Recommended Reading
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Subsidy Calculator (Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation)
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Andrew Tobias: "Two Pauls: Ryan and Krugman"
Clinton gave us peace, prosperity, and a balanced budget … Bush, with a Republican Congress six of his eight years, gave us war, near-Depression, and trillion-dollar deficits . . . Obama has ended wars, avoided others McCain et al would have started, overseen 42 months of private sector job growth despite Republican refusal to pass the American Jobs Act, and shrunk the deficit from 10% of GDP to 4%.
Andrew Tobias: What Will YOU Pay With Obamacare?
It appears Gerald's wife will save about $13,000 a year with Obamacare.
Nick Mattos: "'Artemis of the wildland' and the food stamp haters" (Guardian)
Portland, Oregon has been plagued by a vigilante threatening to 'out' food stamp recipients. Because hunger needs stigmatizing.
Aditya Chakrabortty: Why this year's freshers are just part of a failed experiment (Guardian)
Higher education is pumping out people with degrees into a jobs market that doesn't need them. It's blighting lives - and undermining the university system itself.
Oliver Burkeman: "Advice for students: how to concentrate" (Guardian)
From smartphone apps that eliminate distractions to choosing the right place to study, here are five ways to work efficiently - leaving plenty of time to have fun.
Cal Newport: Study Hacks
Blog.
Bridget Christie: "'Normal sex' is not having sex in a box in front of a studio audience" (Guardian)
If we need Channel 4's Sex Box to tell us how to have sex, we're better off not having it.
Kristi Harrison: 5 True Stories Behind Iconic Pictures of Badass Women (Cracked)
Someone once said "Well-behaved women seldom make history" immediately before mistakenly attributing the quote to Marilyn Monroe and tattooing it on a calf muscle. Even if you've never heard of the Pulitzer Prize-winning historian who came up with the phrase, history and common sense tell you it's true: Whether you're a man or woman, changing the status quo means getting a little rowdy. Rebellious. Defiant.
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took the day off.
is engaged in Father-of-the-Bride activities and will return upon conclusion of the festivities.
took the day off.
Reader Suggestion
Michelle in AZ
From The Creator of 'Avery Ant'
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Fairly overcast and humid.
2013 MacArthur Winners Unveiled
'Genius Grant'
The old man couldn't control his diabetes, no matter how closely he followed his doctor's instructions. A nurse visited him to find out why the insulin wasn't working, only to watch the nearly blind man inadvertently inject himself with a syringe filled with nothing but air.
It sounds simple to track a patient outside of office visits. But the Chicago-based John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation found the idea genius.
Jeffrey Brenner, a doctor and founder of the organization that dispatches medical professionals to the doors of the desperately poor residents of Camden, N.J., was named Wednesday as one of 24 to receive a $625,000 "genius grant" from the foundation.
The eclectic group of grant recipients includes scientists, artists, historians, writers, a lawyer, a statistician and a photographer. They can spend the money however they like, for seeing things others haven't, asking questions others haven't asked and finding new solutions to old problems.
The awards, given annually since 1981, are doled out over a five-year period. This year's class brings the number of recipients to nearly 900, and also will be given the largest amount ever - $125,000 more than last year. Shrouded in secrecy, the selection process involves anonymous nominators and selectors who make final recommendations to the foundation's Board of Directors.
'Genius Grant'
Sells For $2.75 Million
"Coiled Hair Stella"
An extremely rare coin sold for $2.75 million during an auction on Monday, greatly exceeding expectations and making it one of the all-time biggest such sales in U.S. history.
Mining.com reports that the "Coiled Hair Stella" coin was minted in 1880 featuring a profile image of Lady Liberty. The coin contains about six grams of pure gold and was never released into circulation. On the back of the coin an inscription reads, "ONE STELLA" and "400 CENTS."
"The 1880 $4 Coiled Hair Stella is one of the so-called white whales of the coin collecting world. They are so rare, they come on the market maybe once or twice, at most, every decade," Paul Song, director of rare coins at Bonhams, which auctioned the coin in Los Angeles, told Reuters.
The $2.75 million selling price is reportedly more than 66.6 percent higher than earlier estimates and places it in the top 10 of all-time U.S. gold coin sales.
"Coiled Hair Stella"
Theater Hunts
UnsungMusicals
Don't be fooled by how mild-mannered Ben West seems. He's the musical theater world's Sherlock Holmes and Victor Frankenstein rolled into one.
As artistic director of the nonprofit UnsungMusicalsCo. Inc., West scours libraries, newspaper archives and databases for overlooked and undervalued musicals. Then he breathes life into them.
"The intention is to return them to the canon," he says as he puts the finishing touches on the latest of his "lost" shows - "Bless You All!" a 1950 revue with songs by Harold Rome and sketches by Arnold Auerbach.
West, who also directs, has restructured the show, trimmed a few numbers, restored a sketch and streamlined the story. "I always try to stay true to the original author's intent," he says from the company's temporary home at the Connelly Theatre.
Now celebrating its fifth year, UnsungMusicalsCo. has produced 13 shows that range from developmental readings to fully staged off-Broadway productions, including "The Fig Leaves Are Falling" and "Make Mine Manhattan."
UnsungMusicals
Wedding News
Meredith Baxter
Michael Gross says his former "Family Ties" co-star Meredith Baxter is getting remarried.
The actor says he recently received a wedding invitation announcing plans for Baxter to wed longtime girlfriend Nancy Locke.
Gross says the ceremony will take place in southern California in December.
Gross says he and Baxter remain close some three decades after introducing viewers to the fictional Keaton clan in "Family Ties," about a pair of former '60s flower children who end up having an ardently Republican son, played by Michael J. Fox.
Meredith Baxter
15% In US Shun
Internets
Despite a seemingly unstoppable move to digital lifestyles, some 15 percent of Americans don't use the Internet, and most are quite content to remain offline, a survey shows.
The survey released Wednesday found that in addition to the 15 percent of adults who don't use the Internet on any device, another nine percent say they only go online at their workplace.
The report by the Pew Research Center found a whopping 92 percent of these "offline adults" with no interest in using the Internet or email in the near future.
The survey found 34 percent of the offline Americans said the Internet is not relevant to them, that they are not interested, do not want to use it, or have no need for it.
Age was a major factor in Internet usage: 44 percent of those 65 and older said they do not use the Internet, compared with 17 percent of the next-youngest age group, 50 to 64.
Internets
Ends Reader Comments
Popular Science
The scientific method relies on rigorous observation and peer-based feedback as critical components in moving a theory from hypothesis to fact. But one of the world's leading science publications now says there is a major difference when it comes to reading news articles about science.
In a surprising move, the website for Popular Science announced they are no longer allowing reader comments on their articles. And in a potentially even more controversial move, the site's online content director boldly explains the decision was reached because of their belief that reader's comments are actually bad for science.
"A politically motivated, decades-long war on expertise has eroded the popular consensus on a wide variety of scientifically validated topics," writes Suzanne LaBarre. "Everything, from evolution to the origins of climate change, is mistakenly up for grabs again. Scientific certainty is just another thing for two people to 'debate' on television. And because comments sections tend to be a grotesque reflection of the media culture surrounding them, the cynical work of undermining bedrock scientific doctrine is now being done beneath our own stories, within a website devoted to championing science."
LaBarre says there is evidence suggesting that skewed comments can actually impact a reader's original view of a news story, even if the comments are inaccurate or misleading. "Simply including an ad hominem attack in a reader comment was enough to make study participants think the downside of the reported technology was greater than they'd previously thought," LaBarre writes.
However, LaBarre says the site will not permanently block all reader feedback. For now, Scientific American will still accept and occasionally respond to user feedback through their social media accounts on sites like Twitter (where the site has nearly 200,000 followers) and Facebook. She also says they plan to open up reader comments section "on select articles that lend themselves to vigorous and intelligent discussion."
Popular Science
Childhood Home For Sale
Kurt Cobain
The childhood home of the late grunge rock hero and Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain has been put up for sale in Washington state, with his family asking $500,000 for the property, more than seven times its assessed value.
The run-down, two-story house, located in the woebegone former timber town of Aberdeen near the Olympic National Forest, can be moved into as is or uprooted from its foundations and carted off for display elsewhere, selling agent Edward Fitz said.
"In terms of the price, we really thought about the fact that he was, according to many sources, the poet laureate of Generation X," said Fitz, a realtor with The Agency, a Beverly Hills-based luxury real estate firm. "How many times does that kind of item come on the market? Not very often."
Cobain's parents bought the 1,522 square-foot (141 square meter) house, on East 1st Street, early in the musician's life.
According to "Heavier than Heaven: A Biography of Kurt Cobain," by Charles Cross, Cobain was 2 years old when his parents purchased the home in 1969, for $7,950. Its assessed value was recently put at $66,990.
Kurt Cobain
Futurist Study
U.S. Postal Service
The financially strapped United States Postal Service is paying a futurist more than half a million dollars to assess the future of stamps as the agency struggles to raise revenues.
The Postal Service will pay Faith Popcorn's BrainReserve, which describes itself as a futurist marketing consultancy, $565,769 to provide "analysis and recommendation on the future of stamps," according to documents acquired by Federal Times, which provides news for federal managers.
The New York-based company was expected to make recommendations in October on ways to slow the decline in stamp usage.
Stamped mail, the most profitable business of the agency, accounts for 43 percent of its revenues. But stamp sales have continued to plummet as more Americans communicate electronically and pay bills online.
U.S. Postal Service
28-Year-Old GF
Oh Silvio
Here's one way to land a billionaire: Silvio Berlusconi's 28-year-old girlfriend says she courted the 76-year-old former premier relentlessly until he finally surrendered. Now she's just waiting for him to agree to marry her.
In an interview published Wednesday in the Italian edition of Vanity Fair, Francesca Pascale described two years of pain and jealousy as Berlusconi responded to the failure of his second marriage by throwing lavish "bunga bunga" parties for young women.
Pascale said she met "B," as she calls him, in 2006 while working for his political party, although she had him in her sights much earlier, when she was under 18.
"He completely rejected me," she said of her initial volley. "But mine is an unending courtship. It's still going on today."
Finally her persistence paid off; she said Berlusconi gave her a diamond ring on Christmas 2011.
Oh Silvio
Time Running Out
Spirit Sands
As desertification creeps into parts of the world, a rare stretch of sand in Canada's vast western plains is oddly doing the reverse -- slowly sprouting with vegetation.
Tufts of prairie grasses are emerging throughout Spirit Sands, a stretch of dunes steeped in local lore in a popular nature park in Manitoba province.
The sands cover only about four square kilometres (1.54 square miles) and in some parts, entire mounds have been completely overgrown. Today, this small patch is the only desert in Manitoba and one of only a handful in all of Canada.
Once vastly bigger, it fanned out an estimated 6,500 square kilometers (2,500 square miles) -- about one-fifth the size of Belgium -- from the mouth of the Assiniboine River.
Spirit Sands
Prime-Time Nielsens
Ratings
Prime-time viewership numbers compiled by Nielsen for Sept. 16-22. Listings include the week's ranking and viewership.
1. NFL Football: Chicago at Pittsburgh, NBC, 20.51 million.
2. "Emmy Awards," CBS, 17.76 million.
3. "Dancing With the Stars," ABC, 16.04 million.
4. "Sunday Night NFL Pre-Kick Show," NBC, 14.55 million.
5. NFL Football: Pittsburgh at Cincinnati, ESPN, 14.33 million.
6. "Under the Dome," CBS, 12.1 million.
7. "America's Got Talent" (Wednesday), NBC, 11.49 million.
8. "America's Got Talent" (Tuesday), NBC, 11.19 million.
9. "NCIS," CBS, 10.64 million.
10. "Sleepy Hollow," Fox, 10.1 million.
11. "Football Night in America," NBC, 9.76 million.
12. "Survivor," CBS, 9.73 million.
13. "Duck Dynasty," A&E, 9.43 million.
14. NFL Football: Kansas City at Philadelphia, NFLN, 9.37 million.
15. "The Big Bang Theory," CBS, 8.95 million.
16. "The Big Bang Theory" (Thursday, 9 p.m.), CBS, 8.01 million.
17. "NCIS: Los Angeles," CBS, 7.99 million.
18. "Bones," Fox, 7.76 million.
19. "Two and a Half Men," CBS, 7.03 million.
20. "Shark Tank," ABC, 6.86 million.
Ratings
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