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And now, in keeping with the Holiday Season theme, I submit fer yer approval...
The 'Scope or Grope' Edition
"Resistance is Futile"
If you don't want to pass through an airport scanner that allows security agents to see an image of your naked body or to undergo the alternative, a thorough manual search, you may have to find another way to travel this holiday season. The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) is warning that any would-be commercial airline passenger who enters an airport checkpoint and then refuses to undergo the method of inspection designated by TSA will not be allowed to fly and also will not be permitted to simply leave the airport. That person will have to remain on the premises to be questioned by the TSA and possibly by local law enforcement. Anyone refusing faces fines up to $11,000 and possible arrest... $11,000 fine, arrest possible for some who refuse airport scans and pat downs - South Florida Sun-Sentinel.com
If you were (or are) planning to travel this Holiday Season, what's it gonna be?
1.) Scope
2.) Grope
3.) Car, train, bus...
4.) I'm stayin' home, Dagnabbit!
1.) Scope
Joe B.
I'd would just get scoped and try to deal with the way it is now, but I won't be flying anywhere any way. My wife is going to fly to Florida to see her daughter and she said the scope, because it would be faster.
Richard McD...
Scope... 'nuff said.
Adam in NoHo
We just got back from Iowa for Thanksgiving. Since Burbank is such a little airport (and Cedar Rapids for that matter), it was all the usual taking-your-shoes-off-and-metal-detector nonsense.
Considering I fly so rarely I would probably go for he scan, unless the TSA Agent looked particularly cute!
In the end I would prefer to travel by train. But in the States, that's just not efficient.
Beyond the technical issues, I have a serious 4th amendment problems- the TSA should have to get a search warrant from a judge before even sending me through a metal detector, never mind a (virtual) strip search or full-body frisk. When did we give them sooo much power?
2.) Grope
saskplanner...
Man. I have a condo in Palm Springs so I have to fly there at Christmas (1200 miles) but really don't want to. I vote for grope cause I am gay and a grope from a hunky T S A guy might constitute an early gift.
Dave in Tucson...
Sad to say that I'm going to have to go along with "grope". My job requires frequent airline travel and getting repeated doses of ionic radiation doesn't sound like a good idea.
Car, train, bus...
3.)
The Vidiot...
I'd rather drive 1300 miles each way with a surly - and sometimes smelly - 15-year old step son and a dog prone to car sickness then be x-rayed and/or groped.
(Yup... Same here... I've had way too much radiation as it is with all the medical procedures I've endured. I do like trains. I've been an Amtrak passenger on long distance trips 5 times and on short trips too numerous to remember. If I were traveling, I would not fly...)
Barbara K...
#3, Don't encourage TSA., or it's only going to get worse.
4.) I'm stayin' home, Dagnabbit!
Joe S...
I will never, ever, ever, fly again. If I wanted to go somewhere far away, I would take a train if there was a train to take. Brother Ben been says he has a great idea about what to do with all the old train station in America. Turn them into train stations. We never travel anywhere for the holidays. That's all we need, more old people driving on icy roads in heavy traffic.
(Me, too! Stayin' home that is...)
5.) Combo answers (Added ex post facto)
bebo...
2.) & 3.) --- I'm traveling by car to the nearest bar & get groped by the barmaid.
Lorie in OH!
If I were flying, I would want to find out if a few grams of explosives are taped to someone's butt crack, thankyouverymuch. I'm more discomfited by that possibility than the (small) sacrifice of my privacy. The
attention-seeking pseudo-civil libertarians and their failed "opt-out" protest got their 15 minutes, and now it's time they got a life. But alas, the media loves it's overly entitled blowhards.
Let's get real. The images are not kept, transmitted, or viewed by the agents leading the passenger through the process. As well, the technology has been dialed back from the more revealing, detailed images
that were originally being used. It's not a peep show, end of the story.
Welcome to America! We are a nation of bipolar, hysterical amnesiacs and whiners. We got mind-bogglingly lucky last year because the "underwear bomber" had defective equipment. And if the current system had been in place and they had caught him before he boarded overseas -- well, we would have forgotten
that success, and would still chose to listen to some little jerk bitchin' about HIS equipment.
(and then added as a sort of p.s. I'm guessin'...)
Disinformation and distraction campaigns are very successful lately, and that alarms me more than this non-issue of airline security. There's a sickness in our culture, raging out of control. Obama is a secret Muslim!
Death panels! Deficit hawks! Unexplained vapor trails in the sky!! Sarah Palin!!!
The celebrity industrial complex and the "media conflictinator" (thanks, Jon Stewart) is the real danger
to our civil liberties, not a quick pat-down
Paul in Seattle...
Answer is 1 and 2!!! David Letterman nailed it when he postulated that question in his monologue.
He said "why can't we have both"
Thanks to all responders... Sorry for my lack of comments, but I gots a 'surgical adhesion' thing going on and I'm not feelin' all that perky, as it were... Anyway, thanks again... and Yer the Best!
BadToTheBoneBob
~~~~~~~~~~~
New Question
The 'Wiki-Humpty Dumpty' Edition...
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Monday the leak of hundreds of thousands of secret diplomatic documents is an attack not only on the United States but also the international community...
"This disclosure is not just an attack on America's foreign policy interests," Clinton said. "It is an attack on the international community: the alliances and partnerships, the conversations and negotiations that safeguard global security and advance economic prosperity." ..."It puts people's lives in danger, threatens our national security and undermines our efforts to work with other countries to solve shared problems," she told reporters at the State Department...
Clinton calls leaked documents attack on world | detnews.com | The Detroit News
(I watched her statement live and she looked to be NOT a happy camper... Woe be unto PFC Manning)
Do you feel the release of these diplomatic documents are:
1.) A good thing...
2.) A bad thing...
3.) Sorta good - Kinda bad...
4.) Hey! What happened to the Holiday Season theme - thingy?
Send your response to
Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Paul Krugman: The Spanish Prisoner (New York Times)
Trapped by the euro, Spain has no good options for economic recovery.
Steve Nelson: Education Reform -- Crashing on the Bell Curve (Huffington Post)
All the hot rhetoric over educational achievement is nonsense. The problem in America is a dangerous class divide, not a crisis in teaching and learning.
John Thompson: "My Waiting for 'Superman' Experience" (Huffington Post)
I finally saw Waiting for "Superman" at a Chamber of Commerce showing. The United States Chamber is taking the film on a 12 city tour. The film was even more inaccurate than I expected.
THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN: Got to Get This Right (New York Times)
Americans understand that we need nation-building at home, and we need it now.
Esther Dyson: Not Everybody Can Be Bill Gates?(Slate)
The world doesn't need more entrepreneurs. It needs more people for entrepreneurs to hire.?
Richard Klein: The Case Against Health (Chronicle Review)
We could do more for public health if the government spent a fraction of what it spends curbing smoking on promoting dancing. An Epicurean approach asks not what temptations need to be avoided in the name of health. Instead it asks, "What is health, and how do you get it?" Imagine a world in which public policy declared that pleasure is the principal means to health.
Terry Savage: Cost of Long-Term Care Rising, but It's Still a Good Deal (Creators Syndicate)
Long-term care insurance policies have been such a great deal that one of the top underwriters - MetLife - has just announced it will no longer sell these policies. (Of course, it is contractually required to keep its existing policies on the books and stand behind them when payout is needed.) And another top LTC insurance underwriter, John Hancock (a division of Manulife), has just announced an intention to raise policy prices an average of 40 percent!
Ron Lieber: A Dying Banker's Last Instructions (New York Times)
He and Mr. Goldie have managed to beat the clock, finishing and printing the book themselves while Mr. Murray is still alive. It is plenty useful for anyone who isn't already investing in a collection of index or similar funds and dutifully rebalancing every so often.
TERRY TEACHOUT: The Cowardly Lion Waits for Godot (Wall Street Journal)
How a baggy-pants comedian did justice to a stage masterpiece.
Roger Ebert: Review of "RED BEARD (UNRATED; 1965; A Great Movie)
Told in the world of early 19th century Japan, Akira Kurosawa's "Red Beard" is a passionate humanist statement, almost the last he would make about an exemplary human being.
Roger Ebert: Review of "BLUE COLLAR" (R; 4 stars)
Detroit. Dawn. The next shift arrives for work. On the sound track, music of pounding urgency, suggesting the power of the machines that stamp out car doors from sheets of sheel. The camera takes us into the insides of an automobile factory, takes us close enough to almost smell the sweat and shield our eyes against the sparks thrown off by welding torches.
David Bruce: Wise Up! Celebrities (The Athens News)
Being a popular entertainer does have drawbacks. Country comedian Jerry Clower once ordered a ham dinner at Cracker Barrel, but he never did eat it because his gravy got cold as he signed 39 menus. He ended up going to a Seven-Eleven and buying crackers and Vienna sausages.
David Bruce has 39 Kindle books on Amazon.com with 250 anecdotes in each book. Each book is $1, so for $39 you can buy 9,750 anecdotes. Search for "Funniest People," "Coolest People, "Most Interesting People," "Kindest People," "Religious Anecdotes," and "Maximum Cool."
wrote:
answered:
From The Creator of 'Avery Ant'
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Another sunny, but cold (for these parts) day.
Co-hosts For Oscars
Franco and Hathaway
James Franco and Anne Hathaway have just what Academy Awards producers want as hosts of Hollywood's biggest night. They'll put on a show, rather than just another awards ceremony, organizers say.
Bruce Cohen and Don Mischer, producers of the Feb. 27 telecast, said Monday they had chosen Franco and Hathaway as hosts because the two are rising stars with broad talent that will help turn the night into a celebration of film.
While most Oscar shows over the past two decades had a comedian such as Billy Crystal, Chris Rock or Jon Stewart as emcee, Hathaway and Franco continue a recent trend of using film stars.
Steve Martin, a past solo host of the Oscars, and his "It's Complicated" co-star Alec Baldwin teamed up as hosts last time, while "X-Men" and Broadway star Jackman was host the year before.
Franco and Hathaway
Ecuador Offers Residency
Julian Assange
Ecuador on Monday offered Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks founder who has enraged Washington by releasing masses of classified US documents, residency with no questions asked.
"We are ready to give him residence in Ecuador, with no problems and no conditions," Deputy Foreign Minister Kintto Lucas told the Internet site Ecuadorinmediato.
"We are going to invite him to come to Ecuador so he can freely present the information he possesses and all the documentation, not just over the Internet but in a variety of public forums," he said.
Julian Assange
Secret Trove
Pablo Picasso
Pablo Picasso was both hugely prolific and famously generous with his work, but was he enough of a free spirit to give hundreds of his early works -- an invaluable collection -- to his electrician?
That question lies at the heart of a court case over the origin of 271 Picasso works -- a treasure trove of original sketches, paintings and collages that was unknown to the art world a few months ago and unveiled for the public on Monday.
Experts have yet to appraise the full collection, which has been placed under lock and key after a judicial appeal by Picasso's heirs. But there is little dispute so far over its authenticity. The works, many of which belong to the artist's Blue and Cubist periods, could fetch more than 60 million euros ($79 million) at auction.
More mysterious is how such an extensive collection could have wound up in the hands of a retired electrician in the south of France who once worked for the Picasso family, or why he chose to hold onto it for so many decades.
Pablo Picasso
Bad Sex in Fiction Prize
Rowan Somerville
Author Rowan Somerville won literature's little-coveted Bad Sex in Fiction Prize Monday for the use of unsettling insect imagery in his novel "The Shape of Her."
Judges of the annual literary award said they were especially impressed by a passage comparing lovemaking to "a lepidopterist mounting a tough-skinned insect."
The animal imagery continues elsewhere in the novel, a tale of desire and memory set on a Greek island. One character's fingers are described as "tender enough to hold a tiny bird."
The prize, founded in 1993 by Literary Review magazine, aims to draw attention to "the crude, tasteless, and often perfunctory use of redundant passages of sexual description in contemporary novels."
Somerville, who was born in Britain and lives in Ireland, took his victory in good humor, noting that "there is nothing more English than bad sex."
Rowan Somerville
Expanding Into Comic Books
Discovery Channel
After chewing up television with its wildly popular Shark Week, Discovery Communications aims to snatch an even bigger bite for its popular franchise: comic books.
The parent company of Discovery Channel and Animal Planet hopes to make a big splash when it releases its first comic book, "Top 10 Deadliest Sharks." The book - dubbed a nonfiction graphic novel - comes out Dec. 1 and is being published by Philadelphia's Zenescope Entertainment under the Silver Dragon Books imprint.
Like its namesake television counterpart, the "Shark" graphic novel takes a serious but accessible look at some of the species' deadliest and dangerous members. Using Andy Dehart, the network's resident shark expert - and public face of the annual TV event - the graphic novel boasts 10 stories based on real events and spotlights a particular shark.
Elizabeth Bakacs, vice president of licensing at Discovery Communications, told The Associated Press that the graphic novel is the first, but won't be the last. It will be followed in 2011 by "Discovery Channel's Dinosaurs & Prehistoric Predators" and "Animal Planet's Worlds Most Dangerous Animals."
Discovery Channel
3 More Years
'The Young and the Restless'
CBS says it's renewing "The Young and the Restless" for three more years.
TV's top-rated daytime drama has now been picked up through the 2013-14 season. It premiered in 1973.
CBS' announcement Monday comes on the heels of NBC's recent renewal of its long-running soap, "Days of Our Lives," for two more years. Both shows are produced by Sony Pictures Television.
The glad tidings strike a contrast to the usual downbeat news about daytime dramas, whose ratings overall have been falling for years. In September, TV's oldest soap, "As the World Turns," left the air after 54 years.
'The Young and the Restless'
Bail Denied
Bruce Beresford-Redman
A reality TV producer charged with killing his wife in Mexico will not be released from a Los Angeles jail while he fights extradition, a federal judge ruled Monday.
Former "Survivor" producer Bruce Beresford-Redman did not demonstrate a special circumstance that would warrant his release on bail, U.S. Magistrate Judge Suzanne Segal said.
She said that his arguments that he should be released so he could help care for his young children were not unique. Although she was not required to, Segal also ruled that Beresford-Redman posed a flight risk.
He faces charges of the aggravated homicide in the death of his wife, Monica, during a vacation in Cancun in April. Prosecutors say he surrendered his passport and was told by Mexican authorities to notify them if he was leaving, but he instead returned to the United States.
Bruce Beresford-Redman
Pleads No Contest
Faith Evans
Authorities say Faith Evans has pleaded no contest to reckless driving after being arrested in August for investigation of drunken driving. Los Angeles city attorney spokesman Frank Mateljan says the Grammy-winning singer entered the plea Monday and was sentenced to three years of informal probation.
Police say the 37-year-old Evans was arrested after being stopped at a DUI checkpoint in Marina del Rey.
She is the widow of rapper Christopher Wallace, also known as the Notorious B.I.G. Evans won a Grammy in 1998 for the song "I'll Be Missing You."
It was not immediately clear whether she was represented by an attorney. A phone message left with her agent, Marc Gerald, was not immediately returned.
Faith Evans
VictimsComplain To UN
Bosnia
Wartime rape victims in Bosnia say they will complain to the U.N. refugee agency about its goodwill ambassador Angelina Jolie who has not yet clarified rumors surrounding her movie that have infuriated the women.
Wartime rape victims were outraged when they heard rumors that Jolie's directorial debut was about a victim in a rape camp falling in love with her rapist. Jolie's producer denied the rumors.
Bakira Hasecic, the head of the association Women Victims of War, says she will send a letter to the UNHCR, according to an interview published in daily newspaper Dnevni Avaz on Monday.
Jolie had promised a meeting with the women in November and invited them to shooting in Budapest but Hasecic said Jolie should come to Bosnia and meet the women there.
Bosnia
Sues To Stop Leaks
Rupert
Twentieth Century Fox is taking aggressive steps to keep its movie and TV scripts off the Internet.
The studio has filed a lawsuit alleging roughly $15 million in damages against a New York woman, Patricia McIlvaine, who is said to have put up roughly 100 scripts online without authorization.
On her personal website, McIlvaine describes herself as a "struggling screenwriter who sells flowers over the phone by day and writes scripts by night." She says she collected scripts that were already posted on the web and made a free online library of scripts in order to assist other screenwriters. She's already soliciting donations for a legal defense fund.
Fox's lawsuit mentions various scripts including "Aliens," "Edward Scissorhands," "Wall Street," and "Glee." It also mentions the leak of the script for the X-Men sequel "Deadpool," which isn't scheduled to be released until 2012.
Rupert
Sever Ties With Debit Card
Kardashians
The Kardashian Kard appears to have proven to be too much even for the Kardashians.
The stars of the reality TV series "Keeping Up with the Kardashians" have severed ties with a bank that promoted a high-fee, prepaid debit card that featured their image, Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal said.
Blumenthal had complained last week that the Kardashian Kard and similar prepaid debit cards unfairly targeted financially unsophisticated young adults, including those enticed by the family's "lives of luxury and extravagance."
He said the Kardashian Prepaid MasterCard had "outrageous" fees that could reach $100 a year, plus fees for ATM withdrawals, cancellations and talking with a phone operator.
Kardashians
$200,000 Penalty
Dole
Free speech advocates can go bananas over a new court ruling against food giant Dole.
A Los Angeles judge has awarded $200,000 in attorneys fees and costs as punishment for filing a defamation lawsuit against the filmmakers behind "Bananas!*," a controversial documentary that claimed Dole exposed workers in Nicaragua to harmful pesticides.
"Bananas!*," which played at the 2009 Los Angeles Film Festival, investigated a 2008 lawsuit against Dole by Nicaraguan workers who claimed that exposure to DBCP pesticides made them sterile. After the film was completed, the lawsuit was revealed to be based in part on fraudulent information. But Swedish filmmakers Fredrik Gertten, Margarete Jangard and WG Film AB went forward with screening the film anyway.
Dole sued claiming defamation but dropped the case in October 2009 amid free speech criticism from groups in Sweden. Now Dole can add Los Angeles judge Ralph Dau to its critics. Judge Dau granted the filmmakers motion under California's anti-SLAPP law, which protects against lawsuits intended to stifle debate on topics of public importance. The filmmakers were awarded $200,000 in fees and costs.
Dole
HLN Hires For Prime-Time
Dr. Drew
Addiction specialist Dr. Drew Pinsky will have a new prime-time show weeknights on HLN starting next spring, talking about issues from Charlie Sheen to airport pat-downs.
The network, formerly CNN Headline News, made the announcement Monday. Pinsky already hosts "Celebrity Rehab With Dr. Drew," in its fourth season on VH1, and separate shows about sober living and on rehabilitation for sex addiction.
HLN didn't say where Pinsky will fit into an evening lineup that already includes shows with Nancy Grace, Joy Behar and Jane Velez-Mitchell. HLN currently airs a 10 p.m. ET rerun of Grace's show from two hours earlier; Pinsky's show will replace the rerun, but the network may make some time-slot shifts, said Scot Safon, executive vice president in charge of HLN.
Pinsky is a frequent guest on CNN and HLN, where his appearances are usually well-received, Safon said. Just last week, Pinsky appeared on John King's CNN show to talk about Facebook bullying.
Dr. Drew
In Memory
Mario Monicelli
Mario Monicelli, 95, who directed some of postwar Italy's most famous films and launched the careers of some of the country's greatest actors, jumped to his death from a Rome hospital window on Monday, Italian media said.
Monicelli directed such classics as "I Soliti Ignoti," (Big Deal on Madonna Street), "The Great War," "For Love and Gold," and the "My Friends" series with Ugo Tognazzi and Philippe Noiret.
Monicelli, known as a genius of the Italian comedy, also directed serious films such "The Great War," a story set in World War One, and "An Average Little Man," which tells the tragic tale of an average man who takes justice into his own hands after his son is killed in a robbery.
He was nominated for an Oscar four times but the award always eluded him. He made about 70 films and wrote nearly all the screenplays himself.
He made his first short film when he was 19 and made his directorial debut in 1949 by directing the Italian comic genius Toto, a partnership that would help make them both famous.
He worked with some of postwar Italy's greatest actors, including Marcello Mastroianni, Sophia Loren, Vittorio Gassman, Alberto Sordi, Anna Magnani, Claudia Cardinale and Monica Vitti.
Monicelli was a master at telling tales of ordinary people thrust by fate into difficult circumstances.
In the 1985 film "Let's Hope It's a Girl," he directed Liv Ullmann, Catherine Deneuve and Philippe Noiret in a story about how two sisters hold an extended family together when the male members make a mess of things.
A native of Tuscany, Monicelli remained active into old age and had cameo appearances in numerous films that he did not direct.
He had a small role in "Under a Tuscan Sun" in 2003 with Diane Lane and Raul Bova. He played an old man who stops every day to place flowers at a roadside statue of the Virgin Mary, and serves as an inspiration to Lane, who plays an American trying to rebuild her life after a failed marriage.
Mario Monicelli
In Memory
Irvin Kershner
Irvin Kershner, who directed the Star Wars sequel "The Empire Strikes Back" and the James Bond film "Never Say Never Again," has died at age 87. Kershner died Saturday in Los Angeles after a long illness, said Adriana Santini, a France-based actress who is a family friend. He is survived by two sons, she said. His agent, Derek Maki, also confirmed the death Monday in an e-mail to The Associated Press.
Kershner already had made a number of well-received movies when he was hired by George Lucas to direct "Empire," which was the second produced but fifth in the "Star Wars" chronology.
The Philadelphia-born Kershner had both musical and photographic training and worked as a freelance illustrator before he turned to filmmaking. He graduated from the University of Southern California film school and in the 1950s made U.S. government informational films in Greece, Turkey and the Middle East.
He was a director and cameraman for a television documentary series called "Confidential File" in Los Angeles before getting his first movie break in 1958 when Roger Corman hired him to shoot a low-budget feature called "Stakeout on Dope Street."
He went on to direct a number of noted features in the 1960s and 1970s, including "A Fine Madness" with Sean Connery, Joanne Woodward and Jean Seberg, "The Flim-Flam Man" with George C. Scott, "Loving" with George Segal and Eva Marie Saint, and "Eyes of Laura Mars" with Faye Dunaway.
The 1976 television movie "Raid on Entebbe" earned him an Emmy nomination for direction.
Besides "Empire," his big-budget work included the 1983 James Bond movie "Never Say Never Again" with Connery and "Robocop 2" in 1990.
Kershner also was an occasional actor. He played the priest Zebedee in Martin Scorsese's "The Last Temptation of Christ."
He also was a faculty member at the University of Southern California.
Irvin Kershner
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