Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Jon Entine: The Next Catastrophe (reason.com)
Think Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were a politicized financial disaster? Just wait until pension funds implode.
Vicky Ward: The Brightest and Best (Males) Are the Ones Being Laid Off (huffingtonpost.com)
Another day, another one bites the dust. Friends everywhere are losing their jobs.
Mark Morford: Eat the rich (sfgate.com)
Politicians? Lawyers? Not anymore. Time to loathe the *real* American monsters.
Garrison Keillor: The care and feeding of ex-celebrities (chicagotribune.com)
The new musical that's moved into Washington-New All-Star Cast! New And Cooler Songs! Awesome Dance Numbers!-has bumped the old attractions off the avenue. The wax museum of Ann Coulter, the Fox vaudeville acts, the woofing of Rush Limbaugh and Bill O'Reilly- they're playing the VFW circuit now.
MICHAEL FRANCO: "'I Never Thought That I'd Miss You So Much': An Interview with Gary Louris and Mark Olson" (popmatters.com)
After more than a decade apart, the ex-Jayhawks are in harmony once again. Gary Louris, the alt-country icon who has forged a solo career after leading the legendary Jayhawks for roughly two decades, talks to PopMatters.
David Friedman: Rock-a-bye baby... and Jewel fans (McClatchy-Tribune News Service)
Departing from trends in favor of experimenting musically is nothing new for singer-songwriter Jewel.
Walter Tunis: Despite his troubled past, John Hiatt remains a rugged romantic (McClatchy Newspapers)
John Hiatt doesn't croon a love song with spit and polish any more than he writes one with generic sentimentality. But make no mistake, he is a romantic through and through.
Roger Moore: Script-savvy Clive Owen is a man of his words (The Orlando Sentinel)
Clive Owen was born with the whole "tall, dark and handsome" thing. But "the strong, silent type" that got him tagged "the new Steve McQueen" as his film career took off? That, he cultivated.
Ian Caddell: Clive Owen creates a secret agent all his own in The International (straight.com)
Clive Owen was not chosen to play James Bond, even after years of speculation that the 007 role was a natural fit. Yet in his latest film, The International, he does get to play a character who somewhat resembles Bond, and with a plot in which the secret agent would feel at home.
Peter Bradshaw: Oh, what a night (guardian.co.uk)
"Slumdog Millionaire" won all the awards, but it was the presence of Hollywood's king and queen, Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, that made the Baftas such a triumph.
David Bruce: Wise Up! Fathers (athensnews.com)
Bob Newhart was a family man as well as a comedian and a comic actor. While making "The Bob Newhart Show," he owned a very large watch instead of one of the small digital watches that were then becoming popular. When Oliver Clark, who played Mr. Herd on the sitcom, asked why he had bought such a large watch, Mr. Newhart replied that around 3 or 4 p.m. he would take a look at his watch, very obviously and very significantly, to let the people around him know that he was ready to go home and see his children. For that particular purpose, he needed a big watch.
San Francisco Public Library
A copy of David Bruce's "The Kindest People Who Do Good Deeds, Volume 1" is on the shelves. Also on the shelves are four other books by David Bruce, including "The Funniest People in Sports and Neighborhoods."
The Weekly Poll
The 'Stimulate me... Please!' Edition
Are there any aspects of the pending 'Stimulus Bill' that you find to be inadequate or inappropriate?
Due to the ongoing negotiations (i.e. Republican stonewalling) over the 'Stimulus' Bill I'd like to postpone the results until the final bill has been decided. The 6 responders, so far, are invited to rethink their answers and change them if they so choose. Who the heck knows what the finished bill would look like. Or even if there will be one at all. What a frickin' mess!
Send your response, and a (short) reason why, to
wrote:
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
By an odd quirk, dear old Dad's PA backwoods was warmer at 60° than sunny Long Beach was at 57° today.
School Board Offers Apology
Pete Seeger
Nearly a half century ago, amid suspicion and fears of McCarthyism, folk singer Pete Seeger faced an ultimatum from the San Diego school district: Sign an oath against communism or cancel a concert he planned at a high school auditorium.
Seeger, who at the time of the board's demand was under scrutiny for his leftist politics, refused to sign the oath. A judge allowed the concert to proceed anyway.
Decades later, the school board wants to make amends. In a resolution approved Tuesday night, the school district declared that the board "deeply regrets its predecessors' actions" and offered an apology to a man who has become "one of our dearest national treasures."
The 89-year-old songwriter appears willing to accept the board's apology, saying the board's resolution is a "measure of justice that our right to freedom of expression has been vindicated."
He also quipped that the board's demand for the oath in 1960 may have helped his career.
"This was the contradiction the poor blacklisters faced: The more they tried to target me the more they drummed up publicity for my concerts," Seeger told The Associated Press in a telephone interview from his home in Beacon, N.Y. "I like to misquote Thomas Jefferson in saying, 'The price of liberty is eternal publicity.'"
Pete Seeger
Stations Don't Want To Wait
DTV Switch
U.S. regulators are scrutinizing bids by hundreds of TV stations that want to broadcast in all digital next week, to prevent millions of households from losing television access, the acting chief communications regulator said on Wednesday.
Regulators were caught off guard by the steep number of stations that want to transition early, even after lawmakers delayed a mandatory nationwide switch to "DTV" by months.
In markets that are vulnerable and left with few to no local broadcasting options, the requests may be denied, acting FCC Chairman Michael Copps told reporters on Wednesday.
About 681 of the nearly 1,800 television broadcast stations will have already stopped broadcasting in older, analog signals, or will by next week, the FCC said Tuesday.
DTV Switch
A Feel Good Story
Koala Love Story
A love story between two badly burned koalas rescued from Australia's deadliest bushfires has provided some heart-warming relief after days of devastation and the loss of over 180 lives.
The story of Sam and her new boyfriend Bob emerged after volunteer firefighter Dave Tree used a mobile phone to film the rescue of the bewildered female found cowering in a burned out forest at Mirboo North, 150 km (90 miles) southeast of Melbourne.
Photos and a video of Tree, 44, approaching Sam while talking gently to her, and feeding her water from a plastic bottle as she put her burned claw in his cold, wet hand quickly hit video sharing website YouTube, making her an Internet sensation.
But it was after reaching a wildlife shelter that Sam met and befriended Bob, who was saved by wildlife workers on Friday, two days before Sam, in Boolarra, about 180 km from Melbourne.
Koala Love Story
Brazilian Bombshell Remembered
Carmen Miranda
Rio de Janeiro this week is paying homage to Carmen Miranda, the 1940s Hollywood entertainer who, more than anybody, gave Brazil a worldwide reputation for dancing -- and fruit hats.
Scores of events are taking place in the city, including exhibits of Miranda's costumes, films, debates, concerts and even the unveiling of life-sized statue in honor of "The Brazilian Bombshell."
The celebration marks Miranda's birth 100 years ago, on February 9, 1909, in Portugal.
Miranda, who moved with her family to Brazil as a child, achieved fame early in the South American nation as a singer, and was soon whisked to the United States where her international career took off.
Carmen Miranda
Wife Stands By Her Man
Robin Gibb
Robin Gibb's wife is standing by him, despite him fathering a lovechild.
The Bee Gees singer and his wife Dwina appeared together in public to show their unity, just days after it was revealed Robin had a daughter with his live-in housekeeper Claire Yang.
Robin's eight-year relationship with 33-year-old Claire was tolerated by his wife because they have an open relationship.
However, Dwina, 56, kicked Claire out of the couple's mansion saying she felt "betrayed" by the pregnancy.
Claire's daughter, Robin Snow, was born last November. Robin, 59, is listed as the father on the birth certificate. Claire now lives in a house rented by the 'Stayin' Alive' singer near his home.
Robin Gibb
2 Collide 500 Miles Over Siberia
Satellites
Two big communications satellites collided in the first-ever crash of two intact spacecraft in orbit, shooting out a pair of massive debris clouds and posing a slight risk to the international space station.
NASA said it will take weeks to determine the full magnitude of the crash, which occurred nearly 500 miles over Siberia on Tuesday.
"We knew this was going to happen eventually," said Mark Matney, an orbital debris scientist at Johnson Space Center in Houston.
The collision involved an Iridium commercial satellite, which was launched in 1997, and a Russian satellite launched in 1993 and believed to be nonfunctioning. The Russian satellite was out of control, Matney said.
The Iridium craft weighed 1,235 pounds, and the Russian craft nearly a ton.
Satellites
Hundreds Stranded
Dolphins
Dozens of Philippine fishing boats tried to stop hundreds of disoriented dolphins from beaching themselves near the mouth of Manila Bay on Tuesday, officials said.
Inspector Edgardo Bernardo, police chief in Pilar town in Bataan, said many of the dolphins were found in shallow water and some had come ashore, including three in a bad condition due to wounds.
Malcolm Sarmiento, head of the fisheries and aquatic resources bureau, said experts were studying whether an underwater quake had disoriented the animals or the pack of dolphins followed a sick leader.
"Many strange things are happening in our oceans now and we still don't have any explanation for these occurrences," Sarmiento said.
Dolphins
Thai Official Rebukes
Angelina Jolie
A senior Thai diplomat rebuked Hollywood star Angelina Jolie on Wednesday for speaking out on behalf of Muslim refugees from Myanmar.
Jolie - who is deeply involved in the plight of refugees in her capacity as a United Nations goodwill ambassador - called on the Thai government to respect the human rights of Myanmar's Rohinyga "boat people" last week while touring a camp in northern Thailand for other refugees from the military-ruled nation.
The Rohingya, who are denied citizenship in their native land, have been trying to land in Thailand after treacherous sea journeys in recent months only to be towed back to sea and cast adrift by the Thai Navy.
Virasakdi Futrakul, permanent secretary of Thailand's foreign ministry, said Jolie's mission last week was to inspect a camp that houses refugees mostly from Myanmar's ethnic Karenni minority not deal with the Rohinyga.
Angelina Jolie
Pleads Guilty
Sam Shepard
Actor-playwright Sam Shepard has pleaded guilty to speeding and drunken driving charges in central Illinois.
Shepard apologized to McLean County Associate Judge Casey Costigan during Wednesday's hearing and said he never intends to drive under the influence again.
He was fined $600 and court costs and has been placed on 24 months' supervision. He also has to finish an alcohol treatment program and perform 100 hours of community service.
Shepard, who won the 1979 Pulitzer Prize for drama for "Buried Child," was arrested Jan. 3 after officers stopped him for driving 16 mph over the speed limit. Police said a breath test indicated Shepard's blood-alcohol level was double the legal limit.
Sam Shepard
Facelift For Lincoln Bicentennial
Ford's Theatre
Officials on Wednesday unveiled a freshly renovated Ford's Theatre, site of Abraham Lincoln's assassination, in commemoration of the bicentennial of the former US president's birth.
After 18 months and 25 million dollars of renovation, the theatre reopened with a revamped stage, comfortable new seats and a spacious lobby showcasing the coat Lincoln wore when he was shot at the site in 1865.
The Ford's Theatre Museum will open this spring after completing its own makeover.
President Barack Obama, who repeatedly invoked the memory and rhetoric of his political hero "Honest Abe" during the 2008 election campaign, was expected to join screen and stage stars later Wednesday at a specially commissioned biographical play about Lincoln, "The Heavens are Hung in Black," at the theatre and a gala dinner at the National Portrait Gallery, organizers said. The White House would not confirm Obama was planning to attend.
Ford's Theatre
Letters Shed New Light
Ernest Hemingway
Thousands of letters by American author Ernest Hemingway containing intimate details of his life are shedding new light on the writer, Cuban researchers said in a media report Wednesday.
"There are lots of intimacies in these letters," researcher Rosalba Diaz told the daily Juventud Rebelde, saying she had been impressed by how many letters had been found which "break with his image of being a wild man."
Diaz, who is digitalizing more than 3,000 pages of unpublished correspondence, is the curator at Hemingway's former home Finca Vigia, which Havana has turned into a museum.
The Nobel laureate, who penned such classics as "For Whom the Bell Tolls" and "A Farewell to Arms," moved to Cuba in 1940 where he lived in the villa until 1960. It was there that he wrote "The Old Man and the Sea," which won him the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1954.
Ernest Hemingway
Better Beer
Yeast
Researchers have mapped the DNA of dozens of strains of yeast used for brewing, baking and biofuels, something they said Wednesday will help map the human genome and could lead to better-tasting beer and wine.
This means brewers can pick the best strains to make beer with more flavour or perhaps help vintners bottle wine that lasts longer after opening, Ed Louis of the University of Nottingham in Britain and colleagues reported in the journal Nature.
Yeast has long been used as a model for studying cancer, ageing and diseases like Alzheimer's in humans because many of its genes are similar to ours. It also has as many genetic variations as human DNA, the researchers said.
The team mapped the genes of more than 70 strains of yeast used around the world for baking bread, brewing beer and making wine. They also looked at wild strains found in oak bark.
Yeast
In Memory
Molly Bee
Molly Bee, who became an overnight country music star when she recorded the 1952 novelty hit "I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus," has died in California from complications following a stroke. She was 69.
Bee was just 10 when she began her music career, singing the Hank Williams' classic "Lovesick Blues" on country star Rex Allen's radio show. Three years later she released "I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus."
She went on to record a number of hit country songs throughout the 1950s and appeared in several musical comedies in the '60s.
Although her star had begun to fade by the 1970s, she continued to tour and perform.
Molly Bee
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