Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Grad School Scam (YouTube)
The biggest financial scam in history is revealed.
Tom Danehy: The right-wing GOP attack on teachers makes no sense whatsoever (Tucson Weekly)
When I was in high school, we had this really cool math teacher named Dr. Anderson. He had a doctorate in math and had worked for Army intelligence and the CIA, but he was teaching math in an inner-city school, because he was just cool like dat. One time, at a meeting of the Math Club, he told us that he was going to have to leave teaching: He and his wife were having a baby, and he couldn't afford to raise a family on what he made as a teacher. … we found out that he made around $3,200 a year as a full-time teacher in the Los Angeles city schools (and that was with a doctorate). You might correctly note that it was a long time ago-and it was-but adjusted for inflation, that $3,200 would today be just less than $19,000. That means that Dr. Anderson would be part of Mitt Romney's deadbeat 47 percent who don't pay taxes.
Froma Harrop: Swing-state Florida's Up-for-grabs Region (Creators Syndicate)
The Villages is a development crossing four counties. Its 60,000 residents are largely white, well-to-do and Republican. It is here that Paul Ryan brought his mom to pound home the Republican claim (inaccurate, by the way) that the party's plan for reforming Medicare would not touch these voters. That's an important political message. Although these folk planned and saved for many happy years on the crew-cut golf greens, their calculations undoubtedly included Medicare health coverage and Social Security benefits.
Andrew Tobias: EASY SAVINGS
So I went to buy these really comfortable shoes on-line for a horrifying $90 a pair (Charles would have been horrified at the thought of such cheap shoes) . . . with free shipping because I was buying two . . . but just before I completed my purchase, seeing the APPLY PROMO CODE field on the checkout page, I Googled FLORSCHEIM PROMO CODE, clicked the first entry that appeared, cut and pasted the code into the field, and completed the purchase for 25% off, saving $45. Elapsed time for the Google detour-cut-and-paste? Maybe 30 seconds. If I could make $45 every 30 seconds for a year, I'd have an extra $47 million. Moral: any time you're about to make a significant on-line purchase, take a few seconds to check for a promo code.
Interview by Ian Tucker: "James Flynn: IQ may go up as well as down" (Guardian)
James Flynn, discoverer of the 'Flynn effect', explains why environment plays a major role in determining a social group's IQ levels.
Juliette Binoche: 'These tabloid stories, it feels like being in a bad soap opera' (Guardian)
The Oscar-winner on her return to the stage, working with R-Patz, and her constant fight to preserve privacy. Interview by Killian Fox.
Lauren Weiner: The Dark and Starry Eyes of Ray Bradbury (New Atlantis)
The ebullient Ray Bradbury often gave the impression that if anyone could defeat mortality, it would be he. Alas, the "poet of the pulps" died in June at age ninety-one at his home in Los Angeles. He left legions of devoted readers and a vast oeuvre that, at its best, combined Hobbesian fears with emotionally resonant hopes for his country and for the human race.
Roger Ebert: The Wild Bunch (A Great Movie)
The message here is not subtle, but then Sam Peckinpah was not a subtle director, preferring bold images to small points. It is that the mantle of violence is passing from the old professionals like Pike and his bunch, who operate according to a code, into the hands of a new generation that learns to kill more impersonally, as a game, or with machines.
AssassinPrincess: Cake
Cake is one of the focal points of parties. It's pretty. It's elaborate. It's a food that you put fire on top of and then ritualistically extinguish said fire while everyone chants. This fire extinguishing alerts the cosmos to the fact that you are now owed one shot at a mystical alignment of the fates to guide destiny into the path of your intended desires, merely because you were born a certain number of exact years ago.
David Bruce's Amazon Author Page
David Bruce's Lulu Storefront
David Bruce's Smashwords Page
David Bruce's Blog
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."
"Doug's Most Shared Facebook Post" Today
wrote:
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Reader Suggestion
Michelle in AZ
From The Creator of 'Avery Ant'
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Not much of a marine layer.
Theater Award Established
Edward M. Kennedy Prize
A $100,000 theater award honoring the late Sen. Edward Kennedy has been established in New York.
The announcement was made Thursday by one of his sisters, former Ambassador Jean Kennedy Smith, and Columbia University.
The award is called The Edward M. Kennedy Prize for Drama Inspired by American History.
The prize will be given annually to the author of a new play or musical. Columbia's libraries will work with the winners to create online study and teaching guides.
The first winner will be announced on Feb. 22, Kennedy's birthday.
Edward M. Kennedy Prize
Bryn Mawr To Honor
Patti Smith
Rock music veteran Patti Smith will be honored by Bryn Mawr College for her artistic accomplishments and pioneering spirit.
The women's liberal arts school near Philadelphia announced that Smith will receive the 2013 Katharine Hepburn Medal.
Bryn Mawr will award the Hepburn Medal to Smith at a campus event on Feb. 7. A performance for students is being planned.
The medal is given to women who embody "the intelligence, drive and independence" of the Oscar-winning college alumna for whom it is named.
Patti Smith
Festival To Go On With Or Without Corpse
"Frozen Dead Guy Days"
The frozen corpse that has inspired a Colorado town's whimsical "Frozen Dead Guy Days" celebration may soon be put on ice somewhere else, but festival organizers said the body's removal will not have a chilling effect on the annual event.
"We will continue on whether or not Bredo Morstoel is here," festival owner Amanda MacDonald said Wednesday of the man whose body has been packed in dry ice outside Nederland, Colorado, since 1993.
A financial dispute between Morstoel's grandson, Tryve Bauge, and the man hired to replenish the dry ice on a monthly basis, Bo Shaffer, has led to Bauge threatening to move his grandfather's body out of Colorado.
Each month for 18 years, Shaffer has hauled 1,700 pounds (770 kg) of dry ice - carbon dioxide in solid form - to a remote shed above Nederland to keep the corpse of Morstoel at minus-24 degrees Fahrenheit (minus-31 degrees Celsius) and in a state of cryonic suspension.
But Shaffer said he quit after Bauge refused to pay for the rising costs of fuel and ice, which has made the endeavor unprofitable.
"Frozen Dead Guy Days"
Baby News
Tennessee James Toth
Oscar-winning actress Reese Witherspoon gave birth to a baby boy on Thursday, her first child with husband Jim Toth, and has named him Tennessee James, her representative said.
Witherspoon has two older children - daughter Ava, 12, and son Deacon, 9 - with first husband Ryan Phillippe. The couple divorced in 2007.
"Reese Witherspoon and husband Jim Toth welcomed Tennessee James into their family today. Both mom and baby are healthy and the entire family is thrilled," Witherspoon's spokeswoman Meredith O'Sullivan Wasson said in a statement.
Tennessee James Toth
Leaves Radio Show
Savage Wiener
Michael Savage's talk show left the airwaves Thursday after the conservative host won a legal battle with his longtime employer, although his attorney said discussions with new networks are already under way.
Savage posted a message on his website Thursday evening under the headline "Free at Last!" that said he was free to work with any station or network from now on. He said he "will not be heard on the radio for some time."
His attorney Daniel Horowitz said Savage left Talk Radio Network after obtaining a favorable ruling in arbitration Thursday afternoon.
Horowitz says Savage has been fighting the network for two years to get out a contract that was 10 years old and prevented the host from switching employers. Horowitz said the agreement lacked protections afforded to artists and entertainers under California law, and tied Savage to Talk Radio Network indefinitely.
Savage Wiener
Film Maker Ordered Jailed
"Innocence of Muslims"
A federal judge on Thursday determined a California man behind a crudely produced anti-Islamic video that inflamed parts of the Middle East is a flight risk and ordered him detained.
Citing a lengthy pattern of deception, U.S. Central District Chief Magistrate Judge Suzanne Segal said Nakoula Basseley Nakoula should be held after officials said he violated his probation from a 2010 check fraud conviction.
Nakoula, 55, was arrested Thursday. He had eight probation violations, including lying to his probation officers and using aliases, and he might face new charges that carry a maximum two-year prison term, authorities said. Nakoula will remain behind bars until another hearing where a judge will rule if he broke the terms of his probation.
After his 2010 conviction, Nakoula was sentenced to 21 months in prison and was barred from using computers or the Internet for five years without approval from his probation officer.
The hearing had an unusual wrinkle as the news media were banned from the courtroom, and reporters had to watch the proceedings on a TV in a different courthouse a couple blocks away. Court officials didn't give a reason for the decision.
"Innocence of Muslims"
Pleads Not Guilty In Hit-And-Runs
Amanda Bynes
An attorney for Amanda Bynes has entered a not guilty plea in a misdemeanor case that accuses the actress of two hit-and-runs.
Attorney Richard Hutton entered the plea on Bynes' behalf during a brief court hearing Thursday in Los Angeles. The actress' case is due back in court on Oct. 19 and Bynes must be booked on the charges within two days of that hearing.
Los Angeles prosecutors accuse Bynes of leaving the scene of two accidents, one on April 10 and another on Aug. 4, without providing proper information. The first incident occurred just days after Bynes was arrested on suspicion of drunken driving after grazing a sheriff's patrol car. She has pleaded not guilty in that case.
Amanda Bynes
UN Chief Pranked
Masked Avengers
Former victims include Bill Gates, Mick Jagger, Britney Spears and Sarah Palin.
This week, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon joined the ranks of those pranked by a Quebec radio station, his office confirmed Friday.
Montreal comedy duo Marc-Antoine Audette and Sebastien Trudel called Ban on Thursday afternoon and pretended to be Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper.
Known as the Masked Avengers, the two are notorious for prank calls to celebrities and heads of state. The duo said the world's top diplomat was rushed out of an important meeting to speak to them.
Masked Avengers
Flea Market Artwork Now Thought Stolen
Renoir
A painting believed to be by French impressionist Pierre-Auguste Renoir that a woman bought for $7 at a flea market may have been stolen from a museum six decades ago.
An auction house has put the sale of the painting on hold after a Washington Post reporter discovered documents in the Baltimore Museum of Art's library showing the painting was there from 1937 until 1949. Museum officials then found paperwork showing "Paysage Bords de Seine" was stolen in 1951.
Museum Director Doreen Bolger tells the Post on Thursday that the FBI is investigating.
A Virginia woman bought the painting at a West Virginia flea market. She took it to the Potomack Co. auction house in Alexandria, Va. The auction had been set for Saturday.
Renoir
Statue From Meteorite
"Iron Man"
It sounds like a mash-up of Indiana Jones' plots, but German researchers say a heavy Buddha statue brought to Europe by the Nazis was carved from a meteorite that likely fell 10,000 years ago along the Siberia-Mongolia border.
This space Buddha, also known as "iron man" to the researchers, is of unknown age, though the best estimates date the statue to sometime between the eighth and 10th centuries. The carving depicts a man, probably a Buddhist god, perched with his legs tucked in, holding something in his left hand. On his chest is a Buddhist swastika, a symbol of luck that was later co-opted by the Nazi party of Germany.
The iron man first came to Germany after a 1938-1939 Tibet expedition by zoologist and ethnology Ernst Schäfer, who was sent to the region by the Nazi party to find the roots of Aryan origin. The statue then passed into the hands of a private owner.
Stuttgart University researcher Elmar Bucher and his colleagues first analyzed the statue in 2007, when the owner allowed them to take five miniscule samples of it. In 2009, the team had the opportunity to take larger samples from the inside of the statue, which is less prone to contamination by weathering or human handling than the outside where the initial samples were taken.
They found that the statue is carved from a rare class of space rocks known as ataxite meteorites. These mostly iron meteorites have a high level of nickel. The largest-ever known meteorite, the Hoba meteorite of Namibia, is an ataxite meteorite that may weigh more than 60 tons.
"Iron Man"
Top 20
Concert Tours
The Top 20 Concert Tours ranks artists by average box office gross per city and includes the average ticket price for shows in North America. The previous week's ranking is in parentheses. The list is based on data provided to the trade publication Pollstar by concert promoters and venue managers.
1. (1) Kenny Chesney / Tim McGraw; $4,377,592; $87.96.
2. (2) Roger Waters; $2,679,568; $111.17.
3. (3) Coldplay; $2,294,022; $83.31.
4. (4) Cirque du Soleil - "Michael Jackson: The Immortal"; $1,840,478; $111.59.
5. (5) Dave Matthews Band; $1,434,591; $54.44.
6. (6) Phish; $1,166,104; $54.45.
7. (7) Enrique Iglesias / Jennifer Lopez; $1,114,513; $79.70.
8. (8) "Gigantes Tour" / Marc Anthony / Marco Antonio Solis / Chayanne; $1,042,502; $106.99.
9. (9) Jason Aldean; $728,180; $37.67.
10. (New) "Honda Civic Tour" / Linkin Park; $702,819; $49.66.
11. (11) Iron Maiden; $634,286; $55.04.
12. (10) Brad Paisley; $634,184; $39.21.
13. (12) Rascal Flatts; $611,236; $36.51.
14. (13) Journey; $530,058; $60.64.
15. (14) Def Leppard / Poison; $511,058; $63.35.
16. (16) Wiz Khalifa / Mac Miller; $449,405; $27.00.
17. (18) "Vans Warped Tour"; $440,842; $32.10.
18. (19) Il Divo; $377,813; $85.07.
19. (20) John Mellencamp; $356,126; $79.15.
20. (22) Scorpions; $331,005; $57.39.
Concert Tours
In Memory
Herbert Lom
Herbert Lom, the durable Czech-born actor best known as Inspector Clouseau's long-suffering boss in the comic Pink Panther" movies, died Thursday, his son said. He was 95.
Alec Lom said his father died peacefully in his sleep at home in London.
The London-based star appeared in more than 100 films, including "Spartacus" and "El Cid," acted alongside film greats including Charlton Heston and Kirk Douglas, and worked for directors from Stanley Kubrick to David Cronenberg.
But Lom was most famous for playing Charles Dreyfus, the increasingly unhinged boss to Peter Sellers' befuddled detective Clouseau in the popular "Pink Panther" series. The two actors starred together from "A Shot in the Dark" in 1964 until Sellers' death in 1980, and Lom continued in the series until "Son of the Pink Panther" in 1993.
Alec Lom said his father was forever grateful to director Blake Edwards for offering him a comic role after years of being cast as "the suave Eastern Bloc gangster with the dark looks."
Born Herbert Karel Angelo Kuchacevic ze Schluderpacheru in Prague in 1917, Lom came to Britain just before World War II and began his career as a radio announcer with the BBC's Czech-language service.
Adopting the shortest stage name he could think of, Lom had his first major movie role as Napoleon in 1942's "The Young Mr. Pitt."
He played a psychiatrist counseling a traumatized pianist in "The Seventh Veil," a big box-office hit in 1945, and had roles opposite Richard Widmark, in the moody "Night and the City" (1950), Henry Fonda in "War and Peace" - Lom was Napoleon again - and a pre-James Bond Sean Connery in truck-driving thriller "Hell Drivers" (1957).
Horror roles included the title character in Hammer Studios' "The Phantom of the Opera" in 1962, and Van Helsing in 1970's "Count Dracula," opposite Christopher Lee.
A postwar American career was stymied when Lom was denied a visa - he suspected because of his left-wing views - though he later appeared on U.S. TV series including "The Man from U.N.C.L.E." and "Hawaii Five-O."
Lom is survived by his sons Nicholas and Alec, and his daughter Josephine - named after Napoleon's wife.
Herbert Lom
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