Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Mark Morford: Bubblegum and the Date Rape Cocktail (SF Gate)
Panic! Fainting! Pearls-clutching galore among the easily terrified and the never-orgasmic as it was announced that a federal judge just spanked the Obama Administration - Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sibelius in particular - for being so surprisingly backasswards when it comes to emergency contraception for women.
Aditya Chakrabortty: The Lloyds workers are paying for their bosses' catastrophe (Guardian)
Average Lloyds employees face hardship and redundancy. Meanwhile, those that led them into this mess are thriving.
Paul Krugman: It's Not Me (New York Times)
I've been told that there's a commenter on Zero Hedge who is pretending to be me. Not so. I publish my column and this blog; there is a Twitter account, NYTimeskrugman, that is a Times robot that tweets titles of columns and blog posts; and that's it. I don't leave comments on other blogs, I don't have another Twitter account, Facebook account, Google Plus account, or any of that. Hey, I am trying to have a life.
Paul Krugman: Did Thatcher Turn Britain Around? (New York Times)
There will presumably be a lot of commentary about Margaret Thatcher over the next few days, although probably nothing like the "Reagasm" of 2004. And there will in particular be many assertions that Thatcher turned around a moribund British economy. So, is this right?
Zachary Roth: GOP voting crackdown in NC threatens minorities (MSNBC)
Parents would lose a tax credit worth $2500 if their child registers to vote at a different address. The effect would be to force college students-who, like minorities, tend to vote Democratic-to return to their parents' towns to vote, or cost their families money.
Amalaa: How we used silly string to reveal our baby's sex
If you've heard of gender reveal parties, you probably know how they go - people usually use colored cake or balloons to reveal the sex of their baby to family and friends. When it came to our own baby, I wasn't as interested in having an actual party as much as I wanted a fun way to find out the news
Hadley Freeman: "How to deal with cellulite: scrub it or forget about it" (Guardian)
No one will run screaming at the sight of your dimples at the beach or pool, because no one cares, believe me. But if you care, that's different, and help is at hand.
Interview by Laura Barnett: Michael Bublé, singer - portrait of the artist (Guardian)
The Canadian singer talks about why it's good to steal from other artists, the problem with the record industry - and what it's like to be badmouthed by Morrissey.
Xavier Jackson and Douglas A. McDonnell: 6 Hilarious Pranks Pulled by Soldiers in the Middle of War (Cracked)
#6. Sarcastically Bombing Fake Airfields With Fake Bombs
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Michelle in AZ
From The Creator of 'Avery Ant'
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Sunny and toasty.
America's Most Appealing Celebrity
Betty White
The honors keep pouring in for 91-year-old actress Betty White, who has been named America's most appealing celebrity, according to a market research firm.
White, who stars on the sit-com "Hot in Cleveland," narrowly topped Oscar-winners Sandra Bullock and Tom Hanks, and other celebrities such as singer Adele and Dame Maggie Smith of "Downton Abbey" fame on E-Poll Market Research's annual "appeal" list for 2012.
Others making the list's top 10 included Morgan Freeman, Carol Burnett, actress and recording star Cote de Pablo, "NCIS" TV star Pauley Perrette and Olympian Gabby Douglas.
Robin Williams and Clint Eastwood dropped out of the top 10.
Betty White
$6 Million For DNA Letter
Francis Crick
A bidder paid over $6 million at an auction today (April 10) for a letter British scientist Francis Crick wrote to his 12-year-old son explaining the double-helix structure of the DNA molecule, which he and James Watson had just discovered.
The winning bid was $5.3 million, with the final price tag for the "Secret of Life" letter coming in at $6,059,750, according to Christie's, which handled the sale.
The seven-page handwritten note, dated March 19, 1953, contains diagrams that outline the scientists' model for how "des-oxy-ribose-nucleic-acid (read it carefully)" replicates and encodes instructions for the development and function of living things.
"In other words we think we have found the basic copying mechanism by which life comes from life," Crick wrote to his son, Michael, who was at boarding school at the time, signing off, "lots of love, Daddy."
As legend has it, when Watson and Crick made their discovery on Feb. 28, 1953, Crick announced inside a local Cambridge pub called the Eagle, "We have discovered the secret of life." Their findings wouldn't be published in the journal Nature until two months later, and the note to Michael is likely one of the first written explanations of the discovery.
Francis Crick
Wrong Swami
J.D. Salinger
In a story April 9 about a donation of J.D. Salinger letters made to the Morgan Library & Museum, The Associated Press erroneously reported to whom some of his correspondence was addressed. It was to Swami Nikhilananda, not Swami Vivekananda.
The Morgan Library & Museum, based in Manhattan, announced Tuesday that it will receive 28 letters by the author of "The Catcher in the Rye." The letters were written to Swami Nikhilananda, founder of the Ramakrishna-Vivekananda Center, which donated the correspondence.
Salinger, who died in 2010 at age 91, was strongly influenced by Eastern religion and philosophy and worked in his beliefs into such stories as "Hapworth 16, 1924."
Materials given to the Morgan also include letters the center wrote to Salinger and exchanges between the center and Salinger's widow, Colleen O'Neill. The Morgan will exhibit two of the donated letters April 12-19. The museum already had 24 Salinger letters.
J.D. Salinger
Country Music Hall of Fame
Kenny Rogers
Veteran singers and songwriters Kenny Rogers, Bobby Bare and "Cowboy" Jack Clement will be inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame, organizers said on Wednesday, achieving one of the highest honors in the music industry.
Rogers, 74, the husky-voiced three-time Grammy winner best known for songs like The Gambler" and "Ruby, Don't Take Your Love To Town," will be inducted in the "Modern Era" category, the Country Music Association announced.
"Everything pales in comparison to this," Rogers said, tearing up because the honor came in his lifetime.
"My older sons thought I was already in here. Maybe now I can really impress them," he told Reuters, referring to his 8-year-old twin sons from his fifth marriage.
Kenny Rogers
Settlement Reached
'Spider-Man'
A settlement has been reached between the producers of "Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark" and its fired director, Julie Taymor, ending a bitter legal fight over what has become Broadway's most expensive show.
"All claims between all of the parties in the litigation have been resolved," both sides said in a statement Wednesday. No details about the settlement or how it was reached were immediately revealed.
Taymor, who was the original "Spider-Man" director and co-book writer, was fired after years of delays, accidents and critical backlash to a show whose $75 million price tag ballooned to make it the most expensive in Broadway history.
The show, which features music by U2's Bono and The Edge, opened in November 2010 but spent months in previews and then retooling before officially opening a few days after the Tony Awards in June 2011. It has become a financial hit at the box office.
'Spider-Man'
Afraid Of Women
Patriarch Kirill
The head of the resurgent Russian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Kirill, said on Tuesday feminism was a "very dangerous" phenomenon offering an illusion of freedom to women who should focus on their families and children.
Some three quarters of Russians consider themselves Russian Orthodox and Kirill has fostered increasingly close ties with President Vladimir Putin who has portrayed the church as the guardian of Russia's national values.
"Man turns his sight outward, he should work, make money. While a woman is always focused inwards towards her children, her home. If this exceptionally important role of a woman is destroyed, everything will be destroyed as a consequence - family and, if you wish, the homeland," he said.
Kirill once likened Putin's rule over Russia to a miracle of God and the president has said the Orthodox Church should play a bigger role in the country where faith runs deep after the fall of the officially atheist Soviet Union.
Russian legislators on Tuesday gave initial approval to a law that would make offences against religion punishable by up to five years in prison.
Patriarch Kirill
Paris Judge Sets Hearing On Auction
Hopi
A judge in Paris has agreed to hold a hearing Thursday on the sale of dozens of items central to an Arizona tribe's religious practices.
The auction house, Neret-Minet Tessier & Sarrou, plans a Friday sale of a collection it describes as 70 kachina masks of the Hopi Indians.
The Hopi Tribe contends the items were stolen and has asked the auction house to prove otherwise. The tribe says the items are communal property and no one other than a Hopi has the right to possess them.
A lawyer representing the Hopi Tribe has filed a motion in a Paris court to suspend the auction to determine the origin of the items.
Hopi
Felony Case
Flavor Flav
Entertainer Flavor Flav is facing a trial on felony charges that he threatened his longtime girlfriend's 17-year-old son with a butcher knife during a family argument.
The 54-year-old former rap and reality TV star, whose legal name is William Jonathan Drayton Jr., didn't testify during a Wednesday evidence hearing in Las Vegas Justice Court.
But the teen did. He pointed from the witness stand toward Drayton at the defendant's table, identified him as the man wearing a clock around his neck, and told Justice of the Peace Melanie Andress-Tobiasson that Drayton chased him to a bedroom and stabbed the knife through the door during the argument early Oct. 17.
The argument began when Drayton woke the boy during a 3 a.m. argument with the boy's mother, Elizabeth Trujillo, with whom he has lived for about eight years. It escalated when the teen, a 6-foot-3, 200-pound high school football and basketball player, wrestled the 5-foot-6 Drayton into a head lock in the kitchen.
Flavor Flav
Workers Walk Off Job Over Pickpockets
Louvre
The Louvre was closed Wednesday after its workers walked off their jobs to protest what is said to be a rising problem of pickpockets haunting the famed Paris museum's vast galleries.
Louvre spokeswoman Sophie Grange was unable to say when the museum, which normally attracts up to 30,000 visitors a day at this time of year, would reopen. Museum staff organized the protest to draw attention to the problem, which they say is hindering their ability to welcome visitors and protect the Louvre's collections.
Louvre officials could not provide an exact figure for the number of pickpocketing victims there, but the museum said in a statement that it was a growing problem despite measures taken last year including tighter cooperation with the police. The Louvre said it would crack down on repeat offenders through temporary bans on entry into the museum.
The Louvre claims to be the world's most visited museum, with nearly 10 million visitors last year.
Louvre
Foundation Headquarters For Sale
John Denver
The 950-acre property that John Denver bought in the late 1970s as headquarters for his Windstar Foundation is being sold, a move seen by some environmentalists as the unofficial end to the singer's vision to protect some of the land west of Aspen from being overrun by developers.
The property in Old Snowmass is under contract to be sold to a private buyer. The conservancy placed the property on the market in September for $13 million. The foundation was dissolved last fall.
The Windstar Land Conservancy was founded in 1996 by the Windstar Foundation and the Rocky Mountain Institute to own and manage the land Denver loved. The institute still operates an office on the property for about 20 employees.
According to the Aspen Times, foundation officials want to use the money to help the institute achieve its goal of opening a state-of-the-art green office building in Basalt, which is about 18 miles northwest of Aspen.
John Denver
Hits UK Chart
"Ding Dong! The Witch Is Dead"
The death of former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher has sent a 74-year-old song, "Ding Dong! The Witch Is Dead", flying into the UK charts, figures showed on Wednesday.
The song from the 1939 film "The Wizard of Oz" was top of Amazon's most downloaded chart on Wednesday after a social media campaign to promote the upbeat track as a way for detractors to "celebrate" the death of Britain's most divisive postwar leader.
A spokeswoman from Britain's Official Charts Company said the track, sung in the film by the Munchkin characters alongside Judy Garland's Dorothy after the oppressive Wicked Witch of the West dies, would hit No. 10 in the singles chart on Wednesday.
"The surge in sales follows a campaign to get the track to Number 1 on the Official Singles Chart following the death of Margaret Thatcher on Monday," said the spokeswoman.
Amazon reviewers urged others to buy the track to show their disapproval of Thatcher whose free-market ideology drove policies which alienated the many Britons who demonize the "Iron Lady" as a destroyer of jobs and traditional British industries.
"For those genuine witches, who purposely destroy the lives of others for purely ideological reasons and with not one shred of apology or a single tear, this is the perfect funeral-day track," wrote reviewer Gareth Mark Gee from Nottingham.
"Ding Dong! The Witch Is Dead"
In Memory
Besedka Johnson
Besedka Johnson, who became an actress at age 85 and won praise for last year's movie "Starlet," has died. She was 87.
Johnson died on April 4 at Glendale Memorial Hospital of complications following surgery for a bacterial infection, her son, Jim Johnson, told the Los Angeles Times.
Besedka Johnson played the cranky widow Sadie, who befriends Dree Hemingway in last year's movie. It was her only role.
Johnson got the part when an executive producer for the movie saw her in the locker room at a YMCA gym in Los Angeles and asked her to audition.
"I thought it has got to be a great big joke," Besedka Johnson later said, but "when you're this old, it's like let's just go along with it and see what happens."
The character's crustiness was worlds apart from Johnson's sweet nature.
After an abrasive scene, Johnson "would turn to Dree and apologize for the way she was acting," director Sean Baker said. "It was so sweet."
Beatrice Vivian Divic was born in Detroit but moved to Los Angeles as a teenager to pursue a modeling career. In the 1960s, she began using Besedka as her first name, taking the name of a dress shop she owned. In her 30s, she took acting lessons for fun but said she never expected to get a professional job.
In addition to her son Jim, she is survived by sons Marc Johnson and Lloyd Johnson, and two granddaughters.
Besedka Johnson
In Memory
Andy Johns
A sound engineer and producer who worked with Led Zeppelin, Van Halen and the Rolling Stones has died.
Andy Johns' family says he died Sunday in Los Angeles after a brief hospital stay to treat complications from a stomach ulcer. He was 62.
Johns was born in England and started his career at Olympic Studios in London. He went on to produce dozens of classic rock 'n' roll albums including the Stones' "Exile on Main Street."
Johns is survived by his wife Annette; sons Evan, Jesse and William; grandchildren Lennon, Everly, Charlie and Luca; brother Glyn Johns; and sister Susan Johns.
Andy Johns
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