Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Marc Dion: Abraham Lincoln and the Gettysburgistan Address (Creators Syndicate)
I read the Gettysburg Address from time to time and not always on the anniversary of its delivery. I read it like I read Jack Kerouac or Ernest Dowson's poetry or Winston Churchill's speeches. I read it because I'm a writer and a writer should, as often as possible, read words that are better than his own.
Dana Stevens: "The Hunger Games: Catching Fire" (Slate)
Needs more kindling.
Brian Beutler: Whoops! Obamacare turns out to be great deal personally for Boehner (Salon)
The ACA is actually a great deal for a 64-year-old smoker with a high-stress job. Any idea who I'm talking about?
Sarah Kliff: There's a 'November surge' in Obamacare enrollments (Washington Post)
By the end of October, the federal government had counted 106,000 people enrolled into private coverage through the new health insurance marketplaces, a small percentage of the projected half-million sign-ups. By mid-November, though, with the 14 state-based marketplaces reporting fresh data, that number had just about doubled to more than 200,000.
Lucy Mangan: leave the age of consent alone (Guardian)
I've known a lot of teenage girls in my life. And do you know what I've never, ever heard any one of them say? 'I wish I'd lost my virginity earlier.'
Ask a grown-up: why do all films have to have a baddie? (Guardian)
The award-winning director Ken Loach answers three-year-old Phoebe's question.
What I see in the mirror: Helen Lederer (Guardian)
'I am 59 and will be a big number next year, so there is no point in lying to myself, let alone anyone else.'
Alex Santoso: Interactive Billboard Tells You About The Airplane Overhead (Neatorama)
British Airways and Ogilvy 12th Floor unveiled a series of digital billboards that "interact" with BA aircrafts flying overhead to tell you where it's headed. The ads use custom technology to track the aircraft and play a video clip of a child pointing up to the plane just as it flies overhead.
Terry Savage: Your Credit Score (Creators Score)
Do you know your credit score? Or how to improve it? The National Foundation for Credit Counseling has joined with Experian, which has donated 80,000 free, 12-month memberships to its FreeCreditScore.com website in order to help consumers not only understand, but improve their credit scores. It's all part of the NFCC's Sharpen Your Financial Focus program aimed at empowering consumers to manage credit wisely.
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David Bruce has approximately 50 Kindle books on Amazon.com.
wrote:
is off communing with nature.
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Reader Suggestion
Michelle in AZ
From The Creator of 'Avery Ant'
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Overcast mostly.
Wins $1.2 Million
Photographer
A federal jury on Friday ordered two media companies to pay $1.2 million to a freelance photojournalist for their unauthorized use of photographs he posted to Twitter.
The jury found that Agence France-Presse and Getty Images willfully violated the Copyright Act when they used photos Daniel Morel took in his native Haiti after the 2010 earthquake that killed more than 250,000 people, Morel's lawyer, Joseph Baio, said.
The case is one of the first to address how images that individuals make available to the public through social media can be used by third parties for commercial purposes.
"We believe that this is the first time that these defendants or any other major digital licensor of photography have been found liable for willful violations of the Copyright Act," Baio said in an email.
The $1.2 million was the maximum statutory penalty available under the Copyright Act, Baio said. AFP had asked for the award to be set at $120,000.
Photographer
Help Preserve Pseudoscience-Debunking Collection
Adopt A Skull
For all the skeptics out there, and for everyone who loves a good pseudoscience debunking, the Hyrtl Skull Collection at Philadelphia's Mütter Museum needs your help.
The 139 skulls in the Hyrtl collection were gathered together by Australian anatomist Joseph Hyrtl in the 19th century, from all over eastern Europe. The collection includes skulls from a broad range of individuals - herdsmen, soldiers and criminals to name just a few - with a wide variety of causes of death - disease and suicide being the most common, with a few gunshot wounds as well. For several, the identity or cause of death (or both) are unknown. The museum recorded this short video in 2010, describing the collection and what it means:
One of the most noted uses of the collection was its role in the debunking of the pseudoscience known as phrenology. Phrenology did help forward the ideas that the brain was the seat of personality and behaviour, which led to the development of modern neuroscience, but at the same time, it was also based on very flawed concepts and it led to some dangerous and rather racist ideas. Debunking this pseudoscience saved many people from being unfairly labeled and undergoing dangerous and unnecessary procedures simply due to having bumps on their head.
The Hyrtl collection is currently being restored so that it can be put on display again, but in order to do so the museum needs some help. They've started the Save Our Skulls campaign - an 'adoption' program where someone can sponsor a specific skull for an annual fee of $200. You can choose the skull you want to sponsor (from those that haven't been sponsored yet), and your name will go up along with the skull to note your support.
If you're interested in supporting the program, either in your own name or someone else's, it continues until December 31st of this year. You can scan the skull catalogue to see what's been adopted and what's available by clicking here.
Adopt A Skull
Miss Golden Globe 2014
Sosie Bacon
Meet Miss Golden Globe 2014! Sosie Bacon, the daughter of two of Tinseltown's biggest stars, Kevin Bacon and Kyra Sedgwick, was announced on Thursday, Nov. 21 as the next Hollywood heir to carry the torch into awards season.
The 21-year-old actress, who stunned on the red carpet at Hollywood hot spot Fig & Olive, in a black, lacy dress and large diamond earrings, told Us Weekly how her parents inspired her to pursue acting, and how she is preparing for the Golden Globes.
Asked what advice she'd gotten from her famous parents before The Hollywood Foreign Press Association announced her as Miss Golden Globe 2014, Bacon replied: "Nothing really -- they trust me. They think I'm going to do a good job. I think they're saying, 'It will be fun, don't be too nervous, be yourself.'"
Sedgwick and Bacon's youngest child added that her parents inspired her to pursue a career in acting -- though not necessarily through their own films. "I don't really watch a lot of my parents' movies," she admitted. "When I was little, their movies were so inappropriate. It was all R-rated, so I wasn't allowed to watch any of them and now it's gone on that way."
Sosie Bacon
Recording Sold At Auction
Unique Quartet
A 120-year-old wax-covered cylinder containing the earliest known recording of a black vocal group in the U.S. was sold at auction Saturday.
Discovered in a private collection in Portland, the 1893 recording of "Mama's Black Baby Boy" by the New York-based Unique Quartet was one of only two copies known to exist and sold for $1,100. The other resides in the Library of Congress.
A second Unique Quartet song, "Who Broke the Lock (on the Henhouse Door)?" from 1896, sold at the same auction for $1,900. The same buyer purchased both recordings, which pre-date vinyl records.
The recordings were so rare that auctioneers at Saco River Auction Co. had no idea how much they might fetch. An appraiser had suggested they were worth $25,000 or more each before the auction.
Unique Quartet
Threatens Democracy
Surveillance
The scientist credited with inventing the World Wide Web spoke out Friday against what he called a "growing tide of surveillance and censorship," warning that it is threatening the future of democracy.
Tim Berners-Lee, who launched the Web in 1990, made the remarks as he released his World Wide Web Foundation's annual report tracking the Web's impact and global censorship. The index ranked Sweden first in Web access, openness and freedom, followed by Norway, the U.K. and the United States.
"One of the most encouraging findings of this year's Web Index is how the Web and social media are increasingly spurring people to organize, take action and try to expose wrongdoing in every region of the world," said Berners-Lee, 58.
"But some governments are threatened by this, and a growing tide of surveillance and censorship now threatens the future of democracy," he said, adding that steps need to be taken to protect privacy rights and ensure users can continue to gather and speak out freely online.
The warning from Berners-Lees is the latest in a global debate about surveillance and privacy, sparked by the release of classified documents leaked by former National Security Agency analyst Edward Snowden that showed the extent of government spying on people's online lives. While the leaks focused on the work of the NSA, scrutiny has since spread to other Western intelligence agencies.
Surveillance
Lays Off 5 Per Cent
Pixar
Disney subsidiary Pixar is laying off up to 5 per cent of its 1,200 employees after it pushed back the release of "The Good Dinosaur" to November 2015 from next May.
That's according to a person familiar with the situation, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the matter involved personnel.
The Walt Disney Co. released a statement saying Pixar is always re-evaluating its creative and business needs.
The delay of "The Good Dinosaur" means 2014 will be the first year since 2005 that Pixar hasn't released an animated movie.
Pixar
Few Details
Butterball Mystery
Butterball apparently has big fat mystery on its hands: The company says it doesn't know why some of its turkeys wouldn't plump up in time for Thanksgiving this year.
CEO Rod Brenneman says in an interview with the AP that it's the first time it happened and that the company is investigating what went wrong. Butterball had announced last week that it will have a limited supply of large, fresh turkeys that are 16 pounds or heavier for the holidays.
Like many other turkey producers, Butterball feeds its birds antibiotics to prevent and treat illnesses, which can occur from living in cramped quarters. The use of antibiotics, which also promote growth in livestock, has been the subject of concern that it could lead to antibiotic-resistant germs.
Butterball, a privately held company based in Garner, N.C., declined to say whether it made any changes to its feed formula this year. But the problem seems to have come up rather recently.
For much of the year, Butterball produces turkeys that are frozen and stored until they're ready to be sold for the holidays. But then in October and November, it shifts into production for fresh turkeys. And that's when the company ran into problems with the turkeys not gaining enough weight, Brenneman said.
Butterball Mystery
French Veteran Sells Photo Albums
WWII
A French veteran made more than 10,000 euros on Friday selling four photo albums he took from Adolf Hitler's mountain retreat as "a souvenir" in the final days of World War II.
The albums, which contain pictures and messages of admiration, were presented to Hitler by supporters in the 1930s and early 1940s. Two of them are bound in red leather with the Reich eagle engraved on the cover.
The books were sold at auction in La Roche-sur-Yon in France's western Loire region. They went to a single buyer who paid a total sum of 10,100 euros ($13,700), an AFP reporter saw.
Paul Gerbi, 92, who took the four items from Hitler's library at his mansion, the Berghof, in Berchtesgaden in the southern state of Bavaria, said the proceeds from the sale make a nice gift for his grandchildren.
Gerbi, who fought as a sergeant in General Philippe Leclerc's 2nd Armoured Division, said he arrived at the mountain retreat in the Bavarian Alps on May 4, 1945, four days before the end of the war and four days after Hitler's suicide in Berlin.
WWII
Not So 'Smart' Freeways
California
California's highways aren't as smart as they used to be.
Buried under thousands of miles of pavement are 27,000 traffic sensors that are supposed to help troubleshoot both daily commutes and long-term maintenance needs on some of the nation's most heavily used and congested roadways. And about 9,000 of them do not work.
The sensors are a key part of the "intelligent transportation" system designed, for example, to detect the congestion that quickly builds before crews can get out and clear an accident.
A speedy response matters: Every minute a lane is blocked during rush hour means about four extra minutes of traffic. Fewer sensors can mean slower response times, so the fact that 34 percent are offline - up from 26 percent in 2009 - creates an extra headache in California's already-sickly traffic situation.
The outages are significant enough that the sensors alone cannot produce real-time traffic maps that are useful to the public. Especially when compared to the many private traffic mapping services that drivers rely on to get around.
California
In Memory
Georges Lautner
Director Georges Lautner, whose films from the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s are part of the French canon and still adored, has died.
He was 87. The cause of death was not announced.
Of the dozens of films he made, "Les Tontons Flingeurs," which appeared as "Monsieur Gangster" for Anglophone audiences, was perhaps the most beloved.
His films were often hilarious and wildly popular; lines from several have entered the popular imagination and quoted almost as if proverbs. His movies are still frequently screened on French television.
Lautner is credited with guiding a generation of actors, including Jean-Paul Belmondo.
Georges Lautner
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