Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Tom Danehy: "Hey, big-name sportswriters: Stop selling out, and start doing your job" (tucsonweekly.com)
Dear nationally known sportswriter(s)/commentator(s): You know who you are: You're cool; you're hip; you know the latest handshakes.
Ted Rall: Afghan War Lies (MAUI TIME WEEKLY)
There's an exception. It is a limited set of circumstances. If the armies of another nation invade your country, there is no need to resort to lies to sell war. The battle is already joined. The threat is palpable. Anyone with a smidgen of patriotism and/or the instinct of self-preservation will rush to enlist.
Never Forget: Bad Wars Aren't Possible Unless Good People Back Them ...a message from Michael Moore
We invaded Iraq because most Americans -- including good liberals like Al Franken, Nicholas Kristof & Bill Keller of the New York Times, David Remnick of the New Yorker, the editors of the Atlantic and the New Republic, Harvey Weinstein, Hillary Clinton, Chuck Schumer and John Kerry -- wanted to.
SAMUEL G. FREEDMAN: Muslims and Islam Were Part of Twin Towers' Life (nytimes.com)
Sometime in 1999, a construction electrician received a new work assignment from his union. The man, Sinclair Hejazi Abdus-Salaam, was told to report to 2 World Trade Center, the southern of the twin towers.
Richard Roeper: If audience had a say in Oprah's big giveaway ... (suntimes.com)
Somehow, I don't think a trip Down Under would make cut.
Connie Schultz: We Outnumber the Religious Fanatics (creators.com)
Years ago, I criticized atheists who wanted to dissuade believers of their faith. My argument was always the same: Why don't you just leave us alone?
Susan Estrich: The Difference Between Girls and Boys (creators.com)
When I was in seventh grade, I was the only girl on the junior high math team. I wasn't the best, and I wasn't the worst. But the experience of standing out in such an obvious way - the loneliness, the geekiness, the sitting alone on the bus, all of it combined - left the math team, after just a few meets, all boys.
David Weigel: Requiem for Mike Castle (slate.com)
I see a lot of conservatives arguing tonight that Christine O'Donnell's victory shows that she can upset the establishment and win this seat. These conservatives are not from Delaware.
Jason Easley: Why Jon Stewart Is a Huge Long Term Threat to Fox News
Stewart educates his young viewers in the ways of Fox news on a nightly basis. Meanwhile, Fox's primary audience is over 60. Who does the future belong to?
Jim Hightower: OFFSHORING AMERICA'S LEGAL JOBS
Maybe you're one of the thousands of young lawyers in America working in some low-skill, part-time job because law firms have cut so many of the starting positions you were educated to take. If so, I have good news: Jobs for young lawyers are now mushrooming in companies that provide legal services to U.S. corporations. Unfortunately, you'll have to move to India to get one. And the pay will be - how shall I put this? - "disappointing."
Jim Hightower: THE TECHNO-GIZMO TAKEOVER OF AMERICA
Whether you want it to or not, technology marches on! And on... and on... and on...
Stephen Moss: "The Duchess of Devonshire: 'When you are very old, you cry over some things, but not a lot'" (guardian.co.uk)
The 90-year-old Duchess of Devonshire talks about her famous Mitford sisters, meeting Hitler and why she doesn't like change.
The Weekly Poll
Current Question
The 'Cleaning House' Edition
Flint (MI) public housing authority, in an effort to fight crime in the projects, is considering a requirement for all current and prospective residents to take a drug test to keep their federally subsidized apartments.... Housing Commission Executive Rodney Slaughter said he wants a drug-testing program modeled after the city of Indianapolis, where public housing residents are required to take annual drug tests. If a resident tests positive, they would have 30 days to test negative or seek help...
Flint eyes drug tests for public housing | detnews.com | The Detroit News
Would you support such a policy in your community?
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From The Creator of 'Avery Ant'
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Sunny but cooler than seasonal.
Director Confesses To Hoax
Joaquin Phoenix
Director Casey Affleck told the New York Times Thursday that the strange behavior of Joaquin Phoenix is a put-on, staged for the documentary on which they collaborated, "I'm Still Here," and for the actor's infamous 2009 appearance on "Late Show with David Letterman."
"It's a terrific performance, the performance of his career," Affleck told The Times. Letterman, Affleck said, was not aware that Phoenix was faking instability while on the air for an uncomfortable interview segment.
The actor is scheduled to return to Letterman next week. Earlier this month, Affleck was singing a different tune, telling reporters at the Venice International Film Festival, "I can tell you that there is no hoax."
Affleck also says that Phoenix's agent, Patrick Whitesell at William Morris Endeavor Entertainment, was in on the joke. But as The Hollywood Reporter has reported, the aberrant behavior hasn't hurt Phoenix's career; he's weighing his next film roles. There had been rumblings for quite some time that Phoenix was faking his sudden career detour from respected actor to unstable, aspiring hip-hop artist.
Joaquin Phoenix
Autism Benefit
Comedy Central
Stephen Colbert, Larry David, Tina Fey, Ricky Gervais and Sarah Silverman are just a few of the names expected for this year's "Night Of Too Many Stars: An Overbooked Concert For Autism Education," the network said Thursday.
The bicoastal benefit will consist of a comedy concert taped at New York's Beacon Theatre. Steve Carell, Jimmy Fallon, Tracy Morgan, Joel McHale, John Oliver, Chris Rock and Triumph The Insult Comic Dog are among those on the bill, with soul-funk ensemble Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings serving as the house band.
That event will be intercut with live appearances and a celebrity phone bank originating from Los Angeles. Rob Coddry, Bryan Cranston, Jimmy Kimmel, Jim Parsons, Sofia Vergara and Rainn Wilson will be some of the stars on hand taking calls from donors.
Jon Stewart will host the two-hour broadcast, which airs Oct. 21.
Comedy Central
Mexican Journalist Receives PEN Prize
Lydia Cacho
A Mexican journalist who was arrested and threatened after exposing a pedophile ring is to receive a major writing prize.
Writers' charity PEN says Lydia Cacho is the recipient of its International Writer of Courage Prize, which goes to writers persecuted for their beliefs.
Cacho was arrested, charged with libel and received death threats after publishing a book about a child sex abuse ring involving business figures in Cancun in 2005.
The prize is presented alongside an award to a British writer, created in honor of Nobel Prize-winning playwright Harold Pinter. This year's winner is Hanif Kureishi, whose screenplays and novels include "My Beautiful Laundrette" and "The Buddha of Suburbia."
Lydia Cacho
Centenary
Mervyn Peake
British writer and illustrator Mervyn Peake, famed for a series of Gothic fantasies that earned him an international cult following, would have been 100 years old next year.
To mark the occasion, more than 20 new publications are planned as well as exhibitions.
But first, his little-known play "The Cave," written in 1961, will receive its world premiere in October this year, not on the West End or on Broadway, but at a small-scale theater hidden away in southeast London.
The Gormenghast Trilogy -- "Titus Groan," "Gormenghast" and "Titus Alone" -- was a way of dealing with the horrors of World War Two and Peake's experience as a war artist in which he visited Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.
Sebastian Peake's admiration for his father is huge, even if growing up with a genius could be emotionally "tough-going." He tackles the subject in his book "In the Shadow of Genius," which he has completed after working on it intermittently for roughly 30 years, and is in the hands of his agent.
Mervyn Peake
FBI Urges Cartoonist To Go Into Hiding
Molly Norris
A Seattle cartoonist who stirred up a religious storm with a tongue-in-cheek encouragement to draw images of the Muslim prophet Mohammed has gone into hiding after a threat to her safety.
According to Seattle Weekly, which originally published an illustration by cartoonist Molly Norris entitled "Everybody Draw Mohammed Day," Norris was told by the Federal Bureau of Investigation to "go ghost."
"On the insistence of top security specialists at the FBI," Norris is "moving, changing her name and essentially wiping away her identity," a Seattle Weekly report said on Thursday.
Norris originally launched her mock campaign in protest at threats of violence issued against those who depict Mohammed, which is considered blasphemous in Muslim culture.
Molly Norris
Guilty Of Attempted Murder
Shelley Malil
An actor who appeared in the film "The 40-Year-Old Virgin" was convicted Thursday of the attempted premeditated murder of his ex-girlfriend in a knife attack.
San Diego County jurors also found Shelley Malil guilty of assault with a deadly weapon for stabbing Kendra Beebe more than 20 times during a violent quarrel at her San Marcos home in 2008. He was acquitted of residential burglary.
Beebe, 37, hugged her best childhood friend, who stood beside her at Vista Superior Court, where the judge read the verdict.
Malil - who played Haziz, a co-worker of Steve Carell's character in "The 40-Year-Old Virgin - faces 16 years to life in prison. He faced 21 years before being acquitted of residential burglary for entering the woman's home.
Shelley Malil
One-Third Omits Birth Control
Sex Ed
Almost all U.S. teens have had formal sex education, but only about two-thirds have been taught about birth control methods, according to a new government report released Wednesday.
Many teens apparently are not absorbing those lessons - other recent data shows that after years of steady decline, the teen birth rate rose from 2005 to 2007. It dipped again in 2008, to about 10 percent of all births.
The report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is based on face-to-face interviews with nearly 2,800 teenagers in their homes from 2006 through 2008. Female interviewers from the University of Michigan asked the questions for the CDC.
About 97 percent of teens said they received formal sex education by the time they were 18. Formal sex education was defined in the report as instruction at a school, church, community center or other setting teaching them how to say no to sex or about birth control and sexually transmitted diseases.
Lessons about saying no and STDs were more common than instruction on how to use a condom or other birth control, the study found.
Sex Ed
Sets U.S. Record
Meg Whitman
Smashing the record for the most money ever donated by a candidate in a political election, Republican Meg Whitman has written her gubernatorial campaign a $15-million check that brings her personal stake in the race to $119 million.
The new infusion pushed the billionaire candidate past the previous record holder: New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who spent $109 million on his 2009 reelection bid.
The most visible effect of Whitman's deep pockets has been her ability to blanket the airwaves, notably in recent days with a controversial ad featuring 1992 footage of then-presidential candidate Bill Clinton flaying Brown's record on taxes during a Democratic primary debate.
The report upon which Clinton relied - a CNN story on Brown's governorship - has since been proved inaccurate, leading the Brown campaign to repeatedly call on Whitman to take down the ad. Clinton called the ad "misleading" as he endorsed Brown, despite their past enmity.
Meg Whitman
Promoter Discounts Suit
Katherine Jackson
A lawyer for the entertainment company sued by Michael Jackson's mother challenged the lawsuit Thursday and distanced AEG Live from the doctor charged in the singer's death.
"The lawsuit is inaccurate, unsubstantiated and meritless," attorney Marvin S. Putnam said in a statement released by AEG Live LLC.
Katherine Jackson sued AEG Live on Wednesday, claiming the promoter of her son's planned series of comeback concerts failed to provide key lifesaving equipment and adequately monitor the cardiologist hired to care for her son as he prepared for the shows.
Putnam's statement claimed the doctor, Conrad Murray, was acting as Jackson's personal physician and was not an AEG employee.
Katherine Jackson
Sues Ex-Wife Over Paternity
Andrew Douglas
Horror film director Andrew Douglas claims his ex-wife tricked him into believing he had fathered her daughter.
Douglas says in a lawsuit he wants Ameena Meer to pay him nearly $700,000 - the amount he says he paid in child support over 17 years.
According to court papers filed in Manhattan state Supreme Court, Douglas says he began to suspect he wasn't the child's father last summer after the girl asked him about his blood type. He says a paternity test confirmed that.
The two married in 1992, and Meer gave birth the following year. The couple later split up.
Andrew Douglas
Considered Other Targets
John Lennon's Killer
The man who fatally shot John Lennon outside his New York City apartment says he considered killing Johnny Carson and Elizabeth Taylor but the ex-Beatle was more accessible.
Mark David Chapman also says the bullets he used came from a former police officer friend.
Chapman told a New York parole board earlier this month he borrowed $5,000 from his wife's father to pay for his trip from Hawaii to shoot Lennon on Dec. 8, 1980.
Chapman told the panel killing Lennon was "a horrible decision." He said he thought killing someone famous would make him somebody but instead it only made him a murderer.
John Lennon's Killer
Goes Behind Online Paywall
News of the World
Rupert's News Corp's UK newspaper arm is to put its mass-selling News of the World tabloid, known for scoops on celebrities and politicians, behind an online paywall in its latest move to charge readers for Web access.
Rupert Murdoch's News Corp has championed the cause of charging for news online, which consumers had become used to reading for free, contributing to a fall in newspaper revenues.
The group started charging for online access for its broadsheet newspapers The Times and The Sunday Times earlier this year. The daily Sun newspaper is still available for free and the company has not said whether that will change.
Readers will pay 1 pound for a day's access or 1.99 for a four-week subscription. An application to run on the popular Apple iPad will follow with a separate weekly charge of 1.19 pounds.
News of the World
Genome Mapped
Tasmanian Devils
Australian scientists said on Thursday they had made a breakthrough in the fight to save the cancer-hit Tasmanian devil by mapping the species' genome for the first time.
The dark, furry marsupials were declared endangered in 2009 after a contagious cancer began sweeping through the population, disfiguring their faces so badly they are unable to eat and starve to death.
Some 70 percent of devils have already been lost to the infectious disease, which is spread by biting as the feisty creatures mate and fight over animal carcasses.
But researchers working to save the dwindling species said the genome sequence opened a new path to understanding where the cancer attacked and how it could potentially be treated.
Tasmanian Devils
Cable Nielsens
Ratings
Rankings for the top 15 programs on cable networks as compiled by the Nielsen Co. for the week of Sept. 6-12. Day and start time (EDT) are in parentheses:
1. College Football: Boise St. vs. Virginia Tech (Monday, 7:58 p.m.), ESPN, 7.25 million homes, 9.88 million viewers.
2. "2010 Video Music Awards" (Sunday, 9 p.m.), MTV, 7.16 million homes, 11.39 million viewers.
3. "The Closer" (Monday, 9 p.m.), TNT, 5.73 million homes, 7.91 million viewers.
4. "Rizzoli & Isles" (Monday, 10 p.m.), TNT, 5.5 million homes, 7.23 million viewers.
5. College Football: Penn St. vs. Alabama (Saturday, 7:10 p.m.), ESPN, 4.91 million homes, 7.12 million viewers.
6. "Jersey Shore 2" (Thursday, 10 p.m.), MTV, 4.33 million homes, 6.38 million viewers.
7. "Pawn Stars" (Monday, 10:30 p.m.), History, 4.27 million homes, 5.93 million viewers.
8. "2010 VMA Pre-Show" (Sunday, 8 p.m.), MTV, 4.15 million homes, 6.29 million viewers.
9. "Pawn Stars" (Monday, 10 p.m.), History, 4.08 million homes, 5.69 million viewers.
10. College Football: Miami vs. Ohio St. (Saturday, 3:30 p.m.), ESPN, 4 million homes, 5.75 million viewers.
11. "Covert Affairs" (Tuesday, 10 p.m.), USA, 3.96 million homes, 5.35 million viewers.
12. "Jersey Shore 2" (Sunday, 7 p.m.), MTV, 3.92 million homes, 5.71 million viewers.
13. "ICarly" (Saturday, 8 p.m.), Nickelodeon, 3.85 million homes, 5.91 million viewers.
14. "American Pickers" (Monday, 9 p.m.), History, 3.65 million homes, 5.26 million viewers.
15. "White Collar" (Tuesday, 9 p.m.), USA, 3.56 million homes, 4.71 million viewers.
Ratings
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