Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Ocean trench: Take a dive 11,000m down (BBC)
Icy cold, pitch black and with crushing pressures -- the deepest part of the ocean is one of the most hostile places on the planet. Only two explorers have made the epic journey there: 11km (seven miles) down to the bottom of the Pacific Ocean's Mariana Trench. As a new wave of explorers is gearing up to repeat this remarkable dive, take a look at the mysterious world that they will be plunging into.
Michael Weinberg: The DIY Copyright Revolution (Slate)
How 3-D printing will change the way we think about intellectual property.
Susan Estrich: Taking Care (Creators Syndicate)
The news from Sloan Kettering that colonoscopy measurably saves lives will certainly make me feel better when I start drinking the liquid the night before mine. But really, what my doctors have been telling me from their own experience is why, as much as I hate doing it, I'm pretty religious about the timetable.
Eddie Deezen: 13 Women Who Won an Academy Award by Playing a Hooker (Neatorama)
Okay, maybe it's pure sexism, but the surest way an actress can grab a Best Actress or Best Supporting Actress Academy Award is by playing a prostitute. Whether a "hooker with a heart of gold," a high-class call girl, or a destitute woman who turned to the streets, any actress knows well that if she takes on a role dealing with this occupation, she had a better shot at an Oscar win.
Bronnie Ware: Regrets of the Dying (inspirationandchai.com)
When questioned about any regrets they had or anything they would do differently, common themes surfaced again and again. Here are the most common five: 1. I wish I'd had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.
Margaret Cho: How I Overcame Childhood Bullying (Huffington Post)
My former bullies pay extra to come backstage and meet me after shows, and I pretend not to know them in front of their friends. It is the most divine pleasure to exact the revenge of the brutalized child that resides within.
Maria Bustillos: Romance Novels, The Last Great Bastion Of Underground Writing (The Awl)
Romance novels are feminist documents. They're written almost exclusively by women, for women, and are concerned with women: their relations in family, love and marriage, their place in society and the world, and their dreams for the future. Romances of the Golden Age are rife with the sociopolitical limitations of their period, it must be said. They're exclusively hetero, and exclusively white, for example. Even so, they can be strangely sublime.
Brian Palmer: The Real Caveman Diet (Slate)
Did people eat fruits and vegetables in prehistoric times?
Some Good Advice For Mrs. Clark (Sofapizza)
"Kids have a knack for cutting through the BS and telling it like it is, especially when it comes to handing out advice. The brilliant 6 year old that wrote up this note for Mrs. Clark has some really sound advice about a shortcut to feeling better-just go poop!" -- Neatorama
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
Sunny and breezy.
Spent part of the afternoon tracking down a vile smell in the garage. Turned out to be an opposum, a few days past just being dead. Ack.
Here's a complete list of Razzies - 2012 Nominations
Saturday Night
Independent Spirit Awards
The Independent Spirit Awards, art house cinema's equivalent of the Oscars, on Saturday handed out honors for the best films and performances of 2012 among movies made outside Hollywood's major studios. Following is a list of winners at the event that is sponsored by Los Angeles-based group, Film Independent.
Feature film - "The Artist"
Lead actor - Jean Dujardin, "The Artist"
Lead actress - Michelle Williams, "My Week with Marilyn"
Supporting actor - Christopher Plummer, "Beginners"
Supporting actress - Shailene Woodley, "The Descendants"
For the complete list: Independent Spirit Awards
Nominations Announced
The Razzies
When Adam Sandler's bad, he's really bad, according to voters for the Razzies, an Academy Awards spoof that singles out the worst movies of the year.
Sandler received a record 11 nominations Saturday for the Razzies as star, producer or writer on three 2011 movies - "Jack and Jill," ''Just Go with It" and "Bucky Larson: Born to Be a Star."
That more than doubled the previous record of five Razzie nominations held by Eddie Murphy for 2007's "Norbit."
Razzie nominations were released on the eve of the Oscars. Winners will be announced on April Fool's Day.
The group traditionally has announced its nominees the day before the Oscar nominations and its winners the night before the Oscars. But Wilson and the roughly 600 voting members for the Razzies decided to experiment with an April 1 date this time, figuring April Fool's Day was an ideal time for their mock ceremony.
The Razzies
Complete List of the Razzie Nominations
Opposed To Keystone XL Line
Ted Turner
CNN founder Ted Turner is opposing construction of the Keystone XL oil pipeline, which would be built close to his buffalo ranch in South Dakota.
The pipeline would deliver oil from Canada's Alberta province to the U.S. Gulf Coast, running through Montana, Nebraska and South Dakota in the Great Plains.
CNN recently broadcast a commentary in which Turner says the pipeline shouldn't be built.
The manager of Turner's 141,000-acre (57,000-hectare) buffalo ranch southwest of Pierre says the pipeline would cross the Bad River about 15 miles (24 kilometers) upstream from the ranch. The river flows through Turner's property.
Manager Tom LeFaive tells the Rapid City Journal the project should at least guarantee that a percentage of the Canadian crude oil is used in the United States.
Ted Turner
Cancels Vegas Shows
Celine Dion
Singer Celine Dion has canceled several upcoming concerts in Las Vegas because of a virus.
Caesars Palace officials say her doctor advised her to rest for a week to recover from the virus, which caused an inflammation of her vocal cords. Shows scheduled for Friday, Sunday, Tuesday and Wednesday were canceled at the resort's Colosseum.
Her next scheduled concert there is March 3.
Caesars spent $95 million to build the Colosseum for Dion in 2003, complete with a humidifier to protect her voice
Celine Dion
Academy Unhappy But Helpless To Stop
Oscar Auction
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is not pleased with plans to auction off 15 Oscar statuettes from such films as "Citizen Kane," ''Wuthering Heights" and "Little Women."
But the academy says its hands are tied in blocking the Tuesday sale by Nate D. Sanders Auctions because the statuettes were awarded prior to 1950, when a "winners agreement" was instituted banning the sale of Oscars.
"Oscars should be won, not purchased," the academy said in a statement, adding that it had no "legal means of stopping the commoditization of these particular statuettes."
The Sanders Co. expects its total Oscar inventory, which includes Herman Mankiewicz's 1941 screenplay award for "Citizen Kane," to command more than $1 million.
Oscar Auction
Ticket 'Fiasco'
Burning Man
The biggest prior threats to Burning Man's annual regeneration in the Black Rock Desert were U.S. land use laws, undercover cops and the media-perpetuated perception that the largest outdoor arts festival in North America is really just an excuse to get naked and do drugs.
But that was before the teeth-gnashing "ticket fiasco."
"The hard truth is that there are a lot of you who want to come to Black Rock City to celebrate your participation in the Burning Man culture this year, but not everyone will be able to attend," organizers said in an apologetic email - this after a lottery ticket sale intended to keep attendance below the federally permitted cap blew up in their faces.
The counter-culture celebration open to all under the principal of "radical inclusion" sold out for the first time last year with a crowd in excess of 53,000, forcing organizers to make plans to sell the bulk of the 2012 tickets through random drawings. But it wasn't until recently that many regulars got word they may not get in to this year's psychedelic adventure combining wilderness camping with avant-garde performance.
Officials acknowledged in a Feb. 15 email that the lottery had left "an inordinately large" core of longtime contributors ticketless, punching "significant holes" in the artistic, civic and functional infrastructure and "putting the integrity of the event itself at risk."
Burning Man
Amazing Race Producer
Jeff Rice
An American television producer found dead on a hotel balcony in Uganda last week died after taking contaminated cocaine, police and a private investigator said on Saturday.
An official toxicology report confirmed the narcotic was in Jeff Rice's blood, dispelling initial suspicions the father-of-two known for his work on the U.S. show "The Amazing Race," had been poisoned by attackers.
Rice, who was found slumped over a table bleeding through the nose and mouth, died of asphyxiation, a post mortem showed. Drug users who fall unconscious risk inhaling vomit.
Brad Nathanson, a private investigator and friend of Rice, said he had been shown the toxicology report by police and there was no evidence of "foul play" in Rice's death.
Rice's assistant, identified by police as Kathryne Fuller, was found unconscious at the same time Rice's body was discovered on February 18 at the Serena hotel in the capital, Kampala. She is now conscious but paralyzed down the right hand side of her body.
Rice and Fuller were believed to have voluntarily consumed the drugs, meaning Fuller could be prosecuted under Uganda's drug laws. Drug use can carry a jail term in Uganda.
Jeff Rice
Art Collection Found
Doksany Monastery
A Czech writer and publisher has discovered seven paintings once owned by Nazi German dictator Adolf Hitler at a Czech monastery, part of an art collection deemed lost for decades.
Jiri Kuchar, who wrote two books on the collection, said Friday the paintings found at the Doksany monastery 50 kilometres (30 miles) north of Prague were worth about 50 million koruna (two million euros, $2.7 million).
The collection was deposited at the southern Czech monastery of Vyssi Brod during World War II, together with two larger collections formerly owned by German-born Jewish banker Fritz Mannheimer and the Rothschild family.
"The monks who got the monastery back after the war said they didn't want the paintings," said Kuchar, describing their journey through several castles and monasteries before ending up at Doksany, where he discovered them last July.
Kuchar began his research five years ago with pictures of the collection taken while it was still at Vyssi Brod.
Doksany Monastery
Contents Autioned
The Milhous Collection
Two brothers who spent a lifetime traveling the world and buying one-of-a-kind items have auctioned off their collection, with one of their antique cars fetching more than $3 million.
Two days of bidding on 550 lots neared their conclusion with the biggest sale of them all, $3.3 million for the only known surviving 1912 Oldsmobile Limited, more than double its pre-auction estimate.
All told, the winning bids were expected to total around $40 million, though organizers were still tallying the sales after the auction ended.
Bob Milhous, 75, and his brother Paul Milhous, 73, spent decades building their collection. The Milhous Collection, as it has become known, is housed in a 39,000-square-foot building.
The Milhous Collection
Work To Be Auctioned
Roy Lichtenstein
A work by Roy Lichtenstein is going on the auction block in New York City. The presale estimate is up to $40 million.
"Sleeping Girl" is from the estate of Beatrice and Phillip Gersh of Los Angeles. It'll be offered at Sotheby's on May 9.
The philanthropists bought it in 1964. It's been exhibited only once. That was in 1989-90 at the Museum of Contemporary Art in L.A.
"Sleeping Girl" is among a series of sexy comic book-inspired images Lichtenstein created in the 1960s. It shows a woman with closed eyes and flowing blond hair.
Roy Lichtenstein
No Longer Official
Mademoiselle
Official French documents will no longer force women to reveal their marital status by requiring them to choose the title Mademoiselle or Madame.
French Prime Minister Francois Fillon has ordered all regional and local governments to remove the title "Mademoiselle" -- used for unmarried women and implying a youthful immaturity -- from official documents.
From now on, people filling out government forms will get just two choices: Madame or Monsieur.
The change, signed in a memo to regional and local governments by Fillon this week, comes after lobbying from women's groups who argued that Mademoiselle is sexist. Its male equivalent -- Monsieur -- does not distinguish marital status.
Respondents on official documents will also no longer be asked to supply their maiden names, their father's last name, or the name of their husbands.
Mademoiselle
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