'Best of TBH Politoons'
M Is FOR MASHUP - October 24th 2007
A Mashup In Podcast Paradise
By DJ Useo
I have a large interest in Mashups. Sometimes they
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time to go around to the DJ's sites to snag some booty
swag, but there's an easier way! Let the experts do it
for you. I advise signing up for the following podcast
shows. They are all packed with the finest mashup work
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Recommended Reading
from Bruce
PAUL KRUGMAN: Gone Baby Gone (The New York Times)
It pains me to say this, but this time Alan Greenspan is right about housing.
Jim Hightower: BURMESE BLOOD GEMS (jimhightower.com)
The brutal military dictatorship that controls Burma showed the world just how thuggish it is when it recently attacked and imprisoned Buddhist monks who had dared to protest peacefully against the regime. To see the military cracking heads and hauling off so many monks was appalling - but what can we do?
Greg Beato: Amusing Ourselves to Depth (reason.com)
The Onion ... delights in crapping on pieties and regularly publishes stories guaranteed to upset someone: "Christ Kills Two, Injures Seven In Abortion-Clinic Attack." "Heroic PETA Commandos Kill 49, Save Rabbit." "Gay Pride Parade Sets Mainstream Acceptance of Gays Back 50 Years." There's no predictable ideology running through those headlines, just a desire to express some rude, blunt truth about the world
Rebecca Solnit: "Finding Time: The fast, the bad, the ugly, the alternatives" (orionmagazine.org)
THE FOUR HORSEMEN OF MY APOCALYPSE are called Efficiency, Convenience, Profitability, and Security, and in their names, crimes against poetry, pleasure, sociability, and the very largeness of the world are daily, hourly, constantly carried out. These marauding horsemen are deployed by technophiles, advertisers, and profiteers to assault the nameless pleasures and meanings that knit together our lives and expand our horizons.
Live fast, love hard, die young (economist.com)
Chasing females can take years off life.
Daniel Oppenheimer: Far Out -- science fiction taught me all about honesty (incharacter.org)
I was twelve or thirteen when literature first taught me about the necessity, and the inadequacy, of confronting genocide with honesty. But it wasn't Elie Wiesel or Primo Levi who did it. It wasn't memoirs of the gulag. Pol Pot wasn't involved, nor Ataturk, nor the genocidaires of Cambodia.
Philip Hensher: Gay wizards, hobbits and angels: a celebration (guardian.co.uk)
JK Rowling dropped a bombshell on an American audience last week. Albus Dumbledore, her kindly headmaster, was gay all along.
Liz Garrigan: Off the Record (nashvillescene.com)
Amy Grant talks about her new book, her divorce and subsequent marriage to Vince Gill, 'easy' hair, teenage crushes and more.
Luaine Lee: PBS' 'American Masters' salutes Carol Burnett (popmatters.com)
It was one of the greatest variety shows of all time, and when "The Carol Burnett Show" went dark in 1979 so did the genre. Though the show lasted 11 years it began with a whimper.
'I think I'm sane' (guardian.co.uk)
Famed for his surreal sense of humour and deadpan delivery, Paul Merton is one of Britain's best-loved comedians. He talks to Sam Wollaston about his distressing 'manic episode', his silent movie heroes, and why you'll never see him smile on TV.
David Bruce: Wise Up! Gays and Lesbians (athensnews.com)
Terry Ryan is one-half of the lesbian cartooning team T.O. Sylvester. (The other half is Sylvia Mollick.) Among Ms. Ryan's leisure activities is lying on the couch while "looking remarkably lifelike."
from Vic
Links
I WAS going to just build a ship in a bottle, but NOW...
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Still hot and dry, but not as windy.
The backyard is dusted with a white ash - sorta like snow, only grayer, and there's also a layer of grit on everything in the house - too big to be dust, too fine to be dirt.
Left a magazine open overnight and this morning there was enough grit on the pages to draw in it.
Dumbledore Brave, Brilliant; Why Not Gay
J.K. Rowling
J.K. Rowling, whose Harry Potter series made her the first billionaire author, said on Tuesday she was surprised at the fuss surrounding her announcement the boy wizard's head teacher, Albus Dumbledore, was gay.
"It has certainly never been news to me that a brave and brilliant man could love other men," Rowling told a news conference in Toronto, where she is attending an authors' festival.
Rowling declined to say whether her "outing" of Dumbledore might alienate those who disapprove of homosexuality.
"He is my character. He is what he is and I have the right to say what I say about him," she said.
Rowling said she made no revelations about Dumbledore's sexuality before Friday, because she had never before been asked directly.
J.K. Rowling
'Lions for Lambs'
Robert Redford
Robert Redford hopes his new film, "Lions for Lambs," about U.S. military action in Afghanistan will encourage American youth to "take command of their voice."
In the United States, "we have lost lives, we have lost sacred freedoms, we have lost financial stability, we have lost our position of respect on the world stage," the Oscar-winning filmmaker told a news conference Tuesday.
"I can only speak for my own country, I cannot speak for other countries - but I assume it is similar in some countries," Redford, 70, said. "But the future is going to belong to young people and young people have to take command of their voice."
"Are (American youth) going to become politically active or are they going to move away from it because they are disgusted, they are disillusioned and they don't respect it because there is no morality in leadership so therefore they just move away to other things," Redford said. "If that happens we may have a continuation of what we have had."
Robert Redford
`Doonesbury' Doesn't Get Easier
Garry Trudeau
Garry Trudeau says topics in his "Doonesbury" comic strip that were at first shocking to some readers aren't so anymore, such as one character's revelation 30 years ago that he was gay.
"Now I can pretty much write about gay issues and not hear from anyone," Trudeau told students at the Center for Cartoon Studies on Monday. "Certainly popular culture has a role to play in destigmatizing."
In recent years, with his children grown, Trudeau said he's had more time to do research.
He's met with soldiers and created a military blog called "The Sandbox" on his Web site for their stories, collecting the best entries in a new book.
Garry Trudeau
Bonfire Event Banned In Home Town
Guy Fawkes
A bonfire celebration in York, the home town of Guy Fawkes, has been banned on health and safety grounds, the local council said on Tuesday.
Thousands were due to attend the spectacle on the 402nd anniversary of Fawkes' failed plot to blow up parliament.
But York City Football Club was told their ground was too small to ensure spectator safety, a decision which left the head of the cathedral city's tourist board "lost for words."
The chief executive of York Tourism Board, Gillian Crudass, said she was "lost for words" at the council's decision.
Guy Fawkes
Hospital News
Robert Goulet
Singer and actor Robert Goulet is in a Los Angeles hospital in critical condition awaiting a lung transplant, according to a notice put on his Web site.
The 73-year-old crooner was admitted Sept. 30 to a hospital in Las Vegas, where he lives, and diagnosed with a form of pulmonary fibrosis the site described as a "rapidly progressive and fatal condition."
The site said he was later transferred to the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles and accepted as a transplant patient.
Robert Goulet
Disrupt TV Shoots
California Fires
The raging wildfires that forced the evacuations of a quarter half-million people in southern California are disrupting the production of several TV shows and prompting local TV stations to pre-empt network programming for continuous coverage of the disaster.
"24" was scheduled to film scenes featuring star Kiefer Sutherland at the Marine Corps Air Station El Toro near Irvine on Monday and Tuesday. Sutherland was on the set in one of the base's hangars when filming was canceled at 7:30 a.m. Monday because of health reasons; the cast and crew had blurry eyes and difficulty breathing and were coughing from the smoke.
CBS' "Cold Case" was among several other series that suffered minor fire-related production glitches. Its sets in Simi Valley were blown over by the strong winds Sunday, so the producers had to select another location.
Production on CBS' "NCIS" -- whose stages and locations are so close to the Stevenson Ranch fire that people on the show could see the smoke -- was not affected, but producers had to sub for a number of crew members who stayed home to protect their houses from the blaze.
California Fires
Claims No Errors Tied To Fake Consultant
ABC:
An ABC News internal investigation has concluded that the reporting of a discredited consultant did not cause any inaccuracies in its broadcast.
Alexis Debat is suspected of faking news interviews with Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama and others for articles written for a French publication. A French Web site first reported on the fake Obama interview.
Debat acknowledged to The Associated Press on Sept. 13 that he never conducted any of the interviews published under his byline.
After a report by French Web site Rue 89 brought Debat's reporting - not just his resume - into question, ABC conducted another internal investigation to determine if any of his reporting for the network was not credible.
ABC:
Admits Delaying Some Traffic
Comcast
Comcast Corp. on Tuesday acknowledged "delaying" some subscriber Internet traffic, but said any roadblocks it puts up are temporary and intended to improve surfing for other users.
The statement was a response to an Associated Press report last week that detailed how the nation's largest cable company was interfering with file sharing by some of its Internet subscribers. The AP also found that Comcast's computers masqueraded as those of its users to interrupt file-sharing connections.
Internet watchdog groups denounced Comcast's actions, calling it an example of the kind of abuse that could be curbed with so-called "Net Neutrality" legislation. It would require Internet providers to treat all traffic equally as has largely been the case historically.
Comcast has repeatedly denied blocking any Internet application, including "peer-to-peer" file-sharing programs like BitTorrent, which the AP used in its nationwide tests.
Comcast
Urged To Drop Donnie McClurkin From Tour
Barack Obama
Donnie McClurkin is among several gospel singers scheduled to raise money for Illinois senator and Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama at a concert in South Carolina this weekend.
McClurkin has drawn attention from gay rights activists for his views on homosexuality.
"I don't believe that it is the intention of God," McClurkin said Monday in a telephone interview. "Sexuality, everything is a matter of choice."
"We strongly urge Obama to part ways with this divisive preacher who is clearly singing a different tune than the stated message of the campaign," Wayne Besen, executive director of Truth Wins Out, said in a statement.
McClurkin is a Grammy Award winner who performed at the Republican National Convention in 2004.
Barack Obama
Fan Harassment
Garrison Keillor
Garrison Keillor has gotten a restraining order against a Georgia woman he claims has made telephone calls and sent him explicit e-mails and disturbing gifts, including a petrified alligator foot and dead beetles.
A Ramsey County District judge issued the order against Andrea R. Campbell, 43, of Hawkinsville, Ga., on Friday. Campbell said she received it Monday.
In the petition filed Oct. 12, Keillor, 65, claimed the harassment started April 28, after Campbell attended a live performance of his public radio show, "A Prairie Home Companion," in Columbus, Ga.
Keillor's filing said the e-mails and letters were often "disturbing, unintelligible and rambling," and in one, Campbell "graphically described making love to me."
Garrison Keillor
When Wingnuts Rule
Kaleb Tierce
A popular English teacher has been placed on paid leave - and faces possible criminal charges - after a student's parents complained to police that a ninth-grade class reading list contained a book about a murderer who has sex with his victims' bodies.
Kaleb Tierce, 25, is being investigated for allegedly distributing harmful material to a minor after the student selected Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Cormac McCarthy's "Child of God" off the list and read it.
Tierce, a third-year teacher and assistant football coach at Jim Ned High School, has not been arrested, but his case has caused an uproar in this West Texas town of 700 people. Last week, more than 120 parents and students crowded into a meeting where the school board voted to keep Tierce on paid leave.
Most parents say Tierce should be reinstated, regardless of whether the book is too graphic for teens.
Kaleb Tierce
Put In Punitive Segregation
Foxy Brown
Rapper Foxy Brown has received 76 days in punitive segregation after she scuffled with another inmate at Rikers Island jail, authorities said Tuesday.
Brown, 28, and another inmate got into a shoving match earlier this month, said Stephen Morello, deputy commissioner for public information for the city's correction department, adding he didn't know why the two were fighting. Neither inmate was injured.
Following that incident, Morello said Brown was abusive toward correction guards and then refused to take a random drug test.
The combined violations, Morello said, earned Brown more than two months in punitive segregation, where an inmate can spend up to 23 hours a day in isolation.
Foxy Brown
Catholic Condom Ban Helps Spread
AIDS
The rapid spread in Latin America of the virus that causes AIDS is made worse by the Roman Catholic Church's stand against using condoms, a U.N. official said on Monday.
Some 1.7 million people across Latin America are infected with the HIV virus or full-blown AIDS, and the epidemic is spreading swiftly with up to 410,000 new cases in 2006, up from as many as 320,000 new cases in 2004, according the UN AIDS program, UNAIDS.
"In Latin America the use of condoms has been demonized, but if they were used in every relation I guarantee the epidemic would be resolved in the region," said Alberto Stella, the UNAIDS Coordinator for Honduras, Nicaragua and Costa Rica.
AIDS
In Serious Peril
Collier Glacier
Between the North Sister and Middle Sister in Oregon's Cascade Range, Collier Glacier has advanced and receded for hundreds of thousands of years. But like many glaciers, it is headed in one direction these days: backward.
It is in serious peril, says geologist Ellen Morris Bishop of the Fossil-based Oregon Paleo Lands Institute. "We have basically a really sad picture of Collier Glacier today."
Geologists blame among other things a warming climate, altering the landscape and perhaps the availability of water to high-elevation ecosystems. Collier is shrinking faster than most of the 35 glaciers in the state.
Collier Glacier
Cut Warming Impact Testimony
White House
The White House severely edited congressional testimony given Tuesday by the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on the impact of climate change on health, removing specific scientific references to potential health risks, according to two sources familiar with the documents.
Dr. Julie Gerberding, director of the Atlanta-based CDC, the government's premier disease monitoring agency, told a Senate hearing that climate change "is anticipated to have a broad range of impacts on the health of Americans."
Her testimony before the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee had much less information on health risks than a much longer draft version Gerberding submitted to the White House Office of Management and Budget for review in advance of her appearance.
"It was eviscerated," said a CDC official, familiar with both versions, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the review process.
White House
Prime Time Nielsen
Ratings
Prime-Time viewership numbers compiled by Nielsen Media Research for Oct. 15-21. Listings include the week's ranking, with viewership for the week and season-to-date rankings in parentheses. An "X" in parentheses denotes a one-time-only presentation
1. (1) "CSI: Crime Scene Investigation," CBS, 21.22 million viewers.
2. (2) "Dancing with the Stars" (Monday), ABC, 19.40 million viewers.
3. (X) MLB ALCS Game 7 (Cleveland at Boston), Fox, 19.15 million viewers.
4. (4) "Desperate Housewives," ABC, 18.21 million viewers.
5. (3) "Grey's Anatomy," ABC, 18.04 million viewers.
6. (6) "NCIS," CBS, 17.55 million viewers.
7. (6) "Dancing with the Stars" (Tuesday), ABC, 17.30 million viewers.
8. (9) "CSI: Miami," CBS, 15.59 million viewers.
9. (11) "Criminal Minds," CBS, 15.03 million viewers.
10. (13) "Samantha Who?," ABC, 14.42 million viewers.
11. (12) "Survivor: China," CBS, 14.03 million viewers.
12. (14) "CSI: NY," CBS, 13.99 million viewers.
13. (18) "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition," ABC, 13.73 million viewers.
14. (14) "Two And a Half Men," CBS, 13.69 million viewers.
15. (X) MLB ALCS Game 7-Pre-game, Fox, 13.32 million viewers.
16. (8) "NBC Sunday Night Football" (Pittsburgh at Denver), NBC, 13.29 million viewers.
17. (X) MLB ALCS Game 5 (Boston at Cleveland), Fox, 13.10 million viewers.
18. (31) "The OT," Fox, 12.64 million viewers.
19. (21) "Law & Order: Special Victims Unit," NBC, 12.51 million viewers.
20. (28) "Deal Or No Deal" (Wednesday), NBC, 12.41 million viewers.
Ratings
In Memory
Cathleen Armstrong-Resh
Cathleen Armstrong-Resh, 55, died Sunday from multiple injuries she suffered when she was run over by her own car.
Armstrong-Resh was the director of the Housing Alliance of Indiana County, which helps low-income families find affordable housing.
Cambria County Coroner Dennis Kwiatkowski said Armstrong-Resh apparently had pulled her car, a 2004 Volkswagen Jetta, into her yard so she could listen to its radio while she worked in her garden.
"She apparently failed to put the car into park or put on the emergency brake and the car tragically rolled over her," Kwiatkowski said.
Kwiatkowski said Armstrong-Resh's husband, Jim Resh, was working in the barn and did not discover his wife until about an hour after the accident occurred at approximately 2 p.m. The death was ruled accidental.
Cathleen Armstrong-Resh
Cathy was a 1970 graduate of Johnsonburg Area High School, where she was a cheerleader, a member of the National Honor Society, active in chorus, and also involved in Girl Scouts.
She was unabashedly liberal, always cheerful, and remarkably easygoing.
Besides her husband, Jim, and 2 children, she is also survived by her mother, Theodora (Teddy), sister Amy, and brothers Jeff and Tom.
She will be greatly missed.
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