Laura Vanderkam: Meet the Middle-Class Millionaires (american.com)
...over 90 percent of Middle-Class Millionaires say it's "very or extremely important" to be a good parent. Yet they work, on average, 70 hours a week, which makes it nearly impossible to kick a soccer ball with the kids in the backyard before dinner, or even to eat dinner together most nights. Middle-Class Millionaires are five times more likely than middle-middle-class people to say they are always available for business, and they are three times more likely to regularly work weekends.
Jim Hightower: HOUSE THE RICH (jimhightower.com)
You think you've got it tough trying to find affordable housing or trying to figure out how you can pay for a two-bedroom apartment instead of the one-bedroom you're now in? Well you don't know the meaning of troubles, bucko, until you've walked a mile in the Guccis of those poor rich people who are dealing in the luxury housing market.
Connie Tuttle: Vince Pardo has been an El Con institution since 1963, despite the odds (tucsonweekly.com)
When Pardo arrived in Tucson in 1961, there were at least 30 or 35 shoemakers practicing their trade, and "every single one knew what they were doing," the loquacious craftsman recently said at his midtown shop. After two years as an employee, Pardo opened his own business in El Con Mall under unfavorable circumstances.
Who (or what) was Charles Lindbergh's lucky mascot on his historic transatlantic flight?
A: Buster Brown's Dog, Tige
B: Felix the Cat
C: One of the Katzenjammer Twins
D: Mickey Mouse
E: The Yellow Kid
Source
Thanks to Charlie for the picture of Felix.
Charlie was first, and correct, with:
That was
B: Felix the Cat
who had previously demonstrated proficiency in lighter-than-air travel
Alan J responded succinctly:
Felix the Cat
mj wrote:
I'm going on gut here, but I think C was still near it's popularity peak near that time and Chuckie did have a fondness for things German. That's my guess, and I'm sticking to it.
Marian the Teacher replied:
Felix the Cat, the wonderful, wonderful cat.
Joe S observed:
Lindbergh was a white supremacist. He saw Nazi victory as certain and thought America's attention should be placed elsewhere. He is no hero of mine, just a guy who wanted to eliminate the "mongrel" races and happened to fly airplanes.
And, pgw answered:
Lindberg's mascot was Gore Vidal. Just Kidding. It was Felix The Cat.
CBS starts the night with '60 Minutes', followed by a FRESH'Big Brother 9', then a FRESH'Cold Case', followed by a recycled 'Dexter'.
NBC opens the night with 'Dateline', followed by a recycled 'Monk', then a recycled 'Psych', followed by a RERUN'Law & Order: Special Victims Unit'.
ABC begins the night with FRESH'America's So-Called Funniest Home Videos', followed by a FRESH'Oprah's Big Fake Reality Show', then a FRESH'Desperate Housewives', followed by a FRESH'Eli Stone'.
The CW offers a RERUN'America's Next Top Model', followed by a FRESH'Everybody Hates Chris', then a RERUN'Aliens In America', followed by a FRESH'The Game', then a RERUN'Girlfriends'.
Faux has a RERUN'King Of The Hill', followed by a RERUN'American Dad', then a FRESH'Simpsons', followed by a FRESH'King Of The Hill', then a RERUN'Family Guy', followed by a RERUN'American Dad'.
MY has an old 'Raymond', another old 'Raymond', then the movie 'Stranded'.
A&E has the movie 'The Godfather, Part II', 'The First 48', another 'The First 48', and 'The Sopranos'.
AMC offers the movie 'The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly', followed by the movie 'Hang 'Em High', then 'Breaking Bad'.
BBC -
[12:00 PM] Top Gear - Episode 6;
[1:00 PM] Doctor Who - Eps 11 & 12;
[3:00 PM] That Mitchell and Webb Look - Episode 1;
[3:40 PM] That Mitchell and Webb Look - Episode 2;
[4:20 PM] That Mitchell and Webb Look - Episode 3;
[5:00 PM] That Mitchell and Webb Look - Episode 4;
[5:40 PM] That Mitchell and Webb Look - Episode 5;
[6:20 PM] That Mitchell and Webb Look - Episode 6;
[7:00 PM] MI-5 - Ep 5 Love and Death;
[8:00 PM] Wire In The Blood - Episode 1;
[10:00 PM] Being the Sexiest - Being The Sexiest;
[11:00 PM] Wire In The Blood - Episode 1;
[1:00 AM] Being the Sexiest - Being The Sexiest;
[2:00 AM] Wire In The Blood - Episode 1;
[4:00 AM] Being the Sexiest - Being The Sexiest;
[5:00 AM] Cash in the Attic - Ep. 4 Sweet;
[5:30 AM] Cash in the Attic - Ep. 5 Maddison;
[6:00 AM] BBC World News. (ALL TIMES EDT)
Bravo has all 'Law & Order: Criminal Intent' all night.
Comedy Central has the movie 'Napoleon Dynamite', followed by the FRESH'Night Of Too Many Stars: An Overbooked Concert For Autism Education', then a RERUN of the 'Night Of Too Many Stars: An Overbooked Concert For Autism Education'.
FX has the movie 'Batman Returns', followed by 'dirt'.
History has 'Zero Hour', 'Ax Men', another 'Ax Men', and still another 'Ax Men'.
IFC -
[07:00 AM] IFC Short Film Showcase;
[08:00 AM] And the Ship Sails On;
[10:15 AM] Amarcord;
[12:20 PM] The Glass Shield;
[02:15 PM] The Young Americans;
[04:00 PM] Amarcord;
[06:05 PM] The Glass Shield;
[08:00 PM] Fall Time;
[09:30 PM] Foxy Brown;
[11:05 PM] The Whitest Kids U'Know #210;
[11:30 PM] The Whitest Kids U'Know #209;
[12:00 AM] Undertow;
[02:00 AM] The Whitest Kids U'Know #210;
[02:30 AM] The Whitest Kids U'Know #209;
[03:00 AM] Foxy Brown;
[04:35 AM] Undertow. (ALL TIMES EST)
A monument to Laika, the first dog to go into space, standing on top of a rocket, is unveiled in Moscow, Friday, April 11, 2008. Russian officials on Friday unveiled the monument to Laika, a mongrel dog whose flight to space more than 50-years ago paved the way for human space missions. The small monument is located near a military research facility in Moscow that prepared Laika's flight to space on Nov. 3, 1957.
Photo by Alexei Nikolsky
The Dalai Lama, Tibet's exiled spiritual leader, said on Friday he did not support a boycott of the Beijing Olympic Games.
Asked on NBC "Nightly News" whether he wanted the world to boycott the Olympics this summer, the Dalai Lama replied, "No."
Asked if he wanted the United States and other world leaders to boycott the opening ceremony in support of Tibet, he replied, "That's up to them."
"It is very important to make clear, not only just the Tibet case. But in China proper, the report of human right is poor. And their freedom, also very poor," the Dalai Lama said.
The Dalai Lama, exiled spiritual leader of Tibet, playfully touches fists with musician Dave Matthews (R) after a panel discussion on "Dialogue for Compassion" at Key Arena at the Seattle Center on the first day of the 5-day Seeds of Compassion gathering in Seattle, Washington, April 11, 2008.
Photo by Marcus R.Donner
Lawmakers, actors and writers marked the fifth anniversary of the conflict in Darfur on Saturday with an impassioned plea for more support for Sudanese children displaced by the conflict.
Harry Potter creator J.K. Rowling and fellow authors of children's books have signed an open letter calling for more support for children affected by the bloodshed.
Actors Matt Damon and Thandie Newton were also among those supporting the campaign worldwide, in a television advertisement campaign.
Protests will take place in around 30 countries on Sunday, humanitarian charity Crisis Action said, calling for an immediate deployment of more peacekeeping troops.
In the late 1950s and early 60s, a lanky blond Texan sold out concerts, caused riots when spotted in public and was so popular that one Elvis fan club changed its name to his.
But Van Cliburn was no hip-shaking rock star: He was a classical pianist.
After winning a prestigious Moscow music competition at the height of the Cold War, Cliburn quickly gained international fame and millions of fans. He triumphantly returned to a New York ticker tape parade - the only one ever for a classical musician - and a Time magazine cover proclaimed him "The Texan Who Conquered Russia."
Fifty years after that historic win, Cliburn's fan base isn't as large or mainstream. In fact, many Americans may not recognize the 73-year-old. But in classical music circles, he's still considered an icon.
Composer Michael Atherton (L), a professor at the University of Western Sydney, conducts members of a local 'Ute Club' as they perform the piece 'Utility Horn Groove' in Sydney April 12, 2008. A new musical piece called 'Car Orchestra' which features the engines and horns of five utility trucks, known as 'utes', alongside a saxophone, double bass and disc jockey, will debut at a music festival in western Sydney on Saturday.
Photo by Tim Wimborne
A sculpture of a pig and cow wearing crowns, created by the once secret daughter of Belgium's king, has been removed from a town hall during a visit by his "official" daughter to avoid offence, reports said Saturday.
The work by artist Delphine Boel, natural daughter of Albert II adorns the town hall of the Belgian seaside resort of Coxyde.
"The Royal Sacred Four Legged Monster", a 2001 oeuvre executed in papier-mache, depicts a pig and a cow adorned with crowns, and spread out on a bed.
Her secret birth in 1968 was revealed only three decades later. Offspring of a liaison between the then Prince Albert and Baroness Sybille de Selys Longchamps, she came under media spotlight in 1999 with a biography of Albert's consort, Queen Paola.
Every morning, the head of Britain's Glastonbury Festival swims 40 laps of a chilly pool. But sales of tickets for this year's show aren't performing quite so swimmingly.
The team behind the June 27-29 festival has taken the unprecedented step of restarting the ticket-registration process, after stubs failed to sell out.
Festival chief Michael Eavis is mystified by the lethargic sales. In February, roughly 225,000 people registered for tickets. Last year, the corresponding registration -- a prerequisite to buying tickets -- was 400,000.
After tickets went public April 6, only 100,000 were snapped up, prompting Eavis to reopen registration two days later. Last year, the entire allocation of 137,500 tickets sold out in about two hours.
A man rings a traditional bell, under a shower of sparks cascading from fireworks from a portable shrine, during "Tejikara-no-himatsuri" or Tejikara Fire Festival at Tejikarao Shrine in Gifu, central Japan, April 12, 2008. The traditional festival that has a history of 300 years or more is held on the second Saturday of April at the shrine every year.
Photo by Issei Kato
A California asbestos awareness group sued CBS Corp, a toy maker and several retailers on Friday, claiming they sold toy crime-scene kits based on the hit CBS series "CSI: Crime Scene Investigation" that contained the cancer-causing substance.
The lawsuit, filed in Los Angeles Superior Court, alleges that laboratory tests revealed the fingerprint dusting powder in the kits contained "substantial quantities of tremolite asbestos ... one of the most lethal forms of asbestos."
New York-based manufacturer Planet Toys Inc pulled the kits from the market late last year over the group's claims but said that multiple tests had shown no traces of asbestos.
The company said on its Web site it had issued a "stop sale" on all "CSI" fingerprint kits "until further information can be ascertained as to the discrepancy between our respective test findings."
Workers rebuilding a sports stadium on the site of an 18th century Jewish cemetery in Belarus say they have no choice but to consign the bones to city dumps.
"It's impossible to pack an entire cemetery into sacks," said worker Mikhail Gubets, adding that he stopped counting the skulls when the number went over 100.
The stadium in Gomel, Belarus' second largest city and a center of Jewish life until World War II, is one of four that were built on top of Jewish cemeteries around the country.
The Gomel cemetery was destroyed when the stadium was built in 1961, but the remains lay largely undisturbed until this spring when reconstruction began and a bulldozer turned up the first bones.
Jews began settling in Gomel in the 16th century and by the end of the 19th century made up more than half of the population. In 1903, they made history by being the first to resist a pogrom, defending 26 synagogues and prayer houses.
Hindu devotees step over children to bless them during a religious festival called "Gajan" in Kolkata April 12, 2008. Worshippers offer prayers to the Hindu god Shiva to mark the Bengali year-end.
Photo by Parth Sanyal
A Long Beach man has been acquitted of smuggling iguanas in his hollowed-out prosthetic leg. However, a jury on Thursday found Jereme James guilty of concealing and possessing Fiji Island banded iguanas. The neon green-striped iguanas are endangered species, prosecutors said.
He faces a maximum possible sentence of 20 years in prison when sentenced July 14.
During an undercover probe, James told investigators he had sold three iguanas for $32,000, prosecutors said. Four iguanas were seized when a search warrant was served at his house in April.
Scientists listening to underwater microphones have detected an unusual swarm of earthquakes off central Oregon, something that often happens before a volcanic eruption - except there are no volcanoes in the area.
Scientists don't know exactly what the earthquakes mean, but they could be the result of molten rock rumbling away from the recognized earthquake faults off Oregon, said Robert Dziak, a geophysicist for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and Oregon State University.
There have been more than 600 quakes over the past 10 days in a basin 150 miles southwest of Newport. The biggest was magnitude 5.4, and two others were more than magnitude 5.0, OSU reported.
On the hydrophones, the quakes sound like low thunder and are unlike anything scientists have heard in 17 years of listening, Dziak said. Some of the quakes have also been detected by earthquake instruments on land.
A plume of sulfur dioxide gas and ash rises from Halemaumau Crater atop Kilauea volcano in the Hawaii Volcanoes National Park at dawn on Tuesday, April 8, 2008. Later in the day Park officials evacuated 2000 visitors and the Park remained closed for a second day Wednesday as officials waited for a change in wind direction to blow away sulfur dioxide belching from Kilauea.
Photo by David Jordan
Melting ice in southern Chile caused a glacial lake to swell and then empty suddenly, sending a "tsunami" rolling through a river, a scientist said Thursday. No one was injured in the remote region.
Glacier scientist Gino Casassa said the melting of the Colonia glacier, which he blamed on rising world temperatures, filled the Cachet Lake and increased pressure on the ice sheet.
The water bored a 5-mile tunnel through the glacier and finally emptied into the Baker River on April 6.
The lake was nearly full again by late Wednesday, he said.
A woman who posed naked for British artist Lucian Freud revealed Saturday she was paid 20 pounds -- and the resulting painting is expected to become the most expensive work by a living artist.
Sue Tilley said she had been delighted to be the inspiration for "Benefits Supervisor Sleeping" in 1995, which is set to become the most expensive painting by a living artist when it is sold in New York next month.
Art experts expect the painting of a fleshy woman reclining on a sofa to fetch up to 17 million pounds (33.5 million dollars, 21 million euros) when it goes under the hammer in New York in May.
Tilley, nicknamed Big Sue, joked she was the first nude pin-up to grace the front page of the Financial Times newspaper, which carried a photograph of the painting Saturday.
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