Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Matthew Yglesias: Giving Poor People Money is a Great Idea (Slate)
As we've seen, very wealthy people tend to spend their money in rather frivolous and extravagant ways not because they're bad people but simply because there are only so many high-value things to buy in the world. Poor families, by contrast, seem to spend an extra marginal dollar in very valuable ways including on things that substantially improve infant health.
Matt Miller: "Recognizing Paul Ryan's 'tell' when he is trying to avoid something" (Washington Post)
The point: Democrats can't afford to let Ryan/Romney's phony image as superior fiscal stewards survive. And Hume's interview shows how swiftly this charade can be exposed if Democrats and the press zero in on simple questions like Hume's. If the press is primed to cover this more intelligently, such queries will also expose the big Republican lie-the idea that you can balance the budget as the baby boomers age without taxes rising.
Froma Harrop: Akin's Consistency Is GOP's Real Problem (Creators Syndicate)
hile the U.S. senatorial candidate's grasp of reproductive science is shockingly lacking - he said real rape victims rarely get pregnant - his position that abortions be banned with no exception for rape happens to be in the new Republican Party platform. It is a stance that most Americans, including most registered Republicans, disagree with and probably didn't know was an official party position. Now they do.
Connie Schultz: O, to be a Fly on Those Walls (Creators Syndicate)
… a GOP committee outlined the party platform that includes anti-abortion language, with no exceptions for rape or incest.
Have Pussy Riot sparked a new wave of grrl power? (Guardian)
The Pussy Riot trial sparked global protest. Will it mobilise artists, too? Laura Snapes meets music's angry young women.
Henry Rollins: Subterranean Homesick Blues (LA Weekly)
While I have done my best to avoid prolonged exposure to heat, I have found myself in situations where a lot was expected of me in unfavorable conditions. So many nights I walked onto a stage, realizing the music we were going to play was going to test us to the very limits of our existence. I came to fear it.
Steven J. Boettcher: Remembering Phyllis Diller (Huffington Post)
You'll hear a lot in the next few days about how Phyllis Diller paved the way for women in comedy, but that's not how Phyllis saw herself. "There have always been funny ladies, Steve," she told me when I interviewed her a few years ago. She was careful to use my name -- just one more example of the level of fine-tuned professionalism that was a part of everything she ever did.
Gilbert Gottfried: Above all, Phyllis Diller was hysterical (CNN)
Today, some women may condemn other women for doing self-deprecating comedy, but Phyllis did it and she took it to an art form and it wasn't threatening, it wasn't angry and, just in a nutshell, when all else failed, it was just plain funny.
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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
Bit cooler.
iPod Demonstration
Longfin Inshore Squid
Squid: not just delicious, but also musical. Scientists at the Woods Hole, Mass., Marine Biological Laboratory made a trippy video, surfaced on CNET, which came about from wanting to explore how the colors of the Longfin Inshore squid's skin changes.
According to the Backyard Brains website, the Longfin Inshore has "three different chromatophore colors: brown, red, and yellow. Each chromatophore has tiny muscles along the circumference of the cell that can contract to reveal the pigment underneath."
And the best way to demonstrate the changing colors: hip-hop. The researchers attached the cephalopod to an electrode hooked up to an iPod nano, and let rip the Cypress Hill tune "Insane in the Brain."
The must-see video is seen through a microscope magnified eight times and zoomed in on the dorsal side of the fin. It was made with the help of Paloma T. Gonzalez-Bellido of Roger Hanlon's Lab in the Marine Resource Center of the Marine Biological Labs.
Longfin Inshore Squid
Foreign Funnymen Sweep British Comedy Awards
Edinburgh Fringe Festival
Performers from the United States, Norway and New Zealand swept Britain's top comedy awards at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival on Saturday, the first time all three prizes have gone to non-British comedians.
American Phil Burgers from Los Angeles took the top prize, the Foster's Best Comedy Show award, while the Best Newcomer award went to Norway's Daniel Simonsen.
New Zealander Sam Wills took the Foster's Panel Prize for performances over the past three weeks at the world's largest annual festival of the arts.
A total of 536 comedy shows were eligible for the prizes, and the judging panel and awards team attended more than 1,400 performances over the past three weeks.
The Best Comedy award was worth 10,000 pounds ($16,000), and the Best Newcomer and Panel prizes 5,000 pounds each.
Edinburgh Fringe Festival
Geneva Fundraiser
George Clooney
US film star George Clooney was expected Monday in Geneva at a fundraiser for US President Barack Obama's re-election campaign, Democrats Abroad said.
The group's co-president Charles Adams is organising the event, Democrats Abroad said on its website.
Swiss media said the evening event was limited to US citizens and would begin with a champagne reception for 150 people donating $1,000 (800 euros) each, followed by a dinner for 50 costing $20,000 a head or $30,000 per couple.
In May, some 150 donors met at the actor's home in support of the US president, and he held a fundraiser in Geneva in 2008, when Obama won his current term in office.
George Clooney
Baby News
Jack Pratt
Actress Anna Faris has given birth to a son named Jack who entered the world earlier than expected and is in a neonatal intensive care unit, her representative said on Saturday.
Faris, who in 2009 married actor Chris Pratt of the show "Parks and Recreation," revealed in May that she was pregnant. At the time, her representative told the magazine US Weekly that Faris was due to give birth in the fall.
"Anna Faris and Chris Pratt are happy to announce the birth of their beautiful baby boy Jack," her representative, Dominique Appel, said in a statement on Saturday.
"He arrived earlier than expected and will be spending some time in the (neonatal intensive care unit)," Appel said. "The happy parents thank you for your warm wishes and ask that you honor their privacy during this time."
Jack Pratt
Arrests Filmmaker, Actor
Syria
Security forces in Syria have arrested a filmmaker and an actor who helped people made homeless or jobless by President Bashar al-Assad's forces, their friends said on Friday, part of an apparent crackdown on the country's secular intelligentsia.
Arwa Nairabiya - who founded the "Damascus Dox Box" documentary film festival - was arrested at Damascus airport on Thursday evening before boarding a plane to Cairo, fellow filmmakers and relatives said.
Secret police agents also raided the home of Mohammad Omar Oso, an actor who had starred in several popular television series, and took him to an unknown destination, the Damascus Media Centre activists' group said in a statement.
The Syrian state has a Soviet-like monopoly on cinema and television production. The establishment shunned Oso, who is also in his 30s, when he refused to join the state-controlled actors' guild and sign statements declaring support for Assad at the start of the revolt, his friends said.
Nairabiya has championed the cause of human rights and freedom of expression in the face of state attempts to control culture through institutions that monopolize teaching of art, film and dance to support the personality cult of Assad.
Syria
Europe's Most Valuable Monument
Eiffel Tower
The Eiffel Tower isn't just the most widely known landmark in Paris. It's also just been rated the most valuable landmark in all of Europe.
A new study by Italy's Monza and Brianza Chamber of Commerce values the Eiffel Tower at about $544 billion, placing it far ahead of other historic locations, including Rome's Coliseum (about $90 billion), Milan's duomo (about $81 billion), the Tower of London (about $70 billion), Madrid's Prado Museum (about $58 billion) and even Great Britain's Stonehenge (about $10 billion).
Outside Europe, the White House in Washington is ranked as one of the world's most valuable landmarks, valued at over $101 billion. But that's still less than 20 percent of the estimated value of the Eiffel Tower.
Because none of these landmarks is actually up for sale, the values were calculated by estimating the inherent worth of the landmark to its home country, including the number of annual visitors and monetary value it brought in through tourism.
Eiffel Tower
Unofficial Dress Codes
Airlines
Airlines give many reasons for refusing to let you board, but none stir as much debate as this: How you're dressed.
A woman flying from Las Vegas on Southwest this spring says she was confronted by an airline employee for showing too much cleavage. In another recent case, an American Airlines pilot lectured a passenger because her T-shirt bore a four-letter expletive. She was allowed to keep flying after draping a shawl over the shirt.
Both women told their stories to sympathetic bloggers, and the debate over what you can wear in the air went viral.
It's not always clear what's appropriate. Airlines don't publish dress codes. There are no rules that spell out the highest hemline or the lowest neckline allowed. That can leave passengers guessing how far to push fashion boundaries. Every once in a while the airline says: Not that far.
Clashes over clothing and other flash points seem to be increasing, says Alexander Anolik, a travel-law attorney in Tiburon, Calif. He blames an unhappy mix of airline employees who feel underpaid and unloved, and passengers who are stressed out and angry over extra fees on everything from checking a bag to scoring an aisle seat.
Airlines
Two Leonardo Self-Portraits?
'Last Supper'
Leonardo da Vinci's "Last Supper" painting may include two self-portraits of the legendary Renaissance artist, according to a British art expert.
Ross King says the nose, beards and hairstyle on two of the apostles standing to the right of Jesus in the portrait, Thomas and James the Lesser, match up with a portrait of da Vinci that was made several years after he created his masterpiece.
King told the Independent that while historians have long-suspected da Vinci placed images of himself into his works, no one has thoroughly researched "The Last Supper" for such evidence.
Da Vince scholar Charles Nicholl supports King's hypothesis, telling the Independent,"Of all the apostles that [Leonardo] would wish to be identified with, I think Doubting Thomas would be top of his list because Leonardo was a great believer in asking questions rather than accepting what people tell you."
'Last Supper'
On Helium
Gibbons
Gibbons are jungle divas. The small apes use the same technique to project their songs through the forests of southeast Asia as top sopranos singing at the New York Metropolitan Opera or La Scala in Milan.
That was the conclusion of research by Japanese scientists who tested the effect of helium gas on gibbon calls to see how their singing changed when their voices sounded abnormally high-pitched.
Just like professional singers, the experiment found the animals were able to amplify the higher sounds by adjusting the shape of their vocal tract, including the mouth and tongue.
It is a skill only mastered by a few humans, yet gibbons are able to do it with minimal effort, according to Takeshi Nishimura from thePrimate Research Institute at Kyoto University.
Singing is particularly important to gibbons, which use loud calls and songs to communicate across the dense jungle. Their exchanges, described by primatologists as "duets", can carry as far as two kilometers (just over one mile).
Gibbons
In Memory
Neil Armstrong
U.S. astronaut Neil Armstrong, who took a giant leap for mankind when he became the first person to walk on the moon, has died at the age of 82, his family said on Saturday.
The family said in a statement online that Armstrong died following complications from heart-bypass surgery he underwent earlier this month, just two days after his birthday on August 5.
As commander of the Apollo 11 mission, Armstrong became the first human to set foot on the moon on July 20, 1969. As he stepped on the dusty surface, Armstrong said: ""That's one small step for (a) man, one giant leap for mankind."
A bit of controversy still surrounds his famous quote. The broadcast did not have the "a" in "one small step for a man..." He and NASA insisted static had obscured the "a," but after repeated playbacks, he admitted he may have dropped the letter.
Repeated attempts have been made using modern acoustic equipment to search for the missing letter, with one Australian scientist claiming to have found it. Armstrong has expressed a preference, however, that written quotations include the "a" in parentheses.
The Apollo 11 astronauts' euphoric moonwalk provided Americans with a sense of achievement in the space race with Cold War foe the Soviet Union and at a time when Washington was engaged in a bloody war with the communists in Vietnam.
Neil Alden Armstrong was 38 years old at the time and even though he had fulfilled one of mankind's age-old quests that placed him at the pinnacle of human achievement, he did not revel in his accomplishment. He even seemed frustrated by the acclaim it brought.
The Apollo 11 moon mission turned out to be Armstrong's last space flight. The next year he was appointed to a desk job, being named NASA's deputy associate administrator for aeronautics in the office of advanced research and technology.
Armstrong's post-NASA life was a very private one. He took no major role in ceremonies marking the 25th anniversary of the moon landing. "He's a recluse's recluse," said Dave Garrett, a former NASA spokesman.
Hansen said stories of Armstrong dreaming of space exploration as a boy were apocryphal, although he was long dedicated to flight. "His life was about flying. His life was about piloting," Hansen said.
He left the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) a year after Apollo 11 to become a professor of engineering at the University of Cincinnati.
After his aeronautical career, Armstrong was approached by political groups but unlike former astronauts John Glenn and Harrison Schmitt who became U.S. senators, he declined all offers.
Armstrong made a rare public appearance several years ago when he testified to a congressional hearing against President Barack Obama administration's plans to buy rides from other countries and corporations to ferry U.S. astronauts to and from the International Space Station.
Armstrong also said that returning humans to the moon was not only desirable, but necessary for future exploration -- even though NASA says it is no longer a priority.
He lived in the Cincinnati area with his wife, Carol.
His family expressed hope that young people around the world would be inspired by Armstrong's feat to push boundaries and serve a cause greater than themselves.
"The next time you walk outside on a clear night and see the moon smiling down at you, think of Neil Armstrong and give him a wink," the family said.
Armstrong is survived by his two sons, a stepson and stepdaughter, 10 grandchildren, a brother and a sister, NASA said.
Neil Armstrong
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