Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Tom Danehy: Tom looks into the future of Arizona's school voucher program and sees disaster ahead (Tucson Weekly)
I recently got an unsolicited e-mail from the Goldwater Institute touting the part the group played in the final destruction of teachers' unions in Arizona. The wording of the press release was absolutely giddy, explaining how the cabal of white guys in expensive suits has stripped away all legal protections from people who have selflessly devoted themselves to the education of Arizona's young people for decades and suddenly find themselves at the mercy of petty administrators, dysfunctional school boards, and lawmakers who refuse to obey the law (301 monies, anyone?).
Peter Taylor: If cigarettes kill, why do tobacco giants still wield so much power? (Guardian)
The industry now claims to be more socially responsible, yet it is suing countries around the world that try to introduce plain packaging.
Alexis Petridis: "Ralph Steadman: 'Why was I so vicious? Was I unfair?'" (Guardian)
Propelled by drugs and egged on by the god of gonzo Hunter S Thompson, Ralph Steadman brought a savage hooliganism to the sedate world of drawing - and high-society America. Did he go too far?
Swedish One-Man Band Plays "Star Wars" Music (YouTube)
"Jabba the Hutt could have saved a lot of money by turning down Figrin D'an and the Modal Tones and instead employing a single musician: Anders Flanderz. This whimsical street musician from Sweden plays a vast assortment of instruments, including an accordion, cymbals, a xylophone, and what appears to be a mailbox." - Neatorama
Ryan Plummer: Everything You Never Knew About The Making Of Escape From New York (io9)
How did Escape From New York become one of the greatest cult movies of all time? It was sheer luck that this film even got made - and a similar amount of luck was involved in Kurt Russell surviving the filming. Here are all the weirdest secrets, and wildest adventures, from the making of John Carpenter's classic film.
John Schmoll: 4 Killer Money Lessons Hidden in 'Game of Thrones' (Daly Finance)
"A Lannister always pays his debts."
C. Coville: 5 Useless Products That Nobody Can Throw Out (Cracked)
In our culture, throwing out books ranks somewhere on the behavioral scale between torturing small animals in front of a group of nuns and torturing small animals in front of a group of nuns while wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with Game of Thrones spoilers.
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David Bruce has approximately 50 Kindle books on Amazon.com.
wrote:
has retired.
took the day off.
Reader Suggestion
Michelle in AZ
Reader Suggestion
Medical Tour
From The Creator of 'Avery Ant'
from Marc Perkel
BartCop
Hello Bartcop fans,
As you all know the untimely passing of Terry was unexpected, even by
him. We all knew he had cancer but we all thought he had some years
left. So some of us who have worked closely with him over the years are
scrambling around trying to figure out what to do. My job, among other
things, is to establish communications with the Bartcop community and
provide email lists and groups for those who might put something
together. Those who want to play an active roll in something coming from
this, or if you are one of Bart's pillars, should send an email to
active@bartcop.com.
The most active open discussion is on Bart's Facebook page.
( www.facebook.com/bartcop )
You can listen to Bart's theme song here
or here.
( www.bartcop.com/blizing-saddles.mp3 )
( youtu.be/MySGAaB0A9k )
We have opened up the radio show archives which are now free. Listen to
all you want.
( bartcop.com/members )
Bart's final wish was to pay off the house mortgage for Mrs. Bart who is
overwhelmed and so very grateful for the support she has received.
Anyone wanting to make a donation can click on this the yellow donate
button on bartcop.com
But - I need you all to help keep this going. This note
isn't going to directly reach all of Bart's fans. So if you can repost
it on blogs and discussion boards so people can sign up then when we
figure out what's next we can let more people know. This list is just
over 600 but like to get it up to at least 10,000 pretty quick. So
here's the signup link for this email list.
( mailman.bartcop.com/listinfo/bartnews )
Marc Perkel
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Sunny and seasonal.
Video Quality Report
YouTube
Starting today, internet providers in the United States will finally be held to account for lackluster YouTube streaming speeds. Google has brought its Video Quality Report - first launched in Canada at the start of this year - to the US, and is now ranking ISPs like Cablevision and Verizon FiOS based on the fidelity of their YouTube streams. If you've been experiencing buffering issues or playback interruptions despite paying for a speedy internet connection, this monthly report could help answer the lingering question of why.
"Making sure you can watch YouTube in HD from anywhere, anytime is a shared effort among us, your Internet service provider and even you," the company says. On that last point, Google is offering consumers a number of tips to help boost YouTube performance. That's assuming of course that your chosen ISP and YouTube are on good, cooperative terms. But we're in a different world now. And as Netflix has shown (more than once), ensuring smooth streaming sometimes means pulling out the checkbook.
You'll know which ISPs are faring best because they're labeled as "HD Verified." This means that customers can expect reliable streams of at least 720p; apparently setting the bar at 1080p was too great of a challenge for these companies to meet. More specifics on the methodology YouTube's using to grade ISPs can be found here.
If you can only successfully watch videos at a resolution of 360p, your ISP is offering what YouTube describes as standard definition. But some internet providers are apparently doing even worse than that; the worst designation of "lower definition" is reserved for ISPs plagued by stuttering video and buffering - even when you're trying to watch something at less than 360p quality. The Video Quality Report also lends an interesting look at what time of day YouTube is most popular with other people on your network and in your city. Surprise: many people use it to waste time at work.
YouTube
'The Weed Fairy'
Seattle
A woman who calls herself the "Weed Fairy" distributed free nuggets of marijuana to people in Seattle over the weekend, taping the free pot on fliers around a city neighbourhood.
The woman, 23-year-old Yeni Sleidi, says she does it to amuse people and to give them a break from everyday stress.
She said 50 fliers had nuggets taped to them.
The fliers posted in Seattle came with the message: "These are tough times. Take this weed." Sleidi posted her free marijuana in Capitol Hill, a Seattle neighbourhood known for its nightlife and counterculture.
Seattle
Not A Hunchback
King Richard III
He may have had a twisted spine, but England's King Richard III was no hunchback, according to a new analysis of the medieval king's skeleton.
After the bones of the 15th-century king were discovered under a parking lot in central England in 2012, scientists scanned the remains of Richard III's back and created replicas of each bone to reconstruct his spine. The researchers said while Richard III had a severe case of scoliosis, he was far from the limping "hunchbacked toad" with a withered arm depicted in William Shakespeare's play.
"Richard had a very squishy spine but it wouldn't have stuck out that obviously," said Piers Mitchell of the University of Cambridge, one of the study's authors. He said it was technically inaccurate to describe Richard III as a hunchback because his spine was bent sideways rather than forward.
He said the king's head and neck were straight, but his right shoulder was higher than his left and his upper body was relatively short compared to his limbs.
King Richard III
Visit Revealed in Old Journal
Forbidden City
Newly analyzed artifacts and a 200-year-old journal reveal the remarkable tale of the first American citizen to enter China's Forbidden City and meet the emperor.
The mission was based on a diplomatic deception, and lives would be lost on the journey, but in 1795 Andreas Everardus van Braam Houckgeest would get to see the Forbidden City, a palace complex of more than 900 buildings that was off-limits even to most Chinese. He saw it at a time when China was wealthy and at the height of its power.
At one point Houckgeest was shown to the emperor's favorite apartment, which gave him a view of a mountain covered with temples.
In Houckgeest's journal, he writes of his visit, as translated into English in the 18th century: "This work seems to represent the enterprise of the giants who attempted to scale the Heavens: at least rocks heaped upon rocks recall that ancient fiction to the mind. The assemblage of the buildings and picturesque embellishments of the mountains afford a view of which the pen can give no adequate idea …"
Bruce MacLaren, a Chinese art specialist at the firm Bonhams, has been researching Houckgeest's tale and presented his findings recently at a symposium at Toronto's Royal Ontario Museum. While scholars are aware of the tale, MacLaren's research adds new details and insights.
Forbidden City
Loses $750 Million In Two Months
Vince McMahon
Vince McMahon's fortunes have been thrown off the top of a steel cage. In a precipitous stock plummet, McMahon has lost a stunning $750 million in the past two months, punctuated by a single-day loss of $350 million earlier this month.
WWE's shares had ascended in the early months of 2014, gaining 89 percent in value. That helped McMahon amass a fortune on paper of $1.6 billion in mid-March. But a variety of negative factors chopped away at that valuation. WWE's new online streaming network has picked up only an estimated 700,000 subscribers, and WWE conceded that it could lose as much as $52 million this year. That announcement cost McMahon another $325 million in March.
One of the key downward forces was the announcement of a new TV deal between the WWE and NBCUniversal. Analysts estimated the $150 million deal was a 50 percent increase from the previous agreement, but had expected the deal to be double or even triple the prior one. The announcement of that agreement forced WWE's share price from a high of about $20 to the $11 range, where it remains to this day.
The irony, of course, is that TV deals were how McMahon built his empire. As Fortune notes, his pay-per-view broadcasts put WWE into American households and made stars out of its wrestlers.
Vince McMahon
Bloomberg Bashes Liberal McCarthyism
Harvard
Former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg used his commencement address at Harvard University on Thursday to bash a U.S. academic culture that he described as increasingly intolerant of ideas from outside a narrow liberal spectrum.
Citing the campus protests that caused luminaries including former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and International Monetary Fund head Christine Lagarde to back out of planned speeches, Bloomberg criticized students and faculty for being hostile to ideas that clashed with their own ideologies.
Standing amid the centuries-old stone buildings of Harvard Yard, he compared the atmosphere in U.S. academia to that which prevailed during Senator Joseph McCarthy's 1950s campaign to ferret out Communists in public life.
"In the 1950s the right wing was attempting to repress left-wing ideas," said Bloomberg, who started his career on Wall Street before launching the news and data company that bears his name. "Today on many college campuses it is liberals trying to repress conservative ideas even as conservative faculty members are at risk of becoming an endangered species.
Bloomberg, who started out as a Democrat but became a Republican in his initial bid to become the mayor of New York and later became an Independent, since leaving office in January has vowed to spend $50 million of his fortune on a gun-control initiative he intends to stand as a counterweight to the powerful National Rifle Association.
Harvard
Money Talk$
Texa$$
The amount of explosive gas tainting a North Texas neighborhood's water supply has increased in recent years, but the state's oil and gas regulator says it can't link the methane to drilling activity nearby, according to a report it released Wednesday.
The state Railroad Commission has found that the contamination has gotten worse in most of the private water wells it tested in September 2013 compared with what was measured in 2010 and in 2011. However, Peter Pope, the agency geologist who signed off on the report, wrote that staff "has determined that the evidence is insufficient to conclude that Barnett Shale production activities have caused or contributed to methane contamination beneath the neighborhood."
The agency will not investigate further, Pope added in the report dated Friday. He suggested that infuriated residents of the subdivision in Weatherford, a suburb about 30 miles west of Fort Worth, "properly ventilate and aerate their water systems."
The agency's report contradicts findings by independent scientists who have done fingerprint-like analysis of the methane in the water wells and compared it to those being produced by a gas driller. Those scientists have said that the methane originates from a well that was once owned by Fort Worth-based Range Resources. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency reached a similar conclusion in 2010 and took rare emergency action ordering Range to provide the homeowners with clean water.
The EPA, faced with lengthy and expensive litigation, eventually withdrew its order and settled with Range Resources. The company, under that agreement, was to conduct quarterly tests of the water wells in the area.
Texa$$
Sick Cop Kills Elk
"Big Boy"
In a stately neighborhood of Boulder, a city known as the Berkeley of the Rocky Mountains, a bull elk named "Big Boy" had become a treasured fixture.
Now jurors must decide whether to convict the former officer on felony charges that could send him to prison. Among the questions they must answer: Did the elk deserve to die, and was there a cover-up?
Sam Carter was charged with attempting to influence a public official, forgery and tampering with evidence after he shot the elk while on duty on a snowy New Year's Day 2013.
Prosecutors say Carter, fascinated with the elk, stalked it for days and sought to mount its head on a wall as a trophy. They said he shut off the GPS in his squad car when he shot the animal, and failed to radio dispatchers his location. Prosecutors said Carter later forged a tag to pass off the dead animal as road kill.
Prosecutors say Carter called another officer, Brent Curnow, to come cart away the body in his pickup truck, and together they butchered the animal for its meat. Curnow pleaded guilty last year to tampering with evidence and other charges and is expected to testify against Carter.
"Big Boy"
School Digitally Alters Students Pics
Wasatch High
A group of Utah high school students said they were shocked and upset to discover their school yearbook photos were digitally altered, with sleeves and higher necklines drawn on to cover up bare skin.
Several students at Wasatch High School in Heber City say that their outfits did meet the school dress code and they've worn them on campus many times.
"I feel like they're trying to shame you of your body," said sophomore Shelby Baum, who discovered a high, square neckline was drawn on her black, V-neck T-shirt.
Baum told The Salt Lake Tribune she was upset to learn a tattoo she had on her collarbone was erased from her photo. She said she consulted the school dress code before getting the tattoo, a line of script that reads "I am enough the way I am."
The Wasatch County School District said in a statement Thursday that students were warned when yearbook photos were taken last fall that images might be altered if students violated dress standards.
Wasatch High
Disappearing Faster
Species
Species of plants and animals are becoming extinct at least 1,000 times faster than they did before humans arrived on the scene, and the world is on the brink of a sixth great extinction, a new study says.
The study looks at past and present rates of extinction and finds a lower rate in the past than scientists had thought. Species are now disappearing from Earth about 10 times faster than biologists had believed, said study lead author noted biologist Stuart Pimm of Duke University.
"We are on the verge of the sixth extinction," Pimm said from research at the Dry Tortugas. "Whether we avoid it or not will depend on our actions."
The work, published Thursday by the journal Science, was hailed as a landmark study by outside experts.
Pimm's study focused on the rate, not the number, of species disappearing from Earth. It calculated a "death rate" of how many species become extinct each year out of 1 million species.
Species
Releases Diversity Data
Google
In a groundbreaking disclosure, Google revealed how very white and male its workforce is - just 2 percent of its Googlers are black, 3 percent are Hispanic, and 30 percent are women.
The search giant said Wednesday that the transparency about its workforce - the first disclosure of its kind in the largely white, male tech sector - is an important step toward change.
The numbers were compiled as part of a report that major U.S. employers must file with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Companies are not required to make the information public.
The gender divide is based on the roughly 44,000 people Google employed throughout the world at the start of this year. The company didn't factor about 4,000 workers at its Motorola Mobility division, which is being sold to China's Lenovo Group for $2.9 billion. The racial data is limited to Google's roughly 26,600 workers in the U.S as of August 2013.
Google
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