'Best of TBH Politoons'
Recommended Reading
from Bruce
PAUL KRUGMAN: The War Against Wages (The New York Times)
Should we be cheering over the fact that the Dow Jones Industrial Average has finally set a new record? No. The Dow is doing well largely because American employers are waging a successful war against wages.
Jason Furman: CLAIM THAT DOW JONES IS AT ALL-TIME HIGH IS BASED ON FAULTY COMPARISON THAT FAILS TO ADJUST FOR INFLATION (cbpp.org)
Dow Jones Down 17 Percent from Peak Once Inflation is Taken Into Account
Jason Epstein: Books@Google (nybooks.com)
... On Demand Books ... has installed in the World Bank bookstore in Washington, D.C., an experimental version of a machine ... that receives a digital file and automatically prints and binds on demand a library-quality paperback at low cost, within minutes and with minimal human intervention-an ATM for books.
FIONA MORGAN: Hip Happy Prof" teaches over MySpace, bosses protest (indyweek.com)
MySpace has helped musicians reach their fans, political activists spread the word and made average people feel popular. Now, it's being used to teach--but not without controversy.
Richard Roeper: Kids need look no further than adults to learn art of stupidity (suntimes.com)
Every once in a while there's a news item for which there seems to be only one sane, logical, intelligent response: How stupid. Item #1: A popular and well-respected art teacher with 28 years of experience is put on paid leave and told her contract won't be renewed because some of her fifth-grade students caught a glimpse of nude art in a museum on a field trip.
Richard Roeper: E-mail is unforgiving, so you might want to sleep on it first (suntimes.com)
In the prehistoric era of communication -- ancient times, like the early 1990s -- if you wanted to reach someone who wasn't immediately available, you could write a letter, leave a message on a telephone answering machine, send a fax or leave word with a person known as a "secretary."
Richard Roeper: Want to be a thrill-seeker? Uncle Sam has a place for you (suntimes.com)
This was around 1972. Two teenagers were knocking the crap out of each other in the parking lot of a shopping plaza on Sibley Boulevard in Dolton. A small crowd was watching A big, hippie-looking guy in his 20s moved in and broke it up, forcefully separating the combatants in a way that told them he could handle both of them at the same time.
Stuart Jeffries: If you feel a commotion beneath your feet today, that'll be gazillions of unbaptised children moving out of Limbo (guardian.co.uk)
Since the Middle Ages, Limbo has been for Catholics a place where the souls of unbaptised children go. But a 30-strong commission of theologians established by John Paul II has concluded that a nicer destiny is necessary.
Charlie Brooker: Supposing . . . You are not what you eat (guardian.co.uk)
On a street near my home there's a gigantic poster, depicting a grisly photograph of a young girl glugging a five-litre bottle of cooking oil. The oil is pouring down her chin and over her shirt. It looks disgusting and is designed to put you off eating crisps. "What goes into crisps goes into you," shrieks the tagline. Do you see?
Erik Deckers: How to Raise a Spoiled Child (irascibleprofessor.com)
I am a firm believer in setting boundaries as a way to help children grow. My own kids have learned the Basic Rules for Getting Along in the Deckers' House: be respectful to others, never hit your siblings, and never, ever cheer against the Colts.
Laughing Stalk: Humor Columns (kconline.com)
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Sunny and cooler.
Wonder if SNL will give Mark Foley a pass again this week.
Winners Named
IgNobel Prize
Research into stinky feet, a study on the sound of fingernails on a blackboard and a device that repels teen-agers with an annoying high-pitched hum on Thursday won IgNobel prizes -- the humorous counterpart to this week's Nobel prizes.
Other winning research included a U.S. and Israeli team's discovery that hiccups could be cured with a finger up the rectum and a study into why woodpeckers do not get headaches.
"The prizes are intended to celebrate the unusual, honour the imaginative -- and spur people's interest in science, medicine and technology," said Marc Abrahams, editor of the science humor magazine "Annals of Improbable Research," which sponsors the awards with the Harvard-Radcliffe Science Fiction Association and Harvard-Radcliffe Society of Physics Students.
All the research is real and has been published in often-prestigious scientific and medical journals. However, unlike the Nobel prizes awarded this week by the Swedish Academy of Sciences, IgNobel winners receive no money, little recognition and have virtually no hope of transforming science or medicine.
For a lot more, IgNobel Prize
Gift To USC
George Lucas
Filmmaker George Lucas, the man behind the "Star Wars" movie franchise, says he hopes to revitalize the study of cinema through a recent $175 million gift to the University of Southern California, his alma mater.
Lucas' donation last month, the biggest private gift ever received by USC, is being used to endow and rebuild its School of Cinematic Arts. The university broke ground on the project on Wednesday.
The first $75 million of Lucas' donation will pay the cost of constructing a new building to replace a facility he helped build years ago. The remainder of his gift will establish an endowment that Lucas hopes to expand through further fund-raising efforts.
George Lucas
In Talks To Buy YouTube
Google
Internet search leader Google Inc. is in talks to acquire the popular online video site YouTube Inc. for about $1.6 billion, the Wall Street Journal reported Friday, citing a person familiar with the matter.
Mountain View-based Google and San Mateo-based YouTube are still at a sensitive stage in the discussion, the newspaper reported on its Web site.
The blog TechCrunch had reported on rumors of the acquisition talks. Representatives from Google and YouTube did not immediately return calls to The Associated Press.
Google
Joining Emory Faculty
Salman Rushdie
Salman Rushdie will join the Emory University faculty and donate his archive to the institution. The novelist's five-year appointment as a distinguished writer in residence in the English Department begins in the spring of 2007, Emory officials announced Friday.
This will be Rushdie's first extended relationship with a university, university officials said.
Included in the archive are Rushdie's private journals detailing life under the fatwa, as well as personal correspondence, notebooks, photographs and manuscripts of all of his writings, including two early unpublished novels.
Salman Rushdie
Building School In Hometown
Shakira
Pop diva Shakira will donate the proceeds from a concert in her hometown to build an arts school for 1,800 children forced to flee their homes by Colombia's civil war.
The concert, part of her worldwide Oral Fixation tour, will held Nov. 15 in the Caribbean port city of Barranquilla and is being billed as a festive homecoming for the hip-shaking international superstar who last month was nominated for five Latin Grammy awards.
The English and Spanish bilingual school will bear the name of Shakira's Pies Descalzos (Spanish for Bare Feet) foundation and have an emphasis on arts education, the foundation said Thursday in a statement.
The school will be located in La Playa, a poor suburb of Barranquilla where 45 percent of the residents are minors, only about half of whom attend school.
Shakira
Full Season Pickup
'Heroes'
The first breakout new series of the season, NBC's drama "Heroes," has become the first freshman show to receive a full-season order.
NBC has ordered nine additional episodes of the supernatural saga, bringing its complement to 22. In its first two airings, "Heroes" has averaged 13.5 million viewers. It ties with ABC's "Brothers and Sisters" as the No. 1 new series among adults 18-49, the demographic coveted by advertisers.
The ensemble drama, which chronicles the lives of ordinary people who discover they possess extraordinary abilities, is the top show in the Monday 9 p.m. slot in the demo.
'Heroes'
10 Episode Pickup
'Who Wants to Be a Superhero?'
Sci Fi Channel has ordered an expanded second season of the reality series "Who Wants to Be a Superhero?"
The series features comic books legend Stan Lee searching for America's next great superhero among contestants who create a superhero alter ego, live together and compete in challenges. As with Season 1, the winner will again be immortalized in a comic book.
"Superhero" has been expanded from six to 10 one-hour episodes for its second season, which is set to air on Sci Fi in the summer. Lee said the extra episodes will allow producers to add to whatever "zany idea" or "outrageous gimmick" they come up with.
'Who Wants to Be a Superhero?'
Baby News
Keisha Castle-Hughes
Keisha Castle-Hughes is growing up fast. The 16-year-old actress, who was nominated for a best-actress Oscar for her role in 2002's "Whale Rider," is expecting a baby in the spring, the agency that represents her confirmed Friday.
The father is her boyfriend of three years, Bradley Hull, 19.
Castle-Hughes, who was born in Australia, played the Queen of Naboo in last year's "Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith." She will be seen next as Mary in "The Nativity Story," set for release Dec. 1.
Keisha Castle-Hughes
First Cancelled New Show
'Smith'
Here's something Ray Liotta and Virginia Madsen won't be putting on their resumes: stars of the first new TV show to bite the dust this fall. "Smith," the Tuesday night CBS drama with Liotta leading a band of high-stakes thieves, is off the schedule, the network said Friday. It will be replaced temporarily by reruns of "CSI: Crime Scene Investigation" and "Criminal Minds."
Meanwhile, NBC announced the sort-of cancellation of its Wednesday night serial comedy "Kidnapped," which stars Jeremy Sisto. NBC gambled by putting the show in the time slot held for a long time by "Law & Order," and it failed miserably.
"Kidnapped" will be moved to the television purgatory of Saturday nights, starting Oct. 21. Its producers have been told to wrap up the serialized drama's story lines by the end of the show's 13-episode order, NBC said.
'Smith'
Newest Ambulance Chaser
Alien Abductions
A German lawyer hopes to drum up more business by pursuing state compensation claims for people who believe they were abducted by aliens.
Jens Lorek, a lawyer based in the eastern city of Dresden who specializes in social and labor law, said he hoped to expand his client base by taking on the unusual work.
He has yet to win any abduction claims, but says there are plenty of potential clients, noting that extra-terrestrial watchdogs report scores of alien assaults every year.
Alien Abductions
Ancient Burial Cave Found
Peru
Archeologists have uncovered a 600-year-old, large underground cemetery belonging to a Peruvian warrior culture, thought to be the first discovery of its kind, an official said on Thursday.
After a tip-off from a farmer in Peru's northern Amazon jungle, archeologists from Peru's National Culture Institute last week found the 820-feet-(250-meter)deep cave that was used for burial and worship by the Chachapoyas tribe.
The Chacapoyas, a white-skinned tribe known as the "Cloud People" by the Incas because of the cloud forests they inhabited in northern Peru, ruled the area from around 800 AD to around 1475, when they were conquered by the Incas.
But their strong resistance to the Incas, who built an empire ranging from northern Ecuador to southern Chile from the 1400s until the Spanish conquest of the 1530s, earned them a reputation as great warriors.
Peru
Share `Prairie' Tales
Altman & Keillor
What was it that made "A Prairie Home Companion" such a quintessential Robert Altman movie that also captured the gabby spirit of the Garrison Keillor radio show on which it was based?
Maybe it's because when Altman and Keillor get together, they don't sound that different from the rambling raconteurs of the radio program and the chatty Altman characters who talk over one another's dialogue.
Altman and Keillor sat down with The Associated Press to discuss their oddball movie, a solid theatrical mini-hit that debuts Tuesday on DVD.
For the interview - Altman & Keillor
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