Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Paul Krugman: How to Kill a Recovery (New York Times)
Though we finally seem to be climbing out of a very deep hole, many people on the political right want to send us sliding right back down again.
Paul Krugman: What Happens When Pretending to Be Crazy Is a Career Strategy (New York Times)
I have said this before, but it's worth repeating: a large segment of the population in the United States is completely impervious to rational argument and the presentation of evidence. In our country, learned ignorance is on the rise.
Ruth Coniff: Sudden Retirements Wreak Havoc in Wisconsin (Truthout)
On Friday night, the eve of a massive rally in Madison, Wisconsin, against Governor Scott Walker's union-busting "budget repair bill," a few state employees gathered for a hasty retirement party at Jenna's, a downtown bar directly across from the Capitol building.
David Baird: Anti-labor bills just the latest in GOP's depredations (Athens [Ohio] News)
For many years the Republicans have attacked the interests of the middle-class and the working man as well as any idea that interfered with their prime directive (that is, to concentrate and protect wealth) and have been (to give the devil his due) very successful in that effort.
Jim Hightower: SNORTING 100% PURE CORPORATE HALLUCINOGENS
Scott Walker is a Kochhead - one of several super-ambitious right-wing politicos who can't get enough of the laissez-fairyland hallucinogens being pushed all across the land by the secretive billionaire Koch brothers.
Brett Arends: Five Investing Tips From Warren Buffett (Wall Street Market)
What does Warren Buffett's latest letter to stockholders mean for you and your money? Plenty, if you read it carefully.
20 Questions: Over the Rhine (PopMatters)
The coarse, dry dirt is sensed below the sweet, blooming fields of this Ohio-grown duo. Karin and Linford Detweiler of Over the Rhine, making music from the bittersweet notes in life for more than 20 years, now, talk with PopMatters 20 Questions about what must go into the ground to make things grow. Their latest, 'The Long Surrender,' released this month.
LARRY BLUMENFELD: A 'Small' Legacy Grows (Wall Street Journal)
"There may have been 25 people at that show," said Mr. Wilner, "but thousands may hear it via the Internet. And if we disappear, all this is documented." Yet Mr. Wilner has no intention of vanishing. He hopes to build an expansive brand, based on an acoustically charmed basement, an open door and a storied past.
Michael Franco: "'In a Different Place Now': An Interview with Lucinda Williams" (Popmatters)
She has toured with icons like Bob Dylan and Tom Petty, recorded with legends like Elvis Costello and Steve Earle, been named America's best songwriter by Time magazine, and put together one of the most impressive bodies of albums this side of rock 'n roll. But suggest to Lucinda Williams that it's an honor to speak to her and she responds with baffled silence, a dismissive scoff, and then a simple, drawling "Okaaay".
Mike Spies: Listening to Adele's New Album (Slate)
How soul music became "soul music."
David Bruce has 41 Kindle books on Amazon.com with 250 anecdotes in each book. Each book is $1, so for $41 you can buy 10,250 anecdotes. Search for "Funniest People," "Coolest People, "Most Interesting People," "Kindest People," "Religious Anecdotes," and "Maximum Cool."
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From The Creator of 'Avery Ant'
Reader Suggestions
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Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Sunny and warmer.
Praises Wisconsin Protesters
Pete Seeger
Folk music legend Pete Seeger, who has been singing about union rights since the 1940s, told The Associated Press on Friday he's pulling for the demonstrators in Wisconsin who want to stop a bill taking away collective bargaining rights from public workers.
"Maybe the Republican governor, he's done us a favor by bringing the problem to national attention," the 91-year-old Seeger said in a telephone interview from his New York home. "It shows the whole country how much we need unions. We may end up thanking him."
Seeger, who's been singing since the Great Depression and released a record in 1942 titled "Talking Union," said he was following the issue in Wisconsin.
"Without collective bargaining rights we'd be right back to primitive times," Seeger said. "The average American, I think, looks upon unions as a standard way of doing business. Just like you pay rent, you pay taxes, you also get paid a decent wage because of unions. It's not because of the generosity of the employer."
Pete Seeger
Clinton Boosts
Al-Jazeera
A decade ago the U.S. government attacked Al-Jazeera as a propagator of anti-American propaganda. Now Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton is citing the network for fine news coverage - and tweaking the U.S. media in the process.
The Arab broadcaster says it's ready to take advantage of what it considers a major boost in its acceptance in the United States.
Clinton, on the week many U.S. television outlets were preoccupied by the spectacle of actor Charlie Sheen, suggested during testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that American networks were falling behind in the competition for information.
Al-Jazeera has been a leader in changing people's minds and attitudes, Clinton told lawmakers Wednesday.
"Like it or hate it, it is really effective," Clinton said. "In fact, viewership of Al-Jazeera is going up in the United States because it is real news."
Al-Jazeera
Salutes Arab Demonstrators
Music Freedom Day
Musicians in the Middle East will pay tribute to the Arab uprising and commemorate the death of an Egyptian musician during the Cairo demonstrations as part of this year's international Music Freedom Day on Thursday.
Music Freedom Day, the brainchild of Freemuse, an independent organization advocating freedom of expression for music makers worldwide, is bringing together artists in over 20 countries to highlight the plight of colleagues around the globe who suffer censorship, imprisonment and even death.
The event kicked off with concerts in Mumbai and Kabul and ends with a session in New York and special broadcasting programs in Canada after events in Egypt and Lebanon paying tribute to Egyptian musician Ahmed Basiouni, who died on the fourth day of demonstrations in Cairo earlier this year.
Freemuse was founded in the late 1990s to document censorship in music, raise awareness of the problem and offer support to the musicians and their families.
Music Freedom Day
The War On Science
Lyle Craker
A University of Massachusetts-Amherst professor says he's dropping his nearly decade-long fight to persuade the government to let him grow marijuana in bulk for medical research.
Horticulturist Lyle Craker wanted to cultivate marijuana to boost research into the plant's potential medicinal benefits. But he's been rebuffed - even as more than a dozen states have legalized medical marijuana.
Craker, 70, said he saw no end in sight to the legal wrangling, given the likelihood of an appeals process that could run several years, or even decades. He was frustrated, too, that he never got a hoped-for boost from the Obama administration.
Craker, who said he has never smoked marijuana, launched his challenge to the government's monopoly on growing and distributing research marijuana in 2001. A lab at the University of Mississippi is the government's only marijuana-growing facility.
Craker contends that the government-grown pot lacks the potency medical researchers need for breakthroughs. He said there isn't enough of the drug freely available for scientists across the country.
Lyle Craker
Marines Like Him Naked
Bradley Manning
The Army private suspected of giving classified U.S. documents to the anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks was forced to sleep naked in a military jail at least once this week, the Marine Corps acknowledged Friday after the soldier's lawyer complained.
Commanders of the brig in Quantico, Va., ordered all of Pfc. Bradley Manning's clothing, including his boxer shorts, taken from him Wednesday night under provisions of the Navy Corrections Manual, which governs prisoner treatment, said 1st Lt. Brian Villiard, a spokesman for the Marine Corps base.
"It was a situationally driven event but to go into detail about it would be inappropriate because it would violate the detainee's privacy," Villiard said.
U.S. Rep. Dennis Kucinich issued a statement saying the clothing-removal order could amount to cruel and unusual punishment and may violate international law.
"Is this Quantico or Abu Ghraib?" the Ohio Democrat said, referring to detainee abuses at a U.S. military prison in Iraq in 2003.
Bradley Manning
Convention In NC
DNC
With the American labor movement newly energized by its most serious threat in years, the Democratic Party's decision to hold its 2012 convention in the least union-friendly state is causing friction with a key constituency.
The Democratic National Committee selected Charlotte to show confidence in the party's ability to win crucial swing states in the South, including North Carolina, that President Barack Obama carried in 2008. But the choice isn't sitting well with some union leaders.
Workers around the nation have rallied in solidarity with union brethren fighting Republican efforts to curtail collective bargaining rights for public employees in Wisconsin and Ohio. But the issue is a moot point in North Carolina, one of two states where all public workers are prohibited by law from engaging in collective bargaining.
In many other ways, Charlotte makes perfect sense as the site of the convention. A bustling city of more than 700,000 with a popular Democratic mayor, the Queen City is both a center of the American banking industry and a symbol of the New South, and just 3.2 percent of workers belong to a union, the lowest percentage in the country.
DNC
Drops Lawsuit Against Kanye West
Mairon "Suge" Knight
Rap mogul Marion "Suge" Knight has dropped an appeal in a lawsuit he filed against hip-hop star Kanye West over a 2005 shooting in Miami.
Knight's attorney filed the dismissal last month in Miami federal court. The judge had granted a summary judgment in November for West and his companies, but Knight appealed the decision in December.
Knight was seeking millions of dollars in damages from West. Knight was shot in the leg at a 2005 Miami Beach party hosted by West, whom Knight blames for lax security. The shooter has never been identified and the case is unsolved. The judge concluded there was no evidence that a shooting at the party was foreseeable.
Both sides have reached a confidential agreement to settle court costs.
Marion "Suge" Knight
Settles $1M Legal Fee Dispute
Phil Spector
Imprisoned music producer Phil Spector has settled his lawsuit against attorney Robert Shapiro over a $1 million retainer.
Court records in Los Angeles show attorneys reported the settlement to a judge on Thursday. The judge ordered all discussions and the settlement's terms sealed.
Spector had been seeking a refund of the $1 million retainer he paid Shapiro after his arrest in 2003. The "Wall of Sound" producer was convicted of second-degree murder in the shooting of Lana Clarkson after two trials and is currently serving 19 years to life in prison.
Spector had been fighting for years to get the money returned, claiming Shapiro took advantage of him. A trial was scheduled to begin on Monday.
Phil Spector
Inserts Extra Ads
Mediacom
Mediacom Communications Corp., a cable company with more than 800,000 Internet subscribers, has tried something other U.S. Internet service providers have shied away from: It has inserted its own ads into Web pages as its subscribers surfed.
Ads for Mediacom's home phone service have shown up on the normally ad-free home pages of Google.com and Apple.com, according to subscribers.
There are only a few reports of the ads showing up, starting last week, and many Mediacom subscribers on Web forums said they had not seen any. That leaves the possibility that the ads were part of a test run rather than a full-fledged rollout.
The company won't say. Spokesman Thomas Larsen said the company's senior vice president of technology was unavailable for comment. On the company's Web forum, a complaining subscriber is told by a Mediacom representative that the issue has been "escalated to the corporate office and we are still investigating."
Mediacom
'Tiger Blood Radio'
Charlie Sheen - SiriusXM
SiriusXM Radio is devoting a channel to the Charlie Sheen affair.
The satellite radio service announced Friday that it has created Tiger Blood Radio, a 24-hour limited-run channel it says will examine the news, facts and media frenzy surrounding the actor and his hit CBS series, "Two and a Half Men."
Tiger Blood Radio will air from Saturday at 6 a.m. Eastern time until Sunday at 6 a.m. on both the Sirius and XM systems, the company said.
Sheen has recently mounted a public campaign to disprove that he is a drug-using, reckless playboy. He is fighting the decision by his show's studio and network to shut down production of the series. Meanwhile, he is facing a battle for custody of his 23-month-old twin sons.
Charlie Sheen - SiriusXM
Charlie Sheen - Spike TV Animated Special
4 New Species
Zombie-Ant Fungi
The world just got a little weirder: Scientists have identified four new species of brain-controlling fungi that turn ants into zombies that do the parasite's bidding before it kills them.
Identified from samples collected at two sites in Brazil's tropical rain forest, each of the four species specializes in controlling a different species of carpenter ant.
The original zombie-ant fungus, Ophiocordyceps unilateralis, was first identified in 1865, and it seems to exist around the world.
"So we knew, right off the bat, there was a range of other species within that," said study researcher David Hughes, an entomologist at Pennsylvania State University. "I think it will turn out to be in the hundreds."
Once it infects an ant, the fungus uses as-yet-unidentified chemicals to control the ant's behavior, Hughes told LiveScience. It directs the ant to leave its colony (a very un-ant-like thing to do) and bite down on the underside of a leaf - the ant's soon-to-be resting place. Once it is killed by the fungus, the ant remains anchored in place, thanks to its death grip on the leaf.
Zombie-Ant Fungi
In Memory
Frank Alesia
Frank Alesia, a character actor in the beach party movies of the 1960s and a director of "Captain Kangaroo," died February 27 of natural causes at his home in Carlsbad, California. He was 65.
Alesia came to Hollywood from Chicago in 1964 and was one of the last character actors to work under the studio system. His film appearances included "Riot on the Sunset Strip" (1967) and some of the beach films that starred Frankie Avalon and/or Annette Funicello, including "Bikini Beach" (1964), "Pajama Party" (1964) and "Beach Blanket Bingo" (1965).
Alesia also appeared on such TV series as "That Girl;" "Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C.;" "The Odd Couple;" "Room 222;" "Bewitched;" and "Laverne & Shirley." He wrote for and directed for the latter.
Alesia directed the kids show "Captain Kangaroo" and was nominated for a daytime Emmy in 1979.
After show business, Alesia bred and raced thoroughbreds.
Survivors include his wife Sharon, his children Dore and Eden Alpert and his sister Lucille. Arrangements for a celebration of his life were pending.
Frank Alesia
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