'Best of TBH Politoons'
Recommended Reading
from Bruce
MAUREEN DOWD: Fly Into a Building? Who Could Imagine? (The New York Times)
The F.B.I officer who arrested and questioned Zacarias Moussaoui told a jury that he had alerted his superiors about 70 times that Mr. Moussaoui was a radical Islamic fundamentalist who hated America and might be plotting to hijack an airplane.
Dr. Mark H. Shapiro: College Costs Are Stifling Upward Mobility. (irascibleprofessor.com)
It's no secret that going to college has become an expensive proposition these days. According to the College Board tuition and fees for four-year private colleges averaged $21,235 for the 2005-06 academic year, which was up 5.9% from the previous year.
William Saletan: Don't Do Unto Others (slate.com)
The difference between gay marriage and polygamy.
Jack Shafer: The Tripster in Wolfe's Clothing (cjr.org)
Tom Wolfe writes himself into the second sentence of his book about Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters, The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, describing a boaty ride up and down the streets of San Francisco in the open bed of a Day-Glo-painted pickup truck.
Lisa Armstrong: Très chic? Mais non!
Contrary to popular belief, French women are not paragons of style.
Annalee Newitz: Spy on Yourself
A new service allows you to track your every web move -- but how private is it really?
Mark Morford: American Teens, Perky As Candy (sfgate.com)
Disney's dorky smash hit "High School Musical" proves teens aren't what you think. Are they?
Richard Roeper: Scientologists not given to turning other cheek (suntimes.com)
Whether you're into Buddha or Jesus or Muhammad or L. Ron Hubbard, if it gets you through the day and it makes you want to be a better person, then God bless. So to speak.
David Bruce: Wise Up! (athensnews.com)
In 1969, the town of Picoaza, Ecuador, elected as its mayor a foot powder named Pulvapies. Taking advantage of an upcoming election, the Pulvapies foot powder company rolled out an advertising campaign that made it seem as if their foot powder was a real person who was really running for mayor. The ads proclaimed in big letters: VOTE FOR PULVAPIES. Of course, a foot powder cannot become mayor, so the election was voided, a new election was held, and a real human being was elected mayor. However, the new mayor made himself unpopular, and these signs appeared in the town of Picoaza: "BRING BACK PULVAPIES!" and "PULVAPIES, THE BEST MAYOR WE EVER HAD!"
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Sunny & much warmer.
No new flags.
'A Question Of Sovereignty'
Cecilia Fire Thunder
When Governor Mike Rounds signed HB 1215 into law it effectively banned all abortions in the state with the exception that it did allow saving the mother's life. There were, however, no exceptions for victims of rape or incest. His actions, and the comments of State Senators like Bill Napoli of Rapid City, SD, set of a maelstrom of protests within the state.
Napoli suggested that if it was a case of "simple rape," there should be no thoughts of ending a pregnancy. Letters by the hundreds appeared in local newspapers, mostly written by women, challenging Napoli's description of rape as "simple." He has yet to explain satisfactorily what he meant by "simple rape."
The President of the Oglala Sioux Tribe on the Pine Ridge Reservation, Cecilia Fire Thunder, was incensed. A former nurse and healthcare giver she was very angry that a state body made up mostly of white males, would make such a stupid law against women.
"To me, it is now a question of sovereignty," she said to me last week. "I will personally establish a Planned Parenthood clinic on my own land which is within the boundaries of the Pine Ridge Reservation where the State of South Dakota has absolutely no jurisdiction."
Cecilia Fire Thunder
Women Behind The Men
Literary Spouses
Thanks to the current lawsuit against the publisher of Dan Brown's "The Da Vinci Code," Blythe Brown has entered a pantheon whose occupants include Vera Nabokov, Olivia Twain and Tabitha King: the indispensable literary spouse.
Few had heard of Blythe Brown before the trial, but as the author's witness statement and court testimony revealed, she was an essential contributor to his million-selling historical thriller. She led the massive research effort, supplied countless notes and suggestions and offered an invaluable "female perspective" for a book immersed in "the sacred feminine, goddess worship and the feminine aspect of spiritually."
Her unexpected prominence made for fine courtroom drama, especially since Blythe Brown did not attend the trial, but she is actually one of many spouses who have served well beyond the traditional roles of muse or moral support. They have been researchers, editors, agents and virtual co-authors. They are not one half of a famous literary couple, like Joan Didion and John Gregory Dunne, but private collaborators usually little known beyond friends and family.
Literary Spouses
Starving Musician Story
Chrissie Hynde
Some 30 years ago, they were starving musicians who engaged in a sordid fling. They became big rock stars, but Pretenders singer/guitarist Chrissie Hynde and former Sex Pistols guitarist Steve Jones also remained friends, and they got nostalgic on Wednesday, both on the airwaves and later on stage in Los Angeles.
Jones, 50, a Londoner who lives in Los Angeles, interviewed Hynde on his midday radio show, and immediately brought up their romantic past.
Hynde, who rarely talks about her personal life, admitted that when she had nowhere to live in the mid-'70s, she would meet up with Jones in the Sex Pistols' rehearsal studio in London's Denmark Street.
Jones recalled a liaison in a bathroom at a party. But Hynde said the most memorable thing about that encounter was that she briefly dropped her vegetarian ways and ate a piece of meat afterwards.
Chrissie Hynde
Reviewing Policy On Planting News Stories
Pentagon
The Pentagon will review whether it is proper for the military to pay news organizations to publish positive stories secretly written by U.S. forces, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said on Thursday.
During a briefing, Rumsfeld refused to give his opinion on the propriety of the practice.
The stories were planted with the help of Lincoln Group, a Washington-based defense contractor, officials said.
Pentagon
Managed Health Care's Answer
Patient Dumping
A videocamera recorded a 63-year-old hospital patient dressed only in a gown and slippers being dumped onto a skid row street - a controversial practice that has come under fire from police, politicians and homeless advocates.
Officials from Kaiser Permanente's Bellflower hospital apologized for the incident, which occurred Monday and was revealed by authorities during a Wednesday news conference.
The videotape, recorded by a camera mounted outside the downtown Union Rescue Mission, shows a taxicab making a U-turn and driving out of camera view. Moments later, a woman appears from the direction of the cab, wandering for about three minutes on a street and a sidewalk before mission staff take her inside the building.
Patient Dumping
Women Win Battle
'The Lion Sleeps Tonight'
Three impoverished South African women whose father wrote the song known as "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" have won a six-year battle for royalties in a case that could affect other musicians.
The story surrounding the song that never seems to go out of date amounts to a rags-to-riches tale, replete with racial overtones.
No one is saying how many millions will go to the daughters of the late composer Solomon Linda, who died in poverty from kidney disease in 1962 at age 53. But the family's settlement last month with New York-based Abilene Music gives Linda's heirs 25 percent of past and future royalties and has broad implications.
Linda composed his now-famous song in 1939 in one of the squalid hostels that housed black migrant workers in Johannesburg. According to family lore, he wrote the song in minutes, inspired by his childhood tasks of chasing prowling lions from the cattle he herded. He called the song Mbube, Zulu for lion.
'The Lion Sleeps Tonight'
Watching More Old Sitcoms Than Ever
TV Viewers
TV viewers are watching more sitcoms each week than they did a decade ago, a new study concluded. Unfortunately for broadcast networks, they're tuning in to "Friends," "Seinfeld" and "Everybody Loves Raymond" reruns more than anything new on the air.
As network executives spend early spring behind closed doors plotting their fall schedules, the statistics starkly illustrate how these programmers are forced to compete against the best of the last 30 years when developing new comedies.
"The viewers say we're not going to tolerate mediocrity anymore because we've got the classics and there's a lot of competition out there," said NBC Entertainment President Kevin Reilly on Thursday.
TV Viewers
Feet On The Furniture, Again
Tom Cruise
When it comes to chairs and his love for Katie Holmes, Tom Cruise just can't help himself.
The megastar was the guest of honor at Yahoo's quarterly "Influential Speakers" event Tuesday at the company's headquarters in Sunnyvale, Calif., bantering with chief executive Terry Semel and answering questions from the crowd.
After an impromptu arm-wrestling match with Semel, Cruise happily repeated, albeit in jest, his "Oprah" chair-hopping episode to trumpet his joy about his fiancee and their soon-to-arrive offspring. Then he brought the very pregnant Holmes onto the stage, where he beamed and patted her round belly.
Tom Cruise
Attracting Talent
Voiceovers
"Bright. Crisp. Clean. Pure," says the silky smooth, perfectly masculine voice on the beer commercial. "This is Budweiser. THIS is beer."
Twenty years ago, voiceovers were the domain of the baritone radio announcer or the character actor. No longer. These days, more A-list stars than you might imagine are cashing in.
Kevin Spacey's pitching Honda. Kelsey Grammer does Disney. Kiefer Sutherland voices Apple commercials, and his dad, Donald, did Volvo. There's Queen Latifah (Pizza Hut), Sean Connery (Level 3 Communications), Christian Slater (Panasonic), Gene Hackman (Oppenheimer Funds) - oh, and then there's Julia Roberts.
And George Clooney, that mysterious Budweiser voice. When Anheuser-Busch was searching for "a classic voice" last year, the company hit on Clooney as the perfect embodiment of its product. "George Clooney - it's almost a brand in itself," says Dan McHugh, vice president for trademark brands. "It just made a lot of sense for us."
Voiceovers
In Memory
Addwaitya
A giant aldabra tortoise thought to be around 250 years old has died in the Kolkata zoo of liver failure, authorities said on Thursday.
The tortoise had been the pet of Robert Clive, the famous British military officer in colonial India around the middle of the 18th century, a local minister in West Bengal state said.
Local authorities say the tortoise, named "Addwaitya" meaning the "The One and Only" in Bengali, was the oldest tortoise in the world but they have not presented scientific proof to back up their claim.
"Historical records show he was a pet of British general Robert Clive of the East India Company and had spent several years in his sprawling estate before he was brought to the zoo about 130 years ago," West Bengal Forest Minister Jogesh Barman said.
"We have documents to prove that he was more than 150 years old, but we have pieced together other evidence like statements from authentic sources and it seems that he is more than 250 years old," he said.
The minister said details about Addwaitya's early life showed that British sailors had brought him from the Seychelles islands and presented him to Clive, who was rising fast in the East India Company's military hierarchy.
Addwaitya
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