Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Jay Gormley: I-30 Pro-Gay Christian Billboards Spark Debate
Christine Lutz was traveling down Interstate-30, just east of Fort Worth, when she came face to face with a billboard containing a pro-gay message. "I cringed. I was disgusted at the same time," she said.
Kevin O'Donnell: Why Won't Anyone Give Me a Credit Card? (slate.com)
I don't have bad credit, and I've been trying to get one for a year.
Michele Hanson: Offensive customers and rotten pay (guardian.co.uk)
Fielding's daughter has discovered the trials and tribulations of waitressing.
JERRY WEINBERGER: America's Food Revolution (city-journal.org)
There's a lot of bad food in America, almost all of it eaten in god-awful chains. But in back streets and strip malls, you can also find uncounted small acts of culinary genius...
Jim Hightower: Food Industry Is Now Calling Junk Food 'Healthy' - Why Could That Be? (AlterNet.org)
Food corporations are hoping to cash in on the growing public concern about nutrition by launching a program that labels some junk food healthy.
"Camus, A Romance" by Elizabeth Hawes: A review by Benjamin Moser
... it's thrilling to see that precisely such a shadow biography has now been written, not about Lispector but about another great writer, Albert Camus. It isn't often that I read a book with which I have as much personal afÞnity as I did with Elizabeth Hawes's Camus, A Romance (Grove, $25), which tells of her lifelong fascination with the Algerian, and ...
Tirdad Derakhshani: Of droll, balmy Paul Chowder and his poetically lived life (The Philadelphia Inquirer)
Nicholson Baker laughs gently, a little nervously, when his work is praised. (Embarrassment? Joy?)
Tom Jacobs: This Is Your Brain on Kafka (miller-mccune.com)
Does absurdist literature make you smarter? Giraffe carpet cleaner, it does!
Mark Mulcahy 'knocked out' by surprise tribute album (guardian.co.uk)
Artists including Thom Yorke, Michael Stipe and Frank Black have chipped in on an album of Mark Mulcahey cover versions that left the bereaved singer misty-eyed, reports Nige Tassell.
Stefanie Marsh: What's it like to be Peaches Geldof? (timesonline.co.uk)
She's a student, rock daughter, paparazzi magnet and designer... but her minders don't want you to really know her.
Amy Adams: look at me now (timesonline.co.uk)
It has taken the 'Julie & Julia' actress 10 years of bit parts to achieve 'overnight' success, she tells John Harlow.
Roger Ebert: Movie Answer Man
Q. I haven't seen Sandra Bullock's "All About Steve," but judging from your description, it sounds a little like someone was trying to synthesize, for a female lead, the Adam Sandler formula for highly profitable movies. ...
The Weekly Poll
New Question
The 'Helping out The Man' Edition
I think I can safely say that we all support President Obama's efforts to enact an effective, comprehensive Health Care Reform Bill... Right? Right!
Well then, have you contacted your congressional representatives and senators and asked them to support his plan?
If not, here's your opportunity to do just that! Then you can answer yes and become a member of my Badtothebone for Barack club. How cool is that, eh?
Details of the plan are included in the link for your perusal...
Do the right thing, I'm sayin'! Walk the walk!
Send your response to
Results Tuesday
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From The Creator of 'Avery Ant'
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Having another heat wave. Ack.
FCC To Propose Rules
Net Neutrality
The head of the FCC plans to propose new rules that would prohibit Internet service providers from interfering with the free flow of information and certain applications over their networks, according to reports published Saturday.
The reports said the Federal Communications Commission chairman, Julius Genachowski, will announce the proposed rules in a speech Monday at the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank.
The proposals would uphold a pledge Barack Obama made during the presidential campaign to support Internet neutrality and would bar Internet service providers such as Verizon Communications Inc., Comcast Corp. or AT&T Inc., from slowing or blocking certain services or content flowing through their vast networks.
The FCC began wading into the issue even before Genachowski became FCC chairman. Last year the FCC rebuked Comcast for blocking or delaying some forms of Internet file-sharing. Comcast agreed to stop the practice.
Net Neutrality
Hospital News
Leonard Cohen
Leonard Cohen is recovering after collapsing onstage while on tour in eastern Spain, his music company said Saturday.
The veteran poet and performer has been released from hospital after suffering from a stomach complaint, Doctor Music Concerts said in a statement.
Cohen was part-way through his song "Bird on the Wire" in Valencia when he fainted, causing the band to stop playing to rush to his aid as concertgoers watched. The concert was stopped.
Cohen was due to perform the last show of his Spanish tour at the Palau Sant Jordi concert hall in northeastern Barcelona on Monday. Trucks carrying Cohen's show had arrived at the hall on Saturday morning and were to set up as normal, a spokesman for the concert hall said.
Leonard Cohen
A Fading Skill
Cursive Writing
Charleston resident Kelli Davis was in for a surprise when her daughter brought home some routine paperwork at the start of school this fall. Davis signed the form and then handed it to her daughter for the eighth-grader's signature.
"I just assumed she knew how to do it, but I have a piece of paper with her signature on it and it looks like a little kid's signature," Davis said.
Her daughter was apologetic, but explained that she hadn't been required to make the graceful loops and joined letters of cursive writing in years. That prompted a call to the school and another surprise.
West Virginia's largest school system teaches cursive, but only in the 3rd grade.
The decline of cursive is happening as students are doing more and more work on computers, including writing. In 2011, the writing test of the National Assessment of Educational Progress will require 8th and 11th graders to compose on computers, with 4th graders following in 2019.
Cursive Writing
World's Most Baluable Brand
Coca-Cola
Consumers lost trust in brands this year as the recession deepened, according to an industry report released Thursday, although longtime staples Coca-Cola and IBM retained their spots as the world's two most valuable brands.
This is the first time the combined value of the world's top 100 brands as ranked by Interbrand, a branding agency, has fallen in the 10 years Interbrand has assessed them.
The list's total value, including brands like Google Inc., Nintendo and Sony, fell 4.6 percent to $1.15 trillion, Interbrand estimates.
Brands are more than just names, colors or logos - think Coca-Cola's red or McDonald's golden arches. A brand includes all the elements of a product or service from its design, ingredients and manufacture to its marketing, advertising and logo.
A well-honed brand evokes in consumers an emotion and a promise of what it will deliver, without the consumer having to do much - if any - research, said Allen Adamson, managing director at branding firm Landor Associates. Brands are important for all businesses, and critical in categories that have direct consumer contact, like autos, he said.
Coca-Cola
Vegas Business Shuttered
Heidi Fleiss
Former "Hollywood Madam" Heidi Fleiss' Las Vegas dog grooming business has been shut down by a judge as part of a civil lawsuit, two days after she was sentenced to three years probation on felony drug charges.
Fleiss' Dirty Dog salon had been open for just three days when Clark County District Judge Elizabeth Gonzalez ordered it closed Thursday.
The ruling was in response to a motion filed by Jeffery Marvian, who claims his estranged wife conspired to sell the business to Fleiss in violation of the couple's ongoing divorce action.
Gonzalez ordered Dirty Dog to remain closed until a Sept. 30 hearing that could determine whether Fleiss will be allowed to reopen the salon.
Heidi Fleiss
Sherpa Present
Mount Everest
Nepal's sherpa community is sending a piece of rock from Mount Everest to U.S. President Barack Obama to underscore the impact of global warming on the Himalayas.
Environmental group WWF said Prime Minister Madhav Kumar Nepal had promised to carry the "memento" and give it to Obama when world leaders meet in New York next week as "a symbol of the melting Himalayas in the wake of climate change."
The rock was collected from the 8,850 meter (29,035 feet) Mount Everest by Apa Sherpa, who climbed the mountain for a record 19th time in May.
Experts say mountainous Nepal, home to eight of the world's 14 tallest peaks, including Mount Everest, is vulnerable to climate change despite being responsible for only 0.025 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, among the world's lowest.
Mount Everest
Not Welcome In Nigeria
"District 9"
One of the summer's biggest blockbusters - a sci-fi morality tale about aliens and apartheid - is not welcome in Nigeria because of its portrayal of Nigerians as gangsters and cannibals, Nigeria's information minister said Saturday.
Information Minister Dora Akunyili has asked movie houses in the capital of Abuja to stop screening "District 9" because the South Africa-based sci-fi movie about aliens and discrimination makes Nigerians look bad.
Akunyili said she has asked Sony for an apology and wants them to edit out references to Nigeria and to the name of the main Nigerian gangster Obesandjo, whose name closely resembles that of former Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo.
The film is first feature from commercial and music-video director Neill Blomkamp, who co-wrote the script with Terri Tatchell. The film, which features a cast of mostly unknown South African actors, got its big-name backing from producer and "Lord of the Rings" director Peter Jackson.
"District 9"
Tainted Water
Mercury
Abandoned mercury mines throughout central California's rugged coastal mountains are polluting the state's major waterways, rendering fish unsafe to eat and risking the health of at least 100,000 impoverished people.
Mining in California ceased decades ago, leaving behind at least 550 mercury mines, though no one knows for sure how many. One U.S. Geological Survey scientist says the total may be as high as 2,000.
In the 19th and 20th centuries, California produced up to 90 percent of the mercury in the U.S. and more than 220 million pounds of quicksilver were shipped around the world for gold mining, military munitions and thermometers. Much of the liquid mercury was sent to Sierra Nevada gold mines, where miners spilled tons of it into streams and soil to extract the precious ore.
The Sulfur Bank Mine has made the nearby Clear Lake the most mercury-polluted lake in the world, despite the EPA spending about $40 million and two decades trying to keep mercury contamination from the water. Pollution still seeps beneath the earthen dam built by the former mine operator, Bradley Mining Co.
Mercury
1 In 7 Want It Back
Berlin Wall
One in seven Germans want the Berlin Wall back because they were better off when the country was divided, according to an opinion poll published on Wednesday ahead of the 20th anniversary of its collapse on November 9, 1989.
The survey of 1,002 Germans by the Forsa institute published in Stern magazine said 15 percent of the country's 82 million long for the days when there were two Germanys. Some 16 percent pining for the Wall were westerners and 10 percent easterners.
The survey found that many westerners are bitter about higher taxes to pay for rebuilding the formerly communist east, where some 1.2 trillion euros ($1,762 billion) worth of state funds has been transferred in the last 20 years.
Eastern Germans are unhappy about income levels that are on average only 80 percent of western levels and that due to higher unemployment depopulation is decimating parts of the east, where the population has declined by about two million since 1990.
Berlin Wall
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