Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Marc Dion: Forgetting the Boys in Afghanistan (Creators Syndicate)
Kim Kardashian's ass gets more press than some 19-year-old rendered legless by a roadside bomb. And why not? A blind man can find Kardashian's ass, but a wizard couldn't find that kid's legs. If you can't see it, it ain't there.
Joan Bakewell: What would you save from a fire? I rescued Eeyore (Telegraph)
The small personal items that tell the story of someone's life have been one of the sad casualties in the Australia fires.
Scott Burns: Means-Testing Social Security (AssetBuilder)
"Means-testing" seems to be a quick solution for the inadequate funding of future Social Security benefits. What few understand is that Social Security is already means-tested. In fact, it is means tested twice.
Martin Stephen: I had a stroke of good luck with my stroke (Telegraph)
Martin Stephen knows what the broadcaster Andrew Marr is going through with his stroke - but with quick treatment the brain can make a great recovery.
SNEJANA FARBEROV: "Faces of change: Amazing time lapse video captures transsexual's three-year transformation from man to woman" (Daily Mail)
An incredible time lapse video was posted on YouTube by a user nicknamed iiGethii stringing together scores of photos showing her gradual facial metamorphosis.
Dave Simpson: "Marianne Faithfull: 'I don't think I had any choice but to be decadent'" (Guardian)
The star of pop and film talks to Dave Simpson about being cast as a sex kitten of the 60s, drugs, homelessness, and why she will never sell Mick Jagger's love letters.
Eddie Deezen: The Only Number One Song Recorded by a Father and Daughter (Neatorama)
"Something Stupid" was a love song written by C. Carson Parks in 1966. In fact, Parks himself had recorded the original version with his wife, Gaile. But it was a cover version of a year later that was destined to become the classic.
This is the best magic trick on the internet (io9)
You deserve a magic trick of the highest caliber. Here you go.
Amazing Last-Second Shot (YouTube)
"Eighth grader Matt DeMember made an unbelievable shot that just beat the buzzer in a youth basketball game at Greenridge Baptist Church in Maryland. Not only did he get a great reaction from the crowd, but later ESPN tweeted the video. It's a kid's dream come true!"--Neatorama
Floor Show at Tim Horton's (YouTube)
These adorable old men brightened the day for Tim Horton's customers by breaking into song in the middle of a GTA coffee shop.
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From The Creator of 'Avery Ant'
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Sunny, clear and cold.
Kennedy Interview
Charlie Rose
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is convinced that a lone gunman wasn't solely responsible for the assassination of his uncle, President John F. Kennedy, and said his father believed the Warren Commission report was a "shoddy piece of craftsmanship."
Kennedy and his sister, Rory, spoke about their family Friday night while being interviewed in front of an audience by Charlie Rose at the Winspear Opera House in Dallas. The event comes as a year of observances begins for the 50th anniversary of the president's death.
Their uncle was killed on Nov. 22, 1963, while riding in a motorcade through Dallas. Five years later, their father was assassinated in a Los Angeles hotel while celebrating his win in the California Democratic presidential primary.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said his father spent a year trying to come to grips with his brother's death, reading the work of Greek philosophers, Catholic scholars, Henry David Thoreau, poets and others "trying to figure out kind of the existential implications of why a just God would allow injustice to happen of the magnitude he was seeing."
He said his father thought the Warren Commission, which concluded Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone in killing the president, was a "shoddy piece of craftsmanship." He said that he, too, questioned the report.
Charlie Rose
Drum Major Award
Louis Gossett Jr.
Oscar-winning actor Louis Gossett Jr. has become the first out-of-state resident honored by a Utah human rights group.
The 76-year-old Gossett received the Drum Major Award from the Martin Luther King Jr. Utah Human Rights Commission during a luncheon Friday in West Valley City.
Then-Gov. Michael Leavitt signed an executive order creating the commission in 1999 in an effort to promote principles of human rights.
Gossett stressed the importance of education and being sensitive to other cultures during an address to a crowd of about 200.
Louis Gossett Jr.
Getty Museum To Return Artifact
Sicily
The J. Paul Getty Museum said Thursday it plans to return to Sicily a terra-cotta head depicting the Greek god Hades after determining it was clandestinely excavated from an archaeological site in the 1970s.
The museum took the initiative to investigate the piece's origins after seeing fragments in a publication that could join to the head, which dates to about 300 or 400 B.C., according to Timothy Potts, the museum's director.
The Getty acquired the piece in 1985, and Potts said it's believed it was taken from the Morgantina Archaeological Park in Italy in the 1970s.
The Getty purchased the piece from New York collector Maurice Tempelsman. It is among more than 40 pieces the museum has returned to Greece and Italy in recent years.
Sicily
Major Collection To Auction
Judaica
Philanthropist and former Wall Street money manager Michael Steinhardt began collecting objects of Jewish history and culture three decades ago, eventually amassing a trove of manuscripts, textiles and art worth millions of dollars.
Now, the 72-year-old wants to sell his more than 500-piece collection so others can enjoy it.
Sotheby's will auction the collection in New York on April 29 after exhibiting it in Moscow and Jerusalem and offering special presentations in Hong Kong, Singapore, Brazil and several European and U.S. cities.
Among the highlights is a Torah from the 15th century with an estimated value of $4.5 million to $6 million.
The manuscript known as the Frankfurt Mishneh Torah has text by the Middle Age Jewish philosopher Moses Maimonides. It is the second of a two-volume manuscript featuring six large illustrations plus 32 smaller images and marginal decorations. The first volume is housed in the Vatican.
Judaica
Palms Faces $1M Fine
Vegas
The company that owns the Palms Casino Resort said Friday it will pay $1 million in fines after employees of casino nightclubs accepted payments to supply prostitutes, cocaine and pain pills in a series of stings last year.
The Nevada Gaming Control Board detailed the shady dealings in a complaint filed Friday, and the owner of the Palms, FP Holdings LP, said it would to pay the penalty for failing to prevent the illegal transactions.
Among other offenses, the complaint said employees of NM Ventures LLC and NM Ventures II LLC, which operates the nightclubs, offered to sell undercover agents ecstasy, the prescription painkiller oxycodone, and $18,000 worth of cocaine last March.
In one sting, a bottle runner at Rain nightclub agreed to track down prostitutes for a patron. After failing to find the women, the runner reached into a front pocket and produced $100 of cocaine for the undercover agent.
Authorities said they targeted the Palms because they suspected its nightclubs. The last comparable operation took place at the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino three years ago, Logue said.
Vegas
"Storage Wars" Porn Lawsuit
Brandi Passante
"Storage Wars" star Brandi Passante has won a legal victory over the man accused of distributing a fake pornographic video of her on the Internet.
Or, at least, the alleged porn-monger has suffered a legal setback.
Federal judge James V. Selna of U.S. District Court in Central California found Hunter Moore, former operator of the website Is Anyone Up, in contempt of court on Tuesday. Selna ruled Moore failed to comply with a preliminary injunction ordering him to remove the images of Passante from the websites that he posted them to.
According to the order issued by Selna, if Moore has not "purged his contempt" (presumably, meaning "removed the images," but feel free to supply your own mental imagery) by the time he has received the order, he will be fined $50 for each day that he fails to comply with the injunction.
After that, the fine increases to $100 per day, and a warrant for his arrest will be issued if he fails to comply after 14 days.
Brandi Passante
Judge Lifts Ban On Horse Roundup
Nevada
The Bureau of Land Management can resume its roundup of dozens of wild mustangs in northern Nevada, but wranglers must limit their use of electric cattle prods and take other steps to ensure the animals are treated humanely, a federal judge said Thursday.
U.S. District Judge Miranda Du's formal order lifted an injunction she issued last week blocking the roundup of 50 horses near the Idaho-Nevada line.
Although disappointed that the roundup was set to resume Friday, horse protection advocates were pleased that Du's order outlined specific conduct for the BLM.
The judge prohibited the routine use of "hot shot/electric prod treatments" to expedite movement of horses through gathering and loading chutes, allowing their use only "as necessary to ensure the safety and security of the horses."
Also, BLM contract helicopter pilots who chase the horses toward the gathering traps must make sure that slower young foals aren't separated from the herd. And the judge specifically forbade the agency from driving horses into barbed-wire fences, as they did with several earlier in the roundup at the Owyhee complex about 90 miles northwest of Elko.
Nevada
Staffers Claim They Aren't Getting Paid
Mrs. Bachmann
On Thursday a high-level staffer for Congresswoman Michele Bachmann's failed presidential campaign issued a press release alleging that Bachmann's finance chairman refuses to pay a number of former staffers because they declined to sign a non-disclosure agreement that "prohibits any discussion of any criminal, moral, and/or unethical behavior witnessed during Mrs. Bachmann's campaign in Iowa." That's a not-quite-veiled allusion, Salon suggests, to allegations that the Bachmann campaign illegally accessed a list of Iowa-area homeschooling families and emailed them solicitations. Bachmann's campaign responded to Waldron's claims by denying them:
Mr Waldren's presentation of the facts and related allegations are false and inaccurate. Why Mr Waldren would be motivated to attempt to disparage the Congresswoman, the campaign, or fellow campaign members I can't explain.
The campaign acknowledged a handful of outstanding invoices, and said that it's paid off "in excess of 90% of [Bachmann's] Presidential Campaign debt," but elided any mention of the non-disclosure agreements it supposedly asked staffers to sign. And, if you read the PR-ese closely enough, the campaign isn't denying any of the allegations - just former Bachmann for President National Field Coordinator Peter Waldron's "presentation" of them.
This would not be the first time Bachmann staffers have clashed with the law - Waldron himself was detained in Uganda, in 2006, for carrying an assault rifle. Nor would it be the campaign's first public spat: Bachmann has a well-documentedhistory of alienating staffers. (In October 2011, her New Hampshire campaign staff quit en masse.)
Mrs. Bachmann
Pants On Fire
"Badge of Honor"
It took 15 minutes for former vice president Al Gore to reject Glenn Beck's offer to buy Current TV - a point of pride for the former Fox News host-turned-media entrepreneur.
Beck told Fox News's Bill "Poppa Bear" O'Reilly on Thursday that it was a "badge of honor" to not be "anywhere close to his agenda, to his values."
"Did you really make an offer to buy this dopey network?" O'Reilly asked Beck, who has previously said he attempted to buy Gore's nascent cable network, sold recently to Qatar-based Al Jazeera.
"We debated back and forth because I think it was worth about half of what they paid," said Beck, who offered to make a bid for Current. "They said, 'We actually have to go to the vice president - we're going to call you back.'"
"'The vice president has a reputation and under no circumstance will he ever entertain an offer from Glenn Beck,'" Beck recalled the Current representatives saying. "His legacy of his network was too important, so he sold it to Al Jazeera."
Beck went on to accuse Al Jazeera of conspiring to hide Osama bin Laden. he also said the network supports the stoning of women and homosexuals in the streets of Qatar.
"Badge of Honor"
In Memory
John Wilkinson
Rhythm guitar player John Wilkinson, who performed with Elvis Presley more than a thousand times, has died at his home in southwest Missouri. He was 67.
Wilkinson passed away Friday at his home in Springfield after a fight with cancer, according to a family spokesman and the Gorman-Scharpf Funeral Home. Priscilla and Lisa Marie Presley offered their "deepest sympathy" to his family, saying in a statement that "John and the beautiful music he made with Elvis will live forever in our hearts."
Wilkinson first met Elvis Presley when he was 10 years old after sneaking into his dressing room before a show at the Shrine Mosque in Springfield. He amused Presley when he told him, "You can't play guitar worth a damn."
After the chance meeting, Wilkinson developed a name for himself as a singer and guitarist, performing with such groups as The New Christy Minstrels.
He was 23 when Presley saw him perform on a television show in Los Angeles in 1968, and asked him to join the TCB Band - not knowing he was the youngster who insulted his playing a decade earlier, Ellison recalled.
Wilkinson went on to play 1,200 shows as Presley's rhythm guitar player until the legendary singer's death in 1977.
Even after suffering a stroke in 1989 that left him unable to play the guitar, Wilkinson continued singing with fellow musicians, including the old TCB Band (the acronym stood for Taking Care of Business), and also made a living in retail and airline services management.
He is survived by his wife, Terry. A private graveside service is planned.
John Wilkinson
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