Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Marc Dion: Begging for Surveillance (Creators Syndicate)
Until I got married, which was only a few years ago, I threw away every census form I ever received. I answered the last census because my wife made me. "You have to fill it out," she said. "If you don't, they just come to your house."
Lucy Mangan: lessons of the first world war (Guardian)
'We read a poem about a soldier's view "running red with blood" and tried to work out what that meant. Blood in his eyes like Darren when he gashed his head in the playground, or something more?'
Iain Banks: the final interview (Guardian)
Iain Banks died last Sunday, just before the publication of his final novel The Quarry. Last month he talked to Stuart Kelly about writing, politics and all the things still left to do . . .
Richard Lea: Neil Gaiman prepares for social media 'sabbatical' (Guardian)
Fans of Neil Gaiman can anticipate an empty January 2014, when the writer is set to take a "sabbatical" from social media.
Lucy Mangan: The Final Roundup (Guardian)
… the Chaos Walking trilogy (the third part is due out in May next year, and I honestly don't know how I'm going to wait that long) by Patrick Ness, which I would press urgently on anyone, anyone at all, but particularly on any reluctant readers among older boys. If it doesn't break down their resistance within the first 10 pages, I want to know. It is extraordinary.
Oliver Burkeman: "This column will change your life: embrace the schedule" (Guardian)
Unhooked from the whims of mood, relieved of the pressure of ceaseless decision-making, the schedule-follower may be freer than the impulse-follower.
Anonymous: "What I'm really thinking: the first-time cohabiter" (Guardian)
'I resent the back-from-work smalltalk, the lack of escape room and that sex already seems like yet another chore.'
Terry Savage: The High Cost of Procrastination (Creators Syndicate)
Is there a nagging little voice reminding you of some important task you've been postponing? With a little practice, it's easy to shut that voice out. But did you ever notice that - eventually - those little undone things come back to haunt you in a big way?
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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
Overcast morning, sunny afternoon.
5-Year-Old Protests Westboro Baptist
Pink Lemonade
The always controversial Westboro Baptist Church just earned itself another critic, but this one is only a few feet tall and her chosen method of protest is pink lemonade.
On June 14, five-year-old Jayden Sink held her first "Pink Lemonade for Peace" event on the front lawn of the famed Equality House-a rainbow-wrapped home located directly across the street from Westboro headquarters in Topeka, Kansas.
Equality House belongs to one of the founding members of Planting Peace, an organization dedicated to spreading good will. The brightly colored home opened its doors this March in an effort to stage a peaceful counter-protest to the hatred and fear-mongering perpetrated by the Westboro organization.
With a sign that read, "Pink Lemonade for Peace: $1 Suggested Donation," Sink wasn't expecting to raise a massive amount of money, but hundreds of dollars were handed over to her that day as a multitude of people showed up to chip in. She's since started a complimentary online fundraiser as well-and it currently tops out at over $5,000.
But even though their opponent was a five-year-old girl, that didn't stop the WBC from attempting to obstruct Jayden's efforts. They reportedly tried to get police to shut down the lemonade stand, and when that didn't work, they shouted obscenities.
Pink Lemonade
43 Years Later
Black Sabbath
The British rock band Black Sabbath's album "13!" has given them a first British Number One album in nearly 43 years, a record interval between chart-toppers, the Official Charts Company said on Sunday.
Black Sabbath were last at the top of the UK chart with their second album, "Paranoid".
"I'm in shock!" Black Sabbath front man Ozzy Osbourne told the Official Charts Company. "The success of this album has blown me off my feet. We've never had a record climb the charts so fast."
Black Sabbath
Cat Runs For Mayor
Morris
This mayoral hopeful in Mexico promises to eat, sleep most of the day and donate his leftover litter to fill potholes.
Morris, a black-and-white kitten with orange eyes, is running for mayor of Xalapa in eastern Mexico with the campaign slogan "Tired of Voting for Rats? Vote for a Cat." And he is attracting tens of thousands of politician-weary, two-legged supporters on social media.
"He sleeps almost all day and does nothing, and that fits the profile of a politician," said 35-year-old office worker Sergio Chamorro, who adopted the 10-month-old feline last year.
Also running for mayor are "Chon the Donkey" in the border city of Ciudad Juarez, "Tina the Chicken" in Tepic, the capital of the Pacific coast state of Nayarit, "Maya the Cat" in the city of Puebla and "Tintan the Dog" in Oaxaca City, though their campaigns are not as well organized as that of Morris.
Politicians repeatedly rank at the bottom of polls about citizens' trust in institutions. A survey last year by Mitofsky polling agency ranking Mexicans' trust in 15 institutions put politicians and government officials among the bottom five. Universities and the Catholic Church were the top two, respectively.
Morris
Divers Begin Search For Ship
Lake Michigan
Divers began opening an underwater pit Saturday at a remote site in northern Lake Michigan that they say could be the resting place of the Griffin, a ship commanded by the 17th century French explorer La Salle.
U.S. and French archaeologists examined sediment removed from a hole dug near a timber slab that expedition leader Steve Libert discovered wedged in the lakebed in 2001. They found a 15-inch slab of blackened wood that might have been a human-fashioned "cultural artifact," although more analysis will be required to determine whether it was part of a vessel, project manager Ken Vrana said.
Libert, who has spent about three decades searching for the Griffin (also known by its French equivalent Le Griffon), said he hoped that by Sunday, the excavation would reach what sonar readings indicate is a distinct shape beneath several feet of sediment. The object is over 40 feet long and about 18 feet wide - dimensions similar to those the Griffin is believed to have had, Vrana said.
Although Libert and his associates have dived at the site numerous times and conducted several surveys with remote sensing equipment, they hadn't conducted archaeological excavations until receiving a permit from the Michigan Department of Natural Resources this month after years of legal squabbles. The agency claims ownership over all Great Lakes shipwrecks in the state's waters, although it acknowledges France would have rights to the Griffin because it was sailing under the authority of King Louis XIV.
Lake Michigan
Putin Says It Was Gift
Super Bowl Ring
Russian President Vladimir Putin is denying insinuations that he stole New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft's Super Bowl ring that's on display in the Kremlin, but says he's ready to buy him another ring as a gift.
Putin was reacting Sunday through a spokesman to a New York Post story quoting remarks made by Kraft at an awards gala at the Waldorf-Astoria hotel last Thursday.
"I took out the ring and showed it to (Putin). And he put it on and he goes, 'I can kill someone with this ring,'" Kraft said, as quoted by the Post. "I put my hand out and he put it in his pocket, and three KGB guys got around him and walked out."
The diamond-encrusted Super Bowl ring worth about $25,000 changed hands while Kraft was visiting St. Petersburg, Russia, in 2005 with an American business delegation that met Putin. At the time, Kraft had said he gave the ring to Putin as a gift.
Super Bowl Ring
Studio City Temper Tantrum
Jeff Garlin
Los Angeles police say "Curb Your Enthusiasm" actor and comedian Jeff Garlin has been arrested on a felony vandalism charge after a dispute with another motorist over a parking space.
Police Sgt. Harry Rosenfeld says the 51-year-old actor was arrested for allegedly smashing the windows of the other person's car. Rosenfeld says officers arrested Garlin in Studio City on Saturday.
Garlin was jailed on $20,000 bail. It wasn't clear from the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department's website if he had been released. Garlin's publicists didn't immediately respond to phone and email messages Sunday.
Garlin played Larry David's friend and manager on "Curb Your Enthusiasm" and was the show's co-executive producer. He's also appeared frequently on "Arrested Development" and numerous other television shows.
Jeff Garlin
Ends July 4 Pops Concert Broadcast
CBS
For the first time in more than 20 years, the July 4 Boston Pops Fireworks Spectacular will not be televised nationally.
The Boston Globe reports that CBS declined to renew a contract with producers of the show, which will appear locally on WBZ-TV.
The show's executive producer, David Mugar, says ratings for the Independence Day event have fallen in recent years.
The Boston Pops concert and fireworks show draw more than 500,000 visitors to the Charles River Esplanade, free of charge.
CBS
Not-So-Christian College
Grace University
Danielle Powell was going through a hard time in the spring of 2011, just months away from graduating from a conservative Christian college in Nebraska. She had fallen in love with another woman, a strictly forbidden relationship at a school where even prolonged hugs were banned.
Powell said she was working at a civil rights foundation in Mississippi to finish her psychology degree when she was called back to Grace University in Omaha and confronted about the relationship. She was eventually expelled - then sent a bill for $6,000 to reimburse what the school said were federal loans and grants that needed to be repaid because she didn't finish the semester.
Powell is now fighting the Omaha school, arguing that her tuition was covered by scholarships and that federal loans wouldn't need to be repaid in that amount. She also notes she was kicked out even after undergoing months of counseling, spiritual training and mentoring insisted upon by the school following her initial suspension.
The university insists that the $6,000 bill covers federal grants and loans that, by law, must be repaid to the federal government because Powell didn't finish her final semester. School officials declined to discuss specifics of Powell's case, citing federal student privacy laws, but through a public relations agency said it would provide Powell official transcripts and transfer her credits.
Powell is skeptical. She noted that nine months after she was expelled in January 2012, the registrar's office denied her request for her transcripts because of the bill, though she eventually received student copies of her transcripts.
Grace University
Lifelike Android Demoed
Hiroshi Ishiguro
An extremely humanlike robot made a public appearance today (June 15) here at the Global Futures 2045 International Congress, a futuristic conference focused on the technological singularity.
Japanese roboticist Hiroshi Ishiguro, director of the Intelligent Robotics Laboratory at Osaka University, Japan, described some of his efforts to develop lifelike androids. But there were two Hiroshi Ishiguros onstage: the living, breathing one and a robotic lookalike. The bot's human resemblance was striking, even down to its tiny movements and blinking eyes.
Ishiguro has developed some impressive robots over the years. The one onstage was the "Geminoid," an android resembling a real person that was "tele-operated" - controlled remotely - by a colleague offstage. Ishiguro joked that he could use the Geminoid to give lectures in his stead. People could easily accept the android as his own body, Ishiguro said.
Ishiguro has also developed another Geminoid, this one a fashionably dressed female android, which he has shown off in the windows of clothing stores. The robot was so popular that the clothing it was modeling sold out immediately, Ishiguro said.
Hiroshi Ishiguro
Let Loose in Wild
California Yellow-Legged Frogs
In a boost to California's endangered amphibians, researchers released about 100 mountain yellow-legged froglets into the wild this week.
The diminutive frogs were bred and raised in captivity for a year before they were released on Wednesday (June 12) into a creek at the James San Jacinto Mountains Reserve. This is the first time frogs of this species have been reintroduced into the wild, said researcher Frank Santana, of the San Diego Zoo Institute for Conservation Research.
Some of the frogs were outfitted with radio telemetry backpacks, which will allow researchers to pinpoint the animals' location and track their wellbeing, Santana added.
The frogs once thrived in streams in parts of the San Gabriel, San Bernardino and San Jacinto mountains in Southern California, but they experienced a precipitous decline over the last several decades; by 2003, there were estimated to be fewer than 200 individuals.
California Yellow-Legged Frogs
Moving From NY to Chicago
15-Ton Magnet
Scientists on Long Island are preparing to move a 50-foot-wide electromagnet 3,200 miles over land and sea to its new home at the U.S. Department of Energy's Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Illinois. The trip is expected to take more than a month.
The electromagnet, which weighs at least 15 tons, was the largest in the world when it was built by scientists at Brookhaven in the 1990s, Morse said. Brookhaven scientists no longer have a need for the electromagnet, so it is being moved to the Fermi laboratory, where it will be used in a new experiment called Muon g-2.
The experiment will study the properties of muons, subatomic particles that live only 2.2 millionths of a second. The results of the experiment could create new discoveries in the realm of particle physics, said Chris Polly, manager of the Muon g-2 project at Fermilab.
The move is expected to cost about $3 million, but Polly estimated that constructing an entirely new electromagnet needed for the Muon g-2 experiment could cost as much as $30 million.
Scientists will begin the move next Saturday, taking the magnet from its location on the 5,300-acre Brookhaven campus to the front gate - a distance of about 1.8 miles. The following day, they are expected to move the magnet south along the William Floyd Parkway for 6 miles to Smith Point Park on the Atlantic Ocean. From there, it will be loaded onto a barge and will proceed down the East Coast, around the tip of Florida and up the Mississippi, Illinois and Des Plaines rivers.
15-Ton Magnet
Scientists Saving Bees
Bee Sperm Bank
Although the mating ritual of the queen bee has been finely tuned by Mother Nature, it may not be long before scientists are providing assistance.
Entomologists in Washington are starting the world's first bee sperm bank. Their goal is to collect semen from different honey bee species abroad, freeze it in liquid nitrogen, and bring it back to the United States to help fight Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD), a phenomenon in which adult bees mysteriously disappear from their hive.
"Poor nutrition, pesticides, and parasites all play a role [in CCD]," said Susan Cobey, one of the founders of the bee sperm bank project and a research associate at Washington State University. By increasing the genetic diversity of bees, beekeepers can selectively breed for traits to assist to better prepare them against CCD.
And if you're wondering what it's like to actually get semen from a bee, it's simpler than you might think.
"The drone's only function is to mate," she says. "You just need to apply a little pressure to the abdomen." Afterwards, the semen is extracted with a specialized syringe and frozen with liquid nitrogen. Once frozen, the semen can be viable for several decades.
Bee Sperm Bank
Weekend Box Office
'Man of Steel'
"Man of Steel" leaped over box office expectations in a single weekend.
The Warner Bros. superhero film earned $113 million in its opening weekend at the box office, according to studio estimates Sunday. The retelling of Superman's backstory earned an additional $12 million from Thursday screenings, bringing its domestic total to $125 million. Original box-office expectations for "Man of Steel" ranged from $75 million to $130 million.
Sony's "This Is the End" debuted in second place in North America behind "Man of Steel" with $20.5 million in its opening weekend. The comedy starring Seth Rogen, James Franco and Jonah Hill as versions of themselves trapped in a mansion during the apocalypse opened Wednesday, earning a domestic total of $32.8 million. The film cost just $32 million to produce.
Estimated ticket sales for Friday through Sunday at U.S. and Canadian theaters, according to Hollywood.com. Where available, latest international numbers are also included. Final domestic figures will be released on Monday.
1. "Man of Steel," $113 million ($71.6 million international).
2. "This Is the End," $20.5 million.
3. "Now You See Me," $10.3 million ($15.6 million international).
4. "Fast & Furious 6," $9.4 million ($20 million international).
5. "The Purge," $8.2 million ($2.4 million international).
6. "The Internship," $7 million ($5.1 million international).
7. "Epic," $6 million ($8.1 million international).
8. "Star Trek: Into Darkness," $5.6 million ($17 million international).
9. "After Earth," $3.7 million ($24 million international).
10. "Iron Man 3," $2.9 million ($1 million international).
'Man of Steel'
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