Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Daniel Gross: Is 2010 Going To Be 1994 or 1934? (slate.com)
The economy is recovering, which means Democrats may not get routed in November.
Daniel Gross: Cash Is King (slate.com)
American companies-and consumers-are borrowing much, much less. That's good news.
Melinda Wenner Moyer: End the War on Fat (slate.com)
It could be making us sicker.
Bill Press: The End of the World as We Know It (billpressshow.com)
My advice: Before rushing into repeal, Republicans and their tea bagger friends might well learn a lesson from history. In 1936, one year after Franklin Roosevelt made Social Security the law of the land, Republican Alf Landon ran against him on the slogan: "Repeal Social Security." He carried two states. As with FDR's Social Security, so with Barack Obama's health care reform. Once it kicks in, once Americans realize what a good deal it is for their families, only an idiot would vote to repeal it.
HOW DID YOUR REPRESENTATIVE VOTE ON HEALTH REFORM?
Check here, and then, if you wish, email your representative.
Jim Hightower: Just How Nutty is the Texas Board of Education?
Right-wing fanatics are turning "Texas education" into an oxymoron.
MAUREEN DOWD: Eraser Duty for Bart? (nytimes.com)
Angry nuns have been calling Congressman Bart Stupak's office to complain about his dismissive comments on their bravura decision to make a literal Hail Mary pass, break with Catholic bishops and endorse the health care bill.
Kick-Ass - an interview with its creator (guardian.co.uk)
Mark Millar, a lay preacher, has shot to Hollywood fame with his comic book characters. Richard Bath talks to him.
'A bunch of dead muscles, thinking' (guardian.co.uk)
Motor neurone disease has left the historian Tony Judt quadriplegic and, he tells Ed Pilkington, has forced him to think about what it really means to be human. The result is an astonishing series of essays and a determination to get young people thinking collectively again.
Laura Barton: "Charlotte Church: 'I've just gotta sing'" (guardian.co.uk)
Child star, pop star, TV star ... Charlotte Church did it all and then disappeared from view. Now she's back - with TV show 'Over the Rainbow' and a new album.
Kieran Yat: "Erykah Badu: 'I'm not a feminist, I'm a humanist'" (guardian.co.uk)
The neo-soul singer talks sinister melodies and special relationships ahead of her fifth album.
Stuart O'Connor: "Emily Watson: 'I'd like to take revenge on spammers'" (guardian.co.uk)
Actor Emily Watson loves email because it means she doesn't have to talk to people.
Camilla Long: The Robsession with Twilight's star (timesonline.co.uk)
Girls strip off for him, fans mob his set, but sweet little Robert Pattinson still struggles with his sex scenes.
The Weekly Poll
New Question
The 'Health Care Deformed: Winners and Losers...' Edition
The House of Representatives has passed a Health Care 'Reform' Bill... 'The Man' will sign it and it'll be a done deal... So be it... Now then, Poll-fans, I ask...
What will the President's proposal mean for you? An interactive guide.
Who do you see as the long term Winners and Losers in this imbroglio?
A.) The People
B.) The Democrats
C.) The Republicans
D.) The Insurance companies | Big Pharma | Wall Street vultures
E.) Everybody wins
F.) Everybody loses
G.) How in the hell should I know?
Pick and Choose! Mix and Match! Name names! Point fingers! Rant and Rave!
Praise or excoriate! Let it all out! Have some fun, it'll be therapeutic!
(We're all about fun and wellness here, dontcha know!)
Send your response to
replied:
From The Creator of 'Avery Ant'
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
The heat wave returned. Yikes.
Cities Worldwide Unplug
Earth Hour
Europe's best known landmarks - including the Eiffel Tower, Big Ben and Rome's Colosseum - fell dark Saturday, following Sydney's Opera House and Beijing's Forbidden City in joining a global climate change protest, as lights were switched off across the world to mark the Earth Hour event.
In the U.S., organizers said some of the participating landmarks would be the Mt. Rushmore presidential monument, the glittering Las Vegas strip and the marquee lights of Broadway theaters in New York.
Millions of people were turning off lights and appliances for an hour from 8:30 p.m. in a gesture to highlight environmental concerns and to call for a binding pact to cut greenhouse gas emissions. This year's was the fourth annual Earth Hour, organized by the World Wildlife Fund.
Some 4,000 cities in more than 120 countries - starting with the remote Chatham Islands off the coast of New Zealand - voluntarily switched off Saturday to reduce energy consumption, though traffic lights and other safety features were unaffected, organizers said.
Earth Hour
Hollywood Walk O'Fame
Dennis Hopper
A bandaged and frail Dennis Hopper was surrounded by friends, family and colleagues Friday as he was honored with a star on Hollywood's Walk of Fame.
The 73-year-old actor and filmmaker, who is battling prostate cancer, appeared gaunt and was helped to the stage by a friend. Hopper explained that bandages on his right arm and eye were the result of a fall Thursday outside his home.
The two-time Oscar nominee, who has appeared in more than 100 films, said he came to Hollywood from his native Kansas at 18, "so that was my college."
Jack Nicholson, Viggo Mortensen, David Lynch and Dwight Yoakam were among the luminaries on hand to honor their friend and colleague. Nicholson wore a shirt decorated with images from "Easy Rider," the classic 1969 road film Hopper wrote, directed and starred in, alongside Peter Fonda.
Dennis Hopper
Leaves CBS For AP
Kimberly Dozier
Kimberly Dozier, an award-winning correspondent for CBS News, is joining The Associated Press' Washington bureau to cover intelligence for the world's largest news organization.
As the network's Middle East correspondent, Dozier earned a reputation as a tireless reporter covering hot spots, from Israel to the war in Afghanistan and the hunt for Osama bin Laden. She reported on the war in Iraq from 2003 until she was injured in a car bombing in 2006.
For the last three years, Dozier has covered the White House, the Pentagon and national security out of the CBS Washington Bureau.
Prior to CBS, Dozier was an anchor for the BBC Radio World Service's "World Update." While living in Cairo, she was a freelance reporter for The Washington Post, The San Francisco Chronicle and other publications.
Kimberly Dozier
Honored By Vienna Philharmonic
Pierre Boulez
The Vienna Philharmonic has held a birthday celebration for famed composer and conductor Pierre Boulez.
Musicians from the world-renowned orchestra and the Vienna State Opera Orchestra serenaded the French maestro - who turned 85 on Friday - during a ceremony Saturday in the Austrian capital's prestigious Musikverein concert hall.
Boulez is an honorary member of the orchestra and has worked regularly with it over the years.
Boulez - speaking in German - said he was very touched by the tribute and received a round of applause.
Pierre Boulez
Sick Singer Stops Singapore Show
Tom Jones
Singer Tom Jones has postponed Singapore and Manila concerts due to laryngitis, his website said on Saturday, another blow to a new $4.4 billion resort and casino complex in Singapore.
Jones began a concert at the newly opened Resorts World Sentosa in the city-state on Friday night but left the stage after two songs, the Straits Times newspaper reported. The casino and entertainment complex is operated by Genting Singapore, a unit of Malaysia's Genting Group.
Jones's pullout came after the $4.4 billion resort said on Friday it had shut down one of its main attractions, the world's tallest dueling rollercoaster, a week after its Universal Studios theme park opened.
The rollercoaster was closed because of a technical problem and would remain shut while an analysis of the problem was completed, the park said in a statement.
Tom Jones
Moth Forces Secret Into The Open
CA Wine Country
One of the dirty secrets of California's wine country is now on everyone's lips.
Somehow a voracious grape-eating moth has found its way nonstop from Europe to the heart of the Napa Valley, the land of three-figure cabernet. With valuable fruit at risk, the region's fast and loose play with federal agriculture quarantine laws is getting new scrutiny from investigators and researchers.
Suitcase smuggling is the winked-at act of sneaking in cane cuttings to clone vines from France's premier vineyards, hoping to replicate success. Vintners say it helped build a handful of exceptional vineyards in the 1980s when U.S. plant choices were limited and import testing took seven years.
As California clamps a quarantine across the heart of Napa Valley and farmers ready their pesticides, nobody is winking anymore. A new Napa reality is setting in - that lax attitudes invite costly invasions of new pests that can threaten the country's most expensive and economically productive farmland.
CA Wine Country
To Europeans, U.S.Is Long Overdue
Universal Health Care
Europeans are gloating this week. The continent might be struggling with ballooning debts, a faltering euro and national strikes, but when the U.S. House voted in favor of President Barack Obama's health care bill Sunday night, March 21, Europeans seized the moment to thumb their noses at Americans and remind them that they've had pretty good health care for decades.
"On Sunday evening the richest, most powerful country in the world, the USA, finally entered the 20th century. Yes, not the 21st century, but the 20th," read an article published Monday on the popular French news website Rue89.com. The site also posted a copy of TIME's cover, from Nov. 24, 2008, showing Obama as a contemporary Franklin D. Roosevelt, below which it placed a cartoon of Obama on the phone to French President Nicolas Sarkozy, saying, "Hi, Nicolas, how's your health?" The Dutch daily De Volkskrant noted that the change was a long time coming: "Where health care was until now a closed privilege, Obama and the Democrats have made it a law," read an article in the paper Monday. "One of the most important differences between America and other industrialized countries has finally been lifted."
In Europe, voters demand that their governments offer good public services - including decent education and medical care - and regularly vote them out of office when they fail to deliver. Taxes may be slightly higher in Europe, but medical fees are heavily subsidized by governments and are drastically cheaper than they are in the U.S. The French, for example, pay a fixed $30 for a doctor's visit - and proposals to raise that fee even a few cents can ignite national protests. And in most of Europe, insurance companies are barred from rejecting applicants because of pre-existing conditions.
The fundamental difference between Europe and the U.S., Europeans believe, is that Americans regard public services as a bonus rather than a basic right. For some, this is evidence that the American system is deeply flawed. "It was a scandal that the world's richest country for so long offered its citizens such pitiful protection against illness or injury," wrote Gregor Peter Schmitz, Washington correspondent for Der Spiegel on its website Monday. "It seems entirely possible that, in 10 years time, Americans will find it hard to believe that they didn't always have the right to health insurance."
Universal Health Care
Approves Domains In Native Scripts
ICANN
Four countries and two territories have won preliminary approval to have Internet addresses written entirely in their native scripts as early as this summer.
However, proposals for Internet addresses that would say "China" and "Taiwan" in Chinese will require a few more months of technical review. The delay is not over political disputes, but rather because the Chinese language can be written in two ways - using simplified and traditional scripts. Rules are being developed to make sure that addresses in either script go to the same Web sites.
Since their creation in the 1980s, Internet domain names such as those that end in ".com" have been limited to 37 characters: the 10 numerals, the hyphen and the 26 letters in the Latin alphabet used in English. Technical tricks have been used to allow portions of the Internet address to use other scripts, but until now, the suffix had to use those 37 characters.
With the addition of non-Latin suffixes, Internet users with little or no knowledge of English would no longer have to type Latin characters to access Web pages targeting Chinese, Arabic and other speakers.
ICANN
Tourists Flock To Volcano Eruption
Iceland
With lava still gushing Friday, a small Icelandic volcano that initially sent hundreds fleeing from their homes is turning into a boon for the island nation's tourism industry, as visitors flock to catch a glimpse of the eruption.
"I hope the eruption continues for a while because it is very good for business," said Ingi Thor Jakobsson, the manager of the Hotel Ranga located near the Eyjafjallajokull glacier where the Fimmvorduhals volcano erupted.
"We have the eruption just next door and the view is just amazing. There aren't a lot of four star restaurants that can offer dinner and a view of a volcanic eruption," he told AFP, adding that his hotel has begun offering helicopter rides over the volcano.
The Hotel Ranga is not the only one making a bundle from the volcano blast that sent some 600 people fleeing from their homes early Sunday in a remotely populated area about 125 kilometres (75 miles) east of Iceland's capital Reykjavik.
Iceland
New York Museum Adds To Design Collection
@ Symbol
For the French, it may always remind them of delicious escargot, but for most everyone else the @ symbol has come to embody the age of the Internet and its constantly evolving language.
In honor of the little squiggly's potency, the Museum of Modern Art in New York announced on Monday that it had added the @ symbol to its architecture and design collection, citing its "design power."
The @ symbol, currently used every day by millions around the world in email addresses, text messages and on twitter.com, is thought to be ancient, the museum said, possibly dating back to the sixth century.
Because the symbol is not a concrete thing but an abstract idea, it has changed meaning many times in the course of its existence.
@ Symbol
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