Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Rick Perry: A 'Brokeback Mountain' Fan? (Video)
Jane Martinson: The Muff March against 'designer vagina' surgery (Guardian)
"Keep your mitts off our muffs!" "I love my vagina!" "You've put my chuff in a huff!" These are some of the slogans of the Muff March …
Sarah Boseley: "Cancers could be prevented by lifestyle changes in over 40% of cases: study" (Guardian)
Drinking and smoking less and losing weight could save 134,000 cancer diagnoses each year, Cancer Research UK finds.
Noam Chomsky: Marching Off the Cliff (In These Times)
To gain perspective on what's happening in the world, it's sometimes useful to adopt the stance of intelligent extraterrestrial observers viewing the strange doings on Earth. They would be watching in wonder as the richest and most powerful country in world history now leads the lemmings cheerfully off the cliff.
Paul Krugman: All the G.O.P.'s Gekkos (New York Times)
In getting to the truth about those wealthy "job creators" the Republicans aim to protect, the '80s film "Wall Street" seems more relevant than ever.
Scott Burns: The Prisoners of PMI (AssetBuilder.com)
The father of three eased into a chair. He is in his late-thirties. He works hard at both of his jobs. He and his wife, he said, are very careful about spending.
Paul Krugman: Send in the Clueless (New York Times)
The Republican Party is getting the candidates it deserves.
Poor Elijah (Peter Berger): Asking for More (Irascible Professor)
Project-based learning is just one facet of a larger folly, student-directed learning, both of which employ the term "learning" loosely. The theory is that children should be allowed to pursue their individual interests rather than conform to prescribed content requirements imposed by adults, which explains why even many capable students today know so little about so much but everything about whales or dinosaurs.
Mark Bauerlein: The Research Bust (Chronicle of Higher Education)
Deans and department heads always fear faculty reaction, but if they cast their policy changes as making faculty lives and labors better, less wasteful, and more meaningful, 20 years from now we may look back upon the research years of literary studies, 1970 to 2010, as a remarkable epoch that arose, evolved, and waned as has every other cultural movement over time.
Roger Ebert: Where I Stand on the Occupy Movement
I commissioned this chart to make my position clear. I've avoided the subject until now because, while I instinctively felt I must be in favor of the Occupiers, I wasn't sure what the movement stood for. I support most populist uprisings on matter of principle, and would perhaps even support the Tea Party were it not demonstrating in favor of the very things that are wrong.
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."
wrote:
answered:
From The Creator of 'Avery Ant'
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Sunny and nice.
"Family Guy" Writer Recounts Occupy LA Arrest
Patrick Meighan
A writer for "Family Guy" has garnered attention from a blog he wrote detailing, what he described as the forceful actions of police on demonstrators during LAPD's raid on the Occupy Los Angeles encampment.
In contrast to the officers he said entered the scene with weapons, Patrick Meighan claims he was among a group of protestors during the early morning raid sitting Indian-style with their hands interlocked chanting words of peace.
"As we sat there encircled, a separate team of LAPD officers used knives to slice open every personal tent in the park," he blogged. "They forcibilby removed anyone sleeping inside, and then yanked out and destroyed any personal property inside those tents, scattering the contents across the park."
Meighan says he wrote the blog to call attention to a different injustice.
"We as a society, including the city of Los Angeles and the LAPD treat peaceful non-violent protesters one particular way, sort of give them the full force of the law. Whereas at the same time, there are folks who have defrauded our nation out of hundreds of billions of dollars, and those folks walk free."
Patrick Meighan
More Than 800 People Hacked
Rupert
More than 800 people have had their telephones illegally hacked by the now-defunct News of the World tabloid, British police investigating the alleged practice said on Saturday.
A statement by London's Metropolitan Police said 2,037 people had been contacted during the year-long investigation, of whom 803 are alleged victims of hacking by the best-selling tabloid, part of Rupert Murdoch's News Corp.
It was the first time police provided an overall figure for alleged victims of News of the World hacking.
The scandal forced Murdoch's News Corp to shut down the News of the World, a weekly tabloid, in July. Top London police officers have resigned and Prime Minister David Cameron's media adviser, a former editor at the tabloid, resigned and was arrested.
Rupert
Woman With An Opinion
Catherine Deneuve
French screen legend Catherine Deneuve said Friday it was easier for ageing European actresses to play leading roles than it is for female stars in Hollywood where younger alternatives get the nod.
"It's easier to be an European actress than an American actress as far as age is concerned," said Deneuve, who was in Singapore for a French film festival.
"I think it's difficult to have a career in the States because (of) the competition and most of all, the appeal for youth is so intense and it's very difficult for an actress to grow older in American cinemas," she added.
But US actresses as well as ones from Britain enjoyed a wider appeal because of their English-language backgrounds, Deneuve said.
Catherine Deneuve
Helping To Define US Presidential Race
"Free" Media
From late-night comedy shows to cable news interviews, free media exposure has proved influential in defining the Republican presidential candidates and setting the dynamics of the primary race, especially for lower-tier hopefuls lacking cash for TV ads.
The turn toward free media, and Twitter, too, may have come at the expense of traditional campaigning. It also raises the chances that a moment of fuzzy thinking or a verbal gaffe will haunt a candidate endlessly in the YouTube world.
"The campaigns are using free media as an amplifier and it's smart, especially for those who don't have much money," American University political communications professor Leonard Steinhorn says. "But there's also a reality show quality to it all, with the kind of visual moments people don't forget."
There have been many such moments.
"Free" Media
Hollywood Reaming
Sgt. Jeffrey S. Sarver
The tables have turned on the army sergeant who sued "The Hurt Locker" team over a year ago for allegedly stealing his life story.
At the time, Master Sgt. Jeffrey S. Sarver was asking for millions of dollars, but he'll be the one left writing some checks. This week, U.S. District Court Judge Jacqueline Nguyen ordered Sarver to pay $187,125 in attorneys fees, according to court documents.
The lawsuit was thrown out initially October, but a number figure was not attached to the billings that Sarver was ordered to pay.
Among those named in Sarver's lawsuit were the Oscar winning film's screenwriter Mark Boal, director Kathryn Bigelow, production company Voltage, distributor Summit Entertainment and Playboy magazine, for whom Boal wrote the article that inspired "The Hurt Locker."
According to the filings, Boal and Bigelow will receive $37,975.50 in fees, the film's producers will get $89,753.85 in fees, and the film's distributor Summit Entertainment will get $59,395.30.
Sgt. Jeffrey S. Sarver
Rights Wrong
Gari-Lynn Smith
It took Gari-Lynn Smith more than four years to learn what happened to the final remains of her husband, an Army sergeant killed in Iraq.
The New Jersey widow never thought that knowing would be worse than not, or that her search would lead to the bottom of a landfill.
Her quest to find the truth of what happened to her husband's remains led to an even more disturbing revelation this week as the Air Force acknowledged it had dumped cremated partial remains of at least 274 troops into a Virginia dump - far more than previously acknowledged.
Her story, first told by The Washington Post, along with information from multiple whistleblowers about other mistreatment of fallen soldiers' bodies became the catalyst for an investigation that found "gross mismanagement" at the Air Force's mortuary in Dover, Del. - the first stop on American soil for fallen troops coming home from Iraq and Afghanistan.
Initially led to believe her husband's entire body was returned, Gari-Lynn became suspicious after being told she shouldn't ask to see the body before the closed-casket funeral. Later, she ordered copies of the autopsy and learned there were additional remains located, leading to more questions.
Gari-Lynn Smith
Hollywood Gunman
Sunset & Vine
A gunman opened fire on motorists in the heart of Hollywood on Friday, wounding three people before he was shot to death by an off-duty police officer who had been working on a nearby film set.
The bizarre mid-morning incident, which some witnesses initially mistook for a movie, touched off fear, confusion and panic at the famed Hollywood intersection of Sunset Boulevard and Vine Street.
Police said on Friday night they were still trying to determine why the 26-year-old gunman, whose name was not immediately released, began firing randomly at motorists and pedestrians.
Los Angeles Police spokeswoman Norma Eisenman said a plainclothes detective and an off-duty motorcycle officer who was working a security detail on the set of a film in the area were the first to engage the gunman.
A spokesman for FilmLA, an agency that coordinates film and television permits in Los Angeles, said the closest movie set was "Gangster Squad," a crime drama starring Ryan Gosling, Emma Stone and Sean Penn.
Sunset & Vine
The old Disney Channel was located in what was then known as the 'Sunset Vine Tower', on the southeast corner of Sunset & Vine.
The bank across the street is a BofA, and the McDonald's south of it has been there since (at least) 1971.
When the guys couldn't think of a clever way to smuggle food out of the Happy Hours feed at Simply Blue's, they were stuck with Mickey D's.
Spent better than 8 years there, so it's kinda familiar turf. Sigh.
Pigboy Vs. Rupert
A Gingrich Schism?
Newt Gingrich's surge to the top of the GOP presidential polls is causing some giants of conservative opinion-making to turn on each other. On his radio show this week, talk radio icon Rush Limbaugh railed against the apparently "coordinated" attacks on Gingrich from the "Republican establishment conservative media," which Rush defined as everyone but "me, talk radio, the Tea Party, and the American people who are conservative." What should we make of the apparent rift between Limbaugh and conservative-leaning organizations like the occasionally "Newt-bashing" Fox News?
Rush's "heretic hunting" has reached a new low: Limbaugh didn't name many names, says Conor Friedersdorf at The Atlantic. But it's pretty clear that Rush has drummed Fox News, National Review, and "every other right-leaning magazine, website, and newspaper" out of the conservative movement. Their apostasy? Sometimes criticizing the questionably conservative Newt. It appears that "Gingrich and Limbaugh have now bonded over their unseemly, egomaniacal delusions of grandeur."
Actually, Rush's attacks are largely about Romney: Limbaugh's "impassioned defense of Gingrich's ideological credentials" has provided Newt "invaluable cover" on the Right, says Steve Kornacki at Salon. But Rush is far more interested in slamming conservative opinion-makers who have embraced Mitt Romney than attacking right-wingers who are recoiling over Gingrich. Sinking the shape-shifting Romney has become "a test of Limbaugh's clout." Rush is boosting Newt because if the former House speaker doesn't topple Romney, Limbaugh will look foolish.
A Gingrich Schism?
Convicted Child Molester/Casting Agent
Hollywood
A convicted child molester who worked under an alias in casting children's movies has been arrested on charges of violating sex-offender registration laws.
The Los Angeles Times reports that prosecutors charged Jason James Murphy Friday with two felonies, failure to file a name change and a change of address.
An investigation of Murphy was sparked by Times stories that revealed he'd been working in casting offices in Hollywood under the name Jason James.
Murphy served five years in prison after a conviction for molesting a boy he met at a summer camp, where he worked as a teen counselor.
His credits include the films "Bad News Bears" and "Super 8."
Hollywood
Return Sought
1972 Telecaster
A Vermont man is seeking the return of a 1972 Fender Telecaster electric guitar that his late brother received during a 1991 trip to Seattle arranged through the Make-A-Wish Foundation.
Ben Hardy says his brother Josh was 17 when he hung out with Nirvana, jammed with the Posies and received the guitar that had been autographed by Pearl Jam. The teen died from cancer three months after returning to the family's home in Durham, N.H.
Ben Hardy tells the Burlington Free Press that the guitar was stolen from his Burlington home between Thanksgiving and Dec. 5 while he was in Peru.
His father says a money clip belonging to a son killed in Iraq was also stolen. Mother Donna Hardy says the thieves "can't take the memories."
1972 Telecaster
Trophy Labor Fight
Oscars
A labor dispute at a Chicago manufacturing company could mean there are no new Oscar trophies at next year's Academy Awards. But the academy says it has enough trophies for the show to go on.
Workers and management at R.S. Owens & Company are fighting over a proposed wage freeze and benefit cuts. Chicago television station WMAQ reported that union leaders say they want to avoid a work stoppage.
R.S. Owens makes the 13 1/2-inch golden statuettes handed out at the Oscars. It also produces awards for the Emmys and MTV Music Awards.
A spokeswoman for the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences told The Associated Press that the academy has a "closet full of Oscars" ready to go.
Oscars
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