Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Elizabeth Truss: No, we have not banned To Kill a Mockingbird (Guardian)
You might think a government saying that pupils need to study a wider range of more challenging authors would be welcomed. Instead we received a broadside.
Lucy Mangan: Don't stop with Steinbeck - let's can all of Eng Lit (Guardian)
What would teachers do if they weren't teaching to a syllabus, a set exam?
What I'm really thinking: the long-distance grandmother (Guardian)
'The only child of my only child lives in the US, and I'm heartbroken.'
Oliver Burkeman: "This column will change your life: the best dating advice? Wait and see" (Guardian)
If you're not one of the beautiful people, take heart. All you need is for others to have the patience to get to know you.
Adam Tod Brown: 4 Classic Horror Movies That Get More Love Than They Deserve (Cracked)
Anyway, the thing about horror movies is that we want to love them, so when something comes along that seems even remotely new or veers away from the run-of-the-mill tropes and cliches we've come to expect from scary movies, our first instinct is to pile on mountains of praise that, in time, reveals itself to be completely undeserved. For example ...
Marc Dion: The White House Needs a Jew (Creators Syndicate)
The only time I ever covered a tea party candidate, the crowd was 75 percent elderly people and 25 percent twitchy young guys whose prospects for ever taking a shower with a woman seemed, well, kinda dim. Which is good because as the old ones die off, I don't think the young ones are gonna breed.
Terry Savage: Commencement Speech (Creators Syndicate)
… since time is more important than money - something else you will only learn in hindsight - it is imperative that you build a strong base right from the start. The two keys to that base are: paying down debt and starting to save.
Sean Hutchinson: 15 Things You Might Not Know About 'Caddyshack' (Mental Floss)
[Bill] Murray filmed for a total of six days, and all of his lines-including his Dalai Lama speech-were improvised on-the-spot. In fact, the only script direction for what became his "Cinderella speech" read: "Carl cuts off the tops of flowers with a grass whip." Murray took it from there and ad-libbed lines that would, in 2005, be named to the AFI's list of greatest movie quotes of all time.
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wrote:
has retired.
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Reader Suggestion
Michelle in AZ
From The Creator of 'Avery Ant'
from Marc Perkel
BartCop
Hello Bartcop fans,
As you all know the untimely passing of Terry was unexpected, even by
him. We all knew he had cancer but we all thought he had some years
left. So some of us who have worked closely with him over the years are
scrambling around trying to figure out what to do. My job, among other
things, is to establish communications with the Bartcop community and
provide email lists and groups for those who might put something
together. Those who want to play an active roll in something coming from
this, or if you are one of Bart's pillars, should send an email to
active@bartcop.com.
The most active open discussion is on Bart's Facebook page.
( www.facebook.com/bartcop )
You can listen to Bart's theme song here
or here.
( www.bartcop.com/blizing-saddles.mp3 )
( youtu.be/MySGAaB0A9k )
We have opened up the radio show archives which are now free. Listen to
all you want.
( bartcop.com/members )
Bart's final wish was to pay off the house mortgage for Mrs. Bart who is
overwhelmed and so very grateful for the support she has received.
Anyone wanting to make a donation can click on this the yellow donate
button on bartcop.com
But - I need you all to help keep this going. This note
isn't going to directly reach all of Bart's fans. So if you can repost
it on blogs and discussion boards so people can sign up then when we
figure out what's next we can let more people know. This list is just
over 600 but like to get it up to at least 10,000 pretty quick. So
here's the signup link for this email list.
( mailman.bartcop.com/listinfo/bartnews )
Marc Perkel
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
And May Gray turns into June Gloom.
San Francisco Offers Site For Museum
George Lucas
San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee has offered George Lucas 2.3 acres of waterfront real estate in hopes that the director will locate a proposed arts and culture museum in the city, a spokeswoman for the mayor's office said on Friday.
The proposal, which was sent to Lucas on Thursday, heats up a competition between Chicago and San Francisco for Lucas's planned art museum, where he will house his personal collection.
"This is the most iconic site we could offer up," said Christine Falvey, a spokeswoman for the mayor's office. "It's right on our waterfront and right by our Bay Bridge and AT&T park."
Lucas had originally intended to build the museum in the Presidio, an area near the Golden Gate Bridge that is protected from development under a land trust.
George Lucas
France Restricts Coverage Of Anniversary
D-Day
Millions of viewers worldwide could miss live coverage of the commemorations marking the 70th anniversary of D-Day next week because the French president's office reversed a decision to grant international news agencies free access to the broadcast.
The administration of Francois Hollande has handed two French broadcast networks exclusive rights to the main international ceremony, and they are now imposing sports-style syndication fees on global news agencies, satellite and cable news channels, and online news outlets.
The French host broadcasters, France Televisions and TF1, are demanding that global news providers AP, AFP, Reuters and ENEX pay nearly 200,000 euros ($265,000) collectively for live broadcast and online streaming coverage of the official ceremonies, which feature at least 18 heads of state.
The French networks are providing coverage free to European state broadcasters, who belong to the 100-member European Broadcasting Union consortium.
The Elysee reversed itself May 15 despite having provided the agencies with verbal assurances on March 27 and written assurances on May 7 that they would be granted access to the broadcast to distribute free of charge to affiliated news organizations outside France.
D-Day
Jacques Cousteau's Grandson
Fabien Cousteau
The grandson of famed oceanographer Jacques-Yves Cousteau will embark on a month-long stay inside an undersea laboratory off the Florida Keys in an attempt to break a half-century-old record set by his late grandfather.
After years of planning and delays, Fabien Cousteau will make a 60-foot (18-meter) dive on Sunday in an attempt to spend 31 days in a laboratory known as Aquarius, observing fish behavior, studying the impact of ocean pollution and warming seas on coral reefs, and measuring the effect of lengthy underwater stays on the human body.
"There are a lot of challenges physically and psychologically," said Cousteau, 46, who was born in Paris and grew up on his grandfather's ships, Calypso and Alcyone.
Cousteau will be living and working underwater with a team of researchers and documentary filmmakers. If he succeeds in spending the entire time submerged, Cousteau will beat the 30-day underwater record set 50 years ago in the Red Sea by his grandfather.
Fabien Cousteau
Calls Oilsands "Filth"
Desmond Tutu
Anglican archbishop Desmond Tutu has called Alberta's oilsands "filth" created by greed, and has urged all sides to work together to protect the environment and aboriginal rights.
"The fact that this filth is being created now, when the link between carbon emissions and global warming is so obvious, reflects negligence and greed," Tutu told more than 200 rapt attendees at a conference on oilsands development and treaty rights in Fort McMurray on Saturday.
"The oilsands are emblematic of an era of high carbon and high-risk fuels that must end if we are committed to a safer climate."
"Oilsands development not only devastates our shared climate, it is also stripping away the rights of First Nations and affected communities to protect their children, land and water from being poisoned."
Desmond Tutu
"Truther" Steals Signs
Sandy Hook
A Virginia man who claims the massacre of 20 children and six adults at Sandy Hook School in Connecticut never took place has been arrested after stolen memorial signs for two 7-year-old victims were found in his home, police said.
A sign honoring victim Chase Kowalski had been removed from a playground in Mantoloking, New Jersey, and another, in memory of Grace McDonnell, was taken from a playground in Mystic, Connecticut.
Both signs were found on Friday at the Herndon, Virginia, residence of Andrew David Truelove, 28, and he was arrested on a charge of receiving stolen property, Herndon Police Chief Maggie DeBoard told reporters.
Truelove told police he is one of the so-called "truthers" who do not believe the 2012 massacre at Sandy Hook School actually happened. In the incident, one of the worst school shootings in U.S. history, gunman Adam Lanza, 20, a former student at the elementary campus, killed 20 children and six adults before taking his own life.
Sandy Hook
Gets 10 Years
Faux 'Shaman'
A fraudulent faith healer who convinced victims she was a shaman and conned them out of almost 1 million pounds ($1.7 million) was sentenced Friday to 10 years in jail.
A British jury convicted London-based Juliette D'Souza of ripping off clients who went to her for help with problems ranging from illness to job worries.
Prosecutors said D'Souza convinced them to hand over money, saying it was a "sacrifice" that would be hung off a sacred tree in the Amazon rainforest as a spiritual offering before being returned.
Sylvia Eaves, a retired opera singer who was duped out of more than 350,000 pounds, said outside court that she was relieved D'Souza would not target anyone else.
Faux 'Shaman'
Indonesia Testing Products
Cadbury
Indonesian authorities said on Friday they were testing products made by British confectioner Cadbury to check they complied with Islamic standards after two chocolate varieties in neighboring Malaysia were found to be contaminated with pork DNA.
The scandal over the ingredient banned under Islamic dietary laws has sparked outrage among some Muslim groups in Malaysia, who have called for a boycott on all products made by Cadbury and its parent Mondelez International Inc.
Concerns over halal food standards could jeopardize Mondelez's sales in Muslim markets that are larger than Malaysia, such as Indonesia, home to the world's largest Muslim population, and the Middle East.
"People need to understand that we can't immediately take action against Cadbury when there's no solid evidence yet or if contamination occurred in the factory itself or if it was external factors," said Othman Mustapha, the director general of Malaysia's Department of Islamic Development, or JAKIM.
Cadbury
Coffee Rust Reaches New Heights
Central America
For years, Hernan Argueta's small plot of coffee plants seemed immune to the fungus spreading elsewhere in Central America. The airborne disease that strikes coffee plants, flecking their leaves with spots and causing them to wither and fall off, failed to do much damage in the cooler elevations of Guatemala's mountains.
Then, the weather changed.
Temperatures warmed in the highlands and the yellow-orange spots spread to Argueta's plants. Since the warming trend was noted in 2012, the 46-year-old farmer said his family went from gathering a dozen 100-pound (45-kilogram) sacks of coffee beans each month to just five.
Argueta, like many farmers, is replacing his old trees with new coffee plants that better resist the rust, and cutting back existing trees in the hope they'll spring new foliage. It will be two to three years, however before the new plants produce the bright red cherries that hold the valuable beans. Argueta has had to seek out construction jobs to get by. "Now we have had to find other lines of work," he said.
Coffee rust first hit Central America in the 1970s. For decades, coffee growers simply coped with the blight and lower yields. But as rust spread to the highlands, the problem demanded action. Last year, Guatemala declared a national emergency, with officials estimating rust had affected 70 percent of the nation's crop.
Central America
Reading As Resistance
Thailand
In junta-ruled Thailand, the simple act of reading in public has become an act of resistance.
On Saturday evening in Bangkok, a week and a half after the army seized power in a coup, about a dozen people gathered in the middle of a busy, elevated walkway connecting several of the capital's most luxurious shopping malls.
As pedestrians trundled past, the protesters sat down, pulled out book titles such as George Orwell's "Nineteen Eighty-Four," a dystopian novel about life in a totalitarian surveillance state - and began to read.
In a country where the army has vowed to crack down on anti-coup protesters demanding elections and a return to civilian rule, in a place where you can be detained for simply holding something that says "Peace Please" in the wrong part of town, the small protest was a major act of defiance - a quiet demonstration against the army's May 22 seizure of power and the repression that has accompanied it.
"People are angry about this coup, but they can't express it," said a human rights activist who asked to be identified only by her nickname, Mook, for fear of being detained. "So we were looking for an alternative way to resist, a way that is not confrontational," she said. "And one of those ways is reading."
Thailand
Lighter-Hued Fare Better Than Darker Counterparts
Butterflies and Dragonflies
Do you worry much about climate change? Probably not, according to a new Gallup poll that surveyed 513 random American adults in March and found only 24 percent worry about the issue "a great deal."
The top three concerns-the economy, federal spending and the budget deficit, and affordable access to health care-may clue us in to why so few get worked up about climate change: It doesn't appear to affect our money and health as immediately. Well, another study puts out the latest plea involving global warming. If we don't want to act against the threat for ourselves, we should at least do it for the butterflies.
Scientists from London and Copenhagen studied 366 butterfly species and 107 dragonfly species across Europe from 1988 to 2006. They found that the darker-colored insects were migrating toward Western Europe, the Alps, and the Balkans, where it's cooler. The lighter-colored butterflies, while also gradually moving toward the chillier parts of Europe, have mostly dominated the warmer south. They fare better in the heat than their darker peers, whose coloring absorbs more sunlight. Lighter-colored insects can deflect light to avoid overheating.
Researchers have long suspected that the planet's changing climate affects species distribution, and this study proves a direct link between the two.
Butterflies and Dragonflies
Make Longest Trek In Africa
Zebras
At a time when mankind's encroachment on habitats is increasingly leading species to extinction, scientists have discovered a mass migration of animals in Africa that reaches farther than any other documented on the continent.
The journey made by about 2,000 zebra who traveled between Namibia and Botswana, two countries in a sparsely populated part of southern Africa, was discovered by wildlife experts only after some of the zebras were collared with tracking devices.
The newfound migration is a rare bright spot at a time when mass movements of wildlife are disappearing because of fencing, land occupation and other human pressures. Species of plants and animals around the planet are being wiped out at least 1,000 times faster than they did before humans arrived on the scene, said a separate study published Thursday by the journal Science.
The previously unheralded trek occurs within the Kavango-Zambezi Transfrontier Conservation Area, which is the size of Sweden and encompasses national parks in Namibia, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Zambia and Angola.
The zebra odyssey encompasses a roundtrip journey of 500 kilometers (300 miles), starting in floodplains near the Namibia-Botswana border at the beginning of the wet season. It follows a route across the Chobe River and ends at the seasonally full waterholes and nutritional grass of Nxai Pan National Park in Botswana. The zebras spend about 10 weeks there before heading back.
Zebras
In Memory
Joan Lorring
The Oscar-nominated actress Joan Lorring has died more than six decades after appearing opposite Bette Davis in the film "The Corn is Green." She was 88.
She died Friday in the New York City suburb of Sleepy Hollow, according to her daughter, Santha Sonenberg.
Lorring was born in Hong Kong and left for the United States with her mother in 1939 to escape the coming Japanese invasion. The two settled in San Francisco, where she started working in radio.
She went on to a career as a stage, screen and television performer. Her earliest American film was the 1944 MGM production "Song of Russia."
Signed with Warner Bros., Lorring was nominated for an Oscar in 1946 for best supporting actress in "The Corn is Green," in the role of Bessie Watty.
Lorring also appeared opposite Sidney Greenstreet and Peter Lorre in the 1946 movies "Three Strangers" and "The Verdict."
Broadway roles included Marie in "Come Back, Little Sheba," with Shirley Booth, for which she won the Donaldson Award in 1950.
Her many television appearances included "The Star Wagon," a 1966 movie with Dustin Hoffman and Orson Bean, and "The Love Boat" in 1980.
In addition to Santha, she leaves another daughter, Andrea Sonenberg, and grandchildren Josh and Rebecca Jurbala. Lorring's husband, the prominent New York endocrinologist Martin Sonenberg, died in 2011.
Joan Lorring
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