zEN mAN (observing a family of Beavers who've built a dam on Alhambra Creek in Martiinez, California...right in the City...but it may be threatening flood control this winter)
This week's poll is... the Paul Newman 'Tribute' edition
What are your favorite Paul Newman movies and why?
I'd list them all for you to choose from, but why? You know what they are! You relish the memories of seeing them for the first time. You've looked forward to seeing them again and again since then... So, unload... Let it out... Let us remember a man who was not only a great actor, but a marvelous philanthropist and loyal husband, as well.
Paul Krugman: Edge of the Abyss (nytimes.com)
The financial news since the middle of last month has been grim. And what's truly scary is that we're entering a period of severe crisis with weak, confused leadership.
Steven Wells: Why Sarah Palin is totally rock'n'roll (guardian.co.uk)
Sarah Palin is both the executioner and the living embodiment of rock'n'roll. She is its Jesus Christ and its rough beast, whose hour has come round at last, slouching towards Bethlehem to be born. And she is but one deranged electorate and a heart attack away from control of the greatest empire the world has ever known.
Ted Rall: "MAD MONEY: A Broke America Can't Afford Wars, Tax Cuts"
Credit has dried up. The stock market is disintegrating. Unless someone pours money into capital markets, everyone agrees, we could wind up like people in Baghdad, fondly remembering the day five years ago when they pushed the handle and their toilets still flushed. Only one "someone" has enough cash to fix the problem: the U.S. government.
Andrew Tobias: QUICK! CHECK YOUR VOTER REGISTRATION (andrewtobias.com)
I went to voteforchange.com to find out whether I'm still registered. (Our Republican friends like to do voter purges.) The site asked me address and then - an instant later - told me that if April such-and-such is my birthday (i.e., if I am that Andrew Tobias) then, yep, I'm registered. Knocked my socks off how fast it worked.
Stephen Hawking: The final frontier (cosmosmagazine.com)
In the 1960s the space race created a fascination with science and great technological advances. To find alien life we need to take back up that mantle, says astrophysicist Stephen Hawking, and send people further into space.
CATHERINE O'SULLIVAN: Cath tries to focus on local issues as she battles anemia (tucsonweekly.com)
There's a dish I make called Mexican Surprise. It consists of anything left in the refrigerator, placed in a casserole dish, covered with chiles and cheese, and baked for 40 minutes. Every minimally competent "housewife" knows that if you put enough of these ingredients on something, you can get away with virtually anything: cocktail onions, capers, wilted celery, Vegemite, soy burger. Peanut butter is hard to slip by, as is okra, but it can be done if the cheese is plentiful and the chiles hot enough.
'I gambled on my talent' (guardian.co.uk)
At 80, André Previn still has all the impish energy that won him four Oscars and five wives. He talks to Emma Brockes about marriage to Mia, and his loathing of Lang Lang.
Glenn Gamboa: Robin Thicke talks race, collaborations (Newsday)
Robin Thicke's new album "Something Else" hit stores Tuesday. But the ardent Barack Obama supporter also had more to say about race in America and how he picks his collaborators, including Ashanti.
Roger Ebert's Journal: "You give out too many stars"
That's what some people tell me. Maybe I do. I look myself up in Metacritic, which compiles statistics comparing critics, and I find: "On average, this critic grades 8.9 points higher than other critics (0-100 point scale)." Wow. What a pushover.
Okay, now that we've objectified the medium, the average 60-minute audio cassette tape has 562.5 (B) feet of tape in it. Ain't it wonderful?
PS: DannyD is still a riot!! I would love to "hear" a tape of him, "sucking the distinctly formed bird embryo," and then swallowing the Balut, while sitting on a jeepney - providing humor for the locals... Funny stuff :)
Charlie replied:
I'm not going to take one apart, but we may have a problem here.
Cassette players typically operate at 1 7/8 inches per second, so we get 60*15/8 = 112 1/2 inches per minute for 60 minutes is 6750 inches which is
B: 562.5 feet
But since cassettes are 2 sided, I suspect the correct answer is half of that (281.25). Indeed, if we look at a good site discussing the technical aspects of this, we find that a 90 minute cassette contains about 129 meters of tape, which is 423.23 feet, and 2/3 of that for a 60 minute tape would give about 282, which is in the ballpark.
Adam in NoHo answered:
C- around 800ft
Roy the hoghead answered:
My answer...none of the above, based on the following observations:
The average 60-minute (C60) audio cassette tape has 2 sides, 30 minutes per side.
60 seconds in 1 minute, 30 minutes per side...1800 seconds per side.
The speed of the average cassette player is 1.875 inches-per-second (IPS)
1800 x 1.875= 3375 inches...12 inches per foot....281.25 feet.
Answer (B) (562.5 feet) would be correct if the 60 minutes in question were all on the same side of the cassette.
However, that would make it a 120-minute cassette (C120).
I have worked with cassette tapes for over 30 years.
Marian the Teacher responded:
526.5
And, Joe S ("In the past 3-4 years I've developed a habit of keeping numerous small cassette recorders in my house and in a bag with me so that I'm able to commit to tape memory song ideas on a constant basis."
~ Dwight Yoakam) said:
Cassette tapes... I seem to remember cassette tapes.
My W.A.G. (wild ass guess) is B: 562.5, unless of course I've transposed some digits. Ok, ok, I looked it up, I didn't guess. No. No, I had a vision. I had a vision the answer is exactly 562.5 feet, unless i've transposed of course.
Thanks to Charlie and Sally for the pictures.
New Contest!
Five sets of 11 books have been supplied by Hachette Book Group USA for a special election-focused giveaway!
Each winner will receive one copy of ALL 11 books!
That comment about OMFG being censored made me chuckle AND shake my head.
In the opening credits of my show I use OMFG but covered my butt in what I think to be a rather creative way. There are a LOT of fundies up here but I don't do much other than that credit cover to safeguard my show against them and will no doubt have a run-in with them some day...I'm ready!
Here's my OMFG moment.
Vic in AK
Thanks, Vic!
Makes me glad my time in AK was before the self-righteous took over.
Back when it was very libertarian, and considered bad form to ask what one did for a living.
Part of my job at KTVA involved directing some religious TV shows - like 'Bible for Today' and 'Happiness Is The Lord' - mostly because I was the only one willing to control my mouth for an hour at a time (it was a very potty-mouth bunch).
But what struck me the most was how wonderfully non-judgmental society was as a whole.
One of my pals and her partner (and their dog Ghandi) were living in an old school bus and they used large Welchade cans for their toilet.
Because it was so cold at night, the waste would freeze in the cans.
Since they were early recyclers, they'd bring the cans into work & leave them in a dark corner of the station rest room so the contents would melt enough to be disposed of properly.
No one ever batted an eye, or said unkind about it. It wasn't a big deal.
If someone in LA took a frozen can of shit to work, hazmat would be called, the company shut down for disinfection, and traffic re-routed.
And the employee would be fired.
But, by the then-standards in Anchorage, they were respected for being committed to the lifestyle they'd chosen and making it work.
I went over to the Emery Bay 12 Theater today on a $5 dollar Bet….alone….without my Fascist Brother Frank (who dared me to go)……with my moldy popcorn and lukewarm soda, I sat down with one other person….in the whole theater (she walked out after the opening sequence)….I, of course, had to stay through the entire tawdry, tedious TURD!
Not Funny…At All!
"
Airplane" was riotously hilarious……but when David Zucker decided to write, produce and direct "An American Carol", he did so with a big Right Wing chip on his shoulder….he was going after Michael Moore and his amazingly successful Documentary career (AND all Liberals, Hollywood as a whole, the ACLU and everything slightly leaning to the LEFT) The sad truth Mr. Zucker is……You're not FUNNY…At All!
No One will See This Movie!
"An American Carol" is the most Patently Patronizing Patriotic Pandering Piece of Political Propaganda I've EVER SEEN !
I Lost $5 Dollars Too!
Because my brother is a Far Right Coulter, O'Reilly (he's in the movie), Hannity, Malkin, Limbaugh-loving Gullible Conservative….he's also a LIAR….so I'll never see my money…..He won't even get out to see the movie.
Purple Gene gives "An American Carol" minus 10 bad jokes and boring skits out of 10 for being the worst piece of shit ever made!
CBS begins the night with '48 Hours', followed by the FRESH'EliteXC: Saturday Steroid Night Fights'.
NBC opens the night with a RERUN'Knight Rider', followed by a RERUN'Chuck', then a RERUN'Law & Order: Special Victims Unit'.
'SNIL' is FRESH with Anne Hathaway hosting, music by The Killers'.
ABC starts the night with LIVE'College Football', then pads the left coast with local crap and maybe a RERUN'Boston Legal'.
The CW offers an old 'Friends', followed by another old 'Friends', then an old 'Sex & The City', and another old 'Sex & The City'.
Faux has the traditional 'Cops', 'Cops', and 'America's Most Wanted'.
'MADtv' is FRESH.
MY fills the night with the movie 'Walking Tall'.
A&E has 'CSI: The 2nd One', another 'CSI: The 2nd One', still another 'CSI: The 2nd One', and 'The Sopranos'.
AMC offers the movie 'Clear And Present Danger', followed by the movie 'Starsky & Hutch', then the movie 'The Birdcage'.
BBC -
[12:00 PM] You Are What You Eat - Episode 8
[12:30 PM] You Are What You Eat - Episode 9
[1:00 PM] Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares Revisited - Ep 2 Walnut Tree
[2:00 PM] Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares - Ep 2 The Fenwick Arms
[3:00 PM] Dragons' Den - Episode 1
[4:00 PM] Top Gear - Episode 1
[5:00 PM] Top Gear - Episode 11
[6:00 PM] Doctor Who - Ep 6 The Lazarus Experiment
[7:00 PM] Doctor Who - Ep 7 42
[8:00 PM] Primeval - Episode 8
[9:00 PM] Primeval - Episode 9
[10:00 PM] The Graham Norton Show - Ep 10 Alicia Silverstone, Joan Rivers and The Fr
[11:00 PM] Primeval - Episode 8
[12:00 AM] Primeval - Episode 9
[1:00 AM] The Graham Norton Show - Ep 10 Alicia Silverstone, Joan Rivers and The Fr
[2:00 AM] Primeval - Episode 8
[3:00 AM] Primeval - Episode 9
[4:00 AM] The Graham Norton Show - Ep 10 Alicia Silverstone, Joan Rivers and The Fr
[5:00 AM] Cash in the Attic - Ep. 17 Holmes
[5:30 AM] Cash in the Attic - Ep. 18 Peltier
[6:00 AM] BBC World News (ALL TIMES EDT)
Bravo has 'Tim Gunn's Guid To Style', 'Project Runway', another 'Project Runway', and the movie 'Tristan And Isolde'.
Comedy Central has the movie 'Tommy Boy', 'South Park', another 'South Park', still another 'South Park', and yet another 'South Park'.
FX has the movie 'Hellboy', followed by the movie 'Mr. & Mrs. Smith'.
History has 'Tougher In Alaska', followed by 'Ku Klux Klan: A Secret History', and 'Alaska: Big America'.
IFC -
[8:00 AM] Samurai 1: Musashi Miyamoto
[9:35 AM] Jersey Girl
[11:20 AM] The Winter Guest
[1:10 PM] Private Fears in Public Places
[3:15 PM] Jersey Girl
[5:00 PM] The Winter Guest
[6:50 PM] IFC in Theaters
[7:00 PM] The Ballad of Jack and Rose
[9:00 PM] Far From Heaven
[10:50 PM] IFC in Theaters
[11:00 PM] River's Edge
[12:45 AM] Criminal Law
[2:45 AM] Far From Heaven
[4:35 AM] The Ballad of Jack and Rose (ALL TIMES EST)
SciFi has the movie '10.5: Apocalypse, Part 2', followed by the movie 'NYC: Tornado Terror'.
Sundance -
[05:10 AM] Philip and His Seven Wives
[06:20 AM] Loggerheads
[08:00 AM] Iconoclasts - Season 2: Episode 3: Quentin Tarantino + Fiona Apple
[09:00 AM] Gay Muslims
[10:00 AM] Project Grizzly
[11:00 AM] The Calcium Kid
[12:30 PM] In Short: Festival 9
[01:00 PM] The Making of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
[01:00 PM] John Safran vs. God: Episode 5
[01:30 PM] Architecture School: Episode 1
[02:00 PM] Iconoclasts - Season 1: Robert Redford on Paul Newman
[02:00 PM] Slings & Arrows - Season 1: Episode 5: A Mirror Up to Nature
[03:00 PM] Loggerheads
[05:00 PM] Live From Abbey Road - Season 2: Stereophonics, Colbie Caillat & Joan Armatrading
[06:00 PM] The Front Page
[08:00 PM] The Hill: Episode 1: Fighting the Good Fight
[08:30 PM] Office Tigers: (Episode 1)
[09:00 PM] Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels
[11:00 PM] Together
[12:50 AM] The Killing of a Chinese Bookie
[03:05 AM] The Beat That My Heart Skipped
[04:50 AM] La Moustache (ALL TIMES EST)
Actor Ed Harris, left, and actor Kirk Douglas pose for a photograph with the Kirk Douglas Award for Excellence in Film at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival at the Biltmore in Santa Barbara, Calif., Thursday, Oct. 2, 2008.
Photo by Phil Klein
Having announced that he and Billy Joel will play at an October 16 New York benefit for Barack Obama's presidential campaign, Bruce Springsteen is taking his activism to the next level.
In the coming days, the rock star will play acoustic sets at three rallies for Obama and voter registration. First up is an open-air rally Saturday (October 4) in Philadelphia, followed by a show the next day on the Ohio State campus in Columbus.
On Monday (October 6), Springsteen will visit Eastern Michigan University in Ypsilanti.
In related news, the Boss and his wife and bandmate, Patti Scialfa, have signed on to perform November 5 at New York's Town Hall as part of the Stand Up for Heroes benefit. Proceeds from the event, which is part of the New York Comedy Festival, will be donated to the Bob Woodruff Family Foundation, which aids wounded soldiers transitioning to civilian life.
British actor Sacha Baron Cohen appears on the catwalk during Jean-Charles de Castelbajac's spring/summer 2009 women's ready-to-wear fashion show in Paris October 3, 2008.
Photo by Benoit Tessier
Barack Obama's tendency through the Democratic primaries to perform better in exit polls than he actually does at the ballot box has some media organizations nervous heading into Election Night.
Television networks want to avoid having their performance become an issue for the third straight presidential election. Their political experts hope that experience gained during the primaries will help things run smoothly Nov. 4.
ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, Fox News Channel and The Associated Press pool resources to conduct exit polls in select precincts, hoping to glean information about why people vote the way they do and to help predict a winner or loser. A combination of actual vote counts and exit polls is generally used to "call" a state for one candidate or another.
Exit polls frequently overstated Obama's vote during the primaries by as much as 3 percentage points.
One of two people missing since their boat collided with a barge about five miles south of San Pedro is the brother of U.S. Reps. Linda and Loretta Sanchez.
Henry Sanchez, 51, and Penny Avila, 48, both of Santa Ana, disappeared after the crash was detected on radar about midnight Wednesday.
"Yesterday afternoon, our family was notified by the U.S. Coast Guard of a possible boating accident involving a family member," said a joint statement issued by the Sanchez sisters.
The Bayliner left Long Beach about midnight for a trip to Two Harbors on Catalina Island, which this weekend is hosting the 19 th annual Buccaneer Days end-of-summer bash.
Laurel and Hardy Museum of Harlem patrons look at memorabilia, Thursday, Sept. 25, 2008 , in Harlem Ga., during a tour of the facility, which opened July 15, 2002 in the town where Oliver Hardy was born. On Saturday, Oct. 4, Harlem will balloon to more than 20 times its size when 40,000 people arrive for the annual Oliver Hardy Festival, created two decades ago to raise money for the community.
Photo by Chris Thelen
Carlos Santana is on tour and has an album coming out, but in an interview with Rolling Stone posted online on Friday the rocker said he sees himself one day heading up a church in Hawaii.
The 61-year-old rocker described in the interview how his faith has helped him get through low points in his life, and that he would like to start a church in Maui, Hawaii.
"I'm going to stop playing when I'm 67 and work on what I really want to do, which is to be a minister, like Little Richard," he said to Rolling Stone.
A lawsuit involving the three surviving children of Martin Luther King Jr. and Coretta Scott King is threatening to derail a $1.4 million deal for a book on their mother.
The New York-based Penguin Group agreed to pay $1.2 million plus royalties to King Inc., which controls the civil rights icon's intellectual property. The publisher would pay another $200,000 to the Rev. Barbara Reynolds, who taped conversations with Mrs. King before she died in January 2006.
The lawsuit - the third among the three siblings in as many months - was filed Sept. 24 in Fulton County probate court. Bernice King is listed as plaintiff and administrator of her mother's estate, and the estate of Martin Luther King Jr., which Dexter King controls, is listed as the defendant.
The siblings are feuding over whether the documents should be turned over. Bernice King and Martin Luther King III maintain that their mother no longer wanted to work with Reynolds on the book. They are asking that the documents be distributed among Coretta Scott King's heirs and not given to the publisher.
Dexter King, president and chief executive officer of King Inc., signed the book contract.
South Korean Kwon Won-tae walks a high wire during the World High Wire Championships in Seoul, South Korea, Thursday, Oct. 2, 2008. 27 high-wire walkers from 14 countries challenged on the tightrope, a wire rope of 30 millimeter in diameter stretching 1,000 meters across the Han River in Seoul.
Photo by Lee Jin-man
Four writers involved with a Writers Guild of America organizing effort at writer-director-producer Tyler Perry's cable TV show "House of Payne" have been fired.
The production company says they were fired for cause, but the union said Thursday that they were dismissed because they were involved in the organizing effort. The WGA West plans to picket Tyler Perry Studios in Atlanta when the facility opens the weekend of October 3.
The guild claims that the problems began in April when the writers -- Kellie Griffin, Christopher Moore, Teri Brown-Jackson and Lamont Ferrell -- were among seven scribes seeking to negotiate a first WGA contract with Perry's production company, House of Payne. The company produces "House of Payne" and the upcoming TBS show "Meet the Browns." No contract has been signed.
Perry's attorney, Matt Johnson, said that the four were fired because of poor work performance. Griffin, Moore, Brown-Jackson and Ferrell had worked on more than 100 episodes of Perry's TBS series, now syndicated on Fox. The three remaining writers were asked to stay on, and two did.
A German choir that has strung together a list of everyday gripes about everything from lousy weather and bad services to poor leaders and unfaithful husbands has become a musical hit in a country that loves to complain.
The Cologne-based group of 140 amateur musicians travels the city, happily singing their tale of woes to unsuspecting rail commuters and passers-by as well as filling the prestigious 1,500-seat Cologne Philharmonie for a special performance.
Poking fun at the pleasure many Germans seem to take at being unhappy about something, the choir bills itself as the world's largest "complaint choir" and has become part of a trend that has spread around the world.
Although the choir was originally intended to be a temporary project, the moan-music has proved so popular that composer Wolfgang Kaets has announced more performances are planned.
In this Wednesday, Oct. 1, 2008 photo provided by the Edge of Cedar State Park Museum, a statue of an humpbacked flute player is seen. Edge of the Cedars State Park moved the sticklike figure from the front to the back of a museum where it can't been seen from the street, said park manager Teri Paul.
Photo by Teri Paul
A homeowner whose beachfront property in Texas was destroyed during Hurricane Ike has found a football-size fossil tooth in the debris.
Dorothy Sisk asked her colleague, Lamar University paleontologist Jim Westgate, to accompany her to her Bolivar Peninsula home after Ike hit. Together they found something unusual in the remains of Sisk's front yard: a six-pound fossil tooth.
Westgate believes the fossil is from a Columbian mammoth common in North America until around 10,000 years ago.
The tooth, which looks like a series of boot soles or slices of bread wedged together, is expected to be sent to the Texas Memorial Museum in Austin.
A centuries-old tradition of wearing a white horse-hair wig in court ended for many judges on Wednesday when a simpler new dress code came into force.
While judges in criminal cases will still wear them, those in civil and family hearings will appear bare-headed in court, wearing a new-style plain black robe, the government said.
After a long debate that divided the legal profession, the Lord Chief Justice, Lord Phillips, head of the judiciary in England and Wales, finally ordered the changes in an attempt to modernise the courts.
Wigs have been an emblem of the British legal system since the 17th century when the fashion for wearing them in wider society filtered through to the courts.
Two three-month-old male baby lesser pandas play at Chiba Zoological Park near Tokyo Sunday, Sept. 28, 2008. The lesser pandas, also known as red pandas, debuted in the public Saturday. Their names will be chosen from eight names by park visitors.
Photo by Itsuo Inouye
You have reached the Home page of BartCop Entertainment.
Make yourself home, take your shoes off...
Go ahead, scratch it if it itches.
The idea is to have fun.
Do you have something to say?
Anything that increased your blood pressure, or, even better,
amused or entertained?
Do you have a great album no one's heard?
How about a favorite TV show, movie, book, play, cartoon, or legal amusement?
A popular artist that just plain pisses you off?
A box set the whole world should own?
Vile, filthy rumors about Republican musicians?
Just plain vile, filthy rumors?
This is your place.
Charlie replied:
