Paul Kugman: Where the Money Is (New York Times)
… the point is that higher taxes on the very rich could make a significant contribution to deficit reduction. They couldn't eliminate the deficit on their own, but what could? There's real money up there, and those making it should be bearing a share of the burden.
Paul Krugman: Death by Hawkery (New York Times)
Judging from recent comments, many readers missed my earlier analyses on these issues - I'm still getting the "You idiot, debt got us into this mess, how can debt get us out?" type of comment. So let me re-repost my discussion of this whole issue in full, followed by a couple of brief notes on the European situation.
Free to Be Fat (Daily Beast)
Americans are fatter than ever but Prof. Richard McKenzie says it's our economic and political freedoms that have led us here-and there's no reason to change.
Connie Schultz: 'Tis the Season to be an Adult (Creators Syndicate)
It's that time of year for the annual question to divorced moms and dads: What kind of parent will you be? Will you be the mother or father who casts aside lingering resentments for the sake of your kids' happy holidays? Or will you be the ex-spouse who wages a war in which no one wins and every child loses?
Canadian's lucky iron fish saves lives in Cambodia (The Record)
"Anemia is a serious problem in Cambodia, leading to birth defects and impaired brain development. Chris Charles, a graduate student at the University of Guelph in Canada, was trying to persuade villagers there to increase the amount of iron in their diet. A simple solution would be to stir chunks of iron inside cooking pots, but Charles encountered serious resistance to this idea. His solution, which gained broad acceptance, was to shape the iron like a local fish considered lucky…"-Neatorama
Jed Perl: Dirty Money (New Republic)
The collector Eli Broad was quoted, at the end of the auction, explaining that "People would rather have art than gold or paper." To which it seems to me the only response is that people who have millions of dollars to spend on a Cattelan, a Gober, or a Lichtenstein are not what used to be known as "the people."
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."
The Bad Seed is a 1954 novel by William March, nominated for the 1966 National Book Award for Fiction. It was the last major work written by March, and, although published in his lifetime, its enormous critical and commercial success was largely realized after his death, one month after publication. The novel was adapted into a successful and long-running Broadway play by Maxwell Anderson and an Academy Award-nominated film directed by Mervyn LeRoy.
Eight-year-old Rhoda is the only child of Kenneth and Christine Penmark. Kenneth Penmark goes away on business, leaving Christine and Rhoda at home. Christine begins to notice that Rhoda is acting strangely after one of her classmates mysteriously drowns, and eventually makes a horrible discovery: Rhoda killed the boy, and will almost certainly kill again.
Claude Daigle - The little boy whom Rhoda drowned the day of the Fern Grammar School picnic. He won the Penmanship medal that Rhoda declared to be hers. He is described as a timid and shy boy who rarely stood up to others. He was the only child of Hortense and Dwight Daigle. Rhoda murdered Claude because he would not give her the penmanship medal.
Source
Alan J was first, and correct, with:
Rhoda Penmark, from the movie "The Bad Seed"
Sally said:
Who can forget child actress, Patty McCormack, playing the evil little girl Rhoda Penmark, who murdered Claude Daigle (because she wanted his penmanship medal), in the 1956 film, "The Bad Seed?"
She just wanted the medal, gee wiz!
PS: My daughter/granddaughter, and I am off to the Mall early (11 AM is early for my daughter) this morning. I am now looking around for some saint's metal to wear for protection... (Hard to come by in a Jewish family though.)
BadtotheboneBob wrote:
Rhoda Penmark... don't even think about making her mad.
Jim from CA, retired to ID, replied:
Rhoda murdered Claude because he would not
give her the penmanship medal.
Adam answered:
Rhoda Penmark, 'The Bad Seed'
Charlie responded:
Rhoda Penmark
Marian replied:
Rhoda Penmark, the Bad Seed
Barbara A, one of my Pepperdine roomies, responded:
The answer is the very creepy Rhoda Penmark in "The Bad Seed".
Happy belated Turkey Day, Marty!
MAM wrote:
Rhoda Pennmark, in the 1954 novel "The Bad Seed" by William March.
And, Joe S answered:
Miss Scarlett in the pool with her tap shoes and bare hands, or maybe Rhoda Penmark.
CBS starts the night with '60 Minutes', followed by a FRESH'Amazing Race', then a RERUN'Person Of Interest', then another RERUN'Person Of Interest'.
NBC fills the night LIVE'Sunday Night Football', then pads the left coast with local crap and maybe an old 'Dateline'.
ABC begins the night with a FRESH'America's So-Called Funniest Home Video', then a FRESH'Once Upon A Time', followed by the movie 'Mitch Albom's Have Little Faith'.
The CW fills the night with local news and other fluffery.
Faux has a RERUN'Cleveland Show', followed by a FRESH'Cleveland Show', then a FRESH'Simpson', followed by a FRESH'Allen Gregory', then a FRESH'Family Guy', followed by a FRESH'American Dad'.
MY has an old 'How I Met Your Mother', followed by another old 'How I Met Your Mother', then an old 'Big Bang Theory', followed by another old 'Big Bang Theory', then another old 'Big Bang Theory', followed by yet another old 'Big Bang Theory'.
Bravo has 'Real Housewives Of Atlanta', another 'Real Housewives Of Atlanta', followed by a FRESH'Real Housewives Of Atlanta', and another 'Real Housewives Of Atlanta'.
Comedy Central has the movie 'Just Friends', 'Jeff Dunham's Very Special Christmas Special', 'South Park', another 'South Park', and still another 'South Park'.
FX has the movie 'Twilight', followed by the movie 'Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen', then the movie 'Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen', again.
History has 'American Pickers', another 'American Pickers', followed by a FRESH'Real Deal', followed by another FRESH'Real Deal', then a FRESH'IRT Deadliest Roads'.
IFC -
[6:00AM] The Whitest Kids U'Know
[6:15AM] Watching the Detectives
[8:15AM] The Tao of Steve
[10:15AM] A Good Woman
[12:15PM] Freaks and Geeks-Kim Kelly Is My Friend
[1:15PM] Freaks and Geeks-Tests and Breasts
[2:15PM] Freaks and Geeks-I'm With the Band
[3:15PM] Freaks and Geeks-Carded and Discarded
[4:15PM] A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints
[6:30PM] Hard Candy
[8:45PM] King of New York
[11:00PM] Onion News Network-Artificial Intelligence
[11:30PM] Onion News Network-Artificial Intelligence
[12:00AM] King of New York
[2:15AM] Hard Candy
[4:30AM] Larry Flynt: The Right to Be Left Alone (ALL TIMES EST)
[6:00A] Luckey
[7:25A] Paper Covers Rock
[9:00A] ALL ON THE LINE WITH JOE ZEE - Angelo Lambrou: Your Dream Turned Into My Nightmare (Episode 1, Season 2)
[10:00A] UNLEASHED BY GARO: Can I Pull You a Little Tighter? (Episode 1, Season 1)
[11:00A] UNLEASHED BY GARO: It's Time For Her to Expose Herself (Episode 2, Season 1)
[12:00P] UNLEASHED BY GARO: I'm Never Going to Take it All Off (Episode 3, Season 1)
[1:00P] UNLEASHED BY GARO: A Little Bit of Pain (Episode 4, Season 1)
[2:00P] UNLEASHED BY GARO: That's a Lot of Skin (Episode 5, Season 1)
[3:00P] UNLEASHED BY GARO: I Kind of Feel Naked (Episode 6, Season 1)
[4:00P] Peter and Vandy
[5:20P] The Tunnel Dwellers of New York
[6:20P] Superheroes
[7:50P] Mammoth
[10:00P] A Home at the End of the World
[11:45P] Always Crashing In The Same Car
[12:00A] GIRLS WHO LIKE BOYS WHO LIKE BOYS - Let's Get This Party Started (Nashville)
[12:30A] GIRLS WHO LIKE BOYS WHO LIKE BOYS - Too Heavy, Too Hard, Too Fast (Nashville)
[1:00A] ALL ON THE LINE WITH JOE ZEE - Angelo Lambrou: Your Dream Turned Into My Nightmare (Episode 1, Season 2)
[2:00A] MY SO-CALLED LIFE - Self-Esteem (Episode 12, Season 1)
[3:00A] Love Lust & Holiday Feasts
[4:00A] A Home at the End of the World
[5:40A] Kavi (ALL TIMES EST)
SyFy has the movie 'American Werewolf In London', followed by the movie 'Drag Me To Hell'.
Actor Bill Murray, center, chats with President Barack Obama, left, and first lady Michelle Obama before an NCAA basketball game between Oregon State and Towson in Towson, Md., Saturday, Nov. 26, 2011.
Photo by Patrick Semansky
Singer and actress Grace Jones watches Jo-Wilfried Tsonga play against Tomas Berdych in a semifinal single tennis match at the ATP World Tour Finals at O2 Arena in London, Saturday, Nov. 26, 2011.
Photo By Alastair Grant
Dutch astronaut Andre Kuipers will have a special treat waiting for him in orbit when he arrives in space next month: five kilogrammes of Amsterdam's finest cheese, its maker said Saturday.
The 53-year-old Kuipers is due to blast off on board a Soyuz rocket on December 21 with two other astronauts for a five-month-mission on board the International Space Station.
"Andre is a big fan of our cheese and asked us in a letter to arrange with space authorities to see if we could send up some of his favourite Old Amsterdam," the cheesemaker's spokeswoman Henriette Westland told AFP.
"After numerous emails to NASA and the European Space Agency, they agreed to send up around 10 kilogrammes (22 pounds)," she added.
She said the Dutch traditional snack had to be specially cut and wrapped before being shipped to Houston and then to Kazakhstan, where five kilogrammes were blasted off on board a cargo rocket to the ISS at the end of October.
One of the world's rarest and most valuable books is out of the vault and on public view as part of an unusual daily ritual at the nation's oldest natural history museum.
Every weekday at 3:15 p.m., a white-gloved staff member of the Academy of Natural Sciences lifts the locked protective cover from 19th century naturalist John James Audubon's influential book, "The Birds of America," and turns a large linen-backed page to reveal the bird of the day. More than 180 years after Audubon created the life-size illustrations that now link his name with ornithology, their vibrant watercolors and fine details are still remarkable.
"Many times these were framed as artworks and faded from exposure to light," said curator Robert Peck, who does many of the page turnings. "Ours weren't exposed to light, so they're in wonderful condition."
The Academy of Natural Sciences was an original pay-as-you-go subscriber of "The Birds of America" from 1827 to 1838. The complete folio of 435 hand-colored copper engravings on handmade paper, each measuring about 2 feet by 3 feet, cost $1,000 - the equivalent of around $40,000 today, Peck said.
Every month or so during those years, "Birds of America" subscribers received a set of five prints - usually one large show-stopper of a bird like the hot-pink Roseate Spoonbill, along with four prints of smaller species. Audubon created 87 sets of five in all; the museum bound its completed collection into five volumes.
Eyo masquerades dance through Tafawa Balewa Square in Lagos, Nigeria, Saturday, Nov. 26, 2011, to honour the death of Lagos important man Yusufu Abiodun Oniru. The shouting masquerades carry sticks and sometimes hit people who break traditional rules like wearing shoes around them. Elders choose who to honour with this traditional festival and this year they honour Yusufu Abiodun Oniru who died in 1984.
Photo by Jon Gambrell
Previously unseen footage of Michael Jackson's 1993 "Dangerous" tour, which had been expected to fetch 4-5 million pounds ($6.2-7.8 million) failed to sell at auction in Britain on Saturday.
"At this stage it has not sold," said a spokesman for The Fame Bureau auctioneers, who specialize in pop memorabilia. "We are still talking to people, but online it did not sell."
The auction house said it had been forced to remove a brief clip of the video from its website before the online auction after Jackson's record label made a "copyright claim."
The fact that a successful buyer may not be able to use the film for commercial purposes may have dampened demand given the hefty asking price, but the spokesman played down the copyright dispute.
One of the prosecutors who investigated the Iran-Contra affair concluded two decades ago that neither Ronald Reagan nor George H.W. Bush was criminally liable in the scandal that tarnished the presidencies of both men, according to reports made public Friday.
Associate independent counsel Christian Mixter reached that conclusion in 1991 even though he found that President Reagan was briefed in advance about every weapons shipment sold to Iran in the arms-for-hostages deals in 1985-86. In a separate report on Bush, Mixter wrote that the then-vice president was chairman of a committee that recommended mining the harbors of Nicaragua in 1983.
Mixter's reports were obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request from the National Security Archive, a nonprofit research group, which released them on the 25th anniversary of the Iran-Contra scandal. At a Nov. 25, 1986, White House news conference, Reagan and then-Attorney General Edwin Meese disclosed that money from the arms sales to Iran had been diverted to the Contra guerrillas fighting the leftist government of Nicaragua after Congress had cut off military aid to the rebels.
Mixter concluded it would be difficult to prosecute Reagan for violating the Arms Export Control Act mandating congressional notification of arms transfers through a third country - Israel in the case of the Reagan White House's secret arms sales to Iran in 1985. The reason, said Mixter, was that Meese had told Reagan the National Security Act could be invoked to supersede the export control act.
As for the report on Bush, Mixter wrote: "Although the quantity of information compiled by Mr. Bush's Iran-Contra activities is much smaller than that amassed on former President Reagan, it is quite clear that Mr. Bush attended most - although not quite all - of the key briefings and meetings in which Mr. Reagan participated."
Japanese ballet dancer Motoko Hirayama, top, performs along with Romanian ballet dancer Razvan Mazilu, bottom, during the rehearsals for the "Requiem. You know nothing about me" show at the Odeon Theater in Bucharest, Romania, Friday night, Nov. 25, 2011. The two artists created the show based on the music in Requiem by Karl Jenkins and and all the income from the performances will be donated to the victims of the March 11 earthquake and tsunami in Japan.
Photo by Vadim Ghirda
Pope Benedict XVI insisted on Saturday that all of society's institutions and not just the Catholic church must be held to "exacting" standards in their response to sex abuse of children, and defended the church's efforts to confront the problem.
Benedict acknowledged in remarks to visiting U.S. bishops during an audience at the Vatican that pedophilia was a "scourge" for society, and that decades of scandals over clergy abusing children had left Catholics in the United States bewildered.
An official of a U.S. group advocating for victims of clergy abuse lamented that Benedict, with his remarks, was setting a "terrible example" for bishops.
"No public figure talks more about child safety but does little to actually make children safer than Pope Benedict," David Clohessy, national director of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, told The Associated Press in an emailed statement.
"The pope would have us believe that this crisis is about sex abuse. It isn't. It is about covering up sex abuse," Clohessy said. "And while child sex crimes happen in every institution, in no institution are they ignored or concealed as consistently as in the Catholic church."
The World Health Organisation warned on Saturday that only a stronger political commitment to child health could prevent a dangerous rise in mortality rates at a time of global economic turmoil.
WHO Director General Margaret Chan told the opening of a maternal and child health event in the Uzbek capital Tashkent that mortality rates had reached their lowest levels in more than a generation in the past decade.
The biggest maternal mortality rate declines were reported in East Asia and North America, where they reached around 60 percent, she said.
But Chan warned that even the world's richer nations had recorded no recent improvements and called a recent spike in food prices a worrying sign.
A model performs with live butterflies during the Biofashion show in Cali, Colombia, Saturday, Nov. 26, 2011. The eco-friendly fashion show showcased designs made with organic elements such as leaves, seeds, flowers and natural fibers, among others.
Photo by Carlos Julio Martinez
Federal prosecutors in Florida say at least three people working for a septic tank company duped customers into buying about $1 million in unnecessary products - in some cases enough toilet paper to last more than 70 years.
More than a dozen customers were told they needed special toilet paper to avoid ruining their septic tanks because the federal government changed regulations on toilet paper. The federal government does not regulate septic tank products.
The trio pleaded guilty in federal court to conspiring to commit wire fraud.
The trio faces up to two decades in prison when they are sentenced in February.
A Chinese firm has decided Scorpios and Virgos are too moody and critical, telling job seekers with those star signs they need not apply. Capricorns, Pisces and Libras, on the other hand, are welcome.
The unusual requirements are part of a job ad posted at a university in the central city of Wuhuan by an English language training company, and have generated a storm of online controversy since they were uncovered this week.
"We don't want Scorpios or Virgos, and Capricorns, Pisces and Libras will be prioritised," the job spec reads, according to the Chutian Metropolis Daily, a local newspaper in Wuhan.
The report quoted a woman in charge at the unnamed firm as saying she had done research and found Scorpios had strong personalities and were moody, while Virgos were hugely critical and did not stay in one job for long.
A sheep wears a Christmas costume during a promotional event for the upcoming Christmas holiday season at the Everland amusement park in Yongin, about 50 km (31 miles) south of Seoul November 24, 2011.
Photo by Jo Yong-Hak
You have reached the Home page of BartCop Entertainment.
Make yourself home, take your shoes off...
Go ahead, scratch it if it itches.
The idea is to have fun.
Do you have something to say?
Anything that increased your blood pressure, or, even better, amused or entertained?
Do you have a great album no one's heard?
How about a favorite TV show, movie, book, play, cartoon, or legal amusement?
A popular artist that just plain pisses you off?
A box set the whole world should own?
Vile, filthy rumors about Republican hypocrites?
Just plain vile, filthy rumors?
This is your place.
wrote:
answered:
