Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Mark Morford: Permagrins For Obama (sfgate.com)
The country's still a disaster. Why is everyone smiling?
Video: Keith Olbermann Special Comment: Proposition 8 (youtube.com)
"The world is barren enough... with so much hate in the world, so much meaningless division... this is what your religion tells you to do?... this is what your heart tells you to do?... You are asked to stand now on a question of love."
RICHARD ROEPER: To hear GOP tell it, Obama's already a bust (suntimes.com)
OK, we all know that anonymous comment areas on Web sites are often the sewers of the Internet, where cowardly rats spew their insane venom, knowing they won't be held accountable. We shouldn't be surprised by this any more than we'd be shocked to find drawings of genitalia and dirty limericks on a bathroom stall.
Al Norman: Thank You, Wal-Mart, For A Cheap Christmas (huffingtonpost.com)
Wal-Mart's PR team thought that helping "Main Street" sounded good -- even though businesses on Main Street will tell you that Wal-Mart is the Grinch who stole their Christmas.
ROBERT K. LANDERS: Learning for Everyone (wsj.com)
Alex Beam, a columnist for the "Boston Globe," set out to write a book that wasn't great -- and, mirabile dictu, he has succeeded. He wanted his informal history of the Great Books movement in America, "A Great Idea at the Time," to be "brief, engaging, and undidactic . . . as different from the ponderous and forbidding Great Books as it could possibly be" -- and so it is.
CHRISTIAN JOHN WIKANE: "A Study in Contrasts: An Interview with Maiysha" (popmatters.com)
Too black for some and not black enough for others, Maiysha defies racial and musical conventions. With the launch of her debut album underway, she chats about race, celebrity, and a typical day in the United States of Hysteria.
Not fade away: Mick Jagger on the trials of life at 65 (independent.co.uk)
It's not very rock'n'roll, but Mick Jagger, the man who brought us 'Sympathy for the Devil', supermodel girlfriends and skin-tight jeans, recently acquired OAP status. So has he mellowed with age? James Mottram finds out.
Jason Harper: "A Picture of Hope: Abigail Henderson fights cancer - and rallies musicians for health care" (pitch.com)
Abigail Henderson feels best when she's onstage.
20 QUESTIONS Stereophonics (popmatters.com)
One of Apple's inventions and Salvador Dali's creations hold some envy for members of Stereophonics. The band's bassist and drummer talk with 20 Questions about these and other inspirations.
Trish Bendix: Ruby Rose stirs up some heat down under (afterellen.com)
The MTV VJ gives us the lowdown on her career and her favorite lesbian movie.
Graham Kolbeins: Gay TV Scribes Prove Life Really Is Golden (advocate.com)
Since sharpening their comedic teeth on shows like "The Golden Girls" and "Roseanne," Stan Zimmerman and Jim Berg have gone on to long, successful careers in Hollywood. But this season their dream of finally creating their own sitcom came true thanks to "Mad TV"'s Nicole Sullivan, Tisha Campbell-Martin, and a little show called "Rita Rocks."
DREW FORTUNE: "'To Be Happy in Your Own Life is All You Can Do': An Interview with Wayne Coyne" (popmatters.com)
It laboured for years in production, all while its lead actor was at the height of his drug addiction and the press grew wary of its many delays. Finally, the Flaming Lips' full-length film "Christmas on Mars" is seeing the light of day, and Wayne Coyne couldn't be happier to talk about it.
The Weekly Poll
Current Question
Has there been a particular book or movie that you can say truly changed your life?
Send your response, and a (short) reason why, to BadToTheBoneBob ( BCEpoll 'at' aol.com )
Results next week - Bob's out of the hospital.
wrote:
Reader Suggestion
RE. "SINGING BOWLS"
FROM BartCop E (11/12/08)
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Sunny and a bit warmer.
Boosted Kazakhstan Tourism
Borat
Borat, the spoof blundering reporter from Kazakhstan, actually boosted tourism in the central Asian country, a Kazakh tourism minister said.
Kenzhebay Satzhanov, deputy chairman in Kazakhstan's tourism and sports ministry, told AFP that British comic Sacha Baron Cohen's character had helped put the country on the map.
"It was free of charge advertising and lots of people want to come and see our country," he said through a translator at the four-day annual World Travel Market tourism industry fair in London, which closes Thursday.
"The result of six months' statistics showed that inbound tourism grew by 13 percent," he said.
Borat
Microscopic Likeness
'Nanobama'
Barack Obama is larger than life these days. Except, that is, at the University of Michigan, where the president-elect has become remarkably small.
A team of researchers has created carbon nanotube images of Obama that can be seen only through electron microscopes.
John Hart, assistant professor in mechanical engineering, led the team that created a "nanobama" flag and "nanobama" blocks. There's even a "nanobiden" image of the incoming vice president.
The idea behind "nanobama" came to Hart about six months ago. It took about two days of work on their off-time just before the election to "grow" and photograph the nanotube images.
'Nanobama'
Brazil Celebration
R.E.M.
R.E.M. turned the last concert of its Brazil tour into an "Obama-fest," complete with giant images of U.S. President-elect Barack Obama to celebrate his historic victory at the polls.
The politically outspoken band, whose songs have sometimes savaged U.S. policies, has made no secret of its support for Obama throughout a tour of South America that has taken it to Colombia, Chile and Argentina.
During the Sao Paulo show, an image of Obama's smiling face was projected onto a giant screen with the words "Obamatic for the People," echoing R.E.M.'s 1992 album "Automatic for the People."
R.E.M. found a sympathetic audience in Brazil's biggest city where, as in the rest of South America, Bush is widely unpopular.
R.E.M.
Ratings Whore
William Shatner
William Shatner is continuing to feud with former "Star Trek" co-star George Takei.
In his latest online video, Shatner says: "George has been mean to me for a long time - I mean, decades and decades."
Shatner complained in a previous video that he wasn't invited to Takei's September wedding to Brad Altman. Takei and Altman have said Shatner was invited; Shatner says he didn't receive the invitation.
He then invites Takei to appear on his Biography Channel talk show, "Shatner's Raw Nerve."
William Shatner
Stolen Works Get New Home
Thomas Mann
Bavaria's state library will hand over 75 books belonging to German author Thomas Mann that were stolen by the Nazis to an archive in Switzerland, the library announced Wednesday.
Two of the works bear Mann's own signature while several others contain dedications to the author from the translator.
The anti-Nazi writer, author of "Buddenbrooks" and "Death in Venice" fled Bavaria in 1933 and settled in Zurich.
Winner of the Nobel Prize for literature in 1929, Thomas Mann was stripped of his German nationality in 1936. After a period of exile in the United States between 1939 and 1952, he died in Switzerland in 1955 at the age of 80.
Thomas Mann
Baby News
Sunny Madeline Sandler
Adam Sandler and his wife, Jackie, have welcomed their second daughter.
A posting on Sandler's Web site says Sunny Madeline was born Nov. 2.
The couple have been married since 2003. Their daughter Sadie was born in May 2006.
Sunny Madeline Sandler
Pro-Life Judges Choose Death
Navy Vs. Whales
The Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that military training trumps protecting whales in a dispute over the Navy's use of sonar in submarine-hunting exercises off the coast of southern California.
Writing for the majority in the court's first decision of the term, Chief Justice John Roberts said the most serious possible injury to environmental groups would be harm to an unknown number of the marine mammals the groups study.
Joining Roberts' opinion were Justices Samuel Alito, Anthony Kennedy, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas.
The court did not deal with the merits of the claims put forward by the environmental groups. It said, rather, that federal courts abused their discretion by ordering the Navy to limit sonar use in some cases and to turn it off altogether in others.
Navy Vs. Whales
Blaming The Economy
Blu-ray Format
Executives hoping that the weak consumer embrace of high-definition discs will strengthen during the holiday season thanks to clarity on format and hardware issues suddenly face this rude awakening: It's the economy, stupid.
The format war is over, hardware prices are falling and studio marketing efforts finally are taking hold with retailers. Yet the economic downturn has become a chief reason for fearing that holiday sales of Blu-ray Discs will prove more naughty than nice.
Hollywood is counting on Blu-ray -- winner of a bloody format with now-failed HD DVD -- to become the next-generation format of choice for home entertainment, compensating for a DVD cash cow that's starting to run a bit dry. But consumer concern about the worsening economy couldn't have spiked at a more inopportune time: the cusp of the holiday gift-buying season.
Blu-ray player prices also are heading south, though perhaps not as quickly a recession-minded consumers might like. Although several manufacturers are flirting with the $200 price point long considered key to platform launches, most Blu-ray players still sell for considerably more.
Blu-ray Format
Deputies Investigate Battery Claim
Brad Garrett
Authorities are investigating battery allegations against Emmy-winning actor Brad Garrett in an incident involving a photographer in West Hollywood.
Los Angeles County sheriff's Sgt. Kristin Aloma said the 48-year-old Garrett has not been arrested in the incident that occurred late Tuesday or early Wednesday. She did not provide further details.
A video posted on celebrity gossip site TMZ.com shows photographers shooting and taping Garrett for about three minutes as he left a restaurant. As he approached his vehicle, Garrett briefly chased one photographer, then pushed the video camera of another paparazzo.
Brad Garrett
Trasfers Neverland
Michael Jackson
Michael Jackson has given up title to his Neverland ranch, transferring the deed to a company he partly controls.
The singer filed a grant deed on the ranch Monday that makes the new owner an entity called the Sycamore Valley Ranch Co. LLC, Tom Pearson of the Santa Barbara County clerk-recorder's office said Wednesday.
Sycamore Valley Ranch Co. is a joint venture between Jackson and an affiliate of Colony Capital LLC, according to a person with knowledge of the transaction who was not authorized to speak on the record and requested anonymity.
Jackson had gone into default on the $24.5 million he owes on the property and had faced foreclosure before Colony Capital bailed him out earlier this year by purchasing his loan.
Michael Jackson
More Common Than Thought
Paranoia
If you think they're out to get you, you're not alone. Paranoia, once assumed to afflict only schizophrenics, may be a lot more common than previously thought.
According to British psychologist Daniel Freeman, nearly one in four Londoners regularly have paranoid thoughts. Freeman is a paranoia expert at the Institute of Psychiatry at King's College and the author of a book on the subject.
Paranoia is defined as the exaggerated or unfounded fear that others are trying to hurt you. That includes thoughts that other people are trying to upset or annoy you, for example, by staring, laughing, or making unfriendly gestures.
Surveys of several thousands of people in Britain, the United States and elsewhere have found that rates of paranoia are slowly rising, although researchers' estimates of how many of us have paranoid thoughts varies widely, from 5 percent to 50 percent.
Paranoia
Artists Stage Street Scenes
Google Maps
Anyone using Google's Street View map feature to scan one downtown Pittsburgh street is bound to do a double-take.
Two 17th century swordsmen doing battle? An escape from a building using knotted sheets? A laser zapping a Steelers fan and a Cleveland Browns fan, rendering them love-struck and about to embrace?
Google really did capture those scenes when it sent a car equipped with cameras down Pittsburgh's Sampsonia Way in May to take photographs for its online maps. But these images and most of the other scenes caught on Sampsonia were staged by artists Ben Kinsley and Robin Hewlett. The two set out to explore the boundaries of the real and virtual worlds after Pittsburgh became included in Street View.
Like many first-time Street View users, Kinsley and Hewlett, then roommates, typed in their address and found their house. Kinsley and Hewlett soon found themselves discussing surveillance and virtual reality, and began considering how they might explore those issues and Street View through art.
Google Maps
Cable Neilsens
Ratings
Rankings for the top 15 programs on cable networks as compiled by Nielsen Media Research for the week of Nov. 3-9. Day and start time (EST) are in parentheses:
1. NFL Football: Pittsburgh vs. Washington (Monday, 8:30 p.m.), ESPN, 10.00 million homes, 14.21 million viewers.
2. Election Night (Tuesday, 11 p.m.), CNN, 9.45 million homes, 15.21 million viewers.
3. Election Night (Tuesday, 9 p.m.), CNN, 8.07 million homes, 13.17 million viewers.
4. Election Night (Tuesday, 10 p.m.), CNN, 7.79 million homes, 12.41 million viewers.
5. Election Night (Tuesday, 8 p.m.), CNN, 7.02 million homes, 11.30 million viewers.
6. Election Night (Tuesday, 12 a.m.), CNN, 7.00 million homes, 11.04 million viewers.
7. America's Election HQ (Tuesday, 9 p.m.), Fox News Channel, 6.17 million homes, 9.45 million viewers.
8. America's Election HQ (Tuesday, 8 p.m.), Fox News Channel, 6.14 million homes, 9.32 million viewers.
9. America's Election HQ (Tuesday, 10 p.m.), Fox News Channel, 5.63 million homes, 8.30 million viewers.
10. Election Night (Tuesday, 7 p.m.), CNN, 5.60 million homes, 8.52 million viewers.
11. America's Election HQ (Tuesday, 11 p.m.), Fox News Channel, 5.59 million homes, 8.05 million viewers.
12. John McCain Concession Speech (Tuesday, 11:18 p.m.), Fox News Channel, 5.48 million homes, 7.88 million viewers.
13. America's Election HQ (Tuesday, 7 p.m.), Fox News Channel, 5.07 million homes, 7.25 million viewers.
14. Election Night Coverage (Tuesday, 11:19 p.m.), MSNBC, 4.77 million homes, 8.23 million viewers.
15. Movie: "iCarly iGo to Japan" (Saturday, 8 p.m.), Nickelodeon, 4.72 million homes, 7.60 million viewers.
Ratings
In Memory
Mitch Mitchell
Mitch Mitchell, drummer for the legendary Jimi Hendrix Experience of the 1960s and the group's last surviving member, was found dead in his hotel room early Wednesday. He was 61.
Mitchell was a powerful force on "Are You Experienced?" the 1967 debut album of the Hendrix band. He had an explosive drumming style that can be heard in hard-charging songs such as "Fire" and "Manic Depression."
The Englishman had been drumming for the Experience Hendrix Tour, which performed Friday in Portland. It was the last stop on the West Coast part of the tour.
Mitchell played for numerous other bands but was best known for his work in the Jimi Hendrix Experience, which was inducted into the Rock Hall of Fame in 1992.
According to the Hall of Fame, he was born July 9, 1947, in Ealing, England.
In an interview last month with the Boston Herald, Mitchell said he met Hendrix "in this sleazy little club."
"We did some Chuck Berry and took it from there," Mitchell told the newspaper. "I suppose it worked."
Mitch Mitchell
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