Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Droplet Collisions at 5000fps - The Slow Mo Guys (YouTube)
In the slowest slow mo video yet, Gav shows us the classic colliding droplets shot in liquid. Using a mixture of coloured water and milk shot at 5000 frames per second (200 times slower than real-time.)
Photographs from the extremes of US culture (Guardian)
Mark Laita's pictures reveal the truth that Americans live their lives in completely individual ways. A Mormon polygamist stands next to a pimp, Amish next to punks.
American extremes by Mark Laita - in pictures (Guardian)
Mark Laita's photographic pairs juxtapose Americans from wildly different subcultures - portraying the indvidualism at the heart of life in the US. There is, in the end, no American mainstream, only individuals pursuing different roads to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
Ken Murray: "How Doctors Die: It's Not Like the Rest of Us, But It Should Be" (zocalopublicsquare.org)
Years ago, Charlie, a highly respected orthopedist and a mentor of mine, found a lump in his stomach. He had a surgeon explore the area, and the diagnosis was pancreatic cancer. ... He went home the next day, closed his practice, and never set foot in a hospital again. He focused on spending time with family and feeling as good as possible. Several months later, he died at home. He got no chemotherapy, radiation, or surgical treatment. Medicare didn't spend much on him.
Mark Morford: Screaming Doom Fetus saves Christmas (SF Gate)
I do not have many guilty pleasures. Most of my pleasures tend to be flat-out shameless, unapologetic, openly shared for better or worse right here in this very column, over on Facebook, on Twitter and in my book and my classes and far too many other places for either of us to care about, really.
Paul Krugman: Paying For Health Reform (New York Times)
I've noticed an odd thing in comments whenever the subject of Obamacare comes up. Many commenters scoff when I say that the Obama health reform was fully paid for; not only that, but some of them confidently assert that the Congressional Budget Office says that the reform will increase the deficit. I assume that this is coming from some right-wing source. But you know, the CBO has a web site, and it's easy to check this…
Lisa O'Kelly: "Jeff Kinney: 'I didn't think I was writing Wimpy Kid for kids' - interview" (Guardian)
Jeff Kinney on why his phenomenally successful Wimpy Kid series, which he began as an adult project, is so appealing to children.
Pam Grier takes raunch to the ranch (Guardian)
She was the queen of the 1970s blaxploitation movies. But being a black woman in Hollywood hasn't been Pam Grier's toughest fight. She talks to Shahesta Shaitly about rape, cancer and finding peace with her horses in the country.
Stuart Heritage: "Meet 'Creature': the biggest box-office flop of all time" (Guardian)
It had everything: nudity, gore and the most superfluous lesbian sex scene in the history of film. How could it possibly fail? Stuart Heritage goes behind the scenes of a real Hollywood disaster movie.
Grady Hendrix: Killer Clowns, Tough Old Nuns, and a Really Randy Messiah (Slate)
Ten movies you didn't see in 2011, but should have.
Roger Ebert: Review of "Departures" (A Great Movie)
This film is not a stylistic breakthrough or a bold artistic statement. But it is rare because it is so well-made. The universal reason people attend movies is in the hopes of being told an absorbing story that will move them. They would rather be touched emotionally, I believe, than thrilled, frightened, or made to laugh. Yet there are few things more deadening than manipulative sentimental melodramas -- what Variety likes to call "weepers."
Howard Reich: Guitarist Hubert Sumlin energized Howlin' Wolf's hits (Chicago Tribune)
When Howlin' Wolf romped through "Wang Dang Doodle" or thundered in "Three Hundred Pounds of Joy," the snarling guitar that accompanied him belonged to one of the greatest bluesmen to pick up the instrument: Hubert Sumlin.
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."
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Reader Suggestion
Michelle in AZ
From The Creator of 'Avery Ant'
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Sunny and cool, but I figure it's gonna change soon - the ants are back in the bathroom.
Crushes Rivals In 2011 Music Earnings
Lady Gaga
Lady Gaga towered over other female musicians in 2011, heading a list of top earning women with an estimated $90 million in income, according to a Forbes.com survey released on Wednesday.
The "Born This Way" singer and performance artist made more than double her nearest rival -- country/pop artist Taylor Swift -- thanks to multiple endorsement deals and an estimated $1.3 million nightly gross ticket sales from her concert tour.
Swift earned about $45 million, thanks to her hit album "Speak Now", perfume line, and other deals, just ahead of "Teenage Dream" singer Katy Perry with $44 million.
Forbes.com drew up its list from data on pre-tax income compiled through record sales, touring data and interviews with music lawyers, managers and concert promoters.
Lady Gaga
Jewels Break Record
Liz Taylor
An auction of actress Elizabeth Taylor's world-renowned jewels took in $116 million, more than double the record for a single collection, and set new marks for pearls, colorless diamonds and Indian jewels.
Christie's sale of 80 items from Taylor's collection on Tuesday had been estimated to raise about $20 million. But everything from her famous 33-carat diamond ring, a gift from Richard Burton, to her charm bracelets sold for many times their estimates.
Just halfway into the four-hour sale, the Taylor items broke the record for a single-owner jewelry collection set in 1987 when the Duchess of Windsor's jewels sold for just over $50 million.
The pattern was set early on, when one of the most historic pieces, a 203-grain (equivalent to 55 carat) pear-shaped 16th-century pearl, once owned by England's Mary Tudor and later by Spanish queens Margarita and Isabel, sold for $11.8 million including commission, setting an auction record for a pearl.
Minutes later an ivory and gold necklace featuring theater medallions soared to more than 100 times its $1,500 to $2,000 estimate, selling for $314,500.
Liz Taylor
Recordings From 1880s Played
Alexander Graham Bell
Alexander Graham Bell foresaw many things, including that people could someday talk over a telephone. Yet the inventor certainly never could have anticipated that his audio-recording experiments in a Washington, D.C., lab could be recovered 130 years later and played for a gathering of scientists, curators and journalists.
"To be or not to be..." a man's voice can be heard saying in one recording as it was played on a computer at the Library of Congress on Tuesday. The speaker from the 1880s recites a portion of Hamlet's Soliloquy as a green wax disc crackles to life from computer speakers.
The early audio recordings - which revealed recitations of Shakespeare, numbers and other familiar lines - had been packed away and deemed obsolete at the Smithsonian Institution for more than a century. But new technology has allowed them to be recovered and played.
The technology reads the sound from tiny grooves with light and a 3D camera.
A second recording, on a copper negative disc, played back Tuesday reveals a trill of the tongue and someone reciting the numbers 1-2-3-4-5-6.
Alexander Graham Bell
Honors Rupert Sock Puppet
National Press Foundation
The National Press Foundation honored Fox News' Chris Wallace for broadcast excellence and David Newhouse as editor of the year award for his oversight of the Harrisburg Patriot-News' coverage of the Penn State sexual abuse scandal.
Wallace will receive the Sol Taishoff Award for broadcast excellence, an award "given to an active broadcaster for a body of quality work in video or audio journalism," at the group's annual awards dinner March 7.
Wallace is the host of "Fox News Sunday." He started his broadcast career at NBC, where he stayed for 14 years before moving on to ABC in 1989. Wallace joined Fox in 2003, the same year Brit Hume won Fox its first award from the NPF.
Geneva Overholser, a veteran of several major newspapers and now a journalism professor, resigned from the Foundation's board in protest.
National Press Foundation
Media Ownership Laws Set To Benefit Rupert
Australia
A review of Australia's media will call for a radical overhaul of laws that curb the influence of media proprietors, potentially paving the way for more consolidation between newspapers, internet and television, reports said on Thursday.
Australian media is already among the world's most concentrated, with Rupert Murdoch's News Ltd controlling some 70 percent of the country's newspaper ownership. Previous attempts to ease ownership laws have drawn criticism that they will threaten democratic protections.
But an interim report by the government-backed review into media convergence said long-standing cross-ownership rules were irrelevant in the online era, as media companies increasingly operate across several platforms, the Sydney Morning Herald newspaper said.
Instead of cross-media ownership rules, the report will call for all big media mergers to be subject to an overarching "public interest" test, the paper said.
Australia
Revolving Door For Lobbyist
FCC
Eddie Lazarus, chief of staff to the top U.S. communications regulator, is stepping down next month to pursue other endeavors, the Federal Communications Commission said on Tuesday.
Lazarus described his role at the agency as a "consigliere" to FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski.
Lazarus came to the agency from the law and lobbying firm Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer & Feld in June 2009 to serve as Genachowski's chief of staff.
"I am enormously grateful to Chairman Genachowski for giving me the opportunity to enter public service and join his vital enterprise of bringing the extraordinary benefits of broadband to all Americans," he said lied.
FCC
CEOs Unbridled Greed
The 1%
It had been a rough few years for CEOs--at least by their customary pay standards. But not to worry: Good times appear to be here again for the denizens of the executive suite.
In news that will likely add to the debate over widening inequality, CEO pay shot up by 27 percent last year, according to a survey by the corporate governance organization GMI Ratings, the Guardian reports. In 2009 and 2008, CEO earnings had been broadly flat, in the wake of the financial crisis and economic slump.
The country's highest paid CEO, John Hammergren of healthcare provider McKesson, took home a cool $145.2 million package, America's highest paid.
You can read more about the survey here.
The 1%
Displace Nativity Scenes
Atheist Messages
Jesus, Mary, Joseph and the three wise men are being crowded out by atheists.
Most of the Christmas nativity scenes that churches had placed in a Santa Monica coastal park for decades have been displaced by non-religious displays - and the churches are crying conspiracy.
The Santa Monica Nativity Scenes Committee, a coalition of 13 churches, and the Santa Monica Police Officers Association, has traditionally claimed 14 of the 21 display spaces, which are vandal-proof, cage-like areas surrounded by chain-link fencing.
But atheists got all but three of the spaces this year because of a new lottery system. The coalition got two spots to display Jesus, Mary and the wise men. The third went to Isaac Levitansky of Chabad Channukah Menorah.
Atheist Messages
Reverses Noot Endorsement
Gary Busey
Gary Busey's crucial endorsement for the Republican presidential nomination is once again up for grabs.
The former "Celebrity Apprentice" star endorsed Donald Trump for president in April. But with Trump taking himself out of the running, Busey this week endorsed Newt Gingrich in an interview with The Hill.
But: In a stunning reversal, Busey now believes it is too early in the process to endorse, he said in a statement to the publication. "It is not time for me to be endorsing anyone at this time! When there are the two final candidates, then I will endorse," he said.
Gary Busey
Novelist Gets New Trial
Michael Peterson
Novelist Michael Peterson will get a new trial in the death of his wife because a key investigator misled jurors about the strength of bloodstain evidence, a judge ruled Wednesday.
Peterson was convicted of first-degree murder in the 2001 death of Kathleen Peterson, who was found at the bottom of a bloody staircase in the couple's mansion. Peterson has maintained his wife died in an accidental fall.
Judge Orlando Hudson ruled that former State Bureau of Investigation agent Duane Deaver misled jurors at Peterson's 2003 trial.
Deaver was fired by the agency in January after an independent audit found problems in 34 cases where he either misreported test results, withheld results that could have helped the defendant or overstated the strength of the evidence to help prosecutors.
Michael Peterson
Running Republicans
Their Favorite Guns
Every Republican running for president brags of being pro-2nd Amendment while out on the campaign trail. But how many candidates actually practice what they preach?
Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum has seven guns, spokesman Matt Beynon told The Daily Caller. His favorite, the aide said, is a Kimber 1911 pistol.
A spokeswoman for Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann wouldn't go into details about any guns Bachmann may keep.
But she said Bachmann likes semi-automatic rifles. "Michele's favorite gun is the AR-15," she told TheDC.
Their Favorite Guns
Exec Charged
Tony Packo's
The grandson of the founder of a hot dog diner in Ohio made famous on TV's "M.A.S.H." was charged Wednesday with stealing more than $100,000 from the family business.
The charges stem from a yearlong family battle over control of Tony Packo's, a restaurant chain whose hot dog sauce and pickles are sold in stores across the nation.
Tony Packo III, who is executive vice president of Tony Packo's Inc., and company controller Cathleen Dooley were both charged with aggravated theft and face up to three years in prison if convicted.
Descendants of the restaurant's namesake this summer began accusing each other of financial misdeeds and mismanagement and made their own bids to buy the company. A private restaurant group backed by Tony Packo III and his father, Tony Packo Jr., won the bidding in October for the restaurant chain.
Actor Jamie Farr, a Toledo native, put Packo's on the map in "M.A.S.H." when he portrayed a homesick U.S. soldier in the Korean War who longed for the hot dogs and wore dresses in hopes of convincing the Army he was crazy and should be discharged.
Tony Packo's
Thousands Of Birds
Utah
Thousands of migratory birds were killed or injured after apparently mistaking a Wal-Mart parking lot, football fields and other snow-covered areas of southern Utah for bodies of water and plummeting to the ground in what one state wildlife expert called the worst mass bird crash she'd ever seen.
Crews went to work cleaning up the dead birds and rescuing the injured survivors after the creatures crash-landed in the St. George area Monday night.
By midday Wednesday, volunteers had helped rescue more than 3,000 birds, releasing them into a nearby pond. There's no count on how many died, although officials estimate it's upwards of 1,500.
Officials say stormy conditions probably confused the flock of eared grebes, a duck-like aquatic bird likely making its way to the Mexican coast for the winter.
More than 175 mass death events, in which more than 1,000 birds died, have been reported to the National Wildlife Heath Center in the past 10 years. Causes for those die-offs included disease, weather, poisoning, trauma and starvation.
Utah
Original Offering Found
Teotihuacan Pyramid
Archaeologists announced Tuesday that they dug to the very core of Mexico's tallest pyramid and found what may be the original ceremonial offering placed on the site of the Pyramid of the Sun before construction began.
The offerings found at the base of the pyramid in the Teotihuacan ruin site just north of Mexico City include a green serpentine stone mask so delicately carved and detailed that archaeologists believe it may have been a portrait.
The find also includes 11 ceremonial clay pots dedicated to a rain god similar to Tlaloc, who was still worshipped in the area 1,500 years later, according to a statement by the National Institute of Anthropology and History, or INAH.
The offerings, including bones of an eagle fed rabbits as well as feline and canine animals that haven't yet been identified, were laid on a sort of rubble base where the temple was erected about A.D. 50.
They also found seven burials, some of them infant remains.
Teotihuacan Pyramid
In Memory
George Whitman
George Whitman's life was packed with the type of adventures that filled every nook and cranny of his bookshop, Paris' iconic English-language Shakespeare and Company.
A bohemian traveler, Whitman was once nursed to health by Mayans in the Yucatan during a 3,000-mile (5000-kilometer) trek across Latin America and sometimes bragged that he had lived in Greenland with a beautiful Eskimo woman.
At home, Whitman was best known as a pillar of Paris' literary scene. For more than half century, his eclectic Left Bank shop was a beacon for readers, who spent long hours browsing its overflowing shelves or curling up with a good book next to a drowsy cat.
Shakespeare and Company was also a haven for every author or would-be writer passing through the City of Light.
For them, Whitman reserved a welcome that turned Yeats' famous verse - "Be not inhospitable to strangers / Lest they be angels in disguise" - into deed: He took in aspiring writers as boarders in exchange for a helping hand in the store.
Whitman died Wednesday in his apartment above the bookstore, two days after his 98th birthday and two months after suffering a stroke, the store announced on its website.
The store will live on under the management of Whitman's daughter, Sylvia Whitman. In an interview with The Associated Press earlier this year, she summed up the unique store this way: "My father says it's a Socialist utopia masquerading as a bookstore."
Whitman was born on Dec. 12, 1913, in East Orange, New Jersey, although he grew up in Massachusetts.
After graduating from Boston University with a degree in journalism in 1935, Whitman enlisted in the U.S. Army. During World War II, he was trained as a Medical Warrant Officer and treated the wounded at hospitals across Europe, according to the store's statement.
Whitman moved to Paris permanently under the GI Bill in 1948. Three years later, he founded his bookshop in a rickety old building directly across the Seine River from Notre Dame cathedral. Initially baptized "Le Mistral" after the blustering winds that blow in off the Mediterranean, the shop's name was later changed.
The original Shakespeare and Company bookstore came from legendary literary matron Sylvia Beach, and the place was a magnet for English-speaking expats like Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald. She opened that store in the early 1920s in a Left Bank district not far from its current home, on the rue de l'Odeon. The shop gained fame by publishing Irish writer James Joyce's banned book "Ulysses."
World War II forced it to close, and Whitman gave Shakespeare and Company a new life in new digs in 1951.
He is to be buried in the city's venerable Pere Lachaise cemetery, where the remains of literary giants including Oscar Wilde, Balzac and French poet Guillaume Apollinaire rest, the posting said. The date of the funeral has not yet been set.
George Whitman
In Memory
Bert Schneider
"Five Easy Pieces" producer Bert Schneider, credited for inspiring a "New Hollywood" band of independent filmmakers, has died in Los Angeles at 78.
Daughter Audrey Simon tells the Los Angeles Times that Schneider died on Monday of natural causes.
Schneider produced 11 movies from 1969 to 1981, including "Easy Rider," ''Days Of Heaven" and "The Last Picture Show." Those movies about rootlessness and discontent became symbols of a new era that helped filmmakers break out of the studio system.
Schneider also produced the Oscar-winning 1974 anti-Vietnam War documentary "Hearts and Minds."
Schneider created the Monkees pop band with producer-director Bob Rafelson.
Bert Schneider
In Memory
Booie
A chimpanzee that kicked a smoking habit and used sign language to beg for candy has died at a California animal refuge.
Martine Colette of the Wildlife WayStation says Booie (BOO'-ee) was being treated for a heart condition when he died Saturday at 44. The chimp had been living at the animal sanctuary near Los Angeles since 1995, after he retired from a research lab.
Colette says she turned Booie into a non-smoker but couldn't fix his sweet tooth. She says he would use his skill to panhandle by signing: "Booie see sweet in pocket."
Booie's death is a serious blow to the financially troubled refuge because he was one of its best fundraisers. Martine says he had fans around the world because of his TV appearances.
Booie
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