'Best of TBH Politoons'
Recommended Reading
from Bruce
NORMAN SOLOMON: Political Forecast for 2008: Bad Media Weather (creators.com)
My crystal ball is usually in the shop, but I hope you'll forgive me for a momentary lapse into predictive punditry. As the end of 2007 becomes history, here are some thoughts about what's likely to occur in the media world of the next year.
FROMA HARROP: Will Arizona's Immigration Law Work? (creators.com)
What would happen if the United States seriously enforced the ban on hiring undocumented workers? We may find out starting Jan. 1, when Arizona promises to do it locally. The Arizona law is tough. Companies that knowingly employ illegal workers will have their business licenses suspended for a first offense and permanently revoked for the second.
Tom Danehy: Some favorite moments from the year that was 2007 (tucsonweekly.com)
As 2007 draws to a close, these are a few of my favorite things. Not the best, perhaps, but my favorites: FAVORITE BOOK: Arsenals of Folly by Richard Rhodes.
SARAH MILLER: If you can't say something nice ... (latimes.com)
Imagine a scene on "Little House on the Prairie" in which Merlin Olsen says to Michael Landon, "Howdy, Charles! Heard locusts are fixin' to attack your wheat crop and you might lose the farm. Alright, well, see ya. Say hello to Half-Pint and whatever the blind one's name is."
Rob Long: Serve double lattes on double-deckers (latimes.com)
When I go to a new place, I almost always end up on a bus. I rode the bus through northern Turkey; I take the bus in Paris; I took a kind of bus-like thing in Myanmar; the buses in Vienna are excellent; and in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, I took a taxi that was really closer to a bus because it kept stopping and picking people up.
Daniel Mendelsohn: His Design for Living (nybooks.com)
On "The Letters of Noël Coward," edited and with commentary by Barry Day.
Carol Cooper: Meet the East Village "It" Couple of Young-Adult Lit (villagevoice.com)
Teen-fiction authors Scott Westerfeld and Justine Larbalestier are living the dream.
Roger Ebert: "Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story" (3 stars)
John C. Reilly was appearing in Chicago onstage the other night as Dewey Cox, and the act may be something to fall back on if he ever gives up the daytime job. Apart from anything else demonstrated by "Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story," the movie shows that he can do plausible versions of Johnny Cash, Elvis, Bob Dylan, Roy Orbison and on and on. He's like a kid who locked himself in his room singing along with his record collection and finally made it pay off.
Roger Ebert: Answer Man
Were the first movie audiences terrified, thinking it was real?
Reader Comment
Nin, the Mt. Washington Cat
Marty
As I am a cat lover and have also been to the top of Mt. Washington, I
just HAD to see what Nin looked like!
More about Nin here.
MAM
Thanks, Marianne!
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Mostly overcast and cool.
Protesters?
Rose Parade
There could be some discord during the Tournament of Roses Parade as demonstrators promise to raise issues during the holiday spectacle that has been going on for more than a century. Human rights advocates plan to protest a float honoring the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games and anti-war activists, including "Peace Mom" Cindy Sheehan, intend to rally for peace.
This won't be the first Rose parade touched by protest - in 1992, American Indians complained about the naming of a descendant of Christopher Columbus as grand marshal - but most problems have been mechanical.
Sheehan, the outspoken San Francisco Bay area activist whose son was killed in Iraq, is campaigning for Congress against Rep. Nancy Pelosi and calling for the impeachment of resident Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney. She will join other pro-impeachment and anti-war groups at the parade, according to her sister, Dede Miller.
As many as 1,000 supporters are expected to rally before and after the parade and distribute 20,000 pamphlets while flying 300 banners along the parade route, said Peter Thottam, executive director of the Los Angeles National Impeachment Center.
Rose Parade
Makes Trash Treasure
Free Swap Network
When Laura Gernell heard about a place where people gave away perfectly good things to strangers - no money changing hands, no questions asked - she figured it was too good to be true.
But husband Ronald had lost his job as a truck driver and she was temporarily unemployed, at home in a rented, unfurnished apartment with her infant son. With nothing to lose, she joined The Freecycle Network, a Web-based community swap program, and asked if anyone had a sofa to spare.
"I wasn't looking to furnish my whole apartment," says the 32-year-old mom from Marmet, just south of Charleston. "I was just looking for the basics, just something to sit on."
Three people e-mailed with offers, and Gernell used the sofa from that day in 2004 until last summer, when the springs broke. Today she runs West Virginia's largest Freecycle group, 2,100 members strong and part of a far-flung forum where people can find homes for things they no longer want.
Free Swap Network
US Bathroom Farce
Margaret Thatcher
As British premier, Margaret Thatcher may have forged a strong "special relationship" with the US, but an early visit did not always offer a warm introduction to the nation, documents released Friday show.
Thatcher went to the United States as leader of Britain's main opposition Conservative Party in September 1977 but the visit took a comic turn when she got locked in a toilet and "had to be released from bondage" at a Texan hotel.
She also displayed signs of what became her trademark strong-mindedness, "wrestling" the microphone from the host of one event so that she could speak and snubbing a journalist from television network CBS.
Roy Fox, an official at the British consulate-general in Houston, wrote to a colleague at the British embassy in Washington, Mark Russell, detailing the mishaps which befell her at a top hotel in Houston.
Margaret Thatcher
AOL To End Support
Netscape Browser
An historic name in software will effectively pass into history in February as AOL discontinues development and active support for the Netscape browser, according to an official blog.
AOL will keep delivering security patches for the current version of Netscape until Feb. 1, 2008, after which it will no longer provide active support for any version of the software, according to a Friday entry on The Netscape Blog by Tom Drapeau, lead developer for Netscape.com. The Netscape.com Web site will remain as a general-purpose portal.
Netscape was the original mass-market Web browser and helped to popularize the Internet in the mid-1990s, but it has long taken a back seat to Microsoft Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox. Firefox itself traces its roots back to Netscape software that was made into open source. The Mozilla Foundation was founded in 2003, with support from AOL, and has released successive versions of Firefox while AOL continued to develop Netscape on top of the same platform, Drapeau wrote.
As of this month, Netscape had only 0.6 percent of the browser market, which was still dominated by Internet Explorer with more than 77 percent, according to Web application and analytics firm Net Applications. Firefox was gaining, however, with market share just over 16 percent.
Netscape Browser
Wedding News
Juvonen - Fallon
Longtime "Saturday Night Live" performer Jimmy Fallon and movie producer Nancy Juvonen were married in the Caribbean, a publicist announced Saturday.
Fallon, 33, and Juvonen, 40, were married in a Dec. 22 ceremony on Necker Island "with family and close friends in attendance," said a statement from Ina Treciokas.
No other details were released.
Juvonen - Fallon
Irreconcilable Differences
Wright Penn
Robin Wright Penn has filed for divorce from Sean Penn after 11 years of marriage. Wright Penn filed the papers Dec. 21, citing irreconcilable differences. The couple, who live in Northern California, are seeking joint custody of their two teenage children.
The pair met while Sean Penn was filming the 1990 Irish mob movie "State of Grace." At the time, he was considered one of the bad boys of Hollywood. He had married and divorced Madonna and occasionally tussled with photographers.
Wright Penn
Children Challenge Will
James Brown
Five of James Brown's children say their late father's will should be invalidated because his former advisers used undue influence to get him to create charitable trusts that the advisers would profit from, according to court documents filed this week.
The children were largely left out of the financial portion of the will, which leaves the bulk of the soul singer's money to trusts set up to educate Brown's grandchildren and needy kids.
Atlanta attorney Louis Levenson said the children discovered earlier wills drafted by their father that cast doubt on whether he truly wanted to leave his estate to charity.
James Brown
Arrives In Japan
Ancient Mammoth
The frozen carcass of a 37,000-year-old baby mammoth unearthed this summer in Siberia arrived in Japan on Saturday for tests that researchers hope will shed new light on the internal structure of the ancient beasts, an official said.
The 4-foot gray-and-brown carcass arrived at Tokyo International Airport on Saturday afternoon, said Mitsuyoshi Uno, an official with the joint Russo-Japanese mammoth-study project that is overseeing the research.
Discovered in May by a reindeer herder in northern Siberia's remote Yamal-Nenets region, the frozen mammoth's trunk and eyes are virtually intact and it even has some fur, but its tail and ear were apparently bitten off, Russian officials said.
The mammoth, which was initially thought to be about 10,000-years-old, is bound for Tokyo's Jikei Medical University, where it will undergo a computed tomography scan, Uno said. CT scans allow scientists to get 3-D pictures so detailed they allow an almost surgical view into the body.
Ancient Mammoth
Global Warming To Alter
California
California is defined by its scenery, from the mountains that enchanted John Muir to the wine country and beaches that define its culture around the world.
But as scientists try to forecast how global warming might affect the nation's most geographically diverse state, they envision a landscape that could look quite different by the end of this century, if not sooner.
Where celebrities, surfers and wannabes mingle on Malibu's world-famous beaches, there may be only sea walls defending fading mansions from the encroaching Pacific. In Northern California, tourists could have to drive farther north or to the cool edge of the Pacific to find what is left of the region's signature wine country.
Abandoned ski lifts might dangle above snowless trails more suitable for mountain biking even during much of the winter. In the deserts, Joshua trees that once extended their tangled, shaggy arms into the sky by the thousands may have all but disappeared.
California
Superstitious Village
Reeves, La
Beginning this month, residents and businesses of Reeves, Louisiana, can change the first three digits of their phone numbers from 666 - depicted in the Bible as the mark of the beast - to 749.
Mayor Scott Walker said one of the biggest hangups he's had, both as mayor and as a lifelong resident of Reeves, is the reaction he's gotten when giving people his number. He describes it as a pause, followed by the admonition: "Y'all have to change that."
He worked with the phone company, CenturyTel, and the state Public Service Commission, among others, to make the change.
"This boils down to, this is a very, very religious community," Walker said.
Reeves, La
Man Leaves $50,000, Car To Waitress
Good Tipper
For nearly seven years Melina Salazar did her best to put on a smile and tend to the every need of her most loyal and cantankerous customer.
She made sure his food was as hot as he wanted, even if it meant he burned his mouth. And she smiled through his demands and curses. The 89-year-old Walter "Buck" Swords obviously appreciated it, leaving the waitress $50,000 and a 2000 Buick when he died.
"I still can't believe it," the Luby's cafeteria employee told Harlingen television station KGBT-TV in an interview during which she described Swords as "kind of mean."
Swords, a World War II veteran, died in July. But Salazar learned just a few days before Christmas that he had left her the money and car.
Good Tipper
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