'Best of TBH Politoons'
Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Meghan Daum: Recession has its benefits (latimes.com)
As hard times loom, people are actually doing what they say they'll do when they say they'll do it.
Garrison Keillor: Nobody loves you like your mama does
The last time I witnessed a woman becoming a mother, it wasn't anything like the frilly sentiments of Mother's Day. She lay on her back, perspiring heavily and yelling, "Oh my God, why did you do this to me? I'll never forgive you in a hundred years. I hope you hurt like this someday. Give me another epidural, you sadists. And get this thing out of me!" and looking up at me as if she were burning at the stake and I had lit the fire. And when the Infant appeared and was placed on the Madonna's chest, she said, "What in the world am I supposed to do with that?"
Dr. Michael J. Breus: Lose Weight, Sleep Tight (huffingtonpost.com)
Waist size affects sleep quality. But "short sleepers" are also more likely to be obese. So we should focus on the things we can do to reach our ideal weight and maintain it.
DR. RALLIE MCALLISTER: Time for a Coffee Break? Drink Tea for Your Health (creators.com)
Wouldn't it be great to find a drink that tastes good, quenches your thirst and improves your health, all at the same time? It's a tall order, but a glass of tea might just measure up.
The moral minority (guardian.co.uk)
Mary Whitehouse spent her life campaigning against 'dirt, promiscuity, infidelity and drinking' on our TV screens. Should we have listened to her warnings? Perhaps, says David Stubbs.
The Community Reacts (advocate.com)
The movers and shakers of the LGBT community tell The Advocate how they feel about the California supreme court's landmark decision May 15 to legalize same-sex marriage in the state.
Nat Hentoff: The Beating Heart of Jazz (villagevoice.com)
Art Blakey: 'You don't have to be a musician to understand jazz. Just be able to feel.'
Hollywood's odd couple (film.guardian.co.uk)
Film critics Marcia, 81, and Lorenzo, 84, are winning fans of all ages on YouTube. Elizabeth Day asks the Reel Geezers how they do it.
Meghan Daum: The millstone of boomer milestones (latimes.com)
Enough with the 1968 nostalgia. It's time for boomers to stifle themselves.
The Real-Life Indiana Jones Is a Lesbian (advocate.com)
With Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull in theaters now, Smithsonian anthropologist Dr. Jane MacLaren Walsh, a crystal-skull expert and a lesbian, is getting international attention. Michael Gardner asked her about the skulls, the film, and her role in it all.
A: Alan Alda
Reader Contribution
McSame
Hello Marty!
The latest from Phoenix:
A Tuesday fundraiser headlined by Resident Bush for U.S. Sen. John
McCain's presidential campaign is being moved out of the Phoenix
Convention Center.
Sources familiar with the situation said the Bush-McCain event was not
selling enough tickets to fill the Convention Center space, and that there
were concerns about more anti-war protesters showing up outside the venue
than attending the fundraiser inside.
Bush's Arizona fundraising effort for McCain is being moved to private
residences in the Phoenix area. A White House official said the event was
being moved because the McCain campaign prefers private fundraisers and it
is Bush administration policy to have events in public venues open to the
media. The White House official said to reconcile that the Tuesday event
will be held at a private venue and not the Convention Center.
Poor ticket sales, expected protests scuttle Bush-McCain fundraiser
A big big hat tip should go out to:
Phoenix Radio Station 1480 KPHX - The Valley's Progressive Talk
The KPHX local radio hosts have really been doing a great job organizing
and promoting the protests!
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Still overcast and cool.
Called Threat To Online Communication
YouTube Suit
A $1 billion copyright infringement lawsuit challenging YouTube's ability to keep copyrighted material off its popular video-sharing site threatens how hundreds of millions of people exchange all kinds of information on the Internet, YouTube owner Google Inc. said.
Google's lawyers made the claim in papers filed in U.S. District Court in Manhattan as the company responded to Viacom Inc.'s latest lawsuit alleging that the Internet has led to "an explosion of copyright infringement" by YouTube and others.
The back-and-forth between the companies has intensified since Viacom brought its lawsuit last year, saying it was owed damages for the unauthorized viewing of its programming from MTV, Comedy Central and other networks, including such hits as "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart."
Google said that by seeking to make carriers and hosting providers liable for Internet communications, Viacom "threatens the way hundreds of millions of people legitimately exchange information, news, entertainment and political and artistic expression."
YouTube Suit
US Mathematician Splits Prize
David Mumford
US mathematician David Mumford said on Monday he would donate his share of Israel's Wolf Prize to a Palestinian university and an Israeli human rights group.
"Access to education determines how the next generation of Palestinians will grow up, specifically whether potential mathematicians will have the opportunity to join the international community," said Mumford, who was awarded the prestigious mathematics award by the Israeli parliament on Sunday.
He said he would give his part of the 100,000 dollars he shares with two other laureates to the Palestinian Bir Zeit university and to Gisha, an Israeli legal centre focused on Palestinian rights.
"Mathematics in Israel flourishes today on this high international plane. Its lifeblood is the free exchange of ideas with scholars visiting, teaching, learning from each other, travelling everywhere in the world. But this is not so in occupied Palestine where education struggles to continue and travel is greatly limited," Mumford said.
David Mumford
Rock Acts Ringing Up Sales
Video Games
Games like "Rock Band" and "Guitar Hero III" have proved their ability to breathe new life into classic rock sales. But can they do the same for new music?
Last month, Motley Crue decided to find out. The band placed its new single, the title track from "Saints of Los Angeles," for sale as a downloadable track on "Rock Band" well in advance of the album's release date, which has been pushed back to June 24. The only other place to obtain the track was iTunes.
According to data provided by the band's management, Tenth Street Entertainment, the track was downloaded more than 47,000 times via the Xbox 360 version of the game alone in the first week after it became available. ("Rock Band" publisher MTV Networks was unable to independently verify these figures, and total downloads that include the PlayStation 3 version of the game were not available.)
By comparison, the same track received slightly more than 10,000 downloads via digital services like iTunes and Amazon, according to Nielsen SoundScan.
Video Games
Honorary Doctorate
Graham Greene
Oscar-nominated actor Graham Greene will receive an honorary doctorate from Wilfrid Laurier University next month.
Greene, a member of the Oneida First Nation near Brantford, Ont., has appeared in films including "Thunderheart," "Grey Owl" and "The Green Mile," and in such TV series as "Northern Exposure" and "Wolf Lake."
He was nominated for best supporting actor for his role as Kicking Bird in the 1990 film "Dances With Wolves."
Others getting honorary degrees at Laurier's spring convocation ceremonies include former foreign affairs minister Lloyd Axworthy, former senator Lorna Marsden, and composer and pianist John Kim Bell.
Graham Greene
More Clients, Less Food
Food Banks
Like nearly a third of the first 50 customers to arrive at the Emergency Food Bank of Stockton that morning, Jackie Hoffman was new to the pantry. But since she lost her sales job at a local newspaper in December, she has not found work in Stockton, which has the highest foreclosure rate in the country and a hurting job market.
Hoffman, 55, is one of the growing number of "nontraditional" food pantry clients across the country. They include more formerly independent senior citizens, more people who own houses and more people who used to call themselves "middle-class" - those who are not used to fretting over the price of milk.
April saw the biggest jump in food prices in 18 years, according to the Labor Department. At the same time, workers' average weekly earnings, adjusted for inflation, dropped for the seventh straight month.
A survey it conducted of 180 food banks in late April and early May found that 99 percent have seen an increase in the number of clients served within the last year. The increase is estimated at 15 percent to 20 percent, though many food banks reported increases as high as 40 percent.
Food Banks
Women Dumped
Mount Athos
Four Moldovan women accidentally violated a 1,000-year-old ban on females entering the all male monastic community of Mount Athos, when they were left on Greek shores by human traffickers.
Police said on Monday the women -- aged between 27 and 32 -- as well as a 41-year-old Moldovan man were smuggled from Turkey by boat to the Greek Orthodox community of 20 monasteries, long off limits to women. The reached land on Sunday.
"They told police and the monks they were sorry but they couldn't have known this was a no-women area," said a police officer, who declined to be named. "They were forgiven."
Monks spotted the women late on Sunday and alerted police. Under Greek law, the violation of the ban on women on Mount Athos, considered Orthodox Christianity's spiritual home, is illegal and can be punished with up to two years in jail.
Mount Athos
Australian Fishermen Net
500-Pound Squid
Australian fishermen have hauled up a 20-foot-long giant squid off the country's southeastern coast.
Skipper Rangi Pene said Monday that the 500-pound squid was already dead when it was caught in a trawler's nets Sunday night in waters more than 1,640 feet deep.
Paul McCoy, a fisheries research biologist, said it took 10 men to lift the squid onto a stretcher and place it in a storage freezer in the city of Portland. A museum will collect it this week.
500-Pound Squid
One-Of-A-Kind Museum Tours
Victoria Wyeth
It's clear this isn't the typical tour of a museum with major works of art when the guide sidles up to a painting and begins: "I'll never forget it. We're having cheeseburgers across the street at Hank's and he's telling me about this one."
The guide with the ultimate insider's knowledge is Victoria Wyeth, 29, great-granddaughter of N.C. Wyeth, only grandchild of Andrew Wyeth and niece of Jamie Wyeth. And her popular talks are equal parts art lesson, gossip session and peek inside the clan often called the first family of American art.
Six days a week she gives her one-of-a-kind tours at the Brandywine River Museum, a converted 19th-century grist mill with a permanent collection that includes hundreds of works by three generations of Wyeths.
Known to her family as "Vic," she is the daughter of Nicholas Wyeth - an art dealer and the older of Andrew and Betsy Wyeth's two sons - and art consultant Jane Wyeth.
Victoria Wyeth
Greenpeace Action
Fred & Wilma Flintstone
"Fred and Wilma Flintstone" were arrested as they approached the European Parliament on Monday to protest about the influence of the auto industry on proposals to curb carbon dioxide emissions from cars.
Six Greenpeace activists dressed as cavemen and travelling in a Flintstones-style vehicle were detained along with three others for public order offences, police said.
A stone tablet accusing car lobbyists of driving climate change was confiscated before it could be delivered to lawmakers, a Greenpeace spokeswoman said.
"Our activists and their zero-emission vehicle are raising the alarm about the influence this dinosaur industry exercises over EU climate policy," Greenpeace transport campaigner Melanie Francis said.
Fred & Wilma Flintstone
Defy Weather, Gravity
Cheese Rollers
Fearless thrill-seekers on Monday flipped, slipped, somersaulted and tumbled down a suicidally steep slope in western England to try to catch a giant runaway circle of cheese.
The cheese rolling event at Coopers Hill is one of Britain's more unusual annual events and is not for the faint-hearted but it was made even more perilous this year by torrential rain that turned the course into a mudbath.
Organisers claimed the downpours that lashed much of southern Britain over the weekend made the vertiginous slope softer underfoot but more than 30 first aid volunteers were kept busy as 19 people limped in with injuries.
Cheese rolling is thought to date back as far as the ancient Britons or the Romans, but no one knows for sure how the race started.
Cheese Rollers
In Memory
Utah Phillips
Folk singer Bruce (U. Utah) Phillips, a freewheeling storyteller and Grammy-nominated musician known for his extensive touring over nearly 40 years and strong support of peace groups and labour unions in his works, has died. He was 73.
Phillips died of congestive heart failure on May 23 at his home in Nevada City, Calif., a small town in the Sierra Nevada mountains located about 100 kilometres north of Sacramento, family spokesman Jordan Fisher Smith told The Associated Press on Saturday.
Phillips leaves behind his wife, Joanna Robinson, and three children of his own and two stepsons.
Phillips, the son of labour organizers, once ran for a seat on the U.S. Senate on the Peace and Freedom Party ticket and was known as a champion for the rights of working people and a comedian on stage.
One of Phillips's best-known songs in folk circles is "Moose Turd Pie," a single from his first album that recounts Phillips's tale of serving moose excrement to fellow labourers as a cook in a railway track gang to dare them to complain about the food. Smith said strong radio support for the tune in the early 1970s helped Phillips book steady shows in other cities and launch his career on the road.
That career spanned nearly four decades, and Phillips's collaboration with Ani DiFranco on the labour-themed 1999 album "Fellow Workers" earned them a Grammy award nomination in 2000 for best contemporary folk album.
Utah Phillips
In Memory
Sydney Pollack
Academy Award-winning director
Sydney Pollack, a Hollywood mainstay who achieved commercial success and critical acclaim with the gender-bending comedy "Tootsie" and the period drama "Out of Africa, has died. He was 73.
Pollack, who occasionally appeared on the screen himself, worked with and gained the respect of Hollywood's best actors in a long career that reached prominence in the 1970s and 1980s.
The Lafayette, Ind. native was born to first-generation Russian-Americans.
In high school, he fell in love with theater, a passion that prompted him forego college and move to New York and enroll in the Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theater.
Studying under Sanford Meisner, Pollack spent several years cutting his teeth in various areas of theater, eventually becoming Meisner's assistant.
After appearing in a handful of Broadway productions in the 1950s, Pollack turned his eye to directing.
Pollack is survived by his wife, Claire; two daughters, Rebecca and Rachel; his brother Bernie; and six grandchildren.
Sydney Pollack
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