Paul Krugman: Winter of Our Discontent (nytimes.com)
"Americans' Economic Pessimism Reaches Record High." That's the headline on a recent Gallup report, which shows a nation deeply unhappy with the state of the economy.
Chris Landers: Reading Between the Ancient Lines (Baltimore City Paper)
William Noel oversees a collection of thousands of books, including some 850 medieval manuscripts and 1,500 of the earliest printed books, but one in particular has been monopolizing his time since its arrival in 1999 -- a one-of-a-kind copy of the work of Archimedes.
Rachel Abramowitz: Eliza Dushku goes from 'Buffy' to group sex (Los Angeles Times)
IF you make a movie about group sex, you must be prepared to own up to your point of view on the subject. But when actress Eliza Dushku, star of the indie "Sex and Breakfast," which opens in limited release Friday, is asked whether she's pro or con group canoodling, she giggles, before fessing up, she's more of a monogamous kind of gal.
John DeFore: MAD Magazine Heads to the Library (San Antonio Current)
If only they'd had crystal balls, the juvenile delinquents who read MAD Magazine in the '50s could have blown the ever-lovin' minds of the moms who begged them to stop: "Ma," they'd taunt, "Someday this stuff is gonna be bound up in hardback and shelved in college libraries!"
Who invented Ctrl-Alt-Del as a keyboard combination to reboot a computer?
A: John Mauchly, co-designer of Eniac, in the late 1940s
B: Gordon Moore, of Moore's Law fame, in 1967 while developing the integrated circuit for Fairchild Semiconductor
C: Seth Briedbardt, developer of the Breidbart Index, while working on his college mainframe in the early 70s
D: David Bradley, a designer of the original IBM PC, in 1981
E: Steve Wozniak, co-founder of Apple Computers, in early designs for the Apple I and Apple II in the late 70s and early 80s, eventually not used by Apple but incorporated into IBM machines running Windows Source
mj was first, but wrong, writing:
I'll guess A. I like to think some things have been around longer than I.
Maurice was second, adding a 6th choice:
F. Karl Rove in an effort to rewrite history.
bebo was right with:
hi--- I remember reading somewhere that David Bradley found this option by mistake.
DanD was wrong, writing:
I did two years majoring in programming at Valley College in Van Nuys, 82/83
I (think I) remember reading some history of the early PC and the
legendary garage computer-builders which included a statement
specifically about the C/A-D being an innovation created specifically for
easy re-boots (in order to exit a perpetual bad-programming routine,
etc.) on those early small versions.
I'll go out on a virtual limb and choose "E."
Sally also got it right, writing:
What mother of a computer nerd doesn't know that the answer is: "D" (David Bradley, a designer of the original IBM PC, in 1981)
According to my son, (AKA the geek)
The combination is also known as a three-finger salute, Three Fingered Death Grip or, more esoterically, as a Vulcan nerve pinch...
Kevin in Portland was right, too, writing:
I'm going to guess David Bradley, because my copy of Maximun PC in it's "100 Greatest Technologies of All Time " article said it was invented in 1981.
And, Joe (Inside every old person is a young person saying. "What the hell happened?") got it right, with:
I have absolutely no idea, but I'm guessing the obvious, D: David Bradley, a designer of the original IBM PC, in 1981. I am tempted to choose E: Steve Wozniak but I just can't see Apple allowing anything they developed to be used by any PC without a lawsuit.
Got this note from Skyfrequency:
Re: Registered Jack & Trivia Questions
Hey Marty, that reminded me of a joke:
Blonde Caller: "Can you give me the telephone number for Jack?"
Operator: "I'm sorry, I don't understand who you are talking about".
Blond Caller: "On page 1 section 5, of the user guide it clearly states that I need to unplug the fax machine from the AC wall socket and telephone Jack before cleaning.
Now, can you give me the number for Jack?"
By the way, did you see how NBC is running Leno, from the mid nineties? Telling jokes about former President Clinton, in the monologue. Do you think it's just a random programming thing? I don't.
Skyfrequency
Thanks, Sky!
I watched part of one of those 'vintage' Jay Leno's the other night, but couldn't get past his horrifically frosted hair and dreadful clothes, but I missed the monologue.
Probably a good thing - I tend to talk back to the TV, and at that hour, wouldn't want to wake up the kid.
Thanks to Baron Dave* for today's and yesterday's question.
CBS begins the night with the FRESH'My Night At The Grammys', followed by a RERUN'NUMB3RS'.
On a STRIKE-related RERUNDave (from 5/24/07) are Former Vice President Al Gore, and Jim Short.
On a STRIKE-related RERUNCraig (from 11/30/06) are John Waters, Alex Borstein, and Plain White T's.
NBC starts the night with a FRESH'Deal Or No Deal', followed by a FRESH'Friday Night Lights', then a FRESH'Las Vegas'.
On a STRIKE-related RERUNLeno (from 4/13/95) are Johnny Depp, David Hasselhoff, and George Wallace.
On a STRIKE-related RERUNConan (from 10/3/07) are Tina Fey, Kenneth Branagh, Ani DiFranco.
On a STRIKE-related RERUNCarson 'Scab' Daly it's TBA.
ABC opens the night with the movie 'Polar Express', followed by '20/20'.
On a STRIKE-related RERUNJimmy Kimmel it's TBA.
The CW here has LIVE'NBA Basketball', with the Clips visiting in Denver.
Faux has a FRESH'The Next Great American Band', followed by a RERUN'Don't Forget The Lyrics!'.
MY fills the night with the movie 'Mulholland Dr.'.
PLEASE check local PBS listings for a FRESH'Bill Moyers Journal', and a FRESH'NOW With Bill Moyers David Brancaccio'.
AMC offers the movie 'The In-Laws', followed by the movie 'Mission: Impossible', then the movie 'Lionheart'.
BBC -
[12:00 PM] Cash in the Attic - Ep 7 Casino (Brain);
[1:00 PM] Cash in the Attic - Ep 6 Holland;
[2:00 PM] Bargain Hunt - Ep. 17 Derby 4;
[2:30 PM] Bargain Hunt - Ep. 18 Newark 35;
[3:00 PM] How Clean Is Your House? - Episode 9;
[3:30 PM] How Clean Is Your House? - Episode 10;
[4:00 PM] You Are What You Eat - Episode 11;
[4:30 PM] You Are What You Eat - Episode 12;
[5:00 PM] Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares - Ep 3 Moore Place;
[6:00 PM] My Family - Ep. 6 Driving Miss Crazy;
[6:30 PM] My Family - Ep. 7 I Second That Emulsion;
[7:00 PM] BBC World News America;
[8:00 PM] Coupling - Ep. 6 The Cupboard of Patrick's Love;
[8:40 PM] Coupling - Ep. 1 The Man With Two Legs;
[9:20 PM] The Catherine Tate Show - Episode 4;
[10:00 PM] BBC World News America;
[11:00 PM] Coupling - Ep. 6 The Cupboard of Patrick's Love;
[11:40 PM] Coupling - Ep. 1 The Man With Two Legs;
[12:20 AM] The Catherine Tate Show - Episode 4;
[1:00 AM] Absolutely Fabulous - Ep. 4 New Best Friend;
[1:40 AM] The World Stands Up - Episode 5;
[2:00 AM] Gordon Ramsay's F Word - Ep 6 Alison Moyet;
[3:00 AM] Hollyoaks - Episode 65;
[3:30 AM] Changing Rooms - Ep. 19 Plymouth;
[4:00 AM] Bargain Hunt - Ep. 15 Wetherby 19;
[4:30 AM] Bargain Hunt - Ep. 16 France 14;
[5:00 AM] Cash in the Attic - Ep. 19 Lovell;
[5:30 AM] Cash in the Attic - Ep. 20 Burrows;
[6:00 AM] BBC World News. (ALL TIMES EDT)
Bravo has the movie 'Gangs Of New York', followed by the movie 'Gangs Of New York'.
Comedy Central has 'Scrubs', another 'Scrubs', an old 'Jon Stewart', an old 'Colbert Report', 'Chappelle's Show', another 'Chappelle's Show', and 'Daniel Tosh: Completely Serious'.
FX has the movie 'Peter Pan', followed by the movie 'Christmas With The Kranks', 'That 70s Show', and another 'That 70s Show'.
History has 'Modern Marvels', another 'Modern Marvels', 'Shockwave', and 'Human Weapon'.
IFC -
[06:45 AM] The Station Agent;
[08:25 AM] Girl With a Pearl Earring;
[10:15 AM] Garden State;
[12:00 PM] IFC Short Film Showcase;
[01:00 PM] The Station Agent;
[02:40 PM] Girl With a Pearl Earring;
[04:30 PM] Garden State;
[06:20 PM] The Station Agent;
[08:00 PM] The Human Stain;
[09:50 PM] IFC News Special;
[10:00 PM] This Film Is Not Yet Rated;
[11:40 PM] The Henry Rollins Show #312: Tim Roth/Robyn Hitchcock;
[12:10 AM] Samurai 7 Episode #23: The Lies;
[12:35 AM] Crash;
[02:15 AM] Léolo;
[04:05 AM] Crash;
[05:50 AM] The Henry Rollins Show #312: Tim Roth/Robyn Hitchcock. (ALL TIMES EST)
SciFi has the movie 'Bruce Almighty', followed by a FRESH'Flash Gordon', 'Stargate Atlantis', and a FRESH'Stargate Atlantis'.
Jimmy Jam, left, Chair of The Recording Academy, Pierre Cosette, former executive producer of the Grammy Awards, second left, Johnny Grant, the honorary Hollywood mayor, second right, and and Neil Portnow, president and CEO of The Recording Academy, pose in front of the Walk of Fame Star on Hollywood Boulevard in Los Angeles Thursday, Nov. 29, 2007, after the Hollywood Historic Trust presented The Recording Academy with an 'Award of Excellence' star in recognition of the academy's 50 year contribution to the music industry.
Photo by Kevork Djansezian
With his nonstriking "Late Night" staffers facing layoffs after Friday, Conan O'Brien has promised to cover their salaries next week, an NBC spokeswoman said Thursday.
"He's paying the staffers' salaries out of his own pocket," NBC spokeswoman Rebecca Marks said. She said O'Brien had informed his staffers earlier in the day. The nonwriting staff numbers about 75.
Through this week, NBC had been covering the salaries of its nonwriting staffers, along with those of "The Tonight Show with Jay Leno" and "Last Call with Carson Daly," which are also in reruns.
But the network thus far has not said whether it intends to continue paying employees of any show on hiatus. All three programs are owned by Universal Media Studios, which, like NBC, is owned by General Electric.
Queen and its new frontman, Paul Rodgers, will release the single "Say It's Not True" to mark World AIDS Day on Saturday.
It is the rock group's first new recording in 10 years, and will be available as a free download on its Web site.
Freddie Mercury, Queen's famous lead vocalist, died of an AIDS-related illness in 1991.
"By making the song available for free, we hope to help Nelson Mandela with his campaign to get across the message that no one is safe from infection," drummer Roger Taylor said Thursday in a statement. "We have to be aware, we have to protect ourselves and those we love."
Geraldine Ferraro, left, the 1984 United States Vice Presidential nominee, and actor Kerry Washington, right, arrive to the launch of WE Vote '08 Wednesday, Nov., 28, 2007, hosted by a partnership of the cable network WE tv, The Creative Coalition, and Gotham Magazine, in New York. WE Vote '08 is a public service initiative that seeks to register over one million women to vote in the 2008 election.
Photo by Stuart Ramson
Best-selling author Stephen King reveals his seven picks for the "best albums of the year" in Entertainment Weekly's Dec. 7 issue.
"In truth, your Uncle Stevie was disappointed with this year's new music, very disappointed indeed, and his year-end list reflects that," King writes. "I could only find seven albums I wanted to mention ..."
His No. 1 pick is Steve Earle's "Washington Square Serenade," followed by Wilco's "Sky Blue Sky," Mika's "Life in Cartoon Motion" and Lyle Lovett and His Large Band's "It's Not Big It's Large."
King's fifth choice is Ozzy Osbourne's "Black Rain" - "finest heavy metal record of the year; a true speaker-buster" - followed by John Fogerty's "Revival" and Southern Culture on the Skids' "Countrypolitan Favorites."
The writer's union on Thursday said it reached a contract agreement with television network ABC covering about 250 news writers, editors, production assistants and others in New York and Washington.
Under the terms of the agreement, the ABC employees will receive raises of 3.5 percent annually, the Writers Guild of America, East said in a statement. The employees had been working under an expired contract since January of 2005.
The announcement comes a week after news writers, producers and editors at ABC rival CBS Corp voted to authorize their union to call a strike after working without a contract for two years.
From Cher's used Hummer to Wayne Gretzky's old hockey sticks to Ozzy Osbourne's guitar, anybody can have a piece of celebrity - for a price.
If you were flush with cash and wanted to sit on a throne fit for a rock star, for example, you could have bought the late Grateful Dead guitarist Jerry Garcia's toilet for $2,500, the price it fetched at auction last year.
But don't fret about lost opportunity. Not when you could spend Friday and Saturday bidding on any of the hundreds of items belonging to Osbourne, the heavy metal rocker and former star of "The Osbournes" hit TV series.
For the right price, you could be driving to work Monday in the Oz Man's 2006 Bentley, a car that always put him in heaven, he says, when he would "crank up the sound system as loud as it would go."
Tony Bennett poses for photographers during the 75th Rockefeller Center tree lighting ceremony Wednesday, Nov. 28,2007 in New York.
Photo by Julie Jacobson
A watercolour by master artist JMW Turner not seen in public for more than a century and listed as lost goes on sale next week with a price tag in excess of 1.5 million pounds.
Described by The Graphic Society in 1837, shortly after it was painted, as "one of the finest watercolour drawings in the world" Bamborough Castle has not been on the open market since 1872 when it went for a then record of 3,309 pounds.
About 18 years later it passed privately into the hands of the American Vanderbilt dynasty and disappeared from public view, being listed in a 1979 catalogue as "untraced".
The painting depicts the castle high on a cliff on the northern English coast in the 19th century in the middle of a violent storm which has driven a ship onto the rocks.
Former Lynyrd Skynyrd drummer Artimus Pyle has been arrested a second time after failing to properly register as a sex offender, sheriff's officials said.
The 59-year-old musician, whose real name is Thomas Delmer Pyle, was arrested Tuesday at one of three addresses he gave to authorities, Sgt. Chuck Mulligan said. He was being held Wednesday on $50,000 bond, Mulligan told The Florida Times-Union. Jail records do not show whether he had a lawyer.
Pyle had been released on $10,000 bond after being arrested on the same charge Nov. 19. He was arrested again after he still didn't register a new permanent address, officials said.
Pyle pleaded guilty in 1993 to charges of attempted capital sexual battery by an adult on a victim younger than 12 and being principal to lewd and lascivious behavior on a child younger than 16. He was sentenced to eight years of probation.
A model wearing a chocolate corset performs during the chocolate fashion presentation of a food show in Moscow, November 29, 2007.
Photo by Denis Sinyakov
A forensic scientist is casting further doubt on claims a cache of paintings found recently was the work of Jackson Pollock.
James Martin says many of the pieces include materials available only after the artist's death in 1956, a newspaper reported Thursday.
Martin said at least one of the works was painted on a board produced no earlier than the late 1970s, The New York Times reported. Martin, forensic expert who examined 24 of the 32 paintings at their owner's request, made the comments in a lecture Wednesday sponsored by the International Foundation for Art Research in Manhattan, the newspaper said.
Martin's views further a debate over the origins of the paintings, which were discovered in 2002 in a storage locker in Wainscott, on Long Island. The locker had belonged to the late photographer Herbert Matter, a close friend of the abstract expressionist.
Goran Visnjic has agreed to pay child support for the infant daughter of a Croatian woman.
Mirela Rupic, 36, had sued Visnjic, claiming he is the father of her 8-month-old child.
At a hearing Tuesday before a Zagreb court, Visnjic's lawyer, Marijan Hanzekovic, said the 35-year-old actor had abandoned requests for a paternity test and recognized the child as his own. He agreed to pay $1,800 a month in child support.
Visnjic, who lives in Los Angeles, was granted visits once a month, said Rupic's lawyer, Nenad Skare.
Members of the Beijing Xueming Art Group train to perform on stilts at a theatre in Beijing, November 29, 2007. Walking and performing on stilts is one of the most famous traditional Chinese arts and this group which members are between 13 and 26 years old, began to inherit stilt performance since 2005.
Photo by Reinhard Krause
More than 300 dogs and cats may have died earlier this year as a result of eating contaminated pet food, a survey released Thursday shows.
The Michigan State University study showed the cause of death may have been related to melamine and cyanuric acid, two food contaminants that turned deadly when pet food manufacturers combined them.
"When combined, they form crystals which can block the kidneys," said Wilson Rumbeiha, an associate professor in Michigan State's Diagnostic Center for Population and Animal Health.
Rumbeiha found that 347 cases met the criteria for what he called "pet food-induced nephrotoxicity." The cases involved 235 cats and 112 dogs.
The muscular Norway rat climbed ashore on the rugged, uninhabited island in far southwestern Alaska in 1780 after a rodent-infested Japanese ship ran aground. It was the first time rats had made it to Alaska.
Since then, Rat Island, as the piece of rock was dubbed by a sea captain in the 1800s, has gone eerily silent. The sounds of birds are missing.
That is because the rats feed on eggs, chicks and adult seabirds, which come to the mostly treeless island to nest on the ground or in crevices in the volcanic rock.
State and federal wildlife biologists are gearing up for an assault on the rats of still-uninhabited Rat Island, hoping to exterminate them with rat poison dropped from helicopters. If they succeed, the birds will sing again on Rat Island. And it will be the third-largest island in the world to be made rat-free.
This photo of a Norman Rockwell painting entitled 'Extra Good Boys and Girls,' was released by Christie's Images LTD, Tuesday, Nov. 27, 2007 in New York. The painting sold to an anonymous buyer for $2.17 million at Christie's in New York on Thursday, Nov. 29.
A 1.5-kg white truffle found in the Italian countryside will be sold at a charity auction in Macau where it is expected to fetch 150,000 euros (108,000 pounds).
Truffle hunter Cristiano Savini's dog, Rocco, sniffed out the truffle, one of the biggest unearthed in the past 50 years, by an oak tree near Pisa last weekend, in an area of Tuscany where Cristiano and his father scout for truffles every year.
The truffle was 75 centimetres (2.5 feet) underground. As two men dug deeper, the dog went "wild", jumping from one side to the other as if to indicate they had to enlarge the hole.
It took Savini and his father more than an hour to get the truffle out.
A thief made off with 180 kegs of Guinness beer after smoothly driving into the Dublin brewery which makes the black stout and snatching a trailer load of drink, police said on Thursday.
The incident took place on Wednesday at the Guinness brewery on the banks of Dublin's River Liffey where Ireland's trademark tipple has been brewed for almost 250 years.
The lone raider's haul also contained 180 kegs of Budweiser and 90 barrels of Carlsberg lager, police said.
"A man drove into the yard in a truck and took a trailer containing the drink which has an estimated value of 64,000 euros (46.000 pounds)," a police spokesman said.
A Christmas tree made of 98 kilograms (216 pounds) of potatoes is seen during a food exhibition in Lima, Wednesday, Nov. 28, 2007. In Peru there are around three hundred varieties of potatoes; most of them only grow at in the Andes at high altitudes.
Photo by Martin Mejia
You have reached the Home page of BartCop Entertainment.
Make yourself home, take your shoes off...
Go ahead, scratch it if it itches.
The idea is to have fun.
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Anything that increased your blood pressure, or, even better,
amused or entertained?
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How about a favorite TV show, movie, book, play, cartoon, or legal amusement?
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