Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Phil Plait: Jenny McCarthy Asks, the Internet Slam Dunks (Slate)
Just when you think that Internet commentary is nothing more than a wretched hive of scum and villainy, a light shines through so strongly it can help restore your optimism about people.
Mark Shrayber: Should We Be Teaching Kids They Never Have to Die? (io9)
"That's not how it works," my mom told him and proceeded to tell the both of us that one day we would both be adults, and then we would be be old, and then we would die. And death, she told us, happened to everyone. Even people we loved. And that's how I've been operating ever since, recognizing that death is inevitable.
James Ball: Read this to find out how Upworthy's awful headlines changed the web (Guardian)
Viral content about 'stuff that matters' for a young demographic has made two-year-old Upworthy a serious presence. Oh, and those titles …
Alison Flood and Caroline Davies: Russell Brand offers guide to utopia (Guardian)
Comedian lambasted for declaring he had never voted will urge readers to 'discard apathy and challenge status quo' in new book.
Alison Flood: North Korean dictators revealed as children's authors (Guardian)
Researcher finds Kim Jong-il and his father Kim Il-sung both credited with fiercely ideological but 'quite enjoyable' tales.
Scott Elizabeth Baird: 5 Insane Video Game Easter Eggs You Weren't Supposed to Find (Cracked)
#5. Beyond: Two Souls Has Full Frontal Ellen Page Nudity, for No Apparent Reason
Amanda Hess: "'If They Saw Me as a Specialty Act, I'd Take It': Talking to Carol Leifer, Woman in Comedy" (Slate)
Slate: Three decades after you launched your standup career, you note in the book that women are still underrepresented and underpaid in comedy. Why do you think that is?
David Bruce: Wise Up! Scientists (Athens News)
In 1995, "The Face" magazine requested from physicist Stephen Hawking a formula for time travel. On 6 April 1995, Mr. Hawking wrote back, "Thank you for your recent fax. I do not have any equations for time travel. If I had, I would win the National Lottery every week."
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Reader Suggestion
Michelle in AZ
From The Creator of 'Avery Ant'
from Marc Perkel
BartCop
Hello Bartcop fans,
As you all know the untimely passing of Terry was unexpected, even by
him. We all knew he had cancer but we all thought he had some years
left. So some of us who have worked closely with him over the years are
scrambling around trying to figure out what to do. My job, among other
things, is to establish communications with the Bartcop community and
provide email lists and groups for those who might put something
together. Those who want to play an active roll in something coming from
this, or if you are one of Bart's pillars, should send an email to
active@bartcop.com.
So - to let you know what's going on, the guestbook on bartcop.com is
still open for those who want to write something in memory of Bart.
I did an interview on Netroots Radio about Bart's passing
( www.stitcher.com/s?eid=32893545 )
The most active open discussion is on Bart's Facebook page.
( www.facebook.com/bartcop )
You can listen to Bart's theme song here
or here.
( www.bartcop.com/blizing-saddles.mp3 )
( youtu.be/MySGAaB0A9k )
We have opened up the radio show archives which are now free. Listen to
all you want.
( bartcop.com/members )
Bart's final wish was to pay off the house mortgage for Mrs. Bart who is
overwhelmed and so very grateful for the support she has received.
Anyone wanting to make a donation can click on this the yellow donate
button on bartcop.com
But - I need you all to help keep this going. This note
isn't going to directly reach all of Bart's fans. So if you can repost
it on blogs and discussion boards so people can sign up then when we
figure out what's next we can let more people know. This list is just
over 600 but like to get it up to at least 10,000 pretty quick. So
here's the signup link for this email list.
( mailman.bartcop.com/listinfo/bartnews )
Marc Perkel
Thanks, Marc!
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Seems there was an earthquake - slept right through it. Weirdly, there have been no after-shocks.
"Enemies of the Internet" List
Reporters Without Borders
Watchdog group Reporters Without Borders publishes its updated "Enemies of the Internet" list each year. The report looks to shed light on the current state of the Internet, revealing which countries across the globe stand in the way of unfettered access to the wealth of information the Web has to offer. Places like North Korea and China are regulars on the list, as you might have guessed, but the 2014 version of this important report includes a troubling new addition: America.
Reporters Without Borders is clear in stating that the U.S. government as a whole is not the troubling issue here, but rather particular government agencies like the NSA. As you might have guessed, the string of leaked documents unearthed by Edward Snowden and all of the revelations that ensued is the cause of America's newfound presence on RWB's Internet enemy list.
"Identifying government units or agencies rather than entire governments as Enemies of the Internet allows us to draw attention to the schizophrenic attitude towards online freedoms that prevails in in [sic] some countries," Reporters Without Borders wrote in its report. "Three of the government bodies designated by Reporters Without Borders as Enemies of the Internet are located in democracies that have traditionally claimed to respect fundamental freedoms: the Centre for Development of Telematics in India, the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) in the United Kingdom, and the National Security Agency (NSA) in the United States."
The report continued, "The mass surveillance methods employed in these three countries, many of them exposed by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, are all the more intolerable because they will be used and indeed are already being used by authoritarians countries such as Iran, China, Turkmenistan, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain to justify their own violations of freedom of information."
Reporters Without Borders
Gets Her News From CNN
Lauren Ashburn
Fox News contributor Lauren Ashburn made a shocking admission Sunday that she gets her breaking news from her network's competitor.
"If I do want to know about news, I turn to CNN because it is 24/7!" Ashburn said candidly.
Appearing on MediaBuzz, Ashburn was commenting on host Howard Kurtz's observation that CNN has focused so much attention on the the missing Malaysian airplane, it's opened the door for misleading speculation.
Ashburn went on to compliment the "amazing news resources" CNN has at its disposal to cover the missing plane, allowing Fox News' rival to take their coverage "to the next level."
Lauren Ashburn
Pulled Out Of NY's St. Patrick's Parade
Guinness
Irish brewer Guinness said on Sunday that it would not participate in New York City's St. Patrick's Day parade this year because gay and lesbian groups had been excluded, costing organizers a key sponsor of the annual event.
The move came on the same day that Boston's Irish-American mayor skipped that city's St. Patrick's Day parade after failing to hammer out a deal with organizers to allow a group of gay and lesbian activists to march openly.
"Guinness has a strong history of supporting diversity and being an advocate for equality for all. We were hopeful that the policy of exclusion would be reversed for this year's parade," the brewer said in a written statement issued by a spokesman for its parent company, Diageo.
"As this has not come to pass, Guinness has withdrawn its participation. We will continue to work with community leaders to ensure that future parades have an inclusionary policy," Guinness said.
Guinness
Early Guitar To Auction
George Harrison
An electric guitar played by George Harrison on British television prior to the Beatles' "invasion" of the United States will go on the auction block along with a rare album cover signed by the Fab Four, Julien's Auctions said on Monday.
Harrison's black-and-white 1962 Rickenbacker 425 electric guitar is expected to fetch between $400,000 and $600,000 at an auction on May 16-17 at the Hard Rock Cafe in New York City.
Harrison, who died in 2001 at age 58, played the guitar on 1963 appearances on British TV shows "Ready Steady Go!" and "Thank Your Lucky Stars" months before the group brought Beatlemania to the United States with a series of performances on "The Ed Sullivan Show" in February 1964, launching the British Invasion of rock bands.
The guitar, which Harrison had painted white and black to match John Lennon's Rickenbacker guitar, was also used during the sessions when the band recorded "I Want to Hold Your Hand" and "This Boy" in October 1963.
George Harrison
Special Rules For Special Predators
Brig. Gen. Jeffrey Sinclair
An Army general who admitted to improper relationships with three subordinates appeared to choke up Monday as he told a judge that he'd failed the female captain who had leveled the most serious accusations against him.
Hours later, she took the stand to testify about how she can't trust people and fears her superiors are always going to take advantage of her in the aftermath of the three-year affair.
As he pleaded guilty, Brig. Gen. Jeffrey Sinclair's voice halted when telling the judge why he was pleading guilty to mistreating her in a deal that included the dropping of sexual assault charges.
The judge accepted Sinclair's guilty pleas on several lesser charges in a deal that includes the dropping of sexual assault counts and two others that may have required him to register as a sex offender.
Ultimately, the judge will give Sinclair a sentence that can't exceed terms in the agreement struck between defense lawyers and military attorneys over the weekend, but has not been made public. The legal agreement is likely to require a punishment far less severe than the maximum penalties of 21 ½ years in prison and dismissal from the Army.
Brig. Gen. Jeffrey Sinclair
Warmest Winter On Record
California
California is coming off of its warmest winter on record, aggravating an enduring drought in the most populous U.S. state, federal weather scientists said Monday.
The state had a average temperature of 48 Fahrenheit (9 Celsius) for December, January and February, an increase from 47.2 F in 1980-81, the last hottest winter, and more than 4 degrees hotter than the 20th-century average in California, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) said in a statement.
Warmer winters could make the already parched state even drier by making it less likely for snow to accumulate in the Sierra Nevada Mountains, NOAA spokesman Brady Phillips said. That snow, melting in the spring and summer and running down through the state's rivers, is vital for providing water in the summer, when the state typically experiences little rain.
The state also recorded its driest winter to date by March, despite recent storms, with an average of 4.5 inches of rainfall, compared to 11.7 inches over the previous winter, NOAA said.
Despite regional heavy snow pummeling regions the eastern region of the country, overall rainfall across the United States was far below normal. An average of 5.7 inches of rain fell overall in the United States in the past three months, causing the ninth driest winter on record, NOAA said.
California
Big Bang
Evidence
Researchers say they have spotted evidence that a split-second after the Big Bang, the newly formed universe ballooned out at a pace so astonishing that it left behind ripples in the fabric of the cosmos.
If confirmed, experts said, the discovery would be a major advance in the understanding of the early universe. Although many scientists already believed that an initial, extremely rapid growth spurt happened, they have long sought the type of evidence cited in the new study.
The results reported Monday emerged after researchers peered into the faint light that remains from the Big Bang of nearly 14 billion years ago.
Marc Kamionkowski, a theoretical physicist at Johns Hopkins University who did not participate in the research, said the finding is "not just a home run. It's a grand slam."
He and other experts said the results must be confirmed by other observations, a standard caveat in science.
Evidence
There's A Name For This
Jack Daniel's
If it isn't fermented in Tennessee from mash of at least 51 percent corn, aged in new charred oak barrels, filtered through maple charcoal and bottled at a minimum of 80 proof, it isn't Tennessee whiskey. So says a year-old law that resembles almost to the letter the process used to make Jack Daniel's, the world's best-known Tennessee whiskey.
Now state lawmakers are considering dialing back some of those requirements that they say make it too difficult for craft distilleries to market their spirits as Tennessee whiskey, a distinctive and popular draw in the booming American liquor business.
But the people behind Jack Daniel's see the hand of a bigger competitor at work - Diageo PLC, the British conglomerate that owns George Dickel, another Tennessee whiskey made about 15 miles up the road.
Republican state Rep. Bill Sanderson (R-Lined Pockets) emphasized that his bill wouldn't do away with last year's law enacted largely on the behest of Jack Daniel's corporate parent, Louisville, Ky.,-based Brown-Forman Corp. The principal change would be to allow Tennessee whiskey makers to reuse barrels, which he said would present considerable savings over new ones that can cost $600 each.
Sanderson acknowledged that he introduced the measure at Diageo's urging, but said it would also help micro distilleries opening across the state. Diageo picked up on the same theme.
Jack Daniel's
Cavemen's Rock Music
Lithophones
Thousands of years after they resonated in caves, two dozen stone chimes used by our prehistoric forefathers will make music once more in a unique series of concerts in Paris.
Known as lithophones, the instruments have been dusted off from museum storage to be played in public for the first time to give modern Man an idea of his ancestral sounds.
The instruments, carefully-crafted stone rods up to a metre (3.2 feet) in length, have been in the museum's collection since the early 20th century.
They have been dated to between 2500 and 8000 BC, a period known as the New Stone Age, characterised by human use of stone tools, pottery-making, the rise of farming and animal domestication.
For decades, their solid, oblong shape made experts believe they were pestles or grinders of grain.
Lithophones
Archaeologists Discover Earliest Human Example
Cancer
British archaeologists have found what they say is the world's oldest complete example of a human being with metastatic cancer and hope it will offer new clues about the now common and often fatal disease.
Researchers from Durham University and the British Museum discovered the evidence of tumors that had developed and spread throughout the body in a 3,000-year-old skeleton found in a tomb in modern Sudan in 2013.
Analyzing the skeleton using radiography and a scanning electron microscope, they managed to get clear imaging of lesions on the bones which showed the cancer had spread to cause tumors on the collar bones, shoulder blades, upper arms, vertebrae, ribs, pelvis and thigh bones.
Despite being one of the world's leading causes of death today, cancer is virtually absent in archaeological records compared to other diseases - and that has given rise to the idea that cancers are mainly attributable to modern lifestyles and to people living for longer.
Cancer
'Not Obsessed'
Fernando Botero
Colombia's Fernando Botero, whose paintings and sculptures of plump women have won him recognition as one of Latin America's most famous living artists, says he is "not obsessed" with fat women.
The 81-year-old insisted in an interview published on Sunday that his bulky subjects are not fat, preferring instead to call them "volumetric."
"I don't paint fat women. Nobody believes me but it is true. What I paint are volumes. When I paint a still life I also paint with volume, if I paint an animal it is volumetric, a landscape as well," he told daily Spanish newspaper El Mundo.
"I am interested in volume, the sensuality of form. If I paint a woman, a man, a dog or a horse, I always do with this idea of the volume, it is not that I have an obsession with fat women," he added.
Asked if he was attracted to "fat women", Botero said: "No, no, not at all. I have been attached to three women, all of them skinny."
Fernando Botero
In Memory
L'Wren Scott
L'Wren Scott, who left her small-town Utah home as a teenager to become a model in Paris, then a top Hollywood stylist and finally a high-end fashion designer best known as the longtime girlfriend of Mick Jagger, has died in what was being investigated as an apparent suicide.
Scott was found dead in her Manhattan apartment at 10 a.m. Monday; no note was found and there was no sign of foul play, police said. The designer had texted her assistant 90 minutes earlier and asked her to come to her apartment but didn't say why. She was found kneeling with a scarf wrapped around her neck that had been tied to the handle of a French door, police said.
Her spokesperson requested privacy for her family and friends. Just last month Scott, who was believed to be 49 but had not disclosed her precise age, cancelled her London Fashion Week show, due to reported production delays.
Jagger's representative said the singer was "completely shocked and devastated by the news" of her death.
Scott, whose elegant designs in lush fabrics were favoured by celebrities like Madonna, Nicole Kidman, Oprah Winfrey, Penelope Cruz and first lady Michelle Obama, was a fixture on Jagger's arm since she met the Rolling Stones frontman in 2001. On red carpets, the striking 6-foot-3 designer towered over her famous 5-foot-10 boyfriend.
Scott was adopted by Mormon parents and raised in Roy, Utah, which had a population of less than 10,000 at the time.
As a teenager, she developed a love of clothes and made her own on the sewing machine, according to biographical notes from London Fashion Week. She made her way to Paris after high school where, aided by her height and striking looks, she found work as a model for some prominent photographers.
But she became more interested in working with clothes than modeling them, and eventually made her name as a top stylist in Los Angeles and also a costume designer for films like "Ocean's 13."
Scott also designed a huge wardrobe for boyfriend Jagger to wear during the Rolling Stones' "50 and Counting" anniversary tour. The band is currently on its "14 On Fire" tour, scheduled to play six concerts in Australia beginning Wednesday in Perth, according to the RolingStones.com website.
Scott is survived by a brother, Randall Bambrough of Ogden, Utah, who declined comment.
L'Wren Scott
In Memory
Mitch Leigh
Mitch Leigh, a successful advertising jingle writer with an exuberantly entrepreneurial side whose debut attempt at writing music for a Broadway show became the instant, celebrated hit "Man of La Mancha" and earned him a Tony Award, has died. He was 86.
Leigh died Sunday in New York of pneumonia and complications from a stroke. A memorial was being held Monday afternoon in Manhattan and all Broadway theatre marquees will dim in his honour for one minute at 7:45 p.m. Wednesday.
"Mitch would have enjoyed every 60 seconds of that minute. He would have been honoured. It's really, really wonderful news on a day of gloomy news here," his wife, artist Abby Leigh, said Monday.
Mitch Leigh followed up his early theatrical success by producing and directing for the Broadway stage, including a 1985 production of "The King and I" with Yul Brynner, in which he earned a best director Tony nomination.
He also produced "The Gershwins' Fascinating Rhythm" in 1999, supplied the music for "Ain't Broadway Grand" in 1993, produced "Chu Chem," billed as the first Chinese-Jewish musical in 1989, and backed a 1983 revival of "Mame" with Angela Lansbury. In later life, he turned to real estate and the creation of a huge environmentally clean residential and commercial project in New Jersey.
Born Irwin Michnick in the Brooklyn borough of New York in 1928, Leigh's mother was illiterate and his father was a Communist. He played the bassoon, was a childhood fan of Benny Goodman and served in the Army in two roles - as a baseball player for the Army team and a drum major in the Army band.
While recuperating from a broken leg at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center - he had slid into home badly - he heard the work of composer Paul Hindemith and fell in love. He wrote a postcard to Hindemith pleading to study with him at Yale University. Hindemith advised him to first apply to Yale and send some music. Leigh did exactly that and earned bachelor's and master's degrees, studying under Hindemith.
Leigh worked for a time in Hollywood for MGM, and then became a studio musician. He soon created his own a radio and television commercial production house in 1957, called Music Makers, Inc., which employed a staff of composers, musicians and orchestrators, turning out jingles for hundreds of commercials. He penned "Nobody Doesn't Like Sara Lee," and his clients included American Airlines and Polaroid. He set one of his first jingles for Revlon to "London Bridge Is Falling Down."
Leigh got into musical theatre after supplying incidental music to "Too True to be Good" by George Bernard Shaw, which was directed by Albert Marre and stared Lillian Gish and Robert Preston. Marre soon brought him in for the musical version of Spanish author's Miguel de Cervantes' 1605 telling of "Don Quixote."
"Man of La Mancha" with a book by Dale Wasserman and lyrics by Joe Darion (after poet W.H. Auden dropped out), won five Tony Awards, ran for over 2,000 performances, and was translated into a dozen languages. The show's most popular song, "The Quest" (popularly known as "The Impossible Dream") hit No. 1 on the Billboard charts in 1966 and has been recorded by dozens of artists, including Elvis Presley, Frank Sinatra, Diana Ross and the Supremes, Placido Domingo and Cher.
A film version starring Peter O'Toole and Sophia Loren was released in 1972. The musical has been revived four times on Broadway - most recently in 2003 with Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio and Brian Stokes Mitchell - and has hundreds of productions a year throughout the world. The show played for 253 performances in London at the Piccadilly Theatre.
More recently, Leigh concentrated on his yearslong quest to build a massive planned green community of homes, shops and sports facilities "designed for really nice people of all ages who love sports and the arts" in Jackson Township, N.J. The Jackson Twenty-One project takes its name from the exit number of its location off of Interstate 195. "If you're not a nice person," he said in a TV ad, "please don't call."
He is survived by his wife and their two children, David and Rebecca, and a son, Andy, from a previous marriage.
Mitch Leigh
In Memory
Scott Asheton
Scott Asheton, drummer for the influential punk rock band the Stooges, has died. He was 64.
His daughter, Leanna Asheton, confirmed Monday that her father died Saturday of a heart attack. She said her father "was as cool as they came. His wisdom guides us on."
Bandleader Iggy Pop posted on his Facebook page Sunday that he's "never heard anyone play the drums with more meaning than Scott Asheton."
Asheton was part of the Stooges when they formed in 1967 in Ann Arbor, Mich. His older brother, Ron Asheton, who was the group's guitarist, died in 2009. The Stooges released their self-titled debut in 1969.
Asheton suffered from undisclosed illnesses in 2011 and was unable to perform at summer music festivals in Europe with the Stooges.
While the Stooges weren't a commercial success, they went on to become one of the significant bands in punk music. Their raw sound helped inspire the first generation of punk musicians. The band influenced acts from Patti Smith to the Ramones to Sid Vicious. The group landed in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2010.
After recording three albums in the late 1960s and early 1970s, the Stooges split and Pop went on to a successful solo career. The band reunited for 2007's "The Weirdness" and "Ready to Die," released last year.
Always rooting for the underdog, he also was a fan of poet and writer Charles Bukowski. His daughter said her father's favourite Bukowski quote was, "What matters most is how well you walk through the fire."
Asheton was born on Aug. 16, 1949, in Washington, D.C. He played drums for other bands, including Sonic's Rendezvous Band, the group led by former MC5 guitarist Fred "Sonic" Smith. Along with his wife and daughter, Ashton is survived by his stepsons Simon and Aaron, whom "he loved as his own," his daughter said.
Scott Asheton
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