Joe Conason: Four Trillion for War -- and Rising (Creators Syndicate)
Anyone paying attention to the costs of U.S. military action in Iraq and Afghanistan must have known that the president badly underestimated those numbers on June 22, when he told the nation that we have spent "a trillion dollars" waging war over the past decade.
Paul Krugman's Blog: Repatriation is the Last Refuge of Scoundrels (New York Times)
OK, not quite. But the idea of granting a tax holiday for corporations that repatriate income they've kept overseas, and on which they have avoided taxes, is one of the worst ideas I've heard in a long time. (And that's saying something in these days and times). It figures, then, that my politically clued-in friends tell me that it's an idea gaining lots of support on the Hill, even among progressives.
Andrew Tobias: Worried, Married, and Calling for Free
Republicans "applauded the huge Reagan military build-up but didn't want to pay for it (the National Debt quadrupled under Reagan/Bush-41). They applauded the war in Iraq but didn't want to pay for it (the National Debt doubled under Bush-43). And now we have a debt per capita the same size as the one in Greece (about $45,000 for every man, woman, and child)…."
Jim Hightower: BILLIONAIRES HIDING BEHIND THE HEDGE
If your job paid $50,000 a year and you stayed at it for 47 years, your tally for a lifetime of work would be $2.4 million. Not bad - but hedge fund hustler John Paulson pulled down that much last year. … That's how much he made an hour.
Susan Estrich: Big Steps and Baby Steps (Creators Syndicate)
Just days after New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed into law legislation legalizing same-sex marriage, Rhode Island Gov. Lincoln Chafee and the coalition supporting similar legislation in that state effectively conceded defeat.
Lenore Skenazy: Call the Cops! Mom Took a Nap! (Creators Syndicate)
How can you tell if a mother is doing a good enough job? She never lets anything bad happen, ever. No accidents, no missteps, no whoopsies. No, she is watching her children every single second of every single day, including during those moments when a mere mortal would be sleeping or taking a shower or going to the bathroom. If she slips up, even once, she is apparently negligent. Criminally so.
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."
Juicy Fruit is a brand of chewing gum made by the Wm. Wrigley Jr. Company, a U.S. company that since 2008 has been a subsidiary of the privately-held Mars, Incorporated. It was introduced in 1893, and in the 21st century the brand name is recognized by 99 percent of Americans, with total sales in 2002 of 153 million units. It is also known for being the first ever product bought using a barcode scanner.
Source
BttbB was first, and correct, with:
In June 1974, a Marsh supermarket in Troy, Ohio installed the first Bar Code scanning equipment. The first product to be scanned using a UPC bar code was a 10 pack of Wrigley's Juicy Fruit gum. This pack of gum is now on display at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History
Baron Dave ("I have been attacked by Rush Limbaugh on the air, an experience somewhat akin to being gummed by a newt. It doesn't actually hurt, but it leaves you with slimy stuff on your ankle." -- Molly Ivins) wrote:
Hmmm... Wrigley's Gum.
Alan J wrote:
Juicy Fruit Gum
Sally said:
Wrigley's Juicy Fruit Gum was the first ever product bought using a barcode scanner.
Whenever I hear the name "Wrigley," I think of visiting Santa Catalina Island circa 1964. I took the boat trip over to the island (off CA) with a friend, and a very ordinary group of tourists. Once there, we met up with a ranch hand from the Wrigley Ranch - apparently, the chewing gum king owned most of the island and raised horses there. The man invited us 'up to the ranch,' and took us through the gates and guided us WALKING around the ranch. I was SO unimpressed, being a young, shallow city girl in my early 20's - who was most comfortable in the heart of NYC. How many times I have kicked myself for not appreciating that which I experienced, once upon a time...
PS: The history of the island, and the contributions of the Wrigley family are very interesting if anyone cares to read up on it: Santa Catalina Island, California - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jim from CA, retired to ID, responded:
The first UPC marked item ever scanned at a retail checkout (Marsh's
supermarket in Troy, Ohio) was at 8:01 a.m. on June 26, 1974, and was a
10-pack (50 Sticks) of Wrigley's Juicy Fruit chewing gum
Adam answered:
Milk? No, Juicy Fruit gum.
Charlie replied:
On June 26, 1974 at 8:01 a.m, Sharon Buchanan, a checker at Marsh's supermarket in Troy, Ohio scanned first product with a bar code. It was a 10-pack (10 5-stick packets) of Wrigley's Juicy Fruit chewing gum. The cash register rang up total of 67 cents for that first item. The pack of gum wasn't specially designated to be the first scanned product. It just happened to be the first item lifted from the cart by a shopper, Clyde Dawson. Today, the pack of gum is on display at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History.
But by 1980, we were getting (i still have this book somewhere):
Marian responded:
Juicy Fruit
John I from Hawaii says:
chewing gum.
MAM wrote:
Wrigley's Juicy Fruit chewing gum. On 6/26/74, the first product with a bar code was scanned. Clyde Dawson made history as the first consumer to buy a product which had been scanned into a till by its Universal Product Code. The product was a $0.67 10-pack of Wrigley's Juicy Fruit gum purchased at a supermarket in Troy, Ohio.
And, Joe S replied:
Juicy Fruit is a brand of chewing gum made by the Wm. Wrigley Jr. Company, a U.S. company that since 2008 has been a subsidiary of the privately-held Mars, Incorporated. It was introduced in 1893, and in the 21st century the brand name is recognized by 99 percent of Americans, with total sales in 2002 of 153 million units. It is also known for being the first ever product bought using a barcode scanner.
A new investigation into the tangled sex lives of deep-sea squid has uncovered a range of bizarre mating techniques. The cephalopods' intimate encounters include cutting holes into their partners for sex, swapping genders, and deploying flesh-burrowing sperm...
CBS starts the night with '60 Minutes', followed by a RERUN'Blue Bloods', then a RERUN'Undercover Boss', followed by a RERUN'CSIL The 2nd One'.
NBC opens the night with 'Dateline', followed by a RERUN'America's Got Talent', then another RERUN'America's Got Talent', followed by a FRESH'Marriage Ref'.
ABC begins the night with a RERUN'America's So-Called Funniest Home Videos', followed by a RERUN'Extreme Makeover: Home Edition', then a RERUN'Castle', followed by a RERUN'Body Of Proof'.
The CW fills the night with the movie 'Gladiator'.
Faux has a RERUN'American Dad', followed by a RERUN'Bob's Burgers', then a RERUN'The Simpsns', followed by a RERUN'Cleveland Show', then an hourlong RERUN'Family Guy'.
MY has an old "How I Met Your Mother', followed by another old 'How I Met Your Mother', then an old 'The Closer', followed by another old 'The Closer'.
A&E has 'Criminal Mnds', another 'Criminal Minds', still another 'Crimnal Minds', followed by a FRESH'The Glades'.
AMC offers the movie 'The Perfect Storm', followed by the movie 'Titanic'.
BBC -
[5:30 AM] Come Fly With Me - Episode 3
[6:00 AM] Top Gear - Episode 2
[7:00 AM] James May's Road Trip - Episode 1
[7:40 AM] James May's Road Trip - Episode 2
[8:20 AM] James May's Road Trip - Episode 3
[9:00 AM] James May's Road Trip - Episode 4
[9:40 AM] James May's Road Trip - Episode 5
[10:20 AM] James May's Road Trip - Episode 6
[11:00 AM] Top Gear - Episode 3
[12:00 PM] Bullitt - Bullitt
[2:30 PM] The Road Warrior
[4:30 PM] Top Gear - Top Gear Season 16 Special (90)
[6:00 PM] Top Gear - Episode 1
[7:00 PM] Top Gear - Episode 8 (90 min)
[8:30 PM] Top Gear - Episode 6 (90)
[10:00 PM] The Road Warrior
[12:00 AM] Bullitt - Bullitt
[2:30 AM] Top Gear - Episode 4
[3:30 AM] Top Gear - Episode 5
[4:30 AM] Top Gear - Episode 8 (90 min) (ALL TIMES EST)
Comedy Central has 'Jeff Dunham: Spark Of Insanity', 'Ron White: Behavioral Problems', followed by the FRESH'Christopher Titus: Neverlution', and 'Jeff Dunham: Arguing With Myself'.
FX has the movie 'Baby Mama', followed by the movie 'Role Models'
History has 'Pawn Stars', another 'Pawn Stars', 'Ice Road Truckers', another 'Ice Road Truckers', and still another 'Ice Road Truckers'.
Sundance -
[6:30 AM] Music Rising
[7:20 AM] Swedish Auto
[9:00 AM] E2: ENERGY - Paving the Way
[9:30 AM] E2: ENERGY - Growing Design
[11:30 AM] Kool: Dancing In My Mind
[12:00 PM] ALL ON THE LINE - Dana-Maxx (Episode 5, Season 1)
[1:00 PM] ALL ON THE LINE - Gemma Kahng (Episode 4, Season 1)
[2:00 PM] Love Lust & The Undead
[3:00 PM] Swedish Auto
[4:40 PM] Mammoth
[6:50 PM] Luckey
[11:30 PM] MY SO-CALLED LIFE - Halloween (Episode 9, Season 1)TV14 Mark Piznarski
[12:30 AM] MY SO-CALLED LIFE - Other People's Mothers (Episode 10, Season 1)
[1:30 AM] Love Lust & The Social Network
[2:30 AM] ALL ON THE LINE - Gemma Kahng (Episode 4, Season 1)
[5:10 AM] Luckey (ALL TIMES EST)
SyFy has the traditional 'Twilight Zone' marathon.
US guitarist Carlos Santana, right, and British guitarist John McLaughlin, left, perform on the Stravinski Hall stage during the 45th Montreux Jazz Festival, in Montreux, Switzerland, Friday, July 1, 2011.
Photo by Laurent Gillieron)
American Association for the Advancement of Science
A major US-based science association on Wednesday issued an open letter expressing its concern about harassment of climate scientists, saying such tactics could harm scientific progress.
The letter, published by the American Association for the Advancement of Science, followed an incident in Australia earlier this month when university researchers were rushed to a secure location after receiving death threats.
"Scientists should not be subjected to fraud investigations or harassment simply for providing scientific results that are controversial," said the letter from the board of the AAAS, which publishes the journal Science.
"AAAS vigorously opposes attacks on researchers that question their personal and professional integrity or threaten their safety based on displeasure with their scientific conclusions."
US scientists have been targeted by an activist group known as the American Tradition Institute which is seeking detailed records from climate researchers.
Jamaican reggae star Jimmy Cliff performs onstage during the 45th Montreux Jazz Festival in Montreux July 1, 2011. Over 350 artists and groups will perform on the two main stages and at the ten free venues during the sixteen-day long festival.
Photo by Valentin Flauraud
In a vast hangar in a north German shipyard, environmental pressure group Greenpeace's latest weapon is nearing completion: the state-of-the-art Rainbow Warrior III.
"The Rainbow Warrior III is much more than a flagship," the group's spokesman Mike Townsley told AFP ahead of the vessel being floated on Monday prior to its official launch for Greenpeace's 40th birthday in October.
Costing an estimated 23 million euros ($33.4 million), 10-15 percent of Greenpeace's total annual budget, this is the first time that Greenpeace is having a Rainbow Warrior built from scratch to its own specifications.
The first one, sunk by French agents in 1985 in New Zealand while attempting to stop nuclear testing in the Pacific, was a converted British fisheries research trawler built in 1955 acquired by Greenpeace in 1978.
The second, another former fishing vessel, is more than 50 years old and is being retired after being "rammed, raided and bombed" in numerous campaigns against nuclear testing, over-fishing and illegal logging, Greenpeace says.
The musicians looking for work at the city's famed Mariachi Plaza are singing a lot of ai-yai-yai's these days.
With the number of gigs plummeting by more than half over the past two years, competition has gotten so cut-throat at the square that fistfights and shouting matches have erupted as musicians underbid each other to land scarce jobs.
Now a group of veteran plaza musicians have banded together to form a type of mariachi labor union to stop what they call "mariachi pirates" from slashing prices to half the going rate.
Mariachi Plaza, in the heart of the heavily immigrant neighborhood of Boyle Heights on the edge of downtown, has been known as the place to contract a band since the 1940s. It's now an anchor of city lore with huge colorful murals of mariachis blanketing walls and a bandstand and benches donated by the Mexican state of Jalisco, the birthplace of mariachi.
Peruvians march in the 10th annual Gay Pride parade in Lima, Peru, Saturday July 2, 2011. The capital's Mayor Susana Villaran is proposing a controversial ordinance that all public places be required to post a notice announcing that Lima supports "gender and sexual orientation equality."
Photo by Martin Mejia
Lifestyle guru Martha Stewart is being reinvented as an animated 10-year-old in a bid to inspire young girls to take up cooking and crafting.
Stewart, 69, whose empire includes publishing, broadcasting and merchandising, is the inspiration behind an animated, multimedia Internet series called "Martha & Friends" that makes it debut on AOL Kids on Friday.
The 26 short webisodes feature a 10 year-old blonde Martha as a problem solving, craft-loving girl who with her three friends and two dogs shows kids how to do it themselves.
The series is aimed at 6-11 year-old girls and also features interactive online games, activities and projects.
Six weeks after Arnold $chwarzenegger revealed he had fathered a child out of wedlock, his wife Maria Shriver filed divorce papers Friday to end their marriage of 25 years.
The former television journalist and Kennedy family heir cited irreconcilable differences but offered no additional details about the breakup.
Shriver's filing does not indicate the couple has a prenuptial agreement, which likely means $chwarzenegger's earnings from his career as a Hollywood megastar will be evenly divided with his estranged wife.
The couple were married in 1986 and have four children together, including two sons who are still minors. Shriver's petition seeks joint custody of the couple's sons, ages, 17 and 13.
"Gleeks" worldwide say goodbye to Chord Overstreet, who plays "trouty-mouth" choir member Sam Evans on hit TV program "Glee."
The doe-eyed, blond-haired series regular has not been picked up for another season, according to reports Friday night.
Darren Criss (who portrays Blaine Anderson) and Harry Shum Jr. (Mike Chang) are being picked up, however, as full-time regulars for "Glee's" Season 3 this fall, which could be great news for Kurt Hummel and Tina Cohen-Chang -- their respective on-screen beaus.
Overstreet joined the cast last fall as transfer student Sam Evans, and could return in occasional guest star roles, according to the reports.
Health experts in Portugal said Friday that Portugal's decision 10 years ago to decriminalise drug use and treat addicts rather than punishing them is an experiment that has worked.
"There is no doubt that the phenomenon of addiction is in decline in Portugal," said Joao Goulao, President of the Institute of Drugs and Drugs Addiction, a press conference to mark the 10th anniversary of the law.
The number of addicts considered "problematic" -- those who repeatedly use "hard" drugs and intravenous users -- had fallen by half since the early 1990s, when the figure was estimated at around 100,000 people, Goulao said.
Portugal's holistic approach had also led to a "spectacular" reduction in the number of infections among intravenous users and a significant drop in drug-related crimes, he added.
Of the nearly 40,000 people currently being treated, "the vast majority of problematic users are today supported by a system that does not treat them as delinquents but as sick people," Goulao said.
This June 29, 2011 photo provided by the Detroit Zoo shows a bush dog at the zoo in Royal Oak, Mich. The arrival of two bush dogs marks the first time in four decades the zoo has had the animals. The Detroit Zoo said in a news release this week that only five other zoos in the U.S. care for the species. With fewer than 15,000 bush dogs in the wild, the species is listed as "near threatened" on the International Union for Conservation of Nature red list of threatened species.
The seventh graders find their seats quickly and quietly. They look up expectantly from rows of desks, studying the unfamiliar man with salt-and-pepper hair, dressed in a navy sport jacket, who steps to the front of Room 30 without any introduction.
"I'm ... going to tell you guys a story of something that happened in my life before you were born," the man says. He speaks gently, his tone warm but slightly tentative - a voice that easily reaches the back of the room even as it appeals for careful listening.
David Kaczynski does not mention that he has recounted this story many times - and, indeed, will repeat it at least twice more today. He does not tell the audience that this fragment of the past is central to who he is in the present. He does not explain that for all the times he's told it, he's still figuring out how to apply its lessons.
Until he became known as the brother of the Unabomber, David Kaczynski lived a content and rather anonymous life as the assistant director of a youth shelter in Albany, N.Y., married to a woman he'd known since seventh grade. Ever since, he has yearned for a day when the public and the media might forget the case and his role in it, when merely offering his last name to a stranger did not raise eyebrows.
A treasure trove of gold and silver jewelry, coins and precious stones said to be worth billions of dollars has been found in a Hindu temple in southern India, officials said on Saturday.
The valuables have an estimated preliminary worth of over 500 billion rupees ($11.2 billion), said Kerala Chief Secretary K. Jayakumar, catapulting the temple into the league of India's richest temples.
The thousands of necklaces, coins and precious stones have been kept in at least five underground vaults at the Sree Padmanabhaswamy Temple which is renowned for its intricate sculptures.
"We are yet to open one more secret chamber which has not been opened for nearly 140 years," Jayakumar told AFP.
Until now, the Thirupathy temple in southern Andhra Pradesh state was believed to be India's richest temple with offerings from devotees worth 320 billion rupees.
A baby giant anteater sits on the back of its mother during a photo opportunity at Edinburgh Zoo, Scotland, June 30, 2011. The baby anteater, who along with its mother are as yet unnamed, was born in March and will spend most of its time riding on its mother's back until it reaches around eighteen months old.
Photo by David Moir
You have reached the Home page of BartCop Entertainment.
Make yourself home, take your shoes off...
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How about a favorite TV show, movie, book, play, cartoon, or legal amusement?
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A box set the whole world should own?
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This is your place.
wrote:
replied:
Six weeks after Arnold $chwarzenegger revealed he had fathered a child out of wedlock, his wife Maria Shriver filed divorce papers Friday to end their marriage of 25 years.
