Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Ted Rall: CEO-BASHING FOR FUN AND PROFIT
Obama, Media Grandstand on Executive Pay.
Alexander Chancellor: My mother's response to my sister Sophia's death was to behave as if she had never existed (guardian.co.uk)
One way of dealing with unbearable pain must be to try to suppress all memories of its cause. But my brother believes he has suffered emotionally as a result.
Farhad Manjoo: Fear the Kindle (slate.com)
Amazon's amazing e-book reader is bad news for the publishing industry.
"'The Customer Is Always Wrong: Terrifying True Stories of Retail': edited by Jeff Martin" A Review by PAUL CONSTANT (thestranger.com)
Quite a few authors must rise through some level of retail drudgery on their way to literary fame and fortune, but you don't often see those jobs reflected in their later work. You could spend an entire day or two listing novels about writers, but the only enjoyable roman à clef about a crappy retail job that I can recall right now is The Mysteries of Pittsburgh, in which Michael Chabon recounts a job at "Boardwalk Books" and how the large, impersonal bookstore transformed books for him from objects of mystery and wonder into merchandise fit solely for commercial transaction.
MEGAN SELING: The Will to Interview Eugene Mirman (thestranger.com)
A Conversation with a Comedian About His New Satirical Self-Help Book.
Tom Danehy: Looking back on more than two decades of colleagues and hate mail (tucsonweekly.com)
I've been fortunate to know some great coaches in my life, including the legendary John Wooden, Lute Olson and Sahuaro High's Dick McConnell. They all have several things in common, but what stands out is that they all say they remember their losses more vividly than their wins.
WILL GOSNER: Growing up around the offices of the 'Weekly' left lasting impressions (tucsonweekly.com)
When I was a kid, my mom used to pick me up at school in our old station wagon. We'd grab some red chile burritos at the El Rio Bakery and then plop down in her office at the Tucson Weekly. At first, we went to a house downtown on Main Avenue, where the editor's office doubled as a playroom with a basket of toys. But it's at the address on Meyer Avenue where I locate all of my best Weekly memories.
DOUGLAS BIGGERS: The story of a little newspaper, now 25 years old, that almost didn't make it (tucsonweekly.com)
It should have died a quick and easy death, since it was started by two 24-year-olds with no money, limited experience and virtually no qualifications to assume the monikers of editor and publisher. The city had a nasty reputation for chewing up and spitting out all attempts to start publications that were alternatives to the daily papers. That the Tucson Weekly continues to thrive and can celebrate 25 years of publication is nothing short of a miracle.
LEO W. BANKS: Here's to my second-longest relationship--with the 'Tucson Weekly' (tucsonweekly.com)
I'm thinking of Ted Williams, the greatest hitter ever, and his final game at Fenway Park on Sept. 28, 1960. My father took me. In his last at-bat, the Splendid Splinter launched a home run, career No. 521, and the little ballpark rocked. What a spectacle, what theater, what joy.
Wendy Ide: "Anvil: the band who refused to die" (timesonline.co.uk)
A film about Anvil, the Canadian heavy-metal band that refuses to die, excites inevitable comparisons with the notorious rockumentary - but it's all true.
Walter Tunis: Drive-By Truckers are cruising again (McClatchy Newspapers)
Three tunes into "Brighter Than Creation's Dark," a typically literate and lyrically stark album of rural rock meditations by Drive-By Truckers, sits a song called "The Righteous Path."
Here I go again (guardian.co.uk)
She wrote "Mamma Mia!" Now she's back - with another story about a wedding. Lyn Gardner meets Catherine Johnson.
The Weekly Poll
New Question
The "Guilty by Association" Issue
Amnesty International is urging the suspension of US military aid to Israel in a report that details the recent use of US weapons in Gaza. (CommonDreams.org)
Do you support their call to do so or not?
Send your response, and a (short) reason why, to
Results next Tuesday.
One of the most memorable episodes of All In The Family featured an appearance by Sammy Davis, Jr. Who wrote that episode?
What was the first television program to earn Emmys for all of its principal cast members?
responded:
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Sunny and summery.
Some kids came by the house with a turtle they said they found in the alley. One of the boys remembered we had a lizard from when they visited on Halloween and thought we seemed gullible animal-friendly.
So, we have a turtle - at least temporarily.
Took it to the reptile shop where it was identified as a female red-eared slider turtle, at least 10 years old. Then they offered to sell us hundreds of dollars worth of crap to tend to it.
She's now in Jo the (lucky) lizard's spare terrarium, with a lovely rock to climb on.
The kid took some nice pictures of her and made 'Found' posters, and we put them up around the area.
Hope somebody claims her.
If not, my pal, Barbara at The Fish Lady.com, said she'd take her, but Barb's way the hell out in Tujunga.
The reptile store also offered to take her, too.
Figure we'll give it a week and see what happens.
French 'Oscars'
Cesar Awards
The French film industry honored Dustin Hoffman and saluted Sean Penn Friday during a ceremony that saw its coveted Cesar for best film going to Martin Provost's "Seraphine."
In all, "Seraphine" took seven Cesars, the French equivalent of the Oscars. The film is based on the magical true-life story of a painter known as Seraphine of Senlis. Paris' Musee Mayol recently exhibited her works.
Dustin Hoffman, 71, received a special Cesar, a day after the two-time Oscar winner was named an honorary commander in France's National Order of Arts and Letters.
This year's best-actor Oscar winner Sean Penn, a guest of honor, presented the best film award to Martin Provost for "Seraphine."
The "Milk" star's own movie, "Into the Wild," missed the best foreign film award which went to the Israeli animated documentary by Ari Folman "Valse avec Bachir" (Waltz With Bashir).
The French school drama "Entre les murs" (The Class) - which won the Cannes film festival last year - took home the Cesar for best adaptation. The Paris high school class that the film was based on presented the award for best set design - which went to Thierry Francois for "Seraphine."
Cesar Awards
Take Aim At `Clean Coal'
Coen Brothers
The Coen brothers, who won Academy Awards for "Fargo" and "No Country for Old Men," have turned their sardonic sights on the coal industry.
Joel and Ethan Coen directed a TV commercial attacking the notion that coal can be an environmentally safe way to produce electricity.
About 600 coal-burning plants supply nearly half the nation's power, but critics say coal is a major contributor to global warming.
The commercial, which began airing Thursday on cable TV channels, plays like an air freshener ad. A smiling pitchman extolls the virtues of a black spray can labeled "clean coal." But when a suburban housewife uses it, the can spews a black cloud that gives her family coughing fits. The ad ends with the line, "In reality, there's no such thing as clean coal."
Coen Brothers
Replaces Cookware
Chef Emeril Lagasse
Chef Emeril Lagasse says he felt so bad when he heard a woman lost one of his trademark pans while warding off home intruders that he's replacing the item. Lagasse is sending 70-year-old Ellen Basinski a whole new set of his signature cookware.
She used her favorite pan to fight the intruders at her home west of Cleveland on Tuesday. Police then took it from her to be used as evidence.
Basinski was on the phone with her husband when the teens pushed their way into her home.
Her husband, Lorain County Judge David Basinski, overheard the scuffle, called 911 and raced home. Meanwhile, his wife says she grabbed the 5-quart saucepan and hit one teen, who was going through her purse.
Chef Emeril Lagasse
Old Shows For Sale
Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker
An Atlanta investment banker is auctioning off more than 15,000 videotaped episodes of Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker's iconic Christian talk show.
"The PTL Club," which aired from 1974 to 1987, featured Jim Bakker offering upbeat sermons from a couch and Tammy Faye, wearing her trademark heavy mascara, singing about Jesus. Most episodes were taped at their empire - which included a hotel, campground and theme park - just south of Charlotte.
The 15,069 hourlong tapes went to a Charlotte church, then a cable content provider, said Ben Dyer, president of Gospel Properties.
The cable provider defaulted on a loan from Dyer's company and he got the tapes, which he plans to auction in San Francisco on March 27.
Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker
Sued For $4 Million
Bruce Willis
Actor Bruce Willis and his production company are being sued in Los Angeles for $4 million for breach of contract.
The lawsuit filed Friday alleges Willis Brother Films agreed on a contract with three companies to produce the feature film "Three Stories About Joan," which Willis was to star in and direct.
The lawsuit alleges that on Sept. 29 Willis quit as director without notice in violation of the agreement.
Henry Gradstein, attorney for the companies suing Willis, says the courts will resolve the matter. He had no further comment.
Bruce Willis
Thieves Use Cat To Trigger Stampede
Somaliland
Thieves caused chaos outside a Somaliland mosque late on Thursday when they took advantage of a power cut to throw a stray cat into the crowd, triggering a stampede so they could rob worshippers.
Large screens had been set up outside Hargeisa's packed Ali Matan Mosque so thousands of people could watch a sermon by Sheikh Moustafa Hagi Ismael Hassan, one of the Horn of Africa country's most senior Muslim clerics.
But when a short circuit cast the downtown area into darkness, the sheikh said gangsters hurled a feral cat into the centre of the crowd, causing a commotion. During the stampede, the robbers grabbed mobile phones and money.
Suleiman Abdillahi Qafil, who owns a nearby restaurant, told reporters he saw at least three children hurt in the melee. Tables and chairs outside his small business were wrecked.
Somaliland
Unearthed In Boulder, Colorado
Clovis-Age Artifacts
Landscapers were digging a hole for a fish pond in the front yard of a Boulder home last May when they heard a "chink" that didn't sound right. Just some lost tools. Some 13,000-year-old lost tools. They had stumbled onto a cache of more than 83 ancient tools buried by the Clovis people - ice age hunter-gatherers who remain a puzzle to anthropologists.
The home's owner, Patrick Mahaffy, thought they were only a century or two old before contacting researchers at the University of Colorado-Boulder.
"My jaw just dropped," said CU anthropologist Douglas Bamforth, who is leading a study of the find. "Boulder is a densely populated area. And in the midst of all that to find this cache."
The cache is one of only a handful of Clovis-age artifacts uncovered in North America, said Bamforth.
The tools reveal an unexpected level of sophistication, Bamforth said, describing the design as "unnecessarily complicated," artistic and utilitarian at the same time.
Clovis-Age Artifacts
Ancient Language
Southwest Script
When archaeologists on a dig in southern Portugal last year flipped over a heavy chunk of slate and saw writing not used for more than 2,500 years, they were elated.
The enigmatic pattern of inscribed symbols curled symmetrically around the upper part of the rough-edged, yellowish stone tablet and coiled into the middle in a decorative style typical of an extinct Iberian language called Southwest Script.
"We didn't break into applause, but almost," says Amilcar Guerra, a University of Lisbon lecturer overseeing the excavation. "It's an extraordinary thing."
For more than two centuries, scientists have tried to decipher Southwest Script, believed to be the peninsula's oldest written tongue and, along with Etruscan from modern-day Italy, one of Europe's first. The stone tablet features 86 characters and provides the longest-running text of the Iron Age language ever found.
Southwest Script
Conservatives Are Biggest Consumers
Porn In The USA
Americans may paint themselves in increasingly bright shades of red and blue, but new research finds one thing that varies little across the nation: the liking for online pornography.
A new nationwide study (pdf) of anonymised credit-card receipts from a major online adult entertainment provider finds little variation in consumption between states.
However, there are some trends to be seen in the data. Those states that do consume the most porn tend to be more conservative and religious than states with lower levels of consumption, the study finds.
The biggest consumer, Utah, averaged 5.47 adult content subscriptions per 1000 home broadband users; Montana bought the least with 1.92 per 1000. "The differences here are not so stark," Edelman says.
Eight of the top 10 pornography consuming states gave their electoral votes to John McCain in last year's presidential election - Florida and Hawaii were the exceptions. While six out of the lowest 10 favoured Barack Obama.
Porn In The USA
In Memory
Paul Harvey
Paul Harvey, the news commentator and talk-radio pioneer whose staccato style made him one of the nation's most familiar voices, died Saturday in Arizona, according to ABC Radio Networks. He was 90.
Harvey died surrounded by family at a hospital in Phoenix, where he had a winter home, said Louis Adams, a spokesman for ABC Radio Networks, where Harvey worked for more than 50 years. No cause of death was immediately available.
Harvey had been forced off the air for several months in 2001 because of a virus that weakened a vocal cord. But he returned to work in Chicago and was still active as he passed his 90th birthday. His death comes less than a year after that of his wife and longtime producer, Lynne.
Known for his resonant voice and trademark delivery of "The Rest of the Story," Harvey had been heard nationally since 1951, when he began his "News and Comment" for ABC Radio Networks.
His fans identified with his plainspoken political commentary, but critics called him an out-of-touch conservative. He was an early supporter of the late Sen. Joseph McCarthy and a longtime backer of the Vietnam War.
Harvey was born Paul Harvey Aurandt in Tulsa, Okla. His father, a police officer, was killed when he was a toddler. A high school teacher took note of his distinctive voice and launched him on a broadcast career.
While working at St. Louis radio station KXOK, he met Washington University graduate student Lynne Cooper. He proposed on their first date (she said "no") and always called her "Angel." They were married in 1940 and had a son, Paul Jr.
Paul Harvey
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