Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Books Should Be Free
Free Audio Books from the public domain.
10 Surreal Botanical Spaces From Around the World (flavorwire.com)
…we present ten of the most strange, surreal, and spectacular botanical spaces from around the world, from gardens with sleeping moss giants to fields of roaring creatures and spiraling labyrinths to scientific theorems played out in grand scale on the lawns of Scotland.
Exploring the Best 'Secret' Gardens in the US (flavorwire.com)
… we got in the mood to do a little exploring of gardens you may be less familiar with, but which are worth going out of your way for.
Paul Krugman: The Wrong Worries (The New York Times)
In case you had any doubts, Thursday's more than 500-point plunge in the Dow Jones industrial average and the drop in interest rates to near-record lows confirmed it: The economy isn't recovering, and Washington has been worrying about the wrong things.
Froma Harrop: Detroit Loves Good Gas Mileage at Last (Creators Syndicate)
Fifty years ago, Ford unveiled a small-scale model for its atomic-powered car of the future. A capsule in the rear would contain the nuclear power and could be replaced. The engineering challenge would be dealing with the weight required for shielding the radioactivity. That was about the time Ford came out with another shaky idea, the Edsel, which, unfortunately for the company, it put into production.
Douglas W. Texter: Academic English Is Not a Club I Want to Join (Creators Syndicate)
When considering an occupation, most people look for a role model. They look around their professional world and ask, "Is there anybody here whom I would like to be like in 20 years? Are there older versions of me here? More accomplished, certainly, but basically like me." I have never found anybody working in English departments whom I wanted to emulate, or with whom I ever felt any connection.
Mark Edmundson: "Health Now: A Provocation" (Chronicle of Higher Education)
A certain part of the American population now lives for nothing so much as it does for good health.
Alex Ross: Deceptive Picture (The New Yorker)
Oscar Wilde was not a man who lived in fear, but early reviews of "The Picture of Dorian Gray" must have given him pause.
Jim Phillips: OU prof's novel captures a time, a place and its voices (Athens News)
There's so much to delight a reader in local author Jack Matthews' new novel, "The Gambler's Nephew," it's hard to know where to start. Probably with the prose, which Matthews writes with easy, lyrical grace and a bulls-eye wit.
"The Long Night: William L. Shirer and the Rise and Fall of the Third Reich " by Steve Wick: A review by Richard J. Evans
Wick has missed the opportunity to assess the accuracy of Shirer's reporting. He is too uncritical of Shirer's cliche-ridden opinions on the Germans. And while one can understand why he confined himself to writing just about Shirer as a foreign correspondent, his very cursory treatment of the McCarthy years and Shirer's life as an author leaves the reader unsatisfied. The reader may end up crying out for the full biography that this great American journalist deserves.
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."
wrote:
answered:
3 4 5 6 7 8 CaterpillarsGulf Fritillary Butterfly
Here are today's pictures:
Caterpillar #1 - pupated (7/24/11) (but not looking so good, but still alive)
Caterpillar #2 - pupated (7/26/11)
Caterpillar #3 - pupated (8/01/11)
Caterpillar #4 has disappeared. Don't know if it's pupating somewhere or if a wasp got it. Sigh.
Caterpillar #5 prepares to pupate
Caterpillar #6
Caterpillar #7
Caterpillar #8 - the newest addition
Gulf Fritillary Butterfly Archive
Reader Suggestion
Michelle in AZ
From The Creator of 'Avery Ant'
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Sunnier and more humid.
Seth McFarlane Producing Sequel
"Cosmos"
In the vast expanse of the TV universe, there would seem to be billions and billions of popular series from the past more appropriate for "Family Guy" creator Seth MacFarlane to take on than Carl Sagan's landmark scientific program "Cosmos: A Personal Voyage."
In fact, MacFarlane has already found what feels like a nice fit with the upcoming "Flintstones" reboot he's putting together for Fox.
But Fox announced Friday that MacFarlane has teamed up with Sagan's closest collaborators -- his widow, Anne Druyan, and astrophysicist Steven Soter -- to produce "Cosmos: A Space-Time Odyssey," a 13-part sequel to the Emmy-winning 1980 PBS docu-series -- pretty much billions and billions of light years away from what you might expect the guy who conceived of little Stewie to tackle next.
"Cosmos: A Personal Journey," which will be produced in conjunction with National Geographic Channel, is planned for a 2013 debut and will air on primetime in 13 parts, just like Sagan's 1980 PBS series. It will be hosted by Neil deGrasse Tyson, the renowned astrophysicist, who we hope will use the expression "billions and billions" as memorably as Sagan did in "Cosmos."
"Cosmos"
Wardrobe Malfunction
Nicki Minaj
ABC News is apologizing for a wardrobe malfunction that gave singer Nicki Minaj more exposure than she bargained for.
Minaj appeared Friday on the "Good Morning America" concert series, wearing a loose-fitting halter top that she occasionally had to adjust. As Minaj sang "Where Dem Girls At," some slips made one of her nipples fleetingly visible.
Despite a five-second delay, the slips were seen during the East Coast's live telecast. ABC said they were edited out of Friday's later feeds to other parts of the country.
ABC says in a statement: "We are sorry that this occurred."
Nicki Minaj
Top Sales
Video Rentals
Americans spent more money renting home movies than buying them in the second quarter, marking only the second time that's happened in the DVD era. The big switch in consumer behavior shows the rising popularity of cheap alternatives like Netflix and Redbox and suggests people are pinching pennies in this economy.
Rental revenue rose 11 percent from a year ago to $2.06 billion, while sales of discs and digital purchases fell 15 percent to $1.93 billion in the three months through June, according to a report released Friday by The Digital Entertainment Group, an industry consortium of studios and electronics makers.
The resurgence of rentals is noticeable mainly because the DEG started including subscription plans such as Netflix's in the rental category this year, said executive director Amy Jo Smith. Still, she said consumer behavior is changing.
The last time rental revenues beat purchases was in 2000, before people slowed their rentals of VHS tapes from rental video shops like Blockbuster and began buying more DVDs - which at around $20 seemed like a bargain. The DVD first came out in 1995 and led to a revolution where people replaced their home libraries of video cassettes for the thinner, lighter discs that lasted longer, giving a huge boost to movie studios' profits.
Video Rentals
Hospital News
Rowan Atkinson
"Mr. Bean" actor Rowan Atkinson, whose character is known for hapless driving in the television shows and films, left a hospital Friday after being treated for minor injuries following a sports car crash in southern England.
The 56-year-old comedian was driving his McLaren F1 supercar - one of the world's fastest road cars - when he crashed late Thursday, striking a tree and a lamppost before the vehicle caught fire, authorities said.
Firefighters said Atkinson hadn't been trapped inside the car. Britain's Daily Mirror tabloid reported that the actor was able to walk away from the vehicle and flag down other motorists for help.
Atkinson was seen leaving Peterborough City Hospital with four security guards Friday afternoon, but made no comment to reporters. Publicists did not disclose details of his injuries.
His McLaren F1 car has a top speed of 230 mph (370 kph), though police did not suggest Atkinson had been speeding. The exclusive cars can cost around $1 million.
Rowan Atkinson
2nd Newspaper Group Faces Lawsuits
Hacking
Several alleged victims of tabloid phone hacking in Britain will soon file lawsuits against a second newspaper group, Piers Morgan's former employer Trinity Mirror PLC, their lawyer said Friday.
Mark Lewis said the claims would be filed in "a few weeks," but would not disclose identities of his clients or say precisely when the papers would be lodged at court.
Lewis represents the family of Milly Dowler, a 13-year-old girl abducted and murdered by a pedophile in 2002. The revelation a month ago that her voicemail messages had been accessed by the News of the World while she was still missing outraged British opinion, and triggered a crisis for Rupert Murdoch's News Corp.
So far the crisis has centered on Murdoch's media empire, leading him to shut down the News of the World tabloid and abandon a bid to take over British Sky Broadcasting. Several former executives of the newspaper have been arrested by police investigating the eavesdropping.
But there have also been allegations of hacking by other newspapers. This week Paul McCartney's ex-wife, Heather Mills, claimed in a BBC interview that she was hacked by a Trinity Mirror journalist in 2001.
Hacking
Pieman's Sentence Reduced
Rupert
A judge has cut the sentence of an activist who hit Rupert Murdoch with a shaving foam pie as the mogul testified to British lawmakers.
Jonathan May-Bowles was sentenced Tuesday to six weeks in jail for assaulting the 80-year-old media tycoon as he gave evidence to the House of Commons Culture, Media and Sport Committee on July 19.
A judge on Friday rejected his attempt to overturn the sentence, but reduced it to four weeks.
Ruper
Dogged By Kaplan Woes
Washington Post
The Washington Post Co continues to grapple with declining student enrollments at its core Kaplan education business and it signaled a further fall in the division's profit over the rest of the year.
The company, which posted better-than-expected earnings from operations on cost cuts, has been restructuring its Kaplan education unit to combat a prolonged fall in the number of students signing up for its courses and will see this trend continue going forward.
Most for-profit colleges have seen a drop in new students as they change their enrollment practices to comply with tougher new regulations linking access to federal aid with students' ability to repay debt.
Earlier this week, for-profit education companies Lincoln Educational Services Corp, Bridgepoint Education Inc signaled tough days ahead as they trimmed their student enrollment outlook.
Washington Post, which gets about 60 percent of total revenue from its education business, also warned that the segment would see more restructuring costs in 2011.
Washington Post
Possessions To Be Auctioned
Bruce Lee
Thirteen items belonging to the late kung fu legend Bruce Lee, including a hand-written letter and a fur-lined coat, are set to go under the hammer in Hong Kong at the weekend.
Among the items to be sold in what is thought to be the largest auction of Lee memorabilia in Hong Kong to date is the fur-lined costume jacket, which was made for Lee's film "Game of Death" and worn by him in 1973, just before he died of a reaction to medication.
Other items include a letter written in 1966 to Taky Kimura, a friend in Seattle and fellow kung fu instructor who was best man at Lee's 1964 wedding.
The letter is estimated to go for up to $38,500 and all 13 lots -- which came from the same U.S. collector -- to fetch up to $113,000.
Bruce Lee
Art And Sub-Atomic Particles Collide
CERN
CERN, focus of research into the Big Bang and what makes the universe tick, on Thursday announced a new program -- fusing science with art to encourage painting and music inspired by the wonders of the cosmos.
Or more prosaically a "policy of engaging with the arts" that will involve giving the European nuclear research center's seal of approval for cultural projects influenced by the particle physics at the heart of its work.
"The arts and science are inextricably linked; both are ways of exploring our existence, what it is to be human and what is our place in the universe," said CERN director general Rolf Heuer, a German physicist and classical music fan.
Leading Japanese video and photographic artist Mariko Mori provided a more lyrical view of the ideas behind the program, which will be directed by a "Cultural Board for the Arts" and bring artists to work in residence at CERN.
The 5-member "Cultural Board" -- including a top opera company director from France, a museum chief from Switzerland and a CERN physicist specializing in the cosmic search for anti-matter -- will select two projects a year for endorsement.
CERN
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