Recommended Reading
from Bruce
The Most Astounding Fact (YouTube)
"An interviewer from TIME asked Dr. Neil DeGrasse Tyson what the "most astounding fact" is. The astrophysicist's answer was so poetic that Max Schlickenmeyer was inspired to add music and visuals. The song is "To Build a Home" by Cinematic Orchestra." - Neatorama
The Story of the Keep Calm and Carry On Poster (YouTube)
"A simple phrase, topped with the crown of King George VI. Since its rediscovery twelve years ago, the Keep Calm and Carry On poster has become a popular symbol of courage and resolution. Now learn the story behind the poster and its rediscovery in an amazing bookstore in northeastern England." - Neatorama
Mark Morford: How to be a complete jerk about it (SF Gate)
Let me just ask you outright: Are you a bit of a thug? Do you like to shoot very large animals for no real reason and then hug their massive carcasses to your body in what many feel is a rather disturbing and vaguely bestiality-friendly manner as your BFF snaps a photo of your shameless, mile-wide smirk and posts it for all the world to cringe over?
Froma Harrop: What Limbaugh Is Really About (Creators Syndicate)
My take on Limbaugh is that he was losing his spotlight tan and needed a UV blast of attention. Thus the "conservative" radio personality called the self-possessed Sandra Fluke "a slut" and "a prostitute" for testifying in favor of requiring all employers to cover birth control.
John Timpane: Coping with the mischief of Internet trolls (The Philadelphia Inquirer)
As long as there have been bridges, trolls have hidden beneath them. Same for the Internet.
Tim Jonze: Farewell Ray Presto - you were one of life's unsung stars (Guardian)
The comedian was one of those characters who comes on as a cameo and steals the show. He saved my groom's speech from disaster, too.
Russian documentary captures anti-Putin pranksters in action (LA Times)
Russia held presidential elections Sunday, and amid reports of irregularities, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin claimed victory after early returns showed him with 63% of the vote. Opposition groups have threatened protests Monday, and the outcome seems sure to add kindling to the fire that fuels art group Voina, the country's premier political pranksters.
Accompanists: the unsung heroes of music (Guardian)
They get little credit and less pay than the singers they support. So why do accompanists do it? Tom Service finds out.
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."
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Michelle in AZ
From The Creator of 'Avery Ant'
Long Beach, CA
'Levitated Mass'
'Levitated Mass' rolled into the Bixby Knolls section of Long Beach Wednesday.
They parked the big truck with the 320-ton rock in the middle of Atlantic Avenue and the local merchants threw a party.
Even the local media attended.
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Sunny but cooler than seasonal.
Artists Unite For Benefit
"Shinsai: Theaters for Japan,"
In a rehearsal room below Lincoln Center Theater, seven singers have gathered around a piano, trying to nail a mash-up of two songs from the musical "Pacific Overtures."
They're getting ready for more than just a concert: The group is part of an unprecedented, one-day fundraising effort on Sunday by dozens of theaters across the nation and some abroad to present a menu of 10-minute songs and plays.
Sunday marks the one-year anniversary of when a monstrous earthquake triggered a tsunami that roared across Japan's coast, leaving nearly 20,000 people dead or missing, leaving hundreds of thousands homeless, and sparking the worst nuclear crisis the world had seen in a quarter century.
American and Japanese theater veterans including Doug Wright, Richard Greenberg, Suzan-Lori Parks, Philip Kan Gotanda and Naomi Iizuka have contributed original works, while others, including Edward Albee, John Guare, John Kander and Tony Kushner, have donated older pieces. Japanese playwrights have also contributed their own works that are being translated and will be performed at a later date.
Stephen Sondheim and John Weidman, who teamed up to write "Pacific Overtures," did something a little different: They combined the songs "Four Black Dragons" and "Next" from their 1976 musical about the Westernization of Japan, added new lyrics and incorporated lines of spoken information about the destruction and recovery.
About 70 theaters and colleges in America - ranging from Malone University in Ohio, the McCarter Theatre in New Jersey, Theatre Conspiracy in Florida, Wheaton College in Illinois, and the American Conservatory Theater in California - have signed up for "Shinsai: Theaters for Japan," as well as companies in Canada, Turkey and Italy.
"Shinsai: Theaters for Japan,"
Teenager Petitions To Change R Rating
'Bully'
A teenage activist has collected more than 200,000 signatures in an effort to change the R rating of the teen-focused documentary "Bully," but she says the Motion Picture Association of America doesn't want to make the change.
The 17-year-old Katy Butler met Wednesday with MPAA officials and delivered four boxes of papers containing the signatures she collected online. She is urging the organization to change the film's rating from R to PG-13 so more young people can see it.
"Bully" follows five young bullying victims and their experiences during the school year.
Joan Graves of the MPAA says that though "Bully" is a "wonderful film," the organization's primary responsibility is to provide information to parents about films' content. "Bully" earned an R rating because of its use of profanity.
'Bully'
Now A Building
Bob Barker
Bob Barker's name has been attached to a game show and a cause for decades. Now it's attached to a building.
For decades, the former game show host urged "Price Is Right" viewers to spay or neuter their pets. After he retired from the show, he donated $2.5 million to renovate a Los Angeles building that will become the West Coast headquarters of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.
PETA officials and Barker will attend Thursday's grand opening.
The Bob Barker Building on Sunset Boulevard will house PETA's media, marketing, youth outreach and campaign departments.
Bob Barker
Step Closer To Casino License
Jimmy Buffett
Jimmy Buffett is one step closer to sharing in the gambling revenue his Parrotheads deliver to his Margaritaville casino in Sin City.
The Nevada Gaming Control Board on Wednesday recommended the singer's holding company be approved for a gambling license, setting up a final hearing later this month.
Board members questioned Buffett for about 15 minutes and asked him about two incidents in which he was accused of having drugs.
Buffett said that when the Jamaican military mistook his plane for smuggling drugs in 1996, they fired 115 shots and hit twice. French customs officials detained him in 2006 and suspected he was carrying ecstasy, but Buffett said it was actually heart palpitation medication and he was released quickly.
Jimmy Buffett
The Riddler's Son
Mitch Gorshin
His father played "The Riddler" on TV's "Batman" series, but Mitch Gorshin cooked up a puzzling mystery of his own: Just what IS that big ball on the top of the Revel casino?
On Wednesday, he came clean, telling The Associated Press that the constantly changing work of art is designed to become the identity of the soon-to-open casino, a beacon of ever-changing light visible for 10 miles at night.
Gorshin, a former Disney executive whose title with Revel Entertainment is "executive director of fun and creative," got the idea for the ball while walking back to the casino from a nearby pizzeria.
"The foil my pizza was in was empty, so I crumpled it up into a tiny ball and was about to throw it away, when I held it up and looked at it lined up with the top of the casino, and then it hit me," he said. "A ball, by nature, is the universal symbol of fun. There's a great visual tension; if you put a ball on the top of a slanted roof like we have, your eye senses that it's about to fall off."
Gorshin's father, Frank, was a famous stage and screen actor, best known for his role as the green question-mark-clad villain who tried to do away with Batman and Robin in all sort of hopelessly complicated ways. Mitch Gorshin grew up in Las Vegas, where his father performed, and nurtured a love of creative designs.
Mitch Gorshin
NBC Announces "Talent" Debut
Howard Stern
NBC will debut "America's Got Talent" with new judge Howard Stern on May 14, the week after the season finale of "The Voice," the network announced Wednesday.
"The Voice" will add a second night of live elimination rounds beginning Tuesday, April 3, and will announce its winner in a two-hour season finale Tuesday, May 8.
The following week, "Talent" will debut in "The Voice's" Mondays-at-8 p.m. timeslot.
Howard Stern
TLC Cancels
'All-American Muslim'
A TLC network reality television show about Muslim families living in the Detroit area is ending after one season.
TLC spokeswoman Laurie Goldberg said Wednesday the "All-American Muslim" series won't be back. Its eight-episode run ended in January.
"All-American Muslim" attracted attention when a conservative Christian group called for an advertiser boycott. At least two companies announced they were pulling ads. TLC says the protest caused a backlash in which new advertisers signed on.
After a strong start to the series, ratings faded. The series was considered a long shot to return.
'All-American Muslim'
Says 'Everything's Cool'
Pigboy
Talk show host Rush Limbaugh sought to reassure listeners Wednesday after the tally of local and national companies that have pulled their advertisements from his time slot topped 40, insisting that the show will go on and that the program is not losing revenue from the exodus.
At last count, 42 advertisers, two radio stations and two musicians have closed the door on Limbaugh following incendiary comments he made last week about a Georgetown law student who testified before Congress in favor of having birth control covered under insurance plans.
Limbaugh told his listeners today that "everything's cool," noting that many of the advertisers that have yanked their support are local and thus have little if any impact on the show's revenues.
"Nobody is losing money here, including us, in all this," Limbaugh said on his radio show Wednesday. "[The advertisers] are not canceling the business on our stations. They're just saying they don't want their spots to appear in my show. We don't get any revenue from 'em anyway. The whole effort is to dispirit you."
While he would not name companies, Limbaugh said three new sponsors have signed onto his show in the past two weeks.
Pigboy
How Much Darker...
Rupert
After James Murdoch's resignation from News International, new revelations ranging from the attempted suicides of staffers to an executive-level conspiracy against the police are adding a macabre layer to an already twisted story. The tension at News International is so strained that at least one manager has hired security guards out of fear for his personal safety . This all comes on top of the various lawsuits and investigations into phone hacking, computer hacking, and bribery, which threaten to bring Rupert Murdoch's newspaper division to its knees.
Most of the new details about the News Corp. phone hacking nightmare come from the witnesses in three separate police investigations and the ongoing Levenson Inquiry. But behind-the-scenes, some former News Corp. employees are starting to report on current News Corp. employees. On Wednesday, Neville Thurlbeck -- the journalist at the center of the now infamous email thread that revealed the widespread use of phone hacking to James Murdoch -- reported that a member of News Corp.'s management and standards committee, Will Lewis, had hired a private security detail. Thurlbeck links Lewis's decision to Tuesday's news from the London Evening Standard that two senior journalists at the Murdoch-owned Sun newspaper had attempted suicide. If News international employees are willing to kill themselves, one wonders, what would they do to the well-paid executives who should've maintained and monitored the company's ethical standards?
It's becoming increasingly clear, however, that it was those very executives who were knowingly breaking the rules. Rebekah Brooks, who had appointed the lawyer to handle all of the police investigations, is now being named among the obstruction of justice allegations. Just last week, more damning emails surfaced showing Brooks also knew about widespread phone hacking while she was an editor at The Sun. A new Bloomberg report explains how a recently discovered email reveals "that hacking victims were more widespread than the New York-based media company had admitted -- and included Brooks herself." It adds, "The e-mail, sent between two News of the World managers, suggests that from the beginning of the phone-hacking scandal, there was a conspiracy among senior executives to deceive the police and a separate, parliamentary probe into phone hacking." No wonder News Corp. employees are disgruntled.
Rupert
Takes Down Vatican Website
Anonymous
The Italian branch of the hackers group Anonymous took down the Vatican's website on Wednesday, saying it was an attack on the Roman Catholic Church's scandals and conservative doctrine.
The Vatican website was inaccessible. A spokesman said he could not confirm that the crash was the work of the hackers group but said technicians were working to bring it back up.
A statement on the Italian website of the loosely-knit cyber-activists group accused the Church of being responsible for a long list of misdeeds throughout history, including the selling of indulgences in the 16th century and burning heretics during the Inquisition.
"Today, Anonymous has decided to put your site under siege in response to your doctrine, liturgy and the absurd and anachronistic rules that your profit-making organization spreads around the world," the website said.
It also accused the Vatican of being "retrograde" in its interfering in Italian domestic affairs "daily."
Anonymous
Jury Hears 2 Versions
Nicollette Sheridan
A former writer on "Desperate Housewives" on Wednesday contradicted testimony by the show's creator that a decision to kill off Nicollette Sheridan's role had been made four months before the actress claimed her boss struck her on the set.
The testimony by Lori Kirkland Baker was the latest twist in Sheridan's wrongful termination and battery lawsuit against "Housewives" creator and executive producer Marc Cherry and ABC.
Cherry and Baker told jurors how plots are discussed months in advance using index cards, brainstorming sessions and assistants taking notes.
Cherry testified that he announced at a writers' retreat in May 2008 that he had received authorization from top studio and network executives to kill off Sheridan's character Edie Britt. He said a photograph of note cards from the sessions that included the coded message "Steven drinks OJ" signaled that Britt's days were numbered.
Hours later, Baker testified that the first time she heard about the decision to kill Britt was in December 2008, the same month ABC cleared Cherry of wrongdoing in his dispute with Sheridan in September 2008.
Nicollette Sheridan
Town Elects Birther Nutjob
Clovis, N.M.
A former New Mexico mayor who called President Barack Obama "the carnal manifestation of evil" and said Obama's election was part of a CIA conspiracy has been elected to his former job, according to unofficial results.
The Clovis News Journal reports that former Clovis mayor David Lansford won his old job back Tuesday by defeating Mayor Gayla Brumfield with almost 63 percent of the votes.
Lansford, 53, recently gained national attention after the newspaper reported his ties to a fringe religious and political group, ATLAH Media Network in New York. After threatening to withdraw from the race, Lansford later changed his mind and stayed in the race but said he felt disclosing his activities was unfair and would prompt others to label him "a whack job."
Lansford later told KOB-TV that he didn't believe Obama had the legal right to be president because he's "not a natural born citizen."
Clovis, N.M.
Fires 3 Schullers
Crystal Cathedral
The Crystal Cathedral has fired three relatives of the megachurch's founder in an effort to revamp the "Hour of Power" amid declining donations and viewership.
The Orange County Register reported Tuesday that the church's board voted to oust Rev. Robert H. Schuller's daughter and two sons-in-law along with five other people.
Church spokesman John Charles says Schuller and his wife abstained from voting to dismiss daughter Gretchen Penner and her husband Jim Penner as producers of the "Hour of Power" televangelist program. Son-in-law Jim Coleman was dismissed as director of creative services.
The program will replay previous episodes for a few weeks amid the change in direction.
Crystal Cathedral
Alaska Mystery Solved
Orange Goo
A bizarre orange goo that invaded and baffled a remote Alaskan village and caught the world's attention last year has been identified. Despite occasional conspiracy theories and Internet speculation, it was both nonalien and nontoxic. But beyond that, nobody really knew what to make of it. Until now.
Researchers from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) first believed that the weird goo was created by millions of tiny crustacean eggs, with fatty oil seen through the transparent egg sacs causing the curious orange color. Upon closer analysis, the scientists changed their diagnosis, saying that it was actually a mass of spores from a type of fungus called rust - named so for its distinctive orange color - though in a quantity and location never before seen.
But part of the mystery remained: the scientists were unable to positively identify the exact species of rust fungus; the sample they tested did not match any comparison samples, nor anything anyone there had seen. What could it mean?
Writer Jennifer Frazer covered the strange story on her "Artful Amoeba" blog for Scientific American, and reported that the mystery had finally been solved: "the identity of the rust has been revealed at last. It is the Spruce-Labrador Tea Needle Rust, Chrysomyxa ledicola, a parasite of both spruce trees and a rhododendron - a flowering woody shrub common to conifer understories the world over - called Labrador Tea."
Orange Goo
1953 'Witch Hunt'
Lavender Scare
Joan Cassidy, 84, has the U.S. Navy in her blood. Her father and mother, a proud Yeomanette, served active duty in World War I. Her brother and sister were in World War II.
By 1953, Lt. j.g. Cassidy, then 26, was head of a Navy intelligence division with highest-level security clearances.
But while serving in Pearl Harbor, she resigned from a promising career and joined the Navy Reserve, forced to throw away her dreams because she was a lesbian.
President Dwight D. Eisenhower that year declared homosexuals a threat to national security and ordered the immediate firing of every gay man and lesbian working for the U.S. government.
The State Department fired hundreds of gay men and women, calling them sexual "perverts" who would be vulnerable to blackmail; 5,000 government workers, including private contractors, were publicly exposed and sent packing.
Lavender Scare
Afghan Artists
Graffiti
Encased in a head-to-toe burqa, the image depicts a distraught woman slumped on a cement stairwell, the work of Afghanistan's first street artists who use graffiti to chronicle violence and oppression.
The female-male duo surreptitiously spray-paint the crumbling and dilapidated walls of buildings in the capital Kabul, abandoned and destroyed during 30 years of war that still rages today.
Talking of her woman on the steps, Shamsia Hassani, 24, said: "She is wondering if she can get up, or if she will fall down. Women in Afghanistan need to be careful with every step they take."
In an abandoned textile factory, Hassani spray-painted a wall with six willowy figures in sky-blue burqas, who rise out of the ground like ghosts.
"In three decades of war, women have had to carry the greatest burdens on their shoulders," Hassani, who also works in the faculty of fine arts at Kabul University, told Reuters.
Graffiti
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