Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Largest Mural on Inhabited Building (Fubiz.net)
"CitéCréation, a French art firm, claims to have composed the largest mural in the world. It covers this residential building in Berlin, adding wildlife and additional windows." - Neatorama
Connie Schultz: No Closure for Cleveland (Creators Syndicate)
Ten hours after Ohio prison staff found Ariel Castro dead in his cell, Pam Zander Turos was standing in her kitchen in a Cleveland suburb. She was spreading cream cheese on bagels for her two young sons, when the TV came to life in the living room.
Scott Burns: The Incredible Importance of Social Security (AssetBuilder)
It would be difficult to overstate the importance of Social Security. I don't say this as a blind loyalist of our largest social program. I'm simply awestruck by how large it looms for all but the wealthiest Americans.
Froma Harrop: China's Rich, Yearning to Breathe Free (Creators Syndicate)
Thousands of Chinese are fleeing to the United States. We are not talking about impoverished peasants hiding in cargo containers. We're talking about millionaires flying first class and buying condos in the choicest ZIP codes. A big reason for this relocation, real estate agents say, is a desire for America's clean air, as opposed to China's suffocating smog.
Willio Lacomme: I work for $8.25 an hour at Walmart. What would you like to know? (Guardian)
For me, there's no good day. I'm a part-time employee, although I often work close to 40 hours a week and don't get benefits.
Willietta Dukes: "Why I'm on strike [Aug. 29]: I can't support myself on $7.85 at Burger King" (Guardian)
I know what it feels like to be afraid that your children will go to bed hungry, your heat will be turned off or you'll be evicted.
Froma Harrop: Spending Behind Your Mate's Back (Creators Syndicate)
A little infidelity, a little cheating, is OK in a marriage - or even protective of it - if the sneaking is just about money. Note the emphasis on "little." Take handbags. Some time back, The Wall Street Journal reported on a woman who kept a secret stash of cash so she could buy very expensive handbags without disclosing the prices to her husband. "He just wouldn't understand," was her explanation. And he probably wouldn't have.
Henry Rollins: Music Keeps You Young (LA Weekly)
I try to refer to my age only when I can make self-deprecating jokes. Beyond that, I am not all that hung up on it. There is not one thing I can do about it. That being said, sitting here, at this moment, I feel completely ageless. Looking at the young people across the street, most if not all of whom were not even born when I started going to club shows, I feel no separation or difference between them and myself. We are here for the same reason.
Lenore Skenazy: Song of the Open Road (Creators Syndicate)
OK, a few almost un-American confessions: 1) I never have been camping. That's right. Even as a Girl Scout, all our troop did (as far as I can recall) was knit yarn octopi. (You read that right. We made little cuddly octopi out of yarn, and someone delivered these - or so we were told - to a nursing home, though God knows why.) Anyway: I never slept in a tent, camper or RV. For all I know, a camper is an RV.
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From The Creator of 'Avery Ant'
Team Coco
CONAN Highlights
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
A welcome return to more seasonal temperatures.
Long-Lost Painting Identified
Van Gogh
A painting that sat for six decades in a Norwegian industrialist's attic after he was told it was a fake Van Gogh was pronounced the real thing Monday, making it the first full-size canvas by the tortured Dutch artist to be discovered since 1928.
Experts at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam authenticated the 1888 landscape "Sunset at Montmajour" with the help of Vincent Van Gogh's letters, chemical analysis of the pigments and X-rays of the canvas.
The roughly 37-by-29-inch "Sunset at Montmajour" depicts a dry landscape of twisting oak trees, bushes and sky, and was done during the period when Van Gogh was increasingly adopting the thick "impasto" brush strokes that became typical of his work in the final years of his short life.
It can be dated to the exact day it was painted because he described it in a letter to his brother, Theo, and said he had painted it the previous day - July 4, 1888.
But then Van Gogh confessed that the painting was "well below what I'd wished to do." Later he sent it to Theo to keep.
Van Gogh
Wedding News
Ozell - Stewart
Patrick Stewart, 73, got married for the third time this weekend to his 35-year-old jazz singer girlfriend of five years, Sunny Ozell.
The British actor announced the news via Twitter, simply stating:
Stewart's "X-Men" co-star and good friend, Sir Ian McKellen, officiated the ceremony.
"I did my part," the "Lord of the Rings" actor wrote on his official Facebook page, sharing a photo of himself holding a "Minister" t-shirt, the couple's marriage certificate, and giving the "live long and prosper" hand sign to his "Star Trek" star friend.
Ozell - Stewart
A Twist On Wine Tours
Jamaica
Napa and Sonoma have their wine tours, and travelers flock to Scotland to sample the fine single malt whiskies. But in Jamaica, farmers are offering a different kind of trip for a different type of connoisseur.
Call them ganja tours: smoky, mystical - and technically illegal - journeys to some of the island's hidden cannabis plantations, where pot tourists can sample such strains as "purple kush" and "pineapple skunk."
The tours pass through places like Nine Mile, the tiny hometown of reggae legend, and famous pot-lover, Bob Marley. Here, in Jamaica's verdant central mountains, dreadlocked men escort curious visitors to a farm where deep-green marijuana plants grow out of the reddish soil. Similar tours are offered just outside the western resort town of Negril, where a marijuana mystique has drawn weed-smoking vacationers for decades.
"This one here is the original sinsemilla, Bob Marley's favorite. And this one here is the chocolate skunk. It's special for the ladies," a pot farmer nicknamed "Breezy" told a reporter as he showed off several varieties on his plot one recent morning.
Jamaica
Business Booming For Vinyl Record Company
RIP-V
Philippe Dubuc plunges his hands into one of his six old machines used to press vinyl records, trying to find out why it's not working.
A production slowdown is the last thing he wants to be dealing with on a warm September morning at RIP-V, which dubs itself as the only vinyl record pressing plant in Canada.
"I got a production order for 50,000 albums by Arcade Fire," Dubuc explains amid overheated machinery and a strong plastic smell. "And it's a double album so we're talking about 100,000 discs."
The popular Montreal band is one of many top acts still loyal to the medium of Elvis Presley and the Beatles. Punk band Rancid, jazz sensation Serena Ryder and singer Nicole Martin are also among those who want to be immortalized in the fabled format.
"Vinyl never died," says Dubuc, saying its new popularity isn't just because of the quality of the sound.
RIP-V
Copyright Suit Settled
Ghost Rider
Marvel Comics has agreed to settle a lawsuit by a comic book writer who sued the publisher over the copyright to the flaming-skulled character Ghost Rider.
The agreement, disclosed in a letter filed Friday in U.S. District Court in Manhattan, if finalized would resolve five-years of litigation brought by former Marvel freelancer Gary Friedrich, who claimed he created the motorcycle-riding vigilante.
The settlement follows a decision by the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York to revive the lawsuit. A trial judge had previously dismissed the lawsuit, finding the rights to the character belonged to Marvel, owned by Walt Disney Co.
In a letter to U.S. District Judge Katherine Forrest on Friday, Friedrich's lawyer, Charles Kramer, said that his client and Marvel "have amicably agreed to resolve all claims between, among, and against all parties."
Ghost Rider
Banned In Ukraine
Bloodhound Gang
Russia on Monday named two musicians from US rock band Bloodhound Gang as suspects in a criminal case over inciting hatred after a band member stuffed a Russian flag down his trousers.
The bassist of the band, "Evil" Jared Hasselhoff, stuffed a Russian flag down the front of his trousers, pulled it out from the back and threw it into the crowd at a concert in late July in Ukraine.
The powerful Investigative Committee, the equivalent of the US FBI, said in a statement on its website that it had opened a criminal probe examining the possible guilt of Hasselhoff, referred to by his real name Jared Hennegan, as well as the band's vocalist, James Franks.
The Investigative Committee accused Hennegan and Franks of inciting hatred in an organised group. If charged and found guilty, they could face up to five years in a penal colony.
Ukraine last month banned Hennegan from visiting for five years after videos were published on the web of him urinating onstage on a Ukrainian flag.
Bloodhound Gang
James Bond's Submarine Car Sold
Lotus Esprit
The "submarine car" used in the James Bond film "The Spy Who Loved Me" sold for 550,000 pounds ($864,600) at auction on Monday, less than had been expected.
The white Lotus Esprit, which transformed into a submarine during a sequence in the 1977 movie starring Roger Moore as 007, had been expected to sell for between 650,000 and 950,000 pounds, according to RM Auctions.
Known as "Wet Nellie" on the set of the film, the fully operational submarine car was among the contents of a storage unit in Long Island, New York, which was bought by a couple in a "blind" public auction in 1989.
Although six Esprit body shells were used in filming, only one was converted into a submarine car, RM Auctions said.
Lotus Esprit
Bulgaria Set To Close Probe
'Umbrella Killing'
Bulgaria is set to close a 35-year probe into the spectacular "umbrella killing" of dissident Georgy Markov in London in 1978, the prosecution in Sofia said Monday.
Markov's murder has gone down as one of the most daring and extraordinary crimes of the Cold War.
The prominent journalist and playwright fled communist Bulgaria in 1969 for Britain but continued to lambast the regime in reports for the BBC and Radio Free Europe.
While waiting for a bus on London's Waterloo Bridge on September 7, 1978, he was jabbed in the leg by a passer-by and later told his family that he saw this person drop his umbrella.
Markov developed a high fever and died in hospital five days later without being questioned by police. An autopsy revealed a tiny metal pellet embedded in his thigh that could have contained ricin or some other powerful poison.
'Umbrella Killing'
Logging Threatens
Monarch Butterflies
A new study of the Monarch butterflies' winter nesting grounds in central Mexico says small-scale logging is worse than previously thought and may be contributing to threats facing the Monarch's singular migration pattern.
The reserve's 33,482-acre (13,550-hectare) core zone lost 41 acres (16.6 hectares) of pine and fir trees so far in 2013, about half of that because of illegal logging, said the study by Omar Vidal, head of Mexico's chapter of the World Wildlife Fund, the WWF, and other authors. The rest of the loss was due to drought or disease-control removal of trees.
Mexico's government has taken a strict stance to protect the Monarch grounds in recent years, shutting down sawmills and going after logging trucks, commercial loggers and their equipment. As a result, the reserve reached a milestone in 2012, when aerial photographs found almost no detectable deforestation due to logging over the previous year.
But the study's comparative analysis of aerial photos taken more than a decade apart showed that small-scale logging has never gone away. Too minor to detect in year-to-year comparisons, the study found incremental losses by comparing 2001 photographs, from the first systematic aerial survey, to ones from 2011.
Monarch Butterflies
Byzantine-Era Gold Hoard Unearthed
Jerusalem
Israeli archaeologists have unearthed a Byzantine-era hoard of gold in Jerusalem's Old City, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem announced on Monday.
Dig director Eilat Mazar described the excavation of 36 gold coins, a gold medallion inscribed with a Jewish ritual candelabrum and a selection of gold and silver jewellery as "a breathtaking, once-in-a-lifetime discovery."
A statement said that the treasure was found about 50 metres (yards) from the southern wall of the Al-Aqsa mosque compound, known to Jews as Temple Mount and venerated as the site of the Jewish temples of kings Solomon and Herod.
Mazar, of the Hebrew University Institute of Archaeology, said that while excavations in the same area had revealed artifacts from the time of Solomon's temple, which according to Jewish tradition was razed by the Babylonians in 586 BC, the seventh century finds were completely unexpected.
Jerusalem
Toy Meth Lab Sells Out Online
'Breaking Bad'
A toy company has cooked up a mixture of controversy and amusement after its plastic block meth lab set, inspired by the show Breaking Bad, sold out.
Citizen Brick recently offered Superlab Playset complete with "poison" warnings, barrels of ingredients and figurines based on characters in the show for $250.
Citizen Brick's actual target audience, according to its cheeky online marketing, includes "nostalgia benders," "jaded hipsters," "reclusive diorama-builders" and "funny people" - though perhaps the company meant to include "small children who watch television shows featuring violence and drugs" on the list of their biggest customers, but they forgot.
Wired magazine interviewed the owner of Citizen Brick, Joe Trupia, back in August, and he said the company had received a flood of requests to build a lab after its related "chemistry enthusiast" figurine sold out earlier this year.
Last year, photos of an elaborate Breaking Bad-inspired meth lab built out of real LEGO blocks went viral online.
'Breaking Bad'
In Memory
Cal Worthington
Cal Worthington, a legendary car dealer whose ubiquitous TV advertising introduced him and his dog Spot to millions of TV viewers, has died at 92.
Worthington, a war hero who became a business success, died Sunday while watching football on TV at his home in Orland, Sacramento attorney Larry Miles said.
Worthington, one of nine children raised in Oklahoma, flew 29 missions over Europe as a bomber pilot in World War II. An intrepid pilot, he received five Air Medals and the Distinguished Flying Cross. He continued flying a Lear jet until his death.
After the war, he began selling cars in Texas and made his way to Los Angeles. He leased a dirt lot to sell used cars, became a millionaire by 30 and built an empire of dozens of auto dealerships and land holdings, including ranches in California, Nevada and Idaho.
He became an iconic car dealer by staring in his own TV commercials that featured his dog Spot. His bouncy, corny jingle - "If you need a better car, go see Cal / For the best deal by far go see Cal" - became indelible in the minds of many Americans.
Worthington is survived by six children, Rod, Barbara, Calvin, Courtney, Susan, and Coldren; and nine grandchildren. Information about services is unavailable.
Cal Worthington
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