Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Paul Krugman: Ben Bernanke, Hippie (New York Times)
And an end to deficit obsession can't come a moment too soon. Right now Washington is focused on the idiocy of the sequester, but this is only the latest episode in an unprecedented run of declines in public employment and government purchases that have crippled our economy's recovery. A misguided elite consensus has led us into an economic quagmire, and it's time for us to get out.
Tom Danehy: Tom reflects on Tucson's strange snow day (Tom Danehy)
I once read that The New York Times didn't want to be considered just another newspaper, but rather the paper of record, something that could be looked up 50 years hence to provide the reader-researcher a full accounting of an event and the proper contemporary perspective thereof. I remember thinking, "How delightfully pretentious; good for them."
A Video for Straight People Made by Gay Men
Legalize gay marriage or we'll marry your girlfriends. ("Do you even know the difference between hummus and baba ghanoush?")
Phil Hoad: "Stoker director Park Chan-wook: 'In knowing yourself, you can liberate yourself'" (Guardian)
The director of Oldboy has featured vendettas, incest and even amateur dentistry in his movies. So what horrors does his first Hollywood film, the 'gothic fairytale' Stoker, have in store?
Ron Miller: Why Frank Kelly Freas was possibly the greatest science fiction artist who ever lived (io9)
Frank Kelly Freas was the best scifi artist who ever lived. That's what I say and I'm sticking to it.
Robert T. Gonzalez: This experimental dance film is most hypnotizing thing you'll watch today (io9)
The movement of a dancer is dichotomous. A physically expressive dance can last for minutes, but its individual movements, poses and positions are ephemeral to the viewer. Videos of dance pose the same problem, and while a photograph can capture a choreography's fleeting configurations, it usually does so at the expense of conveying its kinetics. One way around this either/or situation is …
Froma Harrop: How to Live Long Is Everybody's Guess (Creators Syndicate)
The latest dispatch from the food wars: For those at high risk of heart disease, following the Mediterranean diet results in 30 percent fewer heart attacks and strokes. Focused on nuts, beans, fatty fish, fruits and vegetables - all washed down with olive oil and wine (separate glasses, please) - the diet is said to be more effective in combating cardiovascular disease than the low-fat regimens now in vogue.
Lenore Skenazy: Nuts for the Mediterranean Diet (Creators Syndicate)
So now the new thing is to eat nuts. "Nuts keep you healthy." "Hearts love nuts." "Go nuts for the Mediterranean diet!" Let me tell you about nuts. Eating them is all I do. I'm a squirrel, and I coulda told you that nuts are the cat's meow - except I'm scared of cats.
Farhad Manjoo: You Can't Touch This (Slate)
Why don't Apple laptops have touch screens?
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Reader Suggestion
Michelle in AZ
From The Creator of 'Avery Ant'
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Sunny and hot with single-digit humidity.
Upsets Rupert's Pet Poodle
Keith Ellison
Sean Hannity's cable television showdown this week with a Democratic congressman has become more than a verbal schoolyard brawl. It's a fundraising opportunity.
Democratic and Republican advocates are using Tuesday's Fox News Channel appearance by Minnesota Rep. Keith Ellison to raise money. They're sending out solicitations referring to the TV confrontation and asking for donations to Ellison's campaign or to the Minnesota GOP.
Ellison opened his appearance Tuesday by calling Hannity the worst excuse for a journalist he'd ever seen.
Hannity says he has the ability to fight back and will. He has referred to Ellison as an "incoherent congressman" who had an "epic meltdown." He says he plans to continue a discussion of Ellison's career on his Fox show Friday.
Keith Ellison
Summer Is Hottest on Record
Australia
Australia's summer of 2013 is the hottest on record so far, the country's Bureau of Meteorology announced today (March 1).
The country's average temperature this summer has been 83.5 degrees Fahrenheit (28.6 degrees Celsius), 2 degrees F (1 degree C) above normal. That breaks the previous summer temperature record, set in the summer of 1997 to 1998, by 0.18 degree F (0.1 degree C).
Summertime in the Southern hemisphere runs during wintertime in the Northern hemisphere. Australia defines the season based on the meteorological definition, in which summer begins on Dec. 1 and ends on the last day of February.
A widespread and prolonged heat wave drove temperatures up for three weeks in January, with the hottest temperature during that period peaking at a whopping 121.3 degrees F (49.6 degrees C) in Moomba in South Australia. That heat wave contributed to massive wildfires, with 130 burning in New South Wales alone as of Jan. 8.
Records were also set in Sydney, which hit 114.4 degrees F (45.8 degrees C), and Hobart in Tasmania, which got up to 107.2 degrees F (41.8 degrees C). According to the Bureau, of the 112 locations used for long-term climate monitoring, 14 had their hottest day on record during the summer of 2012-2013.
Australia
Removal Project Stalls
Berlin Wall
Hundreds of angry protesters on Friday prevented construction workers from removing a section of one of the few remaining stretches of the Berlin Wall, part of a plan to build a road to a new luxury condominium being built on the banks of the reunited city's Spree river.
Crews only managed to remove one section from the famous East Side Gallery before about 300 protesters pressed too close for work to continue. Demonstrators then wheeled in a mock wall section they had set up in front of the gap.
The East Side Gallery is the longest remaining stretch of the Berlin Wall and is one of the German capital's most popular tourist attractions, with Nicolas Cage recently mugging for snapshots with his wife Alice Kim during time off from the Berlin film festival. It was recently restored at a cost of more than €2 million ($3 million) to the city.
On Friday, a protester carried a sign asking "does culture no longer have any value?" in bold letters, with "die yuppie scum" written in smaller letters.
Berlin Wall
Town Ponders Exhibit
Alexander Solzhenitsyn
Residents of the southern Vermont town that was once the home-in-exile of former Soviet dissident and writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn are considering whether to convert an historic church into an exhibit to honor the Nobel laureate's 18 years in Cavendish.
At Town Meeting - the locals' annual decision-making gathering and the venue where Solzhenitsyn once addressed his neighbors when he arrived in 1977 - voters will be asked whether they should take ownership of a small stone Universalist Church and use it to honor him.
Solzhenitsyn, who spent eight years in prison and labor camps for criticizing Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin, said he chose Cavendish for its resemblance to his homeland and its small-town personality.
"I dislike very much large cities with their empty and fussy lives," he told his new neighbors. "I like very much the simple way of life and the population here, the simplicity and the human relationship. I like the countryside, and I like the climate with the long winter and the snow, which reminds me of Russia."
If the town decides at the meeting Monday to take over the deed to the church, plans call for some repairs and later an exhibit that would include videos of Solzhenitsyn, talking about his years in Cavendish where he lived until 1994 and where his son, Ignat, a pianist and conductor, still lives with his family.
Alexander Solzhenitsyn
Parole Denied Again
Manson Family
California Governor Jerry Brown denied parole on Friday for a member of the Manson Family who was sentenced to life in prison for two 1969 murders carried out with other members of the cult, saying that he remained a danger to the public.
In rejecting parole for Bruce Davis, 70, Brown reversed the decision of a California parole board that found him eligible for release after his 27th parole hearing last October.
"As our Supreme Court has acknowledged, in rare circumstances, a murder is so heinous that it provides evidence of current dangerousness by itself," the governor wrote in his six-page decision. "This is such a case."
Brown commended Davis for his efforts to improve himself during his four decades behind bars, including earning degrees in religion and philosophy, leading counseling groups and teaching Bible classes.
But he said the convicted killer had continued to minimize the extent of his involvement and leadership in the Manson Family, a collection of runaways and outcasts brought together by ex-convict Charles Manson whose spree of killings horrified the nation in the late 1960s.
Manson Family
Judge Halts Auction
Garth Hudson
Musician Garth Hudson has temporarily blocked a New York landlord's plans to sell some possessions dating back to his days with The Band to recoup unpaid storage costs.
The Times Herald-Record of Middletown reports the Rock and Roll Hall of Famer won a restraining order Friday to halt an online auction scheduled for April 6.
Landlord Mike Piazza told the newspaper he was selling Hudson's property because the musician couldn't pay at least $60,000 owed for seven years of storage in a Kingston loft.
Hudson's lawyer says Piazza has illegally taken some items and is claiming more rent than Hudson owes.
Garth Hudson
Feds Seize 2,200 Pieces
Artworks
A federal prosecutor in New Jersey says the government has seized more than 2,000 works of art allegedly used to launder money raised fraudulently. They were appraised at nearly $16 million.
The U.S. Attorney's Office in Newark announced Friday a court filing seeking to force the owner to forfeit the works, including an Alfred Stieglitz photograph that sold for $675,000. They were seized from a warehouse in July.
The government says the owner of Green Diesel, based in Houston, was trying to ship the works to Spain.
The complaint alleges company owner Philip Rivkin bought the artwork by selling credits for generating biodiesel fuel, though it did not produce any fuel.
Artworks
Mis-Delivery
FedEx
A Massachusetts woman has sued FedEx, claiming the company mistakenly sent her a package containing seven pounds of marijuana, then gave her address to the intended recipients, who later showed up at her door.
Maryangela Tobin of Plymouth said in the suit filed Feb. 12 that by disclosing her address, the company violated state privacy laws and put herself and her children in danger.
Tobin said she thought the package was a birthday present for her daughter, because when she opened it, she found candles, pixie sticks and peppermint. There was also something she thought was potpourri, but it was marijuana.
Tobin said that about an hour later, a man knocked on her door looking for the package, while two men sat in a vehicle in her driveway, waiting. She said she didn't have it, and bolted and slammed the door. Tobin claims FedEx gave out her address, which led the men to her home.
Police made an arrest, but Tobin said now she's worried about retribution.
FedEx
Reno Wreck
Ketchup
It looked a lot worse than it was. A semitruck carrying thousands of bottles of Heinz ketchup crashed on I-80 near Reno, leaving huge splotches of bright red tomato paste on the heavily trafficked highway.
Fortunately, nobody was injured, though traffic was mucked up for about an hour on Thursday. Sgt. Janay Sherven of the Nevada Highway Patrol told the Reno Gazette Journal, "I have red everywhere on the highway. No bodies, no people, just ketchup."
Police believe the accident occurred when the truck driver swerved to dodge a car. The truck collided with the highway median and hit a light pole, which, the Gazette Journal noted, slashed open a side of the trailer.
And then out came the ketchup. Lots and lots of ketchup. State transportation authorities used snowplows to get it off the road. Its ultimate destination: the dump.
Ketchup
In Memory
Bonnie Franklin
Bonnie Franklin, the pert, redheaded actress whom millions came to identify with for her role as divorced mom Ann Romano on the long-running sitcom "One Day at a Time," has died.
She died Friday at her home in Los Angeles due to complications from pancreatic cancer, family members said. She was 69. Her family had announced she was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in September.
Franklin was a veteran stage and television performer before "One Day At a Time" made her a star.
Developed by Norman Lear and co-created by Whitney Blake - herself a former sitcom star and single mother raising future actress Meredith Baxter - the series was groundbreaking for its focus on a young divorced mother seeking independence from a suffocating marriage.
It premiered on CBS in December 1975, just five years after the network had balked at having Mary Tyler Moore play a divorced woman on her own comedy series, insisting that newly single Mary Richards be portrayed as having ended her engagement instead.
On her own in Indianapolis, Ann Romano was raising two teenage girls - played by Mackenzie Phillips, already famous for the film "American Graffiti," and a previously unknown Valerie Bertinelli. "One Day At a Time" ran on CBS until 1984, by which time both daughters had grown and married, while Romano had remarried and become a grandmother. During the first seven of its nine seasons on the air, the show was a Top 20 hit.
Like other Lear productions such as "All in the Family" and "Good Times," ''One Day at a Time" dealt with contemporary issues once absent from TV comedies such as premarital sex, birth control, suicide and sexual harassment - issues that had previously been overlooked by TV comedies whose households were usually headed by a husband and wife or, rarely, a widowed parent.
Franklin herself was married for 29 years. Her husband, TV producer Marvin Minoff, died in 2009.
Born Bonnie Gail Franklin in Santa Monica, Calif., she entered show business at an early age. She was a child tap dancer and actress, and a protege of Donald O'Connor, with whom she performed in the 1950s on NBC's "Colgate Comedy Hour."
A decade later, she was appearing on such episodic programs as "Mr. Novak," ''Gidget" and "The Man from U.N.C.L.E."
On stage, Franklin was in the original Broadway production of "Applause," for which she received a 1970 Tony Award nomination, and other plays including "Dames at Sea" and "A Thousand Clowns."
Franklin's recent credits include appearances on "The Young and the Restless" and the TV Land comedy "Hot in Cleveland," which again reunited her with Bertinelli, one of that show's regulars.
Franklin was a "devoted mother, grandmother, daughter, sister, aunt and friend," her family said in a statement. She also was a longtime activist for a range of charities and civic-oriented issues, among them AIDS care and research and the Stroke Association of Southern California.
In 2001, she and her sister Judy Bush founded the nonprofit Classic and Contemporary American Plays, an organization that introduces great American plays to inner-city schools' curriculum.
Bonnie Franklin
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