Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Paul Krugman: Incestuous Amplification, Economics Edition (New York Times)
Back during the early days of the Iraq debacle, I learned that the military has a term for how highly dubious ideas become not just accepted, but viewed as certainties. "Incestuous amplification" happen when a closed group of people repeat the same things to each other - and when accepting the group's preconceptions itself becomes a necessary ticket to being in the in-group.
Matthew Yglesias: Amazon Profits Fall 45 Percent, Still the Most Amazing Company in the World (Slate)
It's a truly remarkable American success story. But if you own a competing firm, you should be terrified. Competition is always scary, but competition against a juggernaut that seems to have permission from its shareholders to not turn any profits is really frightening.
Edward Carney: Short-Sighted About Long Hours (Irascible Professor)
Isn't it also conceivable that one of the advantages of extracurricular activities and private tutoring is precisely that they take place outside of the school?
Chip Walter: Why Are We the Last Apes Standing? (Slate)
Is curiosity what saved the humans?
Annalee Newitz: Domestic cats are destroying the planet (io9)
Our cats may be cuddly pals and adorable internet memes, but they are also destroying the environment more efficiently than humans. They have been called one of the "worst" invasive species.
Interview by Laura Barnett: "Petula Clark, singer - portrait of the artist" (Guardian)
I've been famous for so long, I don't even notice it any more.
Jason Good: 46 Reasons My Three Year Old Might be Freaking Out
His shirt has a tag on it. … The car seat is weird. … He's hungry, but can't remember the word "hungry."
Roger Ebert: Review of MOVIE 43 (R; Zero stars)
There's lousy, there's excremental, and then there's ... this motion picture.
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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
Mostly sunny and windy.
Job Opening In Washington (State)
Pot Consultant
Wanted: A green thumb with extensive knowledge of the black, or at least gray, market.
As Washington state tries to figure out how to regulate its newly legal marijuana, officials are hiring an adviser on all things weed: how it's best grown, dried, tested, labeled, packaged and cooked into brownies.
Sporting a mix of flannel, ponytails and suits, dozens of those angling for the job turned out Wednesday for a forum in Tacoma, several of them from out of state. The Liquor Control Board, the agency charged with developing rules for the marijuana industry, reserved a convention center hall for a state bidding expert to take questions about the position and the hiring process.
Khurshid Khoja, a corporate lawyer from San Francisco, wore a suit and sat beside a balding, ponytailed man in a gray sweatshirt - Ed Rosenthal, a co-founder of High Times magazine and a recognized expert on marijuana cultivation. They're on a team bidding for the contract.
Pot Consultant
First Chinese Translation
'Finnegans Wake'
The Chinese version is no easier to read than the original, the loyal-minded translator assures, but James Joyce's "Finnegans Wake" has still sold out its initial run in China - with the help of some big urban billboards.
Wang Weisong, chief editor of the Shanghai company that published the first Chinese translation of the Joyce classic, coyly said at a recent forum in Shanghai that he wasn't expecting any success for the book, but that the modest initial run of 8,000 copies has sold out since it went on sale Dec. 25. He said more copies are being printed to meet demand.
Dai Congrong, who spent eight years translating it, told the same forum that she didn't fully grasp the novel but that it was supposed to be difficult, and that she kept the Chinese version that way.
Despite a waning interest in foreign literature over the past couple of decades, the Shanghai News and Publishing Bureau said the novel's sales in Shanghai last week were second only to a new biography of Deng Xiaoping in the category of "good books," a term reserved for more serious reads.
'Finnegans Wake'
Hospital News
Ron Jeremy
Veteran pornography actor Ron Jeremy, one of the industry's biggest stars, was resting after undergoing surgery in Los Angeles on Wednesday for an aneurysm near his heart, his manager said.
Jeremy, 59, who appeared in more than 2,000 adult films, drove himself to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles early on Wednesday after suffering from chest pains.
Jeremy's manager Mike Esterman said that the surgery "went smoothly," adding that Jeremy "is now resting with complete privacy and no visitors."
Jeremy, nicknamed the "Hedgehog" for his short and hirsute body and known for his large mustache, parlayed his porn star fame into mainstream celebrity status by appearing on the American reality television series "The Surreal Life" in 2004, and by being featured in an advertisement by animal-rights advocates PETA.
Ron Jeremy
Online Auction
Andy Warhol
A New York City auction house will offer an online auction of Andy Warhol's works, giving a broader audience the chance to own a piece of his art.
It's Christie's first online-only Warhol sale. About 125 paintings, drawings, photographs and prints will be offered from Feb. 26 through March 5. Pre-sale estimates range from $600 to $70,000.
The auction is being held in partnership with The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.
Bidders can browse, bid and receive instant updates by email or phone if another bid exceeds theirs.
Andy Warhol
Russian Court Orders Videos Banned
Pussy Riot
Russian punk rockers Pussy Riot on Wednesday lost an appeal against an Internet ban on their music videos, including one showing a protest song for which three band members were jailed.
A Moscow City Court upheld a lower court's November decision deeming the videos "extremist". Wednesday's ruling that meant that four Pussy Riot videos were banned from the web.
The videos were still available on sites hosted outside Russia, including the Google-owned YouTube.
The lower court judge said the videos contained "words and actions which humiliate various social groups based on their religion" as well as calls for mutiny and "mass disorder" and that they could ignite racial and religious hatred.
Pussy Riot
Charged With Hit-And-Run
Emmylou Harris
Los Angeles prosecutors have charged country star Emmylou Harris with misdemeanor hit-and-run related to an accident last year.
The Grammy-winning singer was charged Wednesday for failing to exchange information with a driver whose car she hit on a freeway on Oct. 1.
A criminal complaint filed in Beverly Hills did not contain additional details about the accident or how much damage occurred.
Emmylou Harris
Afraid To Return To Russia
Bolshoi Ballerina
A scandal involving allegations of blackmail and threats against a top ballerina at the Bolshoi is unfolding just days after the artistic director of ballet at Russia's most prestigious theatre was attacked, a Russian newspaper reported this week.
Dancer Svetlana Lunkina has extended a leave of absence because she is afraid to return home from Canada as a result of threats targeting her and her film producer husband, Russian daily Izvestia reported in stories it ran on Monday and Tuesday.
The alleged threats stem not from Lunkina's career at the Bolshoi, now on hold for several months at least, but from a dispute between her husband and his former partner in a project for a film about late Russian ballerina Matilda Kshesinskaya'.
Lunkina's husband, Vladislav Moskalyov, was sued for $3.7 million by a foundation linked to his former partner in the film, prominent Russian comic Vladimir Vinokur, shortly after Moskalyov left the film project, Izvestia reported.
It said letters had been sent to theatres alleging Moskalyov had laundered some of the money with help from Lunkina.
Bolshoi Ballerina
Top Food Poisoning Source
Leafy Greens
A big government study has fingered leafy greens like lettuce and spinach as the leading source of food poisoning, a perhaps uncomfortable conclusion for health officials who want us to eat our vegetables.
"Most meals are safe," said Dr. Patricia Griffin, a government researcher and one of the study's authors who said the finding shouldn't discourage people from eating produce. Experts repeated often-heard advice: Be sure to wash those foods or cook them thoroughly.
Each year roughly 1 in 6 Americans - or 48 million people- gets sick from food poisoning. That includes 128,000 hospitalization and 3,000 deaths, according to previous CDC estimates.
The new report is the most comprehensive CDC has produced on the sources of food poisoning, covering the years 1998 through 2008. It reflects the agency's growing sophistication at monitoring illnesses and finding their source.
About 1 in 5 illnesses were linked to leafy green vegetables - more than any other type of food. And nearly half of all food poisonings were attributed to produce in general, when illnesses from other fruits and vegetables were added in.
Leafy Greens
Would-Be Carjackers Foiled
Stick Shift
An attempted stickup was confounded by a car's stick shift, when would-be carjackers failed to understand the mechanics behind a manual transmission.
Randolph Bean tells WOFL FOX 35 that two men attempted to steal his 2002 yellow Corvette at gunpoint outside an Orlando hospital, but they ended up running away after they couldn't figure out how to drive his car.
"They apparently couldn't start it," Bean 51, is quoted as saying in a police report. "I had to tell him four different times to push in the clutch, because it's a standard transmission."
After several failed attempts, the thieves eventually fled the scene.
"My first thought was I guess we don't have driver's ed. in school anymore, because no one knows how to drive a stick. And my second thing was, don't shoot me because you can't start the car," Bean said. "I'm trying to help you out here, you know. Thankfully they didn't."
Stick Shift
Marks 80th Anniversary
Germany
On the 80th anniversary of Adolf Hitler's rise to power, Chancellor Angela Merkel urged Germans to always fight for their principles and not fall into the complacency that enabled the Nazi dictator to seize control.
Speaking Wednesday at the opening of a new exhibit at the Topography of Terror memorial documenting Hitler's election, Merkel noted that German academics and students at the time happily joined the Nazis only a few months later in burning books deemed subversive.
"The rise of the Nazis was made possible because the elite of German society worked with them, but also, above all else, because most in Germany at least tolerated this rise," Merkel said.
After winning about a third of the vote in Germany's 1932 election, Hitler convinced ailing President Paul von Hindenburg to appoint him chancellor on Jan. 30, 1933 - setting Germany on a course to war and genocide.
The fact that Hitler was able to destroy German democracy in only six months serves as a warning today of what can happen if the public is apathetic, Merkel said.
Germany
High-Tech Cargo Airship
Aeroscraft
The massive blimp-like aircraft flies but just barely, hovering only a dozen feet off a military hangar floor during flight testing south of Los Angeles.
Still, the fact that the hulking 230-foot-long Aeroscraft could fly for just a few minutes represents a step forward in aviation, according to the engineers who developed it. The Department of Defense and NASA have invested $35 million in the prototype because of its potential to one day carry more cargo than any other aircraft to disaster zones and forward military bases.
The airship is undergoing testing this month at Marine Corps Air Station in Tustin, and must go through several more rounds of flight testing before it could be used in a disaster zone or anywhere else. The first major flight test took place Jan. 3.
The lighter-than-air vehicle is not a blimp or a zeppelin because it has a rigid structure made out of ultra-light carbon fiber and aluminum underneath its high-tech Mylar skin. Inside, balloons hold the helium that gives the vehicle lift. Unlike hydrogen, the gas used in the Hindenburg airship that crashed in 1937, helium is not flammable.
The airship functions like a submarine, releasing air to rise and taking in air to descend, said Aeros mechanical engineer Tim Kenny. It can take off vertically, like a helicopter, then change its buoyancy to become heavier than air for landing and unloading.
Aeroscraft
In Memory
Patty Andrews
Patty Andrews, the last surviving member of the singing Andrews Sisters trio whose hits such as the rollicking "Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy of Company B" and the poignant "I Can Dream, Can't I?" captured the home-front spirit of World War II, died Wednesday. She was 94.
Andrews died of natural causes at her home in the Los Angeles suburb of Northridge, said family spokesman Alan Eichler in a statement.
Patty was the Andrews in the middle, the lead singer and chief clown, whose raucous jitterbugging delighted American servicemen abroad and audiences at home.
She could also deliver sentimental ballads like "I'll Be with You in Apple Blossom Time" with a sincerity that caused hardened GIs far from home to weep.
From the late 1930s through the 1940s, the Andrews Sisters produced one hit record after another, beginning with "Bei Mir Bist Du Schoen" in 1937 and continuing with "Beat Me Daddy, Eight to the Bar," ''Rum and Coca-Cola" and more. They recorded more than 400 songs and sold over 80 million records, several of them gold (over a million copies).
The Andrews's rise coincided with the advent of swing music, and their style fit perfectly into the new craze. They aimed at reproducing the sound of three harmonizing trumpets.
Unlike other singing acts, the sisters recorded with popular bands of the '40s, fitting neatly into the styles of Benny Goodman, Glenn Miller, Jimmy Dorsey, Bob Crosby, Woody Herman, Guy Lombardo, Desi Arnaz and Russ Morgan. They sang dozens of songs on records with Bing Crosby, including the million-seller "Don't Fence Me In." They also recorded with Dick Haymes, Carmen Miranda, Danny Kaye, Al Jolson, Jimmy Durante and Red Foley.
The Andrews' popularity led to a contract with Universal Pictures, where they made a dozen low-budget musical comedies between 1940 and 1944. In 1947, they appeared in "The Road to Rio" with Bing Crosby, Bob Hope and Dorothy Lamour.
The trio continued until LaVerne's death in 1967. By that time the close harmony had turned to discord, and the sisters had been openly feuding.
Bette Midler's 1973 cover of "Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy" revived interest in the trio. The two survivors joined in 1974 for a Broadway show, "Over Here!" It ran for more than a year, but disputes with the producers led to the cancellation of the national tour of the show, and the sisters did not perform together again.
Her father, Peter Andrews, was a Greek immigrant who anglicized his name of Andreus when he arrived in America; his wife, Olga, was a Norwegian with a love of music. LaVerne was born in 1911, Maxine (later Maxene) in 1916, Patricia (later Patty, sometimes Patti) in 1918, though some sources say 1920.
After Peter Andrews moved the family to New York in 1937, his wife, Olga, sought singing dates for the girls. They were often turned down with comments such as: "They sing too loud and they move too much." Olga persisted, and the sisters sang on radio with a hotel band at $15 a week. The broadcasts landed them a contract with Decca Records.
They recorded a few songs, and then came "Bei Mir Bist Du Schoen," an old Yiddish song for which Sammy Cahn and Saul Kaplan wrote English lyrics. (The title means, "To Me You Are Beautiful.") It was a smash hit, and the Andrews Sisters were launched into the bigtime.
Their only disappointment was the movies. Universal was a penny-pinching studio that ground out product to fit the lower half of a double bill. The sisters were seldom involved in the plots, being used for musical interludes in film with titles such as "Private Buckaroo," ''Swingtime Johnny" and "Moonlight and Cactus."
In 1947, Patty married Martin Melcher, an agent who represented the sisters as well as Doris Day, then at the beginning of her film career. Patty divorced Melcher in 1949 and soon he became Day's husband, manager and producer.
Patty married Walter Weschler, pianist for the sisters, in 1952. He became their manager and demanded more pay for himself and for Patty. The two other sisters rebelled, and their differences with Patty became public. Lawsuits were filed between the two camps.
"We had been together nearly all our lives," Patty explained in 1971. "Then in one year our dream world ended. Our mother died and then our father. All three of us were upset, and we were at each other's throats all the time."
Patty Andrews
In Memory
Ceija Stojka
Ceija Stojka survived three Nazi death camps and then found her life's work: Raising awareness of the Nazis' persecution of Roma - also known as Gypsies - in her art and her writings.
Stojka carried the horrors of those camps with her until she was in her 50s, speaking out in words and pictures only decades after she was liberated from the Bergen-Belsen camp at age 12.
Her death Monday at age 79 in a Vienna hospital was announced by her publisher. The Budapest-based European Roma Cultural Foundation described Stokja's concentration-camp themed paintings to The Associated Press on Wednesday as reflecting "entrenched sorrow in the bodies and spirit of the victims."
Her family's persecution under the Nazis began in 1941 and ended four years later with Stojka's liberation from the Bergen-Belsen camp in Germany. While her mother and four siblings also survived, Stojka's father and brother were killed in Auschwitz, two of the more than 1 million Roma estimated to have been killed under Hitler. In all, nearly 200 members of her extended family perished under the Nazis.
Stojka kept those experiences to herself for decades at a time most Austrians embraced the popular notion that they and their nation were victims of Hitler instead of his willing accomplices.
Born in Austria to a nomadic family of horse traders, Stojka returned after the end of the Nazi era and made a living selling carpets. She started speaking out in the 1980s, as Austrian awareness of the country's complicity in Nazi crimes grew. And she started painting - dark somber pictures depicting the death camps that alternated with joyful images of pre-war life on the road in her family's horse-drawn wagon.
Despite those happier images, she never forgot the horrors of the Nazi era - and implored audiences not to let history repeat itself.
"How is it possible at the beginning of the new century that the Roma population ... is still humiliated and maltreated - and sometimes killed as it happened in Hungary - for the only reason of being Roma?" she asked a gathering of Hungarian university and high-school students three years ago after a spate of Roma hate killings there.
"Let my grandchildren live," she declared.
Ceija Stojka
In Memory
Ann Rabson
Pianist and vocalist Ann Rabson, co-founder of the trio Saffire-The Uppity Blues Women, died Wednesday in Virginia after a battle with cancer, her label announced. She was 67.
A barrelhouse blues pianist, Rabson was also a songwriter and guitarist. She recorded eight albums with Saffire and one solo CD for Alligator Records. She made three solo albums for other labels.
Rabson was best known for her work with Saffire, which she formed with one of her guitar students, Gaye Adegbalola. Andra Faye McIntosh completed the trio, which had a loyal following. Saffire disbanded in 2009 after 25 years of performing.
While Rabson didn't start playing piano until she was 35, DownBeat magazine said she played "bluesy, honky-tonk piano with staggering authority."
A native New Yorker who grew up in Ohio, she moved to Fredericksburg in 1971 where she gave music lessons on the side. Her father gave her a guitar when she was 17 and she idolized blues greats such as Memphis Minnie and Big Bill Broonzy.
"Blues speaks to me directly," she said. "It wasn't a choice. I was drawn to it naturally, sort of like a sheepdog with sheep."
Rabson had continued to perform over the last few years, appearing on recordings with Pinetop Perkins and Ani DiFranco. Her most recent was "Not Alone," recorded in 2012 for VizzTone Records.
Rabson is survived by her husband, George Newman, her daughter and a granddaughter.
Ann Rabson
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