Paul Krugman: Free Mitt Romney! (NY Times Column)
The former Massachusetts governor should be proud of helping to pave the way for Obamacare, but in today's Republican Party that is viewed as a crime.
Mark Morford: Porn does not kill, and God does not weep (SF Gate)
Playboy is not porn. Playboy is not even smut. Playboy is - or rather, was - all about relatively mild, heavily Photoshopped, fairly old-fashioned pinups, barely a notch above PG-rated - nudes that, these days, amount to almost quaint depictions of the female erotic.
Mark Morford: Investments for the damned: Should you buy stock in Tinder, or Ferrari? (SF Gate)
Do you believe in love? In sex? What about modern hookup culture, fast and disposable and cruel? I mean really believe in it, as more than just a generational fad, a lifestyle option or a tantalizing weekend prospect? Enough to, say, bet some real money on its erratic but irresistible future?
Shakespeare's play Macbeth is said to be cursed, so actors avoid saying its name when in the theatre (the euphemism "The Scottish Play" is used instead). Actors also avoid even quoting the lines from Macbeth before performances, particularly the Witches' incantations. Outside a theatre and after a performance, the play can be spoken of openly. If an actor speaks the name "Macbeth" in a theatre prior to one of the performances, he or she is required to leave the theatre building, spin around three times, spit, curse, and then knock to be allowed back in.
There is also a legend that the play itself was cursed because the first time it was ever performed, the actor playing Macbeth died shortly before or after the production (accounts vary). Another version of this legend claims that it was the actor who played Lady Macbeth who died during the play's first production run and that Shakespeare himself had to assume the role. There is no evidence that either version of this legend is factual.
Another legend states that Macbeth was cursed by witches because the play revealed their secrets. Another explanation claims that the original production of the play used actual witches and witchcraft, and so the play is cursed.
Source
Alan J was first and correct with:
Macbeth.
mj wrote:
I think I spotted this one
Macbeth.
Jim from CA, retired to ID, said:
Actors avoid even quoting the lines from Macbeth before performances, particularly the Witches' incantations.
Kevin K. in Washington, DC replied:
The cursed Scottish Play is "Macbeth", by that Shakespeare guy.
Dale of Diamond Springs, Norfallcali replied:
Macbeth…Here comes Halloweenie
Lois Of The Loch responded:
MacBeth's me favorite! Reminds me of my childhood: three weird sisters and idiots telling tales!
MAM wrote:
William Shakespeare's Macbeth ~ said to be cursed, so actors avoid saying its name when in the theatre (the euphemism "The Scottish Play" is used instead). Those who believe in the curse claim that real spells are cast in the three witches scene.
Patriot Act NSA Spying Unconstitutional Section 215 National Security Letters Must End
My name is Marc Perkel and I have decided to announce that I will not comply with the so called "Patriot Act" laws requiring me to disclose information about my customers. If I receive a national security letter I will immediately photograph it, post it online everywhere I can, and then make a video of me burning it. I will then await my arrest. If you want to put me in jail then come get me mother fucker.
CBS fills the night with FRESH'Thursday Football', then pads the left coast with local crap.
Scheduled on a FRESHStephen Colbert are Seth MacFarlane and Neil DeGrasse Tyson.
Scheduled on a FRESHJames Corden, OBE, are Kate Hudson, Billy Eichner, and Ruth Wilson.
NBC begins the night with a FRESH'Heroes Reborn', followed by a FRESH'The Blacklist', then a FRESH'The Player'.
Scheduled on a FRESHJimmy Fallon are Will Forte, Kate Upton, Alex Rodriguez, and Steve Martin & Edie Brickell.
Scheduled on a FRESHSeth Meyers are Sean "Diddy" Combs, Jaimie Alexander, Gary Clark Jr., and Jeremy Gara.
Scheduled on a FRESHCarson 'The Scab' Daly are Niecy Nash, Drenge, and Neil Strauss.
ABC starts the night with the chestnut 'It's The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown', followed by a FRESH'Scandal', then a FRESH'How To Get Away With Murder'.
Scheduled on a FRESHJimmy Kimmel are Harrison Ford and Katie Lowes.
The CW offers a FRESH'The Vampire Diaries', followed by a FRESH'The Originals'.
Faux has a FRESH'Bones', followed by a FRESH'Sleepy Hollow'.
MY has 'TMZ (Not So) Live', followed by 'Hollywood Today (Not So) Live'.
AMC offers the movie 'Halloween III: Season Of The Witch', followed by the movie 'Halloween 4: The Return Of Michael Myers', then the movie 'Halloween 5: The Revenge Of Michael Myers'.
BBC -
[6:00AM] Star Trek: The Next Generation - Season 6 - Ep 24 - Second Chances
[7:00AM] Star Trek: The Next Generation - Season 6 - Ep 25 - Timescape
[8:00AM] Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares US - Season 1 - Ep 4 - Finn McCool's
[9:00AM] Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares US - Season 5 - Ep 2 - Leone's
[10:00AM] Doctor Who - Season 3 - Ep 2 - The Shakespeare Code
[11:00AM] Doctor Who - Season 3 - Ep 3 - Gridlock
[12:00PM] Star Trek: The Next Generation - Season 1 - Ep 19 - Coming of Age
[1:00PM] Star Trek: The Next Generation - Season 1 - Ep 20 - Heart of Glory
[2:00PM] Top Gear: Winter Olympics Special - Season 7
[3:00PM] Top Gear: Best of All - Jeremy, James and Richard-Ep 1 - Best of All
[4:00PM] Top Gear: Best of All - Jeremy, James and Richard-Ep 2 - More Best of All
[5:00PM] Top Gear: Patagonia Special-Season 22 - Part 1
[6:30PM] Top Gear: Patagonia Special- Season 22 - Part 2
[8:00PM] From Dusk Till Dawn
[10:00PM] From Dusk Till Dawn
[12:00AM] Quarantine
[2:00AM] The Rocky Horror Show
[4:30AM] Top Gear: The Worst Car in the History of the World (ALL TIMES EST)
Bravo has 2½ hours of old 'Don't Be Tardy ...', followed by a FRESH'Don't Be Tardy ...', then another FRESH'Don't Be Tardy ...', followed by a FRESH'Watch What Happens Live'.
Comedy Central has 'Jeff Dunham: Minding The Monsters', 'Jeff Dunham: Minding the Monsters', again, 'Key & Peele', another 'Key & Peele', followed by a FRESH'Nathan For You', and 'South Park'.
On a RERUNThe Daily Show Daily Show: (from 10/12/15) is Ta-Nehisi Coates.
On a RERUN@Midnight (from 10/14/15) are Brent Weinbach, Kate Micucci, and Riki Lindhome.
FX has the movie 'Zombieland', followed by the movie 'R.I.P.D.'.
History has 2 hours of old 'Pawn Stars', followed by a FRESH'Pawn Stars', then another FRESH'Pawn Stars', followed by a FRESH'Great Wild North'.
IFC -
[6:00AM] THE MIST
[8:45AM] ASSAULT ON PRECINCT 13
[11:15AM] GET CARTER
[1:30PM] ASSAULT ON PRECINCT 13
[4:00PM] 300
[6:30PM] THE DARK KNIGHT
[10:00PM] BENDERS-THE SPORT OF KINGS
[10:30PM] GIGI DOES IT-EAT SOMETHING
[11:00PM] COMEDY BANG! BANG!-ROBERT KIRKMAN WEARS A TAN BLAZER AND RED SUIT PANTS
[11:30PM] THAT '70S SHOW-STOLEN CAR
[12:00AM] THAT '70S SHOW-THAT WRESTLING SHOW
[12:30AM] THAT '70S SHOW-THE FIRST DATE
[1:00AM] BENDERS-THE SPORT OF KINGS
[1:30AM] GIGI DOES IT-EAT SOMETHING
[2:00AM] COMEDY BANG! BANG!-ROBERT KIRKMAN WEARS A TAN BLAZER AND RED SUIT PANTS
[2:30AM] 300
[5:00AM] BENDERS-THE SPORT OF KINGS
[5:30AM] GIGI DOES IT-EAT SOMETHING (ALL TIMES EST)
Sundance -
[7:00AM] Ghostbusters
[9:30AM] Ghostbusters II
[12:00PM] A Few Good Men
[3:00PM] Law & Order-A Losing Season
[4:00PM] Law & Order-Swept Away: A Very Special Episode
[5:00PM] Law & Order-Bronx Cheer
[6:00PM] Law & Order-Ego
[7:00PM] Law & Order-White Lie
[8:00PM] Law & Order-Whiplash
[9:00PM] Law & Order-All My Children
[10:00PM] Law & Order-Brother's Keeper
[11:00PM] Law & Order-School Daze
[12:00AM] Law & Order-Judge Dread
[1:00AM] Law & Order-Soldier of Fortune
[2:00AM] A Few Good Men
[5:00AM] Love Lust-Love Lust & Breakfast
[5:15AM] The Brave One (ALL TIMES EST)
SyFy has 'Z Nation', followed by a FRESH'WWE Steroid SmackDown', then a FRESH'Haven'.
TBS:
Scheduled on a FRESHConan are Dr. Phil McGraw, Aya Cash, and Ahmed Bharoocha.
Bryan Cranston, left, and Helen Mirren, cast members in "Trumbo," pose together at the post-premiere party for the film at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences on Tuesday, Oct. 27, 2015, in Beverly Hills, Calif.
Photo by Chris Pizzello
The apartment where rock guitarist Jimi Hendrix lived and died in London will be open to the public starting next year.
He lived at 23 Brook Street in London's posh Mayfair section, adjacent to the home where composer George Frideric Handel had lived two centuries earlier.
The Handel House Trust that owns both properties has spent two years and 2.4 million pounds ($3.7 million) restoring Hendrix's apartment.
It has been made to look as it did in 1969, when he played some of his most famous concerts.
Trust chairman Alistair Stranack said Tuesday Hendrix's circle of friends and acquaintances helped provide details about his life there.
Lt. Sulu is inviting Klingons, Vulcans and any Starfleet officers for a night out at the theatre.
George Takei is encouraging sci-fi fans to "trek or treat" in "Star Trek" costume for the Halloween night performance of his new Broadway show, "Allegiance."
Takei will participate in an audience conversation after the Saturday 8 p.m. show and choose a costumed fan to take a picture with.
"Allegiance," based on Takei's childhood, follows a Japanese-American family forced to live in a U.S. internment camp.
Cleveland Browns Hall of Fame running back Jim Brown and his championship ring will be reunited nearly half a century after it was stolen from his home.
"I feel great," Brown said Wednesday as he left Manhattan federal court after settling a lawsuit he brought against a memorabilia dealer. Except for the return of the ring, terms of the deal were not disclosed.
The dealer ended up with the ring decades after someone stole it from Brown's Cleveland home in 1966, just months after he received it for his role in helping the Browns win the 1964 NFL Championship Game, the predecessor to today's Super Bowl. The championship - the last for any major Cleveland sports franchise - came in a season in which Brown rushed for 1,446 yards and scored seven touchdowns.
"Symbolically, I don't keep a lot of trophies. But that ring was special," Brown told several reporters as he waited for his turn to meet with Magistrate Judge Ronald L. Ellis earlier in the day. "It wasn't me the star. It was all of us."
He said he had no regrets about retiring at age 29 in 1965 after compiling 12,312 yards and scoring 106 touchdowns over nine seasons, especially after seeing boxer Joe Louis struggle through the end of his career.
Mitzi Trumbo, left, and Niki Trumbo, daughters of the late screenwriter Dalton Trumbo, pose together at the premiere of the film "Trumbo" at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences on Tuesday, Oct. 27, 2015, in Beverly Hills, Calif.
Photo by Chris Pizzello
As fewer U.S. high school students exclusively smoke cigarettes and cigars, more of them are using marijuana, a recent study suggests.
Overall, the proportion of teens in grades 9 through 12 who only smoked traditional tobacco products declined to 7.4 percent of students in 2013 from 20.5 percent of students in 1997, the study found.
However, exclusive use of marijuana more than doubled from 4.2 percent of students to 10.2 percent over the study period.
For the current study, the research team examined racial differences in teen use of cigarettes, cigars and marijuana over time based on surveys completed by tens of thousands of students in public and private high schools nationwide.
Dennis Hastert (R-Predator) pleaded guilty Wednesday to evading banking laws in a hush-money scheme, averting a potentially lurid trial that could have dredged up sexual allegations by agreeing to a deal with prosecutors that recommended he serve no more than six months in prison.
In the written agreement, the Illinois Republican directly acknowledged for the first time that he sought to pay someone $3.5 million to hide misconduct by Hastert against that person dating back several decades, to around the time the longtime GOP leader was a high school wrestling coach.
Before accepting the plea, the 73-year-old was warned by the judge that he could go beyond the recommendation and give Hastert up to five years behind bars when he is sentenced in February.
Because the plea agreement has a sentencing range from no prison time to six months, U.S. District Judge Thomas M. Durkin could also decide to put Hastert on probation or home confinement.
By pleading guilty, Hastert avoids a trial that could have divulged the embarrassing secrets he presumably wanted to keep under wraps by paying hush money.
Italian actress Monica Bellucci, left, and English director Sam Mendes, right, pose for photogarphers during the photocall of the film Spectre at Royal Theatre, in Madrid, Spain, Wednesday, Oct. 28, 2015.
Photo by Abraham Caro Marin
The Fox network has picked up "The 64th Annual Miss Universe Pageant" and domestic rights to air "Miss USA."
The three-hour "Miss Universe" will air live from Las Vegas' Planet Hollywood Resort & Casino on Dec. 20, the Miss Universe Organization and IMG, its new owner, said Wednesday.
Partnering with Fox "marks a new era for the Miss Universe Organization as a whole," said Michael Antinoro, IMG's senior vice-president of original content. Fox entertainment president David Madden said the partnership would "infuse a fresh new energy into these perennial broadcast favourites."
The announcement would seem to conclude months of turmoil for the pageants. The uproar began in June when Donald Trump (R-Pendejo), then co-owner with NBC, made anti-immigration remarks that offended Mexicans and others while declaring himself a Republican candidate for president.
Members of CodePink hold up signs during a protest against drone warfare held at the entrance of Creech Air Force Base Wednesday, Oct. 28, 2015, in Indian Springs, Nev. Members of the group CodePink have been protesting at the base, where drone pilots operate, since Monday.
Photo by John Locher
A judge in Salem, Massachusetts, on Wednesday granted a self-proclaimed witch's request for a restraining order to keep a self-proclaimed warlock and business rival from harassing her.
Lori Sforza, 75, who calls herself a psychic and a "hereditary high priestess" had appealed to Salem District Court Judge Robert Brennan to issue an order stopping Christian Day, who calls himself the "world's best-known warlock" and owns magic-themed stores in Salem and New Orleans from making what she said were harassing phone calls.
The two are well-known in Salem, infamous as the site of 17th century trials that led to the executions of 20 people found guilty of witchcraft. Modern-day Salem capitalizes on its morbid reputation with tourist attractions both ghoulish and historic that help the city draw about 1 million visitors a year, with crowds peaking in the run-up to Halloween.
Sforza, who serves as founder and Head Mother of Our Lord and Lady of the Trinacrian Rose Church, in the waterfront city 16 miles (26 km) northeast of Boston, welcomed the ruling.
Day hosts a "Festival of the Dead" in Salem, where participants can learn to become a paranormal investigator, hear from departed loved ones, or cast a magic circle on Salem Common.
This undated photo provided by Heritage Auction shows a 1962 painting titled "A Sinister Figure Lurks in the Dark," by pop artist Mel Ramos. The artist traded it to a man for a stack of comic books more than a half-century ago and it is expected to bring more than $100,000 at auction by Dallas-based Heritage Auctions in New York on Wednesday, Oct. 28, 2015.
A University of Alberta dinosaur researcher was just looking for a project when he chose one fossil specimen out of others still lying around unexamined from a six-year-old dig.
But when Aaron van der Reest cracked the plaster shell protecting the 75-million-year-old specimen from southern Alberta, he got a lot more than that.
Van der Reest was studying ornithomimus, a dinosaur that looked very much like an ostrich. What he found on bones connecting the leg to the breast was something never seen before on a North American fossil - feathers.
Feathered dinos have been found before but most come from China. Not only is van der Reest's sample believed to be a North American first, it's one of the best-preserved in the world and includes a patch of skin.
The fossil reveals what ornithomimus's tail plumage was like. Scientists are still studying molecules within the feathers to see if they hint at colour, but van der Reest can say they would have been fluffy, without the tiny hooks that hold the branches of modern feathers together.
An unmanned Army surveillance blimp which broke loose from its ground tether in Maryland floats through the air about 1,000 feet about the ground while dragging a several thousand foot tether line just south of Millville, Pa., Wednesday, Oct. 28, 2015.
Scientists say they have detected significant amounts of molecular oxygen coming out of a comet, an unexpected find that may have implications for the search for alien life and understanding how the solar system formed.
Oxygen atoms are abundant throughout the universe, but because they react very easily with other elements they are rarely found in the molecular form known as O2. Scientists had previously assumed that almost all oxygen in a comet would come in the form of water (H2O), carbon monoxide (CO), or carbon dioxide (CO2).
But using instruments aboard the European spacecraft Rosetta, researchers were able to prove the existence of large amounts of O2 in the gas cloud, or coma, around the comet named 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko.
Andre Bieler, a research fellow at the University of Michigan who contributed to the study, said the constant level of molecular oxygen observed in the gas cloud indicates it was trapped before the comet formed and has remained there, untouched, since the early days of the solar system some 4.6 billion years ago.
Sara Seager, a professor of planetary science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who wasn't involved in the research, said the findings were a "wake-up call" because O2 has long been top of the list of molecules sought by scientists hoping to find evidence of life on other planets.
A pumpkin Jack O' Lantern carved as the movie monster Frankenstein is displayed on the grounds of the historic Van Cortlandt Manor House and Museum during the "Great Jack O' Lantern Blaze" in Croton-on Hudson, New York October 27, 2015. With more than 7,000 hand carved illuminated Jack O' Lanterns, the annual Halloween exhibit draws thousands of visitors.
Photo by Mike Segar
The Destination America network's "Exorcism: Live!" on Friday could either turn out to be the scariest pre-Halloween program on television or the ghostly version of Al Capone's vault. There isn't much middle ground.
The mostly live, two-hour telecast will culminate in an attempt to rid a suburban St. Louis home of supposed malevolent spirits. The boy who was the subject of the head-turning 1949 exorcism immortalized in William Peter Blatty's 1971 book, "The Exorcist," and subsequent movie, briefly lived in the Bel-Nor, Missouri house.
"This, to me at least, is probably the quintessential American horror story," said Henry Schleiff, group president at Discovery Communications who oversees the network, and no stranger to colorful promotions. At Investigations Discovery, he ran a "Wives With Knives" marathon one year as counterprogramming on Super Bowl Sunday.
Schleiff brought up Capone's name unbidden, to promise "Exorcism: Live!" will be different. The reference to Geraldo Rivera's 1986 special where he opened the gangster's vault to find next to nothing has become shorthand for much-hyped television programs that fail to deliver.
Chip Coffey, a psychic who participates in the show, said the spirits communicated with him when he visited the house, and a picture of Pope Francis was mysteriously ripped from his hand. "This stuff is real," Coffey said. "This is nothing to play around with."
Flamingos wims from an island to their wintering grounds on a sunny autumnal Tuesday, Oct. 27, 2015 at the zoo in Gelsenkirchen, Germany.
Photo by Martin Meissner
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