Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Paul Krugman: Still Coring After All These Years (New York Times)
Blogging is a bit like teaching the same class year after year; inevitably there are moments when you feel exasperated at the class's failure to grasp some point you know you explained at length - then you realize that this was last year or the year before, and it was to a different group of people.
Froma Harrop: Legal Pot Means More Money for States, Less for Gangs (Creators Syndicate)
The good things that should happen after marijuana is legalized are happening in Colorado. In November, voters in Colorado - and Washington state - legalized pot for recreational use. (Many states allow medical use of marijuana.)
Froma Harrop: "Free the 'Work Beasts'" (Creators Syndicate)
We who work through colds, bad backs and low moods - however liberal we might be - have permission to resent those who could hold a job but don't, preferring to collect disability checks unto the decades. You see them at the coffee shop, refilling their cups in leisure, or even pumping iron at the gym.
Michele Hanson: Shame on those who practise intimate cosmetic surgery (Guardian)
Why get yourself stuffed, probed and stitched up down there for nothing? It's a waste of money.
Lou Davis, emergency nurse, clinical nurse educator: What Is It Like to Treat a Patient Who Has Committed a Horrible Crime? (Slate)
I remember treating a particularly unpleasant man several years ago. He had been responsible for several murders, including a child. I was talking to a colleague about my feelings, about how I wished that I hadn't had to look after this person. My colleague looked at me and said: "Just think to yourself: 'we care for you, not about you' and it will make it easier."
Sam Adams: The Great Netflix Purge (Slate)
For many Netflix subscribers, tomorrow is just another day. But to serious movie fans, especially those used to plumbing Netflix's streaming library for lesser-known classics, May 1 is the end of an era: Streamageddon. It's the day that hundreds of titles drawn from the libraries of Warner Bros., MGM, and Universal become exclusive to Warner Archive Instant, the classic film service that officially launched earlier this month.
Why is 1960s female icon Diana Rigg now laying into other women? (Guardian)
The star famous for her iconic role in The Avengers is now lambasting women as 'more bitchy than men' and 'dangerous and competitive.'
Interview by Laura Barnett: "John Hannah, actor - portrait of the artist" (Guardian)
The star of Spartacus and Sliding Doors talks about urinal etiquette, what's up with British TV drama - and the day he was told to give up acting and teach PE instead.
Lucy Mangan: Just William by Richmal Crompton (Guardian)
I fell in love with William Brown the very first time we met, in Torridon Road library. He had just received an entire shilling from a generous aunt and was swaggering into his local sweetshop to buy an unprecedented sixpenn'orth of Gooseberry Eyes from the surprised owner. And then I read "'Gotter bit of money this mornin,'' explained William carelessly, with the air of a Rothschild," and lost my heart to Crompton's hero for ever. Oh, the exuberant confidence of it - the splendour! The magnificent insouciance!
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Reader Suggestion
Michelle in AZ
From The Creator of 'Avery Ant'
Team Coco
Conan
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Sunny, windy and dry -- fire season is only 4 or 5 months early.
John Oliver Takes Over In June
'Daily Show'
Comedy Central's "The Daily Show With Jon Stewart" will have a new face at the anchor desk starting Monday, June 10 at 11/10c. Correspondent John Oliver will take over for Jon Stewart through September 3.
The cable channel also released Oliver's guest list for his first week: Seth Rogen (June 10), Armando Iannucci (June 11), a musical performance by Mavis Staples (June 12) and Fareed Zakaria (June 13).
Oliver joined "The Daily Show" in 2006. He also performs standup and writes and stars in a weekly podcast, "The Bugle: Audio Newspaper for a Visual World."
Stewart previously announced in March that he would take a summer break to direct his first film, "Rosewater." Based on Maziar Bahari and Aimee Molloy's 2011 book, "And Then They Came For Me: A Family's Story of Love, Captivity and Survival," Stewart is also writing the screenplay.
'Daily Show'
Report Shows Persistence
TV Violence
Violence, gore and gunplay were staples on prime-time television even in the most sensitive period directly following the Newtown school shooting.
A study of 392 prime-time scripted programs on broadcast networks shown during the month following Vice President Joe Biden's January meeting with entertainment industry executives on the topic revealed that 193 had some incident of violence, according to the Parents Television Council. Some are cartoonish - quite literally, with Homer strangling Bart for mouthing off on "The Simpsons" - but there is plenty of gunplay, stabbings and beat-downs.
Real life has continued to intrude on television entertainment as the months go by. NBC pulled an episode of its serial killer drama "Hannibal" after the Boston Marathon bombing, as did ABC with a "Castle" episode where a character stepped on a pressure-sensitive bomb. Some Newtown parents objected to a recent "Glee" episode that depicted a school shooting.
TV executives are reluctant to talk about violent content, and when pressed question any link between what they air on television and aggressive behavior in real life. Schedules get shifted around when tragic events are in the news, but there's no indication they have changed the types of programs being made. Policy debates have largely overlooked the issue, focusing instead on background checks for gun owners or bans on assault weapons.
TV Violence
PEN/Allen Foundation Literary Service Award
Philip Roth
Philip Roth's latest honor was as much for what he has done for other writers as for his own work.
Roth received the PEN/Allen Foundation Literary Service Award Tuesday night. He was cited for such novels as "Portnoy's Complaint" and "American Pastoral," but also for his advocacy in the 1970s and 1980s for writers in Czechoslovakia and other Eastern bloc countries during the Cold War. PEN, in the midst of a weeklong "World Voices Festival," is an international writers' organization that defends human rights.
The ceremony included readings from two Roth books, "Everyman" and "American Pastoral," and brief films of and about Roth. The author laughed along as he watched himself on screen joking about the daring humor of James Joyce, and was clearly moved by a clip of Czech writer Ivan Klima thanking him.
Roth's support for Klima, Milan Kundera and other Eastern European writers was personal and literary. He traveled to Prague every spring from 1972-1977, arranged to have such peers as Arthur Miller and William Styron send money to persecuted authors and oversaw the U.S. publication of novels by Klima, Kundera and others.
Roth, 80, has announced his retirement from writing books, but not from the written word or prepared text. He spoke briefly, and forcefully, before the hundreds gathered for the PEN Literary Gala at the Museum of Natural History, with attendees including Martin Amis, Salman Rushdie and Jeffrey Eugenides.
Philip Roth
Nominations Announced
Daytime Emmys
CBS' soap "The Young and the Restless" earned a leading 23 Daytime Emmy nominations on Wednesday, including three of the four competitors for best actor, while ABC rival "General Hospital" had 19 nominations.
The 40th annual Daytime Emmy awards will be held June 16 in Beverly Hills, Calif., televised for the second year on the cable network HLN. Nominations were announced Wednesday.
PBS' venerable children's show "Sesame Street" earned 17 nominations, including one for Kevin Clash, who played the Elmo character and resigned last November amid allegations that he sexually abused underage boys. Clash's lawyer has said that related lawsuits filed against Clash are without merit. Clash, who was nominated for outstanding performer in a children's series, played Elmo for 28 years and already has 23 Daytime Emmy awards.
Anderson Cooper, Steve Harvey, Ricki Lake, Mehmet Oz and Rachael Ray were nominated for best talk show host.
CBS led with 50 nominations, followed by PBS with 44. In a sign of changing times, YouTube earned three nominations.
Daytime Emmys
Plain Speech Advocate
Alan Alda
Among the procedures Army surgeon Hawkeye Pierce performed on "M.A.S.H." was an end-to-end anastomosis.
Most of the viewers, actor Alan Alda concedes, had no idea he was talking about removing a damaged piece of intestine and reconnecting the healthy pieces.
Today, the award-winning film and television star is on a mission to teach physicians, physicists and scientists of all types to ditch the jargon and get their points across in clear, simple language.
The former host of the long-running PBS series "Scientific American Frontiers" is a founder and visiting professor of journalism at the Stony Brook University Center for Communicating Science, which has just been named in his honor.
"There's no reason for the jargon when you're trying to communicate the essence of the science to the public because you're talking what amounts to gibberish to them," Alda said in a recent interview with The Associated Press.
Alan Alda
Furthur Cancels Show
Bob Weir
Furthur is cancelling a tour date after guitarist Bob Weir fell onstage at a concert last week.
Weir said on his website Tuesday that the Grateful Dead offshoot is "unable to perform for the next several weeks ... due to unforeseen circumstances." They were scheduled to play May 9 in Napa, Calif.
Weir was quickly helped off the floor after collapsing onstage at a concert last week in Port Chester, N.Y.
Weir formed Furthur with fellow Grateful Dead member Phil Lesh. Furthur's summer tour kicks off July 11 in Brooklyn, N.Y.
Bob Weir
Directing Berlioz Opera
Terry Gilliam
The English National Opera's 2013-14 season will include a world premiere of Oedipus-inspired opera "Thebans" and the return of Monty Python's Terry Gilliam to direct a new production, the company announced Wednesday.
"Thebans," based on the tragedies of Sophocles, is a first opera from composer Julian Anderson, with libretto by Irish playwright Frank McGuinness. It opens in May 2014.
Gilliam, who directed "The Damnation of Faust" at the ENO in 2011, will lead a production of Hector Berlioz's "Benvenuto Cellini" in June 2014.
Unlike its London neighbor the Royal Opera, the ENO performs all its works in English. It also has tried to overcome opera's often stuffy image, offering audiences 3-D cinema broadcasts, casual performances aimed at younger music-lovers and an opera about the late Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi.
Terry Gilliam
$100,000 An Acre
Wounded Knee
The president of a South Dakota tribe facing a deadline on whether to buy a piece of land where 300 of their ancestors were massacred more than a century ago says his tribe does not have the money for the purchase.
The Oglala Sioux faced a Wednesday deadline to buy a 40-acre piece of the Wounded Knee National Historic Landmark on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation.
Owner James Czywczynski had said if the tribe did not agree to the $4.9 million asking price for that parcel and another parcel, he would open up bidding to outside investors.
Tribal president Bryan Brewer tells The Associated Press the tribe will not purchase the land, which has been appraised at less than $7,000 apiece.
Wounded Knee
Liberal Priest Excommunicated
Brazil
The Catholic Church has excommunicated a Brazilian priest after he defended homosexuality, open marriage and other practices counter to Church teaching in online videos.
In a statement released late on Monday, the priest's diocese said Father Roberto Francisco Daniel, known to local parishioners as Padre Beto, had "in the name of 'freedom of expression' betrayed the promise of fealty to the Church."
The priest "injured the Church with grave statements counter to the dogma of Catholic faith and morality." The actions amount to "heresy and schism," the statement said, the penalty for which is excommunication, or expulsion from the Church.
The 47-year-old cleric, who studied theology in Germany, is popular in the southeastern city of Bauru, where he has been a priest since 2001. He is known for his rock T-shirts, a silver stud pierced through his right ear and his habit of posing, as on his official Facebook page, with a glass of beer.
Brazil
Guilty Plea
'Billy the Exterminator'
William "Billy" Bretherton, star of the A&E reality TV show "Billy the Exterminator," has pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor count of possessing synthetic marijuana, his attorney said.
Bretherton was put on probation for a year and prosecutors dropped charges against his wife at a hearing April 19 in Bossier Parish, attorney Allyn Stroud said Tuesday.
He said Bretherton was given a suspended 60-day jail term and fined $500 and that the reality TV star has agreed to undergo substance abuse evaluation and treatment. Bretherton's probation requires community service and regular drug and alcohol testing, Stroud said.
When Billy and Mary Bretherton were arrested last year in Bossier Parish, a spokesman for the northwest Louisiana municipality of Bossier City said police answering a 911 hang-up call from a hotel room had found the Brethertons with suspected synthetic marijuana and a device often used to smoke drugs.
'Billy the Exterminator'
Utah NBC Affiliate Pulls Show
'Hannibal'
A Mormon church-owned NBC affiliate in Utah has pulled the "Hannibal" TV show because of its graphic violence.
The first three episodes of the serial-killer drama that aired on KSL-TV became increasingly graphic and "extremely gory," drawing complaints from many viewers and rising eyebrows among station executives, said Tami Ostmark, KSL-TV vice president of marketing.
KSL executives were somewhat uncomfortable with the "Hannibal" show after viewing the pilot and promos but decided to give it a chance, Ostmark said.
"Hannibal" is the latest show the TV station - owned by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which has its worldwide headquarters in Salt Lake City - has judged to be unsuitable for its audience.
In the fall of 2012, the station opted not to run "The New Normal," a sitcom about a gay couple who invites a surrogate mother into their home. Since 2002, the station hasn't aired "Saturday Night Live." KSL will fill its Thursday 9 p.m. time slot with a special edition of its newscast, Ostmark said.
'Hannibal'
Pink Floyd Poser
"David Gilmour"
A man is accused of pretending to be a member of rock band Pink Floyd at a Minnesota hospital - and racking up as much as $100,000 in unpaid medical bills.
Police say the 53-year-old Monticello man went to St. Cloud Hospital for treatment April 20. He claimed he was Pink Floyd singer-guitarist David Gilmour and that he didn't have health insurance. He was treated and released, but not before signing an autograph.
The St. Cloud Times says hospital security was suspicious about the man's identity and his medical records were flagged. The man returned for more treatment several days later and, confronted by police, admitted he wasn't Gilmour.
The man was booked into the Stearns County Jail on a possible charge of theft by swindle.
"David Gilmour"
Actor Charged
'Coronation Street'
A longtime star of British soap opera "Coronation Street" has been charged with two counts of rape involving a 15-year-old girl about three decades ago, prosecutors and police said Wednesday.
William Roache, 81, was arrested at his home earlier Wednesday for the offenses, which allegedly took place in Haslingden, a town north of Manchester, between April and July of 1967.
He has played Ken Barlow on the series since its first episode in 1960, and some call him the world's longest-serving soap star.
In March, Roache issued an apology after he appeared to suggest in an interview with New Zealand television that victims of child sex crimes had behaved badly in a previous life. He also said that the public should not be judgmental about people accused of child sex offenses.
'Coronation Street'
Ad Pulled
Mountain Dew
PepsiCo Inc pulled an online ad for Mountain Dew on Wednesday after criticism from bloggers that the spot embraced racial stereotypes and made light of violence toward women.
The ad was developed by African-American hip-hop artist Tyler the Creator and shows a battered white woman on crutches trying to pick out her assailant from a police lineup featuring five African-American men and a goat.
As she scans the lineup, the goat threatens her: "Keep ya mouth shut," "snitches get stitches, fool" and "I'ma get outta here I'ma do you up."
The woman eventually runs out, yelling that she can't "do it" - go through with the identification.
The white police officer then takes a sip of Mountain Dew, saying, "She's just gotta do it."
"Dew It" is the soft drink's slogan.
Mountain Dew
Scholars Find Cannibalism
Jamestown
Scientists revealed Wednesday that they have found the first solid archaeological evidence that some of the earliest American colonists at Jamestown, Va., survived harsh conditions by turning to cannibalism.
For years, there have been tales of people in the first permanent English settlement in America eating dogs, cats, rats, mice, snakes and shoe leather to stave off starvation. There were also written accounts of settlers eating their own dead, but archaeologists had been skeptical of those stories.
But now, the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History and archaeologists from Jamestown are announcing the discovery of the bones of a 14-year-old girl that show clear signs that she was cannibalized. Evidence indicates clumsy chops to the body and head of the girl, who appears to have already been dead at the time.
Smithsonian forensic anthropologist Douglas Owsley said the human remains date back to a deadly winter known as the "starving time" in Jamestown from 1609 to 1610. Hundreds died during the period. Scientists have said the settlers likely arrived during the worst drought in 800 years, bringing severe food shortages for the 6,000 people who lived at Jamestown between 1607 and 1625.
The historical record is chilling. Early Jamestown colony leader George Percy wrote of a "world of miseries," that included digging up corpses from their graves to eat when there was nothing else. "Nothing was spared to maintain life," he wrote.
Jamestown
Illuminated Manuscript
Mishneh Torah
The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the Israel Museum in Jerusalem have jointly acquired a 15th-century illuminated Hebrew manuscript, they announced Monday.
The Mishneh Torah is a rare manuscript with text by the Middle Ages Jewish philosopher Moses Maimonides. It is a synthesis of Jewish law and the second of a two-volume manuscript featuring six large illustrations plus 32 smaller images and marginal decorations. The first volume is housed in the Vatican.
The two institutions said they would share the Mishneh Torah on a rotating basis.
The manuscript was created in 1457 in the style of Northern Italian Renaissance miniature painting. It was restored at the conservation lab of the Israel Museum, where it has been on loan since 2007 and on public view since 2010.
Mishneh Torah
In Memory
Deanna Durbin
Deanna Durbin, a singing child movie star of the 1930s who became one of the world's highest paid actresses before turning her back on stardom, has died at the age of 91.
Her son Peter H. David was quoted as telling The Deanna Durbin Society newsletter that the actress died "a few days ago", thanking her admirers for respecting her privacy. No other details were given.
The actress was born Edna Mae Durbin in Winnipeg, Canada, but moved to California with her British-born parents when she was young. She broke into the movies in 1936, aged 14, when she appeared in "Every Sunday" with Judy Garland, according to her biography on the IMDb film website.
She made her name playing the ideal teenage daughter in "Three Smart Girls" in 1936 and in its profitable follow-up the next year, "One Hundred Men and a Girl", which was credited with saving Universal studios from bankruptcy.
Capitalizing on her fame, Universal cast Durbin in a series of musical movies including "That Certain Age" and "Mad About Music" which made the actress with the sweet soprano voice into one of Hollywood's most popular stars.
Durbin shared a special Juvenile Award with Mickey Rooney at the 1938 Oscars for their "significant contribution in bringing to the screen the spirit and personification of youth".
But Durbin found fame hard to handle and, despite trying to move on from her image as the perfect daughter with films such as "Christmas Holiday" (1944) and "Lady on a Train" (1945), she walked away from stardom aged about 28.
"I couldn't go on forever being Little Miss Fixit who burst into song," she once said.
From 1949 she stayed out of the limelight, moving to France with her third husband, the French director Charles David. She gave only one interview in the following decades and rejected all offers of a comeback. Her husband died in 1999.
Deanna Durbin
In Memory
Chris Kelly
Chris Kelly, half of the 1990s kid rap duo Kris Kross who made one of the decade's most memorable songs with the frenetic "Jump," has died, according to authorities. He was 34.
Investigator Betty Honey of the Fulton County Medical Examiner's office said the 34-year-old Kelly was pronounced dead around 5 p.m. Wednesday at the south campus of the Atlanta Medical Center.
Honey said authorities are unsure of Kelly's cause of death and that an autopsy has yet to be performed.
Kelly, known as "Mac Daddy," and Chris Smith, known as "Daddy Mac," were introduced to the music world in 1992 by music producer and rapper Jermaine Dupri after he discovered the pair in an Atlanta mall. The duo wore their clothes backwards as a gimmick, but they won over fans with their raps.
Their first, and by far most successful song, was "Jump." The hit, off their multiplatinum 1992 debut album "Totally Krossed Out," featured the two trading versus and rapping the refrain, the song's title. The duo had surprising maturity in their rap delivery, though the song was written by Dupri. It would become a No. 1 smash in the United States and globally, and one of the most popular of that year.
Their success led to instant fame: They toured with Michael Jackson, appeared on TV shows, and even had their own video game.
The group was never able to match the tremendous success of their first song, though they had other hits like "Warm It Up," and "Tonite's tha Night."
Earlier this year, the group performed together to celebrate the anniversary of Durpri's label, So So Def.
Chris Kelly
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