Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Suzanne Moore: Party politics needs to loosen up - the rest of us have (Guardian)
I don't want to be governed by people who have never made mistakes, never had the 'wrong' kind of sex or taken drugs. I propose Uslut, a party that actually knows how to party.
Henry Rollins: Decoding Vladimir Putin (LA Weekly)
I am still laughing about Putin's op-ed published in The New York Times on 9-11-13. Quite often, American behavior has been less than becoming, but one of the last people I will hear it from is this dipshit. I took some of the more glaring passages, put cloth over their faces and poured water on top -- to get the truth!
Matthew Yglesias: Mint the Coin (Slate)
The silly but totally legitimate loophole that lets the Obama administration avert the debt-ceiling showdown with a $1 trillion platinum coin.
Paul Krugman: Fools and Fixers (New York Times)
Lydia DePillis has an interesting piece interviewing Paul Stebbins - a CEO who was very involved with Fix the Debt - in which Stebbins acknowledges that business is part of the problem in Washington, and proceeds to illustrate, unintentionally, just why that is. You see, if he's any indication, big business is completely clueless about both the economics and the politics of the situation.
What I'm really thinking: the house seller (Guardian)
'I want to show my house in its best possible light, to avoid giving you a reason to reject it, but still you turn your nose up.'
Oliver Burkeman: "This column will change your life: the secret of true misery" (Guardian)
'Nobody wants to be unhappy? Nonsense. Consider your friend who's always getting involved with unavailable men, or that colleague who goes hunting for things to get annoyed by.'
Cyriaque Lamar: 5 5 'Breaking Bad' Actors Whose Early Roles Now Look Hilarious (Cracked)
The last episode of Breaking Bad, a beloved dramedy about an unhip dad who takes an edgy new job to impress his teenage son, airs tonight. To commemorate such, we're celebrating the show's actors, who were so crackerjack at playing engrossing sociopaths that a lot of their past roles now look really damn funny.
Simon Doonan: How I Became a Fashion Don't (Slate)
"And if the reality check involved in weeding the age-inappropriate looks from your wardrobe stings that much, take heart: Once you turn 80, you can dress however the hell you want." One slight problem: The life expectancy for the average bloke in the USA is 76. Life is for living. Join the bloody cabaret before it's too late.
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Movable Bridges
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From The Creator of 'Avery Ant'
Team Coco
Conan
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Mostly sunny and seasonal.
Finale Tops Ratings
'Breaking Bad'
The much-anticipated final episode of "Breaking Bad" drew the cult TV show's largest ever audience -- 10.3 million viewers -- but there were also more than 500,000 illegal downloads, figures show.
The series, centered around once humble chemistry teacher turned drug lord Walter White, ended Sunday with a thrilling climax to its fifth and final season a week after winning best drama at the Emmys, television's Oscars.
In doing so it drew 3.7 million more viewers than the penultimate episode seven days earlier, which itself had set a series record at 6.6 million, the ratings tracker Nielsen said, cited by industry journal Variety.
The show was illegally downloaded more than half a million times within 12 hours of the first illegal copy appearing online, according to online piracy news website TorrentFreak.
Australia had the largest number of illegal downloads with 18 percent of the total, followed by the United States on 14.5 percent, Britain on 9.3 percent, India on 5.7 percent and Canada 5.1 percent, it reported.
'Breaking Bad'
NPR Commentator Wins Thurber Prize for American Humor
Dan Zevin
The judges have made it official: Essayist and NPR commentator Dan Zevin is funny.
Zevin has been declared the winner of the Thurber Prize for American Humor. He received the $5,000 award on Monday for his parenting book "Dan Gets a Mini-Van: Life at the Intersection of Dude and Dad."
The other finalists were Shalom Auslander's "Hope, a Tragedy" and a collaboration between Dave Barry and Alan Zweibel called "Lunatics."
The prize was founded in 1996 and is named for the late author and illustrator James Thurber, who was known for the short stories and cartoons he contributed to The New Yorker magazine. Previous winners include David Sedaris, Christopher Buckley and Calvin Trillin.
Dan Zevin
Admits Mistake
Anthony Bourdain
Insults dished out by food critic Anthony Bourdain on an episode of CNN's "Parts Unknown" have stirred up outrage in New Mexico - and now he acknowledges that he was wrong.
The sharp-tongued chef and writer lashed into the "World Famous" Frito pies sold at Santa Fe's Five & Dime General Store's snack bar. The store is a tourist attraction and a mainstay in the city's historic plaza.
The dish, according to Bourdain, was made with canned Hormel Chili and a "day-glow orange cheese-like substance."
But Bourdain spokeswoman Karen Reynolds told The Associated Press on Monday that the writer was incorrect in his description of the chili used by Santa Fe's Five & Dime General Store's snack bar to make the Frito pies.
"Contrary to the impression left by some reports of the show, I, in fact, very much enjoyed my Frito pie in spite of its disturbing weight in the hand. It may have felt like (expletive) but was shockingly tasty," Bourdain said in a statement.
Anthony Bourdain
Luxury Fruit
Japan
With melons that sell for the price of a new car and grapes that go for more than $100 a pop, Japan is a country where perfectly-formed fruit can fetch a fortune.
An industry of fruit boutiques has defied Japan's sluggish economy to consistently offer luscious and lavishly tended produce for hefty prices -- and it is always in demand.
In July, a single bunch of "Ruby Roman" grapes reportedly sold for 400,000 yen ($4,000), making the plump, crimson berries worth a staggering 11,000 yen each.
While such cases are at the extreme end, top-notch fruit is a valuable commodity in the world of business and as a seasonal gift, signifying just how much importance the giver attaches to the relationship.
Japan
NBC, CNN Back Out Of TV Projects
Hillary Clinton
CNN and NBC on Monday backed out of high-profile television projects about Hillary Rodham Clinton they had been working on for months.
NBC said it was pulling the plug on a planned four-hour miniseries on the Democratic former first lady and secretary of state. "Hillary," which was to star Diane Lane in the feature role and appear before the 2016 election, was the target of external protests and internal unhappiness at NBC.
CNN, meanwhile, had contracted with Charles Ferguson to make a documentary on Clinton. Ferguson won the 2011 Academy Award for his documentary "Inside Job," about the 2008 financial meltdown.
But Ferguson wrote in a column posted on The Huffington Post on Monday that he concluded he couldn't make much of a film: Clinton wouldn't agree to be interviewed, and of the more than 100 people he approached only two who had dealt with her agreed to speak on camera.
Hillary Clinton
Nominees Announced
Sakharov Prize
Fugitive U.S. intelligence analyst Edward Snowden has made the shortlist for a European human rights prize whose past winners include Nelson Mandela and Aung San Suu Kyi.
Snowden was nominated for the Sakharov Prize by the Green group in the European Parliament for what it said was his "enormous service" to human rights and European citizens when he disclosed secret U.S. surveillance programs.
Snowden, who is in hiding in Russia, said in a statement read out to parliament that he was grateful lawmakers were "taking up the challenge of mass surveillance".
Among the other nominees for the prize, to be announced on October 10, is Malala Yousafzai, the Pakistani girl shot in the head by the Taliban last year for demanding education for girls.
The Sakharov Prize for freedom of thought is given by the European Parliament each year since 1988 to commemorate Soviet scientist and dissident Andrei Sakharov
Sakharov Prize
Failure
War On Drugs
The global war on heroin, cocaine and cannabis is failing to stem supply, as prices of these drugs have tumbled while seizures of them have risen, according to a study published Monday.
Researchers analysed data from seven government-funded programmes that tracked the illegal drug market over more than a decade.
Three of the programmes monitored international drugs trafficking; three focused on the United States; and one tracked the drugs business in Australia.
The prices of heroin, cocaine and cannabis tumbled by 81 percent, 80 percent and 86 percent respectively between 1990 and 2007 in the United States when adjusted for inflation, the researchers found.
Over the same period, the average purity of these drugs rose by 60 percent, 11 percent and 161 percent respectively.
War On Drugs
Bogus Statistics
Child Gun Deaths
The debate over gun control in America has, to this point, not included children's access to guns. But according to a front-page New York Times report ("Children and Guns: The Hidden Toll") published Sunday, accidental child gun deaths occur roughly twice as often as publicly reported.
More than half of 259 accidental firearm deaths of children aged 14 and younger reviewed by the Times were not recorded as accidents, the paper said, mostly because of inconsistencies in way such deaths are classified by authorities. Many are classified as homicides rather than accidents, the Times said, because most medical examiners and coroners "simply call any death in which one person shoots another a homicide."
The report argues that incorrect reporting of child gun deaths has contributed to the failure of "safe storage" laws opposed by the National Rifle Association, and curtailed development of "smart gun" technology to make the weapons childproof.
In nearly all of the child shooting deaths reviewed by the paper, the shooter was male, as were more than 80 percent of the victims - highlighting an "almost magnetic attraction of firearms among boys," the Times said. "Time and again, boys could not resist handling a gun, disregarding repeated warnings by adults and, sometimes, their own sense that they were doing something wrong."
Child Gun Deaths
Feds Plan To Drop Protection
Gray Wolf
Federal officials offered a staunch defense Monday of their proposal to drop legal protections for the gray wolf in most of the country, as opponents rallied in the nation's capital before the first in a series of public hearings on the plan.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service called for removing the wolf from the endangered species list for the lower 48 states in June, except for a subspecies called the Mexican wolf in the Southwest, which is struggling to survive. Ranching and hunting groups have praised the proposal, while environmentalists have said it is premature.
A final decision will be made within a year, following a scientific analysis of the agency's proposal and three public hearings, the first of which was being held Monday in Washington. The others are scheduled for Wednesday in Sacramento, Calif., and Friday in Albuquerque, N.M., although officials said they will be postponed if the government partially shuts down because of the fight in Congress over the health care overhaul.
Fish and Wildlife Service Director Dan Ashe acknowledged the fierce opposition to the wolf plan from many advocacy groups, scientists and members of Congress. They say the predator remains in a tenuous position despite bouncing back from the last century, when trapping, shooting and poisoning encouraged by federal bounties left just a few hundred survivors in Minnesota by the time they were placed on the protected list in 1974.
But he said the agency's mission is not to restore an endangered species in every place it once lived. Rather, it is to ensure that a species is established and thriving in enough places that it won't die out.
Gray Wolf
Drive-Thrus Getting Slower
Fast-Food
According to an annual study of drive-thru performance released Monday, the amount of time consumers wait in line at fast-food drive-thru windows is on the rise. On average, customers spent roughly three minutes (180 seconds) from order to pickup in 2013, the study found, or about eight seconds slower than last year.
McDonald's customers spent an average of 189.5 seconds in the drive-thru line - the company's slowest drive-thru time in the 15-year history of the study.
But that's a sprint compared with Chick-fil-A, where customers waited an average of 203.9 seconds, the longest of any chain in the study and Chick-fil-A's slowest showing since 1998.
Wendy's, on the other hand, had the fastest drive-thru, with an average wait time of 133.6 seconds.
Fast-Food
Preservation Effort
Angel Oak
A group trying to preserve the centuries-old Angel Oak near Charleston, South Carolina, is racing against a fall deadline to raise the $3.6 million needed to protect surrounding land from development that environmentalists contend would harm the tree.
The Angel Oak, with a massive canopy stretching more than 1,889 square yards (1,580 square meters) and trunk of more than 25 feet in circumference, has drawn generations of visitors to Johns Island near historic Charleston.
In less than two months, the Lowcountry Open Land Trust has collected almost $700,000 from more than 9,000 donors. With local governments contributing additional money toward the purchase, the land trust still has about $500,000 left to raise by November 21.
Many donations were dropped into jars at local Piggly Wiggly grocery stores, Director Elizabeth Hagood said, but some funds have come from as far away as South America.
Named for 19th-century rice and cotton plantation owner Justus Angel, the oak stands 65 feet high and is estimated to be between 400 and 500 years old.
Angel Oak
In Memory
A.C. Lyles
A.C. Lyles, who rose from mail boy to producer at Paramount Pictures and became the studio's longest-serving employee during a tenure that lasted more than three-quarters of a century, has died at age 95.
Lyles, whose most recent title with Paramount was ambassador of goodwill, died Friday at his Los Angeles home, longtime family friend Ben Wheeler told The Associated Press on Monday.
Lyles was just 18 when the lifelong movie fan arrived in Hollywood from his native Florida, going to work in Paramount's mailroom in 1937. There, as the person who delivered fan letters, the outgoing Lyles became friendly with most of the major stars of the era, including Bob Hope, Bing Crosby, Dorothy Lamour and William Holden.
His celebrity contacts would become invaluable when Lyles started producing such Westerns as "The Young and the Brave," ''Stage to Thunder Rock," ''Apache Uprising" and "Johnny Reno" in the 1960s.
He persuaded friends such as Joel McCrea, Randolph Scott, Jane Russell, Pat O'Brien and Dana Andrews to appear in his films, even talking James Cagney into directing one of them, the gangster movie, "Short Cut to Hell."
It marked Cagney's only directing effort, and Lyles remarked years later, "I don't think he liked telling actors what to do."
Other production credits included "Law of the Lawless," ''Young Fury," ''Red Tomahawk," ''Arizona Bushwhackers," ''Fort Utah" and "Hostile Guns."
He was also credited as associate producer on nine episodes of the hit TV series "Rawhide."
His last producer credit was for the 2005-2006 HBO Western series "Deadwood."
As Paramount's ambassador of goodwill, Lyles appeared regularly in his later years at film festivals, colleges and nostalgia conventions to talk about the studio's legacy and its current products. He also welcomed visiting notables to the studio and conducted tours of the Paramount lot, which he knew intimately.
Lyles worked well into his 90s, operating out of a suite once occupied by Fred Astaire and bedecked with scores of photographs of the many stars Lyles had been friends with. It was only in the past year, Wheeler said, that he stopped going to the office regularly.
Until then he would leave home for the office every weekday morning, dressed in a custom-made suit with handkerchief in the breast pocket. He would arrive at the studio in his mint-condition 1955 Ford Thunderbird.
Throughout his life, Lyles went just by the initials A.C., explaining that was the name his father had used as well. It was an old Southern tradition, he said, to just use initials rather than a full name.
Lyles was married to Martha French in 1955, in a ceremony attended by Ronald Reagan and Cagney, among others.
He is survived by her.
A.C. Lyles
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