Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Mark Morford: 10 amazing truths you already suspected (SF Gate)
If the migrating sand hill cranes are to be believed - and of course, birds never lie - winter is coming hard and fast this fine year of our glorious iPhone 5, and it plans to be a doozy.
Obama's Way (Vanity Fair)
To understand how air-force navigator Tyler Stark ended up in a thornbush in the Libyan desert in March 2011, one must understand what it's like to be president of the United States-and this president in particular. Hanging around Barack Obama for six months, in the White House, aboard Air Force One, and on the basketball court, Michael Lewis learns the reality of the Nobel Peace Prize winner who sent Stark into combat.
Matt Miller: What Obama is thinking, but won't say (The Financial Times)
But 50m uninsured Americans could go broke today if they fall seriously ill. They don't receive care that prevents costly illnesses down the road. That was the point of my health reform-to have America join the community of wealthy nations that assure their citizens' basic health, while aggressively testing ways to slow spiralling costs.
Matt Miller: Still the One (Washington Post)
Clinton's ability to frame the arguments and the choice in a way that treats people as adults, explains the policy stakes accessibly and then downright inspires you, remains unmatched. This blend of Arkansas boy and Rhodes scholar turned political happy warrior is utterly unique.
Bill Clinton full DNC Speech 2012 (YouTube)
"All I can say is this: If Democrats can make every undecided voter sit down and watch Bill Clinton's speech, this thing is over."-Matt Miller
Poor Elijah (Peter Berger): The Nineteenth Annual Emperor's Awards (Irascible Professor)
The Emperor Awards honor outstanding achievement in the world of education. Our annual prizes commemorate the monarch who paraded around in his underwear and the throng of admirers who applauded him for it.
BRIAN BEUTLER: How A Bunch Of Republicans Accidentally Voted To End Welfare-To-Work Requirements (Talking Points Memo)
There's little Republicans love more these days than falsely attacking President Obama for stripping work requirements out of welfare. But in their zeal to slash and de-federalize safety net programs, they've advanced legislation that would do exactly that.
Rick Archbold: All Is Not Vanity (Literary Review of Canada)
The rise of literary self-publishing.
David Bruce's Amazon Author Page
David Bruce's Lulu Storefront
David Bruce's Smashwords Page
David Bruce's Blog
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."
"Doug's Most Shared Facebook Post" Today
wrote:
answered:
Reader Suggestion
Michelle in AZ
David Suggests
From The Creator of 'Avery Ant'
Team Coco
Conan
More politics from last night's episode of Conan!
More Shocking Mitt Romney Tapes
(YouTube)
The Conan editing team had some fun with those Romney tapes. But other than "I'd like to bang that Nancy Grace," I'm not sure they came up with anything worse than what was really said.
Diana
Thanks, Diana!
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Checked in with jury duty, and for day 4, I gotta report at 7:45am.
Thanks for the birthday wishes.
Invites Romneys
David Letterman
David Letterman is reassuring Mitt Romney that he doesn't hate him - and getting in a dig at Jay Leno in the process.
The Republican presidential candidate said in a private speech to donors made public this week that Letterman "hates me because I've been on Leno more than him."
Letterman said on the "Late Show" Wednesday that Romney and his wife are welcome on his CBS late-night show. Romney has been on three times but hasn't made any appearances since he became GOP nominee. Democratic President Barack Obama was on Letterman on Tuesday.
Letterman says he certainly doesn't hate Romney for going on Leno's NBC show. Says Letterman: "I mean, why hate a guy who's suffered through that?"
David Letterman
Only 26 Percent of Behind-the-Scenes TV Jobs
Women
Women might be front and center when it comes to acting roles in prime time, but they fall far short of their male counterparts when it comes to behind-the-scenes jobs, according to a new study.
Just 26 percent of such positions as writers, creators, producers, directors and editors of prime time shows for the 2011-12 season were held by women, a recent study from the Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film at San Diego State University shows.
That statistic includes female writers and show creators like Shonda Rhimes, Tina Fey and Mindy Kaling, and is up only 1 percent from the previous year's study.
The annual report takes into account prime-time dramas, comedies and reality shows aired on ABC, CBS, Fox, NBC and the CW, according to The Wrap. Scripted shows employ a higher percentage of women (28 percent) than reality shows do (21 percent), the study shows.
Women
36 Years
Ben Vereen
Tony Award-winning actor Ben Vereen has filed for divorce from his wife of 36 years.
Court records in Los Angeles show Vereen filed the petition on Thursday, citing irreconcilable differences. The actor-dancer married wife Nancy Bruner Vereen in July 1976, although his filing states the pair separated in March.
The 65-year-old won a best actor in a musical Tony Award in 1973 for his role in "Pippin" and he appeared in numerous films and television series. His acting credits vary from a role in the miniseries "Roots" and a guest stint on "How I Met Your Mother," as well as a Golden Globe nominated performance in the film "Funny Lady."
Vereen is asking a court to terminate his estranged wife's ability to collect spousal support.
Ben Vereen
Baby News
Theodora Rose Williams
Singer Robbie Williams and his wife Ayda Field are celebrating the birth of their first child, a daughter.
Williams, who rose to stardom as part of the boy band Take That, announced that the girl was born Tuesday at 3:33p.m., and weighed in at 7 pounds, 4 ounces (3.29 kg).
He wrote on his blog: "Praise be, it's Theodora Rose Williams, affectionately known as Teddy."
The blog post didn't say where the baby was born, but Williams had said previously that a London birth was planned.
Theodora Rose Williams
Investors Press To Keep Hacking Lawsuit Alive
Rupert
Lawyers for News Corp investors asked a U.S. judge on Wednesday to force the media company's board to face a lawsuit over a phone hacking scandal, while a defense lawyer said board members should be protected from second-guessing by shareholders.
News Corp shareholders argue that Chief Executive Rupert Murdoch and the board of directors, including two of his sons, should be held responsible for damage from the scandal. In their lawsuit, the investors say the board refused to investigate the hacking allegations because the directors sought to protect Murdoch's interests.
Facing a public backlash over the scandal, which included allegations of hacking of the phones of crime victims by journalists, Murdoch shuttered one of his tabloids, the News of the World, in July 2011. The scandal also cost New Corp a deal for full control of the BSkyB satellite business.
The investor lawsuit was filed in Delaware's Court of Chancery, the forum for many U.S. shareholder legal disputes.
The board of News Corp, which owns the Wall Street Journal as well as the Fox TV and studio business, wants an early dismissal of the case before the defendants are required to provide evidence to shareholders. If the case survives a motion to dismiss, it could become a bigger headache for board members, exposing them to depositions by the shareholders lawyers and possibly embarrassing revelations.
Rupert
Tries To Remove Slime Trail
WWE
The wresting empire that U.S. Senate candidate Linda McMahon (R-Big Feet) once ran is removing raunchy footage of wrestling performers from the Internet to keep it from being used by Democrats in the state's tightening race.
"It's being presented as today's WWE," said Brian Flinn, a WWE spokesman, "and it does not represent our PG-family-friendly entertainment of today."
But Democrats backing Rep. Chris Murphy are vowing to find a way to air the highlight reel anyway. On the campaign trail, McMahon often touts her time as CEO.
"We want to get it out there for the voters to be able to evaluate her full record," said Elizabeth Larkin, spokeswoman for state Democrats.
The Democratic-produced montage was released online in 2010, during McMahon's first run for Senate. It was intended to highlight instances where women allegedly have been objectified in WWE performances, including scenes of simulated sex and necrophilia and has been available for viewing on YouTube for the past two years. The clips at issue were from 2002 to 2006, before the company's broadcast programming was rated TV-PG in 2008.
WWE
No Charges In Pepper-Spraying
UC, Davis
The University of California, Davis police officers who doused students and alumni with pepper spray during a campus protest last November won't face criminal charges, prosecutors said Wednesday.
The chemical crackdown prompted widespread condemnation, campus protests and calls for the resignation of Chancellor Linda Katehi after videos shot by witnesses were widely played online. Images of an officer casually spraying orange pepper-spray in the faces of nonviolent protesters became a rallying point for the Occupy Wall Street movement.
But the Yolo County District Attorney's office said in a statement that there was insufficient evidence to prove the use of force was illegal.
A task force appointed by the university concluded in April that the Nov. 18 pepper-spraying was "objectively unreasonable" and could have been prevented.
UC, Davis
Arrested In NYC
Lindsay Lohan
Lindsay Lohan was arrested on Wednesday after a pedestrian told police that her car struck him as the "Mean Girls" actress was driving into a hotel in New York, New York City police said.
Lohan's vehicle clipped a 34-year-old man in an alley, around 2:30 a.m., police told Reuters, and the man later went to a nearby hospital saying he had an injured knee.
The 26-year-old actress, who has been in and out of court, rehab and prison since a 2007 drunk driving arrest in Los Angeles, was arrested for leaving the scene of an accident. Police arrested her as she left the Dream hotel in lower Manhattan.
She was charged with a misdemeanor and released, the New York police department's Office of Public Information said.
Lindsay Lohan
Smoking Ban Takes Effect
Lebanon
A smoking ban in all closed public spaces, including coffee shops, restaurants and bars, went into force in Lebanon on Monday under new legislation that promises hefty fines for lawbreakers.
In a country considered a "smokers' paradise," the law took effect a year ago in airports, hospitals and schools, but took hold on a wider basis on Monday, also banning tobacco advertisements criticised for luring youths into the habit.
Smokers caught lighting up in a closed public space face a $90 penalty, while restaurant or cafe owners who turn a blind eye to offenders could be fined anything from $900 to $2,700.
The number of smokers in Lebanon is among the highest in the region and cancer-related illnesses directly linked to tobacco are rising at a rapid rate, health professionals say.
Still, there is speculation as to how far the new ban can actually hold in a country where cigarette, cigar and nargileh (water-pipe) smoking is so popular and widespread.
Lebanon
Half 1980 Size
Arctic Ice
In a critical climate indicator showing an ever warming world, the amount of ice in the Arctic Ocean shrank to an all-time low this year, obliterating old records.
The ice cap at the North Pole measured 1.32 million square miles on Sunday. That's 18 percent smaller than the previous record of 1.61 million square miles set in 2007, according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colo. Records go back to 1979 based on satellite tracking.
"On top of that, we're smashing a record that smashed a record," said data center scientist Walt Meier. Sea ice shrank in 2007 to levels 22 percent below the previous record of 2005.
Ice in the Arctic melts in summer and grows in winter, and it started growing again on Monday. In the 1980s, Meier said, summer sea ice would cover an area slightly smaller than the Lower 48 states. Now it is about half that.
Man-made global warming has melted more sea ice and made it thinner over the last couple decades with it getting much more extreme this year, surprisingly so, said snow and ice data center director Mark Serreze.
Arctic Ice
Work Set For NYC Sale
Jean-Michel Basquiat
An auction house says an important early work by graffiti artist Jean-Michel Basquiat is going up for sale in New York.
Christie's says "Untitled 1981" could set a record sale for Basquiat when it's offered Nov. 14.
The colorful acrylic and oilstick canvas depicts a skeletal figure of a fisherman displaying his catch.
Basquiat's current record sale of $20.1 million was set for the self-portrait "Untitled" in June.
Jean-Michel Basquiat
In Memory
Ashbel Green
Ashbel Green, a versatile and respected editor at Alfred A. Knopf who persuaded Gabriel Garcia Marquez to switch publishers, worked on Walter Cronkite's memoir and a foreign policy book by President George H.W. Bush and helped discover the crime classic "The Friends of Eddie Coyle," has died. He was 84.
The publisher announced Wednesday that Green died Tuesday night while dining with his wife, Elizabeth Osha, near their home in Stonington, Conn. The cause of death was not immediately given.
Known to his friends as "Ash," Green was an old-school publishing man who preferred a typewriter to computers and was praised by The New York Observer as "an exemplar of elegance, decency and seriousness." Green acquired and edited hundreds of books and as managing editor at Knopf looked through the endless unsolicited manuscripts known as the "slush pile."
The son of a newspaperman and descendant of Presbyterian ministers, Green was born in New York in 1928. He graduated from Columbia College in 1950 and two years later received a master's in Eastern European history from Columbia. He worked as publicity director of Prentice Hall, developed a love for editing and was hired by Knopf in 1964 as managing editor. Nine years later, he was promoted to vice president and senior editor and remained in those positions until his retirement, in 2007.
In the early 1970s he came upon a story about the Irish-American underworld in Boston, written by an Assistant U.S. Attorney General George V. Higgins. Although put off by the two-page cover letter - "George sometimes tended to garrulity," Green later told the alumni publication Columbia Magazine - he looked through the submission, liked it and paid $2,000 for a novel now considered a masterpiece and made into a film starring Robert Mitchum.
At an elite publishing house that included literary editor Gary Fisketjon and poetry editor Harry Ford, Green had a special interest in politics and history. He edited the Pulitzer Prize-winning "Founding Brothers" by Joseph Ellis, who in the introduction cited Green's reputation as "the salt of the earth." He acquired many works by Cold War dissidents, among them Andrei Sakharov's memoir and books by Milovan Djilas and Vaclav Havel.
Green's other projects included Cronkite's "A Reporter's Life" and a collaboration between Bush and former National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft titled "A World Transformed." He also worked with historians Ken Burns and Geoffrey Ward and the novelists Ernest J. Gaines and Winston Groom.
A notable achievement was getting Garcia Marquez to join Knopf in the 1980s after a long history with Harper & Row (now HarperCollins). According to Al Silverman's "The Time of Their Lives," a publishing history, Green had heard that negotiations were stalled for Garcia Marquez's novella "Chronicle of a Death Foretold." Green contacted the Nobel laureate's agent, noted Knopf's history of publishing Latin American authors and acquired the English edition of his new book and many of his older ones.
Green's job required patience and firmness, especially when dealing with the famous. He waited years for Cronkite to finish his book and had to prod Bush and Scowcroft.
Ashbel Green
In Memory
Stephen Dunham
Stephen Dunham, who starred in several television shows including NBC's DAG, died last week after suffering a heart attack, Variety reports.
Dunham, whose full name was Stephen Dunham Bowers, was born in New Hampshire and attended NYU, according to his obituary. He appeared as a lead actor in a number of short-lived TV shows, including DAG; Oh, Grow Up and Hot Properties. He also had recurring and guest roles on What I Like About You, The Bill Engvall Show, Just Shoot Me and Hot in Cleveland.
The actor's film credits included The Mummy, Catch Me If You Can, Traffic and most recently Oliver Stone's Savages. Dunham will also be seen in Paranormal Activity 4 this fall, starring as the husband of his real-life wife, Alexondra Lee.
Dunham died on Sept. 14 after reportedly suffering a heart attack several days prior. He is survived by Lee, as well as his parents, a brother and a sister, according to Variety.
Stephen Dunham
| CURRENT MOON lunar phases |
