BadtotheboneBob
Veterans Report - Important Medical Info!
Michael Dare
Humor plus Time equals Tragedy
Recommended Reading
from Bruce
The Ultimate Trick (YouTube)
Michel and Sven do a trick in 14 seconds.
ARTIST JAY SHELLS ESTABLISHES THE 'METROPOLITAN ETIQUETTE AUTHORITY' (animalnewyork.com)
We're especially fond of the "Pull Up Your Pants," which is now reaching epidemic proportions with the advent of skinny jeans and the "Clean Up After Your Horse," a direct challenge to the NYPD and their habit of not policing their own poop.
NYPD SH*TTING ALL OVER THE LES (animalnewyork.com)
According to Section 161.03 of the NYC Health Code, "A person who owns, possesses or controls a dog, cat or other animal shall not permit the animal to commit a nuisance on a sidewalk of any public place, on a floor, wall, stairway or roof…" Somehow, this doesn't apply to NYPD horses…
Ben's Game: Fight Cancer (Make-a-Wish)
Ben's Game was launched on the Make-A-Wish website in May, 2004. After a whirlwind of press coverage, Ben and Eric were approached by many new friends from around the globe to translate Ben's Game into various languages. Thanks to the generosity of Ben's Game enthusiasts worldwide, players can now enjoy the game in 9 languages: English, Dutch, French, German, Greek, Italian, Japanese, Russian, Spanish!
Matt Culkin: The 8 Most Badass Make-A-Wish Foundation Wishes (Cracked)
Since its inception in 1980, the Make-A-Wish Foundation has been responsible for granting the wishes of thousands of children with life threatening illnesses all across the United States. While the vast majority of wishes involve taking vacations, meeting celebrities or going to Disneyland, occasionally kids go off-prompter, and things get awesome. For example ...
9/11 anniversary: Comic strips remember the heroes, victims (LA Weekly)
Sept. 11 seems an unlikely topic for the newspaper funny pages, but cartoonist Brian Walker might be considered an expert in finding the positive.
Paul Krugman's Column: An Impeccable Disaster (New York Times)
On Thursday Jean-Claude Trichet, the president of the European Central Bank or E.C.B. - Europe's equivalent to Ben Bernanke - lost his sang-froid. In response to a question about whether the E.C.B. is becoming a "bad bank" thanks to its purchases of troubled nations' debt, Mr. Trichet, his voice rising, insisted that his institution has performed "impeccably, impeccably!" as a guardian of price stability. Indeed it has. And that's why the euro is now at risk of collapse.
Marc Dion: Big Government Finds Me: An American Financial Crisis (Creators Syndicate)
I wrote a check to the government today. By "the government," I mean the big, mysterious government, as represented by the Internal Revenue Service, not the small, lazy government, as represented by your buddy Rudy who is a grade-school custodian.
David Bruce has 42 Kindle books on Amazon.com with 250 anecdotes in each book. Each book is $1, so for $42 you can buy 10,500 anecdotes. Search for "Funniest People," "Coolest People, "Most Interesting People," "Kindest People," "Religious Anecdotes," "Maximum Cool," and "Resist Psychic Death."
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answered:
Reader Suggestions
Michelle in AZ
From The Creator of 'Avery Ant'
Reader Question
A Warning?
This ole Vet sees something that bugs me. Using my mouse to
open repugs or controversial pages, I get a clicking sound and a gold or
warning star on my pointer arrow, and many time it appears two and three
times before the page opens, almost like a warning "stay away". Have to
click to open or open in another setting? Is it my problem? I like reading
Bartcope entertainment and have been for years.
Ole Vet
Thanks, Ole Vet!
Hate to admit this, but my computer hasn't had audio in a couple of years. Fhe only noise that comes out of it is the
dial-up tones.
OTOH, bet there're some readers out there who probably do know.
Anybody?
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Beginning to feel like fall.
1st Interview To Diane Sawyer
Gabrielle Giffords
Arizona Rep. Gabrielle Giffords will give her first TV interview since being shot in January to Diane Sawyer (R-Nixon's Girl) of ABC News.
She'll sit down for the interview with her husband, astronaut Mark Kelly. The extent of her participation will depend on how well she's recovered by then.
ABC said Monday the discussion will air as part of a prime-time special Nov. 14. That's the night before a book by Giffords and her husband will be published. It's titled "Gabby: A Story of Courage and Hope."
Gabrielle Giffords
Marathon Swim Along Thames
David Walliams
Actor David Walliams has battled diarrhea, polluted waters and strong tides to complete a 140 mile (225 kilometers) charity swim along the River Thames.
Walliams, best known for his role in the television comedy show "Little Britain," raised more than one million pounds ($1.58 million) for the charity Sport Relief with his grueling, eight-day challenge.
The 40-year-old started at the source of the Thames in Gloucestershire last week, and finished at the Big Ben clock tower in London at dusk Monday.
It saw him brave strong and unpredictable currents, busy river traffic, and sewage-polluted waters. He also endured vomiting and diarrhea along the way.
David Walliams
Killer Bull Fame Spreads
'Mouse'
With more than 3,000 fans cheering, a hulking, black-and-white fighting bull named "Mouse" chased one daredevil runner after another, trying to flip them airborne and skewer them as he did a month ago in a fatal goring that enshrined his reputation as Spain's most feared and famous beast.
Mouse was greeted in the southeastern farm town of Sueca like a rock star: Everyone stood up at 2 a.m. Sunday in the bull ring's grandstands as he charged across the sand after loudspeakers introduced him with the eerie strains of the soundtrack to "The Good, The Bad and The Ugly," the 1960s spaghetti western film starring a young Clint Eastwood.
The 550-kilogram (1,213-pound) bull didn't claim any more victims this time, but tried his hardest to gore runners. And he captured intense media coverage in what could be his last appearance before retirement amid the controversy he has generated about Spain's summertime tradition of bull versus human runs, a pastime that plays out in rings, narrow streets and plazas across the nation.
Mouse's owner now fends off as many as 60 cell phone calls daily from reporters. Facebook pages dedicated to him include comments from some people praising him for taking revenge against humans in a country where slews of bulls are slain every year in bullfights by matadors.
'Mouse'
Goes Retro
Playboy
It was among the most exciting periods of Playboy founder Hugh Hefner's life, so what could be better in a bad economy than to retrace the 1960s' good times and give readers a break on the price of his magazine?
Hefner is slashing the cost of Playboy's October issue, which hits newsstands this Friday, to 60 cents. His editors have styled the men's magazine with retro look matching 1961, when the first Playboy Club was founded, and linked it to the debut of TV show "The Playboy Club" by putting star Laura Benanti on the cover -- and inside the pages.
The octogenarian known as "Hef" who embodies a stylish life of posh nightclubs, wild parties, men's fashion, free speech and, of course, naked women, said that six years after he founded the magazine in 1953, his life changed quickly.
The magazine that made its biggest splash publishing nude pictures of Marilyn Monroe was, by that time, being read by millions. From late 1959 through 1960, he held his first jazz festival, hosted his first TV show and opened his initial Playboy Mansion in Chicago.
Playboy
Sues Universities
Authors Guild
Authors and authors' groups in the United States, Australia, Canada and the United Kingdom sued the University of Michigan and four other universities Monday, seeking to stop the creation of online libraries made up of as many as 7 million copyright-protected books they say were scanned without authorization.
The Authors Guild, the Australian Society of Authors and the Union Des Ecrivaines et des Ecrivains Quebecois, or UNEQ, joined eight individual authors to file the copyright infringement lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Manhattan against Michigan, the University of California, the University of Wisconsin, Indiana University and Cornell University.
The lawsuit accuses the University of Michigan of creating a repository known as HathiTrust where unlimited downloads could be accessed by students and faculty members of so-called orphan works, which are out-of-print books whose writers could not be located.
The authors said they obtained from Google Inc. the unauthorized scans of an estimated 7 million copyright-protected books. They said the schools had pooled the unauthorized files at Michigan.
The lawsuit was filed just days before lawyers for authors and publishers are scheduled to tell a judge whether they have reached a new deal with the Mountain View, Calif.-based Google to create a massive online library.
Authors Guild
CA Dems Hit
Dianne Feinstein
Sen. Dianne Feinstein said Monday that her campaign fund was "wiped out," making her campaign another alleged victim of a campaign treasurer accused of fraud.
Feinstein, a California Democrat, told Politico that the losses from her fund are likely to be in the hundreds of thousands, if not more than $1 million. "I was wiped out too, we don't know how much," she told the news site.
Kinde Durkee was arrested on a federal fraud charge this month. She is accused of taking thousands of dollars from the campaigns of various elected officials.
Although many Democratic insiders expressed shock at Durkee's arrest, it wasn't the first sign of trouble. When the FBI started investigating Durkee in January, the Los Angeles County district attorney's office and the state Fair Political Practices Commission were already looking at her use of campaign funds.
Several local officials, including U.S. Rep. Loretta Sanchez, have said they lost hundreds of thousands of dollars. The Los Angeles County Democratic Party
Dianne Feinstein
Mixed Martial Artist Takes Plea
"Iron Mike" Whitehead
A mixed martial arts fighter once featured in Spike TV's "The Ultimate Fighter" series has pleaded an equivalent of no contest in Las Vegas to attempted sexual assault in an April 2010 attack on a woman at his home.
The Las Vegas Sun reports (http://bit.ly/n86j8I ) that 30-year-old Michael Whitehead acknowledged Monday he could face two to 20 years in prison at sentencing Jan. 19 and will have to register as a sex offender.
Whitehead had faced sexual assault, attempted sexual assault and lewdness charges after a 32-year-old woman accused him of attacking her while she slept at his home following a party.
Whitehead competes as "Iron Mike" Whitehead. He has a record of 26 wins and seven losses.
"Iron Mike" Whitehead
Stolen Work Intrigues Art World
Rembrandt
On the surface it looked like an open-and-shut case: A pair of thieves drop by an art exhibition at the Ritz-Carlton and, while one distracts a curator, the other snatches a valuable, centuries-old Rembrandt drawing and bolts with it.
Apparently finding the small pen-and-ink work by the Dutch master too hot to fence, the thieves have second thoughts. They abandon it, undamaged, at a church on the other side of town.
Then the real mystery begins.
Three weeks after recovering the framed, 11-by-6 inch drawing called "The Judgment," authorities aren't sure whether it really is a Rembrandt or if it even belongs to the art dealer that displayed it with other works at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Marina del Rey.
Officials with the Linearis Institute, which says it owns the work that it values at $250,000, did not respond to phone calls and email messages.
Rembrandt
Visitors To Prisons Hit With $25 Fee
Arizona
PJ Longoni has shelled out hundreds of dollars to pay for toiletries, a television and legal fees for family and friends locked up in Arizona prisons. When she learned she'd have to pay a one-time $25 background check fee to visit her son, she was angry.
Under a new state law, some adults who want to visit incarcerated inmates must pay the fee, with the money raised going toward maintaining 10 state-run prisons.
"For me, it is not the $25 fee that is an issue," she said. "It is when it is combined with the other costs of caring for an inmate, then it becomes a burden to me."
A prison reform group sued the corrections department, saying the fee was arbitrary, unconstitutional and amounted to a tax on an already vulnerable segment of residents. Corrections officials say the fees will ensure inmates are safe.
Since the law went into effect July 20, there has been confusion, with potential visitors wondering whether they would have to pay and why a fee for a background check would go toward building repairs. Some worried that the fee would reduce the number of visitors, essentially eliminating the kinds of family contact with prisoners that could improve the chances for rehabilitation.
Arizona
Offically Out At AOL
Michael Arrington
Michael Arrington is officially out at AOL, per a statement issued Monday:
"The TechCrunch acquisition has been a success for AOL and for our shareholders, and we are very excited about its future. Michael Arrington, the founder of TechCrunch has decided to move on from TechCrunch and AOL to his newly formed venture fund. Michael is a world-class entrepreneur and we look forward to supporting his new endeavor through our investment in his venture fund. Erick Schonfeld has been named the editor of TechCrunch. TechCrunch will be expanding its editorial leadership in the coming months."
This ends more than a week of speculation about what place Arrington, who founded TechCrunch and was its editor-in-chief, held at AOL, which purchased the site for $25 million last week. Arrington announced earlier this month that he would launching a $20 million venture fund, which AOL invested $10 million in, sparking a media maelstrom due to the apparent conflict of interest.
AOL's position on what Arrington's role was seemed ill-defined while Arrington and several of his devotees at TechCrunch were outspoken about the need to maintain the site's editorial integrity, a condition to AOL's $25 million purchase last year.
AOL seems to have tried to push out Arrington and keep the site's employees happy at the same time. Erick Schonfeld, previously Arrington's second in command, has been promoted to the top spot, satisfying the demand of those at TechCrunch that the next editor come from within.
Michael Arrington
City: Says Venue Safe
Red Rocks
Denver officials insisted Monday that the iconic Red Rocks Amphitheater is safe after rocks fell on concertgoers, injuring seven people and sending four of them to the hospital.
Witnesses told KMGH-TV (http://bit.ly/o5opZC ) that rocks rained down on people sitting near the front left side of the stage during a concert, injuring some severely on Sunday. A spokeswoman for West Metro Fire Rescue said the names of the victims and extent of the injuries were not immediately available.
The naturally formed amphitheater tucked in the foothills west of Denver has two, 300-foot sandstone monoliths, dubbed Ship Rock and Creation Rock. A half dozen or more rocks fell from Creation Rock on the north side of the theater.
Denver cultural affairs spokeswoman Kristin Rust said investigators may never know what caused rocks to fall on spectators around 1 a.m. Sunday during the last segment of a concert by the band Sound Tribe Sector 9. Some witnesses reported seeing people climbing on the rocks before the incident.
Red Rocks
In Memory
Mary Fickett
Mary Fickett, who played compassionate nurse Ruth Martin on ABC's "All My Children," has died at age 83.
Fickett was an original cast member of "All My Children," which premiered in 1970, and for decades she appeared alongside Ray MacDonnell, who played her on-screen husband, Dr. Joe Martin, in the fictional town of Pine Valley, Pa. She retired from the show in 2000.
In 1973, she became the first performer to receive an Emmy for work on a daytime soap opera. As the mother of a young man who was drafted to fight in the Vietnam War, Ruth Martin gave an impassioned anti-war speech that won Fickett the award.
A native of Bronxville, N.Y., she was a seasoned stage, film and TV actress before "All My Children."
Her first feature was "Man on Fire" with Bing Crosby in 1957. In 1958, she was nominated for a Tony Award for her Broadway role as Eleanor Roosevelt in "Sunrise at Campobello."
And in a departure from drama, she co-hosted the early 1960s CBS morning news-and-features program "Calendar" with Harry Reasoner.
Fickett is survived by a daughter and a son and several grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
ABC plans to dedicate the Sept. 21 episode of "All My Children" to Fickett. Two days later, the series will end its long network run.
Mary Fickett
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