Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Froma Harrop: If You Like Local Government (Creators Syndicate)
But with their states strapped for funds, Republican governors are finally joining their Democratic colleagues in demanding the right to collect the same taxes from online merchants that they do from stores on Main Street or in the mall.
Connie Schultz: One American, One Vote, Every Time (Creators Syndicate)
If you want to save money, voter registration modernization, or VRM, is the way to do it. Unless they opt out, residents are automatically registered to vote whenever they interact with the bureau of motor vehicles. The states save time and paper, and eligible voters don't face a boatload of obstacles when they try to vote. Expand these opportunities to any interaction with a government entity and you've solved countless voter registration problems.
George Dvorsky: "China's Worst Self-Inflicted Environmental Disaster: The Campaign to Wipe Out the Common Sparrow" (io9)
… without the sparrows to curb the insect population, the crops were getting decimated in a way far worse than if birds had been allowed to hang around. Consequently, agricultural yields that year were disastrously low. Rice production in particular was hit the hardest. On the advice of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Mao declared full-stop to the Great Sparrow Campaign, replacing the birds with bed bugs on the Four Pests naughty list.
Stephen Hise: "Straight Up: Q&A with Mark Coker" (Indies Unlimited)
I recently had the opportunity to interview Mark Coker, one of the visionaries of the indie author movement. In 2008, Mark founded Smashwords to accelerate the death spiral of the bloated, inefficient, out-dated publishing industry-or as he put it: to change the way books are published, marketed and sold.
On social media the new religion is sharing. Some of that sharing may not be very nice (Guardian)
But maybe a certain level of abuse is the price we pay for free speech, writes Suzanne Moore.
Emily Yoffe: "Hands-Off Relationship: My husband had sex with me while I was in a drunken state. Should I divorce him?"
Living in terror that expressing one's perfectly normal sexual desire could end one's marriage, and freedom, is itself a form of abuse. Stop acting like a parody of a gender-studies course catalog and start acting like a loving wife. If you can't, then give the poor sap a divorce.
Roger Ebert: The mega-epic pissing contest
Peter Jackson caused a bit of a stir by announcing that he would shoot his forthcoming "The Hobbit" at 48 frames per second. The film will be released in two parts, in December 2012 and December 2013, and he revealed recently that Part One will be two and a half hours long. One wonders how much of this burden the lovable little creatures can carry on their shoulders. There is a kind of one-upmanship going on among the titans of the mega-uber-blockbusters, Jackson and James Cameron--who himself just announced that …
Bill Hicks (Disinformation)
"Thank you. How you doing folks? Me too. You gotta bear with me, I'm very tired, very tired of traveling, and very tired of doing comedy, and very tired of staring out at your vacant faces looking back at me, wanting me to fill your empty lives with humor you couldn't possibly think of yourselves. Good evening."
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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Reader Suggestion
Michelle in AZ
From The Creator of 'Avery Ant'
Day 13
Gulf Fritillary
Came across some of Gulf Fritillary larva
on the back fence, so it looks like we'll have a third year of raising butterflies. : )
Click on any picture for a larger version.
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Sunny and a bit less humid.
Federal Funding Threats
PBS
PBS President Paula Kerger says she's disappointed that public TV's federal funding is again under attack by lawmakers Republicans.
Kerger said Saturday that the move also is ironic, given the impressive number of Emmy Award nominations earned last week by PBS' programs, including the popular drama "Downton Abbey." PBS received 58 nods, second only to HBO and CBS.
Public TV gets 15 percent of its money from the federally funded Corporation for Public Broadcasting, with the rest largely contributed by viewers, Kerger told a meeting of the Television Critics Association.
But some stations get half or more of their funding from federal funds, Kerger said, predicting that a number of them will "go dark" if the money is cut off.
PBS
Firewalk Experience Fails
Tony Robbins
Fire officials in California say at least 21 people were treated for burns after attendees of an event for motivational speaker Tony Robbins tried to walk on hot coals.
The San Jose Mercury News reports that at least three people went to a hospital and most suffered second- or third-degree burns.
Robbins was hosting a 4-day gathering called "Unleash the Power Within" at the San Jose Convention Center. Witnesses say on Thursday, a crowd went to a park where 12 lanes of hot coals were on the grass.
Robbins' website promotes "The Firewalk Experience" in which people walk on super-heated coals.
Witness Jonathan Correll says he heard "screams of agony."
Tony Robbins
Russian Baritone Quits
Bayreuth Festival
A Russian baritone who was due to sing the lead role in Richard Wagner's "The Flying Dutchman" when the Bayreuth opera festival opens next week withdrew from the event Saturday after it emerged that he once had Nazi-related symbols tattooed on his body.
A German television program broadcast Friday showed old footage of a bare-chested Evgeny Nikitin playing drums in a rock band, in which a swastika tattoo partly covered by another symbol could be seen. The festival said Nikitin made his decision amid questions from a German newspaper about the significance of some of his tattoos.
Organizers made Nikitin, 38, aware of "the connotations of these symbols in connection with German history," said a statement from the festival in Bayreuth, in the southeastern state of Bavaria. It added that his decision to pull out is "in line with the festival leadership's consistent rejection of any form of Nazi ideas."
The Nazi past is a sensitive issue for the Bayreuth festival, which was founded by Richard Wagner in 1872.
Bayreuth Festival
Highest Earning Chef In U.S.
Gordon Ramsay
With 24 restaurants around the world, 11 Michelin stars, numerous cookbooks, and TV shows, Gordon Ramsay is the top earning chef in the United States, with an estimated global income of $38 million, according to a new list by Forbes.com.
Scottish-born Ramsey, known to U.S. television audiences for his acerbic comments on "Master Chef" and "Hell's Kitchen", surpassed Rachael Ray, who earned an estimated $25 million for the year ending June 2012 from her TV show, magazine and cookbooks.
Austrian-born Wolfgang Puck, whose 20 restaurants contributed to his $20 million in earnings, came in third on the list of top earning chefs who have a strong presence in the United States. Puck is based in California.
Completing the list's top five were Paula Deen, the southern U.S. cook criticized for buttery recipes and for becoming a pharmaceutical company spokeswoman after she was diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes, and Mario Batali, co-owner of more than a dozen restaurants and one of the stars of TV's "The Chew." They earned $17 million and $13 million, respectively.
Gordon Ramsay
Resigns From Boards Of UK Newspapers
Rupert
Media mogul Rupert Murdoch has resigned as a director of a number of News Corp. boards overseeing his Britain newspapers, a spokeswoman confirmed Saturday. He also quit from some of the media company's subsidiary boards in the United States.
Murdoch stepped down this past week as a director of NI Group,Times Newspaper Holdings and News Corp. Investments in the U.K., said Daisy Dunlop, spokeswoman for News Corp.'s British arm, News International. The companies oversee The Sun, The Times, and The Sunday Times.
It was not immediately clear which of News Corp.'s U.S. boards Murdoch had left. Britain's Telegraph newspaper, which first reported the news late Saturday, said those details had not yet been disclosed by the US Securities and Exchange Commission.
Saturday's announcement suggests that Murdoch may be distancing himself from his British newspaper interests, which have been shaken to the core by a widespread phone hacking scandal.
Rupert
Puts Box Office On Mute
Hollywood
Hollywood studios aligned in a rare show of solidarity to give their weekend box-office reporting a rest because of the shootings in Colorado at a screening of "The Dark Knight Rises."
Sony, Fox, Disney, Universal, Fox and Lionsgate said Saturday that they are joining "Dark Knight Rises" distributor Warner Bros. in withholding their box-office numbers for the weekend.
Warner Bros. announced Friday that it would forgo the usual revenue reports until Monday out of respect for the victims and their families in the shooting that killed 12 and wounded 58 at the midnight show earlier in the day.
The other studios said they also would not be reporting numbers until Monday. Paramount didn't immediately say whether they were joining. Box-office tracking service Rentrak said it would not report figures this weekend.
Hollywood
What Climate Change?
Tribal Communities
Native American and Alaska Native leaders told of their villages being under water because of coastal erosion, droughts and more on Thursday during a Senate hearing intended to draw attention to how climate change is affecting tribal communities.
The environmental changes being seen in native communities are "a serious and growing issue and Congress needs to address them," Tex Hall, chairman of the Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara Nation of New Town, N.D., said Wednesday.
Mike Williams, chief of the Yupit Nation in Akiak, Alaska, said in the informational Senate Indian Affairs Committee hearing, that villages are literally being wiped out by coastal erosion. Williams said he can cast a net and catch salmon at his childhood home because the home is under water, he said. He also described how the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race, in which he participates, has been moved because of lack of snowfall and that dogs must run at night to stay cool.
"We've always lived off the land and off the waters and continue to do that. But we're bearing the burden of living with these conditions today," Williams said.
Tribal Communities
Northern Utah
'Goat Man'
A man spotted dressed in a goat suit among a herd of wild goats in the mountains of northern Utah has wildlife officials worried he could be in danger as hunting season approaches.
Phil Douglass of the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources said Friday the person is doing nothing illegal, but he worries the so-called "goat man" is unaware of the dangers.
Douglass said a man hiking Sunday along Ben Lomond peak in the mountains above Ogden, about 40 miles north of Salt Lake City, spotted the person dressed like a goat among a herd of real goats. The person provided some blurry photographs to Douglass, who said they did not appear to have been altered.
Wildlife officials now just want to talk to the man so that he is aware of the dangers. There's no telling what his intentions are, Douglass said, but it is believed he could just be an extreme wildlife enthusiast.
'Goat Man'
Bounty Mutineer Descendants May Hold Key
Myopia
Descendants of the famous Bounty mutineers who now live on an isolated Pacific Island have among the lowest rate of myopia in the world and may hold the key to unlocking the genetic code for the disease, according to a new study.
A study of residents on Australia's Norfolk Island, 1,600 km (1,000 miles) northeast of Sydney, showed the rate of myopia, or short-sightedness, among Bounty descendants was about half that of the general Australian population.
Fletcher Christian led a mutiny on the British Royal Navy ship HMS Bounty against captain William Bligh in 1789 in the South Pacific. The mutineers settled in Tahiti but later fled, along with their Tahitian women, to remote Pitcairn Island to escape arrest.
Some 60 years after arriving on Pitcairn, almost 200 descendents of the original mutineers relocated to Norfolk Island to avoid famine.
"We found the rate of Pitcairn group myopia is approximately one-half that of the Australian population and as a result would be ranked among one of the lowest rates in the world," said David Mackey, the managing director of Australia's Lions Eye Institute which led the studies.
Myopia
In Memory
Alexander Cockburn
Alexander Cockburn, a famous leftist writer and journalist, died Friday evening in Germany after going through a two year battle with cancer that was largely kept a secret.
Only a few people close to Cockburn knew about his condition according to Jeffrey St. Clair, a "friend and comrade" of Cockburn's. St. Clair broke the news of Cockburn's passing onCounterPunch, the newsletter and website the two co-edited since 1994. "Alex kept his illness a tightly guarded secret. Only a handful of us knew how terribly sick he truly was. He didn't want the disease to define him. He didn't want his friends and readers to shower him with sympathy. He didn't want to blog his own death as Christopher Hitchens had done," St. Clair writes of his friend.
Cockburn wrote columns for CounterPunch, The Nation, and First Post right up until his death. "In one of Alex's last emails to me, he patted himself on the back (and deservedly so) for having only missed one column through his incredibly debilitating and painful last few months," says St. Clair. Cockburn also wrote for The New York Review of Books, Esquire, the Village Voice, among other places over the course of his career. Cockburn founded the Voice's on-again-off-again media reporting column "Press Clips" during his tenure with the paper, before leaving under murky circumstances in 1983. Cockburn finished writing his memoirs and a short book on his death bed, both of which CounterPunch plans to publish within the next year.
Cockburn was known for having radical views on things coming from both sides of the political spectrum. He was very critical of American foreign policy and of Isreal's treatment of the Palestinians. His thoughts on global warming aligned with that of the far right.
But, most of all, he will likely be remembered as Christopher Hitchens' foil. The two were friends for a while, but they drifted apart after publicly sparring in the media and moving to different places. "Because of the similarities between him and Christopher Hitchens-both Anglos (he of Ireland, Hitchens of England) in America; both friends, for a time; both left (though, in Hitchens's case, for a time); and both dying relatively young from cancer-people, inevitably, will want to make comparisons," writes political scientist Corey Robin. Robin argues Cockburn was the superior writer because he "was a much better observer of people and of politics;" "was extraordinarily well read, but he didn't make a parade;" and he "managed to achieve, again at least on the page, a better equanimity between his savagery and his sweetness."
If you'd like to read a piece of Cockburn's writing in his honor, might we suggest this 1982 satire of PBS's News Hour that originally appeared in Harper's. Cockburn was 71-years-old.
Alexander Cockburn
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