Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Mark Morford: The pope stole my Maker's Mark (SF Gate)
Have you tried Casa Nobles? Have you tried Booker's? Have you tried sucking some dry rosé off a lovers' lips at sunset overlooking the Sea of Cortez while the dolphins romp and Surya licks Chandra with a wink and a sigh while the mountains march quietly toward eternity? I might be OK dying a few years early, just for that.
Patricia Park: "The case for blue-collar work: College no longer guarantees success" (guardian)
I make more money bagging groceries than lecturing at a university. 'Menial' work doesn't deserve the stereotypes.
Zack Budryk: Dangerous Curves (Inside Higher Ed)
As the semester ended in December, students in Fröhlich's "Intermediate Programming", "Computer System Fundamentals," and "Introduction to Programming for Scientists and Engineers" classes decided to test the limits of the policy, and collectively planned to boycott the final. Because they all did, a zero was the highest score in each of the three classes, which, by the rules of Fröhlich's curve, meant every student received an A.
Rachel Dissell: Cleveland police chase and shooting portrayed as chaotic scene by Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine (Cleveland Plain Dealer)
… when the smoky haze -- caused by rapid fire of nearly 140 bullets in less than 30 seconds -- dissipated, it soon became clear that more than a dozen officers had been firing at one another across a middle school parking lot in East Cleveland.
George Monbiot: The educational charities that do PR for the rightwing ultra-rich (Guardian)
Billionaires control the political conversation by staying hidden and paying others to promote their brutal agendas.
Alok Jha: Food labelling underestimating calorie content of some foods, scientists say (Guardian)
Dieters who eat high-fibre foods consume more calories than they think because retailers' calorie count system is out of date.
Meredith Woerner: Watch The Simpsons' Oscar-Nominated, Hans Zimmer scored short film (io9)
Check out the The Simpson's dialogue-free, short film "The Longest Day Care." It's a sequel to Maggie's previous plot line in "A Streetcar Named Marge." Watch as Maggie takes on the nefarious Baby Gerald, while learning a little something about developmental biology. This Oscar-nominated short is long on talent, James L. Brooks produced and Hans Zimmer and Jim Dooley are responsible for the music (which is fantastic with lots of great little classic nods).
Andrew Gallix: "In theory: the unread and the unreadable" (Guardian)
There was a time when a learned fellow (literally, a Renaissance man) could read all the major extant works published in the western world. Information overload soon put paid to that. Since there is "no end" to "making many books" - as the Old Testament book Ecclesiastes prophesied, anticipating our digital age - the realm of the unread has spread like a spilt bottle of correction fluid.
You Had One Job
Major mishaps.
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Reader Suggestion
Michelle in AZ
From The Creator of 'Avery Ant'
Team Coco
Conan Highlight
Joe Biden Tries Too Hard To Appeal To Facebook's Youth
He's trying to firm up his 2016 prospects by casually mentioning his sports car and his heavy weaponry.
(Available in Select Nations Only)
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Sunny, windy, and cold (for these parts).
The Oscars are this Sunday (02/24), so how about a little contest to see who can predict the most winners?
Best Actor
Best Actress
Best Supporting Actor
Best Supporting Actress
Best Director
Best Picture
Best Documentary Feature
Here's a complete list of all the nominees
No prizes - just bragging rights.
Send your predictions to Marty by 11pm (pst) Saturday, 23 February.
White House Correspondents' Association Dinner
Conan O'Brien
Late night talk-show host and comedian Conan O'Brien will be spending a late night with President Barack Obama.
The White House Correspondents' Association has chosen O'Brien as the featured act for its annual dinner on April 27.
The association dinner is traditionally attended by the president and first lady, government officials and journalists. Proceeds finance scholarships and awards that recognize journalism excellence.
O'Brien appears prepared. On Monday he tweeted: "In honor of President's Day, I won't be getting along with Congress."
Conan O'Brien
Voting Closes
Oscars
Voting for Sunday's Oscars, the highest honors in the movie industry, closed on Tuesday evening after a big spending campaign by Hollywood studios and the first online balloting system in the 85-year history of the Academy Awards.
More than 5,800 movie industry professionals who are members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences were invited to vote in 24 Oscar categories, starting on February 8 and ending at 5 p.m. PST on Tuesday (0100 GMT On Wednesday).
The results will be tabulated at a secret location by accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers, who deliver the envelopes with the winners' names from backstage at the February 24 Oscars ceremony, televised live from Hollywood.
With the races for Best Picture, Director, Actress and Supporting Actor considered too close to call by awards pundits, movie studios have been blasting newspapers, radio, trade publications and television with promotions for their nominees.
The Los Angeles Times estimated that Warner Bros., the studio behind "Argo," and Walt Disney Co, which is distributing "Lincoln," had spent about $10 million each in Oscar campaigns in recent weeks. The two movies are locked in a tight contest for the top Oscar prize - Best Picture.
Oscars
British Neighborhood Wants Art Back
Banksy
A London neighborhood wants its Banksy back.
A stencil by the famed but secretive graffiti artist of a young boy sewing Union Jack bunting on an antique sewing machine appeared on the side of a north London bargain store last May. Soon the gritty Turnpike Lane area was drawing art lovers keen to see Banksy's typically cheeky take on the Diamond Jubilee celebrations of Queen Elizabeth II's 60 years on the British throne.
Last week it vanished, leaving nothing but a rectangle of exposed brick - only to reappear on the website of a Miami auction house. Listed as "Slave Labor (Bunting Boy)," it is due to be sold Saturday with an estimated price of between $500,000 and $700,000.
London authorities concede the sale is probably legal - the mural was on private property. But they hope moral pressure will make the auction house change its mind.
Fine Art Auctions Miami said it had acquired the work legally, but gave few other details. It said in a statement that it had "done all the necessary due diligence about the ownership of the work."
Banksy
Ends Broadcast Career
Joe Garagiola
Be it down on a baseball field or up in the broadcast booth, whether he was pinch-hitting for Johnny Carson or looking at pooches, Joe Garagiola could always tell a story.
So when the 87-year-old Garagiola was prodded Wednesday to reminisce about an on-air career that lasted nearly six decades, he obliged. Naturally, he did.
Garagiola, the ballplayer-turned-announcer who was honored by the Hall of Fame, said he's ending his days as a broadcaster. He's retiring as a part-time television analyst for the Arizona Diamondbacks, and said goodbye at a 30-minute news conference at the team's spring training facility.
"I don't deserve a lot of things that have happened to me," he said, "but I remember Jack Benny saying he had arthritis, he didn't deserve that, either."
Joe Garagiola
Warm Greeting At LAX For Documentarian
Emad Burnat
Michael Moore said that Oscar-nominated Palestinian filmmaker Emad Burnat's ordeal with immigration officials on Tuesday demonstrates that the United States is overly strict when it comes to greeting foreign visitors, particularly people of color.
Burnat, whose film "5 Broken Cameras" is up for a Best Documentary Academy Award, was held for questioning by immigration officials at Los Angeles International Airport and was asked to produce evidence that he was, indeed, invited to attend Sunday's ceremony. The director and his family were grilled for an more than an hour, he said, while authorities repeatedly suggested he might be sent back to his native country.
Moore, who is a governor in the Academy's documentary branch and an outspoken supporter of Burnat's film, intervened after receiving a text message from the director.
On his blog, Moore wrote that he contacted officials at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences, which produces the Oscars, who in turn enlisted the organization's attorney. Moore called the State Department in Washington and told Burnat to have the officials call him so he could verify that he was an Oscar nominee and shouldn't be deported.
Emad Burnat
More Sanctimonious Conservative Family Values
Pete Domenici
Former Sen. Pete Domenici has disclosed that he fathered a secret child in the 1970s with the 24-year-old daughter of one of his Senate colleagues - a startling revelation for a politician with a reputation as an upstanding family man.
Domenici and Michelle Laxalt sent statements to the Albuquerque Journal that announced the relationship for the first time and identified their son as Nevada attorney Adam Paul Laxalt. They said they decided to go public with their decades-old secret because they believed someone was about to release the information in an attempt to smear Domenici.
Domenici, a Republican, was the longest-serving senator in New Mexico history when he retired in 2008 after six terms. He was known for his unflagging support of the state's national laboratories and military installations, and he became a power broker for his work on the federal budget and energy policy.
Domenici voted for the impeachment of former President Bill Clinton in 1998 after his affair with Monica Lewinsky, but his floor statement focused on the fact that Clinton had lied under oath, noting that the trial "has never been about the President's private sex acts, as tawdry as they have been."
But in the same speech, he cited the value of "truthfulness" and how it's the first pillar of good character.
Pete Domenici
Unpatriotic Defense Contractor
Ohio
A southwest Ohio woman who says she was fired because she voted for President Barack Obama filed a lawsuit against her former employer.
Patricia Kunkle's lawsuit accuses Dayton-based defense contractor Q-Mark Inc. and its president of telling employees that if Obama was re-elected, then his supporters would be the first to be fired, The Dayton Daily News reported.
The lawsuit, filed in Montgomery County Common Pleas Court on Feb. 14, seeks a minimum of $25,000. It says that Kunkle's vote came up in conversation on Nov. 7, the day after the election, and that she was fired Nov. 9. The suit claims that the company's president and owner, Roberta Gentile, said the firing was in the "best interest of the company."
The lawsuit said that Gentile engaged Q-Mark employees in conversations aimed at discovering their political affiliations and repeatedly disparaged Obama supporters.
Kunkle started as a temporary worker with the small company in April and became full-time in May, according to the lawsuit. The lawsuit said that she performed her duties "efficiently and effectively," and never received any disciplinary action or negative performance evaluations.
Ohio
1st College To Raise $1B
Stanford University
Stanford University has set a new record for college fundraising, becoming the first school to collect more than $1 billion in a single year, according to a report released Wednesday.
For the eighth straight year, Stanford ranked first in the Council for Aid to Education's annual college fundraising survey, which shows that elite institutions continue to grab a disproportionate share of donor dollars.
In the 2012 fiscal year, roughly 3,500 U.S. colleges and universities raised $31 billion, 2.3 percent more than the previous year. The record was set in 2008 when schools took in $31.6 billion before fundraising dropped during the height of the financial crisis.
Topping the list was Stanford at $1.035 billion, followed by Harvard University at $650 million, Yale University at $544 million, the University of Southern California at $492 million and Columbia University at $490 million.
The top 10 fundraising colleges collected $5.3 billion, or 17 percent, of the $31 billion, even though they represent only 0.3 percent of the 3,500 accredited, nonprofit schools included in the survey.
Stanford University
Prime-Time Nielsens
Ratings
Prime-time viewership numbers compiled by Nielsen for Feb. 11-17. Listings include the week's ranking and viewership.
1. "The Big Bang Theory," CBS, 17.89 million.
2. "Person of Interest," CBS, 14.87 million.
3. "Two and a Half Men," CBS, 13.69 million.
4. "American Idol" (Wednesday), Fox, 13.45 million.
5. "American Idol" (Thursday), Fox, 12.59 million.
6. "Elementary," CBS, 10.98 million.
7. "2 Broke Girls," CBS, 10.9 million.
8. "Blue Bloods," CBS, 10.73 million.
9. "Mike & Molly," CBS, 10.5 million.
10. "Modern Family, ABC, 10.05 million.
11. "60 Minutes," CBS, 9.73 million.
12. "Hawaii Five-0," CBS, 9.64 million.
13. "Amazing Race 22," CBS, 9.57 million.
14. "The Mentalist," CBS, 9.42 million.
15. "NCIS: Los Angeles (Tuesday, 8 p.m.), CBS, 9.23 million.
16. "How I Met Your Mother," CBS, 8.98 million.
17. "Castle," ABC, 8.97 million.
18. "Survivor: Caramoan," CBS, 8.94 million.
19. "Bones," Fox, 8.82 million.
20. "CSI: NY," CBS, 8.59 million
Ratings
In Memory
Petros Vlahos
Petro Vlahos, a two-time Academy Award winner whose blue- and green-screen technique on movies like "Mary Poppins" and "Ben Hur" made the modern blockbuster possible, has died. He was 96.
His family said he died on Feb. 10, according to The Los Angeles Times. The Hollywood Reporter said Vlahos' company, Ultimatte, also announced the death. No details were released.
The night before his death, an ailing Vlahos was on the minds of many at the Scientific and Technical Oscars ceremony, where he'd been a constant presence through the years and where his acolytes in so-called "composite photography" took home most of the trophies.
Others had tried "composite photography" before, combining separately filmed actors and sets into one shot, but results had been spotty, and actors often appeared with a halo of light around them that killed the effect.
Vlahos took huge leaps forward in the process with the chariot race in the 1959 Charlton Heston epic "Ben Hur" and in Julie Andrews' and Dick Van Dyke's romp through a chalk-drawing wonderland in 1964's "Mary Poppins."
He kept up his partnership with Disney in effects-heavy films like 1969's "The Love Bug" and 1971's "Bedknobs and Broomsticks."
He and his collaborators won an Academy Award for their composite processes in 1965, and he and his son Paul Vlahos shared another Oscar in 1995 for the blue-screen advances made by Ultimatte.
Petros Vlahos
In Memory
Lou Myers
Actor Lou Myers, best known for his role as ornery restaurant owner Mr. Gaines on the television series "A Different World," has died.
Tonia McDonald of Myers' nonprofit, Global Business Incubation Inc., said Myers died Tuesday night at Charleston Area Medical Center in West Virginia. She said he was 76. McDonald said Wednesday that Myers had been in and out of the hospital since before Christmas and collapsed recently. An autopsy was planned.
A native of Chesapeake, W.Va., Myers had returned to the state and lived in the Charleston area.
His TV credits included "NYPD Blue," ''E.R.," ''The Cosby Show," and more. He also appeared in a number of films, including "Tin Cup," ''How Stella Got Her Groove Back," ''Wedding Planner" and more.
"A Different World" ran from 1987-93 and originally starred Lisa Bonet from "Cosby" fame. Myers said he owed his introduction to Hollywood to Bill Cosby.
Myers also appeared on Broadway including "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" African American Style and "Oprah Winfrey's The Color Purple."
In 2005, the Appalachian Education Initiative listed Myers as one of 50 "Outstanding Creative Artists" from the state of West Virginia and featured him in their coffee table book Art & Soul.
He began singing jazz and blues with the touring company of "Negro Music in Vogue," according to a biography provided by McDonald.
His Cabaret show has been acclaimed in Berlin, Paris, Hong Kong, Tokyo, and New York, as well as Los Angeles at the Roosevelt Hotel.
He won a NAACP "Best Actor" award for playing the Stool Pigeon in "King Hedley II," a play by August Wilson.
Lou Myers
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