M Is FOR MASHUP - April 18th, 2012
Gun Comic Books
By DJ Useo
Hey y'all. I just got out of hospital. I'm doing a bit better, but have been out of touch with mashups the last few weeks. Instead, here's some of the comic books people brought me to read during my hospital stay. Have fun.
-Konrad.
Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Mark Coker: A dark day for the future of books (CNN)
While I'm a big fan of discounting and price competition, I think the responsibility for pricing decisions should rest with authors and publishers. If they price fairly and competitively, customers will reward them. If they price too high, customers will migrate to lower-cost books.
Interview by Tim Lewis: "Jonah Lehrer: We can all be as creative as Picasso… we just have to learn how" (Guardian)
Want to be like Bob Dylan? Or a poet like Auden? Jonah Lehrer's latest book looks at how creative minds work and suggests we can all become more innovative.
Nick Meador: Funding My Existence
Much of this so-called Creative Class can only prosper by finding work within the current corporate infrastructure, resulting in very little actual creativity or innovation. The very ones who might create the necessary change in society must expend their time and energy worrying about "making a living." Those who can keep a job have to sacrifice ideas that contradict the wishes of bosses and the company's stockholders.
Sean Fallon: The World's Nerdiest Bathrooms (Nerd Approved)
If you're like me, most of your major life decisions are made in the bathroom. So, it makes sense that the space is one that inspires creativity. The following 10 nerdy bathrooms are perfect examples.
John Farrier: 5 Sci-Fi Actors Who Were War Heroes in Real Life (Neatorama)
Good actors can play courageous heroes - sometimes because they have that spark of greatness within them. Here's a look at five science fiction actors who played imaginary heroes on screen, but were also real heroes on the battlefield.
Danny DeVito: 'It all worked out for me. Life is good' (Guardian)
Danny DeVito has had a successful career both in front of the camera and behind it. Now, at 67, he is preparing for his first West End run in The Sunshine Boys - and shows no sign of slowing down. By Barbara Ellen.
Bryan Young: "A Look Inside Pottermore: First Impressions" (Huffington Post; from August 2011)
I'll be honest, I'm not even the biggest Harry Potter fan and I found the whole experience completely riveting. It really has taken a significant chunk of my day.
Pottermore, The Harry Potter Official Website, Is Finally Open To Muggles (Huffington Post)
We're expecting to be really busy to start with and plan to activate new registrations in a steady stream. This means that you may not get access to Pottermore immediately after you sign up but we will get you exploring the site as quickly possible.
Jed Perl: Avant-Garde Persuasions (New Republic)
Nobody in the history of culture has known more about the art of persuasion than the avant-garde painters, sculptors, writers, composers, choreographers, and impresarios who transformed European art from the end of the nineteenth century to the middle of the twentieth century.
Scott Burns: "Reverse Mortgages: Their Time Has Come" (AssetBuilder)
Reverse Mortgages are the Rodney Dangerfield of financial planning tools. Long thought of as things retirees used in last-ditch efforts to stay in their house, they were seen more as leaky lifeboats than as financial planning tools. They were badges for people soon to be broke. … But all that may be changing.
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."
wrote:
answered:
Reader Suggestion
Michelle in AZ
From The Creator of 'Avery Ant'
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Sunny and a bit warmer.
Police Recover Stolen Guitars
Tom Petty
Police say they've made an arrest and recovered five guitars that were stolen from Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers at a Southern California rehearsal studio.
The instruments were reported stolen last week from The Culver Studios, a soundstage where the band was rehearsing for an upcoming tour.
The band had offered a "no questions asked" reward of $7,500 for information leading to their return.
The stolen guitars include Petty's blond 1967 12-string Rickenbacker and his Gibson SGTVJunior, Mike Campbell's blue Dusenberg, Ron Blair's Fender Broadcaster and Scott Thurston's 1967 Epiphone Sheridan.
Tom Petty
Named Special UN Refugee Envoy
Angelina Jolie
After a decade of promoting refugee causes around the world, Angelina Jolie herself has been promoted.
The United Nations refugee agency has elevated the Hollywood star from being a goodwill ambassador to a special envoy, a role that will see her represent the organization to governments and diplomats.
It is the first time the U.N. refugee agency has named a special envoy, said its spokesman Adrian Edwards. Elsewhere in the global body such posts are usually reserved for career diplomats or retired politicians.
"Her work does go substantially beyond what we would typically see as being the normal role of a goodwill ambassador," Edwards told reporters in Geneva. "I don't think you need a rocket scientist to see the benefits that she is bringing in terms of the attention that she is getting for the plight of the world's displaced."
Jolie's new position will focus on the complex crises that result in the mass displacement of people, such as in Afghanistan and Somalia. In addition, on special occasions she will represent the U.N.'s High Commissioner for Refugees, Antonio Guterres.
Angelina Jolie
$412 Check Sold For $160,000
Superman
The $412 check that DC Comics wrote to acquire Superman and other creative works by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster has sold for $160,000 in an online auction.
Stephen Fishler, chief executive of ComicConnect.com and Metropolis Collectibles in New York, said Tuesday that the 1938 check was auctioned online to an unnamed buyer.
The check was made out to Siegel and Shuster and deposited. It includes a line item for $130 showing DC paid for full ownership and rights to Superman.
The canceled check was saved by a DC Comics staffer in the 1970s and sat undisturbed in a desk drawer for 38 years.
Superman
TV Premiere
Julian Assange
The opening episode of Julian Assange's new talk show featured an interview with militant leader Hassan Nasrallah, whose Syria-backed Hezbollah militia is considered a terrorist organization in the United States and Europe.
The half-hour segment aired on Kremlin-backed broadcaster RT Tuesday and featured questions about Israel, Lebanon, Syria, theology and encryption.
Nasrallah, who rarely gives interviews, largely stuck to well-established positions, but he did reveal that his group had been in touch with opponents of President Bashar Assad, whose bloody crackdown on Syria's protest movement has claimed thousands of lives.
Later in the segment, Assange and Nasrallah also shared a joke about encryption - with the latter saying that Hezbollah kept Israeli code-breakers on their toes by using Arabic farm slang.
"That's not going to do you any good in WikiLeaks, by the way," Nasrallah joked.
Julian Assange
NRA's Favorite Draft Dodger
Ted Nugent
The U.S. Secret Service is reportedly investigating faded '70s rock star Ted Nugent for his recent insistence he'll be "dead or in jail" in a year's time if President Barack Obama is re-elected in November.
At a convention of the National Rifle Association over the weekend, the longtime gun advocate compared Obama and the Democrats to a coyote who should be shot.
"It isn't the enemy that ruined America," he said as he reaffirmed his endorsement of Republican front-runner Mitt Romney.
"It's good people who bent over and let the enemy in. If the coyote's in your living room pissing on your couch, it's not the coyote's fault. It's your fault for not shooting him."
"If Barack Obama becomes the president in November again, I will either be dead or in jail by this time next year," he said angrily. "We need to ride into that battlefield and chop their heads off in November."
He then told his audience of proud gun-owners that if they failed to "clean house in this vile, evil, America-hating administration, I don't even know what you're made out of."
Ted Nugent
No $300M Payday From Sirius
Howard Stern
Howard Stern's hopes for a $300 million payday from Sirius XM Radio Inc. have been dashed by a judge. His show's Twitter feed said the shock jock was "really bummed" by the decision and plans to appeal.
Stern sued last March, arguing that he was entitled to a huge stock-based bonus in his contract because the number of Sirius subscribers exceeded the company's internal forecasts. But his initial job contract was signed in October 2004, well before Sirius acquired XM in July 2008.
New York state court judge Barbara Kapnick ruled Monday that Stern couldn't count XM's nearly 10 million subscribers in calculating his bonus, saying that the language of his contract was clear and unambiguous.
Kapnick dismissed Stern's lawsuit "with prejudice," which means he can't bring another case based on the same set of facts.
Stern had already received a $75 million stock bonus for exceeding the 2006 subscriber estimate by more than 2 million subscribers. He was also paid $25 million when Sirius combined with XM, in order to enable Stern's show to be broadcast to XM listeners as well.
Howard Stern
Woman Sues Over Concert Melee
Johnny Depp
Johnny Depp is being sued by a disabled woman who claims that the "Pirates of the Caribbean" star's security detail physically assaulted her at a concert in December.
In the suit, the plaintiff -- listed as Jane Doe -- claims that Depp's security guards caused severe pain, injuries and emotional distress by brutalizing her during a December 1, 2011 Iggy and the Stooges concert at the Hollywood Palladium. According to the plaintiff -- who, the suit says, suffers from fibromyalgia and other conditions and must walk with a cane or other implement -- she had to buy tickets for the VIP section because the Palladium didn't provide handicapped access at the theater.
All was fine, the suit says, until Depp and his security detail also showed up to the VIP section. According to the plaintiff, Depp's security guards put her in a bear hug, restrained her wrists and pried her iPhone from her hands, one finger at a time.
Then things really got ugly, the suit alleges, as Depp's bodyguards handcuffed her and dragged her through the theater as her pants were removed from her torso and hips, "exposing her buttocks to the other Hollywood Palladium Theater patrons." Eventually, the suit says, Depp's security guards dragged her up several stairs, after which Hollywood Palladium employees ejected her from the venue.
The suit claims that Depp was fully aware of his guards' actions, and "was supplying direct supervision and management of his security guards and directing" their actions throughout the melee.
Johnny Depp
Cake & Circumcision
Stockholm
A bomb threat closed Stockholm's modern art museum on Tuesday, two days after an exhibit about degrading stereotypes that black people have endured prompted one Swedish organization to demand that the nation's culture minister resign.
On Sunday, Culture Minister Lena Adelsohn Liljeroth participated in an event at the museum that involved several cakes designed by artists, including one in the shape of the naked torso of a black woman.
The black cake, part of an exhibition on World Art Day, was intended as part of Afro-Swedish artist Makode Linde's project illustrating degrading stereotypes of black people through history.
However, a Swedish organization promoting the rights of people of African origin called the cake exhibit racist and said that Liljeroth should resign for participating in a "tasteless, racist spectacle."
"According to Moderna Museet, the cake eating party was intended to highlight the problem of female circumcision, but how this is supposed to be done with a cake depicting a racist caricature of a black woman ... is unclear," said Kitimbwa Sabuni, head of the African Swedish National Association.
Stockholm
Police Rescue DJ From "Sex Mad" Woman
Munich
A Munich disc jockey held for five hours as a sex slave by a 47-year-old German woman said on Monday he would press charges of sexual coercion and deprivation of freedom against a woman he had met just a few hours earlier in a local pub.
The 43-year-old disc jockey named Dieter S. told Munich's T.Z. newspaper that he had to call police to rescue him from the woman's flat in Munich after she locked him inside, hid the key and forced him to have repeated sex with her.
But after the first consensual rounds, Dieter said he wanted to leave. He discovered she had locked the doors from the inside and hidden the key so he could not leave. He thought about trying to flee over the balcony but it was too high, he said.
"I realized I was trapped and had to keep going until she fell asleep," Dieter said. "So we had sex five more times."
As soon as the woman fell asleep, Dieter said he went out to the balcony and placed an emergency call to police on his cell phone. Police arrived 10 minutes later.
The woman unlocked the door to let the authorities in. She then promptly propositioned the officers, police said.
Munich
Don't Defrost The Frozen Cows
Forest Service
The U.S. Forest Service is considering explosives to move a bunch of frozen cows that died after getting stuck inside a cabin at an elevation of 11,000 feet (3,350 metres) in Colorado's Rocky Mountains.
Forest Service spokesman Steve Segin said Tuesday that rangers are worried about the high fire danger and discussed other solutions when they met Tuesday, including using helicopters or trucks.
Segin said using helicopters is too expensive and rangers are worried about using trucks in a wilderness area, where the government bars permanent improvements and tries to preserve the natural habitat.
Other options include burning the cabin and dragging the dead cows out with pack animals, he said.
"Obviously, time is of the essence because we don't want them defrosting," Segin said.
Forest Service
Prime-Time Nielsens
Ratings
Prime-time viewership numbers compiled by Nielsen for April 9-15. Listings include the week's ranking and viewership.
1. "NCIS," CBS, 17.66 million viewers.
2. "American Idol" (Wednesday), Fox, 16.81 million.
3. "Dancing With the Stars," ABC, 16.39 million.
4. "American Idol" (Thursday), Fox, 15.81 million.
5. "Dancing With the Stars Results," ABC, 13.39 million.
6. "NCIS: Los Angeles," CBS, 12.86 million.
7. "Criminal Minds," CBS, 11.81 million.
8. "60 Minutes," CBS, 11.03 million.
9. "The Voice," NBC, 10.52 million.
10. "Two and a Half Men," CBS, 10.4 million.
11. "Modern Family," ABC, 10.35 million.
12. "Hawaii Five-0," CBS, 10.3 million.
13. "The Big Bang Theory" (Thursday, 9 p.m.), CBS, 10.21 million.
14. "The Good Wife," CBS, 10.16 million.
15. "Body of Proof," ABC, 10.05 million.
16. "CSI: Crime Scene Investigation," CBS, 9.94 million.
17. "Survivor: One World," CBS, 9.91 million.
18. "The Big Bang Theory," CBS, 9.72 million.
19. "Mike & Molly," CBS, 9.58 million.
20. "Unforgettable," CBS, 9.45 million.
Ratings
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