Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Mark Morford: How many companies want you dead?
Oh, don't even pretend to be shocked. You know it's true. You know there are simply a huge number of big, sweaty major corporations out there in big, sweaty capitalismland who claim to be in the business of feeding and caring for the human body, but who actually care about as much for your general health and well-being as a Republican cares for his meth dealer's lesbian daughter's organic free-range Vermont wedding.
Ken Auletta: Publish or Perish (newyorker.com)
Can the iPad topple the Kindle, and save the book business?
Froma Harrop: Too Much Medicine Isn't Good Medicine (creators.com)
In the land of "too much ain't enough," the idea that less medicine could be better medicine is a hard sell. This was impossible to discuss during the fracas over health care reform, when any talk of fewer tests and less surgery was portrayed as rationing or the government coming between you and the doctor. But more medicine can make you sicker. Sometimes it is worse than the disease it purports to cure.
"Autobiography of a Recovering Skinhead: The Frank Meeink Story" by Frank Meeink: A review by Gerry Donaghy
When Frank Meeink first watched the film 'A Clockwork Orange,' he wondered, "Do people really do that kind of psycho shit?" It wouldn't take him long to find out. By the time he was 14 years old, Meeink, the product of a broken South Philadelphia upbringing, was the alpha dog of a growing neo-Nazi skinhead brigade called the Terror Squad. By the age of 17, he was doing hard time on kidnapping and assault charges.
"Changing My Mind: Occasional Essays" by Zadie Smith: A review by Morten Hoi Jensen
Zadie Smith, the prodigiously gifted English novelist, seems to have been caught in the tangle of literary debate from the beginning.
'I hope the wretched Catholic church will vanish entirely' (guardian.co.uk)
A conversation with Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury, inspired Philip Pullman to write his new book about Jesus, he tells Laura Barton.
Andrew Smith: Caribou cracks the equation (timesonline.co.uk)
Dan Snaith of electronic band Caribou has turned his Maths PhD skills into a complex but immediately appealing sound.
Sam Leith: Sell 1m records today and you'll earn a half-sucked gobstopper covered in fluff (guardian.co.uk)
The internet has done a Good Cop/Bad Cop routine on the music industry - and Spotify is a Good Cop.
KRISTIN A. SMITH: Q&A with Martha Davis of the Motels (curvemag.com)
New Wave Star Martha Davis waxes gay politics, why "Only the Lonely" is a gay anthem and why being 58 is great.
the linster: Interview with Lily Tomlin (afterellen.com)
The iconic performer talks to us about Damages, Desperate Housewives, and how things have changed for the LGBT community during her 40 years in public life.
Michael Ordoņa: Cheech and Chong haven't gone to pot (latimes.com)
At least not in the retirement sense. The comedians are on a mission with their "Get It Legal" tour.
Roger Ebert: Review of "THE PERFECT GAME" (PG; 3 stars)
Once in a very long time, a film "based on a true story" is both true, and almost too good to be a story. Perhaps anticipating any suspicion, William Dear intercuts newsreel footage from 1957 with "The Perfect Game," frequently piping into the past for black and white, and then segueing into the color of the present day. These players really lived, and this game was really played.
David Bruce, editor: "Life in America: Tales of Love and Laughter" (lulu.com)
Download: FREE. This book collects the humorous autobiographical essays of talented authors in Athens, Ohio, who write about life, and especially about growing up, in America.
The Weekly Poll
I have to take a short 'medical leave of absence' and hopefully I will be back with a new question next Tuesday (04/27). It's nothing serious, mind ya, just annoying and inconvenient. Not to worry!
TTFN...
BadToTheBoneBob
wrote:
From The Creator of 'Avery Ant'
Reader Suggestion
Iceland
I had wondered how Iceland was coping. Guess this answers that.
Iceland Pictures
MAM
Thanks, Marianne!
Contributor Observation
E-Mail
From: Baron Dave
Date: Wed, April 21, 2010 3:08 pm
To: marty@suprmchaos.com
suprmchaos@aol.com
suprmchaos@hotmail.com
suprmchaos@yahoo.com
Undeliverable mail notice, finally
I just -- more than three days later -- got two mailer-daemon
messages bouncing my mail to you from Sunday. One re hotmail, the
other re yahoo,. Yes, this is why I send multiple copies.
Baron Dave
--
"I don't want to bother the Internet with my problem." -- Marge Simpson
Thanks, Baron Dave!
Seems stuff getting lost in the mail doesn't apply only to the snail-version.
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Cold and windy.
1000 days in a row means it's been 1001 since the last visit to PA (and access to a fresh Straub's).
New Deals For Stewart And Colbert
Comedy Central
The late-night lineup is shifting on TV but not at Comedy Central. The cable channel has signed new deals to keep Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert.
Comedy Central said Tuesday that in separate agreements, Stewart agreed to host "The Daily Show" through June 2013 and Colbert will stick with "The Colbert Report" until the end of 2012. The two shows air in the 11 p.m. Eastern to midnight block.
The contract extensions were announced a week after Conan O'Brien said his home after a short stint at "The Tonight Show" will be cable channel TBS. He will host a late-night show later this year that will compete with Stewart and Colbert.
O'Brien left NBC after the network sought to move him and "Tonight" to make way for Jay Leno's return to late night.
Comedy Central
Haiti Benefit Tour
Rock Bottom Remainders
A semi-musical band made up of best-selling authors, including Dave Barry, Amy Tan and Mitch Albom, is touring East Coast cities to raise money for Haitian relief and other charities.
The Rock Bottom Remainders tour begins Wednesday night with a concert at Washington's 9:30 Club and continues this week in Philadelphia, New York and Boston.
Barry says the band has been hailed as "not as bad as you would expect."
Funds for Haiti will be sent to the group World Vision. The Pearson Foundation also is donating five books to public schools in each city on the tour for each ticket sold.
Rock Bottom Remainders
Christie's Earth Day Auction
Bill Clinton
Christie's on Thursday is set to auction a series of "experiences" that include a round of golf with ex-US president Bill Clinton in a special fundraiser for the 40th anniversary of Earth Day.
Items up for auction include a five-night getaway in Bali; two tickets to the 2011 Vanity Fair Oscars After Party, where the winners can hobnob with the A-list Hollywood glitterati; a photographic safari to Botswana for six with National Geographic magazine chief editor Chris Johns; and a chance to "Put Your Baby in the Next BABY GAP ad," Christie's said in a statement.
Celebrities, including actresses Salma Hayek and Brooke Shields, Queen Noor of Jordan, and former tennis great John McEnroe, will be present at the auction.
Of the 21 items and "experiences" up for auction, six -- including golf with Clinton, with an estimated price of 100,000 -- have already received early bids.
Bill Clinton
Entertaining Feud
Jon Stewart
Last week, Stewart's show did a segment about how Fox News commentators criticized Tea Party opponents for judging the movement based on the bad actions of a few. Stewart played tape of Fox personalities, including Goldberg, making generalizations about liberals.
Goldberg pleaded guilty. But on Monday's "The O'Reilly Factor," he urged Stewart to show guts and be tough on liberal guests.
He said Stewart thinks he's edgy, but is Jay Leno with a smaller audience who gets to swear.
Responded Stewart: "If you think I'm Leno with an f-bomb, you know less about comedy than you do about politics."
Jon Stewart
Jon Stewart Hits Back At Fox News With A Gospel Version Of 'Go F*ck Yourselves' (VIDEO) | TPM LiveWire
Age No Handicap
Eli Wallach
When he was well into his 80s, Eli Wallach told an interviewer that he feared directors would consider his age a handicap. He needn't have worried.
At 94, the prolific character actor is on the big screen in Roman Polanski's "The Ghost Writer" and recently completed work on Oliver Stone's "Wall Street" sequel.
Plenty of things have changed in the half-century since Wallach began his film career, but his enthusiasm for acting and the high regard in which the industry holds him aren't among them.
As a featured guest of the inaugural TCM Classic Film Festival, which runs April 22-25 in Los Angeles, Wallach will introduce a screening of "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly," the 1966 spaghetti Western that for many fans defines the genre. It also inspired the title of his 2005 autobiography, "The Good, the Bad, and Me."
Eli Wallach
Hangs Up His Spock Ears
Leonard Nimoy
Leonard Nimoy, the actor who has famously portrayed "Star Trek's" original alien Spock for over 40 years, has announced he's officially hanging up the pointy Vulcan ears for good.
Nimoy, 79, plans to retire shortly from show business and the "Star Trek" convention circuit, according to the Canadian newspaper Toronto Sun.
The actor, director and photographer will be attending the Calgary Comic and Entertainment Expo this weekend, and told the paper that beyond this event he only has a few more public appearances scheduled.
Nimoy also currently guest stars on the television show "Fringe," produced by J.J, Abrams who directed last summer's re-launched "Star Trek" film franchise chronicling a younger original series cast on their first mission on the starship Enterprise.
Leonard Nimoy
Centenary Performance In Elmira, NY
Hal Holbrook
Hal Holbrook has performed on stage as Mark Twain far longer than Twain did himself.
His 56 years of one-man "Mark Twain Tonight!" shows reach a milestone in Elmira, N.Y., on Wednesday, which is the centenary of the author's death.
The Emmy Award-winning actor has been gluing on a bushy moustache and pontificating in a gravelly twang since his first full-fledged Twain impersonation in 1954.
Elmira is where Twain wrote most of his best-known works, from his "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" masterpiece to "Life on the Mississippi," a memoir of his days as a steamboat pilot.
Hal Holbrook
Unpublished Family Sketch To Auction
Mark Twain
Mark Twain, known for his curmudgeonly wit and storytelling, is shown as a family man and loving father in "A Family Sketch," a never published tribute to a daughter who inspired two of his stories and died at 24 after contracting spinal meningitis.
The 64-page, handwritten document is among a trove of 200 personal letters, manuscripts and photographs of Mark Twain - the pen name for Samuel Langhorne Clemens - going on sale June 17 at Sotheby's New York.
The auction house will exhibit the material for five days, beginning Wednesday, on the 100th anniversary of the author's death at age 74. The Associated Press got a preview earlier this week.
Among those at Sotheby's is a letter to Twain's future father-in-law, Jervis Langdon, in which the love-struck suitor, then working as a newspaperman, defends his character and offers a list of character references.
Mark Twain
Letter Found In City Hall
John Quincy Adams
A letter penned by the nation's sixth president, John Quincy Adams, has been found in a dusty box in a Massachusetts city hall's basement.
The letter, dated Sept. 8, 1826, outlines the burial wishes of his father, John Adams, the nation's second president. It was recently discovered by a city attorney who was combing through some old records in Quincy City Hall.
John Quincy Adams wrote that his father, who had died two months earlier, and his mother, Abigail Adams, wished to be buried in the First Parish Church, and that a "plain and modest monument" be built in their memory.
John and Abigail Adams are buried in the basement of the church, as are John Quincy Adams and his wife.
John Quincy Adams
Court Discovers Original Papers
OK Corral
A missing handwritten transcript from a coroner's inquest done after the legendary gunfight at the OK Corral has resurfaced in a dusty box more than 125 years after the most famous shootout in Wild West history.
The document resurfaced when court clerks stumbled on the box while reorganizing files in an old jail storage room in Bisbee, about 20 miles south of Tombstone.
Stuffed inside was a modern manila envelope marked "keep" with the date 1881.
Court officials turned the document over to state archivists on Wednesday. Experts will immediately begin peeling away tape, restoring the paper and ink, and digitizing the pages.
OK Corral
Army 'Considers' Rescinding Invitation
Military Religious Freedom Foundation
The Army is considering whether to rescind an invitation to evangelist Franklin Graham to appear at the Pentagon amid complaints about his description of Islam as evil, a military spokesman said Wednesday.
Graham, the son of famed evangelist Billy Graham, was to appear at the Pentagon on May 6 - the National Day of Prayer.
Army Col. Tom Collins said the invitation wasn't from the Pentagon but from the Colorado-based National Day of Prayer Task Force, which works with the Pentagon chaplain's office on the prayer event.
Task force chairwoman Shirley Dobson said in a written statement that U.S. leaders have called for a day of prayer during times of crisis since 1775 but the tradition is under attack.
"Enough is enough," said Dobson, wife of conservative Christian leader James Dobson. "We at the National Day of Prayer Task Force ask the American people to defend the right to pray in the Pentagon."
Military Religious Freedom Foundation
Fatwah For Matt & Trey?
'South Park'
A radical Muslim group has warned the creators of "South Park" that they could face violent retribution for depicting the prophet Muhammad in a bear suit during last week's episode.
The website RevolutionMuslim.com, has since been taken down, but a cached version shows the message to "South Park" creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone. The article's author, Abu Talhah Al-Amrikee, said the men "outright insulted" the religious leader.
The posting showed a gruesome picture of Theo Van Gogh, a Dutch filmmaker who was shot and stabbed to death in an Amsterdam street in 2004 by a fanatic angered by his film about Muslim women. The film was written by a Muslim woman who rejected the Prophet Muhammad as a guide for today's morality.
The posting listed the addresses of Comedy Central's New York office and Parker and Stone's California production office. It also linked to a Huffington Post article that described a Colorado retreat owned by the two men.
'South Park'
Cited For Hit & Run
Heather Locklear
Heather Locklear has a court date next month on misdemeanor hit-and-run charges after an early-morning crash knocked down a street sign.
Ventura County Sheriff's Captain Eric Dowd says Locklear was cited and released Saturday after a resident reported hearing a crash around 4 a.m. An investigation led police to Locklear, whom they believe was behind the wheel at the time of the crash.
Blair Berk, an attorney for the 48-year-old actress, confirmed Locklear was cited as the car's registered owner but said "it is not yet clear who was driving the vehicle."
The matter will be heard May 17 at Simi Valley Court, Dowd said.
Heather Locklear
Settles Royalty Lawsuit
Billy Joel
Billy Joel's longtime drummer has settled a lawsuit accusing his former boss of depriving him of royalties from many of his biggest albums, the singer's lawyer said on Wednesday.
Liberty DeVitto was Joel's principal drummer from 1975 to 2005, performing on such albums as "The Stranger," "52nd Street," "Glass Houses" and "Storm Front," as well as in Joel's touring band.
In his May 2009 lawsuit, DeVitto alleged that Joel breached agreements to pay him unspecified royalties based on sales of 11 albums that were recorded between 1975 and 1990, and which collectively sold more than 100 million units worldwide.
"The case has been amicably resolved," said Paul LiCalsi, a partner at Mitchell Silberberg & Knupp LLP in New York, who represents Joel. He declined to discuss settlement terms.
Billy Joel
Parodies Removed From The YouTubes
Hitler's `Downfall'
Since its release in 2004, the German film about Hitler's last days, "Downfall," has been adopted for wildly popular YouTube parodies.
Every spoof is from the same scene: A furious, defeated Hitler unleashes an impassioned, angry speech to his staff huddled in an underground bunker.
The scene takes on widely different meaning when paired with English subtitles. Most any subject could be substituted. It was made even funnier by the scene's intense melodrama, artful staging and timely cutaways.
On Tuesday, the parodies began disappearing from YouTube. The company that owns rights to the film says it has been fighting copyright infringement for years.
Hitler's `Downfall'
Enabling Cardinals Sued
Benny's Boys
A Mexican citizen filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles on Tuesday accusing Roman Catholic cardinals in Mexico City and Los Angeles of conspiring to shelter a Mexican pedophile priest in both countries.
The lawsuit alleges then-Bishop, now Cardinal Norberto Rivera (no relation to the accused priest), head of the Diocese of Tehuacan, and Los Angeles Cardinal Roger Mahony shuttled the Rev. Nicolas Aguilar Rivera between the U.S. and Mexico in the late 1980s to shield him from prosecution. Parishioners in both countries complained he had molested young boys.
Aguilar Rivera was defrocked last summer and remains at large in Mexico, where he was believed to be living out of his car in Puebla, in central Mexico. He has been wanted by U.S. authorities on 19 felony counts of lewd conduct since he fled his temporary post in Los Angeles in 1988 and returned to Mexico.
Once back in Mexico, Aguilar Rivera continued to work as a priest for at least another decade and molested more young boys in Mexico City and in the Diocese of Tehuacan, in central Mexico, attorneys said. One of those boys is the current plaintiff.
Benny's Boys
Antivirus Program Goes Berserk
McAfee
Computers in companies, hospitals and schools around the world got stuck repeatedly rebooting themselves Wednesday after an antivirus program identified a normal Windows file as a virus.
McAfee Inc. confirmed that a software update it posted at 9 a.m. Eastern time caused its antivirus program for corporate customers to misidentify a harmless file. It has posted a replacement update for download.
About a third of the hospitals in Rhode Island were forced to stop treating patients without traumas in emergency rooms. The hospitals also postponed some elective surgeries, said Nancy Jean, a spokeswoman for the Lifespan system of hospitals. The system includes Rhode Island Hospital, the state's largest, and Newport Hospital, the only hospital on Aquidneck Island.
In Kentucky, state police were told to shut down the computers in their patrol cars as technicians tried to fix the problem. The National Science Foundation headquarters in Arlington, Va., also lost computer access.
Intel Corp. appeared to be among the victims, according to employee posts on Twitter. Intel did not immediately return calls for comment.
McAfee
Defunct Museum Returning Adams Prints
Fresno Metropolitan Museum
The bankrupt Fresno Metropolitan Museum has agreed to return six Ansel Adams photographs to his son, who had objected to them being sold to pay off creditors.
The move will settle a lawsuit by Michael Adams and his wife, Jeanne, who gave the famed nature photographer's prints to the Met in 1983 but maintained they did not give permission for them to be sold.
The photos being returned are of Yosemite National Park, Mount McKinley and Lone Pine in California, and Canyon de Chelly National Monument in Arizona. Adams' attorney Rene Lastreto says the photographer never intended for private collectors to hang those prints in their living rooms.
In exchange, the family will give the museum other Ansel Adams prints of equal value for the October art auction.
Fresno Metropolitan Museum
Tops In Asking Google To Temove Content
Brazil
Brazil tops the list of countries asking Google Inc to remove content from its services, the Internet search company disclosed in a new Web tool -- but it said statistics on China are secret.
The company said it was offering the summary of requests in order to shed more light on how and when it removes data, but government requests from China, where Google has ended its censorship of local search results, is a state secret that the company won't publish.
In the last six months of last year, Brazil had 3,663 data requests and 291 removal requests, driven largely to alleged impersonation and defamation on its orkut social network, orkut Google said on its site, http://www.google.com/governmentrequests/.
Germany, which had a high number of removal requests related to Nazi paraphernalia and Holocaust denial, was second in removal requests, followed by India, where orkut also is popular, and the United States.
Brazil
In Memory
Dorothy Height
Dorothy Irene Height, a pioneering voice of the civil rights movement whose activism stretched from the New Deal to the election of President Barack Obama, died Tuesday. She was 98.
Height, who marched alongside Martin Luther King Jr. and led the National Council of Negro Women for 40 years, was known for her determination and grace - as well as her wry humor. She remained active and outspoken well into her 90s and often received rousing ovations at events around Washington, where she was easily recognizable in the bright, colorful hats she almost always wore.
Height received two of the nation's highest honors: the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1994 and the Congressional Gold Medal in 2004.
Height was born in Richmond, Va., before women could vote and when blacks had few rights. Her family moved to the Pittsburgh area when she was 4. Distinguishing herself in the classroom, she was accepted to Barnard College but then turned away because the school already had reached its quota of two black women. She went on to earn bachelor's and master's degrees from New York University.
As a teenager, Height marched in New York's Times Square shouting, "Stop the lynching." After earning her degrees, she became a leader of the Harlem YWCA and the United Christian Youth Movement of North America, where she pushed to prevent lynching, desegregate the armed forces and reform the criminal justice system.
She traveled to Holland and England as a U.S. delegate to youth and church conferences, and in 1938 was one of 10 young people chosen by Eleanor Roosevelt to spend a weekend at the first lady's Hyde Park, N.Y., home preparing for a World Youth Conference at Vassar College.
One of Height's sayings was, "If the time is not ripe, we have to ripen the time." She liked to quote 19th century abolitionist Frederick Douglass, who said the three effective ways to fight for justice are to "agitate, agitate, agitate."
In the 1950s and 1960s, she was the leading woman helping King and other activists orchestrate the civil rights movement, often reminding the men heading not to underestimate their female counterparts.
Height was on the platform at the Lincoln Memorial, sitting only a few feet from King, when he gave his famous "I have a dream" speech at the March on Washington in 1963.
Height dedicated most of her adult life to the National Council of Negro Women, where she first worked under her mentor, Mary McLeod Bethune, who founded the group. Height took over in 1957 and led it until 1997, fighting for women's rights on issues such as equal pay and education. She developed programs such as "pig banks" to help poor rural families raise their own livestock, and "Wednesdays in Mississippi," in which black and white women from the north traveled to Mississippi to meet with their Southern counterparts in an effort to ease racial tensions and bridge differences.
To celebrate Height's 90th birthday in March 2002, friends and supporters raised $5 million to enable her organization to pay off the mortgage on its Washington headquarters on Pennsylvania Avenue, just a few blocks from the White House. Herman said Height "believed very strongly that we as black women deserved to be on this corridor of power."
Dorothy Height
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