Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Roger Simon: Roger and Me (Creators Syndicate)
That night, when I was back in Champaign-Urbana, I got this roaring call from Ebert, telling me that nobody in his right mind would turn down the offer of a job from a newspaper! Newspapers were where the most important writing in America was done!
Marc Dion: "Save American Jobs: Invade South Korea" (Creators Syndicate)
Let's say North Korea didn't use nuclear weapons. Let's say they invaded South Korea, destroying all their steel mills, textile plants, electronics plants and car factories. If that happened, maybe guys with a high school education could get a factory job in Illinois. If the Chinese got involved, and American bombers were free to bomb Chinese industrial cities, maybe there'd be factory jobs in Ohio again.
Paul Krugman: The Urge to Purge (New York Times)
Mellon was dead wrong in the 1930s, and his avatars are dead wrong today. Unemployment, not excessive money printing, is what ails us now - and policy should be doing more, not less.
Dan Gillmor: In our digital world you don't own stuff, you just license it (Guardian)
Corporations and lawmakers have put us on course for a world where consumers do not own the things they buy.
Giles Tremlett in Madrid and Owen Bowcott: "Caught in the web: case histories of people whose digital past haunts them" (Guardian)
Deleting false or embarrassing profiles, pictures and reports from websites can prove impossible as these personal stories show.
Charles Arthur: How to delete your digital life (Guardian)
Advice on how to successfully wipe out your online past. Add your own tips and views in the thread below.
Rebecca Schulman: Thesis Hatement (Slate)
Getting a literature Ph.D. will turn you into an emotional trainwreck, not a professor.
Clive James: How I Translated The Divine Comedy (Slate)
Entry 1: An introduction to the beauty, variety, and drive of Dante's epic poem-plus three cantos from The Inferno.
Chelsey Philpot: Matilda at 25 (Slate)
Roald Dahl's bookish heroine is still an inspiration to the quiet girls.
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Reader Suggestion
Michelle in AZ
Bojan Suggests
Animals
Thanks, Bojan!
From The Creator of 'Avery Ant'
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Sunny and seasonal.
Broadway
"Kinky Boots"
Take an obscure British film about a failing shoe factory, hand it over to openly gay actor and writer Harvey Fierstein, add music by pop star Cyndi Lauper and what have you got?
It is the new Broadway musical "Kinky Boots," which aims to make drag safe and commercially viable for the masses, while offering life lessons on love and self-acceptance along the way.
With a mantle full of Tony awards for hit shows such as "La Cage aux Folles," "Torch Song Trilogy" and "Hairspray," Fierstein embraced the opportunity to take the story to the stage.
In "Kinky Boots," opening on Friday, the reluctant owner of a failing shoe factory teams up with a force-of-nature drag queen to save the business. The owner comes up with an unlikely plan to produce outrageous thigh-high spike-heeled boots that can withstand a man's heft, meeting resistance from the English working-class laborers.
"Kinky Boots"
Boys Club
Late-Night
The role of female talk show hosts in late-night TV broadcast network history, all 50-plus years of it, can be summed up in two words: Joan Rivers. It takes just another two - Arsenio Hall - to do the same for minorities.
There's no indication that's going to change in the latest round of musical chairs involving "Tonight" and "Late Night." All the NBC, ABC and CBS showcase jobs at 11:30 p.m. Eastern and later appear likely to remain securely in white men's hands.
Jay Leno is handing off to Jimmy Fallon, with speculation tagging Seth Meyers as his likely successor. Meanwhile, David Letterman, Jimmy Kimmel, Craig Ferguson and Carson Daly are sitting pretty, without the faintest drumbeat of a pair of advancing high heels to signal a threat.
There have been alternatives bandied about - Chelsea Handler, black comedian-writer Aisha Tyler - but no hints they or others are getting traction.
"In real life it seems to me that women have definitely shown themselves to be able to carry on a conversation," said Merrill Markoe, the Emmy Award-winning writer who helped David Letterman create "Late Night" at NBC. "Women have exhibited an interest in talking for centuries. I'm not sure how it is that no one has seemed to notice."
Late-Night
Museum Set For New London
Coast Guard
A museum dedicated to the history of the U.S. Coast Guard will be built on the waterfront of New London, officials announced Friday in the southeastern Connecticut city that has ties to the maritime service dating back more than two centuries.
The 50,000-square-foot museum, which will be located adjacent to a new high-speed ferry terminal, is expected to cost $80 million to $100 million. The National Coast Guard Museum Association has been raising money for the project, and the state has agreed to contribute $20 million.
The commandant of the Coast Guard, Adm. Robert J. Papp Jr., said in comments reported by The Day of New London that he hopes the riverfront museum helps local businesses to thrive.
New London is also home to the U.S. Coast Guard Academy, and Papp said one of the 10 cutters that George Washington authorized in 1790 to enforce federal tariff and trade laws was built and based in New London. The vessels were used by the Revenue Cutter Service, which was one of several agencies that were combined into the Coast Guard.
Coast Guard
Celebrates 500th Anniversary
Florida
Spanish explorer Ponce de Leon was only 4-foot, 11-inches tall, a trolley tour operator told his passengers as they rolled down a picturesque street in St. Augustine lined with moss-draped live oak trees.
But the Timucuan Indians he encountered when he set foot in Florida towered over him, standing 7 feet tall, the tour guide said.
Turning into the Fountain of Youth Archaeological Park, he noted: No wonder the explorer thought these tall, robust natives were drinking enchanted water.
This week Florida celebrated the 500th anniversary of the day when Ponce de Leon stepped onto the shores of what he thought was a large island and called the land "La Florida."
But the modern-day state of Florida built on the lure of sunshine and myth of eternal youth is still grappling with how to tell its first city's story - a rich history of centuries-old multiculturalism, yet distorted by useful falsehoods aimed at entertaining tourists who are important to its economy.
Florida
"El-Bernameg"
Bassem Youssef
A Cairo court has turned down a lawsuit demanding that a popular Egyptian satirist's TV show be banned.
The Administrative Court said on Saturday that the lawsuit against Bassem Youssef's "El-Bernameg," or "The Program," was dropped because the plaintiff did not have an interest in the case.
Youssef - known as Egypt's Jon Stewart - frequently satirizes Egypt's Islamist President Mohammed Morsi.
A lawyer filed the suit demanding the suspension of the license of the channel that broadcasts his show, claiming that it "corrupted morals" and violated "religious principles."
Bassem Youssef
Bar Built From 16th Century Shipwreck
Minerva Inn
The Minerva Inn in Plymouth, UK is a famous landmark, with part of its structure made of wood from sunken 16th Century Spanish Armada ships in 1588.
But the historical location is now facing a mandatory makeover, with city officials saying the 500-year-old wood is a fire hazard and must be painted over with a flame-resistant coating. In addition, the paint could conceal hand-carved messages written by thousands of servicemen and celebrities over the years.
"I don't think Drake would have thought very much of the idea," manager Shelley Jones said in an interview with the Plymouth Herald, referring to Sir Francis Drake, whose forces defeated the Spanish Armada that provided the wood for the Minerva's construction. "The place has been here for nearly 500 years and it hasn't burned down yet."
After the Spanish Armada was defeated, Drake himself lived in a small home next to the pub.
The Minerva is rich with centuries of history, claiming to be the area's oldest establishment, dating back to the late 1500's. Some people claim the establishment is haunted by both members of the fallen Spanish Armada and by some of the thousands of patrons who frequented the Inn over the past several hundred years.
Minerva Inn
Depression Trial Hits Stumbling Block
'Shrooms
The world's first clinical trial designed to explore using a hallucinogen from magic mushrooms to treat people with depression has stalled because of British and European rules on the use of illegal drugs in research.
David Nutt, president of the British Neuroscience Association and professor of neuropsychopharmacology at Imperial College London, said he had been granted an ethical green light and funding for the trial, but regulations were blocking it.
"We live in a world of insanity in terms of regulating drugs," he told a neuroscience conference in London on Sunday.
He has previously conducted small experiments on healthy volunteers and found that psilocybin, the psychedelic ingredient in magic mushrooms, has the potential to alleviate severe forms of depression in people who don't respond to other treatments.
'Shrooms
Spike In Strandings
Sea Lions
Nearly 1,100 sickly sea lion pups that should still be with their mothers have stranded in southern California since the beginning of this year, officials say.
Biologists still don't know exactly what's causing the unusually high number of young animals to wash ashore, but there is one symptom that most of the pups share: They're starving.
"You can see bones through their skin," said Sarah Wilkin, California's marine mammal stranding coordinator for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
The leading hypothesis is that environmental conditions are cutting the sea lion pups' supply of food like anchovies and sardines, Wilkin told reporters today (April 4). While adult sea lions and other marine mammals are more adaptable and can change their feeding habits in the face of a shortage, pups are more limited in how far they can travel for food and what they can eat.
Sea Lions
1780s British POW Camp In PA
Camp Security
The mud of a south-central Pennsylvania cornfield may soon produce answers about the fate of British prisoners of war - and the newly independent Americans who guarded them - during the waning years of the American Revolution.
A few miles east of York, the city that briefly served as the fledgling nation's capital after the Continental Congress fled Philadelphia, more than a thousand English, Scottish and Canadian soldiers were imprisoned at what was then known as Camp Security.
The fight to preserve the plot where those soldiers and their captors worked and lived has lasted almost twice as long as the Revolutionary War itself. And the end is in sight - if its backers can raise the last few hundred thousand dollars needed to pay for it.
A 1979 archaeological study found numerous artifacts that confirmed local lore about the prison camp's location. Two years ago, the local government, Springettsbury Township, took possession of an adjacent, 115-acre property and last year The Conservation Fund paid a developer nearly $1 million for the 47-acre parcel. Now the Friends of Camp Security faces an August deadline to pay off the fund so it can turn the smaller plot over to the township as well.
Nothing about the property today suggests it was once teeming with prisoners. The first group arrived in 1781, four years after their 1777 surrender at Saratoga, N.Y. More arrived the next year after the battle in Yorktown, Va. By April 1782, there were 1,265 men at the camp, along with 182 women and 189 children - family members and others who accompanied the prisoners.
Camp Security
In Memory
Milo O'Shea
The Irish actor Milo O'Shea, whose many roles on stage and screen included a friar in Franco Zeffirelli's "Romeo and Juliet," an evil scientist in "Barbarella" and a Supreme Court justice on "The West Wing," has died in New York City. He was 87.
Ireland's arts minister, Jimmy Deenihan, said in a statement announcing O'Shea's death on Tuesday that the Dublin-born actor would be remembered for "ground-breaking" roles, including a performance as Leopold Bloom in the 1967 film adaptation of "Ulysses."
O'Shea also acted on Broadway, playing a gay hairdresser in 1968's "Staircase." He was nominated for Tony Awards twice.
The public knew O'Shea best as a character actor. His bushy eyebrows and white hair made him a favorite of casting directors looking for priests. He played a drunken one on the TV show "Cheers," a pedophilic one in the 1997 film "The Butcher Boy," a charming one in the 1981 Broadway play "Mass Appeal," as well as the tragedy-enabling Friar Laurence in "Romeo and Juliet." He was a judge in the film "The Verdict."
His loony turn as the pleasure-obsessed scientist Durand Durand in the 1968 science fiction romp "Barbarella" inspired a British rock group to name its band after his character. Duran Duran also put him in a concert video.
O'Shea moved to the U.S. in the mid-1970s and was a longtime resident of New York.
Milo O'Shea
In Memory
Juan Jose Bigas Luna
One of Spain's best known film directors, Juan Jose Bigas Luna, who shot actors Penelope Cruz and Javier Bardem to fame in the 1990s with his celebrated film "Jamon, Jamon", has died of cancer at the age of 67.
Bigas Luna was known in Spain for his erotically charged films like Bilbao (1978) and had more recent success again outside his home country with "My Name Is Juani", a 2006 movie about a young woman ditching her small town for Madrid.
Bigas Luna died at his home in Tarragona, near the northeastern city of Barcelona.
His 1992 film, "Jamon, Jamon" (Ham, Ham), not only gave Bardem and Cruz, now married, their big break, but Bigas Luna also won a Silver Lion award at the Venice Film Festival for the comedy drama.
Bigas Luna's latest film was Di Di Hollywood, released in 2010. He was working on a film adaptation of a novel by Catalan author Manuel de Pedrolo.
Juan Jose Bigas Luna
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