Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Farhad Manjoo: Amazon Makes Everything Better (Slate)
Books, movies, games-how the new Kindle will revolutionize your experience with all of them.
Bank of America Gets Pad Locked After Homeowner Forecloses On It (5 June 2011)
Collier County, Florida -- Have you heard the one about a homeowner foreclosing on a bank? Well, it has happened in Florida and involves a North Carolina based bank.
Luke McKinney: 7 Tips for Not Screwing Up College (Cracked)
College is the greatest time in your life, but only if you screw it up. It's meant to be the greatest time in your life so far, while permanently improving you and the rest of your existence. That it's a wonderland filled with more adventures, sexy people and incredible scientific breakthroughs than the Bond franchise is a mere side effect. But students are sometimes too distracted by how they've just taken the safety catches off their genitals.
Esther Inglis-Arkell: The hoaxes that made fake people famous (io9)
How likely is it that people can be made up out of thin air and a bunch of rumors? In the age of Facebook, pretty likely. But it's happened before - long before the rise of social media.
Howard Jacobson: 'I write fiction. The others write crap' (Guardian)
The Booker winner talks to Elizabeth Day about his new, 'funniest-ever' novel, his scorn for genre fiction and why he'll never wear a T-shirt.
Michael Chabon: 'Two years into writing this I felt like it was an utter flop' (Guardian)
The Pulitzer prize winner tells Killian Fox about the struggle to write his latest novel and how his wife persuaded him to persevere.
Jack London: "You Must Deliver Marketable Goods" (Letters of Note)
Merely because you have got something to say that may be of interest to others does not free you from making all due effort to express that something in the best possible medium and form. Medium and form you have utterly neglected.
Jack London: "Sympathy Begins at Home" (Letters of Note)
Sympathy for the struggling unknown is all very well. It is beautiful-but there are so many struggling unknowns, something like several millions of them. And sympathy can be worked too hard. Sympathy begins at home. The writer would far rather allow the multitudinous unknowns to remain unknown than to allow his near and dear ones to occupy pauper pallets and potter's fields.
Charlie Jane Anders: This book is the perfect gift for the weird kid in your life (io9)
Adam-Troy Castro rocked our world with his Andrea Cort novels and stories (and later today, we're republishing a story of his that just appeared in Lightspeed Magazine.) So we were thrilled to see that he's written a children's book, "Gustav Gloom and the People Taker." It's the story of a weird little boy living in a house full of shadows - and it's the perfect gift for the weird boy or girl in your life.
Pat Hunter: Certain acts, long forgotton, simply end inexplicably (River Falls Journal)
Years ago I loaned one of my favorite books to a student. It was Max Shulman's "Barefoot Boy With Cheek," a comic novel about the misadventures of Asa Hearthrug, a country boy who attends the University of Minnesota and suffers under its weird mismanagements back in the 1940s. (Apparently things haven't changed.)
D J Taylor: In Defence of Parody (Literary Review)
Jane Carlyle was once asked by a friend what John Sterling, the subject of her husband's Life of John Sterling, had ever done in his life to rate a biography, and she replied: 'Induced Carlyle somehow to write him one.' And so a parody of a badly written novel or a vainglorious autobiography may very well annoy its subject, but it is also an acknowledgement that the writer being parodied is worth criticising. There are worse destinies.
David Bruce's Amazon Author Page
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David Bruce's Blog
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."
"Doug's Most Shared Facebook Post" Today
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Reader Suggestion
Michelle in AZ
From The Creator of 'Avery Ant'
BadtotheboneBob
More turkeys... and some antlers
This was just before they turned to follow the clearing. As close as they'd let me get within their comfort zone. They were somewhat relaxed although they certainly knew I was standing there motionless in the middle of the path nearby... Note how the soil turns sandy when cleared. Where there's trees, the ferns and moss grow and there's a thick, dark, damp soil of decayed leaves. The clearing, less than a football field in size, was made to grow rye which the forest animals love... Particularly these guys...
The nearby cedar swamp bucks...
The Barcia Camp is primarily a hunting and fishing camp...
Meanwhile, back in civilization...
...my neighbors looked well after my flowers. God Bless them...
Oh, and my neighbors, as well ~ Har!
I might be 'Bad', but I do like flowers and will readily admit it to anyone.
Maybe, that's why I'm 'Bad'...
...totheboneBob
Thanks, B2tbBob!
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Even hotter. Sigh.
Pa. Schools Re-Enact Game
'All the Right Moves'
It took almost three decades, but the "Ampipe Bulldogs" football team finally evened the score - even without Tom Cruise on the field.
Two western Pennsylvania high school football teams re-enacted on Friday night the game in "All the Right Moves" that was filmed in Johnstown in 1983. There was even a second-half downpour and a fumbled snap, just like in the movie, the (Johnstown) Tribune-Democrat (http://bit.ly/SmYNvw ) reported.
But this time Ampipe won by three points rather than losing by two. Johnstown High School, playing as Ampipe, prevailed over Westmont Hilltop, playing the rival Walnut Heights, 20-17 before about 4,500 fans who crammed into Trojan Stadium for a commemoration of the filming.
Johnstown's players wore gold Ampipe uniforms with black numbers rather than their traditional Columbia blue and black, while Westmont sported white jerseys with red numbers.
The 20th Century Fox movie starred Cruise, Lea Thompson and Craig T. Nelson featured dozens of local football players, coaches, cheerleaders, band members and students, and more than 10,000 Johnstown residents filled Point Stadium nearly 30 years ago during filming of the big game.
'All the Right Moves'
German Group Protests Prices
Oktoberfest
Munich's world famous Oktoberfest doesn't kick off for another 12 days and it's already off to a tough start.
First, there was a report last week that German brewers were short on bottles and kegs after an unseasonably warm summer spiked beer consumption. The bottles and kegs are needed to ensure brewers can supply enough beer to festival.
Now, according to German newspaper Der Spiegel, a "German association that fights against deceptive pouring practices" is taking issue with the price of beer at Oktoberfest.
Attendees to this year's festival can expect to pay between 9.10 and 9.50 euros ($11.63-$12.14) for the traditional liter (34-ounces) mug of beer, up 35 cents (euro) ($0.45) from last year.
According to a Russian news channel, the price of beer at Oktoberfest has increased 43 percent over the last decade.
Oktoberfest
22,000 Times
Atari 2600
If you're old enough - sorry, classic enough - to remember the original Atari 2600 from the early '80s, you'll know that processor speed, hard drive capacity, and RAM chips were not really even a thing to be worried about. Your only concern was getting that white block on the right side of the screen over to the left side before your friend. But here we are 30 years later and gaming systems have changed quite a bit.
Hard Drives Northwest has built a limited number of impressively retro machines that do a wonderful job of keeping that original Atari 2600 look, but still pack quite a punch when it comes to computing power. With the exception of the cooling fans peeking out from the cartridge slot and an LED power light, the average consumer might not even see the difference - until you plug it in.
If you want to talk numbers, Atari's original MOS 6507 Processor crawled along at 1.19 MHz on one thread. This updated version runs on an Intel Core i7 2600S Processor at 3.4 GHz on eight threads. That's an increase of 22,857 times the processing power of the original! This glorified case mod also boasts 8GB of RAM, a 120GB SATA hard drive, and a 1GB 128-bit Radeon HD 6570 graphics card. All of this is miraculously powered by a mere 192W power supply.
Atari 2600
Addresses Fordham Students
Stephen Colbert
In a rare public moment out of character, actor Stephen Colbert told students at the Jesuit Fordham University on Friday that he loves the Roman Catholic Church no matter its human flaws.
The host of "The Colbert Report" talked about his faith in a discussion on humor and spirituality with New York Cardinal Timothy Dolan and the Rev. James Martin, author of "Between Heaven and Mirth" and the official chaplain of Colbert's show.
Colbert, who has taught Sunday school classes to school-age children, said people in comedy often don't understand how he could remain Catholic. But he said he views the church as teaching joy, which he called the "infallible sign of the presence of God."
"I love my church - warts and all," he said, before an audience of about 3,000 cheering students, who posted his quotes on Twitter using the organizers' (hash)dolancolbert hashtag.
Colbert said people in comedy often make jokes at the expense of religion, but he makes jokes about what he called people's misuse of religion in politics and other arenas. Still, he said, "If Jesus doesn't have a sense of humor, I am in huge trouble."
Stephen Colbert
Misplaced Radioactive Cylinder
Halliburton
Somewhere in West Texas is a 7-inch radioactive cylinder thatHalliburton would like to find. Anyone who comes across it is advised to keep their distance.
The oil field services company lost track of the device, which is used to assess potential sites for hydraulic fracturing, on Tuesday (Sept. 11) while trying to transport it from Pecos to a well site near Odessa 130 miles away. A special unit of the Texas National Guardhas now stepped in to aid Halliburton in a search for the cylinder, according to Bloomberg.
"It's not something that produces radiation in an extremely dangerous form," said Chris Van Deusen, a spokesman for the Texas Department of State Health Services. "But it's best for people to stay back, 20 or 25 feet."
The tool that Halliburton lost contains a mixture of beryllium and americium-241, the same radioactive isotope of americium that is found in very small quantities in a common type of smoke detector.
Halliburton
Rejects White House Request
Google
Google Inc rejected a request by theWhite House on Friday to reconsider its decision to keep online a controversial YouTube movie clip that has ignited anti-American protests in the Middle East.
The Internet company said it was censoring the video in India andIndonesia after blocking it on Wednesday in Egypt and Libya, where U.S. embassies have been stormed by protestors enraged over depiction of the Prophet Mohammad as a fraud and philanderer.
On Tuesday, the U.S. Ambassador to Libya and three other Americans were killed in a fiery siege on the embassy in Benghazi.
Google said was further restricting the clip to comply with local law rather than as a response to political pressure.
Google
Arms Merchant/Messiah
Sun Myung Moon
Sun Myung Moon, a self-proclaimed messiah who founded the Unification Church that once boasted millions of members, was buried at a church-owned mansion modelled on the White House on Saturday after a two-week mourning period.
Tens of thousands of followers gathered at Gapyeong, an hour outside the capital Seoul, to say a final goodbye to Moon, a man who dubbed himself the "True Parent" of those he married in mass ceremonies and who once proposed himself as "supreme chairman" of a reunited Korea.
He died aged 92 on September 3 of complications due to pneumonia. The church he founded is now run by his youngest son, while the business entities are run by another son.
Moon is survived by his wife and 10 of their 13 children. But his eldest son Hyun Jin, the chairman of UCI, which owns the UPI news agency, did not attend the funeral. Church officials did not give details about why he was not there.
Sun Myung Moon
Portrait Likely First Of Spanish King
Diego Velazquez
In preparing an exhibit on 17th century artist Diego Velazquez's early work for Spain's King Philip IV, art historians believe they discovered that a portrait by the Spanish master at Dallas' Meadows Museum is likely his first of his lifelong patron.
"Diego Velazquez: The Early Court Portraits" opens Sunday at the museum on the campus of Southern Methodist University, the result of a partnership between the Meadows and Madrid's famed Museo del Prado, Spain's national art museum. The exhibit, which the Meadows calls the most important devoted to Velazquez in the U.S. in more than two decades, will run through Jan. 13.
Velazquez became the king's court painter in 1623, when he was only 24. It was a job he would hold until his death in 1660 at the age of 61. The exhibit focuses on his first decade working for the king.
For the first time in four centuries, the Dallas exhibit brings together two of Velazquez's early portraits of the king: the Prado's full-length portrait of him dressed all in black that was painted in the 1620s and the Meadow's bust-length portrait.
Diego Velazquez
Dig Turns Up Skeleton Of 'Wealthy Woman'
Mona Lisa
Archaeologists digging for the remains of the real-life Mona Lisa have found a female skeleton, but they say it doesn't belong to the mysterious Florentine noblewoman, according to news reports.
The team is excavating underneath a former convent in central Florence, searching for the body of Lisa Gherardini, the woman thought to be the model for Leonardo da Vinci's iconic painting finished around 1506. The skeleton that the archaeologists pulled out this week is the fourth they've found at the site. Silvano Vinceti, the researcher leading the search, said he believes the remains belong to a rich woman who died decades after Lisa Gherardini.
"The ledgers kept by the nuns of this convent tell us that, presumably, the remains exhumed today are those of Maria Del Riccio, a wealthy woman who (died) in 1609," Vinceti told a news conference Wednesday (Sept. 12), according to Italian news agency ANSA.
But Vinceti added that graves under the convent were buried on top of each other, meaningGherardini, who died in 1542, "could be right here" if they keep digging deeper.
Mona Lisa
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