Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Anna North: If You Read This, You Might Never Drink a Latte Again (NY Times)
Lattes have a lot to answer for. To some, drinking one makes you a snob. To others, it makes you a spendthrift. But neither of these perceptions may be particularly accurate - and in fact, the latte can tell us a lot about how America thinks about food, work and money.
Paul Krugman: The Empiricist Strikes Back (NY Times)
If climate change doesn't scare you, and our failure to act doesn't inspire despair, you're not paying attention. And the great sin of the climate deniers is their role in delaying action, quite possibly until it's too late. But there are other, smaller evils; and one that strikes close to home for me is the campaign of personal destruction waged against Michael Mann.
Paul Krugman: Phosphorus and Freedom (NY Times)
Free markets can't solve all our problems. Just ask Toledo.
Marc Dion: King of the World on $14 an Hour (Creators Syndicate)
The minimum wage, federal or state, did not come down from the mountain with Moses. It is not engraved on tablets of stone. It is merely printed on the blue and white paper of depressed little paychecks all over America. It's the kind of paycheck you cash in a bar or in one of those check-cashing storefronts specifically designed make money off people you would swear had no more to give.
Robert Evans, Mark Hipwood: 5 Insane Things I Learned as a Foreign Aid Worker (Cracked)
In a world full of people whose concept of charity extends only to forwarding inspirational Facebook messages, it's impressive to hear of people who actually fly across the world and spend years of their lives living with the needy people they're trying to help. And we're here to tell you, that shit is even harder than it sounds.
Rohan Ramakrishnan: The 5 Most Famous Musicians Who Are Thieving Bastards (Cracked)
Every artist "steals" a little, whether they realize it or not. For instance, we talk about how some musician was "influenced" by music they grew up with, even if sometimes that influence consists of outright stealing and/or barely remixing a classic. That's just the way it works. But sometimes, it's even more blatant than that. In fact, some of the most successful musical acts in history based huge chunks of their careers entirely on plagiarism.
Rogeting: why 'sinister buttocks' are creeping into students' essays (Guardian)
In an attempt to get away with plagiarising their work, unscrupulous students are using a thesaurus app to ring the changes on essays copy-and-pasted from the internet. The results are often hilariously inept.
Dennis Hayes: Let's Stop Trying To Teach Students Critical Thinking (The Conversation)
Many teachers say they strive to teach their students to be critical thinkers. They even pride themselves on it; after all, who wants children to just take in knowledge passively? But there is a problem with the widespread treatment of critical thinking as a skill to be taught.
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"Doug's Most Shared Facebook Post" Today
wrote:
took the day off.
has retired(?).
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.
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
Late.
Finds $1 Million Baseball Trove
"Antiques Roadshow"
The PBS series "Antiques Roadshow" says it hit a home run with a collection of 1870s Boston baseball memorabilia.
A trove of signatures and rare baseball cards from Boston Red Stockings players was appraised at $1 million for insurance purposes, series producer Marsha Bemko said.
She said it's the largest sports memorabilia find in the history of the 19-year-old public TV show, which travels America looking for varied heirlooms and treasures.
The collection was brought to an "Antiques Roadshow" taping Saturday in New York City. The owner inherited it from her great-great-grandmother, who ran a Boston boarding house where the team lived in 1871-72, PBS said.
According to "Antiques Roadshow" appraiser Leila Dunbar, the "crown jewel" of the items is a May 1871 letter to the Boston landlady that includes notes from three future Hall of Fame members: Albert Spalding, the future sporting good magnate, and brothers Harry and George Wright. The letter included the players' appreciation for their host's cooking.
"Antiques Roadshow"
Acclaimed Documentary Causing Controversy
High School Students
A group of high school students and fresh graduates recently released a documentary about vaccinations after realizing that their community in California had decreasing rates of vaccination compliance, according to PBS. The documentary, which was made by a group of 16 students while they attended Carlsbad High School, is receiving high praise.
The 42-minute film explores "the science of disease and the risks facing a society that is under-vaccinated," according to the outlet. However, even before its release, the film garnered its fair share of controversy.
Despite scientific evidence proving there is no correlation between autism and vaccines, as the students prepared to debut their film months ago, they received vocal opposition from groups who believe otherwise, according to The Los Angeles Times. The groups called the film a piece of propaganda accused the students of taking bribes from pharmaceutical companies.
Top of Form 1
Bottom of Form 1
But the film has elicited support from physicians.
Some of the students making the film initially believed that vaccines could be linked to autism. However, throughout the filmmaking process, they changed their minds, according to the outlet.
High School Students
Unable to Serve on Gaza Rights U.N. Probe
Amal Alamuddin
George Clooney wasn't totally joking when he said he's marrying up.
Amal Alamuddin, who is reportedly set to wed the Oscar-winning actor next month, was chosen for the U.N.'s three-member commission to look into possible violations of the rules of war in Gaza.
The 36-year-old Alamuddin is a London-based international law specialist and former legal adviser to the prosecutor of the Special Tribunal for Lebanon.
"There are various reports published today stating that I have been appointed as one of three members of the UN Commission of Inquiry for Gaza," the British barrister said in a written statement Monday. "I am horrified by the situation in the occupied Gaza Strip, particularly the civilian casualties that have been caused, and strongly believe that there should be an independent investigation and accountability for crimes that have been committed."
Alamuddin, who specializes in international law, human rights, extradition, and criminal law, concluded: "I was contacted by the UN about this for the first time this morning. I am honoured to have received the offer, but given existing commitments - including eight ongoing cases - unfortunately could not accept this role. I wish my colleagues who will serve on the commission courage and strength in their endeavors."
Amal Alamuddin
Separated at Birth
Twins
Jim Lewis and Jim Springer were identical twins raised apart from the age of 4 weeks. When the twins were finally reunited at the age of 39 in 1979, they discovered they both suffered from tension headaches, were prone to nail biting, smoked Salem cigarettes, drove the same type of car and even vacationed at the same beach in Florida.
The culprit for the odd similarities? Genes.
Genes can help explain why someone is gay or straight, religious or not, brainy or not, and even whether they're likely to develop gum disease, one psychologist explains.
Such broad-ranging genetic effects first came to light in a landmark study - Minnesota Twin Family Study - conducted from 1979 to 1999, which followed identical and fraternal twins who were separated at an early age.
"We were surprised by certain behaviors that showed a genetic influence, such as religiosity [and] social attitudes," said Nancy Segal, an evolutionary psychologist at California State University, Fullerton, who was part of the study for nine years. "Those surprised us, because we thought those certainly must come from the family [environment]," Segal told Live Science. Segal described the groundbreaking research on Aug. 7 here at a meeting of the American Psychological Association.
Twins
Weasel
GlennBeck
Attorneys for U.S. television commentator Glenn Beck (R-Unprincipled) on Monday asked a judge to dismiss a lawsuit charging their client with defamation for wrongly accusing a victim of the Boston Marathon bombing of being the "money man" behind the attack.
The plaintiff, Saudi Arabian national Abdulrahman Alharbi, 21, had been present at the race's crowded finish line on April 15, 2013, when two homemade pressure-cooker bombs ripped through the crowd and was injured.
He was briefly investigated by federal authorities who concluded within days that he played no role in the largest mass-casualty attack on U.S. soil since Sept. 11, 2001. Federal prosecutors now contend that a pair of ethnic Chechen brothers, Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev, carried out the bombing.
Attorneys for Beck and his media company, The Blaze Inc, argued that by granting interviews to media outlets after being cleared of suspicion by federal officials, Alharbi made himself a "limited purpose public figure" subject to higher levels of scrutiny than a private citizen.
Alharbi's attorney, Peter Haley, said that Beck showed malice by continuing to claim the Saudi exchange student was responsible for the attacks even after he was cleared.
GlennBeck
Heirs Demand $2 Billion Payday
'Aunt Jemima'
Relatives of the woman who became "Aunt Jemima" are suing Pepsi and Quaker Oats for more than $2 billion, accusing those and other brands of denying that their great grandmother was once a Quaker Oats employee.
The Chicago Tribune reports that D.W. Hunter is filing a class-action lawsuit against Pepsi, Quaker Oats, Pinnacle Foods and Hillshire Brands. Hunter is filing the suit on behalf of all of the great grandchildren of Anna Short Harrington, who took on the pre-existing character of Aunt Jemima in 1935.
Hunter alleges that the companies conspired to deny that Harrington had been an employee of Quaker Oats, all the while exploiting her image and recipes for profit, while refusing to pay an "equitable fair share of royalties" to her heirs for more than 60 years.
The defendants allegedly received a death certificate from Quaker Oats that listed Harrington as her employer, despite the company's reported denial of said employment.
The suit, which was filed Aug. 5 in Chicago, also alleges that Harrington was "dissuaded from using a lawyer, exploiting her lack of education and age, so that the company could not pay her a percentage of sales from her recipes."
'Aunt Jemima'
Professor Resigns
Navy
A U.S. Naval War College professor has resigned following an investigation into a complaint that he took a racy photo that wound up online.
John Schindler voluntarily resigned his post as a professor of national security affairs, effective Aug. 29, a college spokeswoman said Monday. The former National Security Agency intelligence analyst has been on administrative leave since late June.
A May text message conversation with a photo of a penis and Schindler's name atop it was circulated in June on Twitter. It was unclear who sent it and who posted it. A blogger sent a complaint to college administrators in Newport, and the college's president ordered an investigation.
Schindler has been critical of National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden and others and frequently engaged in heated exchanges with critics on Twitter. He did not immediately return telephone and email messages from The Associated Press on Monday. He previously refused to discuss the photo, citing legal reasons.
College spokeswoman Cmdr. Kelly Brannon declined to say what the investigators concluded. She said Schindler was told of the findings in late July and of possible outcomes. He had seven days to respond before an official decision was made, and he voluntarily submitted his resignation, she said.
Navy
Books Pulled
Megapastor
The nation's second largest Christian book retailer has pulled megachurch pastor Mark Driscoll's books from its website and 186 stores.
Leaders at the Southern Baptist Convention's LifeWay Christian Resources, informed stores on Friday to stop selling books by the Seattle pastor who has been in hot water.
Driscoll has been an influential but edgy pastor within conservative evangelical circles for several years. His Mars Hill Church attracts some 14,000 people at 15 locations across five states. He has been provocative, occasionally profane and has faced allegations of plagiarism and inflating book sales.
Driscoll recently admitted to and apologized for crude comments he made about feminism, homosexuality and "sensitive emasculated" men on an online discussion forum under the pseudonym "William Wallace II."
Blogger Warren Throckmorton, who broke the news, has also reported allegations from former ministers that Driscoll publicly asked their wives about their favorite sexual position.
Megapastor
Can Keep Court Orders Secret
NSA
The U.S. government need not turn over a secret surveillance court's orders or the names of phone companies helping it collect call records, because it might reveal methods needed to protect national security, a federal judge decided on Monday.
U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers in Oakland, California, rejected the Electronic Frontier Foundation's argument that the U.S. Department of Justice should turn over the materials, in the wake of unauthorized disclosures last year by a former National Security Agency contractor, Edward Snowden.
The EFF noted that the government had already declassified hundreds of pages of other documents discussing data collection under the U.S. Patriot Act, including some that the data privacy advocacy group had requested. These declassifications came after Snowden's leaks had been revealed.
Rogers, though, said disclosing orders of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which handles federal requests for surveillance warrants, could "provide a roadmap" for targets of national security investigations to evade surveillance.
The EFF had also argued that statements by people affiliated with the government, including a former member of a technology review panel who said "telephone companies like Sprint, Verizon, and AT&T" were required to turn over records to the NSA, justified the disclosures.
NSA
Amtrak Passenger Lists
DEA
The Drug Enforcement Administration paid an Amtrak secretary $854,460 over nearly 20 years to obtain confidential information about train passengers, which the DEA could have lawfully obtained for free through a law enforcement network, The Associated Press has learned.
The employee was not publicly identified except as a "secretary to a train and engine crew" in a report on the incident by Amtrak's inspector general. The secretary was allowed to retire, rather than face administrative discipline, after the discovery that the employee had effectively been acting as an informant who "regularly" sold private passenger information since 1995 without Amtrak's approval, according to a one-paragraph summary of the matter.
On Monday, the office of Amtrak Inspector General Tom Howard declined to identify the secretary or say why it took so long to uncover the payments. Howard's report on the incident concluded, "We suggested policy changes and other measures to address control weaknesses that Amtrak management is considering." DEA spokeswoman Dawn Dearden declined to comment.
Passenger name reservation information is collected by airlines, rail carriers and others and generally includes a passenger's name, the names of other passengers traveling with them, the dates of the ticket and travel, frequent flier or rider information, credit card numbers, emergency contact information, travel itinerary, baggage information, passport number, date of birth, gender and seat number.
DEA
Derides NBC
Chris Wallace
Fox News Sunday's Chris Wallace derided NBC's "lousy" treatment of "Meet the Press" host David Gregory (R-Turdblossom's Favorite Dance Partner), saying the network is leaving him "twisting in the wind" by not being clear about his job security.
Gregory has suffered rampant speculation that he may be on his way out. A recent Daily Beast column questioned whether NBC offered a strong enough denial of a report by the New York Post's Page Six that Gregory's days are numbered.
Wallace, a former moderator of "Meet the Press," said NBC was mistreating his fellow Sunday morning show host.
"We all understand we don't have a right to these jobs," Wallace said on Fox News' "MediaBuzz" Sunday. "It's a tremendous privilege. On the other hand I think we do have a right to be treated properly and not shabbily. And if you're going to get rid of David Gregory - and I don't know that they are, I have no inside information - then they oughta just do it."
"But this kind of twisting in the wind… it's unseemly," he said. "They oughta either say 'He's our guy and we're sticking with him,' or they should get rid of him. But they shouldn't put him in this limbo."
Chris Wallace
In Memory
Robin Williams
Robin Williams, the Academy Award winner and comic supernova whose explosions of pop culture riffs and impressions dazzled audiences for decades and made him a gleamy-eyed laureate for the Information Age, died Monday in an apparent suicide. He was 63.
From his breakthrough in the late 1970s as the alien in the hit TV show "Mork and Mindy," through his standup act and such films as "Good Morning, Vietnam," the short, barrel-chested Williams ranted and shouted as if just sprung from solitary confinement. Loud, fast, manic, he parodied everyone from John Wayne to Keith Richards, impersonating a Russian immigrant as easily as a pack of Nazi attack dogs.
He was a riot in drag in "Mrs. Doubtfire," or as a cartoon genie in "Aladdin." He won his Academy Award in a rare, but equally intense dramatic role, as a teacher in the 1997 film "Good Will Hunting."
Like so many funnymen, he had serious ambitions, winning his Oscar for his portrayal of an empathetic therapist in "Good Will Hunting." He also played for tears in "Awakenings," ''Dead Poets Society" and "What Dreams May Come," something that led New York Times critic Stephen Holden to once say he dreaded seeing the actor's "Humpty Dumpty grin and crinkly moist eyes."
Williams also won three Golden Globes, for "Good Morning, Vietnam," ''Mrs. Doubtfire" and "The Fisher King."
His other film credits included Robert Altman's "Popeye", Paul Mazursky's "Moscow on the Hudson," Steven Spielberg's "Hook" and Woody Allen's "Deconstructing Harry." On stage, Williams joined fellow comedian Steve Martin in a 1988 Broadway revival of "Waiting for Godot."
Robin Williams
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