'TBH Politoons'
Farewell Video
Dick Eats Bush
Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Michael Smith and Sarah Baxter: US generals 'will quit' if Bush orders Iran attack (timesonline.co.uk)
SOME of America's most senior military commanders are prepared to resign if the White House orders a military strike against Iran, according to highly placed defence and intelligence sources. Tension in the Gulf region has raised fears that an attack on Iran is becoming increasingly likely before President George Bush leaves office. The Sunday Times has learnt that up to five generals and admirals are willing to resign rather than approve what they consider would be a reckless attack.
Beth Quinn: How to quit smoking: Take up drinking instead (recordonline.com)
Sometimes I wish the news guy on TV would announce that the sky is falling. If he did, I could take the attitude, "Oh well, the end is near. Too bad. Might as well have a cigarette!" It would be kind of a bright spot to Doomsday.
Faith (guardian.co.uk)
Britain's new cultural divide is not between Christian and Muslim, Hindu and Jew. It is between those who have faith and those who do not. Stuart Jeffries reports on the vicious and uncompromising battle between believers and non-believers.
STEVE DOLLAR: Love Among the Crumbs (nysun.com)
Back in the 1990s, the cartoonist Aline Kominsky Crumb and her husband, Robert Crumb - more famously known as R. Crumb to generations of underground comic book fans - launched their own autobiographical compendium. It was a kind of she-said, he-said...
Brendan I. Koerner: Is Classical Making a Comeback? (slate.com)
The hottest musical genre of 2006.
Has Daniel Radcliffe killed Harry Potter? (guardian.co.uk)
Xan Brooks on suggestions that the final two Potter pictures may be re-cast.
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Sunny, clear and cool.
The day got off to a lousy start. The kid's favorite radio station changed formats, with no warning.
K-Mozart is know country. Yee haw.
At least there's a 2nd classical station to fall back on - KUSC, but as the kid puts it "they beg for money too much."
Tried to explain that's the nature of NPR, but he'd have none of it.
PEN/Faulkner Literary Award
Philip Roth
Philip Roth has won yet another literary prize, this time the PEN/Faulkner award for "Everyman," his short, bleak novel about illness and mortality.
The runners-up were Charles D'Ambrosio's "The Dead Fish Museum," Deborah Eisenberg's "Twilight of the Superheroes," Amy Hempel's "The Collected Stories of Amy Hempel" and Edward P. Jones' "All Aunt Hagar's Children."
Roth, who will receive $15,000, is the first three-time winner of the PEN/Faulkner, having received it in 1994 for "Operation Shylock" and in 2001 for "The Human Stain." The PEN/Faulkner Award was founded in 1980.
Philip Roth
Sci Fi Channel Project
Virgin Comics
Sci Fi Channel has teamed with Richard Branson's Virgin Comics to create comic books that also will be developed into content for feature film, television, digital and gaming.
Five new comic book titles will kick off the joint venture, dubbed Sci Fi/Virgin Comics. Details on those titles are forthcoming, but the idea is to create original properties that will be eyed across all media.
An eight-member editorial board -- representing comic books, television, movies, digital, gaming, licensing and merchandising -- will be responsible for determining which stories make the cut. The first Sci Fi/Virgin titles, distributed by Diamond Comics, are expected to be available to consumers this year.
Virgin Comics
200th Birthday
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Remembrances of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, who would have turned 200 on Tuesday, are hard to escape in his native Portland, the place he described in "My Lost Youth" as "the beautiful town that is seated by the sea."
In the heart of the downtown sits Wadsworth-Longfellow House, the three-story brick building where the poet lived as a youth. It's a few blocks east of Longfellow Square and even closer to Longfellow Books. Some of the city's elementary school pupils attend Longfellow School. Older folks can, in season, order a locally brewed Longfellow Winter Ale in a nearby bar or restaurant.
Longfellow, one of the most beloved literary figures in 19th-century America, has left his mark in the city where he was born on Feb. 27, 1807. Because of that connection, the Maine Historical Society is hosting a 200th birthday celebration Tuesday that kicks off a year of bicentennial activities.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Goes Legal
BitTorrent
BitTorrent, the website once seen as a hub for piracy of Hollywood films, relaunched Monday as a legal download service with the cooperation of the major US film studios.
The BitTorrent Entertainment Network at BitTorrent.com will include "the most comprehensive library of downloadable digital entertainment ever amassed on the Web," the company said in a statement.
BitTorrent, whose video-sharing software launched in 2001 was used by film pirates around the world, will under its new scheme allow consumers to rent or purchase films, music and other content.
It will also include a video-sharing service allowing customers to post their own content in the style of Youtube.
BitTorrent
Order of Service to the Fatherland, First Degree
Mstislav Rostropovich
President Vladimir Putin has awarded renowned cellist and conductor Mstislav Rostropovich with a state medal, the Kremlin said Monday.
Putin signed a decree awarding Rostropovich with the Order of Service to the Fatherland, First Degree, for his "outstanding contribution to the development of world music and many years of creative activity," the presidential press service said.
Rostropovich, 79, was hospitalized earlier this month for unspecified reasons - first in Paris and then in Moscow. His hospitalization was revealed when the Kremlin said Putin had visited him in a Moscow hospital on Feb. 6.
Rostropovich went into exile from the Soviet Union with his family in 1974 after housing dissident writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn for four years, which cost him his Soviet citizenship.
Mstislav Rostropovich
Designer Spills Beans
Naomi Watts
Don't count on Naomi Watts appearing as the face of Escada anytime soon.
While the Australian thesp has spent the past few weeks responding to increasing stork watch queries over her expanding belly with a steady stream of "no comments," her work now seems to have all been for naught. As Watts was busy keeping mum, the Italian design house was busy outing her as one.
In a publicity gaffe for the record books, Escada, whose couture creation was donned by Watts at the Academy Awards, released a statement Sunday afternoon touting their newest design and inadvertently spilling the beans on Watts' pregnancy.
"The Escada gown sets off her most precious new asset-the baby she is expecting with longtime boyfriend Liev Schreiber," read the press release, sent to outlets including E! News.
Naomi Watts
Arrested In Massachusetts
Bobby Brown
For the second time in a year, Bobby Brown has been arrested while in town to watch his daughter at a cheerleading competition.
Brown was picked up at Attleboro High School on Sunday night on a warrant for failing to appear at a child support hearing in October.
The 38-year-old singer was scheduled to appear Monday afternoon in Norfolk Probate and Family Court, said Adam Loomis of All State Constables in Weymouth.
Bobby Brown
Anti-Torture Speech
Kiefer Sutherland
24 star Kiefer Sutherland has accepted an invitation from the US military to teach army cadets it is wrong to torture prisoners.
Sutherland, who plays agent Jack Bauer in the show, has agreed to talk to cadets at the West Point military academy in New York state after army chiefs claimed the show's torture scenes are influencing its newest recruits.
Earlier this month, Brigadier General Patrick Finnegan visited the set of 24 to urge its makers to cut down on torture scenes.
Kiefer Sutherland
Scholars Criticize Documentary
James Cameron
Archaeologists and clergymen in the Holy Land derided claims in a new documentary produced by James Cameron that contradict major Christian tenets, but the Oscar-winning director said the evidence was based on sound statistics.
"The Lost Tomb of Jesus," which the Discovery Channel will run on March 4, argues that 10 ancient ossuaries - small caskets used to store bones - discovered in a suburb of Jerusalem in 1980 may have contained the bones of Jesus and his family, according to a press release issued by the Discovery Channel.
One of the caskets even bears the title, "Judah, son of Jesus," hinting that Jesus may have had a son, according to the documentary. And the very fact that Jesus had an ossuary would contradict the Christian belief that he was resurrected and ascended to heaven.
Archaeologists also balk at the filmmaker's claim that the James Ossuary - the center of a famous antiquities fraud in Israel - might have originated from the same cave. In 2005, Israel charged five suspects with forgery in connection with the infamous bone box.
James Cameron
Clearfield's 123-Pound Burger
Denny's Beer Barrel Pub
The newest addition to the menu at Denny's Beer Barrel Pub is one whopper of a burger. The Beer Barrel Main Event Charity Burger weighs in at 123 pounds, a meaty monstrosity that its cooks maintain shatters the world record of 105 pounds shared by two restaurants in New Jersey and Thailand.
The sizable sandwich features an 80-pound beef patty, along with a pound each of lettuce, ketchup, relish, mustard and mayonnaise, 160 slices of cheese, up to five onions and 12 tomatoes.
It's topped with a couple of pounds of banana peppers, then sandwiched into a 30-pound bun. Don't forget the garnish of 33 pickles.
It's not the first time that owner Denny Leigey has waded into the competition for the world's biggest burger. He drew headlines a couple years ago when he unveiled the Beer Barrel Belly Buster, which weighed in at a mere 15 pounds.
Denny's Beer Barrel Pub
In Memory
Ian Wallace
Ian Wallace, an ex-Nashvillian and one of the most distinguished rock drummers of the modern era, died Thursday in Los Angeles after a long battle with cancer of the esophagus. He was 60.
"All you have to do is look at what he played on to know that a great artist has passed," said Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame member Rodney Crowell, who brought Wallace in to play drums on his acclaimed album, The Houston Kid. "The only time we recorded together was on The Houston Kid, but I was a such a fan of his. The things he did with Jackson Browne … the things he did with Bob Dylan and King Crimson and David Lindley …"
Mr. Wallace joined innovative progressive rock band King Crimson in 1971, and he went on to play on numerous important projects. He recorded and/or toured with Dylan, Browne, Lindley (Crowell calls Wallace's work on Lindley's version of "Mercury Blues" "one of the best rock 'n' roll drum tracks ever"), Don Henley, The Traveling Wilburys, Bonnie Raitt and Stevie Nicks.
Mr. Wallace moved to Nashville in the late 1990s and left in 2004, heading to Los Angeles to play drums for a Val Kilmer musical called The Ten Commandments.
In addition to his session and stage work with others, Mr. Wallace recorded his own projects, including a recent album with the Crimson Jazz Trio, a jazz group that reinvented King Crimson songs.
Ian Wallace
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