Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Jesse Bering: Do Men Find Dumb-Looking Women More Attractive? (Slate)
A new study says yes.
Scott Burns: How the Social Security Trust Fund Was Supposed To Work (AssetBuilder)
We've succeeded beyond our wildest dreams in extending the gift of life. What we haven't done is find the courage to pay for it, either collectively through Social Security or individually through personal saving.
Suzanne Moore: A few people might have made the leap 40 years ago, but social mobility no longer exists (Guardian)
Normal service has returned, and the only way out of it is if you can buy an education or have the right parents.
Henry Rollins: South Africa's Present and Future (LA Weekly)
My first introduction to African music was by my mother, who bought the Pata Pata album by the great Miriam Makeba when it came out. Now THAT is an album. What a voice.
JAVIER CABRAL: "Alice Bag: She Was a Punk Before You Were a Punk" (LA Weekly)
Over raw vegan coconut ice cream in Pasadena, she would like to set a few things straight. "Women were co-creators of the scene," Bag says of the American punk movement. "It was ours, and we happily shared it."
Henry Rollins: Alice Bag's Punk Rock Legacy (LA Weekly)
More than 30 years ago, in Washington, D.C., I secured a copy of a single by a Los Angeles band called The Bags. The two-song 7-inch, released on Dangerhouse, had a girl on the cover who looked right at you with huge eyes. The songs, "Survive" and "Babylonian Gorgon," were great and made many of my mix tapes.
Greg Rucka: "Why I Write 'Strong Female Characters'" (io9)
People always ask Rucka why he chooses to write so many hard-hitting women. And now, to celebrate the release of his new novel Alpha, he's explaining why.
Mark O'Connell: There You Go Again (Slate)
In defense of writers, filmmakers, and composers who return to the same themes, settings, and motifs over and over and over again.
Emily Bazelon: More Problems for 'Bully' (Slate)
A judge grants a major legal victory to the school officials demonized by the documentary.
Barry Koltnow: The curse of 'The Godfather, Part III' - fuhgeddaboutit (The Orange County Register)
Francis Ford Coppola is off the hook. After 22 years, the visionary director can hold his head high again. The world has forgiven him for "The Godfather, Part III." That movie singlehandedly killed the second sequel, but the second sequel is back with a vengeance, so I can only assume that "The Godfather, Part III" can be taken off the shelf of ill-conceived movie ideas and placed in a locked crate never to be seen or thought of again.
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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Michelle in AZ
From The Creator of 'Avery Ant'
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Sunny, windy and on the cool side.
Debate Will Soon Be History
Evolution
Richard Leakey predicts skepticism over evolution will soon be history. Not that the avowed atheist has any doubts himself.
Sometime in the next 15 to 30 years, the Kenyan-born paleoanthropologist expects scientific discoveries will have accelerated to the point that "even the skeptics can accept it."
"If you get to the stage where you can persuade people on the evidence, that it's solid, that we are all African, that color is superficial, that stages of development of culture are all interactive," Leakey says, "then I think we have a chance of a world that will respond better to global challenges."
Leakey, a professor at Stony Brook University on Long Island, recently spent several weeks in New York promoting the Turkana Basin Institute in Kenya. The institute, where Leakey spends most of his time, welcomes researchers and scientists from around the world dedicated to unearthing the origins of mankind in an area rich with fossils.
Evolution
Thousands Take Part In Brazil
'Slut Walk'
Several thousand scantily clad women staged boisterous "Slut Walks" in several Brazilian cities Saturday to protest sexual violence against women.
With horns, drums, chants and placards denouncing sexism, nearly 3,000 took to the streets in Brasilia, the nation's capital, according to organizers and police.
In Sao Paulo, police said the "Slut Walk" drew at least 700 women, many wearing lingerie, mini-skirts and blouses with revealing necklines. They included representatives of various feminist, lesbian and transgender groups.
Slut Walk was first held in Toronto last year after a police officer caused outrage by stating that "women should avoid dressing like sluts in order not to be victimized" during a speech to university students.
The protest soon spread to over 60 cities where women joined in huge numbers to challenge the mindset that victims of sexual assault should be blamed for the crime against them on the grounds that they were "asking for it".
'Slut Walk'
Visits Thai Ladyboys
Lady Gaga
Lady Gaga met Thai 'ladies' of a different kind at a transvestite cabaret show in Bangkok that had the flamboyant entertainer singing along, club management said Friday.
The 'Born This Way' star "clapped her hands and screamed" in appreciation of the performance at Calypso Cabaret, which included lip-synched versions of well-known Asian pop songs and dance routines by a troupe of extravagantly dressed 'ladyboys'.
"When she arrived, she was so friendly, she said 'Hi lady, hi lady' to our performers all the way to her seat before the show started," Nipon Boonmasuwaran, sales and marketing manager at Calypso Cabaret told AFP.
"When the show finished, she went up to her favourite performer and said 'you are so beautiful'," Nipon said. "We're so happy and impressed with her. She seemed very nice and not arrogant like other superstars."
Lady Gaga
NYC's Famed Algonquin Cat Is Back
Algonquin
Matilda the cat is back at work at New York City's Algonquin Hotel.
The blue-eyed beauty was feeling the love as the hotel reopened Thursday after a five-month, $18 million renovation.
Thanks to a November issue with the Health Department, Matilda now wears a special collar that keeps her away from the hotel's food-related areas.
After prowling within her parameters, the silky-coated hostess curled up behind the computer at the front desk.
Matilda
Hosts World's Artists, Imprisons Its Own
Morocco
Morocco's glittering Mawazine international music festival wraps up this weekend with performances by Mariah Carey and Lenny Kravitz, after nine days of showcasing the North African kingdom's cool factor - even as dissident Moroccan musicians are imprisoned for their anti-establishment lyrics.
The 11-year-old "Rhythms of the World" festival in the capital Rabat has always highlighted Morocco's contradictions as the country spends millions to lure top world artists to perform at generally free concerts, while much the country remains mired in poverty.
In past years the festival has been attacked by Islamists for inviting gay performer Elton John in 2010 and by activists for the cost of attracting Shakira and other high profile acts in 2011, but this year the theme of protest is freedom of expression.
Just a week before the festival began, Human Rights Watch slammed Morocco for sentencing a rapper to a year in prison for lyrics deemed insulting to police - a common theme in rap music elsewhere in the world.
"Morocco hosts one famous international music festival after another each spring, but meanwhile it imprisons one of its own singers solely because of lyrics and images that displease the authorities," Sarah Leah Whitson, Mideast director of the group said in a statement. "Morocco should be known as a haven for world music, not for locking up singers with a political message."
Morocco
Blood Auction Halted
Reagan
The British company that had been auctioning what it said was a vial of the late U.S. President Ronald Reagan's blood canceled the sale on Thursday and the owner will donate the material to the Reagan foundation, the company said.
"We have negotiated with the consignor to arrange for the item to be withdrawn from the auction and donated to the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation," PFC Auctions said in a statement.
The halt of the sale came after the foundation expressed outrage over the auction earlier this week. The vial is purported to contain blood taken from Reagan at the hospital where he was treated after a 1981 assassination attempt.
PFC, based on the English Channel island of Guernsey, said the owner acquired the vial at a U.S. auction in February for $3,550. Before the latest auction was halted, bidding had reached $30,086, PFC said.
Reagan
Scapegoat Arrested
Vatican't
An already sordid scandal over leaked Vatican documents took a Hollywood-like turn Saturday with confirmation that the pope's own butler had been arrested after documents he had no business having were found in his Vatican City apartment.
The detention of butler Paolo Gabriele, one of the few members of the papal household, capped one of the most convulsive weeks in recent Vatican history and threw the Holy See into chaos as it enters a critical phase in its efforts to show the world it's serious about complying with international norms on financial transparency.
The "Vatileaks" scandal has seriously embarrassed the Vatican at a time when it is trying to show the world financial community that it has turned a page and shed its reputation as a scandal plagued tax haven.
Vatican documents leaked to the press in recent months have undermined that effort, alleging corruption in Vatican finance as well as internal bickering over the Holy See's efforts to comply with international norms to fight money laundering and terror financing.
The Vatileaks scandal began in January when Italian journalist Gianluigi Nuzzi broadcast letters from the former No. 2 Vatican administrator to the pope in which he begged not to be transferred for having exposed alleged corruption that cost the Holy See millions of euros in higher contract prices. The prelate, Monsignor Carlo Maria Vigano, is now the Vatican's U.S. ambassador.
Vatican't
Seized At Mexican Cannes Party
Mezcal
Police raided a glitzy Cannes party thrown by Mexico's Palme d'Or contender Carlos Reygadas, seizing a shipment of the traditional alcoholic drink mezcal, one of his producers said Friday.
The Mexican embassy in Paris had sent the party Thursday night several dozen bottles of mezcal in a diplomatic case, Jean Labadie, head of Le Pacte which co-produced Reygadas' festival entry "Post Tenebras Lux", told AFP.
"We were in our dinner jackets and were unable to produce the paperwork proving the origin of the mezcal," an alcohol distilled from the agave plant which grows in many parts of Mexico, he said.
Some 30 police and customs officials raided the Chateau du Suquet, a mansion overlooking the Riviera city, where the party was being held, and seized the Mexican alcohol, Labadie said.
"The whole villa was searched. The buffets were destroyed and the food chucked in the bin. They banned the waiters from serving anything, even water. It was rather excessive," he said.
Mezcal
Archaeologists Find Rare Ancient Jewelry
Israel
Israeli archaeologists have discovered a rare trove of 3,000-year-old jewelry, including a ring and earrings, hidden in a ceramic jug near the ancient city of Megiddo, where the New Testament predicts the final battle of Armageddon.
Archaeologists who unearthed the jug during excavations at the site in 2010 left it in a laboratory while they waited for a molecular analysis of what was inside. When they were finally able to clean it, pieces of gold jewelry - a ring, earrings, and beads - dating to around 1100 B.C. poured out.
Israel Finkelstein of Tel Aviv University, who co-directed the dig, said that the find offers a rare glimpse into ancient Canaanite high society. He said the fact that the jewelry was found inside the jug suggested that the owner hid them there.
Tel Aviv University called the trove "among the most valuable ever found from the Biblical period," adding that one piece in particular, a gold earring decorated with molded ibexes, or wild goats, is "without parallel."
Israel
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