Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Paul Krugman: Here Comes the Sun (New York Times)
We are, or at least we should be, on the cusp of an energy transformation, driven by the rapidly falling cost of solar power. That's right, solar power.
Calling Out The Police For Hiding Their Nameplates (Video)
The California Penal Code states that uniformed police officers must wear "a badge, nameplate, or other device which bears clearly…the identification number or name of the officer". Feel free to remind the police of this when they forget: …
How Did We Get to 7 Billion from 1 Billion People in Just 200 Years? (Video)
It was just over two centuries ago that the global population was 1 billion - in 1804. But better medicine and improved agriculture resulted in higher life expectancy for children, dramatically increasing the world population, especially in the West. U.N. forecasts suggest the world population could hit a peak of 10.1 billion by 2100 before beginning to decline. But exact numbers are hard to come by - just small variations in fertility rates could mean a population of 15 billion by the end of the century.
Scott Burns: When One Program Devours Another (Assetbuilder)
Tip jars are usually simple. But this one, encountered in the passenger food gallery at Austin's Bergstrom International airport, was different. A sign tucked into the jar read: "This is our health care plan."
Mark Shields: Back from the Dead in Ohio (Creators Syndicate)
Exactly one year ago, Ohio Republicans stood as a colossus astride the Buckeye State. Prior to Election Day 2010, Ohio Democrats had held every statewide office except that of auditor. After the votes were counted, Republicans had won back control of the state House, held all seven state Supreme Court seats, took five U.S. House seats away from incumbent Democrats and captured every statewide office. That was one year ago.
Richard Jenkyns: What Alice did (Prospect)
A new exhibition reminds us of Alice In Wonderland's enduring influence on visual art. But its impact extends much further. Why do Lewis Carroll's books still have such a hold on us?
An Unexpected Alliance (moreintelligentlife.com)
Lee Siegel considers the weird comedy of letters between T.S. Eliot and Groucho Marx ...
Rosanna Greenstreet: "Q&A: Jennifer Egan" (Guardian)
My grandchildren will be dealing with the fallout from George Bush.'
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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Michelle in AZ
From The Creator of 'Avery Ant'
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Sunny and clear.
Show Needs Financing
Roger Ebert
Veteran film critic Roger Ebert said that his "At the Movies" television show will leave the airways at the end of the current season unless funding is found in the coming days to continue financing it.
Noting that he and his wife, co-producer Chaz Ebert, have been funding "Ebert Presents" on public television channel PBSalmost entirely by themselves since it premiered in January, Ebert wrote on his blog "we can't afford to do the show any longer."
Ebert said the new show, the latest version of the legendary "Sneak Previews" movie review show that Ebert launched in 1979 with Gene Siskel, has been "a great success," shown in more than 90 percent of the country and boasting ratings near the top on U.S. public television.
Ebert said he must tell PBS sometime this month whether the show will be back next year, writing: "Unless we find underwriting, I'm afraid our answer will have to be "no."
Roger Ebert
London Tribute
Vanessa Redgrave
Decades after her provocative Oscar acceptance speech, Vanessa Redgrave will be honored at the film academy's first European tribute to an actor.
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences says it will honor Redgrave Sunday in London, where she is starring with James Earl Jones in the stage production of "Driving Miss Daisy."
Jones, who is to receive an honorary Oscar Saturday at the academy's Governors Awards, will fete his co-star in person. The 80-year-old actor is skipping the Governors Awards ceremony in Los Angeles to continue the play's run without interruption.
Meanwhile, across the pond, the academy will honor Redgrave for her five decades in film. The 74-year-old actress has been nominated for six Academy Awards and won for her supporting role in 1977's "Julia," playing an anti-Nazi activist murdered by the Germans. This latest honor does not involve an Oscar statuette.
Vanessa Redgrave
Ratner's Writers
Oscars
Is Bruce Vilanch joining the ranks of the unemployed when the 84th Academy Awards roll around?
The upcoming Oscars show will make use of a new crop of writers with ties to producer Brett Ratner but little awards-show experience, among them the screenwriters of Ratner's new film, "Tower Heist."
Ratner, who is producing the show with Don Mischer, told the Los Angeles Times on Sunday that his writing team for the show would include the "Tower Heist" team of Jeff Nathanson and Ted Griffin, "Curb Your Enthusiasm" writers Alec Berg and David Mandel, "Saturday Night Live" vets Barry Blaustein and David Sheffield and one longtime Oscar-show writer, Jon Macks.
Notably missing from the list is Vilanch, the chief comic voice of the Oscars for the last two decades .
Oscars
Philly Mural
The Roots
As a teen, Tariq "Black Thought" Trotter got busted for graffiti and was ordered by a judge to perform 150 hours of what he called "scrub time" - cleaning up such vandalism by painting murals.
More than 20 years later, it seems all is forgiven in his hometown. Philadelphia is showing some brotherly love to Trotter and the Grammy-winning band he co-founded, The Roots, by creating a city-sanctioned mural in their honor.
Trotter and Ahmir "Questlove" Thompson formed The Roots in 1987 after meeting at Philadelphia's High School for Creative and Performing Arts. They are the house band for NBC's "Late Night with Jimmy Fallon" and their 13th album, "Undun," drops on Dec. 6.
The mural site is still being finalized, but it is planned for a funky shopping area known as South Street. The neighborhood features some music joints where The Roots first began playing - and a now-defunct restaurant where Trotter noted he used to wash dishes.
The Roots
Season Extended With Extra Episode
"Sons of Anarchy"
Breathe easy, "Sons of Anarchy" fans; Jax, and the rest of the SAMCRO crew will have a little bonus mayhem for you this season.
FX has ordered an extra episode of the current season of its biker-gang drama, pushing the season finale to Tuesday, December 6 at 10 p.m.
According to FX's executive VP of original programing, Nick Grad, the addition of a 14th episode came at the request of outspoken show runner Kurt Sutter.
It likely didn't hurt that, four seasons in, the series is delivering its best numbers yet, averaging 5.45 million total viewers, with 3.71 million of those in the coveted adults 18-49 demographic (which represents a 23 percent and 20 percent boost, respectively, over last season).
"Sons of Anarchy"
US Approves Project
Christo
The U.S. Bureau of Land Management has issued its final decision approving Christo's art proposal to suspend 5.9 miles (9.5 kilometers) worth of fabric over the Arkansas River, with provisions for protecting bighorn sheep and other wildlife.
Christo's team still needs permits from two counties, the Colorado Department of Transportation and the State Patrol.
But construction of the $50 million Over the River project on eight sections along a 42-mile (68-kilometer) stretch is expected to start next year. It would be displayed for two weeks in August 2014 before being dismantled.
Opponents have said it would disrupt wildlife, traffic on a highway along the river, and rafting and fishing businesses.
Christo
Hospital News
Kelly Osbourne
Media personality and reality star Kelly Osbourne says she has been released from a Miami hospital after being treated for a head injury.
The 27-year-old E! Fashion Police co-host Tweeted on Sunday that she was given the "all clear" and was released from Mercy Hospital, which declined comment Monday.
The nature of the injury and how Osbourne was hurt were not immediately clear. She tweeted that she had cracked her head open, though her publicist has not released any details.
Osbourne was in Miami attending a model casting call for Madonna's Material Girl clothing line.
Kelly Osbourne
Talks About KLOS Dismissal
Jim Ladd
Jim Ladd can drop rock-star names like nobody's business - no surprise considering music's been his business for four decades. Or it had been until late last month when the new owners of L.A. rock radio station KLOS-FM (95.5) gave the boot to Ladd, who had been holding court behind a microphone there for the last 14 years.
And that was just his latest stint at the station. Ladd logged a total of 20 years during three separate tours of rock 'n' roll radio duty at KLOS. A fixture on the Southern California airwaves, Ladd also chalked up nine years at the defunct station KMET-FM before it dumped rock for an easy-listening format dubbed "The Wave," as well as time at L.A.'s short-lived KEDG-FM ("The Edge") and at the station where he got his start in 1969, KNAC-FM in Long Beach.
"Jackson Browne once came up to me backstage at a [Don] Henley show," Ladd, 63, said Wednesday in an interview over lunch at Hollywood's Roosevelt Hotel. The historic hotel is just steps from the star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame that was given to Ladd in 2005. "He said, 'You know, you have the greatest job in the world.' I said, 'Don't tell anybody - but you're absolutely right.'"
At the moment, however, he's out of the greatest job in the world, having been pink-slipped along with 26 others in a round of staff layoffs after Atlanta-based Cumulus Media took ownership of KLOS from Citadel Broadcasting.
More than simply a popular personality on the Southland radio scene, Ladd had developed last-man-standing status in his field, the only DJ at a major-market commercial radio station in the country who still picked the songs he played rather than using a preapproved playlist created by the station's program director or outside consultants.
Jim Ladd
Apologizes For Slur
Brett Ratner
"Tower Heist" director and Oscar producer Brett Ratner apologized on Monday for using a gay slur Friday night at a public screening of his new film.
The director lost his cool during a question-and-answer session, and angered some in the audience by saying that "rehearsal's for fags."
The director was answering questions from the audience after introducing the movie at the Arclight Hollywood cineplex.
"The audience was stunned," one person who was present told TheWrap. At least one person walked out, upset over the reference.
Brett Ratner
Rupert's Girl Gets $2.7 Million Severance
Rebekah Brooks
News Corp. has given Rebekah Brooks, the former editor of its scandal-ridden News of the World tabloid, quite a severance package -- $2.7 million, use of her company limousine and driver and an office in central London, British newspaper the Guardian reports.
Brooks, a close associate of News Corp. chairman and CEO Rupert Murdoch (R-Evil Incarnate), resigned in July from her post as CEO of News International, News Corp.'s British publishing division. This followed allegations that she knew about the company's complicity in a major phone-hacking scandal.
For her troubles, Brooks not only received the large payment, but access to the company limo for two years and the pricey office for the same stretch of time.
This hefty settlement for someone so closely linked to the hacking scandal will likely produce another series of questions for James Murdoch, Rupert's son and Brooks' former boss.
Rebekah Brooks
In & Out
Lindsay Lohan
Lindsay Lohan was released from a Los Angeles County jail early Monday, less than five hours after she arrived at the crowded women's lockup to serve a 30-day sentence for violating probation.
The "Mean Girls" actress was booked into the Century Regional Detention facility in Lynwood at 8:48 p.m. Sunday, in what was expected to be a short stay because of jail overcrowding.
She was released at 1:35 a.m., county sheriff's spokesman Steve Whitmore said.
News crews staking out the jail said she left in a black Cadillac Escalade sport utility vehicle, and that she was in her Venice home by 2 a.m.
Lindsay Lohan
Criticizes 'Reforms'
Jack Abramoff
Jack Abramoff can't say he wasn't warned.
When the now-notorious lobbyist was a rising star as Republicans expanded their power in Washington, a concerned senior partner in his firm warned against his win-at-all-costs approach to business. "At the rate you're going," the boss said, "you're either going to be dead, disgraced or in jail in five years."
Abramoff writes in his autobiography, out Monday, that the line rang in his ears for the next decade, including the 3 1/2 years he spent in a federal penitentiary paying for his bribery of public officials and other crimes before his release last year.
The 52-year-old's name has become a synonym for Washington corruption. The influence-peddling schemes he masterminded ultimately resulted in conviction of 20 people and changed federal lobbying laws.
But Abramoff says the reforms aren't tough enough to keep special-interest power in check and, from his insider perspective, he lays out what more needs to be done.
Jack Abramoff
NY Times Sues
Huffington Post
The New York Times Co has sued AOL Inc to force its Huffington Post online news website to rename a parenting blog with a similar name to its own.
In a lawsuit filed late Friday in the U.S. District Court in Manhattan, the Times said Huffington Post's "Parentlode" blog had caused reader confusion with the newspaper's 3-year-old "Motherlode" blog.
Both blogs have been overseen by Lisa Belkin, who worked for the Times from 1982 to 2011 before joining AOL last month. The new blog started on October 24.
The Times said Belkin "clearly intended" to confuse readers into believing her new blog was the same as her old blog, which she called a "virtual koffee klatch" for parenting.
Huffington Post
Fined In Las Vegas
Vince Neil
A judge accepted a guilty plea Monday on behalf of rock 'n' roller Vince Neil and his lawyer paid a $1,000 fine to close a misdemeanor case stemming from a confrontation between the Motley Crue singer and his ex-girlfriend at a Las Vegas casino lounge.
Neil, 50, didn't appear in person while attorney Richard Schonfeld acknowledged his client pointed and cursed at Las Vegas entertainment reporter Alicia Jacobs and two of her friends in a casino comedy club on March 24.
Las Vegas Justice of the Peace Melissa Saragosa dismissed a more serious misdemeanor charge of battery constituting domestic violence and declared the case closed. Neil, who lives in Las Vegas, could have faced up to a year in jail and a $2,000 fine if convicted on both charges.
Schonfeld made the court record clear that Neil wasn't convicted of poking his finger into Jacobs' chest during the confrontation before a comedy show at the Las Vegas Hilton.
Vince Neil
Attacked In Los Angeles
Lavigne - Jenner
Canadian singer Avril Lavigne and her boyfriend are recovering after being attacked outside the Roosevelt Hotel in Hollywood in the early hours of Sunday morning.
Celebrity news website TMZ.com reported that five people attacked Lavigne and "The Hills" star Brody Jenner outside of the iconic Hollywood hotel.
Lavigne, 27, whose hit singles include "Sk8er Boi" and "Girlfriend," addressed the incident on Twitter.
"I don't fight. I don't believe in it. To clear things up I got attacked by 5 people last night out of nowhere. Not cool..." Lavigne posted, adding that she had suffered a black eye, bloody nose, hair ripped out, scratches, bruises and cuts.
Lavigne - Jenner
Were Realists
Cave Painters
Cave painters during the Ice Age were more like da Vinci than Dali, sketching realistic depictions of horses they saw rather than dreaming them up, a study of ancient DNA finds.
It's not just a matter of aesthetics: Paintings based on real life can give first-hand glimpses into the environment of tens of thousands of years ago. But scientists have wondered how much imagination went into animal drawings etched in caves around Europe.
The latest analysis published online Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences focused on horses since they appeared most frequently on rock walls. The famed Lascaux Cave in the Dordogne region of southwest France and the Chauvet Cave in southeast France feature numerous scenes of brown and black horses. Other caves like the Pech Merle in southern France are adorned with paintings of white horses with black spots.
Past studies of ancient DNA have only turned up evidence of brown and black horses during that time. That led scientists to question whether the spotted horses were real or fantasy.
Cave Painters
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