Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Cyrus Nemati: What's Next for U.S. Surveillance? (Slate)
Look to jolly old England!
Allison Benedikt: Having a Baby in the U.S. Costs Way Too Much, Especially If You Actually Pay Your Bills (Slate)
Rosenthal writes: "In most other developed countries, comprehensive maternity care is free or cheap for all, considered vital to ensuring the health of future generations." My husband and I are done having kids-remember Eight Is Enough? Well, three is enough. But even if we wanted to have more, we really couldn't afford it.
Alyssa Rosenberg: Kristen Wiig Says No Bridesmaids Sequel. Where Is Our Lady Franchise? (Slate)
Ever since Bridesmaids crashed the box office in 2011, proving you didn't need Carrie Bradshaw or Angelina Jolie's fight choreographer to tell a story about women that could make a whole bunch of money in theaters, there's been some hope of a sequel. But a profile of star Kristen Wiig in Harper's Bazaar suggests that hope has been in vain.
Daisy Buchanan: Faking it can make you smarter and more creative (Guardian)
Sometimes, attempting to impress the people around us is the best way to become the people we want to be. Trying to look smarter than we are can actually make us smarter. And in [David] Bowie's case, his own pretentious leanings ultimately inspired him to create more art.
Celia Walden: Two romantic garlic heads in a stinker of an anniversary (Telegraph)
What more could a woman want on her wedding anniversary than dining at a garlic-themed restaurant?
Esther Inglis-Arkell: The plot to kill Einstein (io9)
Let's say that you found out that someone was conspiring to kill the most celebrated scientist of the twentieth century. What exactly would the penalty for that be? Whatever you're thinking, you're wrong. It's already been decided. And it's not good.
Paul K. Pickett: 6 Awesome Stories of Bystanders Becoming Heroes (Cracked)
#6. A Homeless Drifter Saves the Life of a Newborn Baby at a Truck Stop
Photo: No Kisses Above 3 Minutes! (Imgur)
Sign at an airport in Aalborg, Denmark.
Don't Get Your Shoes Wet (YouTube)
David Bruce's Amazon Author Page
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David Bruce has approximately 50 Kindle books on Amazon.com.
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Reader Suggestion
Michelle in AZ
From The Creator of 'Avery Ant'
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Still hot & humid.
2 Dozen To Be Honored
National Humanities Medals
Musician Herb Alpert, sportswriter Frank Deford and filmmaker George Lucas are among 23 people and an organization chosen to receive national medals for their contributions in the fields of the arts and humanities.
President Barack Obama will award the medals next Wednesday during a ceremony in the East Room of the White House.
Playwright Tony Kushner, musician Renee Fleming and the Washington Performing Arts Society have also been selected to receive a National Medal of Arts.
Other recipients of the National Humanities Medal include author Joan Didion and actress Anna Deavere Smith, along with Kay Ryan, a former poet laureate of the U.S., and Robert B. Silvers, editor and co-founder of The New York Review of Books.
National Humanities Medals
Earns Place In Standard German Dictionary
'Shitstorm'
The English profanity "shitstorm" is so widely used by Germans, including Chancellor Angela Merkel, that the country's most prestigious dictionary has included it in its latest edition.
"Over the last few years, 'shitstorm' has entered everyday usage so that's why it now appears in the new printed edition of the dictionary," said Nicole Weiffen, head of communications at Duden, which publishes Germany's standard dictionary.
The latest edition of the Duden dictionary defines the word as "a storm of indignation expressed via the internet, sometimes accompanied by offensive comments."
That varies slightly from the English meaning, with the Oxford English Dictionary, which defines shitstorm as "a situation marked by violent controversy".
The word was named "Anglicism of the Year" by a panel of language experts in 2011, who said it "filled a gap in the German language".
'Shitstorm'
Wedding News
Washington - Asomugha
No "Scandal" here: Kerry Washington is a newlywed.
The star of TV's "Scandal" married professional football player Nnamdi Asomugha last week in Hailey, Idaho.
E! reported the nuptials Wednesday and posted a copy of the couple's marriage license online. The Blaine County recorder's office in Hailey confirmed the June 24 filing to The Associated Press.
The 36-year-old actress and 31-year-old athlete were married the same day. Washington's parents served as official witnesses, while one of Asomugha's relatives performed the ceremony.
Asomugha is a cornerback with the San Francisco 49ers. He previously played for the Oakland Raiders and Philadelphia Eagles.
Washington - Asomugha
Hitler's Food Taster
Margot Woelk
Margot Woelk spent the last few years of World War Two eating lavish meals and fearing that every mouthful could mean death.
The former food taster for Adolf Hitler was served a plate of food and forced to eat it between 11 and 12 every morning for most of the last 2-1/2 years of the Nazi German leader's life.
If she did not fall ill, the food was packed into boxes and taken to Hitler at the Wolf's Lair, a military headquarters located deep in woodland, in what is today northeastern Poland.
"Hitler was a vegetarian so it was all vegetarian fare - it was very good food like white asparagus, wonderful fruits, peppers and cauliflower," the 96-year-old Berliner told Reuters.
Along with 14 other girls in their 20s, Woelk lived in fear that every meal she ate would be her last.
Margot Woelk
Spent $630,000 On Facebook
State Department
A newly released report from the U.S. State Department reveals that the government agency spent approximately $630,000 on acquiring Facebook likes.
Jen Psaki, spokesperson for the State Department, addressed the concerns in a press conference on Wednesday morning. She explained the State Department is now spending far less on advertising. Whereas the department was spending $315,000 a year, it is now spending $36,000 a year, according to Paski.
"Online advertising has significantly decreased," Paski said. "It's now at $2,500 a month, and that still allows us to reach out and communicate with a wide range of individuals living overseas."
The 57-page report, prepared by the State Department's inspector general, says the agency's spending resulted in an increase in the bureau's likes on the popular social network, going from around 100,000 to over 2 million within two years.
Indeed, while the number of likes increased dramatically, the engagement did not. According to the report, just over 2 percent of the fans actively liked, shared or commented on an item within the previous week.
State Department
Breaks Georgian Law
Depardieu
French-born actor Gerard Depardieu broke the law in Georgia by visiting the country's breakaway Abkhazia region and meeting separatist leaders without warning national authorities, an official said on Wednesday.
Ketevan Tsikhelashvili, deputy minister for reintegration in the Caucasus state bordering Russia, said the action was punishable but signaled he was unlikely to face arrest.
The 64-year-old star of films such as "Green Card" and "Cyrano de Bergerac" was granted Russian citizenship by President Vladimir Putin in January after criticizing a planned 75-percent tax on millionaires in France.
Russia recognized the independence of Abkhazia and the separatist region of South Ossetia after waging a five-day war with Georgia in August 2008. Georgia and most other countries do not recognize them as independent states.
Depardieu
Senate Approves Sharia Law
North Carolina
The North Carolina state Senate passed new restrictions on abortion - blocking many insurance plans from covering it and making abortion clinics qualify as ambulatory surgical centers - on Wednesday as protesters shouted "Shame! Shame! Shame!" in the gallery. In an interesting twist, the bill was originally crafted to ban the state from following Sharia - Islamic law some American politicians interpret as putting onerous restrictions on women's freedom. The legislation was reengineered on Tuesday to include abortion, and now the bill goes back to the state House to vote on the changes. Republican Gov. Pat McCrory said during the 2012 campaign that he wouldn't sign any more abortion restrictions.
Lt. Gov. Dan Forest ordered police to clear the Senate gallery of the "Shame!"-shouting protesters, WRAL reports.
The bill allows health care provers to refuse to provide abortions, bans plans on the Obamacare exchanges from offering abortion coverage, requires abortion clinics to qualify as ambulatory surgical centers, and requires abortion clinics to have transfer agreements with hospitals.
North Carolina
Fairmount High School
James Dean
Part of the eastern Indiana high school where James Dean was first exposed to acting has collapsed.
Fairmount clerk-treasurer Jo Ann Treon says the southeast corner of the shuttered Fairmount High School gave way about 3 a.m. Wednesday in the town about 50 miles northeast of Indianapolis. She says there are concerns that another section of the 115-year-old building could collapse next.
Dean grew up on a farm near Fairmount and performed at the school in plays that fueled his interest in acting. After graduating in 1949, he headed to California and then New York, before landing iconic roles in the films "Rebel Without a Cause," ''Giant" and "East of Eden."
The actor achieved posthumous stardom after his 1955 death at age 24 in a California car crash.
James Dean
200-Year-Old Fish
Shortraker
A fisherman in Alaska took home a catch for the ages recently when he reeled in a 40-pound shortraker rockfish that experts believe is at least 200 years old.
The Daily Sitka Sentinel reported that Henry Liebman of Seattle was deep-sea fishing off the coast of Alaska on June 21 when he hooked the record-setting shortraker
"I knew it was abnormally big (but I) didn't know it was a record until on the way back we looked in the Alaska guide book that was on the boat," Liebman told the paper.
Shortrakers, which have hues of orange, pink or red on top of their white bodies, are one of the most commonly sought fish in Alaska and can live at depths of more than 2,500 feet.
Troy Tidingco, Sitka area manager for the state Department of Fish and Game, said the fish is still being analyzed but he believes it is at least 200 years old. Tidingco said that would beat the current record of 175 years. Researchers are able to determine the age of a shortraker by the number of growth rings along its ear bone.
Shortraker
Dallas Fashion Icon
Dale Irby
Dale Irby is retiring after 40 years. And so is his yearbook outfit.
For his entire career at Prestonwood Elementary in the Richardson school district in Texas, the physical education teacher wore the same disco-era shirt and dirt-colored sweater each year for his yearbook picture.
At first, Irby told the Dallas Morning News, it was an accident when he wore the same outfit in the yearbook two years in a row.
"I was so embarrassed when I got the school pictures back that second year and realized I had worn the very same thing as the first year," he said.
Then his wife, Cathy, dared him to make it three.
Dale Irby
Discoverd In Minnesota Corn Field
Meteorite
For 40 years, University of Minnesota professor Calvin Alexander has been contacted by people who think they've found meteorites. They call, write, and come in to the lab of the curator of meteorites with rocks they think, or hope, are from outer space. Over four decades, Alexander has seen about 5,000 "meteorwrongs" that turn out to be regular Earth rocks. Until now.
In April, Alexander was contacted by farmers Bruce and Nelva Lilienthal, who sent the professor photos of a peculiar stone they'd found a couple years ago while clearing their corn field in Arlington, Minn.
The rock, which is about 16 inches by 12 inches (40.6 centimeters by 30.5 cm) across, and about 2 inches (5 cm) thick, weighs a surprising 33 pounds (15 kg) - about three times more than a regular Earth rock of that size. Its weight, as well as its unusual flattened shape and rusty surface, immediately suggested it was special. "I said, 'That certainly looks like a meteorite, but I need to see it up close to tell for sure,'" Alexander recalled.
On May 30, the couple brought their find to Alexander's lab and allowed him to chip 0.02 ounces (0.6 grams) off the edge of it for analysis under a scanning electron microscope. The rock was iron, and contained about 8 percent nickel - a telltale giveaway. Iron objects on Earth contain almost no nickel, but iron rocks from space are usually between 5 and 20 percent nickel. The microscope also revealed what's called a Widmanstätten pattern of nickel-iron crystals that's unique to meteorites.
To say that the revelation was welcome news would be a major understatement.
photos of the Lilienthals' meteorite
Meteorite
In Memory
John David Wilson
John David Wilson, a pioneering animation producer and director who worked on everything from Lady & the Tramp and an Igor Stravinsky ballet film to Grease, died June 20 in a nursing home in Blackpool, England. He was 93.
The Englishman, schooled in the art of animation by David Hand, the director of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) and Bambi (1942), founded Fine Arts Films in the 1950s.
Wilson's five-minute animated shorts, featuring popular songs like Joni Mitchell's "Big Yellow Taxi" and Jim Croce's "Bad, Bad Leroy Brown," were seen on The Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour in the 1970s, long before the era of MTV.
Wilson's credits also include Exploring, the 1960s NBC News educational series that won a Peabody Award, and the 1971 feature Shinbone Alley, a tale about a poetic cockroach that was voiced by the likes of Carol Channing, Eddie Bracken and John Carradine.
Wilson was born in Wimbledon on Aug. 7, 1919. At age 20, he joined the London Rifle Brigade and lost his leg in a bombing attack in the African campaign.
Following convalescence in South Africa, he returned to London and landed a job in the art department at Pinewood Studios, where he worked onThe Thief of Bagdad (1940) and David Lean's Great Expectations (1946). He then honed his animation skills at the new G.B. Animation -- a studio bankrolled by J. Arthur Rank in an effort to end Disney's worldwide animation domination -- under the tutelage of Hand.
In 1950, Wilson took his wife and young son to the U.S. for a job at Disney, where he went on to work on Peter Pan (1953), Lady & the Tramp (1955) and the Oscar-winning short Toot, Whistle, Plunk and Boom (1953). He also did stints at UPA and Hanna-Barbera on such projects as Mr. Magoo and The Flintstones, respectively.
In 1955, Wilson formed Fine Arts Films and produced and directed the animated short Tara the Stone Cutter, an adaptation of a Japanese folk tale, and an animated version of Stravinsky's Petrushka ballet. The Russian composer himself conducted the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra for the project, which became the first animated film to be accepted by the Venice Film Festival.
Under his guidance, Fine Arts also did the trailer for Billy Wilder's risque romantic comedy Irma La Douce (1963); the opening sequence for Grease (1978), which featured caricatures of John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John; and the 1982 ABC special Stanley the Ugly Duckling, with Wolfman Jack contributing the voice of one character.
For the 1962 World's Fair in Seattle, Wilson created the groundbreaking Journey to the Stars for the NASA Space Pavilion. Projected on a hemispherical 360-degree, 75-foot screen, the 15-minute color film filled the 6,000-square-foot surface with all the excitement of a trip to the galaxies and was seen by an estimated 4.5 million viewers.
A member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences and a founding member of ASIFA Hollywood (the home of the Annie Awards), Wilson was a painter in oils, watercolors and pastels whose work has hung in the Summer Exhibition of the Royal Academy of Arts in London.
In 1995, he returned to England and retired in St. Annes-on-the-Sea in Lancashire. He suffered from dementia the past four years.
Survivors include his wife, Fabian, children David, Debbie, Michael, Victoria, Peter and Andrew and several grandchildren and great grandchildren.
John David Wilson
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