.
Other cities in the U.S. experiencing one of their top five worst winters this year are Philadelphia, Chicago, Indianapolis and New York. In Altanta, where the season has already delivered one crippling ice storm that shut the city down last month and another one just two weeks later, this winter still only ranks as their 18th worst on record.
'Misery Index'
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