Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Marc Dion: We Don't Want to Work for You Anymore (Creators Syndicate)
In what will soon be the bane of the writers' (and the readers') existence, The New York Times has published a study about the growing number of working-age men who are not working and who are not looking all that hard for a job. You want to know the truth of it? The jobs suck - and by that I mean the jobs you can get if you're a male with a high school diploma.
Mark Shields: You Can Delegate Authority, but Not Responsibility (Creators Syndicate)
When Congress voted in 2002 - after an uninspired debate - to yield the decision to invade Iraq to President George W. Bush, not one of the 435 members of the House of Representatives had a son or daughter in the enlisted ranks of the nation's military.
Robert Evans, Anonymous: 5 Terrifying Secrets of Hospital Emergency Rooms (Cracked)
Once, I was showing a new family-medicine doctor how to do his very first spinal tap -- a procedure in which a long, thin needle is jammed in between two vertebrae in the lower back. I started by having him watch a video of someone else doing it. On YouTube.
Ian Cheesman, Dustin Koski: "The 9 Most Badass Last Words Ever Uttered: Part 2" (Cracked)
Hello there, dear readers. We hope you're having a wonderful day. We just wanted to take a moment to remind you that you are most likely going to die in total obscurity. Sad, we know, but it doesn't have to be that way. While we can't all pioneer nanosurgery or discover the Higgs boson, we can all plot out something epic to say with our dying breath. Hopefully history will remember us for our sick burns and ballsy braggadocio, even if it forgets everything else. Hey, it worked for the folks below.
Joe Sacco: On Satire - a response to the Charlie Hebdo attacks (Guardian)
Cartoon.
Jonathan Jones: The art market is disgustingly inflated, yes - but surprisingly meritocratic (Guardian)
Marlene Dumas isn't the only artist to feel anxious about the money. Fortunately, though, it tends to be the best who benefit.
Why the art world needs to ditch the rich Russians (Guardian)
As Russian investors snap up an even greater stake in the contemporary art world, Jonathan Jones asks if there can ever be a truly independent art press.
Mark Hill: 5 Everyday Groups of People Society Says It's Okay to Mock (Cracked)
There's a rule in comedy that says you shouldn't punch down. It's okay to make fun of someone rich and famous, because they're too busy molesting groupies with 100-dollar bills to notice, but if you make a joke at the expense of a homeless person, you're just an asshole.
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wrote:
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took the day off.
Reader Suggestion
Michelle in AZ
Reader Assist
Milkweed in PA
This is what milkweed looks like in westerm PA.
MAM
Thanks, Marianne!
And, for comparison purposes, here's what milkweed looks like in CA.
(Still trying to get used to what it looks like here.)
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.
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
Rainy day.
Rolls Back Zero-Tolerance
LA
In the last three years, Marcquees Banks has been taken out of class twice and sent to another school for getting into fights.
The third time he got into a scuffle, something different happened: A counselor at Augustus Hawkins High School in South Los Angeles pulled Banks and the other teen aside and told them they needed to talk.
Seated face to face, Joseph Luciani asked them to explain why they'd fought and how they felt - part of the school's new approach to discipline that is catching on in urban districts and focuses more on students working out their differences with counselors than suspensions.
At Los Angeles Unified School District, the nation's second largest, the shift has been tectonic. Five years ago, students were scolded with 74,765 days of suspension; last year, they received 8,351, an 89 percent decrease.
The decline comes on the heels of a nationwide push to rollback zero-tolerance policies instituted after the deadly Columbine High School shootings that emphasize harsh discipline for even minor misbehavior in favor of support-focused alternatives.
LA
Baby Surprises Wildlife Experts
California Condor
A pair of California condors have produced a baby, surprising wildlife experts who said on Friday the endangered raptors had managed to secretly mate outside their careful monitoring.
Late last month, biologists noticed a "mystery" juvenile condor at a wildlife sanctuary in Big Sur, California, according to the Ventana Wildlife Society, a group that helps protect and observe the birds in their natural habitat.
The young bird was seen with two adult condors presumed to be its parents - and the bundle of joy, about 9-months-old, had been hatched and raised without the knowledge of biologists monitoring the region, the group said.
This was only the third unobserved pairing of condors in the wild since 1997, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.
The parents were identified as "Shadow" and "Wild 1," the group said. Shadow, the suspected father, has been active in the population, having produced two other chicks, the group said.
California Condor
Leader of His Own Pack
OR7
After an epic journey that made him the world's most famous, if lonesome, wolf, OR7 is now officially the leader of his own pack.
Wildlife officials this week designated OR7, also known as Journey, as the leader of the Rogue Pack in western Oregon, where the gray wolf settled after crossing back and forth into California from Oregon. In late 2011, OR7 became the first gray wolf in the Golden State since the last of his species was exterminated there in the 1920s.
The Rogue Pack is a small gang, consisting of OR7, his mate, and perhaps three of their offspring. But it signals that wolves are on the rise in Oregon.
Ironically, that could lead to the removal of some protections for the wolves if four breeding pairs produce pups for three consecutive years, according to Michelle Dennehy, a spokesperson for the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife.
OR7
Astronomer Gets Rare Look
Binary Pulsar
A B.C. astronomer helped uncover some of the secrets of a rare and mysterious occupant of our universe - a binary pulsar system - before it disappeared from view for the next 160 years.
Ingrid Stairs, a professor of astrophysics and astronomy at the University of British Columbia, spent the last decade examining the system called J1906 with an international team.
The system is 25,000 light years from Earth and consists of a pulsar - a highly magnetized, rapidly rotating neutron star - that orbits around a companion star in just under four hours.
The pulsar emits a lighthouse-like beam of radio waves that the team has been monitoring. But because the pulsar's spin axis "wobbles" like a spinning top, the region that emits the waves moves and eventually they no longer reach Earth.
"We would expect it to come back again eventually ... but (that) takes about 160 years," she said. "We sort of got lucky detecting the system when we did."
Binary Pulsar
Murderer Charged In Domestic Dispute
Zippy
George Zimmerman (R-Got Away With Murder), a former neighborhood watch volunteer acquitted in a fatal shooting of an unarmed black teenager in 2013, was charged with aggravated assault on Saturday after his arrest in connection with a domestic disturbance in Florida.
Zimmerman was arrested by Lake Mary police on Friday night after allegedly throwing a wine bottle in his girlfriend's direction earlier in the week, his attorney Donald West said.
West appeared at Zimmerman's side in a Seminole County court Saturday morning. Later Zimmerman was released, the Seminole County Sheriff's Office said.
"Mr. Zimmerman denies the accusation," said West, who was part of the defense team that represented Zimmerman during his trial in the shooting death of Trayvon Martin, 17, during a neighborhood watch patrol in Sanford two years ago. Zimmerman claimed he was acting in self-defense.
Zippy
Son Sentenced
Jackie Chan
The son of actor Jackie Chan pleaded guilty in a Beijing court Friday to providing a venue for drug users and was sentenced to six months in prison, following a major crackdown on illegal drugs in the Chinese capital.
Jaycee Chan, 32, also was ordered to pay 2,000 yuan, or about $320, the Dongcheng District People's Court in Beijing said on its microblog account.
Police detained Chan, Taiwanese movie star Ko Kai and several others in August in Chan's Beijing apartment. Chan and Ko tested positive for marijuana, and police seized more than 100 grams (3.5 ounces) of marijuana from Chan's home, the official Xinhua News Agency said.
"I violated the law. I deserve to be punished. When I return to society, I won't do it again," Chan said in courtroom footage aired on state broadcaster China Central Television.
Jackie Chan
Climate Change
Polar Bears
As climate change melts Arctic sea ice, Canadian polar bears seem to be migrating permanently from the south to take up year-round residence in the country's High Arctic islands.
The result? A decrease in genetic diversity that could hurt the species' chances of survival in coming decades.
Using blood samples from four Canadian polar bear populations, an international research team analyzed the DNA of each group. It found that over the last one to three generations a one-way flow of genetic material has developed, towards the Canadian Archipelago and its year-round supply of sea ice.
What this means on the ground is that the more southern polar bear populations are drifting northward, and then pretty much staying put, while no Archipelago bears are moving to the south.
This increases the risk of polar bears going extinct in the wild, because an animal population that become isolated may begin to inbreed and weaken genetically.
Polar Bears
Scientists Raise Concerns
Great Lakes
Scientists who have reported that the Great Lakes are awash in tiny bits of plastic are raising new alarms about a little-noticed form of the debris turning up in sampling nets: synthetic fibers from garments, cleaning cloths and other consumer products.
"When we launder our clothes, some of the little microfibers will break off and go down the drain to the wastewater treatment facility and end up in our bodies of water," Sherri "Sam" Mason, a chemist with the State University of New York at Fredonia, said Friday.
The fibers are so minuscule that people typically don't realize their favorite pullover fleece can shed thousands of them with every washing, as the journal Environmental Science & Technology reported in 2011.
Over the past couple of years, Mason and colleagues have documented the existence of microplastic litter - some too small to see with the naked eye - in the Great Lakes. Among the particles are abrasive beads used in personal care products such as facial and body washes and toothpastes. Other researchers have made similar finds in the oceans.
But microfibers have gotten comparatively little attention. They've accounted for about 4 per cent of the plastic litter that Mason and her students have collected from the Great Lakes. The group drags finely meshed netting along the lake surfaces, harvesting tens of thousands of particles per square mile, and study them with microscopes.
Great Lakes
Super-Speed Evolution
Lizards
A lizard's penis evolves six times faster than any of its other parts, a new study finds.
The study is the first to directly measure the evolution rate of the penis of any species, though researchers have long suspected that the male genitalia evolve faster than other body parts, said study researcher Julia Klaczko, a biologist at the University of Campinas in Brazil.
"What we see is, sometimes, very close species have very different hemipenes or genitalia," Klaczko told Live Science. Hemipenes are the pair of organs that make up the version of a penis found in snakes and lizards. But dramatic genital differences are seen among closely related animals with penises, as well.
Because penises are often so different even in species that otherwise look almost identical, researchers frequently use genitals to discriminate between different species. Klaczko and her team chose to measure the genitals of 25 species of Anolis, a group of lizards that live in the Caribbean. Anolis lizards are a well-studied group, and researchers have lots of information about the relationships between the species, as well as their habitats and body shapes, Klaczko said.
Lizards
In Memory
Francesco Rosi
Italian director and screenwriter Francesco Rosi, whose films took on corruption in postwar Italy, winning top honours at the Venice and Cannes film festivals, has died. He was 92.
Rosi's most famous works include "Hands over the City," a film about political corruption that won the won the Golden Lion at Venice in 1963, and "The Mattei Affair," which dealt with the mysterious death of an oil tycoon. It won the Golden Palm at Cannes in 1972.
Born in Naples, Rosi was an innovator of socially committed filmmaking that took on both controversy and corruption in Italian society.
In addition to the awards in Venice and Cannes, he won a Silver Bear in Berlin in 1961 with "Salvatore Giuliano," a film about a Sicilian bandit.
He was also honoured in 2012 with a Golden Lion for lifetime achievement for having left "an indelible mark on the history of Italian filmmaking."
The cause of Rosi's death wasn't released, but Corriere della Sera reported he had been suffering from bronchitis.
He is survived by daughter, Carolina, an actress. His wife of nearly 50 years, Giancarla Mandelli, died in 2010 at age 83, when her clothing caught fire from a cigarette.
Rosi's body will lie in state for mourners to pay tribute at Rome's Casa del Cinema on Monday.
Francesco Rosi
In Memory
Samuel Goldwyn Jr.
Samuel Goldwyn Jr., a champion of the independent film movement and son to one of the founding fathers of Hollywood cinema, has died. He was 88.
Goldwyn's son told the Los Angeles Times his father died Friday from congestive heart failure.
Goldwyn produced low-budget hits like "Mystic Pizza" starring Julia Roberts and "Cotton Comes to Harlem" in the 1970s and 80s. His company was one of the largest indie film operations. His final production credit was for "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty" in 2013.
Goldwyn's father was one of the founders of Paramount Studios.
In 1986, Goldwyn told the Times his goal was to appeal to sophisticated movie lovers. He said he was brought up in "a tradition of patience," seeing his father produce now classic films like "Wuthering Heights" that weren't an immediate success.
Samuel Goldwyn Jr.
In Memory
Taylor Negron
Veteran character actor and stand-up comedian Taylor Negron has died. He was 57.
Deadline Hollywood reported that Negron died after a long battle with cancer.
The Glendale-born comedian played memorable roles in movies like "Punchline," "Fast Times at Ridgemont High," "Easy Money," "Angels in the Outfield," "Stuart Little," "The Last Boy Scout" and his motion picture debut in "Young Doctors In Love."
He was usually cast as the snarky or high pizza delivery guy, waiter, nerd or doctor with edge. In fact, he played a pizza guy three times in the aforementioned "Fast Times," as well as"Bio-Dome" and "Vamps."
His TV credits include "The Hughleys," "Dream On," "Falcon Crest" and "Curb Your Enthusiasm."
Born Brad Taylor Negron, the comedian studied acting with famed teacher Lee Strasberg and comedy with Lucille Ball.
While never a big star or even a household name, if you asked most working comedians who one of their funniest contemporaries is, Negron's name would often come up. He worked extensively with more than 130 credits to his name.
Tom Hanks, who played a stand-up in "Punchline," credited Negron with teaching him the hard discipline and making him look believable on screen.
Negron was a cousin to Chuck Negron former lead singer of the 60s-70s pop and rock group Three Dog Night.
Taylor Negron
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