Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Ted Rall: "'1984' is Here. Yawn"
Another horror no one will care about: the government is spying on your snail mail.
Henry Rollins: Misguided Outrage Over DOMA's Demise (LA Weekly)
When I read the Supreme Court's decision on the Defense of Marriage Act last week, I allowed myself a few moments of elation and then started scouring the Internet to read the reaction. The sentiments expressed by longtime marriage-equality advocates, while inspiring and sincere, didn't interest me nearly as much as the misguided outrage of those who find DOMA's demise to their disliking. It's fun to hear them howl.
Marc Dion: The Sun is Liberal (Creators Syndicate)
The sun, it seems, is a liberal, shining on those "professional recipients" who don't deserve sunlight, enabling their lazy taxpayer-financed days at the beach. The sun has no "means test" - it won't check your papers to see if you're citizen.
Terry Savage: What Happened? What's Next? (Creators Syndicate)
The markets had a temper tantrum. A big one. Fed Chairman Bernanke's comments last week were widely anticipated. And, in fact, his remarks were far more moderate than many expected. Some had feared the Fed would start pulling back immediately, buying fewer bonds, creating less new money and credit in the banking system.
Scott Burns: Is Social Security a Good Deal? (AssetBuilder)
Very few people buy life annuities. There's something about giving an insurance company our hard-earned cash in exchange for a lifetime of monthly payments that gives us the willies. It causes us to look for the door.
Miranda Sawyer: "Simon Pegg and Nick Frost: the triumph of the nerds" (Guardian)
Shortly to be reunited onscreen in 'The World's End,' and with a host of solo TV and film projects in the works, the comic boy-man duo seem to be going from strength to strength.
Carole Cadwalladr: "John Cusack: from hearththrob to psychopath" (Guardian)
Few actors draw us back like John Cusack - we can't get enough of that humble, sincere, over-articulate character he plays so well. So, Carole Cadwalladr asks the star of Say Anything and High Fidelity, why all the psychopaths?
Ted Rall: Anna Badkhen's The World is a Carpet (Columbia Journalism Review)
A book review in comic form
Esther Englis-Arkell: The women who took radium from savior to killer (io9)
The famous radium girls took the reputation of radium from the savior of the sick to the killer of the poor. Working in a factory at a time when radium was considered the best way to improve health, by the time they died, they were exhaling radon gas and their hair glowed in the dark.
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David Bruce has approximately 50 Kindle books on Amazon.com.
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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
Back to too hot, with even hotter on the way. Ack.
Former Mexican President Has A Cause
Vicente Fox
Former Mexican President Vicente Fox took his crusade to legalize marijuana to San Francisco on Monday, joining pot advocates to urge the United States and his own country to decriminalize the sale and recreational use of cannabis.
Fox met for three hours with the advocates, including Steve DeAngelo, the Oakland-based executive director of California's largest marijuana dispensary, and former Microsoft executive Jamen Shively, who hopes to create a Seattle-based pot brand now that Washington state has legalized recreational use.
Legalization, Fox told reporters after the meeting, is the only way to end the violence of Mexican drug cartels, which he blamed on America's war on drugs.
"The cost of the war is becoming unbearable - too high for Mexico, for Latin America and for the rest of the world," Fox said in English.
Fox's position on legalizing drugs has evolved over time since the days when he cooperated with U.S. efforts to tamp down production in Mexico during his 2000-2006 presidential term. He has been increasingly vocal in his opposition to current policies, backing two prior efforts to legalize marijuana in Mexico.
Vicente Fox
Pittsburgh Bridge Renamed
David McCullough
A Pittsburgh bridge has been renamed for Pulitzer Prize-winning historian David McCullough on his 80th birthday.
County officials gathered Sunday to rename the 16th Street Bridge in McCullough's honor. A Pittsburgh native and two-time Pulitzer prize winner, McCullough said no honor has touched him like the decision to rename the bridge after him.
The span across the Allegheny River was built in 1923 to connect the Strip District with the historic H.J. Heinz plant. The county council had approved the name change in December and deemed Sunday "David McCullough Day."
McCullough joins Roberto Clemente, Andy Warhol and Rachel Carson among those who have Pittsburgh bridges named for them.
David McCullough
Gives $1M to NJ Superstorm Sandy Relief
Bon Jovi
Jon Bon Jovi went home Monday to present a $1 million check from his band to a fund to help New Jersey recover from Superstorm Sandy.
The rocker joined Gov. Chris Christie and first lady Mary Pat Christie to announce the donation during a ceremony where the native son rocker got bigger cheers than the popular governor.
"My being here is not political," Bon Jovi said during a news conference in front of the borough hall in the central New Jersey town. "It's emotional."
Bon Jovi, who has long had philanthropic interests, has been highly visible in his home state since the storm hit.
He was a headliner of a relief concert and is, along with Bill Bradley, Bruce Springsteen and others, a co-chairman of the storm relief fund overseen by Mary Pat Christie. She said that the fund, which is designed to help people with needs not covered by government aid or insurance, now has brought in $38 million in donations from 29,000 people.
Bon Jovi
Hospital News
Randy Travis
Country music star Randy Travis was in critical condition Monday in a Texas hospital, a day after he was hospitalized with viral cardiomyopathy.
A news release from the singer's publicist says Travis was admitted to the hospital Sunday in Dallas and is in critical condition. Kirt Webster, Travis' publicist, said no other details about Travis' condition were available Monday.
Viral cardiomyopathy is a heart condition caused by a virus.
The Mayo Clinic website describes cardiomyopathy as a disease that weakens and enlarges the heart muscle, making it harder for the heart to pump blood and carry it to the rest of the body. It can lead to heart failure. Treatments range from medications and surgically implanted devices to heart transplants.
Randy Travis
Starts Prison Sentence
Lauryn Hill
Grammy-winning singer Lauryn Hill began serving a three-month prison sentence in Connecticut on Monday for failing to pay about $1 million in taxes over the past decade.
Hill reported to federal prison in Danbury, said Ed Ross, a spokesman for the federal Bureau of Prisons. Inmates at the minimum security prison live in open dormitory-style living quarters and are expected to work jobs such as maintenance, food service or landscaping.
Hill, who started singing with the Fugees as a teenager in the 1990s before releasing her multiplatinum 1998 album "The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill," pleaded guilty last year in New Jersey to failing to pay taxes on more than $1.8 million earned from 2005 to 2007. Her sentencing also took into account unpaid state and federal taxes in 2008 and 2009 that brought the total earnings to about $2.3 million.
Her attorney had sought probation, arguing that Hill's charitable works, her family circumstances and the fact she paid back the taxes she owed should merit consideration.
Lauryn Hill
3 More Journalists Charged
Rupert
U.K. officials are for the first time charging a journalist outside of Rupert Murdoch's British newspaper empire as part of an ongoing investigation into bribery of public officials.
The charge against Thomas Savage - deputy news editor of the Daily Star on Sunday - is being brought as part of an investigation triggered by revelations of phone hacking at Murdoch's now-shuttered News of the World tabloid. The Crown Prosecution Service said Monday that Savage will be charged with conspiring with prison officer Scott Chapman to commit misconduct in a public office. Lucy Panton, former crime editor at the now-shuttered News of the World, will be charged with the same offense, prosecutors added.
Chapman allegedly sold information about a high-profile prisoner to a number of British tabloids - including the News of the World, The Sun, the Daily Mirror and the Daily Star - between March 2010 and June 2011 for thousands of pounds (dollars). His partner, Lynn Gaffney, allegedly acted as go-between.
Separately, prosecutors said they will be levying one count of the same charge against The Sun newspaper's Chris Pharo, for allegedly authorizing payments to public officials employed at the Broadmoor high-security psychiatric hospital , two police forces, prison officials and officers in the British army between January 2006 and December 2010. He was news editor of the Murdoch-owned tabloid at the time.
The charges are being brought as part of Operation Elveden, an investigation into allegations that newspapers were paying police and other officials for information.
Rupert
Activists Blocked
Women of the Wall
Several thousand ultra-Orthodox protesters effectively blocked Jewish women activists campaigning for equal worship rights at the Western Wall from holding a monthly prayer session on Monday at the holy site.
Israeli police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said members and supporters of the Women of the Wall group were escorted by police to a spot a short distance from the Western Wall "to make sure there would be no incidents".
A spokeswoman for the movement, which is challenging the Orthodox monopoly over rites at the Western Wall, called the incident a setback after a court decided in April the women could legally don prayer shawls that Orthodox ritual says are meant for men only.
Prayer rites at the site, revered by Jews as a perimeter wall of the Biblical Temple, are part of a long struggle between Israel's secular majority and ultra-Orthodox minority over lifestyle in the Jewish state, where institutions such as marriage, divorce and burial are controlled by rabbis.
Women pray at a separate section, set apart from men. Women of the Wall want to be able to practice the rituals reserved by Orthodox law for men - such as wearing prayer shawls and reading out loud from the Torah, or holy scriptures - in their section.
Women of the Wall
Don't Like Being Tortured
Celebrities
The rapper known as Mos Def volunteered to be force-fed through the nose to bring attention to the force-feeding of 44 detainees on hunger strike at Guantanamo Bay, and he did not like it. In the video of the feeding, he begs the medical team to stop and cries. Yasiin Bey (Mos Def's name) is one of many celebrities who have volunteered to be tortured, only to report to the world that being tortured is horrible. It both draws attention to the suffering of anonymous people and turns their suffering into a spectacle. Does the spectacle help change the conversation?
Reprieve, a group that works with Guantanamo Bay prisoners, made the four-minute video of Bey being force-fed according to the U.S. government's standard operating procedure. The video shows how the pain of force feeding is not fleeting, because they have to stick the tube far into your body to reach your stomach. There is a risk of accidentally putting the tube in your lungs. The feeding lasts about 20 to 30 minutes, but can take up to two hours.
Is it torture? Bey seems to think so. "I really didn't know what to expect," he says. "When the tube went in-at first it's not that bad, but then you get this burning… and it just starts to get really unbearable… like something's going into my brain and it reaches the back of my throat and I really, I really… I really couldn't take it."
Does the world think it's torture? The World Medical Association says it's "unethical, and is never justified."
Will it change anything? We'll see. Bey's video was released when Guantanamo is getting more attention after being mostly ignored for years. It's only weeks after the massive hunger strike forced President Obama to address the problem. Obama will allow detainees from Yemen to return there if they've been cleared for release (86 prisoners were cleared for release three years ago, but can't go home for bureaucratic reasons.)
Celebrities
The Surprising Cause
'Spider Bites'
If the thought of spiders makes your skin crawl, you might find it reassuring that the chances of being bitten by a spider are smaller than you imagine, recent research shows.
Most so-called "spider bites" are not actually spider bites, according to researchers and several recent studies. Instead, "spider bites" are more likely to be bites or stings from other arthropods such as fleas, skin reactions to chemicals or infections, said Chris Buddle, an arachnologist at McGill University in Montreal.
For one thing, spiders tend to avoid people, and have no reason to bite humans because they aren't bloodsuckers and don't feed on humans, Buddle said. "They are far more afraid of us than we are of them," he said. "They're not offensive."
When spider bites do happen, they tend to occur because the eight-legged beasts are surprised -- for example when a person reaches into a glove, shoe or nook that they are occupying at the moment, Buddle said.
'Spider Bites'
Always A Class Act
Rupert
When the world found out Rupert Murdoch and Wendi Deng were getting a divorce after roughly 14 years of marriage, the shocked masses looked for a possible reason the two lovebirds who looked rock-solid on the outside would split. Turns out, it may be a simple...lack of understanding.
There was that ugly rumor of an affair with former Prime Minister Tony Blair that seemed to have legs in the immediate wake of the divorce news. But lo, thanks to The Daily Beast's Tina Brown, we have a different interpretation of their relationship: "I don't understand a word she says," Murdoch allegedly told a friend around 2009, after a decade of marriage. You'd think Murdoch would have picked up on this problem before the couple was already married ten years. If he could barely understand her, what were their famous dinner parties really like?
Brown reports that Murdoch, now a swingin' single on the upstate New York party circuit, grew to see Deng, his third wife, as a "hyper-social irritation with a challenging Chinese accent," before the split. But Brown's reporting does seem to line up with Michael Wolf saying that the couple drifted apart around 2008 or 2009 after she started to get around with "jet-set" types.
That means Murdoch grew tired of hearing about how Deng is an excellent networker with potential media-mogul aspirations of her own in the glowing profiles that came in the later years of their marriage. Those endorsements were almost a complete turnaround from the first half of their matrimonial life, when Deng was routinely called a "gold-digger." But all good things must end, and it seems Murdoch just couldn't understand what his wife, who is 38 years his junior, was saying the whole time they were married.
Rupert
The Guardian Wants Your Help Nabbing Rupert Murdoch in the U.S.
Yahoo Shuts Down
AltaVista
Once up on a time, there was a popular search engine called AltaVista. It lives no more.
On Monday, its owner Yahoo Inc. sent AltaVista.com to the Internet graveyard to rest alongside order-almost-anything venture Kozmo.com and the butler from Ask Jeeves.
Palo Alto, Calif.-based AltaVista was introduced in 1995, three years before Google Inc. was founded. Eclipsed by Google in the early 2000s, AltaVista's star had already faded by the time Yahoo acquired it as part of its $1.7 billion purchase of Overture Services Inc. in July 2003. Overture had bought AltaVista earlier that year from Massachusetts-based CMGI Inc.
Yahoo announced AltaVista's fate on its Tumblr page late last month. Search industry expert Danny Sullivan likened AltaVista to a bright child neglected by its parents.
Yahoo's June 28 announcement of AltaVista's end is brief. It's buried as the eighth item on a list of other services the company is shutting down. Along with the mention of AltaVista's July 8 expiration date, the post says only: "Please visit Yahoo Search for all of your searching needs."
AltaVista
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