Recommended Reading
from Bruce
David Bruce: Wise Up! (Athens News)
During 2010, a controversy raged over the construction of a Muslim community center with a prayer room that would be built near the site of the Twin Towers. Mr. Mamdouh says, "It is a shame, shame, shame. Sometimes I wake up and think, this is not what I came to America for. I came here to build this country together. People are using this issue for their own agenda. It's designed to keep the hate going."
Mark Morford: Hi! In three days you will all be dead (SF Gate)
This much we know: In a mere 72 hours (give or take, time zone depending, sometime before brunch) millions of true believers shall be whisked off to a cloudless overlit megadome where no one has sex and no one reads books and everyone is huddled together in a massive quivering vanilla cuddleparty, despite the requisite 500 layers of scratchy taffeta. Please remove your jewelry.
PHOTOS: 12 Analogies For Bush Getting Credit For Bin Laden's Death (Huffington Post)
The Bush Administration taking credit for killing Osama bin Laden is akin to… if George Lucas took credit for Natalie Portman's Oscar-winning role in "Black Swan," after casting her as Queen Amidala in the "Star Wars" prequels.
Froma Harrop: The Rights of a Chambermaid (Creators Syndicate)
Most every detail surrounding the arrest of Dominique Strauss-Kahn blew right out the "Law and Order" storybook. Detectives board an Air France jet about to taxi off for Paris and pull Strauss-Kahn right out of his first-class seat. (They dispense with cuffs.) Before the head of the august International Monetary Fund knows it, he is spending Sunday as a guest of the Manhattan Special Victims Unit in East Harlem.
Rachel Maddow: Home Sweet Homewood
"I thought of this a couple of weeks ago when 70,000 gun enthusiasts were attending the annual NRA convention in Pittsburgh, not far from the city's Homewood section. This tour of Homewood, with the district's councilman, and its continuation after the commercial break, makes the case better than I've ever seen for allowing cities to have gun laws different from those in rural areas. Yet Pennsylvania, acting at the behest of the NRA, is one of the states that forbid it. If you think there is any merit to the NRA position, you will find your mind changed by the end of that second segment. Or so I believe anyway."-Andrew Tobias
E.J. Dionne: Arm the Senate
Isn't it time to dismantle the metal detectors, send the guards at the doors away, and allow Americans to exercise their Second Amendment rights by being free to carry their firearms into the nation's Capitol building? … I want these guys to put up or shut up. If the NRA's servants in Congress don't take their arguments seriously enough to apply them to their own lives, maybe the rest of us should do more to stop them from imposing their nonsense on our country.
Stanley Fish: Sex, the Koch Brothers and Academic Freedom (New York Times)
The pursuit of truth is what is done in classrooms and laboratories and that is why those activities should be protected from outside interference. Truth cannot be pursued if constraints in the form of political or ideological preferences block the search for it. Other activities not in the pursuit-of-truth business merit no such protection because there is no specifically academic value to their being allowed to occur without constraint.
Ian Sample: "Stephen Hawking: 'There is no heaven; it's a fairy story'"
In an exclusive interview with the 'Guardian,' the cosmologist shares his thoughts on death, M-theory, human purpose and our chance existence.
Julianne Escobedo Shepherd: Was Ellen Willis - Feminist, Activist, Genius - The Best Rock Critic of All Time?
A new anthology of the New Yorker's first-ever pop music columnist helps rescue her writing from obscurity.
Karen Zarker: "20 Questions: Thomas Dolby" (Popmatters)
As the steampunk aesthetic embraces technology past, present, and future, so too Thomas Dolby personifies the creative and intellectual process of musical ideas past, present and future. He also turns out rather nicely in steampunk fashion. His new album, 'A Map of the Floating City,' will release in the near future -- this summer.
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'
BadtotheboneBob
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Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Another rainy morning.
Bad Religion Frontman Teaching Evolution
Greg Graffin
Greg Graffin, frontman for punk rock stalwarts Bad Religion who obtained a PhD in zoology from Cornell University and recently published the science memoir "Anarchy Evolution: Faith, Science and Bad Religion in a World Without God," will teach Evolution at the ivy league university this fall.
The semester runs from August 24 to December 11, leaving "plenty of time to head overseas on the weekends!," Graffin jokes in a statement released Wednesday.
In addition, the singer recently had an ancient bird named after him, "Qiliania graffini." Paleontologists discovered the fossil in the Gansu Province of north-western China. Dr. Jingmai O'Connor explains in this month's Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society in London: "The species name is in honor of Dr. Gregory Graffin, PhD: paleontologist, evolutionary biologist, professor, rock star, and inspiration to numerous budding and established scientists around the world."
Greg Graffin
Ousts Oprah On Forbes List
Lady Gaga
Flamboyant pop singer Lady Gaga ousted U.S. media mogul Oprah Winfrey to top this year's Forbes celebrity power list released on Wednesday.
Gaga, whose real name is Stefani Germanotta, moved up four positions from last year to claim the top spot in Forbes' annual "The Celebrity 100" 2011 list that measures power by entertainment-related earnings, media visibility and social media popularity.
Forbes rated the American singer-songwriter No. 1, estimating her earnings in the past 12 months as $90 million, but also noting her 32 million Facebook fans and 10 million Twitter followers.
Winfrey, who next week ends "The Oprah Winfrey Show" syndicated TV chat show after 25 years, dropped one place from last year to No. 2 earning an estimated $290 million.
Canadian pop star Justin Bieber, 17, was the youngest to make the list and debuted at No. 3, earning $53 million from concerts and sales from his concert movie and documentary "Never Say Never."
Lady Gaga
Snarks The Half-Termer
Chris Matthews
With a history of accusations of misogynistic behavior, MSNBC "Hardball" host Chris Matthews is not showing any indications that he's willing to tread carefully, especially when it comes to discussing conservative women.
On his Tuesday MSNBC "Hardball" program, Matthews took another swipe at former half-term Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin (R-Quitter). In a discussion about the prospects of Minnesota Republican Rep. Michele Bachmann's shot at the 2012 GOP presidential nomination, Matthews was warned by one of his guests not to count out Palin, to which he immediately downplayed her viability.
"I think Sarah Palin proved herself to be - I think she's proven herself to be profoundly stupid," Matthews said to applause on-location in Los Angeles. "Her inability to answers the questions of Katie Couric, her inability of even now to explain if she ever reads anything."
"Her absolute failure to begin studying and get serious about running for president," he continued. "She has shown no effort to doing any homework or understanding issues about the economy or science or the world. No effort and she's running for president? I don't believe she would be at all helpful to our republic."
Chris Matthews
Bids Soar For "Toilet Seat" Wedding Hat
Princess Beatrice
The much-mocked hat worn by Princess Beatrice to Britain's royal wedding last month -- widely described as looking like a "toilet seat" -- is up for sale on eBay where bids have reached 18,400 pounds ($29,940).
The tea rose, silk hat was "the most talked about hat of the whole occasion" Harold Tilman, Chairman of the British Fashion Council, said on eBay.
The fuss over the hat worn to the royal wedding of her cousin Prince William to longtime girlfriend Kate Middleton seems to have taken Beatrice -- who is the daughter of William's uncle Prince Andrew and Sarah Ferguson -- by surprise too.
Money raised by the sale of the hat will be equally split between two charities: UNICEF and Children in Crisis.
Princess Beatrice
Roth Controversy
Booker Prize
Philip Roth, America's most decorated living novelist, on Wednesday won the fourth Man Booker International Prize, but the award sank into controversy with one of the judges resigning in protest.
The 78-year-old author of "Portnoy's Complaint" beat off competition from 12 other writers -- including two from China -- for the 60,000 pound ($97,500) award.
Carmen Callil, founder of the British feminist publisher Virago Press, said in the Guardian newspaper that praise for Roth was a case of the "emperor's clothes".
"I don't rate him as a writer at all. I made it clear before the longlist that I didn't rate Philip Roth, and that I wouldn't put him on the longlist, so I was amazed when he stayed there," she said.
Callil said that Roth "goes on and on and on about the same subject in almost every single book. It's as though he's sitting on your face and you can't breathe".
Booker Prize
Cover Contest
Rolling Stone
Bonnaroo will be more than a gig for two acts: It will help serve as the final battle for the cover of Rolling Stone.
Lelia Broussard and The Sheepdogs have been announced as the finalists for the magazine's "Do You Wanna Be A Rock & Roll Star" contest. It started in February with 16 acts.
The victor will be picked by Rolling Stone readers. They can see both acts perform at next month's Bonnaroo Music & Arts Festival in Tennessee; their performances will be streamed on the magazine's website.
The winner will be crowned on NBC's "Late Night with Jimmy Fallon" and also perform on the show. The Rolling Stone cover will appear on the Aug. 18 issue.
Rolling Stone
Hospital News
Jeff Conaway
Jeff Conaway's manager says the former star of "Taxi" and "Grease" is in a coma following a drug overdose, possibly from pain pills.
Manager Phil Brock says the 60-year-old actor was found unconscious on May 11. He is hospitalized in critical condition.
Brock says Conaway is in a coma in an Encino, Calif., hospital and his recovery is uncertain. The name of the hospital was not disclosed.
As part of the reality show "Celebrity Rehab" in 2008, Conaway discussed his addiction to drugs and alcohol.
Jeff Conaway
Sues Producers Of 'Law & Order: SVU'
Rosie Perez
Academy Award-nominated actress Rosie Perez is suing the producers of television's "Law & Order: Special Victims Unit," alleging she was injured during the filming of a 2009 episode in New York City.
Perez says in the lawsuit filed Wednesday that she was "recklessly pulled, grabbed, yanked, wrenched and/or manhandled" during filming of the "Hardwired" episode on Sept. 9, 2009.
Her attorney, Brian O'Dwyer, tells the New York Daily News that his client is suffering severe pain and has numbness in her arms. He says she has been out of work for about a year.
The lawsuit names the producers of the show, which is broadcast on NBC. Representatives for the network and the show did not immediately respond to email requests for comment.
Rosie Perez
Tears And Shouts Mark Trial
Feld Family
Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey circus owner Kenneth Feld emotionally defended himself Wednesday in a civil assault trial and broke into tears as he accused his only sister of ruining their dead aunt's memorial service with a profanity-laced outburst.
His sister, Karen Feld, was not there to hear his testimony because for the second consecutive day she angrily stormed out of the courtroom after being incorrectly referred to as "Mrs. Feld" although she's never married.
Her departure came shortly after her lawyer rested her case following eight days of testimony that portrayed an often tragic history and allegations of abuse and dysfunction behind a Feld Entertainment empire built on family-friendly productions. She is suing her brother for $110 million because she says his private security guards attacked and injured her as they ejected her from the shiva service for their aunt, Shirley, who reared them after their mother committed suicide in 1958.
The siblings are the only two children of Irvin Feld, who bought the circus in 1967 and passed ownership to his son upon his death in 1984. The siblings have been estranged ever since Karen Feld sued her brother over their father's estate.
Feld Family
Pursues New Appeal
Phil Spector
Attorneys for music producer Phil Spector said on Wednesday they have asked the California Court of Appeal to revisit its decision this month upholding his murder conviction.
The legal gambit, which is expected to be denied by the appeals court, is a first step toward a separate appeal with the California Supreme Court that has a deadline of June 13.
Spector's attorney, Dennis Riordan, said his imprisoned client is "very focused on pursuing the appeal."
The 71 year-old producer with a signature "wall of sound" recording technique was convicted in 2009 of shooting to death actress Lana Clarkson in his suburban Los Angeles home.
Phil Spector
Diplomat Abuse
Strauss-Kahn
The case against Dominique Strauss-Kahn is an extreme example of alleged sexual assault by an elite member of the international community. But the charges against him also shine a light on how diplomats and international officials have been accused of abusing maids or nannies in the United States, and have largely escaped prosecution.
Foreign diplomats have been the subject of at least 11 civil lawsuits and one criminal prosecution related to abuse of domestic workers in the last five years, according to a Reuters review of U.S. federal court records. The allegations range from slave-like work conditions to rape, and the vast majority of the diplomats in these cases avoided prison terms and financial penalties.
A common theme in many of the incidents involving alleged abuse of maids and nannies is the elevated legal status of the foreign officials, which some experts say can lead to an improper sense of superiority and make them believe they are unaccountable. Also, most of the alleged victims come from countries where women have few rights, making them easy prey. "In short, diplomatic immunity means diplomatic impunity," says Mark Lagon, former head of the U.S. State Department's Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons.
Even when judges in the United States have ruled against diplomats, the officials have recourse to another option most other defendants do not: They can simply leave the country.
Strauss-Kahn
Suing Over Natalie Portman Film
Investors
When "Hesher," starring Natalie Portman and Joseph Gordon-Levitt, arrived at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival, it generated a fair amount of buzz. Unfortunately, when it was finally released in theaters last week, it didn't take off. Made for an estimated $7 million, the film about an anarchist who plays counselor, grossed only about $126,000 in the U.S. at about 40 theaters.
The carnage doesn't end there. The film has already provoked litigation from investors claiming they were defrauded by "slick lawyers" in Hollywood who allegedly hid that the production was on the verge of defaulting on loans as well as their own financial participation in the film.
Now it's gotten even uglier, with investors suing each other, looking to recoup whatever they can from the film that took millions of dollars to make and may be on its way to bombing.
What's left might be whatever money the production got by pre-selling foreign distribution rights. According to court documents, Nu Image advanced $1 million for unsold territories. The full proceeds from foreign sales are not publicly known, and may be modest, but could be enough to at least repay one of the investors. The question is who.
Investors
Corpse Schtupper
Joe Jackson
An impromptu press conference called on the sidelines of this year's Festival de Cannes for the Jackson Family Foundation, saw Joe Jackson, and a number of his associates, gather at the Playboy Mansion Tuesday for a brief meet with the press.
After posing around the pool for two-dozen photographers, Jackson sat down briefly to clarify and confirm his endorsement of some new Michael Jackson-branded perfumes, Jackson Tribute, Legend and Legacy.
Dressed in a large black suit and bling, Jackson talked about the two bottles presented on the table, before the perfume's creators came forward to talk ahead of the June 9 launch of the scents in Las Vegas.
"Anything you get involved with you are supposed to make money. You know what you can do with money you smile all the way to the bank," he said during the conference.
Joe Jackson
Blame Society, Absolves Selves
US Bishops
Researchers hired by the U.S. Roman Catholic bishops to determine the causes of the sex crisis that convulsed the church dismissed all the usual suspects:
Few of the offenders were pedophiles. The abusers were not acting on their homosexuality. Mandatory celibacy did not turn clerics into molesters.
Instead, most of the priest-offenders came from seminary classes of the 1940s and 1950s who were not properly trained to confront the upheavals of the 1960s, when behavioral norms were upended and crime overall in the United States spiked, the researchers said.
The analysis by the John Jay College of Criminal Justice was the last of three studies authorized by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops in 2002, when the scandal erupted in the Archdiocese of Boston, creating what bishops have called the worst crisis in American Catholicism.
David O'Brien, a historian of American Catholicism at the University of Dayton, said the report was dangerous because it seemed to exonerate bishops. Researchers said that when bishops sent accused priests for treatment, then returned the clerics to ministry over the decades, they were following the best advice available to them at the time.
US Bishops
Oink. Oink. Oink.
"Sperminator" $chwarzenegger
To fans, he was movie star tough guy the Terminator. Then he turned to politics and was affectionately dubbed the Governator. But after acknowledging that he fathered a child out of wedlock, Arnold $chwarzenegger was swiftly given a new name -- the Sperminator.
$chwarzenegger's admission on Tuesday that he impregnated a member of his household staff 10 13 years ago, while married to Maria Shriver and before running for California governor, triggered scorn, shock and ridicule in the U.S. media.
Veteran Hollywood publicist Michael Levine called it "the most outrageous Hollywood scandal" since director Woody Allen's affair with Soon-Yi Previn, the adopted daughter of his longtime companion, actress Mia Farrow, in 1992.
"I don't think I am shockable any more ... but this one is breathtaking in its outrageous, egregious, irresponsible arrogance," Levine said.
"Sperminator" $chwarzenegger
Man With An Opinion
Peter Fonda
Peter Fonda launched a four-letter attack on US President Barack Obama at the Cannes film festival on Wednesday, calling him a traitor over the handling of the aftermath of the Gulf oil spill.
The star of the 1969 road movie "Easy Rider" was in Cannes for the premiere of "The Big Fix" by Rebecca and Josh Tickell, the only feature documentary in the official selection at the Cannes film festival this year.
Fonda -- a keen environmentalist and co-producer of the film which centres on the explosion of the BP oil rig Deepwater Horizon, the ensuing spill and its consequences -- accused Washington of trying to gag reporting on the issue.
"I sent an email to President Obama saying, 'You are a f(expletive) traitor,' using those words... 'You're a traitor, you allowed foreign boots on our soil telling our military -- in this case the coastguard -- what they can and could not do, and telling us, the citizens of the United States, what we could or could not do'."
Peter Fonda
Gave Escorts To Other Celebs
DC Police
District of Columbia police records released Wednesday show Bill Gates and rapper Jay-Z are among the celebrities who have received police escorts similar to the one officers provided last month to actor Charlie Sheen, revealing more widespread use of a practice mostly intended for top government officials and foreign dignitaries.
Records obtained by The Associated Press through a Freedom of Information Act request show dozens of escorts have been provided in the last year and a half, including to entertainers, celebrities, college and pro athletes, and sometimes to the teams' owners. The department is routinely reimbursed for the escorts, in amounts ranging from several hundred dollars to, in one case, nearly $80,000, the invoices show.
D.C. Police Chief Cathy Lanier said last month that escorts were generally reserved for the president, vice president and visiting heads of state and the mayor, with exceptions made on a case-by-case basis.
DC Police
Extremes Show "New Normal"
U.S. Weather
Heavy rains, deep snowfalls, monster floods and killing droughts are signs of a "new normal" of extreme U.S. weather events fueled by climate change, scientists and government planners said on Wednesday.
"It's a new normal and I really do think that global weirding is the best way to describe what we're seeing," climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe of Texas Tech University told reporters.
"We are used to certain conditions and there's a lot going on these days that is not what we're used to, that is outside our current frame of reference," Hayhoe said on a conference call with other experts, organized by the non-profit Union of Concerned Scientists.
An upsurge in heavy rainstorms in the United States has coincided with prolonged drought, sometimes in the same location, she said, noting that west Texas has seen a record-length dry period over the last five years, even as there have been two 100-year rain events.
U.S. Weather
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