Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Marc Dion: If You Like the Middle East, You'll Love America (Creators Syndicate)
When I'm on the day shift, I wake up in the morning and watch enough television news to find out if I can wear suede shoes to work.
Lucy Mangan: separate door for the poor? Welcome to classless Britain (Guardian)
'Poor doors are visible. They are a brilliant, instantly comprehensible distillation of an entire complex of social, cultural and political attitudes.'
Stuart Heritage: Orlando Bloom v Justin Bieber: history's most pathetic celebrity scuffle (Guardian)
Orlando Bloom and Justin Bieber engaged in embarrassing fisticuffs earlier this week over Miranda Kerr, but what they're really fighting for is their waning careers.
What I'm really thinking: the charity shop manager (Guardian)
'The belief that we have significant cash in the attic is widespread, and it disappoints when we discover our souvenir egg timers and commemorative plates are worthless.'
Oliver Burkeman: "This column will change your life: what not to say" (Guardian)
'Deep down, unhelpful comments are motivated not by an urge to comfort the sufferer, but the selfish desire to make matters less awkward for the consoler.'
Tom Danehy: Tom says we could learn some lessons from Louie Zamperini (Tucson Weekly)
A long, long time ago, in my phony-baloney position as president of my high school's Letterman's Club, I found myself seated at a banquet table next to legendary USC football coach John McKay, who, while waiting for the banquet to begin, was reading a book about the Civil War. (John McKay was one of the funniest big-time coaches of all time. After his Tampa Bay Buccaneers lost a game, he was asked what he thought of his team's execution. He deadpanned, "I'm in favor of it.")
Naomi McAuliffe: The sinner's top 10 guide to happiness (Guardian)
Pope Francis confuses commandments for behaviour with tips for happiness. The nefarious know bad things bring true contentment.
Adam Withnall: Pope Francis issues top 10 tips for happiness (Independent)
Turn off the TV, calm down and stop trying to convert people to your religion. These are among the top 10 pieces of advice issued by Pope Francis this week as part of his recipe for a happy, more fulfilled life.
David Bruce's Amazon Author Page
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David Bruce has approximately 50 Kindle books on Amazon.com.
"Doug's Most Shared Facebook Post" Today
wrote:
took the day off.
has retired.
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.
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
Out-of-season rainy night.
Breaks Character
Stephen Colbert
Have you ever wondered what the differences are between the character Stephen Colbert and the real-life Stephen Colbert?
The world will get a full serving of the "real" Colbert once he takes over hosting duties from David Letterman on "The Late Show" next year. But for now, we've seen only flashes of his real persona.
On Friday, Colbert gave viewers a glimpse of his true self when he hosted a 10-minute Q&A session offering advice to young women for the website Rookie Mag as part of its "Ask a Grown Man" series.
The questions were across the board, including whether a teenage girl should be able to sleep at her boyfriend's house, what is love, why boys are mean and how to know if someone really likes you.
Colbert's advice was thoughtful, sincere, often moving and at times conservative compared with his more liberal political views.
Stephen Colbert
Wants Faeroes To Stop Whaling
Pamela Anderson
A more than four century-old pilot whales drive in the Faeroe Islands is a "barbaric, psychotic frenzy" which should cease, actress and animal rights activist Pamela Anderson said Friday.
Anderson traveled to the semi-autonomous Danish archipelago between Scotland and Iceland to support a campaign by Seattle-based Sea Shepherd Conservation Society. It opposes the drives, which date from the late 16th century.
The pilot whales are not an endangered species, but environmental activists claim the hunt is cruel. Sea Shepherd has spearheaded the opposition against the drive, known locally as grindadrab, since the 1980s.
Islanders kill up to 1,000 whales annually out of an estimated pilot whale population of 128,000 in the northeast Atlantic, according to data kept by the Faeroe Islands.
Pamela Anderson
Officials Offer Bonus
China
Chinese parents are being offered cash rewards to give their newborn children the mother's last name, a report said Friday, in an unusual attempt to address the traditional preference for sons.
Women who marry in China keep their own surnames, but their children almost invariably take the father's name and ensure its continuation into the next generation.
Now officials in Changfeng county in the eastern province of Anhui are giving 1,000 yuan ($162) to couples who take part in the "surname reform" plan, the Jianghuai Morning Post reported.
They hope the move will help to gradually change the common perception that giving birth to a son is preferable to having a daughter, it said, and nearly 30 couples have already volunteered.
In most countries, males slightly outnumber females, with between 103 and 107 boys born for every 100 girls, but China had nearly 118 male births for every 100 females in 2012.
China
Pulls Plug On 'Last Independent TV Show'
Russia
A programme seen as Russia's last independent show on mainstream television has been taken off the air amid an upsurge in anti-Western rhetoric, in a move condemned by Kremlin critics.
Ren TV's weekly analytical programme hosted by one of Russia's best known anchors, Marianna Maximovskaya, has been abruptly cancelled, said journalists on the show launched in 2003.
Ren TV is the country's last nationwide TV network with largely independent news programming, and the analytical show "Nedelya with Marianna Maximovskaya" (Week with Marianna Maximovskaya) was seen as one of the channel's gems.
Among colleagues Maximovskaya, 44, has long been seen as the odd one out, regularly interviewing Kremlin critics including former tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky, whom she spoke to in Berlin upon his sudden release from a Russian prison late last year.
Together with Internet TV channel Dozhd, the Echo of Moscow radio station and a handful of newspapers, Ren TV has been seen as a safety valve giving Kremlin critics an opportunity to vent their frustration with the authorities.
Russia
Mural Defaced
Banksy
A mural by British street artist Banksy which mocks government surveillance has been defaced with spray paint, leaving fans saying Friday they faced a race against time to save the £1 million artwork.
The piece, titled "Spy Booth", depicts three men in trench coats using listening devices to tap into conversations at an actual public telephone box in Cheltenham, southwest England.
It is just three miles from the UK government listening post GCHQ, which was the subject of a series of recent revelations by fugitive former US intelligence contractor Edward Snowden.
Vandals spray-painted silver and red graffiti on to the elusive artist's design overnight, but residents have expressed their hope that the piece, valued at £1 million ($1.7 million, 1.3 million euros), can be saved.
Residents have been using toothbrushes and cloth to clean the piece and prevent any lasting damage.
Banksy
Wants Monasteries, Church Rebuilt Inside Kremlin
Puti
Russian President Vladimir Putin has called for two monasteries and a church that were demolished during Soviet times to be rebuilt in the Kremlin, the largest overhaul of the site's architectural landscape in nearly a century.
Putin has cultivated strong ties with Patriarch Kirill, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, adopting more conservative policies and prompting some critics to suggest the line separating state and church has become blurred.
At a meeting on Thursday with Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin and top administrators of the Kremlin site, Putin said his plan would involve tearing down a building used for administrative purposes to restore the site's "historic appearance".
Putin gave no indication of the costs of construction. Russia's economy is teetering on the brink of recession and faces reduced access to foreign capital after the West imposed sanctions over Moscow's policies in Ukraine.
Puti
Compassionate Conservatives
Pakistan
Thousands of women displaced by fighting in Pakistan are struggling to get food and other aid because they lack identity cards and conservative Muslim elders have forbidden them from going to distribution centers.
The women are among nearly a million people who registered for aid after the army began an offensive against the Pakistani Taliban in North Waziristan, a mountainous region on the Afghan border.
There's plenty of food to go around, with the World Food Program handing out nearly 5,000 tonnes and many other aid groups active.
But women face two problems: the lack of identity cards and an edict from elders of their Pashtun tribes forbidding them from going out to get aid. Conservative tribal traditions demand women stay at home and men fetch the food.
The same traditions prevent many women from getting identity cards. Some families also find the idea of a woman being photographed or fingerprinted for cards highly intrusive, even though the national identity agency runs women-only centers. Others simply lived in areas too remote to get cards.
Pakistan
Dismantling Nuke Plant
San Onofre
Dismantling the San Onofre nuclear power plant in Southern California will take two decades and cost $4.4 billion, but spent radioactive fuel will be held at the site indefinitely, according to a game plan from Southern California Edison.
The price tag could make it the most expensive decommissioning in the 70-year history of the nuclear power industry, U-T San Diego reported.
The plant was shut down in 2012 after a small radiation leak led to the discovery of extensive damage to steam-generator tubes that carried radioactive water. Edison, which operated the plant, closed it for good last year.
On Friday, the utility laid out a draft plan for dismantling the twin reactors and restoring the property north of San Diego over two decades, beginning in 2016.
San Onofre
Gets New Name, New Home
Ma Kettle
An aging black Labrador retriever who walked 30 miles back to a Kansas family who didn't want her took a private jet to her new home with a Florida heiress.
Once called Ma Kettle but now known as Lady, the slightly grizzled dog has struggled to find a permanent home since she was taken to the Chautauqua County Animal Shelter after her owner died in 2012.
Kelsey Loyd has twice cared for Lady at the shelter. She told KWCH-TV that the first family who adopted her returned her because she was rough with their puppy. Then she escaped from the backyard of the Independence woman who had subsequently adopted her, trudging the 30 miles back to the family's home. Neither the family nor the woman wanted her back, so she was returned to the shelter.
Lady's life changed when her story was spotted on Facebook by Helen Rich, an heiress to the Wrigley gum company who lives in Florida and has an animal sanctuary there.
Rich sent her assistant, Chet Ragsdale, to southeast Kansas in a private jet to retrieve the retriever. He made the trip to Independence Municipal Airport on Thursday, arriving back in Tampa with Lady late that night.
Ma Kettle
In Memory
Manny Roth
Manny Roth, a colorful club owner in Greenwich Village whose Cafe Wha? and its basement level stage was a rite of passage in the 1960s for Bob Dylan, Jimi Hendrix, Bruce Springsteen and many others, has died. He was 94.
Roth, the uncle of Van Halen singer David Lee Roth, died July 25. His daughter, Jodi Roth, said Friday that he died of natural causes at his home in Ojai, California.
As boisterous as his loud-mouthed nephew, Roth was a good man to know during a special place and time - when Greenwich Village was a mecca for upcoming artists and bohemians, where on a given night, you might see Woody Allen doing standup, or take in performances by Peter, Paul and Mary and such future rock 'n' rollers as Dylan and David Crosby.
Founded in the late 1950s, The Cafe Wha? was a former stable that Roth personally helped renovate, laying down the new floor and bringing in some friends to help decorate. The look was such a mish-mash that Roth named the club Cafe Wha?
It was a true starter club, with low pay, no liquor and little space. But Roth's stage was an essential first stop for young performers looking for a chance, or even a place to stay. Dylan showed up in early 1961, not yet 20 years old and fresh from his native Minnesota.
"He was just a kid," Roth later recalled, noting how he announced from the stage that Dylan needed a room for the night. "The first time I heard Dylan get up on an open mic, I'm thinking to myself, 'This kid doesn't have a prayer. He can't sing, can't play and certainly doesn't have any stage presence.'"
In his memoir "Chronicles: Volume One," Dylan remembered Cafe Wha? as "a subterranean cavern, liquorless, ill lit, low ceiling, like a wide dining room with chairs and tables." Dylan was especially fond of the afternoon hootenannies, calling the potpourri of performers an "extravaganza of patchwork."
You never knew who might be the next superstar. In 1966, a band named Jimmy James and the Blue Flames got a gig. His future manager was in the audience. By the following year, Jimmy James was Jimi Hendrix and the most talked about guitarist in rock. Springsteen turned up in late 1967, a teenager without a record deal. Roth also was a major booster of comedians, including Bill Cosby, George Carlin and a young troublemaker named Richard Pryor, who Roth briefly managed.
Roth was born in New Castle, Indiana, and remembered no special talent growing up beyond a willingness to take chances. After high school, he took off for Miami, attended the University of Miami and acquired a taste for performance when the school staged one of his plays. During World War II, he served with the Army Air Corps.
He left Cafe Wha? in the early '70s amid financial problems and over the past 40 years worked in various businesses, whether opening a restaurant in Woodstock or helping to run the West End Gate in uptown Manhattan.
Cafe Wha? was back in the headlines in early 2012 when a reunited Van Halen chose Roth's former business to launch an upcoming tour. Manny Roth was among the guests as David Lee Roth bowed to the club he visited as a boy.
Roth is survived by his first wife, Jai Italiaander; his second wife, Marlyse Roth; and three children.
Manny Roth
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