Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Prank Signs of the London Underground (Imgur)
These unauthorized signs may be classified as vandalism, but their presence encourages everyone to pay more attention to the signs, wouldn't you think?
Why Obama Now (3 minutes and 43 seconds Video)
Plaese make this viral.
Song of Mitt's Self (YouTube)
"Take a look at 'A Song of Mitt's Self', a parody of Mitt Romney's campaign ads that reveal more about the one-time socially moderate (or more socially moderate) Republican than a thousand of his own talking points. His run for the White House is somewhat reminiscent of John McCain's bid: A perceived "moderate" panders so far to the lunatic fringe that he loses any semblance of what could have made him palatable to mainstream voters in the first place."-Matt Staggs
Mark Morford: Why won't Obama step up? (SF Gate)
It's the reassuring feeling that he's got it, that when it comes to pulling the trigger on Osama, finally supporting gay marriage, or responding appropriately to nearly any global crisis you can name, Obama's intellectual acumen hooks right into the still-incredible sense that the man actually has a functioning soul, and you just know: the lights are on. He's got it under control. There's tremendous sense of competence where we need it most.
Julia Gillard's blistering attack on sexism was her best card (Telegraph)
Julia Gillard, Australia's first female prime minister, played her best hand with a brilliant attack on the Conservative opposition leader, Tony Abbott, accusing him of being sexist and a misogynist, writes Emma Barnett.
Froma Harrop: Mitt's Master Act Not Beloved by All (Creators Syndicate)
Romney's "his numbers don't work. To make the tax cut revenue-neutral, he'd have to break his vow to maintain the wealthy's overall tax burden. The nonpartisan Tax Policy Center says you can't cut rich people's tax rates by 20 percent and make up for the lost revenues without collecting more taxes from the middle class. Team Romney was understandably bucked up by Obama's failure to punch back. But Obama and his people eventually will. When they do, the master-of-the-universe bit will get taken apart - and in a masterful way."
Mark Joseph Stern: Did You Take Your Aspirin Today? (Slate)
How a struggling painkiller was reborn as a heart medicine and earned billions for Bayer.
Find Your Understanding: Expedia Find Yours (YouTube)
Every trip is unique. On this trip, Artie Goldstein travels across the country to attend his daughter's same-sex wedding, a journey that will test him, challenge him, and ultimately change him in un
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:
replied:
Reader Suggestion
Michelle in AZ
From The Creator of 'Avery Ant'
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Mostly overcast and breezy.
Bridge In Bahamas To Be Renamed
Sidney Poitier
A bridge in the Bahamas is being renamed to honour Sidney Poitier, who spent part of his childhood in the island chain east of Florida.
Prime Minister Perry Christie says the Paradise Island Bridge will be rechristened as part of next month's 40th anniversary celebration of Bahamian independence. Christie says the 88-year-old film star is being honoured because of his life story and diplomacy. Poitier has been Bahamian ambassador to Japan and UNESCO.
The Oscar-winning Poitier was born in the United States but spent much of his childhood on Cat Island, a sparsely populated island in the central Bahamas.
The Paradise Island Bridge is the largest in the Bahamas. It connects the capital to the Atlantis resort, one of the region's main tourist destinations. The renaming was announced Tuesday.
Sidney Poitier
Peace Prizes
Yoko Ono
Pop star Lady Gaga was awarded a peace prize by Yoko Ono in a ceremony in Iceland on Tuesday.
Peace activist Ono said the LennonOno Grant for Peace, established in the name of her late husband, former Beatle John Lennon, rewarded Lady Gaga for combining stardom with activism and changing "the mental map" of the world.
Grammy-winning Lady Gaga, who shot to fame with her debut album "The Fame" in 2008, accepted the puzzle-shaped award in Reykjavik along with a monetary prize that she said she will give to the Elton John AIDS Foundation
Last month, at an event in New York City, Yoko Ono awarded the prize to the members of Pussy Riot. Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, Maria Alyokhina and Yekaterina Samutsevich were sentenced to two years in jail in Russia for staging a "punk prayer" in Moscow's main cathedral.
This year's winners of the prize also included peace activist Rachel Corrie, killed on the Gaza strip in 2003, "Confessions of an Economic Hit Man" author John Perkins and the late journalist Christopher Hitchens.
Yoko Ono
First Cancellation Of The Season (Sorry, Joe)
'Made in Jersey'
The fall TV season has claimed its first victim: the CBS series "Made in Jersey."
CBS announced Wednesday the legal drama had been pulled from the Friday lineup after just two airings. It premiered on Sept. 28 to puny ratings. It starred British actress Janet Montgomery as a colorful New Jersey lawyer who lands a job at a posh Manhattan firm.
The network, which is part of CBS Corp., is replacing it with the fourth season of the reality series "Undercover Boss," starting Nov. 2.
Until then, repeats of "NCIS" or "Hawaii Five-O" will fill the Friday hour.
'Made in Jersey'
Only Play Premieres
Jack Kerouac
Jack Kerouac. Neal Cassady. Allen Ginsberg. Gregory Corso. The gang's all here.
The Beat Generation notables and their poetry-writing, conformity-defying antics come to life in the first production of Kerouac's only play.
"Beat Generation" captures a day in the life of Kerouac and his friends as they booze, bet and banter, occasionally reflecting on the turns their lives have taken and the changes their friendship faces after leaving behind life on the road.
"It's exactly what you imagine a play by Kerouac to be like," full of riffing, dialogue and beat poems, director Charles Towers says.
"They wanted to hang out, do their writing and drop out," he said. "I imagine he said, 'All right, you want to see the Beat Generation? Here it is. This is us. This is us on a normal day.'"
Jack Kerouac
Hobbit Coins To Be Legal Tender
New Zealand
New Zealand will release commemorative "The Hobbit" coins worth thousands of dollars ahead of next month's premier of director Peter Jackson's latest Tolkien epic.
The coins featuring characters such as Bilbo Baggins and Gandalf the wizard will be legal tender in the country, New Zealand Post said, although their face value will be only a fraction of the cost collectors will be expected to pay.
The most expensive, made from one ounce (28.3 grams) of pure gold, will set Tolkien enthusiasts back NZ$3,695 ($3,020) but has a face value of just NZ$10, while the cheapest is a NZ$1 coin retailing for NZ$29.90.
The coins go on sale from November 1 and New Zealand Post said it expected strong international interest in the build up to the premiere of the first of the three Hobbit movies in Wellington on November 28.
New Zealand
Space Tourist
Sarah Brightman
Sarah Brightman's voice, beloved by audiences and renowned for its three-octave range, rocketed to fame more than two decades ago as the heroine of "The Phantom of the Opera." Now the world's biggest-selling soprano is heading to outer space.
On Wednesday, Brightman told a news conference in Moscow that she has booked a trip to the International Space Station. Brightman, who had a hit in 1978 with "I Lost My Heart to a Starship Trooper" and has sold more than 30 million records, will become the first recording artist in space.
The British singer said that after touring the world in 2013 for her new album, Dreamchaser, she will spend six months in Russia's Star City cosmonaut training center.
Brightman, a UNESCO ambassador, said the trip would also serve as a way to promote the U.N. agency's message, by encouraging women's education in the sciences and environmental awareness. She hinted at the possibility of doing a promotional "space concert."
Sarah Brightman
Hospital News
Debbie Reynolds
Veteran singer and actress Debbie Reynolds was hospitalized in Los Angeles over the weekend after a bad reaction to medication but is expected to be released on Wednesday, her manager said.
"Ms. Reynolds had an adverse reaction to some medicine and is on the mend and hopefully will be released today," manager Milt Suchin said in an email. He did not provide details.
Married three times, the actress shared a husband with Elizabeth Taylor when Eddie Fisher left Reynolds for her violet-eyed rival in a 1950s scandal. Reynolds also had her own TV comedy, "The Debbie Reynolds Show," in 1969, and continues to make guest appearances in movies and TV shows.
Celebrity website TMZ.com said Reynolds had canceled all upcoming appearances for the next three months. But Suchin said the actress was taking a "wait and see" approach based on the advice of doctors.
Debbie Reynolds
One Member Freed On Appeal
Pussy Riot
A member of punk band Pussy Riot was freed on appeal on Wednesday but a Moscow court upheld prison sentences for two others imposed over a raucous cathedral protest against Vladimir Putin, who said they had got the jail terms they deserved.
Yekaterina Samutsevich walked free from Moscow City Court after six months behind bars but the appeal judge who suspended her two-year sentence said fellow band members Nadezhda Tolokonnikova and Maria Alyokhina should serve out their terms.
"I have mixed feelings," Samutsevich said outside the court, where she was greeted by applause and whistles from a crowd of about 150 people in the rain. "I'm happy, of course, but I am upset about the girls."
Defense lawyers, relatives of the women and rights activists including the chairman of Putin's own presidential human rights council, Mikhail Fedotov, welcomed Samutsevich's release but criticized the split ruling.
The women say their protest was a comment on the close ties between the Kremlin and Russia's dominant church, which considers about two-thirds of the population as its flock.
Pussy Riot
McCaskill Hits Akin With Ads
"Legitimate Rape"
Missouri Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill took aim Wednesday at Republican challenger Todd Akin with a new series of TV ads featuring rape survivors outraged by Akin's remark about "legitimate rape" and his opposition to emergency contraception.
The three separate ads feature individual testimonials from three women who said they were raped, including one who describes herself as a "pro-life" Republican and another self-described "pro-life mother" who calls herself a "woman of faith." The ads are among the most powerful yet by McCaskill, who is intent on reminding voters of Akin's remark about women's bodies having ways of avoiding pregnancy in "legitimate rape."
McCaskill's goal is to persuade voters that Akin didn't merely misspeak, but that his words revealed his extreme beliefs. Akin has countered by continuing to highlight his opposition to abortion while suggesting it is McCaskill who is out of line with most Missourians because of her support for President Barack Obama's marquee initiatives such as the 2009 stimulus act and 2010 health care law.
In her new ads, McCaskill links the "legitimate rape" remark to statements Akin made in a separate August interview in which he expressed support for a ban on emergency contraception.
"As far as I'm concerned, the morning-after pill is a form of abortion. I think we just shouldn't have abortion in this country," Akin said in the August interview on Kansas City radio station KCMO.
"Legitimate Rape"
Denies Probation Violation
Mark Basseley Youssef
A California man behind an anti-Muslim film that inflamed parts of the Middle East has denied he violated his probation for a 2010 bank fraud conviction.
U.S District Judge Christina Snyder said Wednesday an evidentiary hearing will be held on Nov. 9 for 55-year-old Mark Basseley Youssef.
Prosecutors allege Youssef had eight probation violations, including lying to his probation officer and using aliases. Another judge last month found Youssef was a flight risk and ordered him jailed without bond.
Federal authorities say Youssef, who also went by the name of Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, was behind the film "Innocence of Muslims." The movie prompted widespread violence in the Middle East, killing dozens.
Mark Basseley Youssef
1991 Wedding Guest List Non-Issue
Martha Raddatz
The day before the vice presidential debate the guest list for moderator Martha Raddatz's 1991 wedding has become an issue, of sorts.
The list included Harvard Law School student and future president Barack Obama. The groom was Julius Genachowski, the current Federal Communications Commission chairman. And The Daily Caller website wanted to know if the connections 21 years ago raise the question of bias going into Thursday's debate.
Raddatz's employer, ABC News, called the issue "silly" and sought to beat the website to the punch by confirming that Obama attended the wedding 21 years ago. The couple divorced in 1997.
In the early 1990s, Raddatz was a reporter for ABC's local station in Boston. Law school student Genachowski worked at the Harvard Law Review, where Obama was president, and the couple invited much of the review's staff to their wedding, ABC said. The guest list also included Bradford Berenson, a future counsel in George W. Bush's administration.
Martha Raddatz
Family Removes Gravestone
Jimmy Savile
Sir Jimmy Savile's headstone will be broken up and sent to landfill after it was removed.
The elaborate tombstone was removed in the early hours of Wednesday morning after Savile's family requested it be taken away out of "respect to public opinion".
The move came after police said they believe the "predatory sex offender" could have abused up to 25 victims over 40 years.
Savile's family said they made the decision to ensure the "dignity and sanctity" of Woodlands Cemetery in Scarborough.
The headstone, which bears the star's image and lists his accomplishments, including the epitaph "It was good while it lasted", has now been taken to a stonemason's yard in Leeds where the inscription will be ground down.
Jimmy Savile
Gets Australian Visa After NZ Rejection
Mike Tyson
Australia granted Mike Tyson a visa Wednesday, one week after New Zealand barred the former heavyweight boxing champion from entering that country due to his 1992 rape conviction.
Officials carefully weighed the pros and cons of his visit and of his character given his criminal past before making the decision, said Cian Manton, a spokeswoman for Australia's Department of Immigration and Citizenship.
She said it was the first time Tyson had applied for a visa to Australia and he was warned the privilege could be revoked if he broke any laws.
"Given the purpose of his visit and the short duration, we considered the risk of him reoffending to be very low," Manton said.
Mike Tyson
End Of The Line
Coca-Cola
It's the end of an era for Coca-Cola lovers, as the last 6.5-ounce returnable, glass bottle rolls off the production line.
A small Coke bottler in Minnesota says it's stopping production of the bottles, which customers could return to get back a 20-cent deposit. The company in Winona, Minn., had been refilling the returnable bottles since 1932 but said it no longer makes business sense to continue doing so.
The Coca-Cola Co, based in Atlanta, notes that its 8-ounce glass bottles are still widely available across the country. Those recyclable bottles are nearly identical to the smaller 6.5-ounce bottles. They have less glass but hold more cola.
The glass bottles that were refilled in Winona, Minn. had a very limited footprint, distributed in only four counties.
The bottling company, which will continue to distribute other Coca-Cola products, says it refilled about 6,000 bottles for the final run. The bottles will be sold online for $20 each starting Monday, with proceeds going toward the Lake Winona Pedestrian and Bicycle Path restoration project.
Coca-Cola
In Memory
Alex Karras
Alex Karras was one of the NFL's most feared defensive tackles throughout the 1960s, a player who hounded quarterbacks and bulled past opposing linemen.
And yet, to many people he will always be the lovable dad from the 1980s sitcom "Webster" or the big cowboy who famously punched out a horse in "Blazing Saddles."
The rugged player, who anchored the Detroit Lions' defense and then made a successful transition to an acting career, with a stint along the way as a commentator on "Monday Night Football," died Wednesday. He was 77.
Karras had recently suffered kidney failure and been diagnosed with dementia. The Lions also said he had suffered from heart disease and, for the last two years, stomach cancer. He died at home in Los Angeles surrounded by family members, said Craig Mitnick, Karras' attorney.
His death also will be tied to the NFL's conflict with former players over concussions. Karras in April joined the more than 3,500 football veterans suing the league for not protecting them better from head injuries, immediately becoming one of the best-known names in the legal fight. Mitnick said the family had not yet decided whether to donate Karras' brain for study, as other families have done.
Born in Gary, Ind., Karras starred for four years at Iowa. Detroit drafted Karras with the 10th overall pick in 1958 and he was a four-time All-Pro defensive tackle over 12 seasons with the franchise.
He was the heart of the Lions' defensive line, terrorizing quarterbacks for years. The Lions handed the powerful 1962 Green Bay Packers their only defeat that season, a 26-14 upset on Thanksgiving during which they harassed quarterback Bart Starr constantly.
For all his prowess on the field, Karras may have gained more fame when he turned to acting in the movies and on television.
Playing a not-so-bright bruiser in Mel Brooks' "Blazing Saddles," he not only slugged a horse but also delivered the classic line: "Mongo only pawn in game of life."
Several years before that, Karras had already become a bit of a celebrity through George Plimpton's behind-the-scenes book about what it was like to be an NFL player in the Motor City, "Paper Lion: Confessions of a Second-string Quarterback."
That led to Karras playing himself alongside Alan Alda in the successful movie adaption - Karras and Plimpton remained friends for life and one of Karras' sons is named after Plimpton - and it opened doors for Karras to be an analyst alongside Howard Cosell and Frank Gifford on "Monday Night Football."
In the 1980s, he played a sheriff in the comedy "Porky's" and became a hit on the small screen as Emmanuel Lewis' adoptive father, George Papadapolis, in the sitcom "Webster."
He also had roles in "Against All Odds" and "Victor/Victoria." He portrayed the husband of famed female athlete "Babe" Didrikson Zaharias in the TV movie that starred Susan Clark, who later became his wife. The two formed their own production company and it was Clark who played the role of his wife on "Webster."
Susan Clark said her husband couldn't drive after loving to get behind the wheel and couldn't remember recipes for some of the favorite Italian and Greek dishes he used to cook.
Clark has said he was formally diagnosed with dementia several years ago and has had symptoms for more than a dozen years. He joined hundreds of other former players suing the league.
Karras played his entire NFL career with the Lions before retiring in 1970 at age 35. He was a first-team All-Pro in 1960, 1961 and 1965, and he made the Pro Bowl four times. He missed the 1963 season when he was suspended by NFL Commissioner Pete Rozelle in a gambling probe. Karras was recognized by the Pro Football Hall of Fame as a defensive tackle on the All-Decade Team of the 1960s.
Karras later wrote an autobiography, "Even Big Guys Cry," and two other books, "Alex Karras' and "Tuesday Night Football."
Alex Karras
| CURRENT MOON lunar phases |
