Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Lee Camp: The Mind-Blowing Truth About War With Syria (YouTube)
Today I bring you proof that our government has been planning war with Syria for many years, and that proof comes from none other than General Wesley Clark.
Henry Rollins: Live Life, or It Lives You (LA Weekly)
To answer the eternal question: What is the meaning of life? Whatever you say it is. To me, life is an either-or proposition. You live it or it lives you. These are the choices I allow myself. This puts me in an adversarial relationship with life. I have never seen it any other way. Harmony is boring.
Ask a grown-up: why do I get just £1 pocket money a week? (Guardian)
BBC business editor Robert Peston answers six-year-old Ennis's question.
Cindy Donald, As told to Marissa Charles: "Experience: My dad ran me over" (Guardian)
It was a clean break and I was paralysed from the neck down, although I didn't know it at the time.'
Rosanna Greenstreet: "Q&A: Björk" (Guardian)
'What extinct thing would I bring back to life? Female facial hair and tails.'
Interview by Leah Harper: "Elton John: soundtrack of my life" (Guardian)
The singer on the influence of Elvis (and his mum), the brilliance of Bruce Hornsby and Bridge Over Troubled Water, and the musician who always turns the most heads at his famous parties.
Owen Jarus: 19th-Century Samurai Training Text Deciphered (LiveScience)
A training text, used by a martial arts school to teach members of the bushi (samurai) class, has been deciphered, revealing the rules samurai were expected to follow and what it took to truly become a master swordsman.
Chan Teik Onn: "5 Things Everyone Did Growing Up (That Now Get You Arrested)" (Cracked)
#5. Doodling on a Desk
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From The Creator of 'Avery Ant'
In The Chaos Household
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Hot. Humid.
College Houses Endangered Writings
Thomas Paine
He helped inspire the American Revolution, but Thomas Paine suffered a broad range of indignities afterward: Political cartoonists lampooned him, he was denied the right to vote and a coin was minted that pictured him in a noose.
After his death, his body was dug up and lost and the gravesite was paved over.
As for his writings and personal effects, "His archives, like his bones, have been scattered," one scholar said.
But now a historic endangered collection, including first editions of "Common Sense," Paine's eyeglasses and locks of his hair, has found a safe new home at Iona College in the New York City suburbs, barely a mile from what was once Paine's farm.
When the Institute for Thomas Paine Studies formally opens Sept. 9 at Iona, it will be a widely welcomed resolution to a battle over the fate of the memorabilia.
Thomas Paine
Crowd Tops 61,000
Burning Man
A federal official says more than 61,000 people have turned out so far for the weekend Burning Man outdoor art and music festival in the Black Rock Desert of northern Nevada.
U.S. Bureau of Land Management spokesman Mark Turney said Saturday that gate management was tightened Friday when organizers got close to a permitted capacity of 68,000.
He says organizers reported one person was flown to a hospital by medical helicopter this week after being struck by a vehicle.
No other serious incidents have been reported.
Attendance peaked last year at 56,000.
Burning Man
Trees Rebounded After Clean Air Act
Red Cedar
A species of old trees in the Appalachian Mountains is growing faster than expected in the wake of clean-air controls implemented decades ago, a new study shows.
The research on eastern red cedar trees - all between 120 and 500 years old - also showed changes in the types of carbon and sulfur in their tree rings a few years after the Clean Air Act was enacted in 1970.
"The first thing that got us interested was how these old trees are doing, and what are some of the physiological mechanisms that allow the old trees to stay alive," Richard Thomas, a biology researcher at the University of West Virginia, told LiveScience.
"When we saw all this change in growth and the change in isotopes in the early 1980s, the research went into a different direction ... it was like a detective story, almost, trying to eliminate each little thing."
Thomas and his team now aim to broaden their search to more species of trees and a wider geographic area.
Red Cedar
Wedding News
Ashe - Meyers
Here's a weekend update for you: Seth Meyers is married!
The "Saturday Night Live" funnyman and future host of "Late Night," 39, said "I do" to human rights lawyer Alexi Ashe on Martha's Vineyard in Massachusetts.
Us Weekly reports the bride wore a cap sleeve lace dress while Meyers opted for a dark colored suit.
Jason Sudeikis, Allison Williams, Jimmy Fallon, Jack McBrayer, Kristen Wiig, Will Forte, Kenan Thompson, Lorne Michaels, Taran Killam, Andy Samberg, Ali Larter, Olivia Munn, Amy Poehler, Fred Armisen, Rashida Jones, Tony Shaloub, Nick Kroll, and Bill Hader all watched Seth tie the knot.
Ashe's parents own a home on the island and she and Meyers, who met at a wedding and dated for several years before confirming their engagement in July, have visited many times together this summer and in years past.
Ashe - Meyers
Plays Kazakhstan
Kanye West
American hip hop superstar Kanye West was the surprise celebrity guest at the lavish wedding party this weekend in Almaty of the grandson of Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev, Kazakh media reports said Monday.
Aisultan Nazarbayev celebrated his marriage to bride Alima Boranbayeva in a no expense spared party on Saturday night at the Royal Tulip hotel in Almaty, the Tengri news website reported.
The Kazakh media reports did not give any financial details but US celebrity website TMZ said he was paid around $3 million (2.2 million euros) for the private performance.
According to Kazakh media, Aisultan is a 23-year old graduate of the Sandhurst Royal Military Academy in Britain.
Kanye West
Adultery Law Debate
Taiwan
A Taiwanese widow who faced the theoretical possibility of 298 years in jail for an affair with a married man has rekindled the debate over the island's controversial adultery laws.
The woman, 56, who was not herself married during the five-year affair with her neighbour, was told she must serve two years in jail or pay a fine of Tw$730,000 ($24,300).
But court officials said she had faced the possibility of 298 years in jail after judges used confessions from the pair to estimate they had held a total of 894 trysts in various motel rooms.
Under Taiwanese law, each offence was worth up to four months in jail, but judges at the district court in central Changhua county decided to reduce the sentence.
The man, 50, avoided legal punishment altogether after his wife, who had filed the complaint against the duo after learning of the affair, decided to forgive him and drop the lawsuit against him.
Taiwan
Spouse's Voice Easier To Ignore
Selective Hearing
Modern living often forces us into situations of sensory overload involving competing voices on a bustling street or at a crowded cocktail party. The process by which our brains selectively hear or ignore voices and sounds is a fascinating one.
New research from Queen's University suggests that middle-aged couples are able to selectively tune out each other's speech so they can pay greater attention to other people talking.
The study, published in the journal Psychological Science, found that husbands and wives become so familiar with one another's pitch and sound that they can distinguish it from background noise and ignore it if necessary. However, this ability diminished with age.
"Middle-age people can ignore their spouse - older people aren't able to as much," says researcher Ingrid Johnsrude. "The benefit of familiarity is very large."
Johnsrude and her colleagues asked married couples, aged 44-79, to record themselves reading scripted instructions out loud. Later, each participant put on a pair of headphones and listened to the recording of his or her spouse as it played simultaneously with a recording of an unfamiliar voice.
Selective Hearing
Agents Plumb Database
Hemisphere Project
For at least six years, federal drug and other agents have had near-immediate access to billions of phone call records dating back decades in a collaboration with AT&T that officials have taken pains to keep secret, newly released documents show.
The program, previously reported by ABC News and The New York Times, is called the Hemisphere Project. It's paid for by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration and the Office of National Drug Control Policy, and it allows investigators armed with subpoenas to quickly mine the company's vast database to help track down drug traffickers or other suspects who switch cellphones to avoid detection.
The federal government pays the salaries of four AT&T employees who work in three federal anti-drug offices around the country to expedite subpoena requests, an Obama administration official told the AP on Monday. The official spoke on the condition of anonymity because he or she was not authorized to discuss the program, and said that two of the AT&T employees are based at the High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area office in Atlanta, one at the HIDTA office in Houston, and one at the office in Los Angeles.
To keep the program secret, investigators who request searches of the database are instructed to "never refer to Hemisphere in any official document," one of the slides noted. Agents are told that when they obtain information through a Hemisphere program subpoena, they should "wall off" the program by filing a duplicative subpoena directly to target's phone company or by simply writing that the information was obtained through an AT&T subpoena.
Hemisphere Project
'Secret' Club
Ultra-Frequent Flyers
Airlines have long rewarded loyal customers-particularly business travelers who spend thousands on their seats-with a variety of upgrade perks and other special treatment. For the most part, the key to joining this exclusive group is to belong to an airline's frequent flyer program and rack up enough annual miles to qualify for the desired status level. Air Canada's Altitude program, for example, offers priority check-in and airport lounge passes to flyers who accumulate anywhere from 25,000 qualifying miles or 25 flight segments within a year. Meanwhile, the airline's Super Elite travelers, with more than 100,000 miles, get priority security clearance and generous upgrade opportunities, among other perks.
But at many global airlines there's a whole other level of frequent flyer exclusivity-one that's largely unadvertised and can't be attained simply by amassing the requisite number of miles. These are secret, invitation-only programs that, according to a recent article in the Wall Street Journal, employ a dedicated staff to track members' itineraries and try to address problems before they occur. That can include anything from re-booking a cancelled or delayed flight without being asked (while possibly bumping an unsuspecting lesser passenger in the process) to sending someone to the dry cleaners to pick up a suit. The newspaper was recently given a rare inside look at United Airline's version of a such a program, called Global Services. The story recounts a mother and daughter who were whisked between connecting flights at Chicago's O'Hare airport in a Mercedes. No need to even set foot in the terminal.
How to become part of such an exclusive club is the subject of much online discussion. Some believe it's based on total number of miles flown. Others say it has more to do with how many of those miles are in business class. Still others claim all that matters is how much money passengers spend on their tickets. The airlines, which acknowledge the existence of the programs, but offer few details, seem to enjoy cultivating an air of mystery around the whole subject-perhaps because it entices other frequent flyer members to keep striving to achieve a more exalted status.
Ultra-Frequent Flyers
Spanish Film Storms U.S. Box Office
"Instructions Not Included"
"Instructions Not Included," a Spanish-language film with English subtitles, generated $10 million in ticket sales over the four-day Labor Day weekend, a record for a Spanish film in the United States and a sign of the potential the Hispanic market represents for Hollywood.
The film, which stars 52-year-old Mexican TV star Eugenio Derbez as an Acapulco playboy forced to raise a baby girl left on his doorstep, ranked fifth among films in U.S. theaters, despite opening in scant 347 theaters, according to Hollywood.com.
As a result, it generated average ticket sales of $28,818 per screen, more than four times the average of "Lee Daniels' The Butler," the weekend's top film.
The movie is distributed by Pantelion, a joint venture of Hollywood studio Lionsgate Entertainment and Mexican media giant Televisa that intends to tap the Hispanic American moviegoing audience that last year bought 10.9 million tickets or 26 percent of all tickets sold, according to the industry group Motion Picture Association of America.
The biggest-selling Spanish-language film in the United States ever is "Pan's Labyrinth," a horror film directed by Spain's Guillermo del Toro, that opened in early 2007 with $4.5 million on its first weekend and totaled $83 million in worldwide sales, according to movie site Box Office Mojo.
"Instructions Not Included"
Weekend Box Office
"Lee Daniels' The Butler"
In the end, Hollywood made it through a precarious minefield of summer box-office bombs with a heftier wallet. The summer concluded with a record $4.7 billion in box-office revenue despite much maligned flops like "The Lone Ranger," ''After Earth" and "White House Down."
The summer movie season closed out on Labor Day weekend as the boy band concert film "One Direction: This Is Us" took in an estimated $18 million from Friday to Monday for Sony Pictures, according to studio estimates Monday. That wasn't enough to unseat the Weinstein Co. historical drama "Lee Daniels' The Butler," which stayed on top for the third week with $20 million.
It was a positive note on which to end a tumultuous but profitable summer for Hollywood. More than ever before, the industry packed the summer months with big-budget blockbusters that ranged from the hugely successful "Iron Man 3" to the disastrous "The Lone Ranger." Though the movie business has always been one of hits and misses, this summer brought particular attention to some big whiffs.
Yet the box office saw a 10.2 percent increase in revenue over last summer (not accounting for inflation), with attendance rising 6.6 percent. A portion of the revenue bump could be attributed to rising ticket prices which, on average, went up 27 cents from last year.
Estimated ticket sales for Friday through Monday at U.S. and Canadian theaters, according to Hollywood.com. Where available, latest international numbers for Friday through Sunday are also included. Final domestic figures will be released on Tuesday.
1. "Lee Daniels' The Butler," $20 million.
2. "One Direction: This Is Us," $18 million ($14.5 million international).
3. "We're the Millers," $15.9 million ($10.9 million international).
4. "Planes," $10.7 million ($7.9 million international).
5. "Instructions Not Included," $10 million.
6. "Elysium," $8.3 million ($17.9 million international).
7. "Mortal Instruments," $6.8 million ($9.2 million international).
8. "The World's End," $6.1 million ($410,000 international).
9. "Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters," $6.1 million ($11.4 million international).
10. "Getaway," $5.5 million.
"Lee Daniels' The Butler"
In Memory
Tommy Morrison
Tommy Morrison's career reached its pinnacle on a hot June night in Las Vegas, when he stepped into the ring and beat George Foreman to become heavyweight champion.
It reached its nadir when he tested positive for HIV three years later.
The last 20 years of the brash boxer's life would be defined by extensive legal troubles, erratic behavior and mounting health problems. Morrison would later claim that he never tested positive for the virus that causes AIDs, even as he was hospitalized during the last days of his life.
Morrison died Sunday night at a Nebraska hospital. He was 44.
His longtime promoter and close friend, Tony Holden, confirmed that ''the Duke'' had died, but his family would not disclose the cause of death. Morrison and his wife, Trisha, continued to deny that the former champion ever had HIV during the final years of his life.
''Tommy's a very stubborn person and he views things the way he wants to view things. That's his right and privilege,'' Holden said. ''All through his career, him and I would come not to physical blows but disagreements on certain things. We always ended up friends. That was Tommy.
''That's the way Tommy took off after he was told he was HIV-positive,'' Holden added. ''When he first was told, I was taking him to seek treatment and to different doctors around the country. And then he started research on the Internet and started saying it was a conspiracy. He went in that direction and never looked back.''
Morrison was a prodigious puncher whose bid to fight in the 1988 Seoul Olympics ended at the hands of Ray Mercer, who later dealt him his first professional loss. Along the way, Morrison became such a recognizable face that he was cast in ''Rocky V'' alongside Sylvester Stallone.
Morrison won his first 28 professional fights, beating faded champions such as Pinklon Thomas along the way. He hit it big at the Thomas & Mack Center in the summer of 1993 - a unanimous decision over Foreman, then in the midst of his comeback - to claim a vacant world title.
Morrison was in line for a high-profile bout with Lennox Lewis when he was upset by unheralded fighter Michael Bentt in Tulsa, Okla., not far from where Morrison was raised. He was knocked down three times and the fight was called before the first round ended.
He had already run afoul of the law in 1993, when he pleaded guilty to assaulting a college student. He also dealt with weapons charges and multiple DUI incidents over the years.
Morrison was finally sentenced to two years in prison in 2000, and another year was added to his sentence in 2002 for violating parole.
When he was released, Morrison said his HIV tests were in fact false positives, and he wanted to resume his career. He passed medical tests in Arizona - even as Nevada stood by its decision to suspend his license - and returned to the ring. Morrison fought twice more in his career, winning once in West Virginia and for the final time in Mexico. He finished with a record of 48-3-1 with 42 knockouts.
Tommy Morrison
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