Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Manhole Cover Art That Is Far From Pedestrian (Web Urbanist)
Fine art manhole covers. What? Yes, some artists have chosen a medium only a Ninja Turtle could love. Manhole cover and storm drain art is actually a great way to spice up an otherwise mundane, and let's face it, gross aspect of the dirty city streets.
Paul Krugman: G.O.P. Monetary Madness (New York Times)
Apparently the desperate search of Republicans for someone they can nominate not named Willard M. Romney continues. New polls suggest that in Iowa, at least, we have already passed peak Gingrich. Next up: Representative Ron Paul.
Connie Schultz: Teens in Foster Care Deserve a Christmas, Too (Creators Syndicate)
Remember how hard it was to be a teenager? All that angst and self-doubt, surrounded by family who didn't understand you. Now try to imagine what it's like to be that teenager in foster care, at Christmas.
George Skelton: Let's make textbooks affordable (LA Times)
Making textbooks truly affordable, or even available free, is the least we can do for California's beleaguered college and university students. And the state would ultimately benefit.
Froma Harrop: Other Reasons Why French Women Don't Get Fat (Creators Syndicate)
Portion control is key. Frenchwomen may eat their famously rich sauces and fatty pates with gusto, but only in dainty amounts. They go for quality over quantity and avoid "diet" foods - said to drain off the hearty flavors that sate appetites. And, of course, they walk more. But other reasons may be less charming.
Nine Stubborn Brain Myths That Just Won't Die, Debunked by Science (lifehacker.com)
Brain games will make you smarter! The internet is making you dumber! Alcohol is killing your brain cells! The brain is a mystery we've been trying to solve for ages, and the desire to unlock its secrets has led to vast amounts of misinformation. Many of these false notions are more widely believed than the truth.
Andy Borowitz: Three Classic Works of American Comedy
Classics of American comedy, selected by the satirist and editor of 'The 50 Funniest American Writers.'
Dana Stevens: They Left Me Scraping Myself Off the Floor (Slate)
My top 10 movies of 2011.
David Bruce has 42 Kindle books on Amazon.com with 250 anecdotes in each book. Each book is $1, so for $42 you can buy 10,500 anecdotes. Search for "Funniest People," "Coolest People, "Most Interesting People," "Kindest People," "Religious Anecdotes," "Maximum Cool," and "Resist Psychic Death."
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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
Mostly sunny, but cool enough that there's still some unmelted hail in the backyard.
One Of The Good Guys
Stephen King
Horror author Stephen King's efforts to raise money to help low-income Maine residents pay their heating oil bills this winter have exceeded goals.
King announced last month that his foundation would match up to $70,000 if listeners of the three Bangor-area radio stations he owns donated that amount, for a total of $140,000.
Listeners donated $24,000, the Lerner Foundation pitched in $46,000 and the foundation kept its promise.
On-air personality Pat LaMarche says an anonymous Californian then promised another $50,000, if King matched it. The Maine native agreed, bringing the total to over $240,000.
Stephen King
Script Sells For $170,500
"National Velvet"
Elizabeth Taylor's script for the movie "National Velvet" -- which made her a star at age 12 -- sold for more than 50 times its estimate on Friday as the New York auction of the actress's jewels, clothes, art and memorabilia neared its close.
Christie's auctioneers said the 1944 "National Velvet" script, bound in lilac leather, was sold to a private U.S. buyer for $170,500 on Friday. It's pre-sale estimate was $2,000 - $3,000.
A drawing of lips inscribed to Taylor by Andy Warhol sold for $242,500, and was among the priciest items bought on the fourth day of the auction.
Friday's total sales were $4.4 million, including commission, taking the auction sales so far this week to $154.2 million. An online-only sale of some 1,000 lower-priced items from Taylor's estate continues through Saturday.
"National Velvet"
Good Deeds At Kmart
Anonymous Donors
The young father stood in line at the Kmart layaway counter, wearing dirty clothes and worn-out boots. With him were three small children.
He asked to pay something on his bill because he knew he wouldn't be able to afford it all before Christmas. Then a mysterious woman stepped up to the counter.
"She told him, 'No, I'm paying for it,'" recalled Edna Deppe, assistant manager at the store in Indianapolis. "He just stood there and looked at her and then looked at me and asked if it was a joke. I told him it wasn't, and that she was going to pay for him. And he just busted out in tears."
At Kmart stores across the country, Santa seems to be getting some help: Anonymous donors are paying off strangers' layaway accounts, buying the Christmas gifts other families couldn't afford, especially toys and children's clothes set aside by impoverished parents.
Anonymous Donors
Hospital News
Ian "Molly" Meldrum
Ian Meldrum, Australia's top music journalist and a friend of singer Elton John is in critical condition after falling from a ladder while hanging Christmas decorations, doctors said on Friday.
Meldrum, who was given the nickname "Molly" early in his career by a DJ who had the habit of dishing out female names, fell at his Melbourne home and struck his head on some tiles on Sunday. His gardener found him unconscious and not breathing.
His injuries include a fractured skull and punctured lung as well as a number of broken ribs.
Sometimes called the single most important person in the Australian pop music industry, Meldrum's career of more than four decades has seen him interview most music celebrities passing through Australia, as well as luminaries such as Britain's Prince Charles.
Ian "Molly" Meldrum
Roughed Up In China
Christian Bale
Actor Christian Bale was roughed up by Chinese security guards as he attempted to visit a blind legal activist whose detention has sparked a domestic and international outcry, CNN reported on Friday.
Bale, who plays crime-fighting superhero Batman, and a camera crew from CNN were jostled by men in plainclothes in Dongshigu village in eastern Shandong province, where activist Chen Guangcheng has been under house arrest for 15 months, according to a video released by CNN on its website.
"Why can I not visit this man?" Bale asked several security officers, while they were pushing him.
CNN said the guards shadowed its van for more than half an hour.
The fate of Chen, a self-schooled advocate who has campaigned against forced abortions, has become a test of wills, pitting the Communist Party's crackdown on dissent against activists championing his cause and that of artist Ai Weiwei.
Christian Bale
Appears In Court
Bradley Manning
An American Army intelligence analyst suspected of being behind the largest leak of classified documents in U.S. history made his first court appearance on Friday, sitting stone-faced as military prosecutors launched their case against him.
Private First Class Bradley Manning, 23, faces charges including aiding the enemy, which could send him to prison for life. He is suspected of being the source of documents that eventually were released on the Internet by WikiLeaks -- data dumps that Washington said jeopardized national security.
Manning was quiet as he sat in the courtroom at Fort Meade, Maryland, wearing military fatigues and dark-rimmed glasses, occasionally taking notes during the pre-trial proceedings.
For much of the time since his detention beginning in May 2010 in Iraq, Manning was held on a charge of improperly obtaining a classified gunsight video that showed a 2007 helicopter attack that killed a dozen people in Iraq, including two Reuters journalists. The video was released publicly by WikiLeaks.
Bradley Manning
Sacked For Stock Fraud
"Rudy"
Daniel Ruettiger, the legendary Notre Dame football underdog who inspired the 1993 movie "Rudy," couldn't do an end run around the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
The SEC on Friday charged Ruettiger and 12 others with running a stock scam associated with Rudy Nutrition - a company Ruettiger founded to try to compete against Gatorade in the sports drink market.
The company sold modest amounts of the sports drink "Rudy" with the tagline "Dream Big! Never Quit!", but the company was primarily a pump-and-dump stock scheme that created more than $11 million in illicit profits, the SEC said.
Ruettiger agreed to pay $382,866 to settle the case, without admitting or denying the charges.
"Rudy"
Challenge Utah Law
'Sister Wives'
Attorneys for a polygamous family made famous on a reality television show on Friday asked a Utah federal judge not to block their challenge of the state's bigamy law.
Kody Brown and wives Meri, Janelle, Christine and Robyn filed a lawsuit in Salt Lake City's U.S. District Court in July.
The stars of the TLC show "Sister Wives" contend the law is unconstitutional because it violates their right to privacy - prohibiting them from living together and criminalizing their private sexual relationships.
Under Utah law, people are guilty of bigamy if they have multiple marriage licenses, or if they cohabitate with another consenting adult in a marriage-like relationship.
In court, the Browns' Washington-based attorney, Jonathan Turley, said the family has suffered losses of income and been forced to move out of state because they were under investigation for bigamy.
'Sister Wives'
Channel Squeeze Proposed
TV
Call it the Great Channel Squeeze.
Congress is considering letting cellphone companies pay television stations to give up their frequencies so they can be put to better use for wireless broadband.
The idea is to squeeze over-the-air television, which has few viewers, into a smaller slice of the airwaves. The government would be the broker in the deal and would use some proceeds to fund tax cuts and unemployment benefits.
In years to come, you might see Channel 17 cease to broadcast and Channel 49 take its place, for instance. The empty slot at Channel 49 would then become available for a range of wireless services. That could mean faster downloads for smartphones and tablet computers.
Although vast swaths of broadcast spectrum were freed when television signals converted from analog to digital in 2009, much of that has already been claimed. Technology companies have been clamoring for even more airwaves to satisfy growing consumer appetite for movies, books and websites on mobile devices.
TV
I'm so old I can remember when the air waves were owned by the citizens and licensed to broadcasters.
So remind me, what did we get in return?
Fatalities Linked to Common Cold Remedy
Brain-Eating Amoeba
Louisiana's state health department has issued a warning about the dangers of improperly using nasal-irrigation devices called neti pots, responding to two recent deaths in the state that are thought to have resulted from "brain-eating amoebas" entering people's brains through their sinuses while they were using the devices.
Both victims are believed to have filled their neti pots with tap water instead of manufacturer-recommended distilled or sterilized water. When they used these pots to force the water up their noses and flush out their sinus cavities - a treatment for colds and hay fever - a deadly amoeba living in the tap water, called Naegleria fowleri, worked its way from their sinuses into their brains. The parasitic organism infected the victims' brains with a neurological disease called primary amoebic meningoencephalitis (PAME), which rapidly destroys neural tissue and typically kills sufferers in a matter of days.
Jonathan Yoder, an epidemiologist with the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), said the Louisiana cases are still being investigated to ascertain that the deaths did indeed result from exposure to treated tap water in neti pots, rather than exposure to untreated water in a pond or lake. If so, they are the first known incidences of the disease in the U.S. resulting from N. fowleri organisms surviving the water treatment process.
Municipal water undergoes a rigorous purification process to make it potable, including being treated with chlorine to kill microorganisms, he explained. "We consider chlorination to be effective in killing [N. fowleri]. I can't comment on any water system in Louisiana, but in general … you may start out with 1 million amoebas and your goal is to reduce it with chlorine, and you might get 99.9 percent out. But you're probably never going to eliminate 100 percent. That goes for amoebas, parasites, bacteria, viruses. So while we say our drinking water is safe, it's not sterile."
Brain-Eating Amoeba
Trims Print Edition
The Guardian
The Guardian continues to downsize its print edition, announcing on Friday it will consolidate a few sections and reduce the paper's overall number of pages to cut costs.
The legendary U.K. paper already had begun a "cycle of integration" earlier this year that included folding the Media, Education and Society sections into the main section of the paper.
This latest round of changes includes folding the Sport section into the front section from Tuesday to Friday, an end to the Comment section on weekdays and a reduction in the number of obituary pages.
The changes will take effect in January.
The Guardian
In Memory
Graham Brown
Graham Brown, who appeared on stage at London's Globe Theatre and on television in "Sanford & Son" has died in New Jersey. He was 87.
Barbara Montgomery often appeared with Brown on the stage and had power of attorney on his behalf. She says he died Tuesday of pulmonary failure at the Lillian Booth Actors' Fund Nursing Home in Englewood.
Montgomery says Brown was meticulous and was a gentleman.
Brown often appeared in stage productions of the New York-based Negro Ensemble Company and was a founding member of the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis.
He played a school principal on the 1970s sitcom "Sanford & Son" and a judge on "Law & Order." He also had roles in movies including "Malcolm X," ''Clockers" and "The Muppets Take Manhattan."
Graham Brown
In Memory
Christopher Hitchens
British-born journalist and atheist intellectual Christopher Hitchens, who made the United States his home and backed the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, died on Thursday at the age of 62.
Hitchens died in Houston of pneumonia, a complication of cancer of the esophagus, Vanity Fair magazine said.
A heavy smoker and drinker, Hitchens cut short a book tour for his memoir "Hitch 22" last year to undergo chemotherapy after being diagnosed with cancer.
As a journalist, war correspondent and literary critic, Hitchens carved out a reputation for barbed repartee, scathing critiques of public figures and a fierce intelligence.
In his 2007 book "God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything," Hitchens took on major religions with his trenchant atheism. He argued that religion was the source of all tyranny and that many of the world's evils have been done in the name of religion.
The son of a British naval officer, Hitchens studied at Oxford University and worked as literary critic for the New Statesman magazine in London before moving to New York to work as a journalist in 1981. He settled in Washington the following year, initially as correspondent for the left-wing magazine The Nation. He retained his British citizenship when he became an American citizen in 2007.
The author of 25 books - including works on Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine and George Orwell - and countless articles and columns, Hitchens never lost his biting humor.
The 2001 attacks on the United States by Islamic fundamentalists in hijacked passenger planes made Hitchens ever more critical of the role of religion in the world, and led him to appreciate the merits of American democracy.
"I am absolutely convinced that the main source of hatred in the world is religion, and organized religion," he wrote.
Hitchens is survived by his wife, Carol Blue; their daughter, Antonia; and his children from a previous marriage, Alexander and Sophia, Vanity Fair said.
Christopher Hitchens
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