Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Miss USA 2011 - Should Math Be Taught In Schools? (YouTube)
Satire on whether we should teach evolution is schools. Math is a theory-and not at all what the Bible tells us.
David Bruce: Wise Up! Heroes (Athens News)
According to Det. David Foster, an African-American who worked as a Detective in the Newark, N.J., Police Department, "Thinking that you're going [to die] is a nerve-shattering experience. Your life goes right before your eyes. I still check behind shower curtains even at home." In November 1998, he nearly lost his life protecting a young woman who reported to the police that she had been raped by an ex-boyfriend.
Mark Morford: Obama, get your Dick (Cheney) on (SF Gate)
Let me just say it outright: I still love Obama. Still believe him to be the most articulate, thoughtful, integrity rich president in my lifetime, still prouder'n'a bucket of kerosene at Burning Man whenever he stands at the podium at just about any international affair and, you know, represents. Shhh, it's OK. You know you feel the same way, too.
Froma Harrop: Disapproval, of Course, is a Relative Thing (Creators Syndicate)
If the 2012 election were held today, Republicans could very well have their heads handed to them. I do not think this alone. Their debt-ceiling high jinks were no doubt immensely amusing to the tea party fringe, but to those of us not getting the joke, they were an appalling attack on a fragile economy.
Jim Hightower: Parryism in Action
As governor of Texas, Rick Perry has been a five-watt bulb sitting in a 100-watt socket.
Henry Chu: In Britain, some schools banning skirts (Los Angeles Times)
Nailsea School is among a small but growing number of schools that have resorted to what one commentator calls 'the nuclear option' to end students' hemline creep: prohibiting skirts altogether.
Irene Lacher: "The Sunday Conversation: Hank Azaria" (LA Times)
The funny guy with a flair for voices and accents (Hello, Moe!) is playing it straight in his new NBC comedy series, 'Free Agents.'
Mary McNamara: "Television review: 'Ringer'" (LA Times)
Sarah Michelle Gellar returns to TV in the CW's twin-themed thriller.
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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Reader Suggestions
Michelle in AZ
From The Creator of 'Avery Ant'
BadtotheboneBob
Go fishing, catch a deer...
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Sunny and pleasant.
Launches On B-Day
Winehouse Foundation
A charitable foundation was launched in memory of British singer Amy Winehouse on Wednesday, marking what would have been the artist's 28th birthday.
The Amy Winehouse Foundation aims to help young people in the Britain and abroad with problems including ill-health, disability and addiction - causes close to the "Back to Black" singer's heart, her family said.
The launch of the foundation coincided with the release of Winehouse's final recording, "Body and Soul," a duet with 85-year-old crooner Tony Bennett.
Proceeds from sales of the track are to form one of the first major donations to the charitable fund.
Winehouse Foundation
Mark Twain Prize
Will Ferrell
Jack Black, Conan O'Brien and Larry King will honor Will Ferrell with the nation's top humor prize, along with Maya Rudolph and Molly Shannon from his "Saturday Night Live" days.
On Wednesday, the Kennedy Center in Washington announced a lineup of star comedians who will perform in Ferrell's honor for the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor. They'll salute him Oct. 23 in a performance taped for broadcast Oct. 31 on PBS stations nationwide.
Ferrell's longtime collaborator Adam McKay from the films "Anchorman," ''Talladega Nights" and "The Other Guys" will appear, as well as Lorne Michaels, Paul Rudd, John C. Reilly and the rock band Green Day.
Ferrell starred on "Saturday Night Live" for seven seasons, perfecting his character, "President George W. Bush." He went on to create FunnyorDie.com with McKay in 2007 and took his Bush character to Broadway in 2009's "You're Welcome America: A final night with George W. Bush."
Will Ferrell
Three Outrageous Revelations In Biography
Palin
Is it too show-bizzy of us to be less excited about the revelations in Joe McGinnis's apparently hair-raising, 320-page Sarah Palin bio and more eager for a Tina Fey dramatization of it on "SNL" this fall?
There are three particularly lurid accusations:
>> During a 1987 NBA event called "The Great Alaska Shoot-out," schoolgirl hoops star Palin seduced pro baller Glen Rice. Is that an overly euphemistic way of saying she "hauled his ass down," as a friend of Palin's is quoted as saying? The book supposedly further postulates that Plain had a "fetish" for black men.
>> The Rice incident was not the last of the Barracuda's crimes against her relationship with then-boyfriend Todd. The book supposedly asserts that, though Palin has previously denied it, she had a six-month relationship with her husband's business partner in the mid-'90's.
>> Finally, per Enquirer, McGuinness's book claims Palin was once seen snorting cocaine off the top of a 55-gallon drum while snowmobiling with friends. Todd also was "on the end of the straw plenty," and Palin smoked pot with a professor while at Mat-Su College.
Palin
Renewed For A 14th Season
"Big Brother"
All broken up that the 13th season of CBS' "Big Brother," the show's best season in ages, ends tonight?
No worries: The network has announced that a 14th season is a go for next summer.
The reality series, which features a bunch of contestants living together like hamsters in a giant, tricked out house, has earned its best ratings since 2004 for season 13, averaging 8.1 million viewers and a 3.1 rating/9 share in the ever so prized 18-49 demo.
"Big Brother"
Press Inquiry
Rupert
An electic mix of celebrities, crime victims and former police suspects will take part in a judge-led inquiry into the state of Britain's scandal-tarred press.
Lord Justice Brian Leveson said Wednesday that Harry Potter creator JK Rowling, actors Hugh Grant and Sienna Miller, Formula One boss Max Mosley, the parents of missing girl Madeleine McCann and murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler will participate.
The group of around 46 people will give evidence on alleged media intrusion into their private lives.
The inquiry was set up in response to the phone hacking scandal in which journalists at News International are accused of hacking into voice mails.
Rupert
Naked Pictures Leaked
Scarlett Johansson
Actress Scarlett Johansson has become the latest celebrity to fall victim to apparent leaked nude photos from her mobile phone, which appeared on a website on Wednesday.
The FBI has been drafted by "The Avengers" actress to investigate, according to celebrity news website TMZ. An FBI spokesman declined to confirm or deny the investigation, and a representative for Johansson was not immediately available to comment.
The photos show the 26 year-old actress in a towel with an exposed backside, while another shows her topless. They were posted on several celebrity gossip websites.
Johansson's nude pictures are the latest to hit the Internet after actresses including Jessica Alba and Vanessa Hudgens also suffered the embarrassment of explicit photos appearing on the Web.
Scarlett Johansson
On A Journey
Michaele Salahi
Tareq Salahi and his wife Michaele Salahi, reality TV stars who gained infamy as the so-called White House gate crashers, grabbed headlines on Wednesday when he reported his wife was abducted, and she later contacted law enforcement officials to say she was fine and didn't want him to know her whereabouts.
A spokeswoman for the rock band Journey said Michaele and the group's guitarist Neal Schon were together in Memphis for a concert. "Nobody kidnapped her," said the spokeswoman.
The mix-up, if that is what it was, began late Tuesday when Tareq Salahi contacted local authorities claiming Michaele was missing and had left their house without taking any belongings. He believed she was abducted, according to media reports.
But in a news conference outside the Salahi residence on Wednesday afternoon, a sheriff's official from Warren County, Virginia said Michaele Salahi told their department she left with a good friend, was where she wanted to be and did not want her husband to know, according to Kris Van Cleave, a reporter for the local ABC TV station, who spoke to Reuters.
Michaele Salah
Wins Gambling Debt Case
Joe Francis
"Girls Gone Wild" founder Joe Francis beat the house Wednesday in a criminal case over a $2.5 million Las Vegas casino debt.
A state judge threw out a criminal theft and bad check indictment against the soft-porn mogul that involved the Wynn Las Vegas resort. Because the casino waited 16 months to redeem a casino marker, or IOU, the judge ruled that Wynn and prosecutors lost their chance to prove Francis committed a crime.
Unpaid casino markers are treated in Nevada like bad checks under a state law that allows prosecutors to file criminal charges and collect a percentage of any settlement.
"The presumption of fraud does not apply," Clark County District Court Judge Linda Marie Bell said in the ruling. "Mr. Francis had sufficient funds in his account to cover the marker at the time it was issued."
Joe Francis
Court Orders Suit Tossed
'Bruno'
A lawsuit accusing Sacha Baron Cohen of causing injuries to a woman during the filming of "Bruno" should be dismissed because the comedian was exercising his right to free speech when the mishap occurred, an appeals court has ruled.
The 2nd District Court of Appeal said Monday that the finding prevents Baron Cohen from being sued by the woman who tried to force him and his crew from an event being filmed.
Richelle Olson sued Baron Cohen in June 2009, claiming she fell and hit her head moments after struggling with the comedian and his crew as she ordered him to leave a charity bingo game.
Olson initially allowed filming at the game in Lancaster, Calif., but ordered Baron Cohen to leave after he started equating the numbers with the homosexual relationships of his character in the film about a gay Austrian fashionista.
The court ruling states that the comedian's behavior was protected because the comedian was trying to offer commentary on gay stereotypes, culture and homophobia. His conduct was closely tied to those issues, the ruling states.
'Bruno'
TV Meteorologist Admits False Attack Claims
Heidi Jones
A TV meteorologist admitted Wednesday she'd made up claims of being repeatedly attacked by a stranger on the city streets, allegations that sparked an extensive investigation before police said she told them she'd invented the story to get attention.
Heidi Jones, who has worked for stations in New York and Texas and filled in on ABC's "Good Morning America," pleaded guilty to misdemeanor false-reporting charges.
Her plea deal calls for three years' probation, continuing psychiatric counseling and 350 hours of community service - the amount of time police spent looking into her phony claims, prosecutors said. Jones is due to be sentenced Oct. 26.
Suspended after her December arrest, she no longer has her job at New York's local ABC station. Callan declined to comment on the circumstances of her departure.
Heidi Jones
Passenger Cuffed, Strip-Searched Over 'Appearance'
Frontier Airlines
A U.S. woman said Tuesday that she endured nearly four hours in police custody that included being forced off an airplane in handcuffs, strip-searched and interrogated at Detroit's airport on the 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks - all, she believes, because of her Middle Eastern appearance.
Shoshana Hebshi, 35, told The Associated Press she was one of three people removed from a Denver-to-Detroit Frontier Airlines flight after landing Sunday afternoon. Authorities say fighter jets escorted the plane after its crew reported that two people were spending a long time in a bathroom - the two men sitting next to Hebshi in the 12th row.
Hebshi said she didn't notice how many times the men went to the bathroom. "I wasn't keeping track," she said.
"I really wasn't paying attention," said Hebshi, a freelance writer, editor and stay-at-home mother of twin six-year-old boys who lives in a suburb of Toledo, Ohio. "I was minding my own business - sleeping, reading, playing on my phone."
She said she was patted down and taken by car to a holding cell. A uniformed female officer eventually came in and told Hebshi to take off her clothes.
Frontier Airlines
Will Not Be Dictated To
Cherokee
The nation's second-largest Indian tribe said on Tuesday that it would not be dictated to by the U.S. government over its move to banish 2,800 African Americans from its citizenship rolls.
"The Cherokee Nation will not be governed by the BIA," Joe Crittenden, the tribe's acting principal chief, said in a statement responding to the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs.
Crittenden, who leads the tribe until a new principal chief is elected, went on to complain about unnamed congressmen meddling in the tribe's self-governance.
The reaction follows a letter the tribe received on Monday from BIA Assistant Secretary Larry Echo Hawk, who warned that the results of the September 24 Cherokee election for principal chief will not be recognized by the U.S. government if the ousted members, known to some as "Cherokee Freedmen," are not allowed to vote.
Besides pressure from the BIA to accept the 1866 Treaty as the law of the land, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development is withholding a $33 million disbursement to the tribe over the Freedmen controversy.
Cherokee
Plan To Sell Moves Forward
Crystal Cathedral
A federal judge will move ahead with a bankruptcy reorganization plan that includes the sale of the Crystal Cathedral megachurch in Southern California.
The Orange County Register says the court on Wednesday set a timeline for creditors to approve the plan and pick a buyer for the financially distressed church.
Its leaders have said the Crystal Cathedral was not for sale and that they would raise the $50 million to save it.
There are several pending offers for the 40-acre Orange County campus, including the Roman Catholic Diocese of Orange and Chapman University.
Crystal Cathedral
Monopoly Raises Prices
Sirius XM
After years of being prevented by the government from raising prices, Sirius XM Radio Inc said will increase the cost of its most popular radio package by about $1.50, which sent the satellite radio provider's shares up more than 7 percent on Wednesday.
Customers will now pay $14.49 a month for Sirius XM basic packages instead of $12.95. This is below the $2 price increase some analysts were expecting.
The company will also adjust the prices of other programing packages, starting January 1.
The company was widely expected to raise its prices after the Federal Communications Commission lifted a three-year ban on price increases in July. The ban was imposed after Sirius Satellite Radio merged with its only rival, XM Satellite Radio, in July 2008 and regulators worried about the creation of a lone satellite radio company.
Sirius XM
Now A Gender Option In Oz
'X'
Australian passports will now have three gender options: male, female and indeterminate. The change is designed to remove discrimination against transgender people.
The government said Thursday that transgender people and those of ambiguous sex will be able to list their gender with an 'X' if their choice is supported by a doctor's statement.
Previously, gender was a choice of only male or female, and people were not allowed to change their gender on their passport without having had a sex-change operation.
Government senator Louise Pratt, whose partner was born female and is now identified as a man, says the reform is a major improvement for travelers who face questioning and detention in airports because their appearances do not match their gender status.
'X'
In Memory
Wade Mainer
Wade Mainer, a country music pioneer who is credited with inventing the two-finger banjo picking style that paved the way for the Bluegrass era, has died. He was 104.
Mainer died at his home in Flint Township, about 60 miles northwest of Detroit, according to the funeral home where his service was to be held.
He was a member of late brother J.E. Mainer's Mountaineers, one of the most popular sibling duos of the 1930s. He made recordings for all the major labels of the day, including RCA in 1935, and invented a two-finger banjo picking style that paved the way for the bluegrass era.
Born near Asheville, North Carolina, Mainer got his musical start in that state's mountains and later rediscovered it in an industrial Michigan city. Concerned that country music was dying, he left the stage and the South in the early 1950s and moved to Flint, Michigan, to work for General Motors. He played only in church but eventually stopped altogether, putting the banjo under his bed for four years.
Mainer returned to music after another musician convinced the born-again Christian he could use his talents to honor God. He told The Associated Press in 1991 that he got back on the circuit in 1970s after country-western star Tex Ritter bumped into one of Mainer's sons.
Mainer said at the time many of his friends gave up the traditional mountain music for the faster-paced, more profitable bluegrass style.
He is survived by his wife, Julia, whom he married in 1937 and often performed with him. They had four sons and one daughter as well as two grandchildren, and three great-grandchildren. One son died in 1985.
Wade Mainer
In Memory
Charles Hickson
Charles Hickson, the Mississippi man who claimed he was abducted and probed by aliens while he was fishing with a friend in 1973 and never backed off the story despite the ridicule he endured, has died.
Hickson, 80, died last Friday of a heart attack, his family said on Tuesday.
Hickson, then 42, was fishing with 19-year-old Calvin Parker Jr. on a pier near Pascagoula, Mississippi in October 1973 when they said a cigar-shaped UFO with flashing blue lights suddenly appeared above them.
A door opened up, the two men later told authorities, and they were pulled into the craft by aliens, who paralyzed them, examined them on a table and then let them go.
Although Hickson was reluctant to share the story -- he said all he and Parker wanted to do "was go fishing" and he feared people would "laugh me out of Jackson County" -- he and Parker eventually went to local police and reported the incident.
"They weren't lying," the chief investigator for the Jackson County Sheriff's Department told reporters at the time. "Whatever it was, it was real to them."
As word of their claims leaked out, Hickson and Parker became minor celebrities, celebrated by believers in extraterrestrial life but derided by skeptics.
In 1974, after wire services picked up the story, Hickson appeared on a number of national TV programs, including The Dick Cavett Show.
In 1983, Hickson wrote a book about the incident called "UFO Contact at Pascagoula" with William Mendez.
Charles Hickson
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