Recommended Reading
from Bruce
How to Wash a Cat (Motley News)
Instructions by the Dog.
Alex Hern: The internet is broken. You can blame sharks. And Netflix (Guardian)
Don't panic, the situation isn't as awful as it sounds, but online space is running out and undersea creatures are nibbling at some very important cables.
Fiora Carr: My drink was spiked. The next day the questions began… (Guardian)
The focus wasn't on my would-be attacker, but on me and my conduct.
Are people really calling their baby girls Khaleesi? (Guardian)
According to a new survey, it appears that they are - much to the chagrin of hardcore Game of Thrones fans.
Luisa Dillner: Does a daily aspirin prevent cancer? (Guardian)
A study suggests that an aspirin a day can help prevent colon, oesophagus and stomach cancers. So should we all be self-medicating?
Laura Barnett: Did I really stink? How actors cope with a critical mauling (Guardian)
Meera Syal ignores them, John Hurt gets drunk and writes to them, Peter Egan thinks he's fair game ... Five actors tell us how they respond to the critics.
Diana Rigg: No Turn Unstoned review - a gossipy whizz through theatre criticism (Guardian)
The star of The Avengers and Game of Thrones is a warm and genial presence as she revisits actors' worst reviews - including her own, writes Lyn Gardner.
John Crace: Adultery by Paulo Coelho - digested read (Guardian)
'Sometimes, we need to hurt ourselves to heal ourselves …' The message of the Brazilian guru's novel of sexual discovery is distilled in 700 words.
27 Photos That Demonstrate The Power Of Makeup (San Francisco Globe)
At the SF Globe, we are always on the look out for incredible photos. This set is no exception. The following pictures no doubt demonstrate the skill and talent of the makeup artist.
David Bruce's Amazon Author Page
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David Bruce has approximately 50 Kindle books on Amazon.com.
wrote:
took the day off.
has retired(?).
Reader Suggestion
Michelle in AZ
David E Suggests
David
Thanks, Dave!
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
Hotter. More humid.
Anybody know what the time-lag is between the Google car driving by your house and when the updated view is online?
Anti-Keystone XL Pipeline Concert
Willie Nelson & Neil Young
Willie Nelson and Neil Young will headline a concert next month in a Nebraska cornfield organized by opponents of a proposed pipeline that would carry oil from Canada south to the Gulf Coast.
Bold Nebraska said Monday the concert will be held Sept. 27 on a farm near Neligh in northeast Nebraska. Tickets go on sale Wednesday.
Earlier this year, protesters carved an anti-pipeline message into the cornfield, which is in the path of TransCanada's proposed Keystone XL pipeline.
TransCanada has said the pipeline will have upgraded safety measures and should be allowed. The company has already built and is operating the southern leg of the pipeline between Oklahoma and Texas.
Willie Nelson & Neil Young
Screen Actors Guild Life Achievement Award
Debbie Reynolds
The Screen Actors Guild is honouring Debbie Reynolds for her professional and humanitarian accomplishments.
The guild announced Monday that the 82-year-old entertainer will receive the 2014 SAG Life Achievement Award at the Screen Actors Guild Awards ceremony in January. The award is the union's highest accolade.
Reynolds is a star of stage and screen, with more than 50 films, two Broadway shows and two TV series to her credit. In 1955, she and other young stars established a charity called The Thalians to fight the stigma of mental illness. The Thalians has since raised more than $30 million.
The 21st annual SAG Awards will be presented Jan. 25 at Los Angeles' Shrine Exhibition Center.
Debbie Reynolds
Announcers Decide
Washington
Two influential NFL voices - including CBS lead analyst Phil Simms, who will handle Washington's Week 4 game - said Monday they likely won't use the term "Redskins" when discussing the franchise.
Simms will work the Thursday night package the network acquired this season and will have Giants-Redskins on Sept. 25. He isn't taking sides in the debate over whether Washington's nickname is offensive or racist. But he says he is sensitive to the complaints about the name, and his instincts now are to not use Redskins in his announcing.
NBC's Tony Dungy, one of the most prominent voices in the league as a Super Bowl-winning coach and now as a studio commentator, plans to take the same route as Simms.
"I will personally try not to use Redskins and refer to them as Washington," Dungy said in an email. "Personal opinion for me, not the network."
CBS is allowing its announcers to decide on their own whether to call the team the Redskins. So is Fox, which handles the NFC and will televise most of Washington's games.
Washington
Production Surges
Bourbon
In a business where patience is part of the process, Kentucky bourbon makers are making a big bet by stashing away their largest stockpiles in more than a generation.
Large companies are banking on continued international demand from places such as China and a culture in the U.S. that currently has a taste for bourbon, which has to be aged at least two years in new charred oak barrels.
Last year, Kentucky distilleries filled 1.2 million barrels of bourbon - the most since 1970, according to the Kentucky Distillers' Association. Inventory has topped 5 million barrels for the first time since 1977, the group said.
Production has surged by more than 150 percent in the past 15 years in Kentucky - home to 95 percent of the world's bourbon production.
In the U.S., total revenues for bourbon and Tennessee whiskey reached $2.4 billion last year, a 10.2 percent increase, according to the Distilled Spirits Council. Volume was up nearly 7 percent to 18 million cases, it said. The two spirits claimed 34 percent of the U.S. whiskey market in 2013, putting it ahead of the Canadian, Scotch, blended and Irish whiskey categories.
Bourbon
Solar Plant Scorches Birds Mid-Air
"Streamers"
Workers at a state-of-the-art solar plant in the Mojave Desert have a name for birds that fly through the plant's concentrated sun rays - "streamers," for the smoke plume that comes from birds that ignite in midair.
Federal wildlife investigators who visited the BrightSource Energy plant last year and watched as birds burned and fell, reporting an average of one "streamer" every two minutes, are urging California officials to halt the operator's application to build a still-bigger version.
The investigators want the halt until the full extent of the deaths can be assessed. Estimates per year now range from a low of about a thousand by BrightSource to 28,000 by an expert for the Center for Biological Diversity environmental group.
The $2.2 billion plant, which launched in February, is at Ivanpah Dry Lake near the California-Nevada border. The operator says it's the world's biggest plant to employ so-called power towers.
More than 300,000 mirrors, each the size of a garage door, reflect solar rays onto three boiler towers each looming up to 40 stories high. The water inside is heated to produce steam, which turns turbines that generate enough electricity for 140,000 homes.
"Streamers"
Challengers Reject Map Revisions
Florida
Plaintiffs in a lawsuit over gerrymandering in Florida's congressional districts on Monday asked a state judge to reject the Republican-controlled legislature's revised map.
Circuit Court Judge Terry Lewis should also deny the state's claim that special elections cannot be held this year in the redrawn districts, argued a coalition led by the League of Women Voters of Florida and Common Cause in court filings.
The legislature approved minor changes to seven of Florida's 27 congressional districts last week in a hastily convened special session.
In July Lewis ruled the legislature's 2012 redistricting plan "made a mockery" of anti-gerrymandering provisions in the state's constitution. The judge ordered revised maps and asked state elections supervisors to provide a schedule for a possible special election.
The map revisions proposed by the plaintiffs were far more sweeping than the legislature's plan, drawn up in private by Republican leaders.
Florida
Disowns KKK Fundraiser
KKK
Last week, a so-called Imperial Wizard for the Ku Klux Klan sent an email soliciting funds for Darren Wilson, the Ferguson police officer who shot and killed Michael Brown. The email was sent by Charles "Chuck" Murray, who says he is the director of the New Empire Knights in South Carolina.
The email was obtained by Hatewatch, a blog by the Southern Poverty Law Center :
We are setting up a reward/fund for the police officer who shot this thug. He is a hero! We need more white cops who are anti-Zog and willing to put Jewish controlled black thugs in their place. Most cops are cowards and do nothing while 90% of interracial crime is black (and non-white) on white."
It's not surprising that an organization known for their hatred of African Americans would unequivocally support a white police officer who has killed one, as the Klan demonizes the black community as a threat to law and order. However, this grab for publicity and fundraising was distasteful even to others in the Klan. Other top officials affiliated with the Klan are not supporting the effort, causing a rift within the community.
The fundraising email is actually in violation of the traditional Klan constitution, according to another Imperial Wizard, Frank Ancona. Ancona leads the Traditionalist American Knights, one of the largest branches of the KKK, approaching 10,000 members in the lower 48 states. Their headquarters are in Missouri.
The KKK is split into many smaller subdivisions, explained Ancona, and often times, banished members of a larger branch will attempt to start their own. Ancona believes this is the case with Murray, who is not even known to the Traditionalist American Knights.
KKK
More Freshmen From Outside State
California
This fall more than a fifth of all University of California freshmen will come from out of state, providing the system with an estimated $400 million in extra revenue.
Each student from outside California and the United States will pay $23,000 more in tuition than those from in-state, the Los Angeles Times reported Sunday (http://lat.ms/1n0ehpo ). That extra revenue helps support the education of Californians, according to officials.
Among the freshman classes at the system's nine undergraduate campuses, UCLA has the highest percentage of students from out of state, with 30.1 percent. At UC Berkeley, 29.8 percent of freshmen are not from California. UC San Diego has 28.4 percent.
UC began aggressively increasing the numbers of non-California undergraduates five years ago to offset reductions in state support and a freeze on in-state tuition, the Times said.
Although critics contend it hurts Californians and reduces political support for the campuses, UC officials insist no state residents are being pushed out to make room for these students (cough, cough). The $23,000 non-Californians pay on top of the regular $12,192 tuition will provide about 6 percent of UC's core educational budget and help maintain classes and financial aid for Californians, administrators said.
California
World's 'Most Pierced Man'
Rolf Buchholz
The world's most pierced man says he was not allowed to enter the United Arab Emirates because of his appearance and suspicion that he was involved in "black magic."
Rolf Buchholz, who holds the Guinness Book of World Records for his 453 piercings on his body and has horns implanted into his head, was attempting to enter the UAE to perform at the Cirque Le Soir nightclub at Dubai's Fairmont Hotel on Friday.
Buchholz said never got an official explanation as to why he was denied entry, but he tweeted that he told he was suspected of "black magic."
Although Buchholz got past passport control, he was stopped where carry-on luggage was scanned where authorities took his passport which wasn't returned to him until he was back in Germany.
Rolf Buchholz
In Memory
Don Pardo
Don Pardo, the durable television and radio announcer whose booming baritone became as much a part of the cultural landscape as the shows and products he touted, died Monday in Arizona. He was 96.
Few recognized the face of Pardo, a handsome man with a strong chin and confident smile. But Pardo's majestic delivery, with its swoops in pitch and pregnant pauses, graced newscasts, game shows and TV programs for more than 60 years. During the original version of "Jeopardy!," his answers to the question, "Tell 'em what they've won, Don Pardo," became a memorable part of the program.
During his career, Pardo's resonant voice-over style was widely imitated and became the standard in the field. His was no ordinary voice and he guarded it closely, with cough drops always at the ready.
Dominick George Pardo was born in Westfield, Massachusetts, on Feb. 22, 1918, and grew up in Norwich, Connecticut.
His father, Dominick, owned a small bakery and had wanted his son to join the business. But Pardo followed his own dream and, after graduating from Boston's Emerson College in 1942, began his vocal career at radio station WJAR in Providence, Rhode Island.
Two years later, he met a supervisor at NBC who hired the young Pardo immediately upon hearing his voice. He moved to NBC's New York affiliate, and never left the network.
Pardo made his mark right away, reading news dispatches on the radio filed from the front lines during World War II. After the war, he became an announcer for such shows as the "Arthur Murray Party," ''Colgate Comedy Hour" and "Your Show of Shows."
In 1954, he was brought in to announce "Winner Takes All," beginning a long run in game shows. His voice was heard on the "The Price is Right" in its early years, and he was the announcer on the original "Jeopardy!" (1964-75), hosted by Art Fleming.
Then in 1975, NBC launched "Saturday Night Live" with Pardo as its announcer, introducing him to a new generation of viewers with a voice as magnificent as ever - although, on opening night, he botched one of the credits. Instead of saying "The Not Ready for Prime Time Players," Pardo introduced the show's new comedy troupe as "The Not for Ready Prime Time Players." But with a voice like his, any name sounded impressive.
Aside from Season 7, when he was displaced, Pardo remained the "SNL" announcer for decades.
He also introduced sportscaster Len Berman's "Spanning the World" compilations of funny sports moments, a regular feature on the "Today" show. ("Tune in next time ... if there IS a next time.")
In between working on all these shows, Pardo often spent several hours a day in an NBC sound studio, letting viewers know before each break to a commercial that the last program was brought to them by a certain advertiser. As such, he was one of the last network "booth announcers" working a regular daily shift, a classic broadcasting duty that fell prey to the modern age of easily pre-recorded messages.
Pardo retired from NBC in 2004.
"But Lorne Michaels called me soon after and asked if I would continue for three more weeks, so I did," Pardo told the AP in 2010. "Then he called and asked if I would do five more, and so on. I never really left."
For several years, Pardo commuted from Tucson each week the show aired. He arrived to open the show in Rockefeller Center's fabled Studio 8H, just as he had always done, then caught a returning flight. At the end of the show on Feb. 23, 2008, he was brought on camera to blow out the candles of a birthday cake in celebration of his 90th birthday.
In later years, he recorded his introductions from home.
During his career, Pardo appeared in several movies, mostly as himself or an announcer like himself, including "Radio Days," Woody Allen's celebration of the Golden Age of broadcasting, in which Pardo played a game show host. He also made a guest appearance on Frank Zappa's 1978 album, "Zappa in New York," and "Weird Al" Yankovic's 1984 album, "In 3-D."
In 2010, he was inducted into the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences' Hall of Fame.
Pardo is survived by five children.
Don Pardo
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