Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Paul Krugman: The Climate Domino (NY Times)
America can't expect other countries to take strong action against emissions while refusing to do anything itself, so the new rules are needed to get the game going. And it's fairly certain that action in the U.S. would lead to corresponding action in Europe and Japan.
Brian Logan: "Shock value: How Aamer Rahman's 'reverse racism' joke saved his career" (Guardian)
"A lot of white people say this to me," the riff began. "They say, 'Hey, Aamer, you get onstage and make your jokes about white people. Don't you think that's a kind of racism? Don't you think that's" - dramatic pause - "reverse racism?'"
Mishka Shubaly: "Sympathy for the Devil: In Defense of Amazon" (Huffungton Post)
Amazon approached me about writing for Kindle Singles, their new digital publishing platform. I had no name as a writer, a reputation only as a drunken rabble-rouser. I had little faith in their idea or my writing, but I gave them an old story that had sat on my hard drive for nearly 10 years. ... To date, that story, "Shipwrecked" has earned me more than $40,000 and been translated into two other languages.
A.C. Grimes: 6 Shockingly Evil Abuses of Power by School Officials (Cracked)
Obviously, any profession is going to include a certain number of loathsome shitheels. It's just that you think of school teachers and administrators as people who got into it for the love of kids. It's not like those jobs pay much, after all. So while you may get some lazy or incompetent faculty, you don't expect these people to be running toddler fight clubs in the basement.
Rachel Mitchell: You're Worrying About GMOs For the Wrong Reasons (io9)
Scientists have demonstrated that genetically modified organisms have no measurable negative impacts on human health. Indeed, they may hold the key to feeding a world impacted by climate change. But does this mean GMOs are completely without risk? Nope. Here are some good reasons to be concerned.
John Cheese: "5 Personality Flaws That Seem Impossible to Change (Part 2)" (Cracked)
I've spent the better part of a decade attempting to undick my personality after three decades of donging it right on up. It's a classic game of Personality Cock Jenga, and it takes forever to win. Each move has to be slowly and carefully executed, lest the whole thing come crashing down like an avalanche of flaccid, flopping tube steaks.
Matthew Collin: "Detroit: the rebirth of a techno utopia" (Guardian)
Once a symbol of the American dream, Detroit has become a byword for urban decay. But now things are changing. Electronic music legends including Kevin Saunderson, Derrick May and Carl Craig explain how creative young people are colonising the city's derelict spaces and striving for a better future.
Sean Michaels: Beastie Boys win $1.7m in damages from drinks firm (Guardian)
Monster energy drinks ordered to pay up after using Beastie Boys songs in a promotional video without permission.
Tom Service: "Music Education in England: about to be decimated?" (Guardian)
Michael Gove appears to be not only contradicting his own National Plan for Music, but he might be about to destroy Music Education altogether.
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wrote:
has retired.
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Reader Suggestion
Michelle in AZ
From The Creator of 'Avery Ant'
from Marc Perkel
BartCop
Hello Bartcop fans,
As you all know the untimely passing of Terry was unexpected, even by
him. We all knew he had cancer but we all thought he had some years
left. So some of us who have worked closely with him over the years are
scrambling around trying to figure out what to do. My job, among other
things, is to establish communications with the Bartcop community and
provide email lists and groups for those who might put something
together. Those who want to play an active roll in something coming from
this, or if you are one of Bart's pillars, should send an email to
active@bartcop.com.
The most active open discussion is on Bart's Facebook page.
( www.facebook.com/bartcop )
You can listen to Bart's theme song here
or here.
( www.bartcop.com/blizing-saddles.mp3 )
( youtu.be/MySGAaB0A9k )
We have opened up the radio show archives which are now free. Listen to
all you want.
( bartcop.com/members )
Bart's final wish was to pay off the house mortgage for Mrs. Bart who is
overwhelmed and so very grateful for the support she has received.
Anyone wanting to make a donation can click on this the yellow donate
button on bartcop.com
But - I need you all to help keep this going. This note
isn't going to directly reach all of Bart's fans. So if you can repost
it on blogs and discussion boards so people can sign up then when we
figure out what's next we can let more people know. This list is just
over 600 but like to get it up to at least 10,000 pretty quick. So
here's the signup link for this email list.
( mailman.bartcop.com/listinfo/bartnews )
Marc Perkel
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Attended the Wrigley River Run's traditional Pizza Pig Out.
Public TV Groups Screwed
FCC
PBS, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and the Assn. of Public Television Stations are chiding the FCC for not ensuring that all viewers will have access to free public television after it conducts its auction of broadcast airwaves for wireless use.
Under the terms of the framework for the auction, stations can voluntarily choose to give up their spectrum and share in the proceeds when the airwaves are put up for bid. But the public TV organizations fear that if a market's sole public TV station chooses to give up their airwaves, it will leave some cities with no public TV outlet.
In a statement issued on Friday, the organizations said that they were "obliged to express our profound disappointment" that the FCC "has rejected one of public television's most important policy goals in the auction progress - our request that the Commission ensure that no community find itself without free access to public television service in the aftermath of the auction."
Public television organizations said that the FCC has rejected their effort to get assurances that each market will have at least one public TV station.
FCC
Corporate Shills
Shady 'Consumer Groups'
Did you know that America has the greatest and most awesomely competitive broadband market in the world and that it will only get better if we let cable and telecom companies do whatever they want? OK, so you probably didn't know that, likely because it's not at all true. But that's the message that several shady "pro-consumer" groups have started pushing lately to create a perception that the American people are just begging the government to liberate poor Comcast and Time Warner Cable from all regulatory shackles and let them charge companies more money to make sure that their traffic gets delivered faster than traffic on the standard Internet.
Vice has come out with a new report detailing the connections that many of these groups have with the cable industry and, wouldn't you know it, they're pretty extensive.
Take Broadband for America, for instance, the anti-net neutrality organization whose public faces are former Republican Senator John Sununu and former Democratic Congressman Harold Ford. Vice found that the National Cable and Telecom Association (NCTA) donated $2 million to the group, which accounts for well over half of its $3.5 million budget.
Similarly, the anti-net neutrality American Consumer Institute is being funded by a "foundation controlled by lobbyists from the cell phone industry, called MyWireless.org," while the notorious shills at the anti-net neutrality Heartland Institute have grabbed "major funds from Comcast, AT&T, and Time Warner Cable."
And that's not all: Vice's investigation shows that Broadband for America is working with the DCI Group, a lobbying organization that's made its name by creating astroturf groups that support whatever cause their corporate masters happen to be pushing for at any given moment. In other words, if you start seeing TV ads sponsored by groups with names such as "Americans United For A Free Comcast" and "Concerned Citizens For Time Warner Cable," it's likely coming from DCI's lobbying meth lab.
Shady 'Consumer Groups'
Attends D-Day Memorial
Bernard Jordan
At 90 years old, Bernard Jordan escaped from his British nursing home, boarded a train to France and won the respect and admiration of police officers tasked with tracking him down.
A local search for the missing senior became an international celebration of the indomitable spirit on Friday, after Bernard launched a cross-border adventure to participate in the 70th anniversary of the Allies landing in Normandy in WWII.
Gracewell Healthcare says Jordan disappeared suddenly from the Pines Care Home in Hove, England, on Thursday evening.
It was later confirmed Jordan had caught a train to Normandy to attend a ceremony marking the 70th anniversary of D-Day. Cleverly, the veteran had snuck out of the nursing home in a grey raincoat that concealed a jacket containing his war medals.
The BBC reported that Jordan usually commemorates the Battle of Normandy in his hometown, but had travelled to Normandy to mark the 50th and 60th anniversaries.
It seems he wasn't about to miss the 70th.
Bernard Jordan
Hospital News
Casey Kasem
A Washington state judge on Friday said Casey Kasem's daughter, not her stepmother, is in charge of the medical care for the 82-year-old radio personality, who remains in critical condition with an infected bedsore.
However, all members of Kasem's family can visit him at the hospital - just not at the same time, Kitsap County Superior Court Judge Jennifer Forbes ruled.
Kasem has been receiving intravenous antibiotics and other care at St. Anthony Hospital in Gig Harbor, Washington, for a serious pressure ulcer he had when he was admitted on Sunday, according to a hospital statement.
His daughter said she is considering putting her father in hospice care at St. Anthony, the Kitsap Sun reported.
The judge also found Jean Kasem in contempt of court for failing to allow Kerri Kasem to see her father the day the California court order was issued. However, the judge did not impose any sanctions.
Casey Kasem
Romania Sentences Hacker
'Guccifer'
A Romanian court sentenced hacker "Guccifer", who broke into the emails of former U.S. resident George W. Bush's family, entertainment figures and the head of the Romanian secret service, to four years in jail on Friday.
Marcel Lazar Lehel, a cab driver by trade and known by his aliases "Guccifer" and "Small Fume", was arrested in January in Bucharest and could spend a total of seven years behind bars as he also carries a previous three-year suspended sentence.
Guccifer shot to fame in 2013 after he hacked into the Bush family emails and posted artwork by the former president, including self-portraits in the bathtub.
The same year, the hacker distributed emotional emails sent to former U.S. secretary of state Colin Powell from European Parliament member Corina Cretu, a Romanian, prompting Powell to deny that they had an affair.
No mention of the hacker's activities in the United States was made in court, the official added.
'Guccifer'
A Lesson for All Organizations
Unintended Consequences
The Los Angeles Dodgers are taking a beating, and I am not talking about their uneven on-field performance. Yes, given that they have the most expensive roster in baseball history, you would think that they would be winning more games. But it's not the inconsistency of its players that is straining their organization. It's the Dodgers decision to sell exclusive distribution rights of their games to Time Warner Cable for $8.35 billion dollars over 25 years, and then expecting Time Warner Cable to easily partial out those rights to other distributors such as DirecTV and AT&T U-verse.
It hasn't worked thus far. At all. As a result, only about 30% of the homes in Los Angeles are able to see the Dodger games on television, leaving 70% of us in the dark. That includes most of the sports bars and restaurants in town.
The new Dodger management needed to sell the rights at the highest dollar value in order to recoup their investment and pay higher player salaries. Time Warner Cable wanted to buy at that exorbitant price to control the market while mistakenly thinking it could offset the huge price tag by selling the rights at inflated prices to the other distributors, who would in turn pass price increases to all of their subscribers, not just to those who watch Dodger baseball.
Just to be clear, this article is not about the Dodgers. It's about the bitch goddess of unintended consequences. So what are the consequences thus far?
Unintended Consequences
Rising Seas
Japan
Rising sea levels have washed the remains of at least 26 Japanese World War Two soldiers from their graves on a low-lying Pacific archipelago, the foreign minister of the Marshall Islands said on Friday.
"There are coffins and dead people being washed away from graves. It's that serious," Tony de Brum told reporters on the sidelines of U.N. climate change talks in Germany.
Putting the blame on climate change, which threatens the existence of the islands that are only 2 meters (6 ft) above sea level at their highest, de Brum said: "Even the dead are affected."
A U.N. Study on Thursday said changes in Pacific winds and currents meant sea levels in the region had risen faster than the world average since the 1990s.
Japan
Entice Smugglers
Morel Mushrooms
Smugglers in northern California's fire-ravaged Stanislaus National Forest are sneaking out pricey contraband - not marijuana this time, but a favorite delicacy of foodies: the luscious morel mushroom.
Despite a record "flush," or bloom, of the tasty, wild fungi, mushroom hunters are banned from the forest because officials believe that scorched, unstable tree trunks, eroded soil and logging operations after last August's massive Rim Fire have made the area too dangerous.
That means as much as $40 million in a bumper crop of morels - ironically sparked by the same fire that is blocking hunters - is rotting in the woods west of Yosemite Park.
Yet, despite the ban, and threat of a $5,000 fine and six months in jail, smugglers are hauling out hundreds of pounds of morels, and enforcement personnel are confiscating contraband daily, said Garcia.
Morel Mushrooms
"Dear Albert"
Albert Einstein
Albert Einstein's genius did not extend to his own love life, which was full of messy affairs, bumpy marriages and bitter endings, as judged by his letters to the women in his life.
A reading of the letters written by Einstein to his wives and other women brought the strange, complicated life of the world's most famous scientist to the stage in Alan Alda's play "Dear Albert," at New York University's Skirball Center for Performing Arts, here at the World Science Festival on May 28.
The young Einstein, played by Paul Rudd, wrote frequently to his fellow student Mileva Maric, played by Cynthia Nixon, a brilliant and determined woman who later became his wife. Their relationship began with heated passion despite an unwelcome pre-marriage pregnancy and Einstein's parents' disapproval of the relationship.
The couple, who spent a lot of time apart, wrote of their love for each other in between lines of enthusiastic scientific discussions interrupted by mathematical equations.
Albert Einstein
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