Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Paul Krugman: A Victory Against the Shadows (NY Times)
There are two big lessons from GE's announcement that it is planning to get out of the finance business. First, the much maligned Dodd-Frank financial reform is doing some real good. Second, Republicans have been talking nonsense on the subject. OK, maybe point #2 isn't really news, but it's important to understand just what kind of nonsense they've been talking.
Paul Krugman: It Takes a Party (NY Times)
The 2016 election will be about ideologies, not individuals, despite much media attention to the latter.
Gabrielle Bluestone: Cop Laughed About His Adrenaline Rush After Shooting Walter Scott (Gawker)
During the recorded conversation, a senior police officer briefs Slager on department protocols for a police shooting, which Slager acknowledges with a laugh.
Amy Fleming: How to avoid Vitamin D deficiency (Guardian)
Low levels of vitamin D have been linked to cancer, heart disease, diabetes, dementia and arthritis, as well as childhood illnesses. So is sunshine and oily fish enough - or should you take supplements?
Julia Raeside: Britain's Got Talent review - Simon Cowell is looking like Caligula after a dull day at the Coliseum (Guardian)
ITV's annual variety talent search begins again, and the biggest lie of the whole cruel, sorry shambles is that Cowell can't believe the contestants' temerity.
David Bruce: Wise Up! Illness & Injury (Athens News)
Max Geldray played jazz saxophone on Great Britain's "The Goon Show," two of whose stars were Harry Secombe and Peter Sellers. When Mr. Geldray needed a vein removed, he did not tell anyone because it was a minor operation. However, because he is a celebrity, news of the operation got into the newspapers. When Mr. Geldray returned home after the operation, he found his home filled with flowers and fruit - gifts from Mr. Secombe. And Mr. Sellers arrived, carried Mr. Geldray, who couldn't walk, to his car, and drove him to a shopping center. There, Mr. Sellers filled the car with a complete new sound system that was better than the one Mr. Geldray already had.
?
"Dumb Ways to Die (Game of Thrones Edition)" (YouTube)
"A couple of years ago, Metro Trains Melbourne released a safety PSA called Dumb Ways to Die, featuring a song by Tangerine Kitty that got stuck in our heads. Now that same song has a new animation by Egor Zhgun illustrating the many ways characters on the TV show Game of Thrones have died. Although the Game of Thrones deaths are overwhelmingly murder, the accidents in the song fit some of them ridiculously well. Oh, yeah, this contains spoilers if you're not current on the series."
David Bruce's Amazon Author Page
David Bruce's Smashwords Page
David Bruce's Blog
David Bruce's Lulu Storefront
David Bruce's Apple iBookstore
David Bruce has over 80 Kindle books on Amazon.com.
, wrote:
replied:
has returned to semi-retired status.
Reader Suggestion
Michelle in AZ
Team Coco
CONAN
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.
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
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Sunny and seasonal.
Rock Hall Opening Doors
Ringo Starr
The first few years after the Beatles split, Ringo Starr had bragging rights on his mates.
He was all over the radio with "It Don't Come Easy," ''Back Off Boogaloo," ''Photograph" and other singles at a time that John Lennon, Paul McCartney and George Harrison went through some uneven stretches.
"I had all these hits and everybody was surprised," Starr recalled. "I don't know why they were, but they were."
Everyone's favorite genial drummer still has his pride. Already a member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a Beatle, Starr will be inducted this weekend as an individual, joining John, Paul and George with that distinction. He keeps busy at age 74, touring regularly and promoting a just-released new disc, "Postcards From Paradise."
Besides Starr, new inductees to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on Saturday will be Green Day, Bill Withers, Lou Reed, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Joan Jett, the Paul Butterfield Blues Band and the "5'' Royales.
Ringo Starr
Notebook Sold For Over $1 Million
Alan Turing
A handwritten notebook by British World War II code-breaking genius Alan Turing, whose story was portrayed into the 2014 Oscar-winning movie "The Imitation Game," has been sold for more than $1 million.
Bonhams auctioned the 56-page manuscript on Monday. It's believed to be the only extensive Turing manuscript known to exist.
The notebook was written at the time the mathematician and computer science pioneer was working to break the seemingly unbreakable Enigma codes used by the Germans throughout the war.
It contains Turing's complex mathematical and computer science notations.
Alan Turing
Blanket Tested
Abraham Lincoln
A bedspread that may have covered Abraham Lincoln as he lay dying will be tested for his blood in Wisconsin on Tuesday, 150 years to the day after the 16th U.S. president was fatally shot while watching a play in Washington.
University of Wisconsin textile expert Majid Sarmadi will test the cotton bedspread to determine if human blood is on the Wisconsin Historical Society artifact.
Lincoln was shot by John Wilkes Booth as he watched a play in Ford's Theatre on April 14, 1865, five days after Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered his army to Union General Ulysses S. Grant, effectively ending the Civil War.
The president was taken across the street to the Petersen House and placed in a bed, where he died the next morning, perhaps covered by the artifact headed for the lab.
Wisconsin State Journal owner Richard Lloyd Jones gave the blanket to the Wisconsin Historical Society in 1919. Jones, who was interested in preserving Lincoln artifacts, acquired it from the Petersen family in 1907.
Abraham Lincoln
Film Proves Popular
HBO
If the Church of Scientology was hoping that HBO's withering documentary on the religion's practices would pass by with little notice, that turned out to be a miscalculation.
"Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief" has been seen by more than 5.5 million people since its debut two weeks ago. It is likely to wind up being second only to a 2013 movie on Beyonce as the premium cable network's most-watched documentary of the past decade, HBO said Monday.
It has been an extraordinary two months for HBO's film unit. The six-part series on billionaire Robert Durst, "The Jinx," was a sensation with its climax reaching nearly 5 million viewers. Durst was arrested for murder on the eve of the series' last episode, in part due to evidence uncovered by the filmmakers.
The Church of Scientology ran a full-page advertisement in The New York Times denouncing the film before it ran, questioning whether "Going Clear" would turn out to be like Rolling Stone magazine's since-retracted story about an alleged sexual assault at the University of Virginia.
HBO
Should Pay For Elections To Replace Him
Aaron Schock
An Illinois county says former U.S. Rep. Aaron Schock (R-Interior Decorator) should pay for the special elections to replace him.
The (Peoria) Journal-Star reported that the Marshall County Board voted last week to send a bill for $76,000 to the Peoria Republican who resigned last month after questions about his spending. A Schock spokesman did not respond to an emailed request from The Associated Press seeking comment to the board's letter.
The letter seeks a certified check or a promise from Schock that he will cover the costs of this summer's special and general election costs. County officials estimate each will run about $38,000.
The newspaper reported that Schock's campaign fund balance is $3.3 million.
"Schock has more money than the county has in its reserves," Marshall County State's Attorney Paul Bauer said.
Aaron Schock
Have More To Complain About
Airline Passengers
Think flying is getting worse? A pair of university researchers who track the airline business say it's a fact.
More flights are late, more bags are getting lost, and customers are lodging more complaints about U.S. airlines, government data shows. Dean Headley, a marketing professor at Wichita State and one of the co-authors of the annual report being released Monday, said passengers already know that air travel is getting worse. "We just got the numbers to prove it."
The percentage of flights that arrived on time fell to 76.2 percent last year from 78.4 percent in 2013. Best: Hawaiian Airlines. Worst: Envoy Air, which operates most American Eagle flights.
The rate of lost, stolen or delayed bags rose 13 percent in 2014. Best: Virgin America. Worst: Envoy. Airlines lose one bag for every 275 or so passengers, but at Envoy, the rate is one lost bag for every 110 passengers, according to government figures.
Airline Passengers
Annual Report Downgrades US
Nazi Hunting
The world's predominant Nazi-hunting group took the United States to task over its failure to prosecute a member of a notorious Nazi unit who lived quietly in Minnesota for decades in its annual report released on Monday.
The Simon Wiesenthal Center report lowered its ranking of the U.S.'s Nazi-hunting efforts from A to B. It was the first time the U.S. has been ranked so low.
Efraim Zuroff, director of the center's Israel office, said the ranking was in part because the U.S. took no action against Michael Karkoc.
An Associated Press investigation in 2013 found that Karkoc, a commander of a Nazi SS-led unit accused of atrocities, has been living in Minnesota since shortly after World War II. Zuroff cites the AP story in his report.
Nazi Hunting
Become Invisible After 49
Women
In a world of data-driven policies, there is one group in society that barely registers and is at risk of missing out on crucial resources and services, according to researchers - older women.
Much international data, including metrics on health, employment, assets and domestic violence, appears to back up the anecdotal view that women become invisible in middle age. The data sets start at the age of 15 and stop abruptly at 49.
Experts said the limited age framework stems from a focus on women of reproductive age, assumptions about the limited economic role of older women and age discrimination that overlooks sexuality and violence in older women's lives.
Already there are more than 850 million people globally over the age of 60, a number projected to swell to 1 billion in the next 10 years and 2 billion by 2050 - rising to 22 percent of the world population, according to the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA).
Women
Last Days For Ship
RMS St Helena
Recalling a bygone era of stately passenger liners and quaint colonial traditions, the RMS St Helena is making its last journeys before weekly flights to the far-flung South Atlantic island are introduced.
A day on board the five-day cruise to rugged Saint Helena, one of the world's most remote inhabited islands, is marked by aristocratic pastimes alien to modern travellers accustomed to no-frills long-haul journeys.
It's a taste of luxury that won't be around for much longer, on board a nearly 7,000-tonne ship built in 1989 to carry passengers and goods across the ocean.
A final chance to experience a slower way of life has spiked interest in the RMS St Helena, says John Hamilton, the cheerful purser who organises activities on board, from card games to on-deck cricket matches.
The RMS Saint Helena -- the only passenger ship serving the British island -- makes the journey from the South African city of Cape Town every three weeks.
RMS St Helena
In Memory
Günter Grass
Günter Grass was to Germany what William Faulkner was to the old American South: The bard, scourge and pathfinder of a society ruined by moral disgrace and humiliated by military defeat.
For much of his adult life, the Nobel-winning writer held the rare status in the literary world of both national historian and inventor. Grass, who died Monday at age 87, often angered his fellow citizens by reminding them of their shared Nazi past. But through language of renewed freedom and lyricism and stories that were surreal yet recognizable, he also assumed the even greater challenge of imagining what they might become.
Grass' first and most famous novel, "The Tin Drum," came out in 1959 and ranks with Gabriel Garcia Marquez's "One Hundred Years of Solitude" and Salman Rushdie's "Midnight's Children" as a modern, international classic and as a mini-encyclopedia of a country's state of mind.
Combining naturalistic detail with fantastical images, Grass captured the German reaction to the rise of Nazism, the horrors of the war and the guilt that lingered after Adolf Hitler's fall. The book follows the life of Oskar Matzerath, the boy in Danzig who is caught up in the political whirlwind of the Nazi rise to power and, in response, decides not to grow up. His toy drum becomes a symbol of this refusal.
Grass' novel, later adapted by Volker Schloendorff into an Academy Award-winning movie, became the first installment of his so-called Danzig Trilogy. The series also included "Cat and Mouse" and "Dog Years" and was named for the town of his birth, now the Polish city of Gdansk. The books return again and again to Danzig, where Grass was born on Oct. 16, 1927, the son of a grocer.
Starting in the mid-1950s, Grass was a member of Group 47, a gathering of German writers and critics that also included Heinrich Böll and Uwe Johnson and had the mission of ridding the German language of the stilted, overwrought style of the Nazi era. Grass worked on "The Tin Drum" with the help of a stipend from the publishing house Luchterhand.
Grass - winner of the Nobel in 1999 and the picture of the urbane intellectual with his pipe, gravelly voice, bushy mustache and slightly disheveled look - became a force in Germany's cultural and political discussion.
He argued passionately, and unsuccessfully, against the reunification of East and West Germany after the 1989 tearing down of the Berlin Wall, fearing even the potential of German dominance. He wrote speeches for one of Germany's most prominent liberal politicians, Willy Brandt. To much criticism, he wrote a prose poem, "What Must Be Said," in which he assailed Germany for allegedly aiding Israel's nuclear program and worried that a military strike "could annihilate the Iranian people."
Grass had faulted Germans so often, and for so long, about not confronting the Nazi era, that his opponents took special delight when the author admitted to his own slip of memory. He had always acknowledged being a Nazi supporter in his youth, but in 2006 he revealed in his memoir "Skinning the Onion" that, as a teenager, he had served in the Waffen-SS, the combat arm of Hitler's notorious paramilitary organization.
Grass offered an unheroic picture of his service with the division, which fought Soviet troops in the last days of the war in eastern Germany. It ended with his capture by the Americans in May 1945 after a shrapnel wound left his arm so stiff he couldn't move it. His division was delayed getting into the fighting because it was waiting for tanks that never came.
Grass also wrote short stories and essays and published volumes of his drawings and etchings. His more recent works, which included the novels "Call of the Toad" and "Crabwalk," received mixed reviews at home and abroad, with many questioning whether he had lost his incisive ability to critically comment on the darker side of German history.
Funeral plans weren't immediately known. Grass is survived by four children from his first marriage to Anna Schwarz, two stepchildren from his second marriage to Ute Grunert, and two children born to other partners.
Günter Grass
In Memory
Puren (Jin Youzhi)
The brother of China's last emperor -- who was pushed off the throne in 1912, ending the Qing dynasty -- has died in Beijing at the age of 96, state media reported.
Puren was the youngest sibling of the final Qing monarch Puyi, a child-ruler portrayed in the Bernardo Bertolucci film "The Last Emperor".
Puren -- who took the Chinese name Jin Youzhi -- was born six years after the rule of his brother Puyi was ended by the "Xinhai Revolution".
Puyi, from the ethnically Manchu Qing dynasty, became emperor in 1908 when he was just two years and ten months old. His abdication was an epoch-shattering event, ending the rule of the Qing which began in 1644.
The government which took power in 1912 required Puyi and his close family to live within the walls of the Forbidden City, where they retained imperial traditions and were tended to by eunuchs.
They were expelled from the palace complex in 1917.
Puren established a primary school with the help of his father in the 1940s and continued to teach until he retired in the late 1960s, the Guangzhou Daily newspaper reported.
The Communist party which took power in 1949 also reportedly gave him a place on the local Beijing branch of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, a mostly symbolic body.
Puren (Jin Youzhi)
| CURRENT MOON lunar phases |
